Mercenary's Woman (2 page)

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MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

13

That eyebrow lifted again. "Habit. How's Jess?" She frowned.
"Do you know my aunt Jessie?''

"Quite
well," he said. "I knew your uncle Hank. He
and I served
together."

"In the military?"

He didn't answer her, "Do you have a gun?"

She was so confused
that she stammered. "Wh...
what?"

"A gun," he
repeated. "Do you have any sort of
weapon and can you use it?"

"I don't like
guns," she said flatly. "Anyway, I won't
have one in the
house with a six-year-old child, so it's no
use telling me to buy one."

He was thinking. His
face tautened. "How about self-
defense?"

"I teach second
grade," she pointed out. "Most of my
students don't attack me."

"I'm not
worried about you at school. I told you, I don't
like the look of your neighbors."
He wasn't adding that
he knew who they were and why they were in town.

"Neither do
I," she admitted, "But it's none of your
business..."

"It is," he
returned. "I promised Hank that I'd take
care of Jess if he ever bought it
overseas. I keep my prom
ises."

"I can take care of my aunt."

"Not anymore you
can't," he returned, unabashed.
"I'm coming over tomorrow."

"I may not be home..."

"Jess will be.
Besides, tomorrow is Saturday," he said.
"You came in for supplies this afternoon and you don't
teach on the weekend. You'll be home."
His tone said
she'd better be.

She gave an exasperated sound. "Mr. Scott..."

"I'm only Mr. Scott to my enemies," he pointed out

"Yes, well, Mr. Scott..."

He let out an angry
sigh and stared her down. "You
were so young," he bit off. "What
did you expect me to
do, seduce you in the cab of a pickup truck in broad day
light?"

She flushed red as a
rose petal. "I wasn't talking about
that!"

"It's still in your eyes," he
told her quietly. "I'd rather
have done
it in a way that hadn't left so many scars, but
I had to discourage you. The whole damned thing was
impossible, you must have realized that by
now!"

She hated the
embarrassment she felt. "I don't have
scars!"

"You do."
He studied her oval face, her softly rounded
chin, her perfect mouth. "I'll
be over tomorrow. I need to
talk to you and Jess. There have been some developments
that she doesn't know
about."

"What sort of developments?"

He closed the hood
of the truck and paused by her win
dow. "Drive carefully," he said,
ignoring the question.
"And get that tire changed."

"I am not a charity case," she
said curtly. "I don't take
orders. And
I definitely do not need some big, strong man
to take care of me!"

He smiled, but it wasn't a pleasant smile.
He turned on
his heel and walked back to his
own truck with a stride
that was
peculiarly his own.

Sally was so shaken
that she barely managed to get the
truck out of town without stripping the gears
out of it.

Jessica Myers was in
her bedroom listening to the radio and her son, Stevie, was watching a children's
after-school

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DIANA PALMER

15

television program when Sally came in. She
unloaded the
supplies first
with the help of her six-year-old cousin.

"You got me that
cereal from the TV commercial!" he
exclaimed, diving into bags as she put the
perishable items into the refrigerator. "Thanks, Aunt Sally!"
Although they
were cousins, he referred to her as his aunt out of affection
and respect.

"You're very welcome. I got some ice cream, too."

"Wow! Can I have some now?"

Sally laughed.
"Not until after supper, and you have to
eat some of everything I fix.
Okay?"

"Aw. Okay, I
guess," he muttered, clearly disap
pointed.

She bent and kissed
him between his dark eyes. "That's my good boy. Here, I brought some nice
apples and pears.
Wash one off and eat it. Fruit is good for you."

"Okay. But it's not as nice as ice cream."

He washed off a pear
and carried it into the living room
on a paper towel to watch television.

Sally went into
Jessica's bedroom, hesitating at the foot
of the big four-poster bed. Jessica was
slight, blond and
hazel-eyed. Her eyes stared at nothing, but she smiled as
she recognized Sally's step.

"I heard the
truck," she said. "I'm sorry you had to go
to town for supplies after working all day
and bringing Stevie home first."

"I never mind
shopping," Sally said with genuine af
fection. "You doing all right?"

