The Millionaires' Club: Ryan, Alex and Darin

She bit her lower lip thoughtfully and faced the unalterable truth. “Maybe it’s time to give it up.”

She drew in a deep breath, let it out as the thought settled like lead. Yeah. Maybe it was time.

Slipping into a clean, oversize nightshirt that still smelled fresh from the dryer, then tugging a pair of socks over her cold tootsies, she wandered into the living room working a brush through her wet hair as she went. Snagging the remote on the way by the end table, she punched it toward the TV then plunked down on the sofa. The soft navy-blue chenille throw felt snuggly and warm as she dragged it from the back of the sofa and settled it over her upraised knees. It would have felt infinitely better if she’d been snuggled up to Ry.

She caught herself. “You’re doing it again, Whelan. It’s not going to happen. Not with Ry, so just give it up.”

For the next five minutes she tried to get used to the idea that she did need to do just that. She needed to once and for all let go of the fantasy of him and her together.

So she thought about her volunteer work at the burn center, of the kids at day care. Anything to take her mind off him as she channel surfed, punching the remote with one hand and unconsciously fiddling with the hair on the left side of her forehead where the cowlick she always fought to tame remained as stubborn as ever.

“Nothing. You’d think you could find one thing among the dozens of cable channels that looks interesting,” she sputtered aloud. One thing to distract her or to snag her thoughts away from the lost cause that was Ry Evans.

Disgusted with herself, she flicked off the TV and tossed the remote on the coffee table. The photo album on the second shelf caught and held her attention. She stared at it for a long time before finally giving in to the temptation to take a little stroll down memory lane.

A picture of her mom and dad and her and Trav brought a bittersweet smile. She trailed her index finger across the smiling faces of her parents. She’d been nine; Trav was seventeen when the photo had been taken. They’d been in Fort Worth at the stock show. It was one of the last photos taken of them all together before the accident that had claimed Sue and Joe Whelan’s young lives.

She wished with everything in her that it wasn’t so difficult to attach animation to the still photos. She’d always wanted to remember them as three-dimensional and full of life…but after fourteen years, those vital connections had faded along with the picture’s color.

She’d gotten on with her life a long time ago. The pain had ebbed to something tolerable. A misty sort of longing had replaced the cruel, agonizing grief that had shattered the sanctity of her perfect little world. But all these years later, she still missed them.

With one last, lingering look, she turned the page…and there he was. Ryan. Lanky and lean, broad-shouldered and brown-eyed. He’d been eighteen to her ten, larger than life, grinning and strong. Her heart tripped, like it always did when she saw him, when she thought of him, when she let herself believe he could be more to her than a surrogate big brother after his parents had taken her in following the accident that had left her bewildered and withdrawn and confused.

To make matters worse, Travis had signed up for the U.S. Marines just before the accident and had had to leave shortly after. She’d never felt so alone. Even now her eyes stung as she remembered more than one lost, lonely night when Ry would find her in the room his mother had decorated with such special attention to please the sad little person she had been.

He’d stand broad-shouldered and thoughtful in her doorway, a pained, helpless expression momentarily crossing his handsome face. Then he’d smile and charge into her room like a big, noisy teddy bear and proceed to tease a grin out of her, coax her into a giggle and, ultimately and unintentionally, stir the woman budding inside her ten-year-old soul into loving him.

“We’re your family now,” Ry’s mom had told her more than once after that horrible day. “You and Travis belong to us. Your daddy was our foreman. I loved your mother like a sister and your father was like a brother to my John…just like Travis and Ryan are like brothers. Just like you are our daughter now.”

Very quietly Carrie closed the album and hugged it to her breast, as Sandy used to hug her to hers. This album represented her past. So did the lifelong fantasy of Ryan falling in love with her. Tonight had finally made her accept that it wasn’t meant to be.

Ryan Evans was not her Mr. Right.

“So…this is it, then, isn’t it?” she whispered aloud, and felt her heartbeat flutter with sadness.

“The infamous defining moment.”

A tear trickled down her cheek at the reality that she’d finally decided to let it go. It was time to move on. She wanted a relationship. She wanted a husband and little chubby-cheeked kids. And since she’d finally accepted Ry wasn’t going to be a part of that picture, she was determined to find someone who would be. Soon.

