Fearless

Diana Palmer
Fearless

MILLS & BOON

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In memoriam:

James M. Rea, Attorney-at-Law

My first boss

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

1

“I WON’T GO,” GLORYANNE Barnes muttered.

Tall, elegant Detective Rick Marquez just stared at her, his dark eyes unyielding. “Hey, don’t go. No problem. We’ve got a body bag just your sized own at the medical examiner’s office.”

She threw a wadded up piece of paper across the desk at him.

He caught it with one lean hand and raised an eyebrow. “Assault on a peace officer…”

“Don’t you quote the law to me,” she shot back, rising. “I can cite legal precedents from memory.”

She came around the desk slowly, thinner than she usually was, but still attractive in her beige suit. Her skirt flowed to midcalf, above small feet in ankle-strapped high heels that flattered what showed of her legs. She perched herself on the edge of the desk. Her high cheekbones were faintly flushed from temper, and something more worrying. She had very long, light blond hair which she wore loose, so that it fell in a cascade down her back almost to her waist. She had pale green eyes and a wide forehead, with a perfect bow of a mouth under her straight nose. She never wore makeup and didn’t need to. Her complexion was flawless, her lips a natural mauve. She wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but she was attractive when she smiled. She didn’t smile much these days.

“I won’t be any safer in Jacobsville than I am here,” she said, trotting out the same old tired argument she’d been using for the past ten minutes.

“You will,” he insisted. “Cash Grier is chief of police. Eb Scott and his ex-mercenary cronies live there, as well. It’s such a small town that any outsider will be noticed immediately.”

She was frowning. Her eyes, behind the trendy frames of the glasses she occasionally wore in place of contact lenses for extreme nearsightedness, were thoughtful.

“Besides—” he played his trump card “—your doctor said…”

“That’s not your business.” She cut him off.

“It is if you drop dead on your desk!” he said, driven to indiscretion by her stubbornness. “You’re the only witness we’ve got to what Fuentes said! He could kill you to shut you up!”

Her lips made a thin line. “I’ve had death threats ever since I got out of college and took a job here as an assistant district attorney,” she replied. “It goes with the work.”

“Most people don’t mean it literally when they threaten to kill you,” he returned. “Fuentes does. Do I really have to remind you what happened to your co-worker Doug Lerner two months ago? Better yet, would you like to see the autopsy photos?”

“You don’t have any autopsy photos that I haven’t already seen, Detective Marquez,” she said quietly, folding her arms across her firm, small breasts. “I’m not really shockable.”

He actually groaned out loud. His hands moved into his pockets, allowing her a glimpse of the .45 automatic he carried on his belt. His black hair, almost as long as hers, was gathered in a ponytail at his nape. He had jet-black eyes and a flawless olive complexion, not to mention a wide, sensuous mouth. He was very good-looking.

“Jason said he’d get me a bodyguard,” she said when the silence grew noticeable.

“Your stepbrother has his own problems,” he replied. “And your stepsister, Gracie, would be no help at all. She’s so scatterbrained that she doesn’t remember where she lives half the time!”

“The Pendletons have been good to me,” she defended them. “They hated my mother, but they liked me.”

Most people had hated her mother, a social-climbing antisocial personality who’d been physically abusive to Glory since her birth. Glory’s father had taken her to the emergency room half a dozen times, mumbling about falls and other accidents that left suspicious bruises. But when one bout of explosive temper had left her with a broken hip, the authorities finally stepped in. Glory’s mother was charged with child abuse and Glory testified against her.

By that time, Beverly Barnes was already having an affair with Myron Pendleton and he was a multimillionaire. He got her a team of lawyers who convinced a jury that Glory’s father had caused the injury that her mother had given her, that Glory had lied out of fear of her father. The upshot was that the charges against Beverly were dropped. Glory’s father, Todd Barnes, was arrested and tried for child abuse and convicted, despite Glory’s tearful defense of him. But even though her mother was exonerated, the judge wasn’t convinced that Glory would be safe with her. In a surprise move, Glory went into state custody, at the age of thirteen. Her mother didn’t appeal the decision.

When Beverly subsequently married Myron Pendleton, at his urging, she tried to get custody of Glory again. But the same judge who’d heard the case against Glory’s father denied custody to Beverly. It would keep the child safe, the judge said.

What the court didn’t know was that Glory was in more danger at the foster home where she’d been placed, in the custody of a couple who did as little as possible for the six children they were responsible for. They only wanted the money. Two older boys in the same household were always trying to fondle Glory, whose tiny breasts had begun to grow. The harassment went on for several weeks and culminated in an assault that left her bruised and traumatized, and afraid of anything male. Glory had told her foster parents, but they said she was making it up. Furious, Glory dialed the emergency number and when the police came, she ran out past her foster mother and all but jumped into the arms of the policewoman who came to check out her situation.

Glory was taken to the emergency room, where a doctor, sickened by what he saw, gave the police enough evidence to have the foster parents charged with neglect, and the two teenage boys with assault and battery and attempted sodomy.

But the foster parents denied everything and pointed out that Glory had lied about her mother abusing her. So she went back to the same house, where her treatment became nightmarish. The two teenage boys wanted revenge as much as the spiteful foster parents did. But they were temporarily in juvenile detention, pending a bond hearing, fortunately. The foster parents weren’t, and they were furious. So Glory stuck close to the two younger girls, both under five years old, whom she had been made responsible for. She was grateful that they required so much looking-after. It spared her retribution, at least for the first few days back at the house.

Jason Pendleton hated his stepmother, Beverly. But he was curious about her young daughter, especially after a friend in law enforcement in Jacobsville contacted him about what had happened to Glory. The same week she was sent back to the foster home, he sent a private investigator to check out her situation. What he discovered made him sick. He and his sister, Gracie, actually went themselves to the foster home after they’d read the investigator’s covertly obtained police report on the incident—which was, of course, denied by the custodians. They pointed to Glory’s attempt to blame her mother for the abuse that had sent her father to prison, where he was killed by another inmate within six months.

The day the Pendletons arrived, the two teenage boys who had victimized Glory were released to the custody of the foster parents, pending trial. Glory had been running away from the teenagers all day. They’d already torn her blouse and left bruises on her. She’d been afraid to call the police again. So Jason found Glory in the closet in the bedroom she shared with the two little girls, hiding under her pitiful handful of clothes on wire hangers, crying. Her arms were bruised all over, and there was a smear of blood on her mouth. When he reached in, she cowered and shook all over with fear.

Years later, she could still remember how gently he picked her up and carried her out of the room, out of the house. She was placed tenderly in the backseat of his Jaguar, with Gracie, while Jason went back into the foster home. His deeply tanned, lean face was stiff with bridled fury when he returned. He didn’t say a word. He started the car and drove Glory away.

Despite her mother’s barely contained rage at having Glory in the same house where she lived, Glory was given her own room between Gracie’s and Jason’s, and her mother was not allowed near her. In one of their more infamous battles, Jason had threatened to have his own legal team reopen the child abuse case. He had no doubt that Glory was telling the truth about who the real abuser was. Beverly had stormed out without a reply to Jason’s threats. But she left Glory alone.

It became a magical time for the tragic young girl, belonging to a family which valued her. Even Myron found her delightful company.

After Beverly died unexpectedly of a stroke when her daughter was fifteen, Glory’s life settled into something approaching normalcy. But the trauma of her youth had consequences that none of her adoptive family had anticipated.

Her broken hip, despite two surgeries and the insertion of a steel pin, was never the same. She had a pronounced limp that no physical therapy could erase. And there was something else; her family had a history of hypertension, which Glory inherited. No one actually said that the stress of her young life had added to the genetic predisposition toward it. But Glory thought it did. She was put on medication during her last year in high school. Severely overweight, shy, introverted and uncomfortable around boys, she was also the target of bullies. Other girls made fun of her. They went so far as to put false messages about her on the Internet and one girl formed a club devoted to ridiculing Glory.

Jason Pendleton found out about it. The girls were dealt with, one charged with harassment and another’s parents threatened with lawsuits. The abuse stopped. Mostly. But it left Glory feeling alone and out of place wherever she went. Her health, never good, caused many absences during the time of turmoil. She lost weight. She was a good student and made excellent grades, despite it. She went on to college and then to law school with the support of her stepsiblings, and graduated magna cum laude. From there, she went to the San Antonio District Attorney’s office as a junior public prosecutor. Four years later, she was a highly respected assistant prosecutor with an impressive record of convictions against gang members and, most recently, drug smugglers. Her weight problem was in the past now, thanks to a good dietician.

