LITMIR.BIZ

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of the basket.

      “Stubborn woman.” He glanced at the gawkers, then offered a negligible shrug. “I’m helping a friend. Now you?”

      “The same—only it’s a cousin.”

      “Weak save.”

      “Believe me or not, it makes no difference.”

      He looked instantly regretful for his mockery, touched her arm, and nodded to indicate they should start toward the front of the store. “I want to understand,” he said under his breath as he fell in beside her. “I did from the first. You shut me out.”

      Oh, no more, please. She so wanted not to have this conversation again. “I was doing you a favor. You had a job to get back to.”

      “I would have been willing to take some extra time off.”

      He’d never said that. At any rate he didn’t have the luxury, that much she understood. “You don’t have a job, you have a career.” There was a vast difference. Men like Jonas put in their twenty-something years with pride and dogged determination regardless of what was asked of them. Dedication wasn’t easy to walk away from, and after all of the effort and expense invested in developing an agent, the FBI wouldn’t make it easier. What’s more, the grim truth was that they’d had a fling. A few weekends here and there when he could fly down from Washington, D.C., to Austin, Texas. It was hardly what anyone could have called a relationship. Actually, the one gift in all of what had happened—to use the term darkly—was that it had ended before she had to worry that they were, indeed, heading toward some sort of understanding and all that meant.

      Her silence had him studying her profile. “You don’t believe me about wanting to help you. What did you think all of those calls and notes were about?”

      An almost lifelong survival technique triggered her stubbornness and need to be in control. “Maybe I didn’t want to be anyone’s project.” As they came to the express checkout, she handed the basket over to the checker.

      “Ma’am…my apologies.” The store manager came around the counter to bag. His face was flushed, a stark contrast to his crisp white shirt. “Is there anything that I can do? Are you all right?”

      Was this Denny’s uncle? Alyx saw no familial resemblance in the meticulously coifed, sandy-haired, anxious man to the big lug who’d accosted her. “I’m fine, thank you.” Wanting only escape, she nodded to the basket. “I’d just like to pay for this and go home.”

      With abject humility, the man gestured toward the door. “Allow me to sack those and please—no charge. I’m sorry you were—that you had this experience. Let me reassure you it won’t happen again.”

      Alyx wondered how often he had to dig into his own pocket to cover for his sister’s—or brother’s—overgrown delinquent? Feeling bad for him, Alyx said, “I appreciate that, but I don’t need you to comp my purchases.”

      “Where’s the guy who assaulted her?” Jonas interjected.

      The manager’s eyes darted from entrance to entrance before he cleared his throat. “He’s—uh—being driven home, sir. And I’ve called his—his home. His family will see that he stays there.”

      At another time, Alyx would have smiled that Jonas intimidated him. When she’d first laid eyes upon this friend of Judge Dylan Justiss last year, she’d had to struggle to keep her usual cool decorum, too, and for an instant hadn’t been so upset that her client, Deputy DA E. D. Martel, and Dylan were besotted with each other at a most inopportune time. There was something about Jonas’s Hollywood good looks that demanded attention as well…who was it he reminded her of?

      Audrey Hepburn’s pining love interest in Breakfast at Tiffany’s—George Peppard. After all this time it had finally come to her.

      “Here you are, miss.” Ignoring her debit card, the manager held her bagged items out to her. “Again, I’m very sorry.”

      “Thanks.” Painfully aware of all the eyes following her, Alyx exited the store as fast as possible, wanting nothing more than to get to Parke’s black RAV4. The vehicle was a little “outdoorsy” for her, but it represented escape, which was all that mattered.

      “Alyx? A moment?”

      With her thumb on the ignition key’s computerized lock, she paused. Drawing a deep breath, she turned to face her ex-lover and waited for him to voice whatever he felt this rescue had earned him the right to say. What could it hurt at this point? She might look like a worn-out dishtowel ready for the garbage, but at least there was no media around to extend her embarrassment to the evening news.

      Jonas slipped on his sunglasses. Perfect G-man mode, she thought. Seek out secrets, but keep your own.

      “No explanation? No nothing?”

      His soft-spoken query had an edge to it and she couldn’t blame him one bit for being annoyed that “thank you” wasn’t enough either personally or professionally. But she, too, was known to be a hard read in her personal life and a barracuda for her clients. So, bottom line, she had no inclination to explain herself today, and might never.

      “What’s done is done, Jonas. You have your world and I have mine. Let’s leave well enough alone.” Only when she replaced her own glasses did she risk glancing up at him. Despite the filtered lenses, in the bright sunlight, what she saw brought a bit of a shock. He no longer had that Teflon, nothing-sticks, smooth-operator look that she remembered. His face was sunken, more lined and his mouth had a harder twist.

      “‘Well enough’?” he snapped, breaking into her thoughts, “Alyx, have you looked in a mirror lately? There may be no blood this time, but you still look one missed depression pill away from suicide.” With a muttered expletive, he walked away.

      The sting of his criticism, regardless of its accuracy, made it impossible to resist striking back. “Yeah?” she called to his back. “Well, consider the compliment returned and then some!”

      Men. Here she was doing him a favor—whether he knew it or not—but leave it to Testosterone Man that when rejected, he was determined to cut her down to manageable size.

      Inside her cousin’s SUV, Alyx tossed the bag onto the passenger’s seat and shoved the key into the ignition. Tried, that is. Her hands were shaking so hard she had to grip her wrist and direct it in. That’s when the tears started pouring down her cheeks.

      “Crap.”

      Desperate for the privacy of Parke’s house, Alyx blindly ripped at tissues from the box in the console and slipped them under the sunglasses to dab at her eyes. Never would she have suspected that seeing Jonas again would have this effect on her. After the attack, it had been a relief when he’d stopped coming to the hospital and had returned to Washington, D.C., better still when he’d stopped phoning and e-mailing.

      Why start all that again when he claimed to be here for a friend? He’d certainly left without too much coercion.

      Recovering somewhat, Alyx carefully backed out of the parking space, but she kept an eye out for Jonas. When she spotted him a lane away climbing into a red vintage Mustang convertible, her caution turned to skepticism, which sent her eyebrows arching.

      “The government must be paying well these days if that’s what was allowed from the rental counters,” she muttered.

      Accelerating, she made it to the exit and turned right onto the main road. Parke’s house was another few miles west and a bit down from the plateau where the municipal airport was located. At the next traffic light, she eased the SUV left to the turning lane, and it was as she was waiting for the light that she spotted the Mustang two cars behind her.

      What on earth did he think he was doing?

      Agitated, the second the green arrow lit, Alyx hit the gas pedal. Okay, she told herself as emotions turned her insides into a cruller, calm down; there were another few turns on this road. He would go down one of those. Surely he wasn’t trying to find out

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