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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
One
“Every cabdriver in New York must think he’s a jet pilot,” muttered Patrick Flynn, after swerving his vintage Harley-Davidson to avoid the taxi that came roaring onto Fifth Avenue like a guided missile. “Hey, buddy,” he shouted at the driver, “you tryin’ to kill me?”
But it was Flynn who intended to commit murder if anyone so much as scratched his precious motorcycle. He’d spent four years rebuilding this beauty in the living room of his West Side apartment, and he didn’t plan on seeing his labor of love get the slightest bump on her maiden voyage around the streets of Manhattan.
“Take it easy, will ya?” he bellowed after the cab.
“Aw, take the bus, pal!”
Grumbling about the deterioration of mankind’s appreciation for quality machinery, Flynn pulled over to the curb and let the rest of the traffic thunder by. It was at that moment that he thought he heard a distinct ping in the Harley’s engine. Quickly, Flynn set both boots down on the pavement, then removed his helmet and leaned down to listen more carefully.
Or rather, he pretended to listen.
To any unsuspecting passerby, he probably looked like an average guy innocently listening to his motorcycle.
In reality, Flynn was a cop on surveillance. Within a two-block radius, he noted two additional plainclothesmen in a nondescript sedan, one more posing as a panhandler on the corner, and a woman pretending to window-shop across the street. Flynn feigned concern for his bike.
But the Harley’s matchless engine purred in perfect synchronization, causing the frame of the bike to throb with delicious power just waiting to be tapped. Hiding a grin, Flynn decided that he’d never heard a more beautiful sound than a perfectly tuned motorcycle engine. The fact that he had tuned that machinery with his own loving hands—well, with a little help from his brother, Sean—gave Flynn enormous pleasure.
Then a scream shattered his perfect moment.
“What the—” Flynn looked up in time to see one hysterical woman fling herself out the doorway of a nearby church. She spun around and promptly began struggling to slam the massive oak doors closed behind herself.
“Help!” she cried. “Somebody help me!”
All the cops froze in horror. Here was an unexpected development.
“Help!”
She was dressed in a gaudy white bridal gown—complete with at least five pounds of pearls and a satin train that dragged behind her like the tail of a slightly drunken peacock. Her lace veil hung crookedly from—yes, it was a sparkly white cowboy hat. Flynn squinted to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. A cowboy bride? She carried an armload of bluebonnets and staggered on a pair of white cowboy boots with pointed toes. New Yorkers get accustomed to seeing almost anything on the streets, but this was definitely something new to Flynn.
“Help!” she shouted again, much to the amazement of all the cops plus two passing joggers and one homeless woman pushing a wobbly shopping cart. “Please, somebody help!”
She looked like a country-western singer on her way to the Grand Ole Opry to marry an Elvis impersonator. Even for New York, she looked unusual. So nobody made a move to help the woman.
By herself, she managed to yank her massive train through the church doors, then slam them hard. Her veil tilted sideways, unleashing a haystack of long blond hair from beneath the Stetson. Then she flattened herself against the doors to keep them closed, breathing hard and shoving her hair aside. “For cryin’ out loud, somebody help me!”
The joggers picked up their pace and ran away. All the cops pretended hearing loss.
With a frustrated howl, the bride threw down the flowers and hopped on one foot while yanking off one boot. She wedged the boot between the two door handles to hold the doors shut just as someone began pounding on the door from inside.
“Hey,” the homeless woman called up the church steps. “Are you crazy, girl?”
“No,” snapped the bride. “At least not as crazy as they think I am!”
With that, she left her boot between the door handles and hobbled hastily down the stone steps of the church. Snatching off her cowboy hat, she looked up and down the street and began to wave it frantically. “Taxi! Taxi! Why can’t I ever get a cab in this godforsaken city?” she wailed. “Taxi! Hey, I— Oh, damnation!”
She laid eyes on Flynn and made a beeline in his direction. “What the hell are you?” she demanded. “An inner-city biker?”
“What the hell are you?” he retorted, not exactly coming up with brilliant repartee.
“Don’t go asking a bunch of dumb Yankee questions,” she ordered with exasperation, still hobbling with one boot on and one boot off. “Just get me out of here! And hurry! He’s going to kill me!”
