Smooth-Talking Texan

It was crazy.

Wonderful, but definitely crazy, Lisa thought. She did not even like the man, for God’s sake. Quinn was arrogant, cocky and bullheaded. He obviously cared only about getting what he wanted when it came to his job, and it was clear from the grin that he was used to getting what he wanted from women, as well. He was precisely the sort of man she disliked.

So how could one kiss from Quinn Sutton have affected her like that?

How could he have made her feel as if she were about to fall into an old-fashioned swoon?

Smooth-Talking Texan

Candace Camp

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CANDACE CAMP,

a USA TODAY bestselling author and former attorney, is married to a Texan, and they have a daughter who has been bitten by the acting bug. Her family and her writing keep Candace busy, but when she does have free time, she loves to read. In addition to her contemporary romances, she has written a number of historicals, which are currently being published by MIRA Books.

For Pete,

My smooth-talking Texan

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 1

Lisa Mendoza drove to the county courthouse in Angel Eye, ready to do battle. This was the sort of case that she had gone to law school for, a clear miscarriage of justice, an example of prejudice and abuse of power. She felt none of the ambivalence that she often did in the criminal cases she had been assigned so far, where her client was usually clearly guilty and her only hope was of plea-bargaining down to a lesser sentence. Nor was it the small consumer grievance or landlord/tenant dispute that had come to her at the legal aid office since she had moved to the small town of Hammond, Texas. This was an Hispanic teenaged boy held without due cause in a small-town county jail.

She narrowed her eyes and her foot pressed down a little harder on the accelerator as she thought about it. Less than an hour ago Benny Hernandez’s cousin had sat in her office in Hammond and described to her how his seventeen-year-old relative had been stopped the day before by the sheriff and hauled off to jail even though he had committed nothing more serious than a traffic violation. The sheriff had not released him, not even charged him with any crime. There had been no arraignment, no hearing, and his large and loving family was understandably worried, though most of them were too in awe of the Law—with a capital L—to do anything about it. Therefore, Enrique Garza, the man in her office, had decided to take it upon himself to hire an attorney for the boy.

“Sometimes Benny can be a little wild,” he had admitted with a deprecating smile, “but he’s not a bad kid. I don’t want to see him get hurt.”

Lisa could imagine the sheriff she was driving to see: a middle-aged, potbellied Anglo “good ol’ boy,” no doubt, who had judged Benny Hernandez guilty of some crime simply because his skin was too dark. Wasn’t Bertram County, of which the little town of Angel Eye was the county seat, one of those south Texas counties famous for their politically powerful and corrupt sheriffs? The kind of county where the sheriff ruled with an iron fist and took bribes and routinely brought in the graveyard vote for the right politicians? She was almost sure she remembered reading an article in a Texas magazine a few years ago about these sheriffs that had ruled as they pleased earlier in this century. Bertram County had been one of the counties examined. That sheriff had died in some sort of scandal some years back, if she remembered correctly, but it would not be unusual for the political machine to continue with another man of the same ilk at the head of it.

The sheriff would be contemptuous of her, she was sure. He would probably take one look at her and write her off as negligible: young, a woman and Hispanic, as well. It would not be the first time someone had done so. But Lisa had learned that being underestimated often worked to her advantage, and she had made certain that a number of men who had done so had soon regretted it. Her lips curved up in a smile as she thought of the coming confrontation. She intended to make sure that Sheriff Sutton would rue the day that he had tangled with her.

Quinn Sutton leaned back in his chair, legs crossed negligently at the ankles and feet propped up on his desk, and sighed. He was bored, and he was frustrated, and for one of the few times since he had moved back to Angel Eye, he wondered if doing so had been the right thing.

One simple investigation…and it had been dragging on for two months now. The guys he had worked with in San Antonio would probably bust a gut laughing if they knew how he was floundering around on this country case.

He had thought he’d caught a break with Benny Hernandez. The kid knew something, he was sure of that, but so far, he had been determinedly silent, and there was only so long he could hold him here, given the flimsy charge he had run him in on.

