Defender

She frowned. “MO?”

“Modus operandi,” he said. “It’s Latin. It means…”

“Please,” she said. “I know Latin. It means method of operation.”

“Close enough,” he said with a gentle smile. His eyes went back to the computer screen. “Generally speaking, once a criminal finds a method that works, he uses it over and over until he’s caught. I want to make sure that he doesn’t sashay in here while your dad’s gone and make off with Grayling’s Pride.”

“Sashay?” she teased.

He wrinkled his nose. “You’re a bad influence on me,” he mused, his eyes still on the computer screen. “That’s one of your favorite words.”

“It’s just a useful one. Snit is my favorite one.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“And lately you’re in a snit more than you’re not,” she pointed out.

He managed a smile. “Bad memories. Anniversaries hit hard.”

She bit her tongue. She’d never discussed really personal things with him. She’d tried once and he’d closed up immediately. So she smiled impersonally. “So they say,” she said instead of posing the question she was dying to.

He admired her tact. He didn’t say so, of course. She couldn’t know the memories that tormented him, that had him up walking the floor late at night. She couldn’t know the guilt that ate at him night and day because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when it really mattered.

“Are you okay?” she asked suddenly.

His dark eyebrows went up. “What?”

She shrugged. “You looked wounded just then.”

She was more perceptive than he’d realized. He scrolled down the story he was reading online. “Wounded. Odd choice of words there, Isabel.”

“You’re the only person who ever called me that.”

“What? Isabel?” He looked up, studying her softly rounded face, her lovely complexion, her blue, blue eyes. “You look like an Isabel.”

“Is that a compliment or something else?”

“Definitely a compliment.” He looked back at the computer screen. “I used to love to read about your namesake. She was queen of Spain in the fifteenth century. She and her husband led a crusade to push foreigners out of their country. They succeeded in 1492.”

Her lips parted. “Isabella la Catolica.”

His chiseled lips pursed. “My God. You know your history.”

She laughed softly. “I’m a history major,” she reminded him. “Also a Spanish scholar. I’m doing a semester of Spanish immersion. English isn’t spoken in the classroom, ever. And we read some of the classic novels in Spanish.”

He chuckled softly. “My favorite was Pio Baroja. He was Basque, something of a legend in the early twentieth century.”

“Mine was Sangre y Arena.”

“Blasco Ibáñez,” he shot back. “Blood and Sand. Bullfighting?” he added in a surprised tone.

She laughed. “Yes, well, I didn’t realize what the book would be about until I got into it, and then I couldn’t put it down.”

“They made a movie about it back in the forties, I think it was,” he told her. “It starred Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth. Painful, bittersweet story. He ran around on his saintly wife with a woman who was little more than a prostitute.”

“I suppose saintly women weren’t much in demand in some circles in those days. And especially not today,” she added with a wistful little sigh. “Men want experienced women.”

“Not all of them,” he said, looking away from her.

“Really?”

He forced himself to keep his eyes on the computer screen. “Think about it. A man would have to be crazy to risk STDs or HIV for an hour’s pleasure with a woman who knew her way around bedrooms.”

She fought a blush and lost.

He saw it and laughed. “Honey, you aren’t worldly at all, are you?”

“I’m alternately backward or unliberated, to hear my classmates tell it. But mostly they tolerate my odd point of view. I think one of them actually feels sorry for me.”

“Twenty years down the road, they may wish they’d had your sterling morals,” he replied. He looked up, into her eyes, and for a few endless seconds, he didn’t look away. She felt her body glowing, burning with sensations she’d never felt before. But just when she thought she’d go crazy if she didn’t do something, footsteps sounded in the hall.

“So there you are,” Mandy exclaimed. “I’ve looked everywhere.” She stared at them.

Paul made a face. “Do I look like a suicidal man looking for the unemployment line to you?” he asked sourly.

Both women laughed.

“All the same, don’t do that when your dad’s home,” she told Sari firmly.

“I never would, you know that,” Sari said gently. “Why were you looking for me?”

“That girl at college who can’t ever find her history notes wants to talk to you about tomorrow’s test.”

“Nancy,” she groaned. “Honestly, I don’t know how she passed anything until I came along! She actually called up one of our professors at night and asked if he could give her the high points of his lecture. He hung up on her.”

