Safe with a Stranger

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.