Moonglow, Texas

by Mary McBride

  Maybe Moonglow wasn’t such a horrible place after all.

  How could it be, when she found herself suddenly so happy here?

  “What are you grinning at?” Dan was staring at her, his head tilted quizzically to one side.

  “Was I?” She sipped her lemonade, using the glass to hide the smile she couldn’t suppress. You’d have thought she was in Manhattan, about to dine on rack of lamb with a gorgeous investment broker, rather than in Moonglow and about to eat hot dogs with an itinerant handyman.

  No. Not just a handyman. Dan. In some strange way, she felt as if she’d known him forever.

  It wasn’t like her at all to become so mesmerized, so infatuated, by a man so quickly. Use your head. Slow down, she told herself. Stop, for heaven’s sake.

  Only, Molly wasn’t listening. At least, not to her head.

  Dear Reader,

  The excitement continues in Intimate Moments. First of all, this month brings the emotional and exciting conclusion of A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY. In Familiar Stranger, Sharon Sala presents the final confrontation with the archvillain known as Simon—and you’ll finally find out who he really is. You’ll also be there as Jonah revisits the woman he’s never forgotten and decides it’s finally time to make some important changes in his life.

  Also this month, welcome back Candace Camp to the Intimate Moments lineup. Formerly known as Kristin James, this multitalented author offers a Hard-Headed Texan who lives in A LITTLE TOWN IN TEXAS, which will enthrall readers everywhere. Paula Detmer Riggs returns with Daddy with a Badge, another installment in her popular MATERNITY ROW miniseries—and next month she’s back with Born a Hero, the lead book in our new Intimate Moments continuity, FIRSTBORN SONS. Complete the month with Moonglow, Texas, by Mary McBride, Linda Castillo’s Cops and…Lovers? and new author Susan Vaughan’s debut book, Dangerous Attraction.

  By the way, don’t forget to check out our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest on the back of every book.

  We hope to see you next month, too, when not only will FIRSTBORN SONS be making its bow, but we’ll also be bringing you a brand-new TALL, DARK AND DANGEROUS title from award-winning Suzanne Brockmann. For now…enjoy!

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  Moonglow, Texas

  MARY McBRIDE

  For Anna Greve Sadler—

  Oh, Annie! If we only knew then what we know now.

  Books by Mary McBride

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Just One Look #966

  Bluer Than Velvet #1031

  Moonglow, Texas #1084

  Harlequin Historicals

  Riverbend #164

  Fly Away Home #189

  The Fourth of Forever #221

  The Sugarman #237

  The Gunslinger #256

  Forever and a Day #294

  Darling Jack #323

  Quicksilver’s Catch #375

  Storming Paradise #424

  The Marriage Knot #465

  Bandera’s Bride #517

  Harlequin Books

  Outlaw Brides

  “The Ballad of Josie Dove”

  MARY McBRIDE

  When it comes to writing romance, historical or contemporary, Mary McBride is a natural. What else would anyone expect from someone whose parents met on a blind date on Valentine’s Day, and who met her own husband—whose middle name just happens to be Valentine!—on February 14, as well?

  She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and two sons. Mary loves to hear from readers. You can write to her c/o P.O. Box 411202, St. Louis, MO 63141, or contact her online at www.eHarlequin.com.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  “Are you sure you’re a deputy U.S. marshal, Shackelford?”

  Tom Keifer, a deputy marshal himself, just one week out of basic training in Georgia, had begun to think he’d taken a wrong turn off Highway T, or that maybe there were two Dan Shackelfords in this backwater county in South Texas. The man standing before him right now didn’t look like any government agent he’d ever seen.

  Knowing Dan Shackelford was on extended medical leave, Keifer had somehow expected to find him in a dim back bedroom of a shady little convalescent home, where the injured deputy would be sitting in a wheelchair reading—a serious, thin and rather pale man in leather slippers and pressed pajamas.

  That hadn’t been the case.

  The address Keifer was given turned out to be a defunct trailer park, and Shackelford looked like a bum, wearing ripped jeans and last week’s whiskers and leaning one arm on the door frame of his dented trailer while his free hand curved around the long brown neck of a bottle of beer. Lunch, no doubt, Keifer thought with some disgust. Judging from the roadmaps of his eyes, he’d probably had the same thing for breakfast.

  The young deputy eased a finger under his tight, damp, button-down collar even as he viewed the man’s sleeveless T-shirt with pure disdain.

  “Daniel L. Shackelford?” he asked again irritably, actually hoping this derelict would tell him he had the wrong man and point him down the road to the home of a competent, clean-shaven deputy. “Can you confirm your mother’s maiden name?”

  “Liggett.” He raised the beer bottle, took a long wet swig, then aimed a deliberate, almost affable belch in Keifer’s direction. “Do you want to see my badge and my secret decoder ring, Junior?”

  The young man took a half step back, not bothering to disguise his disapproval. He had the right man, much to his disappointment. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “Great.” Shackelford grinned sloppily and leaned a little farther out the door. “Then how ’bout a beer?”

