Ace Is Wild (27 page)

Daniel inserted himself between Joe College and Vivi, one look enough to make the kid let her go. “I suggest you take off,” he said.

The kid reached for his back pocket. “Shouldn’t I give you my information?”

“I don’t think having a criminal record is the only thing standing between you and Harvard.”

“Huh?”

“If you don’t want to go to jail, you should probably keep your name and license number to yourself. I’m not calling the cops and Captain Ahab here doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you.”

The fed confirmed that by not taking his eyes off Daniel. Good thing his mission wasn’t dead or alive because Daniel didn’t think he’d be standing around long enough to make one-legged jokes.

Vivi pointed to the guy on the ground. “Look, he’s calling nine-one-one,” she said to the kid, “you’d better go.”

The kid took off, losing himself in the crowd without a backward glance.

“He’s not calling nine-one-one,” Daniel said. “He’s calling for backup.”

“Then we should probably go, too,” Vivi said.

“Yeah.” Daniel looked around, then met her eyes. She was standing by the truck, arms crossed, foot tapping. “Shit,” he said, “okay.”

“You can get in.”

“I’m not sure Maxine is ready to play nice.”

“She already ran over one guy today,” Vivi said, “but you might want to stay away from her tomorrow.”

“You sure she doesn’t want to go for the hat trick?”

“What’s a hat trick?”

“Hockey,” Daniel said, his eyes on the crowd. “Three goals by one player . . .”

Vivi stared in the same direction as Daniel, and there were Hatch and Flip. “I think they’d probably get out of the way this time. Or maybe not,” she said, because Flip spotted Maxine just then. One hand went to his neck brace, the other slipped into his pocket, and then he spotted Daniel. But his eyes passed right over Vivi.

“At least somebody is fooled by my hair.”

“Nice to know the hour and a half was worth it,” Daniel said.

“It’s not me they’re recognizing.”

“I wouldn’t be here to be recognized if not for the hair.”

“Who told you to hang around?”

“My pesky sense of responsibility.”

“You’re not responsible for me,” Vivi shot back. “I can take care of myself. And I can take care of this.” And she sauntered down the sidewalk, toward the hit men, swinging her hips, smiling at every guy she passed and leaving them staring in her wake.

She was aiming for Hatch, and as she passed him she hunched suddenly, crossing her arms over her chest, shrieking, “Hey!” and swatting at him.

Anyone who wasn’t already staring at her turned to see what the ruckus was, and every guy who wasn’t with a woman decided to defend Vivi’s honor.

Hatch was making like Jackie Chan, arms and legs going a mile a minute. He fought silently, with absolute concentration, his eyes like black holes in an otherwise expressionless face. Not feeling any pain, would probably keep fighting ten minutes after death. It wouldn’t be a good idea to take him on one-on-one, but a whole crowd of guys was too much for even a homicidal freak of nature like Hatch.

Flip was yelling, “Not the face, not the face,” and cowering by a nearby storefront.

Vivi had circled around, coming up behind Daniel again. “We should probably be going.”

“Give me a minute,” he said, grinning.

“See, you are having fun.”

“Yeah, now I’m having fun.” Enough to make up for having to interact with Maxine again. Almost.

Chapter 18

“YOU’RE GOING TO PARK HERE?”

Since here was right in front of Eric’s building, Vivi didn’t think Daniel’s question deserved an answer. In the interest of maintaining the peace, she gave one anyway. “It’s the only open parking space on the block.”

“Everyone who’s chasing us knows this truck. They’ve all been wounded by it. We should park it somewhere else. Somewhere not so obvious.”

“You think Hatch and Flip are driving around looking for Maxine?”

“I think Hatch and Flip are somewhere sticking pins into a voodoo doll of you.”

“And nursing their bruises.”

Daniel didn’t look like he appreciated her levity.

Vivi turned, laying her arm along the back of the seat, and fastened her gaze on his face. “What are you really angry about?”

“I’m not angry.”

She tipped her head to one side, searching his face. “I think you’re angry.”

“How about Grandma? She have an opinion?”

“You don’t want to know Grandma’s opinion.” Neither did Vivi, which was good since the only real opinion she had was her own, Daniel still being a psychic blackout zone. But he didn’t need to know that. “If it helps, Grandma always hated passive-aggressive,” she said, keeping up appearances.

“You want active aggression? Fine. It was stupid of you to walk straight at two armed hit men.”

“I knew they weren’t going to shoot me.”

“I didn’t know it.”

“You would if you trusted my abilities.”

Daniel ran both hands through his hair, fisting them until the pain cut through the red haze of anger. Not to mention the rest of the emotions he didn’t want to acknowledge, including what it might feel like to see Vivi get hurt because of him.

The head pain didn’t help much, but he flexed his thigh by mistake and
that
pain was enough to keep him focused for the rest of his life. It was definitely enough to clear his head, and the clarity produced some pretty interesting ideas, like why hadn’t the hit men shot at Vivi? Hell, why hadn’t they shot at him? It wasn’t the crowd, and it wasn’t having witnesses; the street in front of Cohan’s had been curb-to-curb people and that hadn’t stopped them.

It was because they hadn’t wanted him dead.