A knock sounded at her door, startling her. She rose, sniffed and—brushing the moisture from her cheeks—walked to her foyer, checking the clock on the way. It was almost midnight. A quick look through the peephole had her heart jumping again.

She threw open the door. “Ryan.”

“Hey, bear,” he said, with a lopsided grin. “Can I come in…just for a second…or did I officially make myself persona non gratis in your book tonight?”

She looked at his beautiful, lived-in face, at the smiling brown eyes that made her think of blended whiskey or pricey bourbon and had warmed her like a bonfire more times than she cared to remember. A fine, hook-shaped scar rode the ridge of his cheekbone beneath his left eye—a reminder of his rodeo days and a run-in with a bronc that had all but stomped him into the arena floor.

There were other scars. His hands were peppered with the little nicks and scrapes of a working cattleman. The little bump on the bridge of his nose signified it had been broken once…probably by a horse, possibly in a bar fight. She knew he’d had his share of them, too, when he was rodeoing. The road, she knew, had been rough, and fists had sometimes flown as freely as the BS and the dreams of an NFR championship.

He’d come close to catching his dream. So close.

And so had she. She’d come close to reaching her dream of being loved by him. At least she’d come close in her mind.

“Carrie? Hellloooo? Where’d you go, sweet pea?”

She blinked, realized she’d gone back there…to that place where he filled her senses and her thoughts and kept her from moving away from him and toward her future.

“Sorry,” she said, and opened the door wider so he could step inside out of the chill. “You…surprised me,” she said lamely. “What’s up?”

He lifted a broad shoulder, gave her a sheepish look. “Just wanted to make sure we were okay after…you know.”

She tilted her head. “After you herded me out of the diner like a maverick calf?”

He actually flinched, then grinned. “Ah…yeah. After that.”

“Don’t sweat it,” she said, determined to turn over this new leaf and ignore the slow, melting action going on around her heart. “But don’t let it happen again, okay?”

He considered her as he stood just inside her foyer. “Does that mean you’re still planning on—”

“Putting the moves on Dr. Beldon?” she interrupted cheekily, then told him how it was going to be. “Know what, Ry? I think you and Trav—and for that matter, the rest of the guys at the Cattleman’s Club—all function on some misguided notion that every female in the free world needs saving.”

He looked a little stunned.

“What? You don’t think I know what goes on behind closed doors at that place? Trav is my brother, for Pete’s sake. He disappears…sometimes for days. For that matter, so do you and the others. And isn’t it coincidental that shortly after you all pop up again, world or local headlines report on some heinous crime being thwarted, or some country being saved from a disastrous coup by some radical extremist group?”

She laughed at the pained and panicked expression on his face.

“Oh, don’t look so shell-shocked, Ry. Your secrets are safe. Case in point, Natalie. I know some-thing’s up with her and the baby. And I know you guys are knee-deep in it, trying to bring down whatever chased her to Texas. I hope you succeed. I love her like a sister, and little Autumn…well, she owns me heart and soul. I want them safe. I want that hunted look erased from Natalie’s eyes.”

“Carrie…” He said her name with such a preemptive wariness, she actually took pity on him.

“Yeah, okay, fine. You guys don’t really save nations or damsels in distress. You aren’t secretly investigating the horrible things that happened to Natalie. I got it. It’s your story, you can tell it any way you want to. But if you were…I know you would get to the bottom of it.

“In the meantime—” she held up a hand when he would have cut her off “—I don’t have anything to do with Natalie’s dilemma…which means I don’t need protection. And since I don’t, what I do and who I do it with is really none of your business.”

It could have been, she thought with more than a pinch of regret. But it’s not and you’re the one who wants it that way.

Something had replaced the shock in his expression. He looked a little sad…there might even have been a little regret in his eyes. It didn’t matter. She could no longer afford to care. But damn him, the next words out of his mouth made her want to.

“You will always be my business, sweetie.” He touched a hand to her cheek, and then, as if realizing what he’d done, let it fall. “Just…just be careful, okay?”

