“Which is?” she breathed out.
“To nod and take you home, telling you to let me know if you want my help.” His head cocked, just a millimeter, to the side. Tension rolled from him, taking over the atmosphere with the sense of maleness.
She swallowed, and a heated tornado of air, one borne of instinct, whirled through her chest. “Exactly.”
“But I’m not going to do that.” Determination hardened his already implacable face.
She reared back. “You’re not.”
“No.” One of his muscled shoulders lifted. His angled jaw tightened. “The right thing be damned.”
She started to shake her head and stopped when he took a step toward her. The breath whooshed out of her lungs.
“You showed me you, Zara. Whether you meant to or not.” Another step, and the heat from his body washed over her. “When you cooked me meals and cried on my shoulder. You’re sweet and you’re kind…and I’m neither of those things. I’ll protect you now whether you like it or not.”
The anxiety slid right into temper. “The hell you will.”
“Think you can stop me?” he asked softly.
Her head jerked. His behavior was unacceptable and totally not the norm for a modern man…and U.S. law. The more emotional she became, the calmer he became, which provided a warning…one she couldn’t quite decipher but instinctively knew to heed. Yet damn if it didn’t intrigue her as well. “You can’t just do whatever you want.”
“I gave up on doing the right thing years ago, baby. It’s too late, and even if it weren’t, I don’t give a shit.”
There was the part of Ryker she’d always sensed beneath the surface: an immovable rock of sheer stubbornness, of something not quite tame. And his earlier question had been a good one. Could she stop him? “You’re forgetting a couple of things here.” To her shock, her voice remained steady.
“Which are?” The street showed in his eyes, was stamped hard on his face.
“One, I’m not in any danger. The car was old. Two, I could stop you.” Her voice rose, and she tried to tamp it down, to meet him on even terms. But she knew he had an edge she’d never seen and didn’t have.
He smiled then. “We’ll see about the brakes, but that bruise on your face? Yeah, that’s danger. Two, how are you going to stop me?”
How indeed? Her mind spun for answers. “This is kidnapping. If you follow me, that’s stalking and harassment. Don’t think for a second I won’t turn your ass in.” Yeah. She’d use the law.
“You even think of turning my ass in and I’ll turn yours a bright red.”
She gasped. Oh, she’d been bluffing, but something told her he wasn’t. Heat flared through her chest. “I’m not liking you very much right now,” she hissed, feeling both trapped and traitorously interested in this new side of him.
“I can live with that,” he said evenly.
She opened her mouth to let him have it when a hard knock sounded on the door.
Ryker strode past her, brushing her with heat. “What?”
“Have the car up on the lift,” said a deep, very deep, voice.
Ryker opened the door and moved aside. “Zara, this is Denver.”
Zara walked toward a man every bit as big as Ryker. This one had black hair and deep blue eyes, flecked with gold, that revealed absolutely nothing. A scar along his jaw gave him the look of a battle-worn soldier. He wore a ripped T-shirt and frayed jeans. Man, she wished she wasn’t half covered in mud at the moment. She held out her hand. “Hello.”
He finished wiping his hands on an oil-covered rag and then gently took hers. “Hi.”
She nodded, noting a scar across his palm. One just like Ryker’s.
Denver released her and shoved the rag into his back pocket. “Bad brake lines.”
“How bad?” Ryker prodded.
“Worn and leaking.” Denver glanced at her. “Really worn.”
Well, geez. It wasn’t like she’d had time or money to hit a mechanic’s. “I’d noticed the brakes were getting tougher to use, and I thought to get the car into the shop next week.” Relief, the full and blooming kind, whipped through her. She’d almost subscribed to Ryker’s goofy notion that somebody had tried to harm her.
Ryker’s expression didn’t change. “Any chance somebody did it deliberately?”
Denver shrugged.
Ryker kept still. “If I wanted to sabotage somebody, and their brake lines were that bad, then it’d be easy to use a wire sponge and finish the job. Hell, even sandpaper might’ve worked with worn brakes.”
She shook her head. “Nobody wants me dead.”
Ryker ran a knuckle across the barely there bruise on her face. “Uh-huh.”
Her knees wobbled. One little touch, and he sent her body into overdrive. She should panic, but instead, she wanted to crawl up onto him and plaster herself to his hard body. Man, she needed a vacation.
Denver cleared his throat. “I doubt it.”