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  “Couldn’t you just listen for a minute and stop calling me ‘blondie’? My name is Maxie.”

  Did she think he’d been born yesterday? It clarified in his mind that she might be right out of a man’s hot, sweaty fantasy, but she sure wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Did she seriously believe she could talk him out of taking her back?

  “No. It’s not in my job description,” he said tersely. “Don’t make this hard on yourself.”

  “I have a guy working for me. As soon as Jake Utah clears my name, all this embezzlement business will be straightened out. I assure you.”

  “Blondie, jumping bail makes you my business. You see these pieces of paper?” He pulled them out of his back pocket and held them up for her. “They say you’re mine.”

  Her eyes widened and he recognized the panic he saw building there. She was going to bolt. “Don’t do it, blondie. I’m the best there is. If you could get away, you wouldn’t get far.” He grabbed her other wrist as she sidled backward.

  Then out of nowhere, the Amazonian woman bartender with dark flaming red hair grabbed his arm. “Leave her alone, you big bully.”

  Her knee jerked into his crotch with the force of a battering ram. Austin grunted as white-hot agony set his groin on fire and doubled him over. With a groan, he slipped to his knees.

  “Run, honey. Run!”

  He glimpsed the blond nymph as she looked at the six-foot bartender, indecision in her lovely face. Blondie stared down at him with sympathy and apology in her deep blue eyes. Then she was opening the front door, the handcuffs clanging against the wood.

  He glanced at the sheriff, who made no attempt to go after Maxie. That was the way the wind was blowing, huh? This whole town was going to protect her?

  Austin couldn’t breathe around the pain. He took shallow breaths, and a red, misty haze settled over his eyes. Damn, but that hurt.

  He reached out and latched onto a chair and dragged himself to his feet. Ignoring the nausea that churned at the back of his throat, he took a step. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, but he forced himself to relax and let the pain flow out of him. He’d had good practice at it. He made it to the door and jerked it open.

  Stepping out into the moonlit parking lot, he looked around. Damn. That had never happened to him before. Bested by a middle-aged woman with star tattoos. Of course, she was at least six feet tall with serious muscles.

  He always got his man. Right. Man was the important word. He knew this job was going to be trouble when he’d seen the skip’s sweet, sincere face. Telling himself, I told you so didn’t help in the least. He’d walk away right now if he didn’t need the money, but he couldn’t let his sister down. He’d made her a promise. And since he’d gone to the reservation and saved her from a life of poverty, he could never renege on that promise. Not ever.

  He hit the side of the building in frustration. Now where had his little skipper skipped to?

  MAXIE DIDN’T HAVE to go far, since Star had included room and board along with her wage. Her room was behind the bar and Maxie raced around the small area, stuffing as many of her things as she could into the small bag she’d taken for her jaunt.

  Ha! The magnitude of her problem was just becoming clear to her. The bail bondsman had sent a bounty hunter after her, one who was tenacious and, as he said, good at his job. A man shot through with western steel. She was in deep, deep trouble.

  Star came into the room. “Here, honey.” She thrust money into Maxie’s hand, along with keys to her hog.

  Maxie’s eyes suddenly burned. “Star, I can’t take your ride.” Maxie tried to thrust the keys back, but Star held up her palms.

  “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but I know some good lawyers. I’ll get you one. You call me when you get somewhere safe.”

  Tears pricked the back of Maxie’s eyes at Star’s generosity and fullness of heart. Who would have guessed a former motorcycle mama would care? “I can tell you that it’s all a misunderstanding.”

  Star cupped her cheek. “I know that. You’ve been in this town just shy of a month and you’re a favorite. Patrons come to my bar just to be near your sweet smile.”

  Maxie’s hand tightened around the money and the key. “Thanks.” She put both in her fanny pack and turned to reach for her backpack, feeling queasy when the handcuffs swung forward.

  “Star, what about the handcuffs?” Maxie looked down at them with dread, and a sick sensation made her throat close.

