Lonesome Lawmen

Eight-1

Eight

Boomer Edison’s office was so awash with paper and technology, Dani almost couldn’t find him. She found a shock of orange hair moving in the mass and used it to home in on where he’d hunkered down, typing at two of three computers. A third whirred with the effort of making a printer spew pages in a continuous feed. Except for bifocals perched on the tip of his nose that gave him a vaguely mad scientist air, he looked like a football player who’d taken a wrong turn on his way to the field. His tee shirt even sported a number: infinity.

He didn’t fit into Dani’s notion of a computer whiz. But then, she no longer fit anyone’s idea of a romance writer. Meat’s Mama had played fairy biker “motha,” but instead of taffeta and glass slippers, Dani now sported black Army boots, shiny black leather shorts, a bandeau top that doubled as a push-up bra—more than doubling her available asset—with a black vest pulled over. In her neon beauty salon, conveniently attached to Meat’s junk yard, Mama had trimmed and planted a pyrotechnic bomb in Dani’s hair, then did her face in a combination of slut and Elvira that somehow worked.

After a bit of coaching on her attitude, Dani had thrown her leg over the back of Meat’s Harley and hung on. They stopped once so she could mail her chapters to her agent, then headed for Boomer’s office. She got off the hog feeling like she could kick some serious booty—a feeling she liked. It made a nice change from the whimpering, cowering thing she’d been doing.

Dani propped her shoulder against the door frame, raised her voice to be heard over the technology, and asked, “You Boomer?”

“Yeah, I’m…” He turned to look at her, impatience melting into a look of shock when his gaze collided with the biker babe interrupting him.

Dani chewed the gum Mama had insisted was mandatory and let him look his fill while she studied the scarlet tipped, acrylic nails Mama had applied. If Shakespeare was right and life was a stage, then timing was everything. She wanted him to be capable of thought, but just enough to help her without asking too many questions.

“Can I help you?” The question emerged minus some of his bass tones.

“Meathook said you could, like, help me with a little problem I’m having?” Dani felt the particularly lethal point of her index finger, while studying him through her outrageous lashes. He looked to be simmering nicely.

“Meat…hook?” He dabbed at the sweat popping out across his forehead.

“Big guy, tattoos, nice Hog?” she prompted gently.

His grin was edged with sheepish. “Oh yeah. Meat. What can I do for you?”

Dani smiled back, hoping it was as smoky as it felt. “I been getting this, like, shitty email crap from some jerk. Meat says, like, maybe you can tell us who it is, so he could, I dunno, kill him or something?”

She could almost see his Knight in Shining Armor genes kick in. He straightened. “I might. You got copies?”

“Yeah.” She worked her way through his paper stack maze so she could hand him the print out, then propped her elbows on a chest high pile to watch him at work.

It wasn’t until he blinked and swallowed so dryly she could hear it, that she realized the movement had put her cleavage on display. The romance writer inside her cringed, but biker babe licked her lips, then watched the sweat on his skin sizzle like water on a hot skillet.

“I…uh…usually need several posts for a good match,” he stuttered. Biker Babe did disappointed and he rushed to add, “but I can try.”

She made eye contact, held it for two beats, then said, “I’d be real grateful if you would.” She parted her lips slightly, waited another beat, and added, “Real grateful.”

His glasses fogged over. He took them off and turned to the computer, his hands visibly shaking.

Cool. Dani straightened, glad she wouldn’t have to deliver on that gratitude, though not unhappy with his response. She’d have to add a leather scene to her next book.

While his fingers fumbled on the keys, she looked around. The high tech clutter of Boomer’s space was interesting to someone with her cyberspace habits. The up side of being hunted like a dog was that she got to learn so many interesting things. Idly, she thumbed a stack of print outs—

She stopped, her gaze caught by a name at the top of a list on the first sheet. Willow?

She tipped her head to read what turned out to be a nearly complete list of her online handles. As far as she could tell, he’d only missed one. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out she wasn’t the only one who’d availed themselves of Boomer’s special ID hunting skills. She ought to make sure. It could be Dark Lord.

“So, what’s all this Willow s**t?”

Boomer looked up, tried to look modestly proud. The effort put a twitch at the edge of his right eye. “That’s a search I did for the Feds.”