She had a gigantic mane of corn yellow hair and eyes bluer than a prairie sky. Her skin was milky white beneath a breathless blush, and her lips were a luscious shade of red. Too red, perhaps. And her breasts threatened to overflow her dress at any second. She looked like a riverboat gambler’s shady lady encased in all that snug white satin. Voluptuous was a word that sprang to Flynn’s momentarily stunned mind. Her eyelashes were like velvet, her earrings were huge globs of glittery rhinestone. Her wedding dress looked like a cartoonist’s idea of a fairy-tale gown—all sparkly and poufed and exaggerated.
“You hearing me, sugar?” she demanded, hunkering down to glare straight into Flynn’s face. “I’m runnin’ for my life! Don’t start cross-examining me like some kind of city-slicker lawyer, just help me, huh?”
Behind her the church doors burst open and six very large men in tight black tuxedos tumbled onto the steps, grunting and shouting at each other. One pointed at the runaway bride and yelled, “There she goes! Grab her, quick!”
The woman hitched up her voluminous dress, letting all New York glimpse a saloon showgirl’s long legs, complete with red lace garters around her shapely thighs.
And a pistol tucked inside one of the garters.
She ripped the little gun out of its hiding place and pointed it directly at Flynn’s nose. “You’ve just been elected my Knight in Shining Armor, sugar. So move over and let me on your horse!”
Flynn clenched his teeth and remained calm. “Forget it.”
Her lovely mouth fell open. “I’ve got a gun!”
“I can see that.”
“A gun means you have to do what I say!”
“I don’t think so, lady.”
She stared at him, and Flynn heard an emergency alarm start blaring inside his brain. In fact, his entire body was suddenly flooding with panic. It was crazy—crazy—to stand up to a gun-wielding nut like this! But he couldn’t obey her. He couldn’t. Not even with half-a-dozen goons bearing down on them like paratroopers storming the beach at Normandy. Every cop had to make a stand sometime, and this was Flynn’s time.
Her beautiful face registered shock. “Listen, sugar, I’m gonna put a bullet through that thick head of yours if you don’t help me right this minute!”
“Sorry. There’s nothing you can do to make me get involved.”
“Nothing, huh? We’ll see about that!”
She grabbed the front of his black T-shirt with one hand and swooped close. Before Flynn could take a breath, she was suddenly kissing him.
Kissing him! Her full lips fastened on to his as if she were staking a claim, making her mark, claiming a prize. She was hot, wet, delicious, Flynn realized dimly. Sweet and spicy at the same time. Sexy and teasing and oh, so good. Her kiss packed a wallop of excitement.
For Flynn, time stopped. Talk about crazy. The city spun like a carousel and disappeared in a puff of sensual smoke. His whole world was suddenly this big, beautiful woman who smelled wonderful, tasted magical, and felt something like a wild animal as she pressed up against him. Jolted by a surge as powerful as any electrical current, Flynn felt all his strength drain away. He couldn’t think, couldn’t move.
And he didn’t want to. It was magic. Black magic, maybe. Her kiss turned Flynn’s insides to a cauldron of boiling hormones. He forgot his job, forgot his mission—hell, he even forgot his name.
Sex, he thought. The idea pierced him like an arrow. That’s what he wanted. Now. With her. Let the kiss go on forever, prayed a voice he didn’t recognize at first. Let their mouths melt together for eternity. Let their clothes evaporate, let their bodies meld into one hot, pulsing—
Just as suddenly as she’d started the whole thing, she pulled away and stared straight into Flynn’s eyes with magnetic power. Her face was instantly carved into his mind forever. Those lashes, that pointed nose, those delicate brows. And that delicious, perfect mouth.
“Help me,” she breathed.
Flynn didn’t think. There wasn’t time—there wasn’t any need. He’d had one kiss and he wanted more. Lots more. Logic self-destructed. Common sense died a fiery death.
The men in tuxedos arrived in a puffing, sweaty pack, all grunting commands at each other. One of them grabbed the woman’s arm. She cried out.
Flynn threw a punch—a lucky left-handed one. It connected with the man’s chin and sent him sprawling on the sidewalk.
