Mercenary's Woman (21 page)

156

MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

157

grinned. "See how carefully I look
after your virtue, Miss
Johnson?"

She gave her own
bare torso a poignant glance and met
his eyes again.

He lifted an eyebrow.
"Virtue," he emphasized, "not
modesty. I don't seduce virgins, in
case you forgot."

She couldn't quite
decide whether he was playing or
serious.

He saw that in her
face and smiled gently. "Sally, the
hardest thing I ever did in my life was to
push you away
one spring afternoon six years ago," he said softly. "I had
passionate, vivid
dreams about you in some of the wildest
places on earth. I'm still having them." His hand swept
slowly down her body, watching it lift helplessly
to his
touch. "So are you,
judging by the sounds you were mak
ing in your sleep when I came to bed
about ten minutes
ago. I crawled in beside
you and you came right up against
me
and touched me in a way I won't tell you about."

She searched his eyes blankly. "I did what?"

"Want to
know?" he asked with an outrageous grin.
"Okay." He leaned close and
whispered it in her ear and she cried out, horrified.

"No need to feel
embarrassed," he chided. "I loved
it."

She knew her face was
scarlet, but he looked far more
pleased than teasing.

He traced her lower lip lazily.
"For a few tempestuous seconds I forgot Lopez and last night, and just
about ev
erything
else of any immediate importance." His eyes
darkened as he held her poised above
him. "I've lived on dreams for a long time. The reality is pretty
shattering."
"Dreams?"

He nodded. He wasn't
smiling. "I wanted you six years
ago. I still do, more than ever." He
brushed back her di-

sheveled hair and looked at her with eyes
that were tender and possessive. "I'm your home. Wherever I go, you
go."

She didn't
understand what he meant. Her face was troubled.

He rolled her over
onto her back and propped himself
above her. "From what I know of you, my
life-style isn't
going to
break you. You've got spirit and courage, and
you're
not afraid to speak your mind. I think you'll adjust
very well,
especially if I give up any work that takes me
out of the country. I can still teach tactics, although I'll
cut down my contract jobs when the babies start
coming
along."

"Babies?" She looked completely blank.

"Listen,
kid," he murmured dryly, "what we're doing causes them." He
frowned. "Well, not exactly what we're
doing. But if we were wearing less, and doing
a little more
than we're doing, we'd be causing them."

Her whole body
tingled. She searched his eyes with a feeling of unreality. "You want to
have a child with me?"
she asked, awed.

"Oh, yes. I want
to have a lot of children with you,"
he whispered solemnly.

She laid her hands
fiat on his broad chest, savoring its
muscular warmth as she considered what he
was saying. She frowned, because he hadn't mentioned love or mar
riage.

"What's missing?" he asked.

"I teach
school," she said worriedly. "My reputa
tion..."

Now he was frowning.
"God Almighty, do you think
I'm asking you to live in sin with me, in
Jacobsville,
Texas?" he asked, with exaggerated horror.

"You didn't say
anything about marriage," she began
defensively.

158

MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

159

He grinned wickedly.
"Do you really think I spent so much rime on you just to give you karate
lessons?" he
drawled. "Darlin', it would take years of them to make
you proficient enough
to protect yourself from even a weak
adversary. I brought you over here for
practice so that I
could get my arms around you."

Her eyes brightened. "Did you, really?"

He chuckled.
"See what depths I've sunk to?" he mur
mured. He shook his head. "I had
to give you enough time
to grow up. I didn't want a teenager who was hero wor
shiping me. I wanted a
woman, a strong woman, who could stand up to me."

She smoothed her
hands up to his broad shoulders. "I
think I can do that," she mused.

He nodded. "I
think you can, too. Can you live with
what I do?"

She smiled. "Of course."

He drew in a slow
breath and his eyes were more pos
sessive than ever. "Then we'll get Jess
out of harm's way
and then we'll get married."

She pulled him down to
her. "Yes," she whispered
against his hard mouth.

