Fearless (6 page)

“Yes.” He rocked the swing again.

“She said his father was in jail.”

He made an odd sound. “Yes. Serving a life sentence.”

“For drug smuggling?” she blurted out incredulously, because she knew how difficult it was to send a smuggler away for life without a lot of additional felony charges.

His head turned toward her. He was very quiet. “Is that what she told you?”

She cleared her throat, hoping she hadn’t given herself away. “Yes. She said he was mistaken for another man.”

“Ah.” He puffed on the cigarette.

“Ah?” she parroted, questioning.

“He was piloting a go-fast boat with about two hundred kilos of cocaine,” he said easily. “He was so confident that he’d paid off the right people that he didn’t bother to conceal the product. The Coast Guard picked him up heading for Houston.”

“In a boat?”

He chuckled. “They have airplanes and helicopters, both with machine guns. They laid down a trail of tracers on both sides of his conveyance and told him to stop or learn to swim very fast. He gave up.”

“Goodness! I never knew the Coast Guard worked smuggling cases,” she added with pretended ignorance.

“Well, they do.”

“But the product still gets through,” she said sadly.

“Supply and demand drive the market. As long as there is a demand, there will certainly be a supply.”

“I suppose so,” she said, her voice very quiet.

He rocked the swing into motion again. It was very pleasant out here with her, he thought. But he would rather have been with Sarina and Bernadette. He was lonely. He’d never thought of himself as a family man, but three years of looking out for two other people had changed his mind. He’d even gone so far as to think about having a child of his own. Pipe dreams. All dead now.

“Is this what you planned to do with your life?” she asked suddenly. “Managing a truck farm, I mean?”

He laughed softly. “At one time, I wanted very much to be a commercial airline pilot. I have a pilot’s license, although I rarely make use of it. Flying is expensive,” he added quickly, in case she had some idea of how much private planes cost.

She hesitated about probing further. He was a very private person, and she sensed some irritation in his tone that she’d asked about his goals.

She stared off into the distance. “I wanted to be a ballerina when I was young,” she said quietly. “I took lessons and everything.”

He winced. “That must have been a painful loss.”

“Yes. I’ll never get rid of the limp unless they can find a way to remake muscle and bone.” She laughed shortly. “I enjoy watching ballet productions on educational television,” she added. “And I’d probably have embarrassed myself with any serious dancing. I’m just clumsy. The first recital I was in called for us to hold hands and dance past the orchestra pit. I fell in, right onto a very big fellow playing a big tuba. The audience thought it was all part of the routine.” She grimaced. “My mother got up and walked out of the auditorium,” she recalled. “She never went to another recital. She thought I did it deliberately to embarrass her.”

“A truly paranoid personality,” he commented.

“Yes, she was,” she said quickly. “How did you know?”

“I knew a man who was the same. He thought people were following him all the time. He was certain the CIA had bugged his telephone. He wore a second set of clothing under his suits, so that he could duck into a rest room and change to throw his pursuers off the track.”

“My goodness!” she exclaimed. “Did they lock him up?”

“They couldn’t.” He chuckled. “He headed a very dangerous federal agency at the time.”

She was really curious now. “How did you find out about it?”

He hesitated, playing for time. He was getting careless. He was supposed to be an uneducated farm laborer. “A cousin of mine played semipro soccer with a cousin of his,” he replied finally.

“Nice to have a pipeline like that,” she said. She laughed. “You could have made a fortune if you’d tipped off the tabloids.”

And gotten himself put on a hit list, he thought silently. The man had been a very dangerous enemy. Rodrigo had taken work in Mexico to avoid being around him until he finally retired. Having dual citizenship with the U. S. and Mexico had come in handy. It was really handy now, since there was a price on his head in almost every other country on earth. He glanced at Glory and wondered what she’d think of him if she knew the truth about his anguished past.

“Did you have pets when you were little?” she asked after a minute, just for something to say.

“Yes,” he replied. “I had a parrot who spoke Danish.”

“How odd,” she replied.

Not really, because his father had been Danish. He didn’t explain. “How about you? Did you have other pets besides the ill-fated cat?”

