Rave reviews for
DIANA PALMER

“Nobody does it better.”

—Award-winning author Linda Howard

“Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly…. Heartwarming.”

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

“A compelling tale…[that packs] an emotional wallop.”

—Booklist on Renegade

“Sensual and suspenseful….”

—Booklist on Lawless

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing 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

“The dialogue is charming, the characters likable and the sex sizzling….”

—Publishers Weekly on Once in Paris

“Diana Palmer does a masterful job of stirring the reader’s emotions.”

—Lezlie Patterson, Eagle (Reading, PA), on Lawless

DIana PAlmer
Bound by Honor

CONTENTS

MERCENARY’S WOMAN

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE WINTER SOLDIER

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

MERCENARY’S WOMAN

CHAPTER ONE

EBENEZER SCOTT STOOD beside his double-wheeled black pickup truck and stared openly at the young woman across the street while she fiddled under the hood of a dented, rusted hulk of a vehicle. Sally Johnson’s long blond hair was in a ponytail. She was wearing jeans and boots and no hat. He smiled to himself, remembering how many times in the old days he’d chided her about sunstroke. It had been six years since they’d even spoken. She’d been living in Houston until July, when she and her blind aunt and small cousin had moved back, into the decaying old Johnson homestead. He’d seen her several times since her return, but she’d made a point of not speaking to him. He couldn’t really blame her. He’d left her with some painful emotional scars.

She was slender, but her trim figure still made his heartbeat jump. He knew how she looked under that loose blouse. His eyes narrowed with heat as he recalled the shocked pleasure in her pale gray eyes when he’d touched her, kissed her, in those forbidden places. He’d meant to frighten her so that she’d stop teasing him, but his impulsive attempt to discourage her had succeeded all too well. She’d run from him then, and she’d kept running. She was twenty-three now, a woman; probably an experienced woman. He mourned for what might have been if she’d been older and he hadn’t just come back from leading a company of men into the worst bloodbath of his career. A professional soldier of fortune was no match for a young and very innocent girl. But, then, she hadn’t known about his real life—the one behind the facade of cattle ranching. Not many people in this small town did.

It was six years later. She was all grown-up, a schoolteacher here in Jacobsville, Texas. He was…retired, they called it. Actually he was still on the firing line from time to time, but mostly he taught other men in the specialized tactics of covert operations on his ranch. Not that he shared that information. He still had enemies from the old days, and one of them had just been sprung from prison on a technicality—a man out for revenge and with more than enough money to obtain it.

Sally had been almost eighteen the spring day he’d sent her running from him. In a life liberally strewn with regrets, she was his biggest one. The whole situation had been impossible, of course. But he’d never meant to hurt her, and the thought of her sat heavily on his conscience.

He wondered if she knew why he kept to himself and never got involved with the locals. His ranch was a model of sophistication, from its state-of-the-art gym to the small herd of purebred Santa Gertrudis breeding cattle he raised. His men were not only loyal, but tight-lipped. Like another Jacobsville, Texas, resident—Cy Parks—Ebenezer was a recluse. The two men shared more than a taste for privacy. But that was something they kept to themselves.

Meanwhile, Sally Johnson was rapidly losing patience with her vehicle. He watched her push at a strand of hair that had escaped from the long ponytail. She kept a beef steer or two herself. It must be a frugal existence for her, supporting not only herself, but her recently blinded aunt, and her six-year-old cousin as well.

He admired her sense of responsibility, even as he felt concern for her situation. She had no idea why her aunt had been blinded in the first place, or that the whole family was in a great deal of danger. It was why Jessica had persuaded Sally to give up her first teaching job in Houston in June and come home with her and Stevie to Jacobsville. It was because they’d be near Ebenezer, and Jessica knew he’d protect them. Sally had never been told what Jessica’s profession actually was, any more than she knew what Jessica’s late husband, Hank Myers, had once done for a living. But even if she had known, wild horses wouldn’t have dragged Sally back here if Jessica hadn’t pleaded with her, he mused bitterly. Sally had every reason in the world to hate him. But he was her best hope of survival. And she didn’t even know it.

In the five months she’d been back in Jacobsville, Sally had managed to avoid Ebenezer. In a town this size, that had been an accomplishment. Inevitably they met from time to time. But Sally avoided eye contact with him. It was the only indication of the painful memory they both shared.

He watched her lean helplessly over the dented fender of the old truck and decided that now was as good a time as any to approach her.

Sally lifted her head just in time to see the tall, lean man in the shepherd’s coat and tan Stetson make his way across the street to her. He hadn’t changed, she thought bitterly. He still walked with elegance and a slow, arrogance of carriage that seemed somehow foreign. Jeans didn’t disguise the muscles in those long, powerful legs as he moved. She hated the ripple of sensation that lifted her heart at his approach. Surely she was over hero worship and infatuation, at her age, especially after what he’d done to her that long-ago spring day. She blushed just remembering it!

He paused at the truck, about an arm’s length away from her, pushed his Stetson back over his thick blond-streaked brown hair and impaled her with green eyes.

She was immediately hostile and it showed in the tautening of her features as she looked up, way up, at him.

He raised an eyebrow and studied her flushed face. “Don’t give me the evil eye,” he said. “I’d have thought you had sense enough not to buy a truck from Turkey Sanders.”

“He’s my cousin,” she reminded him.

“He’s the Black Plague with car keys,” he countered. “The Hart boys wiped the floor with him not too many years back. He sold Corrigan Hart’s future wife a car that fell apart when she drove it off the lot. She was lucky at that,” he added with a wicked grin. “He sold old lady Bates a car and told her the engine was optional equipment.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “It’s not a bad old truck,” she countered. “It just needs a few things…”

He glanced at the rear tire and nodded. “Yes. An overhauled engine, a paint job, reupholstered seats, a tailgate that works. And a rear tire that isn’t bald.” He pointed toward it. “Get that replaced,” he said shortly. “You can afford a tire even on what you make teaching.”

She gaped at him. “Listen here, Mr. Scott…” she began haughtily.

“You know my name, Sally,” he said bluntly, and his eyes were steady, intimidating. “As for the tire, it isn’t a request,” he replied flatly, staring her down. “You’ve got some new neighbors out your way that I don’t like the look of. You can’t afford a breakdown in the middle of the night on that lonely stretch of road.”

She drew herself up to her full height, so that the top of her head came to his chin. He really was ridiculously tall…

“This is the twenty-first century, and women are capable of looking after themselves….” she said heatedly.

“I can do without a current events lecture,” he cut her off again, moving to peer under the hood. He propped one enormous booted foot on the fender and studied the engine, frowned, pulled out a pocketknife and went to work.

“It’s my truck!” she fumed, throwing up her hands in exasperation.

“It’s half a ton of metal without an engine that works.”

She grimaced. She hated not being able to fix it herself, to have to depend on this man, of all people, for help. She wouldn’t let herself think about the cost of having a mechanic make a road service call to get the stupid thing started. Looking at his lean, capable hands brought back painful memories as well. She knew the tenderness of them on concealed skin, and her whole body erupted with sensation.

Less than two minutes later, he repocketed his knife. “Try it now,” he said.

She got in behind the wheel. The engine turned noisily, pouring black smoke out of the tailpipe.

He paused beside the open window of the truck, his pale green eyes piercing her face. “Bad rings and valves,” he pointed out. “Maybe an oil leak. Either way, you’re in for some major repairs. Next time, don’t buy from Turkey Sanders, and I don’t give a damn if he is a relative.”

“Don’t you give me orders,” she said haughtily.

That eyebrow lifted again. “Habit. How’s Jess?”

She frowned. “Do you know my aunt Jessie?”

“Quite well,” he said. “I knew your uncle Hank. He and I served together.”

“In the military?”

He didn’t answer her. “Do you have a gun?”

She was so confused that she stammered. “Wh…what?”

“A gun,” he repeated. “Do you have any sort of weapon and can you use it?”

“I don’t like guns,” she said flatly. “Anyway, I won’t have one in the house with a six-year-old child, so it’s no use telling me to buy one.”

He was thinking. His face tautened. “How about self-defense?”

“I teach second grade,” she pointed out. “Most of my students don’t attack me.”

“I’m not worried about you at school. I told you, I don’t like the look of your neighbors.” He wasn’t adding that he knew who they were and why they were in town.

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “But it’s none of your business…”

“It is,” he returned. “I promised Hank that I’d take care of Jess if he ever bought it overseas. I keep my promises.”

“I can take care of my aunt.”

“Not anymore you can’t,” he returned, unabashed. “I’m coming over tomorrow.”

“I may not be home…”

“Jess will be. Besides, tomorrow is Saturday,” he said. “You came in for supplies this afternoon and you don’t teach on the weekend. You’ll be home.” His tone said she’d better be.

She gave an exasperated sound. “Mr. Scott…”

“I’m only Mr. Scott to my enemies,” he pointed out.

“Yes, well, Mr. Scott…”

He let out an angry sigh and stared her down. “You were so young,” he bit off. “What did you expect me to do, seduce you in the cab of a pickup truck in broad daylight?”

She flushed red as a rose petal. “I wasn’t talking about that!”

“It’s still in your eyes,” he told her quietly. “I’d rather have done it in a way that hadn’t left so many scars, but I had to discourage you. The whole damned thing was impossible, you must have realized that by now!”

She hated the embarrassment she felt. “I don’t have scars!”

“You do.” He studied her oval face, her softly rounded chin, her perfect mouth. “I’ll be over tomorrow. I need to talk to you and Jess. There have been some developments that she doesn’t know about.”

“What sort of developments?”

He closed the hood of the truck and paused by her window. “Drive carefully,” he said, ignoring the question. “And get that tire changed.”

“I am not a charity case,” she said curtly. “I don’t take orders. And I definitely do not need some big, strong man to take care of me!”

He smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. He turned on his heel and walked back to his own truck with a stride that was peculiarly his own.

Sally was so shaken that she barely managed to get the truck out of town without stripping the gears out of it.

JESSICA MYERS WAS IN HER BEDROOM listening to the radio and her son, Stevie, was watching a children’s after-school television program when Sally came in. She unloaded the supplies first with the help of her six-year-old cousin.

“You got me that cereal from the TV commercial!” he exclaimed, diving into bags as she put the perishable items into the refrigerator. “Thanks, Aunt Sally!” Although they were cousins, he referred to her as his aunt out of affection and respect.

“You’re very welcome. I got some ice cream, too.”

“Wow! Can I have some now?”

Sally laughed. “Not until after supper, and you have to eat some of everything I fix. Okay?”

“Aw. Okay, I guess,” he muttered, clearly disappointed.

She bent and kissed him between his dark eyes. “That’s my good boy. Here, I brought some nice apples and pears. Wash one off and eat it. Fruit is good for you.”

“Okay. But it’s not as nice as ice cream.”

He washed off a pear and carried it into the living room on a paper towel to watch television.

Sally went into Jessica’s bedroom, hesitating at the foot of the big four-poster bed. Jessica was slight, blond and hazel-eyed. Her eyes stared at nothing, but she smiled as she recognized Sally’s step.

“I heard the truck,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to go to town for supplies after working all day and bringing Stevie home first.”

“I never mind shopping,” Sally said with genuine affection. “You doing all right?”

Jessica shifted on the pillows. She was dressed in sweats, but she looked bad. “I still have some pain from the wreck. I’ve taken a couple of aspirins for my hip. I thought I’d lie down and give them a chance to work.”

Sally came in and sat down in the wing chair beside the bed. “Jess, Ebenezer Scott asked about you and said he was coming over tomorrow to see you.”

Jessica didn’t seem at all surprised. She only nodded. “I thought he might,” Jessica said quietly. “I had a call from a former colleague about what’s going on. I’m afraid I may have landed you in some major trouble, Sally.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you wonder why I insisted on moving down here so suddenly?”

“Now that you mention it—”

“It was because Ebenezer is here, and we’re safer than we would be in Houston.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

Jessica smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. It isn’t something that comes up, usually. But these are odd circumstances. A man I helped put in prison is out pending retrial, and he’s coming after me.”

“You…helped put a man in prison? How?” Sally asked, perplexed.

“You knew that I worked for a government agency?”

“Well, of course. As a clerk.”

Jessica took a deep breath. “No, dear. Not as a clerk.” She took a deep breath. “I was a special agent for an agency we don’t mention publicly. Through Eb and his contacts, I managed to find one of the confidants of drug lord Manuel Lopez, who was head of an international drug cartel. I was given enough hard evidence to send Lopez to prison for drug dealing. I even had copies of his ledgers. But there was one small loophole in the chain of evidence, and the drug lord’s attorneys jumped on it. Lopez is now out of prison and he wants the person responsible for helping me put him away. Since I’m the only one who knows the person’s identity, I’m the one he’ll be coming after.”

Sally just sat there, dumbfounded. Things like this only happened in movies. They certainly didn’t happen in real life. Her beloved aunt surely wasn’t involved in espionage!

“You’re kidding, right?” Sally asked hopefully.

Jessica shook her head slowly. She was still an attractive woman, in her middle thirties. She was slender and she had a sweet face. Stevie, blond and dark-eyed, didn’t favor her. Of course, he didn’t favor his father, either. Hank had had black hair and light blue eyes.

“I’m sorry, dear,” Jessica said heavily. “I’m not kidding. I’m not able to protect myself or you and Stevie anymore, so I had to come home for help. Ebenezer will keep us safe until we can get the drug lord back on ice.”

“Is Ebenezer a government agent?” Sally asked, astounded.

“No.” Jessica took a deep breath. “I don’t like telling you this, and he won’t like it, either. It’s deeply private. You must swear not to tell another soul.”

“I swear.” She sat patiently, almost vibrating with curiosity.

“Eb was a professional mercenary,” she said. “What they used to call a soldier of fortune. He’s led groups of highly trained men in covert operations all over the world. He’s retired from that now, but he’s still much in demand with our government and foreign governments as a training instructor. His ranch is well-known in covert circles as an academy of tactics and intelligence-gathering.”

