Risking his neck is all in a day’s work…

Tough and relentless, Cord Romero lives for the adrenaline rush that comes with being a mercenary for hire. But this time the job is personal. Having barely survived a murder attempt from an elusive enemy, Cord is determined to neutralize his foe—the head of a multinational corporation that fronts a child labor ring. In order to get closer to his target, Cord joins forces with the Lassiter Detective Agency, where he’s reunited with his childhood friend Maggie Barton. Maggie is no longer the impressionable young woman he once knew. She is now strong, independent and in charge of her own life—and, professionally, Cord’s equal. She has one vulnerability: a tragic secret from her past that threatens her relationship with Cord…and sets her up as a pawn for his deadly enemy.

Cord cannot afford to be distracted during the most important case of his life. But Maggie plays an indispensable part in unraveling the links to his enemy’s crimes. Forced to trust each other for their very survival, Cord and Maggie embark on a lethal game of cat and mouse that can leave only one winner standing.

Praise for the novels of New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author DIANA PALMER

“Palmer demonstrates, yet again, why she’s the

queen of desperado quests for justice and true love.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dangerous

“A strong mystery intertwines with this romance, which

has plenty of emotional ups and downs and includes

delightful, intriguing and familiar characters.”

—RT Book Reviews on Dangerous

“The popular Palmer has penned another winning

novel, a perfect blend of romance and suspense.”

—Booklist on Lawman

“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

“This is a fascinating story…

It’s nice to have a hero wise enough to know when

he can’t do things alone and willing to accept help

when he needs it. There is pleasure to be found

in the nice sense of family this tale imparts.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wyoming Bold

“Diana Palmer is one of those authors whose books

are always enjoyable. She throws in romance,

suspense and a good storyline.”

—The Romance Reader on Before Sunrise

“Lots of passion, thrills, and plenty of suspense…

Protector is a top notch read!”

—Romance Reviews Today on Protector

Desperado

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Dear Reader,

I started out as a newspaper reporter, at the age of seventeen. By the time I married, at age twenty-five, I was working as a district correspondent for two daily newspapers, and full-time on a local weekly newspaper. At the age of thirty-three, I saw my first novel published and produced my greatest creative work, our son Blayne. Now, as I look back on a career that spans decades, I can see a common thread in the process that led me to being a full-time author—insanity!

Just kidding. But it does help to be a little out of kilter if you want to do this for a living. Example: Cash Grier is featured in my novel Renegade. Now, he started out as a very minor character in a novel called The Texas Ranger. I thought that was the end of it. Imagine my surprise when he suddenly appeared as assistant police chief of Jacobsville, Texas, in Lawless. No, I didn’t put him in the position. He walked into my office, creatively speaking, sat down in my chair, put his big booted feet on my desk and announced that he was taking over my book. This did not sit well. But he proved impossible to evict, so I wrote Renegade, hoping he might take the hint and leave. As you know, if you read my books, this was also an optimistic and futile wish. He has never left. One of my readers, Cinzi, keeps hoping I will toss Tippy under an ice cream truck and give Cash Grier to her. I really can’t. Tippy would start haunting me.

On the other hand, Cord Romero, in Desperado, started out also in another book, in my Most Wanted series. He turned up in a few other books, as well. He wasn’t as pushy as Cash, but he did fascinate me. So he got a book of his own, and a happy ending. I’m big on those. Life doesn’t give us many. Fiction should take up the slack, or at least, that’s my own philosophy.

While Cash’s story played out in Jacobsville and New York City (one of my favorite places!), Cord wound his way through Texas and Europe in an effort to save the lives of exploited children. He also found out some interesting and tragic things about his foster sister in the process. A lot of Jacobsville’s mercenaries also turn up in Desperado, including Rodrigo Ramirez, of Fearless, and Bojo, who was featured in Lord of the Desert.

Both these books are epic love stories, with twists and turns and many red herrings. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

I am busy working on other projects, most notably a new Wyoming series beginning with Sara Brandon from Texas Born and a book about Stanton Rourke from Invincible. I am also reworking my science fiction novels in The Morcai Battalion series. The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit, which really is a love story about Dr. Madeline Ruszel and the alien Cehn-Tahr commander Dtimun, has new scenes and will be out from Mills & Boon HQN in both ebook and paperback form in December 2014. I am rewriting its sequel, The Morcai Battalion: Invictus, and it will appear in print in late 2015. There will be other books in the series, notably The Morcai Battalion: Ship’s Surgeon with Dr. Edris Mallory in 2016. In my spare time, I sleep. :)

Thank you so much for all your kindness to me over the years, dear readers. I am your biggest fan!

Love,

Diana Palmer

To the doctors and nurses of

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois,

who saved my life, and to the wonderful staff,

with thanks from a grateful patient.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dear Reader

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THE RANCH OUTSIDE Houston was big and sprawling. It was surrounded by neat white fences, which concealed electrical ones, to keep in the purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle that Cord Romero owned. There was also a bull, a special bull, which had been spared from a corrida—a bullfight—in Spain by Cord’s father, Mejias Romero, one of the most famous bullfighters in Spain just before his untimely death in America. Once Cord grew up and had money of his own, Cord had traveled to his elderly cousin’s ranch in Andalusia to get the bull and have it shipped to Texas. Cord called the old bull Hijito, little boy. The creature was still all muscle, although most of it was in his huge chest. He followed Cord around the ranch like a pet dog.

As Maggie Barton exited the cab with her suitcase, the big bull snorted and tossed his head on the other side of the fence. Maggie barely spared him a glance after she paid the driver. She’d come rushing home from Morocco in a tangle of missed planes, delays, cancellations and other obstacles that had caused her to be three days in transit. Cord, a professional mercenary and her foster brother, had been blinded. Most surprising, he’d asked for her through his friend, Eb Scott. Maggie couldn’t get home fast enough. The delays had been agony.

Perhaps, finally, Cord had realized that he cared for her...!

With her heart pounding, she pressed the doorbell on the spacious front porch with its green swing and glider and rocking chairs. There were pots of ferns and flowers everywhere.

Sharp, quick footsteps sounded on the bare wooden floors in the house and Maggie frowned as she pushed the long, wavy black hair away out of her worried green eyes. Those steps didn’t sound like Cord’s. He had an elegance of movement in his stride that was long and effortless, masculine but gliding. This was a short, staccato step, more like a woman’s. Her heart stopped. Did he have a girlfriend she didn’t know about? Had she misinterpreted Eb Scott’s phone call? Her confidence nosedived.

The door opened and a slight blond woman with dark eyes looked up at her. “Yes?” she asked politely.

“I came to see Cord,” Maggie blurted out. Jet lag was already setting in on her. She didn’t even think to give her name.

“I’m sorry, he isn’t seeing people just yet. He’s been in an accident.”

“I know that,” Maggie said impatiently. She softened the words with a smile. “Tell him it’s Maggie. Please.”

The other woman, who must have been all of nineteen, grimaced. “He’ll kill me if I let you in! He said he didn’t want to see anybody. I’m really sorry...”

Jet lag and irritability combined to break the bonds of Maggie’s temper. “Listen, I’ve just come over three thousand miles—oh, the hell with it! Cord?” she yelled past the girl, who grimaced again. “Cord!”

There was a pause, then a cold, short, “Let her in, June!”

June stepped aside at once. Maggie was made uneasy by the harsh note in Cord’s deep voice. She left her suitcase on the porch. June gave it a curious glance before she closed the door.

Cord was standing at the fireplace in the spacious living room. Just the sight of him fed Maggie’s heart. He was tall and lean, powerfully built for all his slimness, a tiger of a man who feared nothing in this world. He made his living as a professional soldier, and he had few peers. He was handsome, with light olive skin and jet-black hair that had a slight wave. His eyes were large, deep-set, dark brown. His eyebrows were drawn into a scowl as Maggie walked in, and except for the red wounds around his eyes and cheeks, he actually looked normal. He looked as if he could see her. Ridiculous, of course. A bomb he’d tried to defuse had gone off right in his face. Eb said he was blind.

She stared at him. This man was the love of her life. There had never been anyone but him in her heart. She was amazed that he’d never noticed, in the eighteen years their lives had been connected. Even his brief, tragic marriage hadn’t altered those feelings. Like him, she was widowed—but she didn’t grieve for her husband the way he’d grieved for Patricia.

Her gaze fell helplessly to his wide, chiseled mouth. She remembered, oh, so well, the feel of it on hers in the darkness. It had been heaven to be held by him, kissed by him, after years of anguished longing. But very quickly, the pleasure had become pain. Cord hadn’t known she was innocent, and he was too drunk to notice at the time. It was just after his wife committed suicide, the night their foster mother had died...

“How are you?” Maggie blurted out, hesitating just beyond the doorway, suddenly tongue-tied.

His square jaw seemed to tighten, but he smiled coldly. “A bomb exploded in my face four days ago. How the hell do you think I am?” he drawled sarcastically.

He was anything but welcoming. So much for fantasies. He didn’t need her. He didn’t want her around. It was just like old times. And she’d come running. What a joke.

“It amazes me that even a bomb could faze you,” she remarked with her old self-possession. She even smiled. “Mr. Cold Steel repels bullets, bombs, and especially, me!”

He didn’t react. “Nice of you to stop by. And so promptly,” he added.

She didn’t understand the remark. He seemed to feel she’d procrastinated about visiting. “Eb Scott phoned and said you’d been hurt. He said...” She hesitated, uncertain whether or not to tell him everything Eb had said to her. She went for broke, but she laughed to camouflage her raw emotions. “He said you wanted me to come nurse you. Funny, huh?”

He didn’t laugh. “Hilarious.”

She felt the familiar whip of his sarcasm with pain she didn’t try to hide. After all, he couldn’t see it. “That’s our Eb,” she agreed. “A real kidder. I guess you have—what was her name?—June to take care of you?” she added with forced lightness.

“That’s right. I have June. She’s been here since I got home.” He emphasized the pronoun, for reasons of his own. He smiled deliberately. “June is all I need. She’s sweet and kindhearted, and she really cares about me.”

She forced a smile. “She’s pretty, too.”

He nodded. “Isn’t she, though? Pretty, smart, and a good cook. And she’s blond,” he added in a cold, soft voice that made chills run down her spine.