“Not really. I always wanted a dog, but that never happened.”

“You could have one now, couldn’t you?”

She could, but her work called her out at all hours. She didn’t think it was fair to a dog to have to share her hectic life. Compared to what she normally did, working on this truck farm was a real vacation. She’d gone to deserted parking lots to meet informers, with the police along for protection. She’d ridden in limousines with gang bosses. She’d done a lot of dangerous things in the course of her job, and she’d made enemies. Enemies like Fuentes. If she had a pet, it would become a target, just as a boyfriend or close friend would. The people she prosecuted held life cheap compared to profit. They wouldn’t hesitate to do anything in their power to harm her, including doing damage to a pet.

“I have a very small apartment,” she hedged. “And my last job was working for a temporary agency. I worked odd hours.”

So did he, when he wasn’t pretending to run a truck farm. He’d considered taking overseas work instead of this undercover assignment, but he’d thought that Sarina and Bernadette would be living here in Jacobsville and he might get a glimpse of them from time to time. In retrospect, that had been a stupid idea. Bernadette could have blown his cover sky high without realizing it. His mind hadn’t been working well just after Sarina and Colby Lane had renewed their marriage vows in a small ceremony. His heart had been broken.

“We’ll have some odd hours here, for a while, as well,” he said suddenly, thinking about what was coming up for his assignment.

“Putting up all the new fruit, you mean?” she asked.

He took a last puff on the cigarette and flung it out into the sand of the front yard. “No. I mean that I’ll be in and out. I have some new contacts that I’m meeting. Some of them may come down to overlook the operation before they sign on with us.”

“It’s a very good little farm,” she said absently. “I know it’s hard work to grow fruits and vegetables, because I’ve tried to.” She laughed. “My tomatoes burned up in the drought and I planted things in the wrong season. It’s hard work.”

“It’s hard, but I enjoy it. It’s relaxing work.”

“Relaxing?” she exclaimed, turning slightly toward him. “It’s backbreaking!”

He chuckled. “Not for me,” he reminded her. “I oversee. I don’t hoe or harvest.”

“You have a good crew that does that,” she agreed. “Is Marco going to work here?”

He hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “For a while.”

“Consuelo will be glad.”

He leaned toward her in the dim light coming from the house. “He may bring one or two of his friends with him occasionally. If he does, stay out of their way. Don’t be tempted to walk around outside, even in broad daylight.”

She stared at him, pretending surprise. “Is he dangerous?”

“All men are dangerous, given the right set of circumstances,” he told her flatly. “Don’t ask questions. Just do what I say.”

She saluted him.

He burst out laughing. “For a woman with a ragged upbringing, you cope well.”

“Coping isn’t a choice,” she replied lightly. “We can’t live in the past.”

“I know,” he replied, and he sounded torn.

She wanted to say something comforting, but nothing came to mind. It was too late, anyway. He got to his feet with that lazy elegance that was so much a part of him.

“I have to make an early start tomorrow. Remember, if you and Consuelo need more hands in the kitchen, we can manage one or two more people.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But we’re doing okay.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

She watched him go, aware of the faint spice of his cologne, the clean smell of his body and his clothing. He was immaculate. Certainly he didn’t smell like a man who worked with his hands at hard labor.

She got up from the swing and moved slowly toward the front door. She was tired. It had been a very long day.

Sometime before morning, she woke suddenly. She didn’t know why. There was a sound, a mixture of sounds, human and insistent.

She lay on her back staring up at the ceiling. A man was arguing with someone. Yelling. She didn’t recognize the voice, but it wasn’t Rodrigo’s. She bit her lower lip. She didn’t like loud voices.

After a minute, there was the sound of a car door slamming, and then an engine revving up. Gravel went flying audibly as the vehicle took off down the driveway. She’d have to ask Consuelo what was going on. It sounded as if there had been a serious quarrel.

W
HEN
G
LORY DRESSED AND
went to the kitchen for breakfast, she found Consuelo sitting at the table crying.

“What’s wrong?” she asked gently.

