Bound by Honor: Mercenary's Woman

“I will,” Sally promised. She didn’t want to risk her aunt’s life, or Stevie’s, by being too independent.

Eb nodded. “We’ll keep the lessons up at least three times a week,” he told Sally. “I want to move you into self-defense pretty quickly.”

She understood why and felt uneasy. “Okay.”

“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “Everything’s going to be fine. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

She managed a smile for him. “I know that.”

“Walk me to the door,” he coaxed. “See you, Jess.”

“Take care, Eb,” Jessie replied, her goodbye echoed by her son’s.

On the front porch, Eb closed the door and looked down into Sally’s wide gray eyes with concern and something more elusive.

“I’ll have the house watched,” he promised. “But you have to be careful about even normal things like opening the door when someone comes. Always keep the chain lock on until you know who’s out there. Another thing, you have to keep your doors and windows locked, curtains drawn and an escape route always in mind.”

She bit her lip worriedly. “I’ve never had to deal with anything like this.”

His big, warm hands closed over her shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry that you and Stevie have been put in the line of fire along with Jess. But you can handle this,” he said confidently. “You’re strong. You can do whatever you have to do.”

She searched his hard, lean face, saw the deep lines and scars that the violence of his life had carved into it, and knew that he would never lie to her. Her frown dissolved. His confidence in her made her feel capable of anything. She smiled.

He smiled back and traced a lazy line from her cheek down to her soft mouth. “If Stevie wasn’t so unpredictable, I’d kiss you,” he said quietly. “I like your mouth under mine.”

Her caught breath was audible. There had never been anyone who could do to her with words what he could.

He traced her lips, entranced. “I used to dream about that afternoon with you,” he said in a sensuous tone. “I woke up sweating, swearing, hating myself for what I’d done.” He laughed hollowly. “Hating you for what I’d done, too,” he added. “I blamed us both. But I couldn’t forget how it was.”

She colored delicately and lowered her eyes to his broad chest under the shirt he wore. The memories were so close to the surface of her mind that it was impossible not to glimpse them from time to time. Now, they were blatant and embarrassing.

His lean hands moved up to frame her face and force her eyes to meet his. He wasn’t smiling.

“No other man will ever have the taste of you that I did, that day,” he said roughly. “You were so deliciously innocent.”

Her lips parted at the intensity of his tone, at the faint glitter of his green eyes. “That isn’t what you said at the time!” she accused.

“At the time,” he murmured huskily, watching her mouth, “I was hurting so much that I didn’t take time to choose my words. I just wanted you out of the damned truck before I started stripping you out of those tight little shorts you were wearing.”

The flush in her cheeks got worse. The image of it was unbelievably shocking. Somehow, it had never occurred to her that at some point he might undress her, to gain access…

“What an expression,” he said, chuckling in spite of himself. “Hadn’t you considered what might happen when you came on to me that hard?”

She shook her head.

His fingers slid into the blond hair at her temples where the long braid pulled it away from her face. “Someone should have had a long talk with you.”

“You did,” she recalled nervously.

“Long and explicit, the day afterward,” he said, nodding. “You didn’t want to hear it, but I made you. I liked to think that it might have saved you from an even worse experience.”

“It wasn’t exactly a bad experience,” she said, staring at his shirt button. “That was part of the problem.”

There was a long, static silence. “Sally,” he breathed, and his mouth moved down slowly to cover hers in the silence of the porch.

She stood on tiptoe to coax him closer, lost in the memory of that long-ago afternoon. She felt his hands on her arms, guiding them up around his neck before they fell back to her hips and lifted her into the suddenly swollen contours of his muscular body.

She gasped, giving him the opening he wanted, so that he could deepen the kiss. She felt the warm hardness of his mouth against hers, the soft nip of his teeth, the deep exploration of his tongue. A warm flood of sensation rushed into her lower abdomen and she felt her whole body go tense with it. It was as if her body had become perfectly attuned to this man’s years ago, and could never belong to anyone else.

He felt her headlong response and slowly let her back down, lifting his mouth away from hers. He studied her face, her swollen, soft mouth, her wide eyes, her dazed expression.

