Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 60360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“Oh, does he?”
Daisy nodded. “Himself, too,” she added. “He says neither of you is the marrying kind.”
Izzy seemed to pretend to consider this. “He’s probably right,” she said.
Caleb decided he’d gotten fairly lucky so far and didn’t want to push it any further. He shoved his chair back and stood up. “Daisy, make her order to go,” he told her and reached for his wallet.
Outside and safely away from the stares of his friends, Izzy led him to a charcoal gray Dodge Charger that was parked around the side of the building.
“Do you ever think about your personal safety?” he grumbled as he walked to her car. She’d parked way too far from the door.
“It’s the middle of the day,” Izzy protested.
“Doesn’t mean much in Rapid City,” he argued.
She smirked at him from across the hood of the car. “I’m armed,” she said, and he believed it. The corner of her mouth quirked up into a sly grin. “And by the way, you missed a few weapons when you frisked me.”
He shook his head at her. Somehow the image of this woman strolling around Rapid City armed to the teeth looking for bad guys seemed to fit her perfectly.
“Want to try again?” she teased as she disabled the car’s alarm.
Caleb ignored the offer and slid into the passenger seat.
“Anyway,” she said as she put the key in the ignition. “I’m from Denver,” she said, as if that settled everything.
Caleb’s boot came up against a steel safe drilled into the car’s floorboard. He kicked it lightly. “Back up piece?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” she replied cryptically.
As she turned out of the bar’s gravel lot, he said, “So you’re a bounty hunter. Who are you looking for? All the way from Denver.”
“Kidnap/murder suspect,” she said, surprising him.
“Dangerous?”
She smirked at him. “Well… there’s the kidnapping. And the murder,” she replied. “So, I’d say yes.”
“And you think you’ll find him hanging out at the bar?”
“No,” she admitted. “Probably not. But his uncle is a Buzzard and I think if the kid’s headed anywhere at all, it’s to his cousin.”
“I haven’t seen any BOLOs,” he told her.
She sighed. “You won’t. Denver PD seems to think he’s headed to Mexico.”
“Why Mexico?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because he turned south and went for the interstate after he shot up a gas station. But they don’t actually have any proof that he took the highway southbound instead of north.”
“Ah,” Caleb said, as though that settled everything. And it did. Most cops chose the obvious answers, the ones that seemed to make the most sense, often forgetting that people didn’t often make sense, at least not to him, anyway. “The Buzzards are serious bad guys,” he told her. “One percenters. They won’t take too kindly to you sniffing around their business.”
“Well, I’m not sniffing around,” she said, turning into the parking lot of the Rainbow Motel. “So far I’m just hanging out at the bar. Where a lot of people hang out. I blend in.”
Caleb stepped out of the car and shut the door. “Trust me,” he grumbled, “you do not blend in.”
She smiled at him and a familiar, yet untimely, warmth spread in his stomach—and lower. He’d just scratched that particular itch, however, and he didn’t need to do it again so soon. Especially not with her. He caught himself eyeing the sway of her hips as she headed toward her room door. He shook himself and glanced away. He definitely didn’t need that, not now and especially not here. He just needed to know more about why she was here. He took one last look at her ass, though, because she was here, and he was a man, and… hell, he didn’t really need a reason, he told himself.
Chapter 14
Izzy didn’t turn to look as he followed her to the room. She was happy that he was just as good-looking as she remembered from their brief but interesting first encounter. She suppressed a shiver at the memory of his large hand feeling her up as they’d tussled, as well as the memory of something even larger behind his zipper as he’d held her close. It was nice to know that she’d made just as much of an impression on him as he’d made on her. Caleb Barnes didn’t exactly blend in, either.
As she strolled to the door to her rented motel room, her interest overwhelmed her. She glanced back at him coyly. “Sure you don’t want to frisk me again?” she asked him. “We’ve still got time until things pick up at the bar this evening. There’s a bed, such as it is. But we could try the floor, or the shower, or up against the wall.”
When he didn’t answer, she said, “Are you on duty tonight? I can’t decide whether I’d rather see you in a uniform or out of one.”