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Her heart was pounding, her pulse racing. She told herself it was fear—but she was also aware of an underlying exhilaration that startled her. She was a tax attorney, for Pete’s sake, not one of those dashing secret-agent types from the movies!
Keeping low, and urging her to do the same, Blake zigzagged through the collection of rather dilapidated vehicles until he reached a black pickup truck that looked somewhat better than the rest of the lot. Tara was startled when Blake pulled his key ring out of his pocket and shoved a key into the lock of the driver’s door.
“Get in,” he said, motioning for her to climb in and scoot over.
She did.
As Blake started the engine and shifted into drive, Tara saw a light go on in the bathroom of the cabin they’d just deserted. A dark figure was silhouetted against the window for a moment, and then Blake pulled out of the car lot and accelerated, leaving the motel—and his sports car—behind them.
They were on the road for well over an hour, driving a circuitous route that finally took them into Carrollton, some forty miles southwest of Atlanta. Blake explained briefly that he didn’t want to get too far out of the area, and that was just about the extent of their conversation during that drive. Blake seemed lost in thought, and Tara was too busy trying to make sense of the evening to attempt to draw answers out of him.
Blake pulled into a service station and parked at the side, next to a door marked Men. He reached into the storage area behind the seat. Tugging a duffel bag into his lap, he opened his door.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Lock the doors.”
That was one instruction he didn’t need to repeat. She had the doors locked almost before Blake had climbed out of the truck.
She didn’t recognize the lanky cowboy who approached the driver’s door a few minutes later. He was wearing snug jeans, a white, long-sleeved western-cut shirt, boots and a black hat pulled low over his face. Even his walk was different, a slightly bowlegged amble that drew her eyes to his slim, rolling hips.
Only the duffel bag beneath his arm looked familiar.
Blake tapped on the driver’s window for her to unlock the door.
“I should make you say ‘trick or treat’ before you get in,” she muttered as she opened the door for him.
He chuckled. “The suit matched the sports car,” he explained. “A pickup truck calls for an image change.”
He tossed the duffel bag over the seat and slid behind the wheel. His hat almost touched the top of the cab; he tugged it off and laid it on the seat between them.
“Don’t touch my hat,” he warned in a broad Texas drawl. “That was my great-granddaddy’s hat. I wouldn’t want nothing to happen to it.”
She looked up from pulling a burr off her tattered hose. “Don’t worry about your hat. It’s your throat I’m going for if this evening goes much further downhill.”
Blake flashed her a quick, bright grin. “That’s the spirit,” he murmured in his own voice.
She opened her door to toss the bit of weed out of the truck, then closed it firmly again and drew a deep breath. “Okay, Tex,” she said. “What are we going to do now?”
BLAKE HAD TO ADMIRE Tara’s composure. Considering everything that had gone wrong that evening, it was a wonder she wasn’t a basket case.
All he’d wanted was an excuse to spend time with the most appealing lawyer he’d ever met—one who had hardly given him the time of day while she worked for Carpathy, Dillon and Delacroix. He’d certainly never anticipated getting her involved in a murder case, or sending her on the run from people who seemed intent on putting a bullet in her.
Events had been spinning out of Blake’s control ever since he’d seen Tara struggling with that ape in the art gallery office—or maybe when he’d waited for a contact who’d never shown up. Or even sooner, when Tara had opened her door to him, looking more lost and wounded and vulnerable than he’d ever imagined the cool, competent, almost intimidatingly intelligent attorney could appear.
Blake wasn’t accustomed to being caught so completely off guard. Nor had he ever before been so distracted by a woman that he forgot to listen to his usually reliable instincts.
He was making mistakes tonight. And he hated admitting that his feelings toward Tara McBride were making him careless. He’d always been damned careful not to let anyone get in the way of his job.
He should have just asked Tara to a movie.
It was after midnight now. She looked tired when he glanced sideways at her as he pulled into the parking lot of yet another motel, this one a budget-priced, nofrills chain.
“Wait out here for a minute, okay?” he asked. “I’ll get us a room.”
“Blake, shouldn’t we go to the police?” she asked, looking at him with searching eyes. “We have to tell them what we saw. We’ll make them believe us somehow.”
He understood her fear, and her automatic assumption that the police would take care of everything for them. But he didn’t share her optimism. He’d been taking care of himself for too long to turn his fate over to anyone else.
“Just let me make a couple of calls first. I want to ask a few more questions, okay?”