“I’m not surprised,” Paul said. “Better go answer the questions, tidbit,” he added to Sari.

“I guess so,” she said. She got off the bed, reluctantly. The way he’d looked at her had made her feel shaky inside. She wanted him to do it again. But he was already buried in his computer screen.

“There was an attempted horse heist just two days ago up near San Antonio,” he was muttering. “I think I’ll call the DA up there and see if he’s made any arrests.”

“Good night, Paul,” Sari said as she left the room.

“Night, sprout. Sleep well.”

“You, too.”

* * *

Mandy led her into the kitchen and pointed to the phone.

“Hello, Nancy?” Sari said.

“Oh, thank goodness,” the other girl rushed. “I’m in such a mess! I can’t find my notes, and I’ll fail the test…!”

“No worries. Let me get mine and I’ll read them to you.”

“You could fax them…”

“You’d never read my handwriting,” Sari laughed. “Besides, it will help me remember what I need for tomorrow’s test.”

“In that case, thanks,” Nancy said.

“You’re welcome. Give me your number and I’ll call you back. I’ll have to hunt up my own notes.”

Nancy gave it to her and hung up.

Sari came back down with the notes she’d retrieved from her bulky book bag. She phoned Nancy from the kitchen, where Mandy was cleaning up, and read the notes to her. It didn’t take long.

“I’ll see you in class,” Nancy said. “And thanks! You’ve saved my life!” She hung up.

“She says I saved her life,” Sari said, chuckling.

Mandy gave her a glance. “If you want to save two lives, you’ll stay out of Mr. Paul’s bedroom.”

“Mandy, it’s perfectly innocent. The door’s always open when I’m in there.”

“You don’t understand. It’s how it looks, that easy familiarity between you two. It will carry over to other times, in daylight. If your father sees it, even thinks that there might be something going on…”

“I don’t do it when he’s here.”

“I know that. It’s just…” She grimaced. “I don’t know where he put all the cameras.”

Sari’s heart jumped. “What cameras?”

“He had it done while you girls were at school. He had three security cameras installed. He sent me out of the house on an errand while they were put in place. I don’t know where they are.”

“Surely he wouldn’t have them put in our bedrooms,” Sari began worriedly.

“There’s no telling,” Mandy said. “I only know that he didn’t put one in here. I’d have noticed if anything was moved or displaced. Nothing was.”

Sari chewed on a fingernail. “Gosh, now I’ll worry if I talk in my sleep!”

“The cameras are why you should stay out of Mr. Paul’s bedroom. Besides that,” she added under her breath, “you’re tempting fate.”

“I am? How?” Sari asked blankly.

“Honey, Mr. Paul takes a woman out for a sandwich or a quick dinner. He never goes home with them.”

Sari flushed with sudden pleasure.

“My point is,” the older woman went on, “that he’s a man starved of…well…satisfaction,” she faltered. “You might say something or do something to tempt him, is what I’m trying to say.”

Sari sighed and rested her face on her palms, propped on her elbows. “That would be a fine thing,” she mused. “He’s never even touched me except to help me out of a car,” she added on a wistful sigh.

“If he ever did touch you, your father would be sure to hear about it. And I don’t like to think of the consequences. He’s a violent man, Sari,” she added gently.

“I know that.” Her face showed her misery. She was too innocent to hide her responses.

“So, don’t tempt fate,” Mandy said softly. She hugged the younger woman tight. “I know how you feel about him. But if you start something, he’ll be out on his ear. And what your father would do to you…” She drew back with a grimace. “I love Mr. Paul,” she added. “He’s the kindest man I know. You don’t want to get him fired.”

“Of course I don’t,” Sari replied. “I promise I’ll behave.”

“You always have,” Mandy said with a tender smile. “It all ends, you know,” she said suddenly.

“Ends?”

“Misery. Unrequited love. Even life. It all ends. We live in pieces of emotion. Pieces of life. It doesn’t all get put together until we’re old and ready for the long sleep.”

“Okay, when you get philosophical, I know it’s past my bedtime,” Sari teased.

Mandy hugged her one last time. “You’re a sweet child. Go to bed. Sleep well.”

“You, too.” She went to the doorway and paused. She turned. “Thanks.”

“What for?”