Another man—this one bigger and more determined—aimed a karate-style kick at Flynn’s head. But he was far too slow. Flynn ducked instinctively, then seized the flying ankle and sent the man sailing backward. He landed on the curb with an explosive “Ooof!”
“My hero!”
Flynn slammed on his helmet and gunned the Harley as the woman gathered up her dress and climbed on sidesaddle behind him. Then he laid a patch of burned rubber on the pavement and they took off.
As they whipped into traffic, his passenger gave a whoop of triumph that sounded like “Yii-ha!” She tore the veil off her cowboy hat and threw it up into the air as they roared down Fifth Avenue. Taxis swerved, horns blared and pedestrians stopped to watch as Flynn opened the throttle and shot the Harley through an intersection with his passenger laughing and waving her hat with triumphant glee behind him.
“Use your spurs!” she cried, hugging him tight with one slender arm. “Oh, I’ve always had a hankering for men in black leather!”
“Are you insane?” Flynn demanded, shaken. His lips were still burning as they roared away from the church and cut up a side street.
“This is the sanest I’ve felt in weeks, sugar. How fast can this clunker go?”
“Clunker? This is a genuine— Why, I rebuilt this machine myself and I won’t have anybody— Good God, put that gun away!”
“This little ol’ peashooter? Honey, back in Texas we’d call this a toy!”
It was one of those miraculous Saturdays in May—not a cloud in the sky and New York’s streets were newly washed of winter grime. Thousands of people were strolling on the sidewalks—now all pointing and shouting at Flynn’s Harley, it seemed. He could hardly keep the bike moving in a straight line and it wobbled dangerously in traffic.
She leaned close. “Am I making you nervous, sugar?”
“Hell, yes, you’re making me nervous!” In more ways than one, he wanted to add, not exactly sure of what had happened back there at the church. One kiss was turning him into a brainless mass of jelly.
“Whaddaya know,” she mused with another whooping laugh. “An honest man!” She put her chin against his shoulder and snuggled close enough for her breath to tickle Flynn’s ear. “Tell you what—I’ll put away my peashooter if you promise to behave yourself.”
“Behave my— What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Just do what I say.” She waggled the pistol in front of him. “Promise?”
A sweat had broken out on Flynn’s brow. “All right, all right! I promise.”
“Good.” She wriggled around, no doubt tucking the pistol back inside her garter. “Now,” she commanded serenely, once the weapon was dispatched, “take me someplace safe.”
“I have a feeling no place on earth is safe with you around,” he retorted, meaning it.
She laughed delightedly and slid both arms around his waist. “That’s what my daddy always said! You’re a pretty perceptive guy, sugar—for a Yankee.”
Flynn’s perceptions were working overtime as she tightened her arms snugly around his waist and trailed one hand up his chest to balance herself. He could feel the curve of her breasts against his back, and the heady scent of her perfume filled his helmet in a dizzying cloud. Her body melded naturally with his as they took a corner.
What the hell was happening?
If Flynn hadn’t been able to feel her body against his, he couldn’t have been sure that she was real. Something had happened. Something amazing and somehow terrible. Flynn had never bolted out of a surveillance detail before. But here he was—acting like a maniac for one fantastic kiss.
Worse yet, he was contributing to a public spectacle!
Her trailing white gown and yellow hair whipping out from under her hat caused heads to turn up and down the street, but Flynn had to rely on his other senses to make a judgment about her. The Texas drawl and cowboy laugh sounded brash and cocky, but he thought he could feel the swift hammer of the woman’s heart beating against his shoulder blade. And the tremble of her hand as she clasped Flynn’s chest felt as if it was caused by something other than the shudder of the Harley’s engine.
But she kept up her bluff, saying blithely, “You’re in charge of this rescue, sugar, so go ahead and get me out of here!”
“Where do you want to go?” Flynn guided the bike up the street, half hoping she’d declare her desire to be nowhere but in the nearest bed with him. But his mind was beginning to function again, so he said, “The airport? Grand Central?”
“Heavens, no, there’d be a riot.”
“A riot?”
“I have to go someplace quiet—where nobody recognizes me.”
“Why? Who are you?”
“Why,” she replied, sounding surprised, “I’m Dixie Davis.”
