Stone Cold Christmas Ranger. Nicole Helm
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but here. Because while they might ignore his presence, maybe, they would never ignore the presence of the motorcycle.
Parking at the top of the drive, he got out of his running car and punched the code into the garage door so it opened.
“This is a guesthouse?” Alyssa called out over the sound of her motorcycle.
Bennet nodded as the garage door went up. He walked back to his car and motioned for her to park inside the garage. Maybe if the evidence was hidden, and it was late enough, it was possible no one would notice the disturbance. A man could dream.
Alyssa walked her motorcycle into the garage and killed the engine. She pulled off her helmet. It seemed no matter how often her hair tumbled out like that, his idiotic body had a reaction. He really needed to get a handle on that.
“Follow me,” he said, probably too tersely. But he felt terse and uncomfortable. He felt a lot of things he didn’t want to think about.
He slid the key he always kept on his ring into the lock of the door from the garage to the mudroom. He didn’t look back to see how she reacted to the rather ostentatious guesthouse as they walked through it. It wasn’t his.
He led her into the living room. “Feel free to use anything in the house. The fridge probably won’t be stocked, but the pantry is. The staff keeps everything clean and fresh for visitors, so—”
“You keep saying ‘staff,’ but I have a feeling what you mean is servants.”
He gave her a doleful look. “I’ll show you to a bedroom and bathroom you can use. I suggest we get some sleep and reevaluate in the morning.”
“Reevaluate what?”
“How we’re going to handle getting me into see your brothers with you.”
“There’s no way. There’s no way. They’ll kill you on sight knowing you’re a Texas Ranger. They have all this time while we’re ‘reevaluating’ to plan to kill you and make it look like an accident, make you just disappear.” She snapped her fingers. “It will be suicide. I don’t think you get that.”
“I told you I had some ideas.”
“Like what?”
“Like what we’re doing right here.”
She threw her arms up in the air, clearly frustrated with him. “What are we doing right here?
“If your brothers think that we...” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with his own idea, with telling it to her, with enacting it. But it made sense. It was the only thing that made sense. No matter how much he didn’t want to do it. “If your brothers think we are romantically involved, there’s a chance they wouldn’t touch me. If I were important to you.”
Alyssa blinked at him for a full minute. “First of all,” she said eventually, “even if that was remotely true, if they have my office bugged, they know we just met. It was part of that conversation.”
“We’ll say it was a lure.”
“You can’t be this stupid. You can’t be.”
That offhanded insult poked at a million things he’d never admit to. “I assure you, Ms. Jimenez, I know what I’m doing,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and giving her a look that had intimidated drug dealers and rapists and even murderers.
Alyssa rolled her eyes. “Spare me the ‘Ms. Jimenez’ crap. It makes far more sense for me to go there on my own and handle things my own way. You can trust me when I say I want to get to the bottom of my mother’s murder more than you do. I have no reason not to bring you whatever information I find so my mother’s murderer can be brought to justice.”
“I think you’re bright enough to realize all of this is so much more than a murder case. The things your brothers are involved in aren’t that easy. It’s not something I can trust a civilian to go into and bring me back the information I need to prosecute. I need to go in there with you. I need to investigate this myself.”
She shook her head in disgust, but she didn’t argue further. Which was a plus.
“How far are you willing to go?” she demanded.
“As far as I need to. This case is my number one priority. I won’t rest until it’s solved.”
She sighed while looking around the living room. “I can’t sit anywhere in here. I’ll stain all this white just by looking at it.”
He rolled his eyes and took her by the elbow, leading her to a chair. It was white, and it was very possible she’d get motorcycle grease or something on it, but it would be taken care of. Stains in the Stevens world were always taken care of.
He pushed her into the chair. She sat with an audible thump. “What about this? You tell them I’m a double agent. That I want to be a dirty cop.”
“They wouldn’t believe that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are the antithesis of a dirty cop. You look like Superman had a baby with Captain America and every other do-gooder superhero to ever exist. No one would believe you want to be a dirty cop.”
“Have you ever had any contact with a dirty cop?”
“Well, no.”
He took a seat on the couch, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He never took his eyes off her—this was too important. “It has nothing to do with what you look like and everything to do with how desperate you are. How powerful you want to feel. Cops go dirty because... Well, there are a lot of reasons, but it’s not about how you look or where you’re from. It’s about ego, among other things.”
“Okay, it’s about ego, which I’ll give you you’ve got, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to believe any of it.”
“It doesn’t mean they won’t.”
“You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”
“We can do it the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is where you work with me. The hard way is where you work against me. Either way, I’m doing it.”
She sighed gustily, but he could see in the set of her shoulders she was relenting. Giving in. One way or another, she was going to give in.
“Fine. But we’re not doing it your way. If we’re doing it together, when it comes to my brothers, we do it my way. I tell them I’m using you to get information. I don’t know if they’ll buy it hook, line and sinker, but it’s better than all your ideas.”
“Gee, thank you.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave your ego at the door, Mr. Texas Ranger.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Alyssa rubbed her temples. She had to be exhausted and stressed and emotionally wrung out from the things she’d found out today.
“Let’s go to bed. We’ll work out the details in the morning.”
She sighed and pushed herself out of the chair. “Fine. Lead me to my castle.”
“You’re awfully melodramatic for a street urchin.”
“I’m not the one living in this place.”
“I don’t live in this place,” he muttered, standing, as well.
“You also don’t live in an apartment above a garage.”
“Is that where you live?” Which was neither here nor there, knowing where she lived or anything about her current life. All that mattered was her connection to the Jimenez family.
“Yes. I live in an apartment above the garage of my friends’ house. My friends who are now in danger because of me, because of this.” She let out a long sigh and faced him, her expression