The Thrill of It All (2 page)

Felicity awoke to find herself flat on her back, her head pounding and her mouth dry. Not ready to open her eyes, she licked her lips and tried accounting for her grogginess. The only time she’d felt like this was after her first freshman dorm party and too many Dixie cups of Mountain-Dew-and-lime-sherbet wine cooler. At the thought, her heart started thumping in time with her head, and she groped along either side of herself, eyes still tightly shut. It seemed wiser that way.

The morning after the wine cooler wingding, she’d found herself in her single bed, fully clothed, but not alone. The couple sharing the mattress had never bothered to introduce themselves, though they’d dressed hastily enough after her startled good-morning shriek.

But this time there weren’t any warm bodies beside her, nor any warm sheets, for that matter. Only sand. Cold sand?

Felicity let her eyelashes part. Dark night sky. A gazillion stars, like you only saw in the desert.

Desert.
Oh
.

She closed her eyes again as her head redoubled its Blue Man Group rhythm. She’d been in Vegas. Won
the Joanie. Called Aunt Vi. With the keys to a brand-new Thunderbird convertible in her hands, she’d taken it into her now-aching head to immediately climb into the thing and hie off for Half Palm.

Memory returned in a series of snapshots. Speeding through the night. The car suddenly losing traction. The steering wheel wrenched out of her hands. Then…then…Nothing.

Until the cold sand, the dark night, the gazillion stars.
Oh, God
. She was alone in the dark in the desert, just her and the sand and—Her eyes shot open and she instinctively jackknifed to a sitting position, jerking arms and legs close to her chest as a ripple of goosebumps moved over her skin—every freaky, creepy, crawly, hairy, scary, multilegged nocturnal critter that called the night its own.

A man’s voice sounded behind her. “You’re back.”

True to form, Felicity shrieked, her head whipping around. She stared at a pair of denim-covered kneecaps, then her gaze followed long legs upward as she took in the new throb at her temples, the new rasp in her throat, and—she blinked a couple of times just to be sure—the new man in her life.

“
You
.” Fear evaporated. “It’s you.”

The stranger’s shoulders twitched, as if she’d spooked him. “Me?”

That’s right, she thought, now confused. He
was
a stranger—someone she’d never seen before, and one of those dark, reckless-looking types she’d always been careful to shun. Yet…

Felicity put up a hand to hold her aching head, try
ing to make sense of this certain, deep-down recognition. “There’s something…I…” What there was, was no way to explain it, she realized, embarrassed heat washing over her face. “You said, ‘You’re back.’ I guess I, uh, thought you knew me.”

Lame, but it was the only excuse her hazy brain provided.

It seemed to satisfy him, though, because he lowered to a crouch beside her. “I meant you’re back with me. I’ve been waiting for you to open your eyes.”

“What—” She broke off as she took in the sight over his shoulder. “My car.” It was nose-to-nose with some sort of black, heavy metal vehicle that belonged at an Iron Maiden concert or in a Terminator movie. Worse, her once sleekly built automobile now had the profile of a pedigreed Pekingese. “
My new car
.”

“And my old one,” the man added dryly.

Felicity’s gaze moved back to his face, and her thoughts were derailed by another wave of that odd, undeniable familiarity. How
did
she know him? she wondered, attempting to sift through the muddle in her head. Had they met sometime before?

His face was lean, with high cheekbones and deep outdoorsy brackets around his mouth. A breeze stirred the ends of his tangle of black hair and she could swear she remembered them brushing against her cheek.

She shivered.

His already grim expression deepened. “You should lie back down.” He reached out as if to help her, but she scooted away to avoid him.

That was odd, too, because she could swear she al
ready knew his touch. Her mind might not be clear at the moment, but her mind’s eye was 20/20. In it she could see his fingertips stroking her skin. Even now the ghost of their rasping caress seemed to linger on the vulnerable underside of her chin. Another shiver skittered over her flesh.

His dark eyes missed nothing. “Lie down,” he commanded again.

