High Octane (Texas Hotzone 2)

His hands slid to her face. “No one knows but you and me.” His voice lowered slightly, took on a promise. “And they never will.” He released her and sidestepped to grab the door and glanced back. “You still owe me a date.”

And then to her utter disbelief, he left. Ryan had just given her an orgasm in the stairwell of her building and left. Wait! This couldn’t happen. She couldn’t leave things like this. She couldn’t. Had she just used him? Or had he used her?

Seemed Ryan had a way of making her act without thinking, because she charged forward and after him. She needed something more than…well, an orgasm. Which was ironic because with most of the guys in her life, she’d have killed for just that.

Sabrina yanked the door open just in time to see the lobby door shut. She pursued, her heart racing as fast as her feet could take her. She exited to the warm Texas night right as the car pulled away.

***

SABRINA SIGHED AND RESTED her elbow on the coffee table. She sat on the floor in front of the couch, her Austin City skyline view streaked with yellows and reds as the sun sprayed the sky with morning flavor.

Sunday morning had arrived far too slowly considering sleep had been nowhere to be found. By 6:00 a.m. Sabrina had been up and making a pot of coffee. And now, at seven, she was fully dressed in her favorite faded jeans and a cool Harley Davidson shirt she’d picked up a few blocks away. Totally inappropriate for her father’s daughter, whom her mother had insisted be prim and proper at every public outing. But that only made her love the shirt more.

She had secret fantasies about riding a Harley and about riding a man who rode a Harley. A man like Ryan, she thought. She laughed to herself, thinking how appalled her mother would be. She loved her mother, but sometimes Sabrina thought her mother would benefit from a Harley fantasy or two of her own. When was the last time she’d seen her mother smile—really smile—not plaster on a camera-ready mockery of one?

Sipping from her mug, Sabrina savored the caffeine, and then punched a key or two on her notebook computer, trying to bring into focus an idea she had brewing for a six-part feature on race-car driving, highlighting everything from drivers to mechanics. But all she saw was Ryan. Ryan, who’d undressed her in the stairwell. Ryan, who’d left her in that stairwell. Ryan, who’d lured her to an indiscretion, yet had still somehow, in the end, given her discretion.

“Stop it, Sabrina,” she murmured. Stop thinking about Ryan. Frustrated with herself, Sabrina splayed fingers into her freshly washed hair and then she did exactly what she’d told herself not to do. Thought of Ryan. Of his claim that she still owed him a date. Right. Of course. He probably thought she was all kinds of easy. Why wouldn’t he want to go out with her? She’d be a fast track to bedroom bliss. Or…maybe he wouldn’t call at all. Maybe he would lose interest, considering how easy she’d been. Then she could worry for the rest of her life that Ryan would suddenly be one of those people who came out of the woodwork and told the world she was a hussy right when her father needed her to be an angel. For that kind of worry, she should at least have held out for the whole package—naked man and a long, hot night. But no. She’d settled for a stairwell. She deserved what she was feeling.

She groaned and forced herself to focus on her computer. But instead of looking up Marco and working on the interview that needed to be perfect to stake her claim on a new writing genre, she searched the press-conference topic—the soldier turned-bank-robber-and-drug-dealer. She opened her email and found the name of the contact in the mayor’s office that Frank had given her, and made the call.

Thirty minutes later, she hung up, with not much more info than what she already had. A secretary in the Mayor’s office had been working late, and swore she saw the wife of the dead soldier there. Nothing more than what Frank had told her, and not enough to say the meeting took place. The secretary could be mistaken, or looking for her fifteen minutes of fame. Sabrina knew the wife was MIA, number disconnected, house vacant, no forwarding address, since she’d suggested Frank send a reporter to her house. She emailed Frank to see if he’d had any luck locating the wife. She was sure she’d regret it because he would see this as her admission that she wanted this story. And she didn’t, not really. Maybe, but someone else could take the credit, then, at least, she’d know the story that needed to be told was told. If even there was a story, she reminded herself.