The sound of voices raised in an outer room stirred him from his reverie. He paused, listening to the heated rise and fall of women’s voices, but he could not make out the words. One of the voices was Betty Murdock, his secretary, but he did not recognize the other one. He frowned and started to rise from his seat.

At that moment, Deputy Hargrove stuck his head in the door, his face alight with interest and amusement. “Hey, Sheriff, come out here. You gotta see this. It’s that new attorney I told you about.”

“Who? What attorney?” Quinn rose to his feet and started toward the door. “Oh, you mean the woman?”

Hargrove nodded. “Yeah. The looker. Remember, I told you about seeing her over at the district courthouse in Hammond last month?”

“Yeah, I remember.” The truth was, the memory was faint. Hargrove was usually raving about some girl or the other.

“Well, she’s out there giving Betty hell about seeing you.”

“Maybe I ought to oblige her then,” Quinn said lazily and slid past the deputy into the outer office.

His eyes went across the office to his secretary’s desk, where Betty now stood, her face flushed and hands on her hips combatively, facing another woman. He looked past the ample form of his secretary to the other woman, and everything in him went still. Later, he could only describe the feeling, a trifle embarrassedly, as something akin to being hit by a stun gun.

She was not the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was not as polished and sleek as Jennifer had been, nor did she possess the icy blond society-princess beauty of his future sister-in-law, Antonia, or the stunning Hollywood good looks of that actress that Jackson had brought to the Fourth of July picnic. But there was something about her that hit him like a fist in the stomach.

She was dressed in a lawyerlike tailored suit, brown with a cream-colored blouse beneath the buttoned jacket, and low-heeled brown pumps. Her makeup and shoulder-length bobbed hair were equally low-key. But the plainness of her clothes could not disguise the fact that her figure was enticingly curved, and the expanse of leg that showed beneath her knee-length skirt was shapely. Her hair, smoothly curved under, was thick, black and lustrous, and her light olive skin and huge brown eyes, ringed by thick black lashes, had little need of makeup. She was vivid, warm, passionate…and in an utter fury about something.

“I insist on seeing Sheriff Sutton!” she snapped, leaning forward pugnaciously toward his secretary. “Whatever wonderfully important thing he’s doing, I suggest you go in there and tell him—”

“Why don’t you just tell me yourself?” Quinn suggested lightly.

Both women, startled, swiveled to face him.

Lisa was, for the moment, bereft of speech. Sheriff Sutton was, indeed, a prototypical sheriff, but not the middle-aged redneck image she had envisioned. He was, rather, what the State Association of Sheriffs might use as a poster boy. In his early thirties, he was tall, even without the added inches of the cowboy boots on his feet, and his long, lean body and wide shoulders filled out the tan shirt and slacks of the sheriff’s uniform to perfection. Lisa was aware, with some surprise—and chagrin—of a deep, primitive thrill of response that snaked down through her abdomen at the sight of him. Nor was it just the muscular set of his body encased in the Western and decidedly masculine uniform that could make a woman’s heart beat a little faster. His face was something that drew one’s eye.

He was not exactly handsome, though he had even features and a well-cut mouth that stirred another primeval response in Lisa. A scar beside that mouth and the determined set of his jaw gave his face a certain toughness in repose. And when he smiled, as he did now, his mahogany-brown eyes twinkled with an impishness, his mouth quirking in a way that was far too boyish to be termed handsome. What he was, Lisa thought, as he walked toward her now, eyes alight and focused solely on her, was a charmer. She had met other men like him—not many, admittedly, but a few—and though they might not be the best-looking man around or the smartest or the wealthiest, they were invariably devastating to the female sex.

“Sheriff Quinn Sutton,” he said now, extending his hand and smiling into her eyes in a way that said they were the only two people in the room. “Pleased to meet you.”

Lisa squared her shoulders. Sheriff Sutton was going to find out that this was one woman who was immune to his charm. “Lisa Mendoza,” she replied in a clipped, cool voice and gave his hand a brief shake. “I am Benny Hernandez’s attorney.”