But in her private life, she was alone. She had no close friends. She couldn’t trust people, especially men. Her traumatic youth in foster care had predisposed her to be suspicious of everyone, especially anyone male. She had male friends, but she had never had a lover. She never wanted one. Nobody got close enough to Glory Barnes to hurt her.

Now this stubborn San Antonio detective was trying to force her to leave her job and hide in a small town from the drug lord she’d prosecuted for distributing cocaine.

Fuentes was the newest in a long line of drug lords who’d crossed the border into Texas, enlarging his drug territory with the help of his street gang associates. One of them, with the promise of immunity from Glory, had testified in the trial and despite his millions, the drug czar had been facing up to fifteen years in federal prison for distribution of crack cocaine. A hung jury on that case had let him walk.

After she lost the drug case against him, she’d been sitting in the hall when Fuentes came out of the courtroom. He couldn’t resist bragging about his victory. Fuentes sat down beside her and made a threat. He had worldwide connections and he could have anybody killed, even cops. He had, he said, taken out a persistent local deputy sheriff who’d harassed him by hiring a contract killer only two weeks ago. Glory would be next if she didn’t lay off investigating him, he’d added with an arrogant smile. Sadly for him, Glory had been wearing a court-sanctioned wire at the time. His arrest had come the very next day.

His fury had been far-reaching. Someone had actually fired a gun at Glory when she walked out of the courthouse two days ago, missing her head by a fraction of an inch. She’d turned to look for her bus when her assailant fired. It had been such a close call that Detective Marquez was determined not to risk her a second time.

“Even if he gets me, you’ve still got the tape,” she argued.

“The defense will swear it’s been tampered with,” he muttered. “It’s why the D.A. didn’t put it in evidence.”

She swore under her breath. Her color was higher than usual, too.

As if on a signal, the door opened and Haynes walked in with a glass of water and a pill bottle. Sy Haynes was Glory’s administrative assistant, a paralegal with a sharp tongue and the authority of a drill sergeant. “You haven’t taken your capsule today,” she muttered, popping the lid on the medicine bottle and shaking one capsule into Glory’s outheld hand. “One close call a month is enough,” she added, referring to what Glory’s doctor had termed a possible mild heart attack arising from the pressure of the trial. A stress test had detected a problem that might require surgery if Glory didn’t take her medicine and keep to her low-fat diet and adopt a low-stress lifestyle.

Marquez wanted her to leave town and she didn’t want to go. But what her doctor had said to her was something she wasn’t willing to share with Marquez or Sy. He’d told her that if she didn’t get out of town, and into some sort of sedentary lifestyle, she was going to have a major heart attack and die at the prosecutor’s table in her courtroom.

She swallowed the capsule. “The damned things include a diuretic,” she said irritably. “I have to go to the bathroom every few minutes. How am I supposed to prosecute a case when I have to interrupt myself six times an hour?”

“Wear a diaper,” Haynes replied imperturbably.

Glory gave her a glare.

“The D.A. doesn’t want you to die in the courtroom.” Marquez pressed his advantage now that he had backup. “He might not get reelected. Besides, he likes you.”

“He likes me because I have no private life,” she retorted. “I carry case files home with me every night. I’d miss yelling at people.”

“You can yell at the workers on the Pendletons’s organic truck farm in Jacobsville,” Marquez assured her.

“At least I do know something about farming. My father had a little truck farm…” She closed up like a flower. It still hurt, after all these years, to remember the pain of seeing him taken away in an orange jumpsuit, cringing when she sobbed and begged the judge to let him go.

“Your father would be proud of you,” Haynes interjected. “Especially now that you’ve cleared his name of that child abuse charge.”

“It won’t bring him back,” she said dully. Her eyes narrowed. “But at least they finally found the man who killed him. He’ll never get out now. If he ever goes up before the parole board, I’ll be sitting there with pictures of my father at every hearing for the rest of my life.”

They didn’t doubt it. She was a vengeful woman, in her quiet way.

“Come on,” Marquez coaxed. “You need a rest, anyway. It’s peaceful in Jacobsville.”

“Peaceful,” she nodded. “Right. Last year, there was a shootout in Jacobsville with drug dealers who moved hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the city limits and kidnapped a child. Two years before that, drug lord Manuel Lopez’s men were stormed on his property in Jacobsville in a gun battle where his henchmen had stockpiled bales of marijuana.”

“Nobody’s been shot at for two months,” Marquez assured her.

“What if I’m recognized by any leftover drug smugglers?”

“They won’t be looking for you on a farm. San Antonio is a big city, and you’re one of dozens of assistant district attorneys,” he pointed out. “Your face isn’t that well known even here, and certainly not in Jacobsville. You’ve changed a lot since you went to school there. Even if someone remembers you, it will be for the past, not the present. You’ll be a quiet little woman from San Antonio with health problems watching over several fields of vegetables and fruit, thanks to your friends, the Pendletons.”

He hesitated. “One more thing. You can’t admit that you’re related to them, or even that you know them well. Nobody in Jacobsville, except the police chief, will know what you really do for a living. We’re giving you a cover story that can be checked out by any suspicious people. It’s foolproof.”

“Didn’t they say that about the Titanic’s design?”

“If she goes, I have to go with her,” Haynes said firmly. “She won’t take her medicine if I’m not there pushing it under her nose every day.”

Before Glory could open her mouth, Marquez was shaking his head.

“It’s going to be hard enough to help Glory fit in,” he told Haynes. “If she takes you with her, a gang member who might not recognize you alone might recognize the assistant who goes to court with her most of the time. Most of the gangs deal in drug trafficking.”

Glory grimaced. “He’s right,” she told her assistant sadly. “I’d love for you to go with me, but it’s risky.”

Haynes looked miserable. “I could wear a disguise.”

“No,” Marquez said quietly. “You’re more useful here. If any of the other attorneys find out something about Fuentes, you’re in the perfect position to pass it on to me.”

“I guess you’re right,” Haynes said. She glanced at Glory with a rueful smile. “I’ll have to find a new boss while you’re gone.”

“Jon Blackhawk over at the FBI office is looking for another assistant,” Marquez suggested.

Haynes glared at him. “He’ll never get another one in this town, not after what he did to the last one.”

Marquez was trying to keep a straight face. “I’m sure it was all a terrible misunderstanding.”

Glory let out a chuckle in spite of herself. “Some misunderstanding. His assistant thought he was very attractive and asked him over to her place for dinner. He actually called the police and had her charged with sexual harassment.”

Marquez let out the laugh he’d been holding back. “She was a beautiful blonde with a high IQ and his own mother had recommended her for the job. Blackhawk phoned his mother and told her that his latest assistant had tried to seduce him. His mother asked how. Now she’s outraged over what he did and she won’t speak to him, either. The girl was her best friend’s daughter.”

“He did drop the sexual harassment charge,” Glory pointed out.

“Yes, but she quit just the same and went online to tell every woman in San Antonio what he did to her.” He whistled. “I’ll bet he’ll grow gray hair before he gets a date in this town.”

“Serves him right,” Haynes muttered.

“Oh, it gets worse,” Marquez added with a grin. “Remember Joceline Perry, who works for Garon Grier and one of the other local FBI agents? They gave Jon’s work to her.”

“Oh, dear,” Haynes murmured.

Joceline was something of a local legend among administrative assistants. She was known for her cutting wit and refusal to do work she considered beneath her position. She would drive Jon Blackhawk up the wall on a good day. God only knew what she’d do to him after the other secretary quit.

“Poor guy,” Glory murmured. But she grinned.

Haynes glanced at Glory with a worried look. “What are you going to do on the farm? You wouldn’t dare go out and hoe in the fields, would you?”

“Of course not,” Glory assured her. “I can can.”

“You can what?” Haynes frowned.

“You have heard of canning?” Glory replied. “It’s how you put up fruits and vegetables so that they don’t spoil. I can do jam and jelly and pickles and all sorts of stuff.”

Marquez raised an eyebrow. “My mother used to do it, but her hands aren’t what they used to be. It’s an art.”