  “No problem, honey. You go see my friend Seymour and he’ll get the cuffs off.” Star picked up a pad of paper sitting on the nightstand and scribbled a name and address.

  Maxie accepted the slip of paper, again stuffing it into her fanny pack. “Star, you could get into a lot of trouble for aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

  “Honey, you ain’t no fugitive—you’re my friend. The law can go to hell.” Star looked out the window. “You stay here while I lock up the bar and until I tell you it’s all clear.”

  Star left the room and Maxie went to the bed and pushed the small bag out of the way. She sat down, leaning her back against the wall. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and let it out.

  A few weeks ago, she’d been a respected bank manager who had just resigned her position to open up a long held dream—Firecrackers. Now, she was a fugitive from justice wanted for embezzlement from the First Security Bank in Sedona. She had no idea where the money, she was supposed to have taken, had gone. They had grilled her about that money for hours, but she couldn’t tell them because she didn’t know.

  She’d hated that job and it had been a chore to stick it out the five years she’d worked there, but the pittance in her bank account was hers. She was baffled to find her password and her authority abused. Someone had taken from numerous personal accounts of the bank’s patrons to the tune of one million dollars.

  Thank God for Jake. He had assured Maxie that he would help her out by looking through all the computer generated information available to try to find out who had framed her. Unfortunately, that took a lot of time and she would have to stall until he came through with the name of the perpetrator. The authorities had stopped looking—they had her.

  She’d wait until Star said it was safe and then she’d find herself another small town in New Mexico and stay one step ahead of that hard-as-nails bounty hunter.

  Maxie sat anxiously on the bed waiting for Star to come back. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was getting close to two in the morning.

  Maxie jumped when Star came back into the room. “It’s all clear, honey.”

  “You haven’t seen him?”

  “No, I think he’s gone.”

  “Is he still in town?”

  “No way to tell. We don’t have time to make sure, but I haven’t seen his Mustang. That car isn’t easy to miss.” Star talked in hushed tones as if the bounty hunter were just outside the window listening. Maxie shivered at the thought.

  Maxie grabbed her bag, walked to the door and peered out. Even with the heat of the desert, Maxie felt a chill travel over her skin.

  “You’re certain he’s nowhere around here?”

  “Can’t say for sure, but it looks clear. You can’t wait much longer. Go now, honey. Call me when you can.”

  Maxie hugged Star hard. “I will. Thanks for everything.”

  The hair on Maxie’s neck lifted as she stepped out into the moonlit night. She looked up at the sky dotted with a thousand stars. It was so beautiful in the desert—too bad she didn’t have the time to enjoy it. She walked to the side of the bar and peered around the corner. The parking lot was empty, the bar closed for the night because all Star’s patrons were in the local jail. Star’s motorcycle sat half in and half out of the shadow of the bar’s overhang.

  Maxie shivered, but there was no one there. Her fingers trembled as she groped for the keys to the bike, but she couldn’t seem to get her hands on them. She’d wait until she was in the light and find them. She could
n’t stand here on the verge of a nervous breakdown all night. Gathering her courage, she strode forward. Reaching the bike, she straddled the seat and reached inside the fanny pack. The security light from the bar fell on the interior of the fanny pack and illuminated the keys. Just as she spied them, a dark, deep, raspy voice curled around her, seeping into her bones.

  “Miss me?”

  Her body tightened like a coiled spring, her heart jumping into her throat. He pulled her off the bike and grabbed her wrists. With quick efficiency, he locked the loose handcuff tight to her free wrist.

  Maxie looked up at him as he loomed over her. He peered down at her as the night wind lifted his sleek black hair. There was nothing welcoming or gentle in his expression. His unrelenting stare speared her, slashing like steel, cutting, seeing what ran beneath skin and masqueraded as control. There was an unnerving quality in his eyes as he looked at her. Awe? Hunger? She couldn’t be sure it wasn’t merely the play of light and shadow. When she tried a tentative smile to put him off guard, the steady gaze of his dark eyes hardened.

