One Tough Texan
Page 24
Val pointed the barrel right at her. “One more step, Tex, and I shoot her. Now open that denim vest of yours very slowly and take out the gun.”
Matt opened his vest to show his empty shoulder holster. “They don’t allow guns on airplanes, Val.”
“You could have gotten one since you got to town. Like I did. You were a fool not to. Who knows you’re here?”
“Everyone,” Matt said easily, waiting for the slightest relaxation of Val’s guard. “The camera crew will be here any minute to shoot Tony and Jamie’s reunion for the next segment of my show.”
Val snickered. “Good yarn, Tex. But not good enough. Everybody thinks Tony’s dead back in Reno. His resurrection from the dead must be as big a surprise to you as to me. You two have been very helpful in leading me to my nephew. Unfortunately for you, your usefulness has just run out”
“Damn it all, Val, you don’t have to kill them!” Tony yelled.
“You’d better start pleading for your own life, Tony. Because if I don’t get that three hundred thousand back you took, your worthless hide is getting tossed over this balcony.”
“You can’t get away with killing us,” Jamie said.
“Of course, I can get away with it. They’re looking for you in Reno for Tony’s death. If your bodies are never recovered, they’ll just think you fled to avoid prosecution.”
Matt judged the distance between him and Val and knew it was too far. Before he’d reached him, Jamie would be dead. He had to wait for the man’s eyes to leave his, for that pistol to veer even slightly from Jamie’s heart.
“Val, for God’s sake—”
“Shut up, Tony. I’ve always liked the idea of ladies first. But prudence necessitates—”
The second the pistol’s muzzle moved away from Jamie on an arc toward him, Matt leapt forward. He wasn’t fast enough. He knew he wouldn’t be. The distance was too great.
The bullet hit him hard in the chest.
Matt landed on Val, knocking him to the floor. Shock was his ally now, the blessed kind of unfeeling shock that cut off the nerves in the brain from the body’s condition.
He could still function for a few more seconds, a few more precious seconds.
He grabbed for the gun. Val pulled it away, kicking and squirming beneath the weight of Matt’s body, desperate, deadly, a man fighting for his life.
There was only one thing more deadly—a man fighting for the life of the woman he loved.
Matt rolled, knocking Val off balance in an attempt to disengage the gun. Val pulled it up and out of the way at the last second, savagely slamming it against Matt’s head, kicking frantically in an attempt to push Matt off him.
But Matt held on, refusing to let himself be shaken off.
Then a hot poker drove suddenly deep into his chest. The shock was wearing off. Desperately, he fought against the sluggishness of his movements, the agonizing pain that came with every breath that tried to fill his lungs, the cloying blackness threatening his vision.
He could feel Val squirming out from under him. Val’s face was red and contorted in fury as he finally pulled free and pointed the automatic at Matt.
The roar of the firing gun deafened Matt’s ears. Val let out a small gurgle of surprise as a bullet whipped through his throat and put a black hole through his windpipe. His head fell backward as his body collapsed. Matt knew he would not be moving again.
Matt looked behind him to see Jamie standing in the middle of the room, her blue eyes piercingly bright, his smoking .38 still poised and steady in her hands.
He smiled, closed his eyes and let the blackness overtake him.
“YOU ARE THE DAMN luckiest man I ever did meet,” Keele said.
“What day is this?” Matt asked, trying to sit up against the tight wrapping of his chest and the weight of the invisible two-ton anvil that perched on it. “Nobody around this damn place will tell me a thing.”
“It’s the fourth night since they brought you into this white palace. You were pretty much out of it the first three. How do you feel?”
“I’ve been a lot better.”
“I bet. Bullet tore through your lung, smashed a rib, came out your back and dispatched a sixty-thousand-dollar vase. Another half inch over and it would have dispatched you.”
“And Val Lipicky?”
“Valmer Lipicky ain’t going to be robbing nobody no more, no how, thanks to your Jamie gal.”
“Jamie’s okay, isn’t she?”
“She’s more than okay. She called the paramedics and kept you from bleeding to death until they got to you.”
“What about Tony Lipicky?”
“He’ll be limping a mite from now on, but he’ll recover. He’s given us the lowdown, Matt. What with his information and Jamie’s creative rounding out of the story—”
“Hold on there. What do you mean, ‘creative rounding out’?”
