The Texas Ranger

by Diana Palmer

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his expression harder than ever. "We could have solved a lot of problems that night if either one of us had been honest about what we felt."

  She turned. "I felt ashamed."

  His jaw tautened. "Not until I stopped," he drawled with self-recrimination in his tone.

  She flushed to the roots of her hair and started walking back down the hall.

  He followed her into the bedroom.

  "I'm not going to argue with you!" she raged. "I'm hurt. You just leave me alone!"

  There was a suspicious brightness in her eyes. "You aren't walking away this time," he said, and moved closer. "Never again."

  She put up both hands at his approach, wincing as the left one protested.

  "Idiot," he murmured as his arms enfolded her against his bare chest. "You're vulnerable."

  "I don't want your arms around me!" she fumed.

  "Funny, because you've slept in them for the past two nights."

  "Wwhat?" she exclaimed, staring up at him.

  He pushed the long, soft hair away from her cheek. "If I'd been shot and raging with fever, would you have been in here asleep with me in the other room?"

  "Of course not," she said without thinking.

  "Exactly."

  "But it would have been impersonal," she said doggedly.

  "It was mostly impersonal," he agreed.

  "Mostly?"

  His fingers trailed down her neck, making chills where they touched. "It's difficult for a man to be totally impersonal when he's hard as a rock."

  She didn't believe she'd heard him say that. Her eyes were like saucers.

  "I thought of it as penance," he murmured, amused by her shock. "Retribution. You kept stroking my chest and kissing it and whispering how much you wanted me. I'm only human, Josie."

  "I never!" she exclaimed, horrified.

  He lifted an eyebrow and smiled slowly. He looked rakishly handsome when he did that. "No, you didn't, but it was going through my mind all night how sweet it would be if you did." He shrugged. "I haven't had a woman in a long time. I'm very easily aroused when I've abstained for this long."

  She met his gray eyes evenly, fascinated.

  He could see the question that she didn't want to ask. He touched her lips with his mouth, tenderly brushing them apart. "Two years," he whispered into them. "I haven't had sex in two years, Josie. Not since that night I lost my head with you."

  While she was trying to get her mind to work, one of his lean hands eased up under the shirt she was wearing with nothing underneath. His fingers began to stroke her naked breast while his mouth played tenderly with her soft lips and teased it into submission. He nibbled the upper lip while his thumb and forefinger found a hard nipple and caressed it softly.

  He felt her body tauten against him, heard the soft, shocked moan that went into his mouth. "Yes," he whispered, and his mouth ground hungrily into hers.

  Both hands were under her shirt. Then they were on the buttons. While he kissed her, he opened the shirt. He drew back, so that when he pulled the edges aside, her pert, pretty little breasts were bare, their dusky nipples hard, her body trembling with desire.

  His lean hands held her narrow waist. His eyes blazed as he looked at her body. "Not even the dreams were this beautiful," he ground out.

  He bent, and she felt his mouth ease down very tenderly on her nipple. She jerked. His head lifted a fraction of an inch. "I won't bite you," he whispered. "I only want the taste of you."

  Her breath was audible. His mouth eased closer, enveloping her. She felt his tongue smoothing against the hard nipple. Her whole body arched. There was a raging heat in her abdomen, a sudden moisture in another place. Her trembling hands caught in the thick waves of his hair.

  His free hand was at the fastening of her jeans. She caught it, holding his wrist, digging in.

  He sighed against her breast, but he didn't insist Seconds later, his head lifted and he drew her bareness against his own, letting her feel the thick hair on his chest brushing her sensitized nipples while he looked into her wide eyes.

  "You haven't had that minor surgery we discussed," he guessed.

  She swallowed hard, trying to get her breath. She was standing half nude in his arms, feeling his body so intimately against her own that she could feel the strength and power of his arousal starkly against her lower stomach.

  "I told youyears ago," she managed to say shakily, "that I didn't have affairs. I still don't."

  His pulse was hammering at his throat. His eyes were blazing with desire. His body was rigid.

  "I know. I'm living in the dark ages," she said sarcastically, trying to pull away.

  "Chastity isn't something you need to apologize for," he said quietly, watching her. "I respect it."

  She looked down at her bare breasts pressed hard to his bare chest. "Sure you do."

  He smiled gently. "This is foreplay," he said in a soft, teasing tone. "Perfectly permissible, even among some of the most devout people."

  Her hands met on his broad chest. "Let me go."

  He did, slowly and with obvious reluctance. He brought the edges of her shirt back together after one long, last look at her breasts. "I've never seen a Greek statue who could compare with you," he murmured as he refastened buttons. "You have the most beautiful breasts I've ever seen."

  "You mustn't say things like that to me," she choked, embarrassed.

  "You can say them to me anytime you like," he offered.

  She coughed. "You don't have breasts."

  A slow, wicked smile split his lips. "I have something else you could comment on?"

  She pushed at his chest, hard. "You stop that!"

