One Tough Texan

by MJ Rodgers

  She had finally faced Wrey and not let him intimidate her. For the first time in her life, Jamie knew that the emotional hold of those long-ago memories of fear had been broken.

  She popped open her can and enjoyed the cold, frosty root beer as a heart-roping Texas ballad played on the radio.

  “So where did Tony go when he left Sweetspring?” she asked a little later as she stored their empty drink cans in the litter basket in the back seat.

  Matt told her about Tony’s school transcript from Louisiana and the fact that no new transcript request had come through.

  “I don’t understand,” Jamie said. “Where would Tony have gone that he didn’t need a new transcript?”

  “I don’t think that should be the first question we ask,” Matt said.

  “What question would you ask?”

  “Whether or not the boy you met was even Tony Lagarrigue.”

  Jamie turned to stare at him. “Run that one by me again?”

  “The transcript from Louisiana was for the Tony who never left the Saint Tammany Parish. His birthdate, his address, his folks’ names-they all match. But we’ve met Erline Lagarrigue and seen a picture of her husband and her Tony.”

  “And they’re not the Lagarrigues who were here in Sweetspring,” Jamie said, nodding. “So you’re saying that Tony and his mama and daddy borrowed the Louisiana Lagarrigues’ names and identities?”

  “Yes.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would they do something like that?”

  “I can think of several reasons. Most folks assume another identity because they are fixin’ on escaping the law.”

  “No, Matt. They weren’t that kind of folks. I met them, remember?”

  “Did you think they were the kind of folks to take another family’s name and pass themselves off as that family?”

  “Well, no. But I don’t see that they harmed anyone, and I’m sure there must be a reasonable explanation.”

  “You’re right quick to come to their defense. You only met Erline and Oscar once. How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I’m sure of Tony. You will be, too, when you find him for me.”

  The blast of a big eighteen-wheeler behind them drowned out Matt’s response. .

  “What?” Jamie asked.

  Matt was looking in his rearview mirror as he pulled over to the right. “The driver of that truck behind us is apparently in an all-fired hurry to get somewhere.”

  Jamie looked over her shoulder. The huge tractor-trailer rig was right behind them. Its horn blasted again in her ears.

  “Could it be his brakes have given out?” Jamie asked.

  “We’re on a slight upgrade. If he lost his brakes, he’d be slowing down, not picking up speed. Besides, there are no cars coming in the other direction. He could pass using that lane.”

  “Then what in the hell is he doing?”

  The horn blasted again, just as the truck whacked the bumper of the Cadillac. Jamie pitched forward. Her spine went rigid and she gripped the door handle and held on.

  The Cadillac lurched as Matt floored the accelerator. Jamie looked at the speedometer. It was pointing past a hundred. Her heart was racing with it. The road ahead was clear, but even on this country road, they were bound to be moving up on some car soon.

  And then what? She looked over at Matt. He had both hands on the wheel. That telltale pulse throbbed in his set jaw.

  “Can you take a side road?” Jamie asked as one whizzed by.

  “We’ll flip if I turn the wheel at this speed.” Despite the danger of their situation, his voice was wonderfully calm. Jamie instantly felt steadied by it.

  The eighteen-wheeler whacked the bumper of the Cadillac once more.

  “Looks like I should have gotten that tank,” Matt said. “Jamie, open up the center console and get out my gun.”

  “Gun?”

  “We don’t have much time, Jamie.”

  Jamie told herself she shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Matt carried a gun with him. He was a private investigator after all. She opened the console and pulled out the seriouslooking .38 she found there.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now I’m going to open the sunroof. I want you to get up there and shoot at that guy.”

  “You want me to shoot him?” Jamie repeated, shocked at Matt’s words.

  The horn blasted behind them again. Once again, Jamie’s neck snapped forward, then back as the rig behind them whacked the bumper of the Cadillac.

