Captive Star

Stars of Mithra

Book Two

Nora Roberts

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It should have been a piece of cake. All he had to do was pick up some pretty little bail jumper who wasn’t even bothering to hide. But cynical bounty hunter Jack Dakota soon discovered there was nothing easy about spitfire M.J. O’Leary—or about this case.

Someone had set them both up. Now they were handcuffed together and on the run from a pair of hired killers. And M.J. wasn’t talking—not even when Jack found a gigantic blue diamond hidden in her purse. Everything told Jack this alluring vixen couldn’t be trusted…everything, that is, except his captive heart.

To independent women

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter 1

He’d have killed for a beer. A big, frosty mug filled with some dark import that would go down smoother than a woman’s first kiss. A beer in some nice, dim, cool bar, with a ball game on the tube and a few other stool-sitters who had an interest in the game gathered around.

While he staked out the woman’s apartment, Jack Dakota passed the time fantasizing about it.

The foamy head, the yeasty smell, the first gulping swallow to beat the heat and slake the thirst. Then the slow savoring, sip by sip, that assured a man all would be right with the world if only politicians and lawyers would debate the inevitable conflicts over a cold one at a local pub while a batter faced a count of three and two.

It was a bit early for drinking, at just past one in the afternoon, but the heat was so huge, so intense and the cooler full of canned sodas just didn’t have quite the same punch as a cold, foamy beer.

His ancient Oldsmobile didn’t run to amenities like air-conditioning. In fact, its amenities were pathetically few, except for the pricey, earsplitting stereo he’d installed in the peeling faux-leather dash. The stereo was worth about double the blue book on the car, but a man had to have music. When he was on the road, he enjoyed turning it up to scream and belting them out with the Beatles or the Stones.

The muscle-flexing V-8 engine under the dented gutter-gray hood was tuned as meticulously as a Swiss watch, and got Jack where he wanted to go, fast. Just now the engine was at rest, and as a concession to the quiet neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., he had the CD player on murmur while he hummed along with Bonnie Raitt.

She was one of his rare bows to music after 1975.

Jack often thought he’d been born out of his own time. He figured he’d have made a pretty good knight. A black one. He liked the straightforward philosophy of might for right. He’d have stood with Arthur, he mused, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. But he’d have handled Camelot’s business his own way. Rules complicated things.

He’d have enjoyed riding the West, too. Hunting down desperadoes without all the nonsense of paperwork. Just track ’em down and bring ’em in.

Dead or alive.

These days, the bad guys hired a lawyer, or the state gave them one, and the courts ended up apologizing to them for the inconvenience.

We’re terribly sorry, sir. Just because you raped, robbed and murdered is no excuse for infringing on your time and civil rights.

It was a sad state of affairs.

And it was one of the reasons Jack Dakota hadn’t gone into police work, though he’d toyed with the idea during his early twenties. Justice meant something to him, always had. But he didn’t see much justice in rules and regulations.

Which was why, at thirty, Jack Dakota was a bounty hunter.

You still hunted down the bad guys, but you worked your own hours and got paid for a job and didn’t answer to a lot of bureaucratic garbage.

There were still rules, but a smart man knew how to work around them. Jack had always been smart.

He had the papers on his current quarry in his pocket. Ralph Finkleman had called him at eight that morning with the tag. Now, Ralph was a worrier and an optimist—a combination, Jack thought, that must be a job requirement for a bail bondsman. Personally, Jack could never understand the concept of lending money to complete strangers—strangers who, since they needed bond, had already proved themselves unreliable.

But there was money in it, and money was enough motivation for most anything, he supposed.

Jack had just come back from tracing a skip to North Carolina, and had made Ralph pitifully grateful when he hauled in the dumb-as-a-post country boy who’d tried to make his fortune robbing convenience stores. Ralph had put up the bond—claimed he’d figured the kid was too stupid to run.

Jack could have told him, straight off, that the kid was too stupid not to run.

But he wasn’t being paid to offer advice.

Jack had planned to relax for a few days, maybe take in a few games at Camden Yards, pick one of his female acquaintances to help him enjoy spending his fee. He’d nearly turned Ralph down, but the guy had been so whiny, so full of pleas, he didn’t have the heart.

So he’d gone into First Stop Bail Bonds and picked up the paperwork on one M. J. O’Leary, who’d apparently decided against having her day in court to explain why she shot her married boyfriend.

Jack figured she was dumb as a post, as well. A good-looking woman—and from her photo and description, she qualified—with a few working brain cells could manipulate a judge and jury over something as minor as plugging an adulterous accountant.

It wasn’t like she’d killed the poor bastard.

It was a cream-puff job, which didn’t explain why Ralph had been so jumpy. He’d stuttered more than usual, and his eyes had danced all over the cramped, dusty office.

But Jack wasn’t interested in analyzing Ralph. He wanted to wrap up the job quickly, get that beer and start enjoying his fee.

The extra money from this quick one meant he could snatch up that first edition of Don Quixote he’d been coveting, so he’d tolerate sweating in the car for a few hours.

He didn’t look like a man who hunted up rare books or enjoyed philosophical debates on the nature of man. He wore his sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a stubby ponytail—which was more a testament to his distrust of barbers than a fashion statement, though the sleek look enhanced his long, narrow face, with its slashing cheekbones and hollows. Over the shallow dent in his chin, his mouth was full and firm, and looked poetic when it wasn’t curled in a sneer.

His eyes were razor-edged gray that could soften to smoke at the sight of the yellowing pages of a first-edition Dante, or darken with pleasure at a glimpse of a pretty woman in a thin summer dress. His brows were arched, with a faintly demonic touch accented by the white scar that ran diagonally through the left and was the result of a tangle with a jackknife wielded by a murder in the second who hadn’t wanted Jack to collect his fee.

Jack had collected the fee, and the skip had sported a broken arm and a nose that would never be the same unless the state sprang for rhinoplasty.

Which wouldn’t have surprised Jack a bit.

