Lone Star Winter

by Diana Palmer

  “I get out there and work with them, and make them ashamed of being lazy,” Harley told him with a grin. “Most of them can’t keep up with me.”

  “I noticed.” Cy leaned back against the corral fence and stared at the younger man evenly, without blinking. “You were out near the warehouse last night. What did you see?”

  “Three big trucks,” Harley said solemnly. “One had some odd stuff on the back. Looked like oil drums lashed together.”

  That was disturbing. Cy knew that drug dealers threw portable bridges across rivers to let trucks full of their product drive to the other side. What Harvey was de scribing sounded like a makeshift pontoon bridge. Cy and the mercenaries he’d worked with had used them, too.

  “Did you get a look at what was in the trucks?” he asked.

  Harley shook his head. “The doors were closed and locked. I was afraid to risk trying to pick a lock, with all that hardware around. Those guys had Uzis.”

  “I know,” Cy said without thinking.

  Harley’s eyebrows went up, and he grinned in a fairly condescending way. “Do you now? Are you using Uzis to load cattle these days, boss?”

  Cy realized what he’d said and chuckled. “I wasn’t listening. Sorry.”

  “No problem. I noticed a couple of new faces over there,” he added. “Tough-looking men, and they weren’t wearing suits.”

  “Get back out there tonight,” Cy told him. “And be very careful, Harley. I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.” He didn’t add that he was worried about Lisa. He saw her every other day, and the paperwork had just been completed and signed, ready for the transfer of money and deeds. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Lopez had an informant in town who’d tell him that. It might prompt the drug lord to hasty action, if he thought Lisa was selling the ranch in order to move away. He couldn’t know that Cy planned to rent her the ranch house. He wouldn’t like having to search for her.

  Knowing that bothered him, and he mentioned it to Lisa when he stopped by to see her the next day. Harley had seen yet another unfamiliar face on the ware house property, and he’d also seen flat after flat of jars being moved inside the structure. The drug dealers were getting ready to begin operations. Things would heat up very soon, or Cy missed his guess. He didn’t want Lisa in the middle of it.

  “Have you got family you could visit out of state?” he asked without preamble as he joined her in the living room, where she had gas logs burning in the fire place.

  She curled up on the sofa in her jeans and knit turtleneck white sweater and stared at him curiously. “I don’t have family anywhere,” she confessed. “Maybe a cousin or two up around Fort Worth, but I wouldn’t know where to look for them.”

  He sighed heavily and leaned forward in the chair with his arms crossed over his knees. “All right,” he said, seeming to come to a decision. “If you leave the house from now on, I want to know first. If you can’t get me, you call Eb Scott.”

  “Why?”

  He knew she was going to ask that. He didn’t have a very logical reply. “I don’t know what Lopez is up to,” he said honestly. “He may have given up on ideas of targeting you. On the other hand, he may be lulling us into a false sense of security. I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

  “That suits me,” she said agreeably.

  “Do you have a phone by your bed?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It makes me feel more secure.”

  He stood up. “Don’t forget to keep your doors locked, even in the daytime, when you’re home alone.”

  “I’m not, much,” she said without thinking. “Harley comes by every day to check on me, sometimes twice a day.”

  His eyes narrowed. He didn’t like that, although he said, “Good for Harley.”

  She caught a nuance of something in his tone. “Do you mind?” she asked deliberately. He’d been remote and she’d hardly seen him since the night of the opera. She wondered if he’d been avoiding her, and she concluded that he was. His manner now was standoffish and he seemed in a hurry to leave. She wanted to know if he was the least bit put out by Harley’s attentiveness.

  “It’s your life,” he said nonchalantly, tilting his wide-brimmed hat over one eye. “He’s a steady young man with a good future.”

  He couldn’t be thinking…or could he? She started to tell him that Harley was friendly, and that she had no romantic interest in him. But before she could, Cy was already on his way out the door.

