Fierce Wanderer by Liza Street Page A

so be it.
    She’d taken five steps up the hillside when the sound of an engine reached her ears. She skidded back down the few steps she’d taken. Her escape wouldn’t work if witnesses could remember seeing a dark-haired woman with a duffel bag, hiking up a hill from her car. Tobin would find her in no time at all. She scrambled to a stop about ten feet from the Mustang, just in time to see the white pickup coming from the opposite direction. He’d turned around and come back. The truck slowed to a stop on the other side of the road.
    This is it, she thought. The end.
    A lanky, lean-muscled man got out of the truck. His light brown hair had golden highlights and swept down over his forehead, and his Star Wars t-shirt was tight enough to reveal a broad chest chock-full of muscles. His eyes were just as noteworthy. Even from across the road she could see they were the kind of brown a girl could get lost in.
    Well, she thought, if this is the end, it doesn’t look so bad at all.

Chapter Two
    The woman was crazy. She was turned to the side, as if not sure whether to run toward her car or away from it. Blake could smell the fear on her, all the way across the road, and other than how she drove her car to death, there was nothing to be afraid of.
    Unless she was afraid of him ?
    He stopped short before crossing the highway.
    True, he was intimidating. Back in high school, punks used to pick fights with him just to prove something. They always lost. Then, when he got older, the same thing would happen in bars. He stopped going to bars. Unfortunate, because in this rural area, a bar was the best place to find women.
    But here was a woman right in front of him. Packaged like a gift, even, in a bright blue top and slim-cut jeans. Her curves looked touchable, and her ass looked like it would fit just right in the palms of his hands. He clenched his fists. Get yourself under control.
    “Car trouble?” he asked.
    “Everything’s fine,” she said. “I can handle it.”
    “Like hell you can,” he muttered under his breath. In a handful of loping strides he was across the road. He opened the driver’s side door, reached in, and popped open the hood.
    The woman stopped cowering and moved next to him, hands on her hips. She must not have thought he was dangerous anymore.
    “Do you often start poking around under a girl’s hood without invitation, or is this a special occasion?”
    He looked up from the engine. He could feel his brows pull together in confusion. “You’re stuck here. You need a—”
    “A new radiator hose. I know.”
    He nodded, trying to keep his eyes on her light blue ones, and away from the deep line formed by her cleavage as she leaned next to him. “So you know cars.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Yeah.”
    “So what the hell are you doing driving this one in the mountains, alone? The radiator’s easy enough to maintain, you just gotta pay attention to it.” Like a relationship, he thought wryly. Something his brother Jude would be quick to point out.
    “Excuse me?”
    He had to hold back a smile. If she’d been a mountain lion, her fur would’ve been standing on end. He could imagine it, how she’d snarl and make herself look bigger.
    “I was following you so close because I could smell that your engine was overheating. I knew something was wrong.”
    “You could smell something wrong with my car?”
    An RV was approaching, chugging up the hill, too big for its lane. Blake didn’t think, he just grabbed the woman and dragged her away from the side of the road. She smelled so good, he stopped watching where he was going so he could look at her eyes. They were a faint blue, with flecks of gray.
    He lost his balance, and they tumbled into the pine needles.
    “Ow!” Her voice sounded more annoyed than hurt.
    “Sorry!” he said over the sound of the RV.
    The RV rumbled by. The woman was rigid in his arms, with fright or anger, he didn’t know, and he didn’t care. She felt good there, her