LITMIR.BIZ

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of me, you must be the only man in New York who hasn’t drooled over my pictures in the tabloids!”

      Flynn cut the Harley across a stream of oncoming traffic and pulled into the relative quiet of a tree-lined East Side street. He nosed the bike between a parked moving van and a city Dumpster before cutting the engine. Then he tore off his helmet and craned around to get a real look at his passenger.

      She smiled, leaned back and lifted both arms like a chanteuse just arriving in the center-stage spotlight of a burlesque show. “Well?” she asked, blue eyes atwinkle. “See anything you recognize?”

      Her low-cut gown revealed the perfect symmetry of her bosom, and no man alive could have mistaken that famous cleavage. Flynn peered closer at the equally curvy shape of her smile and the saucy light in her eyes, and he knew she was the genuine article. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “You’re—”

      “So it’s finally sinking in?”

      “You’re—”

      “Yes,” she replied, lifting her nose to show off her famous profile. “Dixie Davis, who’s taken New York by storm—a Texas Tornado, to be exact. Although I must say I’m disappointed it took you so long to recognize me. My publicist says I should be bigger than Marla Maples by now!”

      It all made sense now.

      Dixie Davis was the sexiest woman on earth. Even the New York Times said so.

      Everything there was to know about the infamous Miss Davis had been screamed in giant headlines and suddenly here she was—perched on Flynn’s motorcycle as happily as a rodeo rider on a pinto pony. In the past few weeks no red-blooded American male could pass a newsstand without seeing Miss Davis’s exquisite figure posed on every front page. A month earlier she’d been an unknown dancer from some Podunk town in Texas. She’d blown into New York to dance in the chorus of a brainless Broadway show—The Flatfoot and the Floozie. But in a matter of days she’d been elevated to star status by the show’s smitten producer—one of New York’s most notorious mobsters, Joey Torrano.

      And how could Joey Torrano avoid falling head over heels for Dixie? She wore sex appeal the way most women wore perfume. She was sexier than champagne, chocolate and satin sheets combined. Everything about her screamed female in big neon letters. Even the city’s toughest, grouchiest columnists couldn’t avoid writing about her.

      The New York tabloids loved a sexy gold digger almost as much as they loved mob bosses. But this story had both—so Dixie had gotten press all over New York City. The so-so Broadway show looked as though it might become a megahit, thanks to all the publicity generated by a well-endowed showgirl.

      “Dixie Davis,” he murmured, wondering how many men on the planet would trade places with him in that moment just to get an up-close-and-personal look at the delectable Texas Tornado.

      She was everything the press claimed she was and more. Her high-voltage kiss still burned in Flynn’s memory. She was the real McCoy, all right—a blond bombshell who was part Marilyn Monroe and part Dolly Parton. An all-American sexpot with a heart of gold.

      Flynn could only exhale. “Wow.”

      “That’s me,” she drawled, giving him her trademark sideways grin—a flirtatious half smile complete with batting eyelashes and an impish wink from beneath the brim of her white hat. At the same time she managed to flaunt her breasts with a practiced flounce. “Want my autograph, sugar?”

      “No, thanks,” Flynn responded. His senses were returning rapidly—as if plummeting to earth without a parachute. “But I do want you the hell off my bike!”

      “Wh-what?”

      “Pronto,” Flynn added, climbing off the Harley. “I don’t want to end up sleeping with the fishes just because you picked me to play Sir Galahad. So move your Texas buns and find a cab, lady.”

      “What? Your silly motorbike is more important than a human life?”

      “It’s not a motorbike—it’s a Harley-Davidson! And I’m not risking my life for you.”

      She sat up straight, thunder on her brow. “Are you afraid?”

      “You bet your boots I am! Your gangster boyfriend is Joey Torrano!”

      “So?”

      “So I assume he’s the one you just left standing at the altar?”

      “He wasn’t standing. Not exactly, anyway.” Primly, she said, “I knocked him down.”

      “You—”

      Without meeting his agitated glare, Dixie Davis made a studied business of crossing one exquisite showgirl’s leg across the other and wrapping the voluminous train of her dress over her arm. She began to swing her one bare foot expressively. “Well, I didn’t have much choice, really. He was blocking the only way to get out of there! And I had to get away before it was too late.”

      “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Flynn said testily, “but don’t most brides wait until after the ‘I do’s’ before running out of the church?”

      “I decided I didn’t want to marry anybody today.”

      Flynn tried to ignore the astonishing length of her creamy bare leg and the pretty arch of her bare foot. “But the groom disagreed?”

      “Precisely. And Joey can be—well, very disagreeable when he disagrees.”

      “So I’ve heard.”

      “So I bolted like a calf out of the chute, sugar.”

      But Flynn thought he saw a flicker of dismay behind her brave smile. “Now what?”

      “Now I’d like to go someplace quiet, please.”

      “I’ll give you cab fare.” Flynn dug into the pocket of his jeans.

      “Cab fare! What kind of Sir Galahad are you?”

      “The kind who plays it safe.”

      She flared like a Roman candle. “New York men! Honest to Pete, I don’t know how you could be genetically related to our Texas fellas! Why, you’re all a bunch of nervous old biddies—afraid to take a risk and never once thinking of a lady’s feelings!”

      She was a piece of work, all right—coquettish one minute and capable of lambasting him the next. A fire seemed to burn inside her. Was it possible that she was related to all the other women in the city? Those cool, well-dressed executives who marched the streets in their sneakers at lunchtime, each one looking much the same as the next? But Dixie Davis seemed so much more than anyone else. The gleam in her blue eyes filled Flynn with a powerful tingling sensation.

      It had to be fear, he told himself. Here was a woman who could cause a hell of a lot of trouble.

      “What’s the matter?” she demanded. “Scared?”

      “You would be, too, if you had any brains.”

      “You calling me dumb?”

      “Let’s be polite and call you impulsive.”

      Dixie Davis looked up into the frowning face of her rescuer and felt a wave of consternation. Maybe he was right. Lately her impulses seemed to be getting her into one jam after another. Seemed like she was snakebit.

      Dixie’s life hadn’t made much sense to her, let alone to a perfect stranger. The past few weeks had turned into a kaleidoscope of events—confusing and exciting and sometimes downright out of control. First, there had been the audition and landing of a small part in The Flatfoot and the Floozie. Then she’d met Joey Torrano at a rehearsal and he’d seen stars right away.

      After that, everything had happened faster than a DoveBar could melt on a Dallas sidewalk—but Dixie hadn’t been calling the shots at all. She’d been swept up by Joey and the show, and—well, it had been so easy to shoot

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