“That’s right. I keep forgetting. You’ve been snoozing these past few days and nights away.”
“You were saying about Jamie?” Matt prodded.
“Jamie told my boss that she came to you because she found a ten-thousand-dollar note in an old locket she’d been given. According to her, you suspected right off that it was stolen property and just possibly part of an interstate robbery ring. She says you took a vacation from your P.L practice to try to secure the proper evidence so that you could turn the matter over to the FBI.”
“But your boss knows the truth.”
“What my boss knows is a great collar when he sees one. And Jamie handed this one over to us on a silver platter. This way it looks like we’ve been in on this from the first. My boss has already gone to yours and told him that you were just assisting us on your own time because you’d been given a lead you knew we’d be interested in. Buddy, not only has your slate been washed sparkling clean, you’re getting a commendation.”
“There’s still the matter of an unauthorized use of a charge code on Jamie’s case.”
“Perry’s already explained that away. He said he just made a mistake and keyed in the wrong one.”
“No,” Matt said. “I can’t let him take the heat for me.”
“Matt, relax. Nevelt is happy to forgive the mistake. Perry has been emceeing the ‘Finder of Lost Loves’ show and getting rave reviews. Nevelt is processing your transfer as we speak. And he’s so ticked at Randy for making him look like even more of a jackass than he is that he’s canning Randy’s hide. Thanks to Jamie you’re back in the saddle again, buddy, just as soon as you’re ready to mount up again.”
“Where is she, Keele?”
“Right outside, along with the rest of the family.” Keele paused to cross his arms over his chest. “Although why I’m bringing you any of this good news I don’t know, you boldfaced liar.”
“Run that one by me again?”
“You heard me. These past few days and nights while I marched up and down outside, waiting to hear whether you were going to live or die, your brother and I did some serious talking. Cade and Jamie haven’t been married for more than two years. She’s free.”
“She’s not free,” Matt said.
Keele smiled. “No, I figured she wasn’t. Truth be told, I sort of saw this was the real lay of the land first time I heard that particular sound in your voice when you told me you’d kill me if I made a move toward her.”
“What sound?”
“Same one I heard just now. Same one I heard in her voice when she told our boss that you solved the case singlehandedly. Like I said, Matt Bonner. You’re the damn luckiest man I ever met. Now the doctor says you can have five minutes with each one of those visitors waiting outside. I’ll go get her for you.”
“No. Ask my brother to come in first.”
Keele lost his smile. “You’re not serious.”
“I have to tell him about Jamie and me.”
“You don’t have to tell him. A blind fool could tell how she feels. She’s lived at this hospital without sleep or food waiting to s
ee if you were okay. Trust me, Cade knows.”
“I did this to him behind his back, Keele. My own brother. I have to face him.”
“Face him tomorrow, Matt. When you have more strength.”
“No, I have to do it now. Get him for me.”
Keele shook his head as he left the room. A moment later Cade came inside. He was smiling as he approached the bed.
“Damn if you don’t look pretty good for a man who near died. So, how you feeling?”
Matt’s chest felt even more constricted. This was hard enough to do without Cade putting on this bold, smiling front for him.
“Cade, we have to talk about Jamie.”
Cade’s eyes met his squarely. “Matt, I know.”
“Cade, I love her. I can’t give her up. Not even for you.”
Cade’s smile didn’t falter. “Matt, stop wasting your strength. And your breath. It’s okay with me, you and Jamie.”
“I know you still love her, Cade.”
“And I always will. But it’s not the same kind of love it once was, Matt. And it was never the kind of love she feels for you. Hell, you should have seen her when the doctors told us you were going to be okay. Why she just got all lit up inside. And just now, when Keele came out and said you wanted to see me, that light dimmed something fierce.”
Matt studied his brother’s face for any sign of hurt or discomfort. He could find none.
“Cade, you have to be straight with me about this. You can’t be giving her up this easy.”
“Matt, I don’t think Jamie was ever mine to give up. If I’m not the one to make her happy, I’m glad it’s you. Now, stop wasting time with me. I’m sending her in. And I’m taking the rest of the family home. We’ll see y’all tomorrow.”
