“Yes, Mr. Nachman… No, Mr. Nachman… Absolutely. I have it with me now, and it is beautiful. I’m quite thrilled, and I know you will be, too.” Smoothing feathers, that’s what Esme was doing, smoothing eighty-two thousand feathers, and after her last stammering bit of embarrassed idiocy in the alley, she was also doing everything she could to avoid having to talk to Johnny Ramos ever again for the rest of her life. “Within the hour, yes, sir. I’m leaving downtown now.”
But despite her dearest wish to remain utterly occupied while in Ramos’s car, there was only so much verbal genuflecting she could manage, and with her last “yes, sir” she’d met her quota.
She should have gotten a damn cab, and the reasons she hadn’t were reasons… well, they were reasons she wasn’t going to examine too damn closely. She knew they wouldn’t pass any test of actual reason, so she wasn’t going to put them to the test. Given the night she was having, she figured she deserved a break, and it sure as hell didn’t look like the universe at large was going to give her one.
“Thank you, sir. I’ll see you shortly.” She ended the call and checked her messages, hoping for some, especially one from her dad, but there was nothing, which left her at a momentary loose end- dammit.
“Solange and I have made the run to Genesee in half an hour, if you need to be there quicker,” Johnny said to her from his side of the car.
Solange? She glanced over at him.
Who in the heck was… oh, she got it. The Charger had been named Roxanne. Solange was the Cyclone, and yes, she supposed if a person sort of squinted and didn’t look too closely, possibly the “sleeper” looked French. Good God.
“I think regular speed will be fine,” she said. “It’s why I told Mr. Nachman an hour, in case there were any… uh, any more extenuating circumstances.”
Extenuating. Right. She guessed that was one way to put the night so far, one damned unexpected extenuating circumstance after another.
“Even if there is a delay, we should be okay.” Yes, she’d just said that. “We shouldn’t hit traffic, though.”
And that was it.
“Not at this time of night,” she added, and that really was it. Nothing more needed to be said, which left her at another momentary loose end- dammit.
While Johnny downshifted for the next stoplight, she busied herself with rummaging through the pockets on her messenger bag until she came up with her PDA. She really needed to upgrade to an all-inclusive system. A quick check of her calendar proved she was heading in the right direction, toward Genesee, but running a little late, over half an hour. No news there.
She let out a very quiet sigh, which in no way indicated her current level of stress.
He’d kissed her, and on top of everything else she had going wrong tonight, she’d liked it-a lot. So everything was A1 perfect: running late, Bleak gunning for her, Dax in the boondocks, and she’d liked kissing a guy she’d known in high school who, despite her initial hopes, had turned out to be a street gangster.
She had to be certifiable. She didn’t have a love life, true, and she resented that she’d all but told him as much, but on those nights when she dreamed about having a love life, she usually dreamed a little bigger than old muscle cars with big engines, and bad boys with big…
Oh, for the love of God and Patsy freakin’ Cline- she brought her hand up to cover her face. She couldn’t believe she’d just thought that, about his…
Oh, hell-there she was again, remembering his…
“Are you okay?” he asked, and under her hand, she felt her face turn hot with a blush.
No, she wasn’t okay. She was mortified. He was the first boy she’d ever seen naked, and in her naiveté, she’d thought all guys were built like him.
They weren’t.
Not even close.
“Esme?”
Not that size mattered, really, at least that’s what everyone said, but how in the hell would she know? Every guy she’d ever been with had been about the same, size-wise anyway, and she’d never been with him, not really, not with him actually…
Oh, geez, Esme, she told herself, grow up, get a grip.
But there was no way to get more grown-up than the thought she’d just had, of him inside her, of everything she remembered about him, and everything she’d learned about men since. The combination was sheer, erotic meltdown, a wall of heat crashing into her and washing through her body, triggering a deep, sensual reaction that was going to be her undoing, right here in his bucket seat.
He’d kissed her, and she’d been poleaxed, frozen in place, because his mouth had felt like coming home. The taste of him, the smell of him, the sound of his breath-the slow slide of his tongue over and around and down the length of hers, it had all said, “Here’s your place, girl, here with me.”
Wrong. Impossibly wrong. It just simply couldn’t be.
He’d done a great job tonight, and it had been a good decision to stick with him for the delivery to Isaac Nachman’s, but beyond that it was crazy.
Crazy to want to kiss him again, right now, while the warmth of him was still in her mouth.
