“HELLO, MAGGIE,” EB SAID, standing up to greet the pretty green-eyed brunette who took possession of his arm and smiled up at him.
“It’s good to see you again so soon!” she said with obvious pleasure. “You remember Cord Romero, don’t you?” She indicated a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed man beside her without meeting his eyes. “He and I were fostered together by Mrs. Amy Barton, the Houston socialite.”
“Sure. How are you, Cord?” Eb asked.
The other man, his equal in height and build, nodded. Sally was curious about Maggie’s obvious uneasiness around the other man.
“Sally, this is Maggie Barton and Cord Romero. Sally Johnson.” They all acknowledged the introductions, and Eb added, “Won’t you join us?”
Sally’s heart plummeted as she saw Maggie’s eyes light up at the invitation and knew she wouldn’t refuse.
“We may be intruding,” Cord said with a pointed look at Sally.
“Oh, not at all,” Sally said at once.
“I thought Sally needed a night out,” Eb said easily and with a warm smile in Sally’s direction. “She’s an elementary schoolteacher.”
The man, Cord, studied her with open curiosity while Eb seated Maggie.
“Allow me,” Cord said smoothly, standing behind Sally’s chair.
Sally smiled at the old-world courtesy. “Thank you.”
Eb glanced at them with unreadable eyes before he turned back to Maggie, who was flushed and avoided looking at the other couple. “Quite a coincidence, running into you here,” he said in a neutral tone.
“It was Cord’s idea,” Maggie said. “He felt like a night on the town and he doesn’t date these days. Better your foster sister than nobody, right, Cord?” she added with a nervous laugh and a smile that didn’t touch her eyes.
Cord shrugged broad shoulders indolently and didn’t say a word, but his distaste for her reference was there, in those unblinking dark eyes.
Sally was curious about him. She wondered what he did for a living. He was very fit for a man his age, which she judged to be about the same as Eb’s. His hands were rough and callused, as if he worked physically rather than sat behind a desk. He had the same odd stare that she’d noticed in Eb and Dallas and even Cy Parks, a probing but unfocused distant stare that held a strange hollowness.
“How are things going at the ranch?” Maggie asked gently. “I heard that you had Dallas out there with you.”
“Yes,” he replied. “He’s doing some consulting work for me.”
“Shot to pieces, wasn’t he?” Cord asked abruptly, his eyes on Sally’s face.
“That happens when a man doesn’t keep his mind on his work,” Eb said with a pointed glance at Cord, who averted his eyes.
“One of my friends is hosting a huge party down in Cancún for Christmas,” Maggie murmured, drawing a lazy polished nail across the back of Eb’s hand. “Why don’t you take some time off and go with me?”
“No time,” Eb said with a smile to soften the words. “I’m not a man of leisure.”
“Baloney,” she replied. “You could retire on what you’ve got squirreled away.”
“And do what?” came the dry response. “Do I look like a lounge lizard to you?”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said, and her eyes searched his face for a long moment. “I meant that you could give up walking into danger if you wanted to.”
“That’s an old argument and you know what the answer is,” Eb told her bluntly.
She withdrew her hand from his with a sad little sigh. “Yes, I know,” she said wearily. “It’s in your blood and you can’t stop.” Involuntarily she glanced at Cord.
Eb frowned a little as he watched her wilt. Sally saw it and knew at once that he and Maggie had gone through that very argument years ago when she’d broken their engagement. It wasn’t their emotions that had split them up. It was his job that he wouldn’t quit, not even for a woman he’d loved enough to marry.
She felt helpless. She’d known at some level that he was carrying a torch for Maggie. She stared at her own short, unpolished nails and compared them with Maggie’s long, red-stained, beautiful ones. The difference was like the women themselves—one colorful and flamboyant and drawing attention, the other reclusive and practical and…dull. No wonder Eb hadn’t wanted her all those years ago. Beside the exotic Maggie, she was insignificant.
“What subject is your specialty, Miss Johnson?” Cord asked curiously.
“History, actually,” she said. “But I teach second grade, so I’m not really using it.”
“No ambition to teach higher grades?” he persisted.
She shook her head and smiled wryly. “I tried it when I did my practice-teaching,” she confessed. “And by the end of the day, my classroom was more like a zoo than a regimented place of learning. I’m afraid I don’t have the facility to handle discipline at a higher level.”
Cord’s lean face lightened just a little as he studied her. “I had the facility, but the principal and the school board didn’t like my methods,” he replied.
