Mercenary's Woman ; Outlawed!

by Diana Palmer

  Eb noticed the reticence, but didn’t understand its purpose. He could hardly take his eyes off her tonight. His green eyes kept returning to linger on her pretty black cocktail dress under the long red-lined black velvet coat she wore with it. Her hair was in a neat chignon at her nape, and she looked lovely.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sally asked him. “I know Dallas will take care of Jess and Stevie, but it seems risky to go out at night with Lopez and his men around.”

  “He’s a vicious devil,” he replied, “but he is absolutely predictable. He’ll give Jessica until exactly midnight Saturday. He won’t do one thing until the deadline. At one minute past midnight,” he added curtly, “there will be an assault.”

  Sally wrapped her arms closer around her body. “How do we end up with people like that in the world?”

  “We forget that all lives are interconnected in some way, and that selfishness and greed are not desirable traits.”

  “What good will it do Lopez to kill Jessica and us?” she asked curiously. “I know he’s angry at her, but if she’s dead, she can’t tell him anything!”

  “He’s going to be setting an example,” he said. “Of course, he probably thinks she’ll give up the name to save her child.” He glanced at Sally. “Would you?”

  “I wouldn’t have a hard time choosing between my child and someone who’s already turned against his own people,” she admitted.

  “Jessica says there are extenuating circumstances,” he told her.

  She stared at her fingers. “I know. She won’t even tell me who the person was.” She glanced at him. “She’s probably covering all her bases. If I knew who it was...”

  He made a sound deep in his throat. “You’d turn the person over to Lopez?”

  She shifted restlessly. “I might.”

  “Cows might fly.”

  He knew her too well. She laughed softly. “I wish there was another way out of this, that’s all. I don’t want Stevie hurt.”

  “He won’t be.” He reached across to clasp her cool hand gently in hers and press it. “I’m putting together a network. Lopez isn’t going to be able to move without being in someone’s line of sight from now on.”

  “I wish...” she began.

  “Don’t wish your life away. You have to take the bad with the good—that’s what life is. Good times don’t make us strong.”

  She grimaced. “No. I guess they don’t.” She leaned her head back against the headrest and drank in the smell of the leather. “I love the way new cars smell,” she said conversationally. “And this one is just super.”

  “It has a few minor modifications,” he said absently.

  She turned her head toward him with a wicked grin. “Don’t tell me—the headlights retract and become machine gun ports, the tailpipe leaves oil slicks, and the passenger seat is really an ejectable projectile!”

  He laughed. “Not quite.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  “You need to stop watching old James Bond movies,” he pointed out. “The world has changed since the sixties.”

  Her eyes studied his profile quietly. He was still handsome well into his thirties, and he glorified evening clothes. She knew that she couldn’t look forward to anything permanent with him, but sometimes just looking at him was almost enough. He was devastating.

  He caught that scrutiny and glanced at her, enjoying the shy admiration in her gray eyes. “Can you dance?” he asked.

  “I’m not in the class with Matt Caldwell on a dance floor,” she teased, “but I can hold my own, I suppose. Are we going dancing?”

  “We’re going to a supper club where they have an orchestra and a dance floor,” he said. “A sophisticated place with a few carefully placed friends of mine.”

  “I should have known.”

  “You’ll like it,” he promised. “You’ll never spot them. They blend in.”

  “You don’t blend,” she murmured dryly.

  He chuckled. “If that’s a compliment, thank you,” he said.

  “It was.”

  “You won’t blend, either,” he said in a low, soft tone.

  She clutched her small bag tightly in her lap, feeling the softness right through her body. It made her giddy to think of being held in his arms on a dance floor. It was something she’d dreamed about in her senior year of high school, but it had never happened. As if it would have. She couldn’t really picture Eb at a high school prom.

  “You’re sure Jess and Stevie will be okay?” she asked as he pulled off the main highway and onto a Houston city street.

  “I’m sure. Dallas is inside and I have a few people outside. But I meant what I said,” he added solemnly. “Lopez won’t do a thing until midnight tomorrow.”

  She supposed that was a sort of knowledge of the enemy that came from long experience in a dangerous profession. But she couldn’t help worrying about her family. If anything happened while she was away, she’d never forgive herself.

  * * *

  THE CLUB WAS just off a main thoroughfare, and so discreet that it wouldn’t have drawn attention to itself. The luxury cars in the parking lot were an intimation of what was inside.

  Inside, the sounds of music came from a room off the main hallway. There was a bar and a small coffee shop, apart from the restaurant. Inside, an employee in a dinner jacket led them into the restaurant, which ringed a central dance floor, where a small jazz ensemble played lazy blues tunes for several couples who were dancing.

  “This is really spectacular,” she told Eb when they were seated near a small indoor waterfall with tropical plants blooming around it.

  “It is, isn’t it?” he asked, leaning back to study her with a warm smile. “I have to admit, it’s one of my favorite haunts when I’m in Houston.”

  “I can see why.” She searched his eyes in a long, tense silence.

  He didn’t smile. His eyes narrowed as they locked into hers. She could almost hear her own heart beating, beating, beating...!

