Desperado

by Diana Palmer

  She went to him at once, sitting down in the chair beside the bed. She reached up to touch his face, his mouth. Tears stung her eyes. She tried to avoid them, but the fear and pain and worry of the past hours had ruined her self-control. Hot tears rolled helplessly down her cheeks.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “I’m not going to die. Honest.”

  She managed a watery smile and held his hand tight.

  He searched her face slowly. “You look like hell.”

  “Think so? You should look in a mirror,” she added.

  He forced a grin. “No, thanks. Hey.”

  “What?”

  His fingers edged between hers. “When we get a minute, I’m going to buy us a ring each. My hand feels naked.”

  Her heart jumped. She remembered, then, the folded piece of paper he had in his wallet. It had been rescued from his inner pocket—fortunately, the one opposite the side of his chest where the bullet had hit. She had it in her purse now, safe and sound.

  “You didn’t even hint that you were thinking of getting married,” she accused, but she didn’t sound angry. “In fact, you swore you never would.”

  He shrugged. “I had a hard time with Patricia,” he said after a minute. “I was never in love with her, Maggie, and she knew it. I married her for a lot of reasons, none of the right ones. You were so young, baby,” he added huskily, and the anguish he felt was in his dark eyes as they searched hers. “I didn’t want to seduce you, and I was afraid I might. You were…you are…the dearest thing on earth to me. It was nothing more than a halfhearted attempt to protect you from a relationship I didn’t think you were ready for.” He sighed heavily. “Then Patricia committed suicide and I had to live not only with the guilt of her death, but the guilt of knowing that I never loved her. She knew it, too.” He caught her hand tight in his. “Just as, I’m sure, your husband knew you never loved him.”

  “He wasn’t lovable,” she said tightly. “And after he cost me the baby, I hated him. But I felt guilty that he died, the way he died. He couldn’t help being an alcoholic. He started drinking when he was very young and couldn’t stop.”

  He smoothed over her fingers. “I have a lot of regrets. About the baby, about your marriage. About the way I treated you, all those long years…”

  She put her fingers over his hard mouth. “You’re the one who keeps saying we have to stop looking back. You really…want to marry me?” she added hesitantly.

  His face hardened. “More than I want to go on living.” He sounded as if he meant every word.

  She sighed worriedly. “There are still things about my past. Things you don’t know. Things I…can’t tell you.”

  “Hey.”

  She looked up.

  “Let’s take it one day at a time,” he said gently. “Suppose we fly to the Bahamas instead of sailing?” he added and grinned. “We can get married there.”

  “We can?”

  “Yes, we can.” He carried her palm to his mouth. “I want to marry you right away, Maggie,” he added. “I don’t want you to have a single chance to run away from me, ever again.”

  “What about Gruber’s men?” she added worriedly.

  He cocked an eyebrow and smiled. “All in custody. His whole outfit’s facing jail time, in countries all over the world. The case will make international headlines. And you and I,” he added, “are finally safe.”

  “Safe.” She studied his big hand. “I’ve very rarely felt that way in my life, except when I was with you. I’d given up on you, though,” she added with a rueful smile. “I decided that you’d never be able to care about me and I might as well try to find a life somewhere else.”

  “You left the country and tried to put an ocean between us.” His eyes darkened. “It unnerved me. I don’t have a life without you, Maggie,” he added solemnly. “I don’t think I have, since I was sixteen.”

  She sighed worriedly. “Cord, about that file Lassiter wants to show you…”

  His fingers curled tight into hers. “He can burn it, with my compliments. If it means that much to you.”

  Her eyes brightened. “You mean it?”

  “Yes. I mean it.”

  Her heart lightened. She felt as if she could fly. Then she remembered how easily Stillwell and Adams had gotten into her sealed records. “But, Stillwell and Adams…”

  “Lassiter has friends,” he replied. “I won’t tell you who, or what, they are. Suffice it to say that Adams and Stillwell are very small fish and they are in imminent danger of being swallowed whole by a shark—even in prison—if they open their mouths.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow.” He looked at her with tender concern. “You need some sleep,” he pointed out.

