Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer

‘Nobody does it better.’

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

‘Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly.’

—Publishers Weekly

‘Diana Palmer is a mesmerising storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.’

—Affaire de Coeur

‘Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.’

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

About the Author

The prolific author of over one hundred books, DIANA PALMER got her start as a newspaper reporter. One of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. Diana lives with her family in Georgia.

Novels by Diana Palmer

NIGHT FEVER

ONE NIGHT IN NEW YORK

BEFORE SUNRISE

OUTSIDER

LAWMAN

HARD TO HANDLE

FEARLESS

DIAMOND SPUR

TRUE COLOURS

HEARTLESS

MERCILESS

TRUE BLUE

COURAGEOUS

Courageous
Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Mel and Syble,

with all my love

PROLOGUE

Peg Larson loved to fish. This was like baiting a hook. Except that instead of catching bass or bream in the local streams around Comanche Wells, Texas, these tactics were for catching a large, very attractive man.

She missed fishing. It was only a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving, and much too cold even in south Texas to sit on a riverbank. It was wonderful, in early spring, to settle down with a tub of worms and her tried-and-true simple cane fishing pole. She weighed down her line with sinkers and topped it with a colorful red, white and blue bobber that her father had given to her when she was five years old.

But fishing season was months away.

Right now, Peg had other prey in mind.

She looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. Her face was pleasant, but not really pretty. She had large eyes, pale green, and long blond hair, which she wore in a ponytail most of the time, secured with a rubber band or whatever tie she could lay her hand to. She wasn’t really tall, but she had long legs and a nice figure. She pulled off the rubber band and let her hair fall around her face. She brushed it until its paleness was like a shimmering curtain of pale gold. She put on a little lipstick, just a touch, and powdered her face with the birthday compact her father had given her a few months earlier. She sighed at her reflection.

In warm weather, she could have worn her cutoffs—jean shorts made by cutting the legs off an old pair—and a nicely fitting T-shirt that showed off her pert, firm little breasts. In November, she had fewer options.

The jeans were old, pale blue and faded in spots from many washings, but they hugged her rounded hips and long legs like a second skin. The top was pink, made of soft cotton, with long sleeves and a low, rounded neckline that was discreet, but sexy. At least, Peg thought it was sexy. She was nineteen, a late bloomer who’d fought the wars in high school to keep away from the fast and furious crowd that thought sex before marriage was so matter-of-fact and sensible that only a strange girl would feel disdain for it.

Peg chuckled to herself as she recalled debates with casual friends on the subject. Her true friends were people of a like mind, who went to church in an age when religion itself was challenged on all fronts. But, in Jacobsville, Texas, the county seat where the high school was located, she was in the majority. Her school had cultural diversity and protected the rights of all its students. But most of the local girls, like Peg, didn’t bow to pressure or coercion where morality was concerned. She wanted a husband and children, a home of her own, a garden and flower beds everywhere, and most of all, Winslow Grange to fill out the fairy tale.

She and her father, Ed, worked for Grange on his new ranch. He’d saved the wife of his boss, Gracie Pendleton, when she was kidnapped by a deposed South American leader who needed money to oust his monstrous nemesis.

Grange had taken a team of mercenaries into Mexico in the dead of night and saved Gracie. Jason Pendleton, a millionaire with a real heart of gold, had given Grange a ranch of his own on the huge Pendleton ranch property in Comanche Wells, complete with a foreman and housekeeper—Ed and his daughter, Peg.

Before that, Ed had worked on the Pendleton ranch, and Peg had spent many long months building daydreams around the handsome and enigmatic Grange. He was tall and dark, with piercing eyes and a nicely tanned face. He’d been a major in the U.S. Army during the Iraq war, during which he’d done something unconventional and mustered out to avoid a general court-martial. His sister had committed suicide over a local man, people said. He was a survivor in the best sense of the word, and now he was working with the deposed Latin leader, Emilio Machado, to retake his country, Barrera, in the Amazon rain forest.

Peg didn’t know much about foreign places. She’d never even been out of Texas and the only time she’d even been on a plane was a short hop in a propeller-driven crop duster owned by a friend of her father. She was hopelessly naive about the world and men.

But Grange didn’t know what an innocent she really was, and she wasn’t going to tell him. For weeks, she’d been vamping him at every turn. In a nice way, of course, but she was determined that if any woman in south Texas landed Grange, it was going to be herself.

She didn’t want him to form a bad opinion of her, of course, she just wanted him to fall so head-over-heels in love with her that he’d propose. She dreamed of living with him. Not that she didn’t live with him now, but she worked for him. She wanted to be able to touch him whenever she liked, hug him, kiss him, do … other things with him.

When she was around him, her body felt odd. Tight. Swollen. There were sensations rising in her that she’d never felt before. She’d dated very infrequently because most men didn’t really appeal to her. She’d thought something might be wrong with her, in fact, because she liked shopping with girlfriends or going to movies alone, but she wasn’t really keen on going out with boys like some of the girls did, every single night. She liked to experiment with new dishes in the kitchen, and make bread, and tend to her garden. She kept a vegetable garden in the spring and summer, and worked in her flower beds year-round. Grange indulged her mania for planting, because he enjoyed the nice organic vegetables she put on the table. Gracie Pendleton shared flowers and bulbs with her, because Gracie loved to garden, too.

So Peg dated rarely. Once, a nice man had taken her to a theater in San Antonio to see a comedy. She’d enjoyed it, but he’d wanted to stop by his motel on the way home. So that was that. The next man she dated took her to see the reptiles at the zoo in San Antonio and wanted to take her home to meet his family of pythons. That date had ended rather badly as well. Peg didn’t mind snakes, so long as they weren’t aggressive and wanted to bite, but she drew the line at sharing a man with several of them. He’d been a nice man, too. Then she’d gone out with Sheriff Hayes Carson once. He was a really nice man, with wonderful manners and a sense of humor. He’d taken her to the movies to see a fantasy film. It had been terrific. But Hayes was in love with another local girl, and everybody knew it, even if he didn’t. He dated, to show Minette, who owned the local weekly newspaper, that he wasn’t pining for her. She bought it, but Peg didn’t. And she wasn’t about to fall in love with a man whose heart was elsewhere.

After that, she’d stopped dating people. Until her father accepted this job working for Grange. Peg had seen him around the ranch. She was fascinated by him. He rarely smiled, and he hardly ever talked to her. She knew about his military background, and that he was considered very intelligent. He spoke other languages and he did odd jobs for Eb Scott, who owned and operated a counterterrorism school in Jacobsville, just up the road from Comanche Wells where Grange lived. Eb was an ex-mercenary, like a number of local men. Rumor was that a number of them had signed on with Emilio Machado to help him recover his government from the usurper who was putting innocent people in prison and torturing them. He sounded like a really bad sort, and she hoped the general would win.

But her worry was about Grange heading up the invasion army. He was a soldier, and he’d been in the thick of battle in Iraq. But even a good soldier could be killed. Peg worried about him. She wanted to tell him how much she worried, but the timing had never been right.

She teased him, played with him, made him all sorts of special dishes and desserts. He was polite and grateful, but he never seemed to really look at her. It was irksome. So she planned a campaign to capture his interest. She’d been working on it for weeks.

She waylaid him in the barn, wearing a blouse even more low-cut than this one, and made a point of bending over to pick up stuff. She knew he had to notice that, but he averted his eyes and talked about his new purebred heifer that was due to calf soon.

Then she’d tried accidentally brushing up against him in the house, squeezing past him in a doorway so that her breasts almost flattened against his chest on the way. She’d peeped up to see the effect, but he’d averted his eyes, cleared his throat and gone out to check on the cow.

Since physical enticements didn’t seem to be doing the trick, she tried a new tack. Every time she was alone with him, she found a way to inject sensual topics into the conversation.

“You know,” she mused one day when she’d taken a cup of coffee out to him in the barn, “they say that some of the new birth control methods are really effective. Almost a hundred percent effective. There’s almost no way a woman could get pregnant with a man unless she really wanted to.”

He’d looked at her as if she’d grown another pair of eyes, cleared his throat and walked off.

So, Rome wasn’t built in a day. She tried again. She was alone with him in the kitchen, her father off on his poker night with friends.

She’d leaned over Grange, her breasts brushing his broad shoulder, to serve him a piece of homemade apple pie with ice cream to go with his second cup of black coffee. “I read this magazine article that says it isn’t size that matters with men, it’s what they do with what they’ve got … Oh, my goodness!”

She’d grabbed for a dishcloth, because he’d knocked over his coffee.

“Did it burn you?” she asked hastily, as she mopped up the mess.

“No,” he said coldly. He got up, picked up his pie, poured himself a fresh cup of coffee and left the room. She heard him go into his own room. The door slammed behind him. Hard.

“Was it something I said?” she asked the room at large.

That tactic obviously wasn’t going to attract him, either. So now, she was going to try demure and sensuous. She had to do something. He was going away with the general, soon, to South America. It might be a long time until she’d see him again. Her heart was already breaking. She had to find some way to make him notice her, to make him feel something for her. She wished she knew more about men. She read articles in magazines, she looked on the internet, she read books. Nothing prepared her for seduction.

She grimaced. She didn’t really want to seduce him completely. She just wanted to make him wild enough to feel that marriage was his only option. Well, no, she didn’t want to trap him into marriage, either. She just wanted him to love her.

How in the world was she going to do that?

Grange didn’t even date. Well, he’d gone out a time or two with a local girl, and there was gossip that he’d had a passion for Gracie Pendleton which was unrequited. But he was no rounder. Not in Comanche Wells, anyway. She imagined that he’d had plenty of opportunity to get women when he was in the military. She’d heard him talk about the high-society parties he’d been to in the nation’s capital. He’d been in the company of women who were wealthy and beautiful, to whom he might have looked as attractive and desirable as he did to poor Peg. She wondered how experienced he was. More so than she was, certainly. She was flying blind, trying to intrigue a man with skills she didn’t possess. She was stumbling in the dark.

