Foster Justice

by Colleen Shannon

  “Why, have you slipped down that pole one too many times and bumped your head?” Chad growled, squirming as if he couldn’t get comfortable.

  Jasmine’s smile stayed fixed. “If he gets out of line, I’ll just give him a matched set.”

  Chad closed his mouth on the next protest. Anywhere was better than here. At least at her place he could work the Internet, call Corey. She probably had a nice, soft bed, too, along with other nice, soft things she’d given him a taste for a few minutes ago.

  She obviously read his mind. “I have a great, comfortable couch.”

  His smile faded.

  “I’ll even let you have the remote.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her cheeky little grin, promising retribution.

  The doctor scribbled something in the chart. “If he relapses, call an ambulance. And no . . . strenuous activity. Clear?”

  Jasmine nodded vigorously, but under Chad’s gaze, she blushed again. When the doctor leveled a stern stare on Chad, he shrugged. “Clear.”

  “I’ll send a nurse in for your exit interview and to help you dress. Be good.” And with that admonition, the doctor walked out, already thinking about his next patient.

  Chad looked at Jasmine. He wondered what to say, if anything, about what had happened between them, but he wasn’t sure he understood it himself. How could a woman who riled him up so much with her lack of morals feel like hope and heaven in his arms? As the last of the heady passion faded, his usual cold feet made his toes curl under the covers. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for him to go to her place. “I can go back to the equestrian center, Jasmine. I’ll be fine. I still have a couple of leads to follow up on—”

  “You can do that from my place. You don’t need to be sleeping on cold, hard ground and you need observation. Who else will do it?”

  “Your Christian duty is noted, but not necessary. The ladies in the Baptist church around the corner from our ranch gave up on me years ago.”

  “Well, maybe a sinner will have more luck.” At his look, she started backing toward the door. “Uh, I’ll bring the car around and wait in the patient pickup area.” She bolted.

  Chad smiled slowly, happy that for the first time since he’d met her, Jasmine seemed off balance. Well, at least the confusing storm of feelings wasn’t one-sided. Chad swung his legs to the side of the bed to look for his clothes. Strange, his head barely twinged and his dizziness had subsided. Maybe she was more of a tonic than a poison, and he was just too stubborn to see it . . .

  He began to dress as he waited for the nurse. One thing was certain: The next few days would be real interesting. Either they’d help him get close enough to her for her to admit she’d been Trey’s girlfriend, or she’d keep lying to him and he could use her as ruthlessly as need be to find his brother.

  Chad recalled the ease with which that asshole had bushwhacked him. He hadn’t heard a thing. Maybe he’d been too worried about Trey, maybe all the city noise had disguised the footsteps coming up behind him, but by any estimation he’d been caught napping. and the gangbangers had whisked his brother away for the second time.

  To where? And in what condition?

  He’d have to use the time at Jasmine’s to methodically check all his leads again because concussion or not, he couldn’t afford to take three days off when Trey’s life hung in the balance. Chad bent to pull on his boots, but his head swam so much that nausea filled his throat. He had to sink back and shut his eyes. Lights danced behind his closed lids, and he saw himself standing alone over a fresh grave on the homestead. Next to Mama and Daddy.

  About to throw up, Chad opened his eyes and took several deep breaths. No. He was just weak from the concussion. Trey was still alive. He had to be. Chad waited until the nausea subsided and pulled his foot up on the bed to put the boot on it so he didn’t have to lean down.

  As she waited for Chad at the curb, Jasmine tried to make sense of that kiss that was more than a kiss. She’d kissed many men, though far fewer had ever gotten to first base with her, but never had a kiss affected her like this. If she’d doubted Chad’s awkwardness around women, she believed it now because even so vulnerable and ill, she’d read the hunger that drove every awkward touch. This was a man who was not comfortable around women. He put up a good show, all right, with all that arrogance, but when you peeled away the layers, he was at heart as much of a romantic as his little brother. She remembered that nugget necklace Trey always wore and wondered what kind of woman had reared two such unusual sons, especially for Texas. Jasmine said softly, “Ride ’er hard, put ’er up wet!” She smiled. The Texas saying seemed to be the credo of most of the Texas men she knew, but not Chad and Trey. They seemed genuinely hungry for a connection.