Crazy to feel desire like a weight on her chest, a longing she wasn’t getting past, even though it had only been a kiss.
Just a kiss.
One kiss.
“I’m…um… feeling a headache coming on. It’ll pass. They usually do. If I just rest quietly.” And don’t talk to guys who get me hot.
She was pitiful.
Of course, not talking to guys who got her hot was her signature modus operandi. That was the problem. Almost one hundred percent of the time, she was only ever in the company of guys who didn’t get her hot-and now she knew why. Johnny Ramos was the guy who got her hot, and she hadn’t been in his company since high school.
Good God.
“Here,” he said, and she heard him lift something into the front seat from the back.
She glanced up from beneath her fingers, then reached over and took the small red canvas pack he was handing her.
The stoplight changed, and with a press of the gas pedal, the Cyclone ramped back up to chassis-shaking life. Geezus, she felt it everywhere, the slow, deep rumble curving around her in the seat, the sound of it sliding down her spine.
“Look in the mesh pocket inside,” he said, shifting into second gear. “You’ll find aspirin and Motrin. Take your pick. Have you had anything to eat lately? Like in the last three or four hours?”
“Uh, no.” Breakfast had been coffee. Lunch had been light, and dinner had been nonexistent.
“Well, open this up.” He stretched his arm into the backseat again and brought up the last thing she’d expected to see.
She lowered her hand from her face to take the package he was offering.
“Um, thanks.” It was an MRE-Meal, Ready to Eat. She glanced into the backseat. Four more MREs were stacked in the corner-government issue, no commercial resale allowed. A guy couldn’t just go to the grocery store and buy a few MREs to keep in his car. She should have noticed them before, and she might have, if she hadn’t been so busy noticing the Locos in the alley and trying to keep them all in view.
She had noticed how nice he kept the interior of the Cyclone. The dash looked as if it was regularly detailed with a toothbrush. Every knob and dial gleamed. There wasn’t so much as a gum wrapper in sight, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the upholstery on the seats was new. Considering what a wreck his car looked like from the outside, he took surprisingly good care of it on the inside.
He’d been taking good care of her, too. Dax had been right, and she’d noticed. Even taking her to Baby Duce’s hadn’t been a bad idea. It had given her a chance to catch her breath someplace safe- and not much could have surprised her more than that she’d been safe in Locos land.
At a clear place between a couple of cars, he pulled over to the curb and put the Cyclone in neutral before engaging the parking brake and reaching into the backseat again.
“You should have this, too. The more of it you can get down, the better you’re going to feel. I can guarantee it,” he said, bringing up an eight-pack of a bottled sport drink.
Electrolytes, just what she needed.
She let out another small sigh, watching him pull a bottle out of the plastic ring harness and unscrew the lid for her.
“Thank you,” she said and took a sip-grape, her favorite.
This was crazy.
He lifted the red pack out of her lap and unzipped the main compartment, revealing an incredibly well organized first-aid kit, of all the darn things.
Watching him, she screwed the lid back on the bottled drink, curious as hell.
“Blowout kit?” She read the label off a sealed plastic pouch in the pack. The pouch was only slightly smaller than the MRE.
“In case one of the good guys gets hurt, me included,” he said, moving aside a package of sterile bandages set above a number of elasticized bands and pockets, each of them fitted with some kind of medical supply.
“What about the bad guys?”
He let out a short laugh. “I don’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about saving the bad guys.”
A little harsh maybe, or maybe not-MREs, blowout kits and first-aid supplies, a pistol he carried concealed in a shoulder holster, for crying out loud, and the way he had of taking charge… especially the way he had of taking charge.
“Do people get hurt a lot in your line of work?”
“Sometimes, yeah,” he said, unzipping one of the kit’s mesh pockets.
“And what is that exactly? Your line of work, I mean.” They’d been rolling through lower downtown pretty much at a dead run for the last hour together; she figured it was time to ask, probably past time.
He gave her a brief glance, and without missing a beat said, “I’m currently between assignments.”
Oh, right. Between assignments. Sure. She’d been there.
Well, actually, she’d never been between assignments, but she could see how some gangster from RiNo could end up “between assignments.”
Bull.
He’d just given her a perfect example of misinformation by omission if she’d ever heard one-and she’d heard plenty. Some days in the private investigation business were just chock-full of all the things people weren’t telling you.
“You’re not one of the Locos, are you?” She just couldn’t get that to line up, him being a street thug, a gang member. It didn’t fit with what she’d been seeing since he’d walked into her dad’s office, no matter how easily he’d fit in with those guys in the alley off Delgany.
