by MJ Rodgers
Table of Contents
Cover Page
It's the end of the trail
About the Author
Books by M.J. Rodgers
Title Page
Dedication
Cast of Characters
Prologue
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
Copyright
“It’s the end of the trail.”
Matt couldn’t keep the anger out of his tone. “In case you hadn’t noticed, you were almost killed.”
Anger colored Jamie’s cheeks and there was a dangerous glint in her eye. “Why would somebody go to all this trouble to stop me from looking for Tony?”
“Face it, Jamie, you know nothing about him, not even his real name.” Matt knew his tough-guy routine wasn’t going to work, but he was too frustrated to stop. “You heard what I said.”
She tossed back her windblown hair in a defiant gesture. “I’m going to find him-with or without you.”
Matt grabbed her by the arms and held them tightly. “What is it with you and this Tony? Is it worth your life to find him?”
Jamie looked him in the eye. “You don’t understand. He’s—”
“A good kisser,” Matt finished for her. “I know. But I’m tired of hearing that. Good kissers can be gotten on any damn corner in Texas.” And with that he did the one thing he never should have done.
He kissed her.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M.J. Rodgers is the winner of a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Romantic Mysteries, twice winner of their Best Intrigue Award and is also winner of B. Dalton Bookseller’s top-selling Intrigue Award. She lives with her family in Seabeck, Washington.
Books by M. J. Rodgers
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
102—FOR LOVE OR MONEY
128-A TASTE OF DEATH
140-BLOODSTONE
157-DEAD RINGER
176-BONES OF CONTENTION
185—RISKY BUSINESS
202—ALL THE EVIDENCE
214-TO DIE FOR
254-SANTA CLAUS IS COMING
271-ON THE SCENT
290-WHO IS JANE WILLIAMS?
335-BEAUTY VS. THE BEAST
342-BABY VS. THE BAR
350-HEART VS. HUMBUG*
375-LOVE VS. ILLUSION*
392-TO HAVE VS. TO HOLD*
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
492-FIRE MAGIC
520-THE ADVENTURESS
563-THE GIFT-WRAPPED GROOM
‘Justice Inc. miniseries
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U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
ONE TOUGH TEXAN
M.J. Rodgers
THIS STORY IS FOR ANN RICHARDS, ONE OF THE BEST AND TOUGHEST TEXANS TO COME ALONG THIS CENTURY.
GO GET ‘EM, GAL.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Matt Bonner—This tough Texan’s specialty is finding lost loves.
Jamie Bonner—She’s looking for the one man whose kiss she cannot forget.
Tony Lagarrigue—He kissed Jamie fifteen years before, but now it seems he never existed.
Oscar and Erline Lagarrigue—They’ve disappeared just as completely as Tony.
Clifford Nevelt—He’s out to make things difficult for Matt.
Wrey Kleinman—He thinks he knows the truth about what went on fifteen years before. He’s wrong.
Wendy McConnell—She’s sure she knows where Tony is. But is it really Tony?
Prologue
Jamie climbed onto her bed at the back of the trailer. She braced herself against the wall as she cranked open the small, high window. Its rusted hinges screeched in protest.
She froze, her whole body tense as she waited to see if they had noticed the noise.
The boxing match blasted out from the TV in the next room. The man who watched it cursed loudly at one of the contestants who wasn’t beating the brains out of the other fast enough. The woman beside the man laughed drunkenly. The thin door that separated the man and the woman from Jamie remained closed.
She let out a soundless sigh of relief.
The welfare money was always long gone by this time of the month. Had Jamie not found the nearly full bottle of whiskey hidden behind an easel in the utility closet at her high school, she never would have been able to manage tonight.
Jamie didn’t feel guilty about taking the whiskey. She knew it had to be the old janitor who had stashed it in that utility closet. Way she figured it, she’d done him a favor.
Whiskey just made folks even more crazy mean than they already were. When those two up front in the trailer tied one on, they beat up on each other and anybody else around. Jamie didn’t plan on being around tonight.
Keeping the whiskey bottle out of sight all week hadn’t been easy. But Jamie had managed. She had learned to manage a lot of things in her life in order to survive.
When she’d opened a kitchen cupboard just before dinner and pretended to find the whiskey there, the man and woman had nearly trampled her beneath their feet, so eager were they to get to it.
For once, she hoped they would get blind drunk. In a few hours they would either pass out in the front of the trailer or come staggering back to sleep it off. She didn’t want them noticing her small bed in the corner was stuffed with nothing but the lumpy, old pillow and her precious stash of books.
Because if they noticed she was gone…
Jamie willed herself to go cold and numb inside so she wouldn’t feel the fear. Tony Lagarrigue had asked her to the dance tonight. And for the first time in her life, she was going to let herself believe in miracles.
