Crazy Hot (21 page)

“Until?” he asked.

“No until,” she admitted. “I'm still angry.” She knew the fact didn't throw her in a very mature light, but it was the truth. She was angry at her parents for hurting Regan, and for hurting Wilson, and for not even bothering to hang around long enough to find out who she was, before they'd gone and gotten themselves killed. She'd seen her grandpa crying, when he thought there was no one around.

Poor Wilson and Regan, they should have both learned a long time ago that she was always around, usually with a camera connected to a long lens. Shameless Nikki McKinney who spent her days painting beautiful, naked men. She couldn't imagine that her parents would have found her any less interesting than the other people who knew her. Every woman she knew wanted her job, but none of them had the talent, or the obsessive passion that took her work out of the prurient into the divine. Her men were beautiful, because she made them so. They were real, because she didn't let them keep their secrets.

“I guess I'd be angry, too,” he said, and she looked up again to find him still watching her. The low light in the car cast him in the gray halftones of muted nighttime colors—making his face a study in silky ecru and velvety soft shadows.

So touchable. That's what he was, and if he showed her even one more ounce of sensitivity and compassion, she'd probably fall in love with him for life.

“What about you?” she asked, ignoring the soft wave of heat rolling through her body, turning in her seat to face him more fully. This was comfortable, being here with him in the dark, cozily tucked in his car. “Have you ever explored your feminine mystique?”

The question took him by surprise; she could tell by the way his eyebrows drew together, one lifting slightly higher than the other.

“I don't have one to, uh, explore,” he said after a second more of confusion.

“Every man has one,” she said, and watched his expression go from confusion to extreme doubt. “Honest. If you'd like to come to my studio sometime, let me paint you, I can guarantee you'll find yours.” Oh, and wasn't she just so smooth—for all the good it was going to do her. From the look on his face, his feminine mystique wasn't something he particularly wanted to find.

“I don't think I'd make much of a model, ma'am.”

Ma'am again. He was in perpetual politeness mode, and she wanted to take his clothes off.

“What about your folks? Where do they live?” she asked, giving him a break and changing the subject.

The relief on his face was so obvious, it was almost comical.

“My mom's in L.A. still trying to make it in the movies, which as far as any of the rest of us has been able to tell, isn't going to happen. She left when I was eight. Us boys stayed with Dad in Denver.”

“Do you have any sisters?”

“No. All guys. My dad, my two older brothers, me, and usually two or three other kids who just always sort of ended up at our house for days or weeks on end. Quinn was there a lot, and a couple of other guys who are with Steele Street now. It was like growing up in a locker room, both the good and the bad.”

“There's a good side to a boys' locker room?” she asked skeptically, but with a humorous edge, feeling better, safer, by the minute.

“Yeah, but you have to be a guy to appreciate it.” He grinned, a flash of white teeth in a boyishly lopsided curve, and without any warning, her heart careened off into a slow, uncontrolled, 360-degree skid. He had dimples and slightly crooked lower teeth, and when he smiled he was absolutely devastating.

Oh, my God.

She was in such deep trouble.

A short laugh that had nothing to do with humor and everything to do with the nameless emotion tightening into a knot inside her chest escaped her on a surprised breath.

A Marine sniper.

God help her. She'd been so wrong. She didn't want to paint him; she wanted to inhale him.

C
HAPTER

19

C
HRISTIAN HAWKINS PULLED INTO
Steele Street just before ten o'clock, pretty disgusted with the whole night.

The Pentagon's guns, which they should have found weeks ago, had disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving them with nothing but a bunch of dusty dinosaur bones in a Lafayette warehouse, and a whole bunch of people running around getting shot at. Regan McKinney's side trip to Cisco had started an avalanche that was picking up speed as the night wore on. The enemy had now been engaged, up close and personal, shots fired, and evasive action taken. But they were no closer to finding the Pentagon's assault rifles than they'd been four months ago.

He hoped to hell everything was about to change.