“Who?”
She leaned closer for emphasis. “Dixie Davis. Sugar pie, if you haven’t heard of me, you must be the only man in New York who hasn’t drooled over my pictures in the tabloids!”
Flynn cut the Harley across a stream of oncoming traffic and pulled into the relative quiet of a tree-lined East Side street. He nosed the bike between a parked moving van and a city Dumpster before cutting the engine. Then he tore off his helmet and craned around to get a real look at his passenger.
She smiled, leaned back and lifted both arms like a chanteuse just arriving in the center-stage spotlight of a burlesque show. “Well?” she asked, blue eyes atwinkle. “See anything you recognize?”
Her low-cut gown revealed the perfect symmetry of her bosom, and no man alive could have mistaken that famous cleavage. Flynn peered closer at the equally curvy shape of her smile and the saucy light in her eyes, and he knew she was the genuine article. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “You’re—”
“So it’s finally sinking in?”
“You’re—”
“Yes,” she replied, lifting her nose to show off her famous profile. “Dixie Davis, who’s taken New York by storm—a Texas Tornado, to be exact. Although I must say I’m disappointed it took you so long to recognize me. My publicist says I should be bigger than Marla Maples by now!”
It all made sense now.
Dixie Davis was the sexiest woman on earth. Even the New York Times said so.
Everything there was to know about the infamous Miss Davis had been screamed in giant headlines and suddenly here she was—perched on Flynn’s motorcycle as happily as a rodeo rider on a pinto pony. In the past few weeks no red-blooded American male could pass a newsstand without seeing Miss Davis’s exquisite figure posed on every front page. A month earlier she’d been an unknown dancer from some Podunk town in Texas. She’d blown into New York to dance in the chorus of a brainless Broadway show—The Flatfoot and the Floozie. But in a matter of days she’d been elevated to star status by the show’s smitten producer—one of New York’s most notorious mobsters, Joey Torrano.
And how could Joey Torrano avoid falling head over heels for Dixie? She wore sex appeal the way most women wore perfume. She was sexier than champagne, chocolate and satin sheets combined. Everything about her screamed female in big neon letters. Even the city’s toughest, grouchiest columnists couldn’t avoid writing about her.
The New York tabloids loved a sexy gold digger almost as much as they loved mob bosses. But this story had both—so Dixie had gotten press all over New York City. The so-so Broadway show looked as though it might become a megahit, thanks to all the publicity generated by a well-endowed showgirl.
“Dixie Davis,” he murmured, wondering how many men on the planet would trade places with him in that moment just to get an up-close-and-personal look at the delectable Texas Tornado.
She was everything the press claimed she was and more. Her high-voltage kiss still burned in Flynn’s memory. She was the real McCoy, all right—a blond bombshell who was part Marilyn Monroe and part Dolly Parton. An all-American sexpot with a heart of gold.
Flynn could only exhale. “Wow.”
“That’s me,” she drawled, giving him her trademark sideways grin—a flirtatious half smile complete with batting eyelashes and an impish wink from beneath the brim of her white hat. At the same time she managed to flaunt her breasts with a practiced flounce. “Want my autograph, sugar?”
“No, thanks,” Flynn responded. His senses were returning rapidly—as if plummeting to earth without a parachute. “But I do want you the hell off my bike!”
“Wh-what?”
“Pronto,” Flynn added, climbing off the Harley. “I don’t want to end up sleeping with the fishes just because you picked me to play Sir Galahad. So move your Texas buns and find a cab, lady.”
“What? Your silly motorbike is more important than a human life?”
“It’s not a motorbike—it’s a Harley-Davidson! And I’m not risking my life for you.”
She sat up straight, thunder on her brow. “Are you afraid?”
“You bet your boots I am! Your gangster boyfriend is Joey Torrano!”
“So?”
“So I assume he’s the one you just left standing at the altar?”
“He wasn’t standing. Not exactly, anyway.” Primly, she said, “I knocked him down.”
“You—”
Without meeting his agitated glare, Dixie Davis made a studied business of crossing one exquisite showgirl’s leg across the other and wrapping the voluminous train of her dress over her arm. She began to swing her one bare foot expressively. “Well, I didn’t have much choice, really. He was blocking the only way to get out of there! And I had to get away before it was too late.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Flynn said testily, “but don’t most brides wait until after the ‘I do’s’ before running out of the church?”