“Bitchin’.” Dani smoothed back her heavily moussed hair. “So you think you can find my guy?”

He sighed, fiddling with the stack of papers closest to him. “Less I have to work with, harder it is.”

“Oh.” She chewed her gum, trying to find a way to exit stage right. She’d run a check on Matt Kirby, Marshals Service tracker. He was good. Not the type to let sleeping lists lie. She’d bet her leather brassiere he or his guys would be here any minute to collect. Did she hear baying hounds getting closer? Absolutely. “So, when do you think you’ll, like, know?”

Boomer shrugged. “Tomorrow?”

“I’ll check back then. Thanks.” It was all he was going to get, so she gave him her sultriest smile. Instead of smiling back, he looked past her. “May I help you?”

“Kirby. US Marshals Service.”

Dani stiffened. The hounds, it appeared, were closer than she’d realized. It didn’t matter, she told herself with all the bravado she could muster. She was Biker Babe. She wasn’t afraid of no Fed. No way.

She turned. The Fed filled the doorway, giving Dani no choice but to study him.

It wasn’t a hardship.

What hit her first was how large and solid he looked, how safe it made her feel to have him looming over her. He was as broad as Texas and solid as the Rock—which is what he looked like he’d been carved out of. Pure granite, except for his molten, brooding eyes. They’d been poured in under the wide forehead and then given the power to cut through flesh and sinew in search of buried secrets and hidden desires. The only softness she could find in his whole face was the dark hair brushed back from his face and the slightly full under lip of his straight mouth that no amount of iron control could harden.

She recognized the weakness in her knees and the warmth that started in places that had been polar since her marriage bit the dust. She should. She’d written about it often enough. Warm flickered to flame when her gaze found the place where his conservative suit jacket met sexy, well-worn jeans wrapped around narrow hips and powerful legs planted firmly in her path.

Wow. Her hands curled into fists against the urge to fan herself. She shouldn’t be surprised there was life in the old hormones or even that this man was stirring them up.

His raw, barely leashed energy wasn’t just physical. The rock had a volcano at its heart. She was looking at an alpha male—in the finely formed flesh—or she wasn’t a romance writer in biker babe drag.

No wonder Caro had waxed lyrical about his assets. It was wonder she could wax anything or do anything but drool.

From the heat moving like thick honey through her mid-section came an instinctive urge to seek the safety of his sturdy body, to trust in the self-confidence he wore as comfortably as his jeans. He wasn’t just sexy as hell. He was a lawman. A hunter. He wouldn’t go around obstacles. He’d go through them. Or possibly over them.

He wanted her.

The idea did nothing to cool her jets until she reminded her unruly libido it was what she knew that he wanted, what she’d seen. He needed her to get to Dark Lord.

Trying for detached, she studied the scuffed cowboy boots he wore. They’d be laying a track right over her if she didn’t get out of here before he turned his hunting dog nose and laser eyes on Biker Babe and saw Dani cowering underneath.

Hmmm. Biker babes walked, they didn’t get walked on, she reminded herself. She took a steadying breath, hoping Mama’s work was as good as she’d thought it was, then asked in a carefully calculated drawl, “You putting down roots, cowboy, or just coming in real slow?”

As soon as he looked at her, she knew it was a tactical error to demand his attention. She’d watched the surgical steel in his eyes cut through Boomer. She might be Biker Babe on the outside, but inside she was all romance writing woman who should have kept a low profile and hoped he’d get what he came for without seeing what he was looking for.

Stark naked in a stadium full of men would have felt less exposed than being caught in his gaze. Time to go. She took an unsteady breath and stepped toward him. If he was a gentleman, he’d move.

He wasn’t and didn’t.

Let’s try that one again. He had to move, didn’t he? She took another step. Nothing. Was he made of stone? A single stack of paper separated them. Even worse, she was close enough to see the smooth-rough texture of his skin, the different variations of brown in his eyes, and the lines fanning out from those eyes and his mouth—wait a minute. Was that a twitch at the edge of his mouth? Was she imagining—no, there it went again. Definitely a twitch.

Was that good or bad? She did one side-step, then one forward step. Now she was close enough to see, not just feel the banked fire behind the cool control in his eyes, close enough to see the jump of the pulse at his neck just above the crisp white shirt.

