Fearless (10 page)

That disconcerted him. He blinked, then scowled. “Jealous of a cop?” he scoffed.

“Hurts your ego, doesn’t it?” she persisted, “that I went from you to him. Would you like to know how he compares as a lover? Ooh!”

Even in their brief intimacy, he’d never kissed her like this. He enveloped her against his tall, muscular body so that she could feel it against every inch of her own soft one. His mouth devoured hers, probing, insistent, hungry for a response. She gave him one because she couldn’t help herself. He was the only man she’d ever wanted.

Her arms went under his and around him. She moaned huskily as the kiss escalated into areas of sensuality she’d never experienced.

Groaning, he backed her into the wall and pushed down against her, so that she could feel the growing evidence of his desire for her.

Her soft hands tugged at his shirt and eased their way under it, up against the warm, strong muscles of his back. She felt them ripple at her touch. Without lifting his mouth, he coaxed them to the front, to the thickness of hair on his chest while he, too, worked at fastenings. Seconds later, she felt her breasts bury themselves in that thick hair, enjoying the exquisite feel of skin on skin. In the silence of the house, the only sounds were those of ragged breathing and faint moans.

She didn’t hear her cane fall. She hardly noticed when he swung her up in his arms and carried her down the hall to her room.

He locked the door behind him and fell with her onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs and clothing that soon merged into an urgent, hard rhythm.

She felt him inside her with a sense of wonder. He was very aroused, even more so than their first time. He lost control quickly. It wasn’t planned. He drove for satisfaction, groaned harshly as he felt her body arching up to accept him, pleading for more, more…more!

His last conscious thought was that she was so aroused that he wasn’t sure that he could manage to satisfy her…

S
HE COULDN’T STOP TREMBLING
. He hadn’t managed to ease the terrible tension he’d aroused in her. She felt him reach his peak and lay shivering and crying under him with her own frustration.

“Shhh,” he whispered at her ear. He moved against her, very slowly, feeling her surge up to him, pleading.

“I didn’t…” she choked.

“I know. Easy,
querida,
” he whispered deeply. “Easy. Move with me. Don’t be so impatient. I won’t stop until I satisfy you. I promise. Do what I tell you.”

She had to fight to slow down. But when she did, she understood. It was frightening, the way it increased her pleasure. Every movement of his hips was sweet anguish. Every kiss against the softness of her breasts brought a wave of delight. As he moved, her long legs curled around his, feeling the power and strength of them as he shifted his weight.

“It wasn’t like this, before,” she whispered frantically.

“I know.” He didn’t sound pleased. His voice was rough. His movements were fierce, demanding. “Don’t talk. Lift up to me. Hard. Hard!”

She obeyed him in a rapturous fog that denied the pain in her hip, the stupidity of letting him this close again.

“That’s it,” he whispered. He nipped at her shoulder as the soft noises they made grew quicker and louder. “Yes!” He caught her thigh in his hand and pulled it up. The sensations he felt were almost frightening. He felt her shudder, heard her cry of surprise as the pleasure notched up another level.

“Oh…!” she cried out, arching. “Oh! I…can’t…!”

The rhythm was frantic now, not controlled or contrived. He moved up, pushed harder, harder, as a red wave of pleasure started to envelope him.

Her nails dug into him. She opened her eyes, shocked as she saw the taut, frozen contours of his face above her.

“Yes,” he whispered roughly. “Watch me…!”

She couldn’t close her eyes. The pleasure shook them both, convulsed them in a free-form work of art as they joined, closed and then riveted themselves into one human being.

His mouth crushed down on hers as she screamed, a husky, high-pitched helpless sign of the unbearable pleasure he was forcing her to feel. She arched, convulsed, arched again. And all the while she looked at him, letting her eyes fill with the beauty of his face, his body, as he drove into her and finally began to shudder.

“¡Dios…mio!”
he cried out just as the convulsions brought him almost to unconsciousness.

She bit his shoulder helplessly. She, too, was drowning in a sea of pleasure so vast that she felt it would never end. She heard her own harsh sobs as she burst into wave after wave of delight.

But it did end. Slowly the world came back into focus, and it was over. The brief, beautiful explosion of joy was gone. They lay together in a tangled, damp heap, shivering in the aftermath. She felt her heartbeat increase dangerously and concentrated on slow, steady breathing to bring it down. She’d never felt such sensations in her life.