  She smiled. “I’ll sleep when this is all over. I’m not leaving you. Not for anything. I don’t care if they do say it’s not a serious wound. I’m here until they let you go.”

  His eyes narrowed with emotion. He didn’t even argue. His fingers bruised hers. “Okay.”

  It was a concession. He was giving her everything she wanted. And Lassiter hadn’t betrayed her. He’d saved her. She wondered if it would be permissible to hug a married man. When they got back to Houston, she was going to find out.

  They let Cord out of the hospital the next afternoon. They went back to the hotel, to take up residence in the suite he and Maggie had hardly enjoyed since their arrival. The hotel staff was attentive and they lacked for nothing—except Bojo. He’d taken off the night before with a quick goodbye to Maggie and a promise to let Cord know how things were going.

  Rodrigo remained, and proved a valuable ally in the logistics of the move from the hospital to the hotel. The other men had gone as well, and Maggie found out only later why. Gruber’s entire operation had been shut down overnight, including his multinational corporation. Government agents from all over the industrial world had converged on the shady businesses Gruber had headed, and children had been rescued and taken home from some of the darkest hellholes on earth. Prostitution rings and child pornography rings had been splintered by enthusiastic agents. Stillwell and Adams were under arrest and, after trial, facing extradition to Amsterdam for trial in the world court. Lassiter’s clients, whose children had been kidnapped and killed, had found peace.

  Two days later, Rodrigo flew to Qawi to join Bojo, and Cord and Maggie flew to the Bahamas, where they were married by an American minister at a beautiful luxury hotel overlooking Nassau—after the appropriate documents were presented and official requirements were satisfied.

  Maggie wore a white cotton skirt and peasant blouse, both with acres of white lace and with a spray of white jasmine in her hair. When Cord looked into her eyes after they made their vows, she thought she’d never seen such an expression of tenderness in her life. It was as if she were reborn. Cord remarked with a husky laugh that he felt just the same. The parallel lines of their lives were now a circle, bonded forever. After three days of sightseeing and feverish petting, they boarded a cruise ship for Miami, from which they would fly home to Houston.

  Maggie felt as if she’d lived a fairy tale as she lay in her own narrow bed across from her husband’s in the elegant stateroom, feeling safe and secure and loved. Cord hadn’t wanted them to share a bed just yet, because of his shoulder, he said. But he kissed her coming and going, and she felt on the verge of something extraordinary. It was just that Cord kept watching her with a haunted, dark look in his eyes that she couldn’t puzzle out. It didn’t go away, either.

  The day before they docked at Miami, Cord was on the Internet with his laptop when she went out for air. He came to find her on deck with exciting news. It was a shock to discover that Gretchen had left Qawi for Texas and was back at her old job. She was also married…to the sheikh himself, Philippe Sabon. There had been a coup attempt and Gretchen had been in the thick of battle alongside her husband. Maggie could hardly believe it.

  “And to think, it was my job that I gave up,” Maggie murmured, nuzzling against Cord’s uninjured
shoulder as they watched the sea glimmer like jewels in the sunshine. “Just imagine what could have happened.”

  “You’re married,” he pointed out, chuckling.

  “I was engaged, and I didn’t even know it,” she accused mischievously. “How could you get a marriage license to marry a woman and not tell her you’d done it? And I did all that agonizing over sleeping with you…!”

  “Which you did beautifully,” he added with a wicked smile.

  “My conscience beat me to death!”

  He grinned shamelessly. “You knew when I did it that I had forever in mind. I don’t sleep with innocents.”

  “I wasn’t innocent.”

  He touched her forehead with his lips. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you were. I’m the only man you’ve ever had, even if it wasn’t an experience you want to remember, that first time.”