Seconds later, they
were so close that she wasn't certain
he'd be able to draw back at all, when there was a loud
knock at the door and the knob rattled.

"Aunt
Sally!" came a plaintive little voice. "I want
some cereal and they
haven't got any that's in shapes and
colors. It's such boring cereal!"

Sally laughed even as
Eb managed to drag himself away
from the tangle of their legs with a groan
that was half
amusement and half agony.

"I'll be right there, Stevie!"

"Why's the door locked?" he called loudly.

"Come on here, youngster, and let's see if we can find

something you'd like to eat," came a
deep, amused adult
voice.

"Okay, Dallas!"

The voices retreated.
Eb lay shivering a little with reaction, but he grinned when Sally sat up and
looked down
at him with love glowing in her eyes.

"Close call," he whispered.

"Very," she agreed.

He took a long,
hungry last look at her breasts and resolutely sat up and fastened her buttons
again with a rueful
smile. "Maybe food is a bearable substitute for what
I really want," he mused.

She leaned forward
and kissed him gently. "I'll make you glad we waited," she whispered
against his mouth.

Several heated minutes later, they joined
the others at
the breakfast table, but Eb didn't
mention future plans. He
was laying down ground rules for the following
week,
starting with the very necessary trip
Sally and Stevie must
take to school
the next day.

"We could keep
him out of school until this is over,"
Dallas said tersely, glancing at the child
who was sitting
between himself and Jessica. "I don't like having him at
risk."

"Neither do I," Jessica said
heavily. "But it's possible
that he
won't be. Lopez has a weakness for children," she
said. "It's
the only virtue he possesses, but he's a maniac about abusive adults. He'd
never hurt Stevie, no matter
what."

"I'd have to agree with that," Eb said surprisingly.

"Then life goes
on as usual," Jessica said. "And maybe
Lopez will make a mistake and we'll
have him. Or at
least," she added, "a way of getting at him."

"What about Rodrigo?" Dallas asked abruptly.

"He phoned me late last night," Eb told him. "He's

160
                            
MERCENARY'S WOMAN

already in town, in place. Fast worker. It
seems he has a
relative, a 'mule' who works for Lopez in Houston, a distant relative
who doesn't know what Rodrigo really does for a living. He got Rodrigo a job
driving a truck for the
new operation here." He let out a breath through
his teeth.
"Once we get Lopez's attention away from Jess," he
added, "that
operation is going to be our next priority."

"Can't you just
send the sheriff over there to arrest
them?" Sally asked.

"It's inside the city limits. Chief
Chet Blake has juris
diction there, and, of
course, he'd help if he could," Eb told her. "But so far, all we have
on Lopez's employees
is a distant
connection to a drug lord. Unless we can catch
them in the act of receiving or shipping cocaine, what
would we charge them with? Building a warehouse is
le
gal, especially when you have all
the easements and per
mission from the planning commission."

"That's why we're
going to stake out the place, once
this is over," Dallas added. He glanced from Jessica to
Stevie with worried eyes. "But first we have
to solve the
more immediate problem."

Jess felt for his
hand on the table beside her and tangled
her fingers into it. "We'll get through this," she said
in a
soft tone. "I can't cold-bloodedly
give a human being's
life up to
Lopez, no matter what the cost. The person in
volved risked everything to put him away. And even then,
his attorneys found a loophole."

"Don't forget
that it took them a couple of years to do
that," Eb reminded her. "He won't
be easy to catch a
second time. He has enough pull with the Mexican government to keep
them from extraditing him back here for
trial."

"I hear DEA's
going to put him on their top ten Most
Wanted list," Dallas said. "That
will turn up the heat a

DIANA
PALMER

little, especially with a fifty-thousand dollar reward to
sweeten the deal."

"Lopez would double their bounty out of his pocket
change to get them off his tail, even if we could
find some
one crazy enough to go down
to Cancun after him," Eb
said.

"Micah Steele would, in a second," Dallas replied.

Eb chuckled. "I
imagine he would. But he's been working on a case overseas with Cord Romero
and Bojo Lu-
ciene."

