Lionhearted

by Diana Palmer

  Grier chuckled. “Don’t believe everything you see, and only half of what you hear,” he replied. He gave Leo a dark-eyed appraisal over his paper plate. “You’re here about Clark, I guess.”

  Leo’s eyebrows jumped.

  “Oh, I’m psychic,” Grier told him straight-faced. “I learned that when I was in the CIA knocking off enemy government agents from black helicopters with a sniper kit.”

  Leo didn’t say a word.

  Grier just shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve done, to hear people talk.”

  “You’re mysterious,” Leo commented. “You keep to yourself.”

  Grier shrugged. “I have to. I don’t want people to notice the aliens spying on me.” He leaned forward confidentially. “You see them, too, don’t you?” he asked in a hushed tone.

  Leo began to get it. He started laughing and was secretly relieved when Grier joined him. The other man leaned back in his chair, with his booted feet propped on his desk. He was as fit as Leo, probably in even better condition, if the muscles outlined under that uniform shirt were any indication. Grier was said to move like lightning, although Leo had never seen him fight. The man was an enigma, with his black hair in a rawhide ponytail and his scarred face giving away nothing—unless he wanted it to.

  “That’s more like it,” Grier said as he finished his lunch. “I thought I’d move to a small town and fit in.” He smiled wryly. “But people are all the same. Only the scenery changes.”

  “It was the same for Cy Parks when he first moved here,” Leo commented.

  Grier gave him a narrow look. “Are you asking a question?”

  “Making a comment,” Leo told him. “One of our local guys was in the military during a conflict a few years back, in a special forces unit,” he added deliberately, recounting something Cy Parks had told him about Harley Fowler. “He saw you on a plane, out of uniform and armed to the teeth.”

  Grier began to nod. “It’s a small world, isn’t it?” he asked pleasantly. He put down his plate and the chopsticks with deliberate preciseness. “I did a stint with military intelligence. And with a few…government agencies.” He met Leo’s curious eyes. “How far has that gossip traveled?”

  “It got to Cy Parks and stopped abruptly,” Leo replied, recalling what Cy had said to Harley about loose lips. “Jacobsville is a small town. We consider people who live here family, whether or not we’re related to them. Gossip isn’t encouraged.”

  Grier was surprised. He actually smiled. “If you asked Parks, or Steele, or Scott why they moved here,” he said after a minute, “I imagine you’d learn that what they wanted most was an end to sitting with their backs to the wall and sleeping armed.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?” Leo wanted to know.

  Grier met his eyes levelly. “I don’t really know why I’m here, or if I can stay here,” he said honestly. “I think I might eventually fit in. I’m going to give it a good try for six months,” he added, “no matter how many rubbernecked yahoos stand outside my office trying to hear every damned word I say!” he raised his voice.

  There were sudden, sharp footfalls and the sound of scurrying.

  Leo chuckled. Grier hadn’t even looked at the door when he raised his voice. He shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, but I love to keep people guessing about what I know.”

  “I think that may be part of the problem,” Leo advised.

  “Well, it doesn’t hurt to keep your senses honed. Now. What do you want to know about Clark?”

  “I’d like some way to get a photo of him,” Leo confessed. “A friend of mine is working at Shea’s. I’m going to ask her if she’ll keep an eye on who he talks to, what he does, if he comes in there. She’ll need to know what he looks like.”

  Grier sobered at once. “That’s dangerous,” he said. “Clark’s brother almost killed a man he suspected of spying on him, up in Victoria. He made some threats, too.”

  Leo frowned. “Why are guys like that on the streets?”

  “You can’t shoot people or even lock them up without due process here in the States,” Grier said with a wistful smile. “Pity.”

  “Listen, do they give you real bullets to go with that gun?” Leo asked, indicating the .45 caliber automatic in a shoulder holster that the man was wearing.