Sally didn’t say a word. She was absolutely speechless. No wonder Ebenezer had been so secretive, so reluctant to let her get close to him. She remembered the tiny white scars on his lean, tanned face, and knew instinctively that there would be more of them under his clothing. No wonder he kept to himself!

“I hope I haven’t shattered any illusions, Sally,” her aunt said worriedly. “I know how you felt about him.”

Sally gaped at her. “You…know?”

Jessica nodded. “Eb told me about that, and about what happened just before you came to live with Hank and me in Houston.”

Her face flamed. The shame! She felt sick with humiliation that Ebenezer had known how she felt all the time, and she thought she was doing such a good job of hiding it! She should have realized that it was obvious, when she found excuse after excuse to waylay him in town, when she brazenly climbed into his pickup truck one lovely spring afternoon and pleaded to be taken for a ride. He’d given in to that request, to her surprise. But barely half an hour later, she’d erupted from the passenger seat and run almost all the half-mile down the road to her home. Too ashamed to let anyone see the state she was in, she’d sneaked in the back door and gone straight to her room. She’d never told her parents or anyone else what had happened. Now she wondered if Jessica knew that, too.

“He didn’t divulge any secrets, if that’s why you’re so quiet, Sally,” the older woman said gently. “He only said that you had a king-size crush on him and he’d shot you down. He was pretty upset.”

That was news. “I wouldn’t ever have guessed that he could be upset.”

“Neither would I,” Jessica said with a smile. “It came as something of a surprise. He told me to keep an eye on you, and check out who you went out with. He could have saved himself the trouble, of course, since you never went out with anyone. He was bitter about that.”

Sally averted her face to the window. “He frightened me.”

“He knew that. It’s why he was bitter.”

Sally drew in a steadying breath. “I was very young,” she said finally, “and I suppose he did the only thing he could. But I was leaving Jacobsville anyway, when my parents divorced. I only had a week of school before graduation before I went to live with you. He didn’t have to go to such lengths.”

“My brother still feels like an idiot for the way he behaved with that college girl he left your mother for,” Jessica said curtly, meaning Sally’s father, who was Jessica’s only living relative besides Sally. “It didn’t help that your mother remarried barely six months later. He was stuck with Beverly the Beauty.”

“How are my parents?” Sally asked. It was the first time she’d mentioned either of her parents in a long while, She’d lost touch with them since the divorce that had shattered her life.

“Your father spends most of his time at work while Beverly goes the party route every night and spends every penny he makes. Your mother is separated from her second husband and living in Nassau.” Jessica shifted on the bed. “You don’t ever hear from your parents, do you?”

“I don’t resent them as much as I did. But I never felt that they loved me,” she said abruptly. “That’s why I felt it was better we went our separate ways.”

“They were children when they married and had you,” the other woman said. “Not really mature enough for the responsibility. They resented it, too. That’s why you spent so much time with me during the first five years you were alive.” Jessica smiled. “I hated it when you went back home.”

“Why did you and Hank wait so long to have a child of your own?” Sally asked.

Jessica flushed. “It wasn’t…convenient, with Hank overseas so much. Did you get that tire replaced?” she added, almost as if she were desperate to change the subject.

“You and Mr. Scott!” Sally exploded, diverted. “How did you know it was bald?”

“Because Eb phoned me before you got home and told me to remind you to get it replaced,” Jessica chuckled.

“I suppose he has a cell phone in his truck.”

“Among other things,” Jessica replied with a smile. “He isn’t like the men you knew in college or even when you started teaching. Eb is an alpha male,” she said quietly. “He isn’t politically correct, and he doesn’t even pretend to conform. In some ways, he’s very old-fashioned.”

“I don’t feel that way about him anymore,” Sally said firmly.

“I’m sorry,” Jessica replied gently. “He’s been alone most of his life. He needs to be loved.”

Sally picked at a cuticle, chipping the clear varnish on her short, neat fingernails. “Does he have family?”

“Not anymore. His mother died when he was very young, and his father was career military. He grew up in the army, you might say. His father was not a gentle sort of man. He died in combat when Eb was in his twenties. There wasn’t any other family.”

“You said once that you always saw Ebenezer with beautiful women at social events,” Sally recalled with a touch of envy.

“He pays for dressing, and he attracts women. But he’s careful about his infrequent liaisons. He told me once that he guessed he’d never find a woman who could share the life he leads. He still has enemies who’d like to see him dead,” she added.

“Like this drug lord?”

“Yes. Manuel Lopez is a law unto himself. He has millions, and he owns politicians, law enforcement people, even judges,” Jessica said irritably. “That’s why we were never able to shut him down. Then I was told that a confidant of his wanted to give me information, names and documents that would warrant arresting Lopez on charges of drug trafficking. But I wasn’t careful enough. I overlooked one little thing, and Lopez’s attorneys used it in a petition for a retrial. They got him out. He’s on the loose pending retrial and out for vengeance against his comrade. He’ll do anything to get the name of the person who sold him out. Anything at all.”

Sally let her breath out through pursed lips. “So we’re all under the gun.”

“Exactly. I used to be a crack shot, but without my vision, I’m useless. Eb will have a plan by tomorrow.” Her face was solemn as she stared in the general direction of her niece’s voice. “Listen to him, Sally. Do exactly what he says. He’s our only hope of protecting Stevie.”

“I’ll do anything I have to, to protect you and Stevie,” Sally agreed at once.

“I knew you would.”

She toyed with her nails again. “Jess, has Ebenezer ever been serious about anyone?”

“Yes. There was a woman in Houston, in fact, several years ago. He cared for her very much, but she dropped him flat when she found out what he did for a living. She married a much-older bank executive.” She shifted on the bed. “I hear that she’s widowed now. But I don’t imagine he still has any feelings for her. After all, she dropped him, not the reverse.”

Sally, who knew something about helpless unrequited love, wasn’t so quick to agree. After all, she still had secret feelings for Ebenezer…

“Deep thoughts, dear?” Jessica asked softly.

“I was remembering the reruns we used to see of that old TV series, The A-Team,” she recalled with an audible laugh. “I loved it when they had to knock out that character Mr. T played to get him on an airplane.”

“It was a good show. Not lifelike, of course,” Jessica added.

“What part?”

“All of it.”

Jessica would probably know, Sally figured. “Why didn’t you ever tell me what you did for a living?”

“Need to know,” came the dry reply. “You didn’t, until now.”

“If you knew Ebenezer when he was still working as a mercenary, I guess you learned a lot about the business,” she ventured.

Jessica’s face closed up. “I learned too much,” she said coldly. “Far too much. Men like that are incapable of lasting relationships. They don’t know the meaning of love or fidelity.”

She seemed to know that, and Sally wondered how. “Was Uncle Hank a mercenary, too?”

“Yes, just briefly,” she said. “Hank was never one to rush in and risk killing himself. It was so ironic that he died overseas in his sleep, of a heart condition nobody even knew he had.”

That was a surprise, along with all the others that Jessica was getting. Uncle Hank had been very handsome, but not assertive or particularly tough.

“But Ebenezer said he served with Uncle Hank.”

“Yes. In basic training, before they joined the Green Berets,” Jessica said. “Hank didn’t pass the training course. Ebenezer did. In fact,” she added amusedly, “he was able to do the Fan Dance.”

“Fan Dance?”

“It’s a specialized course they put the British commandos, the Special Air Service, guys through. Not many soldiers, even career soldiers, are able to finish it, much less able to pass it on the first try. Eb did. He was briefly ‘loaned’ to them while he was in army intelligence, for some top secret assignment.”

Sally had never thought very much about Ebenezer’s profession, except that she’d guessed he was once in the military. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. A man who’d been in the military might still have a soft spot or two inside. She was almost certain that a commando, a soldier for hire, wouldn’t have any.

“You’re very quiet,” Jessica said.

“I never thought of Ebenezer in such a profession,” she replied, moving to look out the window at the November landscape. “I guess it was right there in front of me, and I didn’t see it. No wonder he kept to himself.”

“He still does,” she replied. “And only a few people know about his past. His men do, of course,” she added, and there was an inflection in her tone that was suddenly different.

“Do you know any of his men?”

Jessica’s face tautened. “One or two. I believe Dallas Kirk still works for him. And Micah Steele does consulting work when Eb asks him to,” she added and smiled. “Micah’s a good guy. He’s the only one of Eb’s old colleagues who still works in the trade. He lives in Nassau, but he spends an occasional week helping Ebenezer train men when he’s needed.”

“And Dallas Kirk?”

Jessica’s soft face went very hard. At her side, one of her small hands clenched. “Dallas was badly wounded in a firefight a year ago. He came home shot to pieces and Eb found something for him to teach in the tactics courses. He doesn’t speak to me, of course. We had a difficult parting some years ago.”

That was intriguing, and Sally was going to find out about it one day. But she didn’t press her luck. “How about fajitas for supper?” she asked.

Jessica’s glower dissolved into a smile. “Sounds lovely!”

“I’ll get right on them.” Sally went back into the kitchen, her head spinning with the things she’d learned about people she thought she knew. Life, she considered, was always full of surprises.

CHAPTER TWO

EBENEZER WAS A MAN of his word. He showed up early the next morning as Sally was out by the corral fence watching her two beef cattle graze. She’d bought them to raise with the idea of stocking her freezer. Now they had names. The white-faced Black Angus mixed steer was called Bob, the white-faced red-coated Hereford she called Andy. They were pets. She couldn’t face the thought of sitting down to a plate of either one of them.

The familiar black pickup stopped at the fence and Ebenezer got out. He was wearing jeans and a blue checked shirt with boots and a light-colored straw Stetson. No chaps, so he wasn’t working cattle today.

He joined Sally at the fence. “Don’t tell me. They’re table beef.”

She spared him a resentful glance. “Right.”

“And you’re going to put them in the freezer.”

She swallowed. “Sure.”

He only chuckled. He paused to light a cigar, with one big booted foot propped on the lower rung of the fence. “What are their names?”

“That’s Andy and that’s…Bob.” She flushed.

He didn’t say a word, but his raised eyebrow was eloquent through the haze of expelled smoke.

“They’re watch-cattle,” she improvised.

His eyes twinkled. “I beg your pardon?”

“They’re attack steers,” she said with a reluctant grin. “At the first sign of trouble, they’ll come right through the fence to protect me. Of course, if they get shot in the line of duty,” she added, “I’ll eat them!”

He pushed his Stetson back over clean blond-streaked brown hair and looked down at her with lingering amusement. “You haven’t changed much in six years.”

“Neither have you,” she retorted shyly. “You’re still smoking those awful things.”

He glanced at the big cigar and shrugged. “A man has to have a vice or two to round him out,” he pointed out. “Besides, I only have the occasional one, and never inside. I have read the studies on smoking,” he added dryly.

“Lots of people who smoke read those studies,” she agreed. “And then they quit!”

He smiled. “You can’t reform me,” he told her. “It’s a waste of time to try. I’m thirty-six and very set in my ways.”

“I noticed.”

He took a puff from the cigar and studied her steers. “I suppose they follow you around like dogs.”

“When I go inside the fence with them,” she agreed. She felt odd with him; safe and nervous and excited, all at once. She could smell the fresh scent of the soap he used, and over it a whiff of expensive cologne. He was close at her side, muscular and vibrating with sensuality. She wanted to move closer, to feel that strength all around her. It made her self-conscious. After six years, surely the attraction should have lessened a little.

He glanced down at her, noticing how she picked at her cuticles and nibbled on her lower lip. His green eyes narrowed and there was a faint glitter in them.

She felt the heat of his gaze and refused to lift her face. She wondered if it looked as hot as it felt.

“You haven’t forgotten a thing,” he said suddenly, the cigar in his hand absently falling to his side, whirls of smoke climbing into the air beside him.

“About what?” she choked.

He caught her long, blond ponytail and tugged her closer, so that she was standing right up against him. The scent of him, the heat of him, the muscular ripple of his body combined to make her shiver with repressed feelings.

He shifted, coaxing her into the curve of his body, his eyes catching hers and holding them relentlessly. He could feel her faint trembling, hear the excited whip of her breath as she tried valiantly to hide it from him. But he could see her heartbeat jerking the fabric over her small breasts.

It was a relief to find her as helplessly attracted to him as she once had been. It made him arrogant with pride. He let go of the ponytail and drew his hand against her cheek, letting his thumb slide down to her mouth and over her chin to lift her eyes to his.

“To everything, there is a season,” he said quietly.

She felt the impact of his steady, unblinking gaze in the most secret places of her body. She didn’t have the experience to hide it, to protect herself. She only stood staring up at him, with all her insecurities and fears lying naked in her soft gray eyes.

His head bent and he drew his nose against hers in the sudden silence of the yard. His smoky breath whispered over her lips as he murmured, “Six years is a long time to go hungry.”

She didn’t understand what he was saying. Her eyes were on his hard, long, thin mouth. Her hands had flattened against his broad chest. Under it she could feel thick, soft hair and the beat of his heart. His breath smelled of cigar smoke and when his mouth gently covered hers, she wondered if she was going to faint with the unexpected delight of it. It had been so long!

He felt her immediate, helpless submission. His free arm went around her shoulders and drew her lazily against his muscular body while his hard mouth moved lightly over her lips, tasting her, assessing her experience. His mouth became insistent and she stiffened a little, unused to the tender probing of his tongue against her teeth.

She felt his smile before he lifted his head.

“You still taste of lemonade and cotton candy,” he murmured with unconcealed pleasure.

“What do you mean?” she murmured, mesmerized by the hovering threat of his mouth.

“I mean, you still don’t know how to do this.” He searched her eyes quietly and then the smile left his face. “I did more damage than I ever meant to. You were seventeen. I had to hurt you to save you.” He traced her mouth with his thumb and scowled down at her. “You don’t know what my life was like in those days,” he said solemnly, and for once his eyes were unguarded. The pain in them was visible for the first time Sally could remember.

“Aunt Jessica told me,” she said slowly.

His eyes darkened. His face hardened. “All of it?”