There were other scars. His long, rangy body had the marks of a warrior, and there were women who liked to coo over them.

Jack didn’t mind.

He stretched out his yard-long legs, cracked the tightness out of his shoulders and debated popping the top on another soft drink and pretending it was a beer.

When the MG zipped by, top down, radio blasting, he shook his head. Dumb as a post, he thought—though he admired her taste in music. The car jibed with his paperwork, and the quick glimpse of the woman as she’d flown by confirmed it. The short red hair that had been blowing in the breeze was a dead giveaway.

It was ironic, he thought as he watched her unfold herself out of the little car she’d parked in front of him, that a woman who looked like that should be so pathetically stupid.

He wouldn’t have called her easy on the eyes. There didn’t look to be anything easy about her. She was a tall one—and he did have a weakness for long-legged, dangerous women. Her narrow teenage-boy hips were hugged by a pair of faded jeans that were white at the stress points and ripped at the knee. The T-shirt tucked into the jeans was plain white cotton, and her small, unhampered breasts pressed nicely against the soft fabric.

She hauled a bag out of the car, and Jack received a interesting view of a firm female bottom in tight denim. Grinning to himself, he patted a hand on his heart. Small wonder some slob had cheated on his wife for this one.

She had a face as angular as her body. Though it was milkmaid-pale, to go with the flaming cap of hair, there was nothing of the maid about it. Pointed chin and pointed cheekbones combined to create a tough, sexy face tilted off center by a lush, sensual mouth.

She was wearing dark wraparound shades, but he knew her eyes were green from the paperwork. He wondered if they’d be like moss or emeralds.

With an enormous shoulder bag hitched on one shoulder, a grocery bag cocked on her hip, she started toward him and the apartment building. He let himself sigh once over her loose-limbed, ground-eating stride.

He sure did go for leggy women.

He got out of the car and strolled after her. He didn’t figure she’d be much trouble. She might scratch and bite a bit, but she didn’t look like the kind who’d dissolve into pleading tears.

He really hated when that happened.

His game plan was simple. He could have taken her outside, but he hated public displays when there were other choices. So he’d push himself into her apartment, explain the situation, then take her in.

She didn’t look like she had a care in the world, Jack noted as he stepped into the building behind her. Did she really figure the cops wouldn’t check out the homes of her friends and associates? And driving her own car to shop for groceries. It was amazing she hadn’t already been picked up.

But then, the cops had enough to do without scrambling after a woman who’d had a spat with her lover.

He hoped her pal who lived in the apartment wasn’t home. He’d kept the windows under surveillance for the best part of an hour, and he’d seen no movement. He’d heard no sound when he took a lazy walk under the open third-floor windows, and he’d wandered inside to listen at the door.

But you could never be too sure.

Since she turned away from the elevator, toward the stairs, so did he. She never glanced back, making him figure she was either supremely confident or had a lot on her mind.

He closed the distance between them, flashed a smile at her. “Want a hand with that?”

The dark glasses turned, leveled on his face. Her lips didn’t curve in the slightest. “No. I’ve got it.”

“Okay, but I’m going a couple flights up. Visiting my aunt. Haven’t seen her in—damn—two years. Just blew into town this morning. Forgot how hot it got in D.C.”

The glasses turned away again. “It’s not the heat,” she said, her voice dry as dust, “it’s the humidity.”

He chuckled at that, recognizing sarcasm and annoyance. “Yeah, that’s what they say. I’ve been in Wisconsin the past few years. Grew up here, though, but I’d forgotten… Here let me give you a hand.”

It was a smooth move, easing in as she shifted the bag to slip her key into the lock of the apartment door. Equally smooth, she blocked with her shoulder, pushed the door open. “I’ve got it,” she repeated, and started to kick the door shut in his face.

He slid in like a snake, took a firm hold on her arm. “Ms. O’Leary—” It was all he got out before her elbow cracked into his chin. He swore, blinked his vision clear and dodged the kick to the groin. But it had been close enough to have him swiftly changing his approach.

Explanations could damn well wait.

He grabbed her, and she turned in his arms, stomped down hard enough on his foot to have stars springing into his head. And that was before she backfisted him in the face.

Her bag of groceries had gone flying, and she delivered each blow with a quick expulsion of breath. Initially he blocked her blows, which wasn’t an easy matter. She was obvious trained for combat—a little detail Ralph had omitted.

When she went into a fighting crouch, so did he.

“This isn’t going to do you any good.” He hated thinking he was going to have to deck her—maybe on that sexy pointed chin. “I’m going to take you in, and I’d rather do it without messing you up.”

Her answer was a swift flying kick to his mid section he wished he’d been able to admire from a distance. But he was too busy crashing into a table.

Damn, she was good.

He expected her to bolt for the door, and was up on the balls of his feet quickly to block her. But she merely circled him, eyes hidden behind the dark glasses, mouth curled in a grimace.

“Come on, then,” she taunted him. “Nobody tries to mug me on my own turf and walks away.”

“I’m not a mugger.” He kicked away a trio of firm, ripe peaches that had spilled out of her bag. “I’m a skip tracer, and you’re busted.” He held up a hand, signaling peace, and, hoping her gaze had flickered there, moved in fast, hooked a foot under her leg and sent her sprawling on her butt.

He tackled her, and might have appreciated the long, economical lines of her body pressed beneath him, but her knee had better aim than her initial kick. His eyes rolled, his breath hissed, as the pain only a man understands radiated in sick waves. But he hung on.

He had the advantage now, and she knew it. Vertical, she was fast, and her reach was nearly as long as his and the odds were more balanced. But in a wrestling match, he outweighed her and outmuscled her. It infuriated her enough to have her resorting to dirty tactics. She fixed her teeth in his shoulders like a bear trap, felt the adrenaline and satisfaction rush through her as he howled.

They rolled, limbs tangling, hands grappling, and crashed into the coffee table. A wide blue bowl filled with chocolate drops shattered on the floor. A shard pierced his undamaged shoulder and made him swear again. She landed a blow to the side of his head, another to his kidneys.