He was looking at the ceiling. He hated himself for giving in once more to this weakness. She wasn’t like him. She would never fit into his world. She was getting involved with a cop and his whole operation was in jeopardy. And now, out of jealousy he’d never admit feeling, he’d just doubled his chances of making her pregnant. It didn’t make him feel much better to realize how much she’d enjoyed him this time. And how much he’d enjoyed her.

“Do describe how Marquez compares with me,” he invited darkly.

She was trying to get her mind to work. It was sluggish. “I couldn’t tell you,” she confessed. “I’ve never slept with him.”

He didn’t know how he felt about that. Proud, maybe? Arrogant? He stretched, feeling his muscles ache from the tension they’d been under.

He rolled over and looked down at her. He’d tossed her glasses onto the bedside table when they’d ended up here. Her long blond hair was tangled around her flushed face. Her big, green eyes were wide and curious.

He pushed the tangled hair away from her cheek and the corner of her mouth. “You’re improving.”

She sighed heavily as she stared up at him. Her eyes were accusing.

“I know. It’s all my fault,” he murmured. He bent and kissed her softly. “I sowed my wild oats a long time ago. I’m not usually so easy to arouse.”

She wanted to comment that his wild ride avoiding the police might have had a hand in his loss of control, surging adrenaline making him vulnerable, but she didn’t dare.

“You could have said no,” he pointed out.

“No, I couldn’t,” she said in a conversational tone. “You wouldn’t stop kissing me long enough.”

He shrugged his broad, darkly tanned shoulders. Muscles rippled there, where one of her hands was resting. “It’s addictive.”

She knew it was addictive. She couldn’t refuse him. It was worrying, when she’d been afraid of men for most of her life and singularly unattracted to just about every man she’d ever known. Then here came this farm worker and she couldn’t get out of her clothes fast enough. It was demeaning, in a way.

“Do I detect the sound of mental flogging?” he asked.

She bit down hard on a laugh that escaped anyway. “You can’t expect me to be proud of the way I react to you,” she pointed out. “I was happy with my life until you came along and totally uprooted it.”

He traced her thin eyebrows with his forefinger. “I have noticed your lack of restraint,” he commented with amusement. His eyes met hers in the dim light of the room. “We’ve doubled our chances of producing a child.”

“I did notice.”

“What do you suggest that we do about it?” he persisted.

It was a question she didn’t want to answer. In fact, she didn’t know how to answer it. Part of her wanted the child. Another part was scared, not only of having a child but of the hidden Rodrigo, the drug dealer who might end up in prison. Worse, she might be instrumental in helping to put him there. She’d witnessed him leave the warehouse in the company of Castillo, running from a police car. She’d have to testify.

While she was struggling with that question, the theme song from the Mexican soccer team, from the World Cup in 2006, blared out from somewhere on the floor.

“Damn!” he breathed softly.

He got out of bed, gathering up his slacks. He dug into the pocket and answered it. “Yes?”

There was a long pause.

“I know,” he added.

There was another pause.

“He’d better hope he can outrun me on the way to the border,” he replied. “You can tell him I said that. Yes. I’ll talk to you later.”

He closed the phone. Distracted, he dressed quickly and gathered up her clothing, dropping it onto the coverlet which she’d pulled up over her body.

He paused at the head of the bed and stood just looking at her. “When things settle down around here, we’re going to have a long talk.”

“About what?”

He sighed. “I don’t really know. But if there’s a child, you know we have to make decisions.”

“That would be a very long shot,” she lied. “I’ve had no symptoms of pregnancy.”

He felt oddly disappointed, but he knew it was for the best. The last thing he wanted was to be tied to this woman for the rest of his life by a child he wouldn’t be able to deny. Even though he wanted a child very badly, Glory was, frankly, not the sort of woman he’d want for its mother. He thought of Sarina and he felt sick all over. It was almost like commiting adultery, he reflected. He felt guilty.

“That’s good,” he said after a minute. He hesitated. “I never meant this to happen.”

“I know. Neither did I.”

He reached down and brushed his mouth gently over her damp forehead. “You were right about one thing.”