She didn’t have to puzzle out the remark. He was partial to blondes. His late wife, Patricia, had been a blonde. He’d loved Patricia...

She rubbed her fingers over the strap of her shoulder bag and realized with a start how tired she was. Airport after airport, dragging her suitcase, agonizing over Cord’s true state of health for three long days, just trying to get home to him—and he acted as if she’d pushed her way in. Perhaps she had. Eb should have told her the truth, that Cord still didn’t want her in his life, even when he was injured.

She gave him a long, anguished look and moved one shoulder restlessly. “Well, that puts me in my place,” she said pleasantly. “I’m sure not blond. Nice to see you’re still on your feet. But I’m sorry about your eyes,” she added.

“What about my eyes?” he asked curtly, scowling fiercely.

“Eb said you were blinded,” she replied.

“Temporarily blinded,” he corrected. “It’s not a permanent condition. I can see fairly well now, and the ophthalmologist expects a complete recovery.”

Her heart jumped. He could see? She realized then that he was watching her, not just staring into a void. It came as a shock. She hadn’t been guarding her expressions. She felt uncomfortable, knowing he’d been able to glimpse the misery and worry on her face.

“No kidding? That’s great news!” she said, and forced a convincing smile. She was getting the hang of this. Her face would be permanently gleeful, like a piece of fired sculpture. She could hire it out for celebrations. This wasn’t one.

“Isn’t it?” he agreed, but his returned smile wasn’t pleasant at all.

She shifted the strap of her bag again, feeling weak at the knees and embarrassed by her headlong rush to his side. She’d given up her new job and come running home to take care of Cord. But he didn’t need her, or want her here. Now she had no job, no place to live, and only her savings to get her through the time until she could find employment. She never learned.

He was barely courteous, and his expression was hostile. “Thanks for coming. I’m sorry you have to leave so soon,” he added. “I’ll be glad to walk you to the door.”

She lifted an eyebrow, and gave him a sardonic look. “No need to give me the bum’s rush,” she said. “I got the message, loud and clear. I’m not welcome. Fine. I’ll leave skid marks going out the door. You can have June scrub them off later.”

“Everything’s a joke with you,” he accused coldly.

“It beats crying,” she replied pleasantly. “I need my head read for coming out here in the first place. I don’t know why I bothered!”

“Neither do I,” he agreed with soft venom. “A day late and a dollar short, at that.”

That was enigmatic, but she was too angry to question his phrasing. “You don’t have to belabor the point. I’m going,” she assured him. “In fact, it’s just a matter of another few interviews and I can arrange things so that you’ll never have to see me again.”

“That would be a real pleasure,” he said with a bite in his deep voice. He was still glaring at her. “I’ll give a party.”

He was laying it on thick. It was as if he were furious with her, for some reason. Perhaps just her presence was enough to set him off. That was nothing new.

She only laughed. She’d had years to perfect her emotional camouflage. It was dangerous to give Cord an opening. He had no compunction about sticking the knife in. They were old adversaries.

“I won’t expect an invitation,” she told him complacently. “Ever thought of taking early retirement, while you still have a head that can be blown off?” she added.

He didn’t answer.

She shrugged and sighed. “I must be in demand somewhere,” she told the room at large. “I’ll have myself paged at the airport and find out.”

She gave him one long, last look, certain that it would be the last time her eyes would see that handsome face. There was some old saying about divine punishment in the form of showing paradise to a victim and then tossing him back into reality. It was like that with Maggie, having known the utter delight of Cord’s lovemaking only once. Despite the pain and embarrassment, and his fury afterward, she’d never been able to forget the wonder of his mouth on her body for the first time. The rejection she felt now was almost palpable, and she had to hide it. It wasn’t easy.

“Thanks for the caring concern,” he drawled.

“Oh, anytime,” she replied merrily. “But you can phone me yourself next time you stick your face in a bomb and want tending. And just for the record, you can tell Eb his sense of humor stinks!”

“Tell him yourself,” he shot back. “You were engaged to him, weren’t you?”

Only because I couldn’t have you, she thought, and your marriage was killing me. But she didn’t say another word. She smiled carelessly, dragged her eyes away from him, turned neatly on her heel and started back out the door.

She’d just gone through the doorway when he called to her suddenly, reluctantly, in a husky tone, “Maggie!”

She didn’t hesitate for a second. She was angry now, too, angry that she’d come three thousand miles, that she’d been stupid enough to care about a man who’d never returned her feelings, that she’d believed Eb Scott when he said Cord had asked for her.

June was in the hall, frowning. The frown deepened when she saw Maggie’s face, saw the hurt the woman was trying valiantly to hide.

“Are you all right?” she asked in a quick whisper.

Maggie couldn’t manage many words at that point. June was Cord’s new love interest. Maggie couldn’t bear to look at her. She just nodded, a curt jerk of her head. “Thanks,” she bit off, and kept walking.

She went out the front door and closed it behind her. Despite that faint call, Cord hadn’t pursued her. Maybe he felt momentarily guilty for being so unwelcoming. His sense of hospitality was probably outraged, but she knew from the past that he didn’t dwell on his conscience. Meanwhile, she wanted nothing more than to get her long fingernails into Eb Scott. He was happily married now, and she knew he hadn’t phoned her to be malicious, but he’d caused her untold misery by upsetting her about Cord’s condition. Why?

She stood on the front porch for a moment, trying to get herself together again. Houston was about twenty minutes miles away, and she’d sent the cab off, expecting to stay with Cord and take care of him. She laughed out loud.

She looked toward the highway. Oh, well. As they said, walking was great exercise. She was glad that she’d worn sneakers instead of high heels with her nice gray pantsuit. She could spend the time it took walking to Houston thinking about her stupidity. She noticed that Cord didn’t strain his sense of hospitality offering her a ride, either.

She tugged her wheeled suitcase along with her down the steps and started down the driveway with growing amusement at the absurdity of her predicament. She glanced down at the suitcase with a whimsical smile. “I don’t even have a horse to ride off into the sunset on. Well, it’s just you and me, old paint,” she said, reaching down to pat the suitcase. “Let’s mosey!”

* * *

BACK IN THE living room, Cord Romero was standing where Maggie had left him, frozen with anger by the fireplace.

June looked in, worried. “She seemed concerned about you,” she began.

“Sure,” he said on a cold laugh. “It’s twenty minutes from Houston and she couldn’t drive out here any sooner than this. Some concern!”

“But she had a—!” she began, about to tell him about the suitcase Maggie had left on the porch.

He held up a big, lean hand. “Not another word,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to hear one more thing about her. Bring me a cup of coffee, would you? Then send Red Davis in here.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“And tell your father I want to see him when he’s through overseeing the loading of those cattle we’ve culled,” he added, because her father was the livestock foreman.

“Yes, sir,” she said again, and left.

Cord cursed under his breath. He hadn’t seen Maggie in weeks. It was as if she’d vanished off the face of the earth. He’d actually gone by her apartment once, although she’d refused to answer the doorbell, even after he’d spent five minutes ringing it. She wouldn’t answer her damned telephone, either. He didn’t want to admit that he’d missed her, or that it hurt like hell that she’d waited four days to come and see about him.

Their lives had been entwined since he was sixteen and she was eight when they’d been taken in by Mrs. Amy Barton, a socialite whose sister was an employee at the juvenile detention center. Cord’s parents had died in a fire while they were all visiting Houston on a rare vacation. Maggie had been abandoned by her family about the same time, and both were held at the juvenile center. Mrs. Barton, childless and lonely, had impulsively decided to be a foster parent to the two children. Eventually she’d adopted Maggie.

Cord had been in trouble with the law at eighteen, and Maggie had been his mainstay. At the age of ten, she was so mature with her advice and loyalty for him that Mrs. Barton had laughed even through her agony at his predicament. Maggie was fiercely protective of her older foster brother. He remembered her holding his hand so tightly when his case was called before the judge, her whispered assurances that everything would be all right. Maggie had always taken care of him. When his wife, Patricia, had killed herself, Maggie had stayed right with him through the inquest and the funeral. When Mrs. Barton had died, Maggie had given him loving comfort, and he’d repaid her with pain...

He couldn’t bear to think about that night. It was one of the worst memories of his life. He stared blankly out the window at the pasture where his big bull Hijito roamed, and grimaced as he recalled Maggie’s face only minutes before. Her life had been no bed of roses, either. He knew nothing of her childhood, or why she’d been taken away from her stepfather. Mrs. Barton had refused to discuss it, and Maggie had avoided the question ever since he’d known her.

Maggie had inexplicably married, less than a month after Mrs. Barton’s death, and to a man she’d only known briefly. It hadn’t been a happy relationship. The man she married, a wealthy banker, was twenty years older than she was and divorced. Cord recalled hearing that she’d had some sort of accident at home, and that her husband had been killed in a car crash while she was still in the hospital.

Cord had come home from Africa when he’d heard, just to see about her. She’d been at home when he came, too sick even to go to her husband’s funeral for reasons nobody told him. She hadn’t wanted Cord there. She’d refused to talk to him, even to look at him. It had hurt, because he knew why. The night Mrs. Barton had died, he’d taken Maggie to bed. He’d been drinking, one of only two times in his life he’d ever had too much to drink, and he’d hurt her. Incredibly she’d been a virgin. He didn’t remember much of what had happened, only her tears and harsh sobs, and his shocked realization that she wasn’t the experienced woman he’d imagined her. His anger at himself had translated itself into harsh accusations at her for what had happened. Even through the haze of time, he could still see her anguished tears, her shivering body wrapped in a sheet, her eyes avoiding the sight of his powerful body without clothing as he stood over her and raged.

They’d seen each other very few times since then, and Maggie’s discomfort in his presence had been obvious. After she was widowed, she’d taken back her maiden name, thrown herself into her work as vice president of an investment firm and avoided Cord totally. It should have pleased him. He’d avoided her for years before Amy Barton’s death. She didn’t know that he’d married Patricia in a vain effort to head off his inexplicable obsession with Maggie. He’d spent so many years trying not to let her get close to him. He’d loved his pretty little American mother, worshipped his Spanish father. Their tragic deaths, in a fire that had spared him, had warped his emotions at an early age. He knew the danger of loving that led to the agony of loss. Patricia’s suicide had compounded his misery. When Mrs. Barton died, it was the last straw. Everything he loved, everyone he loved, was taken from him. It was easier, much easier, to stop feeling deeply.