She was just beginning to think she could take him, after all, when he flipped her over. She landed with a jarring smack, and before she could suck in breath, he had her hands locked behind her back and was sitting on her.

The fact that his breath was coming in pants was very little satisfaction. And for the first time, she was seriously afraid.

“Don’t know why the hell you shot the guy, when you could’ve just beat the hell out of him,” Jack muttered. He reached into his back pocket for his cuffs, swore again when he came up empty. They’d popped out during the match.

He simply rode her out as she bucked, and caught his breath. He hadn’t had a fight of this magnitude with a female since he hunted down Big Betsy. And she’d been two hundred pounds of sheer muscle.

“Look, it’s only going to be harder on you this way. Why don’t you just go quietly, before we bust up any more of your friend’s apartment?”

“You’re crushing me, you jerk,” she said between her teeth. “And this is my apartment. You try to rape me, and I’ll twist your pride clean off and hand it to you. There won’t be enough left of you for the cops to scrape off their shoes.”

“I don’t force women, sugar. Just because some accountant couldn’t keep his hands off you doesn’t mean I can’t. And the cops aren’t interested in me. They want you.”

She blew out a breath, tried to suck another in, but he was crushing her lungs. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

He pulled the papers out of his pocket, shoved them in front of her face. “M. J. O’Leary, assault with a deadly, malicious wounding, and blah-blah. Ralph’s real disappointed in you, sugar. He’s a trusting man and didn’t expect a nice woman like you to try to skip out on the ten-K bond.”

“This is a crock.” She could see her name and some downtown address on what appeared to be some kind of arrest warrant. “You’ve got the wrong person. I didn’t post bail for anything. I haven’t been arrested, and I live here. Idiot cops,” she muttered, and tried to buck him off again. “Call in to your sergeant, or whatever. Straighten this out. And when you do, I’m suing.”

“Nice try. And I suppose you’ve never heard of George MacDonald.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Then it was really rude of you to shoot him.” He eased up just enough to flip her face up, then caught both of her hands at the wrist. She’d lost her glasses, he noted, and her eyes were neither moss nor emerald, he decided—they were dark shady-river green. And, just now, full of fury. “Look, you want to have a hot affair with your accountant, sister, it’s no skin off my nose. You want to shoot him, I don’t particularly care. But you skip bond, and it ticks me off.”

She could breathe slightly easier now, but his hands were like steel bands at her wrists. “My accountant’s name is Holly Bergman, and we haven’t had a hot affair. I haven’t shot anyone, and I haven’t skipped bond because I haven’t posted bond. I want to see your ID, ace.”

He thought it took a lot of nerve to make demands in her current position. “My name’s Dakota, Jack Dakota. I’m a skip tracer.”

Her eyes narrowed as they skimmed over his face. She thought he looked like something out of the gritty side of a western. A cold-eyed gunslinger, a tough-talking gambler. Or…

“A bounty hunter. Well, there’s no bounty here, jerk.” It wasn’t rape, and it wasn’t a mugging. The fear that had iced her heart thawed into fresh temper. “You son of a bitch. You break in here, tear up my things, ruin twenty bucks’ worth of produce, and all because you can’t follow the right trail? Your butt’s in a sling, I promise you. When I’m done, you won’t be able to trace your own name with a stencil. You won’t—” She broke off when he stuck a photo in her face.

It was her face, and the photograph might have been taken yesterday.

“Got a twin, O’Leary? One who drives a ’68 MG, license plate SLAINTE, and is currently shacked up with some guy named Bailey James.”

“Bailey’s a woman,” she murmured, staring at her own face while new worries raced in her head. Was this about Bailey, about what Bailey had sent her? What kind of trouble could her friend be in? “And this isn’t her apartment, it’s mine. I don’t have a twin.” She looked up into his eyes again. “What’s going on? Is Bailey all right? Where’s Bailey?”

Under his clamped hands, her pulse had spiked. She was struggling again, with a fresh and vicious energy he knew was brought on by fear. And he was dead certain it wasn’t fear for herself.

“I don’t know anything about this Bailey except this address is listed under her name on the paperwork.”

But he was beginning to smell something, and he didn’t like it. He was no longer thinking M. J. O’Leary was dumb as a post. A woman with any brains wouldn’t have left herself with so many avenues to be tracked if she was on the run.

Ralph, Jack mused, frowning down into M.J.’s face. Why were you so jumpy this morning?

“If you’re being straight with me, we can confirm it quick enough. Maybe it was a clerical mix-up.” But he didn’t think so. No indeed. And there was an itching at the base of his spine. “Listen,” he began, just as the door broke open and the giant roared in.

“You were supposed to bring her out,” the giant said, and waved an impressive .357 Magnum. “You’re talking too much. He’s waiting.”

Jack didn’t have much time to decide how to play it. The big man was a stranger to him, but he recognized the type. It looked like all bulk and no brains, with the huge bullet head, small eyes and massive shoulders. The gun was big as a cannon and looked like a toy in the ham-size hands.

“Sorry.” He gave M.J.’s wrist a quick squeeze, hoping she’d understand it as a sign of reassurance and remain still and quiet. “I was having a little trouble here.”

“Just a woman. You were supposed to just bring the woman out.”

“Yeah, I was working on it.” Jack tried a friendly smile. “Ralph send you to back me up?”

“Come on, up. Up now. We’re going.”

“Sure. No problem. You won’t need the gun now. I’ve got her under control.” But the gun continued to point, its barrel as wide as Montana, at his head.

“Just her.” And the giant smiled, floppy lips peeling back over huge teeth. “We don’t need you now.”

“Fine. I guess you want the paperwork.” For lack of anything better, Jack snagged a can of tomato sauce on his way up and winged it. It made a satisfactory crunching sound on the big man’s nose. Ducking, Jack rushed forward like a battering ram. It felt a great deal like beating his head against a brick wall, but the force took them both tumbling backward and over a ladder-back chair.

