The Crush by Sandra Brown Page A

dancer after all.
    After she was gone, he mentally replayed his telephone conversation with Rennie. He conjured up the pitch of her voice and the cadence of her speech until he could almost hear it.
    The moment he had spoken her name, she had known who was calling. How silly of her to pretend she didn't. She had told him not to call her again, but that, too, was posturing. That was just the surfacing of a nice girl's innate wariness of the bad boy, and he didn't mind that. In fact, he had enjoyed hearing the trace of fear.
    His experience with women was vast, but it was also limited in the sense that all had been mindless encounters for the sole purpose of sex. He was tired of that. Picking up women and going home with them could be tedious, especially when they wanted to cling. And he hated whining.
    Paid whores came with their own set of nuisances. Meeting them in hotel rooms, no matter how upscale, was a tawdry proposition. It was essentially a business transaction, and inevitably the whore believed she was boss. He'd had to kill only one for insisting that she was in charge; they usually submitted to his superiority before it came to that.
    Besides, whores were dangerous and couldn't be trusted. There was always a chance that the police were using one in an entrapment setup.
    The time had come for him to have a woman who was of his own caliber. It was the one area of his life that was deficient. He owned the best of everything else.
    A man of his standing deserved a woman he could show off, one other men would envy him for.
    He had found that woman in Rennie Newton.
    And she must be attracted to him, or why would she have argued so passionately for his acquittal? If he'd had a mind to, he could already have satisfied their physical longing for each other. He could have waylaid her at any time and, if she had put up some bullshit female resistance, eventually subdued her. After he had fucked her a few times, she would've come to the understanding, as he had, that they were destined to be a couple.
    But he'd wanted to take a more subtle approach. She was different from all the others; she should be wooed differently. He wanted to court her as a woman like her would expect to be courted. So even before the trial was over he had set out to learn who this glorious creature was and whether she had any enemies. Through his sly attorney the information had been easily obtained.
    Killing that other doctor had been almost too easy. It wasn't a sufficient demonstration of his affection. Before calling Rennie, he had felt the need to follow that up with something that would better convey the depth of his feelings for her. Thus the roses. They had struck the perfect romantic note.
    He finished his tequila. Chuckling softly, he thought of Rennie's rebuff. Actually, he was glad she hadn't been swept away by these preliminary overtures. Had she given in too soon and too easily he would have been disappointed in her. Her spirit and air of independence were part of her attraction. To a point, of course.
    Eventually she would need to be taught that what Lozada wanted, Lozada would have.
    Chapter 7
    Wick approached the table where Lozada was having breakfast. "Hey, asshole, the glare reflecting off your head is blinding me."
    Lozada's fork halted midway between his plate and his mouth. He looked up with anger-controlling slowness. If he were surprised to see Wick, he gave no indication of it, but rather treated him to an unhurried once-over. "Well, well. Look who's back."
    "For about a week now," Wick said cheerfully.
    "Is the Fort Worth Police Department so hard up they invited you to rejoin their miserable ranks?"
    "Nope. I'm on vacation."
    Wick pulled a spare chair from beneath the corner table, turned it around, and straddled it backward.
    Other customers in the hotel's dining room would think him rude, but he didn't care. He wanted to get under Lozada's skin. If the tick in the other man's cheek was any indication, he was