Then he reached out again, as if he couldn’t help himself, and cupped her nape with his broad hand. He drew her toward him, smelling of leather and sage and a little of horses when he leaned down and pressed his lips against her forehead. “’Night, Carrie-bear. Lock up behind me.”

She was still standing there, rooted to the spot, her heart making one final, futile dive when his truck’s engine fired and he drove away.

“Goodbye, Ryan,” she whispered to the empty street, knowing she was finally saying goodbye to the hope she’d fostered for fourteen years.

She went to bed a little while later, pushing Ryan further and further out of her mind, more determined than ever to get on with her life. But who was she going to get on with her life with?

“And wasn’t that an interesting sentence?” she asked herself aloud with a roll of her eyes.

Speaking of eye rolling… She ran through a list of likely candidates for the position of Mr. Right. It was a very short list. And with good reason. Travis grilled every prospective boyfriend until they were as charred as a well-done T-bone.

Oh, she knew her brother meant well. He didn’t mean to send every boyfriend she’d ever had running for their lives rather than toughing it out and actually taking a stab at a relationship with her—but he did. Aside from Ryan, Trav was the main reason she was still single and resenting the fact that she was a ripe twenty-four and still a virgin.

“Well, you’ve taken the protector role too seriously for too long, brother mine,” she murmured as she rolled over, punched her pillow and snuggled deeper into the covers. She was no longer the ten-year-old little girl, lost and confused and missing her mom and dad. She was a woman now—at least in years. In experience, however, she was as green as meadow grass.

But not for much longer. Tonight had really, truly, once and for all cinched it. She was ready to make the transition to wild oats. Since Ry was not going to be the man to guide her around that exciting corner, she was just going to have to find someone else who would.

There had to be someone who wasn’t intimidated by her brother. Someone who hadn’t grown up around here wouldn’t know enough to be afraid of Travis. Someone new in town.

Someone like Dr. Nathan Beldon.

It just kept coming back to him.

Yeah. She could settle for a doctor.

Settle.

She pulled in a deep breath, let it out. It probably didn’t say much about her strength of character that she was considering settling for any man who didn’t run from Travis. It also pretty much told the tale that she wasn’t evolved, in the feminist sense.

“Not everyone is cut out to be a mover and a shaker or a corporate ball breaker,” she muttered, and flipped over onto her back again. “No crime in that.”

She made a difference in her own way. She liked her volunteer work at the library with her friend Stephanie Firth, and her work at the burn clinic. She also loved organizing fund-raisers. But what she really enjoyed was the time she spent at the day-care center.

She loved kids. Short ones, shy ones, snotty-nosed ones, even the ones that bit. And she wanted kids of her own—with the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Or at least with a man who was willing to spend his life with her.

And then, of course, there was that other little thing. That virgin thing. She was so tired of celibacy. She wanted to know what all the fuss was about. If Nathan Beldon ended up being the one to show her, maybe he could also be the one she could potentially start a life and raise her babies with.

And to hell with what Trav or Ryan said.

“I thought we had this settled, bud.” Trav Whelan clasped a hand on Ry’s shoulder the next afternoon as they cozied up to the bar in the Cattleman’s Club. His expression was filled with stymied disappointment. “Don’t back out on me now.”

Ry grimaced and scratched his ear. And came up blank. This conversation was not going the way he’d planned it. He’d had his arguments lined up like spit-and-polished soldiers. Put one of the other guys—any of the other guys involved with the situation—in charge of looking out for Carrie until this mystery surrounding Natalie Perez and her baby was solved. Ry was a lover, not a fighter, right? Yeah…he’d been in on some of the covert missions the Cattleman’s Club members sometimes found themselves diving into feet first for the greater good, but there were much better men for this particular job.

Trav, however, didn’t see it that way and didn’t plan on taking no for an answer. And he was doing a damn fine job of guilting Ry into forgetting all the valid reasons why it was a bad idea for him to be the one to ride herd on Carrie.

“You are my man,” Trav continued with a come-on, step-up-to-the-plate smile. “You have always been my man. Hell, Ry, you’ve been around long enough to know I can’t take a chance on some opportunistic SOB who might try to take advantage of her. You’re the only one I can turn to…and I can’t keep an eye on her. Not until this is over.”