The gun went off, putting a fist-size hole in the ceiling before it flew across the room.

She thought about running. She could have been out of the door and away before either of them untangled. But she thought about Bailey, about what she had weighing down her shoulder bag. About the mess she’d somehow stepped in. And was too mad to run.

She went for the gun and ended up falling backward as Jack flew into her. She cushioned his fall, and he was up fast, springing into the air and landing a double-footed kick in the big man’s midsection.

Nice form, M.J. thought, and scrambled to her own feet. She snagged her shoulder bag, spun it over her head and cracked it hard over the sleek, bullet-shaped head.

He went down hard on the sofa, snapping the springs.

“You’re wrecking my place!” she shouted, and smacked Jack in the side, simply because she could reach him.

“Sue me.”

He dodged a fist the size of a steamship and went in low. Pain sang through every bone as his opponent slammed him into a wall. Pictures fell, glass shattering on the floor. Through his blurred vision he saw the woman charge, a redheaded fireball that flew up and latched like a plague of wasps on the man’s enormous back. She used her fists, pounding the sides of his face as he spun wildly and struggled to grab her.

“Hold him still!” Jack shouted. “Damn it, just hold him for a minute!”

Spotting an opening, he grabbed what was left of a table leg and rushed in. He checked his first swing as the duo spun like a mad two-headed top. If he followed through, he might have cracked the back of M.J.’s head open like a melon.

“I said hold him still!”

“You want me to paint a bull’s-eye on his face while I’m at it?” With a guttural snarl, she hooked her arms around the man’s throat, clamped her thighs like a vise around his wide steel beam of a torso and screamed, “Hit him, for God’s sake. Stop dancing around and hit him.”

Jack cocked back like a batter with two strikes already on his record and swung full out. The table leg splintered like a toothpick, blood gushed like water in a fountain. M.J. had just enough time to jump clear as the man toppled like a redwood.

She stayed on her hands and knees a minute, gasping for air. “What’s going on? What the hell’s going on?”

“No time to worry about it.” Self-preservation on his mind, Jack grabbed her hand, hauled her to her feet. “This type doesn’t usually travel alone. Let’s go.”

“Go?” She snagged the strap of her purse as he pulled her toward the door. “Where?”

“Away. He’s going to be mean when he wakes up, and if he’s got a friend, we’re not going to be so lucky next time.”

“Lucky, my butt.” But she was running with him, driven by a pure instinct that matched Jack’s. “You son of a bitch. You come busting into my place, push me around, wreck my home, nearly get me shot.”

“I saved your butt.”

“I saved yours!” She shouted it at him, cursing viciously as they thudded down the stairs. “And when I get a minute to catch my breath, I’m going to take you apart, piece by piece.”

They rounded the landing and nearly ran over one of her neighbors. The woman, with helmet hair and bunny slippers, cowered, back against the wall, hands pressed to her deeply rouged cheeks.

“M.J., what in the world—? Were those gunshots?”

“Mrs. Weathers—”

“No time.” Jack all but jerked her off her feet as he headed down the next flight.

“Don’t you shout at me, you jerk. I’m making you pay for every grape that got smashed, every lamp, every—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture. Where’s the back door?” When M.J. pointed down the corridor, he gave a nod and they both slid outside, then around the corner of the building. Screened by some bushes in the front, Jack darted a gaze up and down the street. There was a windowless van less than half a block down, and a small, chicken-faced man in a bad suit dancing beside it. “Stay low,” Jack ordered, thankful he’d parked right out front as they ran down the walkway and he all but threw M.J. into the front seat of his car.

“My God, what the hell is this?” She shoved at the can she’d sat on, kicked at the wrappers littering the floor, then joined them when Jack put a hand behind her head and shoved.

“Low!” he repeated in a snarl, and gunned the engine. The faint ping told him the man with the chicken face was using the silenced automatic he’d pulled out.

Jack’s car screamed away from the curb, and he two-wheeled it around the corner and shot down the street like a rocket. Tossed like eggs in a broken carton, M.J. rapped her head on the dash, cursed, and struggled to balance herself as Jack maneuvered the huge boat of a car down side streets.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Saving your butt again, sugar.” His eyes flicked to the rearview as he took a hard, tire-squealing right turn. A couple of kids riding bikes on the sidewalk lifted their fists and cheered the maneuver. In instant reaction, Jack flashed a grin.

“Slow this junk heap down.” M.J. had to crawl back onto the seat and clutch the chicken stick for balance. “And let me out before you run over some kid walking his dog.”

“I’m not going to run over anybody, and you’re staying put.” He spared her a quick glance. “In case you didn’t notice, the guy with the van was shooting at us. And as soon as I make sure we’ve lost him and find someplace quiet to hole up, you’re going to tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

He shot her a look. “That’s bull.”

Because he was sure it was, he took a chance. He swung to the curb again, reached under his seat and came up with spare cuffs. Before she could do more than blink, he had her locked by the wrist to the door handle. No way was she skipping out on him until he knew why he’d just been tossed around by a three-hundred-pound gorilla.

To block out her shouting, and her increasingly imaginative threats and curses, Jack turned up his stereo and drowned her out.

Chapter 2

At the very first opportunity, she was going to kill him. Brutally, M.J. decided. Mercilessly. Two hours before this, she’d been happy, free, wandering around the grocery store like any normal person on a Saturday, squeezing tomatoes. True, she’d been weighed down with curiosity about what she carried in the bottom of her purse, but she’d been sure Bailey had a good reason—and a logical explanation—for sending it to her.

Bailey James always had good reasons and logical explanations for everything. That was only one of the aspects about her that M.J. loved.

But now she was worried—worried that the package Bailey had shipped to her by courier the day before was not only at the bottom of her purse, but also at the bottom of her current situation.

She preferred blaming Jack Dakota.