“Are you now?” Sutton’s eyebrows rose in lazy surprise. “Well, that’s interesting. I didn’t realize he had one.”

“Obviously, or I assume you would have chosen someone else to ride roughshod over.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” Lisa replied calmly, not fooled by his air of bemusement. “You arrested and are holding my client without any basis. I presume that in the general way you are intelligent enough to find someone without an attorney to protect their rights when you are in the mood for harassing minorities.”

The smile left his eyes, and his brows snapped together. “Now just a minute, Ms. Mendoza…”

“I would like to see my client now,” Lisa went on, plowing right through his attempt to explain himself.

Anger flashed in his red-brown eyes, and Lisa thought he was about to fire back a response, but he only set his jaw and replied, tight-lipped, “Come with me.”

He swung around, strode out of the office and down the hall without looking back to see if she was following him. Lisa hurried out the door after him, determined not to fall behind his long-legged stride. He led her to the end of the hall and turned down another corridor, leading her down a set of stairs and through another institutionally beige hallway or two before coming to a set of locked metal double doors, flanked by a window covered with a metal grille. The uniformed man behind the window looked out at them.

“Hey, Sheriff,” he said in a Texas twang and reached over to push a button.

There was a loud metallic noise as the doors unlocked, and Sheriff Sutton pushed one of them open and walked through, holding it open for Lisa.

“Bring Benny down to visitation,” he told the deputy in the small room behind the window, now looking out at them through a matching window on this side of the doors.

“Sure thing, Sheriff,” the man replied, his eyes going curiously over to Lisa. Lisa felt sure he was wondering who she was, but there had been a note in the sheriff’s voice that did not invite questions.

He walked her down a short hallway past closed doors and ushered her into a small room. There was little in the room except a cheap metal table in the center, bolted to the floor, and a chair on either side of it, also bolted securely to the floor. Lisa set her briefcase down on the table and turned to face the door. She wanted to get a good look at her client when he walked in, alert for any sign of scrapes, cuts or bruises.

Somewhat to her surprise, when the door opened, escorted in by the deputy, the slight teenaged boy dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit was not even wearing manacles. A quick but intent inspection revealed no mark on his pleasant face. His eyes widened a little when he saw her, and he blurted out, “Who are you?”

“I am your attorney, Benny,” Lisa told him with a smile, reaching out to shake his hand. “My name is Lisa Mendoza. I’m here to help you.”

He looked a little disconcerted but shook her hand tentatively, glancing from her to the sheriff as if for explanation. Sheriff Sutton merely shrugged.

Benny launched into rapid-fire Spanish, and Lisa held up her hands in a stopping gesture.

“Wait. I’m sorry. I—I’m afraid I don’t speak Spanish,” she told him, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment.

The boy stared at her in some astonishment, and behind her she heard the sheriff let out a guffaw of laughter, quickly stifled. She turned toward him, sending him a furious glance. “I will need a translator, Sheriff.”

His eyes danced merrily, and Lisa could feel her blush deepening. Her lack of knowledge of her ancestors’ language was embarrassing enough at any time, but it was far worse in front of this man, who she was sure was delighting in her discomfiture.

“Okay,” he replied, struggling to keep his lips straight. “I can help you out.”

“You?” Her brows soared in surprise. “You speak Spanish?”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, the grin twitching back onto his lips. “I was a cop in San Antonio for eight years. It’s kind of unavoidable. ’Course, if you’d rather have a native speaker, I can send down Deputy Padilla.”

“A law enforcement official would hardly provide the confidentiality that—” Lisa shot back hotly.

“No, hey, that’s okay,” Benny interrupted pacifically. “I can speak English instead. It’s cool.”

“Are you sure?” Lisa asked, turning back to look at him. “Because I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding or difficulty in communicating with me.”

Benny looked faintly affronted. “Sure, I’m sure. I grew up here.”

“Of course.” Lisa smiled at him apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t have time to fully acquaint myself with your history. When your cousin explained your problem to me, I thought it was best to come right over.”

