SALLY LOOKED UP INTO PAIN-LACED green eyes and without thinking, she lifted her hand from his arm and raised it toward his hard cheek. But when she realized what she was doing, she drew it back at once.
“No, I don’t think mercenaries are evil,” she said quickly, embarrassed by the impulsive gesture that, thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice. “There are a lot of countries where atrocities are committed, whose governments don’t have the manpower or resources to protect their people. So, someone else gets hired to do it. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, when there’s a legitimate cause.”
He was surprised by her matter-of-fact manner. He’d wondered for years how she might react when she learned about what he did for a living. He’d expected everything from revulsion to shock, especially when he remembered how his former fiancée had reacted to the news. But Sally wasn’t squeamish or judgmental.
He’d seen her hand jerk back and it had wounded him. But now, on hearing her opinion of his work, his heart lifted. “I didn’t expect you to credit me with noble motives.”
“They are, though, aren’t they?” she asked confidently.
“As a matter of fact, in my case, they are,” he replied. “Even in my green days, I never did it just for the money. I had to believe in what I was risking my life for.”
She grinned. “I thought maybe it was like on television,” she confessed. “But Jess said it was nothing like fiction.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he mused. “Parts of it are.”
“Such as?”
“We had a guy like ‘B.A. Barrabas’ in one unit I led,” he said. “We really did have to knock him out to get him on a plane. But he quit the group before we got inventive.”
She laughed. “Too bad. You’d have had plenty of stories to tell about him.”
He was quiet for a moment, studying her.
“Do I have a zit on my nose?” she asked pleasantly.
He reached out and caught the hand she’d started to lift toward him earlier and kissed its soft palm. “Let’s get to work,” he said, pulling her along to the mat. “I’ll change into my sweats and we’ll cover the basics. We won’t have a lot of time,” he added dryly. “I expect Jess to call very soon with an ultimatum about Dallas.”
* * *
JESS AND DALLAS HAD SQUARED OFF, in fact, the minute they heard the truck crank and pull out of the yard.
Dallas glared at her from his superior height, leaning heavily on his cane. He wished she could see him, because his eyes were full of anger and bitterness.
“Did you think I wouldn’t see that Stevie is the living image of me? My son,” he growled at her. “You had my son! And you lied to me about it and wouldn’t ask Hank for a divorce!”
“I couldn’t!” she exclaimed. “For heaven’s sake, he adored me. He’d never have cheated on me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’d had an affair with his best friend!”
“I could have told him,” he returned furiously. “He was no angel, Jess, despite the wings you’re trying to paint on him. Or do you think he never strayed on those overseas jaunts?” he chided.
She stiffened. “That’s not true!”
“It is true!” he replied angrily. “He knew he couldn’t get anybody pregnant, and he was sure you’d never find out.”
She put a hand to her head. She’d never dreamed that Hank had cheated on her. She’d felt so guilty, when all the time, he was doing the same thing—and then judging her brutally for what she’d done. “I didn’t know,” she said miserably.
“Would it have made a difference?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would have.” She smoothed the dress over her legs. “You thought Stevie was yours from the beginning, didn’t you?”
“No. I didn’t know Hank was sterile until later on. You told me the child was Hank’s and I believed you. Hell, by then, I couldn’t even be sure that it was his.”
“You didn’t think—” She stopped abruptly. “Oh, dear God, you thought you were one in a line?” she exploded, horrified. “You thought I ran around on Hank with any man who asked me?”
“I knew very little about you except that you knocked me sideways,” he said flatly. “I knew Hank ran around on you. I assumed you were allowed the same freedom.” He turned away and walked to the window, staring out at the flat horizon. “I asked you to divorce Hank just to see what you’d say. It was exactly what I expected. You had it made—a husband who tolerated your unfaithfulness, and no danger of falling in love.”
“I thought I had a good marriage until you came along,” she said bitterly.
He turned, his eyes blazing. “Don’t make it sound cheap, Jess,” he said harshly. “Neither of us could stop that night. Neither of us tried.”
She put her face in her hands and shivered. The memory of how it had been could still reduce her to tears. She’d been in love for the first time in her life, but not with her husband. This man had haunted her ever since. Stevie was the mirror image of him.
“I was so ashamed,” she choked. “I betrayed Hank. I betrayed everything I believed in about loyalty and duty and honor. I felt like a Saturday night special at the bordello afterward.”
He scowled. “I never treated you that way,” he said harshly.