He’d pushed his way into her apartment and attacked her. Okay, so maybe she’d attacked first, but it was a natural reaction when some jerk tried to muscle you. At least it was M.J.’s natural reaction. She was an ace student in the school of punch first, ask questions later.

It was humiliating that he’d been able to take her down. She had a lot of notches on her fifth-degree black belt, and she didn’t like to lose a match.

But she’d pay him back for that later.

All she knew for certain was that he seemed to be at the root of it all. Because of him, her apartment was wrecked, her things tossed every which way. Now they’d gone, leaving the front door open, the lock broken. She didn’t form close attachments to things, but that wasn’t the point. They were her things, and thanks to him, she was going to have to waste time shopping for replacements.

Which was almost as bad as having some gunwielding punk the size of Texas busting down her door, having to run for her life from her own home, and being shot at.

But all of that, all of it, paled next to one infuriating fact—she was handcuffed to the door handle of an Oldsmobile.

Jack Dakota had to die for that.

Who the hell was he? she asked herself. Bounty hunter, excellent hand-to-hand fighter, slob—she added as she pushed candy wrappers and paper cups around with her foot—and nerveless driver. Under different circumstances, she’d have been impressed by the way he handled the tank of a car, swinging it around curves, screaming around corners, whipping it through yellow lights and zipping onto the Washington Beltway like the leader in a Grand Prix event.

If he’d walked into her bar, she’d have looked twice, she admitted grudgingly. Running a pub in a major city meant more than being able to mix drinks and work the books. It meant being able to size people up quickly, tell the troublemakers from the lonely hearts. And know how to deal with both.

She’d have tagged him as a tough customer. It was in his face. A damn good face, all in all, hard and handsome. Yeah, she’d have looked twice, M.J. thought, teeth gritted, as she looked out the window of the speeding car. Pretty boys didn’t interest her much. She preferred a man who looked as though he’d lived, crossed a few lines and would cross a few more.

Jack Dakota fit that bill. She’d gotten a good close look into those eyes—granite gray—and knew that he wasn’t one to let a few rules get in his way.

Just what would a man like him do if he knew she was carrying a king’s ransom in her battered leather purse?

Damn it, Bailey. Damn it. M.J. fisted her free hand and tapped it restlessly on her knee. Why did you send me the diamond, and where are the other two?

She cursed herself, as well, for not going directly to Bailey’s door after she came home from closing M.J.’s the night before. But she’d been tired, and she’d figured Bailey was sound asleep. And as her friend was the steadiest, most practical person M.J. knew, she’d simply decided to wait for what she was certain would be a very practical, sensible reason.

Stupid, she told herself now. Why had she assumed Bailey had sent the stone to her simply because she knew M.J. would be home in the middle of the day and around to receive the package? Why had she assumed the rock was a fake, a copy, even though the note that accompanied it asked M.J. to keep it with her at all times?

Because Bailey just wasn’t the kind of woman to ship off a blue diamond worth more than a million with no warnings or explanations. She was a gemologist, dedicated, brilliant, and patient as Job. How else could she continue to work for the creeps who masqueraded as her family?

M.J.’s mouth tightened as she thought of Bailey’s stepbrothers. The Salvini twins had always treated Bailey as though she were an inconvenience, something they were stuck with because their father had left her a percentage of the business in his will. And, blindly loyal to family, Bailey had always found excuses for them.

Now M.J. wondered if they were part of the reason. Had they tried to pull something? She wouldn’t put it past them, no indeed. But it was hard to believe Timothy and Thomas Salvini would be stupid enough to try something fancy with the Three Stars of Mithra.

That was what Bailey had called them, and she’d had a dreamy look in her eyes. Three priceless blue diamonds, in a golden triangle that had once been held in the open hands of a statue of the god Mithra, and now property of the Smithsonian. Salvini, with Bailey’s reputation behind it, was to assess, verify and appraise the stones.

What if the creeps had gotten it into their heads to keep them?

No, it was too wild, M.J. decided. Better to believe this whole mess was some sort of mix-up, a mistaken identity tangle.

Much better to concentrate on how she would repay Jack Dakota for ruining her afternoon off.

“You are a dead man.” She said it calmly, relishing the words.

“Yeah, well, everybody dies sooner or later.” He was heading south on 95, and he was grateful she’d stopped swearing at him long enough to let him think.

“It’s going to be sooner in your case, Jack. Lots sooner.” The traffic was thick, thanks to the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but it was fast.

How humiliating would it be, she wondered, to stick her head out the window and scream for help? Mortifying, she supposed, but she might have tried it if she’d believed it would work. Better if they could just run into one of the inexplicable traffic snags that stopped cars dead for miles.

Where the hell were the road crews and the rubberneckers who loved them when she needed them?

Seeing nothing but clear sailing for miles, she told herself to deal with Jack “The Idiot” Dakota herself. “If you want to live to see another sunrise, pull this excuse for a car over, uncuff me and let me go.”

“Go where?” He flicked his eyes from the road long enough to glance at her. “Back to your apartment?”

“That’s my problem, not yours.”

“Not anymore, sister. I take it personal, real personal, when someone shoots at me. Since you seem to be the reason why, I’ll be keeping you for a while.”

If they hadn’t been doing seventy, she’d have punched him. Instead, she rattled her chain. “Take these damn things off me.”

“Nope.”

A muscle twitched in her jaw. “You’ve stepped in it now, Dakota. We’re in Virginia. Kidnapping, crossing state lines. That’s federal.”

“You came with me,” he pointed out. “Now you’re staying with me until I get this figured out.” The doors rattled ominously as he whipped around an eighteen-wheeler. “And you should be grateful.”

“Oh, I should be grateful. You broke into my apartment, knocked me around, busted up my things and have me cuffed to a door handle.”

“That’s right. If I hadn’t, you’d probably be lying in that apartment right now, with a bullet in your head.”

“They came after you, ace, not me.”

