The Texas Ranger

by Diana Palmer

  The lines in her face smoothed out magically. "You don't?" she asked absently, because her eyes were locked into his. She tingled all over with the delight of his concern.

  Brannon touched a wisp of blond hair that had escaped her braided hairdo. He looked exasperated. "Josie, how would you feel if I'd been shot?"

  Her involuntary exclamation was telling. It was as if all the masks had been torn off and she was facing him with her whole heart in her eyes.

  His lean hand framed her cheek and his thumb rubbed softly over her mouth. "At least you still feel something for me," he said huskily.

  She started to protest, but that thumb was back across her lips again.

  "Don't disillusion me," he whispered, leaning toward her. His lips parted just as they touched her. Brannon had to force himself not to drag out the warm, tender kiss. He lifted his head. As he did, he looked straight into Grier's dark eyes through the open passenger window.

  "She said you wouldn't mind if I took her along," Grier repeated, deadpan.

  "I mind," Brannon said flatly, his silver eyes threatening, possessive.

  Grier pursed his wide, thin lips and just for an instant, there was a glimmer in his dark eyes. "Lighten up, Brannon. I'm just a computer expert now."

  "And Putin used to be just a cop!"

  Grier burst out laughing before he turned and walked back into the building, both hands stuck in his jeans pockets.

  Her mind was whirling. "Putin?"

  He gave her a speaking look.

  Russia. The premier. A former colonel in the KGB. "Oh. Putin! Vladimir Putin!" she exclaimed. "Right."

  "Never mind. Get out and go to work, but not with Grier. I mean it."

  "I'm not a waitress."

  He blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "I don't take orders," she said with a grin, and got out of the SUV.

  He leaned toward the open door, where she was silhouetted. "I want kids."

  She gaped at him. "So?"

  "So take care of yourself and do what I asked." Brannon reached over and pulled the door shut before Josette could ask him to explain that outrageous statement.

  Chapter Thirteen

  » ^ «

  When Josette finished going through local files, looking up information about Jake Marsh and talking to police officers and detectives who had interrogated him, she was surprised to find Brannon waiting outside the D.A.'s office.

  He leaned across and opened the passenger door. "Climb in," he invited. "I'll drive you to your hotel."

  It was like old times, when he picked her up after her last college class, or at the library on Saturdays when she was researching project papers. It warmed her heart to see that he was still just as thoughtful.

  She climbed in beside him with a delighted, unguarded smile. "Thanks! But, why are you here?"

  He gave her a long stare. He sighed and shrugged. "I thought Grier might offer to drive you back," he confessed reluctantly.

  She chuckled softly at that involuntary evidence of jealousy. "He went out when I got back from lunch and hasn't returned," she said smugly. "I haven't even spoken to him."

  He smiled. "Good." He started the vehicle and carefully pulled out into the stream of traffic.

  "I've been looking up information about Jake Marsh," she said as he drove. "One of the patrolmen remembers questioning him about Dale Jennings, about the time of the Garner murder trial. Marsh said that Jennings was a sort of courier for him, delivered messages and that sort of thing, but they cut him loose when he started hanging around Bib Webb's house."

  Brannon frowned. "He didn't hang around Bib's. He worked for Henry Garner."

  "I'm just telling you what he said," she replied. "It's in the report the officer made after the interview."

  "If Bib's going to be back in town this weekend, I'll go see him and ask him about it."

  "Good idea."

  "Did Jennings ever ask you out before you went to the Webbs' party with him?"

  Josette glanced at him warily, because this was sensitive territory. "No. I used to see him at the corner coffee shop all the time. Bib Webb's wife was taking some sort of class on campus that year. I even saw her there. It wasn't exactly a hoodlum hangout, if you get my meaning."

  He was suddenly alert. "Silvia had coffee there?"

  "Not often," she recalled. "I saw her there once or twice. She was sitting all by herself."

  That was disturbing. He didn't remember Bib ever mentioning that Silvia was taking a college class. Since she didn't have a high school education, it seemed a bit far-fetched. "Did she talk to anyone?"