“My cousin?” Benny’s expression changed to amazement.

“Yes. He hired me on your behalf.”

“Julio?” Benny’s voice rang with astonishment. “Julio hired you?”

“No. It was Enrique Garza who hired me.”

“Oh.” Something flickered in Benny’s eyes, and the surprise left his features. “I see.” He looked toward the table. “Well, let’s sit down.”

Lisa followed him to the table and sat down across from him, scooting forward to accommodate the immovable chair. She opened her briefcase and took out a yellow legal pad and pen, laying them on the table. “Now, Mr. Hernandez…”

A faint smile touched the young man’s face. “Benny. Everybody calls me Benny.”

“All right. Benny. Mr. Garza told me something of your circumstances, but I’d like to hear it from you.”

“Hear what?”

“All about what happened when Sheriff Sutton stopped you the other night.” She paused and turned her gaze significantly on Sutton, who was still standing a few feet away from them, watching them with narrowed eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. “Sheriff Sutton, it’s hardly a confidential talk with my client with you looming over us like that.”

He smiled, that same flashing smile of startling charm that he had used earlier in his office, and gave her a slight bow of his head. “Of course, ma’am.” She felt sure that if he’d been wearing his sheriff’s Stetson, he would have tipped it with old-fashioned courtesy. “The deputy will be right outside the door if you have any trouble.” His gaze slid over to Benny, one eyebrow lifting.

“No trouble, Sheriff,” Benny said, lifting his hands in an innocent manner.

Sutton nodded and left the room. He paused outside the closed door for a moment, frowning in thought.

“Everything all right, Sheriff?” Jerry asked finally.

Quinn looked at the man and smiled faintly. “I don’t know, Jerry.” The truth was something felt distinctly wrong, both with the case and with his own internal equilibrium. The arrival of Lisa Mendoza seemed to have thrown them both off.

“You ever hear of a fella named Enrique Garza?” he asked the deputy.

The deputy frowned. “Garza? No, not offhand. There are plenty of Garzas, but I don’t recollect an Enrique. Now, there’s a guy that works in Meltzer’s body shop on First Street who’s named Enrique, but I’m pretty sure his last name is Ochoa.”

Quinn nodded. “Well, take Benny back to his cell when he’s through talking to the lady. I imagine we’ll have to release him after that, but I’ll give Ms. Mendoza a chance to tell me off first. She looks like she’s bustin’ to do that. I’ll be in my office.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff.”

Quinn strode back through the maze of hallways and stairs to his office. Most of his staff, he found, were sitting waiting for him in the outer office, faces turned expectantly toward the door. He walked in and raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly.

“What’s this? All the crime in this county’s been settled? You folks need something more to do?”

With a martyred sigh, his secretary turned back to her desk and the others scattered.

“Say, Ruben…” Quinn stopped him as he walked back toward his desk. “Come into my office.”

Ruben followed him and closed the door behind him. “Hargrove’s right, for once,” he said with a grin, turning to face Quinn. “She is a looker.”

“Yeah, she’s a looker,” Quinn admitted, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Don’t think she’s too happy with me at the moment, though.”

Ruben grinned with a noticeable lack of sympathy.

“Do you know if Benny has any cousins named Enrique Garza?” he asked the deputy, who had lived all his life in the small town of Angel Eye.

“Garza?” Deputy Padilla looked doubtful. “I don’t think Benny’s related to any Garzas. ’Course, I don’t know that much about his real dad’s family. Why?”

“Because that attorney told him that his cousin had hired her, and he looked like he about swallowed his tongue, and he said, ‘Julio?”

“Julio?” Ruben repeated and began to laugh. “Julio Fuentes? My three-year-old’s about as likely to find an attorney and hire her as Julio Fuentes.”

“That was the impression I got from Benny’s expression. But then Ms. Mendoza told him that his cousin Enrique Garza had hired her. Benny recognized the name; I could see that. But he got this funny look on his face…You know anybody at all named that? Related to Benny or not?”

