Crazy Hot (30 page)
Authors: Tara Janzen
Swearing again, he started across the lawn, skirting a string of canopied platforms decked out like jungle huts and working his way closer to the caterer's tent and Dylan, who was also working this cakewalk.
Hell. If this was a coincidence, it was one of the worst badass mojo coincidences he'd ever heard about. She was obviously part of the art auction, helping some guys move a painting, hanging around down by the stage, which was all decked out with fake palm trees and twisted vines, like a rain forest. She belonged here.
He didn't.
Dylan looked over and caught his gaze as he neared the caterer's tent.
“You saw our problem?” Dylan asked, the coldness of his gaze telegraphing his mood—royally pissed off verging on ballistic.
“Yes.” Problem was a good way to put it.
“Do you think she's the reason we're here?”
Hawkins hated to think so. He
really
hated to think so.
“She wasn't named in our orders,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as Dylan, who knew the orders as well as he did.
“She's the highest-ranking civilian here,” Dylan said, his glacial gray gaze going to the woman on the amphitheater stage and giving her a cool once-over. “She hasn't changed at all.”
Without wanting to, Hawkins found himself looking at her again.
“No. She's changed.” He'd been wrong earlier, real wrong, the way he'd always been about her. She'd changed. Plenty. She wasn't scared, alone, and eighteen anymore. She wasn't the prom queen or the poor little rich girl tonight—two acts she'd had down pat—and she wasn't naked in bed with him. She'd been most of those things, most of the time, that whole crazy month they'd spent together.
Then the earth had opened up and swallowed him whole. He'd spent two years in the state penitentiary, thanks to Katya Dekker and her crowd of too-rich, too-fast, too-frickin'-dumb-to-stay-out-of-trouble friends.
And thanks to her mother, the mighty Marilyn Dekker. What a piece of work that woman was. Christian had been steamrolled, hog-tied, and locked up before he'd even known what had hit him.
“None of these cops seem to appreciate who she is, so maybe we better keep an eye on her. I'm going to put in a call to General Grant, in case there's something else going on here and this isn't as simple as it was supposed to be,” Dylan said.
Hawkins slanted him a dry look. “There is nothing simple about you and me being at a frickin' garden party.”
Dylan conceded the point with a grim smile.
Geezus, what a mess.
Hawkins looked back at Katya Dekker and felt something cold harden in his chest. She'd cost him. Loving her had cost him.
If it hadn't been for Dylan and his Seventeenth Street lawyer working their asses off to get the case reopened, Hawkins knew he might still be in prison. What had clinched his pardon was the deathbed confession of a downtown vagrant named Manny Waite. In and of itself, the confession might not have been enough. Manny had been a lush whose grip on reality had been tenuous at best, but with one helluva lawyer and Dylan pushing hard to get him a pardon on one end, and poor old Manny giving it up on the other, Hawkins had been set free.
He'd been tough when he'd gone in, but not as tough as he'd thought, and not tough enough, not at nineteen years old. By the time he got out at twenty-one, he
had
killed a man, and his whole world had changed—all thanks to Katya Dekker.
Down on the stage, the auctioneer stepped up to the podium as Katya finished directing the placement of the first painting. The piece was at least six by eight feet of bright, oversize flower petals in a thickly ornate gilt frame. He recognized it as an Oleg Henri, nothing he'd want in his own collection, but a beautiful piece and one sure to appreciate in value once the artist became better known.
The irony of the night wasn't lost on him. Thirteen years ago, he wouldn't have gotten within a hundred yards of a place selling an Oleg Henri or any piece of collectible art. Thirteen years ago, no one would have let him. Back then, he'd looked exactly like what he was, a street kid on the take and one of the most successful car thieves ever to give the Denver cops a run for their money. Dylan had always had a way of looking innocent no matter what crime he was committing, but Hawkins knew he and the rest of the guys at the chop shop on Steele Street had always looked like trouble.
Just the way this damn garden party looked like trouble. Either he needed another Scotch, or he needed to be back on a plane to Colombia. What he didn't need was to be hanging around an art auction with a bunch of socialites—like Katya Dekker.
His gaze followed her as she crossed the amphitheater stage and went down the steps. There had to be a bounty on the dress she was wearing: a little black nothing, slit to the hip. With her mane of blond hair, her golden tan, and a pair of spike heels, she should have looked cheap.
But she didn't. She looked sleek and expensive. A California wet dream come true. Barbie with an attitude.
She had a tattoo, which, oddly enough, unnerved him. She hadn't had a tattoo at eighteen. It wasn't discreetly hidden on a hip or an ankle, or twined around her navel, and it wasn't a butterfly, or a rose, or a unicorn. Nothing sweetly banal for Kat; she'd decorated herself with a shooting star at the top of her arm, just below the curve of her shoulder.
Kee-rist
. He shook his head. Kat Dekker was back in town.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Of the mind that love
truly
is what makes the world go 'round, Tara Janzen can be contacted at
www.tarajanzen.com
.
Happy reading!
CRAZY HOT
A Dell Book / October 2005
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2005 by Tara Janzen
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33470-5
v3.0