His footsteps echoed hollowly as he crossed the dim, open space, winding his way through the cars. This building on Steele Street was SDF's secret headquarters. Only nine people on the face of the earth had the fingerprints necessary to open the doors, or run the elevators, or access the building in any way, shape, or form. Most of them lived there at least part of the time. Hawkins kept a loft on the eleventh floor across from Skeeter's apartment. Quinn had the tenth, and Creed had taken the jungle loft on the ninth. J. T. had dibs on most of the twelfth along with Kid. Dylan, the boss, commandeered the top floor, the thirteenth, and there were enough nooks and crannies in the rest of the building to accommodate anyone who needed a place to store their stuff or themselves for a while.

As Hawkins neared the east side of the garage, he could see Jeanette parked in the shadows to the left of Roxanne. Great, he thought. At least one part of the night was going down right. Quinn had traded Jeanette for a less conspicuous ride.

Or so he first thought. When he looked around, he realized Quinn's idea of less conspicuous was none other than a candy-apple-red 1967 Dodge Coronet with hot pink piping.

Quinn had taken Betty, which was damned interesting since he had about forty-two cars to pick from. The one time out of a hundred he would pick Betty would be the one time he had a woman with him. It was the only reason any guy would pick Betty over something with a lot more muscle, because women loved Betty.

They loved her paint, her whitewalls, her tuned headers, and they really loved her hot pink piping. She was a babe magnet. He'd seen Betty charm females from Creed Rivera's seventy-eight-year-old great-grandmother to Johnny's thirteen-year-old little sister.

So what the hell was up with Quinn and Regan McKinney? He remembered her from all those years ago at Rabbit Valley. She'd been built even at fifteen, and cutely blond, fun to talk with, and nice—too nice to hold his interest beyond friendship. He didn't remember Quinn ever having much to say to her, but he definitely remembered Quinn watching her.

Shit.

The closer he got to the two cars, the clearer it became that Jeanette had been ridden hard and put away wet.

But how in the world had her windshield wiper been broken off? Quinn made a point of keeping Jeanette looking dirty and mean, but he treated her with kid gloves. She was an ultrahigh-performance machine who could turn on a dime, damn near break the sound barrier, and fall apart at the drop of a hat if her specs weren't met. So how in the hell had she lost a wiper?

He reached out to smooth his hand over her hood, then leaned down to take an eye-level gander. Sure enough, she'd been dented.

What the fuck?
he wondered.

The rest of her body was in good shape, and he ducked his head through the driver's-side window to check her out on the inside. Everything looked good, if
good
was the right word to describe the stripped down, bared bolts and snake-pit look of Jeanette's interior.

He started to duck back out of the car, when something pink caught his eye. Leaning in deeper, he reached out and picked up a scrap of cloth from between the passenger seat and the gear console.

It was a pair of lace underwear. Not very big. Pink. Torn.

Scented with expensive perfume.

He arched a brow. Regan McKinney's?

He brought the scrap of lace closer to his nose. Hell. Quinn had never had a chance. The guy just wasn't that strong when it came to smart, beautiful blondes built like Jack O' Nines strippers.

And wasn't that just great. He was so fucking glad to know
somebody
was having himself a real good time tonight.

I
T
was official, Quinn decided. They'd hit disaster status. The Southern Cross Hotel in Boulder had been compromised, and Kid and Nikki right along with it. Kid hadn't gone into details, but Quinn knew him well enough to read between the lines, and what he'd figured out wasn't anything he wanted to discuss with Regan right now. Better for her to have her little sister close at hand, all safe and sound, before she heard the particulars of Kid and Nikki's ill-fated attempt to reach the hotel.

Quinn pulled off the Boulder side street where Betty had been idling while he and Regan had been arguing for the last five minutes in between phone calls from Kid and Hawkins. She wanted to go to Lafayette. He wanted to ship her as far away from this mess as he could get her. She wanted a chance to study the dinosaur bones. He didn't give a damn about the bones.

And somehow, she'd won. Thanks to the last phone conversation with Hawkins, who had pointed out that Regan might spot something about the bones that her grandfather had missed. Quinn turned the car east, heading toward Lafayette and the warehouse, instead of Denver and Steele Street, where he should have been taking her.

“You won't regret this,” she said, her voice full of excitement, but she was wrong. He already regretted it, and they hadn't even gotten there yet.