“Of course you didn’t!” she said miserably, wiping at tears. “But I was raised to believe that people got married and never cheated on each other. I was a virgin when I married Hank, and nobody in my whole family was ever divorced until Sally’s father, my brother, was.” She shook her head, oblivious to the expression that washed over Dallas’s hard, lean face. “My parents were happily married for fifty years before they died.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t work,” he said flatly, but in a less hostile tone. “That’s nobody’s fault.”
She smoothed back her short hair and quickly wiped away the tears. “Maybe not.”
He moved back toward her and sat down in a chair across from hers, putting the cane down on the floor. He leaned forward with a hard sigh and looked at Jessica’s pale, wan face with bitterness while he tried to find the words.
She heard the cane as he placed it on the floor. “Eb said you were badly hurt overseas,” she said softly, wishing with all her heart that she could see him. “Are you all right?”
That husky softness in her tone, that exquisite concern, was almost too much for him. He grasped her slender hands in his and held them tightly. “I’m better off than you seem to be,” he said heavily. “What a hell of a price we paid for that night, Jess.”
She felt the hot sting of tears. “It was very high,” she had to admit. She reached out hesitantly to find his face. Her fingers traced it gently, finding the new scars, the new hardness of its elegant lines. “Stevie looks like you,” she said softly, her unseeing eyes so full of emotion that he couldn’t bear to look into them.
“Yes.”
She searched her darkness with anguish for a face she would never see again. “Don’t be bitter,” she pleaded. “Please don’t hate me.”
He pulled her hand away as if it scalded him. “I’ve done little else for the past five years,” he said flatly. “But maybe you’re right. All the rage in the world won’t change the past.” He let go of her hand. “We have to pick up the pieces and go on.”
She hesitated. “Can we at least be friends?”
He laughed coldly. “Is that what you want?”
She nodded. “Eb says you’ve given up overseas assignments and that you’re working for him. I want you to get to know Stevie,” she added quietly. “Just in case…”
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!” he exploded, rising awkwardly from the chair with the help of the cane. “Lopez won’t get you. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you.”
She leaned back in her chair without replying. They both knew that Lopez had contacts everywhere and that he never gave up. If he wanted her dead, he could get her. She didn’t want her child left alone in the world.
“I’m going to make some coffee,” Dallas said tautly, refusing to think about the possibility of a world without her in it. “What do you take in yours?”
“I don’t care,” she said indifferently.
He didn’t say another word. He went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee while Jessica sat stiffly in her own living room and contemplated the direction her life had taken.
* * *
“YOU HAVE GOT…TO BE KIDDING!” Sally choked as she dragged herself up from the mat for the twentieth time. “You mean I’m going to spend two hours falling down? I thought you were going to teach me self-defense!”
“I am,” Eb replied easily. He, too, was wearing sweats now, and he’d been teaching her side breakfalls, first left and then right. “First you learn how to fall properly, so you don’t hurt yourself landing. Then we move on to stances, hand positions and kicks. One step at a time.”
She swept her arm past her hip and threw herself down on her side, falling with a loud thud but landing neatly. Beside her, Stevie was going at it with a vengeance and laughing gleefully.
“Am I doing it right?” she puffed, already perspiring. She was very much out of condition, despite the work she did around the house.
He nodded. “Very nice. Be careful about falling too close to the edge of the mat, though. The floor’s hard.”
She moved further onto the mat and did it again.
“If you think these are fun,” he mused, “wait until we do forward breakfalls.”
She gaped at him. “You mean I’m going to have to fall deliberately on my face? I’ll break my nose!”
“No, you won’t,” he said, moving her aside. “Watch.”
He executed the movement to perfection, catching his weight neatly on his hands and forearms. He jumped up again. “See? Simple.”
“For you,” she agreed, her eyes on the muscular body that was as fit as that of a man half his age. “Do you train all the time?”
“I have to,” he said. “If I let myself get out of shape, I won’t be of any use to my students. Great job, Stevie,” he called to the boy, who beamed at him.
“Of course he’s doing a great job,” she muttered. “He’s so close to the ground already that he doesn’t have far to fall!”
“Poor old lady,” he chided gently.
She glared in his direction as she swept her arm forward and threw herself down again. “I’m not old. I’m just out of condition.”
He looked at her, sprawled there on the mat, and his lips pursed as he sketched every inch of her. “Funny, I’d have said you were in prime condition. And not just for karate.”
