Safe with a Stranger
Linda Conrad
Rule #1: Stay out of it Josh Ryan knew he wasn't going to heed his own warning. A single mom and a baby on the run? Two men in hot pursuit? Josh's ranger training and his Texas roots left him no choice–he was hardwired to help. Rule #2: Do anything to save her But the battle-scarred ex-soldier didn't want to be a hero. And now the very worst had happened–he had fallen in too deep. Clare had gotten under his skin, and her little son was looking at him with adoring eyes.He'd broken the unwritten code, making Clare even more of a target in the process. To save her, he would have to do the unthinkable. He'd have to make her go….
Josh couldn’t remember the last time he’d really smiled.
His sense of humor had been AWOL for months—years, maybe.
“Thank you,” Clare said with a smile.
Without thinking, only needing to feel her warmth, he leaned in closer. “I don’t know what to say,” he murmured. He was hovering within an inch of those tantalizing lips, caught between a wish and a prayer.
“Say, ‘You’re welcome.’”
The soft whisper of air from her words fanned over his face as he closed his eyes and breathed her in. What would she do if he narrowed the gap between them and bent for a taste of those luscious lips?
He reached out and ended up grabbing a handful of air.
Hot damn. He should’ve known better.
Dear Reader,
June brings you four high-octane reads from Silhouette Romantic Suspense, just in time for summer. Steaming up your sunglasses is Nina Bruhns’s hot romance, Killer Temptation (#1516), which is the first of a thrilling new trilogy, SEDUCTION SUMMER. In this series, a serial killer is murdering amorous couples on the beach and no lover is safe. You won’t want to miss this sexy roller coaster ride! Stay tuned in July and August for Sheri White Feather’s and Cindy Dees’s heart-thumping contributions, Killer Passion and Killer Affair.
USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella enthralls readers with Protecting His Witness (#1515), the latest in her family saga, CAVANAUGH JUSTICE. Here, an undercover cop crosses paths with a secretive beauty who winds up being a witness to a mob killing. And then, can a single mother escape her vengeful ex and fall in love with her protector? Find out in Linda Conrad’s Safe with a Stranger (#1517), the first book in her miniseries, THE SAFEKEEPERS, which weaves family, witchcraft and danger into an exciting read. Finally, crank up your air-conditioning as brand-new author Jill Sorenson raises temperatures with Dangerous to Touch (#1518), featuring a psychic heroine and lawman, who work on a murder case and uncover a wild attraction.
This month is all about finding love against the odds and those adventures lurking around every corner. So as you lounge on the beach or in your favorite chair, lose yourself in one of these gems from Silhouette Romantic Suspense!
Sincerely,
Patience Smith
Senior Editor
LINDA CONRAD
was inspired by her mother, who gave her a deep love of storytelling. “Mom told me I was the best liar she ever knew. And that’s saying something for a woman with an Irish storyteller’s background,” Linda says. Linda has been writing contemporary romances for Silhouette Books for seven years. Besides telling stories, her passions are her husband and family, and finding the time to read cozy mysteries and emotional love stories. Linda keeps busy and is happy living in the sunshine near the Florida Keys. Visit Linda’s Web site at www.lindaconrad.com.
Safe with a Stranger
Linda Conrad
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To all women everywhere: these books are for you.
And to Janet Capps, whose ideas for Texas-sounding
names were superior. Thanks to her, we found
Larado Hinojosa and the interesting character
behind the name. Thanks Janet!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Nothing seemed off, yet everything felt wrong.
There were no eerie noises. No flashes of color. No lightning bolts to give her a clue. Still, Clare Chandler’s instincts told her this funky Houston bus station was about to be the end of their road.
But she refused to give up. Frustration warred with determination as she clutched her sleeping son in her arms and slinked backward into the shadows. So, they would miss this bus. There would be another in a couple of hours.
The danger she’d felt had been coming from those two men there by the bus benches, the ones in the suits and ties. They looked legit, but slightly out of place. Had they come for her and Jimmy?
She’d been so careful. Hadn’t used a credit card or a phone. Hadn’t slipped up and called Jimmy by that hard-to-spell name his father had given him.
Clare and her son had only just arrived in this country on the private plane her old boss had helped to charter. There could not have been time for anyone to locate them.
Clare was sure she hadn’t made any mistakes.
Nevertheless, her gut was telling her the worst had happened. She’d known her ex-husband, Ramzi, would come after them. After Jimmy. But she had hoped to reach the safety of her old college roommate’s Missouri home first.
Trying to stand perfectly still so they wouldn’t be spotted, Clare almost missed her two-year-old’s muffled cry. She settled him higher against her shoulder. In her head she began clicking off the possibilities for his distress, wanting to be the best mother ever.
“Are you wet, Jimmy?” she asked and checked his diaper.
Her baby squirmed in her arms, wide-awake now. “No!” He didn’t have many words in his vocabulary yet, but he knew what changing his diaper meant. She had very nearly managed to potty train Jimmy before it had been time to take her son and sneak away from the country of Abu Fujarah.
Ramzi had once said he thought she made a good mother, though that hadn’t seemed good enough to make him want to let her raise her own son. Clare let out a beleaguered breath, then stiffened her spine, determined to do everything right.
Jimmy crammed his fist into his mouth and whined. Ah, he was hungry again. And he was tired. If she didn’t do something about the hunger soon, he would start making a fuss. The last thing she needed was for Jimmy to throw a terrible-twos tantrum and draw the attention of everyone in the bus station.
Clare would never give up her son. Never. So she couldn’t simply walk into the busy restaurant in the station and let those goons take him away. There had to be someplace else nearby where they could eat.
Murmuring to soothe Jimmy, she inched along the wall in an attempt to stay away from the harsh fluorescent lights of the station’s main waiting room. She slipped out the side door into the starlight-spangled night.
Taking a breath of good ol’ Texas air—the pungent, hit-you-in-the-face-with-gas-wells-and-feed-lots kind of air—Clare thought of her home. Maybe she should try calling her father in West Texas for help. She’d already rejected that plan once, knowing it would be the first place Ramzi would look for Jimmy. But right now, being home sounded so safe.
No, she didn’t dare show up on her father’s doorstep. Sticking with her plan to go to her old roommate’s home would be for the best. She’d never mentioned Brenna to Ramzi and had hoped going in that direction would be the smartest idea for losing him and his men.
Clare checked the local neighborhood right outside the bus station’s door and was dismayed at the sight of such a blighted area. This wasn’t the kind of place for a woman and her child to go wandering after dark. But even going out there seemed a lot smarter than simply hanging around here waiting to be jumped.
Still holding tightly to Jimmy, Clare walked to the corner and checked in both directions. What looked like a roadhouse was down about a block from where she stood. Cars and trucks sat parked on every available inch of the parking lot, which seemed well lit and busy. If it was anything like the roadhouses and truck stops she remembered from West Texas, the place would at least serve food.
She knew joints like that usually served their share of hard liquor, too. But she would much rather take her chances with Texas drunks than with Ramzi’s henchmen.
Josh Ryan wished he was well on his way to getting blitzed. He toyed with the idea of ordering a bottle of tequila, but managed to reject the thought. Just barely.
It wasn’t only that he’d totally sworn off liquor sixty-three days, fourteen hours and twenty minutes ago. His grandfather had also recently died, and he was supposedly on his way to the funeral. It was a good five-hour drive there, and Josh had never been one for drinking and driving.
So what the hell was he even doing in this seedy bar, with its smell of burned ribs, cheap beer and fries cooking in lard? Twice so far he’d been approached by women in skimpy leather outfits who looked hungry and suggestive in a cheap way. Both times he’d sent them about their business with cold, dismissive looks.
If he’d been searching for oblivion tonight, he’d have found it by downing RedEye by the gallon and not with nameless, drugging sex.
But if it wasn’t for booze or women, then why was he here? Apparently he was giving himself a test. Just to see if his new resolutions could stand up to the stress of the upcoming funeral. His life had become one big trial.
So far, the civilian world hadn’t been what he’d hoped. Though he never would’ve re-upped—even if the army docs had said it would be all right. He wasn’t all right. In Afghanistan, his concentration had deteriorated to a point where he had managed to get a buddy blown to hell and himself shot up bad. Once or twice in the heat of battle, he’d even come to the point of considering the use of one of his grandmother’s so-called gifts. Amazing.
The white coats in the evac-hospital had eventually given his mental state some medical-sounding nonsense of a name and DX’d him out of the Rangers, sending him stateside. But Josh knew better. Post-traumatic stress disorder, hell. He’d just stopped giving a crap whether he lived or died. His own life wasn’t worth another bullet. And he refused to be put back into a place where what he did or didn’t do meant someone else’s life.
