case or the heavy-duty paperweight that looked suspiciously like a set of brass knuckles. Aside from their questionable merchandising choices, the owner, Max, and his wife, Elena, believed small talk cut into their profit margin. Turnover was everything to the Meridas. For the life of him, Lang couldn’t imagine what could be taking Kir-sten so long.
The heel of his hand hovered near the center of the wheel. His subconscious prompted him to hit the horn, eager to get this date started so it could be over. Catching himself at the last second, he yanked his hand back as if he’d been singed.
Reflected light colored the drops of rain smattered across his windshield. He let his head rest against the window. His breath fogged the glass. The plate-glass door swung open wide and a woman emerged. Lang sat up straighter.
But the woman was not Kir-sten.
As a matter of fact, this woman was as different from his gum-loving date as Lang could imagine. She was dressed in clothing that was infinitely more weather-appropriate than the candy wrapper Kir-sten had on under her too-short winter coat. Her hair was dark—a rich, thick brown like coffee left to cook too long in the pot. And messy. The winter wind whipped loose curls around a perfect cameo of a face scrubbed clean of any trace of cosmetics. The planes and angles cut by ruthlessly high cheekbones were too sharp to pass for pretty. The careless tangle of her hair told him she was the kind of woman who never gave more than a passing thought to the beauty born in her bones.
She was apparently also the type to wear a hot pink coat so puffy it made her upper body look like a balloon animal.
Lang stared, riveted, as she raised her hand to draw her coat closed against the icy rain. Her gaze was wary and watchful. He liked that. In his opinion, there was nothing sexier than a woman who was nobody’s fool. His skin tingled when their eyes met through the spattered windshield. The wipers brushed semi-frozen precipitation aside but she didn’t look away. His heart rammed into his sternum. Just once. A single dull thud meant to mark the moment.
And then she was gone.
Lang wrapped his arms around the steering wheel and craned his neck, watching her dash out from under the awning and plow headlong into the freezing rain. Headlights caught the reflective strip running down the leg of her sweatpants as she dove into her car. A pang of envy tweaked his stomach. He had a pair with a similar stripe, and right now, he would give his left nut to be home sitting on his couch wearing them. Instead he was all trussed up in a suit heading for an anonymous hotel ballroom with a ditzy blonde who was apparently more interested in bubble gum than the prospect of dating him.
Heaving a sigh, he killed the engine and opened his door, determined to retrieve his date and get back to the task at hand. Wheatfield was only forty miles west of Chicago, but on a cold, rainy December night those miles could stretch on for hours. Though it was a small city in its own right, the far west suburb didn’t offer the kind of entertainment most women would expect on a New Year’s Eve date. That’s why the prepackaged party at a downtown hotel had seemed like a good idea when he forked over the cash for the tickets. Now he wasn’t sure.
Cruel winter wind stole his breath and sliced through the wool of his suit coat. He planted one foot on a patch of icy asphalt, waiting until the sole of his shoe caught a melted spot before leveraging himself from his car. The coupe was too small for a guy who’d been too tall since the tenth grade, but he didn’t care. He loved the way the engine hummed like a satisfied woman. If he could just find the woman he wanted to satisfy…
His car door closed with a solid ker-thunk, but a muffled scream caught his attention. Instinct kicked into high gear. Lang whirled, but he had no weapon strapped to his side. He was on a date, not on duty. He scanned the crowded parking lot, searching for the source of the distress. The screech of unoiled door hinges made the hairs on the back of his neck go porcupine. He spun around just as the woman in the track pants jumped from her driver’s seat to pound the hood of her car as she gave voice to her frustration.
“Really? Now? Because my life hasn’t gone to total and complete crap yet?”
Her outburst startled him, but it had little effect on the sedan. Propelled by a mixture of amusement and empathy, he turned away from the storefront and headed toward her. Ice crunched under the soles of his shoes. She glared at him, but the wind whipped her dark hair into her face, totally ruining the effect. Copping a clue, he tamped down on the urge to laugh but kept the smile in place as he approached.
“Maybe I can help?”
She fell back a step and he raised his hands in the universal symbol of surrender, wanting to ease some of the wariness in her tense expression. Swiping damp, dark hair from her face, the woman eyed him speculatively. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m a police officer.” He offered the information in hopes of reassuring her but knew it could cut either way, depending on her point of view. “I can show you my badge.”
She squinted at him through the falling sleet. Full lips thinned into a grim line. “I don’t need a badge. I need a jump.”
She pushed her hair back from her face once more, tucking the wayward waves behind her ear, leaving the long, smooth line of her throat exposed. That column of pale vulnerable skin beaconed to him. A hot knot of lust formed in his gut.
For a split second, he imagined himself crouched and poised to jump her. Like a tiger or panther, or something equally badass. But instead of taking the leap, he curled his toes in his too-tight shoes and kept his feet planted on the ground. He also bit his tongue. Hard. Ten thousand innuendos tickled the back of this throat, but something told him she wasn’t in the mood to wrestle with words.
“Do you have cables?”
The question jolted him from his haze. Swallowing the rust in his throat, he nodded. “Pop the hood and get in there out of the rain. I’ll be right back.”
Lang hustled back to his car, glad to have something to do other than turning lech on a complete stranger. Then again, it couldn’t be worse than spending an entire evening waiting on a woman with a chewing gum obsession. He grabbed his cables from the trunk just as a carload of teenagers vacated the spot beside his damsel in distress’s vehicle. He waved to catch her attention through her rain-dotted window. Using a series of exaggerated gestures, he signaled his intention to move to the space beside her.
He tossed the canvas bag containing cables into the empty passenger seat and started to slide into his car when a stunning array of light bounced off the mini-mart’s rain-speckled door and a commotion spilled out into the night. Lang looked up to find Kristin…Kir-sten backlit in the doorway, trying to yank her arm from Max Merida’s grip.
“Help!”
“No! You do not yell ‘help’ as if you did not attempt to steal from me,” Max argued.
“Whoa!” Jumper cables forgotten, Lang slammed the car door and hurried to the walkway that led into the store. “What’s going on?”
“Ah, Detective. Thank goodness you are here,” Max said in his thick, accented English. “Arrest this thief. She has stolen from me for the last time.”
Lang stared at the short, balding man until the accusation settled into the right slot in his mind. “Stolen from you?” He shifted his focus to his date and her name sprang to his lips. Apparently, all it took to make a forgettable woman unforgettable was a little petty larceny. “Kirsten?”
She looked chagrined and the bright pink flush of guilt stained her cheeks. A twinge of oh-crap pinged his gut. Dread rooted him to the spot. He stared at his date, at a complete loss. The stomach-clenching realization that he might end up spending his only night off this week at the station left him rattled. Unable to look directly at the woman his grandmother had saddled him with, he ran a hand over his face. A movement to his right caught his attention. The woman with the dead battery climbed from her car and he groaned.
“Excuse me!” Her voice carried on the wet wind, her strident tone matching the determined set of her mouth. She hugged herself hard, holding the sides of her puffy hot pink parka closed as she hop-skipped