She hoisted herself onto the window’s edge. The screen that once kept out the insects was long gone. She was still in her slip as she eased herself through the small opening. It was getting.to.be a tight fit for her fifteen-year-old hips. She knew that pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to make it through.
It was another one of those scary thoughts that she pushed to that dark, cold place in the numb part of her soul. She was determined not to let her fears rob her of tonight.
She landed soundlessly, as her bare feet hit the dust outside the trailer. A foul curse blared out of the open front window. Jamie stiffened, until she realized the man was only yelling at the TV again. She let out a deep, relieved breath.
The still night air stunk of the feedlot next door. The bitter, pungent odors of alcohol and cigarettes that had eaten their way into the walls of the tiny trailer weren’t any better.
She knew if it hadn’t been for her books, she would have been driven mad long ago. Or worse yet, she would have been driven to be like them. She shuddered at the thought.
She reached for the dress dangling from clothespins on the makeshift line that extended from the back of the trailer to a tree. It was the only dress she owned-a hand-me-down from the woman inside the trailer.
The yellow daisies were faded. The rough, unlined material scratched her skin. The waist was way too big. But it was clean. She had washed it in the creek that afternoon when she had washed herself. She hurriedly put it on.
She sent a furtive look back to the trailer before she reached behind the tree for the shoes. The cheap and gau
dy two-inch heels with the gold sequins on their pointed toes belonged to the woman. Jamie had found them stashed away in a box. They were the only pair of shoes that the woman hadn’t beaten up real bad.
If Jamie got caught wearing them, she knew that woman would beat her up real bad.
It had been a big risk taking them. But for this night Jamie knew she would take almost any risk.
She brushed the dust off the bottoms of her feet and slipped on the shoes. They were a little large, but none of her shoes had ever fit. She walked a few steps, gaining greater confidence as she found her balance. She remembered escaping through the trailer window as a young child. Many a cold night she’d kept herself warm by dancing on her toes, pretending to be Cinderella at the ball.
Tonight she didn’t have to pretend. Tonight it was going to happen.
She ran her fingers through her butchered hair and sighed.
There was nothing she could do about her hair. The woman in the trailer had been hacking it off regularly ever since she could remember. It wasn’t even long enough to put a comb to.
One day she would get away from that woman. And that man. And away from clothes that rubbed her skin raw and shoes that never fit-and the need to go all cold and numb inside so as not to feel the fear and the pain.
But that day was still an eternity away.
Thank God tonight was here, now.
Jamie quickly slipped off the shoes and held them carefully as she scrambled barefoot up the steep knoll that separated the old, run-down trailer in the ditch from the main road into town. When she reached the top, she stopped to peer into the twilight.
He was waiting at the edge of the road in the gathering dusk, just as he had said he would be.
Her eyes traveled over his dress shirt and dark slacks. His black hair was combed back, neat and shiny in the faint light.
Tony Lagarrigue was the handsomest boy in town, the handsomest boy in the world. And tonight he was her date. Her heart pumped with pride.
He called her name and held out his hand. She hurriedly brushed off the bottoms of her feet and slipped on the shoes. Then, slowly, carefully she stepped toward him, balancing adeptly on her toes.
She stopped in front of him, holding her breath as he surveyed her from the top of her butchered hair to the tip of those cheap sequined shoes.
“You look very pretty tonight, Jamie Lee.”
Pretty. He thought her pretty. The air escaping her lungs was so full of gratitude that it left her feeling weak.
Tony pulled something out of his pocket. Jamie’s eyes circled wide when she saw that he held a large gold locket on a heavy chain.
“This is for you,” he said.
She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t let herself believe it.
He leaned toward her, circling the chain around her neck. She felt the warmth of his breath on her cheek and a tickle at the back of her neck as his fingers fiddled with the clasp. Her stomach fluttered. For a few precious seconds even the smells of the feedlot were forgotten as she inhaled his rich cologne.
She heard a faint click. The weight of the locket came to rest on her breastbone.
Tony leaned back. “Do you like it?”
She held the locket in her palm and stared down at it. Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she would not cry. She never cried. Crying was a sign of weakness, and the weak were preyed upon. That lesson she had learned early and well.
She gulped down the lump in her throat and resolutely kept the tears at bay.
“It’s beautiful, Tony.”
He slipped a finger beneath her chin and coaxed her into looking up at him. He was smiling. It wasn’t one of the smirking or pitying smiles she’d seen too many times before. It was an approving smile.
Her heart swelled.
She had never been this close to a boy before. Tony was so elegant. His olive skin was so smooth. His teeth were so white. His breath smelled like mint. His eyes were large and dark with mystery. Something was going to happen.
Slowly, he leaned down to kiss her.
Jamie had thought a lot about kissing Tony since that wondrous day the week before, when he had asked her to the dance. And now it was happening. It was really happening.