Never again.
He stared down at the remnants of his brisket sandwich just as the jarring sound of a cue hitting a nest of pool balls cracked through the smoky air. A couple of cowpokes in the corner began to argue, while the laugh of an apparently very drunk woman tittered through the beer-soaked night.
It was time to go.
He paid the bill and shoved out the door into the parking lot. Even outside the night air was hard to take. Exhaust fumes and mesquite smoke mixed with the sulfur smell from nearby refineries over on the bayou. For the first time in many years, Josh was glad to be heading to deep south Texas.
There were a million things wrong with the south Texas town of Zavala Springs and the Delgado Ranch. But bad air had never been one of them.
The roadhouse parking lot was traffic central tonight. Pickup trucks of every size roared over the gravel. Giggly young girls squealed as their desperate-eyed oil-jockey dates grabbed their bottoms on the way to the bar’s door. There weren’t many like him who were leaving. But one or two Resistol-hatted twenty-somethings stumbled out the door on their way to the edge of the lot to puke their guts out.
God, he was so tired. This was no night for anything but a long, careful drive back to the Delgado.
Making his way to his old truck, Josh found he’d been blocked in by a brand-new Cadillac Escalade. He took a moment to wonder what the dude would do if he just backed into all that shiny black metal and made his own exit. Josh felt almost tired enough to give his family’s gifts a shot in order to free his pickup.
Drawing in a breath instead, Josh went around the front of his truck and checked for another way out. It might be possible—if he went over an eight-inch-high curb stop. Then he’d be forced to drive over the next-door empty lot with all its broken glass and weeds growing upward through the old concrete. But damned if he didn’t know his fifteen-year-old Ford F-150 could get through much worse.
He climbed into the pickup and started the engine. Rolling his front tires up and over the curb with minimum effort, he slowed as he realized he would have to gun it to get the back tires over, too.
Sitting at idle, Josh opened his side window and double-checked the position of his wheels. Yeah, it should work.
A high-pitched scream suddenly tore through the night air. The cry jolted him. Definitely coming from a female, it wasn’t at all like the flirty shrieks those young girls made when their dates groped them in the dark.
No, this scream sounded like someone in trouble. Narrowing his lips in a frown, Josh figured it was none of his business. He had plenty of his own problems.
He shrugged a shoulder and jammed his foot down on the gas pedal, praying the old tread would hold together. A few seconds later he’d crossed the barrier and was slowing down on the other side in order to pick his way through the trash and glass scattered around the vacant lot.
Another scream, this time closer, captured his attention. He stepped on the brakes and searched the dark lot for any signs of trouble.
A figure appeared, illuminated in the distance by his headlights. It was a female, all right. For a spilt second he saw a curvy form with a flash of blond hair. She seemed to be carrying something heavy. The vision dashed in and out of the beams.
Right on her tail were two greaseballs, dressed in suits with short haircuts. Their looks made Josh wonder if the FBI might be after this babe. But when he saw their drawn pistols, something in his brain snapped.
The picture was all wrong. No lawmen would run with guns out in the open like that, especially not when chasing an obviously unarmed woman.
Without another thought, Josh gunned his truck again and began chasing down the men. He used the Ford like he had his old mare back in the bronc-cutting days of his youth on the Delgado. But rounding up the two thugs turned out to be easier to manage than wild broncs had ever been.
Rooster-tailing it on the loose gravel as one of the men turned and tried to aim his pistol toward the truck, Josh sent a spray of caliche toward both guys, and they bolted. The two dudes headed away in the opposite direction as he nudged his bumper up close behind them. If they’d spilt up, one of them might’ve stood a chance at getting off a shot at him. But it turned out that neither of them was as bright as any year-old colt.
He wore the two creeps slick and left them panting and limping off the lot as they slithered back into the darkness behind the roadhouse. Then Josh spun his pickup and went after the girl.
With no clue as to what kind of trouble she was in, Josh should’ve just let it be. If he’d had a lick of sense, he would’ve been long gone down the road toward home by now. But nobody had ever referred to Josh Ryan as the most brilliant SOB in the world.
And besides…he’d become downright curious.
Clare slowed, trying to catch her breath. She couldn’t believe her bad luck. She’d almost made it to the relative safety of the roadhouse when Ramzi’s two goons spotted them.
They would’ve overtaken her and Jimmy, too, if it hadn’t been for whoever it was in that old pickup. The fellow behind the wheel had driven like a maniac, but he’d done a fine job of blowing off the two thugs. It made her curious who her knight in scratched and dented armor might have been.
Now how was she going to get back to the bus station in time for the next bus? She couldn’t get past the roadhouse without being seen by those men again.
With a cramp nagging at her side, she gulped for air and tried to think of a way out. Jimmy hadn’t made a sound while she’d been running with him in her arms. But after she’d stopped, he began to squirm.
“Down, Mommy,” he whined as he kicked at her stomach.
“Not here, honey,” she said with a breathless gasp.
Her no didn’t get through to the two-year-old. He kicked again, harder. At that same time the lifesaving pickup turned and came roaring up beside her.
She should have been frightened. Maybe she should have run in the other direction. Instead, her curiosity about what the fancy driver looked like had her standing on tiptoe and staring into the pickup’s cab.
The guy leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Get in.” All she caught of his face in the flash of the overhead light was a stubbled jaw and the brim of a beat-up Stetson pulled low over his eyes.
“What?” Belatedly she found her caution. “No.”
“Look. Those dudes will be back here any second. And if you didn’t notice, they have big, frigging guns. Get the hell in.”
He was right. She was in no position to argue. Still…“I can’t. But we should be okay thanks to you.”
“Can’t?”
This must have seemed like a good time to try to get his own way, because Jimmy squealed. When Clare tightened her grip around him, her child finally looked up at the pickup.
“Bye-bye,” Jimmy said as he pointed toward the truck.
“Is that a kid?” The guy in the truck sounded incredulous.
“My son. I don’t dare put him in your truck without the proper restraint. It isn’t safe.”
Just then, a loud ping resounded off the truck’s back bumper. And a tiny spray of gravel exploded right next to the back rear tire.
“They’re shooting now, lady. That ain’t exactly safe. Climb in or not, but I’m getting the hell out of here.”
Shooting? Ramzi would never allow anyone to shoot at his son. Just who were these goons, if not his men?
From that thought, it didn’t take her a whole minute to load herself, her son and their duffel into the wide front seat of the pickup while the driver doused his headlights. “Go,” she urged while still fumbling with the seat belt.
The driver took off with a crunch of tires against gravel. The whining engine strained to keep up with the man pouring on the gas. His takeoff bounced her around in the seat, but she hung on valiantly to Jimmy.
“Those city dudes are still on foot,” the cowboy told her as he fought the wheel. “This old truck might not look like much, but it’ll do zero to sixty in ten seconds. They won’t stand a chance of getting to their vehicle or catching a glimpse of this truck in the dark before we’re long gone.”
Clare swallowed hard. She was grateful to this man, whoever he was. But she didn’t want his crazy driving to end up taking any risks with Jimmy’s life. After all, Ramzi’s men couldn’t possibly want to kill her son. They must just want to take him back to his father.
She thought of the bullets those goons had fired and amended that idea. They might not mind killing her to get to Jimmy.
“Can you go any faster?”
The man turned the lights back on and downshifted to take a corner. “Sugar, this heap may be fast off the line, but it won’t hold together pushed to the limit.”
He took four more corners in quick succession. When she’d gotten totally turned around and lost, he slowed down.
“They’ll never make us now,” he said. “So, you wanna tell me what the hell is going on? Why were those dudes after you?” He took one more corner, but this time on four wheels. “Tell me those weren’t some sort of cops.”
“Oh yeah,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Cops shoot at women and children all the time—sure. I was just walking from the bus station to the roadhouse to get my son something to eat. How should I know those jokers?”
He shot her a quick glance before returning his attention to the road ahead. “It’s after ten. Not exactly a terrific time to be waltzing around these streets with a baby. Isn’t there a restaurant in the bus station?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” she lied.
“Yeah, I’ll bet. And I suppose you have no idea why those guys were trying to get to you, either. All that drama seems extreme for a simple robbery.”
“Well…Maybe they wanted to kidnap my little boy.”
That shut him up for a few minutes. Finally, he cleared his throat and changed the subject. “You never made it to the roadhouse. I would’ve noticed you there. Is the kid still hungry?”
