Captive Star: the classic story from the queen of romance that you won’t be able to put down

They rounded the landing and nearly ran over one of her neighbors. The woman, with helmet hair and bunny slippers, cowered, back against the wall, hands pressed to her deeply rouged cheeks.

“M.J., what in the world—? Were those gunshots?”

“Mrs. Weathers—”

“No time.” Jack all but jerked her off her feet as he headed down the next flight.

“Don’t you shout at me, you jerk. I’m making you pay for every grape that got smashed, every lamp, every—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get the picture. Where’s the back door?” When M.J. pointed down the corridor, he gave a nod and they both slid outside, then around the corner of the building. Screened by some bushes in the front, Jack darted a gaze up and down the street. There was a windowless van less than half a block down, and a small, chicken-faced man in a bad suit dancing beside it. “Stay low,” Jack ordered, thankful he’d parked right out front as they ran down the walkway and he all but threw M.J. into the front seat of his car.

“My God, what the hell is this?” She shoved at the can she’d sat on, kicked at the wrappers littering the floor, then joined them when Jack put a hand behind her head and shoved.

“Low!” he repeated in a snarl, and gunned the engine. The faint ping told him the man with the chicken face was using the silenced automatic he’d pulled out.

Jack’s car screamed away from the curb, and he two-wheeled it around the corner and shot down the street like a rocket. Tossed like eggs in a broken carton, M.J. rapped her head on the dash, cursed, and struggled to balance herself as Jack maneuvered the huge boat of a car down side streets.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Saving your butt again, sugar.” His eyes flicked to the rearview as he took a hard, tire-squealing right turn. A couple of kids riding bikes on the sidewalk lifted their fists and cheered the maneuver. In instant reaction, Jack flashed a grin.

“Slow this junk heap down.” M.J. had to crawl back onto the seat and clutch the chicken stick for balance. “And let me out before you run over some kid walking his dog.”

“I’m not going to run over anybody, and you’re staying put.” He spared her a quick glance. “In case you didn’t notice, the guy with the van was shooting at us. And as soon as I make sure we’ve lost him and find someplace quiet to hole up, you’re going to tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“I don’t know what’s going on.”

He shot her a look. “That’s bull.”

Because he was sure it was, he took a chance. He swung to the curb again, reached under his seat and came up with spare cuffs. Before she could do more than blink, he had her locked by the wrist to the door handle. No way was she skipping out on him until he knew why he’d just been tossed around by a three-hundred-pound gorilla.

To block out her shouting, and her increasingly imaginative threats and curses, Jack turned up his stereo and drowned her out.

Chapter 2

At the very first opportunity, she was going to kill him. Brutally, M.J. decided. Mercilessly. Two hours before this, she’d been happy, free, wandering around the grocery store like any normal person on a Saturday, squeezing tomatoes. True, she’d been weighed down with curiosity about what she carried in the bottom of her purse, but she’d been sure Bailey had a good reason—and a logical explanation—for sending it to her.

Bailey James always had good reasons and logical explanations for everything. That was only one of the aspects about her that M.J. loved.

But now she was worried—worried that the package Bailey had shipped to her by courier the day before was not only at the bottom of her purse, but also at the bottom of her current situation.

She preferred blaming Jack Dakota.

He’d pushed his way into her apartment and attacked her. Okay, so maybe she’d attacked first, but it was a natural reaction when some jerk tried to muscle you. At least it was M.J.’s natural reaction. She was an ace student in the school of punch first, ask questions later.

It was humiliating that he’d been able to take her down. She had a lot of notches on her fifth-degree black belt, and she didn’t like to lose a match.

But she’d pay him back for that later.

All she knew for certain was that he seemed to be at the root of it all. Because of him, her apartment was wrecked, her things tossed every which way. Now they’d gone, leaving the front door open, the lock broken. She didn’t form close attachments to things, but that wasn’t the point. They were her things, and thanks to him, she was going to have to waste time shopping for replacements.

Which was almost as bad as having some gunwielding punk the size of Texas busting down her door, having to run for her life from her own home, and being shot at.