“A valuable skill,” Glory said smugly.

“You’ll need to wear jeans and look less elegant,” Marquez told her. “No suits on the farm.”

“I lived in Jacobsville when I was a child,” Glory reminded him with a forced smile, without going into detail. Marquez was old enough to have known about Glory’s ordeal. Of course, a lot of people didn’t, even there. “I can fit in.”

“Then you’ll go?” Marquez persisted.

Glory sat back against the desk. She was outnumbered and outgunned. They were probably right. San Antonio was a big city, but she’d been in the same apartment building for two years and everyone who lived there knew her. She’d be easy to find if someone asked the right questions. If she got herself killed, Fuentes would walk, and more people would be butchered in his insane quest for wealth.

If her doctor was right—and he was a very good doctor—the move right now might save her life, such as it was. She couldn’t admit how frightened she was about his prognosis. Not to anyone. Tough girls like Glory didn’t whine about their burdens.

“What about Jason and Gracie?” she blurted out suddenly.

“Jason’s already hired a small army of bodyguards,” Marquez assured her. “He and Gracie will be fine. It’s you they’re worried about. All of us are worried about you.”

She drew in a long breath. “I guess a bulletproof vest and a Glock wouldn’t convince you to let me stay here?”

“Fuentes has bullets that penetrate body armor, and nobody outside a psycho ward would give you a gun.”

“All right,” she said heavily. “I’ll go. Do I have to ramrod this farm?”

“No, Jason’s put in a manager.” He frowned. “Odd guy. He isn’t from Texas. I don’t know where Jason found him. He’s…” He started to say that the manager was one of the most unpleasant, taciturn people he’d ever met, despite the fact that the farm workers liked him. But it might not be the best time to say it. “He’s very good at managing people,” Marquez said instead.

“As long as he doesn’t try to manage me, I guess it’s okay,” she said.

“He won’t know anything about you, except what Jason tells him,” he assured her. “Jason won’t have told him about why you’re there, and you can’t, either. Apparently the manager’s just had some sort of blow in his life, too, and he’s taken the job to get himself over it.”

“A truck farm,” she murmured.

“I know where there’s an animal shelter,” Marquez replied whimsically. “They need someone to feed the lions.”

She glared at him. “With my luck, they’d try to feed me to the lions. No, thanks.”

“This is for your own good,” Marquez said quietly. “You know that.”

She sighed. “Yes, I suppose it is.” She moved away from the desk. “My whole life, I’ve been forced to run away from problems. I’d hoped that this time, at least, I could stand and deliver.”

“Neat phrasing,” Marquez mused. “Would you like to borrow my sword?”

She gave him a keen glance. “Your mother should never have given you that claymore,” she told him. “You’re very lucky that the patrol officer could be convinced to drop the charges.”

He looked affronted. “The guy picked the lock on my apartment door and let himself in. When I woke up, he was packing my new laptop into a book bag for transport!”

“You have a sidearm,” she pointed out.

He glowered at her. “I forgot and left it locked in the pocket of my car that night. But the sword was mounted right over my bed.”

“They say the thief actually jumped out the window when he brandished that huge weapon,” Glory told Haynes, who grinned.

“My apartment is on the ground floor,” Marquez informed them.

“Yes, but you were chasing the thief down the street in your…” She cleared her throat. “Well, you were out of uniform.”

“I got arrested for streaking,” Marquez muttered. “Can you believe that?”

“Of course I can! You were naked!” Glory replied.

“How I sleep has nothing to do with the fact that the guy was robbing me! At least I got him down and immobilized by the time the squad car spotted me.” He shook his head. “I told the arresting officer who I was, and he asked to see my badge.”

Glory put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“Did you tell him where it was?” Haynes asked.

“I told him where he could put it if he didn’t arrest the burglar.” He moved restlessly. “Anyway, another squad car pulled up behind him, and it was an officer who knew me.”

“A female officer,” Glory told Haynes, with glee.

Marquez’s high cheekbones actually seemed to flush. “The burglar’s tote came in handy,” he murmured. “At least I got to ride back to my apartment. But the story got out from the night shift, and by the next afternoon, I was a minor celebrity.”

“What a pity you didn’t get caught by the squad car’s camera,” Haynes giggled. “They could have featured you on that TV show, Cops.”

He glared at her. “I was robbed!”

“Well, he didn’t actually get to keep anything he took, did he?” Haynes asked.

“He fell on my new laptop when I tackled him,” Marquez scoffed. “Trashed the hard drive. I lost all my files.”

“Never heard of backing up with hard copy, I guess?” Glory queried.

“Who expects to have someone break into a cop’s apartment and rob him?”

“He does have a point,” Haynes had to admit.

“I guess so.”

Marquez looked at his watch and grimaced. “I have to be in court this afternoon to testify for a homicide case,” he told them. “I can tell my boss that you’re going to Jacobsville, right?”

She sighed. “Yes. I’ll go tomorrow morning, first thing. Do I need a letter of introduction or anything?”

“No. Jason will let the manager know you’re coming. You can stay in the house on the property.”

She hesitated. “Where is the manager staying?”

“Also in the house.” He held up a hand. “Before you say it, there’s a housekeeper who lives in the house and cooks for the manager.”

That relaxed her, but only a little. She didn’t like strange men, especially at close quarters. She decided that despite the summer heat, she’d pack thick cotton pajamas and a long robe.

JACOBSVILLE SEEMED MUCH smaller than she remembered it. The main street was almost exactly the same as it had been when she lived nearby. There was the pharmacy where her father had gone for medicine. Over there was the café which Barbara, Marquez’s mother, had run for as long as she could remember. There was the hardware store and the feed store and the clothing boutique. It was all the same. Only Glory herself had changed.

As she turned onto the narrow paved road that led to the Pendletons’s truck farm, she began to feel sick at her stomach. She’d forgotten. The house was the same one she’d shared with her mother and father, until her mother’s explosive temper had shattered Glory’s young body and their family. Until now, she hadn’t thought about how difficult it might be, trying to live there again.

The old pecan tree in the front yard was still there. She spotted it before she saw the mailbox beside the narrow paved driveway. Years ago, there had been a tire swing on the tree.

The real surprise was the house. The Pendletons must have spent some money remodeling it, because the old clapboard house of Glory’s youth was now an elegant white Victorian with gingerbread woodwork. There was a long, wide front porch which contained a swing, a settee and several rocking chairs. Far behind the house was a huge steel warehouse where workers were putting boxes of fresh corn and peas and tomatoes and other produce from the large fields on all sides of the house and warehouse. The fields seemed to stretch for miles into the flat distance.

She pulled up in the graveled parking lot under another pecan tree and cut off the engine. Her small sedan contained most of her worldly goods. Except for her furniture, and she hadn’t even considered bringing that along. She was keeping her apartment in San Antonio. The rent was paid up for six months, courtesy of her stepbrother. She wondered when she’d get to go home.

She opened the door and got out, just in time to see a tall, jean-clad man with jet-black hair and a mustache come down the front steps. He had a strong face and an athletic physique. He walked with such elegance that he seemed to glide along. He looked foreign.

He spotted Glory and his taut expression grew even more reserved. He moved toward her with a quick, elegant step. As he came closer, she could see that his eyes were black, like jet, under a jutting brow and dark eyebrows. She had the odd feeling that he was the sort of man you hope you never meet in a dark alley.

He stopped just in front of her, adding up her inexpensive car, her eyeglasses, her windswept blond hair in its tight bun and her modest clothing. If he was measuring, she thought, she’d fallen short.

“May I help you?” he asked coldly.

She leaned heavily on the car door. “I’m the canner.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

She swallowed, hard. He was very tall and he looked half out of humor already. “I can can.”

“We don’t hire exotic dancers,” he shot back.

Her green eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“The can-can is a dance, I believe?”

“Is it, really?” she asked with a mischievous glance. “Would you like to demonstrate it, and I’ll give you my opinion of whether it’s a dance or not?”

Incredible, she thought. Until now, she hadn’t really believed that a man’s eyes could explode with bad temper…

2

THE MAN’S JAW CLENCHED. “I am not in the mood for games,” he said in coldly accented English.

“First you talk about dancing, now you’re on about games,” she said. “Really, I don’t care about your private life. I was sent here to help with the canning. Jason Pendleton offered me the position.”

