Texas Proud

by Diana Palmer

  Bernie followed his gaze and there was Jessie, just picking up a salad and coffee at the checkout. It was on a tray, which meant she wasn’t leaving.

  “The bubonic plague has arrived,” Mikey muttered.

  “Well, hi there, Bernie. I didn’t know you were coming here for lunch. And Mikey, how’s it going with you?” she added, almost purring.

  He looked up at her with cold eyes and took a minute to answer. “We’re having a private conversation, if you don’t mind.”

  Jessie shrugged. “Well, excuse me, I’m sure,” she drawled. She went to a table nearby, at the window, and put down her food.

  Bernie was crestfallen. She’d hoped to have a nice quiet lunch with Mikey, but Jessie was already staring at them. Cooking up plots. Bernie was certain that the woman was searching for ways to split her from Mikey, because Mikey was rich and Jessie wanted him.

  “Don’t look like that,” Mikey said, smiling at her. “She’s trying to upset you. Don’t let her.”

  “She really likes you,” Bernie said, almost choking on the words.

  “It isn’t mutual.”

  The way he looked at her sent all her fears flying away. She smiled slowly. So did he. The rest of the world faded away until there were just the two of them.

  They didn’t look in Jessie’s direction at all. She glared at both of them the whole time. She didn’t stop even when they were walking out of the café.

  * * *

  “If looks could kill,” Bernie said on a heavy sigh when they were back on the street.

  “Why doesn’t Kemp fire her?” he asked abruptly.

  “I think he’d like to, but he has to have a reason that will hold up in court.”

  “Lawyers,” he muttered.

  She laughed. “You sound like one of the men we prosecuted for theft. He was sure that lawyers were all bound for a fiery end.”

  His hand caught hers. “I’ve gone my rounds with prosecutors,” he mused as they walked toward her office.

  “You have?” she asked, curious.

  He looked down at her solemnly. “We really are going to have to have a talk,” he told her. “There are things about me that you need to know.”

  She drew in a long breath. “There are things about me you need to know, too.”

  “Come over for lunch Sunday,” he invited. “Paulie said Sari was going to ask you, anyway. We can walk down through the woods and talk without people watching us all the time.”

  “Would you be safe if we did that?” she worried. “I mean, snipers love deserted places, don’t they?”

  He chuckled. “The one who’s watching me surely does,” he pointed out.

  “Oh! I forgot.”

  He grinned. “I’m glad. I don’t want you upset. I can take care of myself, honey. I’ve been in worse jams than this. I’ll tell you about it, Sunday.” He paused and turned toward her. “You think you can live with my past. I’m not sure you can. But I’ll leave the decision up to you.”

  “You undervalue yourself,” she said, searching his dark eyes. “I said it wouldn’t matter. I meant it.”

  He smiled and touched her cheek gently. “You think it wouldn’t,” he said sadly. “That may not be the case.”

  “You can tell me Sunday.”

  “And there you both are again,” Jessie said from behind them.

  “Yeah,” Mikey said, glaring at her.

  She made a face and went past them into the office, slamming the door behind her.

  “Sore loser,” he muttered after her.

  Bernie smiled. It made her feel good that Mikey preferred her to the beautiful woman who’d just gone past them. She felt valued.

  “Idiot,” he whispered. “You’re worth ten of a woman like that.” His head jerked toward the office. “She’s anybody’s. She’ll play up to a man for what he’s got, nothing else. Women like that are after hard cash, not love.”

  “I don’t care about money,” Bernie said.

  “I know that. It’s one of your best traits, and you’ve got a lot of them.”

  “Me?” she laughed. “I’m just ordinary.” She drew in a breath. “You know, I have flares in the winter,” she began. “I spend a lot of time in bed...”

  He put his forefinger over her lips. “That won’t matter, either. You nursed me through one of the worst headaches I’ve ever had. If you get down, I’ll take care of you,” he added huskily.

  Tears stung her eyes. She lowered them to his broad chest.