She looked down at Jimmy in her lap. “He and I both could use a little food. It’s been a long time since we’ve eaten anything.”
“You were planning on a bus trip, I’d guess. When’s the bus leave?”
“Not until midnight.”
“Then let’s go find a decent place to eat. And I’ll get you two back to the station in time.”
Josh was kicking himself thirty ways from Sunday by the time he found a chain restaurant that stayed open all night. What the hell was he doing with a woman and a child? Only just now recovering from his idiot bout with alcohol, he didn’t know about the long-term effects of PTSD. He still wasn’t sure the docs were right where he was concerned.
He’d been planning on hanging with his baby sister in Zavala Springs for a while after the funeral. Just long enough for him to figure out what he wanted his life to be outside the Rangers and without the alcohol. He wasn’t exactly great company.
Parking and shutting off the engine in the shadowed lot, Josh cleared his throat once more and tried to think of something civil to say.
The woman turned her face toward him and he caught the gleam of white teeth through the darkness. Hot damn, but her smile must have terrific wattage. He had a feeling she was going to turn out to be a real babe when he got a decent look at her in the lights.
“This’ll be fine,” she said. “Thanks for rescuing us. I think the least we can do is buy you dinner.”
“Yeah? Well, I think I can manage on my own.” Hell. Now he felt like a real jerk. What would’ve been wrong with letting her pay or saying something nice, like he’d already eaten?
Swinging down from the truck’s cab, Josh hauled himself around the pickup to help lift her and the kid down. He wasn’t sure why he automatically did that, but it seemed like the thing to do.
He ushered them into the relative safety of the well-lit restaurant and a hostess seated them. Without sitting, the woman excused herself to change the kid’s diaper. It took another ten minutes to locate a high chair. This baby business seemed to be a real pain in the butt.
Finally all together in the booth, they’d placed their orders and now had coffee, iced tea and a sippy cup with juice sitting in front of them. It was then he took a moment and really looked across the table—and nearly bit his tongue in half.
Talk about a babe. He’d only gotten quick glances earlier because they’d been so busy, but this chick was a stunner.
Just looking at her was way better than eating the dessert he’d ordered and more fulfilling than any booze. Even better than the best barbecue he remembered his grandfather Will serving, the sight of Clare became food for the eyes. And sauce for the soul.
Her long, lush eyelashes covered clear, whiskey-colored eyes, and her silvery-blond streaked hair hung in a messy waterfall over the delicate curve of her shoulders. There was a tiny mole at the side of her luscious mouth, but it didn’t mar the beauty of porcelain skin.
She rounded that mouth to say something to her son and the sight of those full, soft lips made him squirm. Whoo baby. For a man who hadn’t cared one whit about sexy females in more years than he’d like to count, Josh was having full-blown wet dreams of her wrapping those lips around a body part of his that was right now sitting up and taking notice.
Hell.
“My son’s name is Jimmy and I’m Clare Chandler,” she said and held out her hand across the table.
He took it briefly. Just long enough to feel an electric shock of warmth running straight to his groin.
“Josh Ryan.” Jerking back his hand, he noticed his words had been uttered in a much lower tone than normal.
“Do you live around here?”
He shook his head. “Don’t live anywhere at the moment. Where’re y’all from? Is that a West Texas drawl I hear?”
“Born and raised in Midland,” she said and nodded. “But I haven’t lived there for years.”
It occurred to him then that she must have a husband around somewhere. Had she been his wife, he wouldn’t have let her out of his sight. As for the kid…Well, as much as he didn’t care for kids, and as much trouble as this one seemed, had Jimmy been his son he would’ve never trusted the two of them out alone.
“Where’s home for you, then? Your husband waiting somewhere that you need to call?”
She glanced down at the table and then over at Jimmy. It took him a moment to notice, but her son definitely didn’t have her coloring. Between her reaction to his question and the difference in their looks, Josh wondered if she was one of those new age single women who’d adopted a child without benefit of marriage or father.
“Jimmy’s father and I are divorced. He’s…in Europe. I’m bringing my baby back to the States to live.”
Josh’s gut was telling him something she’d said was a little off. Maybe a white lie. Whatever it was, he decided he needed to shed himself of these two in a hurry. He was becoming too intrigued by a pair of dewy amber eyes and a baby who reminded him too much of things that couldn’t be.
They each ate what they’d ordered. She had a chef’s salad, he had coffee with pecan pie and Jimmy had juice, a few bites of his mother’s meat and cheese and enough saltine crackers to build a crumb-filled castle.
“Hope that’ll hold y’all for a while,” he said. “It’s nearly time to get you two back to the bus station.”
He’d rather not learn any more about her or hang around her kid any longer than necessary. It was already past time to be on the road again.
“Yes, I agree. Those two goons should’ve given up and left by now.” She began packing up Jimmy’s things. “Our bus leaves in a half hour.”
They made their way back to the truck and he settled them in before he climbed behind the wheel again. On the way back he kept sneaking looks at her when she wasn’t paying attention.
She was a stunner, all right. With neat khaki pants, a formfitting brownish-colored top and a light suede jacket, her curves weren’t obnoxious or too obvious. But they were definitely in all the right places. The gaze from her bright eyes darted down to Jimmy and then back out the windshield, always checking. And that danged silken strand of blond hair still dangled over one of her shoulders as if it was just begging to be played with.
Something nagged at him. Though her clothes weren’t overtly expensive and her manner wasn’t snooty, Clare just seemed to ooze sophistication. She had a worldly character about her.
So what was she doing taking a bus? And what had those two suits really wanted with her and the kid?
Stuff those thoughts. He didn’t want to get any more involved than he’d already become. All he wanted was to get the both of them on their way and then wash his hands of the whole damn puzzle.
Josh drove around the bus station twice, trying to be sure the suits weren’t still hanging around outside. He spotted Clare’s bus parked at an outdoor gate, already loading and with a long line of passengers waiting to climb on. The two of them wouldn’t even have to walk through the station to board.
“I’m not going to get out,” he told her as he idled by the curb. “I’ll just drop y’all off. You’ll be okay, right?”
He couldn’t wait until she got out of his truck. The sexy vibes she’d been throwing off were a distraction, and he needed that about as much as another hole in the head.
She nodded as she unbuckled and prepared herself and her son to go. “Sure. We really have to thank you again for all you did for us. I don’t think we would’ve made it without you, and I wish there was something more I could do to say thanks.”
The various ways he could think of were not suitable to say aloud to a near stranger. “No problem. Take care of yourself and Jimmy, ya hear?”
Josh watched as she carried the toddler to the end of the line. She looked vulnerable. Vulnerable, worldly and sexy. What a strange combination. He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone like that before in his entire life.
While he sat in the pickup with his tongue hanging out and watched as her line inched toward the bus door, two dark figures came out of nowhere and grabbed her and Jimmy. The same two dudes who’d tried and failed at the roadhouse. Ah, hell!
He was out of the truck in an instant.
Chapter 2
Running full out, Josh reached them in time to lunge at one of the bad guys. That one took a swing and caught Josh hard on the chin, and then the same dude spun, hoisting Jimmy in his arms as he took off.
“Jimmy!” Clare shouted while fighting the other guy.
Before Josh could intervene, she stomped her foot on the goon’s instep, shoved her open palm up under his chin and then rammed her knee into his groin. That guy crumbled, and Josh took off after the one with Jimmy.
Josh caught up to him with no trouble. But slowing the slime-ball down without hurting the kid in his arms was tough. Josh finally had the guy in a choke hold at about the same time as Jimmy started squealing and squirming. The boy wiggled like a greased calf at a fair, which seemed to confuse the goon, who couldn’t hang on to the kid.
Josh used the opportunity to take his shot, poking his fingers hard into the guy’s eye sockets while jerking Jimmy from his grip with the other hand. Josh didn’t spend time gloating over his handiwork, just tore back toward the bus and Clare with Jimmy thrown over his shoulder.
“Jimmy, thank heaven,” she sobbed when Josh reached her. Relief and gratitude filled her eyes.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed her elbow, heading outside.
“Go where?”
“Anywhere but here. Get in the truck. Y’all are safer with me than on that danged bus, no matter where we end up.”
After about a half hour of silently driving in circles, trying to lose the goons for sure, Josh thought better of his last remarks. “So where were y’all headed? Is there some other way you can get to wherever you’re going?”
Clare turned to him, the tension in her face clear and alarming. “Um…”
Well, that wasn’t much of an answer. In fact, this babe had been real slow coming up with any straight answers. He doubted that a word she’d said since the moment they’d met had been on the level. Well, he’d had enough.
