“Jonas here.”
“Can you talk?” Leo asked.
“Yeah. I’m alone. What’s up? News from the border?”
Jonas was only one of many men who were working on this case. The Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, the Texas Department of Agriculture and even some county lawmen on the border were involved. Jonas had been placed in the middle, in hopes of catching the culprits en route.
“We’re hearing that another load is expected to cross soon. But that could just be talk. Could be someone is just making noise down that way to throw us off.”
“You think any of the undercover agents down there have been outed?”
“They don’t think so. We’ll see. I was hoping this thing would move in the next few days. If the rustlers are going to stop over in Lincoln County, you need to be there. But the Daniels trial is coming up next week. You’re going to have to come back to testify.”
Biting back a groan, Jonas massaged his taut forehead. “The Daniels trial! I thought that wasn’t going to be coming up for several more months. Since when did the wheels of justice start spinning this quickly?”
“Since the prosecutor argued that the case should be put on the fast track. It’s always best for the state to have fresh evidence. I don’t have to tell you how the courtroom works—when months rock on, memories dim, and the horror of the thing fades. We want this monster behind bars, and you can help put him there. You have to be here, Jonas. There’re no ifs or buts about it.”
Leo was right. A good part of the San Antonio division had worked on the Daniels case for months. It had been a particularly horrific crime, with the accused beating and robbing an elderly farm couple of what few dollars they had in the house, then kidnapping their granddaughter from the same house with the intention of prostituting her in Mexico. Before the assailant had left the scene of the crime, he’d thought that setting the house on fire would cover his tracks. But thankfully, a neighbor had spotted the flames and called 911. A few weeks later, Jonas had caught up to the assailant and the girl in a small Texas border town.
“I’ll be there,” Jonas said in a clipped voice. “When?”
“The trial starts Wednesday. I’ll try to get the prosecutor to narrow down the day that you’ll have to testify, but that’s always iffy. Anything could cause delays. I’ll let you know Monday. In the meantime, keep up your work there.”
After a few more words between the two men, Leo ended the call. Jonas slipped the phone back into his pocket and, with a weary sigh, leaned back in the leather chair. He’d never liked testifying. He didn’t know of any man in his division that did like taking the witness stand, but it was a necessary evil of the job.
The idea of leaving this case for any length of time aggravated him. Particularly when he had the gut feeling that something was about to happen.
And you don’t like the idea of leaving Alexa, either. You may as well admit that, Jonas.
Alexa. How he wished he could get the woman and her baby out of his mind. For the past few days, he’d deliberately tried to keep his distance. He’d told himself it was better that way. The more he saw her sweet smile, the more he looked at her and touched her, the more he wanted her.
Maybe it would be a good thing for him to have to go back to San Antonio, he thought grimly. Maybe time away from her and little J.D. would remind him that he had a life elsewhere.
Frustrated with his torn emotions, he pulled out the feeding schedule he’d been working on earlier and tried to concentrate, but he’d scribbled little more than three words when a light knock sounded on his door.
“Come in,” he called.
The sight of Alexa stepping through the doorway was like a wham in the midsection, and without even realizing it, he rose to his feet and rounded the desk to greet her.
“Am I interrupting?” she asked.
“No. Nothing pressing.”
The day had been hot, and she’d dressed accordingly in a pair of jeans and a blouse that exposed her arms and chest. Her black hair was swept into a ponytail, and he couldn’t help but notice how tiny tendrils curled around her face.
He pulled out a chair and helped her into it. She smiled up at him.
“I’m not pregnant anymore, Jonas. You don’t have to handle me like a flower.”
To him, she would always be a flower, he realized. “Let me be the judge of that,” he told her, then asked, “How’s J.D.?”
Her smile deepened. “I swear, Jonas, I think he’s grown since yesterday.”
Facing her, he propped a hip on the desktop. Having her near made him ridiculously happy, filled him with a quiet joy that he’d never experienced before. The whole thing was scary.
“One of these days you’ll look up and he’ll be scampering down to the bunkhouse, crying to ride with the wranglers.”
Her smile turned wry. “Yes. I’ve already thought of that. Sometimes when I’m holding him I just want to hang on tight and freeze every moment with him. Because I know that some day he’ll be a man like you, and then I won’t have any rein on him.”
His heart winced. At least she had a child, he thought. He probably never would. “I wouldn’t say that. Sons are usually always close to their mothers.”
“Until they take a wife.”
As soon as she said the word wife, Alexa could see an uncomfortable shadow cross his face. His reaction should have put her off, but she remained determined. She had to be.
For the first time in her life, a deep certainty had settled in her heart and assured her that Jonas was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. This time she wasn’t a young teenager dealing only with physical passion. This time she wasn’t running from her past, trying to pretend she was experiencing real love. This time she knew exactly what she was feeling, and it was too special, too right not to fight for it—him.
“Aren’t you a bit curious as to why I’m here?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I figured you were just out taking a stroll.”
“I haven’t seen you in three days. I wanted to find out why you’ve been avoiding me and the baby.”