She nodded.

He was still scowling. He released her to gaze off into the distance, absently lifting the cigar to his mouth. He blew out a cloud of smoke. “I’m not sure that I wanted you to know.”

“Secrets are dangerous.”

He glanced down at her, brooding. “More dangerous than you realize. I’ve kept mine for a long time, like your aunt.”

“I had no idea what she did for a living, either.” She glared up at him. “Thanks to the two of you, now I know how a mushroom feels, sitting in the dark.”

He chuckled. “She wanted it that way. She felt you’d be safer if she kept you uninvolved.”

She wanted to ask him about what Jessica had told her, that he’d phoned her about Sally before the painful move to Houston. But she didn’t quite know how. She was shy with him.

He looked down at her again, his eyes intent on her softly flushed cheeks, her swollen mouth, her bright eyes. She lifted his heart. Just the sight of her made him feel welcome, comforted, cared for. He’d missed that. In all his life, Sally had been the first and only person who could thwart his black moods. She made him feel as if he belonged somewhere after a life of wandering. Even during the time she was in Houston, he kept in touch with Jessica, to get news of Sally, of where she was, what she was doing, of her plans. He’d always expected that she’d come back to him one day, or that he’d go to her, despite the way they’d parted. Love, if it existed, was surely a powerful force, immune to harsh words and distance. And time.

Sally’s face was watchful, her eyes brimming over with excitement. She couldn’t hide what she was feeling, and he loved being able to see it. Her hero worship had first irritated and then elated him. Women had wanted him since his teens, although some loved him for the danger that clung to him. One had rejected him because of it and savaged his pride. But, even so, it was Sally who made him ache inside.

He touched her soft mouth with his fingers, liking the faint swell where he’d kissed it so thoroughly. “We’ll have to practice more,” he murmured wickedly.

She opened her mouth to protest that assumption when a laughing Stevie came running out the door like a little blond whirlwind, only to be caught up abruptly in Ebenezer’s hard arms and lifted.

“Uncle Eb!” he cried, laughing delightedly, making Sally realize that if she hadn’t been around Ebenezer since their move from Houston, Jessica and Stevie certainly had.

“Hello, tiger,” came the deep, pleasant reply. He put the boy back down on his feet. “Want to go to my place with Sally and learn karate?”

“Like the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ in the movies? Radical!” he exclaimed.

“Karate?” Sally asked, hesitating.

“Just a few moves, and only for self-defense,” he assured her. “You’ll enjoy it. It’s necessary,” he added when she seemed to hesitate.

“Okay,” she capitulated.

He led the way back into the house to where Jessica was sitting in the living room, listening to the news on the television.

“All this mess in the Balkans,” she said sadly. “Just when we think we’ve got peace, everything erupts all over again. Those poor people!”

“Fortunes of war,” Eb said with a smile. “How’s it going, Jess?”

“I can’t complain, I guess, except that they won’t let me drive anymore,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

“Wait until they get that virtual reality vision perfected,” he said easily. “You’ll be able to do anything.”

“Optimist,” she said, grinning.

“Always. I’m taking these two over to the ranch for a little course in elementary self-defense,” he added quietly.

“Good idea,” Jessica said at once.

“I don’t like leaving you here alone,” Sally ventured, remembering what she’d been told about the danger.

“She won’t be,” Eb replied. He looked at Jessica and one eye narrowed before he added, “I’m sending Dallas Kirk over to keep her company.”

“No!” Jessica said furiously. She actually stood up, vibrating. “No, Eb! I don’t want him within a mile of me! I’d rather be shot to pieces!”

“This isn’t multiple choice,” came a deep, drawling voice from the general direction of the hall.

As Sally turned from Jessica’s white face, a slender blond man with dark eyes came into the room. He walked with the help of a fancy-looking cane. He was dressed like Eb, in casual clothes, khaki slacks and a bush jacket. He looked like something right out of Africa.

“This is Dallas Kirk,” Eb introduced him to Sally. “He was born in Texas. His real name is Jon, but we’ve always called him Dallas. This is Sally Johnson,” he told the blond man.

Dallas nodded. “Nice to meet you,” he said formally.

“You know Jess,” Eb added.

“Yes. I…know her,” he said with the faintest emphasis in that lazy Western drawl, during which Jess’s face went from white to scarlet and she averted her eyes.

“Surely you can get along for an hour,” Eb said impatiently. “I really can’t leave you here by yourself, Jess.”

Dallas glared at her. “Mind telling me why?” he asked Eb. “She’s a better shot than I am.”

Jessica stood rigidly by her chair. “He doesn’t know?” she asked Eb.

Eb’s face was rigid. “He wouldn’t talk about you, and the subject didn’t come up until he was away on assignment. No. He doesn’t know.”

“Know what?” Dallas demanded.

Jessica’s chin lifted. “I’m blind,” she said matter-of-factly, almost with satisfaction, as if she knew it would hurt him.

The look on the newcomer’s face was a revelation. Sally only wished she knew of what. He shifted as if he’d sustained a physical blow. He walked slowly up to her and waved a hand in front of her face.

“Blind!” he said huskily. “For how long?”

“Six months,” she said, feeling for the arms of the chair. She sat back down a little clumsily. “I was in a wreck. An accident,” she added abruptly.

“It was no accident,” Eb countered coldly. “She was run off the road by two of Lopez’s men. They got away before the police came.”

Sally gasped. This was a new explanation. She’d just heard about the wreck—not about the cause of it. Dallas’s hand on the cane went white from the pressure he was exerting on it. “What about Stevie?” he asked coldly. “Is he all right? Was he injured?”

“He wasn’t with me at the time. And he’s fine. Sally lives with us and helps take care of him,” Jess replied, her voice unusually tense. “We share the chores. She’s my niece,” she added abruptly, almost as if to warn him of something.

Dallas looked preoccupied. But when Stevie came running back into the room, he turned abruptly and his eyes widened as he stared at the little boy.

“I’m ready!” Stevie announced, holding out his arms to show the gray sweats he was wearing. His dark eyes were shimmering with joy. “This is how they look on television when they practice. Is it okay?”

“It’s fine,” Eb replied with a smile.

“Who’s he?” Stevie asked, big-eyed, as he looked at the blond man with the cane who was staring at him, as if mesmerized.

“That’s Dallas,” Eb said easily. “He works for me.”

“Hi,” Stevie said, naturally outgoing. He stared at the cane. “I guess you’re from Texas with a name like that, huh? I’m sorry about your leg, Mr. Dallas. Does it hurt much?”

Dallas took a slow breath before he answered. “When it rains.”

“My mama’s hip hurts when it rains, too,” he said. “Are you coming with us to learn karate?”

“He’s already forgotten more than I know,” Eb said in a dry tone. “No, he’s going to take care of your mother while we’re gone.”

“Why?” Stevie asked, frowning.

“Because her hip hurts,” Sally lied through her teeth. “Ready to go?”

“Sure! Bye, Mom.” He ran to kiss her cheek and be hugged warmly. He moved back, smiling up at the blond man who hadn’t cracked a smile yet. “See you.”

Dallas nodded.

Sally was staggered by the resemblance of the boy to the man, and almost remarked on it. But before she could, Eb caught her eyes. There was a look in them that she couldn’t decipher, but it stopped her at once.

“We’d better go,” he said. He took Sally by the arm. “Come on, Stevie. We won’t be long, Jess,” he called back.

“I’ll count the seconds,” she said under her breath as they left the room.

Dallas didn’t say anything, and it was just as well that she couldn’t see the look in his eyes.

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK in front of Stevie as they drove through the massive electronic gates at the Scott ranch. He, like Sally, was fascinated by the layout, which included a helipad, a landing strip with a hangar, a swimming pool and a ranch house that looked capable of sleeping thirty people. There were also target ranges and guest cabins and a formidable state-of-the-art gym housed in what looked like a gigantic Quonset hut like those used during the Second World War in the Pacific theater. There were several satellite dishes as well, and security cameras seemingly on every available edifice.

“This is incredible,” Sally said as they got out of the truck and went with him toward the gym.

“Maintaining it is incredible,” Eb said with a chuckle. “You wouldn’t believe the level of technology required to keep it all functioning.”

Stevie had found the thick blue plastic-covered mat on the wood floor and was already rolling around on it and trying the punching bag suspended from one of the steel beams that supported other training equipment.

“Stevie looks like that man, Dallas,” she said abruptly.

He grimaced. “Haven’t you and Jess ever talked?”

“I didn’t know anything about Dallas and my aunt until you told me,” she said simply.

“This is something she needs to tell you, in her own good time.”

She studied the youngster having fun on the mat. “He isn’t my uncle’s child, is he?”

There was a rough sound from the man beside her. “What makes you think so?”

“For one thing, because he’s the image of Dallas. But also because Uncle Hank and Aunt Jessie were married for years with no kids, and suddenly she got pregnant just before he died overseas,” she replied. “Stevie was like a miracle.”

“In some ways, I suppose he was. But it led to Hank asking for a combat assignment, and even though he died of a heart condition, Jess has had nightmares ever since out of guilt.” He looked down at her. “You can’t tell her that you know.”

“Fair enough. Tell me the rest.”

“She and Dallas were working together on an assignment. It was one of those lightning attractions that overcome the best moral obstacles. They were alone too much and finally the inevitable happened. Jess turned up pregnant. When Dallas found out, he went crazy. He demanded that Jess divorce Hank and marry him, but she wouldn’t. She swore that Dallas wasn’t the father of her child, Hank was, and she had no intention of divorcing her husband.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Hank knew that she’d been with another man, of course, because he’d always been sterile. Dallas didn’t know that. And Hank hadn’t told Jessica until she announced that she was expecting a child.” He shrugged. “He wouldn’t forgive her. Neither would Dallas. When Hank died, Dallas didn’t even try to get in touch with Jess. He really believed that Stevie was Hank’s child. Until about ten minutes ago, that is,” he added with a wry smile. “It didn’t take much guesswork for him to see the resemblance. I think we won’t go back for a couple of hours. I don’t want to walk into the firefight he’s probably having with Jess even as we speak.”

She bit her lower lip. “Poor Jess.”

“Poor Dallas,” he countered. “After the fight with Jessie, he took every damned dangerous assignment he could find, the more dangerous the better. Last year in Africa, Dallas was shot to pieces. They sent him home with wounds that would have killed a lesser man.”

“No wonder he looks so bitter.”

“He’s bitter because he loved Jess and though she felt the same, she wasn’t willing to hurt Hank by leaving him. But in the end, she still hurt him. He couldn’t live with the idea that she was having some other man’s child. It destroyed their marriage.”

She grimaced. “What a tragedy, for all of them.”

“Yes.”

She looked toward Stevie, smiling. “He’s a great kid,” she said. “I’d love him even if he wasn’t my first cousin.”

“He’s got grit and personality to boot.”

“You wouldn’t think so at midnight when you’re still trying to get him to sleep.”

He smiled as he studied her. “You love kids, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said fervently. “I love teaching.”

“Don’t you want some of your own?” he asked with a quizzical smile.

She flushed and wouldn’t look at him. “Sure. One day.”

“Why not now?”

“Because I’ve already got more responsibilities than I can manage. Pregnancy would be a complication I couldn’t handle, especially now.”

“You sound as if you’re planning to do it all alone.”

She shrugged. “There is such a thing as artificial insemination.”

He turned her toward him, looking very solemn and adult. “How would it feel, carrying the child of a man you didn’t even know, having it grow inside your body?”

She bit her lower lip. She hadn’t considered the intimacy of what he was suggesting. She felt, and looked, confused.

“A baby should be made out of love, the natural way, not in a test tube,” he said very softly, searching her shocked eyes. “Well, not unless it’s the only way two people can have a child,” he added. “But that’s an entirely different circumstance.”

Her lips parted on the surge of emotion that made her heart race. “I don’t know…that I want to get that close to anyone, ever.”

He seemed even more remote. “Sally, you can’t let the past lock you into solitude forever. I frightened you because I wanted to keep you at bay. If I didn’t discourage you somehow I was afraid that the temptation might prove too much for me. You were such a baby.” He scowled bitterly. “What happened wouldn’t have been so devastating if you’d had even a little experience with men. For God’s sake, didn’t they ever let you date anyone?”

She shook her head, her teeth clenched tightly together. “My mother was certain that I’d get pregnant or catch some horrible disease. She talked about it all the time. She made boys who came to the house so uncomfortable that they never came back.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said tautly.

“Would it have made any difference?” she asked miserably.

He touched her face with cool, firm fingers. “Yes. I wouldn’t have gone nearly as far as I did, if I’d known.”

“You wanted to get rid of me…”

He put his thumb over her soft mouth. “I wanted you,” he whispered huskily. “But a seventeen-year-old isn’t mature enough for a love affair. And that would have been impossible in Jacobsville, even if I’d been crazy enough to go all the way with you that day. You were almost thirteen years my junior.”

She was beginning to see things from his point of view. She hadn’t tried before. There had been so much resentment, so much bitterness, so much hurt. She looked at him and saw, for the first time, the pain of the memory in his face.

“I was desperate,” she said, speaking softly. “They told me out of the blue that they were divorcing each other. They were selling the house and moving out of town. Dad was going to marry Beverly, this girl he’d met at the college where he taught. Mom couldn’t live in the same town with everybody knowing that Dad had thrown her over for someone younger. She married a man she hardly knew shortly afterward, just to save her pride.” She stared at his mouth with more hunger than she realized. “I knew that I’d never see you again. I only wanted you to kiss me.” She swallowed, averting her eyes. “I must have been crazy.”

“We both were.” He cupped her face in his hands and lifted it to his quiet eyes. “For what it’s worth, I never meant it to go further than a kiss. A very chaste kiss, at that.” His eyes drifted down involuntarily to the soft thrust of her breasts almost touching his shirt. He raised an eyebrow at the obvious points. “That’s why it wasn’t chaste.”

She didn’t understand. “What is?”