She gave her reflection a last, hopeful look, and went out to impress Grange.

He was sitting in the living room watching a television special on anacondas, filmed in the Amazon jungle, where he was going shortly.

“Wow, aren’t they huge?” she exclaimed, perching on the arm of the sofa beside him. “Did you know that when the females are ready to mate, males come from miles around and they form a mating ball that lasts for …”

He got up, turned off the television, muttering curses under his breath, walked out the front door and slammed it behind him.

Peg sighed. “Well,” she mused to herself, “either I’m getting to him or I’m going to end up under a bridge somewhere, floating on my face.” That amused her, and she burst out laughing.

Her father, Ed Larson, came in the door, puzzled. “Winslow just passed me on his way to the barn,” he remarked slowly. “He was using the worst range language I ever heard in my life, and when I asked him what was wrong, he said that he couldn’t wait to get out of the country and that if he ever got his hands on an anaconda, he was going to pack it in a box and send it home to you special delivery.”

Her eyes popped. “What?”

“Very odd man,” Ed said, shaking his head as he went into the house. “Very odd indeed.”

Peg just grinned. Apparently she was having some sort of effect. She’d aroused Grange to passion. Even if it was only a burst of anger.

She made a coconut cake for dessert the following day. It was Grange’s favorite. She used a boiled icing and sprinkled coconut on top and then dolled it up with red cherries.

After a quiet and tense dinner, she served it to the men.

“Coconut,” Ed Larson exclaimed. “Peg, you’re a wonder. This is just like your mother used to make,” he added as he savored a bite of it with a smile and closed eyes.

Her mother had died of cancer years before. She’d been a wonderful cook, and one of the sweetest people Peg ever knew. Her mother had the knack of turning enemies into friends, with compassion and empathy. Peg had never had a real enemy in her life, but she hoped that if she ever did, her mother’s example would guide her.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said gently.

Grange was digging into his own cake. He hesitated at the red candied cherries, though, and nudged two of them to one side on the saucer while he finished the last bite of cake.

Peg looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. “Don’t you like … cherries?” she asked, with her lips pursed suggestively.

He let out a word that caused Ed’s eyebrows to reach for the ceiling.

Then he flushed, threw down his napkin and got up, his sensuous lips making a thin line. “Sorry,” he bit off. “Excuse me.”

Ed gaped at his daughter. “What in the world is wrong with him lately?” he asked half under his breath. “I swear, I’ve never seen a man so edgy.” He finished his own cake, oblivious to Peg’s expression. “I guess it’s this Barrera thing. Bound to make a man worry. He’s having to plan and carry out an involved military campaign against a sitting dictator, with a small force and out of sight of most government letter agencies,” he added. “I’d be uptight, too.”

Peg hoped Grange was uptight, but not for those reasons. She blushed when she remembered what she’d said to Winslow. It had been a crude comment, not worthy of her at all. She’d have to be less blatant. She didn’t want to drive him away by being too coarse. She cursed her own tongue for its lack of skill. She was making him madder by the day. That brought to mind another possible complication. She could cost her father his job here if she went too far. She was going to have to rethink her strategy, once again.

So she puzzled on it for a couple of days and decided to try something a little different. She curled her hair, put on her best Sunday dress and sat down in the living room to watch a recording of The Sound of Music when she knew Grange was due in from riding fence lines.

He walked in, hesitated when he saw her sitting in his place on the sofa and paused beside her.

“That’s a very old film,” he remarked.

She smiled demurely. “Oh, yes. But the music is wonderful and besides, it’s about a nun who has a fairy-tale romance with a titled gentleman who marries her.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Isn’t that a little tame for your taste?” he asked, and in a rather sarcastic manner.

She looked up at him with wide green eyes. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

“Whatever happened to balls of anacondas and birth control?” he asked.

She gasped. “You think that anacondas should use birth control?” she asked, aghast. “Good heavens, however in the world would a male anaconda use a prophylactic … Hello?”

He left the room so quickly that she imagined a trail of flame behind him. But just as he went out the door, she could have sworn she heard a deep, soft chuckle.

1

“I don’t want to go to the Cattleman’s Ball.” Winslow Grange was emphatic about it. He glared at the other man. His dark eyes were hostile. Of course, they were usually hostile.

His boss just smiled. Jason Pendleton knew his foreman very well. “You’ll have a good time,” he said. “You need the break.”

“Break!” Grange threw his big hands up in the air and turned away. “I’m going to a South American country with a group of covert ops specialists to retake a country under a bloodthirsty dictator …”

“Exactly,” Jason said blandly. “That’s why you need the break.”

Grange turned back to him, with his hands deep in his jeans pockets. He grimaced. “Listen, I don’t like people much. I don’t mix well.”

“And you think I do?” Jason asked reasonably. “I have to hobnob with heads of corporations, government regulators, federal auditors … but I cope. You’ll be able to deal with it, too.”

“I guess so.” He drew in a long breath. “It’s been a while since I led men into battle.”

Jason lifted an eyebrow. “You went into Mexico to liberate my wife when she was kidnapped by your current boss.”

“An incursion. We’re talking about a war.” He turned back to the fence, leaned his arms on it and stared blindly at the purebred cattle munching at a rolled-up hay bale. “I lost men in Iraq.”

“Mostly due to your C.O.’s idiotic orders, as I recall, not to your own competence.”

Grange said grimly, “I loved his court-martial.”

“Served him right.” Jason leaned against the fence beside him. “Point is, you lead well. That’s a valuable ability to a deposed head-of-state who’s fighting to restore democracy to his country. If you succeed, and I believe you will, they’ll erect a statue of you somewhere.”

Grange burst out laughing.

“But the ball is a local tradition. We all go, and donate to important regional causes at the same time. We get together and dance and talk and have fun. You remember what that is, Grange, don’t you? Fun?”

Grange made a face.

“You ex-military guys, honest to God—” Jason sighed.

“Don’t start with me,” Grange told him. “You just remember that my military experience is why Gracie isn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Jason shook his head. “I think about it every day.” He didn’t like remembering it. Gracie had almost died. Their courtship had been rocky and difficult. They were married now, and expecting their first child. Gracie had thought she was pregnant soon after their marriage, only she’d been mistaken. She wasn’t this time. She was six months pregnant and beaming. They were happy together. But it hadn’t been an easy path to the altar.

“I was going to ask her out, just before you married Gracie,” Grange said to irritate the other man. “I even bought a new suit.”

“It wasn’t wasted. It’s still in style. You can wear it to the Cattleman’s Ball. Besides,” Jason added with a grin, “you have no cause for complaint. I gave you a tract of land and a seed herd of purebred Santa Gertrudis.”

“You really shouldn’t have done that,” Grange told him firmly. “It was overkill.”

“It wasn’t. You’re the most valuable employee I’ve got here. It was a bonus. Well deserved.”

Grange smiled. “Thanks.” He made another face. “But you didn’t have to throw in Ed Larson and his daughter.”

“Peg’s sweet, and she cooks like an angel.”

The dark eyes glared. “She’s after me. All the time. She says things …”

“She’s barely nineteen—of course she says things …”

“She’s trying to seduce me, for God’s sake!” he burst out, and his high cheekbones flushed.

Jason’s eyebrows lifted. “You do know that the Victorian Age is over and done with?”

“I am not about to start playing games with a nineteen-year-old,” came the curt reply. “I go to church, pay my taxes and give to charity. I don’t even drink!”

Jason shook his head. “I give up. You’re a lost cause.”

“You want to see a lost cause, look around you,” Grange began. “We have the highest divorce rate, the ugliest economy and the greediest corporate entities on earth….”

Jason held up a hand. “I’m sorry, but I’m due in New York the week after Thanksgiving,” he said drolly.

“I wasn’t going to take that long to get my point across.”

“You’ll have to plant your soapbox someplace else. As to the ball, if you don’t take Peg, who will you take?”

Grange looked hunted. “I’m going alone.”

“Oh, that’s going to put you on everybody’s front page for a month.”

His sensual lips made a straight line. “I’m not taking Peg! Her father works for me! So does she, while we’re on the subject!”

“I can list all the people who took employees to past balls, if you like,” Jason mused.

Grange knew already what a list that would be, and many of those couples ended up married. He didn’t want to open that can of worms.

“It’s only for about three hours,” Jason continued. “What’s the harm? And aren’t you leaving the country two days later?”

“Yes.”

“Think of it as a happy memory to take with you.”

He shifted and averted his eyes. He ran a hand through his thick, black hair. “Peg won’t have the money for a party dress.”

“We have a new boutique in town. The designer, Bess Truman, is trying to drum up business, so she’s outfitted half the town’s eligible women with her stock. Remember Nancy, our pharmacist? She’s got a green gown that she wore for an event that was filmed on the local television station. Bonnie, her assistant, has a red one that stopped traffic. Literally. Even Holly, who works with them, got a gold one. So Bess, she’s the designer, she gave Peg one to wear also.”

“Going to tell me what color it is?” Grange drawled sarcastically.

“You’ll have to wait and see.” Jason grinned. “Gracie said it’s the most gorgeous of the lot.”

Grange still hesitated.

“Ask her,” Jason said, and he was solemn. “You’ve been walking around alone for a long time. You don’t date anybody. It’s time you remembered why men like women.”

His eyes narrowed. “Gracie put you up to this. Didn’t she?”

Jason shrugged and pursed his lips. “Pregnant women have cravings. Strawberry ice cream with pickle topping, crushed ice with mango, their friends getting asked to holiday balls …” He glanced at Grange with twinkling eyes. “You wouldn’t want to upset Gracie?”