His eyes were really smoldering now. “He what?”

“Gave me a job,” she replied. She frowned. “Are you hard of hearing?”

He took a step toward her and she moved further toward the hinges. He looked ferocious. “Jason Pendleton offered you a job, here?”

“Yes, he did,” she replied. Perhaps humor wasn’t a very good idea at the time. “He said you needed someone to help put up his organic fruit. I can make preserves and jellies and I know how to can vegetables.”

He seemed to be struggling with her presence. It was obvious that he wasn’t happy about her coming here. “Jason said nothing about it to me.”

“He told me he’d phone you tonight. He’s in Montana at a cattle show.”

“I know where he is.”

Her hip was throbbing. She didn’t want to mention it. He was irritated enough already. “Would you like me to sleep in the car?” she asked politely.

He seemed to realize where they were, as if he’d lost his train of thought. “I’ll have Consuelo get a room ready for you,” he said without enthusiasm. “She’s been putting up the jellies and preserves herself. It’s a new line. We have a processing plant for the vegetables. If the fruit line catches on, we’ll add it into the plant. Consuelo said the kitchen here is plenty large enough to do for a sampling of products.”

“I won’t get in her way,” she promised.

“Come on, then. I’ll introduce you before I leave.”

Was he going to quit already, then, to keep from having to work with her? she wanted to ask. Pity he had no sense of humor.

She reached back into the car for her red dragon cane. She had an umbrella stand full of the helpful devices, in all sorts of colors and styles. If one had to be handicapped, she reasoned, one should be flamboyant about it.

She closed the door, leaning on the cane.

His expression was inexplicable. He scowled.

She waited for him to comment about her disability.

He didn’t. He turned and walked, slowly, back to the house, waiting for her to catch up. She recognized that expression. It was pity. She clenched her teeth. If he offered to help her up the steps, she was going to hit him right in the knee with her cane.

He didn’t do that, either. He did open the door for her, grudgingly.

Great, she told herself as she walked into the foyer. We’ll communicate in sign language from now on, I guess.

He led the way through a comfortable living room with polished bare wood floors, through what seemed like pantries on both sides of the narrow passage, and into an enormous kitchen with new appliances, a large table and chairs, a worktable, and yellow lace curtains at all the windows. The floor was linoleum with a stone pattern. The cabinets were oak-stained, roomy and easy to reach. There was a counter that went from the dishwasher and sink around to the stove. The refrigerator was standing alone in a corner. It must have offended the cook and been exiled, Glory thought wickedly.

A small dark woman with her hair in a complicated ponytail down her back, tied in four places with pink ribbon, turned at the sound of footsteps. She had a round face and laughing dark eyes.

“Consuelo,” the tall man said, indicating Glory, “this is the new canner.”

Consuelo’s eyebrows arched.

“I told him I can can and he called me an exotic dancer,” Glory told the woman.

The other woman seemed to be fighting laughter.

“This is Consuelo Aguila,” he introduced. “And this is…” He stopped dead, because he didn’t know who the new arrival was.

Glory waited for him to get on with it. She wasn’t inclined to help out.

“You didn’t ask her name?” Consuelo chided. She went to Glory, with a big smile. “You are welcome here. I can use the help. What is your name?”

“Gloryanne,” came the soft reply. “Gloryanne Barnes.”

The tall man raised both eyebrows. “Who named you?”

Her eyes grew solemn. “My father. He thought having a child was a glorious occasion.”

He was curious about her expression. She seemed reluctant to add anything more.

“Do you know who he is?” Consuelo asked her, indicating the tall man.

Glory pursed her lips. She shook her head.

“You didn’t even introduce yourself?” Consuelo asked the man, aghast.

He glowered at her. “She won’t be working with me,” he said flatly.

“Yes, but she’s going to live in the house…?”

“I don’t mind sleeping in my car,” Glory said at once, very pleasantly.

“Don’t be absurd,” he growled. “I have to go to the hardware store to pick up some more stakes for the tomato plants,” he told the small, dark woman. “Give her a room and tell her how we work here.”

Glory opened her mouth to protest his attitude, but he whirled and strode out of the room without another word. The front screen door banged loudly as he went out it.

“Well, he’s a charmer, isn’t he?” Glory asked the older woman with a grin. “I can hardly wait to settle in and make his life utterly miserable.”

Consuelo laughed. “He’s not so bad,” she said. “We don’t know why he took over when Mr. Wilkes resigned. The boss—that’s Mr. Pendleton, he lives in San Antonio—told us that Rodrigo had lost his family recently and was in mourning. He came here to pick up his life again.”

“Oh, dear,” Glory said quietly. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have been so sarcastic toward him.”

“It rolls off his back,” the woman scoffed. “He works like a tiger. He is never cruel or harsh with the men who work in the fields. He is a cultured man, I think, because he loves to listen to DVDs of opera and classical music. But once, we had a worker get into a fight with another man, and Rodrigo intervened. Nobody saw him move, but in the flash of a light, the aggressor was lying on his back in the dirt with many bruises. The men don’t give Rodrigo any reason to go after them, since that happened. He is very strong.”

“Rodrigo?” Glory sounded out the name. It had a quiet dignity.

“Rodrigo Ramirez,” she replied. “He worked on a cattle ranch down in Sonora, he said.”

“He came from Mexico?”

“I think he was born there, but he does not speak of his past.”

“His accent is very slight,” Glory mused. “He speaks Spanish, I guess.”

“Spanish, French, Danish, Portuguese, German, Italian and, of all things, Apache.”

Glory was confused. “With a talent like that, he’s managing a truck farm in Texas?”

Consuelo chuckled. “I, also, made this observation. He led me to believe he once worked as a translator. Where, he did not say.”

Glory smiled. “Well, at least this is going to be an interesting job.”

“You know the big boss, Jason Pendleton?”

Glory nodded. “Well, sort of,” she amended quickly. “I was more friendly with his sister,” she confided.

“Ah. Gracie.” Consuelo chuckled again. “She came with him once. There was a cat with a broken leg lying beside the road, a stray that hung around here. Gracie picked it up, blood and dirt and all, and made Jason take her to the nearest vet. She was wearing a silk dress that would cost me two months wages, and it didn’t matter. The cat was what mattered.” She smiled. “She should marry. It would be a very lucky man, to have a wife like that.”

“She doesn’t want to get married,” Glory said. “Her real father was a hell-raiser.”

“Hers and Jason’s, you mean…”

Glory shook her head. “You see, Jason and Gracie aren’t related. Her father died when she was in her early teens. Her stepmother married Jason’s father. Then her stepmother died and Jason’s father married again.” She didn’t add that Jason’s stepfather was also her own stepfather. It was complicated.

Consuelo took off her apron. “I must show you to the guest room.” She turned, and only then noticed the cane, half hidden behind Glory’s jean-clad leg. Her eyebrows met. “You should have told me,” she fussed. “I would never have let you stand like that while I gossiped! It must be painful.”

“I didn’t notice. Really.”

“The room is downstairs, at least,” Consuelo said, leading the way past the pantry shelves, into the living room, and through a far door that led to another hall, which ended in a bathroom opening into a small, blue-wallpapered room with white trim.

“It’s lovely,” Glory told her.

“It’s small,” Consuelo said. “Rodrigo chose it for himself, but I told him he needed more room than this. He has two computers and several pieces of radio equipment. A hobby, he said. There is a small desk in the study that he uses, but he prefers his bedroom when he’s doing the books.”

“He’s antisocial?”

“He has nothing to do with women,” Consuelo replied. She frowned. “Although, there was a pretty blonde woman who came here to see him one day. They seemed very close. I asked. But he ignored the question. He does not talk about himself.”

“How odd.”

“You are not married, or engaged?”

Glory shook her head. “I don’t want to marry. Ever.”

“You don’t want children?”

Glory frowned. “I don’t know that I should try to have them,” she said. “I have a…medical problem. It would be dangerous.” She sighed. “But since I don’t trust men very much, it’s probably just as well.”

Consuelo didn’t ask any more questions, but her manner with Glory was gentle.