  She went after him, trying not to be undignified and run. She didn’t catch up to him until he was going down the steps.

  “When do we close on the sale?” she asked, having no other excuse for following him.

  He turned at the door of the utility vehicle. “The first of next week, Kemp said. It will take that long to get the paperwork filed.”

  “Okay. You’ll phone me?”

  “I will. Or Kemp will.”

  That sounded less than friendly. She wrapped her arms around her chest and leaned against one of the posts that held up the long porch. “That’s fine, then,” she said with forced cheer. “Thanks.”

  He opened the door and hesitated. “Are you in a rush to close?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to know when I’d need to start paying rent. I was going to go see Mr. Kemp next week about that job.”

  She thought he didn’t want her around, and that was so far from the truth that it might as well have been in orbit. But he didn’t want to rush her, frighten her. Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted anymore.

  “I’ll see you Monday,” he said, and got into the vehicle without another word. He didn’t even look back as he drove away.

  Lisa stared after him with her heart around her ankles. So much for her theory that he was attracted to her. She supposed that he’d had second thoughts. It might be just as well. He was mourning his son, whom he’d obviously loved even if it wasn’t his own child, and she was a recent widow expecting a child of her own. She’d been spinning daydreams and it was time to stop and face reality. Cy wasn’t her future even if she’d hoped he was hers. She turned and went back into the lonely house, pausing to close and lock the door behind her.

  Chapter Five

  The first time she heard the noise at the window, Lisa thought it was a squirrel. The old house seemed to at tract them. They often scurried over the roof and came leaping down into the limbs of the big pecan trees that surrounded the porches. But she usually didn’t hear them in the wee hours of the morning, and so loud that they woke her up. She tried to go back to sleep, but then the noise came again. This time it didn’t sound like a squirrel. It sounded more like a window being forced open.

  Lisa slipped out of bed in her sweatpants and white cotton top, hesitating at the door that led into the hall. The noise had come from the room next door, the one Walt had occupied for most of their married life.

  She heard a faint rubbing noise, like one a man might make climbing in a window. Her heart began racing and she dashed down the hall in her bare feet, down the wooden steps and into the kitchen. Her glasses were still in the nightstand drawer by her bed, and she could barely make out familiar objects in the dim light. She was headed for the back door when she was caught and lifted and a big, gentle hand was clapped over her mouth while she struggled pitifully in an embrace of steel.

  “It’s all right,” Cy Parks whispered at her ear. “It’s all right, we know there’s someone trying to break in up stairs. Micah’s rappeling from the roof down to the window of the room across the hall. He’ll have him in a minute. Don’t scream or you’ll give him all the warning he needs to get away. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  He eased her back onto her feet, taking her soft weight against the black sweater he was wearing with black jeans, one lean arm holding her just under her breasts. She saw the glimmer of metal in his other black-gloved hand. Her frightened eyes drifted up to his face, and all she could see of it was his eyes. He was wearing some sort of black mas
k.

  While she was studying him, she heard a loud thud, followed by a louder groan.

  “All clear!” came a loud, deep voice from upstairs.

  “Stay here.” Cy let her go and went past her and up the staircase with an economy of motion that made her very glad she wasn’t the enemy.

  She leaned back against the counter and almost jumped out of her skin when the back door opened and Eb Scott came in pulling his mask off, grinning.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly. “But the man Cy had staying in the bunkhouse spotted two suspicious figures outside your window. Unless you’re expecting Romeo, it’s a bit late for social calls.”

  “I was asleep,” she said, shaken. “I heard the noise and thought it was a squirrel. I was trying to get out the back door when Cy grabbed me.” She whistled. “I thought my number was up.”

  “Good thing you slept light,” Eb said solemnly. “We barely got here in time.”

  “Who is it, do you think?” she asked.

  “One of Lopez’s goons,” Eb told her flatly. “And this definitely confirms our worst fears. Lopez is after you.”

