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Midas climbed into the driver’s seat. “Tell me what happened.” He put her bag on the floorboard near her leg. His hand brushed over her thigh.
A surge of awareness slid over her. “I…it just stopped. Sputtered. Slowed down. I barely made it fully onto the shoulder before it died. I tried cranking it—a lot,” she confessed. “Maybe I flooded the engine.” That was a thing, wasn’t it? Cars weren’t exactly her specialty. “At the end, everything just turned off. The lights. Radio. I couldn’t even get my windows to lower.”
“You didn’t flood the engine.” He cranked his vehicle. Heat blasted from the vents.
“Well, that’s good to know.” She reached into her bag. Her phone was inside. She didn’t even remember dropping it back inside, but she must have done it before opening the door for him. “I’ll call a tow truck.”
“I’ll handle it.” Flat.
And, again, her brows rose.
“I have an acquaintance who specializes in auto repair. He can find out what happened to the car. Tow the ride. Get you repaired. No problem.” He hauled out his own phone and made a quick phone call.
“That’s nice of you,” she murmured. “Thank you.”
Headlights filled the interior of the SUV. Automatically, she looked back.
And heard the fierce growl of an engine. Not someone who was stopping to help. This vehicle hurtled past them as the engine seemed to suddenly roar.
“Sonofabitch,” Midas snarled.
Yep, very good thing she hadn’t been standing on the edge of the road by her vehicle.
“Ron, I need a pickup,” Midas said into his phone. “An Audi shut down on a friend of mine. Yeah, I can give you a location.” He did. A very specific one. “Let me know what the hell caused it to stop running, got me? ASAP on this.” He ended the call. Stared out after the vehicle that had just blasted past them. “He sure was in a hurry.” His head turned toward her. “You’re all right?”
A knot twisted in her stomach. “My car just broke down. No big deal.”
Illumination from the dash spilled onto him. His face seemed extra intent. Extra hard. “You were scared when I arrived.”
Why lie? She had been afraid. “For a moment, I didn’t know if you were the good guy or someone who might want to harm me.” Wasn’t that a worry everyone faced? In the night, stranded with a broken-down vehicle…
Was someone coming to help?
Or to hurt?
“I was calling for help,” she rushed to add. “Right before you arrived.” Though she just had to shake her head over his arrival. “Talk about perfect timing. For the second time today, you’ve been right there when I needed someone.” She tried to lighten her tone. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you just might be my guardian angel.”
“Oh, baby, no, I am no angel. Do not make that mistake.” He sounded so horrified that she had to laugh.
But he didn’t laugh with her.
“That’s not who I am,” he assured her and there was no humor in his voice. Only what seemed like a grim warning. “Not by a long shot. I’m more like the devil than anything else.”
But she shook her head. “Not to me.” Her hand lifted and curled around his fingers as he still gripped his phone. “To me, you look like a hero.”
He glanced down at her hand. She smiled as he said—
“Fuck.”
***
“Would you like to dance?” Alina’s question came out hesitantly even as her gaze flickered toward the small dance floor. Because the barbecue restaurant she’d picked? Just so happened there was a guy playing guitar there that night. Strumming along as a few couples moved slowly on a faded, wooden dance floor.
Dinner and a dance…and a side dose of danger. Because Midas had sure as shit felt dangerous when he’d followed Alina and saw her car pull over to the edge of the dark road.
Good thing I was on her trail. The car was dead. She would have been stuck there, all alone.
Two suspicious incidents in one day. Every instinct he had was on high alert.