“Yeah, hit me in my weak spot, why don’t you?” Grange muttered.

Jason grinned wider.

He shrugged. “Okay. I should be testing weapons and drilling men. But I’ll take the evening off and escort Peg to a ball I don’t want to attend. Why not?”

“And be nice, could you?” Jason groaned. “Just once?”

He snarled. “I hate nice. I’m not nice. I was a major in a forward company in Iraq.”

“It will be good practice for when you have to charm insurgents to surrender to your boss, the general.”

Grange smiled coldly. “I won’t need charm. I have several retooled automatic weapons and a few grenades.”

Jason just shook his head.

Peg was in the kitchen when Grange walked through the door of his ranch house. Jason had given him the house with the property, against his protests. Grange was still, technically, Jason’s foreman on the huge Pendleton Comanche Wells property. But when he had free time, he could build up his own herd and renovate the huge white elephant of a house. Jason was paying Ed’s salary. Grange was paying Peg’s.

He never failed to appreciate Jason’s generosity. The older man was a fanatic about repaying debts, and he felt that he owed Grange a lot for saving Gracie. Grange refused money, so Jason had found another way to repay him: the land, the house and the seed herd. It was worth a small fortune, but it was impossible to get around Jason when he was determined. Gracie had also been determined. In the end, Grange gave up and accepted with whatever grace he could manage. It was a hell of a reward. But it had been a desperate and dangerous mission. He could have died, so could his men. He’d managed the rescue in short time, and with no serious casualties. He hoped, he prayed, he’d be able to do the same with Emilio Machado’s invasion force the week after Thanksgiving, when they went to South America to liberate Barrera from a merciless dictator who had led a coup against Machado.

Peg was nineteen, vivacious, with long blond hair and green eyes and a wicked smile. She and her father had been alone for five years, since the death of her mother from an aggressive, vicious cancer. The two of them had ended up working for Jason Pendleton, but his obligation to Grange had settled them here, in this old house.

Neither of them minded. Ed loved being foreman of Grange’s small operation. He got the same salary he’d drawn from Jason at the Pendleton ranch property, but the duties were less rigorous and he had more free time. Peg, on the other hand, only had to cook for the three of them, and she was good at it. Not that the bunkhouse cook at Jason’s place didn’t stop by frequently to beg pies and cakes from her, because he couldn’t do those. Peg never minded. She loved to cook.

“You should be in college,” Grange said without preamble when he walked into the kitchen where she was just putting a meatloaf into the oven.

She glanced at him, laughed and stirred her potatoes, which were boiling. “Sure. I’ll go to Harvard next semester. Remind me to ask Dad for the tuition.”

He glared at her. “There are scholarships.”

“I was a straight-C student.”

“Work-study.”

She turned around and looked up at him. It was a long way. She only came up to his chin. Her long, light blond hair was in two pigtails and her sweatshirt was spotted with grease. So were her jeans. She never wore an apron. She pointed the spoon at him. “And what would I study, exactly?”

“Home economics?”

She glowered at him. “Do you really want me to go to college and live in a coed dorm?”

“Excuse me?”

“A dorm that has men and women living in the same rooms, when they don’t even know each other? Do you think I’m undressing in an apartment with a man I don’t know?”

He gaped at her. “You have to be kidding.”

“I am not. They have dorms for married couples. The rest have no choice about whether their dorm mates are male or female.” She glared harder. “I was raised to believe that things work in a certain way. That’s why I live in a place where people think like I do.” She shrugged. “I read this old book by a guy named Toffler. Thirty years ago, he predicted that there would be people out of step with society and who couldn’t fit in.” She turned to him. “That’s me. Out of step. Can’t fit in. Doesn’t belong anywhere. Well, anywhere except Jacobsville. Or Comanche Wells.”

He had to admit, he didn’t like the idea of her living in a dorm with male students she didn’t know. On the other hand, he wouldn’t like being forced to live with some woman he didn’t know. How the world had changed in a decade or so!

He leaned against the wall. “Okay. I guess you’re right. But you could commute to a college, or through the internet.”

“I’ve thought about that.”

He studied her pretty bow of a mouth, her rounded chin, her elegant neck. Her eyes were her finest feature, but the pigtails and lack of makeup did nothing for her.

She saw where he was staring and grinned. “Deterrents.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“My pigtails and my lack of makeup. They keep suitors away. If you don’t care about fancy clothes and makeup, you’re smart, right? So men don’t like smart women.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “If I wanted a relationship, I’d like a smart woman. I have a degree in political science with a double major in that and Arabic language studies.”

The fork she was testing her potatoes with was suspended in midair. “You speak Arabic?”

He nodded. “Several dialects.”

Her eyes fell. “Oh.” She hadn’t realized that he was college educated. She felt suddenly inadequate. He’d said that she needed to go to college herself. Did he find her unattractive because her mind wasn’t developed like his? Or did he want her to leave?

He frowned. She looked worried. He recalled what Jason had said about that designer gown she’d been loaned. He grimaced. Well, he didn’t really have any plans to take another woman …

“How about going to the Cattleman’s Ball with me?” he asked bluntly.

She went from doubt and misery to euphoria in five seconds flat. She gaped at him. “Me?”

“Well, I don’t think your Dad would look very good in a ball gown,” he replied.

“The ball,” she said, confused.

He nodded. “I hate parties,” he said flatly. “But I guess I can stand it for a couple of hours.”

She nodded. She looked blank.

“If you want to go?” he asked, because she looked … He wasn’t sure how she looked.

“Yes!”

He laughed. The fork had flown out of her hand in her excitement. It landed, oddly, right in the sink. He laughed harder. “Nice toss. You might consider the NBA.”

“Oh, I don’t play football.”

He started to tell her it was basketball, but she was beaming, and she looked really pretty. He smiled. His dark eyes sparkled. “Just a joke.”

“Okay.”

He shouldered away from the wall. “I’ll get back to work. We’ll leave about six on Saturday. They’re serving canapés and whatnot. I don’t think you’ll need to cook supper, except something for your dad.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He smiled and walked out.

Peg barely noticed the potatoes until water splashed out onto the stove. She tested them with a clean fork and moved the pan off the burner. She was going to the ball. She felt like Cinderella. She’d fix up her face and hair and make Grange proud. It would be the happiest night of her entire life. She felt as if she were walking on air as she started to mash the potatoes in a big ceramic bowl.

“I hear you’re going to the ball,” Ed Larson teased after they’d shared supper with Grange.

She blushed. She’d been doing that all through the meal. It was almost a relief when Grange went out to check the livestock.

“Yes,” she said. “I was shocked that he asked me. I’ll bet Gracie had her husband goad him into it, though,” she added sadly. “I’m sure he said already that he wasn’t going.”

“I’m glad he is,” Ed said. His face was solemn as he took a sip of coffee. “Rumor is that his group is leaving with Emilio Machado very soon. Revolution is never pretty.”

“So soon?” she blurted out. She knew about the mission. There were no secrets in small towns. Besides, Rick Marquez, whose adopted mother Barbara ran the Jacobsville café, had turned out to be General Machado’s son.

“Yes,” her father replied.

“He’ll die.”

“No, he won’t,” he said, and smiled. “Winslow was a major in the army. He served in spec ops in Iraq and he came home. He’ll be fine.”

“You think so. Really?”

“Really.”

She sighed. “Why do people fight?”

His eyes had a faraway expression. “Sometimes for stupid reasons. Sometimes for really patriotic ones. In this case,” he added, glancing at her, “to stop a dictator from having people shot in their own homes for questioning his policies.”

“Good heavens!”

He nodded. “General Machado had a democratic government, with handpicked heads of departments. He toured his country, talked to his people to see what their needs were. He set up committees, had representatives from indigenous groups on his council, even worked with neighboring countries to set up free-trade agreements that would benefit the region.” He shook his head. “So he goes to another country to talk about one of those agreements, and while he’s away, this serpent brings in his political cronies, has them put in charge of the military and overthrows the government.”

“Nice guy,” she said sarcastically.

“The general’s right-hand man, too, his political chief, Arturo Sapara,” Ed continued. “Sapara takes over the government then he closes down the television and radio stations and puts a representative in each newspaper office to report directly to him. He controls all the mass media. He puts cameras everywhere and spies on the people. Somebody says, anyone he doesn’t like … they disappear, like two internationally known college professors disappeared a few months ago.”

“Ouch.”

“People think things like that can’t happen to them.” He sighed. “They can happen anywhere that the public turns a blind eye to injustice.”

“I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“Machado says he’s not going to stand by and let the work he put into that democracy go down the drain. It’s taken him months to mount a counteroffensive, but he’s got the men and the money now, and he’s going to act.”

“I hope he wins.” She grimaced. “I just don’t want Grange to die.”

He chuckled. “You underestimate that young man,” he assured her. “He’s like a cat. He’s got nine lives. And he thinks outside the box, which is what makes him so invaluable to Machado. Example,” he added, his eyes twinkling as he warmed to his subject, “North Africa in the early days of the North African campaign in World War II. The commanding German field marshal, Rommel, had only a handful of troops compared to the British. But he wanted them to think he had more. So he had his men march through town in a parade, go around the corner and march through again several times to give the appearance of numbers. He also had huge fans, aircraft engines, hooked up behind trucks to blow up the desert sand and make his column appear larger than it really was. By using such tricks, he psyched out the opposition for a long time. That’s what I call thinking outside the box.”

“Wow. I never heard of that German officer.”

He gave her a blank stare. “Excuse me? Didn’t you study about World War II in school?”

“Sure. We learned about this general called Eisenhower who later became president. Oh, and this guy Churchill who was the leader in England.”

“What about Montgomery? Patton?”

She blinked. “Who were they?”

He finished his coffee and got up from the table. “I’ll quote George Santayana, a Harvard professor. ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ And for the record, high school history needs retooling!”