Torn between the need to wrangle a way out of certain disaster and his loyalty to Trav, Ry let out a long sigh while Trav settled in to draw a little more blood.

“I’m a daddy. A daddy,” Trav repeated as if he still couldn’t believe his good fortune, “and the lady in my life… Ry, you know both Natalie and the baby are still at risk.”

Yeah, Ryan knew. So, evidently, did Carrie. He was still chewing on that little bit of news. He was still a little staggered by her conjectures. She’d been dead-on right. About a lot of things. The Texas Cattleman’s Club did get involved in covert missions. It was part of their code of honor and their mission. Justice, peace, leadership…what they did was always for the greater good.

Most recently, several Club members—Trav and himself along with David Sorenson, Clint Andover, Alex Kent and Sheik Darin ibn Shakir—had been trying to unravel the mystery that started one chilly night in November and just kept getting more bizarre. Yes, they knew a lot more now than they had that night when the then-unidentified woman had stumbled into the Royal Diner with a newborn baby girl and a cool half a million dollars stuffed in a diaper bag, but there were still questions.

That woman, who had promptly collapsed, fallen into a coma and only recently recovered and regained her memory, was Natalie Perez, now Travis’s fianceé. The baby was Trav’s baby, the unexpected but wonderful result of an affair they had both decided it was best to walk away from almost a year ago.

The two men became very quiet. Ry pondered the label on the long-neck he cupped loosely in his hands on the bar in front of him. “How is Natalie?” he asked finally. “And little Autumn?”

Trav contemplated his own beer, as sober as Ry had ever seen him. “They’re doing okay. Man… I can’t believe I ever walked away from her. I can’t believe I almost lost them. That bastard Birkenfeld…he could have killed Natalie, sold our baby.”

Ry let out a deep breath, the enormity of the situation weighing heavily on his shoulders as he recalled the details. He hadn’t been at the diner that November night when Natalie showed up with a Texas Cattleman’s Club business card clutched in her hand. Neither had Travis or Darin, who had both been out of the country on assignment until the end of the December.

Maybe if Trav had been in town when Natalie had first appeared on the scene, they’d be further ahead of the game. But he hadn’t, and it was only when she’d spotted Travis at the New Year’s Eve party after he’d returned to Royal from Europe and a TCC mission, that Natalie had started to remember.

She’d finally recalled Travis and their brief but intense affair that had resulted in little Autumn. It wasn’t until weeks later that she’d remembered why she’d ended up in Royal carrying all that money in a diaper bag. The story was so bizarre that even now Ry had trouble digesting the magnitude and the far-reaching effects.

Natalie had been worked at a birthing clinic run by Dr. Roman Birkenfeld. Over several months she’d noticed that an alarming number of single women had lost their babies at birth. She’d been so alarmed she’d decided to secretly search the computer files. When she did, she discovered that the babies hadn’t really died but had been sold. Before she could confront Dr. Birkenfeld or go to the police with this damning information, she’d gone into labor.

And that’s when her trouble had begun. The good doctor, it seemed, had had the same plans for Natalie’s baby as he’d had for the others. He’d drugged her, and the next morning, after she’d given birth, she’d realized he intended to tell her, as he had the other women, that her baby had died. Somehow Natalie had escaped the clinic undetected, and followed Dr. Birkenfeld and his nurse accomplice to the airport where Natalie was positive they intended to fly with the baby to the prospective buyers.

When the nurse took the baby into a rest room to change her diaper, Natalie had made her move. She shoved the woman to the floor, grabbed the baby and the diaper bag—which, it turned out, was full of money that the TCC men now held in the club’s safe. She’d fled to the bus station, but Birkenfeld and his nurse had caught up with her in Amarillo.

And from that point on, Natalie’s memory was still a blank slate, which was why Trav and the rest of the guys were still on guard.

Ry angled Trav a look. “Has she remembered anything else?” he asked, knowing they needed something more to help them resolve this nasty business.