  “Don’t cry,” he whispered. “People will think I’m being mean to you.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. It’s just that I’ve never really had anybody take care of me, not since my father died.”

  “I don’t want to be your dad,” he pointed out. He frowned. “You know, Bernie, I’m a lot older than you.”

  “Bosh,” she mused, looking up into his face. “You’ll never be old. Not to me.”

  His breath caught in his throat. He looked around. Cars everywhere. People on the sidewalks. Her boss, coming toward them.

  “Oh, damn,” he said under his breath.

  Her eyebrows arched. “What?”

  “Bernie, I want to kiss you so badly that it hurts and we’re surrounded by people. Damned people!”

  She grinned up at him. “There’s Sunday,” she teased.

  He pursed his lips. His dark eyes twinkled. “Yeah. There’s Sunday.”

  “Lunchtime’s almost over, Bernie,” Kemp teased as he came up beside them. “Back to boring routine.”

  “It’s never boring, Mr. Kemp,” she said, and meant it. “Tedious and maddening, but never boring!”

  He grinned, nodded to Mikey, and went inside the building.

  “I’d better go in. When?” she asked. “Sunday, I mean.”

  “About eleven suit you?”

  She nodded. “That sounds great.”

  “I won’t see you for a couple of days,” he said. “I’ve got some people to see up in San Antonio. Santi and I have a room reserved for it. But I’ll be here to pick you up Sunday, okay? And tell Mrs. Brown not to rent out my room while I’m gone!”

  “I will, but she never would. She thinks you’re terrific. So do the other boarders.” She lowered her eyes to his chest. “So do I.”

  He bent and brushed a kiss over her forehead. “I think you’re terrific, too, kid,” he whispered. “Now go to work before I wrestle you down in the grass over there and do what I’m aching to do!”

  Her breath caught. “It’s in public view!”

  “So would we be, and they’d be snapping pictures for the local paper, too,” he assured her. “See you Sunday, honey. Be careful. Don’t go out at night for any reason at all. You’re being watched, but don’t take chances. I couldn’t live if anything happened to you.” He touched her cheek and walked away before she could get the words out that she’d wanted to say.

  No matter, she told herself. She could recite them on Sunday.

  * * *

  Jessie was wary of Sari and Glory, so she kept her hot words to herself. But just before quitting time, she stopped by Bernie when the other women were getting their coats and leaned close.

  “You think he’s hooked? You just wait,” she threatened softly. “There’s never been a man I couldn’t get!”

  And before Bernie could say a word, she was out the door and gone.

  * * *

  Bernie was agonizing over what she was going to have to tell Mikey on Sunday. She knew that he had a past, and she was sure she could live with whatever it was. But she wasn’t so sure that he could live, not only with her disability issues, but with what had happened in her family. It was so horrible that she never spoke of it. Only a few people in Jacobsville knew. Her father was a good man, a kind man, who was wonderful to his daughter. But her grandfather had been a different story.
He’d been notorious, in fact, and the story was so gruesome that it was fodder for the tabloids for the better part of a month.

  None of that was Bernie’s fault. She’d only been involved because he was part of her family, but it stung just the same. She felt dirty because of it. There had been survivors who were outraged. Her father had been targeted by one. Only the quick arrival of the sheriff’s department had saved Bernie and her dad, because the man had been armed. She couldn’t even blame him. The grief must have been horrible. But her father was no more responsible for it than Bernie was. It was just that the survivors couldn’t get to the people responsible, so they went after the people who were left.

  That had eventually blown over. Tempers cooled, people went back to church and remembered that part of their religious faith was the very difficult tenet of forgiveness for even the most horrible crimes. Bernie and her dad moved from Floresville back to Jacobsville, and distance helped. But that didn’t mean that Bernie might not be a target in the future from some other relative who was frustrated by not having a means of vengeance.