But all of that, all of it, paled next to one infuriating fact—she was handcuffed to the door handle of an Oldsmobile.

Jack Dakota had to die for that.

Who the hell was he? she asked herself. Bounty hunter, excellent hand-to-hand fighter, slob—she added as she pushed candy wrappers and paper cups around with her foot—and nerveless driver. Under different circumstances, she’d have been impressed by the way he handled the tank of a car, swinging it around curves, screaming around corners, whipping it through yellow lights and zipping onto the Washington Beltway like the leader in a Grand Prix event.

If he’d walked into her bar, she’d have looked twice, she admitted grudgingly. Running a pub in a major city meant more than being able to mix drinks and work the books. It meant being able to size people up quickly, tell the troublemakers from the lonely hearts. And know how to deal with both.

She’d have tagged him as a tough customer. It was in his face. A damn good face, all in all, hard and handsome. Yeah, she’d have looked twice, M.J. thought, teeth gritted, as she looked out the window of the speeding car. Pretty boys didn’t interest her much. She preferred a man who looked as though he’d lived, crossed a few lines and would cross a few more.

Jack Dakota fit that bill. She’d gotten a good close look into those eyes—granite gray—and knew that he wasn’t one to let a few rules get in his way.

Just what would a man like him do if he knew she was carrying a king’s ransom in her battered leather purse?

Damn it, Bailey. Damn it. M.J. fisted her free hand and tapped it restlessly on her knee. Why did you send me the diamond, and where are the other two?

She cursed herself, as well, for not going directly to Bailey’s door after she came home from closing M.J.’s the night before. But she’d been tired, and she’d figured Bailey was sound asleep. And as her friend was the steadiest, most practical person M.J. knew, she’d simply decided to wait for what she was certain would be a very practical, sensible reason.

Stupid, she told herself now. Why had she assumed Bailey had sent the stone to her simply because she knew M.J. would be home in the middle of the day and around to receive the package? Why had she assumed the rock was a fake, a copy, even though the note that accompanied it asked M.J. to keep it with her at all times?

Because Bailey just wasn’t the kind of woman to ship off a blue diamond worth more than a million with no warnings or explanations. She was a gemologist, dedicated, brilliant, and patient as Job. How else could she continue to work for the creeps who masqueraded as her family?

M.J.’s mouth tightened as she thought of Bailey’s stepbrothers. The Salvini twins had always treated Bailey as though she were an inconvenience, something they were stuck with because their father had left her a percentage of the business in his will. And, blindly loyal to family, Bailey had always found excuses for them.

Now M.J. wondered if they were part of the reason. Had they tried to pull something? She wouldn’t put it past them, no indeed. But it was hard to believe Timothy and Thomas Salvini would be stupid enough to try something fancy with the Three Stars of Mithra.

That was what Bailey had called them, and she’d had a dreamy look in her eyes. Three priceless blue diamonds, in a golden triangle that had once been held in the open hands of a statue of the god Mithra, and now property of the Smithsonian. Salvini, with Bailey’s reputation behind it, was to assess, verify and appraise the stones.

What if the creeps had gotten it into their heads to keep them?

No, it was too wild, M.J. decided. Better to believe this whole mess was some sort of mix-up, a mistaken identity tangle.

Much better to concentrate on how she would repay Jack Dakota for ruining her afternoon off.

“You are a dead man.” She said it calmly, relishing the words.

“Yeah, well, everybody dies sooner or later.” He was heading south on 95, and he was grateful she’d stopped swearing at him long enough to let him think.

“It’s going to be sooner in your case, Jack. Lots sooner.” The traffic was thick, thanks to the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but it was fast.

How humiliating would it be, she wondered, to stick her head out the window and scream for help? Mortifying, she supposed, but she might have tried it if she’d believed it would work. Better if they could just run into one of the inexplicable traffic snags that stopped cars dead for miles.

Where the hell were the road crews and the rubberneckers who loved them when she needed them?

Seeing nothing but clear sailing for miles, she told herself to deal with Jack “The Idiot” Dakota herself. “If you want to live to see another sunrise, pull this excuse for a car over, uncuff me and let me go.”