  “Even that time was magical,” she whispered. “And the other times have been earthshaking.” She looked at him curiously, noting the way he avoided her gaze. “It is just your shoulder, isn’t it?” she added worriedly. “I mean, you still want me…?”

  “Of course I still want you,” he scoffed. “But my shoulder’s very sore,” he added without looking at her.

  “Okay. Just so long as I know that it’s temporary.”

  He pursed his lips and grinned at her, although it seemed a little forced. “So I’m that good, am I?”

  She tweaked the hair at his temple as she reached up to hold him. “What a trial you’re going to be.”

  He smiled at her lovingly. “I’ll do my best to reform by the time the kids come along.”

  “You sound very sure that we’ll have them,” she said, not as confident.

  “I am very sure,” he said, and looked as if he meant it. “Meanwhile, we’ll get to know each other, all over again.”

  She didn’t argue about having children. But she had serious doubts about her fertility, her ability to cope with the past if it ever cropped up again, and even her sudden status as a married woman. Finally she decided to just let the current take her downriver, figuratively speaking, and stop trying to swim to shore.

  Houston looked familiar and foreign at one and the same time. It seemed years instead of scant weeks since they’d left it.

  The ranch was warm and welcoming. June met them at the door, having been forewarned of their arrival by a call from Cord on the plane. Her father and Red Davis were waiting in the living room to shake hands and offer congratulations and welcome them back.

  It took a whole day for Cord to get caught up on ranch business, and there were phone calls and e-mails and faxes that had to have replies. He brought in his part-time male secretary and fell back into his routine, wounded shoulder and all.

  Feeling oddly neglected, Maggie walked the floor and worried. She’d had her own room their first night back, mainly because of his shoulder. He insisted that she wouldn’t be able to sleep, because he was restless. It was the same excuse he’d used at the hotel in Amsterdam and even aboard ship, when they married. He’d had his own bed, and she had hers, although they shared a stateroom. She knew there was more to the problem than that.

  In desperation, because he was totally uncommunicative, she phoned Tess Lassiter and went to see her at the office, pretending that she was going shopping for some feminine necessities. Cord gave her the keys to his car and told her to be careful. Even with Gruber’s men rounded up, she might not be totally safe. He had Davis go with her, to her dismay.

  “This is your old office building,” Davis protested when she parked on the street.

  She glared at him. “Thank you, I didn’t know that,” she drawled sarcastically.

  He sighed. “Maggie, what are you up to?”

  “Nothing that you can tell Cord, and I mean it,” she added, holding up her left hand with the small gold band that Cord had put on it.

  He grimaced. “Husbands and wives shouldn’t have secrets.”

  “Tell him that,” she replied. “I’m going inside to see Tess Lassiter and if you breathe one word to Cord, I’ll have you barbecued over that coal pit out back. Do you hear me?”

  He stared at her. “I’d taste terrible.”

  “Not if we used enough barbecue sauce, and I’m not kidding. Wait for me. I won’t be long.”

  “Okay. If the police come and arrest me for parking in a No Parking zone and I tell them you made me promise to stay here, and they shoot me…”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “All right! You can drive to the mall and have coffee at that famous little shop you like,” she chided. “I’ve got my cell phone. Got yours?”

  He took it out of his pocket and showed it to her.

  “Great. I’ll phone you when I’m ready to leave!”

  She got out and went into the building alone.

  Tess Lassiter was uneasy about what Maggie wanted to know. “It’s classified stuff,” she began.

  “What’s classified stuff?” Dane Lassiter asked with a smile as he walked into the office with his briefcase.

  Tess exchanged a complicated glance with him.

  “Okay, come on in,” Dane told Maggie, opening his office door. “Sweetheart,” he addressed Tess, “how about getting me a bear claw? I’m starving. They don’t feed you at federal offices.”

  “Poor old thing,” Tess said with a tender smile. “I’ll see what’s left at the bakery. Maggie, can I get you anything?”

  Maggie shook her head. She was too nervous to eat. “Thanks, anyway.”