He grimaced; then glancing away from her, he released a long breath. “I’ve been very busy, Alexa. The fence thing with Pickens has given me fresh leads about the case.”
“So you think that incident was caused by the rustlers?”
“Yes. When I looked over the area, it was easy to see that it was the perfect spot to load and unload cattle. There’s a small boxed canyon nearby, where they can pen the cows long enough to let them have grass and water. There’s also a mining road that leads past the canyon, across a corner of Pickens land, then to a county road.”
“I’m not much on solving mysteries, Jonas, but it seems to me that these rustlers wouldn’t have known about this secluded spot if someone who lives or works around here hadn’t told them.”
“Bingo,” he replied.
“Dear God!” she exclaimed softly. “You haven’t changed your mind about any of the Chaparral men being involved, have you?”
“No. I think it may be someone on the Pickens ranch. Certainly not Pickens himself, but one of his hands.”
“How are you going to find him?”
“I can’t infiltrate Pickens’s men. And unfortunately, none of the Chaparral men are buddies with the Pickens men. I’ll simply have to keep my eyes open.”
There were many more questions she could have asked him about the rustling case, but she didn’t. Sleuthing was his expertise, and she had every confidence he would handle the matter. She was here for far more personal reasons. Reasons that she didn’t know quite how to express without sounding maudlin or clingy.
“Well, I’ll be honest, Jonas. I’ve been thinking you haven’t been around to see me because—well, because you don’t want to.”
A pinched look came over his features. “Alexa, I told you the reason that we can’t have any sort of relationship.”
Rising from her seat, she went to stand within inches of him. “Y
ou told me you were a Texas Ranger. Is that supposed to be an excuse for not loving, marrying, having children?”
She’d not meant to say any of those words to him, but now that she had, she was relieved they were out in the open. Maybe if she’d been more honest and open with herself these past years in Santa Fe, she wouldn’t have made such mistakes with Barry. Maybe then she would have realized that leaving the ranch she’d always loved and pretending to enjoy a different lifestyle had not been the way to fill up the empty hole inside her.
He frowned. “I’m not giving you excuses. I’m giving you reasons. Sure, there are plenty of men in my division that are married. And they have good marriages. But it didn’t work for me. Maybe I’m too selfish, too much like my father, to be a good husband. I don’t know—I just know that you’re too fine a woman and I—” His features suddenly softened as he touched his knuckles to her cheek. “I care about you too much to hurt you.”
Her head shook back and forth as she tried to understand him. “That part about your father. What do you mean?”
Sighing, he stepped around her and walked over to the window. As he stared out at the falling twilight, he said, “I believe I told you that he was a police commissioner of a small town in Texas. Well, he was so devoted to his job that it put a constant strain on his marriage and himself. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to let up. Then, during the latter years of his tenure, he struggled to run the department on a shoestring budget and with fewer than half the officers he needed. The stress ended up killing him. He suffered a major heart attack.”
“You’re not that obsessed, Jonas.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “Ask my ex-wife,” he said starkly. “She’ll be happy to tell you.”
Alexa walked over to him and placed her hand on his arm. The feel of his warm muscle beneath her fingers was a gift, she realized. Just being near him was a gift.
“I’m thinking she didn’t realize or understand the deep need you have to help other people, to right wrongs. I do know what it’s like to serve the people.”
His hazel eyes flickered with doubt, and she wondered if she was getting to him, if there was any hope that he could ever open his heart and his mind to a future with her.
He frowned. “She understood that I was never there when she needed me. I was always focused on crimes and victims and justice.”
Her fingers instinctively tightened on his arm. “That isn’t a bad fault to have, Jonas.”
“Oh? Are you telling me that you could put up with it?”
She sucked in a deep, bracing breath. “I’m not saying it would be easy for me. But compared to the faults that Barry, J.D.’s biological father has, it would be a pleasure to deal with this.”
His interest piqued, he turned to face her. “You’ve not ever really told me about him. What happened between you?”
This time it was Alexa who was staring awkwardly at the floor. She wanted Jonas to know everything about her, yet that didn’t take away the sting of enlightening him about her foolish behavior.
“I can’t explain about Barry until I tell you about Mitch,” she said lowly. She looked up at him, her eyes pleading for him to listen. Really listen.
“You did say you’d tell me about Mitch one day,” Jonas reminded her.
Nodding, she said, “Looks like that time has come.” Jamming her hands in the front pockets of her jeans, she moved away from him and began to walk aimlessly around the small room. “Mitch and I were both teenagers when we first met. He was a charming rascal and a wizard with a horse and a rope. When he came to work on the ranch, I fell in love with him from the very start, and for a long while, we were inseparable. Much to my parents’ dismay. You see, Mitch was a hard worker and basically a good guy, but he had a wild, adventurous streak. A side that, unfortunately, often appeals to young, foolish females.”
“Why didn’t your father simply fire him? Send him on his way before you got deeply involved?”
“And break my heart? I would have found other ways to see him, and Daddy was wise enough to understand that.”
“So what eventually happened?” he asked gently.
