He looked so smug Saber wanted to slap his boyish good looks right off his face. “I’ve got some bad news for you, Larry. The sad truth is, I’d rather pull out my fingernails one by one than sleep with you.” She slipped out of the low-slung car. “Your breath stinks, Lar, and let’s just face it-you’re a creep.” She slammed the door with such force he winced visibly.
Fury swept through him. “This is a bad section of town, Saber. Drunken cowboys, drug dealers, deadbeats. Not a good idea to stay here.”
“Better company, I’m sure,” she taunted.
“Last chance, Saber.” His eye twitched angrily. “I’m doing you a favor here. Sex with a scrawny thing like you is no Fourth of July. Basically you’re a pity f**k.”
“So tempting, Lar, so very tempting. Did that get results from some scared teenager? Cuz it’s really not working with me.”
“You’re going to be sorry,” he snapped, furious that nothing he said seemed to get the reaction he wanted. She talked down to him like a princess to a peasant and made him feel like slime under her shoe.
“Don’t think it’s over, hotshot,” she warned, still hanging on to her smile. “This will make a great little story on my radio show. I’ll build an entire program around the theme: worst jerk you ever dated.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You’re not dealing with a sixteen-year-old, Larry,” she informed him coldly, too angry to laugh at the situation. He had no idea who-or what-he was dealing with. The idiot. He thought he could force her into sleeping with him by threatening to dump her in a bad part of town? She wondered if his plan had actually worked for him before. The idea made her fingers itch to get at him. She held on to her cool and stared him down.
Swearing furiously, Larry revved the motor and, laying a trail of rubber, screeched away, leaving her standing in the middle of an empty street.
Saber stamped her foot as she glared at the disappearing tail lights. “Darn it, Saber,” she muttered, kicking at the curb in frustration. “If you insist on going out with jerks, what do you expect?” She was tired of trying to be normal. Weary to death of pretending. She was never going to fit in, not in a million years.
Raking a hand through the mass of thick, blue-black curls spilling in unruly confusion around her face, she took a long, slow look around. Larry hadn’t been kidding-it was an appalling part of town.
Drawing a deep breath, she muttered, “Just wonderful. There are probably rats down here. Starving rats. This is not good, Saber, not good at all. You should have kicked the hell out of him and stolen his car.”
Sighing heavily, she headed down the cracked, dirty sidewalk toward the only streetlight, which illuminated a telephone booth. “It will be my luck the stupid thing is broken. If it is, Larry,” she vowed aloud, “you will definitely pay for your sins.”
Because, of course, she couldn’t have a cell phone like everyone else. She didn’t leave paper trails for anyone to follow. Next time, if there ever was a next time that she was stupid enough to go on a date, she would take her own car and she would do the dumping.
A forty-five-minute wait for a cab. Bravado would only carry so far. She was not going to wait forty-five minutes in the dark surrounded by rats. No way. How incompetent of the taxi service not to have planned their resources better.
In a fit of temper she slammed the phone in its cradle, giving only a fleeting thought to the dispatcher’s ear. Saber kicked the side of the booth and nearly broke her toes. Howling, jumping around like an idiot, she vowed eternal revenge on Larry.
She should have stayed in the car and faced him down instead of letting him drive off. He was a worm crawling his way across the earth, but he was no monster. She knew monsters intimately. They dogged her every step, and soon-far too soon if she didn’t leave-they would find her again. A slimebag like Larry was a prince in comparison. Larry certainly hadn’t recognized the monster in her. If he had touched her…She pushed the thought away and made herself think normal. She should have decked him though, just once, for all the other women who would be put in the same situation because he liked power. She was fairly certain most women would have had the desire to at least punch the bastard.
Saber sighed softly and shook her head. She was putting off the inevitable. She wasn’t walking home and she couldn’t very well stay where she was. She was going to pay royally for this, but what was one more lecture out of several hundred? Fighting for a deep controlling breath, she punched in the numbers, her fingertip unconsciously using a rather vicious stabbing motion on the blameless telephone.
Jess Calhoun lay sprawled out full length on the wide, leather, specially built futon, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Suffocating silence surrounded him, wrapped him up and pressed heavily down on him. The sound of the clock ticking was only in his mind. Endless seconds, minutes. An eternity. Where was she? What the hell was she doing out at two thirty in the morning? This was her night off. She wasn’t at the radio station working later than usual, he’d already checked. Surely she hadn’t been in an accident. Someone would have notified him. He’d called every hospital in the area, at least he could console himself with the knowledge that she wasn’t in any of them.
His fingers curled slowly into a fist, beat impotently once, twice, on the leather. She hadn’t told him she was going out. She hadn’t even called to say she would be late. One of these days he would be pushed too far by mysterious, elusive Saber Wynter, and he would just strangle her.
The first memory of her washed over him unbidden, reminding him it was his own folly that had landed him in such an uncomfortable position. He had opened the door ten months earlier to find on his doorstep the most beautiful child he had ever seen, worn suitcase in hand. No more than five foot two, she had raven-colored hair, so black that little blue lights gleamed through the riot of curls. Her face was small, fragile, with classic delicate bones and a faintly haughty nose. Soft flawless skin, full mouth, and enormous violet-blue eyes. She had an innocence about her that made him want-no, need-to protect her. She was shivering unbearably in the cold air.
She’d wordlessly handed him a piece of paper with his ad on it. She wanted the job at the radio station, vacated when his night crew had been killed in a car accident. The accident had left everyone shaken, and Jess had taken a long time before he thought about filling the position, but he’d recently advertised for someone.