"We'll fly up to Dallas and get one at Neiman-Marcus."
She gasped.
"You're marrying a rich man," he pointed out. "Humor me. It's going to be a social event. Let me deck you out like a comet."
She laughed."All right. I'd really love a white wedding, if you don't mind."
"And we'll both wear rings," he added "We'll get those in Dallas, too."
Her eyes were full of dreams as she looked at her future husband hungrily. There was only one small worry. "Eb, about Maggie..."
"Maggie is a closed chapter," he told her. "I adored her, in my way, but she was never in love with me. I stood in Cord's shadow even then, and she never realized it. She still hasn't." He glanced at her and smiled. "I love you, you know," he murmured, watching her eyes light up. "I'd never have proposed if I hadn't."
"I love you, too, Eb," she said solemnly. "I always will."
His fingers curled tighter into hers. "Dreams really do come true."
She wouldn't have argued with that statement to save her life, and she said so.
It was the society event of the year in Jacobsville, eclipsed only by Simon Hart's wedding with the governor giving Tira away. There were no major celebrities at Eb and Sally's wedding, but Eb did have a conglomeration of mercenaries and government agents the like of which Jacobsville had never seen. Cord Romero was sitting with Maggie on the groom's side of the church, along with a tall, striking dark-haired man with a small mustache and neat brief beard. Beside him was a big blond man who made even Dallas look shorter. On the pew across from him, on Sally's side of the church, was a blue-eyed brunette who avoided looking at the big blond man. Sally recognized her as Callie, the stepsister of the big blond man, who was Eb's friend Micah Steele.
A number of men in suits filled the rest of the groom's pews. Some were wearing sunglasses inside. Others were watching the people on the bride's side of the church, which wasn't packed, since Sally hadn't been back in Jacobsville long enough to make close friends in the community. Jessica was there with Stevie and Dallas, of course.
Sally walked down the aisle all by herself, since she hadn't contacted either of her parents about her wedding. They had their own lives now, and neither of them had written to Sally since the breakup of their family when she moved in with Jessica. She didn't really mind going it alone. Somehow, under the circumstances, it even seemed appropriate. She wore a dream of a wedding gown, with yards and yards of delicate lace and a train, and a veil that accentuated her blond beauty.
Eb stood at the altar waiting for her, in a gray vested suit with a white rose in his lapel. He turned as she joined him, and looked down at her with eyes that made her knees weak.
The ceremony was brief, but poignant, and when Eb lifted the veil to kiss her for the first time as her husband, tears welled up in her eyes as his mouth tenderly claimed hers. They held hands going back down the aisle, wearing matching simple gold bands. Outside the church, they were pelted with rice and good wishes. Laughing, Sally tossed her bouquet and Dallas intercepted it to make sure it landed in Jessica's hands.
They climbed into the rented limousine and minutes later, they were at Eb's ranch, pausing just long enough to change into traveling clothes and rush to the private airstrip to board a loaned Learjet for the trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for their brief honeymoon.
The trip was tiring, and so was the aftermath of the day's excitement. Sally climbed into the huge whirlpool bath while Eb made dinner reservations for that evening.
She didn't realize that she wasn't alone until Eb climbed down into the water with her. He chuckled at her expression and then he kissed her. Very soon, she forgot all about her shock at the first sight of her unclothed bridegroom in the joy of an embrace that knew no obstacles.
He kissed her until she was clinging, gasping for breath and shivering with pleasure.
"Where?" he whispered, stroking her tenderly, enjoying her reactions to her first real intimacy. "Here, or in the bed?"
She could barely speak. "In bed," she said huskily.
"That suits me."
He got out and turned off the jets, lifting her clear of the water to towel them both dry. He picked her up and carried her quickly into the bedroom, barely taking time to strip down the covers before he fell with her onto crisp, clean sheets.
She knew that first times were notoriously painful, embarrassing, and uncomfortable, but hers was a notable exception. Eb was skillful and slow, arousing her to a hot frenzy of response before he even began to touch her intimately. By the time his body slid down against hers in stark possession, she was lifting toward him and pleading for an end to the violent tension of pleasure he'd aroused in her.
