Hard to Handle

by Diana Palmer

  For an apology, it was fairly headlong. Alexander never made apologies. It was a red letter event.

  “Okay,” she said after a few seconds.

  He sighed, hard. “We can start over,” he said firmly.

  “Alexander, are you coming out of there?” came Kirry’s petulant voice in the background.

  “Better tell Kirry first,” she chided.

  “I’ll tell her…get the hell out of my study!” he raged abruptly, and there was the sound of something heavy hitting the wall. Then there was the sound of a door closing with a quick snap.

  “What did you do?” Jodie exclaimed.

  “I threw a book in her general direction. Don’t worry. It wasn’t a book I liked. It was something on Colombian politics.”

  “You could have hit her!”

  “In pistol competition, I hit one hundred targets out of a hundred shots. The book hit ten feet from where she was standing.”

  “You shouldn’t throw things at people.”

  “But I’m uncivilized,” he reminded her. “I need someone to mellow me out.”

  “Kirry’s already there.”

  “Not for long, if she opens that damned door again. I’ll see you Monday. Okay?”

  There was a long hesitation. But finally she said, “Okay.”

  She put down the receiver and stared at it blankly. Her life had just shifted ten degrees and she had no idea why. At least, not right then.

  7

  Jodie had just changed into her sweats and was making breakfast in her sock feet when Alexander knocked on the door.

  He was wearing gray sweats, like hers, with gray running shoes. He gave her a long, thorough appraisal. “I don’t like your hair in a bun,” he commented.

  “I can’t run with it down,” she told him. “It tangles.”

  He sniffed the air. “Breakfast?” he asked hopefully.

  “Just bacon and eggs and biscuits.”

  “Just! I had a granola bar,” he said with absolute disdain.

  She laughed nervously. It was new to have him in her apartment, to have him wanting to be with her. She didn’t understand his change of attitude, and she didn’t really trust it. But she was too enchanted to question it too closely.

  “If you’ll feed me,” he began, “I’ll let you keep up with me while we jog.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like a bribe,” she teased, moving toward the table. “What would your bosses say?”

  “You’re not a client,” he pointed out, seating himself at the table. “Or a perpetrator. So it doesn’t count.”

  She poured him a mug of coffee and put it next to his plate, frowning as she noted the lack of matching dishes and even silverware. The table—a prize from a yard sale—had noticeable scratches and she didn’t even have a tablecloth.

  “What a comedown this must be,” she muttered to herself as she fetched the blackberry jam and put it on the table, along with another teaspoon that didn’t match the forks.

  He gave her an odd look. “I’m not making comparisons, Jodie,” he said softly, and his eyes were as soft as his deep voice. “You live within your means, and you do extremely well at it. You’d be surprised how many people are mortgaged right down to the fillings in their teeth trying to put on a show for their acquaintances. Which is, incidentally, why a lot of them end up in prison, trying to make a quick buck by selling drugs.”

  She made a face. “I’d rather starve than live like that.”

  “So would I,” he confessed. He bit into a biscuit and moaned softly. “If only Jessie could make these the way you do,” he said.

  She smiled, pleased at the compliment, because Jessie was a wonderful cook. “They’re the only thing I do well.”

  “No, they aren’t.” He tasted the jam and frowned. “I didn’t know they made blackberry jam,” he noted.

  “You can buy it, but I like to make my own and put it up,” she said. “That came from blackberries I picked last summer, on the ranch. They’re actually your own blackberries,” she added sheepishly.

  “You can have as many as you like, if you’ll keep me supplied with this jam,” he said, helping himself to more biscuits.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  They ate in a companionable silence. When she poured their second cups of strong coffee, there weren’t any biscuits left.

  “Now I need to jog,” he teased, “to work off the weight I’ve just put on. Coffee’s good, too, Jodie. Everything was good.”

  “You were just hungry.”

  He sat back holding his coffee and stared at her. “You’ve never learned how to take a compliment,” he said gently. “You do a lot of things better than other people, but you’re modest to the point of self-abasement.”

  She moved a shoulder. “I like cooking.”

  He sipped coffee, still watching her. She was pretty early in the morning, he mused, with her face blooming like a rose, her skin clean and free of makeup. Her lips had a natural blush, and they had a shape that was arousing. He remembered how it felt to kiss her, and he ached to do it again. But this was new territory for her. He had to take his time. If he rushed her, he was going to lose her. That thought, once indifferent, took on supreme importance now. He was only beginning to see how much a part of him Jodie already was. He could have kicked himself for what he’d said to her at the ill-fated party.

  “The party was a bust,” he said abruptly.

  Her eyes widened. “Pardon?”

  “Kirry opened the presents and commented on their value and usefulness until the guests turned to strong drink,” he said with a twinkle in his green eyes. “Then she took offense when a former friend of hers turned up with her ex-boyfriend and made a scene. She left in a trail of flames by cab before we even got to the live band.”

  She was trying not to smile. It was hard not to be amused at Kirry’s situation. The woman was trying, even to people like Margie, who wanted to be friends with her.

  “I guess there went Margie’s shot at fashion fame,” she said sadly.