He looked absolutely exasperated. “How can you be that old and know nothing?” he asked. He glanced over her shoulder at Stevie, who was facing the other way and giving the punching bag hell. He took Sally’s own finger and drew it across her taut breast. He looked straight into her eyes as he said softly, “That’s why.”

She realized that it must have something to do with being aroused, but no one had ever told her blatantly that it was a visible sign of desire. She went scarlet.

“You greenhorn,” he murmured indulgently. “What a babe in arms.”

“I don’t read those sort of books,” she said haughtily.

“You should. In fact, I’ll buy you a set of them. Maybe a few videos, too,” he murmured absently, watching the expressions come and go on her face.

“You varmint…!”

He caught her top lip in both of his and ran his tongue lazily under it. She stiffened, but her hands were clinging to him, not pushing.

“You remember that, don’t you, Sally?” he murmured with a smile. “Do you remember what comes next?”

She jerked back from him, staggering. Her eyes found Stevie, still oblivious to the adults.

Eb’s eyes were blatant on the thrust of her breasts and he was smiling.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared up at him. “You just stop that,” she gritted. “I’ll bet you weren’t born knowing everything!”

He chuckled. “No, I wasn’t. But I didn’t have a mother to keep my nose clean, either,” he said. “My old man was military down to his toenails, and he didn’t believe in gentle handling or delicacy. He used women until the day he died.” He laughed coldly. “He told me that there was no such thing as a good woman, that they were to be enjoyed and put aside.”

She was appalled. “Didn’t he love your mother?”

“He wanted her, and she wouldn’t be with him until they got married,” he said simply. “So they got married. She died having me. They were living in a small town outside the military base where he was stationed. He was overseas on assignment and she lived alone, isolated. She went into labor and there were complications. There was nothing that could have been done for her by the time she was found. If a neighbor hadn’t come to look in on us, I’d have died with her.”

“It must have been a shock for your father,” she said.

“If it was, it never showed. He left me with a cousin until I was old enough to obey orders, then I went to live with him. I learned a lot from him, but he wasn’t a loving man.” His eyes narrowed on her soft face. “I followed his example and joined the army. I was lucky enough to get into the Green Berets. Then when I was due for discharge, a man approached me about a top secret assignment and told me what it would pay.” He shrugged. “Money is a great temptation for a young man with a domineering father. I said yes and he never spoke to me again. He said that what I was doing was a perversion of the military, and that I wasn’t fit to be any officer’s son. He disowned me on the spot. I didn’t hear from him again. A few years later, I got a letter from his post commander, stating that he’d died in combat. He had a military funeral with full honors.”

The pain of those years was in his lean, hard face. Impulsively she put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry,” she told him quietly. “He must have been the sort of man who only sees one side of any argument.”

He was surprised by her compassion. “Don’t you think mercenaries are evil, Miss Purity?” he asked sarcastically.

CHAPTER THREE

SALLY LOOKED UP INTO PAIN-LACED green eyes and without thinking, she lifted her hand from his arm and raised it toward his hard cheek. But when she realized what she was doing, she drew it back at once.

“No, I don’t think mercenaries are evil,” she said quickly, embarrassed by the impulsive gesture that, thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice. “There are a lot of countries where atrocities are committed, whose governments don’t have the manpower or resources to protect their people. So, someone else gets hired to do it. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, when there’s a legitimate cause.”

He was surprised by her matter-of-fact manner. He’d wondered for years how she might react when she learned about what he did for a living. He’d expected everything from revulsion to shock, especially when he remembered how his former fiancée had reacted to the news. But Sally wasn’t squeamish or judgmental.

He’d seen her hand jerk back and it had wounded him. But now, on hearing her opinion of his work, his heart lifted. “I didn’t expect you to credit me with noble motives.”

“They are, though, aren’t they?” she asked confidently.

“As a matter of fact, in my case, they are,” he replied. “Even in my green days, I never did it just for the money. I had to believe in what I was risking my life for.”

She grinned. “I thought maybe it was like on television,” she confessed. “But Jess said it was nothing like fiction.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he mused. “Parts of it are.”

“Such as?”

“We had a guy like ‘B.A. Barrabas’ in one unit I led,” he said. “We really did have to knock him out to get him on a plane. But he quit the group before we got inventive.”

She laughed. “Too bad. You’d have had plenty of stories to tell about him.”

He was quiet for a moment, studying her.

“Do I have a zit on my nose?” she asked pleasantly.

He reached out and caught the hand she’d started to lift toward him earlier and kissed its soft palm. “Let’s get to work,” he said, pulling her along to the mat. “I’ll change into my sweats and we’ll cover the basics. We won’t have a lot of time,” he added dryly. “I expect Jess to call very soon with an ultimatum about Dallas.”

JESS AND DALLAS HAD SQUARED OFF, in fact, the minute they heard the truck crank and pull out of the yard.

Dallas glared at her from his superior height, leaning heavily on his cane. He wished she could see him, because his eyes were full of anger and bitterness.

“Did you think I wouldn’t see that Stevie is the living image of me? My son,” he growled at her. “You had my son! And you lied to me about it and wouldn’t ask Hank for a divorce!”

“I couldn’t!” she exclaimed. “For heaven’s sake, he adored me. He’d never have cheated on me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’d had an affair with his best friend!”

“I could have told him,” he returned furiously. “He was no angel, Jess, despite the wings you’re trying to paint on him. Or do you think he never strayed on those overseas jaunts?” he chided.

She stiffened. “That’s not true!”

“It is true!” he replied angrily. “He knew he couldn’t get anybody pregnant, and he was sure you’d never find out.”

She put a hand to her head. She’d never dreamed that Hank had cheated on her. She’d felt so guilty, when all the time, he was doing the same thing—and then judging her brutally for what she’d done. “I didn’t know,” she said miserably.

“Would it have made a difference?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would have.” She smoothed the dress over her legs. “You thought Stevie was yours from the beginning, didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t know Hank was sterile until later on. You told me the child was Hank’s and I believed you. Hell, by then, I couldn’t even be sure that it was his.”

“You didn’t think—” She stopped abruptly. “Oh, dear God, you thought you were one in a line?” she exploded, horrified. “You thought I ran around on Hank with any man who asked me?”

“I knew very little about you except that you knocked me sideways,” he said flatly. “I knew Hank ran around on you. I assumed you were allowed the same freedom.” He turned away and walked to the window, staring out at the flat horizon. “I asked you to divorce Hank just to see what you’d say. It was exactly what I expected. You had it made—a husband who tolerated your unfaithfulness, and no danger of falling in love.”

“I thought I had a good marriage until you came along,” she said bitterly.

He turned, his eyes blazing. “Don’t make it sound cheap, Jess,” he said harshly. “Neither of us could stop that night. Neither of us tried.”

She put her face in her hands and shivered. The memory of how it had been could still reduce her to tears. She’d been in love for the first time in her life, but not with her husband. This man had haunted her ever since. Stevie was the mirror image of him.

“I was so ashamed,” she choked. “I betrayed Hank. I betrayed everything I believed in about loyalty and duty and honor. I felt like a Saturday night special at the bordello afterward.”

He scowled. “I never treated you that way,” he said harshly.

“Of course you didn’t!” she said miserably, wiping at tears. “But I was raised to believe that people got married and never cheated on each other. I was a virgin when I married Hank, and nobody in my whole family was ever divorced until Sally’s father, my brother, was.” She shook her head, oblivious to the expression that washed over Dallas’s hard, lean face. “My parents were happily married for fifty years before they died.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t work,” he said flatly, but in a less hostile tone. “That’s nobody’s fault.”

She smoothed back her short hair and quickly wiped away the tears. “Maybe not.”

He moved back toward her and sat down in a chair across from hers, putting the cane down on the floor. He leaned forward with a hard sigh and looked at Jessica’s pale, wan face with bitterness while he tried to find the words.

She heard the cane as he placed it on the floor. “Eb said you were badly hurt overseas,” she said softly, wishing with all her heart that she could see him. “Are you all right?”

That husky softness in her tone, that exquisite concern, was almost too much for him. He grasped her slender hands in his and held them tightly. “I’m better off than you seem to be,” he said heavily. “What a hell of a price we paid for that night, Jess.”

She felt the hot sting of tears. “It was very high,” she had to admit. She reached out hesitantly to find his face. Her fingers traced it gently, finding the new scars, the new hardness of its elegant lines. “Stevie looks like you,” she said softly, her unseeing eyes so full of emotion that he couldn’t bear to look into them.

“Yes.”

She searched her darkness with anguish for a face she would never see again. “Don’t be bitter,” she pleaded. “Please don’t hate me.”

He pulled her hand away as if it scalded him. “I’ve done little else for the past five years,” he said flatly. “But maybe you’re right. All the rage in the world won’t change the past.” He let go of her hand. “We have to pick up the pieces and go on.”

She hesitated. “Can we at least be friends?”

He laughed coldly. “Is that what you want?”

She nodded. “Eb says you’ve given up overseas assignments and that you’re working for him. I want you to get to know Stevie,” she added quietly. “Just in case…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!” he exploded, rising awkwardly from the chair with the help of the cane. “Lopez won’t get you. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you.”

She leaned back in her chair without replying. They both knew that Lopez had contacts everywhere and that he never gave up. If he wanted her dead, he could get her. She didn’t want her child left alone in the world.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” Dallas said tautly, refusing to think about the possibility of a world without her in it. “What do you take in yours?”

“I don’t care,” she said indifferently.

He didn’t say another word. He went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee while Jessica sat stiffly in her own living room and contemplated the direction her life had taken.

“YOU HAVE GOT…TO BE KIDDING!” Sally choked as she dragged herself up from the mat for the twentieth time. “You mean I’m going to spend two hours falling down? I thought you were going to teach me self-defense!”

“I am,” Eb replied easily. He, too, was wearing sweats now, and he’d been teaching her side breakfalls, first left and then right. “First you learn how to fall properly, so you don’t hurt yourself landing. Then we move on to stances, hand positions and kicks. One step at a time.”

She swept her arm past her hip and threw herself down on her side, falling with a loud thud but landing neatly. Beside her, Stevie was going at it with a vengeance and laughing gleefully.

“Am I doing it right?” she puffed, already perspiring. She was very much out of condition, despite the work she did around the house.

He nodded. “Very nice. Be careful about falling too close to the edge of the mat, though. The floor’s hard.”

She moved further onto the mat and did it again.

“If you think these are fun,” he mused, “wait until we do forward breakfalls.”

She gaped at him. “You mean I’m going to have to fall deliberately on my face? I’ll break my nose!”

“No, you won’t,” he said, moving her aside. “Watch.”

He executed the movement to perfection, catching his weight neatly on his hands and forearms. He jumped up again. “See? Simple.”

“For you,” she agreed, her eyes on the muscular body that was as fit as that of a man half his age. “Do you train all the time?”

“I have to,” he said. “If I let myself get out of shape, I won’t be of any use to my students. Great job, Stevie,” he called to the boy, who beamed at him.

“Of course he’s doing a great job,” she muttered. “He’s so close to the ground already that he doesn’t have far to fall!”

“Poor old lady,” he chided gently.

She glared in his direction as she swept her arm forward and threw herself down again. “I’m not old. I’m just out of condition.”

He looked at her, sprawled there on the mat, and his lips pursed as he sketched every inch of her. “Funny, I’d have said you were in prime condition. And not just for karate.”

She cleared her throat and got to her feet again. “When did you start learning this stuff?”

“When I was in grammar school,” he said. “My father taught me.”

“No wonder it looks so easy when you do it.”

“I train hard. It’s saved my life a few times.”

She studied his scarred face with curiosity. She could see the years in it, and the hardships. She knew very little about military operations, except for what she’d seen in movies and on television. And as Jess had told her, it wasn’t like that in real life. She tried to imagine an armed adversary coming at her and she stiffened.

“Something wrong?” he asked gently.

“I was trying to imagine being attacked,” she said. “It makes me nervous.”

“It won’t, when you gain a little confidence. Stand up straight,” he said. “Never walk with your head down in a slumped posture. Always look as if you know where you’re going, even if you don’t. And always, always, run if you can. Never stand and fight unless you’re trapped and your life is in danger.”

“Run? You’re kidding, of course?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. A man of any size and weight on drugs is more than a match for any three other men. What I’m going to teach you might work on an untrained adversary who’s sober. But a man who’s been drinking, or especially a man who’s using drugs can kill you outright, regardless of what I can teach you. Don’t you ever forget that. Overconfidence kills.”

“I’ll bet you don’t teach your men to run,” she said accusingly.

His eyes were quiet and full of bad memories. “Sally, a recruit in one of my groups emptied the magazine of his rifle into an enemy soldier on drugs at point-blank range. The enemy kept right on coming. He killed the recruit before he finally fell dead himself.”

Her lower jaw fell.

“That was my reaction, too,” he informed her. “Absolute disbelief. But it’s true. If anyone high on drugs comes at you, don’t try to reason with him…you can’t. And don’t try to fight him. Run like hell. If a full automatic clip won’t bring a man down, you certainly can’t. Neither can even a combat-hardened man, alone. In that sort of situation, it’s just basic common sense to get out of the way as quickly as possible if there’s any chance of escape, and pride be damned.”

“I’ll remember,” she said, all her confidence vanishing. She could see in Eb’s eyes that he’d watched that recruit die, and had to live with the memory forever in his mind. Probably it was one of many nightmarish episodes he’d like to forget.

“Sometimes retreat really is the better part of valor,” he said, smiling.

“You’re educational.”

He smiled slowly. “Am I, now?” he asked, and the way he looked at her didn’t have much to do with teaching her self-defense. “I can think of a few areas where you need…improvement.”

She glanced at Stevie, who was still falling on the mat. “You shouldn’t try to shoot ducks in a barrel,” she told him. “It’s unsporting.”

“Shooting is not what I have in mind.”

She cleared her throat. “I suppose I should try falling some more.” She brightened. “Say, if I learn to do this well, I could try falling on an adversary!”

