Smooth-Talking Texan

“No, thanks, Elizabeth. I’m not staying. I just wanted to talk to Ms. Mendoza.”

“Sure. You want something to drink? Coffee? Iced tea?”

“Coffee would be great, thanks.”

Elizabeth moved away as he slid into the booth across from Lisa.

“Have a seat,” Lisa commented dryly.

He grinned. “Thanks.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I saw your car outside. Thought I’d drop by and talk to you a little bit.”

“How do you know my car?” She asked, exasperated.

“Saw you get into it a while ago.” Again the bone-melting smile flashed as he admitted, “I was watching out my window when you left.”

“Sheriff…I don’t know what you want, but—”

“You know, I just got my butt chewed out for about ten minutes by Benny’s grandmother for letting you get Benny away from me. You owe me a few minutes of your time.”

Lisa could not help but smile at the image of that short old woman raking Quinn Sutton over the coals. “Sorry. I’ve met the wrath of Señora Fuentes myself.”

“Look, Ms. Mendoza…” Quinn leaned across the table, looking into Lisa’s eyes. Lisa found it difficult to look away. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. I was thinking that maybe we could start all over again. If you knew me better, you might find out that I’m not such an ogre.”

“I am sure you are not,” Lisa agreed easily. “However, I see little use in getting to know you, as you say. We are on opposite sides, and—”

“We’re not so far apart as you think,” he put in quickly. “I realize that you don’t think so, but I have Benny Hernandez’s best interests at heart.”

Lisa leaned back against the padded seat of the booth, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows expressively. “You do?”

“Yes, I do. I don’t know what you’re used to. Obviously you come from the city somewhere. San Antonio? Houston?”

“Dallas.”

He nodded. “Well, things are different here. I don’t look on the sheriff’s job as getting criminals so much as protecting the people of the town. People like Señora Fuentes, for instance. And her grandson, little as you would like to believe it. I am trying to help Benny.”

“I see. So you are sort of the Great White Father of Angel Eye, is that it? Protecting all the poor and ignorant Mexicans, even if it means incarcerating them illegally.”

Sutton’s jaw tightened. “You know, you’ve got a hell of a chip on your shoulder—especially considering the fact that I can speak Spanish better than you can.”

Fury spurted up in Lisa at his words. She grabbed her purse and scooted out of the booth, sending a flashing angry glance at him before striding quickly out of the restaurant.

As she strode across the parking lot, she heard his bootsteps on the pavement behind her, but she ignored him, marching straight to her car. He caught up with her before she reached it, grasping her arm and pulling her to a halt.

Lisa spun around, jerking her arm from his grasp. Her skin seemed to burn where he had touched it, and her anger was fueled by the fact that his nearness, his touch, made her feel weak in the knees. “Let go of me! What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m sorry. Don’t go storming off. I’m trying to explain things to you. I’m trying to make amends.”

“You’re doing a really lousy job of it.”

“I know,” he agreed ruefully. “I seem to have a knack for offending you. Please, ignore what I said. You’re off base in saying that I’m acting out of prejudice, but I understand why you’d feel that way. This isn’t about singling Benny Hernandez out because he’s a Latino. Maybe I’m too paternal in the way I feel about this town, but it isn’t only regarding the Mexican-American community. I have a duty to help the people of this town, to protect them. That’s what I was elected to do. That’s why I haul the kids I catch drinking and driving down to the jail, not because I enjoy hassling drunk teenagers or causing their parents grief, but because I want them to think before they do it next time. I don’t want to have to scrape them up off the road.”

“No doubt that’s admirable. But we are not talking about a drunken teenager here. We’re talking about a trumped-up charge, and I don’t care if Benny’s grandmother wanted you to teach him a lesson or whatever, you violated that young man’s rights.”