Josh spotted an all-night discount department store in the next block. The huge lot was busy with people coming and going and he figured they could join up and get lost in the crowd of trucks. He pulled in under the low-hanging branches of a willow and shut down the engine.
“What are we doing here?” Clare softly asked.
When he turned to answer her, the sight he beheld left him flabbergasted and holding his breath. There, through the low light and in the passenger seat of his old beat-up pickup, sat the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen holding a sleeping angel in her lap. Was it just a trick of lighting that made her suddenly look like a Madonna? Her skin was exquisite, like fine china. Every strand of her hair lay in silky perfection. Her nose wasn’t too small or too large, but just right. And her long lashes lay against high cheekbones as she gazed down at the babe in her arms.
Josh swallowed hard against the lump in his throat.
The mother and child made such a compelling picture that Josh wished he knew how to draw. He’d never been an artist, and he wasn’t sure that even a Michelangelo could manage to capture the perfect essence of this mother and child.
His heart ached for all the pictures like this one that he would miss seeing in his lifetime. The pictures of a loving spouse and child that he would never have—and that his brother and sister would miss having in their lives, as well. Those thoughts sobered him, left him melancholy and finally made him angry. Exactly the way he’d spent the last fifteen years of his life. Mad as hell with no way to let it loose and no one to take it out on.
But Josh wasn’t the kind to dwell on his troubles for very long. He was much more an action kind of guy. Kick butts, take names and take charge. It was the way he’d operated for most of his life. So, burying his personal problems like always, he decided to focus on Clare’s troubles instead.
“We need to talk.” He swiveled to a position in his seat where he could watch her face as he questioned her. “I want answers about what the hell is going on. And don’t give me any of that bull about not knowing those two sleazy dudes or why they were after you. I’ve been shot at, sucker punched and chased tonight, and I want to know why.”
Clare didn’t know what to do or say to answer his questions. She didn’t know who to rely on. Was Josh someone to trust? Did she dare?
She kept perfectly still and stared at the man who was for all purposes a complete stranger. But as the flickering light from one of the parking-lot lamps filtered through the windshield and seemed to water down the edges of his face with soft gray tones and shadows, her insides softened toward him, too.
The look in his eyes as he glared at her wasn’t stony or cynical or in any way threatening, despite his rough words. No, Josh’s facial expression seemed to reach out to her with unspoken compassion. And with something—warmer, more focused—underlying that. Clare didn’t want to think too much about the underlying heat. By now her own body was suffering from a wave of warmth just staring at his remarkably deep-set eyes and intense chocolate-colored gaze.
He was easy to look at. And hot! Six-two or-three, she’d have to guess. All of that was lean, hard-packed muscle. Not the kind of muscle you saw in the gym, but the real sinew and form of an outdoorsman who didn’t hesitate to use his body. He was wearing camo pants and a tight-fitting black T-shirt. Old cowboy boots and a Stetson completed the picture. And what a picture it was, too.
She drew in a shaky breath and her supposedly quick brain finally kicked into gear as she remembered that without his help, Jimmy would have been lost. And she would be hopeless. Even not knowing a thing about her, Josh had given her the sweetest gift in the world.
She swallowed carefully, deciding that she needed someone’s help and it might as well be his. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got all night. I don’t have to be anywhere until the day after tomorrow.”
“Oh.” The way he’d said that, with a murmur of sorrow in his voice, made her curious to know where he was headed. But she figured she owed him the first explanations.
She shifted Jimmy in her arms and rolled her window down halfway for some air. “Okay,” she began, wondering how she could put all her embarrassment and terror into words. “But this has to be off the record.”
“Wait a sec,” he interrupted. “Stay put and hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”
“Wha…” Before she could get a word out, he’d ripped the keys from the ignition, unbuckled and stepped out of the truck into the humidity and heat of an East Texas night.
“Keep the doors locked and an eye out,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. You two should be fine.”
He slammed the door, locked it behind him and stalked off toward the discount store, leaving her with her mouth open and her head shaking. What was with this guy?
True to his word, and before she had a chance to rethink her tenuous position and climb out of his truck and disappear, Josh was already headed back in her direction. And he was carrying an enormous box with him.
“What in blazes…”
“It’s a car seat for a two-year-old,” he said after he opened the door. “Sorry I took so long but I had to get a complete briefing on its installation. Can you put the kid down there on the front seat without waking him up and get out a minute? I’ll give you the short course as we tuck it into the backseat.”
“What backseat?”
Josh slanted a grin in her direction. It was the first one she’d seen from him and it made her heart stutter with lust and longing. Wow. That was fast work. She didn’t even know where she and Jimmy would be in the next hour, yet here she was, thinking about a near stranger in terms of a heated grin. Damn it. She was a mother, for heaven’s sake.
Lightly slipping out of the front seat and easing Jimmy down, Clare tried to get herself back together. This was serious business. Jimmy’s whole future was riding on her doing everything right.
“Lucille has a backseat,” he told her as he pulled a folding knife from his pocket and set to work opening the box. “Maybe it’s more of a bench than a real seat, but this child-size car seat will fit just fine.”
“Lucille? Your truck has a name?” She’d never met anyone who’d named their vehicle. It seemed a little eccentric for such a take-charge guy.
“Yeah. I saved to buy her before I signed up for the army, and then afterward made a few modifications in my spare time. I had a buddy who took care of her for me while I was out of country. She may not be a lot to look at, but she still runs good enough to keep us both out of trouble.”
He and his truck had saved her and Jimmy from a world of trouble. She decided it was worth the effort to become real close friends with Lucille. And to give the man who owned her a break.
Clare and Josh finished installing the child safety seat and then she gently laid Jimmy down into it and buckled him in without waking him up. Grateful not to have awoken the baby, the two adults climbed back into the front and gingerly closed their doors.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “But you didn’t have to spend so much on us. We’ll be back out of your way just as soon as I can figure out what to do.”
“The kid was beginning to look a little heavy in your arms. I thought maybe you both needed a break and some space. You could always use that same seat in an airplane or a rental car if need be.” He handed her one of the water bottles he’d brought back with the car seat.
The bottle was cold and dripping sweat and she was thrilled to be able to quench her thirst. “Thanks. But I’ll pay you back for the seat.” She swallowed a slug of the water and immediately felt better. “This is wonderful.”
Clare thought once again about all that Josh had done for them. She was still rather hesitant to trust a person whom she’d just met for the first time a few hours ago—especially a man who made her itchy and prickly by simply looking in her direction. After all, she’d recently escaped from one gigantic mistake made solely on lust, and she didn’t dare dive off that cliff blindly into another one.
But at the moment, there wasn’t time for careful consideration. Ramzi’s men, or whoever those goons had been, might catch up to them anytime. They weren’t safe yet, and wouldn’t be until they were well on their way out of town.
Her reporter’s instincts were telling her that Josh could not possibly hurt her or her child. Clare understood the Texas men she’d been raised with. They called a spade a spade. They were loyal to a fault, and always more than generous and fair. Her father was a good example, and Josh, too, appeared to be among the best of the breed.
Josh shot her a wary look over the top of his own water bottle. “You ready now to give up those explanations?”
“I think maybe there’s only time enough for the bullet points—the headlines. Okay?”
He nodded and sat back against the door to wait.
“You know, I’m really not sure who those men were who attacked us.”
Josh narrowed his eyes and frowned.
“Well, I thought I knew, but…” She took another sip of water. “Okay. Okay. Here’s the background.
“About three years ago I married a Middle-Eastern man whom I thought I loved. He was…” Clare looked over at Josh and realized her original lust-filled thoughts about Ramzi had been so far off the mark that it would sound ridiculous trying to explain. “Well, anyway, he wasn’t what he appeared to be. For the first six months or so things seemed great between us. I continued to work—”
“What kind of work?” Josh interrupted.
“I’m a reporter. Magazine bylines mostly. I was working for the Oil News Monthly when I met him. And since he was also busy at the time working as an undersecretary for OPEC, I just kept on doing what I’d been doing—traveling and getting interviews for my job.” She took a breath as gentle memories snuck into her mind and threw her out of rhythm for a minute. “We’d meet up on our weekends off and for whirlwind vacations in places like Corfu and the beach resort on Phuket, Thailand. It all seemed…terribly romantic.”
“Uh-huh. So what happened?”
“Jimmy.” Clare snapped back to reality in an instant. “I mean, I learned I was pregnant with Jimmy and everything changed. My husband insisted I quit working until the baby was born and he took me back to his home country…ostensibly to met his family and have their doctors check me over. He claimed their physicians were the best that money could buy. I knew he was concerned for our baby’s health, so I agreed.”