  That kiss had supplied it, on both sides . . . Their embrace had begun tentatively, but by the time the doctor interrupted, thank the Lord, enthusiasm and curiosity were mutual. Jasmine felt her cheeks flush at the recollection, and she knew it was a bad idea to take six-plus feet of male temptation into her sanctuary. She’d never slept with a man in her place, which she kept sacrosanct, one of her few inviolable rules. She’d had fewer than ten partners since she’d moved to LA, which for a woman in her profession, was pretty damn choosy. And part of that was because she wouldn’t sleep with anyone at her place.

  She wouldn’t violate that rule now, especially with a man who’d been directed by his doctor to avoid strenuous activity. As uncertain as she felt about many things, Jasmine knew if they ever laid hands on one another, the activity would be a marathon.

  CHAPTER 11

  Trey awoke to a burning pain in his side, his head, and his arms, which were pulled behind his back and tied. He’d fallen over long ago, and even in the dark he recognized the smell of oily car parts overlaid by the scent of diesel exhaust. He bounced over hard planking as he was jostled; the burning in his extremities became a blessed numbness.

  He was in one of the big rigs, headed God knew where. Almost certainly out of LA, but at least he was still alive. His ruse about Mary had worked. They’d beaten the living tar out of him for the second time in a week, and he retched but had nothing to vomit. When the nausea slowly passed, he couldn’t avoid the hot flow of tears. Mary . . . For a moment he allowed himself the luxury of emotional pain and somehow it was worse than the physical.

  She’d led him on like a prize bull into the glare of the arena, tempting him as a dancer and then giving him those sultry looks and long kisses to sucker him back out to LA. The couple of times they’d had sex had been the highlights of his romantic life. The brief time she’d spent with him in Texas made him miss her all the more, until he’d signed away his heritage to trail her back to LA. Now he understood why she’d been so curious about the lay of their land, had even bent several times to examine the rock strata and shaded her eyes to look at the pumpjacks adjacent to the homestead.

  She’d been working with Kinnard all along. And Jasmine? Was she involved, too? He knew Jasmine had worked longer at the club than Mary had, but now he suspected Mary had been planted there as a guest act just for his benefit. She’d certainly given it up quickly enough when he asked.

  So Kinnard had adroitly used two red-haired floozies like bait to lead the Foster brothers away from their land, if he hadn’t been lying during their confrontation at the warehouse about how Chad was attracted to Jasmine. And knowing Chad, who’d been too long without a woman, how could Jasmine not be to his taste, stripper or not? And they’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

  He blinked, forcing the tears back, but in the crack at the rollup door, which allowed in a few rays of sunlight, he could see shadows. Night was coming or his vision was getting blurry. Probably a bit of both.

  Ignoring the pain in his wrists, he forced himself to sit upright. Using his feet to push his weight against the side of the truck, he levered his upper back slowly up until he could get his feet beneath him. His arms were almost wrenched from their sockets as they took the brunt of his weight. They settled
back into blessed numbness as he staggered against a car, bending over the hood to hold himself upright over a bad road bump. Pain knifed into his side, but he only braced himself as best he could.

  When the rig’s tires hummed again, he wound like a drunkard through the packed cargo until he brushed against something sharp. A car part of some kind, half out of its canvas cover. It snagged on his shirt, ripping it. He turned around and sawed at the duct tape holding his wrists together, feeling blood seep over his fingers, but he was so angry at his gullibility that he didn’t care. Served him right.

  Then he was free. He rubbed his wrists for a few minutes, and slowly feeling came back into them, the tips of his fingers on fire as if he’d had frostbite. He opened and closed his hands to keep his circulation going, as Chad had taught him years ago during a blue norther.