“I decided I didn’t want to marry anybody today.”
Flynn tried to ignore the astonishing length of her creamy bare leg and the pretty arch of her bare foot. “But the groom disagreed?”
“Precisely. And Joey can be—well, very disagreeable when he disagrees.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“So I bolted like a calf out of the chute, sugar.”
But Flynn thought he saw a flicker of dismay behind her brave smile. “Now what?”
“Now I’d like to go someplace quiet, please.”
“I’ll give you cab fare.” Flynn dug into the pocket of his jeans.
“Cab fare! What kind of Sir Galahad are you?”
“The kind who plays it safe.”
She flared like a Roman candle. “New York men! Honest to Pete, I don’t know how you could be genetically related to our Texas fellas! Why, you’re all a bunch of nervous old biddies—afraid to take a risk and never once thinking of a lady’s feelings!”
She was a piece of work, all right—coquettish one minute and capable of lambasting him the next. A fire seemed to burn inside her. Was it possible that she was related to all the other women in the city? Those cool, well-dressed executives who marched the streets in their sneakers at lunchtime, each one looking much the same as the next? But Dixie Davis seemed so much more than anyone else. The gleam in her blue eyes filled Flynn with a powerful tingling sensation.
It had to be fear, he told himself. Here was a woman who could cause a hell of a lot of trouble.
“What’s the matter?” she demanded. “Scared?”
“You would be, too, if you had any brains.”
“You calling me dumb?”
“Let’s be polite and call you impulsive.”
Dixie Davis looked up into the frowning face of her rescuer and felt a wave of consternation. Maybe he was right. Lately her impulses seemed to be getting her into one jam after another. Seemed like she was snakebit.
Dixie’s life hadn’t made much sense to her, let alone to a perfect stranger. The past few weeks had turned into a kaleidoscope of events—confusing and exciting and sometimes downright out of control. First, there had been the audition and landing of a small part in The Flatfoot and the Floozie. Then she’d met Joey Torrano at a rehearsal and he’d seen stars right away.
After that, everything had happened faster than a DoveBar could melt on a Dallas sidewalk—but Dixie hadn’t been calling the shots at all. She’d been swept up by Joey and the show, and—well, it had been so easy to shoot the rapids and enjoy the ride.
Until she found herself standing at the altar with a man she didn’t even like very much.
“Maybe I am impulsive,” she said musingly. “But I couldn’t go through with the wedding. Not for the wrong reasons. I—I just felt like I better run away before things got any worse. You ever feel like that?”
He looked at her for a long moment. Something seemed to click in his head and then register on the narrow planes of his face. Then he said, “Yeah, I’ve felt like that.”
“Now I don’t know what to think,” she said slowly. “I need some time.”
“Well, we can’t stay here,” said Sir Galahad, suddenly acting as if he was waking from a dream. “The neighbors are beginning to suspect.”
Dixie glanced upward and found several residents of the quiet street hanging out their second-floor windows to get a glimpse of her. One woman seemed to be talking on her portable telephone while pointing down at Dixie as if she’d just discovered Princess Di below her windowbox.
“Uh-oh,” Dixie muttered. “In five minutes there’ll be a dozen photographers here snapping my picture.”
“And mine,” said Galahad, slipping his helmet over his dark hair once more. “Let’s split.”
He climbed onto the bike and started it with a jouncing kick that sent Dixie grabbing for his waist. He turned his head. “Ready?”
“Ready!”
Dixie held on tightly this time as her rescuer guided his motorcycle around the streets, winding through traffic with smooth expertise.
You haven’t put yourself in another man’s hands, Dixie told herself sternly. It just feels that way.
She made a silent vow not to let this one take control of her life the way Joey had.
Of course, this one didn’t act like Joey at all. He was younger—in his mid-thirties, no doubt—and had a sweet face beneath the hard expression he tried to maintain. He looked handsome and laconic—a young Gary Cooper. Only with more hair. She assumed he was some kind of mechanic, judging by his deep feelings for a silly machine.