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accident!
    The driver’s door on the smaller car opened slowly. Out stepped a scowling young man in battle dress uniform. Lia had to blink because for a second there she thought she was seeing Al Pacino, the way he looked in
Scarface
. And oh, my God, he was coming toward her car to talk to her. What if he got violent? She groped for the pepper spray she’d just dropped.
    “What did you think was gonna happen with you tailgating me like that?” he demanded.
    She cracked the window just enough to say, “I barely tapped you.”
    “Tapped me?” His eyebrows shot up. He gestured at the back of his car. “Obviously, you haven’t seen the damage, any more than you were looking where you were going.”
    “I was looking!” she retorted with heat.
    “Bullshit. You were too busy looking at yourself in the mirror and reaching for your cell phone.”
    “I don’t even own a cell phone, asshole.” If he wasn’t going to be civil, then neither was she. “I was reaching for this!” She held the pepper spray up to the crack in the window.
    “Whoa.” He stepped back, throwing his hands up. “Put that away. Are you crazy?”
    “Yes, I’m crazy. Now get back in your car and drive. The traffic’s starting to move.”
    He eyed the damage done to the back of his car, then looked at her larger car in disgust—it was probably totally unharmed. “Hell, no,” he said. He went back to his car and came out with a cell phone. With a challenging look, he punched three numbers and held it to his ear.
    He was calling the cops. “Stop!” Lia unlocked her door and struggled to get out, breaking a fingernail. “Ouch! Damn it! Stop,” she pleaded. “You don’t need to do that!”
    His brown eyes seemed to take a snapshot of her body as she rose from the car. In the next instant, he was slipping the phone into his camouflage trousers. “Oh, so you have insurance?” he asked her, on a far more reasonable note.
    “Er, not exactly.” She’d tried to pay her car insurance two months ago, but it was just too much money.
    His mouth curled with renewed contempt.
    “But I’ll pay you whatever you need to get your fender fixed.”
    He stepped back. “Stop waving that thing in the air.”
    “Oh. Sorry. I think it’s expired anyway.” She lowered the pepper spray. “Listen, I’ll write you a check. Just give me a ballpark figure.”
    “Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked her on a note so incredulous that she took closer stock of him.
    Maybe he was a boy genius in uniform, but not likely. “No,” she said carefully. He looked about eighteen years old, but his uniform made him appear important. His black hair was cut so short that the blustery wind had no effect on it, unlike her own locks, which were blowing into her eyes.
    “Look, let’s start again,” she proposed. “I’m sorry I tapped your car, okay? I’m a little distracted this morning. Do you want me to pay for the damage or not?”
    “Oh, you’ll pay,” he said, in a way that had her snatching her hair out of her eyes. “But I’m not taking a check.”
    Perplexed, she tipped her head back to glare at him. He was amazingly good-looking, with chocolate-colored eyes and lush, lush lashes. “Well, a check’s all I’ve got,” she countered, ignoring the sudden tug of sexual attraction. “It’s not like I carry a bunch of cash with me.”
    “Come on,” he chided. “I can tell with one glance at your car that your check would be useless.”
    She gasped, outraged by his assumption.
    “And if my instincts are right, you’ve got some unpaid speeding tickets.”
    “Listen, young man,” she snapped, before he issued any more accurate statements, “I don’t have to take this kind of slander from you. Why don’t you get in your car and drive home to mommy?”
    He quirked an eyebrow and cocked his head, like,
You did not just say that.
“Tell you what,” he said, with a hint of humor lacing his Philadelphia accent. “How ’bout you take me out to