His stint in the Houston Police Department, interrupted by service with the army in Operation Desert Storm, had given him a taste for danger that had led him into the FBI. After Patricia’s suicide, for which he felt guilt because of reasons he’d never shared with another living soul, he’d gone into work as a professional mercenary. His specialty was demolition, and he was good at it. Or he had been, until he’d let himself be lured into a trap by an old adversary in Miami. His instincts had saved him from certain death, only to learn that the whole thing had been a setup. Maggie didn’t know that, and he had no reason to tell her. She was obviously unconcerned with his health, showing up so late after the fact. He knew that his adversary was going to come after him again. But he wasn’t going to let himself be surprised a second time.

He turned away from the window with a sigh and regretted, deeply, his treatment of Maggie. He was responsible for her distaste for him, for the indifference that had brought her to his side four days after the accident instead of hours afterward. If she’d still cared for him at all, she wouldn’t have waited. She’d have been frantic to see him. He laughed at his own idiocy. He’d hurt her, been icy cold to her, pushed her out of his life at every turn for years, and now he was resentful because she didn’t care very much that he’d been injured. He was only reaping the harvest of his abuse. It wasn’t Maggie’s fault.

For one vulnerable moment, he’d called her name and tried to find the words for an apology. But his pride had stopped him from following her when she ignored him. She’d go away and probably never come back. And he deserved it.

* * *

MAGGIE WAS HALFWAY down the long, paved driveway between neat white fences when the sound of a pickup truck coming up fast from behind made her step off the pavement.

But instead of passing her, the truck stopped and the passenger door was pushed open.

Red Davis, one of Cord’s ranch foremen, leaned forward, his wide-brimmed straw hat pulled down over his red hair and blue eyes. He smiled. “It’s too hot to walk a suitcase to Houston. Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”

She chuckled, even as she was touched by an act of kindness she hadn’t expected. She hesitated for just a minute. “Cord didn’t send you, did he?” she asked abruptly. If he had, she wasn’t taking one step into that double-cabbed, six-wheeled truck!

“No, ma’am, he didn’t,” he replied. “He didn’t know you brought the suitcase. And I wouldn’t tell him even if he tortured me,” he swore with a hand over his heart and a twinkle in his eyes.

She laughed. “Okay, then. Thanks!” She slid her suitcase into the backseat and jumped up into the cab beside Davis, closing the door and fastening her seat belt.

He started up the engine again and roared down the driveway. “I guess you didn’t come from town?” he probed.

“Leave it alone, Red,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You brought a suitcase,” he persisted. “Why?”

“You’re a pest, Davis!”

“And I don’t respond to insecticide, either,” he grinned. “Come on, Maggie. Tell Uncle Red why you turned up with that trunk on wheels.”

“All right, I came from Morocco,” she replied finally when he just grinned at her scowl. “Straight from Morocco, at that, despite delays and layovers and flight cancellations. I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours. I expected to find him blind and helpless.” She laughed. “I should have known better. He laid into me the minute I walked into the house and booted me out the door.” She shook her head. “Just like old times. Nothing ever changes. Just the sight of me rubs him the wrong way.”

“What were you doing in Morocco?” he asked, startled.

“Having a vacation before I took up my new job in Qawi,” she confessed. “My best friend is taking it instead. So here I am with everything I own in a suitcase, no place to live, no job, no nothing.” She shot him a half-amused glance. “If I weren’t such a tough nut, I’d bawl my head off.”

“Cord didn’t offer you a room?” he exclaimed, horrified.

“Cord doesn’t know I came from Morocco,” she said stiffly. “He doesn’t even know I was in Morocco in the first place. I didn’t tell him I was leaving Houston. Not that he would have cared, even if he’d noticed.” She leaned her head back against the leather headrest with a sigh and closed her eyes. “You’d think I’d stop bashing my head against stone walls, wouldn’t you?”

The thinly veiled reference to her feelings for her foster brother wasn’t lost on the man beside her. He wasn’t close to Cord Romero, but he recognized unrequited love when he saw it. He was sorry for this pretty, strong woman who looked as if she was at the end of her rope. He wondered why his boss couldn’t see how much she cared about him. He was supremely indifferent to her, and had been ever since Davis had come to work for him.

“Besides,” she added in a voice that betrayed more than she realized, “he’s got June to take care of him, now, hasn’t he?”

He shot her an odd glance. “Not in the way you’re thinking,” he volunteered.

She was suddenly interested. “Excuse me?”

“June is Darren Travis’s daughter,” he explained. “He’s Cord’s cattle foreman, looks after the purebred Santa Gertrudis herd. June’s taken over the housekeeping and cooking just temporarily, because Cord’s regular woman remarried and left. But June’s sweet on a Houston police officer, and vice versa. She’s scared of Cord. Most people are. He isn’t the easiest boss in the world, and he has moods.”

She was really confused now. “But he said...! I mean—” she lowered her voice “—he insinuated that he and June were involved.”

He chuckled. “She has to be forced to go to him with problems. She usually tells her father and has him relay any requests. She thinks Cord’s a holy terror. She told me once she couldn’t imagine a woman brave enough to take him on. It really amazed her that he’d been married at all.”

“It amazed all of us, at the time,” Maggie recalled reluctantly. His marriage had hurt her terribly. It was a whirlwind courtship at that. Maggie had wanted to die when he walked in the front door with Patricia. Their foster mother, Amy Barton, had been equally shocked. Cord didn’t strike anyone as a marrying man.

“He hasn’t had women around in years,” Davis said thoughtfully. “He goes out occasionally, but he never brings anybody home, and he’s never out late. Funny, that. He’s a good-looking man, only in his thirties, in a dangerous profession and rich. You’d think he’d have pretty women tripping over him. He’s something of a recluse.”

She glanced at him. “That dangerous profession is probably why. He knows every assignment could be his last. I don’t imagine he’d want to wish that on a woman.”

“Danger draws women, though, doesn’t it?”

She laughed. “Not this woman,” she confessed, stifling a yawn and lying through her teeth. “I’d rather marry a guy who worked the drive-in window at a fast-food joint than a professional demolition expert. Not much risk of being blown up handling hamburgers and fries,” she added drolly, and was rewarded by a chuckle.

Maggie had been briefly engaged to Eb Scott just after Cord married Patricia. Now, she could admit that it had only been an engagement of friends, one of so many futile attempts to get over Cord. She and Eb had never been really attracted to each other physically. Cord had assumed that they were sleeping together, which explained his stark horror at Maggie’s innocence years later, on the night Mrs. Barton died. But Maggie had never been able to think of any man except Cord intimately—at least, until they were intimate. Now her older, more frightening memories of things sexual were intermixed with new ones of discomfort and embarrassment. Why, oh, why, couldn’t she get him out of her heart, her mind?

“You’ve known Cord a long time, haven’t you?” Red mused.

“Since I was eight and he was sixteen,” she murmured, getting drowsy, lulled by the soft motion of the truck on the smooth pavement of the highway that led into Houston. “That old saying that brothers and sisters fight like cats and dogs isn’t so far off, you know,” she murmured. “Even foster ones.”

“Really?” he said, almost to himself.

“Really.” She yawned and his next comment fell on deaf ears. She drifted off into a brief oblivion.

* * *

IT WASN’T A long drive, but it felt as if they’d just left the ranch when Maggie was brought awake by a tap from Davis’s hand. She opened her eyes and noticed that they’d already reached the city limits of Houston.

“Sorry to wake you, but we’re in town now. Do you have any idea where you want me to take you?” Davis asked gently.

“To a nice, comfortable, cheap hotel,” she murmured dryly. “I’m living on my savings until I get another job, and they don’t amount to much.”

He grimaced. “You should have told him.”

“Oh, no!” she disagreed. She smoothed her pink-tipped fingernails over her white purse. “I’m not his responsibility. I only wanted to take care of him. Funny, isn’t it? He doesn’t need anybody. He never has.” She turned her eyes out the window. She wasn’t a weepy sort of person. She was strong and spirited and independent. The hard knocks of her life had made her strong. But she was tired and sleepy and she felt Cord’s cold rejection deeply. She was momentarily weak and she didn’t want Davis to see it.

Davis mumbled something under his breath. It sounded like “damned idiot,” but Maggie wasn’t rising to the bait.

“It isn’t right,” he said angrily. “Letting you out the door without even knowing if you had a way back to town.”

“Don’t you dare tell him about the suitcase or the trip,” she said impatiently when she saw the look on his face. “Don’t you dare, Red!”

“I won’t tell him about the suitcase,” he agreed, mentally crossing his fingers. “There’s a good hotel downtown, not expensive, where my mother stays when she comes to see me,” he added quickly. “You’ll like it.”

She nodded. “Okay. That’ll do. I think I could sleep for a week.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll get a newspaper and find a job.” She yawned again. “Things will look bright tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry you had such a rough day,” he told her as he pulled up in front of a nice, but nondescript hotel downtown.

“They’re all rough days, lately,” she murmured with a smile. “Life is trial by fire, didn’t you know? It’s an obstacle course. If you survive it, you get to wear wings and float around feeling sorry for the living!”

“Think so?” he teased.

“Of course, when I think about Cord, I want to come back as a stump and trip him twice a day,” she commented drily. She turned toward him. “Thanks for the ride, Red. Thanks a lot. It would have been a long walk.”

“No problem.”

He went around and got her suitcase out for her. She walked into the hotel dragging it behind her. Davis thought he’d never seen such poise, and the thought “grace under fire” came unwillingly to his mind. And Cord Romero could turn his back on a woman like that! The man had to be nuts.

Maggie checked in, went up to her room, locked the door, took off her pantsuit and fell into the bed. She put Cord’s handsome face out of her mind firmly and closed her eyes. She was asleep seconds later.

* * *

BACK AT THE ranch, Cord was sipping coffee and going over ledgers on his computer. He’d spent a lot of time away in recent months, and it was tough catching up on business.