The thought just popped into Daniel’s head, which kind of spooked him, seeing as he was still sitting in Maxine and there was a possibility the truck was some kind of psychic hot zone. And that was beside the point, not to mention paranoid.

The hit men had switched from murder to capture— okay, death would have been the ultimate goal, but they’d only been trying to get their hands on him today. And maybe he could use that.

“We should go inside,” Vivi said, “before it starts to rain.”

And she was already cranky enough, Daniel could hear it in her voice, and he could sympathize. It had been a sucky day, and now he had to top off all the suckiness with twelve hours of inhabiting eight hundred square feet of loft that was empty of just about everything except Vivi and a bed. He had a feeling cranky would be the high point of his mood.

“I’m tired, and I’m hungry,” she said when he didn’t respond. “Getting drenched would be the perfect capper to my day, but if you don’t mind, I think I’ll pass. Feel free to move the truck yourself, if it’s that important to you.”

Daniel ignored the keys she held up. “Looks like Eric is going out.”

Eric exited the building, looking like a bad ’80s clubbing cliché. Shirt unbuttoned to his navel, gold chains, tight jeans, no socks, one-day beard scruff.

“You up for a night on the town?” he asked Vivi. “You, too,” he mumbled in Daniel’s general direction.

“I’m exhausted,” Vivi said, brushing by him to go inside. “We had a busy afternoon. You go out and have fun.”

“Um, staying in sounds like a great idea, too.”

“You never stay in on Saturday night.”

“Yeah, well, I think I’ll order in,” Eric said, trailing inside after them. “You guys want some pizza?”

“Pepperoni and bacon,” Vivi called as she started up the stairs.

“Green pepper and chicken,” Daniel said from right behind her.

“Half and half,” Eric muttered as he turned to go back into his ground-floor apartment.

“And some bread sticks and sauce.”

“And salad,” Daniel added. Then to Vivi, “He certainly knows the way to your heart,” as soon as Eric was out of earshot.

“I never missed a meal when I was dating Eric.”

“Maybe not, but I don’t think it’s your heart he’s interested in.”

“I’m going to take a shower” was all Vivi said.

She grabbed her backpack and made good on her intentions, but she must not have lingered under the spray because she came back out in less than fifteen minutes. To Daniel’s disappointment, she wasn’t damp at all.

“No towels,” Vivi said. “I used a T-shirt to dry off.” And she’d made an effort not to get her hair wet. The ends were a little damp, and the humidity of the shower took it from straight and sleek back to curly and out-of-control, but she felt like a human being again.

She spread her T-shirt out to dry, and when she straightened up Daniel was staring at it. She knew what he was thinking, and not because she’d read his mind. Because he met her eyes and she could see he was wishing she had that wet T-shirt on. And nothing else.

Vivi wished he’d take himself into the bathroom before she made his wish come true. Minus the T-shirt. And then she’d rip his clothes off and find out if he was better than all the hot, lurid thoughts running through her mind. Better might just kill her, but hey, what were her odds of getting out of this in one piece anyway? Might as well have her way with Daniel before Hatch and Flip got their way with guns.

Her gaze lifted to Daniel’s and held. She wanted to cross that room more than anything she’d ever done, but she didn’t move. Neither did he.

They might have stayed that way, or they might have given in to temptation, but a gust of wind rattled the window, and the connection was broken. Daniel headed for the bathroom, poker face back in place, acting like nothing was going on.

Well, two could play that game, Vivi decided. He wanted to pretend there was no heat, no sexual tension between them? Fine. He could go to hell. She felt like she was already there, wanting to crawl out of her skin, to scream if she didn’t get some—

“Food’s here,” Eric called out from the hallway.

She opened the door, took the boxes, and shut the door in Eric’s face.

“Hey!”

“Thanks,” she yelled, “we’ll catch you tomorrow.”

After a minute, she heard him clomping back down the stairs. She dropped the boxes on the table, shoved the salad over in front of Daniel’s chair, and opened the pizza box. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. Nothing like satisfying one physical urge to make her forget about another.

“Did you save me some?”

Vivi held up the salad and kept her eyes to herself.

“You ought to have some of that,” he suggested.

“Already had my vegetables today,” she said around a mouthful of pizza.

Daniel took the chair across from her, opened the salad, and dug in. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack eating like that.”

“The only thing I’m going to die of around you is starvation. Or lead poisoning.”

DANIEL WAS SURFING THE WEB. VIVI SAT CROSS-LEGGED on the mattress, meditating. Both of them were putting off the moment when they had to face the matter of sleeping arrangements.

After a while, Daniel got to his feet—and almost went down to his knees. “My thigh,” he muttered, rubbing at it.

That wasn’t the part of him Vivi had been wishing was stiff, but she could still do something about it. “Take your pants off and lie down on the mattress,” she said, digging through her backpack. “I took a massage class,” she explained when he only stood there staring at her, lines of pain around his eyes and mouth. “Mostly I use it when I get a tense client. But I can use it on any muscle, not just shoulders.”

Daniel mulled that over for a minute, then he reached for his zipper. Vivi decided her self-control wasn’t up to the challenge of watching him shuck his jeans, so she continued to search her backpack, all but stuffing her head into it, long after she’d found what she wanted. By that time Daniel was on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling.

Like she was putting her hands and face that close to trouble. “On your stomach.”