“Yes,” he said huskily.

“Yes?”

He bent and nipped her lower lip sensuously before he pushed her away.

She stared up at him helplessly, feeling as if she’d just been dropped from a great height.

His eyes went to her breasts and lingered on the sharp little points so noticeable at the front of her blouse, the fabric jumping with every hard, quick beat of her heart.

She met that searching gaze and felt the power of it all the way to her toes.

“You know as well as I do that it’s only a matter of time,” he said softly. “It always has been.”

She frowned. Her mind seemed to have shut down. She couldn’t quite focus, and her legs felt decidedly weak.

His eyes were back on her breasts, swerving to the closed door, and to both curtained windows before he stepped in close and cupped her blatantly in his warm, sensuous hands.

Sally’s mouth opened on a shocked gasp that became suddenly a moan of pleasure.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered, and his mouth covered hers hungrily.

It was the most passionate, adult kiss of her life, even eclipsing what had come before. His hands found their way under her sweatshirt and against lace-covered soft flesh. Her body responded instantly to the slow caresses. She curled into his body, eagerly submissive.

“Lord, what I wouldn’t give to unfasten this,” he groaned at her mouth as his fingers toyed with the closure at her back. “And sure as hell, Stevie would come outside the minute I did, and show and tell would take on a whole new meaning.”

The idea of it amused him and he lifted his head, smiling down into Sally’s equally laughing eyes.

“Ah, well,” he said, removing his hands with evident reluctance. “All things come to those who wait,” he added.

Sally blushed and moved a little away from him.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” he chided gently, his green eyes sparkling, full of mischief and pleasure. “All of us have a weak spot.”

“Not you, man of steel,” she teased.

“We’ll talk about that next time,” he said. “Meanwhile, remember what I said. Especially about night trips.”

“Now where would I go alone at night in Jacobsville?” she asked patiently.

He only laughed. But even as she watched him drive away she remembered an upcoming parents and teachers meeting. There would be plenty of time to tell him about that, she reminded herself. She turned back into the house, her mouth and body still tingling pleasantly.

CHAPTER FOUR

JESSICA WAS SUBDUED AFTER the time she’d spent with Dallas. Even Stevie noticed, and became more attentive. Sally cooked her aunt’s favorite dishes and did her best to coax Jess into a better frame of mind. But the other woman’s sadness was blatant.

With her mind on Jessica and not on time passing, she forgot that she had a parents and teachers meeting the next Tuesday night. She phoned Eb’s ranch, as she’d been told to, but all she got was the answering machine and a message that only asked the caller to leave a name and number. She left a message, doubting that he’d hear it before she was safely home. She hadn’t really believed him when he’d said the whole family was in danger, especially since nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But even so, surely nothing was going to happen to her on a two-mile drive home!

She sent Stevie home with a fellow teacher. The business meeting was long and explosive, and it was much later than usual when it was finally over. Sally spoke to the parents she knew and left early. She wasn’t thinking about anything except her bed as she drove down the long, lonely road toward home. As she passed the large house and accompanying acreage where her three neighbors lived, she felt a chill. Three of them were out on their front porch. The light was on, and it looked as if they were arguing about something. They caught sight of her truck and there was an ominous stillness about them.

Sally drove faster, aware that she drew their attention as she went past them. Only a few more minutes, she thought, and she’d be home…

The steering wheel suddenly became difficult to turn and with horror she heard the sound of a tire going flatter and flatter. Her heart flipped over. She didn’t have a spare. She’d rolled it out of the bed to make room for the cattle feed she’d taken home last week, having meant to ask Eb to help her put it back in again. But she’d have to walk the rest of the way, now. Worse, it was dark and those creepy men were still watching the truck.

Well, she told herself as she climbed out of the cab with her purse over her shoulder, they weren’t going to give her any trouble. She had a loud whistling device, and she now knew at least enough self-defense to protect herself. Confident, despite Eb’s earlier warnings, she locked the truck and started walking.