He wondered sometimes why he didn’t just sell the ranch and move into an apartment. He was all on his own, and he never planned to marry again. Life would be less complicated if he lived out of a suitcase, as he’d done most of his adult life except during his brief marriage. But he loved his cattle, and the pair of Andalusian horses he’d purchased on his last visit to his cousin in Andalusia, in the south of Spain not too long a drive from the Rock of Gibraltar.

He leaned back and stared blankly at the black type on the computer screen. He couldn’t get Maggie’s eyes out of his thoughts. When she’d first seen him, before he spoke, those green eyes had been alive with concern, with pleasure, with tentative affection, with joy. So soon, they’d faded to dullness and the joy in them had eclipsed into a sadness that was painful to recall, although she’d quickly hidden it.

It didn’t take good eyesight to recognize her unrequited love for him. At some level, he’d known about it for years. He simply ignored it. She’d grown up, become engaged to his best friend, but married someone else, been widowed—her life had been more of thorns than roses. He’d offered her pain in return for those years of fierce loyalty and affection.

When she’d gone out of his life, he’d expected to have peace, finally. But the loneliness had worn him down until he became careless. In the past, it would have taken far more than a simple electronic bomb to damage him.

In past weeks, for reasons he didn’t really understand, she’d avoided him completely. That had hurt. He’d taken a case in Florida, wounded because Maggie didn’t want to see him. He’d let down his guard and had almost been killed, by an old enemy whose livelihood had been threatened by Cord’s investigation of an employment agency with which he was somehow connected. He’d planted a bomb and Cord had walked into a trap because his mind had been on Maggie instead of the job.

At least she’d finally come to see about him! He’d known that Eb was going to get in touch with her. But he’d stopped just short of telling the man to ask her to come and see about him. He’d expected—no, he’d hoped—that she cared enough to come running the minute he got home. But she hadn’t. It had shaken him.

He’d become accustomed to Maggie on the fringes of his life, always laughing, making him laugh, making him feel safe. She was always there, always waiting for him to...

He cursed under his breath and ran an angry hand through his thick, dark hair. Maggie had finally given up on him. She’d decided that he was never going to turn to her with anything more than sarcasm or indifference. She’d removed herself from the periphery of his life and cut him out of hers. That was what had hurt the most. Having her wait days to acknowledge his injury had only added fuel to the fire.

Well, he’d chased her away for the last time and he wasn’t going to sit around counting his regrets. He couldn’t blame her for not caring, when her place in his life had always been a reluctant one, a remote one, barely tolerated, and totally unappreciated. He couldn’t remember a single time when he’d admitted how much it mattered that she was concerned for him. He’d never told her the comfort it gave him when Patricia died, when he was wounded, when he was in trouble, to have her hold his big hand in her small one so tightly and never let go.

She was a rock in hard times. He hadn’t realized how much he counted on her presence for comfort, for security. Now that comfort was removed, perhaps forever, and her absence was like a hole inside him that nothing could ever fill again. He forced his attention back to the computer screen, grateful that he still had his vision, even if he lost everything else. Not that he was going to advertise his recovery. Not yet.

Impulsively he closed down the spreadsheet and logged on to the Internet. He wanted to know where his nemesis was and what illegal activities might have prompted the attack on Cord in Miami. With a smile of pure arrogance, he walked into the back door of a government agency and right into the protected files on one Raoul Gruber, who had connections in the Cote d’Ivoire of Africa, in Madrid, and in Amsterdam....

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER A MOSTLY sleepless night, Cord sat down to breakfast. He’d gone over the latest herd records with June’s father the day before, and he was satisfied with the breeding program and the sales figures. He’d called down to the bunkhouse for Red Davis last night to discuss a problem with some irrigation equipment, since Red had charge of ranch equipment and supplies, but the cowboy who answered the phone said Davis was off on a date, as usual. Cord wondered how a man with such a cocky attitude and such a big mouth could draw so many women. His own social life was stagnant by comparison. But that suited him, he told himself. He had no time for women.

The back door opened just as he finished his last bite of egg and biscuit, and Davis walked in yawning. His hat was pushed far back over his red hair and he was neat as a pin, in blue jeans and a short-sleeved checked shirt. He was twenty-seven, years younger than Cord, but he seemed even younger at times. Cord mused that he’d lived through more than Davis probably ever would. It wasn’t the age, didn’t they say, but the mileage that made people old. If he were a used car, he thought, he’d be in a junkyard.

“I heard you were looking for me last night, boss,” Davis said at once, pulling out a chair to straddle. “Sorry, I had a date.”

“You always have a date,” Cord muttered, sipping coffee.

Davis grinned wickedly. “Have to make hay while the sun shines. One day, I’ll be ancient and decrepit like you.”

Cord’s mouth drew down sardonically. “And I’d just decided to give you a raise!”

“I’d rather have girls hanging out of my truck,” Davis said, but he grinned again.

“Never mind. We’ve got problems with that irrigation system again,” he added. “I want you to get that serviceman out there and tell him I want it fixed this time, repaired with new parts, not held together with duct tape and baling wire.”

“I told him that last time.”

“Then call the customer service people and tell them to send somebody else. The equipment’s still under warranty,” he added. “If they can’t fix it, they shouldn’t sell it. I want it up and running by tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay, boss, I’ll give it my best. But you probably should have a lawyer talk to them about their customer service department. I think they employ robots.”

Cord stifled a grin. “You took computer courses. Reprogram them.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Davis said, chuckling. But he didn’t get up. He stared at his boss, hesitating.

“Something bothering you?” Cord asked bluntly.

Davis traced a pattern on the back of the wooden chair he was straddling. “Yeah. Something. I promised I wouldn’t tell, but I think you should know.”

“Know what?” Cord asked absently as he finished his coffee.

“Miss Barton had a suitcase with her,” he said, noting the sudden attention the older man gave him. “She came straight here from the airport. She was in Morocco. She said it took her three days just to get home. She was dead on her feet.”

Remembering his cold treatment of her, Cord was shocked. “She was in Morocco? What in hell for?” he burst out.

“She said she’d just taken a job overseas. She was having a holiday with a girlfriend on the way. She came rushing back to see about you.” The younger man’s eyes became accusing. “She was walking back to Houston with her suitcase when I drove up beside her. I drove her to town.”

Cord felt the sickness in the pit of his stomach like acid. The expression that washed over his handsome features knocked the outrage right out of Davis’s eyes.

“Where did you take her?” Cord asked in a subdued tone and without meeting the other man’s gaze.

“The Lone Star Hotel downtown,” he replied.

Cord made an awkward movement. “Thanks, Davis,” he said curtly.

“You bet. I’ll get on that irrigation system,” Davis added as he rose.

“Do that.” Cord didn’t even see him go. He was reliving that painful few minutes with Maggie. He hadn’t told her that he was hurt because he’d thought she’d waited to come and see about him. He’d assumed that she’d been in town and reluctant to come around him. But she’d come halfway around the world as fast as she could, just to take care of him. He’d misread the whole situation and sent her packing. Now she’d be wounded and angry, and she’d go away again; maybe somewhere that he couldn’t even find her. That hurt.

He put his head in his hands with a groan. The most painful realization was that she’d taken a job far away. He remembered calling her and going by her apartment without getting an answer in the past two weeks. Now he knew why. She’d left the country. She’d given up trying to get his attention, and he hadn’t even noticed her departure. That must have hurt her. Maggie was proud. She wouldn’t beg for his interest. After all the years of being pushed away by him, she’d decided to cut her losses. If he hadn’t been injured, and Eb Scott hadn’t tracked her down in Morocco and told her about it, he wouldn’t even have known where she was. She’d have been gone for good.

Now that he knew the truth, it didn’t solve the problem. It only complicated things. He wondered if it wouldn’t be kinder to just let her go, let her think he didn’t care about her, let her think that he was involved with June. But he was oddly reluctant to do that. It made him ashamed to think how much she cared, to come all that way, to sacrifice so much, because she was concerned for him.

There was only one thing to do. He had to go and find her, and tell her how badly he’d misjudged her. Then, if she left, at least they wouldn’t part with a sword between them.

* * *

HE HAD ONE of his ranch hands drive him into town, wearing dark glasses to maintain the fiction about his lack of sight. He got Maggie’s room number from the hotel desk, on the pretext of phoning her later. Then he ducked into the elevator, went up to her room, and easily let himself in with skills learned in a dozen covert operations around the world.

She was asleep in a huge double bed, moving restlessly. It was warm in the room, but she was huddled under the covers as if it were winter. He’d never known her to sleep with the sheet off, even in the hottest summer night when the air-conditioning in Mrs. Barton’s house was on the blink. Odd, that he’d never noticed that before...

She looked younger when she slept. He remembered the first time he’d ever seen her, when she was eight. She was clutching a ragged toy bear and she looked as if she’d seen hell and lived to tell about it. She didn’t smile. She hid behind Mrs. Barton’s ample girth and looked at Cord as if he were responsible for the seven deadly sins.

It had taken weeks for her to come near him. She loved Mrs. Barton, but she was uneasy around boys or men. He attributed that to her age. But as she grew older, she began to cling to Cord. He was her source of stability. She anchored herself to him and hid from any sort of social activity. Despite the age difference, she became possessive of him. When he got in trouble at the age of eighteen and was faced with the possibility of going to jail, it was Maggie who sat beside him and held his hand while Mrs. Barton had hysterics and became the voice of doom. Maggie, in her quiet, gentle way, gave him the comfort and strength he needed to face his problems and overcome them.

She’d only been ten years old, but she had a maturity even then that was surprising. She was an introvert by nature, but she seemed to sense that Cord needed someone bright and happy to bring out the best in him. So she developed a sense of humor and picked at Cord and teased him and made him play. Maggie had taught him how to laugh.

He studied her wan, drawn face on the white pillowcase and wondered why he’d always treated her as an outsider. He was alternately hostile and sarcastic, never kind or welcoming. Maggie had done more for him than anyone in his life except their foster parent. Maybe, he pondered, it was because she knew him so well. Despite his spiny outward appearance, Maggie knew him right inside, where he lived. She knew that he had nightmares about the night his parents had died in a hotel fire. She knew that he was haunted by Patricia’s suicide. She knew that when he was being his most sarcastic, he was hiding wounds. He couldn’t hide anything from Maggie.