“Thirty minutes. That's all. Then we tie the whole thing up,” he said. “And Hawkins better be right about bringing you in.”

The clincher had been time. They were running out. Hawkins had weighed in heavily in favor of using everything they had to get some sort of edge on Roper and get their dead-in-the-water operation back on track—now. If they didn't handle this right, the McKinneys were going to be prime candidates for the Federal Witness Protection Program, or they were going to be dead.

It was a chance nobody wanted to take, which had put Quinn's back flat up against the wall and left him doing the exact opposite of what every instinct in his body was telling him to do. He was taking Regan to Lafayette to look over the damn bones, and probably taking her straight into a whole lot of trouble.

Shit. The absolute best day of his whole life had just taken a real bad turn for the worse.

C
HAPTER

20

O
NCE HE'D DELIVERED
Nikki to Steele Street and left her with her grandfather, Kid found Hawkins on the eighth floor, in the armory, picking out a pair of HK MP5 submachine guns with four extra thirty-round clips.

“Expecting trouble?” Kid asked, crossing the room where SDF kept their weapons and assault equipment.

“Looking forward to it, if it gets this far,” Hawkins said, loading a magazine into one of the guns. “We either finish this thing up, or it starts coming down around our ears even more than it already has. Where's the girl?”

“Nikki? With her grandfather.”

“When I checked, he was asleep.” Hawkins slipped the extra clips into a hip pouch on his belt.

“Still is, but she wanted to see him, make sure he was okay. It's been a rough night.”

“Johnny still asleep, too?”

Kid nodded. “You going to need another shooter in Lafayette, or do you want me to stay here?”

“Here. We're going to set the bones up as an easy snatch-and-grab for Roper and his guys, if anything about seven tons of rock can be called easy.” He flashed Kid a weary grin. “What a fucking mess. This thing has been crazy from the get-go. I want the guns, and I want out.”

“What about Regan McKinney?”

“Quinn is taking her to Lafayette to look over the fossils.” Hawkins picked up an extra pistol magazine and slipped it in a separate pouch. “Seems the old man found something he forgot to tell me about. I knew he was pretty excited about this one chunk of rock. But he pretty much got wound up about every chunk of rock we had. Then when I'd push him on it a little, he'd kind of forget why he was so excited. I think the pressure has been too much for him. He doesn't forget how to button his shirts or anything, but he does forget what he's doing, even while he's doing it. He might not have been Dylan's best call for the job.”

“Dylan usually doesn't make mistakes.”

“Yeah, well, he usually doesn't get very damn sentimental, either.”

Kid understood Hawkins's complaint. He knew SDF's and Steele Street's history as well as any of the guys who had lived it, starting with the street gang of car thieves who'd worked out of this very building, and the Bust, as they always called it.

He also knew about the subsequent summer they'd all spent baking in the desolate badlands of western Colorado at the misnamed Rabbit Valley. Not a one of the busted juvies had seen a rabbit the whole damn time they'd been there, though Hawkins had told him about a run-in he'd had with a rattlesnake. Wilson McKinney always figured pretty heavily in the stories, kind of a curmudgeon-with-a-heart-of-gold type, but no one had ever mentioned his granddaughters. Of course, Nikki couldn't have been much more than a little kid back then. Regan would have been more the guys' age, though, and Kid was betting Quinn had noticed her—plenty.

“Skeeter says Wilson has got a good reputation with dinosaur bones and stuff.”

“So does his granddaughter, apparently. Now it's her turn.” Hawkins checked the load on his pistol before returning it to its holster. “By the way, Dylan called about twenty minutes ago. He'll be in tonight. Something's come up in Colombia.”

Colombia,
Kid thought. His brother J. T. and Creed were in Colombia.

“He said he'd have better intel by the time he got here.” Hawkins glanced up at Kid. “I need you to get some sleep. Once Roper gets the bones, we're not letting them out of our sight. Quinn and I will finish up the night shift, but I'm going to need you for the
A
.
M
. stakeout.”

“Quinn shouldn't even be here in Denver, let alone be chasing Roper's merchandise around, not with the price Roper has on his head,” Kid said. As for whatever had come up in Colombia, his brother and Creed were on a hostage rescue mission that didn't have anything to do with the Roper Jones operation. Maybe they'd finally gotten their guy away from the rebels who had kidnapped him.