"Bojo, the
Moroccan," Dallas recalled. "Now there's
a character."

Eb was immediately somber.
"Okay, tomorrow morning
I'll follow Sally and Stevie in to school. Dallas can
tail
them
on the way home. We'll stay in constant contact and
hope for the
best."

"The best,"
Dallas replied, "would be that Lopez
would give up."

"It won't happen," Eb assured him.

"Have you
considered contacting your informant?"
Dallas asked Jessica. "If we could get
him back to the
States, we could arrange around-the-clock protection and
get him into the
witness protection program, where even
Lopez couldn't find him."

She grimaced. "I thought of that, but I honestly don't
know how to locate my informant," she
said sadly. "The
people who could
have helped me do it are dead,"

Eb scowled. "All of them?"

Jessica nodded with a
sigh. "All of them. About six months ago. Just before my accident."

"Rodrigo might be able to dig
something up," Dallas
said.

"That's very
possible," Eb agreed. "Jessica, you could
trust him with the
name. I know, you don't want to put

162

MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

163

your informant in danger. But if we can't find him, how
can we protect him?"

She hesitated. Then she shifted in her
chair, clinging
even more tightly to
Dallas's big hand. "Okay," she said finally. "But he has to
promise to keep the information to
himself.
Can I trust him to do that?"

"Yes," Eb said with certainty.

"All right, then. When can we do it?"

"Tomorrow after
school," Eb said. "I'll get Cy Parks
to run into him 'accidentally' and
slip him a note, so that
Lopez won't get suspicious."

Jessica's head moved
to rest on Dallas's shoulder. "I
wish I'd done things differently. So many people at risk,
all because I didn't do my job properly."

"But you
did," Dallas said at once, sliding a protective arm around her. "You
did what any one of us would do.
And you did put Lopez away. It's not your
fault that he
slipped out of the country."

Jessica smiled. "Thanks."

"You going to
marry my mama, Dallas?" Stevie piped
up.

"Stevie!" Jessica exclaimed.

"Yes, I am,"
Dallas said, chuckling at Jessica's red
face. "She just doesn't know it yet.
How do you feel about
that, Stevie?"

"That would be
great!" he said enthusiastically. "You
and me can watch wrestling
together!"

"Yes, we can."
Dallas kissed Jess's hair gently and
looked at his son with proud, possessive eyes.

Sally, watching
them, knew that everything was going
to be all right for Jessica, once they were
out of this mess.
She'd be free to marry Eb and she'd never have to worry
about her aunt or her
cousin again. Even more important,
Jessica would be loved. That meant everything to Sally.

Eb followed them to school the next
morning, keeping
a safe distance. But there
were no attempts on them along the way, and once they were inside the building,
Sally felt safe. She and Stevie went right along to her class, smiling
and
greeting teachers and other children they knew.

"It's gonna be
all right, isn't it, Aunt Sally?" Stevie
asked at the door to her classroom.

"Yes, I think it is," she said with a warm smile.

She checked her
lesson plan while the students filed into
the classroom. A boy at the back of the room
made a face
and caught
Sally's attention.

"Miss Johnson,
there's a puddle of something that
smells horrible back here!"

She got up from her
desk and went to see. There was,
indeed, a puddle. "I'll just go and get one of the
janitors,"
she said with a smile,

But as she started
out the door, a tall, quiet man appeared with a mop and pail.

"Hi, Harry," she said to him.

"Hard to be
inside today when it's so nice outside," he
said with a rueful smile. "I
should be sitting on the river in my boat right now."

She smiled.
"I'm sorry. But it's a good thing for us that
you're here,"

He started to wheel
the bucket and mop away when one of the wheels came off the bucket. He muttered
something
and bent to look.

"I'll have to carry it. Can I get one
of these youngsters
to help me carry the
mop?" he asked.

"I'll go!" Stevie volunteered at once.

"Yes, of
course," Sally said. "Would you rather I went
with you?"

He shook his head.
"No need. This strong young man