THE TRUCK FARM WAS HUGE. There were many fields, each with a separate crop, and the plantings were staggered so that something was always ready to harvest. The fruit trees were just being picked. Peaches and apricots, nectarines and kiwi fruit were first to harvest. The apple trees were varieties that produced in the fall. In between were berries, dewberries and raspberries and blackberries and strawberries.

“I’m going to be busy,” Glory exclaimed when Consuelo pointed out the various surrounding fields.

“We both are,” the older woman replied. “I was thinking about giving up this job. It’s too much for one woman. But two of us, we can manage, I think. The jams and jellies and pickles will add a lot to our revenue if they sell. They’re popular with tourists. We also stock them at the local florist shop, and they’re put in gift baskets. We have a processing plant for the organic vegetables and an online shop that our warehouse operates. They ship orders. But this is early days for our specialty canning. I’ve only managed to do the usual things, fruit preserves and jellies. I would love to do small batches of organic corn and peas and beans as well, but they mostly do those at the processing center in bulk. Besides, those require the pressure cooker to process and more time than I have had since Rodrigo took charge. He is a dynamo, that man.”

“Pressure cookers make me nervous,” Glory began.

“We’ve all heard terrible stories about how they can explode,” Consuelo chuckled. “But this is a new age. They all have fail safe controls now a days. Anyway, we won’t use them here. Let me show you what we’re working on. It’s an easy job.”

EASY. THE WORK WAS. Glory’s hip pained her, and she spent some of her time on a heating pad. But Consuelo found her a stool and she adjusted to the new physical demands of her job.

Rodrigo, however, was not easy. He seemed to have taken an instant dislike to Glory and was determined to say as little to her as possible in the course of a day.

He seemed to think she was a useless person. He was impersonally tolerant of her disability, but he often looked at her as if he suspected that her brain was locked away in a fleshy cabinet and was only taken out occasionally to be polished. She wondered what he’d think if he knew what she did for a living and why she was actually down here. It amused her to consider his reaction.

One day, he brought a new man into the house and told Consuelo that he would be overseeing the men while Rodrigo had to be away over the weekend. Glory didn’t like the newcomer at all. He seemed to never look anyone in the eye. He was small and swarthy and he made a point of staring at Glory’s body when he spoke to her. Already uneasy around men she didn’t know, this one was causing her some real problems.

Consuelo noticed, and she got between the man and Glory when he became too friendly.

“I cannot imagine what was in Señor Ramirez’s mind when he hired that Castillo man as an assistant,” Consuelo muttered to Glory when they were alone in the kitchen. “I don’t like having him around here. He’s spent time in jail.”

“How did you know that?” Glory asked. She knew the answer, but she wondered if Consuelo was just sensing the man’s past or if there was a reason for the remark.

“The muscles in his arms and torso are huge, and he has tattoos everywhere.” She mentioned one particular tattoo that marked him as a member of one of the more notorious Los Angeles street gangs.

Glory, who knew about gang members all too well, was surprised and impressed by the woman’s knowledge.

“What is he doing here?” Glory asked aloud, pondering.

“I would not dare to ask,” came the solemn reply. “Señor Pendleton should be told, but it would be worth my job to mention it outside the house. We will have to trust that Rodrigo knows what he is doing.”

“There’s a strange bird,” Glory remarked. “Rodrigo. He’s very cultured and quite intelligent. I’m sure he could write his own ticket in management anywhere he wanted to work. He seems out of place on a truck farm.”

Consuelo chuckled. “I would not ask that one anything which was not necessary for the performance of my job,” she replied. “From time to time, something upsets him. He is eloquent with bad words, and he does not tolerate sloppy work or tardiness. One man he scolded for drinking on the job was fired the same day. He is a hard taskmaster.”

“Yes, I thought he seemed that sort of man. He’s not happy.”

Consuelo looked at her and nodded. “You are perceptive. No, he is not. And I think that he is not usually a moody person. He must have loved his family very much. I notice how he is with my son, Marco, when he visits me.”

“You have children, then?” Glory asked gently.

Consuelo smiled. “Yes, a boy. He has just turned twenty-one. I adore him.”

“Does he live nearby?”

Consuelo shook her head. “He lives in Houston. But he comes to see me when he can. Especially when there’s a soccer game on cable—he can’t afford it, but Rodrigo had it put in here so that he doesn’t miss the games.”

“Soccer?” Glory’s green eyes lit up. “I love soccer!”

“You do?” Consuelo was excited. “Which team do you like best?”

Glory smiled sheepishly. “Mexico. I know I should support our own team in this country, but I love the Mexican team. I have a flag of the team that hangs in my living room during the World Cup and the Copita.”

“I probably should not tell you that I am related to a player on that team.”

“You are?” Glory exclaimed. “Which one?”

Before she could answer, Rodrigo walked in. He stopped in the doorway, scowling at Glory’s radiance when she smiled. “What did I interrupt?” he asked curiously.

“We were talking about soccer,” Consuelo began.

He glanced at Glory. “Don’t tell me you watch it?”

“Every chance I get,” she replied.

He made a sound in his throat, like a subdued chuckle. He turned to Consuelo. “I’m going to be away for the weekend. I’m leaving Castillo in charge. If you have any problems with him, let me know.”

“He does not…” Consuelo began, glancing at Glory.

“He doesn’t bother us,” Glory interrupted with a speaking glance.

“Since you have no contact with him, I can’t imagine why he should,” he told her. “If you need me, you have my cell phone number.”

“Yes,” Consuelo said.

He walked out without another word.

“Why didn’t you let me tell him?” Consuelo asked worriedly.

“He’d think I was complaining to you,” Glory said simply. “If Castillo gives me any trouble, I’ll take care of him myself.” She smiled gently. “You shouldn’t think that my hip slows me down very much,” she said softly. “I can take care of myself. But thank you for caring.”

Consuelo hesitated, then she smiled. “Okay. I’ll let you handle it your way.”

Glory nodded, and went back to work.

CASTILLO DIDN’T BOTHER them. But he did have a long conversation with a man in a white van. Glory watched covertly from the kitchen window, making sure she wasn’t visible to him. The van was old and beat-up and the man driving it was as muscular and as tattooed as Castillo. She made a mental note of the van’s license plate and wrote it down on a pad, just in case.

She shouldn’t have been so suspicious of people, she told herself. But she knew a lot about drug smuggling from the cases she’d prosecuted, and she had something of a second sense about the “mules” who transported cocaine and marijuana and methamphetamine from one place to another. Many of the “mules” were in street gangs that also helped distribute the product.

She and Consuelo were kept busy for the next couple of weeks as the fruit started to come in. They had baskets and baskets of it, picked by the workers and spread around the kitchen. If Glory had wondered why there were two stoves, she didn’t have to ask any longer. Both were going night and day as the sweet smell of preserves and jams and jellies wafted through the house.

Slowly Glory had become accustomed to seeing Rodrigo in the kitchen at mealtimes. He slept upstairs, so she didn’t see him at night. Sometimes she heard him pacing up there. His room was apparently right over hers.

She served Rodrigo bacon and eggs and the homemade biscuits she’d made since she was ten, because Consuelo had to go to the store for more canning supplies, including jars and lids. She poured coffee into a cup and put that on the table as well. She’d long since eaten herself, so she went back to peeling a basket of peaches.

RODRIGO WATCHED HER COVERTLY. She had her hair in its usual braid. She was wearing old blue jeans and a green T-shirt that showed very little skin. She wasn’t a pretty woman. He found her uninteresting. Not that it mattered. Now that Sarina was married, and she and Bernadette were no longer part of his life, not much did matter. He’d hoped that the reappearance of Bernadette’s father, Colby Lane, would make no difference to the close ties he had with the woman and child. But in scant weeks, Colby and Sarina were inseparable. They had been married years ago and it seemed that the marriage was never annulled. It was like death to Rodrigo, who’d been part of Sarina’s family for three years. He couldn’t cope. It was why he’d taken on this assignment. It was both covert and dangerous. He was known to the big drug lords, and his cover was paper thin since he’d helped put away Cara Dominguez, successor to famous, and dead, drug lord Manuel Lopez.

Rodrigo was an agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He and Sarina, a fellow agent, had worked out of the Tucson division for three years. Then they’d been asked to go undercover in Houston to ferret out a smuggling enterprise. They’d been successful. But Colby Lane, who’d helped set up the smugglers, had walked off with Sarina and Bernadette. Rodrigo had been devastated.