  “Why, Eb!” came a soft voice from behind Sally. “What a coincidence to find you here, at one of our favorite night spots.”

  Without another word being spoken, Sally knew the identity of the newcomer. It couldn’t be anyone except Eb’s ex-fiancée.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “HELLO, MAGGIE,” EB SAID, standing up to greet the pretty green-eyed brunette who took possession of his arm and smiled up at him.

  “It’s good to see you again so soon!” she said with obvious pleasure. “You remember Cord Romero, don’t you?” She indicated a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed man beside her without meeting his eyes. “He and I were fostered together by Mrs. Amy Barton, the Houston socialite.”

  “Sure. How are you, Cord?” Eb asked.

  The other man, his equal in height and build, nodded. Sally was curious about Maggie’s obvious uneasiness around the other man.

  “Sally, this is Maggie Barton and Cord Romero. Sally Johnson.” They all acknowledged the introductions, and Eb added, “Won’t you join us?”

  Sally’s heart plummeted as she saw Maggie’s eyes light up at the invitation and knew she wouldn’t refuse.

  “We may be intruding,” Cord said with a pointed look at Sally.

  “Oh, not at all,” Sally said at once.

  “I thought Sally needed a night out,” Eb said easily and with a warm smile in Sally’s direction. “She’s an elementary schoolteacher.”

  The man, Cord, studied her with open curiosity while Eb seated Maggie.

  “Allow me,” Cord said smoothly, standing behind Sally’s chair.

  Sally smiled at the old-world courtesy. “Thank you.”

  Eb glanced at them with unreadable eyes before he turned back to Maggie, who was flushed and avoided looking at the other couple. “Quite a coincidence, running into you here,” he said in a neutral t
one.

  “It was Cord’s idea,” Maggie said. “He felt like a night on the town and he doesn’t date these days. Better your foster sister than nobody, right, Cord?” she added with a nervous laugh and a smile that didn’t touch her eyes.

  Cord shrugged broad shoulders indolently and didn’t say a word, but his distaste for her reference was there, in those unblinking dark eyes.

  Sally was curious about him. She wondered what he did for a living. He was very fit for a man his age, which she judged to be about the same as Eb’s. His hands were rough and callused, as if he worked physically rather than sat behind a desk. He had the same odd stare that she’d noticed in Eb and Dallas and even Cy Parks, a probing but unfocused distant stare that held a strange hollowness.

  “How are things going at the ranch?” Maggie asked gently. “I heard that you had Dallas out there with you.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “He’s doing some consulting work for me.”

  “Shot to pieces, wasn’t he?” Cord asked abruptly, his eyes on Sally’s face.

  “That happens when a man doesn’t keep his mind on his work,” Eb said with a pointed glance at Cord, who averted his eyes.

  “One of my friends is hosting a huge party down in Cancún for Christmas,” Maggie murmured, drawing a lazy polished nail across the back of Eb’s hand. “Why don’t you take some time off and go with me?”

  “No time,” Eb said with a smile to soften the words. “I’m not a man of leisure.”

  “Baloney,” she replied. “You could retire on what you’ve got squirreled away.”

  “And do what?” came the dry response. “Do I look like a lounge lizard to you?”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said, and her eyes searched his face for a long moment. “I meant that you could give up walking into danger if you wanted to.”

  “That’s an old argument and you know what the answer is,” Eb told her bluntly.

  She withdrew her hand from his with a sad little sigh. “Yes, I know,” she said wearily. “It’s in your blood and you can’t stop.” Involuntarily she glanced at Cord.

  Eb frowned a little as he watched her wilt. Sally saw it and knew at once that he and Maggie had gone through that very argument years ago when she’d broken their engagement. It wasn’t their emotions that had split them up. It was his job that he wouldn’t quit, not even for a woman he’d loved enough to marry.

  She felt helpless. She’d known at some level that he was carrying a torch for Maggie. She stared at her own short, unpolished nails and compared them with Maggie’s long, red-stained, beautiful ones. The difference was like the women themselves—one colorful and flamboyant and drawing attention, the other reclusive and practical and...dull. No wonder Eb hadn’t wanted her all those years ago. Beside the exotic Maggie, she was insignificant.

  “What subject is your specialty, Miss Johnson?” Cord asked curiously.

  “History, actually,” she said. “But I teach second grade, so I’m not really using it.”

  “No ambition to teach higher grades?” he persisted.

  She shook her head and smiled wryly. “I tried it when I did my practice-teaching,” she confessed. “And by the end of the day, my classroom was more like a zoo than a regimented place of learning. I’m afraid I don’t have the facility to handle discipline at a higher level.”

  Cord’s lean face lightened just a little as he studied her. “I had the facility, but the principal and the school board didn’t like my methods,” he replied.

  “You teach?” she asked, enthused to find a colleague in such an unlikely place.

  “I taught high school science for a year after I got out of college,” he said. “But it wasn’t a profession I could love enough to continue.” He shrugged. “I found I had an aptitude in a totally unrelated area.”