  “WITSEC’s been compromised,” Keifer blurted out.

  “What?”

  “I said WITSEC’s been compromised,” he repeated. “You know. Witness Security?”

  “I know what the hell it is.” Shackelford’s expression hovered somewhere between a bleary-eyed Who gives a rip? and a grim-lipped Go on. Tell me more.

  “Unidentified hackers broke into the system over the weekend. There’s no telling who or what they were looking for, if anything, and no way to know if they found it. But the Marshals Service has put nearly seven thousand people under protection since the seventies, and they’re all in jeopardy now.”

  The man in the doorway let out a low whistle, blinked inscrutably, then took another long pull from his bottle.

  “So, headquarters is bringing in every available deputy,” Keifer continued, “in addition to postponing vacations and retirements, and they’re terminating all medical and personal leaves as of today.” He stiffened his shoulders. “Yours included.”

  Shackelford hissed an expletive.

  “Here.” Keifer shoved a manila envelope through the opening of the trailer’s screen door. “All the information you need is in there.”

  Having performed his assignment, the young deputy was eager to leave, to get away from this obvious loser and get on with his own future heroics in the line of duty. He had only contempt for a burned-out, washed-up rummy like Shackelford. The guy had probably never been any good at the job, anyway.

  “Any questions?”

  “Just one,” Shackelford drawled.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you say yes, you did want a beer, or no, you didn’t?”

  Dan yanked open the lopsided venetian blinds on the tr
ailer’s window. Sunlight strafed the cluttered interior and fell across the letter he had pulled from the manila envelope. The United States Marshals Service emblem was embossed so thick it almost cast a shadow on the page. So did the name on the letterhead. Robert Hayes, regional director. The message below it was handwritten. A familiar scrawl.

  Our files are screwed, amigo. Got you a low-priority witness (see attached) living in seized property in Moonglow. Easy duty. She doesn’t even have to know why you’re there. The quieter we keep this, the better, if you catch my drift. Just hang around her awhile, then get your bad self back to the real world.

  Bobby

  P.S. Didn’t you used to live in Moonglow?

  Chapter 1

  Molly Hansen had been in Witness Security for nearly a year, but she still woke up every morning as Kathryn Claiborn and had to remind herself that she didn’t exist anymore.

  This morning was no exception, except what woke her wasn’t her alarm clock, but rather the clattering of trash cans and a jolt to the side of her house that nearly pitched her out of bed. While she scrambled for her robe, she scrolled through a mental checklist of natural disasters, eliminating each one as soon as it came to mind.

  An earthquake didn’t happen on just one side of a house. It couldn’t have been a landslide or a mud slide because this part of Texas was so dry and flat that things didn’t slide; they just sat still and baked. It wasn’t a thunderstorm because the sun was shining. That left only a rampaging bull or a five-hundred-pound armadillo.

  Or, now that she was peering out the window into the driveway, a big Airstream trailer about to crash into the side of her house. Again. She grabbed for the windowsill just as the trailer hit. This time the impact brought the curtain rod crashing down on her head.

  “You idiot,” she screamed, battling her way out of yards of gathered fabric. “Jerk!” Molly stomped over the fallen drapes, down the hall to the kitchen, and out the back door where the big aluminum behemoth was apparently making a third run at her defenseless little residence.

  She reached for the nearest weapon, which turned out to be a hoe, and swung it with all her might at the blundering vehicle, half expecting the hoe to clang on impact like an enormous bell, but instead there was a sickening thunk as the gardening tool sank deep into the metal skin. It worked, though. The trailer stopped, and none too soon, mere inches from the house.

  Molly was trying to extract the blade of the hoe when a man stalked down the driveway, yelling at her.

  “What the hell were you trying to do?”

  “I was trying,” she huffed, still tugging at the hoe, “to keep you from ruining my house, you idiot.”

  He stopped a few feet away from her, turned toward the little clapboard bungalow with its warped shutters and peeling paint, studied it a moment, and then said, “Hell, lady. In case you haven’t noticed, somebody’s already ruined it.”

  The grin that followed didn’t prompt one from Molly. She was hardly amused. She thought if she could wrest the blade of the hoe from the trailer, she’d like to sink it into this good ol’ boy’s skull. That would wipe the stupid smirk right off his handsome face.

  “Jerk,” she muttered, glaring at the hoe again and twisting its handle to no avail.

  “Here.” A tan, muscled forearm slid against hers and his fingers curved around the handle just beneath her grip. “Let go.”

  “I will not.”

  “Let the hell go.” He gave her a shot with his hip that sent Molly careening sideways, then using only one hand, he popped the hoe from the back of the trailer as if it were no more than a butter knife and tossed the implement away.

  “That’s some dent,” he mused, crossing his arms and contemplating the damage.

  “Well, it matches the rest of them.” Molly snatched up the hoe and held it like a shotgun. “Now, I’ll thank you to get this junkyard special out of my driveway.”

  He turned to look at her, his green eyes lazily taking her in from head to toe. “You’re Molly Hansen.”