  “I’ll be back soon.” Tess closed the door behind her.

  Dane leaned forward and stared across his desk at Maggie, his black eyes steady and unblinking. “You want to know what Cord got out of me.”

  She swallowed and flushed. “Yes. I’m sorry I was trying to find out from Tess.”

  “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “It must be easier for you to talk to a woman.”

  “It is,” she said, surprised at his perception.

  He drew in a long breath. “Even after all the years I’ve been in the business, some things get next to me. This case has been an example. Stillwell and Adams are in jail waiting to be arraigned. They’re going to turn state’s evidence, in exchange for lighter sentences.” His face hardened. “They won’t be a threat to you, ever again. I promise you they won’t.”

  “Cord told me. Thanks.” She hesitated, clasping and unclasping her hands. “There was a fax you sent to Cord in Amsterdam,” she began finally.

  “I told him nothing,” he said at once. “But he knows how to break into encoded files,” he added uneasily.

  Her heart stopped. She looked at Dane with horror in her eyes. “You mean…he knows? He knows…everything?”

  “It looks that way.”

  She bit her lower lip. She was remembering the way he’d acted that night, the odd remarks, the assurance that he loved her, no matter what had happened in the past. He knew, and he hadn’t said, because she’d threatened to run away. She’d spent years running away, from emotions, from attachments, from commitment, from everything, out of fear. She was afraid of what Cord would think of her. But he knew. And he loved her. She studied the small gold band on her finger, the one she’d chosen for its simplicity. Cord had put it on for her, and he’d looked into her eyes…what had he said? That no matter what had ever happened in the past, the ring was a seal on their future, a promise of mutual support through fire and flood and disaster. Surely her past would come under the heading of a disaster.

  She looked up at Lassiter. He’d been saying something. She hadn’t heard him.

  He smiled. “You haven’t heard a word, have you? I said, Cord phoned me on a secure line and told me that he was going to come home and make sausage out of Adams and Stillwell, and that he’d personally hang Gruber out to dry. I’ve never known anyone that homicidal, except maybe me when my wife was shot, before we married,” he recalled. “He wanted blood. I spent half an hour talking him out of it, while he raged in two languages. I t
hink he’d been drinking, too—and I can tell you that Cord Romero doesn’t drink. That was the best indication of how upset he was. He was hurt that you hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him, in all those years he’d known you. He said there was nothing in his life that he wouldn’t gladly have shared with you.”

  Her face cleared. Things fell into place. Her life became an open book, a pattern, that she could see for the first time. She hadn’t trusted Cord. She’d been afraid that he would think less of her, that he wouldn’t want her, that he’d judge her, as so many other people had. But when she turned that scenario around, when she considered how she’d have felt if it had been Cord in her place—she was sick at her stomach.

  “I failed him, right down the line,” she said unsteadily. “I never thought how I’d feel, if he’d had such a past and hadn’t wanted me to know. It all comes down to trust, doesn’t it?” she added, meeting his dark eyes. “If you love someone, you have to trust them.”

  He smiled slowly. “I’m glad you’re getting the picture.”

  “And nothing you do, nothing you have done, will ever make any difference,” she continued, as if she’d just found pure truth. “Because when you love, it’s unconditional.”

  “Exactly.” He pursed his lips. “Why don’t you go home and tell Cord that?”

  Her eyes brightened. It was like free fall. She didn’t have to be afraid. She never had to be afraid again, even of disclosure. Cord loved her. His was the only opinion that would ever matter. It was so simple, and she’d never considered that one simple fact.

  She almost leaped out of the chair. “When the kids get bigger, I want to come and work for you. Can I?”

  He chuckled heartily. “That’s the spirit. And yes, you can.”

  She grinned. “I’ll hold you to that, Mr. Lassiter. Thank you. For keeping my secret. For making Adams and Stillwell keep it. For…everything! I think you’re terrific.”

  He got to his feet and shook hands with her. “Just for the record,” he told her, “so does my wife.”