MAD DOG AND ANNIE by Virginia Kantra

Author:Virginia Kantra [Kantra, Virginia]
Language: fra
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 10

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A tree jumped into the headlights and away as the car lurched toward the curb and then straightened.

Maddox gripped the wheel. "Jeez, Annie." It wasn't only the car that was out of control. His pulse was racing. His body surged. "Where the hell did that come from?"

From the corner of his eye, he saw her wince. "I'm sorry," she said stiffly. "I thought I was responding to your comment."

Damn. She was apologizing again. He might know squat about women, but he knew Annie well enough to realize that was bad.

"No, no. That's great. Take off anything you want. Just—" He was sweating. His hands were clammy on the wheel. "Look, would you mind if we stopped somewhere first? Before I run us both off the road?"

"Stopped somewhere? You mean, like for coffee?"

"No. Someplace private."

In the dim glow of the dashboard, her knuckles were white. "Not a motel."

"No." Something inside him twisted at her obvious distress. Besides, he wouldn't last five minutes with her in a motel. "Somewhere we can talk."

"You want to talk." Her voice was expressionless.

"First. Yeah." This was not going well, he acknowledged. Maybe on her turf, she'd be more comfortable? "How about your place?"

"No. My baby-sitter … and then Mitchell will still be up." His fingers drummed the steering wheel. "We're grownups, for crying out loud. It shouldn't be this hard to find a place to be alone."

Ann's faint smile filtered through the dark like starlight. "It's because we're grown-ups that it's so difficult."

"So, what did we do when we were kids?"

But the answer already throbbed in the air between them, as impossible to ignore as another couple on a double date. Teenagers in Cutler parked on the river road.

I don't get lucky in the back seats of cars, she'd told him. I get pregnant.

Maddox cracked the window and flicked out his unlit cigarette. Birth control or no birth control, he wasn't going to be another bum who hurt her. "Never mind," he said. "Bad idea."

To his surprise, she didn't immediately agree with him. "You said we needed privacy."

"To talk, I said."

"We can talk. I need to thank you, anyway. What you did, keeping Rob away from Val … I'm very grateful."

Her soft, precise voice cut under his skin. Her shoulders gleamed in the dim interior of the car. She was killing him. "How grateful?" he asked grimly.

"What do you mean?"

Trees arched over the road, screening the sky. The moon played prisoner behind their branches. Without him ever making a conscious choice, he'd already taken the turnoff for the river. But the cop in him persisted in questioning her. If Ann was offering herself to him out of some misplaced sense of obligation, she deserved better. And he deserved to know.

"This little road trip down memory lane… Is this how you say thank you? Because I don't want some sacrificial virgin."

She came back at him with the fragile humor that was part of her new toughness and part of her old appeal. "You said it yourself.

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