“Caring about me and Merrie,” Sari said gently. “Nobody else has, since Mama died.”

“It’s because I care that I sometimes say things you don’t want to hear, my darling.”

Sari smiled. “I know.” She turned and left the room.

* * *

Mandy, older and wiser, saw what Sari and Paul really felt for each other, and she worried at the possible consequences if that tsunami of emotion ever turned loose in them.

She went back to her chores, closing the kitchen up for the night.

TWO

When Isabel walked past Paul’s bedroom after she called Nancy, she noticed his door was closed and the lights were off.

She went into her own room, climbed into bed and extinguished the single bedroom lamp in the room.

She recalled what Mandy had said, about the dangers of getting too close to him, with sadness. Yes, of course, her father would fire him if anything indiscreet came to light. She also recalled the pain she felt when the older woman spoke of Paul going on dates with other women.

He didn’t take them to bed, that much was clear. But it also indicated that he wasn’t ready to get serious about a woman, that he wasn’t interested in marriage and kids. And Isabel was. She’d gladly have given up college to end up in Paul’s arms with a baby of her own.

But that seemed more unlikely by the day. She was living in pipe dreams. Paul was content to have her at arm’s length. He didn’t want her. At least, he didn’t want her the way she wanted him. She cared more for him than she’d ever cared for anyone, except her mother and sister.

As Paul liked to remind her, though, she hadn’t been out in the world long enough to know what she really wanted. That amused her. He seemed to think she was still the seventeen-year-old he’d taken to school every day in the limo. She was twenty-one, almost twenty-two now. She’d graduate from college in a few months. That made her, in the eyes of the world, an adult. Not to Paul, though. Never to Paul.

She had to start thinking about what she was going to do with her life after college. Law had always fascinated her. She’d been hanging around the courthouse after school, grilling one of District Attorney Blake Kemp’s assistant DAs about what it was like to practice in a courtroom. Glory Ramirez was happy to talk to her, filling her head with thoughts of working in the DA’s office.

“Blake knows how much time you spend here, on my lunch hour and after work,” Glory teased.

“Oh, no,” Sari began.

Glory held up a hand. “He doesn’t mind. There aren’t that many people blazing paths up the street to the courthouse to solicit work in the DA’s office.” She sobered. “It’s hard work, Sari, with long hours. Sometimes defendants’ families target us, because they think we’ve been unfair. Sometimes the defendants themselves try to attack us when they get out. Those instances are rare, but they do happen. Family life is hard.” She smiled gently. “I’m qualified to know that, because my husband and I have a son who’s almost four years old. Rodrigo still works for the DEA and I’m at the courthouse all hours. Sometimes we have to have the Pendletons babysit.” The Pendletons were Glory’s adoptive family. Jason’s father had been Glory, and Gracie’s, guardian.

“I don’t really think they mind,” Sari teased, because it was well-known that although Jason and Gracie Pendleton had a son and daughter of their own now, they still loved to watch their nephew. All the kids had enough toys to stock a nursery.

“Of course not,” Glory laughed. “But I’m still missing out on time with my family to do this job. I love it,” she added gently. “It’s a special thing, to help keep people safe, to make sure people who do terrible things are punished and off the streets. That’s why I do it.”

“I…would do it for that reason, as well,” Sari said, not adding that her terror of a father was one of her own motivations. He was the sort of person who should have been sitting in a jail cell, but never would, because of his wealth. “Justice shouldn’t be dealt according to who has money and who hasn’t,” she added absently.

Glory, who had some idea of Darwin Grayling’s illegal dealings, only nodded her head.

“Anyway, what about those courses you mentioned?” she asked, bringing Glory back to the present.

Glory laughed. “Okay. Here’s what you need to consider in law school…”

* * *

Sari was full of fire for the fall semester in law school, after she got her undergraduate degree. Her cumulative grades assured that she would graduate, the finals from each class notwithstanding. She already had a graduate school picked out. Law school in San Antonio.

“You’ll have to drive me, of course,” Sari told Paul with a sigh when she outlined the courses Glory had told her about. “There’s no way Daddy will ever let me drive myself. I don’t even have a driver’s license.”

He scowled. “Surely not.”

She shrugged. “He holds the purse strings, you know. Either I do it his way or I don’t do it,” she said with the complacency of a woman who’d lived such a sheltered life. “So I do it.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to break out?” he asked suddenly.