“What thing?” she asked.

“I was jealous,” he confessed.

He opened the door and pulled it shut behind him with quick finality.

Glory lay in the soft semidarkness thinking how easily she walked into traps of her own making.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, G
LORY
was still flogging herself for the night before. She had to stop letting Rodrigo walk up on her blind side. She was almost certainly pregnant. She needed to talk to a doctor before she was too advanced and see just how much of a risk she would be taking if she decided to have the baby. The longer she felt the symptoms, the more attached she became to the tiny thing growing inside her. She wanted it with all her heart, regardless of the complications it would mean to her physically, as well as to her job.

Meanwhile, she noticed that Consuelo was oddly nervous. She kept pulling out her cell phone and checking to make sure it worked. In between, she worked with some distraction, once even forgetting to put sugar in the fruit they were canning.

“What’s wrong?” Glory asked gently. “Is there something I can do to help?”

The older woman looked at her oddly. She grimaced. “I wish I had known someone like you many years ago,” she said enigmatically. “It seemed that the whole world turned against me. I had nobody who even offered help.”

Glory smiled gently. “You know I’d do anything I could for you.”

That, strangely, seemed to make the older woman even more uncomfortable. Her teeth clamped tight. “Thank you,” she said tightly. “But it’s too late.”

Before Glory could ask another question, Consuelo’s cell phone rang. The woman almost popped it into the boiling fruit as she fumbled to open it.
“¿Sí?”
she said at once. She listened, winced, glanced at Glory and winced again.
“¿Lo es absolutamente necesario? ¿Estás seguro?”
She hesitated, listened, and finally said,
“Sí,”
again and hung up.

“It’s something bad, isn’t it?” Glory asked quietly.

“Yes,” came the reply. Consuelo dried her hands and took off her apron. She wouldn’t meet Glory’s eyes. “I have to go out, just for a few minutes, to the store for…for more supplies. You can manage here alone, yes?”

“Of course.” Glory took Consuelo’s place at the stove, stirring the fruit. She forced a smile that she didn’t feel. Something was very wrong, and Glory was almost certain it had to do with herself. “Don’t rush. I’ll be fine.”

The older woman flashed her a look of utter horror. “You…you be careful, okay?” she stammered. “I won’t belong.”

“Okay.”

Consuelo went out the door without looking back. Glory heard her car start, and then speed away.

She turned off the stove at once, her heart pounding. She wasn’t sure what she knew, but she sensed danger all around her. Her job had made her more sensitive to danger, especially now. Consuelo’s erratic behavior was too disturbing to ignore. She moved quickly to her room, locked her door and punched in Cash Grier’s office number on her cell phone. Before it even started to ring, she heard the back door open with a slam.

“Where is she?” a young male voice demanded.

“How should I know?” another replied tersely. “Look for her!”

She hung up and dialed the emergency services number.

“Jacobs County Dispatch. May I help you?”

Glory gave her information succinctly. “I’m alone and unarmed and there are some men in the house,” she said. “I think they mean to hurt me.”

“Two minutes,” the dispatcher said. “Stay on the line.”

In the background she heard the alarm go out to local police. There was static, the dispatcher’s steady, firm voice, and a clear, answering “10-76” in a deep voice, followed by a wailing siren that she heard simultaneously on the phone and outside. There must be a squad car nearby if the dispatcher said he could make it to Glory in two minutes. It was a big county.

Now if the police just made it in time…!

There were heavy footsteps, muttered curses when they tried the locked bedroom door. Glory moved barefooted to behind the door and lifted her cane over her head. If anybody managed to break in that heavy old door, she was going to get in the first blow. Damn Fuentes! She thought furiously. Damn him for a coward, sending other people to do his dirty work for him!

What sounded like a boot slamming into the door echoed in the hall, but it didn’t budge. Then a shoulder hit the door, with the same result. She heard curses in Spanish and then, suddenly, furiously, gunshots went right into the door, where she would have been standing if she hadn’t gotten the idea to ambush her attackers. One of the bullets shattered the wood around the doorknob and another took out the keyhole.

“Got you now, blondie!” the drawling voice carried.

But even as the door started to open, the siren grew loud and a car could be heard racing up to the porch. Her heart was racing, too. The old familiar pain came with it, stinging down her left arm. But she was full of bravado, nevertheless.

