“I know, but you never got a formal restraining order on me. I checked. I know you wouldn’t want to do that to your future wife, because if I get arrested again, I can’t afford to pay for the bail, not after I hocked my Great Aunt Dee’s pearls for the last two times, so . . .” She finally noticed Holly, and all the air seemed to deflate from her lungs, coming out in one unhappy whoosh. “Who are you?”

Holly opened her mouth, but Pace spoke first. “My girlfriend,” he said, shocking both Tia and Holly when he put a proprietary hand on Holly’s arm. His hand was huge and warm, his palm calloused. He looked into Holly’s eyes, his own suddenly not nearly as cold and distant, or even wryly amused, but . . .

Desperate.

Pace Martin looked desperate, which was dumbfounding enough, but then he tightened his grip and said, “Hurry up, honey. We’ll be late.”

Honey?

Before Holly could process that, he shoved her none-too-gently toward his bad-boy car.

“I—”

“Shh,” he muttered in her ear.

Oh no, he didn’t. He didn’t just shush her, and she sent him a glacial stare, but he shot her one of those hey-baby smiles, the one that matched the picture he’d taken for People magazine, while hissing out the corner of his mouth, “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars not to argue with me right now.”

A thousand dollars? That’d make a nice addition to her never-be-poor-again fund. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered.

“Okay, two. Two thousand,” he grated out. “Jesus, just hurry.”

Two thousand dollars.

Holy smokes.

And he clearly wasn’t kidding. Another shove and she was in his car, and he was locking the doors, accelerating them out of the lot with an impressive exhibition of speed as she twisted to look back. Tia stood there hugging her scrapbook, staring after them, looking forlorn.

“Don’t look at her,” Pace directed. “Trust me on this.”

Holly gawked at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she repeated.

“No, seriously. Looking at her only eggs her on.”

She laughed in further shock, even as her stomach quivered at the hair-raising turn he was executing at speeds better suited for a racetrack than the narrow, curvy lanes of the highway. She gripped the console. “You’re more afraid of that little tiny thing than me?”

“Only very slightly.”

She tightened her grip as he took them into another hair-raising turn with shocking ease. It gave her a thrill, a kick of adrenaline. “This is going to cost you.”

He sighed, long and weary sounding, downshifting into the next turn. “Don’t I know it.”

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every day, like those of a baseball player.

“I figure the price for this abduction should fit the crime.”