“I’m okay.” Or she would be, when she solved the puzzle. She’d feel more like herself once she could explain how she could know him and yet
not
know him at the same time.

Trying to come up with an answer, she continued to study his face. With his hard-edged features and overlong hair, he looked too uncivilized for someone she might have dated. Absolutely nothing like the urbane, blond-and-blue-eyed Drew, who she’d set her sights on not long after their first meeting—persuaded by everything about him, from his single-minded dedication to the job to the European way in which he held his fork.

By contrast, this man looked like the kind who would bite the hand that fed him.

Shivering again, she huddled beneath the leather jacket hanging over her shoulders, pulling the zippered edges closer together. Stroking its sleek softness absently, it dawned on her that while she was still in her evening dress the jacket wasn’t hers. It must be his.

The thought pierced the fog in her head, and she finally noticed that his pale-colored dress shirt was
streaked with black grease and ripped at one shoulder. Her eyes widened. “My God, what happened to
you
? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” He looked down at the ruined shirt. “This happened after the accident.”

The accident. The fog cleared more and her gaze jumped to their cars, then back to him. “Oh, my God. I didn’t, did I? Tell me I didn’t hit you.”

“No can do, dollface,” he replied, shaking his head. “You hit me, all right, even though my car’s gotta be the only thing bigger than yours within a thirty-five-mile radius.”

Her jaw dropped. “But—but how could that be?” She didn’t remember it.

His teeth flashed in something that wasn’t a smile. “Karma. The way I figure it, you’re my very own spitwad of bad karma.”

Felicity barely paid attention to the words, because he shifted, the moonlight now illuminating the dark stubble on his chin. She remembered watching the short bristles brush against her cheek as his mouth found hers and—

No! She put her hand to her head again. The accident must have knocked her wiring loose. “Nothing’s making sense.”

He grunted. “Take a few more minutes—but do me a favor by taking them lying down.”

“
No
.” Recalling her earlier fear, she pulled her skirt closer against her bent legs and scanned the deceptively quiet sand around her. If she hadn’t felt too dizzy to stand, she’d be on her feet.

He raked back his hair in an impatient gesture. “Please. You hit your head, so you need to take it easy. I get that you’re a little confused or scared, but—”

“I’m
terrified
.”

He muttered a curse beneath his breath. “Listen, I’m not going to hurt you.”

No, no. She shook her head, too late realizing it set her brain to rattling around in her skull. It wasn’t
him
that had her mouth drying. Some people had a phobia of heights or closed spaces. Call her weak if you wanted to, but she had a thing about tarantulas crawling through her hair.

“It’s not—”

“Lissie—”

They both spoke at once, stopped.

She frowned. “What did you call me?”

“Lissie,” he replied. “When I was trying to get you to wake up, I asked your name. You mumbled, ‘Lissie.’ Isn’t that right?”

A mumbled “Felicity” would come out sounding like that, she guessed. “Lissie’s fine.”

Though her head still ached, her thinking was sharpening with each passing second. There was a thick folder of “fan” mail in her office at GetTV that attested to some people’s weird interest in TV personalities. No matter what her instincts said, if this guy didn’t recognize her as Felicity Charm, maybe that was all to the good.

“Lissie’s perfect.” She took a deep breath, the oxygen sweeping more of the fuzziness away. “And you are…?”

She wasn’t sure, but he may have hesitated.

“Michael,” he said. “I’m Michael.”

Felicity took in another deep breath, clearing away a few more cobwebs. Feeling much closer to normal, she held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Michael.”

This time she was certain he hesitated, but then his fingers reached out and his tough, callused palm met hers.

Goosebumps bolted toward her elbow. Her head went woozy again and she clung to his fingers, not wanting to let go.
Unable
to let go, as the strangest thought yet flowered in her brain: He was her lifeline.