Consuelo dried her face on her apron. “Nothing,” she choked. “It’s okay.”

“I heard someone, a man, shouting.”

The older woman looked up at her with red, swollen eyes. She looked miserable. “Marco was furious because I wouldn’t loan him some money. He thinks I was lying when I said I didn’t have it, but I wasn’t.”

Glory laid a gentle hand on the other woman’s shoulder. “He’ll get over it. Families argue. Then they make up.”

A watery smile was her reward for all that optimism. “You think he’ll come back?”

“Of course,” Glory assured her. She grinned. “How can he stay away from all this wonderful fruit?”

Consuelo burst out laughing. “Oh, you’re good for me,” she said. “What a lucky day I had when Señor Ramirez hired you!”

Glory smiled. “I like you, too. Now could we have coffee? Coffee and toast would be better, but especially coffee. I have to have my morning jolt of caffeine or I can’t get both eyes to work at the same time, to say nothing of my brain.”

“I was just about to make coffee,” Consuelo said, jumping up. “I was waiting for the cinnamon rolls to bake.”

Glory’s eyes lit up. “Cinnamon rolls? Real ones? Homemade ones?”

Consuelo laughed. “Yes.”

Glory slid into a chair. “What a lucky day for me, when Señor Ramirez hired you!” she said. “The closest I can come to cinnamon rolls is to buy frozen ones at the store and heat them up. You’ll spoil me.”

The older woman wiped her eyes and smiled. She got busy with the coffee.

L
ATER, IT OCCURRED TO
Glory that there might have been a dark motive for Marco’s need of immediate cash. She noticed that both he and Castillo spent a lot of their free time talking to each other. She wished she had some decent way to find out what they were saying. But what really bothered her was that Rodrigo was frequently involved in those conversations.

She wished she could call Marquez and talk to him confidentially about what she was learning, but she was wary of using any sort of communication around the house. Consuelo had said weeks ago that Rodrigo kept an arsenal of electronic devices in his room. He might have the ability to monitor conversations. It wouldn’t do for him to get too curious about why a wage earner in his employ was having clandestine conversations with a San Antonio police detective.

M
OST OF THE WORKERS
spent their weekends at their own homes in a local trailer park. But on Saturday afternoon she and Consuelo were pressed into labor helping put up lanterns and streamers for a small fiesta on the farm. A mariachi band had been hired and the men had thrown together a large wooden platform for dancing.

It had been years since Glory had been to any sort of party. She got caught up in the excitement. She remembered how desperately she’d wanted to go to her junior and senior prom, but by then she was too shy and nervous around boys to feel comfortable with one. Which was just as well, because not one boy asked her out during the whole time she was in high school, thanks to the malicious Internet gossip about her.

In college, things had been a little bit different. She tried, she really tried, to make friends and be outgoing. But she learned on her first date that the world outside Jacobsville, Texas, was very different. Her date took her to have a meal in a nice restaurant, and then he tried to take her into a motel room. When persuasion and ridicule didn’t work, he tried force. By then, she was living with the Pendletons. She fought her way out of the car, pulled out her cell phone and dialed Jason Pendleton’s number. By the time she hung up, her erstwhile date had escaped in a spray of gravel. Shortly thereafter he transferred to another school. Jason never told Glory what he’d done to the boy. She never asked, either.

Rodrigo came out of the house just as it started getting dark. He was wearing black slacks with a white cotton shirt. He looked elegant and dangerously sensuous. Glory, in a simple white peasant dress full of handmade embroidery, had let her long blond hair down and even put on a tiny amount of makeup. She knew she’d never be able to compete with other women in any physical way, but she hoped she looked nice enough not to spoil the party.

Rodrigo came up to her at the refreshment table she and Consuelo and a couple of the workers’ wives had helped fill. He smelled clean and spicy. Glory smiled at him with the excitement of the evening making her face radiant. He stared at her for a moment. She did look so much like Sarina with her hair down. She wasn’t as pretty, but she had her own attractions just the same.