Jessica shifted on the
pillows. She was dressed in
sweats, but she looked bad. "I still have some pain
from the wreck. I've taken a couple of aspirins for my hip. I
thought I'd lie down
and give them a chance to work,"

Sally came in and sat down in the wing chair beside the

bed. "Jess, Ebenezer Scott asked about you and said he
was coming over
tomorrow to see you."

Jessica didn't seem at all surprised. She only nodded.
"I thought he
might," Jessica said quietly. "I had a call
from a former
colleague about what's going on. I'm afraid
I may have landed you in some major trouble,
Sally."
"I don't understand."

"Didn't you wonder why I insisted
on moving down
here so suddenly?"

"Now that you
mention it—"

"It was because Ebenezer is here, and we're safer than
we would be in
Houston."
"Now you're scaring me."

Jessica smiled sadly. "I wouldn't have had this happen
for the world. It isn't something that comes
up, usually.
But these are odd
circumstances. A man I helped put in prison is out pending retrial, and he's
coming after me."
"You...helped
put a man in prison? How?" Sally
asked,
perplexed.

"You knew that I worked for a government agency?"
"Well, of
course. As a clerk."

Jessica took a deep breath. "No, dear. Not as a clerk."
She took a deep breath. "I was a special
agent for an
agency we don't mention
publicly. Through Eb and his
contacts,
I managed to find one of the confidants of drug
lord Manuel Lopez, who was head of an international drag
cartel. I was given enough hard evidence to send
Lopez to
prison for drug dealing. I
even had copies of his ledgers.
But
there was one small loophole in the chain of evidence,
and the drug
lord's attorneys jumped on it. Lopez is now
out
of prison and he wants the person responsible for help
ing me put him away. Since I'm the only one who
knows
the person's identity, I'm the one he'll be coming after."
Sally just sat there, dumbfounded. Things like this only

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MERCENARY'S WOMAN

DIANA PALMER

17

happened in movies. They certainly didn't happen in real
life. Her beloved aunt surely wasn't involved in
espionage!

"You're kidding, right?" Sally asked hopefully.

Jessica shook her
head slowly. She was still an attractive
woman, in her middle thirties. She was
slender and she
had a sweet face. Stevie, blond and dark-eyed, didn't favor her. Of
course, he didn't favor his father, either. Hank had
had black hair and light blue eyes.

"I'm sorry,
dear," Jessica said heavily. "I'm not kid
ding. I'm not able
to protect myself or you and Stevie
anymore, so I had to come home for help.
Ebenezer will
keep us safe until we can get the drug lord back on ice,"

"Is Ebenezer a
government agent?'' Sally asked,
astounded.

"No."
Jessica took a deep breath. "I don't like telling you this, and he won't
like it, either. It's deeply private. You must swear not to tell another
soul."

"I swear."
She sat patiently, almost vibrating with cu
riosity.

"Eb was a
professional mercenary," she said. "What
they used to call a
soldier of fortune. He's led groups of
highly trained men in covert operations all
over the world.
He's retired from that now, but he's still much in demand
with our government
and foreign governments as a training
instructor. His ranch is well-known in covert
circles as an
academy of
tactics and intelligence-gathering."

Sally didn't say a
word. She was absolutely speechless.
No wonder Ebenezer had been so secretive, so
reluctant to
let her get close to him. She remembered the tiny white
scars on his lean,
tanned face, and knew instinctively that there would be more of them under his
clothing. No won
der he kept
to himself!

"I hope I haven't
shattered any illusions, Sally," her aunt said worriedly. "I know how
you felt about him."

Sally gaped at her. "You...know?"

Jessica nodded.
"Eb told me about that, and about what
happened just before you came to live with Hank and me
in Houston."

Her face flamed. The
shame! She felt sick with humiliation that Ebenezer had known how she felt all
the time,
and she thought she
was doing such a good job of hiding
it! She
should have realized that it was obvious, when she
found excuse after excuse to waylay him in town,
when
she brazenly climbed into his
pickup truck one lovely
spring
afternoon and pleaded to be taken for a ride. He'd given in to that request, to
her surprise. But barely half an
hour
later, she'd erupted from the passenger seat and run
almost all the half-mile down the road to her
home. Too
ashamed to let anyone see
the state she was in, she'd
sneaked
in the back door and gone straight to her room.
She'd never told her parents or anyone else what had hap
pened.
Now she wondered if Jessica knew that, too.