  “I haven’t shot anybody in months,” Grier assured him. “I was a cyber crime specialist in the D.A.’s office San Antonio. I didn’t really beat up that guy I was accused of harassing, I just told him I’d keep flies off him if he didn’t level with me about his boss’s illegal money laundering. I had access to his computerized financial records,” he added with a twinkle in his dark eyes.

  “I heard about that,” Leo chuckled. “Apparently you used some access codes that weren’t in the book.”

  “They let me off with a warning. When they checked my ID, I still had my old ‘company’ card.”

  Leo just shook his head. He couldn’t imagine Grier being in trouble for very long. He knew too much. “All that specialized background, and you’re handing out speeding tickets in Jacobsville, Texas.”

  “Don’t knock it. Nobody’s shot at me since I’ve been here.” He got up and opened his filing cabinet with a key. “I have to keep it locked,” he explained. “I have copies of documents about alien technology in here.” He glanced at Leo to see if he was buying it and grinned. “Did you read that book by the Air Force guy who discovered night vision at a flying saucer crash?” He turned back to the files. “Hell, I should write a book. With what I know, governments might topple.” He hesitated, frowned, with a file folder in his hand. “Our government might topple!”

  “Clark?” Leo prompted.

  “Clark. Right.” He took a paper from the file, replaced it, closed the cabinet and locked it again. “Here. You don’t have a clue where this photo came from, and I never saw you.”

  Leo was looking at a photograph of two men, obviously brothers, in, of all things, a newspaper clipping. Incredibly, they’d been honored with a good citizen award in another Texas town for getting a herd of escaped cattle out of the path of traffic and back into a fenced pasture with broken electric fencing.

  “Neat trick,” Grier said. “They cut the wire to steal the cattle, and then were seen rounding them up. Everybody thought they were saving the cattle. They had a tractor trailer truck just down the road and told people they were truck drivers who saw the cattle out and stopped to help.” He laughed wholeheartedly. “Can you believe it?”

  “Can you copy this for me?”

  “That’s a copy of the original. You can have it,” Grier told him. “I’ve got two more.”

  “You were expecting trouble, I gather,” Leo continued.

  “Two expensive bulls in less than a month, both from the same herd sire, is a little too much coincidence even for me,” Grier said as he sat back down. “When I heard Clark was working for Duke Wright, I put two and two together.”

  “There’s no proof,” Leo said.

  “Not yet. We’ll give him a little time and see if he’ll oblige us by hanging himself.” He laced his lean, strong hands together on the desk in front of him. “But you warn your friend not to be obvious. These are dangerous men.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “And stop knocking men over tables in Shea’s. It’s outside the city limits, so I can’t arrest you. But I can have the sheriff pick you up for brawling,” Grier said abruptly, and he was serious. “You can’t abduct women in plain sight of the public.”

  “I wasn’t abducting her, I was trying to save her!”

  “From what?”

  “Fistfights!”

  Grier lost it. He got up from his desk. “Get out,” he invited through helpless laughter. “I have real work to do here.”

  “If Harley Fowler said I hit him without provocation, he’s lying,” Leo continued doggedly. “He never should have ordered me to put her down, and leave my hands free to hit him!�
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  “You should just tell the woman how you feel,” Grier advised. “It’s simpler.” He glanced at Leo’s swollen hand. “And less painful.”

  Leo didn’t really know how he felt. That was the problem. He gave Grier a sardonic look and left.

  He worried about letting Janie get involved, even from the sidelines, with Clark. Of course, the man might not even come near Shea’s. He might buy a bottle and drink on the ranch, in the bunkhouse. But it wasn’t a long shot to think he might frequent Shea’s if he wanted company while he drank.

  He disliked anything that might threaten Janie, and he didn’t understand why he hated Harley all of a sudden. But she was in a great position to notice a man without being obvious, and for everyone’s sake, Clark had to be watched. A man who would kill helpless animals was capable of worse.

  He went looking for her Sunday afternoon, in a misting rain. She wasn’t at home. Fred said that she was out, in the cold rain no less, wandering around the pecan trees in her raincoat. Brooding, was how Fred put it. Leo climbed back into his pickup and went after her.

