In Bed With The Wild One: In Bed With The Wild One / In Bed With The Pirate. Colleen Collins

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СКАЧАТЬ to press her ear and her clean hair into the dirty duct, but she had to hear more.

      She caught Tyler’s acerbic tones, something about jumping bail and Fat Mike, and then demanding a list of who exactly knew Slab was back in San Francisco and who else had claims to the money.

      “Wow,” she murmured. This was simply riveting.

      Tyler’s voice grew louder and more intense. “Somebody looking for you busted into my room at my friend’s place,” he said angrily, “and tried to rough up an innocent bystander.”

      Emily knew who that referred to. Her. She winced, not feeling all that innocent.

      “I can’t help it—” Slab began, but then there were choking sounds, as if someone had grabbed the big guy and stopped him in midsentence.

      “You tell your friends to stay away from Emily, do you hear me?” Tyler ordered in a savage tone.

      Yikes. Tyler was defending her, and with physical violence. Emily didn’t know whether to be flattered or scared out of her wits.

      The female voice interjected, “I’m real sorry your little tootsie got in the way, Ty. But it’s got nada to do with me.”

      Little tootsie? Oh, God, she means me. And Tyler didn’t even correct her. What was a “tootsie,” anyway? Was that like a girlfriend, or more of a slut-type person?

      “Shanda, he told me he left the money with you. Do you think I’m the only one who’s going to come looking for you?” Tyler asked impatiently. “You’re involved whether you like it or not.”

      “He didn’t leave no money with me!” she insisted. There was a thwack, as if somebody had gotten slapped. “You big dope! Why’d you go around telling people you left your stash with me?”

      “I didn’t. I swear!” Slab protested. “Yeow! Stop it, Shan. Quit hittin’ me!”

      The two of them argued back and forth for several minutes, with more smacking noises and more cries of “ouch!” and “yeow!” in Slab’s distinctive whine. It sounded as if Tyler tried to intercede and pull them apart a few times, but Shanda kept up the assault.

      Sweet Shanda? Not so you could notice. For being the best time Slab had ever had, Shanda was one tough cookie.

      “I guess I didn’t need to fly to San Francisco to protect her,” Emily murmured. “Slab was going to take her apart with his bare hands, huh? Sounds like vice versa to me.”

      But their tiff was cut off by the sound of splintering wood, as if a door had been forced open, and heavy footsteps that boomed right over Emily’s head. Now another angry voice joined the fray.

      “Slabicki!” the new person growled. “I heard you was back in town.”

      From this set of noises, Emily could conclude that this was all happening one floor up, in whatever was on the third floor of The Flesh Pit over the bathroom. As she kept her ear pressed to the register, she heard Slab and the third man trade insults, plus another set of feet stomp around.

      How many people were up there?

      As if he were right next to her ear, Tyler muttered, “Damn it all to hell. This is just what I need. More mopes. The damn place is crawling with mopes.”

      “Who you calling a mope?” the third man demanded. “Who are you, anyway?”

      “I’m nobody,” Tyler retorted. “I’m not even here.”

      “Yeah, well, you’re in my business now!”

      And then he pounded across the floor, and there was the sickening sound of a fist meeting a face.

      Tyler’s face? She gasped, almost pitching right off her perch on the sink. Not Tyler’s face!

      She knew what she had to do, and she leaped off the sink so fast she skidded into the first stall. It didn’t matter. Her mind honed in on one thought and one thought only.

      Save Tyler.

      Chapter 5

      EMILY RACED out of the rest room and up the stairs before she had a chance to think better of it. A bizarre cocktail of bravado and excitement flowed through her veins, catapulting her up those stairs, and all she could think of was that Emily Chaplin was ready to kick some butt, baby. As she got closer, the sounds of shouting and thrashing got louder, but she wasn’t frightened. The idea that there might be danger at the top of the stairs only spurred her on.

      When she got there, she knew she was in the right place. The door had been smashed completely off its hinges, leaving a gaping hole opening into a lavishly decorated apartment. Not her taste—very purple, pretty darn tacky—but hey, it was plush. Since there were full-size posters of Shanda Leer, exotic artiste, mounted on every possible surface, it was easy to guess who lived there.

      Although Emily slowed down and proceeded cautiously as she approached the door, no one glanced her way. They were too busy.

      Near the doorway, Slab and some guy were rolling around on the floor, grunting and socking at each other. Clutching a skimpy robe around her inflated curves, wearing a pair of spike heels and not much else, Shanda was sort of squealing and trying not to trip over the two of them.

      “Stop it! Stop it!” she cried. “You’re gonna wreck my place. You stop it right this minute!”

      At the moment, the other guy was getting the best of Slab, pummeling his head into the carpet and creating a minor earthquake. With a shriek of distress, Shanda secured a rickety end table loaded with framed photos and glass knickknacks, all of them shaking with the force of Slab’s head hitting the floor.

      Shanda and her knickknacks could fend for themselves—Emily had a more important mission. Steering past the wrestling match on the floor, she went straight for Tyler on the other side of the living room. He was holding up a chair like a lion tamer. Except the lion in this case was a short, stocky man with a twisted face. Tyler’s attacker wore a black pin-striped suit right out of a gangster movie, and he sliced a wicked-looking knife through the air in front of him, making a vicious snick-snick sound.

      Knife? Her heart was in her throat as she scanned Tyler from stem to stern, looking for wounds. But all she saw was a thin slash in one sleeve of his leather jacket and a slightly puffy area on his lower lip where he’d presumably been punched. She sighed with relief. All in one piece. No major damage. She’d arrived in time.

      “Put down the damn chair and fight like a man!” Mr. Pinstripes bellowed.

      Since Tyler had a definite height advantage, Emily would have put her money on him in a fair fight, but the presence of the knife changed the odds somewhat. She wasn’t taking any chances.

      Weapon, weapon! She didn’t have a weapon, she reminded herself, then decided she’d figure something out on the way.

      Hugging the wall, she snagged one of her new shoes out of the bag and held it in front of her. The men were too intent on macho posturing to notice one small woman brandishing a shoe, so it wasn’t hard at all to sneak up behind the pin-striped creep, rap the back of his nasty little head hard with the wooden base of her sandal, СКАЧАТЬ