But she hid her whole life from him. He knew next to nothing about her, really. She’d been a sad, frightened, jumpy child with odd moods and terrors. She’d avoided relationships like the devil, yet she’d married a man she hardly knew, a much-older man, and been married and widowed in weeks. She never spoke of her husband. She was job-oriented and somber as a judge usually. Even a brief engagement to his friend Eb Scott hadn’t really softened her much, long before her marriage to Evans. He’d wondered at the outward distance she seemed to keep from Eb. It hadn’t made sense, until later, when he understood the magnitude of his misconceptions about her.

She looked so fragile, so vulnerable, lying there. Even in sleep, she looked tormented. She looked tired. No wonder. Flying all the way from Morocco without a pause, and then out to his ranch only to be turned away practically at the door. He hadn’t even asked if she had a way back to town. That was harsh. Even for him.

He hesitated for an instant before he reached out and touched her arm through the cotton fabric that concealed it.

* * *

MAGGIE WAS DREAMING. She was walking through a field of wildflowers in the sun. In the distance, a man was laughing, holding out his arms to her—a tall, dark-haired man. She ran toward him, ran as fast as she could, but she never closed the distance. He watched her from afar, like a cat toying with a desperate mouse. Cord, she thought. It was Cord, and he was taunting her as he always had. She could hear his voice, hear it as clearly as if it were in the room with her...

A hand was shaking her, hard. She moaned in protest. She didn’t want to wake up. If she woke up, Cord wouldn’t be there anymore.

“Maggie!” came the deep, insistent voice.

She gasped and opened her eyes. She wasn’t dreaming. Cord was sitting on the edge of her bed, one lean hand beside her head on the pillow supporting his leaning posture.

He studied her face, devoid of makeup, framed by long, wavy dark hair in soft tangles. She was wearing pajamas, a jacket and pants that covered her up completely. It used to puzzle him that Maggie dressed in a luxurious but conventional style to go to work, and she slept in the most unisex clothing she could find. She never wore sexy clothes, even when she’d been a teenager, and she never walked around in her nightclothes, even when she was little and they were living with Mrs. Barton. He wondered why he’d never noticed that before.

She focused on him and her face clenched. “What are you doing here?”

He grimaced. “Field-dressing crow. I’m sure it’ll taste terrible, too.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

He shrugged one powerful shoulder. He didn’t like admitting his faults, but he owed her. “I didn’t know you were in Morocco. I thought you were right here in Houston, and that you’d waited four days to drive out to see about me.”

Her heart ran wild. Cord had never explained anything to her. Over the years, she’d become accustomed to his barbed remarks, his hostility, his sarcasm. He’d never apologized or shown any signs of caring what she thought about him.

Her eyes drank in his strong, handsome face. “Maybe I’m still asleep,” she murmured.

“Pity,” he said, studying her drowsy face with a faint smile. “I don’t apologize very often.”

She watched him. “You didn’t tell Eb you wanted me to come at all, did you?”

He hated to admit that. She looked as cynical as he usually did. But he wasn’t accustomed to lies. “No,” he replied honestly.

She laughed ruefully. “I should have known that.”

“Why were you going to work in Qawi?” he asked abruptly.

“I was in a rut,” she said simply. “I needed a change. I wanted adventure.”

“You lost your job because of me,” he persisted, frowning.

“Big deal! There are jobs everywhere, and I have a good background in investments. I’ll find something. Preferably,” she added teasingly, “in a multinational corporation, so that I can work overseas and never get in your hair again.”

“Why do you want to leave the country?” he asked irritably.

“What is there for me here?” she countered simply. “I’m twenty-six, Cord. If I don’t do something, I’ll dry up and blow away. I don’t want to spend the best years of my life commuting to downtown Houston to play with numbers. I’m not a baby anymore. If I have to work, at least I can choose something in an exotic location. Preferably something adventurous, and exciting,” she said as an afterthought.

He frowned. “Why do you have to work?” he asked suddenly. “Amy left us both a little money. Besides, Bart Evans had an extensive stock portfolio and you were his widow.”

Her face hardened. “I didn’t take one penny of his money. Not property, not stocks, not savings. Nothing!”

That was surprising. “Why not?”

She lowered her eyes to the coverlet and closed them briefly under a wave of pain she didn’t want him to see. “He cost me the most precious thing in my life,” she said in a husky, throbbing tone.

That was an enigmatic statement. He didn’t understand it. “Nobody forced you to marry him,” he pointed out, and with more bitterness than he realized.

That’s what you think, she thought to herself, but she didn’t say it aloud. She crumpled the coverlet under her bright pink fingernails and looked up at him bravely. “I had his estate divided between his two ex-wives.”

He laughed shortly in surprise. “You did what?”

“You heard me,” she remarked with a shrug. She let go of her grip on the bedspread. “I thought they deserved the money more than I did. They lived with him longer than I did. He had no living relatives.”

His dark eyes narrowed. He’d been curious about her marriage for a long time. He’d never mentioned it to her, because she closed up like a clam when her husband’s name came up. She never discussed it. But it had left scars on her emotions that were obvious to anyone with a grain of sensitivity.

“Not a happy marriage, Maggie?” he asked quietly.

“No.” She met his eyes evenly. “And that’s the only thing I’ll ever say about it,” she added firmly. “Digging up the past solves nothing.”

He studied her wan face. “I used to think that way, too. But the past shapes the future. I never got over Patricia’s death.”

“I know.”

She said it in an odd sort of way. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“You aren’t exactly Don Juan these days,” she pointed out.

He bristled with stung pride. It was true that he didn’t have affairs, or spend a lot of time living the life of a playboy, but he didn’t like her knowing it. His dark eyes flashed. “You know nothing about that side of my life,” he said coldly. “And you never will.”

There was a brief, incredulous look on her face, and he could have bitten his tongue. They’d slept together, once, even if it wasn’t a memory she liked. She knew him in a way few women ever had. It was a thoughtless remark.

“On second thought,” he began abruptly.

She held up a hand. “You said it yourself, digging up the past doesn’t solve anything.”

He drew in a long, slow breath. “I hurt you.”

Her face flamed. She wasn’t going to get trapped into that conversation. “Let it go, Cord. It all happened a long time ago. Now I have to get up and start job-hunting. If you don’t mind going out of here so I can get dressed...?”

But he wouldn’t leave it alone. “You’re twenty-six and a widow,” he said shortly, irritated by her embarrassment. “And I know every inch of you. So stop acting coy.”

Her teeth clenched so hard she thought she might chip them. Her eyes were furious. “You have no idea how much I hate the memory of that night,” she said spitefully.

The words stung, as she meant them to. He got to his feet abruptly and noticed how she dragged the covers up to her chin, as if she couldn’t bear him to look at her body at all.

“You must have noticed that I was drunk,” he said curtly. “If I hadn’t been, I’d never have touched you!”

“I drank too much myself,” she shot back. “Or I’d never have let you touch me!”

“Having made ourselves clear on that point,” he added, turning away from her. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

He sounded as if he was about to choke on the words. She noticed that his face was clenched as tightly as her fingers.

“Two apologies in one day,” she said with mock surprise. “Do you have something fatal and you’re trying to win points with God while there’s still time?”

He laughed faintly. “You could be forgiven for thinking so, I suppose.” He turned and looked at her for a long time, as if he needed to reconcile his memory of her with the reality. “You were eight when we came to live with Mrs. Barton. That means you’ve been part of my life for eighteen years.” His eyes grew contemplative. “I’ve given you nothing but hostility, all that time. But the minute I get in trouble or get hurt, you come running. Why?”

“Habit,” she said at once. “And a monstrous appetite for verbal abuse,” she added with a faintly wicked smile.

He burst out laughing, and this time it was genuine. It changed him. It made his eyes sparkle, his face so handsome that it hurt her to see it. He’d been this way with Patricia, his wife, she supposed. Maybe he’d been happy with other women, too, over the years. But he only smiled at Maggie if she teased him. So, through the years, she’d tried to do that. It was one way of getting attention from him, even if the only way.

“You didn’t need to come here and apologize,” she added. “I’m used to having you snarl at me.”

He frowned as he considered that. She spoke as if she expected nothing else. There was so much about her past that he didn’t know, couldn’t know. She volunteered nothing. It was a reminder that she knew far more about him than he knew about her.

“You can come and stay out at the ranch while you look for work,” he said out of the blue.

Her heart skipped, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “No, thanks. I like it where I am.”

He hadn’t expected the refusal. “What’s the matter, scared I’ll lose my temper and throw you out in your nightgown one rainy night?”

She sighed. “It would be in character,” she said with resignation. “You’d make sure it was on a main street, too.”

He grimaced. “I was kidding!”

She looked up. “I wasn’t.”

His jaw clenched. “You don’t know me, Maggie.”

She laughed shortly. She sat up, pushing back the thick waves of her long hair before she leaned forward with her head in her hands, her elbows resting on her drawn-up knees. “My head hurts. I’m not used to traveling so far at one time.”

“You’re jet-lagged,” he said. He knew a lot about overseas travel. He’d done more than his share. “You probably went to sleep the minute you got here. You should have tried to wait until bedtime.”

She gave him a speaking glance. “I had a trying day.”

He sighed and stuck his hands in the pockets of his khaki slacks. “So you did.”

Her eyes lifted to his face, tracing the new cuts and stitches. “It’s a miracle that you didn’t lose your sight,” she said softly.

“It was. And I’m not going to make it public that I haven’t. Note the dark glasses,” he added, indicating them hanging out of one pocket by an earpiece. “I even had one of my boys drive me into town and bring me up on the elevator, just to keep the fiction going.” He didn’t say why. He jingled his car keys in his pocket restlessly. “Watch your back while you’re in town,” he added suddenly. “I’m pretty sure that an old enemy of mine set me up. If I’m right, he’s going to be on my trail pretty soon, to make sure I don’t put him out of business. He wouldn’t stop at attacking anybody close to me.”

“Well, that certainly puts me out of danger,” she said pertly.

He glared at her. “You’re family. If he doesn’t know it, he’ll find it out. You could be in danger. I think he’s involved with people here in Houston.”

“You’ve had plenty of enemies over the years. None of them considered me family, even if you do.”

His gaze was narrow and contemplative. “I don’t know how I think of you,” he said absently. “I’ve never taken time to do an inventory.”

