One Tough Texan

by MJ Rodgers

  “He owes you an explanation.”

  “No, Matt. He doesn’t owe me anything. Please. Let’s just go back to the hotel.”

  Jamie felt too disheartened to say another word on the way to their rooms. Her feet dragged as did her thoughts. All this effort and Tony wouldn’t even talk to her.

  When she opened the door to her room and Matt once again followed her inside, she knew better than to think this time that there was anything even friendly about his actions.

  She sat on the bed, kicked off her shoes, then swung her legs on top of the bedspread and leaned back against the headboard.

  Matt was standing at the bottom of the bed looking at her with his typically cool, distant expression.

  “Something you wanted to say?” she asked, hearing the edge in her voice. “Like I told you so?”

  “Do you really think I’d say something like that to you?”

  Jamie sighed and rubbed her temples. Lord, she felt tired. And so damn disappointed.

  “No, Matt. You’re much too much of a gentleman to rub it in when you’re right. I should have listened. He knew I was looking for him. He just doesn’t want to see me.”

  “He’s a fool.”

  “No, I’m the fool for letting it…bother me.”

  Matt pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat on it. “Why didn’t you tell me about the locket?”

  “I tried to. Last night. But you didn’t want to talk about it, remember?”

  “I’m sorry about last night. I…had something else on my mind. I’m listening now. Tell me about this locket.”

  Jamie picked up the locket and looked at it, feeling suddenly as though all the foolish hopes of the intervening years rested heavily in her hand.

  “Tony gave this to me on the night he took me to the dance. Just before he kissed me.”

  “And you’ve kept it all these years.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it meant so much to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what was so special about that night, Jamie.”

  Jamie looked at Matt, trying to understand the emotion behind his request. But all she saw was that continuing polite, cool professional composure of his. And it was more disheartening than even the rejection she’d gotten from Tony.

  She sighed, her spirits unraveling to their last thread. “Why, Matt? What does it matter? You promised you’d find Tony for me. You found him. It’s over for you.”

  “It’s not over. Someone has been trying to keep you from finding him. Someone has been following you. Jamie, I have to find out who and why. Help me. Tell me about that night.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Why?”

  “Matt, this is real personal and if you don’t understand, it’s going to-” Jamie stopped herself just in time to hold

  back some of her pride. “Disappoint me,” she finished.

  Matt leaned over and rested his hand on top of hers.

  The unexpectedness of the gesture made the breath catch in her throat. The feel of his calloused palm was hot and hard.

  A shiver snaked through her, bringing warmth instead of cold. The pressure of his brief clasp was gentle. When he withdrew his hand, the warmth remained.

  “I’ll do my best to understand, Jamie.”

  And Jamie suddenly knew that he would. She stared hard at the locket in her hands. The words came out hesitantly at first as she tried to describe what it was like to be fifteen, sneaking out the back window of a trailer, not daring to draw the attention of the man and woman who were drunk in the next room. And why she couldn’t

  Next, she was describing the smell of the feedlot, the feel of the scratchy cloth of the hand-me-down dress, the effort to balance in the cheap, gaudy high heels that were too big for her feet.

  But overlaying it all was the excitement of being invited to the dance. Then Tony was putting the locket around her neck and leaning down to kiss her. And they were walking hand in hand.

  “When we heard the shotgun blast, I knew it came from the Kleinman place,” Jamie said. “Tony wanted to go in vestigate. I told him Kyle was only shooting at rabbits in his backyard-and missing as usual. So he went in to the dance with me instead.”

  Jamie paused to take a deep breath. “Deputy Plotnik’s wife, Maylene, took our picture with a Polaroid camera as soon as we walked in the door. She was selling the pictures of all the couples that night for a dollar. Maylene and her husband always had this entrepreneurial bent.

  “Anyway, Tony bought the picture from her, then tore it up and threw it into the wastebasket because he said it didn’t do me justice. When he went to get us some punch, I fished the photo out of the wastebasket and kept it-well, his side of it anyway.”

  “But not your side of it. Why?”

  Jamie laughed with no mirth. “Because it did do me justice. Tony and I had a cup of punch and three dances together before Deputy Plotnik arrived to tell Wrey and his mama about Kyle being shot. The dance broke up then, and everybody went home.”

  “What happened when you got home?”

  “It was okay. They were passed out in the living room. They didn’t even make it into the bedroom that night”

  A moment passed before Matt spoke. “Were your foster folks always that…violent?”

  Jamie nodded. “They were ignorant and coarse and cared for little beyond their next bottle of booze. Lester was a genetic twig right off the twisted family tree.”

  “How did swine like that ever get custody of you?”

  Jamie looked up, startled by the sudden, intense anger in Matt’s voice. And in his eyes.

  “Things were…different then.”

  He looked away for a moment. When he looked back at her, the steadied coolness in his eyes and in his gravelly drawl told her he had the anger under control. “Didn’t you ever try to find any of your blood family?”

  “No point to it. There weren’t any.”

  “No uncles, aunts, cousins?”