  Janie was oblivious to the sound of an approaching truck. She had her hands in her pockets, her eyes on the ground ahead of her, lost in thought.

  It had been a revelation that Leo was concerned about her working at Shea’s, and it had secretly thrilled her that he tried to make her quit. But he’d washed his hands of her when she wouldn’t leave willingly, and he’d hurt her feelings with his comment that she shouldn’t complain if she got in trouble. She didn’t know what to make of his odd behavior. He’d given her a hard time, thanks to Marilee. But she hadn’t been chasing him lately, so she couldn’t understand why he was so bossy about her life. And she did feel guilty that he’d slugged poor Harley, who was only trying to help her.

  The truck was almost on top of her before she finally heard the engine and jumped to the side of the ranch trail.

  Leo pulled up and leaned over to open the passenger door. “Get in before you drown out there,” he said.

  She hesitated. She wasn’t sure if it was safe to get that close to him.

  He grimaced. “I’m not armed and dangerous,” he drawled. “I just want to talk.”

  She moved closer to the open door. “You’re in a very strange mood lately,” she commented. “Maybe the lack of biscuits in your life has affected your mind.”

  Both eyebrows went up under his hat.

  She flushed, thinking she’d been too forward. But she got into the truck and closed the door, removing the hood of her raincoat from her long, damp hair.

  “You’ll catch cold,” he murmured, turning up the heat.

  “It’s not that wet, and I’ve got a lined raincoat.”

  He drove down the road without speaking, made a turn, and ended up in a field on the Hart ranch, a place where they could be completely alone. He put the truck in park, cut off the engine, and leaned back against his door to study her from under the wide brim of his Stetson. “Your father says you won’t give up the job.”

  “He’s right,” she replied, ready to do battle.

  His fingers tapped rhythmically on the steering wheel. “I’ve been talking to Grier,” he began.

  “Now listen here, you can’t have me arrested because I won’t quit my job!” she interrupted.

  He held up a big, lean hand. “Not about that,” he corrected. “We’ve got a man in town who may be involved in some cattle losses. I want you to look at this picture and tell me if you’ve ever seen him in Shea’s.”

  He took the newspaper clipping out of his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to her.

  She took it gingerly and studied the two faces surrounded by columns of newsprint. “I don’t know the man on the left,” she replied. “But the one on the right comes in Saturday nights and drinks straight whiskey,” she said uneasily. “He’s loud and foul-mouthed, and Tiny had to ask him to leave last night.”

  Leo’s face tightened. “He’s vindictive,” he told her.

  “I’ll say he is,” she agreed at once. “When Tiny went out to get into his car, all his tires were slashed.”

  That was disturbing. “Did he report it to the sheriff?”

  “He did,” she replied. “They’re going to look into it, but I don’t know how they’ll prove anything.”

  Leo traced an absent pattern on the seat behind her head. They were silent while the rain slowly increased, the sound of it loud on the hood and cab of the truck. “The man we’re watching is Jack Clark,” he told her, “the man you recognize in that photo.” He took it back from her, refolded it, and replaced it in his pocket. “If he comes back in, we’d like you to see who he talks to. Don’t be obvious about it. Tell Tiny to let it slide about his tires, I’ll see that they’re replaced.”

  “That’s nice of you,” she replied.

  He shrugged. “He’s protective of you. I like that.”

  His eyes were narrow and dark and very intent on her face. She felt nervous with him all at once and folded her hands in her lap to try and keep him from noticing. It was like another world, closed up with him in a truck in a rainstorm. It outmatched her most fervent dreams of close contact.

  “What sort of cattle deaths do you suspect him of?” she asked curiously.

  “Your father’s bull, for one.”

  Her intake of breath was audible. “Why would he kill Dad’s bull?” she wanted to know.

  “It was one of the offspring of a bull he killed in Victoria. He worked for the owner, who fired him. Apparently his idea of proper revenge is far-reaching.”

  “He’s nuts!” she exclaimed.