  “Don’t shoot him, Jamie. Shoot at him. Aim carefully. Try to get a bullet through the passenger side. That should give him something to think about.”

  Matt’s hand shot off the steering wheel and back again as he hit the button to open the sunroof. But even in that instant, Jamie felt the car careen slightly. She realized then that a side wind was buffeting the car quite strongly. It was probably taking all Matt’s concentration and steady hands to keep the car on the road at this speed.

  Jamie’s hair instantly began to whirl around her head as the sunroof came open. The smell of dust and heat and exhaust assailed her nose. She heard the roar of the road and the unmuffled blast of the truck behind them. Her eardrums reverberated with the vibrations.

  Jamie’s pulse skittered as her sweaty hands slid back and forth over the cold steel of the gun.

  Target practice had been one thing. But shooting in the direction of a person was another. Still, Jamie understood this was something she must do.

  “I’m going to open her up, Jamie,” Matt shouted over the roar of the road. “We should leave him behind long enough for you to get into position before he can catch up to bump us again. Ready?”

  Jamie slipped off her high heels and steeled herself.

  “Ready.”

  She felt the Cadillac leap forward with a new burst of speed. She didn’t waste time looking at the speedometer. She unbuckled her seat belt and quickly straddled the console on her knees, facing the back of the car. She held the .38 firmly with both hands, just as Liz had taught her.

  The wind blew her hair every which way. She ignored it as she focused on the big tractor-trailer rig. Matt’s last burst of speed had left it several car lengths behind. But it was coming up again, and coming up fast.

  “Wait until he’s about a car length behind,” Matt shouted over the roar of the road. “No longer.”

  Jamie rested her wrists on the opening of the sunroof to steady them. Her heart was pounding against her ribs like a sledgehammer. The eighteen-wheeler was coming closer, closer.

  The black windshield of the red cab stared at her like the engorged pupils of an angry beast. It was almost on them. Another second or two and it would be ramming them again.

  Only this time she wouldn’t have a seat and shoulder belt to keep her from going through the windshield.

  “You aim for that exact point you want the bullet to go, Jamie,” she heard Liz’s voice say inside her head. “Then you just start squeezing that trigger real slow and gentle like and let that critter go off when it’s ready.”

  The loud blast of the gun and the kick from its recoil surprised Jamie. It surprised the driver of the eighteen-wheeler a lot more. Jamie couldn’t tell for certain, but she was pretty sure she’d hit the windshield.

  The big rig that had been just inches away a moment before dropped back so fast it appeared as though it had just stopped cold. She could see the smoke bursting out of the brake linings.

  Relief flooded through her, making her feel as weak as water. She dropped back into her seat, her hands trembling as she replaced Matt’s gun in the console.

  “Nice shooting,” he said. “Although you did call it a bit close.”

  Jamie looked over at Matt to see him smiling at her. She had no idea how good one of those wonderful half smiles of his could feel. Until now.

  It lasted only a fraction of a second, though. His eyes were instantly back on the road.

  “Jamie, buckle up. Quick.”
>
  There was a sudden, urgent note in Matt’s voice that caught Jamie’s attention immediately. She snapped her seat and shoulder belts into place as she felt the car decelerating rapidly.

  “What is it?” Jamie asked at the same instant she saw the sign whiz by. Deep bumps ahead-slow to 25 MPH.

  They were going way too fast and there simply was no time to slow down. Dread squeezed her stomach like a fist. She gripped the edge of the console and the handle on the passenger door and held on for dear life.

  The first bump launched them into the air. They landed in the deep depression of another. Hard. Jamie felt one of the tires explode. Then another. Sparks flew out from underneath the chassis as the metal rims screeched over the blacktop. Then the car hit another bump, flipped off the road and turned over and over.

  A big mushroom cloud pressed her back in the seat and swallowed her whole. She couldn’t see. All she could hear was a deafening roar.