Felicity tried blinking it away, but it didn’t budge. What was happening to her? More than anything in the world she wanted to move closer, into him. She wanted to put her head on his shoulder once more, bury her face in the skin of his neck, and smell his warm, citrus-and-leather scent again.

From scalp to toes, her skin prickled.
Again
?

“Michael?” she whispered, raising her gaze to his.

For the space of a heartbeat she thought he was as helpless against their connection as she, but then he pulled free of her and stood up. “What?” Looming over her with the moon behind him, his face was a dark, unreadable blob.

Felicity rose to her feet, too, now less concerned about dizziness than the tarantulas, the darkness, and most of all this unnerving, inexplicable link between herself and a total—not to mention dangerous-looking—stranger.

“I feel better. Fine, as a matter of fact.” Physically,
anyway, and she wanted to get away from him ASAP. “I’m ready to go now.”

His only response was to stare at her.

“Obviously my car isn’t drivable,” she went on, talking fast. “But yours appears indestructible. If you’d just take me someplace where I can make a phone call…”

He still wasn’t saying anything.

“Because there’s no cell coverage out here,” she explained further, his silence making her more nervous. “And I don’t think I can hope for another rescuer to come along until after daylight.” Surely he didn’t expect her to stay out here all night, all alone, with only the creepy crawlies for company?

He slowly shook his head. “I hate to break this to you, dollface, but neither of us—our cars anyway—are going anywhere.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” She was supposed to spend the rest of the night with the creepy crawlies and with
him
? The idea was unsettling enough to send her stumbling through the sand to the shoulder of the road where their vehicles had come to rest. He was right behind her, his collision report matter-of-fact.

“Looks like your two front tires blew, that’s why you lost control. Now, my Jeep
is
all right, but the problem is our bumpers are locked.” He lifted his foot and tried rocking them apart, but even Felicity could see it was useless.

She could also see just exactly how much damage had been done to her beautiful, brand-new Thunderbird. And just how lucky she was to be alive. Her
knees went soft as her gaze landed on the unlatched seat belt.

Oh, God. Oh, God. She’d almost been fly-splat on her very own windshield, just like her parents. They’d died on their way home to Half Palm from Las Vegas when she was four years old. “I was—I was thrown from the car?”

He shook his head. “I pulled you out. I needed to see how badly you were hurt.”

He’d pulled her out.

He’d pulled her out! The stomach-clenching realization of her close call eased a little. Finally, finally, things were beginning to make sense. No wonder she’d experienced that “instant” feeling of familiarity. No wonder she’d felt a spontaneous trust for a man who wasn’t remotely her type.

“Mystery solved.” She had to look up a ways to find his face. “That explains why I remember you.” And remembered his arms around her and her head against his chest. “It’s from when you pulled me out.”

One of Michael’s eyebrows lifted. “Yeah? Hard to believe you’d have any memory of it. When I got you out of the car, Lissie, you hadn’t just blacked out. You weren’t breathing.”

“Not breathing.” Her stomach clenched again, and she locked her knees to keep them from wobbling. “Then how did I…?”

“Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

“Mouth-to-mouth?” she repeated. Stupidly, but her excuse was that her brain was otherwise occupied. It was busy showing her images, like the replaying of a
tape. From somewhere above, she saw herself stretched out on the sand. Michael bent over her body. The back of his shirt was ripped, too, she could see that from her position overhead, and after every breath or two he’d beg God to make her breathe. To let her live. “Resuscitation?”

“Yeah. You know.” His voice was dry. “They call it the Kiss of Life.”

“Y
ou…”

Nothing else made it past the woman’s lips, though she continued to stare up at Magee as if he’d just claimed kinship with Conan the Barbarian. Though that wasn’t far off—not in comparison to her, anyway. Even strapped onto tiptoe by a pair of silly high-heeled shoes, the top of her feathery hair couldn’t quite clear his chin.

Damn, he thought, looking down into her wide eyes with a silent shake of his head. He supposed he should have found a prettier way to tell this bit of fancy-dressed fluff what had happened.