She grinned at him across a plate of cookies, which they were sharing with cups of coffee at the small kitchen table. “You offering to help me?” she teased. “Got a helicopter and a couple of guys wearing ninja suits?”

He chuckled. “Not quite. I used to know a couple of guys like that, though, in the old days.”

“Oh, please,” she said, munching a cookie. “You aren’t old enough to be remembering ‘the old days.’”

His eyebrows rose. “You need glasses, kid. I’ve got gray hair already.”

She eyed him. He was so gorgeous. Black wavy hair, deep-set warm brown eyes, high cheekbones, chiseled mouth; he was any woman’s dream guy. “Gray hair, my left elbow.”

“No kidding. Right here.” He indicated a spot at his temple.

“Oh, that one. Sure. You’re old, all right. You’ve got one whole gray hair.”

He grinned, as she’d expected him to. “Well, maybe a few more than that. I’m like my grandfather. His hair never turned gray. He had a few silver hairs when he died, at the age of eighty.”

“Do you look like him?” she asked, sipping coffee.

“No. I look like my grandmother. Everybody else was Italian. She was tiny and Greek and she had a mouth like a mob boss.” He chuckled. “Do something wrong, and that gnarled little hand came out of nowhere to grab your ear.” He made a face.

“So that’s why your ears are so big,” she mused, looking at them.

“Hey, I was never that bad,” he argued. He glowered at her. “And my ears aren’t that big.”

“If you say so,” she said, hiding the gleam in her eyes.

“You little termagant,” he said, exasperated.

“Where do you get all those big words?” she asked.

“College.”

“Really? You never told me you went to college.”

He shrugged. “I don’t like talking about the past.”

“I noticed.”

“We could talk about your past,” he invited.

“And after those forty-five seconds, we could go back to yours,” she teased, blue eyes twinkling. “Come on, what did you study?”

“Law.” His face hardened with the memories. “Criminal law.”

She frowned. “That was before you came to work for Daddy, yes?”

She was killing him and she didn’t know it. His hand, on the thick white mug, was almost white with the pressure he was exerting. “A long time before that.”

“Then, what…”

Mandy came into the room like a chubby whirlwind. “Where did you put the ribbons I was saving to wrap the holiday cookies with?” she demanded from Sari.

“Oh, my gosh, I was working on homemade Christmas cards and I borrowed them. I’m sorry!”

“Go get them,” Mandy ordered with all the authority of a drill sergeant. “Right now!”

Sari left in a whirlwind, and Mandy turned to Paul, who was paler than normal. His hand, around the mug, was just beginning to loosen its grip.

He gave her a suspicious look.

“Sari doesn’t think,” Mandy said quietly. “She’s curious and she asks questions, because she doesn’t think.”

He didn’t admit anything. He took a deep breath. “Thanks,” he bit off.

“We all have dark memories that we never share, Mr. Paul,” she said gently. She patted his shoulder as she walked behind him. “Age diminishes the sting a bit. But you’re much too young for that just yet,” she added with a soft chuckle.

“You’re a tonic, girl.”

“I haven’t been a girl for forty years, you sweet man, but now I feel like one!”

He laughed, the pain washing away in good humor.

“There. That’s better,” she said, smiling at him. “You just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and it gets easier.”

“It’s been almost five years.”

“Thirty years for me,” Mandy said surprisingly. “And it’s much easier now.”

He drew in a breath and finished his coffee. “Maybe in twenty-five years, I’ll forget it all, then.”

She looked at him with a somber little smile. “It would do an injustice to the people we love to forget them,” she said softly. “Pain comes with the memories, sure. But the memories become less painful in time.”

He scowled. “You should have been a philosopher.”

“And then who’d bake cookies for you and Miss Sari and Miss Merrie?” she asked.

“Well, if we had to depend on Isabel’s cooking, I expect we’d all starve,” he said deliberately when he heard Sari coming.

She stopped in the doorway, gasping and glaring. “That is so unfair!” she exclaimed. “Heavens, I made an almost-edible, barely scorched potato casserole just last week!”

“That’s true,” Mandy agreed.

Paul glowered. “Almost being the operative word.”