“I don’t think so. My debts are paid, I’m not fooling around with anyone’s wife, and I haven’t pissed anyone off lately. Except for you. Nobody’s got a reason to send muscle after me. You, on the other hand…” He skimmed his gaze over her face again. “Somebody wants you, sugar.”

“Thousands do,” she said, stretched out her long legs as she shifted toward him.

“I’ll bet.” He didn’t give in to the impulse to look at those legs—he just thought about them. “But other than the brainless idiots you’d kick in the heart, you’ve got someone real interested. Interested enough to set me up, and take me out with you. Ralph, you bastard.”

He shoved aside a copy of The Grapes of Wrath and a torn T-shirt and snagged his car phone. Steering one-handed, he punched in numbers then hooked the receiver under his chin.

“Ralph, you bastard,” he repeated when the phone was answered.

“D-D-Dakota? That you? You track d-d-down that skip?”

“When I figure my way clear of this, I’m coming for you.”

“What—what’re you talking about? You find her? Look, it’s a straight trace, Jack. I g-g-gave you a plum. Just a c-c-couple’s hours’ work for full f-f-fee.”

“You’re stuttering more than usual, Ralph. That won’t be a problem after I knock your teeth down your throat. Who wants the woman?”

“Look, I—I—I got problems here. I gotta close early. It’s the holiday weekend. I got p-p-personal problems.”

“There’s no place you can hide. Why the phony paperwork? Why’d you set me up?”

“I got p-p-problems. Big p-p-problems.”

“I’m your big problem right now.” He tapped the brakes, swung around a convertible and hit the fast lane. “If whoever’s pushing your buttons is trying to trace this, I’m in my car, just tooling around.” He thought for a moment, then added, “And I’ve got the woman.”

“Jack, listen to me. L-l-listen. Tell me where you are, dump her and d-d-drive away. J-j-just drive. Stay out of it. I wouldn’ta tagged you for the job, ’cept I knew you could handle yourself. Now I’m telling you, stash her somewhere, give me the l-l-location and drive away. Far away. You don’t want this.”

“Who wants her, Ralph?”

“You don’t n-n-need to know. You d-d-don’t want to know. Just d-d-do it. I’ll throw in five large. A b-b-bonus.”

“Five large?” Jack’s brows lifted. When Ralph parted with an extra nickel, it was big. “Make it ten and tell me who wants her, and we may deal.”

It pleased him that M.J. protested that with a flurry of curses and threats. It added substance to the bluff.

“T-t-ten!” Ralph squeaked it, stuttered for a full ten seconds. “Okay, okay, ten grand, but no names, and b-b-believe me, Jack, I’m saving your life here. Just t-t-tell me where you’re going to stash her.”

Smiling grimly, Jack made a pithy and anatomically impossible suggestion, then disconnected.

“Well, sugar, your hide’s now worth ten thousand to me. We’re going to find a nice, quiet spot so you can tell me why I shouldn’t collect.”

He zipped off an exit, did a quick turnaround and headed back north.

Her mouth was dry. She wanted to believe it was from shouting, but there was fear clawing at her throat. “Where are you going?”

“Just covering my tracks. They wouldn’t get much of a trace on a cellular, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”

“You’re taking me back?”

He didn’t look at her, and didn’t grin. Though the waver of nerves in her voice pleased him. If she was scared enough, she’d talk. “Ten thousand’s a hefty incentive, sugar. Let’s see if you can convince me you’re worth more alive.”

He knew just what he was looking for. He trolled the secondary roads, skimming through the holiday traffic. He’d forgotten it was the Fourth of July weekend. Which was just as well, he thought, as it didn’t look like there were going to be a lot of opportunities to kick back with that cold beer and watch any fireworks.

Unless they came from the woman beside him.

She was a firecracker, all right. She had to be afraid by now, but she was holding her own. He was grateful for that. There was nothing more irritating than a whiner. But scared or not, he was certain she’d try to take a chunk out of him at the first opportunity.

He didn’t intend to give her one.

With any luck, once they were settled, he’d have the full story out of her within a couple hours.

Then maybe he’d help her out of her jam. For a fee, that is. It could be a small one because at this point he was ticked and figured he had a vested interest in dealing with whoever had set him on her.

Whoever it was, they’d gone to a great deal of trouble. But they hadn’t picked their goons very well. He could figure the scam well enough. Once he captured his quarry and had her secured and in his car, the men in the van would have run them off the road. He’d have figured it to be the action of a competing bounty hunter, and though he wouldn’t have given up his fee without a fight, he’d have been outnumbered and outgunned.

Skip tracers didn’t go crying to the cops when a competitor snatched their bounty.

The goons might have let him off with a few bruises, maybe a minor concussion. But the way that mountain of a man had been waving his cannon in M.J.’s apartment, Jack thought it was far more likely that he’d have sported a brand-new hole in some vital part of his body.

Because the mountain had been an moron.

So at this point he was on the run with an angry woman, a little over three hundred in cash and a quarter tank of gas.

He intended to know why.

He spotted what he was after north of Leesburg, Virginia. The tourists and holiday travelers, unless they were very down on their luck, would give a dilapidated dump like the Kountry Klub Motel a wide berth. But the low-slung building with the paint peeling on the green doors and the pitted parking lot met Jack’s requirements perfectly.

He pulled to the farthest end of the lot, away from the huddle of rusted cars near the check-in, and cut the engine.

“Is this where you bring all your dates, Dakota?”

He smiled at her, a quick flash of teeth that was unexpectedly charming. “Only first class for you, sugar.”

He knew just what she was thinking. The minute he cut her loose, she’d be all over him like spandex. And if she could get out of the car, she’d be sprinting toward the check-in as fast as those mile-long legs would carry her.

“I don’t expect you to believe me.” He said it casually as he leaned over to unlock the cuff from the door handle. “But I’m not going to enjoy this.”

She was braced. He could feel her body tense to spring. He had to be quick, and he had to be rough. She’d no more than hissed out a breath before he had her hands secured and locked behind her. She sucked in air just as he clamped a hand over her mouth.