But on the other hand, maybe it was only fair. She’d already stunned the hell out of him, after all.

And then she did it again, by pointing a fingernail at the middle of his chest. “You saved my life.”

“I didn’t save anyone’s life!”

Magee shouldn’t have shouted it. But,
Jesus
. He’d only acted on instinct. When he’d pulled her from the car and laid her flat, her mouth had been slack and her
lips cold. Without thinking, he’d followed first-aid training and bent to blow two quick breaths into her.

Two hadn’t done it. And not another two. After each double-blow he’d stuck to procedure, searching for signs she was breathing on her own. But her chest hadn’t moved, no exhalations had brushed his cheek, and she’d stayed as silent as if she’d been buried beneath an avalanche of snow.

“I didn’t save anybody,” he muttered again.

“Yes, you did,” she insisted. “I wasn’t breathing, so then you gave me the Kiss—”

“For God’s sake, I didn’t kiss you, either! That’s just a figure of speech.” His mouth against hers had been for air exchange only. He didn’t know the number of times he’d blown into her lungs or the number of times he’d pleaded for her to breathe on her own. It could have been a handful, but it had seemed days—no, months, eighteen of them—before she’d taken her first shallow inhalation.

Of course, then he
had
kissed her, he thought. Kneeling beside her, guarding each of her independent breaths, he’d held her warming hand against his mouth.

It was the most candyass thing he’d ever done in his life.

It had shocked the hell out of him then and was humiliating to think about now.

As if she could read his mind—or worse yet, remember his pathetic actions—Lissie looked down at that small, soft hand of hers, then back up at him. “This is really weird.”

He grunted in reply, then closed the discussion—please—by turning his back on her to survey their tangled cars. It was time to get them on their separate ways.

“Any chance someone will come looking for you tonight?” he asked. A man could hope, even though he remembered her requesting a ride to a phone.

“N-no. It was sort of a…a spur-of-the moment d-decision.”

Oh, great, was that a quiver in her voice? He hoped to God she wasn’t going shocky on him. With her breathing restarted, he’d crossed his fingers that she’d suffer no further effects from the accident. But he’d seen plenty of tough ladies—not to mention granite-nerved guys—turn to stone, turn to tears, turn to everything in between, after a near-miss with death. And this lady appeared about as tough as the apple blossoms on the tree in his parents’ Yakima back yard.

“The drive was sort of spur-of-the-moment for me, too,” he murmured.

Meaning no one would be looking for him, either. He’d told everyone he was overnighting in L.A., but after his dinner meeting, after accepting the job that had been Simon’s, Magee had rushed off, ready to get on with the rest of what he had to do.

“Shit.” He kicked at the cars’ locked bumpers, acknowledging again he’d brought this on himself. At the turnoff toward home, he’d rationalized he’d changed his life enough for one day, and opted for a head-clearing trek farther into the desert.

“Michael…” Lissie said in a tentative voice.

Which had led him to her.

“Michael,” she repeated. This time when he didn’t respond, she touched his back.

“What the—!” Somehow her fingertips had found bare flesh and he jerked, grabbing for the hand whose one light touch pulsed hard and thick through his body like bass reverb through a stereo speaker.

“Th-there’s a tear in your shirt,” she said, all big eyes and quivery voice again. “I…I saw that.”

A statement of the obvious didn’t necessitate a response, he figured, not when he was busy dealing with his own adrenaline hangover. After all that practice facing down danger, you’d think he’d be an expert at managing the symptoms.

Heart thumping like a drum. Heat in the blood. So much that, though the temperature must be a measly forty freakin’ degrees, he hadn’t felt the cold since the instant he’d first laid a finger on her. Worst of all, and new to him, was paralysis. A complete inability to look away from her face. A complete unwillingness to let go of her hand.

Remembering how he’d kissed it before, he felt like a fool.

A candyass fool.

“Michael.” She swallowed, her gaze flickering down to her captured fingers and then back up to him. “I need to tell you. Something happened.”