“You teach?” she asked, enthused to find a colleague in such an unlikely place.
“I taught high school science for a year after I got out of college,” he said. “But it wasn’t a profession I could love enough to continue.” He shrugged. “I found I had an aptitude in a totally unrelated area.”
Maggie’s hand clenched on her water glass and she took a quick sip.
“What do you do?” she asked, fascinated.
He glanced at Eb, who was openly glaring at him. “Ask Eb,” he said on a brief, deep laugh, with a cold glance in Maggie’s direction. “Can we order now?” he asked, lifting the menu. “I haven’t even had lunch today.”
Eb signaled a waiter and brought Sally’s conversation with Cord to an end.
It was the longest and most tense meal Sally could remember having sat through. Maggie and Eb talked about places and people that they shared in memory while Sally concentrated on her food.
Cord was polite, but he made no further attempt at conversation. At the end of the evening, as the two couples parted outside the restaurant, Maggie held on to Eb’s hand until he had to forcibly draw it away from her.
“Can’t you come up and have dinner with us again one evening?” Maggie asked plaintively.
“Perhaps,” Eb said with a careless smile. He glanced at Cord. “Good to see you.”
Cord nodded. He glanced down at Sally. “Nice to have met you, Miss Johnson.”
“Same here,” she said with a smile.
Maggie hesitated and looked uneasy as Cord deliberately took her arm and propelled her away. She went with him, but her back was arrow-straight and she looked as if she was walking on hot coals and on the way to her own execution.
Eb stared after them for a long moment before he put Sally into the sleek Jaguar and climbed in under the wheel. He gave her a look that could have curdled milk.
“Don’t encourage him,” he said at once.
Her mouth fell open. “Wh…what?”
“You heard me.” He started the car, and turned toward Sally. His eyes went over her like sensual fingers, brushing her throat, her bare shoulders under the coat, the shadowy hollow in her breasts revealed by the low-cut dress. “He has a weakness for blondes. He was ravishing you with his eyes.”
She didn’t know how to respond. While Sally was trying to come up with a response, he moved closer and slid a hand under her nape, under the heavy coil of hair, and pulled her face up toward his.
“So was I,” he whispered roughly, and his mouth went down on her lips, burrowing beneath them, pressing them apart, devouring them. At the same time, his free hand slid right down into the low bodice of her dress and curved around her warm, bare breast.
“Eb!” she choked, stiffening.
He was undeterred. He groaned, overcome with desire, and his fingers contracted in a slow, heated, sensual rhythm that brought Sally’s mouth open in a tiny gasp. His tongue found the unprotected heat of it and moved inside, in lazy, teasing motions that made her whole body clench.
He felt her nervous fingers fumble against the front of his dress shirt. Impatiently, he unfastened three buttons and dragged her hand inside the shirt, over hair-roughened muscles down to a nipple as hard as the one pressing feverishly into the palm of his hand.
She was devastated by the passion that had kindled so unexpectedly. She couldn’t find the strength or the voice to protest the liberties he was taking, or to care that they were in a public parking lot. She didn’t care about anything except making sure that he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. He mustn’t stop, he mustn’t…!
But he did, suddenly. He held her hands together tightly as he moved a little away from her, painfully aware that she was trying to get back into his arms.
“No,” he said curtly, and shook her clenched hands.
She stared into his blazing eyes, her breath rustling in her throat, her heartbeat visible at the twin points so blatantly obvious against the bodice of her dress.
He glanced down at her and his jaw clenched. His own body was in agony, and this would only get worse if he didn’t stop them now. She was too responsive, too tempting. He was going to have to make sure that he didn’t touch her that way when they were completely alone. The consequences could be devastating. It was the wrong time for a torrid relationship. If he let himself lose his head over Sally right now, it could cost all of them their lives.
Forcefully, he put her back into her own seat and fastened the seat belt around her.
She just stared at him with those huge, soulful gray eyes that made him feel hungry and guilt-ridden all at the same time.
“I have to get you home,” he said tersely.
She nodded. Her throat was too tight for words to get out. She clutched her small purse in her hands and stared out the window as he put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic.
It was a long, and very silent, drive back to her house. He was preoccupied, as distant as she remembered him from her teens. She wondered if he was thinking about Maggie and regretting the decision he’d made that put her out of his life. She was mature now, but beautiful as well, and it didn’t take a mind reader to know that she was still attracted to Eb. How he felt was less obvious. He was a man who knew how to hide what he felt, and that skill was working overtime tonight.
