bar was a hole-in-the-wall dive. The gas station looked like it was just waiting to get knocked off, and the other corner was an empty field.
He could play this game all night long, trying to find the perfect place to let her go, when what he needed was to just do it and move on.
“Where are we going?” she asked him from the other side of the car.
Good question, he thought, turning and looking at her, giving in to an impulse he’d been trying to resist. He let his gaze drift over the shadowed delicacy of her face, the curves highlighted by the golden sheath of her dress, and down the long silky length of her legs.
His gaze narrowed.
“What happened to your knee?” It was skinned, and it hadn’t been when he’d first seen her in LoDo.
“Well,” she said slowly, “a couple of lifetimes ago, when I was in the Steele Street garage just minding my own business, somebody threw a grenade at me, and I fell to the floor and scraped the hell out of it.”
As the somebody in question, he didn’t have much to offer. He’d have thrown the flash bang even knowing she was going to get her knee scraped, but he’d rather she hadn’t gotten injured. There weren’t many perfect things in the world, but she was one, the way she’d looked walking down Wazee, owning the street.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt … much.”
Hell. He let out a long breath.
“Okay, it hurts a lot, but it’s just a scrape, and I’m getting a bruise from where I hit my head.”
“At Tatsunaka’s.” He remembered her mentioning it—and him dismissing the complaint. She’d been scared and shook up, but for someone who looked like a catwalk queen, she was pretty tough. He’d figured that out the instant he’d seen her hot-wiring the car.
“Yes. See?” She turned in her seat and pulled her hair back from the right side of her face, and, yes, he could see a little swelling on her forehead near her hairline, and maybe a little bruising, too.
He was so tempted to reach out and touch her face, smooth her hair back from the bruise and tell her she was going to be fine. But of course she was going to be fine, and she didn’t need him telling her anything, and it was damn near suicidal for him to touch her.
Hell. He usually had more sense. The blue pills were always a crapshoot and always messed with his head a little.
She messed with his head, too, all by herself, just sitting there, with or without a scraped knee and a bruised forehead. Within the confines of the car, her scent surrounded him, seeped into his senses and made him long for something he didn’t know if he’d ever had—a woman like her, a refuge, someone he could count on to watch his back. Someone to love.
“So where are we going?”
“I’m looking for a restaurant,” he said, choosing the truth, always a good plan.
“Oh.” She sounded a little surprised. “What are you … uh, hungry for? Mexican, Chinese, sushi, cheeseburger and fries?”
You, he thought. Somebody so gorgeous it hurt. A smart, tough, unafraid girl with the tactical sense to draw down on him. Up against anyone else, she’d have had a better-than-average chance of coming out on top, way better.
“A nice place, that’s all. Something you would like.”
It didn’t matter to him. He wasn’t planning on eating. He put Corinna back into gear, his gaze automatically checking the rearview mirror while they waited for the light to change.
“Jane,” he said her name again, thinking it over. “Jane what?”
“Linden,” she answered with barely a moment’s hesitation, which told him way more than she probably knew. Nobody in his business gave their name away that easily. She was pure civilian, all right. “I manage an art gallery over on 17th.”
Well, this was getting damned interesting, right down to employment addresses, and she was a manager, no less. He was impressed.
“What were you doing at Steele Street?” he asked, thinking why the hell not? He seemed to have a willing conversation partner.
“What were you doing at Steele Street?” she shot back. “Besides practically blowing the place up?”
Taking a cue from her, he kept his thoughts on that one to himself. She didn’t need to know anything about Randolph Lancaster.
“All righty, fine,” she said, not bothering to hide her frustration. “I was headed home from work to get ready for—oh, cripes.”