  He nodded. “That’s why you have to be careful if he comes back in. Don’t antagonize him. Don’t stare at him. Don’t be obvious when you look at him.” He sighed angrily. “I hate the whole idea of having you that close to a lunatic. I should have decked Tiny as well as Fowler and carried you out of there anyway.”

  His level, penetrating gaze made her heart race. “I’m not your responsibility,” she challenged.

  “Aren’t you?” His dark eyes slid over her from head to toe. His head tilted back at a faintly arrogant angle.

  She swallowed. He looked much more formidable now than he had at Shea’s. “I should go,” she began.

  He leaned forward abruptly, caught her under the arms, and pulled her on top of him. He was sprawled over the front seat, with one long, powerful leg braced against the passenger floorboard and the other on the seat. Janie landed squarely between his denim-clad legs, pressed intimately to him.

  “Leo!” she exclaimed, horribly embarrassed at the intimate proximity and trying to get up.

  He looped an arm around her waist and held her there, studying her flushed face with almost clinical scrutiny. “If you keep moving like that, you’re going to discover the major difference between men and women in a vivid way, any minute.”

  She stilled at once. She knew what he meant. She’d felt that difference with appalling starkness at the ball. In fact, she was already feeling it again. She looked at him and her face colored violently.

  “I told you,” he replied, pursing his lips as he surveyed the damage. “My, my, didn’t we know that men are easily aroused when we’re lying full length on top of them?” he drawled. “We do now, don’t we?”

  She hit his shoulder, trying to hold on to her dignity as well as her temper. “You let go of me!”

  “Spoilsport,” he chided. He shifted her so that her head fell onto his shoulder and he could look down into her wide, startled eyes. “Relax,” he coaxed. “What are you so afraid of?”

  She swallowed. The closeness was like a drug. She felt swollen. Her legs trembled inside the powerful cage his legs made for them. Her breasts were hard against his chest, and they felt uncomfortably tight as well.

  He looked down at them with keen insight, even moving her back slightly so that he could see the hard tips pressing against his shirt.

  “You stop…looking at that!” she exclaimed without thinking.
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  He lifted an eyebrow and his smile was worldly. “A man likes to know that he’s making an impression,” he said outrageously.

  She bit her lower lip, still blushing. “You’re making too much of an impression already,” she choked.

  He leaned close and brushed his mouth lazily over her parted lips. “My body likes you,” he whispered huskily. “It’s making very emphatic statements about what it wants to do.”

  “You need…to speak…firmly to it,” she said. She was trying to sound adult and firm, but her voice shook. It was hard to think, with his mouth hovering like that.

  “It doesn’t listen to reason,” he murmured. He nibbled tenderly at her upper lip, parting it insistently from its companion. His free hand came up to tease around the corners of her mouth and down her chin to the opening her v-necked blouse made inside her raincoat.

  His mouth worked on her lips while his hands freed her from the raincoat and slowly, absently, from her blouse as well. She was hardly aware of it. His mouth was doing impossibly erotic things to her lips, and one of his lean, strong hands was inside her blouse, teasing around the lacy edges of her brassiere.

  The whole time, one long, powerful leg was sliding against the inside of her thigh, in a way so arousing that she didn’t care what he did to her, as long as he didn’t try to get up.

  Her hands had worked their way into his thick, soft hair, and she was lifting up, trying to get closer to those slow, maddening fingers that were brushing against the soft flesh inside her bra. She’d never dreamed that a man could arouse her so quickly with nothing more invasive than a light brushing stroke of his hand. But she was on fire with hunger, need, aching need, to have him thrust those fingers down inside her frilly bra and close on her breast. It was torture to have him tease her like this. He was watching her face, too, watching the hunger grow with a dark arrogance that was going to make her squirm later in memory.

  Right now, of course, she didn’t care how he looked at her. If he would just slide that hand…down a…couple of…inches!

  She was squirming in another way now, twisting her body ardently, pushing up against his stroking fingers while his mouth nibbled and nipped at her parted lips and his warm breath went into her mouth.