Sarina had promised Colby that she’d give up her DEA job and go to work for Police Chief Cash Grier here in Jacobsville. So Rodrigo had asked for this undercover assignment, to be near her. But Sarina had been persuaded by the DEA to work with Alexander Cobb in the Houston office on another case. Colby hadn’t liked it. Rodrigo had liked it less. She was in Houston, and he was here. Colby had remained at Ritter Oil Corporation in Houston as assistant of security for the firm, while Sarina settled back in with the Houston DEA office. Bernadette was back in Houston finishing out the school year in a familiar place.

Sarina had come here to tell him the news. It had been painful, seeing her again. She knew how he felt; she was sorry for him. It didn’t help. His life was in pieces. She was concerned that his cover was too flimsy and he stood to be killed if the drug lords found him out. It didn’t matter. There was a price on his head in almost every other country in the world from his days as a professional mercenary. This country was the only place left where he wasn’t in danger of being assassinated. On the other hand, his line of work was likely to get him killed.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Rodrigo asked the woman peeling peaches beside him.

She smiled. “Not a lot, no,” she replied.

“How do you like the job, so far?” he asked.

“It’s nice,” she replied. “And I like Consuelo.”

“Everyone does. She has a big heart.”

She peeled another peach. He finished his coffee and got up to get a refill for himself. She noticed. “I don’t mind doing that,” she said. “It’s part of my job to work in the kitchen.”

He ignored the comment, added cream to his coffee, and sat back down. “How did you hurt your leg?”

Her face closed up. She didn’t like remembering. “It was when I was a child,” she said, circumventing the question.

He was watching her, very closely. “And you don’t talk about it, do you?”

She looked him in the eye. “No. I don’t.”

He sipped coffee. His eyes narrowed. “Most women your age are married or involved with someone.”

“I like my own company,” she told him.

“You don’t share things,” he replied. “You don’t trust anyone. You keep to yourself, do your job and go home.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Are we doing a psychological profile?”

He laughed coolly. “I like to know something about the people I work with.”

“I’m twenty-six years old, I’ve never been arrested, I hate liver, I pay my bills on time and I’ve never cheated on my income tax. Oh,” she added, “and I wear size nine shoes, in case it ever comes up.”

He chuckled then. His dark eyes were amused, alive, intent on her face. “Do I sound like an interrogator?”

“Something like that,” she said, smiling.

“Consuelo says you speak Spanish.”

“Tengo que hablarlo,” she replied. “Para hacer mi trabajo.”

“¿Y qué es su trabajo, pues, rubia?” he replied.

She smiled gently. “You speak it so beautifully,” she said involuntarily. “I was taught Castilian, although I don’t lisp my‘c’s.”

“You make yourself understood,” he told her. “Are you literate?”

She nodded. “I love to read in Spanish.”

“What do you like to read?”

She bit her lower lip and gave him an odd look. “Well…”

“Come on.”

She sighed. “I like to read about Juan Belmonte and Joselito and Manolete.”

His eyebrows arched toward his hairline. “Bullfighters? You like to read about Spanish bullfighters?”

She scowled. “Old bullfighters,” she corrected. “Belmonte and Joselito fought bulls in the early part of the twentieth century, and Manolete died in the ring in 1947.”

“So they did.” He studied her over his coffee mug. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? Soccer and bullfighting.” He shook his head. “I would have taken you for a woman who liked poetry.”

IF HE’D KNOWN HER, and her lifestyle, it would have shocked him that she’d even considered doing manual labor, much less read poetry. She was amused at the thought.

“I do like poetry,” she replied. And she did.

“So do I,” he said surprisingly.

“Which poets?” she fished.

He smiled. “Lorca.”

Her lips parted on a shocked breath. “He wrote about the death of his friend Sánchez Mejías in the bull ring.”

“Yes, and was killed himself in the Spanish Civil War a few years later.”

“How odd,” she said, thinking aloud.

“That I read Lorca?”

“Well, considering what he wrote, yes. It’s something of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“What poets do you read?” he returned.

“I like Rupert Brooke.” In fact, as she looked at Rodrigo she was remembering a special poem, about death finding the poet long before he tired of watching the object of the poem. She thought involuntarily that Rodrigo was good to look at. He was very handsome.

He pursed his lips. “I wonder if we could possibly be thinking of the same poem?” he wondered aloud.

“Which one did you have in mind?” she probed.

“‘Death will find me long before I tire of watching you,’” he began in a slow, sensuous, faintly accented tone.

The peach she was peeling fell out of her hands and rolled across the kitchen floor while she stared at the man across the table from her with wide-eyed shock.

3

RODRIGO STARED AT HER curiously. She was a contradiction. She seemed simple and sweet, but she was educated. He was certain that she wasn’t what she appeared to be, but it was far too soon to start dissecting her personality. She interested him, but he didn’t want her to. He was still mourning Sarina. Anyway, it amused him that she liked the same poems he did.

She got up slowly and picked up her peach, tossing it away because Consuelo had waxed the floor that morning and she was wary of getting even a trace of wax in her fruit. She washed her hands again as well.

“I’m glad to see that you appreciate the danger of contamination,” Rodrigo said.

She smiled. “Consuelo would have whacked me with a broom if she’d caught me putting anything in the pot that had been on her floor, no matter how clean it is.”

“She’s a good woman.”

“She is,” Glory agreed. “She’s been very kind to me.”

He finished his coffee and got up. But he didn’t leave. “One of the workers told me that Castillo made a suggestive remark to you when you went to ask him for replacement baskets for some berries that had molded.”

She gave him a wary look. She’d had words with Castillo over his foul language. He’d only laughed. It had made her very angry. But she didn’t want to get a reputation for tale-telling. There was more to it than that, of course. Her mother hadn’t been the only person who’d been physically abusive to her. The two teenage boys in the foster home had harassed and frightened her for months and then assaulted her. As a result of the violence in her past, she was uneasy and frightened around men. Rodrigo had been away when the new employee had made suggestive remarks, and Glory and Consuelo would have been no match for a man with the muscles Castillo enjoyed displaying, if Glory had antagonized him.

“You’re afraid of him,” Rodrigo said quietly, watching her reaction to the statement.

She swallowed. Her hand contracted on the knife. She didn’t want to admit that, even though it was true. She was afraid of men. It hurt her pride to have to admit it.

“Was it a man, who did that to you?” he asked unexpectedly, indicating her hip.

She was too emotionally torn to choose her words. “My mother did it,” she replied.

Whatever reply he’d expected, that wasn’t it. “God in heaven, your mother?” he exclaimed.

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“She was killing my cat,” she said, feeling the pain all over again. “I tried to stop her.”

“What did she hit you with?”

The memory was still painful. “A baseball bat. My own baseball bat. I played on my school team just briefly.”

His indrawn breath was audible in the silence that followed.

“And the cat?”

The memory hurt. “My daddy buried it for me while I was in the hospital,” she managed huskily.

“Niña,” he whispered huskily. “Lo siento.”

She’d never had comfort. It had been offered, and refused, several times during traumatic periods of her life. Sympathy was weakening. It was the enemy. She tried valiantly to stem the tears, but she couldn’t stop them. The tenderness in Rodrigo’s deep voice made her hungry for comfort. Her wet eyes betrayed that need to him.

He took the knife and the peaches from her, set them aside and pulled her up tight into his arms. He held her, rocked her, while years of sorrow and grief poured out of her in a blinding tide.

“What a witch she must have been,” he murmured into her soft hair.

“Yes,” she said simply, remembering what came after her accident. The arrest of her father and his conviction, the foster homes, the assault…

She should have been afraid of him. The memory of the boys overpowering her in her foster home haunted her. But she wasn’t afraid. She clung to him, burying her wet face in his broad chest. His arms were strong and warm, and he held her in a gentle but tight nonsexual way. It was a landmark in her life, that comfort. Jason had held her when she cried, of course, but Jason was like a loving big brother. This man was something entirely different.

He smoothed her hair, thinking how it helped to feel another human body close against his. He grieved for the loss of Sarina and Bernadette, and deep inside he remembered his anguish when the drug lord, Manuel Lopez, had killed his only sister. He knew grief. He began to understand this woman a little. She was strong. She must be, to have survived such an ordeal. He suspected there were more traumatic things in her past, things she’d never told another living soul.