  This man had seen some hard living. And she had no doubt that he was good at what he did. He fit the image of a bounty hunter with his soaring black eyebrows, piercing eyes, a nose that angled slightly at the bridge, cutting through the breadth of his wide, blunt cheekbones, followed by a sensuous mouth that curved slowly as he watched her. Dark skinned, a heritage of his Native American ancestors. Apache, she thought, the evidence in his sharp, angled, breath stealing face.

  “Don’t fight me. Don’t run from me. It won’t do you any good and it ticks me off.”

  He dragged her up against him and she could feel the hard heat of his chest, smell the intoxicating male scent as wave after wave of pleasure ignited inside her.

  “I don’t want you ticked off, right?” she challenged without flinching or looking away from him.

  His predatory smile flashed in the night. “No.”

  “I guess they don’t call you Renegade for nothing.”

  “A fearless pixie with sarcasm.”

  Maxie felt the unfamiliar sense of annoyance flash through her. She gave him a smug, dirty look. To him she was nothing but chattel and she resented the fact that he thought she was dumb.

  “Darlin’, don’t look at me like that. You can’t pass it off.”

  “Like what?” she asked, her anger rising.

  “Like you can outsmart me.”

  “You can’t be outsmarted?” She pushed at his chest with her manacled hands, a hard chest that made her hands want to open so she could explore his muscles.

  “Not by you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Darlin’, ditsy blondes don’t have the sense God gave a turnip.”

  “Ditsy?” Maxie put her hands on her hips and gave him the dirtiest look she could muster.

  “IS THAT LOOK supposed to scare me?” Austin said, thinking that she looked cute and adorable with her face scrunched up. Austin felt those damn hormones kicking up again. He deliberately stepped away from her. “You tried to stop a fight between two men who could squash you like a bug. One of them had a broken beer bottle. You could have bled to death. I’d call that pretty stupid.” He could still see the scene. Those men could have hurt her really bad. He felt his protective instincts rise up along with the gut-wrenching fear.

  “I would have gotten the bottle from him and stopped the bar fight if you hadn’t stuck your arrogant nose into it,” she sniffed.

  “You’re too ditsy to know how ditsy you are.”

  “You’ll pay for that,” she threatened.

  “Sure, I will.”

  He grabbed the handcuffs by the chain and dragged her to the car, which he’d concealed off the road not far from the bar. When he got there, he pulled her forward against the hood, stepped behind her and kicked her feet apart.

  And hesitated.

  Do it man, he said to himself. He wasn’t worried that she had a weapon, but it was common practice to shake each skip down to make sure.

  Do it.

  His hands went over her body so fast it couldn’t even be called a frisk, more like a brisk.

  “What the…heck was that?” were her muffled words as she turned around.

  He stepped back. “I frisked you.”

  She laughed. “You call that a frisk?”

  Sweat popped out on his forehead. He wasn’t going to touch her no matter how much she goaded him.

  She stepped close to him and he jumped back.

  She smiled slow and catlike. “Do I, little ol’ me, intimidate you?”

  “No.”

  “No?” she mimicked. “Then frisk me like you’re supposed to. I could be carrying a weapon,” she challenged, pushing against his chest.

  He snorted. “You couldn’t possibly be carrying any weapons in those shorts.”

  She looked down at her attire. “It’s the bar’s uniform. I have to wear these to work.”

  His eyebrows lowered into a frown, angry because he would enjoy sending his hands over her body. “I don’t get off manhandling women.” He opened the passenger side door. “Watch your head,” he advised, placing his hand on the top of her head to protect it as he guided her into the Mustang.

  He walked around the car and got into the driver’s seat. Inserting the key into the ignition, he started the car.

  “What does get you off?” Maxie asked.

  His hand jerked and the unmistakable sound of a car being started while it was already running grated against his eardrums.