  He laughed, not at all put out by her bad temper. He swung her up gently in his arms and deposited her in the bed, leaning over her to search her angry face. "You might ask me why I haven't had sex for the past two years."

  "Does it have anything to do with a social disease?" she asked pointedly.

  He grinned. "Nope."

  She averted her eyes to his mouth. It was slightly swollen. Such a masculine mouth, and it could wreak the most delicious havoc on a woman's lips

  "You shouldn't tempt me while you're lying on a convenient flat surface, Josie," he mused, bending to kiss her very gently. He stood up and moved away. "Now stay put. I've got to go out for a while, but I'll be back before you miss me. I'll put on the dead bolt when I leave. Don't open the door for anyone. Understand?"

  "I understand."

  He moved toward the door.

  She sat up, breathless. "Marc."

  He turned, his eyes softly inquisitive.

  "Whyhaven't you had a woman for two years?" she asked huskily.

  He searched her eyes. "Oh, I think you know, Josie." He turned and went out, back to his bedroom. Scant minutes later, he called goodbye as he was closing the outer door. Josette was still sitting up in bed, trying to reason out that cryptic remark. She was no closer to solving it when she drifted back to sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  » ^ «

  When Brannon came back, he brought her case files and some of her clothes. He acted as if he hadn't said or done anything unprofessional, and he was polite and gentle, but completely remote. She wondered if he regretted what had happened. She didn't get the chance to ask, because he no sooner delivered her things than he went right back out again.

  When he was through with work for the day, he found her on the telephone with her notes spread out on the bed and a pad and pen close by. The pad had scribbling all over it. She'd changed clothes, too. She was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants with an oversize long-sleeved cowl-necked pullover, and her hair was back in its neat bun.

  She glanced up at him while she talked, curious about the odd look on his face as he went toward the kitchen.

  When she finished her conversation, she hung up, picked up her notepad and walked into the kitchen in her socks.

  He was making sandwiches with a
package of sandwich meat, a loaf of bread and a jar of mayonnaise.

  "Ham and cheese or salami?" he asked.

  "I fixed myself a salad just before you got here," she said. "That's all I usually have for supper. Breakfast is my big meal."

  He only nodded and continued what he was doing.

  "I've been trying to run down leads," she said. "Simon managed to get Phil returned by the FBI, so I called Phil in Austin and got him busy on Sandra Gates's background. Then I phoned the assistant district attorney and told her the direction the investigation is going. She's going to put her cybercrime expert in touch with Phil. That would be Grier, I guess?"

  He nodded again.

  "Are you even listening?" she asked, exasperated.

  He finished his two sandwiches and put everything back in its place before he looked at her. His eyes were harder than she'd seen them in a long time.

  "Are you making a statement?" he asked, nodding toward the way she was dressed.

  "A statement?" she asked blankly.

  "You're dressed like a bag lady," he said flatly. "Textbook unisex clothing."

  "What did you have in mind?" she returned hotly. "Were you expecting to find me in a pert little see-through negligee, panting for you to walk in the door?"

  His eyes narrowed. "No," he said quietly. "That's the last thing in the world I'd expect to see with you."

  "Then what's wrong?"

  "You can't forget, can you, Josie?" he asked in a soft, weary tone. "You won't do anything to encourage menot even leave your hair down."

  She stared at the notes in her hand. After a minute she lifted her eyes back to his. She couldn't manage words. Her misery was plain in her dark eyes.

  He leaned back, watching her. "Even a man with an enormous ego would need encouragement with you," he said softly. "But you aren't confident enough, are you? You're still seeing me as the man who walked out on you without a word."

  "I suppose that's true," she replied after a minute. "Trust comes hard to me. But there's more to it than trust. You want me. But that's all it's ever been, and all it ever will be. You don't need a woman in your life, Marc. You're self-sufficient. You can do most anything around a house better than I can. You're a born loner." She shrugged, favoring her sore arm. "So am I, really. I like being alone, having my own space, not having to answer to anyone. I don'tI don't want to change my life now. I'm used to things they way they are."

  "What do you know about me?"

  That was a curious question. She didn't really understand it. "You're a Texas Ranger. You were born in Jacobsville. You were a policeman before you worked highway patrol. You've been a Ranger since you were twenty-six, except for those years with the FBI. You're thirty-three now, and you have a sister who's married to a foreign head of state."

  "That's right. All you know are the external facts." He made coffee before he spoke again. "What sort of music do I like? What do I read for pleasure? What are the things I enjoy most? What do I want to do with the rest of my life?"

  She could have answered those questions, because she knew most of the answers. But she wasn't setting herself up for another rejection from him. She didn't trust him.

  "I don't know," she said flatly.

  "Exactly. And you don't want to know." He looked at her for a long moment. "I betrayed you once, and you can't forget."

  "You betrayed me twice and I can't forget," she shot back.

  His eyebrows lifted. "Twice?"

  "You sold me out to the prosecutor at Dale's trial."

  "I didn't," he replied. "I told you, Bib brought it up himself, without any inspiration from me."