“Why did Maggie introduce Cord as a foster child at first and then refer to him as her brother? Are they related?” she asked.
“They are not,” he returned flatly. “His parents died in a fire, and she came from a severely dysfunctional family. Mrs. Barton adopted both of them. Maggie took her name, but Cord kept his own. His father was a rather famous matador in Spain until his death. Maggie does usually try to present Cord as her brother. She’s scared to death of him, despite the fact that they’ve kept in close touch all these years.”
That was a surprise. “But why is she scared of him?”
He chuckled. “Because she wants him, although she’s apparently never realized it,” he returned with a quick glance. “He’s been a colleague of mine for a long time, and I always thought that Maggie got engaged to me to put Cord out of the reach of temptation.”
She pondered that. “A colleague?”
“That’s right. He still works with Micah Steele,” he said. “He’s a demolitions expert.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Very,” he replied. “His wife died four years ago. Committed suicide,” he added shockingly. “He never got over it.”
“Why did she do something so drastic?” she asked.
“Because he was working for the FBI when they married and he got shot a few months after the wedding. She hadn’t realized his work would be so dangerous. He was in the hospital for weeks and she went haywire. He wouldn’t give up a job he loved, and she found that she couldn’t live with the knowledge that he might end up dead. She couldn’t give him up, either, so she took what she considered the easy way out.” His face set grimly. “Easy for her. Hell on him.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “I suppose he felt guilty.”
“Yes. That was about the time Maggie broke up with me,” he added. “She said she didn’t want to end up like Patricia.”
“She knew Cord’s wife?”
“They were best friends,” he said shortly. “And something happened between Cord and Maggie just after Mrs. Barton’s funeral. I never knew what, but it ended in Maggie’s sudden marriage to a man old enough to be her father. I don’t know why, but I think it had something to do with Cord.”
“He’s unique.”
He glared at her. “Yes. He’s a hardened mercenary now. He gave up law enforcement when Patricia died and took a job with an ex-special forces unit that went into freelance work. He started doing demolition work and now it’s all he does.”
Her eyes softened. “He wants to die.”
“You’re perceptive,” he mused. “That’s what I think, too. Hell of a pity that he and Maggie don’t see each other. They’re a lot alike.”
She looked at her purse. “You aren’t still carrying a torch for her?”
He chuckled. “No. She’s a kind, sweet woman and I probably would have married her if things had been different. But I don’t think she could have lived with me. She takes things too much to heart.”
“Don’t I?” she fished.
He smiled. “At times. But you’re spunky, Miss Johnson, and despite the scare you had with your two neighbors, you don’t balk at fighting back. I like your spirit. When I lose my temper, and I do occasionally, you won’t be looking for a closet to hide in.”
“That might be true,” she confessed. “But if you were into demolition work, I think I’d run in the opposite direction when I saw you coming.”
He nodded. “Which is exactly what Maggie did,” he replied. “She ran from Cord and got engaged to me.”
That was heartening. If the woman was carrying a torch for another man, it might stop Eb from falling back into his old relationship with her.
“Jealous?” he murmured with a sensuous glance.
Her heart raced. She moved one shoulder a little and avoided his eyes. Then she sighed and said, “Yes.”
He chuckled. “Now that really is flattering,” he said. “Maggie is part of the past. I have no hidden desire to rekindle old flames. Except the one you and I shared,” he qualified.
Sally turned her head and met his searching gaze. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared back at him hungrily.
“Watch it,” he said, not quite jokingly. “When we drive up in your yard, we’ll be under surveillance. I don’t want an audience for what we were doing in the parking lot at that restaurant.”
She laughed delightedly. “Okay.”
“On the other hand,” he added, “we could find a deserted road.”
She hesitated. It was one thing for it to happen spontaneously, but quite another to plan such a sensual interlude. And she wasn’t sure of her own protective instincts. Around Eb, she didn’t seem to have any.
“Don’t make such heavy weather of it,” he said after a minute. “There’s no hurry. We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Have we?” she wondered, remembering Lopez and his threats.
“Don’t gulp down your life, Sally,” he said. “Take it one minute at a time. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or Jessica or Stevie. Okay?”
She swallowed. “Sorry. I panic when I think about how dangerous it is.”
“I’ve been handling danger for a long time,” he reminded her. “I have a state-of-the-art surveillance system. Nothing is going to get past it.”
She managed a weak smile. “He’s very ruthless.”