  “But I didn’t do anything!” she said, still shaken from the experience. “Why is he after me?” She brushed back the long, tangled curtain of hair from her flushed cheeks. She felt sick.

  “He’s going to set an example for anybody else who might consider trying to infiltrate his organization,” Eb told her. “It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. He doesn’t care. Your husband betrayed him and he wants you to pay for it, too. He wants all the government agencies to know the price for selling him out—their lives and their families’ lives.”

  The fear made a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. She sank down into one of the kitchen chairs with a protective hand over her belly. She felt twice her age.

  She heard heavy footsteps on the staircase and out the front door before Cy came back into the room, tearing off his mask. He looked even more formidable than usual, and that said something about his present demeanor, Lisa thought.

  “Micah’s taking the guy over to the sheriff,” he said. “He suddenly doesn’t speak English, of course, and his friend lit a shuck while he was breaking into the house. We won’t be able to prove a thing beyond the obvious.”

  “He’ll be out on bond by tomorrow afternoon and out of the country an hour later,” Ebenezer added.

  Cy’s expression was homicidal before he turned his glittery green eyes on Lisa. “You can’t stay here a day longer,” he said flatly. “Lopez doesn’t make the same mistake twice. You’ve been put on notice. The next time, there won’t be a near miss.”

  She ground her teeth together. “This is my ranch. I haven’t sold it to you yet, and I’m staying here,” she said furiously. “I’m not going to let some sleazy drug king pin force me into hiding out like a scared kid!”

  “Commendable courage,” Cy remarked with a stoic expression. He reached into his belt and pulled out something dark. “Here.”

  He tossed her his automatic. She caught it and then dropped it with a gasp of pure horror.

  “You’d better pick it up and learn to shoot straight and under fire,” he said coldly. “You’d better learn to shoot to kill while you’re at it. Because that—” he indicated the gun “—is the only way you’ll survive if you insist on staying here alone. We were almost too late tonight. Next time, we might not be so lucky.”

  She glared at him, but she didn’t argue. “I hate guns.”

  “Good God, so do I,” Cy told her. “But when you get in a war, you don’t throw potatoes at the enemy.”

  “Then what do I do?” she asked Cy.

  Cy told her. “Go pack a bag. You’re leaving.”

  “Leaving for where?” she demanded, standing up with both hands on her hips. “I told you already, I’ve got no family, no close friends, and no place to go to!”

  “Yes, you have. The Expedition’s outside. I’ll send Harley over in the morning to pick up your VW and bring it over, too.”

  Her dark eyes widened. It didn’t help much, her glasses were upstairs on the bedside table and all she could see of Cy was a blur. “I can’t go home with you. I’ve only been widowed a short time!”

  “I’ve only been widowed three years,” he reminded her. “So what?”

  “I can stay with Callie Kirby!”

  “Callie’s apartment isn’t big enough for Callie, much less Callie and you,” he said. “I’ve got three bedrooms. You can even have a bathroom of your own.”

  She didn’t want to give in. But the memory of someone trying to break in the house scared her. She knew that she couldn’t shoot an intruder. That left her few options.

  “When you make up your mind, I’ll be in the truck,” Cy told her.

  He actually walked out the door. Eb followed him with an amused grin that he didn’t let Lisa see.

  Lisa glared after him, hesitant and bristling with hurt pride. But in the end, she went upstairs, changed into jeans and a shirt and packed a small bag. Ten minutes later, he opened the door of the utility vehicle so that she could climb in with her tote bag.

  “If Harley so much as grins, I’ll kick him in the shins,” she said after she’d fumbled her seat belt together.

  “So will I,” Cy promised her.

  She glanced at him from the warm folds of her flannel-lined denim jacket. “Would you have shot that man?”

  “If there hadn’t been another way to stop him, yes.”

  “I couldn’t shoot anybody,” she said.