“Modern history.” She made a face. “A lot of dates and insignificant facts.”

“The stuff of legends.”

“If you say so.”

He glared at her, grimaced and gave up. “We’re leaving the world in the hands of shallow thinkers when we old ones die.”

“I am not a shallow thinker,” she protested. “I just don’t like history.”

He cocked his head. “Grange does.”

She averted her eyes. “Does he?”

“Military history, especially. We have running debates on it.”

She shrugged. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check it out on Google.”

“There are books in the bookcase,” he said, aghast. “Real, honest to goodness books!”

“Dead trees,” she muttered. “Kill a tree to make a book, when there are perfectly good ebooks for sale all over the web.”

He threw up his hands. “I’m leaving. Next you’ll be telling me that you agree with all the bookstore and library closings all over the country.”

She hesitated. “I think it’s very sad,” she said unexpectedly. “A lot of people can’t afford to buy books, even used ones. So the library has all that knowledge available for free. What are people going to do when they don’t have any way to learn things except in school?”

He came back and hugged her. “Now I know you’re really my daughter.” He chuckled.

She grinned. “Aw, shucks.” She lowered her head and scuffed her toe on the floor. “Twarn’t nothing,” she drawled.

He laughed and went away.

“Pie?” she called after him.

“Wait an hour or so until dinner has time to settle!” he called back.

“Okay.”

She heated up a cup of coffee and carried it through the house, out the back door and into the barn. Grange was sitting out there in an old cane-bottom wooden chair with a prize heifer that was calving for the first time. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was attached to the Santa Gertrudis first-time mother, whom he called Bossie. She was having a hard time.

“Damned big bull that sired this calf,” he muttered, accepting the coffee with a grateful smile. “If I’d known who the sire was, I’d never have let Tom Hayes sell me this pregnant heifer.”

She grimaced. She knew about birth weight ratios. A first-time mother needed a small calf. The herd sire who bred this one was huge, which meant a much higher birth weight than was recommended. It would endanger the mother.

“I hope she’ll do okay.”

“She will, if I have to have the vet come out here and sit with her all night and pay him.”

She laughed. “Dr. Bentley Rydel would do it for free. He loves animals.”

“Good thing. His brother-in-law sure is one. An animal, I mean.”

“You really have it in for mercenaries, don’t you?” she asked, curious.

“Not all of them,” he replied. “Eb Scott’s bunch is a notch above the rest. But Kell Drake, Rydel’s brother-in-law, was a career military man and he threw it all up to go off searching for adventure in, of all places, Africa!”

“Is Africa worse than South America?” she asked, making a point.

“Much worse, because you have so damned many factions trying to get a foothold there,” he replied. “Most of the aid that’s sent never reaches the starving masses, it goes to sale for the highest bidder and the money goes in some warlord’s pocket.” He shook his head. “Guns don’t really solve problems, you know. But neither does diplomacy when you have two religions slugging it out in the same region, plus class warfare, tribal conflicts, greedy corporations …”

“Is there anybody you like?” she asked pointedly.

“George Patton.”

She laughed, remembering her father had mentioned the name. “Who’s he?”

His eyes almost popped.

“Well, I’m young,” she muttered. “You can’t expect me to know everything.”

He drew in a long breath. She was. Very young. It made him uncomfortable. “He was a famous general in World War II. He served in several theaters of operations for the Allies, predominantly the North African and European campaigns.”

“Oh, that Patton!” she exclaimed. “My dad was telling me about a German general named Rommel in North Africa. Then there was this movie I watched … did Patton really do those things?”

He chuckled. “Some of them. I went through West Point with a distant cousin of his.”

“Neat!”

He finished the coffee. “You should go back in. It’s getting cold.”

She took the cup from his outstretched hand. “It is.”

“Thanks for the coffee.”

She shrugged. “Welcome.” She glanced at the heifer, who was staring at them with wide brown eyes. “I hope Bossie does okay.”

He smiled. “Me, too. Thanks.”

She nodded, smiled and left him there.

The next morning, the veterinarian’s truck was sitting at the barn. Before she even started breakfast, Peg ran out the back door and down to the barn. She’d worried about the mother cow all night.

Grange was leaning against a post, talking to the vet. They both turned when she walked in.

“Well?” she asked a little hesitantly, because she was concerned.

Grange smiled. “Bull calf. Mother and baby doing fine.”

She let out a sigh. “Thank goodness!”

Grange grinned at her obvious relief.

“If you’d like to stay for breakfast,” she told the vet, “I’m making biscuits and fresh sausage and eggs. We have hens and he—” she pointed at Grange “—bought us a freezer full of pork sausage and ribs and loins.” She grinned. “We’re rich!”

They both laughed.

“You’re very welcome to stay,” Grange told him. “She cooks plenty. And she’s a good cook.”

Peg blushed. Her eyes sparkled. “Nice to be appreciated.”

“In that case, I’d love to join you, thanks.”

“I’ll get busy.” She ran all the way back to the house. Grange liked her cooking. She could have floated.

2

“What’s your brother-in-law up to these days?” Grange asked their guest.

He got a droll look in reply. “Kell Drake always changes the subject when I ask. But he and one of his cronies were reportedly up to their ears in some project in South Africa that involves guns. I don’t bother to ask,” Bentley Rydel added when Grange started another question. “It’s a waste of breath. He was working on something with Rourke, but I hear he’s going overseas with you,” he added with a pointed look.

“Rourke,” Grange sighed, shaking his head. “Now there’s a piece of work.”

“Who’s Rourke?” Peg wanted to know.

“Somebody you don’t even need to meet,” Grange told her firmly. “He’s a …”

“Please.” Bentley held up his hand, chuckling. “There’s a lady present.”

“You’re right,” Grange agreed, sipping coffee, with a smile in Peg’s direction.

Peg laughed.

“Well, Rourke’s in a class all his own,” Grange continued. “Even our police chief in Jacobsville, Cash Grier, avoids him, and Grier’s worked with some scoundrels in his time. Word is,” he added, “that Kilraven, who used to work for some federal agency undercover in Grier’s department, almost came to blows with Rourke over the woman he married.”

“A ladies’ man, is he?” Ed asked.

“Hard to say,” Grange replied. “He thinks he is.”

“He’s definitely got the connections,” Bentley mused. “Rumor has it that he’s the illegitimate son of billionaire K.C. Kantor, who was once at the forefront of most conflicts in the African states.”

“I’ve read about him,” Ed replied. “A fascinating man.”

“He never married. They say he was in love with a woman who became a nun. He has a godchild who married into a rich Wyoming ranching family.”

“Well!” Ed exclaimed. “The things you learn about people!”

“True.” Bentley checked his watch. “Gotta run, I’m doing surgery at the office in thirty minutes.” He got up. “Thanks for breakfast, Peg,” he added with a smile.

“You’re welcome. Tell your wife I said hello. Cappie was a few grades ahead of me in school, but I knew her. She’s a sweetie.”

“I’ll tell her you said so,” he said with a grin.” See you.”

The men walked him out to his truck while Peg cleared away the breakfast dishes. She put everything in the dishwasher and went upstairs to see what she had in the way of accessories for her big night at the ball. Cinderella, she thought amusedly. That’s me.

Peg loved to plant things. Especially bulbs. She knew that next spring, the hyacinths and tulips and daffodils and narcissus bulbs that she was planting now would be glorious in color and scent. Hyacinths, she mused, smelled better than the most expensive perfume. She knew about expensive perfume; she spent a lot of time at cosmetic counters sniffing it. She’d never be able to buy any of that for herself. But she loved to sample the luxurious scents when she went to the mall in San Antonio. She couldn’t go that often, but she always made the most of each trip.

She finished putting the last of the hyacinths in, and got up from the ground. Her white sweatshirt was streaked with dirt. Probably her hair was, too. But she loved to play in the dirt. So did Jason Pendleton’s wife, Gracie, who’d sent her the bulbs. Gardeners were almost always friends at first sight. There was a kinship among people who loved to plant things.

Grange drove up at the barn, cut the engine and got out. He walked up to Peg and stared at the long rectangular flower bed she’d put right next to the barn. He frowned.

“It’s convenient to the source of my best fertilizer,” she pointed out.

It took him a few seconds to puzzle that out. She was talking about animal waste, which was organic and quite effective. He chuckled. “I see.”

“Mrs. Pendleton sent me the bulbs. They’re nice ones, from her own garden. You don’t really mind …?”

He shook his head. “Amuse yourself. I don’t care.”

“Dad’s gone to the market,” she said, wide-eyed. “Would you like to ravish me while he’s away?”

He glared at her. This was her usual way of teasing, and it was beginning to get to him in ways he didn’t like. “No, I would not,” he said firmly.

She glared back. “Honestly, you’re stuck back in the ice age! Everybody does it these days!”

“Including you?”

“Of course, me,” she scoffed. “I’ve had sex continuously since I was fourteen.”

His eyes were growing darker. He was shocked and trying not to show it. Peg didn’t appear to him as a rounder. Was he that bad a judge of character?

“It’s no big deal!” she exclaimed. “You are such a throwback!”

He turned on his heel and stormed off into the barn. He didn’t like thinking that Peg was promiscuous. He was too old-fashioned to think it was a laudable lifestyle, regardless of how many people did.

She followed him into the barn, waving her trowel in the air. “Listen, people don’t have to abide by ancient doctrines that have no place in modern society,” she burst out. “There isn’t one show on television that has people getting married before they indulge!”

He whirled, glaring. “That’s exactly why I don’t watch television.”

“You’re just the kind of man who thinks women should be saints and go around in frilly clothes and be seen yet not heard!”

“And you’re the sort who thinks they should dress like streetwalkers and throw out profanity with every other breath!”

She tossed the trowel away and went right up to him. “I threaten you, don’t I,” she teased. “You’re mad for me, but you think I’m too young and innocent …!”

