The girl was cute, no question. The slanting chocolate eyes, thick red-gold curls, her wide kissable mouth and pale freckled skin made a unique package—but cute was hardly his type. And then there was the biggest turn-off of all. He was involved with her in a professional capacity. She was definitely a witness, possibly even a perp. And he never crossed that line. Ever.
The heat subsided as he watched her gulp down the last of the burger as if her life depended on it. Exactly how old was she? With that petal-soft skin it was hard to tell, but she could be a teenager.
He forced his gaze from her lips as he lifted the bag of fries off the dash, and passed them to her. ‘How long’s it been since you had a decent meal?’
She stiffened. ‘Not long,’ she said grudgingly but took the bag.
Yeah, right.
She popped the fries into her mouth, but continued to watch him, as if she expected him to snatch them back at any moment.
He suppressed the dart of compassion.
Grab a dose of reality, Montoya.
She’s no damsel in distress—she’s a resourceful little operator with her own agenda. Getting a job at Demarest’s motel had been a neat trick. And how the hell had she tracked the guy from Scotland, when they’d had trouble tracking him across California? Until he had the full story of how she fitted into the picture with Demarest, he didn’t plan to trust her an inch.
But that didn’t solve his immediate problem. What to do with her tonight? He hadn’t planned much past getting her away from Demarest’s motel.
He couldn’t take her back to Morro, and booking her into another motel wasn’t an option either, because she’d skip.
Of course he could dump her on the cops. But while handing her over would ‘contain’ the problem, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
‘So how did you find out Demarest had a room at the Morro, Iona?’ he asked, deciding it was about time he started interrogating her properly—and stopped fixating on those damn lips.
She stopped shovelling fries into her mouth. ‘How do you know my name?’ she said in that lilting Celtic brogue.
‘The motel clerk was real talkative when I told him about your crime spree with his key.’
Her rich chocolate eyes went squinty with temper. ‘You told him? How could you? I’ll lose my job.’
‘You’re not going back there anyway,’ he said, dismissing the prickle of guilt. He wasn’t the one who’d decided to indulge in some after hours B and E. ‘I don’t want you alerting Demarest to our presence.’
‘I’m not going to alert him. Why would I?’ She sounded aggrieved. ‘How am I going to pay my bill now? They probably won’t even give me the wages they owe me.’
‘I settled your bill.’ He’d also paid the clerk to keep her valuables in the motel safe. If Demarest showed up tonight, he might not need the bargaining chip Iona’s ID documents represented, but he had a feeling it wasn’t gonna be that simple. Because nothing about this damn case had been simple so far.
And the biggest complication of all was sitting right in front of him.
A complication made a whole lot worse by his perverse reaction to her.
He’d never before got a kick out of manhandling a woman—even on the force he’d earned the nickname Lancelot, because of his preference for using persuasion and persistence when interrogating female suspects,
instead of threats and intimidation.
But there was no getting away from the fact that when he’d caught her in Demarest’s room tonight—he’d noticed the generous breasts propped on his forearm and the fresh, subtle fragrance of her hair. And while he might have been able to ignore that momentary loss of control—because it had been six months since he’d had a woman, any woman in his arms—that excuse was nowhere near good enough to explain why he’d come close to getting a hard-on just watching her eat.
‘But you can kiss your paycheck goodbye,’ he said, making sure the chill stayed in his voice.
Her big brown eyes widened, making him feel as if he’d just kicked Bambi.
‘Now stop arguing with me or I’ll kick you out of the car and leave you in the middle of nowhere.’
It was an empty threat, he wouldn’t do that to any woman, especially not one who had no money, no ID, who’d just devoured a burger as if she hadn’t eaten in days and who had eyes like Bambi.
But instead of being cowed, she stuck her chin out. ‘Fine, dump me here if you want. I’ve no got a problem with that.’
Damn, she was actually serious.