“Like hell.” The only feelings he allowed himself to have for women were sexual. He would never give a woman the power to tap the deeply buried root of his temper.
“Whatever you say, but I swear if you don’t clean up your mouth while you’re staying in Josie’s house, I’m going to sic my mama on you. You’ll straighten up, or she’ll have your guts for garters.”
“She raised you and let you live. She can’t be all that bad.”
“She’s not, but she’s hell on your conscience if you disappoint her.”
“Mothers are like that.” His certainly weighed on his and probably always would.
He would never forget the sight of her, bruised and motionless, in that narrow hospital bed. He would never allow himself to forget it had been his fault either.
“Josie said you offered her a job,” Daniel said to banish the memories and change the subject.
“Yeah. She’s a natural with computers. Wolf and I both think she’d be a real asset to the business.”
“So your only interest in her is because of her computer skills?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Daniel’s heart actually stopped in his chest. Women fell all over themselves getting to Hotwire. Josie wouldn’t be any exception.
“You want her?”
Silence at the other end of the phone.
“Do you?”
“What difference does it make to you?”
“Just answer the question, damn it.”
“Whew…Lise said she thought your bad temper covered something totally different, but Wolf and I thought she was sniffing the wrong scent.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You want Josie.”
“We aren’t talking about me.”
“Don’t have to. It might have taken me a while to catch on, but I’m no backwoods Georgia farm boy.”
The temptation to drop the conversation was huge, but Daniel had to know. “Is there anything between you and Josie?”
“Friendship.”
He waited in silence, willing his friend to explain.
Hotwire laughed. “This is more fun than watching Wolf forget what he is saying when Lise walks into the room.”
“Hotwire.”
“I don’t want Josie.”
The relief that went through Daniel was too overwhelming to dismiss. “Good.”
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want me. I am, after all, a prime specimen of male flesh and have a certain amount of undeniable southern charm.”
Daniel’s reply was ugly and succinct.
Hotwire was still laughing when Daniel cut the connection.
Daniel relaxed against the overstuffed sofa back. Josie was still sleeping, and he’d decided to skim the earlier journals, hoping they held some clue because he’d found nothing in Tyler’s most recent one. So far all he’d accomplished was to get a pretty good picture of Josie’s childhood.
When she had said she’d had no choice but to become a soldier, he’d thought she meant her dad had pushed her into it, but it had been a lot more concrete than that. Her choice had been made when she wasn’t even old enough to give up playing with dolls.
Tyler McCall had started training his daughter in combat at the tender age of six. The same year her mother died. Some would say the man’s mind had finally snapped, and they might be right, but there was no denying he’d had his reasons for raising his daughter the way he did.
Tyler had seen things in Vietnam that would make any man leery of raising a child, particularly a daughter, in today’s world.
A furious yell hit his eardrums and cut his musings mid-thought.
Chapter 4
Daniel met Josie halfway down her hallway, his blood pumping with combat-ready adrenaline, but he could see no threat.
Unless he counted the small, barefoot woman vibrating with rage, her green eyes shooting retribution fire at him. “I am not a demon!”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
The growl that emanated from her throat would have done a grizzly bear proud. She was royally pissed, and apparently he was the reason.
Rather than being concerned about that salient fact, it was all he could do not to drag her body against his and kiss her until he didn’t know his own name anymore. She turned him on in pretty much any mood. However, passionate anger was too close to passionate desire not to impact his hormones like a freight train running full steam ahead without a brake.
Not to mention her clothes, or lack thereof. If she normally slept in tiny T-shirts and short shorts like the pink ones she had on, he was going to expire from lust his first night in her place just thinking about it.
From the murderous expression on her pixielike face, he guessed she wasn’t on the same wavelength as he was at all.
She smacked his shoulder with her open palm. Hard. “Nor did I attempt to seduce you!”
“Uh, Josie…Are you all right?” Maybe she had a little of her dad’s paranoia. Or a bad dream?
“No, I am not all right.” She was back to shouting again, but when she went to hit him a second time, he moved to restrain her and found himself on his back with her knee in his chest and her furious face above his. “I’m mad.”
He didn’t like her getting the better of him, and he reversed their positions, his hands clamping her wrists and his bigger body pinning hers to the hardwood floor. “I noticed, but why?”
Her body felt perfect under his—tone, but soft and warm, too.
“You called me a succubus!”
“I did n—” Then he remembered. “I said clinging like a succubus.” Not that the semantics appreciably changed the meaning and he’d clearly made a mistake letting his temper control his tongue, even briefly, but a man could try.
“I wasn’t clinging at all,” she snarled.
“No. You weren’t.”
She didn’t look in the least mollified by his agreement.
“I apologized already,” he reminded her.
She glared up at him, her body tense beneath his. “That was before I knew what succubus meant. A two- word apology and instructions to just forget about it don’t cut it now.”
She twisted unexpectedly under him, and he had to maneuver his hips between her legs to keep her flat. In her current frame of mind, there was no saying what she might do, and she was capable of doing a lot. But the new position was torture to his already excited body.
His pants and her shorts were no barrier to the heat of her pressing against the hardness of him. Making love to her would be like taking a trip to the sun.
She bucked, sending his temperature spiking. “Get off me, you cretin.”
He had to keep this light. If he didn’t, he was going to lose control, and that was an unacceptable alternative. “See, that’s the second time you’ve called me that, and you don’t see me having a temper tantrum because you’ve questioned my intelligence.”