  "But you told him all about my past," she continued.

  He couldn't deny that. His face tautened. "Yes, I did," he told her. "And when I realized what he'd done, I told him the truth. He was as upset by it as I was, but neither of us could make it up to you by then. It was too late."

  She searched his eyes and saw the inflexibility there. He was remembering that she'd accused his best friend of murder, and she was remembering the stinging commentary in the local newspaper about her background. It opened up wounds she thought were healing and convinced her that they were never going to be able to get past what had happened. It was too late. It was just too late.

  "It doesn't matter anymore, Brannon," she said, turning away. "Let's go back to being colleagues and not complicate the issue anymore. I'm sure you have all the women you need in your life, anyway."

  There was a hard thud behind her, as if a fist had hit the table. She didn't turn. She kept walking, right back into the bedroom. She put down the pad, picked up the phone and went back to work on the case.

  Just that quickly, she and Brannon were enemies again. They were polite and cordial with each other, and nothing more. They returned to work the next day, although Josette still favored her sore arm. But she was well enough to do what she needed to do. She moved back into her hotel with a gruff speech of gratitude to Brannon for taking care of her, which he ignored.

  Two days later, having tried to phone Mrs. Jennings and failing to hear from her or the guard that had been hired to protect her, she got into her rental car and drove down toward Elmendorf where the old woman's apartment was located, and without phoning Brannon first. Mrs. Jennings might be more willing to talk to her if there wasn't anyone else around.

  She knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. She went next door, to Mrs. Danton, the neighbor who'd offered to take calls for the elderly woman until her own phone was working.

  "No, I haven't seen her since day before yesterday," the thin, elderly neighbor said, and frowned. "But she had company yesterday," she added quickly. "A man and a woman, dressed real nice, in a big fancy black car. The woman had on a hat. I remember thinking what a pretty hat it was and wishing I had one. I used to always wear a hat to church," she added, smiling with reminiscence.

  "How long did they stay?" Josette asked with an uneasy feeling.

  "Not too long. Maybe an hour. They came out and got into their car and drove away. I figured maybe they were family, because they were carrying some of her things."

  "What sort of things?"

  "A little wooden box, kind of like a cigar box, and a book of some sort. A Bible, maybe. The man had a cigarette in his hand, but he didn't smoke it. He ground it out on the driveway under his shoe just before they left. Nice shoes he had on, too. Those black wing tips. I always liked to see a man wear those, they look real fancy."

  Now Josette felt really uneasy. She went to the driveway in front of the house. Sure enough, there was the cigarette stub. Gingerly she produced a handkerchief and carefully rolled it onto the white cloth with her ballpoint pen, securing it loosely before she tucked it into the briefcase she was carrying. She put it back in the car, along with her purse, and took out her flip phone, slipping it into her jacket pocket.

  She went back to the apartment, accompanied by the neighbor, and peered in through the curtains. She couldn't see anything. She went around to the side of the apartment, but there were Venetian blinds there, and they were pulled. At the back door, she saw the kitchen through the door, but no person was visible and no lights were on. There was, however, a cracked window. And the scent that reached her nostrils through it was unmistakable to someone raised in ranch country.

  She activated the flip phone and dialed the emergency services number and the sheriff's patrol unit for that area, asking them to send not only an ambulance, but a crime scene investigation team as well. Then she called Brannon. He wasn't in his office, but she had them relay a message to him.

  "You think something's happened to her, don't you?" the neighbor asked sadly when she closed her flip phone. "Somebody's always falling and can't get up, or being found dead. It's sad that we have to get old and helpless."

  "You go on home," Josette said gently. "Thank you for your help, but you don't need to be here when we go in."

  The old woman grimaced. She turned around with her arms folded and went b
ack to her own apartment.

  Josette waited outside until the paramedics and a deputy sheriff's car drove up. She went immediately to the young deputy and introduced herself.

  "There's a recognizable odor coming from the house," she said flatly, providing information she hadn't wanted to share with the elderly neighbor. "I think she's probably dead. She's connected to a case I'm working with one of the San Antonio Company D Texas Rangers and the local D.A.'s office. If she is dead, it's going to be a homicide."

  "You sure of that?" the deputy asked, a little dubiously.

  "Dead sure," she replied.

  They had to force the front door. The smell came and hit them in the face the instant it opened, because the heat was unseasonable and there was no ventilation, no air conditioner working, inside. Mrs. Jennings lay faceup on the hall carpet just outside the kitchen doorway, her eyes wide-open, her mouth open, and round burn marks all over her thin old arms and legs. There was a small hole in the bodice of her cotton housedress. There was no weapon visible anywhere around the body. The bodyguard was found in a closet, bound and gagged, but unharmed. He gave a statement, but couldn't provide any leads because he'd been knocked out from behind and never saw the assailants' faces.

  A few minutes later, there was the screeching of brakes outside. She walked out onto the pavement in time to see Brannon get out of his SUV, followed by a panel truck driven by Alice Jones from the medical examiner's office.