Knight in Blue Jeans by Evelyn Vaughn

chocolate-colored hair that all but hid her expression. Still, Smith could read body language.
    He could read her fear.
    “Hiya, Vox,” he said, saving the cursing of himself for his assumptions about Vox07’s gender and age for later.
    Still seated at her table, Arden parted her perfect lips in surprise.
    Vox ran.
    Just like that, before Smith could toss out a single quip, the teenager darted across the patio and vaulted the iron fencing that encircled it, despite the short, flowy skirt she wore—or the cowboy boots. She raced toward the light-rail stop. Smith took off after her, swinging over the fence with somewhat less agility than Little Deer-Girl, but damn, she was fast.
    She probably would have shot across the tracks and lost herself in the El Centro crowd if it hadn’t been for the Comitatus. One minute, the girl was in full flight. The next, she’d stumbled to a stop—face-to-face with Prescott Lowell, who’d appeared from behind the handicap-access ramp beside the tracks.
    Now Smith really cursed himself. Obviously, despite whatever knowledge she claimed to have about the Comitatus, Vox07 wasn’t part of a secret society of all-powerful males. Somehow, he and Arden must have led the Comitatus here.
    Lowell wore a suit—Hugo Boss. In August. Even without brandishing a knife, he might as well have worn a pin reading Hi, I’m Prescott. Ask Me About My Secret Society.
    Vox07 took one look at him and whirled around to backtrack.
    Then she saw Smith—and froze.
    “It’s all right, honey!” Arden’s voice surprised Smith, not the least because she swept past him in a pink blur, heading toward the girl. She must have run, too. How could Arden look so good after running in this heat? “You can trust us. Come—”
    But a whistle, overloud and startling in its nearness, drowned out her voice.
    Seeing what was about to happen, Smith lunged forward.
    The girl, as if in shock, took one step backward—more firmly onto the light-rail tracks that bisected the brick street, just as the northbound train bore down on her.
    Arden surged forward, blind to the risk to herself—and Smith, seeing everything unfold too fast to stop it, too fast to get there, did the only thing he could. He ran. He couldn’t reach the teenager. God help him, he couldn’t. But he might reach Arden before she ended up on the tracks, as well.
    Brakes shrieked. Someone yelled. The train’s whistle howled into one long, panicked scream.
    Smith reached—and caught Arden. He dragged her forcefully into his arms, spinning to put himself between her and the blur of white and yellow that barreled by them where the teenaged girl had been standing.
    The girl they’d chased onto the tracks.
    He muffled Arden’s cry against his chest, muffled his own silent scream somewhere far deeper, far more dangerous.
    The breeze off the train blew his hair. He could feel its heat, far worse than that of August, push against his back. With his head ducked, he could see a white stripe under his old shoes and Arden’s strappy sandals, her neatly painted toes.
    The safety line of demarcation separating the public from the train.
    Smith closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling the magnolia scent of Arden’s thick black hair, selfishly glad for her safety even as the train’s horn fell silent and the crowd’s shouts took over.
    He held on to her. She clutched him. And God help him, he was glad that she’d survived, no matter what had happened to the teenaged informant he and the Comitatus may have just helped kill. Maybe his so-called noble bloodline was corrupt down to the cells, at that.
    So much for being a hero.

Chapter 8
    A rden, tucked forcibly into Smith’s chest, could barely breathe. She’d never felt so terrible. Not when she’d seen such horrific poverty, on a good-will tour as a pageant finalist, that she’d had to save little girls and thus discovered her mission in life. Not when Smith, whom she’d thought she loved, dumped her with no