  “None. The only kindred souls that kept me company in those days were the ones I found in books. Their uplifting thoughts and feelings filled in a lot of the empty times. Then I met Liz. From the first, she went about getting the entire Bonner clan to adopt me. She set me up with Cade and kept after him until he proposed.”

  “I doubt he needed much convincing.”

  “Truth be told, poor Cade didn’t have a chance. There I was, a foundling, just like one of his homeless puppies. He couldn’t resist trying to save me.”

  “Jamie, he loves you.”

  “I know he does, Matt. I don’t mean the comment unkindly.”

  Matt looked away from her face toward the window for a moment, before his eyes once again found hers. “Did anyone in Sweetspring have the sense not to blame you for your foster family?”

  “A couple of my teachers pitied me. But their pity was as bad as the meanness from the other kids.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You would if you’d ever been pitied, Matt.”

  “Explain what you mean.”

  “Pity gives you the feeling that you’re a victim. Pretty soon you start acting like one and thinking like one and you become one. It’s a joyless experience.”

  “You didn’t let that happen.”

  “I couldn’t. Thinking of myself as a victim was not the way to survive. And I had to survive in order to leave that place. A victim could never have escaped.”

  “So it wasn’t his kiss or the locket that has made Tony special to you all these years. It was the fact that he was the only one who saw you and liked you for who you were.”

  Jamie smiled. “You do understand. I’m much obliged to you for finding him, Matt, even if Tony won’t acknowledge who I am.”

  “I can rectify that. Just say the word.”

  Jamie saw the look in Matt’s eyes, heard the subtle, deadly change in his voice. They both gave her a start.

  “No. I thank you, Matt, most sincerely, but no. Tony’s accept
ance of me as myself. got me through a particularly painful period of my life. Whatever his reasons for not wanting to accept me now, I will respect them.”

  “Why? You must realize that he had to be the one who threatened you.”

  “No, I don’t believe that.”

  “Jamie, we found the driver of that eighteen-wheeler.”

  Jamie tensed, her spine suddenly straight and rigid. “Are you saying Tony sent him?”

  “His name is Donald Tennisen. He’s from Reno.”

  “I…see. And because he’s from Reno, you assume Tony sent him. But you don’t know that for sure. What did Tennisen have to say?”

  “That he wanted his lawyer. He’s intimately familiar with all the roads into Stripe City. But up until now, Tennisen’s kept his felonies confined to beating up on his competitors and sabotaging their rigs. This is his first offense that doesn’t come off as business related. Unless Tony is part of his business.”

  “Tony didn’t send him, Matt. Not acknowledging me is one thing. But threatening me, having someone run us off the road, that wouldn’t be like Tony.”

  Matt got up from his chair and strode over to the window. He looked out at the clouds that had gathered like thick smoke, blotting out the morning light. The motionless planes and angles of his profile mirrored the somber sky.

  But that pulse vibrating in his jaw was moving faster than a rattlesnake strike.

  She could sense a tension in Matt that was almost tangible. She didn’t know when she had first begun to be aware of it. But now that she had, she realized it was an integral part of him-an almost smoldering energy that lay beneath the cool, professional quality of his control. He turned back to look at her.

  “What was inside the locket?”

  Jamie unfastened the chain from around her neck. She turned it on its face and slipped her nail beneath a small indentation on the back.

  The hidden spring flipped to reveal the secret compartment. Jamie reached inside and drew out a rolled paper. Matt returned to the side of the bed. She held the paper up to him.

  As he unrolled it, Jamie saw his eyebrows raise.

  “This is a ten-thousand-dollar note.”

  “Yes, the discovery rather surprised me, too.”

  “When did you find it?”

  “A week ago I was going through some old clothes I’d stored in a box. The locket fell out on the floor. When I picked it up, I discovered the secret compartment with the money.”

  Jamie watched Matt hold the wrinkled bill up to the light, studying it more closely.

  “At first I thought it had to be play money,” she continued. “I was going to throw it out. But just to be on the safe side, I took it to a bank. They verified that it was real.”

  “Tony must have been more taken with you than you ever knew. He wrote P.S. I Love You on this bill.”

  “No, Matt. I’m convinced Tony didn’t know the money was hidden in the locket or he surely wouldn’t have given it to me. The locket itself has no monetary value.”

  “A cheap metal locket is an odd place to hide ten-thousand dollars,” Matt said, still frowning at the bill.

  “I’ve been thinking about how it might have happened. It could be the locket belonged to an elderly female relative of Tony’s who passed on. She may have been one of those folks who didn’t trust banks. I can see someone like that hiding the money in the locket and not telling anyone about it.”

  “So returning this money was the reason you wanted to see Tony?”

  “Part of it.”

  “And the other part?”

  She couldn’t explain to Matt what had been missing inside her—what she had found only in his arms. Knowing that he didn’t want her, she could never set herself up for this man’s rejection—or worse yet, his pity.

  “Sometimes a kiss can be hard to forget.” she said simply.

  “So you keep telling me,” he said, an odd undercurrent in his drawl. “This bill is old. Date on it is 1918.”