“So what really went down when you got there?” Josh finished his water bottle and stashed the empty under the seat.
This was where the truth was more than a little embarrassing. Clare wished she could fudge on the answer, but fudging wasn’t the way she’d been raised. It wasn’t who she was. So she straightened up in her seat and set her chin.
“For one thing, I found out that I hadn’t done quite enough of a background check before I got married. Apparently I was so smitten, I forgot the first rule to getting a good story. Check your facts. It turns out that my husband already had a few current wives stashed away back in his homeland.”
“A few? Current? How many?”
“Eight.”
Josh’s eyes widened. “So what did you do when you found out? Did you divorce him then?”
“I would’ve. Or I would’ve left and come back to Texas to have my child. But by that time Ramzi had fixed things with the local authorities to keep me in his country and married to him for as long as he wished. Women have no rights there. They’re their husband’s property. I finally woke up and realized what a mess I was in, but by then it was too late. Not even the U.S. State Department could help me.”
“This sounds like a bad movie plot. How’d you get free?”
Her life did sound a lot like a grade-B movie now that she thought about it. She decided to speed up the rest of the story.
“Ramzi suddenly became willing to divorce me when the baby was a year and a half. In fact, he wanted to have me deported. To be sent home and out of his way. But he wasn’t about to let Jimmy leave the country.”
Josh looked a little confused. “He wanted you gone…without your baby?”
“Yep. He convinced a judge that his other wives could do a better job of raising Jimmy in the Abu Fujarah tradition.”
“And a judge bought that? That a mother shouldn’t be allowed to raise her own son?”
Clare remembered how incensed she’d been. “The judge was one of Ramzi’s cousins and was probably on his father’s payroll.”
“Your ex has rich parents?”
“Very. They control most of the oil in their oil-rich nation. And they control most of the people there, too.”
Josh’s eyes narrowed and his lips drew together in a thin white line. He seemed to be taking this story personally, and Clare wished she understood why.
“I’m positive Ramzi will try to find Jimmy and take him back to his country,” she told him in a rush. “I don’t think Ramzi gives a flip about what happens to me, but Jimmy is his only son. I know he wants him and probably won’t rest until he gets him back.”
Would Josh think she was terrible for taking her son away from his father? Maybe. And maybe she felt a little bit guilty about that herself.
“I wouldn’t mind letting them visit with each other,” she added. “But I can’t lose my son forever. I can’t.”
Jimmy stirred in the backseat. Clare got on her knees and leaned over to check on her son. Josh needed a moment to let her story sink in. But as he turned to glance back at the baby, he caught a view that stopped him cold. Clare’s fashionable khaki slacks had pulled tight against the rounded curve of her bottom, and he was lost in a sudden flash of fantasy.
The outline of her bikini underwear was easy to trace under the slacks. Lordy mercy, but it had been forever since he’d seen a woman’s underwear. Or since he’d taken that same underwear off and enjoyed the fruit of the woman beneath. He hadn’t even given sex much thought lately, he’d been so wrapped up in other problems. To be more precise, since before he’d been in that firefight back in Afghanistan. The one that had taken his buddy’s life and landed Josh in the hospital and out of the Rangers for good.
Forcing his eyes away from the temptation in front of him, he tried to focus on the problem at hand. What would he be doing if he were in Clare’s place? Then again, what would he have done if he’d been in her ex-husband’s place?
If he’d been in Clare’s shoes, he would’ve done the same thing as she had. No question. But if he’d been in her ex-husband’s place, well…Different culture or not, Josh would never try to tear a child away from its mother.
“So you think those goons at the bus station were sent by your ex to kidnap your son?” he asked as Jimmy quieted down and she turned back around in the seat.
She nodded and set her mouth in a determined line. “Yes. At least, I did until they started shooting. I can’t believe that Ramzi would actually allow anyone to shoot at and possibly harm his son. Whatever else he is or does, my ex-husband loves Jimmy. I’m sure of it.”
“But you have no other ideas as to who those two suits might’ve been? Other than working for your ex, I mean.”
“None at all.”
“Then I think we have to assume that’s who they were. I guess it’s possible they weren’t really shooting at you back there. Maybe they were aiming at the truck’s tires. I did notice they weren’t the best shots in the world.”
Clare actually smiled at that, and Josh’s heart skipped a beat. Man, he’d never been so taken with anyone so fast in his life. Too fast or not, he knew in that instant he would do just about anything to keep her and her child safe.
“Okay. So, let’s talk about what you want to do from here,” he said with a little determination of his own clear in his voice. “You need a plan.”
An hour later they sat in a parked Lucille outside one of the rental-car agencies on the outskirts of the airport. They were waiting for the agents to come to work for the day at 5:00 a.m. Clare seemed convinced that driving to her old roommate’s home in Missouri was her best course of action. Josh wasn’t so sure.
He didn’t like the idea of her traveling so far with the baby alone. What if those goons caught up to them? She already looked about ready to drop. How was she going to drive herself and her child any distance at all, let alone to a city that was at least a twelve-hour drive away?
“Don’t you think you should contact your friend before you and Jimmy just turn up on her doorstep?” he asked as she changed her son’s diaper. “What if she’s out of town for business or on vacation or something?”
Clare looked up at him from under those spiky, blond lashes. “Maybe I should. It never occurred to me that she might not be there. Have you got a phone?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. Traveling light.”
“Me, too. Ramzi took all my electronics away while I was under his roof,” she admitted bluntly. “I’ll have to start all over again once I’m back home. But for now, I can call from a pay phone inside the rental agency.”
In a few minutes the rental agents arrived and opened up for the day. “Here,” she said as she turned to Josh with Jimmy in her arms. “You hold the baby while I go in and call Brenna. If everything’s okay, I’ll rent the car and be right back.”
Josh found himself in the spot where he’d never imagined he would be. Holding a toddler in his arms. Jimmy was still a little groggy from sleep and the baby leaned his head against Josh’s shoulder.
The yearning for a child of his own stole over Josh like the shadow of a cloud on a sunny day. He fidgeted slightly, not sure how to hold a kid, and not wanting to face the old pain of his family’s loss. For years he’d successfully avoided thinking about the curse. Just as he had successfully avoided being around kids.
Now he was stuck with both. Damn it.
He took off his hat and propped himself against the pickup as Jimmy blinked open his eyes and looked up at the man who was holding him in his arms. “Da De?” the baby murmured sleepily as he patted the overnight stubble on Josh’s cheek.
“No, boy,” Josh whispered. “I’m not your daddy. I’m not anybody’s daddy.” Saying it aloud brought back the old stinging regret. Josh ignored the ache as he’d always done before and did what he had to do to get by.
“But I’ll take care of you, son. Don’t you fret.” He would make sure this kid and his mother were safe—even if he had to use some of his grandmother’s magic to make it so.
“Josh!” Clare came running out of the agency office. “Oh. My. God. They’re there. In Missouri.”
She was out of breath and her face was pale and drawn. “A couple of Ramzi’s men have somehow already found Brenna. They’re waiting outside her house for Jimmy and me to show up. We can’t go to her for help. She was my best hope. What’ll we do?”
No problem there. “Climb back into Lucille. They can’t have her plate numbers and won’t be able to find us. You two will be safe with me. I won’t let anything happen.”
It was a promise he meant to keep. No matter what.
Chapter 3
“But where can we go? Where can we hide that they can’t find us?” Clare knew her voice sounded high-pitched and panicked. She felt herself falling over the edge into hysteria.
Josh started the pickup, and the good ol’ girl rumbled as he turned to speak. “This ex of yours apparently has a lot of pull—and a lot of money. Am I right?”
Clare nodded her head, but the words wouldn’t come. All her plans were going up in a blaze. Every idea she’d had for saving herself and her son looked like a dead end.
“So I’m guessing he can probably get a line on anybody you’ve ever known in your past. That means you and Jimmy can’t go to your old addresses or to any of your old friends or family.” Josh said the words easily, like a statement of fact, but he sure looked as unhappy about their meaning as she felt.
Calm. She had to remain calm. For Jimmy’s sake.
“I—I—Exactly right,” she stuttered breathlessly.
“Then I can’t figure any other way out. You and Jimmy have no choice but to stick with me.
“Your ex doesn’t know who I am,” Josh added after a moment. “You and I didn’t know each other in the past. And…” He shook his head and set his mouth. “None of us seems to have any choice.”
“But stick with you to go where?” Clare knew the time had come to make a decision about Josh, but she just wished she’d been allowed more of an opportunity to get to know him. “You said you didn’t live anywhere at the moment. Where were you headed when you ran into us?”