Her breath jerked out at his ear at the slow, steady invasion of her most private place in a silence that magnified the least little sound. She heard his heartbeat, and her own, increase with every careful thrust of his hips. She heard his breathing, erratic, rough, mingling with her own excited little moans.
She felt one lean hand sliding up her bare leg as he turned and shifted his weight against her, and when he touched her high on her inner thigh in a rhythm like the descent of his body, she arched up toward him and groaned in anguish.
He laughed softly at her temple while he increased the rhythm and caressed her in the most outrageous ways, all the while whispering things so shocking that she gasped. Tossed between waves of pleasure that grew with each passing second, she found herself suddenly suspended somewhere high above reality as she went over some intangible cliff and fell shuddering with ecstasy into a white-hot oblivion.
She felt him there with her, felt his pleasure in her body, felt his own release even as hers threatened to last forever. She wondered dimly if she was going to survive the incredible delight of it. She shivered helplessly as pleasure washed over her and she clung harder to the source of it, pleading for him not to stop.
When she was finally exhausted and barely able to catch her breath, he tucked her close in his arms and pulled the sheet over them.
"Sleep now," he whispered, kissing her forehead.
"Like this?" she asked unsteadily.
"Just like this." He wrapped her closer. "We'll sleep a little. And then..."
"And then,"
The dinner reservations went unclaimed. Through the long night, she learned more than she'd ever dreamed about men and bodies and lovemaking. For a first time, she told her delighted husband, it was quite extraordinary.
They had breakfast in bed and men set out to explore the old city. But by evening, they were exploring each other again.
A week later, they arrived back home at Eb's ranch, to find a flurry of new activity. A local undercover DEA agent, whose wife Lisa Monroe lived on a ranch next door to Cy Parks, had been found murdered. Apparently he'd infiltrated Lopez's organization and been discovered. Rod-rigo was still undercover, and Eb was concerned for him. The warehouse next door to Cy was in the final stages of construction. Things were heating up in Jacobsville.
"At least we had a honeymoon," Eb murmured dryly, hugging his new wife close.
"So we did," she agreed. She looked up at him lovingly. "And now you're back off adventuring."
"Well, so are you," he pointed out. "After all, isn't teaching second-graders a daily adventure as well?"
She hugged him close. "Being married to you is the biggest adventure, but you have to promise not to ever get shot at again."
"I give you my word as a Girl Scout," he murmured dryly.
She punched him in the stomach. "And if you wade into battle, I'll be right there beside you holding spare cartridges."
He searched her eyes. "You really are a hell of a woman," he murmured.
She grinned. "I'm glad you noticed."
"Lucky me," he said only half facetiously, and bent to kiss her with unbridled passion. "Lucky, lucky me!" he added while he could manage speech.
Sally wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, as intoxicated with pleasure as he was. There would always be the threat of dan
ger, but nothing that the mercenary and his woman couldn't handle. But for the moment, she had her soldier of fortune right where she wanted him-in her gentle, loving arms.
5 The Winter Soldier (03-2001)
For J. Nelson
One
It was Monday, the worst day in the world to try to get a prescription filled. Behind the counter, the poor harassed male druggist was trying to field the telephone calls, fill prescriptions, answer questions from patrons and delegate duties to two assistants. It was always like this after the weekend, Cy Parks thought with resignation. Nobody wanted to bother the doctor on his days off, so they all waited until Monday to present their various complaints. Hence the rush on the Jacobsville Pharmacy. Michael, the pharmacist on duty, was smiling pleasantly despite the crush of customers, accustomed to the Monday madness.
