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Touching his forehead to hers, he held her close. “Let’s not argue about this, okay. I’ll meet you at home.”
“My home,” she clarified.
“Yes, Nikki, your home.”
He didn’t move as she slipped into the driver’s seat of her convertible. The upholstery molded to her contours; the seat was the right distance from the throttle for the length of her legs. Shoving the gearshift into Reverse, she backed the car out of its tight slot, slammed into Drive and, with a squeal of tires, threaded her way through the parking lot.
Trent watched her go and wondered how in the hell he was ever going to ease back into his old routine. Once this Crowley mess was settled, there would be no reason to see her, no reason to find excuses to be with her, no reason to scheme ways to get her into his bed.
Angry at himself, the world in general, and most pointedly at Diamond Jim, he kicked at the tire of his Jeep, felt a jarring pain all the way from his foot to his hip and swore under his breath. From the first time he’d seen Nikki Carrothers he’d felt his heartbeat catch, suspected that she was a woman like no other he’d ever seen. When he’d found out that she was working on a story about Crowley, he’d learned everything he could about her. The more he knew, the more fascinated he’d become until, like Crowley, she had become his obsession. One good. One evil. A balance.
But Trent hadn’t expected to become more entranced with her as the days had passed. His intuition had been right, he thought grimly as he stepped into the Jeep. She was different. Stubborn, determined, relentless—not exactly female qualities that he’d hoped to find in his wife.
His hands poised in midair over the steering wheel. Wife? What was he thinking? He didn’t want a wife, never had and especially would never want a bullheaded, prideful, arrogant woman like Nikki. No, he’d always gone for the softly feminine type, curvy, flirtatious, not too many brains. Those kind of relationships were easy to end.
There had been a few intelligent women in his life, women who were attractive to him
on a level he didn’t trust, women who had a chance of toying with his heart and his mind, and he’d avoided them like the proverbial plague. But with Nikki, things were different.
He jammed his key into the ignition, punched the throttle and roared after her. A cynical smile curved his lips. At first he’d played the role of her protector for the singular reason of keeping her safe, but as the marriage charade had worked and he’d been forced into close contact with her, he’d found his attraction to her impossible to fight. She’d been vulnerable and alone in the hospital, frightened, but as the days had passed and she’d healed, Trent had caught a glimpse of the woman within, the woman who seemed to have wrapped her long fingers around his heart and given a hard tug.
Hell, what a mess! And now, here he was, chasing her. Fitting, he thought with more than a trace of irony curving his lips. He couldn’t help wondering if he’d be chasing her for the rest of his life.
* * *
Nikki felt a new power as she drove. Following a nonending stream of glowing red taillights, working her way from freeway to exit, turning on the radio to stations that were as familiar as a favorite old robe, she realized she was beginning to understand herself. Memory flashes were coming as rapidly as the street signs, milestones of her past flashing through her brain.
She remembered a little black dog named Succotash, her favorite doll, her mother lighting a cigarette and warning her never to pick up the habit herself, the fights that seemed to wave from her parents’ bedroom every night when she was in junior high school, her mother’s increasing fascination with wine, the splitting of her family, painful and hard. She’d felt as if the underpinnings of her entire world had been ripped away, all the security she’d known had been stripped from her. That bleak period in her life was the only time she could remember seeing her father cry. Her chin wobbled a bit before her thoughts centered on happier moments, her senior prom and the sparkly white chiffon dress she’d worn only to spill orange punch on the skirt.
Tears studded her eyes as her life began to make sense and the holes and gaps in the jigsaw puzzle of her existence became smaller. She had a life—a life she could recall.
She remembered dating Dave Neumann. Dave. He was her first truly serious relationship, the first man she’d ever considered marrying. He was handsome and witty and they’d spent hours together, planning a future that somehow hadn’t quite jelled. He’d wanted a condo in the city and she’d wanted a house in the suburbs. He’d wanted to wait at least ten years for children and wasn’t sure that babies and diapers and midnight feedings would ever fit into his well-ordered life. He’d planned vacations around his work schedule and insisted that he go where he could “write off” the trip for business purposes rather than choosing a spot for fun or adventure.
No wonder the relationship had died a slow and painful death.
As she wheeled her little Dodge off the freeway, she considered herself lucky. They’d broken up “temporarily” to “test their relationship” to “find out for sure that they weren’t making a big mistake.” It had been Dave’s idea and had all sounded so rational. So clinical. So lacking passion. Well, to hell with that. If Trent had taught her anything, it was that she was a passionate person. Sexually, intellectually and morally. For that, she supposed, she should be thankful.
Trent. Oh, God, what was she going to do with him? It had been easier to deal with him when she’d believed they were married, but now, knowing that there were decisions looming ahead—hard, painful, future-determining decisions—she was frightened. After the breakup with Dave, she’d told herself that she would never, never get involved with a man who tried to run her life. Well, Trent certainly had bulldozed his way past any barriers she’d put up and lied, lied to get what he wanted.
Her teeth gritted. She was still galled at the deception.
Then there was the matter of trust. For years she’d trusted and depended upon her father, never questioning his opinions, though recently, before the trip, they had argued, and it hadn’t been the first time. She remembered Ted Carrothers’s anger, not a red-hot fury, but a quiet seething that she’d suddenly become a woman with a mind of her own, as if he couldn’t quite accept that his baby had developed into a free-thinking, high-spirited female.
“Leave Jim alone,” he’d warned her just before she’d left for Salvaje.
Now, while driving into the parking lot, Nikki shook herself out of her reverie and stood on the brakes to avoid hitting the side of the apartment house. Her throat turned to dust as she thought about the argument. They’d been seated in the shade of a striped umbrella in a restaurant on the waterfront. The scent of brine had drifted upward through the plank decking and the wind had been brisk, ruffling her father’s short hair. She and Ted Carrothers had been the only souls on the deck, all the other diners having been sane enough to seat themselves on the other side of thick glass windows.
“Jim’s a friend of mine,” her father had said as he’d motioned the waiter for another glass of gin and tonic.
“But he’s involved in a lot of shady deals, Dad,” she’d replied, tilting her chin up with determination, the wind whipping a long strand of hair over her eyes.
“He’s a politician. It goes with the job.”
“No way. I don’t believe that. Just because someone’s an elected official doesn’t mean that he has to turn into a crook.”
“The temptations—”
“Everyone has them, Dad. You do in business. I do in my job, in my life. It takes moral fiber to walk away from them.”