  “I know. That’s why you have to stay with me until we get Lopez.” He glanced at her. “It won’t be so bad. I can cook.”

  “So can I.”

  “Good. Fair division of labor.” He glanced at her with a faint smile. “When the baby comes, we’ll take turns getting up for his meals.”

  She felt a warm glow wash over her. She smiled, too. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to sleep if he was hungry,” she mused dreamily. “I’d get up, too.”

  He remembered his wife complaining bitterly about lost sleep, making formula, giving bottles. She hated everything to do with the baby, and couldn’t begin to understand his affection for the tiny little boy, who wasn’t even…

  He closed his mind to the anguish that memory fostered, and concentrated on his driving instead.

  Apparently Cy’s men were asleep in the bunkhouse, because the ranch house was quiet when they arrived. He helped Lisa out of the vehicle and carried her suitcase into the house.

  “You’ll probably like this room. It faces the rose garden,” he added with a smile.

  She looked around at the simple, old-fashioned room with its canopied double bed and gauzy white curtains and white furniture. “It’s very pretty,” she murmured.

  “The house belonged to an elderly woman, who was the last living member of her family,” he said. “She had to go into a nursing home. I learned the history of the house from her. It belonged to her father, who was one of the better known Texas Rangers. She raised two kids and three grandkids here. One of her grandsons was a congressman, and another worked for the U.S. Secret Service. She was very proud of them.”

  “Is she living in Jacobsville?”

  He nodded. “I go to visit her every other week. You might like to go along occasionally. She’s a walking history of Texas.”

  “I’d like that.” She was studying him with open curiosity. He looked so different in that stark black outfit that she wondered if she would even have recognized him if she’d seen him on the street. Her husband had been in law enforcement, but even he hadn’t looked as dangerous as Cy Parks in commando gear.

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Sorry,” she murmured with a shy smile. “You look different, that’s all.”

  “Think of it as a covert ops business suit,” he mused. “The object is to blend in with the night.”

  “Oh, you did that very neatly,” she agreed.

  He chuckled. “Get some sleep. There won’t be anybody to bother
you here, and you can sleep as late as you like.”

  She grimaced. “What about Puppy Dog?”

  “What?”

  “Puppy Dog,” she said. “He’s all shut up on the back porch…”

  “I’ll fetch him at daybreak,” he said. “But if he eats one of my chickens, he’s dog bone stew. Got that?”

  “You’ve got chickens?”

  “Five,” he said. “Rhode Island Reds. I like fresh eggs.”

  She smiled. “I like them, too.”

  “A woman after my own heart.” He moved toward the door. “The windows are electronically wired, by the way,” he added with the doorknob in his hand. “If any one tries to open them from the outside, they’ll think we’re being bombed.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “So it is. Sleep tight.”

  “You, too.”

  He spared her a glance. “Don’t get up until you want to. I’ll haul Puppy Dog over here at daybreak.”

  “He likes to chew up things,” she said worriedly.

  “You shouldn’t let him eat heating pads, while we’re on the subject.”

  “He can reach the shelf I keep them on,” she said. “I didn’t realize it until I saw him jump up to pull it down. By then I’d lost two and I thought I’d left them on the sofa.” She shook her head. “He’s already very tall. His father, Moose, is almost five feet tall when he stands on his hind legs.”

  “He’ll be good protection for you when he’s trained.”

  “He seems to be training me,” she said on a wistful breath.

  “I’ll take care of that. ’Night.”

  She smiled. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

  “I had good help,” he told her.

  She stood staring after him even when the door closed. Her life had just gone up two notches on the complications scale. She forced herself not to think of how hungry he’d made her the night they’d gone to Houston to the opera, of how much she liked being close to him. He’d been very standoffish since, so it was obvious that he didn’t like the small taste of her he’d had. She was safe with him. Safe, pregnant and a widow. She shouldn’t be thinking about kissing Cy. The thought made her uncomfortable, but she slept soundly all night long.