LITMIR.BIZ

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heard it could take you this way, but until now he’d never experienced the need to sublimate grief with sex.

      To screw your ass off as opposed to crying. Death substituted by procreation. Lust mollified by this cockeyed piece of home-brewed psychology, he swung his eyes round the passengers one more time.

      Where’n all hell was McKay?

      He began circling the crush, his impatience as obscure as theirs was obvious while the driver dumped piece after piece from the baggage compartment into a heap on the sidewalk. Gucci took its chances with cheap blue-and-pink-striped plastic as the owners pulled their bags from the bottom of the pile.

      Lazy movements at the far side of the crowd snagged his glance and zapped him again. Pushing his sunglasses back to improve the view, he gazed at the growing distance between the black crop top and matching hipster pants, separated by lush skin.

      Isolated by her unhurried attitude, she reminded him of a cat, easing out its kinks as all hell let loose around it. “Eyes left, Jellic, you’re working.”

      As he scolded himself, a piece of crimson, hard-bodied Samsonite, defaced by a Chinese good-luck symbol and propelled by the removal of the one below it, slid from the top of the heap onto his side of the crowd. Kel took off his shades to read the gold words glinting on its side: Blue Grasshopper, Chinatown, San Francisco.

      “Now, that’s what I call carrying promotion to the nth degree.” It didn’t prevent the back of his neck pricking as he moved in for a closer inspection. San Francisco?

      McKay couldn’t be that dumb, surely, or that cheap. Could he?

      The urge to take a gander at the address tag was blocked by a red floral shirt he recognized. The meaty fingers he’d seen lighting a cigarette captured the handle and pulled it away from the rest. He heard the slap of it against the guy’s bare calves as he hopped off the sidewalk toward the back of the bus, swiping the sweat off his brow through his hair as if the exertion was killing him.

      “Hey! That’s mine.” The owner was feminine, unmistakably American and anything but happy.

      Simultaneously, but not in order of importance, Kel watched Ms. Bronze-skin whip off her sunglasses. Her shocked gaze, bluer than a Tahitian lagoon, followed the red shirt, while her pink sunglasses tumbled from her hand, catching the light.

      As their glances clashed, his body tensed, gearing itself to spring after the thief, then he remembered who he was and why he was there. Although he hadn’t moved an inch, Kel felt as if he’d hit a brick wall. A sensation every bit as painful as her swift expression of disappointment, coursed through him.

      As the woman hotfooted it round her side of the vehicle, pride overcame caution. Dropping his suit carrier, he chased the good-luck-charm that wasn’t living up to its publicity.

      She was fast but in trouble now; the guy outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. Kel heard her yell as she ran, “Drop the case, you jerk, it’s mine.”

      Kel was at least four paces behind them when she confronted the guy, taking up a fighting stance, hands karate style like miniature lethal weapons, as if anything that small could hurt.

      He had to do something quick before she copped a lesson no amount of stretching would get rid of.

      The thief yelped, dropping the case as though it burned before the woman had to follow through with her threat. Two fast paces later Kel grabbed the red collar and felt it rip in his hand as the chunky guy twisted out of his grasp, leaving his ill-gotten gains behind. Then, before Kel could grasp him again, he shambled off at a fast clip without looking back.

      Kel could easily have overtaken him—hell, he ran like a red sofa on speed—but GDE business came first, no matter how beautiful the victim. His first reaction had been correct.

      She was trouble.

      As the woman straightened, he checked her over with his eyes and tossed what was left of the shirt collar away with a grin. “That’s the problem these days, nothing’s made to last. You all right?”

      “I’d have managed.” Her features were tight, the fabulous blue eyes shuttered. The words “Without you” hung in the air like a film title on a theater marquee. He realized she’d seen him hit that wall. How was she to know that just this once he hadn’t let duty win. A first for him. Though, instead of squandering the occasion on her, he wished he’d spent it on Gordie.

      “You want to watch it, lady. Acting as if you’re in some kung fu TV show could get you more than you bargained for. Someone might take you up on it, and then where would you be?”

      He reached for the case, flicking the name tag over to read. She was too quick for him. No surprise, considering he was working under two handicaps—the lush, arousing scent of her body and the way her breasts fell forward, cupped by the knit of her crop top.

      One thing for sure, she wasn’t wearing a bra.

      She caught him looking.

      Well hell, he was only human.

      “Thanks, I’ll remember that,” she replied, voice cool as the drink he’d fancied earlier, especially with the ice in her eyes to chill it.

      She curled her fingers round the handle, pulling it closer.

      “Let me get that for you.”

      “No problem, it has wheels.” She flicked a catch on the curve of the red monstrosity and conjured up a handle. The laptop case still in his hand was written off by a raised brow that made him feel roughly the same size. “Shouldn’t you be saving your own luggage before it disappears?”

      He recognized a dismissal when he heard it. His carrier still where he’d abandoned it, he picked it up and realized she must have been watching him, as well. At least he’d been savvy enough not to damage the laptop. Gorgeous she may be, but he’d long ago given up abandoning his gear in a lost cause, or given the IT engineers who’d invented its programs cause for complaint.

      That given, why did that look she’d shot him earlier still rankle? For sure, he wouldn’t disappoint her in the sack, but what man wanted to be needed just for the sex?

      He joined the tail-end passengers, all too caught up in their own affairs to react to the contretemps. But on his way to the terminal, he noticed her shades in the gutter and picked them up. He wouldn’t mind another close-up of those cool blue eyes.

      A vision startled him with its clarity. A hank of black hair twisting round one hand, to pull her closer, the other sliding under her crop top, bringing an end to another ice age.

      Hell, a guy could dream, couldn’t he? That and no more.

      Time to scrape the bottom of the barrel and see what floated to the surface.

      Waiting at the boarding gate, the thought of how close she’d come to losing the package in her care bathed Ngaire in cold sweat. It was worth a fortune. The fear of not living up to the trust placed in her yawned at the back of her mind like a bottomless pit waiting for her to trip. By now it had been checked in and was secreted in the plane’s hold, safe while no one suspected its nature. The attempted theft today had to be a coincidence. She’d told no one but Leena of her plans. And her best friend would never let her down, not even for the million dollars Paul Savage had brandished under Ngaire’s nose. Savage thought her a fool for turning it down. Like a spoiled child he couldn’t imagine not getting his own way, yet Savage was as every bit an outlaw as the ones who once held up coaches saying, “Your money or your life.”

      She’d chosen life. The money didn’t come into it.

      Taking a long, cooling drink of orange juice, she scanned the passengers for the guy in the black-and-white shirt but couldn’t see him. So, why bother?

      “Yeah, yeah,” she chided herself, knowing his features had made her heart jolt at first glance. One of those things you read about but never in a million years expected to happen.

      Disillusionment

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