The sudden pause was because, in a lightning-fast move that she hadn’t anticipated, he backed her right into the barn wall, slammed his powerful body down on hers and kissed her with an expertise and insistence that made her heart stop dead.

“Damn you,” he ground out against her mouth, and both hands went to her hips, grinding them into the sudden arousal that was as unexpected as it was painful.

She was sorry she’d made such claims. She was scared to death. She’d never even been kissed except once by a boy who was even more bashful than she’d been, and the kiss had been almost repulsive to her. Since she’d had feelings for Grange, she hadn’t even dated.

Now here he was taking her up on her stupid offer, and thinking she was experienced and she didn’t even know what to do. Worse, he was scaring her to death. She’d never felt an aroused man’s body. It was oddly threatening, like the lips that were forcing hers apart in a kiss that was years too adult for her lied-about worldly experience.

Her small hands were against his shirtfront, pushing. She tried to turn her face aside. “Ple … please,” she choked out when she managed to escape his devouring mouth for a few seconds.

His head was spinning. She tasted like the finest French champagne. She felt like heaven against him. She was soft and warm and delicately scented, and she aroused him as no other woman ever had in his whole life.

She’d had men. She bragged about it. But as sanity came back in a cold rush, he became aware of her nervous hands on his chest, of her whispered, frantic plea. He lifted his head and looked point-blank into her wide, soft green eyes. And he knew then, knew for certain, that she’d never had a man in her young life.

“Stand still!” he bit off when she tried to move her hips away from the press of his.

The urgency in his tone stilled her. She swallowed, hard, and swallowed again, while he slowly moved back from her, his hands clenched as he turned away. A visible shudder went through his straight back.

She barely registered it. She was shaking. She leaned back against the barn wall, her arms crossed over her breasts. They felt oddly tight and swollen. She felt swollen someplace else, too, but she didn’t know why. She should have listened more carefully in health class instead of reading books on archaeology while the teacher droned on and on about contraception, and the clinical details. Boring. Theory and practice, she decided, were sometimes unrelated, it seemed.

After a minute, Grange drew in a long, steadying breath, and turned back to Peg.

She couldn’t meet his eyes. She was flushed and nervous and shattered.

Her vulnerability took the edge off his temper. He moved back to her, cupped her oval face in his big, warm hands and forced her eyes to meet his.

“You little liar,” he chided, but he was smiling. He didn’t even seem to be mad.

She swallowed once more.

He bent and kissed her eyelids shut, tasting salty tears. “Don’t cry,” he murmured tenderly. “You’re safe.”

Her lips trembled. The caress was out of her experience. It was so much more poignant than the hard, insistent kiss that had come without respect or tenderness. This was a world away from that.

Her hands flattened against his soft flannel shirt, feeling the muscle and warmth and heavy heartbeat under it. She savored the feel of his lips on her skin.

“And now we know that making false claims and being aggressive can lead to misunderstandings, don’t we?” he murmured.

“Yes, well, we should have paid more attention in health class instead of covertly reading archaeology journals,” she said unsteadily.

He lifted his head. “Archaeology?”

She managed a weak smile. “I like to dig in the dirt. Planting things, digging up artifacts, it’s sort of similar, isn’t it?”

He laughed softly. “If you say so.”

She searched his eyes, feeling vulnerable. “You’re not mad?”

He shook his head. “Ashamed, a bit, though.”

“Why? It was my fault,” she pointed out bluntly. “I was really out of line. I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “Me, too.”

She peered up at him. “You still want to take me to the ball, don’t you?” she worried aloud.

His eyes narrowed. “More than anything,” he replied, and his voice was like deep velvet.

She flushed. She smiled. “Okay!”

He kissed her nose. “Get out of here. I’ve got to check on my heifer.”

“Cow,” she corrected. “She’s a cow, now that she’s a mother.”

His eyebrows arched.

“Sorry.”

He chuckled. “I have to check on my cow,” he corrected.

She grinned and started to leave.

“Peg.”

She turned. Her name on his lips had a magical sound.

“My father was a minister,” he said quietly, and watched her flush as she recalled the things she’d spouted off to him.

“Oh, gosh,” she groaned.

“He wasn’t a fanatic,” he added. “But he had a very solid take on what life should be, as opposed to what other people thought was permissible. He said that the only thing that separated human beings from animals was the nobility of spirit that went with respect for all life. Religion, he said, along with the arts, was the foundation of any civilization. When those two things fell, so did society.”

She searched his face. “One of my archaeological journals talks about the Egyptian civilization,” she said, moving back to him. “The arts went first, followed by the religion that had been practiced for centuries. Or like Rome, when it absorbed so many other cultures and nationalities and they couldn’t mix, so they ended up dividing the nation and it fell to internal conflict.”

He smiled. “You should go to college and study anthropology.”

“Chance would be a fine thing.”

“Jason Pendleton endows scholarships at several universities. If you really wanted to go, he’d send you.”

She flushed. “Wow! You think so?”

“I do.”

She grimaced. “Well, there’s that living in coed dorms thing,” she said reluctantly.

That was when he remembered their talk on that subject earlier, before she’d claimed experience she didn’t have. He should have remembered that while she was making her outspoken claims. A woman who didn’t want to live in a coed dorm obviously wouldn’t approve of sleeping around. He’d forgotten.

He touched her hair. “You could live off campus.”

She looked up at him, searching his dark eyes. “Who’d take care of you and Dad?”

He felt a jolt in his heart. It hadn’t occurred to him until then how well she took care of him. Freshly washed linen on his bed, dusted surfaces, little treats tucked into his saddlebags when he went riding the fence line, his coat always prominent in the front of the closet so that he had easy access to it.

“You spoil me,” he said after a minute, and he wasn’t smiling. “It isn’t wise. I’ve lived hard most of my life in the military. I don’t want to get soft.”

“That won’t ever happen,” she assured him. “You have that same refined roughness that Hannibal was supposed to have when he fought Scipio Africanus, the famous Roman general, in the Punic Wars.”

He blinked. “You know that, and you don’t recognize the names of Patton and Rommel?” he exclaimed.

She shrugged. “You like modern military history. I like ancient history.” She grinned. “One of Hannibal’s strategies was to throw clay pots of poisonous snakes onto the decks of enemy ships. I’ll bet the crew jumped like grasshoppers to get into the water,” she countered.

“Bad girl,” he said, shaking a finger at her. He pursed his sensual lips, still a little swollen from the hard contact with hers. “On the other hand, that’s not a bad strategy even for modern warfare.”

“Oh, it would never do,” she replied. “Groups of herpetology advocates would march in the streets to protest the inhumane treatment of the snakes.”

He burst out laughing. “You know, I can believe that. We live in interesting times, as the Chinese would put it.”

She raised both eyebrows.

“An old Chinese curse. ‘May you live in interesting times.’ It means, in dangerous ones.”

“I see.”

He sighed, smiling as he studied her face. She wasn’t pretty, but she had regular features and beautiful green eyes and a very kissable mouth. He stared at it without wanting to. “No more teasing,” he said unexpectedly. “I have a low boiling point and you’re not ready for what might happen.”

She started to protest, but decided against it. She grimaced. “Rub it in.”

He moved forward, and took her by the shoulders. “It wasn’t a complaint,” he said, choosing his words. “Look, I don’t indulge. I was never a rounder. I don’t like men who treat women like disposable objects, and there are a lot of them in the modern world.”

“In other words, you think people should get married first,” she translated, and then flushed, because that sounded like she wanted him to propose. She did, but she didn’t want to be blunt about it.

He shifted a little. “Marriage is something I’ll eventually warm to, but not now. I’m about to be involved in a dangerous operation. I can’t afford to have my mind someplace else once lead starts flying, okay?”

Her stomach clenched. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that he might get hurt and she wouldn’t be there to nurse him. She wouldn’t think about worst-case scenarios. She wouldn’t!

“Don’t go getting nervous,” he chided. “I’m an old hand at tactics and, not to blow my own horn too much, I’m good at it. That’s why General Machado has me leading the assault.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “Dad thinks you have great skills at leadership. He said it was a shame you got forced out of the military.”

He shrugged. “I believe, like my father did, that things happen for a reason, and that people come into your life at the right time, for a purpose.”

She smiled gently. “Me, too.”

He touched her soft mouth with his forefinger. “I’m glad that you came into mine,” he said, his voice deep and soft. He drew back.” But we’re just friends, for now. Got that?”

She sighed. “Should I get a refund on my prophylactics, then?” she asked outrageously.

He burst out laughing, shook his head and walked away.

“Is that a ‘no’?” she called after him.

He threw up a hand and kept walking.

She grinned.

The day of the Cattleman’s Ball, she was so nervous that she burned the biscuits at breakfast. It was the first time since she started cooking, at the age of twelve, that she’d done that.

“I’m so sorry!” she apologized to her dad and Grange.

“One misstep in months isn’t a disaster, kid,” Grange teased. “The eggs and bacon are perfect, and we probably eat too much bread as it is.”

“Frankenbread,” Ed muttered.

They both looked at him with raised eyebrows.

He cleared his throat. “A lot of the grains are genetically modified these days, and they won’t label what is and what isn’t. Doesn’t matter much. Pollen from the modified crops gets airborne and lands on nonmodified crops. I guess those geniuses in labs don’t realize that pollen travels.”

“What’s wrong with genetic modification?” Grange asked.

“I’ve got a documentary. I’ll loan it to you,” Ed said grimly. “People shouldn’t mess around with the natural order of things. There’s rumors that they’re even going to start doing it with people, in ‘in vitro’ fertilization, to change hair and eye color, that sort of thing.” He leaned forward. “I also heard that they’re combining human and animal genes in labs.”

“That part’s true,” Grange told him. “They’re studying ways to modify genetic structure so that they can treat genetic diseases.”