She bucked and rolled, tried to bring up her legs to kick, but he pinned her on the seat, flipped her facedown. He was out of breath by the time he’d tied the bandanna over her mouth.

“I lied.” Panting, he rubbed the fresh bruise where her elbow had connected with his ribs. “Maybe I enjoyed that a little.”

He used the torn T-shirt to tie her legs, tried not to appreciate overmuch the length and shape of them. But, hell, he was only human. Once he had her trussed up like a turkey, he looped the slack of the handcuffs around the gearshift, then wound up the windows.

“Hot as hell, isn’t it?” he said conversationally. “Well, I won’t be long.” He locked the car and walked away whistling.

It took her a moment to regain her balance. She was scared, she realized. Really, bone-deep scared, and she couldn’t remember if she’d ever felt this kind of mind-numbing panic before. She was trembling, and had to stop. It wouldn’t help her out of this fix.

Once, when she’d just opened her pub, she’d been closing down late at night. She’d been alone when the man came in and demanded money. She’d been scared then, too, terrified by the wild look in his eyes that shouted drugs. So she’d handed over the till, just as the cops recommended.

Then she’d handed him the fat end of the Louisville Slugger she had behind the bar.

She’d been scared, but she’d dealt with it.

She would deal with this, too.

The gag tasted of man and infuriated her. She couldn’t push or wiggle or slide it out, so she gave up on it and concentrated on freeing the loop of the cuffs. If she could free her hands from the gearshift, she could fold herself up, bend her legs through her arms and get some mobility.

She was agile, she told herself. She was strong and she was smart. Oh, God, she was scared. She moaned and whimpered in frustration. The handcuffs might as well have been cemented to the gearshift.

If she could only see, twist herself around so that she could see what she was doing. She struggled, all but dislocating her shoulder, until she managed to flip around. Sweat seemed to boil over her, dripped into her eyes as she yanked at the steel.

She stopped herself, closed her eyes and got her breath back. She used her shaking fingers to probe, to trace along the steel, slide over the smooth length of the gearshift. Keeping them closed, she visualized what she was doing, carefully, slowly, shifting her hands until she felt steel begin to slide. Her shoulders screamed as she forced them into an unnatural position, but she bit down on the gag and twisted.

She felt something give, hoped it wasn’t a joint, then collapsed in an exhausted, sweaty heap as the cuffs slipped off the stick.

“Damn, you’re good,” Jack commented as he wrenched open the door. He dragged her out and tossed her over his shoulder. “Another five minutes, you might have pulled it off.” He carried her into a room at the end of the concrete block. He’d already unlocked the door, and he’d paused for a minute to observe, and admire, her struggles before he came back to the car.

Now he dumped her on the bed. Because her adrenaline was back and she was fighting him, he simply lay flat on her back, letting her bounce until she was worn out.

And he enjoyed that, too. He wasn’t proud of it, he thought, but he enjoyed it. The woman had incredible energy and staying power. If they’d met under different circumstances, he imagined they could have torn up those cheap motel sheets like maniacs and parted as friends.

As it was, he was going to have a hard time not imagining her naked.

Maybe he lay on her, smelled her, just a little longer than necessary. He wasn’t a saint, was he? he asked himself grimly as he unlocked one of her hands and secured the cuff to the iron headboard.

He rose, ran a hand through his hair. “You’re making this tougher than necessary for both of us,” he told her, as she murdered him with a scalding look out of hot green eyes. He was out of breath and knew he couldn’t blame it entirely on the last, minor skirmish. That tight little bottom of hers pressing against his crotch had left him uncomfortably aroused.

And he didn’t want to be.

Turning from her, he switched on the TV, let the volume boom out. M.J. had already ripped the gag away with her free hand and was hissing like a snake. “You can scream all you want now,” he told her as he took out a small knife and sliced through the phone cord. “The three rooms down from here are vacant, so nobody’s going to hear you.” Then he grinned. “Besides, I put it around at check-in that we’re on our honeymoon, so even if they hear, they’re not going to bother us. Be back in a minute.”

He went out, shutting the door behind him. M.J. closed her eyes again. Dear God, what was going on with her? For a moment, for just one insane moment, when he pressed her into the mattress with his body, she’d felt weak and hot. With lust.

It was sick, sick, sick.

But just for that one insane moment, she’d imagined being stripped and taken, being ravaged, having his mouth on her. His hands on her.

More, she’d wanted it.

She shuddered now, praying it was just some sort of weird reaction to shock.

She wasn’t a woman who shied away from good, healthy, hot sex. But she didn’t give herself to strangers, to men who knocked her down, tied her up and tossed her into bed in some cheap motel.

And he’d been aroused. She hadn’t been so stupid, or so dazed with shock, that she was unaware of his reaction. Hell, the man had been wrapped around her, hadn’t he? But he’d backed off.

She struggled to even her breathing. He wasn’t going to rape her. He didn’t want sex. He wanted— God only knew.

Don’t feel, she ordered herself. Just think. Just clear your mind and think.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, took a survey of the room.

It was, in a word, hideous.

Obviously, some misguided soul had thought that using an eye-searing combo of orange and blue would turn the cheaply furnished, cramped little room into the exotic.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

The drapes were as thin as paper, and looked to be of about the same consistency. But he’d pulled them closed over the narrow front window, so the room was deep in shadow.

The television blared out a poorly dubbed Hercules movie on its rickety gray pedestal. The single dresser was ringed with interlinking water-marks. There was a metal box beside the bed. For a couple of bucks in quarters, she could treat herself to dancing fingers. Whoopee.

The yellow glass ashtray on the night table was chipped, and didn’t look heavy enough to make an effective weapon. Even over the din of Hercules, she could hear the roaring sputter of an air-conditioning unit that was doing absolutely nothing to cool the room.

The print near a narrow door she assumed was to the bathroom was a garish reproduction of a country landscape in autumn, complete with screaming red barn and stupid-faced cows.