  Chad. . . . if he knew his big brother, Chad was already in LA tearing the city apart looking for him. At least that taunt to Kinnard hadn’t been an empty one. And Kinnard hadn’t scoffed at him. In fact a very subtle flicker of his eyes at the gibe made Trey feel as if Chad had already made Kinnard understand that the Foster brand of justice—keep on a-comin’—had passed from father to son.

  If Chad was here, Trey had to get a message to him somehow.

  When the burning faded to a dull ache, he used his fingers to feel around every part of the cargo bay. Flashlight, paper, pen, in that order. He had a plan, such as it was.

  He pushed Mary to the back of his mind. Right now he just had to stay alive long enough to confront her . . .

  In the nicest hotel Amarillo, Texas, offered, Mary paced her spacious room from one side to the other. It had been almost two weeks now since she’d spoken to Trey. Jasmine had told her several of Trey’s paintings had sold, but he hadn’t been in to pick up his check.

  Something was wrong. It didn’t do any good to talk to Thomas because he was lying. Trey had stumbled on something he shouldn’t, and Thomas would have his own private little Latino gang shut him up. The question was—how?

  Mary’s circuit brought her to the mirror. She looked at her reflection, and for a moment, her lovely face wavered, becoming a ghastly caricature with a long, beaked nose and pointy chin. She blinked the tears away, only then realizing they’d distorted her vision. It had been a long time since she’d cried, and she certainly hadn’t counted on falling in love with her mark. She’d been alone so long since she hit the streets at sixteen that she’d forgotten what it felt like to need another human being. People scared her for the most part, especially men. Oh, she knew how to use her looks to her advantage, but the two times she’d had sex with Trey had been different. He was so . . . sweet. As creative and generous in bed as out of it.

  When he left to go back to Amarillo, she’d been devastated.

  Jasmine and her unquestioning friendship had put the first crack in her armor. She didn’t care that Mary had walked the streets at one time. Until she got a grant to go to junior college, and from there scholarships to USC to work on her geology degree. The two redheads turned out to have a lot in common.

  So when Thomas had approached Mary and asked her to be a guest star at the strip joint where Jasmine danced, offering her a handsome sum to do so, Mary had accepted without a second thought. It wasn’t until Thomas promised to sweeten the pot if she could get Trey Foster interested, that she began to realize Thomas, as usual, had some grand plan that typically involved fleecing someone.

  And now here she was in Amarillo, using the newfound geology skills she’d been so proud of to complete his plan. He needed someone compliant, someone who would look the other way if he had to bend the law a bit, so he’d taken an interest in her schooling and gotten her an internship at a big firm to learn the ropes of assessing new deposits. It was a lousy economy and she’d welcomed his connections. At first. Now she wore golden handcuffs linking her to him, despite his likely involvement in Trey’s disappearance. One percent of the gross revenue produced by the wells was a helluva lot of money. Enough to keep her safe for a very long time.

  But what would that mean in the end if she lost the only man she’d ever met who made her believe in love? Mary blinked and wiped her tears on her sleeve until her own face stared back at her in the mirror. The darkness in her blue eyes was nothing new, but that hatred had never been self-directed before.

  The rig was almost set up. She knew now she wasn’t going to reach Trey. She was on her own, and she had a very big decision to make.

  Chad tossed and turned on Jasmine’s plush couch, unable to get comfortable. She’d insisted on tucking sheets over the soft leather, a bottom one and another one on top along with a homey quilt his mother might have used. He’d fingered the scalloped edge and lifted an eyebrow at her. “You quilt, too?”

  Her lips twitched. “No, it was my mother’s.” At his doubtful look she said grimly, “Strippers have mothers, too. Kinda like Texas Rangers, I imagine, unless you sprang full blown from “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas like Athena from Zeus. Of course your head’s big enough to do that.”

  Arrested, Chad looked up from the quilt to her face. How the hell did a Californio big city girl know about one of the most famous Texas Rangers? Or, for that matter, did all strippers know so much about Greek mythology?

  She must have read his expression because she hustled to the kitchen, as if fearful she’d revealed too much. “Sandwiches for supper?”