"He didn't divulge any secrets, if
that's why you're so
quiet, Sally,"
the older woman said gently. "He only said
that you had a king-size crush on him and he'd shot you
down. He was pretty upset."

That was news.
"I wouldn't ever have guessed that he
could be upset."

"Neither would
I," Jessica said with a smile. "It came
as something of a
surprise. He told me to keep an eye on
you, and check out who you went out with. He
could have saved himself the trouble, of course, since you never went
out with anyone. He
was bitter about that."

Sally averted her face to the window.
"He frightened
me."

"He knew that. It's why he was bitter."
Sally drew in a
steadying breath. "I was very young,"
she said finally, "and I suppose
he did the only thing he

MERCENARY'S
WOMAN

could. But I was leaving Jacobsville
anyway, when my
parents divorced. I only had a week of school before grad
uation before I went
to live with you. He didn't have to go to such lengths."

"My brother
still feels like an idiot for the way he behaved with that college girl he
left your mother for," Jes
sica said curtly, meaning Sally's father,
who was Jessica's
only living relative besides Sally. "It didn't help that your
mother remarried barely six months later.
He was stuck with Beverly the Beauty."

"How are my
parents?" Sally asked. It was the first
time she'd mentioned either of her
parents in a long while, She'd lost touch with them since the divorce that had
shat
tered
her life.

"Your father spends most of his time
at work while
Beverly goes the party route
every night and spends every
penny he
makes. Your mother is separated from her second
husband and living in Nassau." Jessica shifted on the bed
"You don't ever hear from your parents, do
you?"

"I don't resent them as much as I
did. But I never felt
that they loved
me," she said abruptly. "That's why I felt
it was better we went our separate ways."

"They were
children when they married and had you,"
the other woman said. "Not
really mature enough for the
responsibility. They resented it, too. That's why you
spent
so
much time with me during the first five years you were
alive." Jessica smiled. "I hated
it when you went back
home."

"Why did you and
Hank wait so long to have a child of your own?" Sally asked.

Jessica flushed.
"It wasn't...convenient, with Hank
overseas so much. Did you get that tire replaced?" she
added, almost as if she were desperate to change
the sub
ject.

DIANA PALMER
                                    
19

"You and Mr. Scott!" Sally
exploded, diverted. "How
did you know it
was bald?"

"Because Eb
phoned me before you got home and told
me to remind you to get it replaced,"
Jessica chuckled.

"I suppose he has a cell phone in his truck."

"Among other
things," Jessica replied with a smile.
"He isn't like the men you knew in
college or even when
you
started teaching. Eb is an alpha male," she said qui
etly. "He isn't politically correct, and he
doesn't even pre
tend to conform. In some ways, he's very
old-fashioned."

"I don't feel
that way about him anymore," Sally said
firmly.

"I'm sorry,"
Jessica replied gently. "He's been alone most of his life. He needs to be
loved."

Sally picked at a
cuticle, chipping the clear varnish on
her short, neat fingernails. "Does he
have family?"

"Not anymore.
His mother died when he was very
young, and his father was career military. He grew up in the army,
you might say. His father was not a gentle sort
of man. He died in combat when Eb was in his twenties.
There wasn't any other family."

"You said once that you always saw
Ebenezer with
beautiful women at social
events," Sally recalled with a
touch
of envy.

"He pays for
dressing, and he attracts women. But he's careful about his infrequent liaisons.
He told me once that
he guessed he'd never find a woman who could share the
life he leads. He still has enemies who'd like to see him
dead," she
added.

"Like this drug
lord?"

"Yes. Manuel
Lopez is a law unto himself. He has mil
lions, and he owns politicians, law
enforcement people,
even judges," Jessica said irritably. "That's
why we were
never able to shut him down. Then I was told that a con-