“Ineffective unless you want to gain three hundred pounds,” he returned. He grinned. “Although, you could certainly experiment on me, if you want to. It might immobilize me. We won’t know until we try it. Want me to lie down and let you practice?” he added with twinkling eyes.

She laughed, but nervously. “I don’t think I’m ready to try that right away.”

“Suit yourself. No hurry. We’ve got plenty of time.”

She remembered Jess and the drug lord and her eyes grew worried. “Is it really dangerous for us at home…?”

He held up a cautioning hand. “Stevie, how about a soft drink?”

“That would be great!”

“There are some cans of soda in the fridge in the kitchen. How about bringing one for me and your aunt as well?”

“Sure thing!”

Stevie took off like a bullet.

“Yes, it’s dangerous,” Eb said quietly. “You aren’t to go alone, anywhere, at night. I’ll always have a man watching the house, but if you have to go to a meeting or some such thing, let me know and I’ll go with you.”

“Won’t that cramp your social life?” she asked without quite meeting his eyes.

“I don’t have a social life,” he said with a faint smile. “Not of the sort you’re talking about.”

“Oh.”

His face tautened. “Neither do you, if I can believe Jess.”

She shifted on the mat. “I haven’t really had much time for men.”

“You don’t have to spare my feelings,” he told her quietly. “I know I’ve caused you some sleepless nights. But you’ve waited too long to deal with it. The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be to form a relationship with a man.”

“I have Jess and Stevie to think about.”

“That’s an excuse. And not a very good one.”

She felt uncomfortable with her memories. She wrapped her arms around her chest and looked at him with shattered dreams in her eyes.

He took a sharp breath. “It will never be like that again,” he said curtly. “I promise you it won’t.”

She averted her eyes to the mat. “Do you think Jess and Dallas have done each other in by now?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

He moved closer, watching her stiffen, watching her draw away from him mentally. His big, lean hands caught her shoulders and he made her look at him.

“You’re older now,” he said, his voice steady and low. “You should know more about men than you did, even if you’ve had to learn it through books and television. I was fiercely aroused that day, it had been a long, dry spell, and you were seventeen years old. Get the picture?”

For the first time, she did. Her eyes searched his, warily, and nodded.

His hands contracted on her soft arms. “You might try it again,” he said softly.

“Try what?”

“What you did that afternoon,” he murmured, smiling tenderly. “Wearing sexy clothes and perfume and making a beeline for me. Anything could happen.”

Her eyes were sadder than she realized as she met his even gaze. “I’m not the same person I was then,” she told him. “But you still are.”

The light seemed to go out of him. His pale eyes narrowed, fastened to hers. “No,” he said after a minute. “I’ve changed, too. I lost my taste for commando work a long time ago. I teach tactics now. That’s all I do.”

“You’re not a family man,” she replied bravely.

Something changed in his face, in his eyes, as he studied her. “I’ve thought about that a lot recently,” he contradicted. “About a home and children. I might have to give up some of the contract work I do, once the kids came along. I won’t allow my children anywhere near weapons. But I can always write field manuals and train teachers in tactics and strategy and intelligence-gathering,” he added.

“You don’t know that you could settle for that,” she pointed out.

“Not until I try,” he agreed. His gaze fell to her soft mouth and lingered there. “But then, no man really wants to tie himself down. It takes a determined woman to make him want it.”

She felt as if he were trying to tell her something, but before she could ask him to clarify what he’d said, Stevie was back with an armful of soft drinks and the moment was lost.

JESS AND DALLAS WEREN’T SPEAKING at all when the others arrived. Dallas was toying with a cup of cold coffee, looking unapproachable. When Eb came in the door, Dallas went out it, without a word or a backward glance.

“I don’t need to ask how it went,” Eb murmured.

“It would be pretty pointless,” Jessica said dully.

“Mama, I learned to do breakfalls! I wish I could show you,” Stevie said, climbing into his mother’s lap and hugging her.

She fought tears as she cuddled him close and kissed his sweaty forehead. “Good for you! You listen when Eb tells you something. He’s very good.”

“Stevie’s a natural,” Eb chuckled. “In fact, so is your niece.” He gave Sally a slow going-over with his eyes.

“She’s a quick learner,” Jessica said. “Like I was, once.”

“I have to get back,” Eb said. “There’s nothing to worry about right now,” he added, careful not to speak too bluntly in front of the child. “I have everything in hand. But I have told Sally to let me know if she plans to go out alone at night, for any reason.”

“I will,” Sally promised. She didn’t want to risk her aunt’s life, or Stevie’s, by being too independent.

Eb nodded. “We’ll keep the lessons up at least three times a week,” he told Sally. “I want to move you into self-defense pretty quickly.”

She understood why and felt uneasy. “Okay.”

“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “Everything’s going to be fine. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

She managed a smile for him. “I know that.”

“Walk me to the door,” he coaxed. “See you, Jess.”

“Take care, Eb,” Jessie replied, her goodbye echoed by her son’s.

On the front porch, Eb closed the door and looked down into Sally’s wide gray eyes with concern and something more elusive.

“I’ll have the house watched,” he promised. “But you have to be careful about even normal things like opening the door when someone comes. Always keep the chain lock on until you know who’s out there. Another thing, you have to keep your doors and windows locked, curtains drawn and an escape route always in mind.”

She bit her lip worriedly. “I’ve never had to deal with anything like this.”

His big, warm hands closed over her shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry that you and Stevie have been put in the line of fire along with Jess. But you can handle this,” he said confidently. “You’re strong. You can do whatever you have to do.”

She searched his hard, lean face, saw the deep lines and scars that the violence of his life had carved into it, and knew that he would never lie to her. Her frown dissolved. His confidence in her made her feel capable of anything. She smiled.

He smiled back and traced a lazy line from her cheek down to her soft mouth. “If Stevie wasn’t so unpredictable, I’d kiss you,” he said quietly. “I like your mouth under mine.”

Her caught breath was audible. There had never been anyone who could do to her with words what he could.

He traced her lips, entranced. “I used to dream about that afternoon with you,” he said in a sensuous tone. “I woke up sweating, swearing, hating myself for what I’d done.” He laughed hollowly. “Hating you for what I’d done, too,” he added. “I blamed us both. But I couldn’t forget how it was.”

She colored delicately and lowered her eyes to his broad chest under the shirt he wore. The memories were so close to the surface of her mind that it was impossible not to glimpse them from time to time. Now, they were blatant and embarrassing.

His lean hands moved up to frame her face and force her eyes to meet his. He wasn’t smiling.

“No other man will ever have the taste of you that I did, that day,” he said roughly. “You were so deliciously innocent.”

Her lips parted at the intensity of his tone, at the faint glitter of his green eyes. “That isn’t what you said at the time!” she accused.

“At the time,” he murmured huskily, watching her mouth, “I was hurting so much that I didn’t take time to choose my words. I just wanted you out of the damned truck before I started stripping you out of those tight little shorts you were wearing.”

The flush in her cheeks got worse. The image of it was unbelievably shocking. Somehow, it had never occurred to her that at some point he might undress her, to gain access…

“What an expression,” he said, chuckling in spite of himself. “Hadn’t you considered what might happen when you came on to me that hard?”

She shook her head.

His fingers slid into the blond hair at her temples where the long braid pulled it away from her face. “Someone should have had a long talk with you.”

“You did,” she recalled nervously.

“Long and explicit, the day afterward,” he said, nodding. “You didn’t want to hear it, but I made you. I liked to think that it might have saved you from an even worse experience.”

“It wasn’t exactly a bad experience,” she said, staring at his shirt button. “That was part of the problem.”

There was a long, static silence. “Sally,” he breathed, and his mouth moved down slowly to cover hers in the silence of the porch.

She stood on tiptoe to coax him closer, lost in the memory of that long-ago afternoon. She felt his hands on her arms, guiding them up around his neck before they fell back to her hips and lifted her into the suddenly swollen contours of his muscular body.

She gasped, giving him the opening he wanted, so that he could deepen the kiss. She felt the warm hardness of his mouth against hers, the soft nip of his teeth, the deep exploration of his tongue. A warm flood of sensation rushed into her lower abdomen and she felt her whole body go tense with it. It was as if her body had become perfectly attuned to this man’s years ago, and could never belong to anyone else.

He felt her headlong response and slowly let her back down, lifting his mouth away from hers. He studied her face, her swollen, soft mouth, her wide eyes, her dazed expression.

“Yes,” he said huskily.

“Yes?”

He bent and nipped her lower lip sensuously before he pushed her away.

She stared up at him helplessly, feeling as if she’d just been dropped from a great height.

His eyes went to her breasts and lingered on the sharp little points so noticeable at the front of her blouse, the fabric jumping with every hard, quick beat of her heart.

She met that searching gaze and felt the power of it all the way to her toes.

“You know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time,” he said softly. “It always has been.”

She frowned. Her mind seemed to have shut down. She couldn’t quite focus, and her legs felt decidedly weak.

His eyes were back on her breasts, swerving to the closed door, and to both curtained windows before he stepped in close and cupped her blatantly in his warm, sensuous hands.

Sally’s mouth opened on a shocked gasp that became suddenly a moan of pleasure.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered, and his mouth covered hers hungrily.

It was the most passionate, adult kiss of her life, even eclipsing what had come before. His hands found their way under her sweatshirt and against lace-covered soft flesh. Her body responded instantly to the slow caresses. She curled into his body, eagerly submissive.

“Lord, what I wouldn’t give to unfasten this,” he groaned at her mouth as his fingers toyed with the closure at her back. “And sure as hell, Stevie would come outside the minute I did, and show and tell would take on a whole new meaning.”

The idea of it amused him and he lifted his head, smiling down into Sally’s equally laughing eyes.

“Ah, well,” he said, removing his hands with evident reluctance. “All things come to those who wait,” he added.

Sally blushed and moved a little away from him.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he chided gently, his green eyes sparkling, full of mischief and pleasure. “All of us have a weak spot.”

“Not you, man of steel,” she teased.

“We’ll talk about that next time,” he said. “Meanwhile, remember what I said. Especially about night trips.”

“Now where would I go alone at night in Jacobsville?” she asked patiently.

He only laughed. But even as she watched him drive away she remembered an upcoming parents and teachers meeting. There would be plenty of time to tell him about that, she reminded herself. She turned back into the house, her mouth and body still tingling pleasantly.

CHAPTER FOUR

JESSICA WAS SUBDUED AFTER the time she’d spent with Dallas. Even Stevie noticed, and became more attentive. Sally cooked her aunt’s favorite dishes and did her best to coax Jess into a better frame of mind. But the other woman’s sadness was blatant.

With her mind on Jessica and not on time passing, she forgot that she had a parents and teachers meeting the next Tuesday night. She phoned Eb’s ranch, as she’d been told to, but all she got was the answering machine and a message that only asked the caller to leave a name and number. She left a message, doubting that he’d hear it before she was safely home. She hadn’t really believed him when he’d said the whole family was in danger, especially since nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But even so, surely nothing was going to happen to her on a two-mile drive home!

She sent Stevie home with a fellow teacher. The business meeting was long and explosive, and it was much later than usual when it was finally over. Sally spoke to the parents she knew and left early. She wasn’t thinking about anything except her bed as she drove down the long, lonely road toward home. As she passed the large house and accompanying acreage where her three neighbors lived, she felt a chill. Three of them were out on their front porch. The light was on, and it looked as if they were arguing about something. They caught sight of her truck and there was an ominous stillness about them.

Sally drove faster, aware that she drew their attention as she went past them. Only a few more minutes, she thought, and she’d be home…

The steering wheel suddenly became difficult to turn and with horror she heard the sound of a tire going flatter and flatter. Her heart flipped over. She didn’t have a spare. She’d rolled it out of the bed to make room for the cattle feed she’d taken home last week, having meant to ask Eb to help her put it back in again. But she’d have to walk the rest of the way, now. Worse, it was dark and those creepy men were still watching the truck.

Well, she told herself as she climbed out of the cab with her purse over her shoulder, they weren’t going to give her any trouble. She had a loud whistling device, and she now knew at least enough self-defense to protect herself. Confident, despite Eb’s earlier warnings, she locked the truck and started walking.

The sound of running feet came toward her. She looked over her shoulder and stopped, turning, her mouth set in a grim line. Two of the three men were coming down the road toward her in a straight line. Just be calm, she told herself. She was wearing a neat gray pantsuit with a white blouse, her hair was up in a French twist, and she lifted her chin to show that she wasn’t afraid of them. Feeling her chances of a physical defense waning rapidly as she saw the size and strength of the two men, her hand went nervously to the whistle in her pocketbook and brought it by her side.

“Hey, there, sweet thing,” one of the men called. “Got a flat? We’ll help you change it.”

The other man, a little taller, untidy, unshaved and frankly unpleasant-looking, grinned at her. “You bet we will!”

“I don’t have a spare, thank you all the same.”

“We’ll drive you home,” the tall one said.

She forced a smile. “No, thanks. I’ll enjoy the walk. Good night!”

She started to turn when they pounced. One knocked the whistle out of her hand and caught her arm behind her back, while the other one took her purse off her shoulder and went through it quickly. He pulled out her wallet, looked at everything in it, and finally took out a bill, dropping her self-defense spray with the purse.

“Ten lousy bucks,” he muttered, dropping the bag as he stuffed the bill into his pocket. “Pity Lopez don’t pay us better. This’ll buy us a couple of six-packs, though.”

“Let me go,” Sally said, incensed. She tried to bring her elbow back into the man’s stomach, as she’d seen an instructor on television do, but the man twisted her other arm so harshly that the pain stopped her dead.

The other man came right up to her and looked her up and down. “Not bad,” he rasped. “Quick, bring her over here, off the road,” he told the other man.

“Lopez won’t like this!” The man on the porch came toward them, yelling across the road. “You’ll draw attention to us!”

One of them made a rude remark. The third man went back up on the porch, his footsteps sounding unnaturally loud on the wood.

