A bodyguard? Who the fuck was I kidding? With my blood-shot eyes and my tired, battered suitcase, I looked like I’d only ever existed on the wrong side of the tracks, the wrong side of life. The only celebrity I’d ever seen up close was a basketball player who’d grown up near my grandma’s place—and he’d ignored all of us when he’d come through to get his mother out of her crooked house.

I should have bolted from the diner, knowing the pretty redhead’s questions wouldn’t stop. She was sniffing me out, wanting her own piece of the pot. But for some reason—perhaps because it had been two months since I’d had a proper conversation, perhaps because my body ached at how gorgeous she was—I remained, paused, awaiting her next questions. They fell like swords across my throat.

“So,” she said, easing toward the edge of her booth and abandoning her coffee. “What on earth are you going to spend all that money on?”

“What does anyone spend money on?” I asked, trying to play it cool. I swiped my hands behind my head and leaned back against them. I pulsed my biceps, knowing she’d sensed my dominance over her, my strength. She couldn’t intimidate me. “Life stuff.”

“Life stuff?” she repeated, knocking her head back in a raucous laugh. “And here I assumed you were going to waste it on only things you couldn’t use in this life. You know, like a coffin.”

“A really good gravesite could be nice. Overlooking the ocean,” I said.

“Why not a gold watch that you’ll only receive at the morgue?”

“Or a place in heaven itself,” I said. I couldn’t help but grin at our rapport. In a strange way, she reminded me of the way I used to speak with Aaron, dancing from one joke to the next. If our other friends couldn’t keep up, we left them in the dust.

The girl rose from the booth and walked toward me, swirling her hips left and right. I wasn’t immune to how sensual she was: those firm breasts caught up in a red, V-neck dress, the slimness of her waist emphasizing the crest of her ass—stunning, really. Something you could really hold on to as you railed her.

Not that I was already thinking about that, of course. I wasn’t a monster.

But I hadn’t been in the company of a woman in quite some time.

She sat across from me, looking almost conspiratorial, like we were gang members meeting at the local Italian deli. Her eyes danced first across my face and then over the suitcase, and she shrugged her thin shoulders. She, too, seemed underfed and stressed below the surface—even if she put out this sunny, together exterior.

There was a reason we were both at this crummy diner alone, after all.

“It’s all right,” she said, shrugging. She parted her red lips slightly, in a cute way she perhaps didn’t recognize herself, allowing her tongue to glide along her bottom lip. “It doesn’t really matter to me what you’re going to spend the cash on. I don’t care where you got it. Money comes from all sorts of places, doesn’t it? When we run out, the government just spits out more. And someday, we’re all going to die.”

Her eyes flashed. I placed my large palms against the shining table, aware that the waitress was bobbing around the diner now, cleaning tabletops with an off-yellow sponge.

“As you said,” I murmured, “it comes from everywhere. And it’s mine now.”

I edged closer to the side of the booth, conscious that if I grabbed the suitcase and bolted, I could be at the Mustang in less than 30 seconds. My heart slammed against my ribcage, reminding me of how it had felt to break into the loan shark shack and tiptoe across the beige carpet.

“Right. Of course,” the girl said, her eyebrows rising. Stabbing her hand through the air across the table, she asked for a handshake, and I gave it, feeling electricity spark through my skin upon our touch.

“I’m Luna, by the way. I don’t like to make a deal without knowing names. Just a matter of preference.”

Luna. It was gorgeous, so fitting for her with those big, sparkling eyes.

“Luna means moon, right?” I asked her. Pushing my shoulders back, I removed my hand from hers, conscious that our handshake had gone on a bit too long.

“Smart man,” Luna said to me, pressing her lips together.

I wasn’t entirely sure if she was making fun of me. My mind was centered upon the slimness of her wrists, on what it would feel like to push them far above her head, to pin her against the wall and kiss her deeply, inhaling her scent. It was flowery with a bit of vanilla. I could identify it even after all these years away from the aromas of my grandmother’s kitchen. The exterior had always smelled like pollution, like violence, with the engineering plants down the road swamping the air. But the interior, that was where the air had sung.

“And what kind of man are you, thinking you can get away with not telling me your name?” she asked, easing her arms across her chest, which shoved her breasts upward and caused them to crest over the V-neck in a mound of cleavage.

“It’s, um…” What the hell? I thought. “Colt.”

She turned the name over on her tongue, like something she was sure she wanted to taste in full.

“That’s a good name. It suits you,” she murmured. When she leaned forward, her nose was mere inches from mine, bringing the intensity of her smell forward. “Well, Colt, I have a proposition for you. In exchange for all the cash you have there in your suitcase, you can have anything you want. Anything I can give.”

The tone of the conversation had shifted, growing increasingly sexual. My groin became hot, pulsing against the fabric of my jeans. She was offering herself to me, her body stretched thin, gleaming, and naked. All I had to do was agree. All I had to do was pass the suitcase to this thieving, sexual creature.

But it wasn’t worth it. I’d gone out of the way on my straight path to Mexico for this cash, and I needed it, dammit. How was I going to make it across the border without it?

Sliding forward a bit, feeling dominant and powerful, I whispered back, “You think you have some power over me, don’t you?”

“I’d like to think I do,” Luna murmured back. “In any case, I know one thing about you. You’re running from something, Colt. You’re running as fast as your little hooves can take you. And I don’t think you’ve totally thought this through. I can see it in those deep blue eyes.”

She was bursting with something, an energy that told me she would stop at nothing until she got what she wanted. I leaned backward, pressing my thick forearms against my chest and shaking my head, giving her a firm “no.” Of course, I wouldn’t allow this to continue. I could crush her with my pinkie finger.

But there was that smile again.

“All right,” she said, shrugging evenly. She rose from the booth, tilting her ass this way and that—making it almost impossible not to reach out for it. “Suit yourself, Colt. I offered all I have. Remember that.”

As I watched her walk back to her cold cup of coffee, my mind raced. I could see it all stretched out before me: the open road, alone, just a scraggly 28-year-old man with a suitcase, looking suspicious as hell. If I showed up at the border, my hair in strings at my shoulder, did I really believe the government wasn’t going to yank me to the side and demand to know where I was going, who I was?

“Married couples always look best,” Aaron had told me once, his eyebrows high. We’d been smoking at the park, allowing our hollow smoke rings to roll up to the bright blue sky. “If you’re trying to get away with something, always have a good-looking chick with you. Seriously. The cops will be too busy looking at her tits to notice what you’re taking from them. It’s hilarious. That’s how Monique and I got the last round of groceries. Fuck, I’m going for the best quality steak next time, believe me.”

“Wait,” I said, my voice booming, echoing against the wide windows of the 24-hour diner.

Slowly, Luna shuffled her feet, turning back around. She put her hands on her slender waist, blinking her bright green eyes.

“Yes?” she asked.

Oh, God, that sweet, sexy voice.

“I know what you can do for me,” I said.

Luna eased back into the seat across from me, looking business-like, squaring her shoulders like a CEO. Lending her a large, scheming grin, I leaned forward and spoke softly, my voice carrying under the sizzle of the burgers grilling just a few feet away from us.

“I’ll hand over the cash if you agree to pose as my wife and help me cross the border into Mexico.”

In a fluid motion, I raised my hands to my chin and leaned against them heavily. Inhaling the scent of her, I imagined us hand in hand, speeding across the Texas–Mexico border, the sun setting in front of us, laughter filling the car, and the memories of Iowa City and Detroit flying behind us like dark shadows.