“Long legs, a little on the skinny side, and fast as hell.”
That was her, all right.
“He probably left the bag lying on the street,” she said, while simultaneously determining the quickest escape route, and all the while hating that her wonderful summer crush was over. It was darn hard to stay infatuated with someone who thought you were a thief, even if you were. “Anybody could have come along and picked it up.”
“No,” he said. “Not anyone. General Grant isn’t a patsy. It took someone good to get his dinner away from him.”
A backhanded compliment, but beggars—and thieves—couldn’t be picky.
“That’s a great story,” she said, casually slipping her arm through the handles on the plastic bag and then wrapping her hand around the strap on her pack. “But these are my wontons.” Deny. Deny. Deny. Those were the first three rules of stealing on the street.
“Maybe.” The guy seemed to be giving her the benefit of the doubt. “But he sent me to track down the thief, and here I am, and there you are with a bag of Chinese food.”
Impossible, and she told him so.
“Nobody can track me on the streets.” Hell, she’d been chased by the cops dozens of times, and she’d never been caught. Never.
A small laugh escaped him, and she could see him shaking his head. “Oh, yeah, babe. I can track you, and I did.”
He sounded damned sure of himself, but she wasn’t buying it, even with that sweet little “babe” business. “No,” she said, shaking her own head. “Nobody’s that good.”
“Actually, Ms. Linden, I’m better than that,” he said, his voice coolly serious. “Way better.”
He knew her name, her real name.
The shock froze her in place for all of a nanosecond before she bolted.
But damn, he was fast—faster than her, and when she would have cleared the southernmost corner of the building and made her jump for the balcony, he was two steps ahead of her.
She skidded to a stop, and before she could change directions, he reached out and took her pack and the bag of food, just snatched them right out of her hands.
The loss stopped her cold.
Dammit. She couldn’t go home without her backpack. She wouldn’t go home without it. Delivering the goods was how she kept her standing with her crew. It wasn’t just her livelihood at risk here tonight. It was how she kept the whole sorry pack of them safe—by being better, by never getting caught, by having the cash to feed them.
“I need that,” she said, using her firmest voice, letting him know he’d gone too far. “You can have the Chinese food. I’ll even pay you for the wontons, but I need the pack.”
He stood there in front of her, bigger than life, so calm and sure of himself, still the most beautiful guy she’d ever seen. Five minutes ago, he’d been everything she’d wanted. Now she just wanted away—one more dream down the tubes.
“Ten minutes,” he said with a lift of his eyebrows. “Stay and talk with me for ten minutes, and I’ll give you your pack back. I promise.”
She thought his offer over for all of two seconds.
“With everything in it?”
“Everything,” he promised.
Ten minutes of talk to claim two hundred seventy-seven dollars and eight credit cards? That would be the best deal she’d made all day.
And she believed him, for whatever reason, believed that if she talked to him for ten minutes, he would return her pack, and she’d be on her way—wiser and sadder and wondering what, if anything, would come into her life to replace the thrill of hoping to see him.
But that was over now. It really was, no matter how good he looked standing there.
“How do you know my name?” she asked. She hadn’t given her name to his friend or to the doc who’d looked her over two weeks ago, not her street name, Robin Rulz, and sure as heck not her real name, Jane Linden. She never gave anyone her real name.
“When I was younger, I used to own these streets. So I asked around to see if anybody knew a green-eyed girl picking pockets in LoDo who had long dark hair and a face … yeah, well, an unusual face.”
Unusual face? Coltish?
Well, this was damned embarrassing, but she needed that damn backpack back.
“You’re beautiful,” he said straight out of the blue, then glanced down and let out a soft laugh. “You probably hear that all the time.”