Sally was almost sick with fear, but she fought like a tigress. Her efforts to break free did no good. These men were bigger and stronger than she was, and they had her helpless. She couldn’t get to her whistle or spray and every kick, punch she tried was effectively blocked. It occurred to her that these men knew self-defense moves, too, and how to avoid them. Too late, she remembered what Eb had said to her about overconfidence. These men weren’t even drunk and they were too much for her.

Her heart beat wildly as she was dragged off the road to the thick grass at the roadside. She would struggle, she would fight, but she was no match for them. She knew she was in a lot of danger and it looked like there was no escape. Tears of impotent fury dripped from her eyes. Helpless while one of the men kept her immobilized, she remembered the sound of her own voice telling her aunt just a few weeks ago that she could handle anything. She’d been overconfident.

A sound buzzed in her head and at first she thought it was the prelude to a dead faint. It wasn’t. The sound was growing closer. It was a pickup truck. The headlights illuminated her truck on the roadside, but not the struggle that was going on near it.

It was as if the driver knew what was happening without seeing it. The truck whipped onto the shoulder and was cut off. A man got out, a tall man in a shepherd’s coat with a Stetson drawn over his brow. He walked straight toward the two men, who released Sally and turned to face the new threat. Eb!

“Car trouble?” a deep, gravelly voice asked sarcastically.

One of the men pulled a knife, and the other one approached the newcomer. “This ain’t none of your business,” the taller man said. “Get going.”

The newcomer put his hands on his lean hips and stood his ground. “In your dreams.”

“You’ll wish you had,” the taller of them replied harshly. He moved in with the knife close in at his side.

Sally stared in horror at Eb, who was inviting this lunatic to kill him! She knew from television how deadly a knife wound in the stomach could be. Hadn’t Eb told her that the best way to survive a knife fight was to never get in one in the first place, to run like hell? And now Eb was going to be killed and it was going to be all her fault for not taking his advice and getting that tire fixed…!

Eb moved unexpectedly, with the speed of a striking cobra. The man with the knife was suddenly writhing on the ground, holding his forearm and sobbing. The other man rushed forward, to be flipped right out into the highway. He got up and rushed again. This time he was met with a violent, sharp movement that sent him to the ground, and he didn’t get up.

Eb walked right over the unconscious man, ignoring the groaning man, and picked Sally up right off the ground in his arms. He carried her to his truck, balancing her on one powerful denim-covered thigh while he opened the passenger door and put her inside.

“My…purse,” she whispered, giving in to the shock and fear that she’d tried so hard to hide. She was shaking so hard her speech was slurred.

He closed the door, retrieved her purse and wallet from the ground, and handed it in through his open door. “What did they take, baby?” he asked in a soft, comforting tone.

“The tall one…took a ten-dollar bill,” she faltered, hating her own cowardice as she sobbed helplessly. “In his pocket…”

Eb retrieved it, tossed it to her and got in beside her.

“But those men,” she protested.

“Be still for a minute. It’s all right. They look worse than they are.” He took a cell phone from his pocket, opened it, and dialed. “Bill? Eb Scott. I left you a couple of assailants on the Simmons Mill Road just past Bell’s rental house. That’s right, the very one.” He glanced at Sally. “Not tonight. I’ll tell her to come see you in the morning.” There was a pause. “Nothing too bad; a couple of broken bones, that’s all, but you might send the ambulance anyway. Sure. Thanks, Bill.”

He powered down the phone and stuck it back into his jacket. “Fasten your seat belt. I’ll take you home and send one of my men out to fix the truck and drive it back for you.”

Her hands were shaking so badly that he had to do it for her. He turned on the light in the cab and looked at her intently. He saw the shock, the fear, the humiliation, the anger, all lying naked in her wide, shimmering gray eyes. Last, his eyes fell to her blouse, where the fabric was torn, and her simple cotton brassiere was showing. She was so upset that she didn’t even realize how much bare skin was on display.

He took off the long-sleeved chambray shirt he was wearing over his black T-shirt and put her into it, fastening the buttons with deft, quick hands over the ripped blouse. His face grew hard as he saw the evidence of her ordeal.

“I had a…a…whistle.” she choked. “I even remembered what you taught me about how to fight back…!”

He studied her solemnly. “I trained a company of recruits a few years ago,” he said evenly. “They’d had hand-to-hand combat training and they knew all the right moves to counter any sort of physical attack. There wasn’t one of them that I couldn’t drop in less than ten seconds.” His pale green eyes searched hers. “Even a martial artist can lose a match. It depends on the skill of his opponent and his ability to keep his head when the attack comes. I’ve seen karate instructors send advanced students running with nothing more dangerous than the yell, a sudden quick sound that paralyzes.”

“Those two men…they couldn’t…touch you,” she pointed out, amazed.

His pale eyes had an alien coldness that made her shiver. “I told you to get that damned tire fixed, Sally.”

She swallowed. Her pride was bruised almost beyond bearing. “I don’t take orders,” she said, trying to salvage a little self-respect.

“I don’t give them anymore,” he returned. “But I do give advice, and you’ve just seen the results of not listening. At least you had the sense to leave a message on my answering machine. But what if I hadn’t checked my messages, Sally? Would you like to think where you’d be now? Want me to paint you a picture?”

“Stop!” She put her face in her hands and shivered.

“I won’t apologize,” he told her abruptly. “You did a damned stupid thing and you got off lucky. Another time, I might not be quick enough.”

She swallowed and swallowed again. “The…conquering male,” she choked, but she wasn’t teasing now, as she had been that afternoon when he’d told her to get the tire fixed.

He drew her hands away from her face and looked into her eyes steadily. “That’s right,” he said curtly, and he wasn’t kidding. “I’ve been dealing with vermin like that for almost half my life. I told you there was danger in going out alone. Now you understand what I meant. Get that damned tire fixed, and buy a cell phone.”

Her head was spinning. “I can’t afford one,” she said unsteadily.

“You can’t afford not to. If you’d had one tonight, this might never have happened,” he said forcefully. The heat in his eyes made her shiver. “A man is physically stronger than a woman. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, that’s the honest truth. Unless you’ve trained for years, like a policewoman or a federal agent, you’re not going to be the equal of a man who’s drunk or on drugs or just bent on assault. Law enforcement people know how to fight. You don’t.”

She shivered again. Her hair was disheveled. She felt bruises on her arms where she’d been restrained by those men. She was still stunned by the experience, but already a little of the horror of what might have happened was getting to her.

He let her wrists go abruptly. His lean face softened as he studied her. “But I’ll say one thing for you. You’ve got grit.”

“Sure. I’m tough,” she laughed hollowly, brushing a strand of loose hair out of her eyes. “What a pitiful waste of self-confidence!”

“Who the hell taught you about canned self-defense?” he asked curiously, referring to the can of spray on the ground.

“There was this television self-defense training course for women,” she said defensively.

“Anything you spray, pepper or chemical, can rebound on you,” he said quietly. “If the wind’s blowing the wrong way, you can blind yourself. If you don’t hit the attacker squarely in the eyes, you’re no better off, either. As for the whistle, tonight there would have been no one close enough to hear it.” He sighed at her miserable expression and shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you to run?”

She lifted a high-heeled foot eloquently.

He leaned closer. “If you’re ever in a similar situation again, kick them off and try for the two-minute mile!”

She managed a smile for him. “Okay.”

He touched her wan, drawn face gently. “I wouldn’t have had that happen to you for the world,” he said bitterly.

“You were right, I brought it on myself. I won’t make that mistake again, and at least I got away with everything except my pride intact,” she said gamely.

He unfastened her seat belt, aware of a curtain being lifted and then released in the living room. “I sent Dallas straight here as soon as I got the message,” he explained, “to watch out for Jess and Stevie. You should have let me know about this night meeting much sooner.”

“I know.” She was fighting tears. The whole experience had been a shock that she knew she’d never get over. “There was a third man, on the porch. He said that Lopez wouldn’t like what they were doing, calling attention to themselves.”

He stared at her for a long moment, seeing the fear and terror and revulsion that lingered in her oval face, watching the way her hands clenched at the shirt he’d fastened over her torn bodice. He glanced at the window, where the curtain was in place again, and back to Sally’s face.

“Come here, sweetheart,” he said tenderly, pulling her into his arms. He cuddled her close, nuzzling his face into her throat, letting her cry.

Her clenched fist rested against his black undershirt and she sobbed with impotent fury. “Oh, I’m so…mad!” she choked. “So mad! I felt like a rag doll.”

“You do your best and take what comes,” he said at her ear. “Anybody can lose a fight.”

“I’ll bet you never lost one,” she muttered tearfully.

“I got the hell beaten out of me in boot camp by a little guy half my size, who was a hapkido master. Taught me a valuable lesson about overconfidence,” he said deliberately.

She took the handkerchief he placed in her hands and wiped her nose and eyes and mouth. “Okay, I get the message,” she said on a broken sigh. “There’s always somebody bigger and you can’t win every time.”

“Nice attitude,” he said, approving.

She wiped away the last trace of tears and looked up at him from her comfortable position across his lap. “Thanks for the hero stuff.”

He shrugged. “Shucks, ma’am, t’weren’t nothin’.”

She laughed, as she was meant to. Her eyes adored him. “They say that if you save a life, it becomes yours.”

His lips pursed and he looked down at where the jacket barely covered her torn blouse. “Do I get that, too?”

“Too?”

He opened the shirt very slowly and looked at the pale flesh under the torn blouse. There was a lot of it on view. Sally didn’t protest, didn’t grab at cover. She lay very still in his arms and let him look at her.

His pale eyes met hers in the faint light coming from the house. “No protest?”

“You saved me,” she said simply. She sighed and smiled with resignation. “I belonged to you, anyway. There’s never been anyone else.”

His long, lean fingers touched her collarbone, his eyes narrow and solemn, his expression serious, intent. “That could have changed, tonight,” he reminded her quietly. “You have to trust me enough to do what I tell you. I don’t want you hurt in this. I’ll do anything I have to, to protect you. That includes having a man follow you around like a visible appendage if you push me to it. Think what your principal would make of that!”

“I won’t make any more stupid mistakes,” she promised.

“What would you call this?” he mused, nodding toward the ripped fabric that left one pretty, taut breast completely bare.

“Cover me up if you don’t like what you see,” she challenged.

He actually laughed. She was constantly surprising him. “I think I’d better,” he murmured dryly, and pulled the shirt back over her, leaving her to button it again. “Dallas is at the window getting an education.”

“And I can tell how much he needs it,” she said with dry humor as Eb helped her back into her own seat.

“That makes two of you,” Eb told her. His eyes were kind, and now full of concern. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes.” She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. “Eb, is it always like that?”

He frowned. “What?”

She looked up into his eyes. “Physical violence. Do you ever get to the point that it doesn’t make you sick inside?”

“I never have,” he said flatly. “I remember every face, every sound, every sick minute of what I’ve done in my life.” He looked at her, but he seemed to go far away. “You’d better go inside. I’ll take you and Stevie out to the ranch Thursday and Saturday and we’ll put in some more time.”

“For all the good it will do me,” she managed to say nervously.

“Don’t be like that,” he chided. “You got overpowered. People do, even ‘big, strong’ men. There’s no shame in losing a fight when you’ve given it all you’ve got.”

She smiled. “Think so?”

“I know so.” He touched her disheveled French knot. “You wore your hair down that spring afternoon,” he murmured softly. “I remember how it felt on my bare chest, loose and smelling of flowers.”

Her breath seemed to stick in her throat as she recalled the same memory. They had both been bare to the waist. She could close her eyes and feel the hair-roughened muscles of his chest against her own softness as he kissed her and kissed her…

“Sometimes,” he continued, “we get second chances.”

“Do we?” she whispered.

He touched her mouth gently. “Try not to dwell on what happened tonight,” he said. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Sally.”

That felt nice. She wished she could give him the same guarantee, but it seemed pretty ridiculous after her poor performance.

He seemed to read the thought right in her mind, and he burst out laughing. “Listen, lady, when I get through with you, you’ll be eating bad men raw,” he promised. “You’re just a beginner.”

“You aren’t.”

“That’s true. And not only in self-defense,” he added dryly. “You’d better go in.”

“I suppose so.” She picked at the buttons of the shirt he’d loaned her. “I’ll give it back. Eventually.”

“You look nice in it,” he had to admit. “You can keep it. We’ll try some more of my clothes on you and see how they look.”

She made a face at him as she opened the door. “Eb, do I have to go and see the sheriff?”

“You do. I’ll pick you up after school. Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “He won’t eat you. He’s a nice man. But you must see that we can’t let Lopez’s people get away with this.”

She felt a chill go down her arms as she remembered who Lopez was. “What will he do if I testify against his men?”

“You let me worry about that,” Eb told her, and his eyes were like green steel. “Nobody touches you without going through me.”

Her heart jumped right up into her throat as she stared at him. She was a modern woman, and she probably shouldn’t have enjoyed that passionate remark. But she did. Eb was a strong, assertive man who would want a woman to match him. Sally hadn’t been that woman at seventeen. But she was now. She could stand up to him and meet him on his own ground. It gave her a sense of pride.

“Debating if it’s proper for a modern woman to like being protected?” he chided with a wicked grin.

“You said yourself that none of us are invincible,” she pointed out. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to admire a man’s strength, especially when it’s just saved my neck.”

He made her feel confident, he gave her joy. It had been years since she’d laughed so much, enjoyed life so much. Odd that a man whose adult years had been imbued with such violence could be so tender.

“Okay now?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’m okay.” She glanced toward the road and shivered a little. “They won’t come looking for me?”

“Not in that condition they won’t,” he said matter-of-factly. “And they’re very lucky,” he added, his whole face like drawn cord. “Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been so gentle.”

Both eyebrows went up at the imagery.

“You know what I was,” he said quietly. “Until comparatively recent years, I lived a violent, uncertain life. Part of the man I was is still in me. I won’t ever hurt you,” he added. “But I have to come to grips with the old life before I can begin a new one. That’s going to take time.”

“I think you’re saying something.”

“Why, yes, I am,” he mused, watching her. “I’m giving notice of my intentions.”

“Intentions?”

“Last time I stopped. Next time I won’t.”