He pulled two small brand-name packets out of the mesh pocket and held them up. “Aspirin or Motrin? What do you want?”
“An answer to my question.”
He held her gaze, and, after a moment, handed her the aspirin packet. The Motrin went back in the kit. Then he took the MRE out of her lap and ripped open the top.
“Drink more of your drink,” he said, pulling a tightly sealed package out of the MRE and ripping it open as well.
She unscrewed the lid on her bottle and took another sip, and when he handed her a four-inchsquare cracker, she took a bite.
“They’re a little dry,” he warned.
No kidding.
When she had about half the cracker washed down, he nodded at the aspirin packet she still had clutched in her hand.
At any time during the exchange, she could have told him that she didn’t really have a headache, but she was rather ridiculously enjoying his attention- emphasis on the ridiculous.
She took the aspirin, and when she was finished swallowing, she let her gaze slip to his mouth.
She was doomed.
It had only been a kiss, she told herself, a kiss that made her want more and more, until the more became more than just a kiss.
Her gaze drifted lower, down the strong column of his throat, down the gray T-shirt covering his chest, to his lap, to the zipper on his jeans. It had been a long time for her, since she’d been with someone, which she was absolutely positive would never have come into play tonight-except he’d kissed her, and now everything was in play, especially her response to him.
He’d grown quiet on his side of the car, and when she looked up, she found him watching her, his gaze darkly serious, his attention focused on her face.
Another wave of heat washed through her. Johnny Ramos, all grown-up, the promise of what he could be completely eclipsed by what he’d become- harder, calmer, with a solid confidence she felt coming off him with every breath he took. He wasn’t running wild anymore. He wasn’t running dice in the school parking lot or dope on the corner for the Locos. His world had gotten much bigger, whether he was between assignments or not.
“You don’t answer to Duce,” she said, so sure of it. He didn’t look like he answered to anyone who wasn’t at least as mentally strong and physically tough as he was-which she knew for a fact narrowed the field down to a couple of very specific skill sets, law enforcement and the military. He was either a cop or a soldier. It was in his bearing. She’d been picking up on it since her dad’s office, but she hadn’t put her finger on it until now. The businessmen she dealt with didn’t move like he did. They thought tactically, but their tactics revolved around making money, not survival. Lawyers jockeyed for position in court, not on the street. Accountants, like Pete Carlson, the guy whose office was next door to her dad’s in the Faber Building, or even her own accountant back in Seattle, spent their time anticipating the cost-benefit ratio of tax laws, not threats like Dovey Smollett.
Johnny moved like Dax, who would have seen Dovey zeroing in on her in a heartbeat.
“No, I don’t answer to Duce,” he admitted, handing her the other cracker from out of the package.
She took the cracker, but what she noticed was the ink peeking out from under the cuff of his shirt.
“Oh,” she said, surprised, but then quickly remembering. “I’d forgotten about that one.”
She reached out, her fingers making contact with the letter L inscribed on the inside of his wrist. Almost as quickly, she felt the warmth of his skin.
“This was before Dom got killed, wasn’t it?”
It took a moment, but when he answered, it was in the affirmative.
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
She glanced up, and after a moment, he silently obliged, unbuttoning his cuff and pushing up his sleeve to reveal the word “LOCOS.” The letters were styled in Old English, all capitals, ornately strung along a knife blade with “XX2ST” and “C/S” written on the hilt, all of it inked into his skin, the tattoo going from his wrist to his elbow.
Oh, yes. She remembered this.
She slowly ran her fingers up the inside of his left arm. “You were fourteen when you had this done,” she said. “We were both in Mr. Hawthorn’s American Literature class that year. I remember asking you if it hurt, and you told me no.”
“I lied.”
“Yeah, I figured as much.” A grin tipped the corner of her mouth. His tattoo was elegant, professionally done, far better than what some of the other boys had put on their bodies. “I thought you were so tough.”
“Still am.”
Her smile broadened. “C slash S,” she said, reading the hilt. “Con safos, you told me, protected by God, and the XX2ST is for Twenty-second Street.”
“You remembered.” He sounded somewhat surprised.
She remembered everything about him, not that he would know it, and if at all possible, she was going to keep the news flash to herself.
“I think everybody who grew up around here remembers that the Locos started on Twenty-second Street.” His skin was soft, his arm so hard to the touch, the veins running down the length of it a confluence of strength underlying the elaborate design and stylized script of his tattoo.