  She’d have to tell Mikey that. She’d also have to make him understand about her illness. There was no cure for rheumatoid arthritis. There were many treatments, most of which worked, but the most useful were beyond Bernie’s pocket. Even with them, she would still have flares, days when she couldn’t work at all. And because the drugs required worked at lowering her immune system to fight the RA, she was more disposed to illness than healthy people. She had bad lungs and often had respiratory infections. Mikey had to understand that just an occasional flare was the least of her health issues.

  If he still wanted her after all that, well, it would make him a man in a million. Her family’s notoriety was going to make things more complicated.

  But it might work out, she told herself. They might actually be able to make it work, if they could keep Jessie at bay. She was an odd sort of person, very narcissistic and pretty horrible. She didn’t feel compassion and she had an acid tongue. What in the world was she doing in a small town like Jacobsville when she was obviously more suited to big cities? It was a puzzle.

  * * *

  There was a cold rain on Friday afternoon just as Bernie was getting ready to go home. She hadn’t worn a raincoat or brought an umbrella, and it was pouring outside. Even in south Texas, it could get pretty cold in autumn.

  “Let me drop you off at your boardinghouse, Bernie,” Sari offered. “You’ll get soaked going home and you’ll be sick.”

  “Yes, you have to stay well or Mikey won’t be able to take you anyplace, will he, sweetie?” Jessie purred as she passed them outside, her umbrella raised.

  “One day,” Sari said with venom, and glared at the other woman.

  Jessie made a harrumphing sound in her throat and went on down the street to where her car was parked. Strangely, it was an expensive foreign one. How could she afford that on what she made as a stenographer and receptionist for the local DA, Sari wondered.

  “You should have a car,” Sari chided gently as the limousine driver started off down the street with his two passengers in back.

  “They break down,” Bernie said with a smile. “I can’t afford to run one. And I can mostly walk to work, except when I’m having flares. Then I get a cab.”

  “You can always ride with me,” Sari said. “Anytime you need to.”

  “Thanks,” Bernie said. “But I do okay.”

  Sari laughed and shook her head. “Honestly, you’re the hardest person to do anything for.”

  “I guess so. Sorry.”

  “It’s not a bad trait. Jessie would do anything for someone with money,” she added harshly. “That woman makes my blood boil.”

  “Mikey can’t stand her,” Bernie said with a wicked little smile.

  Sari laughed. “So he said. I guess he’s seen that sort so much in his life that he hasn’t got any interest in them anymore.”

  “He said that he was a bad man,” Bernie mentioned.

  “Some bad, some good, like all of us.”

  Bernie looked at her warmly. “I told him it wouldn’t matter, whatever he’d done.”

  “That’s like you,” Sari replied. She studied the other woman quietly. “He’ll tell you the truth. I know about it from Paul. He and Mikey both had hard lives as children. They grew up with people who weren’t good role models. Mikey went the wrong way. I think he’s trying to leave that behind him now. But...” She hesitated, noticing how Bernie hung on every word. “But he’ll have to tell you the rest. And you’ll have to make a choice.” She paused. She didn’t want to say it. “That choice may be harder than you think right now.”

  Bernie drew in a long breath. “It’s too late for choices,” she said softly. “He’s my whole world, Sari. He’s...everything.”

  Sari smiled. “Paul is mine. I understand. It’s just... Well, Mikey will explain it to you,” she finished.

  Bernie studied her hands, poised on her purse in her lap. “He’s mixed up somehow with organized crime, I think,” she said without noting Sari’s sudden alertness. “I watched The Godfather, so I sort of know about that stuff.”

  She didn’t know anything, not a thing, about the harshness and the blood and the savagery with which Mikey’s associates did and could act. Sari didn’t want to enlighten her, though. It was going to be up to Mikey. If Bernie truly loved him, they’d find a way to make it work.

  “Paul says he’s never seen Mikey so happy,” Sari said, instead of voicing her thoughts.