She cleared her throat and got to her feet again. “When did you start learning this stuff?”
“When I was in grammar school,” he said. “My father taught me.”
“No wonder it looks so easy when you do it.”
“I train hard. It’s saved my life a few times.”
She studied his scarred face with curiosity. She could see the years in it, and the hardships. She knew very little about military operations, except for what she’d seen in movies and on television. And as Jess had told her, it wasn’t like that in real life. She tried to imagine an armed adversary coming at her and she stiffened.
“Something wrong?” he asked gently.
“I was trying to imagine being attacked,” she said. “It makes me nervous.”
“It won’t, when you gain a little confidence. Stand up straight,” he said. “Never walk with your head down in a slumped posture. Always look as if you know where you’re going, even if you don’t. And always, always, run if you can. Never stand and fight unless you’re trapped and your life is in danger.”
“Run? You’re kidding, of course?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. A man of any size and weight on drugs is more than a match for any three other men. What I’m going to teach you might work on an untrained adversary who’s sober. But a man who’s been drinking, or especially a man who’s using drugs can kill you outright, regardless of what I can teach you. Don’t you ever forget that. Overconfidence kills.”
“I’ll bet you don’t teach your men to run,” she said accusingly.
His eyes were quiet and full of bad memories. “Sally, a recruit in one of my groups emptied the magazine of his rifle into an enemy soldier on drugs at point-blank range. The enemy kept right on coming. He killed the recruit before he finally fell dead himself.”
Her lower jaw fell.
“That was my reaction, too,” he informed her. “Absolute disbelief. But it’s true. If anyone high on drugs comes at you, don’t try to reason with him…you can’t. And don’t try to fight him. Run like hell. If a full automatic clip won’t bring a man down, you certainly can’t. Neither can even a combat-hardened man, alone. In that sort of situation, it’s just basic common sense to get out of the way as quickly as possible if there’s any chance of escape, and pride be damned.”
“I’ll remember,” she said, all her confidence vanishing. She could see in Eb’s eyes that he’d watched that recruit die, and had to live with the memory forever in his mind. Probably it was one of many nightmarish episodes he’d like to forget.
“Sometimes retreat really is the better part of valor,” he said, smiling.
“You’re educational.”
He smiled slowly. “Am I, now?” he asked, and the way he looked at her didn’t have much to do with teaching her self-defense. “I can think of a few areas where you need…improvement.”
She glanced at Stevie, who was still falling on the mat. “You shouldn’t try to shoot ducks in a barrel,” she told him. “It’s unsporting.”
“Shooting is not what I have in mind.”
She cleared her throat. “I suppose I should try falling some more.” She brightened. “Say, if I learn to do this well, I could try falling on an adversary!”
“Ineffective unless you want to gain three hundred pounds,” he returned. He grinned. “Although, you could certainly experiment on me, if you want to. It might immobilize me. We won’t know until we try it. Want me to lie down and let you practice?” he added with twinkling eyes.
She laughed, but nervously. “I don’t think I’m ready to try that right away.”
“Suit yourself. No hurry. We’ve got plenty of time.”
She remembered Jess and the drug lord and her eyes grew worried. “Is it really dangerous for us at home…?”
He held up a cautioning hand. “Stevie, how about a soft drink?”
“That would be great!”
“There are some cans of soda in the fridge in the kitchen. How about bringing one for me and your aunt as well?”
“Sure thing!”
Stevie took off like a bullet.
“Yes, it’s dangerous,” Eb said quietly. “You aren’t to go alone, anywhere, at night. I’ll always have a man watching the house, but if you have to go to a meeting or some such thing, let me know and I’ll go with you.”
“Won’t that cramp your social life?” she asked without quite meeting his eyes.
“I don’t have a social life,” he said with a faint smile. “Not of the sort you’re talking about.”
“Oh.”
His face tautened. “Neither do you, if I can believe Jess.”
She shifted on the mat. “I haven’t really had much time for men.”
“You don’t have to spare my feelings,” he told her quietly. “I know I’ve caused you some sleepless nights. But you’ve waited too long to deal with it. The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be to form a relationship with a man.”
“I have Jess and Stevie to think about.”
“That’s an excuse. And not a very good one.”
She felt uncomfortable with her memories. She wrapped her arms around her chest and looked at him with shattered dreams in her eyes.
He took a sharp breath. “It will never be like that again,” he said curtly. “I promise you it won’t.”