Josh grimaced, put the truck into gear and pulled out of the parking lot. “I was raised in south Texas, near the town of Zavala Springs. I was headed back there…to my grandfather’s funeral.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” So that was what the sadness in his voice had been all about. She’d known it must be something bad. “But Jimmy and I don’t want to intrude on your family’s time of sorrow. And, anyway, just going off with you doesn’t solve the real problem. Eventually I’ll have to face Ramzi again. Jimmy is his son, and the two of us will never be safe until the U.S. government gives us their protection under the law.”
Josh gave her a look that said, Too late. The decision has been made. Then he turned the truck at the next corner and headed up the on-ramp to Interstate 610 West.
“You got any better ideas, speak up.” He was focused on the highway ahead, chin set. “My brother and sister will be at the funeral, and they’ve both got good contacts. My brother even works for the feds. Maybe one of the two of them will have an idea of how you can set yourself free of the mess you’ve managed to make.”
Clare opened her mouth to utter a smart retort to his zinger, but fortunately remembered in time that she and Jimmy really were in a huge mess. She slammed her lips shut before saying something that would put her into even deeper trouble. At least she wasn’t so panicked anymore. Folding her arms across her chest, Clare decided to sit back and fume instead.
He was right. There was no choice.
Josh wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so rude. Clare had enough trouble in her life right now; she didn’t need him snapping at her, too. But she’d been looking at him with an expression on her face that said she thought he was some kind of hero. He was no hero—far from it. So he’d decided to show her exactly how unheroic he could be.
Smart as hell, Ryan. Nice work. As usual.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t like her or didn’t have a high opinion of what she’d done so far. He did. Finding a way to get her and Jimmy out of a tradition-bound and male-dominated foreign country, and then managing to protect her child through all kinds of dangers, was admirable. Obviously she had a mother tiger’s instincts. This was no fainting flower of a woman. Tough and determined, she was a fighter, and how he would dearly love to have her go a few rounds with him.
All of a sudden his thoughts began stirring emotions inside him that made him cower. Things that felt so strong, he’d never experienced anything like them before. Prickling and gut-wrenching, they nearly brought tears to his eyes. The simple truth was, he wanted his own family. Badly, damn it. Life was unfair. At least, his life.
But before he could stem the unwanted emotions and shove them back down where they wouldn’t get in his way, he found himself angry all over again. And since it had been his admiration of Clare that had started stirring the whirlwind of emotion in his gut, she was bound to be the object of his anger.
Crap. He hadn’t wanted things to go down this way. Josh had never imagined, when he saved them, that he would get stuck with the two runaways. At first he’d had no intention of taking Clare and Jimmy with him anywhere, and the idea of bringing them along to Zavala Springs had been the furthest thing from his mind. After all, he barely wanted to go back there to face the past himself. He sure as hell didn’t want to drag her and the baby along to mingle with his old ghosts, too. No way would he take a chance of her finding out about his family’s bizarre history.
But what was he supposed to do with them? He couldn’t just dump a woman and a baby by the side of the road. Certainly not this woman and child. So he bit back his temper once again and stepped down on the gas pedal.
Clare made a little snuffling noise and he shot a furious glance in her direction. Her arms were hugging her chest and those fancy, full lips of hers were all stuck out in a huff. Shoot. Another more urgent and surprising sizzle of awareness clipped him in the gut without warning.
Suddenly the urge to kiss her senseless swamped him with such a need that he wasn’t sure he could tame it. Danged woman! This kind of aggravation was more than he could stand at the moment. How had his life taken such a drastic turn in only a few short hours?
Gritting his teeth and forcing his gaze back out the windshield where it belonged, Josh noticed that the lavender and gray tones of the coming dawn had begun to lighten the morning sky and give shape to their surroundings. A new day had begun over southeast Texas. Breathe, he admonished himself. Just breathe in and out, enjoy the scenery and stay calm. For sure he wasn’t going to tell her too much about his family, and she wouldn’t be in Zavala Springs long enough to find out on her own. So just roll with it.
As for the kissing-her-senseless part, well, he was too tough to let that bother him for long. He’d been trained as a Ranger, after all. Hooah! Steely minded when he wanted to be—or when he was forced to be—this moment had just become one of those times that called for using his dogged determination.
“Josh, I’m guessing you’re not currently married,” she said quietly from her corner of the seat.
He nearly bit down on his tongue as his steely mind reeled. “What makes you say so?”
“You’re not wearing a ring and you said you didn’t live anywhere. But that doesn’t tell me if you’ve ever been married, or if you have kids somewhere. Do you?”
Swallowing hard and slowly shaking his head, he answered, “No ex-wife. No children. And it’s probably just as well.”
“Oh? Why? Don’t you like kids?”
The ache in his gut grew into a pain of longing so bad he barely kept from doubling over. He couldn’t understand why these old familiar pains hadn’t gone away long ago. Geez, you’d think a big, tough guy like him would’ve gotten over it already.
“Kids are okay, I guess. I’ve never had a chance to be around them much.” He took the opportunity and checked her expression. “What are you getting at?”
From her spot snugged up close to the passenger door, Clare shrugged at Josh’s question. “Oh, nothing much.” What the devil could she say that didn’t make her sound nosy and controlling as hell? “It’s only that if you had kids, I would think you’d be much more sympathetic to why I can’t take a chance on losing Jimmy.”
“I’m plenty sympathetic. I’m taking you two with me and I’m going to help you get away.”
She narrowed her lips in a frown to keep herself from asking why. But she decided she had nothing more to add to the conversation. Maybe she’d already said too much.
Josh must have guessed she wanted more information, because he kept trying to explain. “Look. When I said it was probably just as well that I’d never had kids, I was talking about how crazy my life is right now. I got busted out of the Rangers a few months ago and I haven’t put my feet back under me yet. I don’t have a job, no house and no ideas of what I want to do next. I have no clue where I’ll be for sure next week, let alone six months from now. What kind of life is that for a kid?”
“None.” But she also took into consideration the fact that he looked to be about midthirties and he had never been married and didn’t seem too interested in having a family anytime soon, if ever.
Clare’s slightly shaky—and definitely rattled—mind came to an instant conclusion. As much as this guy was hot and turned her knees to mush when he glanced her way, and as much as he had come to their rescue several times, he was not now nor ever would be the guy for her. She wanted a big family badly. Always had. There would be a lot more children coming into her life, she just knew it. And she needed a steady guy who wanted kids as badly as she did in order to get that family.
Clare wanted a career, too, of course. She wanted it all. But didn’t women these days have a chance of getting it all? Gulping down a bubble of indecision mixed with apprehension, she tried to find some semblance of her old backbone. She and Jimmy had come this far. She would find a way out of the mess she’d caused. And then, when they were finally safe, she would also find a nice man who wanted a family. One who wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with her as they went through life together, working and raising kids. He had to be out there somewhere.
Josh Ryan definitely didn’t qualify as the life partner she envisioned.
He guided Lucille onto the Southwest Freeway and within twenty minutes they were miles out of Houston. The fast-food places and convenience store/gas stations gave way to big unbroken parcels of live oak and cottonwood, while the sun came peeking through a patch of early morning haze and lit their surroundings. Daylight. A new day. There had been a time last night when she didn’t think she would live to have another day with Jimmy.
Cranking her neck, she glanced over her shoulder to check on the baby. He was still sleeping soundly. She had kept him up too late last night. Chalk one more mistake against her.
Clare let her gaze wander from Jimmy’s seat to stare out the back window. Scanning the road behind them, she looked for any sign that someone might be following them. But she saw nothing out of the ordinary in the growing light of dawn. Just the usual early-morning traffic. Relaxing in her seat, she leaned her head back against the headrest. Maybe she could get a few minutes’ sleep herself.
When she next opened her eyes, the sun was higher in the sky, pouring heat through the back windshield and raising the temperature in the pickup’s cab. Jimmy was making his normal morning waking-up-and-now-it’s-time-to-eat noises in the backseat. Clare looked at her watch and was surprised to see it was already nearing nine o’clock. They would have to stop soon for food and a change of diapers.
She glanced out the windshield and noticed a gentle difference in the scenery. They were no longer on a main expressway but were traveling down a back country highway. The landscape and the vegetation passing by weren’t quite the same as before. But it didn’t look like West Texas scenery, either, the kind she remembered with its parched fields, cedars and hackberries hidden down in gullies and canyons. Instead, the view outside the truck’s window was more of a rolling landscape. She did recognize the mesquite, and some scrawny purple sage interspersed between rows of good raw land laid bare for planting. Those things had taken the place of the tall pines, willows and swampland feel of the countryside around Houston.