Ed glared at him. He pointed his finger at the younger man. “You wait. They’ll have human beings with heads of birds and jackals and stuff, just like those depictions in Egyptian hieroglyphs! You think the Egyptians made those things up? I’ll bet you ten dollars to a nickel they were as advanced as we were, and they created such things!”

Peg got up and glanced around her worriedly.

“What are you doing?” Ed asked.

“Watching for people with nets,” she said. “Shhhhh!”

Grange burst out laughing. “Ed, that’s a pretty wild theory, you know.”

Ed flushed. “I guess I’m getting contaminated by Barbara Ferguson who owns Barbara’s Café in Jacobsville. She sits with me sometimes at lunch and we talk about stuff we see on alternative news websites.”

“Please consider that those websites are very much like tabloid newspapers,” Grange cautioned. “I do remember that Barbara was saying that electrical equipment could sustain an electromagnetic pulse by being stored in a Leyden jar. It’s a Faraday cage,” he explained. “She was very upset when I corrected her, but I pulled it up on my iPhone and showed her the scientific reference. She quoted a source that was totally uninformed.”

“Dang. I guess I’ll have to toss my Leyden jar, then,” Ed said with twinkling eyes, and grinned.

“If you can build one, let me know,” Grange requested.

“Don’t look at me,” Ed replied. “I took courses in animal husbandry, not physics.”

“I flunked physics my first three weeks in the class in high school, and had to transfer to biology.” Peg sighed. “I loved physics. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around it.”

“I took courses in college,” Grange said. “I made good grades, but I loved political science more.”

“You might end up in Machado’s government,” Ed mused. “As a high official. Maybe Supreme Commander of the Military.”

Grange chuckled. “I’ve thought about that. Plenty of opportunity to retool the government forces and make good changes in policy.”

Peg felt her heart drop. That would mean he might not come home from South America, even after the assault, if it was successful. She might never see him again. She studied him covertly. He was the most important thing in her life. She hadn’t slept well since that unexpected, passionate kiss in the barn. He wanted her. She knew that. He hadn’t been able to hide it. But he wasn’t in the market for a wife, and he didn’t do affairs.

Her sadness might have been palpable, because he suddenly turned his head and looked straight into her eyes. There was a jolt like lightning striking her. She flushed and dragged her gaze away as quickly as she could, to avoid tipping off her father that things were going on behind his back.

Her father was pretty sensitive. He looked from one to the other, but he didn’t say a word.

Later, though, he cornered Peg before she went into her room to start dressing for the ball.

“What’s going on between you and Grange?” he asked quietly.

She sighed. “Nothing, I’m afraid. His father was a minister and he doesn’t sleep around.”

Ed, shocked, let out a sudden burst of laughter. “You’re kidding.”

She held up both hands. “Hey, I’m just the messenger. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t … well, indulge. He thinks people should get married first. But he doesn’t want to marry anybody.”

Ed’s expression lightened. “Well!” Grange went up very high on his respected list.

“So he’s taking me to a ball but not to a motel afterward, in case you were worried, I mean,” she added with twinkling eyes.

He shrugged. “I’m out of step,” he confessed. “I don’t know how to live in this world anymore.”

“I guess you and I live in the best place for dinosaurs,” Peg pointed out. “We have plenty of company.”

He grinned. “Yes, and we all live in the past. Look at the town square, all decked out for Christmas, with lights and holly and Santa Claus and his reindeer.”

“With decorated trees in every public and private office, too,” she added, laughing. “I love Christmas.”

“So does Gracie Pendleton,” Ed reminded her. “She’s got their place in San Antonio decked out like a light show, and the ranch here is sparkling with seasonal color as well.”

“I’m going to be sparkling tonight, in my new borrowed designer evening gown,” she said. “I had the beauticians teach me how to do my hair, and I’ve got Mama’s pearls. I thought I’d wear them.” Her face was sad. Her mother had died five years past. They both still missed her.

“She loved parties,” Ed recalled with a sad smile. “But only occasionally. She was like me, a misfit who never belonged anywhere. Except with me.”

She hugged him. “You’ve still got me.”

“Yes, and you’ve still got me.” He hugged her back, and then let her go. “I hope it’s the best night of your life.”

She smiled with breathless anticipation. “I think it might be.”

The gown was silver, with black accents. It draped across her pert, firm breasts from one shoulder, leaving the other arm bare. It was ankle length, with a tight waist and flaring skirt, in a clingy fabric that outlined every soft curve. The bodice was bow-shaped across with the drape from her upper arm diagonally to her other breast. The effect was exquisite, displaying her creamy skin to its best advantage.

The pearls were a single strand, off-white, with matching stud pearl earrings on her small ears. She put up her pale blond hair in a bun with little tendrils escaping, and a set of pearl combs, artificial but pretty, to keep it up. She used a minimum of makeup, just powder and lipstick, no eyeliner or messy mascara. Fortunately the nice boutique owner had even loaned her a pair of pumps to wear with the gown. Peg’s shoes were mostly sneakers and an old pair of scuffed loafers. Her budget didn’t run to fancy clothing.

Finished, she looked in the mirror and beamed at her reflection. She was never going to be beautiful, but she had good teeth and pretty lips and eyes. Maybe that would be enough. She hoped she could compete with all the really pretty women who would be at the ball. But most of them were married, thank goodness, so there shouldn’t be too much competition there.

She had a nice coat that her father had bought her last winter, but when she looked at it in the hall closet she grimaced. It was a shocking pink, hardly the thing to wear with a couture gown. It was very cold outside today, with a high wind. She’d need something to keep her warm.

In desperation, she went through her own closet, looking for something that might do. It was useless. Except for a sweat jacket and a short and very old leather jacket, there wasn’t anything here that matched her uptown outfit.

While she was agonizing over her lack of accessories, there was a knock at the front door. She went to answer it when she remembered that her father had gone out to the barn to check on the new calf and its mother, Bossie.

When she opened the door, she got a shock. It was one of Jason Pendleton’s cowboys with a garment bag over his shoulder.

He grinned. “Got something for you, Miss Peg,” he said, offering it. “Mrs. Pendleton said you’d need a coat to go with that dress, so she’s loaning you one of hers. She said it might be just a little long, but she thinks it will do nicely.”

Peg was almost in tears. “Oh, it’s so kind of her!”

The cowboy, an elderly sort, smiled. “You sure do look pretty.”

She flushed. “Thank you!” She took the bag and opened it. The coat was black, long, with a mink collar. Real mink. She stroked it with breathless delight. “Please tell Mrs. Pendleton that I’ll take great care of it. And thank her very much for me!”

“She said you’re welcome. You have a good time tonight.”

“Thanks,” she said, beaming at him.

He grinned and went back to the ranch pickup he’d driven over in.

Peg went back inside and tried on the coat, with its fine silky lining. She looked at herself in the mirror and couldn’t believe that the pretty woman there was actually plain Peg. She just shook her head.

“I feel like Cinderella,” she whispered. “Just like her!”

Only she was hoping against hope that her carriage wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin and that her gorgeous clothing wouldn’t melt into rags at the stroke of midnight.

3

Grange came home to dress about a half hour before it was time to leave. Peg stayed in her bedroom. She didn’t want him to see her until they were ready to go. She heard the shower running upstairs and sat down to watch the news on her small television while she waited for him. The news was too depressing, so she turned over to a documentary on the history channel instead. It was about the development of weapons, and how the spear of Paleo-hunters turned into the bow because of the speed of whitetail deer—which was the anthropologists’ take on the innovation.

She was so engrossed in it that she forgot the time. A tap on her door startled her. She glanced at the clock and grimaced as she turned off the television and ran to answer the door.

She opened it, flushed and pretty with breathlessness. Grange, in a dark suit with a bow tie, stared at her with flattering speechlessness.

“Will I do?” she asked hopefully.

“Honey, you’ll more than do,” he said in a soft, deep tone which, combined with the unexpected endearment, almost burst her heart with joy. He smiled. “Ready to go?”

“Yes!” She grabbed her coat and started to slip it on.

Grange got behind her and helped, letting her slide her arms into the silky fabric underlay of the rich wool coat with its mink collar.

“Mrs. Pendleton sent it down,” she said. “I guess she knew that I wouldn’t have a coat fancy enough to go with this dress.”

He didn’t let go. His big hands contracted on her shoulders.” That was nice of her.”

“Yes. She’s a sweet person.”

“So are you.” As he spoke, his thumbs eased the coat back. His head bent and he kissed her, tenderly, right on her neck where it joined her shoulder. He felt her shiver, heard her shocked intake of breath. “You taste like candy,” he whispered, and his lips opened on the soft, warm flesh.

She leaned her head back, her breathing unsteady, her eyes closed. His hands moved to her waist. He turned her, ever so gently, and his mouth traveled to her throat, past the pearls, down, slowly, down to the very edge of the fabric over her breasts, and moved there in a sensual caress that shocked a defenseless little moan from her throat.

“I could pull the bodice down,” he whispered, his head spinning, “and slide my lips over your breasts until I found that sweet hardness hiding there.”

She shuddered. She arched back, helpless, hopeful, breathless with anticipation as he began to move the softly shaped fabric out of his way. She felt his mouth open, felt the warm moistness of it pressing against the swell of her breast. She moaned. Her body trembled as she arched again, pleading for relief from the tension that grew to unbearable need in seconds.

“What the hell,” he ground out.

His hand came up and found the zipper, eased it down. He pulled the fabric away and looked at the rosy, hard tips of her pretty breasts for just an instant before his mouth went down and covered one of them.

She cried out helplessly, which only made him more hungry. His mouth opened on the sweet flesh, his tongue traced the nipple, dragging against it to produce sensations Peg had never felt in her life.