“We’ve invited all the workers,” he told Glory. “A sort of thank-you for the hard work they’ve done this season. That goes double for the two of you, although your jobs are far from over.”

“We like job security,” Glory said for Consuelo, who nodded, grinning.

“Just as well,” he chuckled. “We’re picking more peaches next week.”

There was a mutual groan.

“What was that about liking job security?” he teased.

Their answers were drowned out by the start up of the mariachi band. The deep, throbbing echo of the guitars and the trumpet drew everyone around to listen. It was an old Mexican folk song that they were playing, and as if on cue, everyone started singing it.

Rarely in her life had Glory felt so much a part of anything. She’d grown fond of the workers in the time she’d spent here. They were humble, happy, compassionate people, far more concerned with the welfare and happiness of their families than with material wealth. Jason did pay them well, she knew, but they weren’t obsessed with their paychecks.

“It makes me feel good,” she said when the song ended, “to see everyone so happy.”

Rodrigo looked down at her. “Yes. It feels good.”

She smiled shyly at him as the music began again. This time it was a slow dance. Couples began to gather on the wooden platform, close together against the faint chill of evening.

She was leaning on her cane, but she was hoping Rodrigo might ask her to dance. She could, even if only for a little while. She’d always loved to dance.

But his attention was caught by an SUV pulling up in the driveway. He went immediately to it. The driver’s side door opened, and a pretty woman in a flowing white skirt and red blouse with long blond hair jumped out and hugged him. That embrace went through Glory like knives. It was that blonde woman again, the one who’d come to see Rodrigo soon after Glory’s arrival here.

Rodrigo gestured toward the band, took the blonde’s hand and tugged her, laughing, onto the dance floor.

Glory hated the resentment and jealousy she felt, watching them cling to each other among the gaily clad couples. She shouldn’t be jealous of a man who managed her stepbrother’s farms and ranches. He wasn’t right for her. She refused to remember that he spoke several languages and was very intelligent. She was trying to ward off more heartache.

The blonde woman was laughing merrily as they danced. Rodrigo looked as if he’d landed in heaven. Then the mariachis ended the slow dance and played a salsa rhythm. Rodrigo took the blonde by the waist, her hand in his, and he demonstrated that managing other men wasn’t the only thing at which he excelled. Glory had never seen a man move like that on a dance floor. He was elegant. His steps were fluid, his movements exactly with the rhythm of the band. He interpreted the music with a natural pulse of steps that the blonde followed effortlessly, as if they’d danced together many times before this. The other couples, entranced, backed away and stood clapping, laughing, as the duo danced to the music.

All too soon, it was over. They held each other, laughing breathlessly, as the workers crowded around them.

“What a long face,” Consuelo murmured, pausing beside Glory. “What has made you so sad?”

Glory glanced involuntarily at Rodrigo and his guest.

“Oh, it’s that one.”

“Yes.” It was painful to see Rodrigo smiling, laughing. He was such a sad person around the farm. She felt sorry for him. But when she looked closely, it was apparent that it was Rodrigo who was enchanted, not the woman. She was only friendly. But what was she doing here, if she was happily married?

As if in answer to that question, the blonde suddenly looked at her watch, turned and almost ran back to the SUV, with Rodrigo close behind. They spoke for just a few minutes, then she hugged him once more, climbed back into the SUV and sped away.

Rodrigo stood there, hands in his pockets, staring after her.

“Poor man,” Consuelo said sadly. “He tries to live in the past, for there is no room for him in her life now.”

“She’s pretty.”

Consuelo’s eyes popped. “And what are you, a clump of grass? There’s nothing wrong with you,
niña.
”

Glory’s drawn face lightened a little as she met Consuelo’s sympathetic gaze. She smiled. “Thanks.”

She turned back to the table to get a cup of punch. The band, she thought, was really good. The music was dreamy to listen to, even if you didn’t get asked to dance. The excitement she’d felt earlier was beginning to wear off. Suddenly all she wanted was to get away from everyone. She lifted her cup to her lips and sent a last, wistful glance at the wooden platform.

While she was watching the band, a lean, dark hand came over her shoulder, took the cup away and put it back on the table.

