Defender. Diana Palmer
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sighed. “Mandy’s kept house for over twenty years, since before you were born. She knows stuff, but she’s afraid to tell. She has a brother who does illegal things. Daddy told her he could have her brother sent to prison if she ever opened her mouth. She’s afraid of him.” She looked up. “I’m afraid of him.”
Sari winced. “Yes. Me, too.”
“I don’t ever want to get married, Sari,” the younger woman said huskily. “Not ever!”
“One day, you might, if the right man comes along.”
Merrie laughed. “He’s not likely to come along while Daddy’s around, or he’ll be leaving in a body bag in the back of a pickup truck.”
The dark humor in that statement sent them both into gales of laughter.
* * *
Paul Fiore was Italian. He also had a Greek grandmother. It accounted for his olive complexion and thick, jet-black hair and large brown eyes. He was handsome, too, tall and broad-shouldered, muscular without making a point of it. He walked like a panther, light on his feet, and he had a quick mind. He’d been in law enforcement most of his life until he took the job with the Grayling Corporation. He’d wanted to get as far away from federal work—and New Jersey—as he could. Jacobsville, Texas, came close to his ideal place.
He was fond of the girls, Merrie and Sari, and he took charge of the house when Mr. Grayling was out of the country. He could handle any problem that came up. His main responsibility was to keep the girls safe, but he also kept a close watch on the property, especially the very expensive Thoroughbreds Grayling raised for sale.
The housekeeper, Mandy Swilling, was fond of him. She was always baking him the cinnamon cookies he liked so much, and tucking little surprises into his truck when he had to be away on business.
“You’ve got me ruined,” he accused her one morning. “I’ll be so spoiled that I’ll never be able to get along in the world if I ever get fired from here.”
“Mr. Darwin will never fire you,” Mandy said confidently. “You keep your mouth shut and you don’t ask questions.”
His eyes narrowed. “Odd reason to keep a man on, isn’t it?”
“Not around here,” she said heavily.
He stared at her, his dark eyes twinkling. “You know where all the bodies are buried, huh? That why you still have work?”
She didn’t laugh, as he’d expected her to. She just glanced at him and winced. “Don’t even joke about things like that, Mr. Paul.”
He groaned at her form of addressing him.
“Now, now,” she said. “I’ve always called the boss Mr. Darwin, just like I call the foreman Mr. Edward. It’s a way of speaking that Southern folk are raised with. You, being a Yankee…” She stopped and grinned. “Sorry. I meant to say, you, being a northerner, wouldn’t know about that.”
“I guess so.”
“You still sound like a person born up North.”
He shrugged and grinned back at her. “We are what we are.”
“I suppose so.”
He watched her work at making rolls for lunch. She wasn’t much to look at. She was about fifty pounds overweight, had short silver hair and dark eyes, and she was slightly stooped over from years of working in gardens with a hoe. But she could cook! The woman was a magician in the kitchen. Paul remembered his tiny little grandmother, making ravioli and antipasto when he was a child, the scent of flour and oil that always seemed to cling to her. Kitchens were comforting to a child who had no real home. His father had worked for a local mob boss, and done all sorts of illegal things, like most of the rest of his family. His mother had died miserable, watching her husband run around with an endless parade of other women, shuddering every time the big boss or law enforcement came to the front door. After his mother died and his father went to jail for the twentieth time, Paul went to live with his little Greek grandmother. He and his cousin Mikey had stayed with her until they were almost grown. Paul watched Mikey go the same route his father had, attached like a tick to the local big crime boss. His father never came around. In fact, he couldn’t remember seeing his father more than a dozen times before the man died in a shootout with a rival mob.
It was why he’d gone into law enforcement at seventeen, fresh out of high school. He hated the hold crime had on his family. He hoped he could make a difference, help clean up his old neighborhood and free it from the talons of organized crime. He went from local police right up into the FBI. He’d felt that he was unstoppable, that he could fight crime and win. Pride had blinded him to the reality of life. It had cost him everything.
Still, he missed the Bureau sometimes. But the memories had been lethal. He couldn’t face them, not even now, years after the tragedy that had sent him running from New Jersey to Texas on a job tip from a coworker. He’d given up dreams of a home and all the things that went with it. Now, it was just the job, doing the job. He didn’t look forward. Ever. One Day at a Time was his credo.
“Why are you hiding in here?” Mandy asked suddenly, breaking into his thoughts.
“It’s that obvious, huh?” he asked, the New Jersey accent still prevalent even after the years he’d spent in Texas.
“Yes, it is.”
He sipped the black coffee she’d placed in front of him at the table. “Livestock foreman’s got a daughter. She came with him today.”
“Oh, dear,” Mandy replied.
He shrugged. “I took her to lunch at Barbara’s Cafe a few weeks ago. Just a casual thing. I met her at the courthouse. She works there. She decided that I was looking for a meaningful relationship. So now she’s over here every Saturday like clockwork, hanging out with her dad.”
“That will end when Mr. Darwin comes back,” she said with feeling. “He doesn’t like strangers on the place, even strangers related to people who work here.”
He smiled sadly. “Or it will end when I lose my temper and start cursing in Italian.”
“You look Italian,” she said, studying him.
He chuckled. “You should see my cousin Mikey. He could have auditioned for The Godfather. I’ve got Greek in me, too. My grandmother was from a little town near Athens. She could barely speak English at all. But could she cook! Kind of like you,” he added with twinkling eyes. “She’d have liked you, Mandy.”
Her hard face softened. “You never speak of your parents.”
“I try not to think about them too much. Funny, how we carry our childhoods around on our backs.”
She nodded. She was making rolls for lunch and they had to have time to rise. Her hands were floury as she kneaded the soft dough. She nodded toward the rest of the house. “Neither of those poor girls has had a childhood. He keeps them locked up all the time. No parties, no dancing and especially no boys.”
He scowled. “I noticed that. I asked the boss once why he didn’t let the girls go out occasionally.” He took a sip of his coffee.
“What did he tell you?”
“That the last employee who asked him that question is now waiting tables in a little town in the Yukon Territory.”
She shook her head. “That’s probably true. A cowboy who tried to take Merrie out on a date once got a job in Arizona. They say he’s still looking behind him for hired assassins.” Her hands stilled in the dough. “Don’t you ever mention that outside the house,” she advised. “Or to Mr. Darwin. I kind of like having you around,” she added with a smile and went back to her chore.
“I like this job. No big-city noise, no pressure, no pressing deadlines on cases.”
She glanced up at him, then back down to the bowl again. “We’ve