  He winced at the sound. “I’m not falling for this, blondie.”

  “Call me Maxie. Falling for what?”

  “Sexual overtures aren’t going to get you off the hook. But if you’re offering, I don’t want any boohooing in the morning.” He had no intention of following through with that threat. He wasn’t going to get up close and personal with his bounty. It would be sheer stupidity.

  “I’m not making sexual overtures, and I never regret great sex. I’m just curious.”

  “You know what they say about curiosity.” Great sex? Damn. Was she crazy propositioning a male she didn’t know anything about? She was under his complete control, yet she seemed fearless.

  “Sure. It killed the cat, but I’m no cat.”

  He looked at her as if he didn’t believe her, but he could see that she was dead serious. Her innocent eyes beckoned him. “You’re curious about what gets me off?”

  “Sure.”

  Scaring her seemed like a good idea. “Hot little pixies in short shorts asking me what gets me off.”

  “Oh.”

  He smiled, glad that he had finally quieted her down.

  “What else?”

  This woman didn’t know when to quit. “I’m not having this discussion with you.”

  “Austin…may I call you Austin or should I call you ‘Renegade’?”

  “Silence would be your best choice.”

  “I bet you would like that. Then you wouldn’t have to get to know me and realize that I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Tell it to the judge.” Austin wasn’t going to get suckered into believing all that innocence that floated around her like an aura. He wasn’t going to talk to her any more.

  “But…I just need to stall.”

  “My job is to bring you in. End of story.”

  Maxie sat there for a moment and he breathed a sigh of relief that she was finally going to keep quiet. Her voice was more powerful in an enclosed place and did crazy things to his insides. But then she spoke again.

  “We’re not going to drive seven hundred miles straight. Are we?”

  “No. As soon as I find a suitable place, I’ll stop. I’m dead tired.”

  “You look it. Didn’t get much sleep?”

  He gave her a sidelong glance. “No. I was tracking you.”

  “How did you do that, by the way?”

  “I went to your club.” He ran his hand through his hair. How did he get suckered into answering her when he
’d just vowed he wasn’t going to answer her?

  “And?”

  He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I posed as an employee from the liquor licensing bureau.”

  “You tricked Dorrie into telling you where I was?”

  “Not exactly. I paid a delivery guy to cause a ruckus and distract your sister.”

  “Then you searched her personal belongings.”

  “That’s right. Your sister had a postcard from you postmarked from Mesa Roja. After that I drove here, asked around. Everyone knew you, where you worked, told me real nice stories about you. Gotta love a small town.”

  She sighed and leaned her head back. “So you knew I lived in the room behind the bar. Why didn’t you just knock on the door and apprehend me?”

  “I didn’t want to have another tussle with your employer. My balls still ache.” He shifted in the seat. They did hurt with a dull throbbing, but it had nothing to do with being kneed in the groin. “I know how fugitives behave. I knew you’d run sooner or later, so I waited until your employer closed up.”

  “Why would the townspeople talk to you?”

  “Told them I was your husband and that we’d had a spat. I said I’d make nice and fetch you home.”

  “I bet you’re a good liar.”

  “I don’t enjoy it, but it’s part of the job.”

  She lapsed into silence and Austin was thankful. He concentrated on driving the almost barren stretch of NM 64 that ran alongside the Santa Fe Trail. He estimated that it should take them about an hour and a half to make Cimarron and then Taos by daybreak. He tried to keep his eyes from straying over to her mouth-watering legs bared all the way up to the top of her thigh. Those shorts were scandalous. He hoped she had something else to wear inside the beat up bag she was carrying. They went through Raton a blur of streetlights and closed shops. Shortly after that, his head nodded and he swerved suddenly. Maxie grabbed his arm.

  “I think we’d better stop, now.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “We’ll have to go back to Raton because there is nothing between Raton and Cimarron. I think you’re too tired to make Cimarron. I saw a motel a few miles back,” she said, removing her manacled hands from his arm.