Her nails bit into the fine fabric of his suit jacket. She was spinning like a top, burning, aching with desire that she’d never even dreamed of before this.

Somewhere a truck engine sounded loud even in the heated silence of Peg’s room. She heard a door slam.

“It’s … Dad!” she exclaimed hoarsely.

He barely heard her. He lifted his head, his eyes riveted to the stiff nipple. He cupped her breast and bent his head again to explore the soft flesh with his mouth. “Dad?” he whispered.

“Dad,” she managed to say, and moaned.

His hand contracted gently around her soft breast. “Damn.”

“Damn,” she echoed with a shaky laugh.

He lifted his head with a steadying, deep sigh. He held the bodice away from her breasts, smiling warmly at the faint red marks he’d left there in his passion. “Beautiful,” he whispered.

She flushed. Her body felt stiff and swollen. She wondered if his did, too.

With a rueful expression, he reached behind her and reluctantly zipped up the dress, hiding what he’d done to her. Fortunately no marks showed over the bodice.

She looked at him with awe.

He touched her soft mouth with his forefinger. It wasn’t quite steady. “We’d better go,” he said huskily.

She nodded.

He went out of the room and she came out behind him, retrieving the small evening bag the designer had also loaned her from her dresser on the way.

They were in the hall on the way to the front door when Ed came in. He looked from one of them to the other. They looked oddly flushed, but quite presentable.

“What a pair,” he mused, smiling. “You look like socialites.”

“Thanks, Dad.” She grinned.

Grange chuckled. “Well, like impostor socialites, maybe. None of us working stiffs are likely to be mistaken for the real thing.”

“I like us just the way we are,” Ed replied. “Have a great time.”

“We will,” Peg assured him. “See you later.”

“We’ll be home by midnight,” Grange said complacently, smiling at Ed. “I’ve got a lot to get done tomorrow.”

Ed nodded solemnly. “Even more reason to enjoy tonight.”

“Yes.” He took Peg’s arm. “Let’s go. We don’t want to be too late.”

Peg winked at her dad on the way out.

Grange didn’t speak on the way to the civic center in Jacobsville. He’d lost control of himself entirely back there. It had been a very good thing that Ed had come home when he did. Only a few steps to the bed, and he’d gone without a woman for a long time, a very long time. Added to that were Peg’s visible feelings for him, and his weakness for her. All that, with her bedroom door standing wide-open and so inviting. Just as well that Ed had saved them from themselves, he thought.

Peg was nervous. His silence did that to her. She had no resistance to him. She wanted him desperately. But he wasn’t a playboy and he didn’t want to get married, so where did that leave them? He was going away in a few days. She might never see him again. It was devastating, after what had happened back at the house. Her breasts were still tingling.

She glanced at him covertly. Had she made him mad? Was she too responsive? Should she have protested? But, why? He was experienced enough at least to realize what she felt for him. But he kept saying she was young. Did he mean, too young for him? Was her age the barrier to anything more serious than some heavy petting?

“Stop torturing yourself over there,” Grange mused, glancing at her with twinkling dark eyes.

She jumped, and then laughed. “How did you know?”

“You’re twisting that evening bag into a very odd shape.”

“Oh!” She laid it flat and smoothed it, grimacing. “It’s a loaner, too.”

“A loaner?” he inquired.

“Yes. Like the dress and shoes. Cinderella gear.” She leaned toward him as far as the seat belt would allow. “It transforms at midnight into rags. Just so you know.”

“You’d be pretty even in rags.”

She flushed. “Really?”

He glanced at her warmly. “Really.” He forced his eyes back to the road.

She watched him, worried and curious. “Do you guys have automatic weapons and rockets and stuff, like in those merc movies?” she asked suddenly.

He glanced at her and chuckled. “Yes. But intelligence gathering and coordinating native groups with ours are my stock-in-trade.”

“Oh. Then you don’t have to, well, go in shooting, right?” she asked, just to clarify the point.

Why worry her unnecessarily? he thought. So he smiled. “Of course not.”

She relaxed.

And it was that easy. He didn’t tell her about the after-hours training he and his major assault team had been doing over at Eb Scott’s place, with state-of-the-art weaponry and some new toys that could be deployed at long range. It was going to be a bloodbath, even at its best, and a lot of his men weren’t going to come home. He was in it for noble reasons: to depose a dictator who was torturing innocent people. But there was a substantial cash reward in the offing as well, and he had plans for his cattle ranch. He wanted a grubstake to get him started, something that he earned and not something that Jason Pendleton out of gratitude had given him. He wanted to build an empire of his own, with his two hands. That would mean a great risk. But without great risks, there were no great rewards. Besides that, Machado had hinted about a cabinet position if and when he regained power. That would be something to consider as well, although Grange hadn’t thought about relocating to another country, in another continent.

“You’re very solemn,” Peg said, jolting him out of his mental exercises.

He glanced at her with something like consternation. Where would Peg fit into his plans? She was very young, at nineteen; perhaps too young. And taking her out of the country she’d lived in her whole life, to a new and very dangerous environment—it didn’t bear thinking about. Besides that, there was the possibility that this might take months or even years to accomplish. He was gathering intel even now on the opposition forces and their capabilities. His men were good, but he would have to ally with groups that had boots on the ground in Barrera and coordinate them for an attack. It meant a lot of work.

“I was just thinking,” he said after a minute.

She smiled. “Don’t,” she advised. “We’re going to the ball and there is no tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay.”

The Jacobsville Civic Center was decorated for the holidays, with holly and tinsel, golden bells and a huge Christmas tree with ornaments made by the local orphanage and the friends of the nearby animal shelter. The Cattleman’s Ball would benefit both charities.

The town citizens were decked out in their finery as well. Bonnie, who worked as a clerk at the pharmacy, was dressed all in red, one of the couture gowns provided by the local designer, and she was on the arm of a visiting cattleman who had arrived in, of all things, a Rolls-Royce. He was tall and dark and middle-aged, but very appealing.

He paused by Grange and seemed to know him. They shook hands. “Maxwell,” he introduced himself. “I’d like to speak to you before you leave.”

Grange nodded solemnly. “I’ll make a point of it.”

“Where did you meet him?” Peg asked in a hurried whisper.

Bonnie, blond curls very elegantly arranged, and grinning from ear to ear, said, “He came into the pharmacy to get a prescription for a friend, can you believe it? We started talking and he loves sixteenth-century Tudor history! So here I am.”

“Good luck,” Peg whispered.

Bonnie just shook her head. “I think I’m dreaming.”

The visiting cattleman took her hand, smiled at the others and led her onto the dance floor.

Nancy, the pharmacist, dressed all in green, was standing with Holly, her clerk, dressed in gold, and they were shaking their heads at Bonnie and her escort.

“I wonder if he has a couple of nice friends,” Peg whispered wickedly.

They both laughed.

“Well, it’s that sort of night.” Nancy sighed, looking down at her elegant green gown. “Can you imagine, all of us decked out like this?”

“It attracts men, too,” Peg murmured under her breath as one of the local ranch foremen, a real dish, came forward, actually bowed, and led Nancy onto the dance floor.

Nancy just shook her head.

“What were you talking about?” Grange asked Peg as he led her out to dance.

“Loaned dresses and holiday magic,” she whispered, smiling up at him. He was so handsome. She was amazed to find herself at a dance with him, when all her flirting had only seemed to chase him away. Now, here he was, holding her on a dance floor, and looking as if he couldn’t bear to leave her.

In fact, he danced with a couple of the elderly women present, but otherwise, only with Peg.

“People will talk,” he said with a wry smile, noting the interest from the other couples.

She shrugged. “People do. I don’t care. Do you?”

He shook his head. “I don’t care at all. But I’ll be gone.”

Her face fell.

He pulled her close. “Don’t think about it. There’s no tomorrow. We agreed.”

“Yes.” She pressed close and shut her eyes. But already she felt the separation. It was going to be agonizing.

They stayed until the last dance. He left her with Justin and Shelby Ballenger while he went outside with the visiting cattleman in the Rolls-Royce.

“Something big’s going on, huh?” Justin asked Peg.

“Something,” she agreed, with a shy smile. Justin and Shelby were co-owners, with Justin’s brother Calhoun, of the enormous Ballenger Brothers Feedlot. They were millionaires many times over, and Shelby was a direct descendant of Big John Jacobs, the founder of Jacobsville, Texas. It had been an epic courtship, not without its agonies. But the couple was very happy and had grown children.

Grange was back shortly, and he looked pleased. “Time to go. It was a great party. I hope we made lots of money for the orphanage and the shelter.”

“We did,” Justin said with a smile. He put an arm around Shelby and held her close. “Record sums, I hear.”

“Good, good.”

“You be careful where you’re going,” Justin said, extending a hand to shake Grange’s. “Noble causes are noble, but they come at a price.”

“Yes, I do know. Thanks.”

“We’ll keep you in our prayers,” Shelby said gently. “Keep well.”

Grange nodded, smiled and tugged Peg out the door.

They watched Bonnie drive off in the Rolls-Royce.

“Will she have stories to tell!” Peg exclaimed. “I have to get a prescription refilled so I can get all the news!”

Grange laughed. “You women and your gossip.”

“Hey, men gossip, too,” she pointed out.

He made a face.

She had hoped that he might stop along the way, maybe park on some lonely back road. But to her disappointment, he drove right up to the front steps. And her father was inside, with the lights blazing.

He walked her onto the porch. His face was very solemn. “We’ve already jumped the gun, Peg,” he said gently. “No need to make things more complicated. Not right now. I have to have my mind on where I’m going, and what I have to do. Distractions can be fatal.”

The reality of the future caught her by the throat. She’d tried not to think about it, but now she had to face facts. He was going off to war, even if it wasn’t some officially declared one. He might not come back. The panic was in her expression.