He’d been marked hard by his heritage.
“Yeah, way back in the day.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Back in the day.”
Silence fell between them again, a silence underscored by the low growling rumble of the car- and anticipation. She felt it descending like a curtain, hot and silky, around them. He’d kissed her, and she wanted him to kiss her again-Esme the Desperate.
Oh, babe. Johnny looked down at the top of her head where she was bent over his arm, her fingers still warm on his skin. She had no idea how beautiful she was; she never had. Being smart, that had always been her personal claim to fame, and she’d completely missed what everybody else understood-that she was gorgeous.
She didn’t know it, but Kevin Harrell hadn’t been the first guy he’d fought for her. A number of young punks had set their sights on her over the years, la rubia, the blonde, starting way back in seventh grade. He didn’t know about the jerks in grade school, but he’d never doubted for a second that there had been a few. Lucky for them, he’d been at St. Catherine’s while Esme had been at Bennington. The playground had been safer for it.
Despite his chosen profession, violence wasn’t ever his first choice for conflict resolution, unless it was armed conflict-then violence came swift and hard. Winning was the only parameter in armed conflict, in combat. But the whole guy thing with girls was so physical it naturally lent itself to physical confrontation. Guys always wanted to get in a girl’s pants, and other guys knew this, and that’s why they got so pissed off. So when a thirteen-yearold cholo at Campbell Junior High had started talking like he’d had her in the band room, Johnny had called him out. It hadn’t taken more than a little half-assed scuffling to solve the problem, but a pattern had been set.
There was more than one reason she hadn’t had a date in high school. Most of it had been her reluctance, and her shyness, and her holier-bettersmarter-than-you attitude, and the rest of it had been him. He’d traveled the world with the U.S. Army, but from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, in Ms. Trent’s class, his reaction had been pure barrio boy, and he’d never outgrown it, not where she was concerned.
Esme Alexandria Alden, the Unattainable One- when he’d left her in the car in the alley at Duce’s, he’d made it clear to the Arañas not to touch her. Next time he would be adding “Don’t breathe on her.” Those cholos had been breathing all over her by the time he’d gotten back to the Cyclone.
Yeah, he knew exactly why he’d followed her into the Oxford. He knew exactly what he wanted.
And now here she was, so damn close he could smell her, and not just the honeysuckle and summer garden scent of her perfume. He could smell her-the underlying female scent of warm skin and soft breath, of the back of her neck and the lace of her lingerie, a push-up bra and panties curved around just about everything he wanted to get his mouth on.
And she wanted to be kissed.
With Solange rumbling beneath them, and desire building between them, with the night in front of them, and long years of fascination behind them, she wanted to be kissed.
Geezus. He didn’t know if he had it in him-to kiss her. To just kiss her. He’d done it in the alley, but he’d barely touched her, and this time she was already practically in his lap, the heat of where she was touching his arm quickly and inexorably spreading, covering the whole front of his body, a good portion of it settling in his groin, which wasn’t going to do either of them any good parked at the side of the street with traffic going by.
And yet… and yet if he tilted his head slightly to one side he could see down the front of her jacket, and there wasn’t a barrio boy alive who could resist such a beautiful pair of tetas.
She was so lovely, the lace demicups of her bra working overtime, the nape of her neck exposed, golden tendrils of hair sliding loose from her up-twist and lying like a path to be followed across her skin.
He lifted his free hand and cupped the tender line of her jaw, but this time when he lowered his mouth he pulled her close, really close, meeting her more than halfway across the console and sliding his other arm around her waist, under her jacket, and yeah, he had to skirt her shoulder holster, and yeah, he was being damn careful, but he was also kissing her flat-out, tongue to tonsils, baby, his mouth angled over hers, teasing her, and tasting her, and sucking on her just enough to let her know this was not finished between them, not tonight.
Geezus, she had a beautiful mouth. He loved the way her teeth fit together. He loved the softness of her tongue. He loved the way she was kissing him back.
Yeah, she’d grown up in the years since they’d gotten hot and heavy in the mighty Roxanne. She knew where they were going this time, and from the way she was clinging to him, she knew he was the guy to take her there.
First, though, dammit, he had to get her up to Genesee, and get the cash to neutralize Bleak. But in between Genesee and Bleak, he was taking her to his place in Commerce City.
Yeah, with a soft, hot blonde by his side, with Easy Alex next to him, he could face it. He could face going home.