  “You don’t need to wait on me.” He moved to get up but his head swam and he had to sink back.

  She peeked around the corner. “Today only, full restaurant open and turn-down services at night. If you’re a good guest I may even put a chocolate by your pillow.” She disappeared again.

  He settled back, but he still felt uncomfortable. He had to get to his rig. The bug he’d planted on Kinnard’s office phone had been active long enough that he might find something revealing on it. Jasmine had told him they’d towed his rig to the Beverly Hills impound lot, this time, one and only, on the house. He also wasn’t comfortable leaving the Peacemaker there, even hidden.

  While he waited, he looked around her small but comfortable living room. Lone Star map reproduction, Western Remington-style statues, a book on Texas history. Either she was a big Western buff or she knew a lot more about Texas than she let on. Chad rubbed his tender head, but the worst of the aching had subsided. Not for the first time, he’d observed the duality of a personality that troubled him.

  Bottom line, whether he was using the Ranger instincts honed by ten years of interviewing various law breakers, or his questionable instincts as a man, this woman did not add up. She didn’t fit his preconceived notions of a stripper or anyone else.

  Which left . . . what? Him confused as hell and worried about his brother. Right where he started.

  Jasmine carried a tray in. It bore a steaming soup tureen, a neatly halved grilled cheese and a bag of potato chips. She set it on the coffee table in front of the couch. “We can have fresh fruit for dessert, if you like. Nowhere has better fresh fruit than California.”

  “Umm, yeah. Fruity out here.” He took a big bite of the sandwich at her glare. “I’m just saying . . .”

  “Why is it that even when you’re complimentary, every other word out of your mouth sounds like an insult?” When he didn’t answer, she ripped open the packet of chips. A few went flying. She bent to pick them up. He knew she intended to toss them in the trash. On impulse, he caught her hand and brought them to his mouth. He lipped them from her hand and then licked the salt residue away. He looked at her as he did so.

  Her eyes widened, going that clear green that was like sun on a prairie. The thought was so fanciful and unlike him that when she jerked away and got to her feet, fleeing to the kitchen, he let her go. That’s all he needed, to wax poetic over a woman he didn’t, couldn’t trust.

  She was Kinnard’s little sex-kitten pet he put on display, and that was proof enough of her morals. He forced the delicious supper down, leaning back against the couch, listening t
o her banging pots and pans. Slowly the warmth and sustenance steadied him until he almost felt normal.

  Hearing his Mama’s chiding voice in his head, he went to the kitchen, grabbed a towel, and began to dry the skillet she’d washed and put into the dish drainer. She opened her mouth to protest, gave a little shrug, and handed him the clean spatula to dry.

  And so it went for his first evening at her place. Little domestic chores, shared, as if they’d been longtime roomies. When she brought out the vacuum, he lifted the coffee table to let her vacuum beneath, then the legs of the heavy couch. Each time, she bit back a protest because she seemed to sense his need to help. He winced once as he straightened. She reached out to feel his forehead, but when he glared and straightened, her hand dropped.

  He flopped back on the couch. “Thanks. I can only stand so much mothering.”

  “I’m not your mother, I just have a natural sympathy for pain. Sue me.”

  While she was busy, he’d been eyeing the legal books on her shelf. “I have a feeling you could defend a lawsuit pretty handily.”

  She followed his gaze. “Oh. That.”

  He waited.

  Her voice was so soft, he had to strain to hear. “Maybe there’s more to me than meets the eye. Maybe I grew up around lawyers and maybe stripping isn’t my long-term career goal.”

  “Maybe you should quit pussyfootin’ around and tell me if you’re going to law school or not.”

  She shrugged. “Think what you like. You always do.” She wheeled the vacuum back to the closet and closed the door firmly. “You need anything else? I’m going to bed. I’m tired and I have to work tonight.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke.

  He felt her need to be alone and shared it. “I’m good. Sleep well.” When she reached her door, he added in a gravelly tone, “Hey, Jasmine.”

  She paused with her hand on the door knob. “Yes?”