After a minute, she moved away from him. She was embarrassed. She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her apron and turned to pick up the peaches and the knife.

“We all have tragedies,” he said quietly. “We live with them in silence. Sometimes the pain breaks free and becomes visible. It should not embarrass you to realize that you are human.”

She looked up at him with red eyes. She nodded.

He smiled and glanced at his watch. “I have to get the men started. Breakfast was very nice. Your biscuits are better than Consuelo’s, but don’t tell her.”

She managed a watery smile. “I won’t.”

He started out the door.

“Señor Ramirez,” she called.

He turned, his eyebrows arched.

“Thank you,” she managed.

“You’re welcome.”

She watched him go, twisting inside with unfamiliar emotions. She couldn’t remember any man, except for Jason, holding her like that in her adult life. It had been wonderful. Now she had to put it right out of her mind. She didn’t want anyone close to her emotionally. Not even Rodrigo.

THE NEXT WEEK, SHE was surprised to find a police car in the front yard. She went to the front porch and paused as the town’s police chief, Cash Grier, bounded up the steps.

She hadn’t seen him before, and she was surprised by the long ponytail he wore. She’d heard that he was unconventional, and there were some interesting rumors about his past that were spoken in whispers. Even up in San Antonio, he was something of a legend in law enforcement circles.

“You’re Chief Grier,” she said as he approached her.

He grinned. “What gave me away?” he asked.

“The badge that says ‘Police Chief,’” she replied, tongue-in-cheek. “What can I do for you?”

He chuckled. “I came to see Rodrigo. Is he around?”

“He was,” she replied. “But he hasn’t come in for lunch, or called.” She turned and opened the screen door, leaning heavily on the cane. “Consuelo, do you know where Mr. Ramirez is?”

“He said he was going to the hardware store to pick up the extra buckets he ordered,” she called.

Glory turned back to the chief, and found him eyeing her cane. She became defensive. “Something bothering you?” she asked pertly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to stare. You’re young to be walking with a cane.”

She nodded, her green eyes meeting his dark ones. “I’ve been using it for a long time.”

He cocked his head, and he wasn’t smiling. “Your mother was Beverly Barnes, wasn’t she?” he asked coldly.

She drew in her breath.

“Marquez’s mother runs the local eatery,” he replied. “I know about you from her. She and Rick don’t have any secrets.”

“Nobody is supposed to know why I’m here,” she began worriedly.

He held up a hand. “I haven’t said anything, and I won’t. I gather you include Rodrigo in those people who aren’t supposed to know why you’re here?”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Especially Rodrigo.”

He nodded. “I’ll watch your back,” he told her. “But it would be wise to have Rodrigo in on it.”

She couldn’t imagine why. The manager of a truck farm wouldn’t know what to do against a drug lord. “The fewer people who know, the better,” she told him. “Fuentes would love to hang me out to dry before the trial. I know too much.”

“Marquez told me. He said he had to fight you to get you to come down here in the first place. The thing is, Fuentes probably has confederates that we don’t know about.”

“Here?” she asked.

“Very likely. I have a few contacts on the wrong side of the law. Word is that he’s hiring teenagers for his more potent areas of vengeance. They go to juvenile hall, you see, not prison. I understand that he’s recruiting in a Houston gang—Los Serpientes. If you see any suspicious activity here, or any new young faces hiring on, I want to know about it. Night or day. Especially if you feel threatened at all. I don’t care if it’s after midnight, either.”

“That’s generous of you,” she said, and she smiled.

“Not really,” he sighed. “Tris, our baby girl, keeps us awake all hours just lately. She’s teething, so you probably wouldn’t even have to wake us up.”

“Your wife is very famous,” she replied shyly.

He chuckled with pride. “Yes, but you’d never know it to see her pushing baby Tris in a cart in the Sav-A-Lot Grocery Store,” he assured her.

Grocery store. The store had a van. Something niggled in the back of her mind. She remembered something. “There was a van,” she said suddenly. “This man Castillo that Mr. Ramirez just hired to be his assistant was talking to some man in a battered old white van. Something changed hands—money or drugs, maybe. It was suspicious, so I wrote down the license plate number.”

“Smart girl,” he said, impressed.

“I put it on a pad in the kitchen. Would you like to come in and have coffee? Consuelo’s made a nice peach pie for supper.”

“I love coffee and pie,” he assured her.

“Come in, then.”

He followed her into the kitchen, where Consuelo greeted him, but with obvious suspicion. He got the number from Glory while Consuelo was out of the room.

“Consuelo doesn’t like policemen,” she confided. “I don’t know why. I mentioned something about the extra patrols that were coming past the house, and she was belligerent.”

“Could be the immigration investigations,” Cash murmured. “They’ve stepped up in the new political climate.”

“What about the extra patrols?” she asked suddenly.

He glanced toward the doorway to make sure Consuelo wasn’t around. “One of Ramirez’s employees has a rap sheet. We’ve been keeping a low profile, but we’re keeping an eye on him.” He grinned. “Nice work, getting that tag number.”

She chuckled. “I feel like an undercover narc or something,” she murmured as he got up to leave.

He laughed. “I can’t tell you why that’s amusing, but one day you’ll see. Thanks for the coffee and pie.”

“You’re very welcome.” She hesitated. “Can you tell me which employee you’ve got your eye on?”

He sighed. “You’ve probably guessed that already.”

She nodded. “Castillo has tats and muscles like a wrestler. It doesn’t take much guesswork. I’ve seen his type come through my office for years.”

“So have I,” he said.

“Do you know Mr. Ramirez well?” she asked suddenly.

“Not really,” he said deliberately. “I’ve seen him around. But I actually came today to check with him about one of your employees who may be in the country illegally.”

She wondered which employee. “Should I ask him to phone you when he comes in?” she asked.

“Do that, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll be glad to.” She leaned on her cane, frowning. Another thought provoked her next question. “That illegal,” she said slowly. “You don’t think it’s Angel Martinez, do you?” she added, recalling the sweet little man who was always so courteous to her when he came into the house with Rodrigo. She was fond of him.

His eyebrows arched. “Why do you say that?”

She shifted her weight. Her hip was hurting. “It’s just that he and his wife, Carla, have three children. They’re so nice, and they’re happy here. They come from a village in Central America where there was a paramilitary group. Somebody in the village identified one of the rebels to the government authorities. The next day, Angel took Carla and the children to a healer in another village because one of the children had a sore eye. When they got back, everybody in the village was dead, laid out like firewood on the ground.”

He moved closer. “I know what life in those villages is like,” he said with surprising sympathy. “And I know what good people the Martinezes are. Sometimes enforcing the law is painful even for professionals.”

His sympathy made her bold. “I know an attorney in San Antonio who specializes in immigration cases,” she began.

He sighed, noting her expression. “And I know one of the federal attorneys,” he replied with resignation. “Okay. I’ll go make some phone calls.”

She beamed up at him. “I knew you were a nice man the minute I saw you.”

“Did you? How?” he asked with real curiosity.

“The ponytail,” she told him. “It has to be a sign of personal courage.” It was overt flattery.

He laughed. “Well! I’ll have to go home and tell Tippy that the secret’s out.”

She grinned.

His expression became solemn. “Castillo is dangerous. Don’t get brave when you’re on your own here.”

“I realized that early on,” she assured him. “He has no respect for women.”

“Or men,” he added. “Watch your back.”

“I will.”

He waved on his way down the steps.

RODRIGO WAS CURIOUS ABOUT the conversation Glory had with Chief Grier. Too curious.

“Did he say anything about the illegal immigrant he’s looking for?” he asked over bowls of soup at the supper table with Consuelo.

Glory hesitated. She didn’t quite know Rodrigo enough to trust him with information of a potentially tragic case.

Consuelo grinned at him. “She’s afraid you might blow the whistle on Angel,” she said in a stage whisper.

Glory flushed and Rodrigo burst out laughing.

“I would never have suspected you of having anarchist leanings,” he chided Glory.

She finished a spoonful of soup before she answered him. “I’m not an anarchist. I just think people make snap decisions without all the facts. I know that immigrants put a strain on our economy.” She put the spoon down and looked at him. “But aren’t we all Americans? I mean, the continent is North America, isn’t it? If you’re from north, central or south America, you’re still an American.”

