LITMIR.BIZ

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let his irritation show.

      “This is Tyler. Tyler Gillette.” Didn’t she know her ID showed up on his screen?

      “How did you get this number?” he demanded. Rude much, Ortiz?

      “Can we please, please talk about that later? Right now I really need your help.”

      He could hear loud conversation and music in the background. Obviously she was at one of her usual dive bars. Her activities were legend. Rafe gritted his teeth. If she’d called him it must really be bad.

      “What’s up?”

      There was a long pause and he wondered if he’d lost her. If she’d hung up. Then her voice came back, a little lower as if she didn’t want anyone to overhear her. Although with all that noise, he wondered how she could hear herself.

      “I—uh—I hate to bother you, but can you come and pick me up? Please?”

      Pick her up? He held the phone out and stared at it for a moment.

      “Where’s your car?” he asked.

      “I took a cab.” She was practically whispering now. “I am so sorry to bother you, but I-I have a bit of a problem and I seem to be having trouble reaching people. I would really appreciate it if you could see your way clear to coming to get me.” Slight pause. “Please. I’m in, uh, kind of a bind.”

      He just bet she was. Probably the reason she was being excessively polite. His gut told him there was real trouble, and she had focused on him as the solution. He heard a sudden Bam! Bam! Bam! Wherever she was, it sounded as if someone was banging on a door near her.

      “What’s going on, Tyler? Where are you? What’s that noise?”

      “I—I’m in the ladies’ room at a bar. Uh, Rafe? Please?”

      Rafe frowned. Come and get her? Swooping up Tyler Gillette wasn’t on his roster of responsibilities and he’d made damn sure to keep it that way. He had the feeling that no matter what he did he’d end up in trouble.

      “Why can’t you take a cab home?” he asked, hating himself even as he heard the callous tone in his voice. Nice, Rafe. “If you’re too blitzed, have the bartender call one for you.”

      “I can’t. I—You don’t understand.”

      Bam! Bam! Bam!

      “You in there, bitch?”

      Okay, that really did not sound good. What the hell was going on?

      “Fine.” He let out a heavy sigh. If something really did happen to her, he’d never forgive himself. “Give me the name of the bar and lock yourself in the ladies’ until I get there. If the guy busts in just scream, and the bartender will come running. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

      He disconnected the call and tossed his cards on the table. “Wouldn’t you know it. Two queens with an ace back.” He shook his head in disgust. “You guys can divvy up my money; I gotta dash.”

      “Man.” Cal shook his head. “You don’t get too many late night calls like this. It must be pretty damn important for you to break out of the game. Or something.”

      “Or something,” he repeated and headed for the door of Cal’s town house. “Just deal me out. I think I’m in for a long night.”

      God, he really did not want to be doing this. He’d spent a lot of years keeping as much distance between himself and Tyler Gillette as possible. Long years of sticking his hormones in deep-freeze where she was concerned. From the first moment he saw her he’d wanted her, with the passion that only a twenty-two-year-old could have. His need had been hot, strong, and gripping. And for one fleeting moment when they’d been introduced, he saw an answering spark in her eyes.

      “Stay away from that one,” Moe Dempster, a linebacker, had warned him the first day. “She’s poison.”

      But he hadn’t needed to be told. He’d been a rookie who needed to prove himself to his new owner, and she was that owner’s daughter. And young, besides. He’d known from the get go she was off-limits. She was brash, brassy, over the top, the continuing star of tabloids. She might as well have had trouble tattooed on her forehead. Anyway, her lifestyle was so foreign to the way he lived. He could never be with a woman who defied every rule of good behavior the way she did, even if he did have a sneaking suspicion it was all an act. It wasn’t the way he was raised, and it wasn’t the way he lived.

      In the intervening years, each time they’d run into each other, the air fairly shimmered around them with sexual electricity. He knew she’d be willing. The signals were very easy to read, but there was too much holding him back, such as his career and her reputation. She was such a contradiction, that girl. Woman. Not girl. Defensive, go to hell, fuck the world, yet whenever he was with her, he saw the vulnerability beneath the facade.

      If there was one woman he didn’t need to hook up with, she was that person. Yet here he was, on his way to clean up whatever her latest mess was. And then what?

      Yeah, then what, idiot?

      Thankfully, there wasn’t all that much traffic on the streets at this time of night. Still it took some time to get from the north end of San Antonio to a bar on the south side. Miraculously, he found a space across the street and jogged over to the Tequila Sunrise. The moment he opened the door, he knew there was trouble. Almost everyone in the place was crowded toward the little back hallway, and he heard men shouting at each other.

      “Damn it, Dewey.” A man with a nasal voice was speaking. “I said get the fuck away from there.”

      “Not until I get that bitch out of there.” And that, no doubt, was the cause of the trouble Tyler was in.

      “Excuse me.”

      Swallowing a sigh, Rafe pushed his way through the crowd. No one wanted to give up their spot watching the action, so it took a few elbow digs and a look that said, “Get the fuck out of my way.” But then he was in the short hallway. Two men filled up the space between the door to the ladies’ room and the wall, both of them large and beefy. One of them was still banging on the door, even as the other tried to pull him away.

      “Come on, Dewey. Don’t make me get my baseball bat out.”

      Rafe guessed it was the bartender speaking.

      “I’m not leaving till I get my hands on this bitch,” the other man shouted in a nasty, drunken voice.

      “Did you call the cops?” Rafe asked the bartender.

      The man’s face reddened. “I try to keep the cops out of things whenever possible.”

      “Even if someone is in danger?”

      “Aw.” The man scratched his head. “She wasn’t in any real danger. I could conk Dewey over the head and put us all out of our misery.”

      “Next time remember that,” Rafe warned. He turned to the man still banging on the door and shouting. “My turn now.”

      The bartender looked at the former defensive lineman for San Antonio, saw the expression on Rafe’s face, and backed away. Dewey wasn’t quite that smart. He ignored the fact that while he and Rafe were about the same size, Dewey’s flab would be no match for Rafe’s still-solid muscle. He took a step backward and put up his fists.

      Rafe sighed again. He really didn’t want to have to do this, but the asshole wasn’t leaving him any choice. He reached out and grabbed the man by the throat with his powerful fingers, pressing his thumb into the hollow and pushing him away from the door. When Dewey still tried to fight back, Rafe just coldcocked him, and the guy dropped to the floor in a big messy heap.

      “Thank you,” the bartender said. “Dewey just gets a little feisty sometimes when he’s had a drop too much to drink.”

      “Seems like you should have cut him off before he got too—what did you say?—feisty.”

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