“He’s been getting away with murder,” he said simply. “He doesn’t think the justice system can touch him. We’re going to prove to him that it can.”
“How do you bring a man to justice when he’s rich enough to buy a country?”
“You cut off the source of his wealth,” he said simply. “Without its head, the snake can’t go far.”
“Good point.”
“Now stop worrying.”
“I’ll try.”
He reached across the seat for her hand and locked it into his big, warm one. “I enjoyed tonight.”
“So did I,” she said gently.
“Maggie isn’t my future, in case you were wondering,” he added in a soft tone.
Sally hoped fervently that it was true. She wanted Eb with all her heart.
His fingers tightened on hers. “I think it might be a good idea if I start driving you and Stevie to school and picking you up in the afternoons.”
Her heart leaped. “Why?”
He glanced at her. “Because Lopez wouldn’t hesitate to kidnap either or both of you to further his own ends. Even two miles is a long distance when you don’t have any sort of protection.”
She stared at him worriedly. “Why didn’t Jess leave well enough alone?” she asked miserably. “If she hadn’t gotten that person to talk…”
“Hindsight is wonderful,” he told her. “But try to remember that Lopez’s operation supplies about a quarter of all narcotics sold in the States. That’s a lot of addicted kids and a fair number of dead ones.”
She grimaced. “Sorry. I was being selfish.”
“It isn’t selfish to be concerned for the welfare of people you love,” he told her. “But getting Lopez behind bars, and cutting his connections, will help make the world a better place. A little worry isn’t such a bad trade-off, considering.”
“I guess not.”
He brought the back of her hand to his mouth and kissed it warmly. “You looked lovely tonight,” he said. “I was proud of you.”
Her face flushed at the rare compliment. “I’m always proud of you,” she replied softly.
He chuckled. “You’re good for my ego.”
“You’re good for mine.”
He kept his eyes on the road with an effort. He wanted to pull the car onto a side road and make passionate love to her, but that was impractical, given the circumstances. All Lopez’s men needed was an opportunity. He wasn’t going to give them one, despite his teasing comment to Sally about it.
When they pulled up in her driveway, the lights were all on in the house and Dallas was sitting in the front porch swing, smoking like a furnace.
“Have a nice time?” he asked as Eb and Sally came up the steps.
“Very nice,” Eb replied. “I ran into Cord Romero.”
“I thought he was overseas, helping detonate unexploded land mines?”
“Not now,” Eb told him. “He’s in Houston. Between jobs, maybe. Why are you sitting out here?”
Dallas stared at the red tip of his cigarette. “Jessica has a cough,” he replied. “I didn’t want to aggravate it.”
“Are the two of you speaking?” Eb drawled.
Dallas laughed softly. “Well, she’s stopped trying to throw things at me, at least.”
Sally’s eyes went enormous. That didn’t sound like her staid aunt.
“What was she throwing?” Eb asked.
“Anything within reach that felt expendable,” came the dry reply. “Stevie thought it was great fun, but she wouldn’t let him play. He’s gone to bed. She’s pretending to watch television.”
“You might talk to her,” Eb suggested.
“Chance,” Dallas replied, “would be a fine thing. She doesn’t want to talk, thank you.” He finished the cigarette. “I’ll be out in the woods with Smith.”
“Watch where you walk,” Eb cautioned.
“Mined the forest, did we?” Dallas murmured wickedly.
Eb grinned. “Not with explosives, at least.”
Dallas shook his head and went down the steps, to vanish in the direction of the woods at the edge of the yard.
Sally rubbed her arms through the coat, shivering, and it wasn’t even that cold. She felt the danger of her predicament keenly and wished that she could have done something to prevent the desperate situation.
“You’re doing it again,” Eb murmured, drawing her against him. “You have to trust me. I won’t let anything happen to any of you.”
She looked up at him with wide, soft eyes. “I’ll try not to worry. I’ve never been in such a mess before.”
“Hopefully you never will again,” he said. He bent and kissed her very gently, nipping her lower lip before he lifted his head. “I’ll be somewhere nearby, or my men will be. Try to get some sleep.”
“Okay.” She touched her fingers to his mouth and smiled wanly before she turned and walked to the door. “Thanks for supper,” she added. “It was delicious.”
“It would have been better without the company,” he said, “but that was unavoidable. Next time I’ll plan better.”
She smiled at him. “That’s a deal.”