“No duh, dollface.” Something had happened, all right. His first shot of fight-or-flight in over a year had torn through him, wreaking such sensory havoc that his hand was now sticking to hers with a kind of
glue he’d give his right nut for on a first attempt of a new wall.

Sticking him to her.

Binding him to her.

“Shit,” he muttered, panicking. He had to get loose. “I need some help here.”

Well, you should have said something before, mate
.
No worries!

And as if that figment of Simon’s voice were the signal, rain dumped down.

Magee’s hand released Lissie’s and they lurched apart. Looking upward got him nothing but an eyeful of torrential rainwater, but looking back at her didn’t explain anything more than they were both getting drenched. They stared at each other for another startled moment.

“Let’s go,” he finally shouted over the sound of drops pattering against the cars and puttering onto the sand.

“Wh-what?”

She looked pitiful, her hair flattened to her head and streams running down the leather of his jacket she was wearing, the water already soaking through the layered skirt of her long white dress. Her hand lifted to wipe a strand of hair off her cheek.

The fingers were trembling.

Damn, damn, damn. He’d bet the farm she was on the verge of losing it, tipped by the cold, the wet, or just one too many surprises. He grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her toward the rear of the Jeep. “C’mon,” he said.

She stumbled alongside him, her movements clumsy. “Where?”

He rolled his eyes. “Into my car.” Then he was fumbling with the back door latch, his fingers sliding on the wet metal.

“Oh, of course,” she replied, in an odd, teatime voice. “Thank you. Thank you so very much.”

He glanced over, and her wooden expression warned him again she was probably just a few fingernails away from a post-trauma tantrum.

“It’s kind of you to invite me in out of the rain.” She smiled, and it was eerily sweet with the raindrops running down her face. Then she kept yakking in that well-mannered fashion, as if the moment required the making of small talk. “Did you know that what’s inside a man’s car reveals what’s inside a man’s heart? I read that somewhere.”

He’d seen climbers stumble into crevasses while mumbling crazy stuff in that same half-dazed tone, so he wrenched open the door and in one quick movement picked her up and shoved her inside, then crawled in after her. Kneeing over her sopping skirt, he heard her continue the tea-party talk, punctuated by the distinct chatter of her teeth.

“Oh. Michael, inside your car is…nothing.”

Except for the two of them, he thought, shaking his head again. He’d wanted to get loose of her, and if he could he’d put her squarely in Tahiti and himself in Timbuktu, but it appeared now as if they were stuck with each other.

Felicity blinked, trying to acclimate herself to the new surroundings. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the desert dark, but it was gloomier inside the Iron Maiden machine. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, though. Metal floorboards, metal roof and sides, requisite windows. One seat. The driver’s seat, of molded plastic.

At least the open floor space gave Michael plenty of room to maneuver past her toward the dashboard. She didn’t have the energy to get out of his way, not when her head felt as if it had been stuffed like a pillow and her body was starting to shake. Wet leather squeaked as she wrapped one arm over the other.

Hugging herself tight didn’t help.

Oh, well
. She couldn’t work up a worry about it, especially when she felt more numb than cold. So her arms dropped, her hands splashing into the shallow puddles her sodden clothes had created. Idly, her gaze roamed the interior of the vehicle again. Found Michael.

He was cursing beneath his breath and jabbing his keys at the glove box.

Hmmm
. A concern niggled at the back of her fuzzy brain, and she remembered she’d been trying to tell him something before. She’d wanted to thank him for something. Something big. Something really big. But the rain had washed it from her mind.

Thinking back took effort, but after a moment she recalled the last thing she’d said to him. Uh-oh. Had
she offended him? That was very bad of her, especially when he’d been nothing but nice in an abrupt sort of way.

“M-M-Michael,” she called out, fighting her chattering teeth because it seemed imperative to sort this out. “I w-w-was w-w-wrong.”

He didn’t look up from his task. “Huh?”

“Ab-b-bout n-n-nothing inside your h-h-heart.”