That group putting off a visit to the doctor until Monday included himself, Cy mused. His arm was throbbing from an encounter with one of his angry Santa Gertrudis bulls late on Friday afternoon. It was his left arm, too, the one that had been burned in the house fire back in Wyoming. The angry rip needed ten stitches, and Dr. "Copper" Col-train had been irritated that Cy hadn't gone to the emergency room instead of letting it wait two days and risking gangrene. The sarcasm just washed right off; Coltrain could have saved his breath. Over the years, there had been so many wounds that Cy hardly felt pain anymore. With his shirt off, those wounds had been apparent to Coltrain, who wondered aloud where so many bullet wounds came from. Cy had simply looked at him, with those deep green eyes that could be as cold as Arctic air. Coltrain had given up.
Stitches in place, Coltrain had scribbled a prescription for a strong antibiotic and a painkiller and sent him on his way. Cy had given the prescription to the clerk ten minutes ago. He glanced around him at the prescription counter and thought he probably should have packed lunch and brought it with him.
He shifted from one booted foot to the other with noticeable impatience, his glittery green eyes sweeping the customers nearest the counter. They settled on a serene blond-haired woman studying him with evident amusement. He knew her. Most people in Jacobsville, Texas, did. She was Lisa Taylor Monroe. Her husband, Walt Monroe, an undercover narcotics officer with a federal agency, had recently been killed. He'd borrowed on his insurance policy, so there had been just enough money to bury him. At least Lisa had her small ranch, a legacy from her late father.
Cy's keen eyes studied her openly. She was sweet, but she'd never win any beauty contests. Her dark blond hair was always in a bun and she never put on makeup. She wore glasses over her brown eyes, plastic framed ones, and her usual garb was jeans and a T-shirt when she was working around the ranch her father had left her. Walt Monroe had loved the ranch, and during his infrequent visits home, he'd set out improving it. His ambitions had all but bankrupted it, so that Lisa was left after his death with a small savings account that probably wouldn't even pay the interest on the loans Walt had obtained.
Cy knew something about Lisa Monroe because she was his closest neighbor, along with Luke Craig, a rancher who was recently married to a public defender named Belinda Jessup. Mrs. Monroe there liked Charolais, he recalled. He wasn't any too fond of foreign cattle, having a purebred herd of Santa Gertrudis cattle, breeding bulls from which made him a profitable living. Almost as prosperous as his former sideline, he mused. A good champion bull could pull upward of a million dollars on the market.
Lisa had no such livestock. Her Charolais cattle were steers, beef stock. She sold off her steer crop every fall, but it wouldn't do her much good now. She was too deeply in debt. Like most other people, he felt sorry for her. It was common gossip that she was pregnant, because in a small town like Jacobsville, everybody knew everything. She didn't look pregnant, but he'd overheard someone say that they could tell in days now, rather than the weeks such tests had once required. She must be just barely pregnant, he mused, because those tight jeans outlined a flat stomach and a figure that most women would covet.
But her situation was precarious. Pregnant, widowed and deeply in debt, she was likely to find herself homeless before much longer, when the bank was forced to foreclose on the property. Damned shame, he thought, when it had such potential for development
She was clutching a boxed heating pad to her chest, waiting her turn in line at the second cash register at the pharmacy counter.
When Lisa was finally at the head of the line, she put down her heating pad on the counter and opened her purse.
"Another one, Lisa?" the young female clerk asked her with an odd smile.
She gave the other woman an irritated glance as she dug in her purse for her checkbook. "Don't you start, Bonnie," she muttered.
"How can I help it?" the clerk chuckled. "That's the third one this month. In fact, that's the last one we have in stock."
"I know that. You'd better order some more."
"You really need to do something about that dog," Bonnie suggested firmly.
"Hear, hear!" the other clerk, Joanne, seconded, peering at Lisa over her glasses.
"The puppy takes after his father," Lisa said defensively. He did, she mused. His father belonged to Tom Walker, and the mostly German shepherd dog, Moose, was a local legend. This pup was from the first litter he'd sired—without Tom's knowledge or permission. "But he's going to be a lot of protection, so I guess it's a trade-off. How much is this?"
Bonnie told her, waited while she wrote the check, accepted it and processed it. "Here you go," she told the customer. She glanced down at the other woman's flat stomach. "When are you due?"