  “The bank told me that 1968 was the last year that the Federal Reserve issued any bills over one-hundred dollars. If this bill was in better shape, it’d be a collector’s item. As it is, it’s probably worth just the face value.”

  “Which isn’t a bad chunk of change even by today’s standards.” Matt held the bill out to her.

  Jamie took it and returned it to its hiding place in the locket. She slipped the locket into her purse. “I’d still like to return the money to Tony. I suppose that means another round of the casinos tomorrow. Only, if he thinks I might be there, he may avoid them from now on.”

  “We don’t need to repeat this morning’s rounds to locate him.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Think about it, Jamie. He frequents different casinos in the early morning on a regular basis, but he isn’t gambling. Why else would he be there?”

  “If he were an employee,” Jamie said. “But he can’t work for a particular casino. Wendy says she saw him in the Hilton yesterday morning. We saw him in Harrah’s this morning.”

  “There’s another explanation.”

  Matt was obviously getting at something. Jamie mentally retraced their steps that morning, racking her brain for what it might be.

  She had been concentrating on the faces of the men she had seen. But the background lights and shapes, the noises, these were harder to focus on, particularly since they had to compete with the ubiquitous vacuuming machines.

  And then it came to her. She leaned away from the headboard. “The cleaning crew. Nearly all the casinos had workers vacuuming and cleaning in the early morning hours!”

  “And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if your Tony wasn’t there supervising them.”

  “Matt, you’re brilliant!”

  Her unconscious burst of enthusiasm spread over his face in a flash of color. Jamie’s mouth almost dropped open in surprise when she realized she had embarrassed him.

  The fact that Matt could be embarrassed was amazing enough. But the fact that he could be embarrassed by a compliment from her hit Jamie on a whole new level.

  Matt walked over to the phone on the table and picked up the receiver. He dialed the desk and asked to speak to the manager.

  As he waited to be transferred, he kept his eyes averted from hers.

  A moment later, Jamie heard him identify himself to the person on the other end of the line as the owner of a new carpet-cleaning service in town. She was rather amazed at the extremely polished impromptu sales pitch Matt gave. She didn’t know whether to be shocked at how effectively he lied or reassured. After a few questions, he thanked whoever he’d been talking to and hung up the phone.

  “The highly competent Timothy Palmer of Palmer’s Cleaning Company services the Flamingo Hilton casino and most of the other major casinos in Reno.”

  “Tony must work for this Palmer.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Matt picked up the telephone book and flipped through the yellow pages. “Palmer’s Cleaning Company is on the other side of town,” he said.

  “Let’s not call. Let’s just try to catch Tony there.”

  Matt nodded. By the time he had closed the telephone book, Jamie had slid her legs off the bed and her feet into her shoes. She snatched her handbag and beat him to the door.

  She hadn’t opened it but an inch when two powerful arms materialized on either side of her to shove the door closed again.

  “Not so fast, Jamie. Let me check out the hall first.”

  Jamie felt Matt’s breath against her hair, the incredible size and heat of him surrounding her completely, permeating right through her clothing, her skin, her bones. She sucked in a startled breath as a deep, undulating wave of pure, unadulterated desire washed through her.

  The feeling was so devastatingly strong that the only thing that kept her standing was the fact that she was now leaning against the door.

  The next instant he had stepped back, freeing her from the imprisoning circle of his body, a freedom she did n
ot welcome.

  It took another moment for the blood in Jamie’s body to rebalance sufficiently in her limbs to allow her to move away from the door. Even so, she was far from steady on her feet. She never knew she could want a man like this.

  “Sorry,” Matt said, his voice gruff. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Jamie just shook her head, not daring to look at him, afraid he’d see she was anything but scared.

  Cade had been her first lover and a wonderfully tender one. But not once in the entire three years of their marriage had she felt anything like this violent passion that threatened to consume her every time she even got near Matt.

  This was pure madness. And it was getting worse.

  She kept her distance from Matt as she watched him slip open the door and check the hall with swift, silent efficiency. He led the way out into the hall, closing the door behind them.

  Matt passed up two elevators that were occupied, before taking the third unoccupied one to the parking garage. They were in the rental car and on the road just minutes later.

  Jamie noticed Matt varied his speed, even making several turns to double back over streets they had already traveled. Not once did his eyes stray from the mirrors as he watched the road around them. He seemed even more wary today than usual.

  “Are we being followed?” Jamie asked.

  “If we are, they’re doing it in tandem.”

  “What do you mean, tandem?”

  “One of them follows us for a few blocks. Then he turns off and the other one takes over.”

  “How can you tell when that happens?”

  “It’s nearly impossible to know someone is tracking you that way. Professionals use it all the time.”

  “I thought you said these two weren’t professionals?”

  “One of them wasn’t acting professional last night. When they discovered we slipped out on them this morning, they may have decided to bone up on their surveillance skills.”

  “You said one of their names was Stedman. Is there any way for you to identify him further?”

  “I’m working on it. This is Palmer’s Cleaning Company up here on the right.”

  When Matt had pulled into the parking lot, he made no move to get out of the car. He turned to face her.