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one’s real easy.”
    Of course, he’d have to explain why she wasn’t arrested with the rest of the crew, but he was hoping she wouldn’t realize that.
    “Yeah. I could do that,” she snapped back mockingly. “And of course, you would deny to hell and back
    pulling me out of there. Right?”
    He grinned. God love her, he had to give her credit.
    Dawg shrugged. “What can I do? I didn’t check my backseat until I heard someone move around in it. I
    can be a bit absentminded when I’m in a hurry.”
    “And the reason Natches is driving my Rodeo rather than riding with you?”
    Dawg widened his eyes. “You and Natches are friends, Crista. You loaned him the Rodeo.”
    Okay, he wasn’t really that damned dirty. Hell, if she chose jail, he’d take her home and figure something else out. But she should have known that. If she didn’t know that, well, that was just her mistake, not his.
    “That’s dirty, Dawg,” she retorted, disgust thickening her voice.
    “Sure it is.” He nodded in agreement. “But I have a reputation for being dirty. Don’t I?” His grin was pure innocence. One of the kind that normally had Natches looking for the nearest escape route.
    She rubbed her hands over her face before pushing her fingers through the hair she had pulled back tightly into a long ponytail.
    Hair he was dying to loosen, to spread out behind her as he laid her back on his bed. Hair he longed to
    grip while he rode her hard and deep.
    She shook her head before staring straight ahead once again.
    “So, we head to the marina, right?”
    She nodded slowly. “Fine.”
    Dawg let off the brake and eased back onto the road before adding speed and heading down the dark
    highway.
    “You act like you’re heading to the gallows.” He grinned.
    She didn’t reply.
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    Dawg glanced at her again, watching as she rubbed at her bare arms and stared out the window, her
    expression bleak, disheartening.
    Damn her. It wasn’t as though he intended to rape her. Blackmail her a little bit, definitely. But sex would be only under certain conditions. He’d make damned sure she wanted it as badly as he did, first. He wasn’t a complete bastard.
    But he was a horny bastard. And a mad bastard.
    Eight fucking years she had lived in his dreams, and he couldn’t figure out why. She had changed him at a time when he needed to retain that edge of careless unconcern. She had pricked his emotions, filled his
    head, and he couldn’t make sense of it.
    She tormented him. It was that damned simple, and it was time the torment eased.
    “Don’t worry, darlin’. It won’t be so bad,” he assured her, reaching over to pat her knee in a totally false gesture of comfort. “We used to get along good once, remember?”
    Once.
    Crista turned her head slowly and stared at his profile. Once, she had loved him with all the passion and innocence of a young girl who revered the town’s baddest bad boy. But she wasn’t a girl anymore; she
    was a grown woman. She was well aware of just how easily he could destroy her life again.
    “I remember how stupid I was,” she finally answered him with a measure of self-disgust at the memory.
    “And I remember learning my lesson. I don’t really remember much other than that, Dawg. Perhaps you
    could remind me of a time that we actually got along.”
    He didn’t remember that night. Crista knew he didn’t. And she knew Alex would have never told him
    what happened. He had promised her.
    Dawg tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “You ran from me every chance you got,” he growled back
    at her.
    Not every chance. Not one dark night when she had found him too drunk to drive and helped him home.
    And then helped him break her heart.
    “I was smart then,” she said, feeling the regret that welled inside her. If only she had been smarter. If only she had faced the truth then, and what had happened.