  Then the air bag deflated and her view returned. The world passed by as a great cloud of dust and breaking glass and tipping earth and sky. She’d never been a screamer, but at that moment she wanted to scream her lungs out. She might have, too, but she needed all the air in her body just to breathe.

  And then the car whipped around and she hit her head on something and a deep, sweet blackness swallowed her whole.

  WHEN THE CAR STOPPED pitching in the dust and settled, Matt unbuckled his seat and shoulder belts and reached for Jamie. She was slumped over on the passenger door, out cold. An icy knife stabbed him in the chest

  “Jamie?”

  She didn’t answer. He quickly released her from the restraints of her seat and shoulder belts and checked her pulse. It was steady. He couldn’t figure out why she was unconscious until he noticed the skin on her right temple was abraded.

  She had hit her head. She needed medical attention right away.

  He had turned off the ignition the second they’d hit the first bump. He had no fear of the car catching fire. He reached for the cell phone and put through an emergency call.

  When he knew help was on the way he tried to push open the driver’s door, but the metal was too bent and compressed to yield. Every window in the car was a spider web of shattered glass. Matt repositioned himself in the driver’s seat and kicked out the web over the driver’s door. It fell away to the

  dust. A welcome breeze drifted in.

  The car was a wreck. There was nothing to do now but wait until help arrived.

  He drew Jamie’s unconscious body into his arms. He rested her head on his shoulder and held her close to him to keep her warm and ward off the possibility of shock.

  She had to be all right. He couldn’t allow himself to think

  of the alternative. Unconsciously, he stroked her long hair, barely aware of its refined silk sifting through his roughened, calloused hands. Her face was white, so awfully white.

  “Damn it, Jamie, wake up.”

  When she stirred in his arms, Matt’s pulses took an incredible leap.

  She opened hazy eyes and blinked up at him. “Matt? That you?”

  Matt controlled the sigh of pure relief that was escaping from his lungs. “It’s me. Jamie, how do you feel?”

  She raised a hand to her temple and winced. “My head hurts some. Are you okay?”

  “Getting better by the second. Help is on the way.”

  She still looked dazed. “Help? What kind of help?”

  “Someone to get us out of here and take a look at you.”

  Her eyes were beginning to focus. Her head turned as she took in the shattered glass, the deflated air bags, the bent metal of the car’s frame impinging on them.

  He felt her small shudder. “That was some ride. I sure wouldn’t want to be you when you explain the condition of this car to an insurance adjuster.”

  He smiled. She started to pull herself up and swayed. He gently eased her back into the cradle of his arm.

  “You’d best stay put for a spell.”

  She sighed. “Maybe I’d best” She relaxed against him, nestling in closer. Matt could feel the side of her breast nudging his chest wall. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Jamie asked.

  He opened his eyes. “Oh, yeah.” Now that his fear for her had receded, his senses were filling with her warmth, her scent. He gripped the driver’s door with his free hand and held on. He knew if help didn’t get here soon, his insides weren’t going to be in any better shape than his car.

  “It must have been Wrey in that truck that rammed us.”

  “It wasn’t Wrey,” Matt said.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because I didn’t leave Wrey in any condition to walk, much less drive a truck.”

  Her eyes grew wide.

  As soon as Matt saw her reaction, he realized he’d spoken without thinking. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to shock you.”

  She sent him a smile of pure approval that slipped past every defense he ever had to settle deep and warm inside him.

  “I’ve always thought emceeing a show that finds lost loves a mite too tame for you.”

  Matt’s pulses took another incredible leap at the warmth and meaning in her words. “You thought that, did you?”

  “Cade always fit right into the big, softhearted veterinarian persona, and Liz, the sophisticated and sharp accountant, but I always pictured you as the type to be roping steers and riding the range like the leather-faced cowboys on your mama and daddy’s ranch.”

  “You’re talking about the ones who are always doused in eau de cow manure?”

  She laughed, light and warm. “The romantic image does rather tend to relegate the practical considerations.”