Pausing at the back of her chair, Alexa closed her eyes. “We’d gone to Ruidoso on Saturday night to party with friends. Some of us decided to drive out to the Hondo Valley, to a secluded spot where teenagers liked to gather. Mitch had had a few beers but nothing that would have impaired his driving, or so I thought. But on a sharp curve, he crashed the truck into a steep ravine. The impact killed him instantly and broke my leg, collarbone and wrist.”
She opened her eyes to see him shaking his head in dismay. “God, it’s a miracle you’re alive today!”
“Yes. But back then, I couldn’t see that part of the picture. I was devastated over losing Mitch. And I told myself I was never going to look at another cowboy. That I was going to get out of school and away from the ranch, find a new and different life. One that would make me happy.”
“And did you?”
Grimacing, she walked toward him. “I went to college and got a degree in political science, and eventually, after working in the mayor’s office, I got the job in Santa Fe. That’s when I met Barry. We both worked in politics and shared the same sorts of goals, and I was very attracted to that part of him. And a man with tailored suits and shiny wingtips seemed far different and hardly a threat to my heart. He was a bit of a stuffed shirt, but he was a respectable lobbyist and a man I believed my parents would admire.”
His brows arched with curiosity. “Did they?”
She tried to laugh, but the sound was garbled. “Not as a future son-in-law. They didn’t think he fit me at all. But they were always polite with him, and neither of them ever tried to run my life. Barry visited the ranch once and was like a fish out of water. He hated it and I couldn’t get him back to Santa Fe fast enough. I told myself that it was good he wasn’t like Mitch. I never wanted my heart broken like that again.”
His hazel eyes were solemn as they glided over her face in a long, searching sweep. “In other words, you didn’t love the man.”
“No. That’s easy to see now. Back then, I suppose I was pretending. Trying to tell myself that I was creating the perfect life, where nothing bad would ever happen.”
Jonas watched her bite down on her bottom lip and bend her head. His heart ached to take her into his arms, to press her close against his chest and never let her go. Her happiness was so important to him. And yet he could see that he was bringing misery to her life.
“What finally happened between you two?” he asked.
Her head lifted. “I told him about the coming baby. He pretended to be happy about it, but I could see he was disappointed. He had a lot of political plans, and I guess he was wondering how having a child out of wedlock would affect them.”
“Didn’t you want to be married?”
“Yes. But not right away. For some reason I couldn’t explain, even to him, I wanted us to have more time together before we jumped into marriage. I suppose something deep inside must have been telling me that the relationship wasn’t right. But then, about three days after I’d told him about the baby, I discovered, quite by accident, that he was involved in—let’s just call them shady dealings with a couple of state senators. Nothing really illegal, or I would have turned him in. But edging toward unethical. When I confronted him, he merely laughed and told me to get used to it. That everyone who was anyone cheated to get to the top.”
Jonas’s teeth ground together as he wished his authority as a Ranger would allow him to cuff the man and throw him behind bars, where he belonged. “What a bastard!”
“I called him worse. But now—well, I’m just thankful he’s agreed to remain out of our life.”
She reached for his hand, and Jonas didn’t have the strength to keep his fingers from curving invitingly around hers.
“You see, Jonas, I’ve made some big mistakes. But I don’t intend to make them with you.”
As he looked down at her, ev
erything inside him seemed to stop in stunned fascination. “What does that mean?” he asked.
She drew in a deep breath. “It means that I love you, Jonas. And I’m not going to let you simply walk away from me. Not without a fight.”
She loved him? Oh God, he’d never wanted that from her.
Liar, just hearing her say the words has flung your heart over the moon. Admit it. Take her into your arms, and tell her you love her, too.
Fighting to ignore the voice inside him, Jonas slowly swung his head back and forth. “Oh, Alexa! You’re confused. You’re reading more into this thing between us than is really there. You’re just feeling gratitude because I delivered the baby.”
Leaning into him, she flattened her palms against the middle of his chest. Jonas wondered if she could feel his heart hammering, the heat coming from the blood throbbing through his veins. Being near her robbed him of his breath and his senses.
“Damn it, you know what I’m feeling. This!” he muttered.
Before he gave himself a moment to analyze his intentions, Jonas grabbed ahold of her shoulders and crushed her body close against his. Since the baby had been born, it was the first time he’d held her in such an intimate way, and he was wildly aware of her soft curves molding to the contours of his body and the fact that there was nothing between them but a thin barrier of fabric.
“Jonas, I—”
“Don’t talk! For once, don’t try to reason anything,” he mumbled as his lips fastened over hers.
The raw, wild moan in her throat was like that of an animal calling to its mate, and the sound caused Jonas’s hands to slip to her buttocks and drag the juncture of her hips directly against his manhood.
Her mouth fluttered open at the same time her fingers dug into the back of his neck. Somewhere inside him, he knew that kissing her was like playing with explosives. He knew the danger, but he couldn’t resist or worry about the shattered pieces she might leave behind.
The kiss went on far longer than it should have, and by the time he finally managed to lift his head, Jonas realized he was breathing as though he’d been running. His insides trembled as everything shouted for him to kiss her again.
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