Rodrigo looked at Consuelo. “She’s a socialist,” he said.

“I am not classifiable,” she argued. “I just think that helping people in desperate need is supposed to be what freedom and democracy are all about. It isn’t as if they want to come here and sit down and let us all support them. They’re some of the hardest working people in the world. You know yourself that you have to force your hired hands to come out of the fields. Hard work is all they know. They’re just happy to live someplace where they don’t have to worry about being shot or run out of their villages by multinational corporations looking for land.”

He hadn’t interrupted her. He was watching her with narrow, intent eyes, unaware that his soup spoon was frozen in midair.

She raised her eyebrows. “Is my mustache on crooked?” she asked mischievously.

He laughed and put the spoon down. “No. I’m impressed by your knowledge of third world communities.”

She wanted so badly to ask about his own knowledge of them, but she was shy of him. The memory of the fervent embrace she’d shared with him made her tingle all over every time she pictured it. He was very strong, and very attractive.

He finished his coffee, glancing at her. “You’re dying to know, aren’t you?” he asked with a bland expression.

“Know what?”

“Where I come from.”

Her cheeks went pink. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry…”

“I was born in Sonora, in northern Mexico,” he told her. He skipped the part about his family and their illustrious connections, including their wealth. He had to remember his concocted history. “My parents worked for a man who ran cattle. I learned the business from the ground up, and eventually managed a ranch.”

She felt strongly that he wasn’t telling the whole story, but she wasn’t going to dig too deeply. It was too soon. “Did you get tired of the ranch?”

He laughed. “The owner did. He sold his holdings to a politician who thought he knew all about cattle ranching from watching reruns of High Chapparel, that old television Western.”

“Did he really know all about it?” she fished.

“He lost the cattle in the first six months to disease because he didn’t believe in preventative medicine, and he lost the land two months after that in a poker game with two supposed friends. No ranch, no job, so I came north looking for work.”

She frowned. Jason Pendleton wasn’t the sort of man who socialized with day laborers, she thought, even though he wasn’t a snob. “How did you meet Jason…I mean, Mr. Pendleton?” she corrected.

He caught the slip, but let it pass. “We were both acquainted with a man who was opening a new restaurant in San Antonio. He introduced us. Jason said that he needed someone to ramrod a truck farm in a little Texas town, and I was looking for work.”

Actually he’d approached Jason, with the help of a mutual friend, and explained that he needed the job temporarily to provide his cover while he tried to shut down Fuentes and his operation. Jason had agreed to go along with it.

Their next conversation, the day Glory arrived, had been about Glory going to work on the truck farm. Jason had told him nothing about Glory, least of all that she was his stepsister, but he hadn’t liked Rodrigo’s remark about Glory being crippled and it was evident. Rodrigo had the feeling that Jason was overly fond of Glory—perhaps they were even lovers. It had been a taut conversation.

Rodrigo was tempted to ask Glory about her relationship with Jason, but he didn’t want to rock the boat.

“Well, your English is a hundred times better than my Spanish,” she sighed, breaking into his thoughts.

“I work hard at it.”

Consuelo was stirring cake batter. She glanced at Rodrigo curiously. “That Castillo man is going to be trouble, you mark my words.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “We’ve been over this twice already,” he said quietly. “You want your son to work here and take his place. But Marco doesn’t know how to manage people.” He said it in an odd tone, as if he was holding something back.

She glowered at him. “He can so manage people. He’s smart, too. Not book smart, but street smart.”

Rodrigo looked thoughtful. His eyes narrowed. “All right, then. Have him come and talk to me tomorrow.”

Consuelo’s dark eyes lit up. “You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

“I’ll call him right now!” She put down the bowl of unfinished batter and left the room, wiping her hands on her apron as she went.

“Is he as nice as she is? Her son, I mean?” Glory asked.

Rodrigo seemed distracted. “He’s a hard worker,” he replied. “But he has some friends I don’t like.”

“I’ll bet I have some friends you wouldn’t like,” she retorted. “It’s the boy who’ll be working here, not his friends.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Outspoken, aren’t you?”

“From time to time,” she confessed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he replied, finishing his coffee. “I like to know where I stand with people. Honesty is a rare commodity these days.”

She could have written a check on that. She was lied to day by day on the job, by criminals who swore innocence. It was always somebody else’s fault, not theirs. They were framed. The witnesses were blind. The arresting officers were brutal. They weren’t getting a fair trial. And on and on it went.

“I said,” Rodrigo repeated, “will you and Consuelo have enough jars and lids, or should we get more?”

She started. She’d been lost in thought. “Sorry. I really don’t know. Consuelo brings them out. I haven’t really paid attention to how many we’ve got.”

“I’ll ask her on the way out. If Castillo gives you any more lip, tell me,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “We don’t allow harassment here.”

“I will,” she promised.

She watched him go into the other room, heard the murmur of his deep voice as he spoke to Consuelo. He really was a handsome man, she thought. If she hadn’t been carrying so many emotional scars, she might have looked for a way to worm herself into his life. It was odd that a man like that would still be single at his age, which she judged to be mid-thirties. It was none of her business, she reminded herself. She only worked here.

TWO DAYS LATER, A late model SUV pulled up in the driveway. A slender, pretty blonde woman got out and darted up the steps. She was wearing blue jeans and a pink tank top. She looked young and carefree and happy.

Consuelo was busy washing jars and lids before they started on the next batch of peaches when there came a knock at the door. Glory went to answer it, leaning heavily on the cane. She’d had a bad night.

The young woman grinned at her. “Hi,” she said in a friendly tone. “Is Rodrigo around?”

For some inexplicable reason, Glory felt her heart drop. “Yes,” she said. “He’s at the warehouse overseeing the packing. We’re stocking it with fruit preserves and jellies for the Internet business.”

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

If it had been anyone else, Glory would have gone back to the kitchen. But the woman fit the description Consuelo had mentioned, and she was curious. She watched as the other woman approached the big warehouse out back. Rodrigo spotted her and his whole face became radiant. He held out his arms and she ran into them, to be swung around and kissed heartily on the cheek.

If Glory had needed reminding that Rodrigo was handsome enough to attract almost any woman he wanted, that proved it. She turned and went back into the house. It hurt her that Rodrigo wanted someone else. She didn’t dare question why.

He didn’t bring the visitor into the house. They stood together under a big mesquite tree, very close, and spoke for a long time. Glory wasn’t spying. But she was looking out the window. She couldn’t help it. That those two had shared a close relationship was impossible not to notice.

Finally Rodrigo took the blonde’s hand in his and led her back to the SUV, helping her up into her seat. She smiled and waved as she drove away. Rodrigo stood looking after the truck, his smile gone into eclipse. His hands dug into his jean pockets and the misery he felt was evident even at a distance. He looked like a man who’d lost everything he loved.

Glory went back to her canning, pensively. She wondered what had gone wrong for Rodrigo that he and the blonde woman weren’t together.

She asked Consuelo, against her better judgment.

“Who is that blonde woman who comes to visit Rodrigo?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

Consuelo gave her a stealthy look. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s obvious that she means something to Rodrigo.”

“I noticed,” Glory replied. “She seems very nice.”

“He’s fond of her, you can tell.” She set the timer on the pressure cooker. “But if you look close,” she added gently, “you can tell that it’s only fondness on her part. She likes him, but she isn’t in love.”

“He is,” Glory blurted out.

Consuelo glanced at her curiously. “You’re perceptive.”

Glory smiled. “He seems like a good person.”

“He’s the best. We all like him.”

“I noticed that he seems…”

Before she could finish the sentence, the back door opened and a tall, handsome young man with wavy black hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion came in through the back door without knocking. He was wearing jeans and a pullover shirt, and broadcasting gang colors and tattoos.

Glory didn’t dare voice that summary. She wasn’t supposed to know about gang symbols. But she did. This young man belonged to the infamous Los Serpientes gang of Houston. She wondered what in the world he was doing in the kitchen.

Before she could ask, he grinned and hugged Consuelo, swinging her around in a circle and laughing the whole time.

“Hi, Mom!” he said in greeting.

Consuelo hugged him back and gave him a big kiss on both cheeks. She turned, her arm around his muscular waist. “Glory, this is my son, Marco!” she announced.

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