“Yeah,” Hawkins agreed. “Dylan is going to kick all our asses if we lose the poster boy, but Quinn is ready to rumble, and quite frankly, I think
he's
gonna kick
Roper's
ass—which works out a whole lot better than if I do it.”

Kid agreed with a nod of his head.
ALL-AMERICAN HERO TAKES OUT CRIME LORD
played a whole hell of a lot better than
EX-CON MURDERS CRIMINAL SUSPECT IN GANGLIKE SLAYING
, even in the brackish backwaters of Capitol Hill where SDF's orders originated out of the underbelly of the Department of Defense.

“You ever hear of feminine mystique?” Kid asked.

“Betty Friedan?” Hawkins said, without so much as a lift of his eyebrows when the question came out of the blue. “Yeah. I read it. Pretty damned depressing book. I think they put it in the library at the state pen just to mess with our minds.”

“No, I'm not talking about a book. It's a . . . I don't know, a way of thinking maybe. Or a way of . . . glowing.”

That got Hawkins's attention. He looked up from the ammunition bench, where they made their custom loads.

“Glowing?”

Kid shrugged self-consciously. “Yeah. Nikki McKinney, she's an artist, only paints men, really out-there, spectacular stuff, but one of the things she really likes in a guy is his feminine mystique, the way he kind of glows with the tension inherent in the masculine/feminine dichotomy.”

Hawkins blinked, then said, “Okay.” To Kid's surprise, he didn't sound the least bit incredulous or confused—only slightly curious.

Great. He knew he'd come to the right place. Kid's brother J. T. wouldn't know feminine mystique from beans, but Hawkins, well, the guy just knew stuff.

“Well,” Kid said hesitantly. “I . . . uh . . . don't have any.”

Hawkins gave him a sidelong glance. “No feminine mystique?”

“Nope.”

“And you need some, because you like this girl?”

“Yeah. I guess I do. She says she can help me find mine, but—I don't know.” He shrugged.

“Go ahead and let her.” Hawkins turned back to the bench and finished loading another magazine. “Hell, you might be surprised with what she comes up with.”

Let her? Kid studied Hawkins's face. He was serious. Okay. He supposed there were worse ways to spend time than posing naked for a beautiful woman who might possibly finger-paint your body, and he was pretty sure that would be Nikki's way of helping. A grin split his face. Definitely top ten material there.

“Okay. Maybe I'll do just that.”

“I remember her from Rabbit Valley,” Hawkins said as he shoved another ammo mag in his belt. “She was a cute kid. I guess she turned out okay.”

“More than okay.” Kid's grin broadened. “She's amazing.”

“Right. Another amazing McKinney woman.” Hawkins let out a short laugh, then went back to loading magazines. “Look, I'll call you about four o'clock to tell you where we are.”

Kid checked his watch. It was almost eleven. Buoyed by the new plan, he helped Hawkins finish up. When Hawkins left for Lafayette, Kid went back to the office to check on Nikki.

She was alone and asleep. The minute he saw her, curled around a pillow on the bed in one of the guest suites, he knew he couldn't do it. He couldn't be naked in front of her while she painted him or took his picture, or tried to dress him up in angel wings or anything else. It was a great fantasy, but the reality of it was impossible.

First, he'd probably embarrass himself with a raging hard-on, which Travis had not done. He didn't know how, but the guy had been totally placid during the whole shoot. Kid just didn't have that kind of disinterest. He hadn't been able to think of much besides sex since she'd answered the door back at her house.

Secondly, he just couldn't do it. Couldn't bear the thought of her looking for something in him that just wasn't there, and missing
him
in the process. Not that she was likely to miss his guaranteed hard-on. He was more than okay in that department. No ego. Just the facts, and given her artistic expertise, so to speak, she would definitely notice.

So, great. He was standing there, watching her sleep and thinking about his equipment—and the equipment was rising to the occasion.