Well, well, the hunter wasn’t all cold, hard rock. Like a fire changing direction in the wind, embarrassed heat turned into pleased elemental. Had she thought him safe? He wasn’t. He’d be dangerous, even if she wasn’t in trouble. He stirred the ashes of her past, reminding her of what it felt like to want, to need, to feel that first, surprised shock of desire. To recognize that this man was different from all the others. That even if she walked away, she exchanged something in her for something in him.

Dani wrote books about desire. She’d heard songs sung about it, read poems crafted for it, but she still didn’t have a clue why one particular pair of eyes could make bones go soft as butter. Why one man’s smile could tempt a woman to step out of the safe zone into passion’s battle field, even when she knew it could mow her down.

His dark gaze took her to the knife edge of knowing why Eve chose knowledge in Adam’s embrace over that pretty Garden. It tempted her to surrender lonely autonomy for the shared warmth of his molten gaze.

She’d been cold a long time.

If he knew who she was? If he knew who he was looking at? She’d be on the fast track to bait city. Desire wouldn’t turn that jaw from pursuit of Dark Lord. She had to get away before her hormones effected a coup d’etat on her willpower.

Her throat was dry with longing as she forced out, “You make a better wall than door, cowboy.”

He heard her words, knew he needed to move, but Matt was wound so tight he didn’t know if he could. She wasn’t his type. She wasn’t on the same planet as his type. His body didn’t seem to care. It registered only that she was long and lean, except where the leather fell open to frame her round, full breasts. That she was giving off enough bravado to bring out the beast in any guy with a beating heart and working parts didn’t help.

His parts were doing what nature intended them to do, despite a determined rear guard action by his common sense. His blood supply was draining south faster than a cowboy’s first beer, taking the oxygen he needed for thinking. Sweat beaded his brow. A red mist formed in front of his eyes. His chest went tight from the scent of warmed leather, warmer woman, and something he should recognize, but couldn’t because of that blood shortage problem.

Riggs, straining to get a look over Matt’s shoulder, accomplished what Matt couldn’t do for himself, bumping him aside, and leaving a small channel for her to pass through. One so small her body brushed against him for an endless moment as she edged past.

Her lashes hid her eyes from him. The makeup was heavy on her face, but it couldn’t hide the clean, strong foundation of her bones. Her hair was a wild halo around her face, wild like she’d just been prone and seriously physical. At the last minute, her lashes lifted, her gaze catching his, holding it captive while she cut the ground from under his feet without blinking.

Her eyes. Deep in his brain an alarm went off. As if she heard it, she broke the contact and stepped past him into the hallway. Hands on leather hips, she looked over her shoulder, her gaze flicking down, then up, the depths slumberous with “come hither,” her smile weighted with warning. “Thanks, cowboy.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, wanting to match her grin and raise it. Wanting nothing more than to escalate this sudden battle of the sexes with his own salvo. He didn’t. He was a grown-up. A professional. He almost forgot both those things when her eyes called him coward. Then she turned and headed down the hall, each swish of her leather covered hips packing a prize fighter’s punch to his gut.

Riggs said in his ear, “Kinda restores your faith in a higher power, don’t it?”

“Yeah.” Matt watched her pause at a bulletin board covered with flyers. She paused very well.

“Do you think she’s reading that or just looking at the pictures?” Riggs asked, awed.

Dani heard the question as she stared blindly at the board. The chilled air in the hallway stroked goose bumps across her heated skin. She could still feel the way their bodies had brushed together, still smell him with each unsteady breath, but when she heard Matt snap, “Does it matter?” she knew she’d made the right decision.

Neither of them had seen Dani underneath Biker Babe. If she got out of this alive, she was going to put the alpha hero in her next book through total hell. She stared at the flyer hard enough to burn a hole right through it, felt his eyes boring into her for an endless moment. The urge to turn and challenge him was almost overwhelming—

She almost sagged with relief when she felt his attention shift away. Her heart pounding in her throat, she took a cautious peek and saw him start into Boomer’s office. Then he stopped and stepped back, his back to her, so his partner could go in ahead of him.

She still wanted to rail at him, but she did have to admit one thing. Caro was wrong. His butt wasn’t just fine.