“You could do it between sips of coffee.” She laughed.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said unexpectedly.

She met his eyes, and her whole life was suddenly stark and painful in her face. She couldn’t bear the memories sometimes. He knew nothing about her past. She hoped he would never have to know. She couldn’t imagine why he was being so nice to her. He must have a guilty conscience.

“No need for flattery, Cord,” she said with a faint smile. “I know what you think of me.”

He moved back to the bed and sat down beside her. One lean hand went to her cheek and he turned her face up so that he could see it. He felt the tension in her, the choked breath, the wild heartbeat. Her eyes reflected the helpless response that her body betrayed. That, at least, never changed. She might hate the memory of what he’d done to her—no less than he hated it himself—but she was as hopelessly attracted to him as she’d always been. It comforted him on some level to know that.

“Don’t play with me anymore,” she said tautly, her eyes telling him that she hated the hopeless attraction he could see. It was almost physically painful to have him so near, to see the chiseled line of his wide mouth and remember the feel of it, to know the warm strength of that powerful body so very close.

He read those reactions with textbook accuracy. His proud head lifted. His eyes narrowed. His lean hand spread against her cheek and his thumb suddenly swept hard over her soft lips, dragging a gasp from them.

His other hand caught in her thick hair and he pulled her, lifted her, until she was lying across his body with her head in the crook of his arm.

Her breasts were flattened against his broad, hair-roughened chest over the thin cotton shirt he wore. She looked up at him with helpless desire. He gently smoothed his hand up and down her throat, caressing, tantalizing, while his head bent and his hard lips hovered maddeningly just above her mouth.

“What makes you think I’m playing?” he murmured roughly.

Her nails dug into his shoulder as she hung there, vulnerable, aching for him to bend those scant inches and crush his mouth down hard on her parted lips. She could smell the coffee he’d had for breakfast on his breath. She could smell the clean, spicy scent of his skin. Where his sports shirt was open at the throat, she could see the thick press of curling dark hair that covered his broad, muscular chest. She remembered unwillingly the way it had felt against her bare breasts that one time in their lives when she’d thought he really wanted her. Even the memory of pain and embarrassed shame that came afterward didn’t diminish her reactions to him. They were eternal. He touched her and she melted into him. She belonged to him, just as she had at the age of eight. And he knew it. He’d always known.

Involuntarily her cold fingers went trembling to his cheek, up into the thick darkness of his hair at his temple, where that slight wave gave it definition. He always felt clean to the touch. He always smelled good. She felt safe when she was with him, despite his hostility. He was the first male thing in her young life that had ever given her a feeling of security. He was the only man she’d ever trusted.

He caught her hand and held it tightly while he looked into her wide eyes. Abruptly he dragged her palm to his mouth and kissed it with something like desperation, burying his mouth in it. His eyes closed as he savored the softness of it.

She felt the fever in him, but didn’t understand it. He didn’t want her, not really. He never had. But he looked...tormented, somehow.

He drew her hand back to her cheek and looked at her with passion. “I hurt you every time I touch you,” he whispered harshly. “Don’t you think I know it?”

She couldn’t drag her eyes away from his. “You have nothing to give me. I know. I’ve always known.” She laughed painfully. “It doesn’t seem to matter.”

He drew her close and held her, his arms strong around her, his mouth against her hair. He took a deep breath and felt all the anger and misery of the past few years drain out of him. He laid his cheek against her dark, soft hair and closed his eyes. It was like coming home.

She held him, too, drinking in the clean, spicy scent of his muscular body as she tried valiantly to ignore the fever of passion his touch kindled. It gave her comfort, as it did him. He wasn’t an emotional person. He kept his deepest feelings hidden carefully inside. Maggie knew all about that, because she did the same thing. If people could get close to you, they could hurt you. It was a lesson Maggie and Cord had learned early in their lives. It had made them cautious about involvement.

His hand brushed the length of her hair and he smiled lazily. “I love long hair,” he murmured.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He knew she kept it long because of him.

“We’re poison to each other. Maybe,” he began slowly, “it would be for the best if you did start over somewhere else, somewhere...far away.”

“Better for me, certainly,” she murmured huskily. Her fingers caressed his hair at the temple. “But who would take care of you if I did?” she added, her voice teasing to disguise her hunger for him.

His indrawn breath was audible, and his arms loosened, freeing her abruptly. “I don’t need taking care of!” he said shortly.

The truce was over. Just that quickly. She smiled sadly as she watched him get to his feet and move away from the bed. “Don’t pop any blood vessels over a figure of speech,” she chided. She searched his hard face quietly, savoring its nooks and crannies. Soon, she thought, it would be out of her sight forever.

“I’m through with what passes for love,” he said with cold sarcasm. “Just in case you start seeing me as a long-range project.”

“Does June know?” she asked wickedly.

He glared at her. “June is none of your business!”

Her eyebrows arched. “Excuse me! We can just forget that I barged into your hotel room and started making passionate advances toward you!” she added facetiously.

His eyes were smoldering now. “I’m leaving.”

“I noticed,” she agreed.

He got as far as the bedroom door, and then he remembered Gruber. He’d almost lost his eyes, if not his life, to the man’s vengeance. Maggie was alone and vulnerable, and Gruber had contacts here.

“I still want you out at the ranch,” he said curtly.

“Save your breath,” she said pleasantly. “I’m not going.”

“If anything should happen to you...” he began tightly, and was amazed at the fear that clenched his heart. If anything happened to her, he’d be alone in the world. He’d have no one at all.

“My, my, wouldn’t that uncomplicate your life?” she inserted pertly.

“That isn’t true,” he snapped.

“Yes, it is,” she replied. “You just don’t like admitting it. I can call the police anytime I need help, they said so on television just last night. Meanwhile, I’ll find a job as quickly as I can and light a fire out of Houston.” She smiled deliberately. “Won’t that give you a whole new lease on life? I won’t even ask you to send me a Christmas card!”

He started to speak, and he couldn’t. He just glared.

She struck a seductive pose, knowing it would infuriate him. There was no danger in enticing Cord, he was impervious. She tugged the pajama top lightly away from her long neck. “Want to ravish me before you go?” she offered with mischievous eyes. “I can call room service and get them to send up an emergency condom,” she added, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“Damn you!” he bit off furiously. He turned abruptly and slammed out of the door without a backward glance.

Maggie watched him go with sparkling eyes. She could always throw him off balance like that, from their earliest acquaintance. It made her proud, because even his precious Patricia had never been able to do that. It was the one weapon in her arsenal, and a great pride-saver. It was all bluff, of course. She tingled from head to toe just thinking about how it might have been if he’d taken her up on it.

CHAPTER THREE

CORD’S VISIT UNSETTLED Maggie. It was several minutes before she could get herself together enough to shower and dress and go downstairs for breakfast. She had a light meal and looked up the addresses of several employment agencies in the phone book. Then she started making the rounds.

She’d just come out of the third office on her list, with no results, when she walked straight into a tall brunette she hadn’t noticed rounding a nearby corner.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Maggie exclaimed, steadying the taller woman. “I wasn’t even looking where I was...” She hesitated. The other woman was familiar. “You’re Kit Deverell!” she exclaimed, smiling broadly. “I met you and your husband at an investment seminar year before last. We’ve seen each other at several seminars since. I’m Maggie Barton.”

Kit Deverell’s eyes lit up with recognition. “Of course! You’re Cord’s foster sister.”

Maggie’s face closed up at once, defensively.

Kit grimaced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have blurted that out. You see, my boss is Dane Lassiter, who founded the Lassiter Detective Agency here in town. He met Cord some years ago after he started the detective agency—one of his operatives was a rookie when Cord was, and knew him!”

“Yes. I’ve...heard Cord mention him once or twice, at odd times when we were speaking to each other,” she added with a grin.

“You don’t get along well, do you?” Kit asked sympathetically. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Cord. What are you doing at an employment agency, for heaven’s sake?” she added. “You’re vice president at Kemp’s Investment Agency, aren’t you?”

Maggie nodded. “I was. I gave it up to take a job in Qawi. But it didn’t pan out,” she summarized, avoiding the reason. “Now I’m out of work.”

“But Logan’s got an opening in his investment firm,” Kit continued, chuckling. “Isn’t that fate at work? Really, his partner quit and went to work over in Victoria. He’s pulling out his hair trying to manage all the accounts by himself. Please come and interview,” she added, tugging at Maggie’s arm. “He’s got me doing stock research in my spare time, and I hate it! I work for Lassiter as a skip tracer, you see. I had to fight Logan, but it’s not dangerous work and we have a really good babysitter for our son, Bryce. Logan’s brother’s wife, Della, is pregnant and unable to work because of complications. You’d be saving my life if you could take some of the strain off. Would you? Please?”

Maggie laughed with pure delight. “If there’s a job going, I’d love to interview. Actually I sort of had in mind a position that would get me out of the country. But perhaps I can take the job temporarily, while your husband looks for someone permanent and I look for something international...”

“That would work,” Kit said with a grin. “Come on!”

* * *

MAGGIE WENT TO interview. Logan Deverell was a huge man with dark hair, not overweight, but tall and muscular. He obviously doted on his wife, and vice versa.

“You’re the answer to a prayer,” he said after they shook hands and the three of them were seated in Logan’s spacious office, his long oak desk covered with photos of Kit and a mischievous-looking little boy of about two years of age. “Tom Walker and I were partners, until he moved to Jacobsville. Then I took on another partner. He married several months ago, but he just quit and moved to Victoria, where his wife has family. She’s expecting their first child. So here I am, empty-handed and up to my neck in clients.”

Maggie chuckled. “I’m glad I happened along, then. I gave up a lucrative position to rush back here, because I heard that Cord was blinded.” She sighed and smiled self-consciously. “I had hoped to find something permanent overseas.”

“We’ll keep our ears open,” Logan promised, “if you’re serious. But meantime, how about signing on with me? You can even have your own office,” he added with a chuckle. “We acquired the suite next door. Lassiter and his people have the whole third floor. We went in together and bought the building. What we don’t use ourselves, we rent out. It pays for itself.”

“And,” Maggie pointed out, “it’s a good investment.”

He laughed out loud. “So it is.”