And with that Cade strode out the door wearing a smile and carrying with him the burden that had weighed down Matt’s heart for so long.
Jamie was inside a second later, rushing over to the bed. Her clothes had obviously been slept in. Her hair was. a golden mass of tangles. There were dark circles beneath her worried blue eyes. She was untidy and tousled like he had never seen her. And he had never seen her looking more beautiful.
“Matt, they keep telling me you’re all right. Are you?”
He reached for her hand and captured it within his. “At this moment, never better. I love you, Jamie Bonner. I have since the first moment I saw you and I will until the day I die.”
His words brought such pleasure to Jamie’s heart, it paused with the pure amazement of it.
Matt watched as a beautiful smile drew back Jamie’s lips. Gently she wrapped her arms around his neck and covered the rough stubble on his cheeks and chin with a dozen quick kisses.
They warmed him all over, washing away his previous physical discomfort as though it had been nothing.
“Jamie, darlin’, am I to take it you love me, too?”
She leaned back to look into his eyes. “Of course, I love you! I’ve loved you since the moment you kissed me. Why did you take so long to tell me?”
Matt looked deep into the love in her eyes and never felt stronger in his life.
“I thought Cade would always be there between us. I couldn’t understand how a man could love you and ever let you go. I still can’t.”
She sighed. “I didn’t understand about Cade at first, either, Matt. But the truth is that to him, well, folks are just like his hurt animals. All he wants is to fix them.”
Matt raised his hand to her cheek, stroking the soft down of her skin. “What could he possibly fix about you? You’re perfect.”
Jamie smiled as she brushed her lips against his fingertips.
“Cade’s the kind of man who possesses a sixth sense for those he deems hurt or abandoned. He gravitated toward me because he saw my lack of family as a wound that he could fix. He married me to give me that family. And he read me right, Matt. More than anything then, I wanted to be part of the wonderful Bonner family.”
“So that’s why you married him.”
“And because I was attracted to the gentleness in his heart. I never thought he could let me down.”
“You saying he did?”
“Not intentionally. Matt, I lied when I told Liz and Cade and everyone that I was an orphan brought up by a foster family. The woman who reared me was my real mama. When she died two years ago of cirrhosis of the liver, the hospital tracked me down to tell me. Cade saw the letter. I had to tell him the rest.”
“The rest?”
Jamie sighed, deep and hard. “I never knew my daddy, because my mama couldn’t even be sure who he was. She’d slept with so many men around the time I was conceived, she just picked one of their names to tag on to the end of mine. It was the same with Lester. He was my half brother, but he never knew who his daddy was either.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Jamie?”
“Because of the reaction I’ve always gotten when I spoke of it. Because of Cade’s reaction. He looked at me with pity. That ended everything for us. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with a man who saw me as a victim. I would’ve become one.”
Jamie watched as the beautiful turquoise-and-silver slashes in Matt’s eyes stilled with an emotion that had absolutely nothing to do with pity and everything to do with admiration.
“Will you spend the rest of your life with me, Jamie?”
“Oh, yes, Matt. With all my heart, yes.”
He pulled her to him, his mouth claiming hers with a fierce sensuality that both thrilled and surprised her.
She drew back, suddenly breathless. “Matt, you’re still in serious condition.”
He smiled. “Yes, and it’s getting more serious by the second.” He reached for her again.
“Matt!”
When the nurse came by with a sleeping pill a few moments later, Keele was standing guard at the door. He took a quick look inside, smiled and closed the door again.
He flashed his badge at the nurse. “FBI. Sorry, ma’am, but you can’t go in.”
“But that man needs his rest!” the nurse complained.
“He’s got what he needs, ma’am.”
“But—”
“Don’t you worry none. He’ll be fine. He’s one tough Texan.”
eISBN 978-14592-6842-5
ONE TOUGH TEXAN
Copyright© 1997 by Mary Johnson
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or uttilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter Invented, Including xerography, photocopying and recording, or In any Information storage or retrieval system, Is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly Inspired by any Individual known or unknown to the author, and all Incidents are pure Invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
®and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ®are registered In the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and In other countries.
Printed in U.S.A.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Table of Contents
It's the end of the trail
About the Author
Books by M.J. Rodgers
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