Reaching over, she tested the bedside lamp. It was bright blue glass, with a dingy and yellowing shade, but it had some heft. It might come in handy.

She heard the rattle of the key and set it down again, stared at the door.

He came in with a small red-and-white cooler and dropped it on the dresser. Her heart thumped when she saw her purse slung over his shoulder, but he tossed it on the floor by the bed so casually that she relaxed again.

The diamond was still safe, she thought. And so was the can of Mace, the can opener and the roll of nickels she habitually carried as weapons.

“Nothing I like better than a really bad movie,” he commented, and paused to watch Hercules battle several fierce-looking warriors sporting pelts and bad teeth. “I always wonder where they come up with the dialogue. You know, was it really that bad when it was scripted in Lithuanian or whatever, or does it just lose it in the translation?”

With a shrug, he walked over, lifted the top on the cooler and took out two soft drinks.

“I figure you’re thirsty.” He walked to her, offered a can. “And you’re not the type to cut off your nose.” His assessment was proved correct when she grabbed the can and drank deeply. “This place doesn’t run to room service,” he continued. “But there’s a diner down the road, so we won’t go hungry. You want something now?”

She eyed him over the top of the can. “No.”

“Fine.” He sat on the side of the bed, settled himself and smiled at her. “Let’s talk.”

“Kiss my butt.”

He blew out a breath. “It’s an attractive offer, sugar, but I’ve been trying not to think along those lines.” He gave her thigh a friendly pat. “Now, the way I see it, we’re both in a jam here, and you’ve got the key. Once you tell me who’s after you and why, I’ll deal with it.”

The worst of her thirst was abated, so she sipped slowly. Her voice dripped sarcasm. “You’ll deal with it?”

“Yeah. Consider me your champion-at-arms. Like good old Herc there.” He stabbed a thumb at the set behind him. “You tell me about it, then I’ll go take care of the bad guys. Then I’ll bill you. And if the offer about kissing your butt’s still open, I’ll take you up on that, too.”

“Let’s see.” She leaned her head back, kept her eyes level on his. “What was it you told your pal Ralph to do? Oh, yeah.” She peeled her lips back in a snarl and repeated it.

He only shook his head. “Is that any way to talk to the guy who kept you from getting a bullet in the brain?”

“I kept you from getting a bullet in the brain, pal, though I have serious doubts he’d have been able to hit it, as it’s clearly so small. And you pay me back by manhandling me, tying me up, gagging me, and dumping me in some cheap rent-by-the-hour motel.”

“I’m assured this is a family establishment,” he said dryly. God, she was a pistol, he thought. Spitting at him despite his advantage, daring him to take her on, though she didn’t have a hope of winning the game. And sexy as bloody hell in tight jeans and a wrinkled shirt.

“Think about this,” he said. “That brainless giant said something about me taking too long, talking too much, which leads me to believe they were listening from the van. They must have had surveillance equipment, and he got antsy. Otherwise, if you’d gone along with me like a good girl, they’d have pulled us over somewhere along the line and taken you. They didn’t want direct involvement, or witnesses.”

“You’d be a witness,” she corrected.

“Nothing to sweat over. I’d have been ticked off about having another bounty hunter snatch my job, but people in my line of work don’t go running to the cops. I’d have lost my fee, considered my day wasted, maybe bitched to Ralph. That’s the way they’d figure it, anyway. And Ralph would have probably passed me some fluff job to keep me happy.”

His eyes changed, went hard again. Knife-edged gray ice. “Somebody’s got their foot on his throat. I want to know who.”

“I couldn’t say. I don’t know your friend Ralph—”

“Former friend.”

“I don’t know the gorilla who broke my door, and I don’t know you.” She was pleased her voice was calm, without a single hitch or quiver. “Now, if you’ll let me go, I’ll report all this to the police.”

His lips twitched. “That’s the first time you’ve mentioned the cops, sugar. And you’re bluffing. You don’t want them in on this. That’s another question.”

He was right about that. She didn’t want the police, not until she’d talked to Bailey and knew what was going on. But she shrugged, glanced toward the phone he’d put out of commission. “You could call my bluff if you hadn’t wrecked the phone.”

“You wouldn’t call the cops, but whoever you called might have their phone tapped. I didn’t go through all the trouble to find us these plush out of-the-way surroundings to get traced.”

He leaned over, took her chin in his hand. “Who would you call, M.J.?”

She kept her eyes steady, fighting to ignore the heat of his fingers, the texture of his skin against hers. “My lover.” She spit the words out. “He’d take you apart limb by limb. He’d rip out your heart, then show it to you while it was still beating.”

He smiled, eased a little closer. He just couldn’t resist. “What’s his name?”

Her mind was blank, totally, completely, foolishly blank. She stared into those slate-gray eyes a moment, then shook his hand away. “Hank. He’ll break you in half and toss you to the dogs when he finds out you’ve messed with me.”

He chuckled, infuriated her. “You may have a lover, sugar. You may have a dozen. But you don’t have one named Hank. Took you too long. Okay, you don’t want to spill it and rely on me to work us out of this, we’ll go another route.”

He rose, leaned over. He heard her quickly indrawn breath when he reached down for her purse. Without a word, he dumped the contents on the bed. He’d already removed the weapons. “You ever use that can opener for more than popping a beer?” he asked her.

“How dare you! How dare you go through my things!”

“Oh, I think this is small potatoes after what we’ve been through together.” He picked up the velvet pouch, slid the stone into his hand, where it flashed like fire, despite its lowly surroundings.

He admired it, as he had been unable to in the car, when he searched her bag. It was deeply, brilliantly blue, big as a baby’s fist and cut to shoot blue flame. He felt a tug as it lay nestled in his hand, an odd need to protect it. Almost as inexplicable, he thought, as his odd need to protect this prickly, ungrateful woman.

“So.” He sat, tossing the stone up, catching it. “Tell me about this, M.J. Just where did you get your hands on a blue diamond big enough to choke a cat?”

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