She turned, surprised. Rodrigo took the cane and propped it against the table. He wasn’t smiling. His face was drawn and somber. He took one of her small hands into his big one. “Dance with me,” he said in a deep, smooth tone.

Like a dreamer, she followed him slowly to the platform. He took her by the waist and lifted her onto it, and then into close, almost intimate contact with his lean, powerful body. One arm clasped her there, while his hand curled around hers and imprisoned it. She could feel his warm breath at her temple as he eased her into the sultry rhythm of the music.

Her heart ran away. She loved being held by him like this. It was as if the years dropped away and she was back in school again, excited by her first real date, hopeful of a sweet, caring relationship. She wouldn’t think about the other blonde, the one he wanted, or the hunger in his eyes when the woman had left. She was only able to think about the contact with him, the strength in his body as he took her weight and lured her closer.

She felt his legs brushing against hers. The closeness made her tremble with new needs, new hungers. Her fingers dug into his back against the thin shirt. She felt the muscles respond to her helpless movement, felt his body tauten against her.

He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes, her face, and saw every raw emotion she was feeling. His hand spread on her back, coaxing her even closer. She shivered.

His dark eyes took on a strange fire. He bent, sliding his cheek against hers. “Yes, you like this,” he whispered huskily. “You can’t hide it, can you?”

She couldn’t manage words. Her nails bit into him.

He pressed her hips slowly, sensually, into his and she shivered again. “I had forgotten how sweet this is,” he whispered. “Your body clings to mine as if you were made for me. I can feel your breath against my throat, the caress of your hands at my back. If we were alone,
mi vida,
I would crush your mouth under mine and hold you so close that you would not be able to breathe unless I breathed with you.”

No man had ever said such things to her, not in her whole life. She shivered again, helpless, unable to hide herself. Both her arms had gone around him under his arms, and her hands were digging into the hard muscles of his back. She felt as if every cell in her body was swollen and throbbing with passion. She ached for an end to the growing tension that made her almost sick with its intensity.

His own arms closed around her. His face buried itself in the soft, thick hair over her shoulder. “Relax,” he teased softly. “You vibrate like a drum. I won’t hurt you.”

“I…I know that,” she managed. Her voice didn’t sound familiar at all.

“You think that limp makes you unattractive to men,” he mused at her ear. “When it only makes you sexier. I like having you lean on me. Although I am sorry for the reason you limp.”

She loved the smell of his body. She laid her cheek against his broad, hair-roughened chest, there in the opening of his shirt. She wondered how it would feel against her bare body, and she almost gasped at the direction her thoughts were taking.

“And what forbidden dreams are producing that little whisper of dismay, eh?” he asked at her ear. He turned, pulling her even closer, and laughed softly. “Don’t tighten up like that. Life is for living. It is a celebration, not a wake.”

“I don’t know much about celebrating,” she managed in a breathless tone.

He lifted his head and looked down into her soft green eyes. “Perhaps it is time you learned,” he whispered. As he spoke, his gaze fell to her pretty, soft mouth with its faint tint of pink. “And not only about celebrating,” he added, as his head began to bend.

She hung there, trembling, aching, vulnerable, wanting nothing more than to feel that hard, sensual mouth crushing down on hers. Her eyes half closed. She’d been attracted to him from the very beginning. It seemed he might feel the same way. Her heart almost exploded with joy as she felt the first, brief, exquisite brush of his hard mouth over her soft one.

He moved slowly, barely tasting her, nibbling at her upper lip and then nipping it with his teeth. He laughed when she jerked away.

“So you don’t like it when I bite?” he mused. “Okay. I’ll do it your way.” He bent again, nudging her into a secluded area where the shadows engulfed them. “Like this, then,
querida…
”

He kissed her very tenderly, hardly touching her with his mouth until her lips began to follow his. And then, breath by breath, he increased the pressure and the passion until she was moaning softly. Then he crushed his mouth down over hers, arched her into his tall, powerful body and kissed her so hard that it felt as if the world had dropped out from under her altogether. She clung to him, whimpering.