It was really fine. Jeans ought to be illegal on men who already had the corner on sexy.

She sighed, turned to go, when she caught a familiar name out of the corner of her eye. She stopped, more closely examining the flyer. Was it—it was. Kelly Kerwin. Listed as the featured speaker for the writer’s conference the flyer was promoting.

Kelly. It was like finding land in a storm. Dani grinned, felt Biker Babe make a comeback. Just in time, too. Matt started to follow his partner, hesitated, then looked back at her, like he couldn’t help himself. She gave him a cheeky grin, then turned and headed down the hall away from him, taking each step like the song said, one hip at a time. Reveled in knowing he watched every one.

Matt didn’t, couldn’t move until she turned the corner out of his sight. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t blame this on Dani Gwynne. Maybe she wasn’t the problem. Maybe he needed to get out more, chase some women instead of fugitives. He shook his head, trying to break free of the keen bite of lust brought on by swaying hips, endless legs and those cutting eyes—

He stepped into Boomer’s office, frowning, his unease returning in a pointed surge. What was it about her eyes…

Riggs held up a print out. “We got ten possibles with the five mostly likely matches near the top. The list of people each handle chats with is attached.”

“Let me see.” Matt took the sheet, blinked twice before the first name came into focus. Willow. Again he felt the kick of instinct…her posts. Something he’d read in her posts…like the willow tree, I bend not break…

It was almost too obvious. “That’s her. I’m sure of it. Did you give him the email from Hayes?”

“Not yet.” Riggs pulled the sheet out of his coat pocket and handed it to Boomer.

Matt looked at the list of names again, then lifted the sheet, and quickly scanned the list of people Willow chatted with—a biker called Meathook? Biker? Biker’s babe? Pieces were falling into place around him as lightly as boulders, but it couldn’t be that easy…or could it?

The moment they’d been chest to chest came back to him. Leather. She’d smelled of leather but there’d been something else, something too elusive for him to be sure…

Boomer looked up. “I’ve already seen this email—“

“Coconut. And her eyes. Son of a bitch.” Matt turned, his boots slipping against the tile floor as he dived for the door. Riggs made a plaintive sound behind him. Matt ignored him, too intent on getting down the hall. It seemed like it took forever until he skidded around the corner and slammed into the railing. Lucky for him it wasn’t too low. Matt was only winded when he looked down and saw her in the heart of the stairwell, her hand on the door.

“Dani Gwynne!” She started and looked up at him, Biker Babe fading abruptly from her upturned face. He couldn’t believe he’d missed it before. Maybe the leather had confused his thinking. And the legs. And the breasts. He shook his head. Her body was tense with a fight-or-flight wariness that was as disturbing as her cocky stance had been. His was tense with lust. Her eyes flashed a warning he couldn’t ignore. It took effort to ask with tight calm, “Can we talk?”

She hesitated. “About what?”

About what? “Oh, I don’t know. How about the guy trying to you?”

Her gaze narrowed. “You want him bad, don’t you, cowboy?”

“It’s my job to want him bad.”

“Funny,” she said, looking suddenly sad, “I thought it was to help me.” She pushed the door open.

Trust a woman to turn it around.

She was already sliding out the door, calling as she ran, “Meat!”

Matt jumped the rail as Riggs ran up beside him. He landed hard, slid down four steps before he got his balance again. Heard the roar as a bike was kicked to life. Plunged recklessly to the bottom, taking the steps in threes. Made the door just as she was throwing her leg over the back of a nice looking Hog. He just had time to make the license plate before they wheeled in a circle and roared down the street.

Cussing, he started for his car, remembered Riggs had the keys. “Keys, Riggs!”

Riggs, puffing like he had asthma and patting frantically, joined him in a dash to the car. “You sure I got ‘em?”

Matt stared at the Hog getting smaller and smaller. “Just find the damn keys!”

“Uh, Matt?”

“What?”

“I found the keys.”

He turned, saw Riggs pointing inside the car. “You didn’t.”

Riggs shoved his hands in his pockets and contemplated sky. “Oops.”

With a low moan, Matt leaned on the car, mentally cursing fate, Riggs and the romance writer. While a moving picture of her long legs and leather-covered ass settling on the back of the Hog played repeatedly in his head.