Clare tried to recall what she’d heard about Zavala Springs. It wasn’t much. They area was known for one main thing, the huge Delgado Ranch. One of the largest cattle ranches in the world, the Delgado raised and fed cattle, horses and exotic animals. They also grew oil and gas wells in abundance. The headquarters for the Delgado were located in Zavala Springs. She’d never been there, but her father had gone many times to sell drilling supplies to the Delgado Ranch people.
Clare let her mind wander over old memories of what her dad had told her, and then on to what she’d heard rumored in oil circles. Since she’d been a kid, she had known about the original Spanish land grant for the ranch belonging to a family named Delgado. But about twenty-five years ago, hadn’t the last Delgado died and left it to his son-in-law? Now what had been that new owner’s name, anyway? With a jolt, she remembered. The son-in-law’s name was Ryan.
She jerked her head around to stare at Josh. It would be too much of a coincidence that he came from Zavala Springs and had the last name of Ryan if he didn’t belong to the same family that owned the ranch. Drawing in a breath, she stared at his camo pants and beat-up old Stetson, while at the same time listening to the wheezing noises of his fifteen-year-old pickup rumbling beneath her bottom. Clare figured he must be a distant cousin or a black sheep or something. This tough but regular guy just couldn’t come from the Delgado wealth.
It wouldn’t matter to her one way or the other if he was rich, of course. That wasn’t anything she ever noticed about people or really cared about at all. No, wait. She amended that. If Josh was wealthy, it would mean another strike against him. She’d already done the wealthy lover thing once. Oh, yeah. His being one of the Ryans would just seal the deal for her—and not in his favor.
She looked at Josh again and noticed the grim lines set around his mouth. They told the tale of long hours spent behind the wheel, driving straight through the night. Wealthy or not, the man had saved their lives and was continuing to go out of his way to help secure their freedom.
That gave him points in his favor. Enough to make him a friend in need. But not nearly enough to cause her to change her mind. There wasn’t a chance in hell she would ever let herself get romantically involved with Josh, no matter how much being close to him might turn her on.
She stretched her arms and yawned. “Is there anyplace up ahead where we can get coffee and maybe breakfast for the baby?”
Josh started when he heard her voice, but recovered quickly enough and turned to her. “You’re awake. Good thing. I’ve been hearing Jimmy stirring in his car seat.
“And to answer your question, yeah, there’s a last-chance convenience store in a few miles and I was going to stop for gas anyway. It’ll be the only place to get gas or anything else for the next couple of hours of driving into Zavala Springs.”
“What? No stores of any kind for two hours? It can’t be that remote in this part of Texas. Not really. Even the vast stretches of nothingness in West Texas don’t go on for over two hours of dead driving time.”
He slanted a half smile at her. “Ah, but in this part of Texas there’s just a few large ranches, and most won’t allow any other businesses on their land. The state of Texas is lucky the ranchers let them put public roads through in the middle of the last century. Otherwise, the folks living along the Mexican border might have to pay a toll in order to reach their homes—or go by boat.”
Clare tsked at the very idea. But then she stopped, biting down on her lip at the very real fact of such open and remote space and of the enormously wealthy families who controlled all the land.
Josh finished pumping the gas while Clare stood beside the truck, bending over to change Jimmy’s diaper as he lay in the front seat. When that was done, she pulled a clean T-shirt over the baby’s head.
Turning from the sight of the sexy mother leaning over her child, Josh took a deep breath to clear his mind. The air here was drier than it had been in Houston, and full of the hay and sage smells like he remembered from when he grew up in these parts. He hadn’t been home in nearly fourteen years, and he wasn’t particularly happy about going there now.
Well, that wasn’t strictly the whole truth. He was happy for the chance to see his sister again. It had been much too long since that time she’d come to visit him in the hospital when he’d first returned to the States from the “’Stan.” Josh hadn’t been all that glad to see her then, as he thought about it now. But bless Maggie, she never took offense at his ornery moods. Guess that was due to her occasionally having a few blue moods herself.
God, he’d been missing her. And his brother, Ethan, too. And Grandpa Will. Ah, Grandpa Will. Seemed like you never knew how much someone meant to you until it was too late.
Josh heaved a heavy sigh. He could scarcely believe there would never be another opportunity to visit with his grandfather, Will Ryan. It didn’t seem possible that his father’s father could really be gone for good. It made Josh think of his own mortality, and that did nothing to help his melancholy.
One more arrow of guilt punctured Josh’s heart. He’d never made it back to tell the only grandfather he could remember how much he meant to him. Or how much Josh appreciated it when his grandfather and grandmother stepped up and took in Maggie when their mother died.
After their mother had been killed in that freak plane accident, Josh had thought their father should’ve been the one to step in and become both father and mother for his own teenage children—especially fifteen-year-old Maggie. But the mighty Brody Ryan would never bend enough to become a real parent. It was one of those memories from his past that Josh had never settled in his mind. One of the many things he’d wanted time alone to consider.
“Okay, we’re ready to eat now if you are.” Clare picked up her son and turned to face him. “I could sure use a hot shower and Jimmy needs a bath in the worst way. But I guess we’re presentable enough to go for fast-food.”
Josh supposed his alone time would just have to wait. “Why don’t you go on over and get in line while I move the truck away from the pumps.”
A half hour later, they were fed and Jimmy had been allowed a few free moments to toddle around in the restaurant’s indoor playground under his mother’s hawkish gaze. Back outside beside the truck, Josh stood against the open door next to Clare while she tried to ease Jimmy into the car seat. No luck.
“Anything I can do?” he asked as she pulled her boy back out of the pickup and began speaking to him in a soft but stern tone.
She shot Josh a quick “don’t interfere” glance and then turned her attention back to Jimmy. “Please do what I say, honey. Your mama needs you to be a good boy and help her out. We have to work together here.”
Jimmy wasn’t having any of it. “No!”
Clare’s patience at first seemed endless as she tried cajoling and then bribing her child. She was everything he ever remembered about a mother. Josh had to hold back his smile before it threatened to undo what she was trying to accomplish with her son. The woman was something else. She reminded him of his own mama. Strong-willed, firm but loving and unendingly patient with her child.
Maggie was going to love her.
After standing around in the hot Texas sun for a full ten minutes, biding time while Clare fought to get Jimmy settled down, Josh couldn’t wait any longer. He eased around Clare’s body and pulled Jimmy from her arms before either the mama or the boy knew what had happened.
“Heyuuup, boy,” he snapped in his best drill sergeant’s cadence as he swung the kid around and dropped him into the seat. “A—tennn—shun!”
Jimmy gaped up at him with his mouth wide-open and easily slid down into his seat with no fuss. Guess even a baby recognized authority when he heard it.
“You pay attention when your mama speaks,” Josh said firmly as he locked the kid into the restraints. “There you go.”
When Josh turned back around, Clare was glaring at him. Uh-oh. Had he overstepped some boundary without thinking and made her angry? He knew her well enough by now to see that she wanted to feel in charge of the parenting duties with her own son, and he admired her for it. But, hell, there came a time when enough was enough.
“I’m sorry if I did anything…” He stopped talking and stared down into that beautiful face, captivated by the tiny glint he caught in her eyes.
The first real sign she wasn’t mad came as the corners of both her eyes and mouth crinkled up. Pretty soon she was smiling at him with what turned into a full grin.
Josh couldn’t remember the last time he’d really smiled all out. His sense of humor had been AWOL for months—years, maybe. But when he looked at her mouth turned up in that wide smile, he found himself grinning back. He was fascinated by her mouth.
“Thank you,” she said with a flirtatious giggle in her voice.
Without thinking, only needing to feel her warmth, he leaned in closer. “I…uh…don’t know what to say,” he murmured. He was hovering within an inch of those tantalizing lips, caught between a wish and a prayer.
“Say, ‘You’re welcome.’”
The soft whisper of air from her words fanned over his face as he closed his eyes and breathed her in. What would she do if he narrowed the gap between their lips and bent for a taste of those luscious lips?
He reached out and ended up grabbing a handful of air.
The slam of Lucille’s front passenger door behind him told him everything he needed to know about what she would or would not do. Hot damn. He should’ve known better.
Chapter 4
Not ready to discuss their almost-kiss, Clare spent the next two hours finding ways to divert Jimmy’s attention from the long, boring ride. She handed the baby one of his favorite soft blocks, then a handful of fish crackers and finally told him a story he loved hearing over and over.