The sound of running feet came toward her. She looked over her shoulder and stopped, turning, her mouth set in a grim line. Two of the three men were coming down the road toward her in a straight line. Just be calm, she told herself. She was wearing a neat gray pantsuit with a white blouse, her hair was up in a French twist, and she lifted her chin to show that she wasn’t afraid of them. Feeling her chances of a physical defense waning rapidly as she saw the size and strength of the two men, her hand went nervously to the whistle in her pocketbook and brought it by her side.

“Hey, there, sweet thing,” one of the men called. “Got a flat? We’ll help you change it.”

The other man, a little taller, untidy, unshaved and frankly unpleasant-looking, grinned at her. “You bet we will!”

“I don’t have a spare, thank you all the same.”

“We’ll drive you home,” the tall one said.

She forced a smile. “No, thanks. I’ll enjoy the walk. Good night!”

She started to turn when they pounced. One knocked the whistle out of her hand and caught her arm behind her back, while the other one took her purse off her shoulder and went through it quickly. He pulled out her wallet, looked at everything in it, and finally took out a bill, dropping her self-defense spray with the purse.

“Ten lousy bucks,” he muttered, dropping the bag as he stuffed the bill into his pocket. “Pity Lopez don’t pay us better. This’ll buy us a couple of six-packs, though.”

“Let me go,” Sally said, incensed. She tried to bring her elbow back into the man’s stomach, as she’d seen an instructor on television do, but the man twisted her other arm so harshly that the pain stopped her dead.

The other man came right up to her and looked her up and down. “Not bad,” he rasped. “Quick, bring her over here, off the road,” he told the other man.

“Lopez won’t like this!” The man on the porch came toward them, yelling across the road. “You’ll draw attention to us!”

One of them made a rude remark. The third man went back up on the porch, his footsteps sounding unnaturally loud on the wood.

Sally was almost sick with fear, but she fought like a tigress. Her efforts to break free did no good. These men were bigger and stronger than she was, and they had her helpless. She couldn’t get to her whistle or spray and every kick, punch she tried was effectively blocked. It occurred to her that these men knew self-defense moves, too, and how to avoid them. Too late, she remembered what Eb had said to her about overconfidence. These men weren’t even drunk and they were too much for her.

Her heart beat wildly as she was dragged off the road to the thick grass at the roadside. She would struggle, she would fight, but she was no match for them. She knew she was in a lot of danger and it looked like there was no escape. Tears of impotent fury dripped from her eyes. Helpless while one of the men kept her immobilized, she remembered the sound of her own voice telling her aunt just a few weeks ago that she could handle anything. She’d been overconfident.

A sound buzzed in her head and at first she thought it was the prelude to a dead faint. It wasn’t. The sound was growing closer. It was a pickup truck. The headlights illuminated her truck on the roadside, but not the struggle that was going on near it.

It was as if the driver knew what was happening without seeing it. The truck whipped onto the shoulder and was cut off. A man got out, a tall man in a shepherd’s coat with a Stetson drawn over his brow. He walked straight toward the two men, who released Sally and turned to face the new threat. Eb!

“Car trouble?” a deep, gravelly voice asked sarcastically.

One of the men pulled a knife, and the other one approached the newcomer. “This ain’t none of your business,” the taller man said. “Get going.”

The newcomer put his hands on his lean hips and stood his ground. “In your dreams.”

“You’ll wish you had,” the taller of them replied harshly. He moved in with the knife close in at his side.

Sally stared in horror at Eb, who was inviting this lunatic to kill him! She knew from television how deadly a knife wound in the stomach could be. Hadn’t Eb told her that the best way to survive a knife fight was to never get in one in the first place, to run like hell? And now Eb was going to be killed and it was going to be all her fault for not taking his advice and getting that tire fixed…!

Eb moved unexpectedly, with the speed of a striking cobra. The man with the knife was suddenly writhing on the ground, holding his forearm and sobbing. The other man rushed forward, to be flipped right out into the highway. He got up and rushed again. This time he was met with a violent, sharp movement that sent him to the ground, and he didn’t get up.

Eb walked right over the unconscious man, ignoring the groaning man, and picked Sally up right off the ground in his arms. He carried her to his truck, balancing her on one powerful denim-covered thigh while he opened the passenger door and put her inside.

