This day kept going from bad to worse. First, the waiter messed up Tempest’s breakfast order, giving her an all egg-white omelet when she had clearly ordered chocolate chip pancakes—I mean, how do you mix those two up??? Come on!—then she felt guilty about turning back the healthy option for a much less healthy option and was forced to choke it down. Then, she forgot her favorite sweater in the bathroom of a gas station, and now she was chained to this random asshole who kept pulling her down the fire escape without giving her a freaking second to catch up. At least he was cute.

Her mother had warned her that being a bounty hunter was a bad idea, but Tempest sucked at customer service and she could only last about fourteen seconds in front of a computer before she was clicking on the hottest gossip websites. She clearly wasn’t suited for office work. Or, any kind of work for that matter.

“Hurry up,” the tattooed hottie grunted as he practically pulled her down the stairs.

“No, you slow down!” she shouted, yanking him back. He jerked to a stop, slipping on the stair.

He turned back and looked at her over his shoulder with a stunned look on his face. She grinned, loving it. Tempest knew that she was stronger than any woman he’d ever come across. Her mother had made sure of that.

“He’s going to get away,” he said, his voice thick with frustration. He turned back and continued running, but now that Tempest had gotten a second to catch up, she kept up with him. She was fast. Her mother had made sure of that too.

The unbreakable chain of the handcuffs slackened when they got to the ground and started running side by side.

“How are you keeping up with me?” he asked, staring at her in shock as they sprinted after that creepy looking polar bear shifter guy.

She just grinned and put her chin up, letting her hair flow in the wind behind her. He just stared.

That’s right, buddy. Eat your heart out.

Just as she was about to wink at him, her toe snagged on a crack in the pavement and she went flying forward, smacking her forehead on the cement and bringing her new friend down with her.

“Ow,” she whined as she pushed up to her knees. Her head was spinning and her eyes were watering.

Tempest was incredibly strong and incredibly fast. But she was also incredibly clumsy.

Her mother had forgotten to make sure of that.

“Are you okay?” the guy said as he climbed to his feet.

Tempest’s cheeks blushed. She was touched and a little flattered that he had asked about her.

Maybe he’s not so bad after all.

But before he gave her a chance to speak, he continued running, this time dragging her along the pavement.

Yup. Definitely that bad.

“Give me a second,” she said, yanking him back and pulling him to a halt. “I almost cracked my head open!”

He pulled his arm back that was attached to hers and she lurched forward. “We don’t have a second! He’s going to get away!”

“I think he’s already gone.”

The guy whipped his head around, looking from side to side. They were the only two in sight in the empty parking lot.

Mr. Creepy-Bear-Shifter-Guy was long gone.

“Goddamnit!” he shouted, stomping his foot like a petulant child. He reared his head at her and practically growled. “This is your fault!”

“My fault?” she said, staring at him in disbelief. “I had him pinned, thank you very much. You were the one who locked us together.”

He held up his wrist and Tempest’s wrist followed.

“What kind of handcuffs are these anyways?” His chest was heaving up and down. Tempest glanced at the tattooed skin that was showing over his shirt and wondered if his entire torso was tattooed.

“The kind that don’t fucking break,” she said, climbing to her feet.

“There are no kinds that don’t break,” he said, stepping in front of her. Her eyes came up to his chin, and he dwarfed her with his muscular frame, but she stared him down anyway.

“Well, these ones don’t.”

“We’ll fucking see about that,” he mumbled as he grabbed the chain. He grunted, cursed, sweat, and turned red as he tried to rip the chain in two. He was practically panting when he finally gave up.

Tempest just watched with an amused grin on her face. She knew they weren’t going to break.

“Geez, they really won’t fucking break,” Ryder said, staring at them in disbelief. The anger in his face was gone as he looked at her once again. “Seriously. What kind of handcuffs don’t break?”

Tempest swallowed hard. “The magic kind.”

The anger was back as he shook his head. “Fine. Don’t tell me.” His eyes dropped to the wand in her hand. “Did you get that weapon in the same place?”

Her grip tightened around it. She didn’t like talking about her mother’s instruments.