He watched her walk inside the house and lock the door behind her before he turned and got back into his truck. Less than twenty-four hours remained before Lopez would make good his threat. He had to make sure that everyone was prepared for a siege.
* * *
SALLY PAUSED IN THE DOORWAY of the living room with her eyes wide as she saw the damage Jessica had inflicted with her missiles.
“Good Lord!” she exclaimed.
Jess grimaced. “Well, he provoked me,” she muttered. “He said that I’d gotten lazy in my old age, just lying around the house like a garden slug. I do not lie around like a garden slug!”
“No, of course you don’t,” Sally said, placating her while she bent to pick up pieces of broken pottery and various other objects from the floor.
“Besides, what does he expect me to do without my eyesight, drive the car?”
Sally was trying not to smile. She’d never seen her aunt in such a tizzy before.
“He actually accused me of insanity because I won’t give up the name to Lopez,” she added harshly. “He said that a good mother wouldn’t have withheld a name and put her child in danger. That’s when I threw the flowerpot, dear. I’m sorry. I do hope it hit him.”
Sally made a clucking sound. “You’re not yourself, Jess.”
“Yes, I am! I’m the result of all his sarcasm! He can’t find one thing about me that he likes anymore. Everything I do and say is wrong!”
“He doesn’t seem like a bad man,” Sally ventured.
“I didn’t say he was bad, I said he was obnoxious and condescending and conceited.” She pushed back a strand of hair. “He was laughing the whole time.”
Which surely made things worse, Sally mused silently. “I expect it was wails of pain, Jess.”
“You couldn’t hurt him,” she scoffed. “You’d have to stick a bomb up his shirt.”
“Drastic surely?”
Jess sighed and leaned back in the chair, looking drained. “I hate arguments. He seems to thrive on them.” She hesitated. “He taught Stevie how to braid a rope,” she added unexpectedly.
“That’s odd. I thought Stevie wanted to beat him up.”
“They had a talk outside the room. I don’t know what was said,” Jess confessed. “But when they came back in here, Dallas had several lengths of rawhide and he taught Stevie how to braid them. He was having the time of his life.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” she said, her lips compressing briefly, “he just happened to mention that I could have taught him how to braid rope and a lot of other things if I’d exert myself occasionally instead of vegetating in front of a television that I can’t see anyway.”
“I see.”
“Pity I ran out of things to throw,” she muttered. “I was reaching for the lamp when he called a draw and said he was going to sit on the front porch. Then Stevie decided to go to bed.” She gripped the arms of her chair hard. “Everybody ran for cover. You’d think I was a Chinese rocket or something.”
“In a temper, there is something of a comparison,” Sally chuckled.
The older woman drew in a long breath. “Anyway, how was your date?”
“Not bad. We ran into his ex-fiancée at the restaurant.”
“Maggie?” Jess asked, wide-eyed. “How is she?”
“She’s very pretty and still crazy about Eb, from all indications. I think she’d have followed us home if her dark and handsome escort hadn’t half dragged her away.”
“Cord was there?”
“You know him?” Sally asked curiously.
Jess nodded. “He was a handsome devil. I had a yen for him once myself, but he married Patricia instead. She was a little Dresden china doll, blonde and absolutely gorgeous. She worshipped Cord. They’d only been married a few months when he was involved in a shoot-out with a narcotics dealer. She couldn’t take it. When Cord came home from the hospital, she was several days dead, with a suicide note clutched in her fingers. He found her. He was like a madman after that, looking for every dangerous job he could find. I don’t suppose he’s over her yet. He loved her desperately.”
“Eb says he works with Micah Steele.”
“He does, and there’s a real coincidence. Micah also has a stepsister, Callie. You know her, she works in Mr. Kemp’s law office.”
“Yes. We went to school together. But Micah doesn’t have anything to do with her or his father since his father divorced Callie’s mother. They say,” she murmured, “that old Mr. Steele caught Micah with his new wife in a very compromising position and tossed them both out on their ears.”
“That’s the obvious story,” Jessie said dryly. “But there’s more to it than that.”
“How does Callie feel about Micah’s work, do you think?”
“The way any woman would feel,” Jessie replied gently. “Afraid.”
Sally knew that Jess was talking about Dallas, and how she’d regarded his work as a soldier of fortune. She stared at the darkened window, wondering how she’d feel under the same circumstances. At least Eb wasn’t involved in demolition work or actively working as a mercenary. She knew that she could adjust to Eb’s lifestyle. But the trick was going to be convincing Eb that she could—and that he needed her, as much as she needed him.