  “Kirry would never have helped her,” he said carelessly, and finished his coffee. “She never had any intention of risking her job on a new designer’s reputation. She was stringing Margie along so that she could hang out with us. She was wearing thin even before Saturday night.”

  “Sorry,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

  “We weren’t lovers,” he offered blatantly.

  She blushed and then caught her breath. “Alexander…!”

  “I wanted you to know that, in case anything is ever said about my relationship with her,” he added, very seriously. “It was never more than a surface attraction. I can’t abide a woman who wears makeup to bed.”

  She wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t…! “How do you know she does?” she blurted out.

  He grinned at her. “Margie told me. She asked Kirry why, and Kirry said you never knew when a gentleman might knock on your door after midnight.” He leaned forward. “I never did.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask!”

  “Sure you were.” His eyes slid over her pretty breasts, nicely but not blatantly outlined under the gray jersey top she was wearing. “You’re possessive about me. You don’t want to be, but you are.”

  She was losing ground. She got to her feet and made a big thing of checking to see that her shoelaces were tied. “Shouldn’t we go?”

  He got up, stretched lazily, and started to clear the table. She was shocked to watch him.

  “You’ve never done that,” she remarked.

  He glanced at her. “If I get married, and I might, I think marriage should be a fifty-fifty proposition. There’s nothing romantic about a man lying around the apartment in a dirty T-shirt watching football while his wife slaves in the kitchen.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I don’t like football.”

  “You don’t wear dirty T-shirts, either,” she replied, feeling sad because he’d mentioned marrying. Maybe there was another woman in
his life, besides Kirry.

  He chuckled. “Not unless I’m working in the garage.” He came around the table after he’d put the dishes in the sink and took her gently by the shoulders, his expression somber. “We’ve never discussed personal issues. I know less about you than a stranger does. Do you like children? Do you want to have them? Or is a career primary in your life right now?”

  The questions were vaguely terrifying. He was going from total indifference to intent scrutiny, and it was too soon. Her face took on a hunted look.

  “Never mind,” he said quickly, when he saw that. “Don’t worry about the question. It isn’t important.”

  She relaxed, but only a little. “I…love children,” she faltered. “I like working, or I would if I had a challenging job. But that doesn’t mean I’d want to put off having a family if I got married. My mother worked while I was growing up, but she was always there when I needed her, and she never put her job before her family. Neither would I.” She searched his eyes, thinking how beautiful a shade of green they were, and about little children with them. Her expression went dreamy. “Fame and fortune may sound enticing, but they wouldn’t make up for having people love you.” She shrugged. “I guess that sounds corny.”

  “Actually, it sounds very mature.” He bent and drew his mouth gently over her lips, a whisper of contact that didn’t demand anything. “I feel the same way.”

  “You do?” She was unconsciously reaching up to him, trying to prolong the contact. It was unsettling that his lightest touch could send her reeling like this. She wanted more. She wanted him to crush her in his arms and kiss her blind.

  He nibbled her upper lip slowly. “It isn’t enough, is it?”

  “Well…no…”

  His arms drew her up, against the steely length of his body, and his mouth opened her lips to a kiss that was consuming with its heat. She moaned helplessly, clinging to him.

  He lifted his mouth a breath away. His voice was strained when he spoke. “Do you have any idea what those little noises do to me?” he groaned.

  “Noises?” she asked, oblivious, as she stared at his mouth.

  “Never mind.” He kissed her again, devouring her soft lips. The sounds she made drugged him. He was measuring the distance from the kitchen to her bedroom when he realized how fast things were progressing.

  He drew back, and held her away from him, his jaw taut with an attempt at control.

  “Alexander,” she whispered, her voice pleading as she looked up at him with misty soft eyes.

  “I almost never get women pregnant on Monday, but this could be an exception,” he said in a choked tone.

  Her eyes widened like saucers as she realized what he was saying.

  He burst out laughing at her expression. He moved back even more. “I only carry identification and twenty dollars on me when I jog,” he confessed. “The other things I keep in my wallet are still in it, at my apartment,” he added, his tone blatantly expressive.

  She divined what he was intimating and she flushed. She pushed back straggly hair from her face as she searched for her composure.

  “Of course, a lot of modern women keep their own supply,” he drawled. “I expect you have a box full in your medicine cabinet.”

  She flushed even more, and now she was glaring at him.

  He chuckled, amused. “Your parents were very strict,” he recalled. “And deeply religious. You still have those old attitudes about premarital sex, don’t you?”

  She nodded, grimacing.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said wistfully. “In ten minutes or so, the ache will ease and I can actually stand up straight…God, Jodie!” he burst out laughing at her horrified expression. “I’m kidding!”

  “You’re a terrible man,” she moaned.

  “No, I’m just normal,” he replied. “I’d love nothing better than a few hours in bed with you, but I’m not enough of a scoundrel to seduce you. Besides all that—” he sighed “—your conscience would kill both of us.”

  “Rub it in.”

  He shrugged. “You’d be surprised how many women at my office abstain, and make no bones about it to eligible bachelors who want to take them out,” he said, and he smiled tenderly at her. “We tend to think of them as rugged individualists with the good sense not to take chances.” He leaned forward. “And there are actually a couple of the younger male agents who feel the same way!”

