WAS TIRED and he was later than he’d planned.
Clouds were building into swirling black shapes across the murky light of the October moon. The breeze was strong. A storm was brewing.
As Jesse picked up speed and let the wind whip past him, he thought about why he loved his motorcycle—it was controlled power. No arguing, just compliance. But driving through a Texas rainstorm changed the rules. The elements didn’t abide by the rules. Without order, came chaos. He needed to be careful.
The Katy Highway between Houston and San Antonio alternated from busy clusters of strip malls and fast-food outlets to long flat areas of nothing. He’d been summoned for an appointment in San Antonio with the chief the next morning and Jesse James Dane would never be late. A little caffeine would help; he’d pull into the next truck stop.
In the darkness ahead he caught sight of the tail-lights of an eighteen-wheeler running side by side with a smaller truck.
As he came closer, the commercial rig started to weave and the trucker jerked the vehicle back into his lane. After several “near misses” that forced the pickup to either speed up or slow down, Jesse decided he might be driving into trouble.
Jesse hadn’t witnessed a traffic offense in a long time, but it looked as if he was about to. Matters worsened when a light rain began to fall. As Jesse approached, the big rig picked up speed and moved into the passing lane in front of the pickup.
To avoid rear-ending the eighteen-wheeler, the pickup whipped into the inside lane in front of Jesse, forcing him to use his brakes. Normally the bike would have responded but a little sand on a barely wet road caught it and the bike began to slide to the outside lane. For a moment, Jesse thought he had it under control, then the back tire lost traction and the bike skidded into a sudden sideways motion. Jesse swore. He was going to have to lay the bike down. As the eighteen-wheeler that had started the trouble sped out of sight, Jesse’s machine slid across the highway and landed in the ditch with a crunch.
Jesse swore again and pulled himself to a limping stand. Taking a deep breath, he dragged off his helmet, dropped it next to the bike and glanced up to see the pickup driver now backing along the shoulder of the empty highway. He didn’t know why the two vehicles had been playing tag and he couldn’t assume the driver of the pickup was stopping to be a Good Samaritan. He’d been a ranger long enough to know that even the most innocent action could have disastrous consequences. He stepped back, pulled his cell phone from his backpack, and punched in 9-1-1. No service. Damn. The driver was almost at the crash site. Casually, Jesse reached down and picked up one of the rear view mirrors that had snapped off in the skid.
The vehicle coming to a stop in front of him was no simple pickup. Even in the dark he could see that it was a classic Ford El Camino with some kind of custom-designed toolbox built across the cab’s outer wall. As the door opened, the clouds parted and a shaft of moonlight cut through the black rain clouds, hitting the driver like a spotlight and revealing a pair of long, jeans-clad legs, an open stretch of bare midriff and a denim jacket.
“A woman.” She peeled off a baseball cap and, with the shake of her head, her mass of blond hair was caught by the whipping wind.
No, not just a woman, a vision. The Cameron Diaz look-alike strode toward him. She was almost as tall as he was—something he didn’t like in a woman. He preferred them tiny and temporary.
“Hello,” she called. “Are you okay?” For a moment he didn’t answer. He was struck by an awareness of something very physical between them, an energy that started in his fingertips and vibrated up his arms and into the back of his neck. He could only think it was some kind of atmospheric anomaly caused by the impending storm. He felt as if he was about to be struck by lightning. As a ranger, he’d earned the reputation as Ice Man when he encountered trouble. It kept situations from becoming personal. This time that control seemed totally elusive.
“I’m okay but I might not have been,” he blurted, taking his uncertainty out on a woman who didn’t deserve it. He couldn’t see any lightning but he sure as hell felt electricity in the air. If he’d been standing in water, he’d be fried. It was the kind of feeling he imagined a law officer might experience if he were forced to kill a man.
“Should I have hit him?” she asked, a hint of anger in her voice. He wondered if she felt the tension between them. “I don’t think so. My pickup was no match for that big wheeler.”
He took another look at the El Camino with the Georgia tag. “Pickup? Not too many normal people drive a restored vehicle like that on the highway.”
“I do.”
“I can see that.” He made a disparaging sound, not so much directed at her as an attempt to disconnect himself from his rescuer. “What’s a woman from Georgia doing out here alone at this time of night?”
“You have a curfew in Texas for women from other states?”
She couldn’t see his face. He was a silhouette: a lean, dark figure holding a bike mirror as if it were the head of a staff. The Grim Reaper. All he needed was a cloak and a black horse, Cat mused, shivering. Every nerve in her body responded to him in a way she couldn’t understand.
A circle of light split the clouds and fell across the man. She gasped. His five o’clock shadow gave him the sinister look of an old Western outlaw. Dark eyes seemed to look right through her. In response, her teeth began to chatter. She felt as if she were in the eye of a storm. As long as she didn’t move, she was safe.
Bettina had asked her who she was waiting for. She’d quipped that she’d know when she found him. One look at the man in the moonlight and she knew he would be at the top of her list. It had been too long since she’d felt such desire and never this intense. She wanted this man naked, in her bed, inside her—and the sooner the better.
The wind picked up, flinging a wet sheen across her face, and she pulled her cap back on, barely aware she was doing it. “I stopped to help you,” she said.
“Thanks, but I can manage,” he said gruffly.
She took a step back, holding up both hands as a shield. “Okay. Sorry I stopped,” she said, annoyed and puzzled at his mood.
He shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.” If it had been anybody else, he’d have forced himself to be more pleasant, but something he couldn’t explain was affecting his breathing. The very air between them was hot.
She asked again, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Those words echoed in his head as he lost himself in thought….
All right? When he was a child, long after his father had gone, he’d asked his mother that. His older brother Mitchell had been forced into becoming the head of the household and making the rules.
Mitchell and Ran, the middle brother, had established a conspiracy of silence that had closed Jesse out, and he’d never understood why. Rule number one was that Mama was sick and Jesse shouldn’t go into her room.
Yet, he’d slip into Mama’s room when they were away and she would loop her thin arms around him and cry against his chest. “Are you all right?” he’d ask. She’d only cry and say she loved him.
Then came the bad days when she no longer knew him as her youngest son. She’d cried then because she was in pain. He’d continued to break Mitchell’s rules—because she’d needed him—until she’d been sent to the nursing home. Then, out of pain and anger, he’d broken some of Mitchell’s other rules. On probation from his second DUI charge, Jesse had finished high school one day and joined the marines the next. But he’d never gotten over the feeling that he’d let Mama down.
He’d determined long ago that he’d never let anyone need him again and he’d never break any more rules.
“Listen. I feel bad about what happened,” the woman facing him said. “It’s starting to rain. If you’ll put your bike in the back of my truck I’ll drive you wherever you like.”