  It wasn’t a question, really. Just a flat statement. But Molly found herself nodding, anyway, as she once again reminded herself that she wasn’t Kathryn Claiborn. At the same time a little kernel of suspicion was forming in her brain. After all, she was Molly Hansen and in Witness Security because her life was in danger. Kathryn’s, anyway. “And you are?”

  “Dan Shackelford. I’ve been hired to make repairs on your ruined house, Miss Hansen,” he drawled. “Where do you want me to start?”

  He seemed to be studying the roofline now with the same degree of intensity that he had studied her a moment before.

  “I don’t want you to start,” Molly said, then increased not only the volume but the adamance. “Do you hear me?”

  “Half those shingles look rotten. I’ll bet this place leaks like a son of a gun.”

  It did, but that was none of his damned business. The house, as Molly understood it, had been seized from a Honduran drug dealer who only used it to establish a permanent address. The government owned the house. Molly just paid nominal rent, mailed to a post office box in Houston.

  “Who sent you?” she demanded. “Who hired you?”

  He sauntered to the wall, reached out to flick some paint chips from a board. “When’s the last time this was painted?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “How should I know?”

  “Been here long?”

  “No. Only about…”

  Molly’s mouth snapped shut. When she entered the program, they had warned her not to answer even the most innocent of questions. Be skeptical, they had said, especially of strangers too eager to strike up a conversation. If you have any suspicions, don’t hesitate to call.

  “I need to make a phone call,” she said, clutching the trusty hoe and locking the back door once she was safely inside.

  “So, what you’re saying then, Deputy, is that I don’t have to worry about this Shackelford character? That he really was hired to make repairs?”

  Molly was whispering into the phone, her lips practically brushing the mouthpiece. She’d been peeking out the kitchen window at the character in question, but at some point he’d disappeared around the back of the house.

  The U.S. marshal on the other end of the line once again confirmed that Dan Shackelford was working in their employ.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Thank you, Deputy. Oh, and tell Uncle Sam thanks for fixing up my house.”

  She put the receiver back in its cradle and let out a long, audible sigh before peering out the window again. The trailer was still hulking diagonally in the drive, but she didn’t see hide nor hair of its owner.

  “You need a new lock on the front door.”

  The sudden voice behind her had Molly reaching for the hoe again as she whirled around. “How did you get in here?”

  “You need a new lock on the front door.” His gaze cut away from her face to take in the rest of the room. “What a pit.”

  Molly was less frightened than irritated. “Well, it’s my pit.”

  Except it wasn’t, and she was sorely tempted to tell him that her little stone cottage in upstate New York might someday be on the National Register of Historic Places, and that her kitchen—her sweet, cozy kitchen with its big brick fireplace—had already been featured in Early American Homes and Hearth and Home. Only that had been Kathryn Claiborn’s house, and Kathryn was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

  Molly looked around at the ancient metal cabinets, the faded red Formica countertop and the scarred linoleum floor. The appliances had probably been manufactured when Roosevelt was president. Not FDR, but Theodore. My God, calling this place a pit was flattering it.

  “I’ve been too busy to decorate,” she said lamely.

  “Uh-huh.” He was leaning over the sink, jiggling the rusty lock on the window while looking into the backyard.

  While Shackelford scrutinized the landscape, Molly scrutinized him. He was about six-two, lean as a greyhound, probably
in his mid-thirties, and he needed a haircut desperately, not to mention a shave. New jeans, too. The ones he wore were faded to a soft sky blue, replete with fringed rips. Her gaze traveled down his long, muscular legs in search of the obligatory hand-tooled boots worn by every self-respecting male in Moonglow, only to discover a pair of flip-flops instead. Flip-flops! Oh, well. They went with the ratty Hawaiian shirt, she supposed, and the sunglasses that hung from a thick cord around his neck.

  He didn’t look dangerous. He didn’t even look competent! But the marshal’s office had said he was okay.

  “Mind if I park my trailer under that live oak back there?” he asked.

  “Fine. As long as you don’t drive through the house to get there.”

  Molly glanced at the clock above the refrigerator. “Oh, God. I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Well, you just go on,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I expect to have all new locks and dead bolts installed by the time you get home.”

  “Home?”

  “From work.”

  “But I work here.”

  “Oh.” He looked confused for a moment, then shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll just have to do my best to stay out of your way, Ms. Hansen.”

  “Well, I certainly hope so, Mr. Shackelford.”

  Dan slid behind the wheel of his black BMW, then glared in the rearview mirror at the Airstream looming there. He swore roughly. He used to be able to thread any vehicle through the eye of a needle at ninety miles an hour in the dark of night. Now he couldn’t maneuver a goddamned trailer into a cement driveway in broad daylight.

  Little wonder Bobby had assigned him the lowest of low-priority witnesses. Kathryn Claiborn’s terrorists, the Red Millennium, had all but blown their own heads off in labs in the U.S. and Beirut and Ireland this past year. As far as U.S. Intelligence knew, there was nobody left for the woman to identify, but they kept her in WITSEC, anyway, just in case. It was easier to put someone into the program than to get them out.