“My…purse,” she whispered, giving in to the shock and fear that she’d tried so hard to hide. She was shaking so hard her speech was slurred.

He closed the door, retrieved her purse and wallet from the ground, and handed it in through his open door. “What did they take, baby?” he asked in a soft, comforting tone.

“The tall one…took a ten-dollar bill,” she faltered, hating her own cowardice as she sobbed helplessly. “In his pocket…”

Eb retrieved it, tossed it to her and got in beside her.

“But those men,” she protested.

“Be still for a minute. It’s all right. They look worse than they are.” He took a cell phone from his pocket, opened it, and dialed. “Bill? Eb Scott. I left you a couple of assailants on the Simmons Mill Road just past Bell’s rental house. That’s right, the very one.” He glanced at Sally. “Not tonight. I’ll tell her to come see you in the morning.” There was a pause. “Nothing too bad; a couple of broken bones, that’s all, but you might send the ambulance anyway. Sure. Thanks, Bill.”

He powered down the phone and stuck it back into his jacket. “Fasten your seat belt. I’ll take you home and send one of my men out to fix the truck and drive it back for you.”

Her hands were shaking so badly that he had to do it for her. He turned on the light in the cab and looked at her intently. He saw the shock, the fear, the humiliation, the anger, all lying naked in her wide, shimmering gray eyes. Last, his eyes fell to her blouse, where the fabric was torn, and her simple cotton brassiere was showing. She was so upset that she didn’t even realize how much bare skin was on display.

He took off the long-sleeved chambray shirt he was wearing over his black T-shirt and put her into it, fastening the buttons with deft, quick hands over the ripped blouse. His face grew hard as he saw the evidence of her ordeal.

“I had a…a…whistle.” she choked. “I even remembered what you taught me about how to fight back…!”

He studied her solemnly. “I trained a company of recruits a few years ago,” he said evenly. “They’d had hand-to-hand combat training and they knew all the right moves to counter any sort of physical attack. There wasn’t one of them that I couldn’t drop in less than ten seconds.” His pale green eyes searched hers. “Even a martial artist can lose a match. It depends on the skill of his opponent and his ability to keep his head when the attack comes. I’ve seen karate instructors send advanced students running with nothing more dangerous than the yell, a sudden quick sound that paralyzes.”

“Those two men…they couldn’t…touch you,” she pointed out, amazed.

His pale eyes had an alien coldness that made her shiver. “I told you to get that damned tire fixed, Sally.”

She swallowed. Her pride was bruised almost beyond bearing. “I don’t take orders,” she said, trying to salvage a little self-respect.

“I don’t give them anymore,” he returned. “But I do give advice, and you’ve just seen the results of not listening. At least you had the sense to leave a message on my answering machine. But what if I hadn’t checked my messages, Sally? Would you like to think where you’d be now? Want me to paint you a picture?”

“Stop!” She put her face in her hands and shivered.

“I won’t apologize,” he told her abruptly. “You did a damned stupid thing and you got off lucky. Another time, I might not be quick enough.”

She swallowed and swallowed again. “The…conquering male,” she choked, but she wasn’t teasing now, as she had been that afternoon when he’d told her to get the tire fixed.

He drew her hands away from her face and looked into her eyes steadily. “That’s right,” he said curtly, and he wasn’t kidding. “I’ve been dealing with vermin like that for almost half my life. I told you there was danger in going out alone. Now you understand what I meant. Get that damned tire fixed, and buy a cell phone.”

Her head was spinning. “I can’t afford one,” she said unsteadily.

“You can’t afford not to. If you’d had one tonight, this might never have happened,” he said forcefully. The heat in his eyes made her shiver. “A man is physically stronger than a woman. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, that’s the honest truth. Unless you’ve trained for years, like a policewoman or a federal agent, you’re not going to be the equal of a man who’s drunk or on drugs or just bent on assault. Law enforcement people know how to fight. You don’t.”

She shivered again. Her hair was disheveled. She felt bruises on her arms where she’d been restrained by those men. She was still stunned by the experience, but already a little of the horror of what might have happened was getting to her.