  Bernie beamed. “I’ve never been so happy, not in all my life.” She looked at Sari. “You know all about my family, about what happened. Will Mikey be able to handle it? I mean, there are people who went after Daddy, when he was alive, because of what my grandfather did.”

  “Nobody’s ever come after you, and nobody ever will. If they even try, we’ll sic Mr. Kemp on them. He’ll handle it. Okay?”

  Bernie let out the breath she’d been holding. “Okay.”

  “And Mikey’s the last person who’ll blame you for something someone in your family did,” she added.

  “I was notorious for a while,” Bernie said hesitantly.

  “Only for a while, and never after you moved here with your dad,” Sari added.

  “I suppose so.” She lowered her face. “I don’t want Mikey to be ashamed of me.”

  “As if that would ever happen! Honestly, Bernie!” she laughed. “He’s crazy about you. It won’t matter.”

  Bernie smiled. “Okay.”

  “And the past doesn’t matter. For either one of you.”

  “If I stay sick all the time, it may,” Bernie voiced her other fear. “I’ve got a weak immune system already, and the medicines I have to take for RA make it even weaker. I get sick a lot, especially in cold weather.”

  “It won’t matter,” she said firmly. “Besides, Mikey could afford those outrageously expensive medicines that they think might help you,” she added with a smile.

  “As if I’d let him do that,” Bernie began.

  “Under certain circumstances, you would,” Sari drawled, and laughed at the expression on her coworker’s face. “Life is sweet. You’re just finding that out.”

  “It’s never been sweeter, in fact.”

  “So live one day at a time,” Sari counseled, “and let tomorrow take care of itself.”

  “That sounds easy. It’s not.”

  “Nothing is easy. But we get by. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And if Jessie makes one more snide remark about how unhealthy you are, I’m going to encourage Olivia to pour coffee on her head!”

  “Oh, don’t suggest that—Olivia would do it on a dare,” Bernie laughed uproariously.

  “I heard about the coffee incident after I got back from vacation this summer,” Sari said mischievously. “Nobody had made coffee. Agent Mur
dock came to see the boss on a case, and he made coffee just for himself and turned off the pot. Olivia went to get herself a cup. It was barely lukewarm by then, but she thought she’d drink it anyway. She took a sip, spat it out, glared at Murdock, who was flushed by then, and she poured the whole carafe right over his head and his suit. Lucky it wasn’t hot!”

  “Mr. Kemp came out of his office to usher Agent Murdock in,” Bernie recalled, laughing so hard she almost choked. “And when he saw Olivia with the empty pot and the full cup in Agent Murdock’s hand, he put his hand over his mouth and went right back into his office and closed the door. I swear, he laughed for five minutes.”

  “What did Agent Murdock do?”

  Bernie whistled. “He got up, in the ruins of his suit, stared at Olivia for a minute, and then poured the contents of his own coffee cup over her head.”

  “And?” Sari prompted.

  “He walked out the door in a huff and she went home to change. We’re still laughing about it. Except that when Agent Murdock comes through the door, they both pretend that the other one is invisible. It makes things interesting.”

  Sari just grinned.

  Chapter Ten

  Sunday morning, Mikey came by to pick up Bernie at Mrs. Brown’s boardinghouse. He was preoccupied at first, frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked gently. “Can I help?”

  He turned toward her and smiled slowly, oblivious to Santi’s quick and amused glance in the rearview mirror from the front seat. “There’s that sweet compassion that I’ve hardly had in my whole life,” he said. “You really are one in a million, kid.”

  She flushed. “So are you. But can I help?”

  “You can listen, when we get to Paulie’s house,” he said. He glanced in the front seat. “And you can have the day off until I call you to take us home, Santi,” he added with a grin. “You might go take in a movie.”

  “Not a bad idea, boss,” Santi said with a big smile. “Thanks!”

  He shrugged. “I’m not a bad guy.”

  Santi made a sarcastic noise, but Mikey ignored him. They got out at the front door of Paul’s house, and Santi raised a hand and waved as he drove off.