He just rolled his eyes when it was clear that she wasn’t going to answer. “Fine,” he said, lifting up his cuffed hand. “Then unlock it so I can go check on my friends. The guy you let get away stabbed my friend with six spikes.”

“The guy you let get away,” Tempest corrected as she slipped off her boot. She looked inside for the spell that would unlock the unbreakable handcuffs, but there was nothing there.

“Shit,” she cursed under her breath as she shoved her hand in, hoping that maybe it got stuck up by the toe. Things always get stuck up by the toe, don’t they?

There was nothing. Her heart was pounding as she yanked off her other boot and found it just as empty.

The guy was watching her, and her face must have paled because his did too.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said. “You lost the key?”

“There is no key,” she answered, feeling panic rise inside her.

“Where is the key?”

“There. Is. No. Key.” She said it slowly to get it through his thick frustrating skull.

He yanked the chain again, sending her jolting forward on her socks.

“Stop doing that!” she shouted as she yanked him, sending him flying forward.

“Then how do we get it off?”

Tempest took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “They’re sealed with magic.”

“You’re a witch?”

She shook her head. “No. But a witch may or may not have given me the handcuffs.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “How do you open it?”

“They can only be opened with a spell.”

“Tell me you know the spell.”

“I have the spell. In my apartment. In Santa Fe.” Her eyes were still closed. Maybe if she didn’t see the problem it would just go away.

“Please tell me that Santa Fe is the name of a nearby street.”

She shook her head. “Santa Fe, New Mexico.”

“What?!?” he shouted in disbelief. “That’s three states away!”

She slowly opened her eyes and when she saw the look on his face, she immediately closed them back up.

“Look at me!” he shouted. “Look what you’ve done!”

“You did this!” she said, ripping her eyes open. “This is your fault.”

He just huffed in frustration. “Magic cuffs, huh?” He looked down at the red wand in her hand. “I guess that’s not a stun gun? What is that a magic wand or something?”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of? Can it kind of unlock the fucking handcuffs?”

“No,” she said, gripping it tight. “It only does one thing.”

“What? Freezing and stunning people?”

“Yeah.” Her mother would never have trusted her with more magic than that. It was a magic wand, but it was a one-trick pony.

Tempest’s mother knew her well and she would never have given her a fully jacked wand. Knowing Tempest, she would have left it on the bus. Which, Tempest thought was fair enough. She had forgotten this one at the dentist one time and only remembered to go get it out of the lost and found three days later.

In addition to being incredibly strong and incredibly fast and incredibly clumsy, Tempest was also incredibly ditzy. Hence, the forgotten spell in New Mexico.

“So, you freeze and shock people with magic?” he asked, looking at the wand curiously. “What does that feel like?”

Tempest gave a mischievous grin as she raised the wand and let him see for himself. She felt her hand tingling as the magic shot out of the wand, lifting him off the ground and freezing him in place. His eyes widened as his body trembled in the magic hold. He clearly wasn’t enjoying it.

Tempest had felt it once and she could explain it like this—you know when someone tickles you so hard that it stops being funny and borders on pain, but ultimately it just sucks? That’s how it felt times about five hundred percent.

Her grinned widened as she let him ‘experience’ it a little longer. Why does this feel so good?

He fell to his knee, breathing in big gulps when she finally let him go.

“Don’t. Do that again.”

His fierce brown eyes darted up and glared at her.

“You didn’t like that?” She tried to stifle her giggles.

“No.”

A few seconds later, he climbed to his feet.

“Where did you get that thing anyway?”

“Walmart,” Tempest said as she put her hair in a bun and slid the wand inside. “It was half off.”

The guy rolled his eyes. His tattooed arm jerked back and forth as Tempest put her boots back on.

“So, what do we do now?” he asked.

“First, we go to the bank.” She slipped one black boot on then the other. “Then you take out the $1,500 that you owe me. Then, we go to New Mexico and I’ll get that spell.”

