Wild in the Moment

like that. She was suspicious of that kind of thing. He’d had to find something that would really, really be a surprise for her-and it damn well wasn’t easy to surprise a woman who’d lived a lot higher than Teague ever dreamed of.

He put the truck in gear and plodded in, turning into the massive parking lot just before four. Barbara Vanhorn was waiting for him. She came on to anything in pants, wore her hair all moussed up, wore tight skirts to show off her legs. And she was a born saleswoman. Still she was okay to deal with.

“Teague, I was afraid you were a no-show.”

“Didn’t mean to be late. Just been running a few minutes behind all day. You got the paperwork on my baby?”

“Of course. Come on into the office.” She sashayed into her cubicle. Steel-blue chairs, steel-blue desk, nothing there but the usual forms. “I could have done better for you.”

“I know you could have.”

“It’s just…not the right toy for you, you know? You need something sexier. Classier. You could have blown me over with a feather when you said you want this.”

Teague suspected that sexy and classy started and ended her vocab on adjectives. At least when talking about her favorite subject. “This is what I want,” he said.

“And you’ve got it, hon. You just call me anytime.”

“Good.” It took a few minutes to fill out the fifty thousand forms. “I need this delivered first thing in the morning-like by eight. To the Marble Bridge Cafe. To Daisy Campbell. And under no circumstances are you to tell her who it’s from.”

“We settled all this yesterday. Stop worrying,” Barb said.

“I mean it. I’m holding you to your promise. I want to tell her myself, but I just want to do it my own way.”

“Hey, where’s your trust? You know me. I think this whole surprise is just darling,” she assured him.

When he stood up, he had the sixth sense she was going to wrap her arms around him and claim a big hug-for old-time’s sake, and for the sake of the sale, and for the sake of it being a nice day. And any other old sake Barb could think up.

She was nice enough, but right then he didn’t seem to want any boobs pushing against his chest but one woman’s.

In fact, right then he didn’t want to be kissed, hugged or flirted with by anyone except Daisy.

But, man, he was risking everything he had-everything he was-and he knew it. Valentine’s Day didn’t have to be the crunch, but a crunch was imminent. Once Daisy had enough money to take off, that was still her plan-unless a better plan surfaced damn fast.

He was hoping she’d think he was a better plan.

When he climbed back in the truck, he damn near forgot to shut the door-he was that exhausted. He got home. He knew he got home, because he heard the phone ringing. And ringing. And ringing. He seemed to have made it to the bed, seemed to still have his boots on, didn’t care about the boots or the phone.

He suspected it was Daisy. She’d left messages before. Increasingly annoyed messages.

He just couldn’t get it all done-his work, the surprises. Not and pull it all together before Valentine’s Day. Besides which, he was a coward. Unless he could prove to Daisy that life in White Hills-life with him-wasn’t going to be ordinary or dull, a life where she could get back that pride in herself she’d lost with the French Creep…he knew he was going to lose her. He couldn’t accept that. And for damn sure he couldn’t face it until he had to.

So he let the phone ring. In fact, by that time, he didn’t even open an eye. In his mind he heard her talking to him. These last few days he’d fiercely missed working with her. Missed sleeping with her. Missed talking with her. Missed her hoity-toity clothes and the way she arched her right eyebrow when she was teasing him. He missed the way she walked. He missed the shape of her mouth.

Even from the depth of sleep, Teague seemed to be replaying the obvious-not the obvious dream but the totally obvious truth.

He couldn’t imagine living without her.

Daisy answered her cell phone only because someone rang three times already-which meant that someone obviously couldn’t take a hint. She was busy. “What?” she spit into the receiver.

“Daisy! You’ve got to come down to the restaurant right now!”

“Come on, Harry. This is the first day I asked to have off. Jason’s back. You don’t need m-”

“It’s not that. I don’t need you to work. I just need you to come down. Now. Fast.”

She had her hands absolutely full with Teague’s present, but to appease Harry-who after all, had been good to her-she shoved on shoes and sprinted downstairs.

She saw the crowd gathered at the front door, not a crowd in line for the restaurant but a crowd facing the stairs to the apartment, so her immediate thought was uh-oh. When she reached the bottom of the steps, she counted heads. Not every single body in White Hills was sardined into the restaurant lobby, but it had to be close. Faces stared at her, wearing expectant expressions. Nosy expressions. Strangely worried expressions.

Daisy didn’t need any internal conscience warning her uh-oh this time. She spun around to escape back upstairs-fast-and she would have made it, if Harry hadn’t lumbered through the crowd and grabbed her hand. She assumed the point of all this lunacy was for her to see something in the restaurant, but instead of tugging her inside, Harry tugged her outside.

She was wearing navy wool slacks and a Valentinered sweater, respectable inside clothes, but naturally no coat or jacket. The wind blistered her ears before she’d taken the first step. A woman was waiting at the curb, wearing a skirt short enough to risk her rear end getting frostbite, a showy smile on her face. To her right were two townspeople holding cameras. The local newspaper-a weekly-had a snot-nosed kid holding a businesslike camera on her left. Obviously everyone was counting on her to react in some spectacle-like way, but for an instant Daisy couldn’t pin down what on earth she was supposed to react to.

Then she got it. Or kind of. Behind the lady with the showy smile was…well, she had to squint to identify what it was. A vehicle, for sure. But not exactly a car or a truck or an SUV.

And then she remembered. It was one of those things the guys took to war. A Hummer. A used Hummer-truth to tell, it looked like a reinforced used Hummer-painted daisy yellow with a big red Valentine’s Day bow tied prettily on the steering wheel.

Daisy closed her eyes tightly for a good long millisecond, thinking no, this couldn’t be happening. She thought she’d loved him. She actually thought she’d loved him. But this…

This was the end of the line for Teague.

Teague knew he was dreaming. On the other side of his closed eyelids, there seemed to be bright light-which couldn’t be, since he’d stumbled into bed just a few minutes ago in the pitch-black. But he figured the bright light was symbolic. Dreams were goofy like that. And the only time he dreamed at all was when he was so wasted tired that he couldn’t make sense of anything, anyway.

Still, this dream was different. Powerful. Gripping. Whether it was symbolic or wishful thinking or plain old need, Daisy was there. He heard her whispering, “Teague? Teague!” in that exotic, sexy voice of hers. And her perfume wafted around him, the scent that always shot testosterone straight to his brain.

He wasn’t completely surprised that Daisy was there, of course. He knew the Hummer’d do it.

The heart-he’d definitely wanted to give her the heart, but bottom line, giving your best girl chocolate on Valentine’s Day wasn’t exactly a headline-news idea. He needed the opposite of ordinary. He thought the birthday banners on Main Street was a better idea-partly because he couldn’t believe her Jean-Luc would have done such a thing. Also the rest of the town would get off on it, he knew, so that Daisy’d be exposed again to how honestly nice people were in White Hills. It was nice to live in a place where people knew you, paid attention, watched out for you. It wasn’t skinny-dipping in the Riviera, no. But they could do that kind of junk on vacations if she wanted. Daisy knew what it was like to live with strangers and no one she could count on. He couldn’t believe that would be her first choice ever again.

He’d heard feedback that the banner thing had gone over big-which was good-but Teague had known upfront that wasn’t enough. He’d needed to come up with something to really give her a jolt. Dais had to be close to saving