Her mind wasn’t quite grasping what he was telling her. “You mean, with those men…?”

“I mean with you,” he said gently. “I want you very badly, and I’m not walking away this time.”

“You and what army?” she asked, aghast.

“I won’t need an army. But you might.” He smiled. “Go on in. I’m having the house watched. You’ll be safe, I promise.”

She pulled his shirt closer. “Thanks, Eb,” she said.

He shrugged. “I have to take care of my own. Try to sleep.”

She smiled at him. “Okay. You, too.”

He watched her go up onto the porch and into the house, waiting for Dallas, who came out tight-lipped with barely a word to Sally as he passed her.

He got into the truck with Eb and slammed the door.

“What happened to Sally?” he asked, putting his cane aside.

“Lopez’s men rushed the truck when she had a flat. I don’t know if it was premeditated,” he added coldly. “They could have lain in wait for her and caused the flat. The tire was almost bald, but it could have gone another few hundred miles.”

“She looked uneasy.”

“They assaulted her and may have raped her if I hadn’t shown up,” Eb said bluntly as he backed the truck and pulled out into the road. “I want to have another look, if the ambulance hasn’t picked them up yet.”

“You sent for an ambulance?” Dallas asked with mock surprise. “That’s new.”

“Well, we’re trying to blend in, aren’t we?” came the terse reply. He glared at the tall blond man. “Difficult to blend in if we let people die on the side of the road.”

“If you say so.”

They drove to where Sally’s pickup truck was still sitting, but there was no sign of the two men. The house nearby was dark. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

As Eb digested that, red lights flashed and a big boxy ambulance pulled up behind the pickup truck, followed closely by a deputy sheriff in a patrol car.

Eb pulled off the road and got out. He knew the deputy, Rich Burton, who was one of the department’s ablest members. They shook hands.

“Where are the victims?” Rich asked.

Eb grimaced. “Well, they were both lying right there when I took Sally home.”

The deputy and the ambulance guys looked toward the flattened grass, but there weren’t any men lying there.

“Unless one of you needs medical attention, we’ll be on our way,” one of the EMTs said with a wry glance.

“Both of the perps did,” Eb said quietly. “At least one of them has broken bones.”

The EMT gave him a wary look. “Not their legs, by the look of things.”

“No. Not their legs.”

The EMTs left and Rich joined Eb and Dallas beside the truck.

“Something’s going on at that house,” Rich said quietly. “I’ve had total strangers stop me and tell me they’ve seen suspicious activity, men carrying boxes in and out. That’s not all. Some holding company bought a huge tract of land adjoining Cy Parks’s place, and it’s filling up with building supplies. There’s a contractor been hired and a plan has gone to the county commission’s planning committee about a business starting up there.”

“How much do you know about the men who live here?” Eb asked coolly.

Rich shrugged. “Not as much as I’d like to. But my contacts tell me that there’s a drug lord named Manuel Lopez, and the talk is that these guys belong to him. They’re mules. They run his narcotics for him.”

Eb and Dallas exchanged quiet glances.

“What sort of business are we talking about?” Eb queried.

“Don’t know. There’s a huge steel warehouse going up behind Parks’s place,” Rich replied, and he looked worried. “If I were making a guess, and it is just a guess, I’d say somebody had distribution in mind.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“A DISTRIBUTION CENTER,” Eb said curtly. “With Manuel Lopez, the head of the most violent of the international drug cartels, behind it! That’s just what we need in Jacobsville.”

“That’s right,” the younger man replied. He scowled. “How do you know about Lopez?”

Eb didn’t answer. “Thanks, Rich,” he said. “If I hear anything about the men who attacked Miss Johnson, I’ll give you a call.”

“Thanks. But I’d bet that they’re long gone,” he said carelessly. “They’d be crazy to stick around and face charges like attempted rape in a town this size. Lopez wouldn’t like the notoriety.”

“My guess exactly. So long,” Eb said, motioning to Dallas. Rich drove off with a wave of his hand. Eb hesitated, and once Rich was out of sight, he looked for and found a board with new nails sticking through it. It was lying point-side down, now, but the wood was new and there was a long cord attached to it. Evidently it had been placed in the road just as Sally approached, and then jerked away once Sally had run over it. That meant that there had to be a fourth man involved, besides the man on the porch and the two men who’d assaulted Sally. That disturbed Eb.

“They set a trap,” Dallas guessed. “She ran over this. That’s how she got the flat.”

“Exactly.” Eb threw the board in the bed of the truck before he climbed in under the wheel. “There were at least four men in on it, and I don’t think assault was the sole object of the exercise. I think I’ll go over and have a talk with Cy Parks first thing in the morning. He may know something about that new construction behind his place.”

CY PARKS WAS GRUMPY. He hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, and he was groggy. Even after four years, he still had nightmares about the loss of his wife and five-year-old son in a fire back home in Wyoming. He’d moved here to Jacobsville, where Ebenezer Scott lived, more for someone to talk to than any other reason. Eb was not only a former comrade at arms, but he was also the only man he knew who could listen to the unabridged horror of the fire without losing his supper. It kept him sane, just having someone to talk to. And not only could he talk about the death of his family at Lopez’s henchmen’s hands but also he had someone to help him exorcise the nightmares of the past that he and Ebenezer shared.

The knock on the door came just as he was pouring his second cup of coffee. It was probably his foreman. Harley Fowler was an adventurer wannabe who fancied himself a mercenary. He was forever reading a magazine for armchair adventurers and once he’d actually answered one of the ads for volunteers and, supposedly, had taken a job during his summer vacation. He’d come back from his vacation two weeks later grinning and bragging about his exploits overseas with a group of world-beaters and lording it over the other ranch hands who worked for Cy. Harley had become the overnight hero of the men. Cy watched him with amused cynicism. None of the men he’d served with had ever returned home strutting and bragging about their exploits. Nor had any of them come home smiling. There was a look about a man who’d seen combat. It was unmistakable to anyone who’d been through it. Harley didn’t have the look.

None of the ranch hands knew that Cy Parks hadn’t always been a rancher. They knew about the fire that had cost him his family—most people locally did. But they didn’t know that he was a former professional mercenary and that Lopez was responsible for the fire. Cy wanted to keep it that way. He was through with the old life.

He opened the front door with a scowl on his lean, tanned face, but it wasn’t Harley who was standing on his porch. It was Ebenezer Scott.

Cy’s eyes, two shades darker green than Eb’s, narrowed. “Lost your way?” he taunted, running a hand through his thick unruly black hair.

Eb chuckled. “Years ago. Got another cup?”

“Sure.” He opened the door and let Eb in. The living room, old-fashioned and sparsely furnished, was neat as a pin. So were the formal dining room—never used—and the big, airy kitchen with not a spot of dirt or grime anywhere.

“Tell me you hired a housekeeper,” Eb murmured.

Cy got down an extra cup and poured black coffee into it, handing it across the table before he sat down. “I don’t need a housekeeper,” he replied. “Why are you here?” he added with characteristic bluntness.

“Did you keep in touch with any of your old contacts when you got out of the business?” Eb asked at once.

Cy shook his head. “No need. I gave it up, remember?” He lifted the cup to his wide, chiseled mouth.

Eb sipped coffee, nodded at the strength of it, and put the mug down on the Formica tabletop with a soft thud. “Manuel Lopez is loose,” he said without preamble. “We think he’s in the vicinity. Certainly some of his henchmen are.”

Cy’s face hardened. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“Why is he here?”

“Because Jessica Myers is here,” Eb replied. “She’s living with her young son and her niece, Sally Johnson, out at the old Johnson place. She got one of Lopez’s accomplices to rat on Lopez without giving himself away. She had access to documents and bank accounts and witnesses willing to testify. Now Lopez is out and he’s after Jess. He wants the name of the henchman who sold him out.”

Cy made an impatient gesture. “Fighting out in the open isn’t Lopez’s style. He’s the original knife-in-the-back boy.”

“I know. It worries me.” He sipped more coffee. “He had three, maybe four, of his thugs living in a rental place near Sally’s house. Two of them attacked her last night when her truck had a flat tire just down the road from them. It was no accident, either. They’ve obviously been gathering intelligence, watching her. They knew exactly where she was and exactly when she’d get as far as their place.” His face was grim. “I think there are more than four of them. I also think they may have the same sort of surveillance equipment I maintain at the ranch. What I don’t know is why. I don’t know if it’s solely because Lopez wants to get to Jessica.”

“Is Sally all right?”

Eb nodded. “I got to her in time, luckily. I broke a couple of bones for her assailants, but they got away and now the house seems to be without tenants—temporarily, of course. Have you noticed any activity on your northern boundary?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Cy replied, frowning. “All sorts of vehicles are coming and going. They’ve graded about an acre, and a steel warehouse is going up. The city planning commission chairman says it’s going to be some sort of production and distribution center for a honey concern. They even have a building permit.” He sighed angrily. “Matt Caldwell has been having hell with the planning commission about a project of his own, yet this gang got what they wanted immediately.”

“Honey,” Eb mused.

“That isn’t all of it,” Cy continued. “I investigated the holding company that bought the land behind me. It doesn’t belong to anybody local, but I can’t find out who’s behind it. It belongs to a corporation based in Cancún, Mexico.”

Eb’s eyes narrowed. “Cancún? Now, that’s interesting. The last report I had about Lopez before he was arrested was that he bought property there and was living like a king in a palatial estate just outside Cancún.” He stopped dead at the expression on his friend’s face. Cy and Eb had once helped put some of Lopez’s men away.

Cy’s breathing became rough, his green eyes began to glitter like heated emeralds. “Lopez! Now what the hell would he want with a honey business?”

“It’s evidently going to be a front for something illegal,” Eb assured him. “He may have picked Jacobsville for a distribution center for his ‘product’ because it’s small, isolated, and there are no federal agencies represented near here.”

Cy stood up, his whole body rigid with hatred and anger. “He killed my wife and son…!”

“He had Jessica run off the road and almost killed,” Eb added coldly. “She lived, but she was blinded. She came back here from Houston, hoping that I could protect her. But it’s going to take more than me. I need help. I want to set up a listening post on your back forty and put a man there.”

“Done,” Cy said at once. “But first I’m going to buy a few claymores…”

It took a minute for the expression on Cy’s face, in his eyes, in the set of his lean body to register. Eb had only seen him like that once before, in combat, many years before. Probably that was the way he’d looked when his wife and son died and he was hospitalized with severe burns on one arm, incurred when he’d tried to save them from the raging fire. He hadn’t known at the time that Lopez had sent men to kill him. Even in prison, Lopez could put out contracts.

“You can’t start setting off land mines. You have to think with your brain, not your guts,” Eb said curtly. “If we’re going to get Lopez, we have to do it legally.”

“Oh, that’s new, coming from you,” Cy said with biting sarcasm.

Eb’s broad shoulders lifted and fell as he sat down again, straddling the chair this time. “I’m reformed,” he said. “I want to settle down, but first I have to put Lopez away. I need you.”

Cy extended the hand that had been so badly burned.

“I know about the burns,” Eb said. “If you recall, most of us went to see you in the hospital afterward.”

Cy averted his eyes and pulled the sleeve down over his wrist, holding it there protectively. “I don’t remember much of it,” he confessed. “They sent me to a burn unit and did what they could. At least I was able to keep the arm, but I’ll never be much good in a tight corner again.”

“You mean you were before?” Eb asked with howling mockery.

Cy’s eyes widened, narrowed and suddenly he burst out laughing. “I’d forgotten what a bunch of sadists you and your men were,” he accused. “Before every search and destroy mission, somebody was claiming my gear and asking about my beneficiary.” Cy drew in a long breath. “I’ve been keeping to myself for a long time.”

“So we noticed,” came the dry reply. “I hear it took a bunch of troubled adolescents to drag you out of your cave.”

Cy knew what he meant. Belinda Jessup, a public defender, had bought some of the property on his boundary for a summer camp for youthful offenders on probation. One of the boys, an African-American youth who’d fallen absolutely in love with the cattle business, had gotten through his shell. He’d worked with Luke Craig, another neighbor, to give the boy a head start in cowboying. He was now working for Luke Craig on his ranch and had made a top hand. No more legal troubles for him. He was on his way to being foreman of the whole outfit, and Cy couldn’t repress a tingle of pride that he’d had a hand in that.

“Even assuming that we can send Lopez back to prison, that won’t stop him from appointing somebody to run his empire. You know how these groups are organized,” Cy added, “into cells of ten or more men with their chiefs reporting to a regional manager and those managers reporting to a high-level management designee. The damned cartels operate on a corporate structure these days.”

“Yes, I know, and they work complete with pagers, cell phones and faxes, using them just long enough to avoid detection,” Eb agreed. “They’re efficient and they’re merciless. God only knows how many undercover agents the drug enforcement people have lost, not to mention those from other law enforcement agencies. The drug lords make a religion of intimidation, and they have no scruples about killing a man and his entire family. No wonder few of their henchmen ever cross them. But one did, and Jessica knows his name. I don’t expect Lopez to give up. Ever.”

“Neither do I. But what are we going to do about Lopez’s planned operation?” Cy wanted to know.

Eb sobered. “I don’t have a plan yet. Legally, we can’t do anything without hard evidence. Lopez will be extra careful about covering his tracks this time. He won’t want anything that will connect him on paper to the drug operation. From what I’ve been able to learn, Lopez has already skipped town, forfeiting the bond. Believe me, there’s no way in hell he’ll ever get extradited from Mexico. The only way we’ll ever get him back behind bars again is to lure him back here and have him nabbed by the U.S. Marshals Service. He’s at the top of the DEA’s Most Wanted list right now.” He finished his second cup of coffee. “If we can get a legal wiretap on the phones in that warehouse once it’s operating, we might have something to take to the authorities. I know a DEA agent,” Eb said thoughtfully. “In fact, he and his wife are neighbors of yours. He’s gung-ho at his job, and he’s done some undercover work before.”

“Most of Lopez’s people are Hispanic,” Cy pointed out.