He let her wrists go abruptly. His lean face softened as he studied her. “But I’ll say one thing for you. You’ve got grit.”

“Sure. I’m tough,” she laughed hollowly, brushing a strand of loose hair out of her eyes. “What a pitiful waste of self-confidence!”

“Who the hell taught you about canned self-defense?” he asked curiously, referring to the can of spray on the ground.

“There was this television self-defense training course for women,” she said defensively.

“Anything you spray, pepper or chemical, can rebound on you,” he said quietly. “If the wind’s blowing the wrong way, you can blind yourself. If you don’t hit the attacker squarely in the eyes, you’re no better off, either. As for the whistle, tonight there would have been no one close enough to hear it.” He sighed at her miserable expression and shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you to run?”

She lifted a high-heeled foot eloquently.

He leaned closer. “If you’re ever in a similar situation again, kick them off and try for the two-minute mile!”

She managed a smile for him. “Okay.”

He touched her wan, drawn face gently. “I wouldn’t have had that happen to you for the world,” he said bitterly.

“You were right, I brought it on myself. I won’t make that mistake again, and at least I got away with everything except my pride intact,” she said gamely.

He unfastened her seat belt, aware of a curtain being lifted and then released in the living room. “I sent Dallas straight here as soon as I got the message,” he explained, “to watch out for Jess and Stevie. You should have let me know about this night meeting much sooner.”

“I know.” She was fighting tears. The whole experience had been a shock that she knew she’d never get over. “There was a third man, on the porch. He said that Lopez wouldn’t like what they were doing, calling attention to themselves.”

He stared at her for a long moment, seeing the fear and terror and revulsion that lingered in her oval face, watching the way her hands clenched at the shirt he’d fastened over her torn bodice. He glanced at the window, where the curtain was in place again, and back to Sally’s face.

“Come here, sweetheart,” he said tenderly, pulling her into his arms. He cuddled her close, nuzzling his face into her throat, letting her cry.

Her clenched fist rested against his black undershirt and she sobbed with impotent fury. “Oh, I’m so…mad!” she choked. “So mad! I felt like a rag doll.”

“You do your best and take what comes,” he said at her ear. “Anybody can lose a fight.”

“I’ll bet you never lost one,” she muttered tearfully.

“I got the hell beaten out of me in boot camp by a little guy half my size, who was a hapkido master. Taught me a valuable lesson about overconfidence,” he said deliberately.

She took the handkerchief he placed in her hands and wiped her nose and eyes and mouth. “Okay, I get the message,” she said on a broken sigh. “There’s always somebody bigger and you can’t win every time.”

“Nice attitude,” he said, approving.

She wiped away the last trace of tears and looked up at him from her comfortable position across his lap. “Thanks for the hero stuff.”

He shrugged. “Shucks, ma’am, t’weren’t nothin’.”

She laughed, as she was meant to. Her eyes adored him. “They say that if you save a life, it becomes yours.”

His lips pursed and he looked down at where the jacket barely covered her torn blouse. “Do I get that, too?”

“Too?”

He opened the shirt very slowly and looked at the pale flesh under the torn blouse. There was a lot of it on view. Sally didn’t protest, didn’t grab at cover. She lay very still in his arms and let him look at her.

His pale eyes met hers in the faint light coming from the house. “No protest?”

“You saved me,” she said simply. She sighed and smiled with resignation. “I belonged to you, anyway. There’s never been anyone else.”

His long, lean fingers touched her collarbone, his eyes narrow and solemn, his expression serious, intent. “That could have changed, tonight,” he reminded her quietly. “You have to trust me enough to do what I tell you. I don’t want you hurt in this. I’ll do anything I have to, to protect you. That includes having a man follow you around like a visible appendage if you push me to it. Think what your principal would make of that!”

“I won’t make any more stupid mistakes,” she promised.

“What would you call this?” he mused, nodding toward the ripped fabric that left one pretty, taut breast completely bare.

“Cover me up if you don’t like what you see,” she challenged.

He actually laughed. She was constantly surprising him. “I think I’d better,” he murmured dryly, and pulled the shirt back over her, leaving her to button it again. “Dallas is at the window getting an education.”