  "I didn't really notice," she recalled honestly. "I was usually in a hurry, on my way to class or the library or a lab, or even home. I got my coffee to go, mostly. Once in a while I'd drink it there. I liked those homemade scones they sold. Dale Jennings liked them, too, and we started talking. Just casually. I was surprised when he asked me to the Webbs' party. We didn't really know each other that well."

  Brannon didn't enjoy remembering why she'd gone with the man to the Webbs's party. "Did he hit on you?" he persisted.

  "Not at all," she said, smiling faintly. "It wasn't ever that sort of relationship. He liked me, but he wasn't even attracted to me. He just needed a date that night, he said."

  Brannon frowned. It disturbed him that Jennings might have had ulterior motives for that date. Had he been planning to murder Garner and wanted to use Josette as an alibi? Or had he had darker motives?

  "You're wondering why he asked me, aren't you?" she murmured. "I've been wondering myself. Especially since, once we got there, he was never with me."

  He scowled. "Where were the Webbs?"

  "Bib was dancing with his personal assistant—you remember, that shy little brunette. She was really nervous and uncomfortable. I expect that's why he paid special attention to her. I remember Silvia coming back inside and finding them together and making a terrible scene."

  "Becky," he murmured absently. "Becky Wilson. She's on his campaign staff for the senate, too. She's devoted to him. In fact, I think she'd do anything short of murder to protect him."

  "I got that impression, too. But I liked her," she recalled.

  He gave her a pointed glance. "How did you like Silvia?"

  Josette grimaced. "I didn't. And considering the rest of the guest list, I felt as out of place as stale bread," she confessed. "I recognized people I'd only ever seen on the news or at political rallies. Dale said she'd asked him to invite me, but she ignored me completely until I had two cups of that spiked punch and started wobbling. Then she insisted on taking me home. She was cold sober, too." She smiled impishly. "Her husband wasn't. Every time he looked her way, he took another cup of punch. He even gave Becky one, but she had the foresight to smell it and put it down, untouched."

  He was trying to remember something; something important. It was there, he just couldn't grasp it.

  While he was trying to, his car phone rang. He pushed the speaker button and Jones's voice came clearly over it.

  "Brannon, it's Alice Jones at the medical examiner's office. I've got your cause of death."

  "Okay, Jones," he said, pausing for a traffic light.

  "Mrs. Jennings was killed by severe blunt force trauma to the back of the head. There's an odd indentation in the skull"

  "Oval?" he asked at once. "Like a blackjack might have made?"

  There was a pause. "Come to think of it"

  "Jones, check back in the records for the autopsy results on Henry Garner, June, two years ago. You may find a match in that odd indentation."

  " G-a-r-n-e-r ?" She spelled it out.

  "That's it. And let me know what you find, would you?"

  "Will do. But don't get used to me calling you like this, Brannon," she added in a husky tone. "You're not bad-looking, and you have that sexy Texas Ranger badge and belt buckle, but you have to remember that I have hunky movie stars standing in line just to hear the sound of my sultry voice Hello? Hello?"

  B
rannon had already hit the switch and was laughing himself sick.

  "There is only one Alice Jones," Josette mused. "I miss talking to her since I moved to Austin."

  He glanced at her whimsically. "I'll mention you in my will if you can get her to move there, too."

  She chuckled. "Sorry. I've got a Phil Douglas in my own office. I don't need an Alice Jones in the Austin medical examiner's office to drive me even battier."

  His eyes went back to traffic. "You seem to fit in well with the district attorney's staff here."

  Josette nodded. "I can fit in most places. And they're a great bunch of folks to work with. But, I like Austin."

  "Why?" he persisted. "Because I'm not there?"

  Her hands gripped her briefcase. "You haven't been here for two years, either, Brannon," she reminded him.

  "You know why I left," he replied. His silver eyes glanced in her direction and his deep voice dropped softly. "When you feel really reckless, you might ask why I came back."

  "Not my business," she said firmly. She wasn't going to open that can of worms.

  Unexpectedly Brannon turned off the highway onto the paved service road that led to his apartment building through a back street, his expression taut and uncompromising.