"Eight months and two weeks," Lisa said quietly, wincing as she recalled that her husband, away from home and working undercover, had been killed the very night after she'd conceived, if Dr. Lou Coltrain had her numbers right. And when had Lou ever missed a due date? She was uncanny at predicting births.
"You've got that Mason man helping you with the ranch." Bonnie interrupted her thoughts. "You shouldn't need a dog with him there. Can't he protect you?"
"He only comes on the weekends," Lisa replied.
Bonnie frowned. "Luke Craig sent him out there, didn't he? But he said the man was supposed to spend every night in the bunkhouse!"
"He visits his girlfriend most nights," Lisa said irritably. "And better her than me! He doesn't bathe!"
Bonnie burst out laughing. "Well, there's one bright side to it. If he isn't staying nights, you only have to pay him for the weekends...Lisa," she added when she saw the guilty expression on the other woman's face, "you aren't still paying him for the whole week?"
Lisa flushed. "Don't," she said huskily.
"Sorry." Bonnie handed her a receipt. "It's just I hate the way you let people take advantage of you, that's all. There are so many rotten people in the world, and you're a walking, talking benevolence society."
"Rotten people aren't born, they're made," Lisa told her. "He isn't a bad man, he just didn't have a proper upbringing."
"Oh, good God!" Cy said harshly, glaring at her, having kept his mouth shut as long as possible without imploding. The woman's compassion hit him on a raw spot and made him furious.
Lisa's eyes were brown, big and wide and soft through the plastic frames of her glasses. "Excuse me?"
"Are you for real?" he asked curtly. "Listen, people dig their own graves and they climb into them. Nothing excuses cruelty."
"You tell her!" Bonnie said, agreeing.
Lisa recognized her taciturn neighbor from a previous encounter, long ago. He'd come right up to her when she'd been pitching hay over the fence to her cattle one day and told her outright that she should leave heavy work to her husband. Walt hadn't liked that comment, not at all. It had only been a few days after he'd let her do the same thing while he flirted with a pretty blond parcel delivery employee. Worse, Walt thought that Lisa had encouraged Cy's interference somehow and they'd had a fight—not the first in their very brief marriage. She didn't like the tall man and her expression told him so. "I wasn't tal
king to you," she pointed out. "You don't know anything about my business."
His eyebrows rose half an inch. "I know that you overpay the hired help." He looked pointedly at her flat belly.
"And that you're the last person who should be looked upon as a walking benevolence society."
"Hear, hear!" Joanne said again from behind Bonnie.
Lisa glared at her. "You can be quiet," she said.
"Let your erstwhile employee go," he told her. "I'll send one of my men over to spend nights in the bunkhouse. Bonnie's right about one thing, you don't need to be by yourself after dark in such a remote place."
"I don't need your help," she said, glowering at him.
"Yes, you do. Your husband wouldn't have liked having you try to run that ranch alone," he added quietly, even though he didn't mean it, and he hoped that his distaste for the late Walt Monroe didn't show. He still recalled watching Lisa heft a huge bale of hay while her husband stood not ten paces away flirting with a pretty blond woman. It was a miracle she hadn't miscarried, the way she hefted heavy things around. He wondered if she even knew the chance she was taking...
She was looking at him with different eyes now. The concern touched her despite her hostility. She sighed. "I guess you're right," she said softly. "He wouldn't have."
He hated the way that softness made him feel. He'd lost so much. Everything. He wouldn't admit, even to himself, how it felt to have those dark eyes look at him with tenderness. He swallowed down the ache in his throat.
She let her gaze fall to his arm, the one that had just been stitched, and her soft gasp was audible. "You've been hurt!"
"Two prescriptions, Mr. Parks," Bonnie said with a grin, holding up a prescription sack. She bent to pick up the package, a strand of her short blond hair falling around her pretty bespectacled face. “And Dr. Coltrain said that if you don't take this pain medication, he'll have me flogged," she added impishly.
"We can't have that, I guess," Cy murmured dryly.
"Glad you agree." She accepted his credit card as Lisa turned to go.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 258
