Lone Star Winter. Diana Palmer
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them. He borrowed on his salary and his life insurance policy to buy the steers, but he didn’t look far enough ahead to see the drought coming. I guess he didn’t realize that buying winter feed for those steers would put us in the hole.” She shook her head. “I did so want his plans to work out,” she said wistfully. “If they had, he was going to give up undercover work and come home to be a rancher.” Her eyes were sad. “He was only thirty years old.”
“Manuel Lopez is a vindictive drug lord,” he murmured. “He doesn’t stop at his victims, either. He likes to target whole families. Well, except for small children. If he has a virtue, that’s the only one.” He glanced at her. “All the more reason for you to be looked after at night. The dog is a good idea. Even a puppy will bark when someone comes up to the door.”
“How do you know about Lopez?” she asked.
He laughed. It was the coldest sound Lisa had ever heard. “How do I know? He had his thugs set fire to my house in Wyoming. My wife and my five-year-old son died because of him.” His eyes stared straight ahead. “And if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll see him pay for it.”
“I had…no idea,” she faltered. She winced at the look on his face. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Parks. I knew about the fire, but…” She averted her eyes to the dark landscape outside. “They told me that Walt only said two words before he died. He said, ‘Get Lopez.’ They will, you know,” she added harshly. “They’ll get him, no matter what it takes.”
He glanced at her and smiled in spite of himself. “You’re not quite the retiring miss that you seem to be, are you, Mrs. Monroe?”
“I’m pregnant,” she told him flatly. “It makes me ill-tempered.”
He slowed to make a turn. “Did you want a child so soon after your marriage?” he asked, knowing as everyone locally did that she’d only married two months ago.
“I love children,” she said, smiling self-consciously. “I guess it’s not the ‘in’ thing right now, but I’ve never had dreams of corporate leadership. I like the pace of life here in Jacobsville. Everybody knows everybody. There’s precious little crime usually. I can trace my family back three generations here. My parents and my grandparents are buried in the town cemetery. I loved being a housewife, taking care of Walt and cooking and all the domestic things women aren’t supposed to enjoy anymore.” She glanced at him with a wicked little smile. “I was even a virgin when I married. When I rebel, I go the whole way!”
He chuckled. It was the first time in years that he’d felt like laughing. “You renegade.”
“It runs in my family,” she laughed. “Where are you from?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Texas.”
“But you lived in Wyoming,” she pointed out.
“Because I thought it was the one place Lopez wouldn’t bother me. What a fool I was,” he added quietly. “If I’d come here in the first place, it might never have happened.”
“Our police are good, but…”
He glanced at her. “Don’t you know what I am? What I was?” he amended. “Eb Scott’s whole career was in the Houston papers just after he sent two of Lopez’s best men to prison for attempted murder. They mentioned that several of his old comrades live in Jacobsville now.”
“I read the papers,” she confessed. “But they didn’t mention names, you know.”
“Didn’t they?” He maneuvered a turn at a stop sign. “Eb must have called in a marker, then.”
She turned slightly toward him. “What were you?”
He didn’t even glance at her. “If the papers didn’t mention it, I won’t.”
“Were you one of those old comrades?” she persisted.
He hesitated, but only for a moment. She wasn’t a gossip. There was no good reason for not telling her. “Yes,” he said bluntly. “I was a mercenary. A professional soldier for hire to the highest bidder,” he added bitterly.
“But with principles, right?” she persisted. “I mean, you didn’t hire out to Lopez and help him run drugs.”
“Certainly not!”
“I didn’t think so.” She leaned back against her seat, weary. “It must take a lot of courage to do that sort of work. I suppose it takes a certain kind of man, as well. But why did you do it when you had a wife and child?”
He hated that damned question. He hated the answer, too.
“Well?”
She wasn’t going to quit until he told her. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Because I refused to give it up, and she got pregnant deliberately to get even with me.” He didn’t stop to think about the odd way he’d worded that, but Lisa noticed and wondered at it. “I cur tailed my work, but I helped get the goods on Lopez be fore I hung it up entirely and started ranching full-time. I’d just come back from overseas when the fire was set. It was obvious afterward that I’d been careless and let one of Lopez’s men track me back to Wyoming. I’ve had to live with it ever since.”
She studied his lean, stark profile with quiet, curious eyes. “Was it the adrenaline rush you couldn’t live with out, or was it the confinement of marriage that you couldn’t live with?”
His green eyes glittered dangerously. “You ask too damned many questions!”
She shrugged. “You started it. I had no idea that you were anything more than a rancher. Your foreman, Harley Fowler, likes to tell people that he’s one of those dashing professional soldiers, you know. But he isn’t.”
The statement surprised him. “How do you know he isn’t?” he asked.
“Because I asked him if he’d ever done the Fan Dance and he didn’t know what I was talking about.”
He stopped the truck in the middle of the road and just stared at her. “Who told you about that? Your husband?”
“He knew about the British Special Air Services, but mostly just what I told him—including that bit about the Fan Dance, one of their rigorous training tests.” She smiled self-consciously. “I guess it sounds strange, but I love reading books about them. They’re really some thing, like the French Foreign Legion, you know. A group of men so highly trained, so specialized, that they’re the scourge of terrorists the world over. They go everywhere, covertly, to rescue hostages and gather intelligence about terrorist groups.” She sighed and closed her eyes, oblivious to the expression of the man watching her. “I’d be scared to death to do anything like that, but I admire people who can. It’s a way of testing your self, isn’t it, so that you know how you react under the most deadly pressure. Most of us never face physical violence. Those men have.” Her eyes opened. “Men like you.”
He felt his cheeks go hot. She was intriguing. He began to understand why Walt had married her. “How old are you?” he asked bluntly.
“Old enough to get pregnant,” she told him pertly. “And that’s all you’re getting out of me.”
His green eyes narrowed. She was very young, there was no doubt about that. He didn’t like the idea of her being in danger. He didn’t like the idea of the man Luke Craig had sent over to look out for her, either. He was going to see about that.
“How old are you, if we’re getting personal?” she asked.
“Older than you are,” he returned mockingly.
She grimaced. “Well, you’ve got scars and lines in your face, and a little gray at your temples, but I doubt you’re over thirty-five.”
His eyebrows arched almost to his hairline.
“I’d like you to be my baby’s godfather when he’s born,” she continued bluntly. “I think Walt