“Hey.” He put his forefinger over her lips. “I made major before I mustered out of the military. You don’t get those promotions unless you know what you’re doing. Okay?”

She swallowed, hard. “Okay.”

He smiled gently. “You have a wonderful Christmas.”

“You, too.” She grimaced. “I didn’t get you anything yet. Can I send you something? Warm socks, maybe?” she tried to joke.

“I don’t think warm socks and tropical jungles are a good mix, do you?”

She sighed. “Mosquito repellant and snake pellets?”

“Better. I’ll try to get word to your father about our progress, but it’s going to be slow. I’ll have phones with me, but they can be used by the enemy to call down air strikes. The military we’re up against isn’t going to be a pushover. Machado trained most of them, and we have to consider that only a few are likely to defect to our cause. People generally don’t like sudden change.”

“I don’t like it at all,” she agreed. “Stay here.”

“People don’t make history by staying home. Not my nature.”

She sighed. “I know. Well, be careful.”

“Count on it.”

He bent, regardless of her father’s presence in the living room, and kissed her with breathless tenderness. He looked into her eyes for a long time, until she felt shivers down her spine. “You’re the most special person in my life. I’ll come home. I’ve been alone for a long time. I don’t want to be alone anymore, Peg.”

She gasped at the way he was looking at her. “Me … me, neither,” she whispered.

He kissed her eyelids, touching them with the tip of his tongue. “My sweet girl. I’ll be back before you know it.”

She nodded, forcing a wobbly smile. “Okay. I’ll hold you to that promise.”

He smiled. “Good night, Cinderella.” He bent and kissed her one last time, hard, before he turned and she went inside.

Her eyes followed him with aching longing. She was the most special person in his life. He didn’t want to be alone anymore. That had to mean something. It sounded like a commitment. It gave her hope. Great hope.

The next morning, Grange was in Emilio Machado’s camp, gathering gear and talking to his men. Peg was as far from his thoughts as ice cream sundaes and television sports, because he couldn’t afford the distraction of remembering her soft, eager mouth under his.

Machado was grim. “We have men, and equipment,” he told Grange. “We have more financing, thanks to your efforts and those of Mr. Pendleton. But we have no air force and no carrier group …”

“Revolutions can succeed without either, as long as they have dedicated people and good intel,” Grange reminded him. “Military intelligence is my strong point. I know how to organize a resistance movement. I did it in Iraq with local tribesmen. I can do it in Barrera.”

Machado smiled. “You give me confidence. I know that the cause is good. I made a mistake. I left my country in the hands of a power-hungry traitor and many lives have been lost because of it. I worry for Maddie,” he added heavily. “She was my friend, an American archaeologist who had made a very important discovery in the jungle near the capital. I do not know her fate. If they caught her, she is most likely dead. That will be on my conscience forever. There were also two professors at the university, my friends, who have gone missing and are also probably dead. It has been a hard thing, to lose so many people because I was careless.”

“Don’t dwell on the past or anticipate the future,” Grange counseled. “Take it one day at a time.”

Machado sighed. “You are right. Oh. I have a communication from an American journalist with one of the slick magazines. She wishes to accompany us …”

He handed the magazine to Grange. “Her name is Clarisse Carrington …”

“Oh, God, no!” Grange ground out. “No! How did she find out about our mission? She’s like the plague!”

“Excuse me?”

“That damned socialite met me in the Middle East, when she was doing a piece for her magazine,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t fall at her feet at some damned cocktail party in Washington, and I guess it hurt her ego. So four months ago she started chasing me, after I went to a social gathering in Washington with some friends from the military. I gave her the cold shoulder. She was livid. After that, I couldn’t go to a damned hotel anywhere that she didn’t show up at.”

“I see.”

“She thinks she’s irresistible,” Grange said coldly. “She’s not.”

“She may have her ear to the ground about you. There must have been a leak. I will of course refuse the offer.”

“Thanks.”

Grange was looking at the magazine and he frowned at one of the cover stories. He opened it to a certain page, and grimaced. “Damn!”

“What?”

“You remember I told you about the officer who claimed my battle strategy was his own and got me court-martialed? The one I testified against?”

“Yes.”

“He committed suicide.”

“Goodness!”

“This is the story that hit the wires. I’d hoped it wouldn’t, for his family’s sake. He was caught out in another scandal involving blackmail and stolen funds earmarked for equipment,” Grange read. “But his son states here that the officer who testified against him is responsible for his death—me.” He sighed. “I know about the boy. He’s been in and out of therapy all his life. His father said he was bipolar, but his drug problems seemed to me to be the worst of them. His mother was rich. She died and the son inherited it all. She didn’t leave her husband a dime.” He put down the magazine. “So the kid is filthy rich and blames me for his father’s suicide. The socialite thinks she can seduce me over war coverage.” He looked at Emilio Machado with wide eyes. “Perhaps I’m more of a liability than you can afford.”

Machado just smiled. “My friend, we all have our burdens. I think you can bear these. Now, let us speak with your men and finalize our departure.”

They had arranged passage for Grange’s handpicked fighters. Machado had a friend with an old DC-3 who transported the core body of mercs to a small city on the coast of South America, a transit point to Barrera, which was north of Manaus, in Amazonas, a city in the Amazon jungle. Other troops were massing inside the border of Barrera, organized in small groups by Machado’s friends in the resistance. It wasn’t a battle group by any stretch of the imagination. But, then, small forces with the will and means could often overthrow countries. As Machado reminded the others, a handful of his men, defecting to the political leader, Sapara, had overthrown him by stealth and surprise. They could do the same thing to his former lieutenant. It would just require precise planning and good strategy.

On the DC-3 plane, bound for a small covert airstrip in Barrera, Grange outlined his plan of battle to Machado.

“A surprise attack is going to be the most effective means of recapturing your government,” he told the general. “Here—” he pointed to the very small capital city, Medina “—is the heart of the military, in the underground HQ in the city. We have an ally with bunker-busting bombs, but we only have two of them. It means that if we have to go with an all-out military assault, we’ll have to coordinate the strike at the military communications and tactical network with the simultaneous capture of all news media outlets, airfields and the three military command centers in Colari, Salina and Dobri, here, here and here.” He pointed to red marks on his waterproof map. “These cities are smaller than Jacobsville.” He chuckled. “So taking out those command centers could be accomplished by one man with a .45 Colt ACP,” he added.

Machado sighed. “The element of surprise will be difficult, my friend,” he said. “My adversary has agents. He is no fool.”

“I know.” Grange straightened, very somber. “The hardest part is getting everyone familiar with his own role in the attack. I’ve already done that. I sent two of my men ahead to contact your former military commander, Domingo Lopez, in Medina. They’re disguised as farmers, and yes, they’ll pass muster,” he added. “They’re Tex-Mex, some of my best men, and two of them are masters of demolition. They’re ex-Navy SEALs”

“I am impressed,” the general said.

“I also sent one of my former company commanders, who’s proficient in scrounging equipment and arms from unlikely places, along with a South African merc who’s one of the best I’ve ever seen, to set up a base camp. We’ve got a Native American tracker named Carson, a merc with a bad attitude who can speak all the native dialects. They’re accompanied, among others, by an Irishman who knows electronics like his own fingerprints. He can do anything with computers, and he’s a past master at writing virus codes.”

Machado’s eyebrows arched. “Virus codes?”

Grange grinned. “O’Bailey belonged to the British military before he found his way to Eb Scott’s group. He shut down the entire military communications network in an outlying area of Iraq with an old PC running obsolete software,” he informed. He shook his head. “Got a medal for it, in fact.”

“You have good people,” Machado said. “I hope that our endeavor will not result in injury or death to any of them.”

“So do I, but most wars cost blood,” Grange said. “We’ll all do the best we can. Thing is, we may not have an immediate victory. So our priority has to be taking out their communications, their SAMs and the national media.”

“Surface to air missiles.” Machado sighed. “I got them from Russia. They’re state-of-the-art,” he added grimly. “I thought they would give us protection from dangerous enemy states nearby. It was a lack of foresight on my part, as I never dreamed they might be used against my own people.” His expression was solemn. “My former commander will not hesitate to destroy whole city blocks, along with their inhabitants. He will kill anyone to keep power.”

Grange laid a big hand on the other man’s shoulder. “We’ll do what we have to do. Just remember that many innocent people have already died. If we don’t act, many more will.”

“I know that.” Machado smiled sadly. “I know it too well.”

One of the other soldiers came down the narrow steps from the deck above. “We’ll be landing in about an hour, captain said,” he told them. “It’s a few miles from a quiet little village on the river. Nothing much is there in the surrounding area except for a small landing strip just big enough to accommodate our plane. Our intelligence indicates that Sapara built the strip to accommodate landings by an oil corporation doing preliminary investigations in advance of setting up operations.”

“Yes,” Machado said grimly, “and Sapara began killing natives to force them out of the area. Some remain, despite his depredations … a situation I hope to resolve. However, it is a good place to land,” Machado said, and his dark eyes flashed with another brief smile. “It was where I landed on the day I invaded Barrera the first time. The nearby people are sympathetic to our cause.”

Grange shrugged. “So lightning will strike twice, in this case.”

“My friend, I sincerely hope so.”

They left the plane quickly, under cover of darkness, and sent it off to Manaus for the time being, with other members of the group. Grange hadn’t fought a jungle war in some time. His last theater of operations had been the deserts of the Middle East. But his men had the newest camouflage uniforms, and the computer-generated pattern blended perfectly with their surroundings.

They set up a base camp with tents and built a small fire for cooking. They weren’t expected, so there was not much danger of discovery at this point in time. Coffee was made, to exclamations of joy from the men in camp, and ration packs were passed around. The jungle sounds were alien, but the men would adjust.

Grange finished his meal and coffee and rose. “I’ll get in touch with my forward platoon and see what intel they’ve gathered,” Grange said, excusing himself.

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