Shotgun Daddy. Harper Allen
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his musings.
“Yeah, princess, I did. On a job a few years ago I was forced to ride shotgun on a Jeep carrying a load of dynamite through the jungle, and believe me, I felt safer then than I did tonight trying to avoid those patches of black ice.” He felt tension seep out of her. “So are we good here?”
Her eyes still on his, she gave the tiniest of nods. He relaxed his hold on her wrist.
The next moment he rocked back on his heels as her palm connected solidly with his cheek.
“Are we good here? After you made that crack about how I must feel toward the man I was going to marry?” Her glare was blue fire. “This evening I walked in on Larry while he and another woman were indulging in a variation of ‘getting it on,’ as you’d probably put it. When he realized he’d been caught, he told me that if I’d ever shown any interest in performing that particular act on him, he wouldn’t have had to cheat on me. Do you have any idea how humiliating tonight was for me? Do you think I like knowing that when I get back to Albuquerque, everyone’s going to be whispering about what Larry’s prude of a fiancée does and doesn’t do in the bedroom?”
Pain flashed behind her eyes. She blinked it away. “So, no, we’re not good here. I’d sooner spend the night in the car than another minute with you.”
She began to push past him. Instinctively Gabe put out a hand to stop her, nudging the fur coat from her shoulders as he did. He grasped her lightly, his fingers spread wide on the soft whiteness of her sweater.
“You’re right, I was way out of line.” Her lips tightened at his words, but he saw past the dismissive gesture to the tightly wound tension she’d hidden so well.
Or perhaps Caro Moore hadn’t had to hide it that well, he told himself slowly. Maybe he’d been so preoccupied with his failure to save a hostage that he hadn’t wanted to notice the woman behind the icy facade.
Sure, she had attitude. She had it in spades. But pampered princess or not, she hadn’t deserved to learn the way she had what a jerk Kanin was.
“If anyone’s bunking in the car tonight, I am,” he said. “I owe you that, at least, and I’m used to sleeping rough.”
He let his hands slide from her shoulders. Even as he did he saw the twin smears of black grease they left against the pristine white of her cashmere sweater. Caro’s eyes widened in appalled disbelief as she saw them, too.
Sweet move, Riggs, Gabe thought, his heart sinking. Suddenly he felt he was everything she believed him to be—coarse, crude, and better suited to being in a mechanic’s bay working on her car than standing here trying to talk to her—or hell, touch her. He began to apologize, knew there was nothing she wanted to hear from him, and shrugged in defeat.
“You realize that won’t come out,” she said in a tight voice. She didn’t take her gaze off the fingerprints running from her shoulders to just above the curve of her breasts. “You realize that’s probably gone right through the fabric.”
“The alarm box was humidity-proofed with packing grease.” Without meaning to, he followed her gaze. “I must have gotten it on my hands when I was disconnecting the wires.”
He stepped away from her rigid figure, wondering if it was his imagination or if he’d suddenly become bigger, bulkier, more awkward. He still couldn’t seem to avert his eyes from the agitated rise and fall of her breasts.
“I’d better get the hell out of here before I completely mess you up,” he muttered, taking another slow step away.
With an effort he began to drag his gaze from her. Caro slipped a gloved finger under the neckline of the sweater and pulled it slightly away from her body. She let the soft wool fall back into place and looked up at him.
“I’ll probably need some kind of abrasive soap to clean it off my skin.”
Her voice was still tight, but now there seemed to be a breathiness to it, he thought in confusion. Or maybe he was projecting, he told himself. Yeah. That had to be it.
“Pumice,” he said thickly. “When I’ve been working on an engine I have to scrub my nails with pumice. But that’s probably too rough.”
“If rough works, I’ll try it.” He hadn’t imagined the breathiness. Her eyes were wide and locked on his. “I can’t go around like this, can I? I have to scrub it away somehow.”
She wasn’t talking about cleaning abrasives anymore, he realized with sudden certainty. He shook his head and tried to take another step backward. The small heels of her boots clicked against the floor as she took three steps forward and stopped in front of him.
“After tomorrow I don’t imagine I’ll ever see you again.” Her lips barely moved as she spoke. Slowly she brought a fingertip to his chest and traced the rim of one of his shirt buttons, her attention seemingly focused on the small action. “You’ll drop me off in Aspen in the morning and it’ll be like tonight never happened.”
Gabe swallowed. “That’s not how it would be, princess,” he said, too hoarsely. “I don’t think you’re the type that can tell herself it didn’t happen. I think you’d remember everything, whether you wanted to or not.”
He turned away. “You’d better get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He’d never known his father, but he knew his mother had been Navajo. Stoicism. Big Dineh quality, he told himself, mentally using the Navajo term rather than the Anglo one. Hell, maybe I’ll be thankful later, but right now I can’t believe I’m walking away from her.
But he didn’t have a choice—not if he wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror tomorrow.
She wanted to prove something to herself, though she didn’t have to. Kanin had seen a vulnerability beneath that cool exterior and had aimed his jab right at the place where it would hurt the most. The bastard had made her feel it was her fault he’d gone to another woman for the sexual favor he’d wanted performed on him. Tomorrow Caro Moore would be able to see her ex-fiancé’s accusation for what it was—a cheap shot from a man who didn’t deserve her. But tonight, she was in pain and she wanted to scrub away the humiliation as harshly as possible.
And she was going to use you to do it, buddy, the small voice in Gabe’s head said firmly. You don’t wanna play stud for a spoiled little socialite, right?
The hell he didn’t. But he wasn’t going to. And that was final.
He’d almost made it to the door when her voice stopped him.
“I don’t look like I’m all ice, but I must be. That has to be why you’re turning me down—because you can tell just by looking at me that it wouldn’t be any good for you. Is that what you see, Gabe? Am I so obviously frozen?”
He turned around, and knew as soon as he had that he’d made a mistake. She’d pulled off the white sweater. Under it she was wearing a lacy white bra—of course, Gabe thought dizzily—and she’d been right, some of the lace was smudged. More dark prints stood out against the creamy swell of her breasts.
He wasn’t aware that he’d moved, but somehow he was right in front of her. “Maybe a little frozen,” he rasped. “I kind of like that, though.”
“Then, how can you walk away?” The pain in her voice was almost his undoing. “It must be me. Larry was right.”
“He was wrong.” He forced himself to keep his hands at his sides. “If you really want to know what I see when I look at you, I’ll tell you. I see that lush mouth and I wonder what it would be like to have it on me; I see that pale hair and think of it falling across your face while you call out my name. I see heat that could sear a brand onto a man. But I won’t take advantage of how you feel tonight, Caro. I don’t think I could live with myself if I did.”
“And I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it if you don’t,” she whispered.
His