  Maggie’s hand clenched on her water glass and she took a quick sip.

  “What do you do?” she asked, fascinated.

  He glanced at Eb, who was openly glaring at him. “Ask Eb,” he said on a brief, deep laugh, with a cold glance in Maggie’s direction. “Can we order now?” he asked, lifting the menu. “I haven’t even had lunch today.”

  Eb signaled a waiter and brought Sally’s conversation with Cord to an end.

  It was the longest and most tense meal Sally could remember having sat through. Maggie and Eb talked about places and people that they shared in memory while Sally concentrated on her food.

  Cord was polite, but he made no further attempt at conversation. At the end of the evening, as the two couples parted outside the restaurant, Maggie held on to Eb’s hand until he had to forcibly draw it away from her.

  “Can’t you come up and have dinner with us again one evening?” Maggie asked plaintively.

  “Perhaps,” Eb said with a careless smile. He glanced at Cord. “Good to see you.”

  Cord nodded. He glanced down at Sally. “Nice to have met you, Miss Johnson.”

  “Same here,” she said with a smile.

  Maggie hesitated and looked uneasy as Cord deliberately took her arm and propelled her away. She went with him, but her back was arrow-straight and she looked as if she was walking on hot coals and on the way to her own execution.

  Eb stared after them for a long moment before he put Sally into the sleek Jaguar and climbed in under the wheel. He gave her a look that could have curdled milk.

  “Don’t encourage him,” he said at once.

  Her mouth fell open. “Wh...what?”

  “You heard me.” He started the car, and turned toward Sally. His eyes went over her like sensual fingers, brushing her throat, her bare shoulders under the coat, the shadowy hollow in her breasts revealed by the low-cut dress. “He has a weakness for blondes. He was ravishing you with his eyes.”

  She didn’t know how to respond. While Sally was trying to come up with a response, he moved closer and slid a hand under her nape, under the heavy coil of hair, and pulled her face up toward his.

  “So was I,” he whispered roughly, and his mouth went down on her lips, burrowing beneath them, pressing them apart, devouring them. At the same time, his free hand slid right down into the low bodice of her dress and curved around her warm, bare breast.

  “Eb!” she choked, stiffening.

  He was undeterred. He groaned, overcome with desire, and his fingers contracted in a slow, heated, sensual rhythm that brought Sally’s mouth open in a tiny gasp. His tongue found the unprotected heat of it and moved inside, in lazy, teasing motions that made her whole body clench.

  He felt her nervous fingers fumble against the front of his dress shirt. Impatiently, he unfastened three buttons and dragged her hand inside the shirt, over hair-roughened muscles down to a nipple as hard as the one pressing feverishly into the palm of his hand.

  She was devastated by the passion that had kindled so unexpectedly. She couldn’t find the strength or the voice to protest the liberties he was taking, or to care that they were in a public parking lot. She didn’t care about anything except making sure that he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. He mustn’t stop, he mustn’t...!

  But he did, suddenly. He held her hands together tightly as he moved a little away from her, painfully aware that she was trying to get back into his arms.

  “No,” he said curtly, and shook her clenched hands.

  She stared into his blazing eyes, her breath rustling in her throat, her heartbeat visible at the twin points so blatantly obvious against the bodice of her dress.

  He glanced down at her and his jaw clenched. His own body was in agony, and this would only get worse if he didn’t stop them now. She was too responsive, too tempting. He was going to have to make sure that he didn’t touch her that way when they were completely alone. The consequences could be devastating. It was the wrong time for a torrid relationship. If he let himself lose his head over Sally right now, it could cost a
ll of them their lives.

  Forcefully, he put her back into her own seat and fastened the seat belt around her.

  She just stared at him with those huge, soulful gray eyes that made him feel hungry and guilt-ridden all at the same time.

  “I have to get you home,” he said tersely.

  She nodded. Her throat was too tight for words to get out. She clutched her small purse in her hands and stared out the window as he put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic.

  It was a long, and very silent, drive back to her house. He was preoccupied, as distant as she remembered him from her teens. She wondered if he was thinking about Maggie and regretting the decision he’d made that put her out of his life. She was mature now, but beautiful as well, and it didn’t take a mind reader to know that she was still attracted to Eb. How he felt was less obvious. He was a man who knew how to hide what he felt, and that skill was working overtime tonight.

  “Why did Maggie introduce Cord as a foster child at first and then refer to him as her brother? Are they related?” she asked.

  “They are not,” he returned flatly. “His parents died in a fire, and she came from a severely dysfunctional family. Mrs. Barton adopted both of them. Maggie took her name, but Cord kept his own. His father was a rather famous matador in Spain until his death. Maggie does usually try to present Cord as her brother. She’s scared to death of him, despite the fact that they’ve kept in close touch all these years.”

  That was a surprise. “But why is she scared of him?”

  He chuckled. “Because she wants him, although she’s apparently never realized it,” he returned with a quick glance. “He’s been a colleague of mine for a long time, and I always thought that Maggie got engaged to me to put Cord out of the reach of temptation.”