“Off the top of my head, no. But there are lots of Garzas. Could be from Hammond or someplace else, too.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m going to call Señora Fuentes and see if she knows who he is and what relation he is to her grandson.”

“You think Señora Fuentes knows about that attorney?”

“My guess would be no.” Quinn smiled ruefully. “I expect she’s going to give me holy hell about letting Benny go, too.”

“Better you than me,” Ruben replied, grinning. “I used to get enough of that for cutting across her lawn when I was a kid.”

“Listen, check around. See if you can find anything out about this guy Garza.”

“Sure. You think it’s somebody involved in what’s going on at old man Rodriguez’s place?”

“That’d be my guess.”

“You think Ms. Mendoza’s connected with them?”

“I don’t know.” Quinn frowned. “They hired her, if I’m right, but that ‘cousin’ stuff—I’m guessing she doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.”

Quinn didn’t want to admit, even to himself, how intensely he hoped that was true.

“He arrested you because you had a broken taillight?” Lisa asked, amazement sending her voice soaring upward.

“Well, no, not exactly. I mean, that’s why he stopped me. Then he looked at my license and walked around the car and all. Asked me questions.”

“Questions? About what?”

Benny shrugged, not looking at her. “Oh, you know. Where I been and who I was hanging out with.” He raised his eyes to meet hers. “Just general kind of sh—stuff, you know, like cops do. And he said a car like mine had been seen, you know…”

“Seen? What do you mean? Seen where?”

Benny frowned. “I’m not sure. He didn’t say exactly. I—he was kinda holding out on me, you know, like, waiting for me to say something I shouldn’t.”

“Okay. What do you think he was wanting you to say?”

Benny shrugged elaborately. “I don’t know.”

Lisa had the feeling that her client, if not precisely lying to her, was at least possessed of more knowledge than he was letting on to her. It didn’t surprise her. One canon of criminal law that she had had drummed into her in law school was this: Your client always lies. She had experienced it herself with her clients, and not only in the criminal cases she had had. All clients wanted to present their best case to their attorney, even if it meant hiding a few things that would later sabotage their case. She wasn’t sure how much of it was sheer denial, the hope that if they hid the negative things from their attorney, they wouldn’t really exist, and how much of it was the simple human desire to look good in the eyes of their new ally. Whatever it was, it all too often backfired. But no matter how many times she warned them, it was rare that some little lie didn’t surface at some point during a case to muddy it up.

She started to press Benny about it but decided to let it slide. Whatever Benny was concealing, it wasn’t really the point. What mattered was that Sheriff Sutton had hauled Benny off to jail.

“So—when you didn’t say whatever he was hoping you would say, what happened?”

“Finally he told me he was gonna have to take me down to his office.”

“Did he say why?”

Benny shrugged again. “I don’t know. ’Cause I wasn’t telling him anything.”

“Is that what he said? Specifically?”

Benny frowned, concentrating. “I don’t remember exactly what he said. I think he said he wanted to ask me some questions, and, oh, yeah, he made me get out of the car, and there was this beer can on the floor, and he picked it up and asked me if I’d been drinking. And I said, no, ’cause I hadn’t.”

“Did he give you a test? Breathalyzer, walking straight, anything?”

“Nah. He knew I wasn’t drunk. Only there was some beer still in the can, see, and so he was saying I was a minor in possession, like that.” Benny shrugged. “It wasn’t even my beer can. Julio left it in my car the day before, but…”

“So he took you to jail on an MIP—a minor in possession?”

“I guess. I mean, we both knew he was just jacking me.” Benny seemed unmoved by the thought—accepting, Lisa assumed, that getting hassled by the law was simply a fact of life.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Benny repeated what seemed to be his favorite phrase, even when offering up what he obviously did know in the next sentence. “’Cause I didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. He wanted to grill me.”

“And did he?”

“He took me into his office and asked me a bunch of questions and then he had Padilla lock me up.” He grimaced. “Probably hoping I’d tell that cabron something just because he’s Chicano.” He followed this statement with a Spanish word that Lisa did not recognize but the derogatory intent of which was clear.