  "I want to go home," Josette protested.

  "I want to talk."

  "Use the phone."

  He ignored that. He pulled into his usual parking spot in the underground garage and cut off the engine, turning to her.

  "Aren't you tired, just a little, of running from the past?" he asked seriously.

  He made her uncomfortable with that level stare, even though she couldn't see it clearly under the wide brim of his Stetson in the darkened garage.

  "I'm only here to help solve a murder," she said. "Afterward, I'll go back to Austin, to my own life"

  "You'll go home to a lonely apartment with only the television for company," he interrupted. "You'll eat TV dinners or takeout. You'll spend your evenings working through computer files of information, and during the day you'll talk to other people in law enforcement and it will be business. Just business. When you go to bed, maybe you'll dream, but you'll still be alone. What sort of life is that?"

  "Your sort," she threw back curtly.

  His face tautened and then relaxed. His shoulders moved. "Touché."

  "You're happy enough," Josette pointed out.

  "Do you really think so?" he replied. "I live for my job. It's all I've lived for during the past fourteen years, with minor encounters that wouldn't even qualify as romance. Except for the brief time I spent with you two years ago," he emphasized, "I've lived like a hermit."

  Her heart jumped. She couldn't manage a reply.

  "And you're still a virgin," he said doggedly. "Why?"

  She opened her mouth, but she couldn't get any words to come out.

  "Don't bother trotting out that tired old story that you have principles," Brannon said before she could speak. "You want me. You wanted me then, and you want me now."

  "We all have these annoying little weaknesses that we can't quite overcome," she shot back with ruffled pride.

  He lifted an eyebrow and let his gaze drop to her mouth. "Why try to overcome it?"

  "I don't want to have an affair with you."

  He shrugged. "I'm not much on affairs, myself."

  "That makes it even worse, Brannon," she said icily. "I'm even less in the market for a one-night stand."

  "I don't do those, either."

  Josette frowned. She stared at him evenly. She couldn't quite grasp what he was saying.

  Brannon sighed. "You don't have a problem with abstinence yourself, but it doesn't occur to you that anyone else might have the same idealsespecially a man. Isn't that a little sexist in itself?"

  She lifted both eyebrows. "I will never believe that you're a virgin, Brannon," she drawled.

  "I'm not," he replied solemnly. "But I'm not promiscuous, either. And, as I mentioned already, for the past two years I haven't touched a woman."

  Her worried eyes searched his hard, lean face, looking for answers.

  "Why?" she blurted out.

  "Why haven't you ended up in some other man's bed?" he threw the words right back at her. "I don't want anyone else." Brannon paused and his eyes narrowed. "And neither do you, whether or not you're willing to admit it to me."

  Her body clenched at the insinuation. It might be true, but, then, she didn't have to go around admitting things like that to the one man in the world who'd been nothing but an endless headache to her. Conceit was a character-destroying vice in a man. Besides, he'd be insufferable if she admitted that she wanted only him.

  "Why did you bring me here?" Josette asked, avoiding an answer.

  He pursed his lips and his eyes began to twinkle. "Because in addition to meat loaf, I can make chicken and broccoli crepes," he said unexpectedly.

  It was the last reply she expected. "Excuse me?"

  "You always wanted to go to the same French restaurant when we were dating," he reminded her, "because you loved those crepes. The restaurant's gone out of business, but I found the chef and got him to teach me how to make the crepes."

  "Why?" she exclaimed.

  His lips pursed. "A little flattery, a little exquisite cuisine, a little classic tenor sax music" He leaned toward her with a suggestive smile. "A little minor surgery?"

  She flushed and whacked him with a newsletter.

  Brannon sighed. "Ah, well, there's always tomorrow." He got out of the SUV and went around to open the door for her. "You can leave those files in here," he said, putting her briefcase in the floorboard. "I'm not talking business over my crepes."

  He eased her hand into his and held it all the way up the elevator. When he opened the door to his apartment and pulled her inside, he nudged her body up against the closed door and propped his lean hands on either side of her head. He looked down into her eyes for a long time, watching the telltale signs of her attraction as they broke through her reserve.