It was pathetic. She was just lying there, fully clothed, breathing, and he was getting turned on. It didn't make sense. She wasn't even his type, not even close. He liked tall, willowy blondes and brunettes with long hair and even longer legs. Girls who were athletic, liked extreme sports, and were preferably stuck on him. Colorado was full of these beautiful outdoor girls whose only makeup was a tan and whose idea of fixing their hair was winding it up in some kind of a knot and sticking a chopstick or a pencil or both through it. They wore cargo shorts and T-shirts that said
SAVE THE ESCALANTE
, and their mountain bikes cost more than their cars.

Nikki still had mascara smears on her face, and her little silver box of makeup doodads was right next to her on the bedside table. She had five earrings in one ear, and three in the other, and her hair was black and purple, neither color anywhere near a natural shade. Her T-shirt had almost as much Lycra in it as her little black skirt. It clung to her, leaving nothing to the imagination—as if his imagination needed any help.

She stirred on the bed while he watched, stretching with sleepy grace and absolutely riveting him to the spot. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and when her eyes opened, her gaze went straight to him.

“I missed you,” she said around a small yawn, her hair a wild tousle of pure bed head, her T-shirt riding up just enough to give him a heart attack.

Yeah, right,
he thought, his pulse skipping a beat. He'd known her a little over four hours, been gone less than twenty minutes, and he'd missed her, too, a lot. This was so pitiful, feeling this way, but there didn't seem to be a damn thing he could do about it. She was so freaking beautiful. How could any guy not stare?

“How's your grandfather?” He already knew, had just checked on the old man, but it felt like the polite thing to ask.

“Asleep”—she yawned again—“just like the boy watching him. What's his name again?”

“Johnny Ramos.”

“He's cute. Almost pretty, with those delicate Hispanic features,” she said, dragging her hand back through her hair, making it stick up even more wildly from her head. “How old is he?”

Kid just stared at her, then expelled a burst of laughter. “No way,” he warned her, and laughed again. “No way. He's only seventeen.”

A sleepy, teasing smile curved her lips. “Okay. He's jailbait. How about you? Have you changed your mind about modeling for me?”

“Maybe,” he admitted, and wondered just how true it might be.

“I was dreaming about you.”

Well, that pretty much froze him to the floor.

“I was so scared tonight,” she continued, her smile fading into another yawn. She rolled onto her back and covered her mouth until the yawn was finished, then turned back to him. “Sometimes I talk too much, when I'm scared. I'm sorry I went all motor-mouth on you.”

“Not a problem,” he assured her, knocked senseless by the way she moved. He'd never seen so much unconscious grace in such a small package. Everything about her was so smooth—mesmerizing. “I think I've got your whole life story now.”

“How awful for you.” She propped her head up on her hand and gave him the full benefit of her undivided attention.

Even with the mascara smudges, he'd never seen more beautiful eyes, such a clear, sun-shot gray, her lashes so thick it occurred to him they might not be real, her eyebrows like two perfect sparrow wings. Everything about her was perfect. She was pedicured, manicured, and probably bikini-waxed.

Whoa, what a dangerous thought to have pop into his mind.

He cleared his throat. “No. It was fine, really, except that you were scared.”

“Weren't you?”

“A little,” he confessed. “In places.” Especially for her.

She stared at him for a long, quiet moment.

“I found my cherry lip gloss.”

“Uh, great.” Cherry lips. Right. That's just what he needed to know—that her mouth was all glossy soft and sticky sweet with the taste of cherries.

“Are you going to be around for a while? Doing the bodyguard thing?” she asked, sitting up on the bed. A long, sinuous stretch followed, complete with another yawn.

“Yes, ma'am.” The words came out sounding like something he'd swallowed. His heart beat heavily in his chest. He was going to have to kiss her. He couldn't possibly get through the night, or even the next five minutes, without kissing her. His body was nearly electrified with the need to touch her, to somehow draw her close and bury his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder, to open his mouth on her skin and run his tongue all the way down her body from her throat to between her legs.

Geezus.
He was going to fry a circuit board if he didn't get out of the room.

He cleared his throat again. “I'll be out in the office, if you need anything.” Amazingly, the statement came out fairly controlled, as if he were actually in charge of himself—which he wasn't at all. She breathed, and his pulse raced. She glanced at him, and his blood surged.