She’d been willing to do anything to keep Jimmy’s mind off getting out of his car seat to play—and her mind off Josh. Lucille’s cab had suddenly become too small by a factor of one very broad-shouldered man. But Josh didn’t seem to be facing the same problems she and Jimmy were. After nearly driving her mad with those intense looks and lust-filled expressions, he now drove the narrowing roads stoically and paid no attention to either one of them.
He’d been good with Jimmy at the gas stop. So good it had almost made her cry. The baby also noticed his firm but gentle care, and occasionally looked up at the back of his head with obvious admiration and yearning. Jimmy had never reacted with such instant bonding to any man, not even his own father. But then Ramzi was always too busy to pay much attention. In Ramzi’s world, babies were consigned to the women’s domain until old enough to be educated.
Josh had somehow known just what to do to settle and soothe her boy. She had been sorely tempted to find out how good Josh could be with her, too. As he’d stood beside her by the truck, she’d been suddenly wild with need. Narrowing the tiny gap that he’d infuriatingly left between them in a desperate attempt for just one taste had become an instant and insistent obsession. One she had fought hard to conquer, and congratulated herself for having mastered when she’d finally stepped away.
What was with her? She’d known the man less than a day. Furthermore, she had promised herself there would not be any romantic involvement with someone so obviously uninterested in making a commitment to a family.
Was Josh really not interested in kids? What about those longing looks he had given Jimmy? She knew what she’d been seeing. Those were the same kind of wistful looks she knew had been in her own eyes for babies before Jimmy was born. The damn man was confusing as hell with his gentleness and—and his declarations of not caring.
It was enough to make her wish for more time to figure him out. But her main concern, the entire focus of her existence for the immediate future, had to be finding a way to keep Ramzi from taking Jimmy back to Abu Fujarah.
Sighing in frustration, she sat back in her seat just as they drove past the sign that said Welcome To Zavala Springs. Except for a sleek new office complex built outside the old part of the town proper, the place didn’t look too different from any small town. Beyond the new-looking complex, they passed two brand-new multistory hotels and a couple of national chain restaurants. The newness of everything made the area look prosperous.
“Do those new buildings we passed just inside the town limits belong to the Delgado Ranch?” she asked Josh.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Beats me. I haven’t been back in a lot of years. But I’d have to guess they do. I can’t imagine any other businesses would make that kind of investment in Zavala Springs…or that the Delgado would allow anyone else to buy that much land from the company.”
“Does all the land in town belong to the Delgado, too?” She hadn’t thought of that, but it seemed logical when she considered how big and powerful the ranch and its owners were.
“Most of the land for a fifty-mile radius is part of the company’s holdings. Zavala Springs started out as a company town. I’d guess you could say it was sort of an expanded bunkhouse for the families of the ranch hands and those who worked at the wells. When the ranch last changed hands a couple of decades ago, many of the employees’ families inherited the land where they had been working or residing.”
“You mean the last actual owner named Delgado left parts of the town to the citizens in his will? As sort of a reward?”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s just the way it was.”
Wanting to ask him how he was related to the Ryans and the Delgados but afraid she would sound either nosy or pushy, Clare left their conversation at that and stared out the window. The town was neat and clean, even though the mostly one-story stucco and shingled buildings on the main street didn’t look exactly new. She imagined that the whole place was probably no more than a hundred years old at most, but it still seemed to belong to another time. Small live oaks grew in planting beds next to the sidewalks, and there were colorful flowers in pots at every corner.
Certainly Ramzi’s men could never follow them here. Clare took her first real easy breath of air since she’d left Abu Fujarah.
On the other side of the small town’s business district, Josh turned the pickup down a side street. Here the trees were taller, and though there were no sidewalks, houses set on grass lawns and painted in soft pastel colors lined the street on both sides.
“Where are we headed?”
“My grandfather Will lives…lived…in a big house in town for as long as I can remember. And my younger sister has been living there with him since our mother died back when we were teens. My guess is she’s going to stay on now that he’s gone, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about her plans.”
His mother was dead. It hadn’t occurred to Clare to ask about his immediate family. His parents. His siblings. Wouldn’t that be one way to find out if he was related to the Ryans of the Delgado Ranch?
“What’s your sister’s name? And does she have any kids?”
Josh’s lips quirked up in something that resembled a smile. “Her name is Maggie. She’s never been married and has never had babies. But she loves them. Her best friend is the next-door neighbor who has a youngster of her own and runs a day care out of her home. Maggie is over there a lot.” Josh threw a glance back at Jimmy. “Maggie is really going to enjoy having your son in the house.”
“She doesn’t know we’re coming, does she? Are you sure it’s going to be okay to have us come barging in on her when her grandfather just died?”
“It’ll be fine. Wait and see.”
In a small office right off the lobby of the Abu Fujarah Embassy in Washington, Abdullah Ramzi al-Hamzah questioned the man he had hired to find his son. “So your employees actually had my son within their reach in Houston but let his mother spirit him away? That is not the result I’m paying a small fortune to achieve. How did it go wrong?”
“That we found them at all was no small feat, Excellency. The American woman apparently has confederates here in her homeland that are helping to keep your child hidden. But there is nowhere she can hide the child for long. I have hired new men, men more familiar with the country who are new-technology experts. We are watching anyone who has ever come in contact with her and we will find her. It’s only a question of hours, perhaps a few days at most.”
Ramzi fisted his hands but stuck them in his pockets. He was frustrated beyond belief. His child. His beloved son. Taken from his place of birth and from the bosom of his rightful family.
Clare. Ramzi never imagined such a beautiful and gracious woman would be capable of committing the treachery of stealing his only son. At the end of their marriage, she had ceased to mean anything in his life. A minor annoyance only. He had been prepared never to think of her again once she was banished from his country. Now, he could think of nothing else.
“I will give you another forty-eight hours,” he told his employee. “Though I charge you to remember my instructions. I care nothing for what happens to the woman but my son is not to be put in danger. If baby Prince Bashshar is harmed in any way, I will hold you responsible.
“In the meantime,” Ramzi continued, “our diplomats are in the midst of negotiations with the U.S. State Department. I want no possibility of that woman seeking the help of her government in order to keep my child from his home. The U.S. must learn that harboring her will cause a serious rift in our oil negotiations. Soon she will be a fugitive in her own country. Neither friends nor any allies will give her refuge legally.”
Ramzi willed his temper back in place. He had to keep his mind focused on the goal. The return of his son. There would be time enough afterward to think of consequences.
Josh pulled the truck up in front of his grandfather’s home and was surprised to find a small asphalt parking area had been built beside the house. He’d almost forgotten that Grandpa Will had been running his private investigator’s business out of his home. The memories he’d kept in his heart were of his grandfather being a cop, but that had been long ago. It made Josh suddenly wonder what would happen to the P.I. business now that Grandpa Will was gone.
“This is it? What a cool place.” Clare sat and stared out the window for a few seconds. “You’re sure…”
“Come on. You take care of Jimmy. I’ll tote the stuff.”
The house looked like something out of a book, Josh thought idly as he gathered up their things. But he’d never thought about that while growing up. It had just been the place where his father’s second-generation Irish parents had lived. Now, looking up at the three stories with their gingerbread facade and at the wide porch encircling the entire house, he figured his grandfather’s home could possibly be considered cool, if you looked at it with fresh sight.
It could also be considered slightly run-down, as Josh noticed when he helped Clare and Jimmy up the front porch steps. The peeling paint and the worn boards of the steps spoke of neglect. While his grandmother Fiona had been alive, this place had never looked shabby. But she’d been gone a long time now. She’d passed away right after Maggie had graduated from college, about eight years ago.
Josh was sort of surprised that Maggie hadn’t been helping out with keeping the place up. She’d always been a whiz with tools. Maybe she’d had her hands full lately. If he decided to hang around a while after the funeral—and after he found a way to help Clare—he’d offer to fix a few things up around the old place. It would give him time to think.
He knocked on the door to his grandfather’s house, which was a first. He’d never even thought of knocking when his grandmother and grandfather had been alive. But it had been so long since he’d been home. And they were both gone now. He just didn’t feel comfortable here anymore.
After a moment or two, and there still was no answer, he knocked harder.
“Does your sister have a job?” Clare asked. “Maybe she’s gone shopping or to work or something and isn’t at home. We should’ve called when we stopped for gas.”
“Maggie’s been helping out with the business my grandfather ran from his home. If my sister is working, she’ll be here and should hear the front door. But you’re right, she could be out shopping. Somehow I can’t really imagine Maggie would be working on the day before Granddad’s funeral.” He tried the door and found it open.
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