“And I didn’t even mention that I saw you pushing yours out the back door while I was trying to pry open one of my biscuits so I could butter it!”

Sari sighed. “I guess they were a pretty good substitute for bricks,” she added. “Maybe I’ll learn to cook one day.”

“You’re doing just fine, darlin’,” Mandy said encouragingly. “It takes time to learn.” She shot Paul a glance. “And a lot of encouragement.”

“Damn, Isabel, I almost got one of those biscuits pried open to put butter in!” He glanced at Mandy. “How’s that?”

“Why don’t you go patrol the backyard?” Sari muttered.

“She’s picking on me again, Mandy,” he complained.

“Don’t you be mean to Mr. Paul, young lady.” Mandy took his part at once.

“He says terrible things about me, and you never chastise him!” Sari accused.

“Well, darlin’, I may be old, but I can still appreciate a handsome man.” She grinned at them.

Sari threw up her hands. Paul made her a handsome bow, winked and walked out the back door.

“You always take his side,” Sari groaned.

Mandy chuckled. “He really is handsome,” she said defensively.

“Yes. Too handsome. And too standoffish. He’ll never look at me as anything but the kid I was when he came here.”

“You’ve got law school to get through,” Mandy reminded her. She sobered. “And you know how your dad feels about you getting involved with anyone.”

“Yes, I know,” Sari said miserably. “Especially anybody who works for him.” Shivering softly, she said, “It’s just, I’m getting older. I’m a grown woman. And I can’t even drive myself to San Antonio to go shopping or invite friends over.”

“You don’t have any friends,” Mandy countered.

“I don’t dare. Neither does Merrie,” she added solemnly. “We’re young, with the whole world out there waiting for us, and we have to get permission to leave the house. Why?” she exclaimed.

Mandy ground her teeth. “You know how your dad guards his privacy. He’s afraid one of you might let something slip.”

“Like what? We don’t know anything about his business, or even his private life,” Sari exclaimed.

“And you’re both safe as long as it’s kept that way,” Mandy said without thinking, then slapped a hand across her mouth.

Sari bit her lower lip. She moved closer. “What do you know?”

“Things I’ll die before I’ll tell you,” the older woman replied, turning pale.

“How do you know them?”

Mandy ignored her.

“Your brother, right?” she whispered. “He knows people who know things.”

“Don’t you ever say that out loud,” she cautioned the younger woman, looking hunted until Sari reassured her that she’d never do any such thing.

“It’s like living in a combat zone,” Sari muttered.

“A satin-cushioned one,” came the droll reply. “If you want an apple pie, here’s a do-it-yourself kit.” She put a basin of apples in front of the younger woman. “So get busy and peel.”

Sari started to argue. But then she recalled the delicious pies Mandy could make, so she shut up and started peeling.

* * *

Graduation came all too soon. The household, except for Darwin Grayling, who was in Europe at the time, went to Merrie’s first at the high school and took enough pictures to fill an album. Then, only a few days later, it was Isabel’s graduation from college. Merrie kept fussing with Sari’s high collar.

“It’s okay,” her older sibling protested.

“It’s not! There’s a wrinkle, and I can’t get it smoothed out!” Merrie grumbled.

“It will be hidden under my robes,” Sari said gently, turning. She smiled at her younger sister. She shook her head. With her long blond hair like a curtain down her back, wearing a fluffy blue dress, Merrie looked like a picture of Alice in Wonderland that Sari had seen in a book. “I like your hair like that,” she said.

Merrie laughed, her pale blue eyes lighting up. “I look like Alice. Go ahead. Say it. You’re thinking it,” she accused.

Sari wrinkled her nose.

Merrie sighed. “He decides what we’ll wear, where we’ll go, what we do when we get there,” she said under her breath, her eyes on their father, standing with Paul near the front door. “Sari, normal women don’t live like this! The girls I go to school with have dates, go shopping…!”

“Stop, or I won’t get to graduate at all,” the older sister muttered under her breath when Darwin Grayling shot an irritated glance toward them at Merrie’s slightly raised tone.

Merrie drew in a deep breath. “It’s Sari’s collar,” she called to her father. “I can’t get the wrinkle out!”

“Leave it be,” he shot back. He looked at his watch. “We need to leave now. I have meetings with my board of directors in Dallas in three hours.”