“It isn’t always that black and white,” he responded tightly. Quinn truthfully had come to apologize and make things right with Lisa. He had been thinking about her ever since she’d left the courthouse this afternoon, and when he had spotted her car in the parking lot of the Moonstone, it had seemed a heaven-sent opportunity to make a fresh start with her. But somehow, as before, he had wound up right back in an argument with her. And, as before, his loins tightened involuntarily at the sight of her, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with fury, her curvaceous body thrumming with tension.

What was it about this woman that made him respond at the basest level? She filled him with the hot lust to subdue her, to kiss her until she melted beneath him, her fury transforming into passion beneath his touch. He balled his hands into fists and tried to shove down the distinctly erotic images that were flooding his mind.

“Will you let me explain to you?” he asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

“Please do.” Lisa crossed her arms over her chest and waited, her gaze challenging.

“Look. I’m going to be straight with you. Benny’s grandmother came to me because she was worried about him. He’s gotten into a few scrapes with the law over the years, but he’s not a bad kid. But because of his father and stepfather and her own son Pablo, she’s worried about him. She called me and told me that he’s hanging out with a bad bunch of guys. He used to work over here at the Moonstone, busing tables, but then he quit and now he doesn’t have any job. But he never asks her for money, not for clothes or gas or burgers or anything. Where is he getting his money? And he’s gone a lot. She tells me that she thinks his friends are a bad influence, especially this kid named Paco.

“Now, it so happens that this Paco is frequently seen at a house in town where suspicious things are going on. When she told me Benny was hanging with Paco it worried me, too. I’ve been keeping a close eye on this house and you know what? Now I’ve seen Benny over there, too.”

“That’s it?” Lisa asked. “You’ve seen him at some other house? Where suspicious things are going on? What suspicious things? And he has a friend that his grandmother doesn’t like?”

“I can’t tell you what’s going on at this house. I’m not even sure yet myself. But I can pretty much guarantee you that it isn’t legal. There are a lot of kids coming and going at this house, and only some of them are from Angel Eye. That outside element adds something serious to it.”

“This sounds extremely vague. You have no evidence of a crime.”

“Not yet. But I will have. And I would hate for Benny to have been sucked into it. In this part of the country, especially with those outside people involved, the odds are it’s large-scale auto theft, drugs or smuggling illegal aliens. Those aren’t minor offenses. I’d like to get Benny out of if before it’s too late.”

“Oh, I see. So you hauled him down to jail and questioned him for hours without an attorney present just because you were concerned about him. It didn’t have anything to do with trying to get information out of him about this house and these activities that you know so little about?”

“Why are you so all-fired determined to dislike me?” he shot back. “I’m telling you things I wouldn’t normally reveal to a suspect’s attorney. To anyone, in fact. I’m giving you information about an ongoing investigation, because I want to help Benny, not put him in prison. I am trying to make you understand why it’s so important.”

“Why?” Lisa asked bluntly.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Why are you telling me this? Are you hoping that I will encourage my client to tell you what you want to know? Is that it?”

Quinn clenched his teeth together, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “You are the most exasperating, pigheaded woman I ever had the misfortune to meet.” It did not help his irritation any that he knew he was laying out his reasons for her partly because he hated for her to continue thinking of him as a bumbling redneck going around trampling on the rights of others.

“Why, thank you,” Lisa told him sweetly. “You have certainly succeeded in winning me over now.”

She turned on her heel and started toward her car again.

“Wait!” He hurried after her and stepped in front of her, facing her, forcing her to stop. “Think about this—who is Enrique Garza? He’s no cousin to Benny Hernandez.”

“So? He’s a friend, I suppose.”

“Deputy Padilla says he’s not from Angel Eye. I don’t think he’s any friend to Benny. Why don’t you ask yourself why he is so eager to help some kid who’s been picked up on petty charges? What’s in it for him? I’m sure he didn’t do it out of the goodness of his heart.”

“Who he is does not change my job. I am Benny Hernandez’s attorney, and my duty is to protect his rights.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get a chance to do that when he’s hauled in on auto theft or marijuana-smuggling. You know, you might think about helping your client, not just representing him in court.”

