Page 46 of The Belle and the Biker

"You and I have already had sex. In case you'd forgotten."

"Oh, did we? Sorry, it must have slipped my mind. It wasn't that memorable." He winces when I say that. Good. "And that only happened because I was drunk. Now, get out of my bed. You are not allowed to be here."

"Based on what?"

He's sitting up, and I try not to stare at his broad chest and carved, six-pack abs. It's impossible. "Based on the rules of etiquette."

He shrugs. "You've made it clear that I wouldn't recognize good manners if they walked up and introduced themselves to me."

"I never said anything like that!"

He slides under the blanket and turns his back to me.

"Get out!" I yell.

"If you're going to keep talking, I'll turn on some music to fall asleep by."

I try to drag the blanket off him. He holds on to it with a death grip.

We are not going to survive this trip. Well, Crash isn't if I have anything to do with it. I'd be better off facing down the assassin. "I'm telling my aunt that you're mistreating me!"

"I agreed to keep you alive and in one piece. Didn't say anything about acting all fancy and high-falutin'."

"I'll take the floor, then."

I wait for him to protest. There's dead silence.

"Why don't you just go sleep with your girlfriend?" I demand.

Laughter rumbles through the warm night air. "I have a girlfriend? That's exciting news. Does she have a name?"

I jab his back with my elbow and smile when he grunts in pain. "I don't know, but you're wearing her dime-store perfume right now."

He doesn't bother to answer, which is just as good as admitting it. He's lucky there are no sharp objects nearby because you can only push a Southern girl so far.

I take my pillow and settle down on the linoleum floor. I'm stubborn enough that I last about two hours before I finally climb back into bed with him, praying that he's asleep.

But tonight isn't my night.

"Floor wasn't to your liking, princess?"

I ignore him and lie as far away from him as possible without falling off the bed.

I toss and turn all night before finally drifting off to sleep at dawn. The minute I'm in dreamland, Crash appears. The good Crash is the one who's charming and seductive and doesn't let other women rub their perfume off all over him.

"Hey, handsome," I say to him. "Give me some sugar."

CHAPTER15

Crash

At 9 a.m.,I'm standing outside the trailer and talking to Axl on my burner phone. It's unseasonably warm and sultry in Tranquil Bay. The atmosphere in the trailer is considerably chillier, and I don't mean the room temperature. When I asked Savannah if she wanted a cup of coffee, she stuck her hand out from under the blanket, gave me a one-finger salute, and told me to crash and burn. Then she pulled her pillow over her head.

"We haven't found out anything more," Axl says. "I've talked to our cop sources, and the detectives are at a dead end. They don't think the shooter targeted the hipster dude. He was brand-new in town, only moved to New York a few weeks before. He didn't have time to make enemies here, and he didn't have any known enemies in New Mexico. He worked for a web design company. He was described as mildly annoying, but nobody hated him."

I pace the ground, kicking an empty beer can. "Hell. That puts us back to square one. The guy who shot at us yesterday was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood and sunglasses and had a big mustache, which could have been fake. I couldn't tell you what age, height, or race he was. Or she, for that matter. It could have been a woman wearing a fake mustache. The President of the local Skeleton Crew chapter sent out his men looking for the car yesterday. They drove all up and down the highway and checked side roads. Nothing. He's vanished. I checked the local news last night and this morning, and there was a report about the incident on the highway, but no idea who the guy is. And how the hell did he know where we were going in the first place?"

"Excellent question. He's good."

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