Travis shook his head. “No. Everything after Amarillo is pretty fuzzy. All she remembers of Birkenfeld catching up with her is that there was a struggle and she hit her head.” He stopped, and Ry could see a hundred emotions cloud his friend’s face. Everything from rage to helplessness to relief that his woman and his child were safe to frustration that Birkenfeld had dropped out of sight but was still a threat. They wanted to put this entire episode to bed.

“She doesn’t know how she got away from them,” Trav continued. “Last night she told me that the only thing that kept her going was knowing she had to stay conscious long enough to find me.”

He swallowed hard. “And then I wasn’t there for her.”

“Hey.” Ry’s hand on Trav’s shoulder pulled him out of his anguish to meet Ry’s eyes. “You’re here for her now. You’re here for both of them.”

All the TCC guys were, until they caught Birkenfeld and his nurse, who were still on the loose and evidently desperate, if the threats against Natalie’s life were any indication. Ry figured they were. And after Tara Roberts, who had taken Natalie home with her to recuperate, had ended up with her house mysteriously burning down, none of the TCC men felt they could let down their guards or ease up on their continuing investigation.

“Birkenfeld is still out there somewhere,” Travis said, his voice chillingly cold. “Until he’s caught and put behind bars, neither Natalie nor Autumn are safe.” He turned to Ry. “That’s why I need you, man. Carrie—”

“Is a big girl,” Ry insisted, still determined to work his way out of this. He was more or less in agreement with Carrie on this issue. “I really don’t know why you think she needs protection. She’s not a part of this.”

“But I am. And I figure Birkenfeld knows that. Do you feel comfortable—no, strike comfortable. Do you feel one hundred percent sure that this sick bastard who drugs women and tells them their babies are dead so he can sell them, wouldn’t stoop so low as to try to get to Natalie through me and what’s mine?”

Ry closed his eyes, knowing in his heart of hearts that Trav was right. Ry didn’t feel one hundred percent sure about that. And since Carrie was part of Trav’s world, he had a legitimate point. “You’re right. It takes a twisted as well as a corrupt mind to do what he’s done.”

“And it takes someone I trust to look out for my sister until we find him and finish this.”

Ry rocked his beer bottle slowly back and forth on the bar and finally nodded in defeat. How could he turn Trav down in the face of such a compelling argument?

He expelled another deep breath. “Yeah. Okay. Okay. I’ll do it. But I still don’t understand what Nathan Beldon has to do with any of this.”

Trav shrugged. “Probably nothing.”

Ry whipped his head toward his friend. “Then why am I watching out for him?”

“Because I don’t like him.” Trav gave Ry a bland look. “Do I have to have another reason?”

Three

“I don’t believe I’m doing this,” Ryan muttered under his breath later that night. He tugged his Resistol low over his brow. Slumped behind the wheel of his new black SUV, he watched with a scowl as Carrie walked toward the Royal Diner on Nathan Beldon’s arm.

She worked fast. He’d give her that. Or maybe it was Beldon who’d “put the moves” on her. Now, there was a statement that was going to haunt him into the next decade. Just like spying on Carrie was going to be his undoing.

Trav may call it keeping an eye on her, but Ry figured Wayne Vincente, the Royal police chief might have a different take on it—like maybe stalking. And Ry, hell, he called it a whole lot of other things. Like uncomfortable, and stupid and…hey. He sat up straight, all senses on red alert. Had he seen that right? Had the slimeball doctor’s hand slipped a gentleman’s distance too low at the small of Carrie’s back where he’d planted it with a little too much familiarity?

The diner door closed behind them before he had a chance to decide if it had been an accident or an illusion.

Slimeball.

Ry didn’t even know the guy, yet after seeing that—whatever that was—the assessment felt like a good fit. Without an ounce of hesitation, he slipped out of his SUV and headed for the diner. Trav wanted him to watch out for Carrie, so that’s what he was going to do. And that’s what this was about. A favor for a friend. Nothing more. He’d made up his mind last night that no matter what he wanted or how hot she was, Carrie was as off-limits romantically as a top secret military intelligence project.

And with that thought fueling him, he opened the Royal Diner door and prepared to run a little creative interference.