To her surprise, he bent his head and pressed a quick, hard kiss against her mouth.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “For trusting me.”
He was going to have to stop doing that, Tara mused as Blake moved away. For some strange reason, her mind simply stopped functioning when his lips touched hers.
Blake picked up the phone and punched in a number. Tara watched and listened as he identified himself to someone on the other end.
“It’s Blake,” he said without bothering to add a surname. “I need you to do something for me.”
Whoever it was he was talking to apparently agreed without hesitation.
As Blake continued giving instructions, Tara found herself wondering if anyone ever denied this man anything.
The fact that she was here in this room with him, involved in something that made no sense at all to her, was proof that he was extremely persuasive. She was going to have to be on her guard to make sure that he didn’t talk her into a great deal more than she could handle.
3
TARA WAITED until Blake hung up the phone before asking, “What are we going to do now?”
He smiled at her, obviously trying to reassure her. “We can wait here for a while longer. We should be...”
His smile faded. He turned his head suddenly toward the window, like an animal that had just caught a faint whiff of danger.
“What is it?” she asked, her own instincts going on alert.
It seemed that she, too, was beginning to trust in Blake’s “feelings.”
He moved swiftly across the room and shifted the curtain just enough to allow him to glance out into the parking lot.
“We have to go,” he said, dropping the curtain back into place. “Now.”
Tara’s heart tripped as Blake took her hand in an urgent grip. “What did you see out there?”
“The same c
ar that was following us earlier. It just cruised past my car. We’re about to have company we don’t want.” Blake was moving toward the bathroom as he talked, pulling her after him.
“How did they know to come here?” she whispered, as if their pursuers could hear through the walls.
“I don’t—oh, hell.”
She eyed him warily. “What?”
“You have caller LD. at your apartment.”
It wasn’t a question, but she nodded, anyway. “Yes.”
He hissed a curse through his teeth, apparently directed at himself. And then he pulled at her hand again. “Come on. We’re going out the window.”
“How are we going to get to your car?” she asked.
Blake already had the window open in the old-fashioned bathroom. He’d left the light off and Tara could see that there was nothing behind the little cabin but an empty lot filled with thigh-high weeds, scraggly bushes and a few trees. Beyond that was what appeared to be a rundown used-car lot, now closed for the night.
Without pausing to answer her question, Blake turned to boost Tara out the window. She hiked the slim-fitting skirt of her black dinner suit high up on her thighs, telling herself this was no time to worry about modesty. She doubted that Blake was interested in gawking at her legs when they had much more serious matters to concern them.
Blake slipped through the opening with far more dexterity than Tara. The minute his feet touched the ground, he was on the move again, headed for the empty lot. Tara clutched his hand and stayed very close to his side, half expecting to hear a shout or a gunshot from the cabin behind them.
The weeds and bushes tore at her hose, and she stumbled across the uneven ground in her heeled pumps. Blake steadied her, murmuring something encouraging. He seemed to be headed toward the car lot. She followed him mutely, trusting him to know what he was doing.