Alani gasped. Tires screeched. Other drivers blared their horns. To avoid a head-on collision, Jackson did some fast maneuvering, taking them up and over the curb, narrowly missing a telephone pole and a stopped car. He came back to the street again just shy of colliding with a van.

At the side of the road, he hit the brakes.

Slamming the car into Park, he jerked his door open and stepped out to look after the retreating car. Watching over her shoulder, Alani saw the car fishtail, then right itself and disappear around a corner.

A truck driver came jogging over. “Hey, you guys okay? Anyone hurt?”

Two younger men, cursing every other word, offered a similar query. One of them said to Jackson, “Who the f**k was that? Did you see how that dipshit ran the light?”

His buddy added, “I thought he was going to ram you!”

Alani heard Jackson replying, his tone matching that of the other men—heated, furious…like the average male.

He was such a good actor; there was nothing average about Jackson. As she watched, he reached back and tugged down the hem of his T-shirt—to cover a gun.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course he was armed. Like Trace and Dare, he probably went nowhere without a weapon or two on his person.

The tripping of her heart began to slow. Why hadn’t she noticed that particular bulge before now? Maybe because she’d been so interested in the rest of his body.

She had to learn to pay better attention. Hadn’t her kidnapping taught her anything?

Jackson stuck his head in the door. “You okay, honey?”

Behind him, the other males peered in at her, too.

She realized she had a death grip on the door handle and deliberately loosened her hold. One breath, two… She formed the semblance of a smile. “I’m fine.”

His gaze looked diamond bright and full of determination, but his tone maintained that “typical male” quality. “You sure?”

“Just shaken, that’s all.” She opened her door and stepped out. No one had wrecked, thank God.

Warm air blew against her face. Fading sunlight reflected off the concrete. Traffic began moving again.

Looking around the area, she saw so many parked cars, poles, streetlamps and people, it was nothing short of a miracle that they hadn’t wrecked.

And wrecking, she knew, had been the intent.

Someone wanted to hurt them. Was she the target, or was Jackson? Not that it mattered; neither was acceptable.

“…couldn’t see the driver,” the older man was saying. “Not with those darkened windows.”

“I got part of the license plate number,” one of the younger men said. “I wrote it on the back of a receipt.” Anxious to be of help, he handed it to Jackson. “That dude could’ve killed someone.”

Dude. The assumption being that anyone driving so aggressively was probably male.

Jackson said, “Thanks.” He tucked the tattered receipt into a back pocket.

Lifting a hand, Alani shielded her eyes from the setting sun. “Well, hopefully the driver will get home without endangering anyone else.”

Jackson studied her.

“We should be going,” she told him. He needed to do…whatever it was he did during times of emergency. To hurry things along, she said to the bystanders, “Thank you so much for stopping.”

“Wanted to make sure you were okay.” The truck driver took off his cap and replaced it again, settling it in the exact same way. “That was some fancy driving you did there. It’s a wonder you didn’t crash.”

True.

Next time, would they be as lucky?

CHAPTER SEVEN

UNSURE WHAT TO THINK of Alani’s mood, Jackson tightened his hands on the steering wheel. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.” She kept her face turned toward the window.

Wanting to comfort her, or reassure her, or do…whatever she might need him to, Jackson pressed her. “Not shook up a little?”

She glanced at him. “Are you?”

He snorted. “No.” He didn’t get shook up. “Course not.”

She sized him up, nodded and looked away again. “Neither am I.”

Damn it. He didn’t want her drawing comparisons because he didn’t expect her to have the same reaction as him. Hell, he was a professional and some yahoo in a car playing chicken wasn’t even close to the nearest miss he’d ever had.

“You looked spooked right after it happened.”

Her shoulder lifted. “I thought we were going to wreck.” With nervous fingers, she tucked her hair behind her ear. “But we didn’t.”

“You know I won’t let anything happen to you?”

A smile—sad, bemused—came and went so fast he almost missed it. “You’re not invincible, Jackson.”

He repeated, with more force, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Almost as if to comfort him, she glanced his way and said softly, “Okay.”

Deciding he’d just have to prove it to her, he drove in silence the rest of the short distance to the strip-mall parking lot.

As he pulled off the main road, she turned those big golden eyes on him. “What are you doing?”

“We’re doing dinner and a movie, right?”

“We are?” Confused, she looked around the lot. “I mean, still? Even after that near miss?”

“As close calls go, that didn’t even rank in the top twenty.” He parked the car and walked around the hood to open her door.