“What the hell…!” one of the voices exclaimed.

“It’s the heat! She called the cops!”

“And now you can try shooting at them!” she raged.

“I’ll get you next time!” a cold, angry voice in accented Spanish came through the wood. “I swear I will!”

“Like hell you will!” muttered a new, deeply drawling male voice.

There were thuds and running feet, a gunshot that sounded farther away than the hall, and then even louder thuds echoed in the hall. Then there was silence.

“Ma’am, are you still on the line?” the dispatcher asked worriedly.

“Yes,” Glory assured her. “There’s fighting in the hall and a gunshot outside. I’m locked in my bedroom.”

“Just stay there.”

“You bet!”

Another exclamation, another thud. Then silence.

There was a knock on the door. She heard the same deep voice that had answered the intruder. “Ma’am, it’s the police. You okay in there?”

She didn’t know whether or not to answer.

There was static outside the door and she heard the same voice come over the line when the dispatcher answered the call.

“It’s really the police,” the dispatcher assured her. “You can open the door now.”

“Thanks,” Glory said huskily. “Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure.”

Glory hung up the phone and opened the door, carefully. A tall, powerful looking police officer with black hair and glittery pale gray eyes was towering above her. He noted the upraised cane.

“Oops. Sorry,” she said, lowering it to her side. “Sorry.”

He managed a faint smile. “Going to brain the guy, huh? I don’t know if it would have helped, he’s so thick-skulled.”

She moved out into the hall and noted, shakily, that a man was facedown on the floor with his hands cuffed behind him. She knew before they turned him over and helped him up that it was Marco.

He glared at her with hateful black eyes. “I’ll be out by morning, blondie,” he spat at her. “And you’ll be dead by night!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bet on that,” the policeman drawled.

“No, me either,” his younger companion, also in uniform, agreed. He had blond hair and a nice smile. “You okay, ma’am?”

“I’m fine, thanks to both of you,” she replied.

“Do you know this man?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s our cook’s son.”

“There are bullet holes through your door there. Was he trying to shoot you?” the first officer asked.

She hesitated. She didn’t dare tell them the truth. Marco knew that, and he was grinning in a sarcastic fashion.

“I don’t know,” she lied.

Marco only laughed. “Smart girl,” he said.

The officers were looking suspicious. Glory looked past them, and Cash Grier walked in. “I just got word,” he told Glory. He looked at his two patrol officers. “Take him by the dentention center. We’ll charge him with aggravated assault. I’ll walk her through the statement.”

“I never tried to hurt her!” Marco argued. “I only wanted to talk to her.”

Cash looked pointedly at the bullet holes that went through Glory’s bedroom door. “Badly, apparently,” he said.

“It’s her word against mine,” Marco said smugly. “I’ll be out in twenty-four hours. I get to call my lawyer, right?”

Fuentes would have the best lawyers money could buy. Glory had never felt so frustrated. She glared at Marco. It would almost have been worth blowing her cover to charge him with attempted murder and give the reason, which would lead back to the man she was certain he worked for—Fuentes.

“Take him out of here,” Cash told the officers. “I’ll be along.”

They walked Marco down the hall.

Glory leaned against the door facing, catching her breath. Her heart was pounding, and she had pain down her arm.

“Sit down,” Cash said, easing her into a chair just inside her room. “Do you have medicine?”

She shook her head. “Not with me.” It was hard to breathe. Harder to talk.

“I can call an ambulance.”

She swallowed. That would complicate things even more. She concentrated on breathing steadily. Slowly the pain began to ebb. She looked up at Cash. “I’ll be all right,” she said softly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had this problem.”

“It’s angina, isn’t it?” he asked.

She nodded. “They gave me nitroglycerin tablets,” she said, pausing to breathe again. “But I’d rather do anything…than take them. They hurt my head.”

He leaned against the dresser, frowning. “Knowing your medical history, I have to wonder if you’re suicidal, considering your line of work.”

“How odd,” she mused. “That’s exactly what my doctor said.”

“Maybe you should listen to him. Right now, I’m all for putting you in a safe house under protective custody.”

She shook her head. “If you do that, Fuentes wins. Marco missed. He thinks he’ll walk. Now Fuentes will do his best to have Marco killed, too. He doesn’t forgive slipups.”