How the hell did I forget that spell? Oh… right…

Tempest had planned to take her running shoes for her first job and had tucked the spell in there, but at the last moment before she left, she had spotted her sexy black leather hooker boots and thought that they looked more badass than yellow and pink running shoes. Yes, they were uncomfortably too small, and they slowed her down, but she told herself that being a bounty hunter chick was all about attitude and changed them. Too bad she had forgotten the spell in her sneakers…

“I owe you $1,500?” he said, staring at her in shock. “How hard did you hit your head?”

“Pretty hard,” she said, rubbing it. It still hurt!

“I was going to get paid $1,500 by the Littleton Police Department for bringing that guy in.”

“$1,500?” he said with a chuckle. “That’s all?”

That’s all? That was way more than she had. She was practically living out of her car. The ‘apartment’ that she had said was in New Mexico was more of a storage locker.

Maybe she could ask the Littleton Police Department for more money, but they were only a police force of two cops in the small town. She would be lucky to get another fifty bucks.

And what the hell was this guy laughing about? He must have been getting roughly the same amount.

“How much were you going to get paid for the bust before you screwed it all up?” she asked.

He sneered. “You mean before you screwed it all up?” They just stared at each other. “Two million.”

“Two million dollars?!?”

“No, two million hugs,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Who the hell was going to pay you that?” she said, staring at him with her mouth hanging open. And where the hell could she meet him?

He laughed. “I’m not telling you.”

“Because you’re lying?”

“No. Because I don’t want any competition.”

Her lips crept up into a smile as pride blossomed within her. This guy thought she was a real bounty hunter. This guy thought she was competition.

Maybe she hadn’t exactly ever brought in a mark—and maybe she had never heard the term ‘mark’ being used before he said it about ten minutes ago—but he thought that she was the real deal. And that made her happy.

“Not that it’s going to matter,” he said with a sigh. “The guy is long gone now.”

“I know where he is.”

Her tattooed friend perked up. “You do?”

“Yeah. I know where he’s staying. I’ve been following him for two weeks. Don’t you listen?”

He rolled his eyes again. “Where is he?”

“Who is your buyer?”

They stared at each other for a few tense seconds, neither of them wanting to give up any ground.

“Tell me your buyer,” she said. “You’ll never find him without me.”

He lifted his cuffed wrist up, jerking her hand up too. “Ya think?”

“You won’t find him without me telling you his location,” she corrected.

“And you won’t get the extra one million, nine hundred and ninety-eight thousand, and five hundred dollars without my buyer.”

Tempest glanced down at their hands. His right hand was attached to her left. They weren’t going anywhere without each other until they arrived at storage unit #73 by the Westhaven mall in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

No matter what, those cuffs weren’t coming off until she could retrieve that spell.

“We’re going to be together for a while. We might as well work together,” she finally, reluctantly, hesitantly said.

He sighed in utter defeat. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

She held out her hand—a peace offering. “Partners?”

“My crew gets eighty percent,” he said, “and you get twenty?”

“What crew?” she said with a scoff. “I get fifty percent and you and your imaginary crew get fifty.”

“I need this money,” he said with a serious voice. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand needing money,” she said. “I slept in my car for the past three weeks. Fifty-fifty.”

He stared at her, and she stared back with a straight face, giving him nothing.

“Or, we can put on some 90’s pop tunes, load up on licorice and start the long road trip down to New Mexico and neither of us will get anything.”

He just stared.

“Are you more of a Backstreet Boys kind of guy or N’Sync?” she said, rubbing it in. “Oh, you know what? We’ll have time to listen to both and New Kids On The Block on our twenty-three-hour drive.”

He closed his eyes, breathing nice and slow, trying to find his calm place. Too bad for him, Tempest was chained to his calm place. There was no getting away from her.

“Fine,” he said, opening his eyes. “You lead us to him and we’ll split the profits with you.”

“Fifty-fifty?” She held her hand open.

He swallowed hard and then shook it. “Fifty-fifty.”

Wow. One million dollars.

Tempest grinned. She was going to be rich.

That is, unless Mr. Creepy-Bear-Shifter-Guy or her new friend didn’t kill her first.

And he was going to be attached to her for about a week at least…

She gave herself a fifty-fifty chance of surviving.