Tony’s lips were smooth and firm as he pressed them against hers. They felt forbidden and wonderful. Her cheeks grew warm. Some delicious secret seemed to be opening up inside her.
She didn’t know what it was. All she knew was that for the first time in her life, she felt…feminine. And that she would always remember this moment-this kiss.
Tony leaned back and smiled at her. “We’d better go. We’re already late.”
They walked hand in hand down the dusty road toward the school auditorium a mile away. It could have been five miles and Jamie wouldn’t have cared.
She thought about taking off the shoes so they wouldn’t get scuffed. But the extra height made her feel so much more adult. She needed to feel like an adult tonight. Adults had control over their lives. They weren’t the reflection of anyone else.
When they reached the auditorium, Jamie halted at the bottom of the steps. The lights and music and happy voices from inside spilled down toward them.
Jamie looked up at the colorful crepe-paper decorations strung across the entry. Etta Oates and the school’s other popular girls had spent the previous day putting them up. Jamie had seen them laughing and exchanging confidences on her way home from the library.
All those other girls dressed so beautifully. They were all so accomplished in flirting and putting on makeup and all those other secret and sophisticated adolescent female arts that eluded Jamie so completely.
Her heart sank. She knew what was going to happen when she went inside. Etta Oates was going to point her out to the other girls and make fun of Jamie’s dress and shoes. Then, the smirking and pitying smiles would follow.
“You ready, Jamie Lee?”
Jamie looked over at Tony. He smiled and squeezed her hand.
Her heart lifted. Let Etta and the others snicker and shame her. Every one of them would be wishing they were in her
shoes, gaudy or not. For tonight, Tony Lagarrigue was her date.
“I’m ready,” she said.
They started up the stairs together, hand in hand, toward the lights, toward the music, toward what promised to be the most wonderful evening of Jamie’s life.
And then the shotgun blast deafened the music and shattered the night.
Chapter One
Fifteen years later
Matt Bonner stretched his long legs out in front of him and rested his boots on the edge of his desk. The spring sun streamed through the huge picture window behind him to beat down on his neck.
That sun felt real good after the long weekend of rolling rainstorms that had ambushed San Antonio. He sprawled back in his big leather chair, soaking up those sweet, old rays.
“Bonner, are you listening to me?” Clifford Nevelt asked. As always, his boss’s voice sounded way too arrogant coming through the telephone receiver stuck against Matt’s ear.
“Hanging on every word,” Matt said, in his best respectful, controlled Texas tone, knowing the sarcasm would be winging way over the head of the man on the other end of the line.
“Good, because I need you to get me last month’s reports right away,” Nevelt said. “It’s time for me to put in my request for funding for the ‘Finder of Lost Loves’ show. We have to keep that valuable, necessary watchdog going.”
Matt’s tone stayed easy. “Sir, that ‘valuable’ watchdog is about as ‘necessary’ as tail feathers on my chicken-fried steak.”
“Look, Bonner, I don’t want to have this conversation again. The fact is that since I instituted that show last year and revised your clientele, we haven’t had one incident of trouble.”
“We haven’t had one incident of trouble down here since the revamping of the department five years ago. That TV show is a waste of good time and money.”
Nevelt sucked in breath
like a vacuum. Matt could just picture his sour lips pursing and pink cheeks puffing. He was the worst kind of pencil pusher-the ignorant, closed-mind kind.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Bonner. I asked for that paperwork.”
“Yes, sir. Since we’re on that subject of paperwork, how’s my request for transfer going?”
“It’s not going anywhere.”
Matt’s hand gripped the receiver. “Don’t think I heard that one right, sir. You want to run it by me again?”
“I’m not letting you transfer out. You are doing important work. Think of all the people you help, who come to your
P.I. firm and whom you put on the ‘Finder of Lost Loves’ program.”
Matt kept his cool. Barely. “With all due respect, sir, we both know anyone with an IQ as big as his boot size could emcee that TV show.”
“Market analysts tell me that your presence is a major contributor to the extraordinary TV ratings for the cable show. A major network is even interested in doing a syndication. You’re staying. Now, fax those reports to me.”
Dial tone blared in Matt’s ear. He dropped the telephone receiver onto its base with disgust
Network syndication. This was supposed to be a quiet, unobtrusive operation!
Matt’s jaw clenched. Inject Nevelt’s intellect into a spider and it would start spinning earwax instead of a web.
Matt rose and stood in front of his huge picture window, digging his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The city glittered clean and fresh and bright beneath the morning sun. He wasn’t appreciating it.
How had Nevelt found out about the network’s interest? Matt had sworn his staff to secrecy. Had one of them talked? Damn, couldn’t he even trust his own team?
He wanted that transfer. No, he had to have that transfer. If he didn’t get some real work real soonThe intercom on Matt’s desk buzzed. He leaned over to punch the button. “Yes, Charlene?”