  “You’re kidding!”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Maybe it’s a trend. You know, back in the early twentieth century, most women and men went to their weddings chaste. A man with a bad reputation was as untouchable as a woman with one.”

  “I’ll bet you never told a woman in your life that you were going to abstain,” she murmured wickedly.

  He didn’t smile back. He studied her for a long moment. “I’m telling you that I am. For the foreseeable future.”

  She didn’t know how to take that, and it showed.

  “I’m not in your class as a novice,” he confessed, “but I’m no rake, either. I don’t find other women desirable lately. Just you.” He shrugged. “Careful, it may be contagious.”

  She laughed. Her whole face lit up. She was beautiful.

  He drew her against him and kissed her, very briefly, before he moved away again. “We should go,” he said. “I have a meeting at the office at ten. Then we could have lunch.”

  “Okay,” she said. She felt lighthearted. Overwhelmed. She started toward the door and then stopped. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Are you staking out my company because you’re investigating Brody for drug smuggling?”

  He gave her an old, wise look. “You’re sharp, Jodie. I’ll have to watch what I say around you.”

  “That means you’re not going to tell me. Right?”

  He chuckled. “Right.” He led the way into the hall and then waited for her to lock her door behind them.

  She slipped the key into her pocket.

  “No ID?” he mused as they went downstairs and started jogging down the sparsely occupied sidewalk.

  “Just the key and five dollars, in case I need money for a bottle of water or something,” she confessed.

  He sighed, not even showing the strain as they moved quickly along. “One of our forensic reconstruction artists is always lecturing us on carrying identification. She says that it’s easier to have something on you that will identify you, so that she doesn’t have to take your skull and model clay to do a reconstruction of your face. She helps solve a lot of murder victims’ identities, but she has plenty that she can’t identify. The faces haunt her, she says.”

  “I watched a program about forensic reconstruction on educational television two weeks ago.”

  “I know the one you mean. I saw it, too. That was our artist,” he said with traces of pride in his deep voice. “She’s a wonder.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to carry my driver’s license around with me,” she murmured.

  He didn’t say another word, but he grinned to himself.

  The meeting was a drug task force formed of a special agent from the Houston FBI office, a Houston police detective who specialized in local gangs, a Texas Ranger from Company A, an agent from the U.S. Customs Service and a sheriff’s deputy from Harris County who headed her department’s drug unit.

  They sat down in a conference room in the nearest Houston police station to discuss intelligence.

  “We’ve got a good lead on the new division chief of the Culebra cartel in Mexico,” Alexander announced when it was his turn to speak. “We know that he has somebody on his payroll from Ritter Oil Corporation, and that he’s funneling drugs through a warehouse where oil regulators and drilling equipment are kept before they’re shipped out all over the southwest. Since the parking lot of that warehouse is locked by a key code, the division chief has to have someone on the inside.”

  “Do we know how it’s being moved and when?” the FBI agent asked.

>   Alexander had suspicions, but no concrete evidence. “Waiting for final word on when. But we do have an informant, a young man who got cold feet and came to U.S. Customs with information about the drug smuggling. I interviewed the young man, with help from Customs,” he added, nodding with a smile at the petite brunette customs official at the table with them.

  “That would be me,” she said with a grin.

  “The informant says that a shipment of processed cocaine is on the way here, one of the biggest in several years. It was shipped from the Guajira Peninsula in Colombia to Central America and transshipped by plane to an isolated landing site in rural Mexico. From there it was carried to a warehouse in Mexico City owned by a subsidiary of an oil company here in Houston. It was reboxed with legitimate oil processing equipment manufactured in Europe, in boxes with false bottoms. It was shipped legally to the oil company’s district office in Galveston where it was inspected briefly and passed through customs.”

  “The oil company is one that’s never been involved in any illegal activity,” the customs representative said wistfully, “so the agent didn’t look for hidden contraband.”

  “To continue,” Alexander said, “it’s going to be shipped into the Houston warehouse via the Houston Ship Canal as domestic inventory from Galveston.”

  “Which means, no more customs inspections,” the Texas Ranger said.

  “Exactly,” Alexander agreed.

  The brunette customs agent shook her head. “A few shipments get by our inspectors, but not many. We have contacts everywhere, too, and one of those tipped us off about the young man who was willing to inform on the perpetrators of an incoming cocaine shipment,” she told the others. “So we saved our bacon.”

  “You had the contacts I gave you, don’t forget,” the blond lieutenant of detectives from Houston reminded her with a smile, as she adjusted her collar.

  “Do we even have a suspect?” the customs agent asked.

  Alexander nodded. “I’ve got someone on the inside at Ritter Oil, and I’m watching a potential suspect. I don’t have enough evidence yet to make an accusation, but I hope to get it, and soon. I’m doing this undercover, so this information is to be kept in this room. I’ve put it out that we have another company, Thorn Oil, under surveillance, as a cover story. Under no circumstances are any of you to discuss any of this meeting, even with another DEA agent—especially with another DEA agent—until further notice. That’s essential.”