“You think? I’m wondering why a man as dangerous as Fuentes would send a drug-crazed teenage gang member to do a professional hit.”

She felt the blood drain out of her face. She hadn’t seen it. Now she realized that it was a setup. The real killer had sent Marco in to test the water, to see the reaction time of local law enforcement, to see how Glory would react.

“It was staged, wasn’t it?” she asked, and horror was in her eyes.

“I think so,” he replied. “A test run.”

“Yes.” She managed to breathe normally again. “So what do we do now?”

Cash was thinking, hard. He wasn’t sure of anything, except that he wished he knew what the DEA was doing in Jacobs County. It had been one of Cash’s new men, the gray-eyed one who’d rushed to Glory’s aid, who’d ignored an order from the DEA to back off when a drug deal went down in Comanche Wells. Nobody knew exactly who the undercover agent was or what he was up to, and federal agencies tended not to share intel with local police unless they had to.

“What the hell is going on here?” came a familiar deep, faintly accented voice. Glory looked up and Rodrigo walked into the room. He looked at the bullet holes in the door, at Cash and then at Glory with real concern.
“Niña!”
he exclaimed gently, modifying his tone as he knelt beside her.
“¿Estás bien?”

Her heart jumped because he’d used the familiar tense, one that Spanish-speaking people only used with loved ones or children. She met his searching black eyes and felt safe. Unthinking, she held up her arms and he went into them, enveloping her against him, rocking her, smoothing her hair. She felt tears pour out of her eyes and hated showing weakness. But she’d been scared. Really scared. Her heart was still acting up. She felt vulnerable.

“What happened?” Rodrigo asked Cash.

“It’s a long story,” Cash replied. “I’m not at liberty to divulge what I know.”

Rodrigo’s eyes narrowed. He knew this man, and his contacts. He’d been chasing a drug lord, but someone was after Glory. He didn’t know why, and he knew it was useless to ask Cash. Plots within plots, he thought irritably. But at least he was used to secrets.

“Can you tell me who did this?” he asked.

“Marco,” Glory murmured against his chest. “Marco did it. Poor Consuelo!”

“Where is she?” Rodrigo asked.

“She had to run to the store. She had a phone call. She looked very strange when she hung up, and she said she had to go out,” Glory said, her voice muffled against the clean, nice-smelling front of Rodrigo’s chambray shirt.

Rodrigo looked into Cash’s eyes, and the other man knew at once who the DEA had working undercover here. He hadn’t recognized Rodrigo, whom he’d only seen in the dark during a standoff with Cara Dominguez several months ago. He’d rarely seen that look in another man’s face, but it was all too familiar. Rodrigo was obviously involved with Glory in some manner and he looked as if he wanted to take several bites out of Marco. He seemed fiercely protective of Glory. But Cash couldn’t blow Rodrigo’s cover—or Glory’s. If the situation had been a little less potentially fatal, it would have been comedy. Both of them were keeping dire secrets which, apparently, they weren’t willing to share with each other.

“Shhh,” Rodrigo whispered at Glory’s ear. “It’s all right. You’re safe. Nobody is going to hurt you here. Never again. I swear it.”

“I was thinking of having someone come over here to work for you, just to keep an eye on her,” Cash said.

Rodrigo glanced at him. “That was tried once before and it didn’t work. I’ll take care of her.”

It was a veiled warning. When Cash searched his memory, he began to remember other things he’d heard about this agent. The man had been involved in mercenary work for many years. He was so good at what he did that there was a price on his head in almost every country on earth. For the past three years, he’d worked for the DEA out of Arizona. He’d actually gone undercover in Manuel Lopez’s drug operation and helped bring the man down. More recently, he’d been instrumental in Cara Dominguez’s arrest and conviction. Now he was after Fuentes. Cash knew it, but he couldn’t admit it; certainly not in front of Glory.

“I was hiding behind the door when he tried to come in,” she muttered, wiping her eyes as she pulled gently away from Rodrigo’s comforting arms. “I was going to brain him with my cane. But he started shooting instead.”

“Thank God you were behind the door instead of in front of it,” Rodrigo said tersely.

“What will you do with Marco?” she asked Cash.