She averted her eyes to the mat. “Do you think Jess and Dallas have done each other in by now?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
He moved closer, watching her stiffen, watching her draw away from him mentally. His big, lean hands caught her shoulders and he made her look at him.
“You’re older now,” he said, his voice steady and low. “You should know more about men than you did, even if you’ve had to learn it through books and television. I was fiercely aroused that day, it had been a long, dry spell, and you were seventeen years old. Get the picture?”
For the first time, she did. Her eyes searched his, warily, and nodded.
His hands contracted on her soft arms. “You might try it again,” he said softly.
“Try what?”
“What you did that afternoon,” he murmured, smiling tenderly. “Wearing sexy clothes and perfume and making a beeline for me. Anything could happen.”
Her eyes were sadder than she realized as she met his even gaze. “I’m not the same person I was then,” she told him. “But you still are.”
The light seemed to go out of him. His pale eyes narrowed, fastened to hers. “No,” he said after a minute. “I’ve changed, too. I lost my taste for commando work a long time ago. I teach tactics now. That’s all I do.”
“You’re not a family man,” she replied bravely.
Something changed in his face, in his eyes, as he studied her. “I’ve thought about that a lot recently,” he contradicted. “About a home and children. I might have to give up some of the contract work I do, once the kids came along. I won’t allow my children anywhere near weapons. But I can always write field manuals and train teachers in tactics and strategy and intelligence-gathering,” he added.
“You don’t know that you could settle for that,” she pointed out.
“Not until I try,” he agreed. His gaze fell to her soft mouth and lingered there. “But then, no man really wants to tie himself down. It takes a determined woman to make him want it.”
She felt as if he were trying to tell her something, but before she could ask him to clarify what he’d said, Stevie was back with an armful of soft drinks and the moment was lost.
* * *
JESS AND DALLAS WEREN’T SPEAKING at all when the others arrived. Dallas was toying with a cup of cold coffee, looking unapproachable. When Eb came in the door, Dallas went out it, without a word or a backward glance.
“I don’t need to ask how it went,” Eb murmured.
“It would be pretty pointless,” Jessica said dully.
“Mama, I learned to do breakfalls! I wish I could show you,” Stevie said, climbing into his mother’s lap and hugging her.
She fought tears as she cuddled him close and kissed his sweaty forehead. “Good for you! You listen when Eb tells you something. He’s very good.”
“Stevie’s a natural,” Eb chuckled. “In fact, so is your niece.” He gave Sally a slow going-over with his eyes.
“She’s a quick learner,” Jessica said. “Like I was, once.”
“I have to get back,” Eb said. “There’s nothing to worry about right now,” he added, careful not to speak too bluntly in front of the child. “I have everything in hand. But I have told Sally to let me know if she plans to go out alone at night, for any reason.”
“I will,” Sally promised. She didn’t want to risk her aunt’s life, or Stevie’s, by being too independent.
Eb nodded. “We’ll keep the lessons up at least three times a week,” he told Sally. “I want to move you into self-defense pretty quickly.”
She understood why and felt uneasy. “Okay.”
“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “Everything’s going to be fine. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
She managed a smile for him. “I know that.”
“Walk me to the door,” he coaxed. “See you, Jess.”
“Take care, Eb,” Jessie replied, her goodbye echoed by her son’s.
On the front porch, Eb closed the door and looked down into Sally’s wide gray eyes with concern and something more elusive.
“I’ll have the house watched,” he promised. “But you have to be careful about even normal things like opening the door when someone comes. Always keep the chain lock on until you know who’s out there. Another thing, you have to keep your doors and windows locked, curtains drawn and an escape route always in mind.”
She bit her lip worriedly. “I’ve never had to deal with anything like this.”
His big, warm hands closed over her shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry that you and Stevie have been put in the line of fire along with Jess. But you can handle this,” he said confidently. “You’re strong. You can do whatever you have to do.”
She searched his hard, lean face, saw the deep lines and scars that the violence of his life had carved into it, and knew that he would never lie to her. Her frown dissolved. His confidence in her made her feel capable of anything. She smiled.
He smiled back and traced a lazy line from her cheek down to her soft mouth. “If Stevie wasn’t so unpredictable, I’d kiss you,” he said quietly. “I like your mouth under mine.”
Her caught breath was audible. There had never been anyone who could do to her with words what he could.
