“CAN’T YOU GO ANY FASTER?”

      Romero Jinks tightened his grip on the steering wheel at his ex-girlfriend’s latest request, in a litany that had started at nine o’clock that morning with a wake-up call asking him when he’d be ready to leave.

      Who woke up at nine after a wedding reception that had lasted into the wee hours of the morning? But that was Shannon. An early bird, a night owl, and all around too much energy for him to keep up with. At thirty years old, she seemed impossibly young to him even though they were only eight years apart. Blond, blue-eyed and built like a fifties pinup girl, she was too sexy by half, but that was only a fraction of her appeal. He’d been drawn by her energy and enthusiasm when they’d first met. She’d been a spark to his creativity and his life, pulling him out of a long writing drought with her vibrancy. He’d been crazy about her until she’d blindsided him with a wealth of frustrations about their relationship, culminating in the stupidest argument he’d ever been a part of.

      How many women picked a fight because their guy failed to purchase a pair of hiking boots for her? When he’d offered for them to spend some time apart until she cooled down, she’d promptly pulled his clothes out of the closet and boxed up everything he owned in an all-night packing craze. After almost a year together, she’d created a drama the whole neighborhood had witnessed as she’d methodically carried the crates out to the curb.

      “I’m not going any faster.” Romero checked the speedometer and slowed down—not to purposely piss her off, but because he was already doing eighty miles an hour up the Baja Peninsula to reach the California state line as soon as he could. The last thing he wanted was to extend their time in Mexico with a stint in a stink-hole prison cell.

      They’d passed the last town, Insurgentes, long ago in the hunt for a shortcut home. He was seriously tearing up his new car driving this fast on pavement that hadn’t seen a road crew in a decade.

      A small price to pay if it shortened the trip. Only a few more hours to go and they could split for good. No more saccharine sweet Valentine weddings to trap them back into pseudocouplehood. Playing the best man to her maid of honor, dancing that requisite dance with the woman who’d once meant everything to him, had been exquisite torture to a nerve that hadn’t fully healed.

      Of course, he couldn’t blame this trip on anyone but himself, since he’d scrambled to offer her a ride when her flight had been canceled. He’d seen a chance to salvage her pride, knowing damn well her finances wouldn’t support a last-minute ticket out of Mexico. At least not easily. Shannon had tried to hide her dwindling movie prospects from him, but he knew the last couple of parts she’d taken weren’t worthy of her talents.

      “Would you like me to drive?” She peered across the console of his new BMW coupe, a vehicle he’d picked up shortly before the Mexico trip. He’d ordered it months ago, thinking it would be fun to have for a trip up the coast to celebrate his first-year anniversary with Shannon.

      An anniversary that never happened, thanks to her decision to launch World War Three. He’d postponed picking up the car, considering it now represented his failure. He’d been too blind to see what Shannon was feeling until she’d spelled it out in angry detail after it was too late.

      “No, thanks.” He figured the less said, the better. That strategy wouldn’t make the time pass any quicker, though.

      “What did you think of the ceremony?” she asked, her fingers clutching the silver Celtic knot on a chain around her neck and raking the pendant back and forth across the tiny links.

      She looked incredible in her tight jeans and purple satin shoes with high heels that just barely brought her to five foot eight. She wore a lavender cotton tank top with an ivory satin blazer that had big purple rhinestone buttons in the shape of flowers. A skinny silver scarf hung loose around her neck. The scarf didn’t serve a great purpose now, but he’d seen her tie that sort of thing around her head like a hippie-chick bandanna, or a wrap for a ponytail if she wanted her hair out of her face.

      She was a first-class Hollywood diva on the outside, but there’d been a time when he felt as if he knew her better than that—the down-to-earth woman she could be with him at home. He hadn’t seen that side of her in a long while, but then again, he’d been on tour a lot. And he’d been in the music business long enough to know the people you cared about could change while you were out on the road. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d left one woman and returned to—seemingly—someone else.

      He just couldn’t recall it ever bothering him this much before.

      “Don’t you think that us having a conversation is a bad idea?” He wasn’t going to fall onto a land mine without an attempt to test the terrain first.

      “While I realize talking to me is low on your list of preferred activities, what do you suggest we do for the next hundred and fifty miles of scrub and cacti until we start picking up cell-phone coverage again? Crank the radio and hear one of the sexy songs you wrote about me while I slowly became your untouchable muse instead of your living, breathing girlfriend?”

      Romero blinked, trying hard to focus on the road while processing her words. He did not want to fight. Would not fight with her. She was clearly spoiling for another go-round but he had no desire to pick through this latest accusation he only half understood.

      Untouchable?

      He’d never been able to keep his hands off this woman when they were together, except for the weeks when he’d had to bury himself in his work. Writing drained him the way nothing else did, but he hadn’t realized she took it so personally until that night she’d let loose after the hiking-boot incident.

      But, damn it, aside from those times when he needed to write, their relationship had always been hot. And Shannon had as much enthusiasm for sex as she did for everything else in life, a fact he’d better not dwell on now or he’d never make it back to L.A. without pulling over and reminding her how freaking touchable she was.

      “How about a neutral CD with none of my songs?” He flipped open the tray in the dash where he kept his music, needing a diversion fast. “We can compromise with some old Aerosmith or Nirvana…” He dug deeper until he found one of her CDs, and even went so far as to offer, “Or we can play some Gretchen Wilson.”

      Spearing one manicured hand into the CD tray, she retrieved the jewel case and shoved it into her pink faux-leather satchel. As a diehard vegan, she didn’t do real leather.

      “You took Gretchen with you when you left? Bad enough you had to make sexy eyes all through the reception at the fawning groupie who swore she loved you since your days with Jinxed.” Shannon clutched her heart like a devoted fan and raised her voice an octave. “And I saw you in Dallas and Houston and Austin and Shreveport—Geez. I thought for sure she was going to whip off her double-D bra and fling it your way to make her point.”

      Romero eased the accelerator down again, deciding eighty miles an hour would be a better option than more hours of this. Any minutes he could shave off this trip would be a good idea.

      Besides, there was a VW van behind them that had been riding his bumper for the past five miles. Which was ironic as hell,