  "Nice," he murmured. "After two years, you still start trembling when I come close, like this." He leaned down, so that his powerful body was touching hers from breast to thigh. He felt her intake of breath on his lips. "I can feel your heart beating against my chest," he murmured, and his hips began a slow, sensuous revolution against her own. He stiffened with the arousal that was instantaneous.

  "Marc!" she exclaimed, embarrassed.

  His teeth nibbled at her upper lip and his eyes closed so that he could enjoy the taste of her. "Mint and coffee," he breathed, nudging her lips apart. "You always tasted of coffee and smelled of roses." He levered even closer. His own heart was racing now, and one long leg eased between both of hers. She didn't even protest this time.

  Her nails bit into his chest helplessly as her mouth followed the open, teasing pressure of his hard lips.

  "Hell, don't play. Touch!" Brannon guided her fingers to the snaps that held his creamy Western-style shirt together.

  Josette didn't need prompting after that. Her fingers ripped it open to the shiny silver and gold metal of his belt buckle with the Texas Rangers logo embossed on it. Her hands found thick, rough hair over the warm, damp muscles of his chest and burrowed into it even as her mouth pushed up at his to tempt it into longer, deeper contact.

  He smiled as he kissed her with slow enjoyment. "Grier may be something with a K-Bar," he whispered into her yielded lips, "but I'm in a class all by myself with you. Open your mouth a little more, Josie"

  His leg began to move seductively between hers and made her tremble. She kissed him back helplessly, with a tiny little moan of pure pleasure as her arms reached up and around his neck.

  "Waitjust a minute" His hands were busy and all at once, she felt cool air on bare skin. But she was too far gone to care. Brannon looked down at bare silky breasts with hard, dusky little nubs. His hands smoothed over them and she moaned again. "Yes," he breathed, drawing her against his bare chest. "Oh God, yes!"

  "It
's beenso long," she whimpered as he kissed her.

  He pulled her up even closer, groaning against her soft, tremulous mouth. "Yes," he whispered huskily. "Too long! Come closer, baby. Come closercloser!"

  His hands went to her rounded hips and jerked her roughly, hungrily against the visible evidence of his desire. A shock of pleasure shot through his powerful body like fire and he groaned harshly.

  Josette felt tears sting her eyes as her hands moved helplessly into his thick blond-streaked brown hair, dislodging his hat as she tore her mouth from his and pulled his head down to her breasts. She arched backward, whispering, pleading.

  He couldn't resist her. His mouth opened over a hard nipple and began to suckle her in a hot, tempestuous silence that was like the flash before a thunderclap. She cried out softly as her body throbbed with hunger. It had been two years since he'd handled her like this, since she'd lain in his arms all but nude on his sofa and begged him not to stop.

  Brannon lifted his head and looked into her wide, hungry eyes. "I had your clothes off," he said harshly. "Do you remember? I stripped you out of your clothes and you fought mine out of the way. I was over you, my mouth on your mouth, my legs between yours" His mouth ground hard against hers. "And you cried out. I could barely breathe by then. I was shaking, I wanted it so much. But I couldn't getinside you! For a few seconds, I didn't even realize why. Not until you started sobbing and begging me to stop. It was like having a bucket of ice thrown on me."

  Josette moaned and hid her face against his chest. Her eyes closed as she, too, relived the memory.

  "You turned every shade of red when I pulled away and looked at you," he recalled huskily. "I knew then, without a word, that you'd never been with a man. I was so ashamed that I couldn't even speak."

  "But you did," she reminded him painfully. "You saidplenty!"

  "Josie, I really hope you've seen at least one X-rated movie by now, so that you begin to understand why I was upset!"

  She was blushing, she knew she was, but she couldn't meet his eyes. "Well, I do, sort of," she stammered.

  Brannon laughed gruffly. His hands moved in her hair, removing hairpins, until the wealth of the golden mass fell around her shoulders. "No, you don't," he murmured dryly. "But I remember too well how it felt to want to repeat it. So this is as far as it goes. For now."