He outlined her duties, and her salary, and she was delighted to take the job on a temporary basis. She still wanted to get out of Houston. Living near Cord was painful now that she’d decided to burn her bridges. She’d spent enough of her life aching for a man who didn’t care about her.

Although, just for a few seconds in her hotel bedroom, his eyes had burned with desire. He’d wanted her. But that had never been enough for Maggie. She wanted his love. Just as she knew that she’d never have it. She could close her eyes and taste his breath on her mouth, feel the strength of his arms warm and comforting around her. If only she could have that, just for herself, for the rest of her life. It would have been worth more than the most luxurious lifestyle imaginable.

Presumably Cord wanted to live and die alone. Maggie didn’t. Perhaps she might even meet a man she could settle for. She might actually get over Cord. Anything was possible. Even with her past.

* * *

SHE STARTED WORK at Deverell’s the next morning. It was complicated business, but she liked his spin on stocks and bonds, and she liked the mutual funds he recommended. He had a state-of-the-art computer system and an expert who did nothing but scan the Internet for stock prices and update information. Logan was honest, straightforward, and he didn’t pretend that he knew everything. He had a built-in sense of diplomacy that Kit told her privately was a hoot—Logan had a temper and he wasn’t shy about showing it. He was only diplomatic when it suited him.

Her fifth day on the job, she and Kit went out to lunch together with Dane Lassiter’s wife, Tess. Dane and Tess had a little boy and a little girl, and Tess seemed to regard both children as miracles. Later, Kit told her that Dane had been convinced that he couldn’t have a child. Tess had loved him helplessly, obsessively, for years. It had taken an unexpected pregnancy and a near-tragedy to convince Dane that love was worth taking a chance on. Despite their stormy beginnings, the Lassiters were quite an item around town. It was rare to see one without the other, and they usually traveled as a family unit off the job.

Maggie got to meet Dane Lassiter that same day. The former Texas Ranger was tall and dark, not really a handsome man, but with an authority and self-confidence that were striking. There was just enough arrogance with it to make him attractive. He’d started out with the Houston Police, where he still had contacts and from which he’d garnered his first operatives when he opened the detective agency. One of his men and Cord had been police officers together in Houston.

When they got back to Logan’s offices, Kit told Maggie that the Lassiters were working on a very hot and dangerous assignment—trying to shut down an international agency that was really a smuggler of human cargo. They didn’t stop with illegal immigrants in the United States, either. The agency dealt in child slave labor in west Africa and South America, procuring young children to work in mines and on huge farms and ranches. They even dabbled in child pornography, with a branch office in Amsterdam. They literally sold children to a shady global corporation through the agency. Rumor had it that Raoul Gruber was the chief executive officer of the corporation—but it had been impossible to link him to it.

“Children being bought and sold like animals? You have got to be kidding!” Maggie exclaimed. “This is the twenty-first century!”

“I know,” Kit said sadly. “But some horrible things happen in the world. While the news media harps on the latest political sex scandal, little children no older than six and seven are being peddled like raw meat. They’re forced to work down mine shafts, in agricultural fields, on cattle ranches, doing dangerous work sometimes twelve and fourteen hours a day. There are no child labor laws in these rural places, and the children are considered expendable.”

Maggie felt homicidal. “It’s barbaric,” she said with husky fury.

“I agree. That’s why I’m so glad Dane took the case. He’s coordinating with a whole shipload of federal agencies, including the INS, the NEA, Customs, the State Department and Interpol. The case has ties everywhere in the country, with a corporate network of field offices in several states.” She hesitated. “One of them is in Miami,” she added. “And Dane said that Cord’s accident wasn’t an accident at all. The man who’s involved with the slave trafficking is an old enemy of Cord’s who’s newly linked to this labor operation. Cord knows things about him that he doesn’t want uncovered.”

Maggie’s heart jumped. “Cord mentioned that I should watch my back,” she said slowly. “He said an old enemy might even target me, but I didn’t think much about it at the time.”

“You’d better,” Kit said. “You might tell Cord what we’re investigating,” she added. “Dane and his operatives will help keep an eye on you, just as they’re watching me. If we can get enough evidence on this rat, we can put him away forever. But it’s going to take time and patience. And a lot of caution.”

“I won’t see Cord to tell him anything,” she replied in a subdued tone. “We aren’t speaking right now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you with the case?” Maggie asked. “My life is so dull and boring that even surveillance would be exciting right now.”

The other woman laughed. “You wouldn’t think so, if you’d ever had to do it. But I’ll keep you in mind.” She checked her watch. “Oops. Got to run or I’ll be late for work. If I don’t see you before you get off, have a nice weekend. Logan’s very pleased with you. I guess you know that, though.”

Maggie smiled. “I’m glad to hear it. I like my job a lot. I’m sorry I won’t be permanent.”

“That makes three of us,” Kit said, and meant it.

* * *

WHEN MAGGIE GOT to her hotel, there was a message waiting for her to phone Cord. She hesitated about doing it. She wasn’t up to any more angry encounters with him. But she was still worried about him, now more than ever, since he’d told her about his old enemy deliberately targeting him. He could be in great danger. She couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to him. She was nervous about returning his phone call but she couldn’t really resist it. He must have gotten over his anger at her.

She phoned the ranch. A man answered and a couple of minutes later, Cord came on the line.

“You left me a message to call you,” she said formally.

He hesitated uncharacteristically. “Come out here for supper tonight,” he replied.

The eyes he couldn’t see, twinkled. She was surprised at his words. “Is that an invitation, or a royal command?”

He chuckled. “It’s an invitation. We’re having cherry pie for dessert,” he added.

She sighed. “Hit me in my weak spot, why don’t you?”

“I just did. Can’t resist it, can you?”

She was tired and hungry but she did want to see him, so badly. “Okay. I’ll get a cab out...”

“The hell you will. I’ll drive in and get you. Fifteen minutes.”

He hung up before she could argue any further.

* * *

SHE GOT OUT of her business suit and put on jeans and a neat short-sleeved red-and-white-striped shirt with a gray vest. It wasn’t couture, but it looked good on her, outlining her slender body in a nice way.

She left her hair long, for Cord, and picked up a light sweater in case it got cool later in the evening. There was a cold front on the way and Texas could be cool in the evenings, even in spring.

While she waited for Cord, she thought about what Kit had told her, about Gruber and his interests, especially the remark about child pornography. She hated the very thought of children being exploited sexually. She hated people who would use innocence in such a way, only for profit. It made her furious out of all proportion.

Cord knocked on her door exactly fifteen minutes later. She went out to meet him and locked the door behind her.

He was in beige slacks and a sports shirt with a beige-and-brown patterned sports coat. He looked trendy and very handsome.

“I’m glad you didn’t dress up,” he said as they entered the elevator. He pushed the ground floor button and turned to study her in the deserted elevator. “We’re just having chili and Mexican corn bread.”

“And cherry pie.” She wanted to make sure he didn’t forget.

He held her eyes and smiled slowly. “Amy always made one for your birthday, from scratch,” he recalled. “It was one of the few times you really smiled. Amy said she didn’t think you’d ever had a real birthday party in your whole young life.”

“I hadn’t.” She clutched her purse and sweater close to her chest, and her eyes reflected the old sadness. “When my father died, all the laughter went out of my life. Then Mama let pneumonia take her out only two years later.”

He scowled. This was news. “When you were eight,” he guessed.

She lifted her face. “Why...no. When I was six.”

“Then where did you go until Amy fostered you? Did you have grandparents?”

She shivered. “A stepfather.” Her voice was low and soft and full of pain.

He started to ask another question when the elevator stopped. She got off ahead of him and headed toward the front, where the car was parked. He knew he wasn’t being tailed, so he wasn’t being cautious.

He followed along behind her. A stepfather. She’d apparently lived with him for two years before she’d come to Amy Barton’s house. He was full of questions, but she’d closed up like a flower. It didn’t take a mind reader to know that she wasn’t going to answer any more questions right now. Her sharp glance told him so.

“How’s the job hunt going?” he asked as they reached the expensive black sports car he drove.

“I’m working already,” she said. “Logan Deverell hired me to work for his investment firm, just temporarily. His wife, Kit, works for the Lassiter Detective Agency, in the same building. They say you know Dane.”

“I do,” he replied abruptly. He opened her door and helped her inside, before he went around and climbed in under the wheel.

But he didn’t start the car immediately. He put an arm across the back of her seat and looked at her. “Lassiter deals in dangerous cases,” he pointed out. “I don’t like the idea of your working so close to him.”

“You don’t imagine that I care what you like?” she replied with a pleasant smile.

His jaw tautened as he stared at her, his thick eyebrows drawn together at the bridge of his nose. “I’m serious. Lassiter and his wife were involved in a shoot-out not too many years ago, right in his office. It’s well-known that he takes on cases other detectives won’t touch.”

“I’m going to be in the same building with him, not in his office,” she pointed out. “I do investment counseling, not detective work. Although, a change of careers is pretty tempting right now,” she added to irritate him.

He was overreacting. He knew it, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Maggie’s abrupt departure from the country had shaken him more than he’d realized at first. The thought of never seeing her again was unsettling. Involuntarily he reached out a lean hand and caught a strand of her long, dark hair between his fingers, testing its silkiness.

“Just being in Houston right now is dangerous for you,” he said quietly. “You’re walking into something I can’t even tell you about.”

Which she knew already, thanks to Kit. She didn’t let on.

“I’m twenty-six,” she pointed out, trying not to react to the feel of those sensuous fingers in her hair.

His eyes flashed up to meet hers. They were stormy, intimidating, full of secrets. “In some ways, you’re unbelievably naive,” he countered. “The world is a bad place. You’ve never seen how dark it can be.”

She laughed without humor. “Do you think so?” she murmured with a strange look in her eyes.

He didn’t understand her response to the statement. Maggie kept secrets. He wondered just how terrible they were. The two of them had never been confidants, because he wouldn’t let her near him emotionally. He’d pushed her away, kept her at bay, all the long, lonely years. For the first time, he regretted it. Maggie had been the one person in the world who really cared about him. Because he was afraid of loss, he resisted close contact. But soon she could be half a world away, and there would never be another human being who shared his memories, his pain, his loneliness.

“You look sad,” she remarked involuntarily.