“This guy could pass for Hispanic. Good-looking devil, too. His wife’s father left her that small ranch…”

“Lisa Monroe,” Cy said, and averted his eyes. “Yes, I’ve seen her around. Yesterday she was heaving bales of hay over the fence to her horse,” he added in the coldest tones Eb had ever heard him use. “She’s thinner than she should be, and she has no business trying to heft bales of hay!”

“When her husband’s not home to do it for her…”

“Not home?” Cy’s eyes widened. “Good God, man, he was standing ten feet away talking to a leggy blond girl in an express delivery uniform! He didn’t even seem to notice Lisa!”

“It’s not our business.”

Cy moved abruptly, standing up. “Okay. Point taken. Suppose we ride up to the boundary and take a look at the progress on that warehouse,” he said. “We can take horses and pretend we’re riding the fence line.”

Eb retrieved high-powered binoculars from the truck and by the time he got to the stable, Cy’s young foreman had two horses saddled and waiting.

“Mr. Scott!” Harley said with a starstruck grin, running a hand absently through his crew-cut light brown hair. “Nice to see you, sir!” He almost saluted. He knew about Mr. Scott’s operation; he’d read all about it in his armchair covert operations magazine, to say nothing of the top secret newsletter to which he subscribed.

Eb gave him a measuring glance and he didn’t smile. “Do I know you, son?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Harley said quickly. “But I’ve read about your operation!”

“I can imagine what,” Eb chuckled. He stuck a cigar into his mouth and lit it.

Cy mounted offside, from the right, because there wasn’t enough strength in his left arm to permit him to grip the saddle horn and help pull himself up. He hated the show of weakness, which was all too visible. Up until the fire, he’d been in superb physical condition.

“We’re going to ride up to the northern boundary and check the fence line for breaks,” Cy said imperturbably. “Get Jenkins started on the new gate as soon as he’s through with breakfast.”

“He’ll have to go pick it up at the hardware store first,” Harley reminded him. “Just came in late yesterday.”

Cy gave him a look that would have frozen running water. He didn’t say anything. But, then, he didn’t have to.

“I’ll just go remind him,” Harley said at once, and took off toward the bunkhouse.

“Who is he?” Eb asked as they rode out of the yard.

“My new foreman.” Cy leaned toward him with mock awe. “He’s a real mercenary, you know! Actually went on a mission early this summer!”

“My God,” Eb drawled. “Fancy that. A real live hero right here in the boonies.”

“Some hero,” Cy muttered. “Chances are what he really did was to camp out in the woods for two weeks and help protect city campers from bears.”

Eb chuckled. “Remember how we were at his age?” he asked reminiscently. “We couldn’t wait for people to see us in our gear. And then we found out that the real mercs don’t advertise.”

“We were like Harley,” Cy mused. “All talk and hot air.”

“And all smiles.” Eb’s eyes narrowed with memory. “I hadn’t smiled for years by the time I got out. It isn’t romantic and no matter how good the pay is, it’s never enough for what you have to do for it.”

“We did do a little good in the world,” came the rejoinder.

“Yes, I guess we did,” Eb had to admit. “But our best job was breaking up one of Lopez’s cocaine processing plants in Central America and helping put Lopez away. And here he is back, like a bad bouncing ball.”

“I knew his father,” Cy said unexpectedly. “A good, honest, bighearted man who worked as a janitor just up the road in Victoria and studied English at home every night trying to better himself. He died just after he found out what his only child was doing for a living.”

Eb stared off into space. “You never know how kids will turn out.”

“I know how mine would have turned out,” Cy said heavily. “One of his teachers was in an accident. Not a well-liked teacher, but Alex started a fund for him and gave up a whole month’s allowance to start it with.” His face corded like wire. He had to swallow, hard, to keep his voice from breaking. The years hadn’t made his memories any easier. Perhaps if he could help get Lopez back in prison, it might help.

“We’ll get Lopez,” the other man said abruptly. “Whatever it takes, if I have to call in markers from all over the world. We’ll get him.”

Cy came out of his brief torment and glanced at his comrade. “If we do, I get five minutes alone with him.”

“Not a chance,” Eb said with a grin. “I remember what you can do in five minutes, and I want him tried properly.”

“He already was.”

“Yes, but he was caught and tried back east. This time we’ll manage to apprehend him right here in Texas and we’ll stack the legal deck by having the best prosecuting attorney in the state brought in to do the job. The Hart boys are related to the state attorney general—he’s their big brother.”

“I’d forgotten.” He glanced at Eb. His eyes were briefly less tormented. “Okay. I guess I can give the court a second chance. Not their fault that Lopez can afford defense attorneys in Armani suits, I guess.”

“Absolutely. And if we can catch him with enough laundered money in his pockets and invoke the RICO statutes, we can fund some nice improvements for our drug enforcement people.”

They’d arrived at the northernmost boundary of Cy’s property, and barely in sight across the high-wire fence was a huge construction site. From their concealed position in a small stand of trees near a stream, Eb took his binoculars and gave the area a thorough scrutiny. He handed them to Cy, who looked as well and then handed them back.

“Recognize anybody?” Cy asked.

Eb shook his head. “None of them are familiar. But I’ll bet if you looked in the right places, you could find a rap sheet or two. Lopez isn’t too picky about pedigrees. He just likes men who don’t mind doing whatever the job takes. Last I heard, he had several foreign nationals in his employ.” He sighed. “I sure as hell don’t want a drug distribution network out here.”

“Neither do I. We’d better go have a word with Bill Elliott at the sheriff’s office.”

Cy shrugged. “You’d better have a word with him by yourself, if you want to get anywhere. I’d jinx you.”

“I remember now. You had words with him over Belinda Jessup’s summer camp.”

“Hard words,” Cy agreed uncomfortably. “I’ve mellowed since, though.”

“You and the KGB.” He pulled his hat further over his eyes. “We’d better get out of here before they spot us.”

“I can see people coming.”

“They can see you coming, too.”

“That should worry them,” Cy agreed, grinning.

Eb chuckled. It was rare these days to see a smile on that hard face. He wheeled his horse, leaving Cy to follow.

THAT AFTERNOON, EB DROVE over to the Johnson place to pick up Sally and Stevie for their self-defense practice.

Sally’s eyes lit up when she saw him and he felt his heart jump. She made him feel warm inside, as if he finally belonged somewhere. Stevie ran past his aunt to be caught up and swung around in Eb’s muscular arms.

“How’s Jess?” Eb asked.

Sally made a face and glanced back toward the house. “Dallas got here just before you did. It’s sort of unarmed combat in there. They aren’t even speaking to each other.”

“Ah, well,” he mused. “Things will improve eventually.”

“Do you gamble?” she teased. “I feel a lucky streak coming on.”

He chuckled as he loaded them into the pickup. No, he wasn’t willing to bet on friendlier relations on that front. Not yet, anyway.

“How much do you know about surveillance equipment?” Sally asked unexpectedly.

He gave her a look of exaggerated patience. “With my background, how much do you think I know?”

She laughed. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Can a microphone really pick up voices inside the house? Jess tried to convince me that they could hear us through the walls and we had to be very careful what we discussed. I mentioned that Lopez man and she shushed me immediately.”

He glanced at her as he drove. “You’ve got a lot to learn. I suppose now is as good a time as any to teach you.”

When he parked the truck at the front door, he led her inside, parking Stevie at the kitchen table with Carl, his cook, who dished up some ice cream for the child while Eb led Sally down the long hall and into a huge room literally crammed with electronic equipment.

He motioned her into a chair and keyed his security camera to a distant view of two cowboys working on a piece of machinery halfway down a rutted path in the meadow.

He flipped a switch and she heard one cowboy muttering to the other about the sorry state of modern tools and how even rusted files were better than what passed for a file today.

They weren’t even talking loud, and if there was a microphone, it must be mounted on the barn wall outside. She looked at Eb with wide, frankly disbelieving eyes.

He flipped the switch and the screen was silent again. “Most modern sound equipment can pick up a whisper several hundred yards away.” He indicated a shelf upon which sat several pairs of odd-looking binoculars. “Night vision. I can see anything on a moonless night with those, and I’ve got others that detect heat patterns in the dark.”

“You have got to be kidding!”

“We have cameras hidden in books and cigarette packs, we have weapons that can be broken down and hidden in boots,” he continued. “Not to mention this.”

He indicated his watch, a quite normal looking one with all sorts of dials. Normal until he adjusted it and a nasty-looking little blade popped out. Her gasp was audible.

He could see the realization in her eyes as the purpose of the blade registered there. She looked up at him and saw the past. His past.

His green eyes narrowed as they searched hers. “You hadn’t really thought about exactly what sort of work I did, had you?”

She shook her head. She was a little paler now.

“I lived in dangerous places, in dangerous times. It’s only in recent years that I’ve stopped looking over my shoulder and sitting with my back against a wall.” He touched her face. “Lopez’s men can hear you through a wall, with the television on. Don’t ever forget. Say nothing that you don’t want recorded for posterity.”

“This Lopez man is very dangerous, isn’t he?” she asked.

“He’s the most dangerous man I know. He hires killers. He has no compassion, no mercy, and he’ll do absolutely anything for profit. If his henchman hadn’t sold him out, he’d never have been taken into custody in this country. It was a fluke.”

She looked around her curiously. “Could he overhear you in here?”

He smiled gently. “Not a chance in hell.”

“It looks like something out of Star Wars,” she mused.

He grinned. “Speaking of movies, how would you and Stevie like to go see a new science fiction flick with me Saturday?”

“Could we?” she asked.

“Sure.” His eyes danced wickedly at the idea of sitting in a darkened theater with her….

CHAPTER SIX

SALLY FOUND THE WORKOUTS easier to do as they progressed from falls to defensive moves. Not only was it exciting to learn such skills, but the constant physical contact with Eb was delightful. She couldn’t really hide that from him. He saw right through her diversionary tactics, grinning when she asked for short breaks.

Stevie was also taking to the exercise with enthusiasm. It wasn’t hard to teach him that such things had no place at school, either. Even at his young age, he seemed to understand that martial arts were for recreation after school and never for the playground.

“It goes with the discipline,” Eb informed her when she told him about it. “Most people who watch martial arts films automatically assume that we teach children to hurt each other. It’s not like that. What we teach is a way to raise self-esteem and self-confidence. If you know you can handle yourself in a bad situation, you’re less likely to go out and try to beat somebody up to prove it. It’s lack of self-confidence, lack of self-esteem, that drives a lot of kids to violence.”

“That, and a very sad lack of attention by the adults around them,” Sally said quietly. “It takes two incomes to run a household these days, but it’s the kids who are suffering for it. Any gang member will tell you the reason he joined a gang was because he wanted to be part of a family. But how do we change things so that parents can earn a living and still have enough free time to raise their children?”

He put both hands on his narrow hips and studied her closely. “If I could answer that question, I’d run for public office.”

She grinned at him. “I can see you now, mopping the floor with the criminal element on the streets.”

He shrugged. “Piece of cake compared to what I used to do for a living.”

Her pale eyes searched his lean, scarred face while Stevie fell from one side of the mat to another practicing his technique. “I rented one of those old mercenary films and watched it. Do you guys really throw grenades and use rocket launchers?”

A dark, odd look came into his pale eyes. “Among other things,” he said.

“Such as?” she prompted.

“High-tech equipment like the stuff you saw in my office. Plastic explosive charges, small arms, whatever we had. But most of what we do now is intelligence-gathering and tactics. And intelligence-gathering,” he told her dryly, “is about as exciting as two-hour-old cereal in milk.”

She was surprised. “I thought it was like war.”

He shrugged. “Only if you get caught gathering intelligence,” he replied on a laugh. “We were good at what we did.”

“Dallas was one of your guys, wasn’t he?”

He nodded. “Dallas, Cy Parks and Callie Kirby’s stepbrother Micah Steele, among others.”

Her mouth fell open. “Cy Parks was a mercenary?!”

His eyebrows levered up. “You didn’t notice that he has a hard time interacting with other people?”

“It’s hard to miss. But in the condition he’s in…”

“I know. That’s one reason that he isn’t in our line of work anymore. He was one of the group that helped put Lopez’s organization away a little over two years ago—so was I. It was Jess who got to the man himself. But Lopez appealed the verdict and only went to prison six months ago. As you can see, he’s out now,’ he added dryly.

“Two years ago—that was about the time Cy came to Jacobsville,” she recalled.

“Yes. After one of Lopez’s goons torched his house in Wyoming. The idea was to kill all three of them, not just Cy’s wife and child,” he added, seeing the horror in her eyes. “But Cy wasn’t asleep, as they’d assumed. He got out.”

She grimaced. “But why would Lopez burn his house down?”

“That’s how he gets even with people who cross him,” he said simply. “He doesn’t take out just the person responsible, but the whole family, if he can get to it. There have been slaughters like you wouldn’t believe down in Mexico when anyone tried to stand against him. He does usually stop short of children, however; his one virtue.”

“I never knew people like him existed,” she said sorrowfully.

“I wish I could say the same,” he told her. “We don’t live in a perfect world. That’s why I want you to learn how to defend yourself.”

“Fat lot of good it would have done me the night I had the flat tire,” she pointed out. “If you hadn’t come along when you did…” She shuddered.

“But I did. Don’t look back. It’s unproductive.”

Her soft, worried eyes searched his scarred face quietly.

“What are you thinking?” he asked with a faint smile.

She shrugged. “I was thinking what a false picture I had of you all those years ago,” she admitted. “I suppose I was living in a dream world.”

“And I was living in a nightmare,” he replied. “That unforgettable spring day six years ago, I’d just come home from a bloodbath in Africa, trying to help an incumbent government fight off a military coup by a very nasty native communist general. I lost most of my unit, including several friends, and the incumbent president’s office was blown up, with him in it. It wasn’t a good time.”

She named the country, to his surprise. “We were studying that in a political science class at the time,” she said. “I had no idea what you did for a living, or that you were involved. But we all thought it was an idealistic resistance,” she added with a smile.

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