He traced her lips, entranced. “I used to dream about that afternoon with you,” he said in a sensuous tone. “I woke up sweating, swearing, hating myself for what I’d done.” He laughed hollowly. “Hating you for what I’d done, too,” he added. “I blamed us both. But I couldn’t forget how it was.”
She colored delicately and lowered her eyes to his broad chest under the shirt he wore. The memories were so close to the surface of her mind that it was impossible not to glimpse them from time to time. Now, they were blatant and embarrassing.
His lean hands moved up to frame her face and force her eyes to meet his. He wasn’t smiling.
“No other man will ever have the taste of you that I did, that day,” he said roughly. “You were so deliciously innocent.”
Her lips parted at the intensity of his tone, at the faint glitter of his green eyes. “That isn’t what you said at the time!” she accused.
“At the time,” he murmured huskily, watching her mouth, “I was hurting so much that I didn’t take time to choose my words. I just wanted you out of the damned truck before I started stripping you out of those tight little shorts you were wearing.”
The flush in her cheeks got worse. The image of it was unbelievably shocking. Somehow, it had never occurred to her that at some point he might undress her, to gain access…
“What an expression,” he said, chuckling in spite of himself. “Hadn’t you considered what might happen when you came on to me that hard?”
She shook her head.
His fingers slid into the blond hair at her temples where the long braid pulled it away from her face. “Someone should have had a long talk with you.”
“You did,” she recalled nervously.
“Long and explicit, the day afterward,” he said, nodding. “You didn’t want to hear it, but I made you. I liked to think that it might have saved you from an even worse experience.”
“It wasn’t exactly a bad experience,” she said, staring at his shirt button. “That was part of the problem.”
There was a long, static silence. “Sally,” he breathed, and his mouth moved down slowly to cover hers in the silence of the porch.
She stood on tiptoe to coax him closer, lost in the memory of that long-ago afternoon. She felt his hands on her arms, guiding them up around his neck before they fell back to her hips and lifted her into the suddenly swollen contours of his muscular body.
She gasped, giving him the opening he wanted, so that he could deepen the kiss. She felt the warm hardness of his mouth against hers, the soft nip of his teeth, the deep exploration of his tongue. A warm flood of sensation rushed into her lower abdomen and she felt her whole body go tense with it. It was as if her body had become perfectly attuned to this man’s years ago, and could never belong to anyone else.
He felt her headlong response and slowly let her back down, lifting his mouth away from hers. He studied her face, her swollen, soft mouth, her wide eyes, her dazed expression.
“Yes,” he said huskily.
“Yes?”
He bent and nipped her lower lip sensuously before he pushed her away.
She stared up at him helplessly, feeling as if she’d just been dropped from a great height.
His eyes went to her breasts and lingered on the sharp little points so noticeable at the front of her blouse, the fabric jumping with every hard, quick beat of her heart.
She met that searching gaze and felt the power of it all the way to her toes.
“You know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time,” he said softly. “It always has been.”
She frowned. Her mind seemed to have shut down. She couldn’t quite focus, and her legs felt decidedly weak.
His eyes were back on her breasts, swerving to the closed door, and to both curtained windows before he stepped in close and cupped her blatantly in his warm, sensuous hands.
Sally’s mouth opened on a shocked gasp that became suddenly a moan of pleasure.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered, and his mouth covered hers hungrily.
It was the most passionate, adult kiss of her life, even eclipsing what had come before. His hands found their way under her sweatshirt and against lace-covered soft flesh. Her body responded instantly to the slow caresses. She curled into his body, eagerly submissive.
“Lord, what I wouldn’t give to unfasten this,” he groaned at her mouth as his fingers toyed with the closure at her back. “And sure as hell, Stevie would come outside the minute I did, and show and tell would take on a whole new meaning.”
The idea of it amused him and he lifted his head, smiling down into Sally’s equally laughing eyes.
“Ah, well,” he said, removing his hands with evident reluctance. “All things come to those who wait,” he added.
Sally blushed and moved a little away from him.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” he chided gently, his green eyes sparkling, full of mischief and pleasure. “All of us have a weak spot.”
“Not you, man of steel,” she teased.
“We’ll talk about that next time,” he said. “Meanwhile, remember what I said. Especially about night trips.”
“Now where would I go alone at night in Jacobsville?” she asked patiently.
He only laughed. But even as she watched him drive away she remembered an upcoming parents and teachers meeting. There would be plenty of time to tell him about that, she reminded herself. She turned back into the house, her mouth and body still tingling pleasantly.