Safe With A Stranger

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.”