He grimaced. “You’re the only other person alive who remembers our time with Amy,” he said slowly, “my brush with the law, Patricia’s suicide, Amy’s illness and death.”

“All the bad memories,” she remarked.

“No!” He met her eyes. “There were other things. Picnics. Birthday parties. The time she brought home a model train set for Christmas—one we knew she had to have made sacrifices to buy because she didn’t have much of her fortune left by then—and the shock on her face when you loved it as much as I did. We spent hours lying on the rug in the dark, watching the lighted train go around.”

She smiled with memory. “Yes. And I helped you make the little scale buildings that went with it. You were out of school and in college then, just before you dropped out and went with the Houston Police. Amy was devastated. So was I,” she added, dropping her eyes.

“You both thought I’d end up in a coffin after my first week,” he scoffed.

“We should have known better. You were always thorough and methodical.”

His eyes narrowed. “Except once. The night Amy died.”

She jerked back away from him, her scalp stinging as he was forced to let go of her hair or risk hurting her more. She massaged the hurt place with her fingers, avoiding his eyes. “That was a long time ago.”

“Did you ever sleep with your husband?” he asked unexpectedly.

She actually gasped. The question was so blunt that she couldn’t believe what he’d just asked.

He studied her shocked face, rigid with distaste, for a long moment. “I didn’t think so,” he said after a minute. “His second wife in the divorce decree accused him of being impotent and abusive. He pretended to be an invalid, but there wasn’t anything much wrong with him. Except extreme alcoholism, and a violent temper.”

Maggie knew her face was white. “How...?”

“I went down to the courthouse and researched him,” he said. His expression grew hard. “He had a history of arrests for drunkenness and at least two for domestic abuse. Did you know that when you married him?”

Her jaw clenched, but her lips were trembling. She averted her gaze to the windshield. Memories flooded her mind, sickening memories. “Please, don’t,” she choked.

“Did he hit you, Maggie?” he demanded.

Her hand reached for the door handle automatically. She was halfway out when he pulled her gently back inside and closed the door again. The position he was in, his body close to hers, his chest at an angle above her, made her tremble.

He looked down into her wide eyes at such proximity that she could see the black rims around his very dark brown corneas. She could see the thick, straight, short lashes on his eyelids. She could smell the coffee on his breath and the clean scent of his body and clothes.

“I never understood why you married him,” he continued, his eyes narrowing as they searched hers. “You had nothing in common and he was twenty years your senior. It was quick, too—less than a month after Amy’s death, and one of your coworkers said you barely knew him. Everybody thought it was for his money. He was rich.”

“I can’t...I won’t...talk about him,” she choked. “Cord, please...!”

He felt her hand pushing against his chest, but he ignored it. “You said he cost you something precious. What?”

Her gaze fell to his wide, hard mouth, to the chiseled look of it with perfect white teeth barely visible in its parting. She remembered the feel of it on hers. Even the memory of pain and embarrassment didn’t ease the hunger for it. She wondered if he knew?

He did. He felt the quick rush of her breath at his mouth. He could see the hammer of her pulse at the collar of her shirt. He could feel the coldness of her perfectly manicured fingers through his shirt. She wanted him. That, at least, had never ebbed.

His fingers went to her chin and traced the skin next to her lips. “And here we are again,” he whispered. He bent, his mouth poised above her parted lips. He hung there, his fingers maddening on the corner of her mouth, on her lower lip, where they touched in sensuous little tracings.

She moaned helplessly. She bit the sound off almost as it exited her throat, but she knew he heard it.

His nose brushed against hers as he felt the softness of her lips under his fingertips. She was still perfect to him, the most perfect woman he’d ever known, physically, mentally, emotionally. He couldn’t get within two feet of her without having her draw him like a magnet. He was helpless. He hated it.

“Cord,” she groaned, stretching up toward him, enticing his mouth. Her fingers went into the thick hair above his ears and dug into his scalp, pleading for more than the sensual torture he was offering her. The clean, spicy scent of him was in her nostrils, the soft warm whip of his breath teasing her parted lips. She ached to have that hard mouth crush down on hers and drive her mad with pleasure!

He moved closer. His chest pressed down against hers involuntarily. He could feel her full breasts against him, feel the hard tips biting into his chest even through two layers of fabric. Her mouth taunted his, followed it, lifted to tempt it into coming closer. He drank in the fragrance of roses that clung to her and felt himself caving in. He needed to hold her. He needed to kiss her. He couldn’t help it. He had to...!

The sudden opening of car doors close by jerked him back from Maggie. He saw three men getting out of a sedan a few parking spaces away, giving them amused looks.

He got back under the steering wheel without looking at her again. He started the car and put it into gear, ignoring the glances of the three men on their way toward the hotel.

Maggie’s hands were shaking. She wanted to scream and throw things. This was the second time she’d let him torment her physically. And had she fought, protested, dragged herself away, dared him to touch her? Of course not. She’d melted into him the minute he touched her. Great self-control, girl, she told herself with silent contempt. Really great!

He didn’t look at her until they were out of town on the road that led to his ranch. She was more composed now, but she still looked devastated. He couldn’t blame her. He felt the same way. He didn’t want to be attracted to her, but he was. He always had been. But the older he got, the more uncontrollable it was.

“Don’t beat yourself to death over it,” he said carelessly. “Maybe we’ve both spent too much time alone lately.”

“June will be shocked to hear that!”

He chuckled at the sting in her tone. He gave her a wry glance. “She’s dating a corporal with the police department,” he drawled. “Her father likes him, but he thinks she’s too young to marry. She doesn’t agree.”

She raised both eyebrows. She didn’t say a word.

He grimaced. “I was furious because you waited four days to come and see me, to see if the blindness was permanent,” he said.

It wasn’t much of an explanation, but she understood. June was a cutting tool he’d used on her heart. He wasn’t certain that she was jealous of him, but he thought she’d be hurt if he threw another woman in her face. She was. It was chilling that he knew her that well. On the other hand, he’d admitted that she could hurt him, as well. It was a milestone in their stormy relationship.

He glanced at her as he turned down the long driveway with painted white fences on both sides.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” he mused. “I never have to explain anything to you.”

“That works both ways.” She turned her eyes toward the old fighting bull in the pasture on her side of the car. “Maybe it’s some sort of mental shorthand.”

“Maybe it’s ESP,” he murmured dryly.

“Someday we’ll have to find out if it works across oceans,” she replied smartly.

That stung. She probably knew it. “Why do you have to leave the country?” he asked quietly.

“I told you. I’m twenty-six. I want to do something adventurous while I can do it without leaning on a cane.”

“Adventure isn’t what it’s cut out to be,” he told her.

“Davy Crockett wouldn’t agree with you,” she informed him. “Neither would Jim Bowie, or George Custer, or Crazy Horse or Pancho Villa or Genghis Khan.”

He pursed his lips. “You certainly covered all walks of life with that group.”

She chuckled.

“Why don’t you move out here with me?” he asked out of the blue. “You can learn the cattle business. We could play with the train sets in our spare time. I’ve got a whole room dedicated to them, complete with buildings and tunnels, mountains and even running water for trestles to go over.”

She turned her purse in her hands and hated the invitation. He was inviting his foster sister to move in. Nothing more.

He pulled up in the driveway that circled at the front door and cut off the engine. He turned to her with narrowed eyes. “You want me,” he said bluntly. “I know it. I want you. You know that, too. But nothing will ever come of it unless you want it to. I made a vicious mistake with you once because I was out of my mind with grief and alcohol. I never make the same mistake twice. You’ll be safe here.”

“That’s an interesting choice of words,” she replied slowly. “Safe from your old enemy, you mean.”

His chin lifted. “From him, and from me, Maggie,” he replied. “I won’t make you afraid of me. Not in any way.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve been afraid of you for years, in between attacks of helpless attraction,” she said matter-of-factly. “There has to be a cure somewhere. If I go far enough, maybe I can find it.”

It was a confession, of sorts. He rested one arm over the steering wheel and studied her sadly. “All we have left,” he said softly, “is each other.”

Her eyes flew to his. She was pale, confused, uneasy. She frowned. “Don’t do that,” she said irritably. “Don’t make it sound like you need me. You never have and you never will. I’m a memory adjunct. That’s all I’ll ever be.”

“Our lives are intertwined. You can’t break an eighteen-year bond just like that,” he pointed out. “Some marriages don’t last a fraction that long.”

The word froze her. She averted her face.

“It wasn’t an insult,” he said at once, misunderstanding her reaction. “Your husband wasn’t good to you. You had every reason not to want to remember him.”

“I have more reason than you’ll ever know,” she said without meeting his speculative gaze. “Happy marriages are a fairy tale.”

“Dane Lassiter wouldn’t agree with you,” he mused. “Neither would your friend Kit.”

She shrugged. “They got lucky.”

“You don’t think you could?”

She rubbed at a spot on her purse. “I don’t ever want to marry again.”

He hesitated. “Maggie, don’t you want children someday?”

The question sent her gaze flying up to meet his. The pain, the anguish, the haunted look in them shocked him.

She opened the door and got out.

He followed, determined to find out why she looked that way, when Red Davis sped up the driveway and stopped even with Cord.

“The irrigation equipment’s up and running like a track star, boss,” he called with a grin. “And they promised to replace any part that misfires again!”

“Good work.”

“Thanks! How are you doing, Maggie?” he called to her with a big grin.

Cord’s eyes flashed. “I don’t pay you to flirt with my foster sister,” he shot at the younger man, and he wasn’t teasing.

Davis saw that. He cut his losses, waved and shot off again down the ranch road.

Cord’s attitude puzzled Maggie. It was oddly like jealousy. But that was an outlandish assumption. It would take a miracle to get Cord jealous of her.

He led the way through the living room, where she left her purse, and into the dining room. Four places were set at the table, and an older white-haired man was occupying one of them while June put dishes of food on it.

“Hi!” she called to Maggie. “I hope you like chili and Mexican corn bread.”

“Love them. And there’s supposed to be a cherry pie?” she added hopefully.

June grinned, with a glance at Cord. “Oh, I heard somebody had a passion for it. I’m famous for my cherry pie. You can even have vanilla ice cream on it, if you like. It’s homemade, too,” she added.

Maggie smiled at her. “I think I’ve died and gone to heaven!”

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