  The romantic image. She thought of him as a romantic image. He took a deep breath and tightened his hold on the driver’s door.

  “Even if it wasn’t Wrey, he could have called someone to do his dirty work for him, Matt.”

  “Wrey wasn’t in any condition to be picking up a telephone or talking anytime soon. Besides, the store didn’t have a phone. I checked. I also made sure neither his truck nor the phone inside it was in operating order before I left. No one from Sweetspring could have caught up with us so fast, anyway.”

  “So it was just a random attack?” Jamie asked.

  “I seriously doubt it. The way I see it, that truck was waiting for us outside of town.”

  “Waiting for us? No, that can’t be. Who would want to run us off the road?”

  “Maybe someone who figured you’d go looking for a trail to Tony in Sweetspring and followed you here.”

  “This can’t have anything to do with my looking for Tony.”

  “Can’t it? I don’t believe in coincidences. Twice before you’ve received warnings to back off the search. It seems pretty obvious to me that our being rammed was designed to scare you real bad, so you’d stop looking for Tony.”

  “Why would someone go to all this trouble just to stop me from looking for Tony?”

  “Jamie, face it. You know virtually nothing about him, not even his real name. We have no idea what his family was doing in Sweetspring fifteen years ago. Or what any of them might be doing now. There could be a lot of reasons why he doesn’t want you finding him.”

  “He isn’t the one doing these things.”

  Damn it, what had this guy done to earn this kind of belief?

  Anger rode Matt’s tone. “End of the trail, Jamie.”

  “What do you mean, end of the trail?”

  “In case you. hadn’t noticed, you were just almost killed. You’re letting this matter go.”

  An irritated eyebrow flew up her forehead. “Excuse me?”

  Matt knew his tough routine had not worked on Jamie before and wasn’t going to work now. But he was just too angry and frustrated to care. “You heard what I said.”

  She reached up to the steering wheel and pulled herself into a sitting position. She scooted over to the passenger seat. This
time she didn’t wobble. On the contrary. Her reflexes were smooth, her movements agile.

  And boy, was her color back. She had a dangerous glint in her eyes. When she tossed her windblown hair it crackled across her shoulders as though filled with an electrical charge.

  “Just because you decided you don’t want to go looking for Tony any more, that does not mean the end of the trail for me. I’m not letting this matter go.”

  Matt knew she meant it, too. She was a damn headstrong, stubborn woman. She was going to go on looking until she probably got herself killed.

  He grabbed her arms and held them tightly. “Damn it, Jamie, what is it with you and this Tony? Is it worth your life to find him?”

  “He’s not connected with that eighteen-wheeler, Matt. He’s—”

  “I know,” Matt said, not letting her finish. “He’s a good kisser. Well, I’m tired of hearing how good the bastard can kiss. Good kissers can be gotten on any damn corner in Texas.”

  Matt pulled her into his arms and brought his mouth to hers with all the angry frustration that had just overwhelmed all his good sense.

  But all the anger and frustration fled the instant he felt her softness crushed to him and the incredible sensation of having her mouth molded to his.

  Her lips parted with an intake of surprise. He dipped his tongue into the heat and softness inside her mouth and came out with a taste so sweet it burned all the way to his soul.

  In the next heartbeat he was kissing her deeply, wantonly, madly, greedily sinking into all the sensual heat and textures of her mouth and body. She was everything he’d ever dreamt she would be and more.

  He no longer had any thought for the past. The future. Family. Honor.

  With her in his arms he had no thoughts at all.

  The blood hammered through his ears so hard he couldn’t hear. He couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to hear. He didn’t need to breathe.

  All he needed was her. All he had ever needed was her.

  He ran his hands up her back, over the soft, smooth heat of her body and tangled them through the silk of her hair. With every new demand of his mouth he found himself pouring out all the ache and longing and hunger he’d carried in his heart for her for so long. He was soaring way out of control. He didn’t care. She was heaven, and he never wanted to come back to earth again.