He mumbled something that sounded like, “I hope like hell you are right.” Then the glove box door sprang open. “Ah-hah!”

He swung around to face her, smiling in triumph.

Oh, he had
such
a nice smile. It was white and reckless, deepening the brackets on either side of his mouth. She smiled back, she couldn’t help herself. It was the strangest thing, she thought, but that he was happy made her happy.

“It’s going to be okay now,” he said, moving toward her. “You’re going to be fine soon. Warm.”

She smiled again, delighted by his interest. “F-f-fine now. Warm. P-p-perfectly warm.”

He paused, his upbeat expression dying, then he scrambled forward again. “Dollface.” His voice was urgent. “Get your clothes off. You need to get your clothes off right now.”

She blinked some more. “W-w-whatsamatter?”

He didn’t explain. Instead, he started on her himself, wrenching the leather coat away and tossing it down. But then he stopped, his hands hovering over her goosefleshed bare shoulders.

“How does this damn thing come off?” When she
didn’t immediately respond, he grabbed her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “
We need to get your clothes off
.”

His new mood baffled her, but she reacted to the command in his tone and half-lifted her left arm. He went about unzipping the dress and then working it off. Since he didn’t seem to require any help, she let her mind wander.

He was mumbling again, “cold,” “emotional shock,” “hypothermia.” Maybe she
was
cold, because her skin was so numb she didn’t feel his hands on her. Amazing, because when he’d touched her before…

“M-Michael.” It was on the tip of her tongue, that big thing she needed to tell him about. “M-Michael—”

The rest of what she’d been going to say was lost as he threw a lightweight cloth over her. Within another minute she was wrapped like a rolled taco from her head to her toes and deposited on the other—dry—side of the vehicle.

“Better?” Michael asked. He didn’t wait for an answer, just held a flask to her lips. “Drink.”

She didn’t have any choice but that, even though the vile stuff burned her throat and a lot of whatever it was dribbled out the corners of her mouth.

“Take another.”

Sputtering a refusal didn’t work, and with her arms bound beneath the blanket, she could only turn her head aside. That got her nowhere, too. He forced another swallow of the stuff down her, and another, then he rocked back on his heels.

“W-what is th-that?” The numbness from before
was wearing off. There was a burning at the pit of her stomach and she was shivering so badly that her spine was banging on the metal he’d leaned her against. “P-poison?”

“No. It’s…” He glanced down at the flask in his hand, and then his brows drew together. “I…It’s not mine. I thought it was brandy.”

He lifted it to his nose and a hint of a smile quirked his mouth. “It’s tequila. Lousy tequila. The favorite of a friend. We must have mixed up our flasks.”

Then he eyed her again, leaning forward.

She tried shaking her head. “F-f-fine!”

But Michael fisted his hand in the back of her hair and poured another couple of sips down her. “Sorry, dollface, but you need the heat. Champagne might be what you’re used to, but this will do.”

At swallow six, Felicity’s shivering started to ease. But she was aware of the cold now and she could see it in every puff of breath they released. It occurred to her not only had Michael not taken his turn at the flask, but that he was still wearing wet clothes. “You,” she said, working to control her chattering. “B-blanket for you, too.”

He plopped down on the other side of the cargo area, resting his forearms on his knees. “There’s only the one.”

“I’m wound like a m-mummy,” she got out. “There’s enough for us both.”

He hesitated another moment, then his fingers moved to the buttons of his shirt. She leaned the back of her head against the car and closed her eyes. Rain
pattered down outside, a cozy sound. Despite the chill in the air, she was starting to warm nicely, she thought. As the heat in her stomach started to meander its way through her bloodstream, her still-fuzzy mind floated behind in its wake.

Her eyes stayed closed as some of her blanket wrapping was peeled back and Michael moved beneath it. When she felt metal against her lips, she took another obedient sip.

A layer of cloth away, a shoulder bumped against hers.

“Warmer?” His breath washed over her temple.