He whirled and took a few steps away from her, then stopped, muttering a curse beneath his breath. He turned and covered the distance between them in two quick strides. Grabbing Lisa by the arms, he pulled her up against him and buried his lips in hers.

Chapter 3

At the touch of Quinn’s lips on hers, desire burst through Lisa. The intensity and ferocity of her hunger was overwhelming. Every atom in her body seemed suddenly alive and pulsing, every nerve throbbing with sensation. His lips were smooth and hot, pressing into hers, opening her mouth to him. His hands left their grip on her arms, one of them sliding behind her back, pulling her even more tightly into his hard body. His other hand came up to the back of her head, tangling in her hair, fingertips pressing into her scalp.

Without thinking, she slid her arms around his neck, pressing herself up into him as her lips responded hungrily to his. She trembled, clinging to Quinn, as lust unfurled deep inside her abdomen, hot and aching. Her breasts were pressed against the hard bones of his chest; she could feel the line of his body all up and down her own.

Then, abruptly, his arms loosened around her, and he raised his head. He looked down into her face, his eyes lit with a red fire. The heat of his body surrounded her; his arm was like iron against her back. Lisa sagged against it, too numb to speak or even think. Her mouth was slightly open in bemusement, her lips soft and faintly moist, darkened from the bruising pressure of his kiss. Quinn sucked in his breath, hunger slamming through him with the force of a freight train.

But he was also aware of the windows of the restaurant behind him and the wide sweep of street in front of him, and he knew that if he continued, the gossip would be all over town tomorrow.

He tried to speak and it came out a croak. He cleared his throat, his arms sliding away from Lisa, and tried to bring his scrambled brains back into sufficient order to make sense.

“Oh, God!” Lisa squeaked, her hand clapping over her mouth, her brown eyes huge and horrified above her hand. “Oh, no!”

She whirled and almost ran to her car. Quinn stood and watched her go, having no words to stop her. The engine of her car roared to life and she whipped out of the parking space, then tore out into the street in a squeal of tires. Quinn pulled in a deep breath.

What in the hell had just happened?

He remained standing there for a long moment before he got into his car and drove home in a state of profound disquiet.

Sitting in front of the small, old-fashioned brick house where he lived was an ice-blue BMW, which could belong to only one person he knew.

“Hey, Cater,” he said as he swung out of the patrol car and cut across the lawn toward his front steps.

“Hey, bro,” the black-haired man sitting on the top step replied, standing up. “How you doing?”

“Not too well at the moment. What are you doing here?”

The other man’s brows rose and he replied in a mocking way, “Well, I’m doing fine. Thank you very much for asking. I always appreciate it when my brother is so pleased to see me.”

“Sorry.” Quinn took the front steps two at a time and stopped beside his brother.

Cater, almost exactly the same height as his younger brother, was dark-haired like most of the rest of the family, and his eyes, under straight black brows, were a deep blue. Generally considered the most handsome of the Sutton brothers, there was about him an air of sophistication that usually earned him a good deal of ribbing from Quinn and their older brother Daniel. A successful author of mystery novels, he lived in Austin, but he had bought a piece of land near Angel Eye and built a small house on it, which he frequently visited.

“Bad day?” Cater asked.

Quinn shrugged. “An unusual one. I haven’t yet decided whether it’s bad or good. Come on in.” He unlocked the door and opened it, leading the way inside and calling back over his shoulder, “You want a beer? I could sure use one.”

“Sure.” Cater trailed after him.

A cat jumped down from the windowsill and stalked toward Quinn, meowing plaintively. The cat was big, and few would call him attractive. Orange in color, his tail was unnaturally short, and the tip of one ear had a small chunk missing. A scar curved down over one eye and across his nose, and another short, thick scar cut through the fur on the top of its head. He looked like what he was, an old fighter, and he had adopted Quinn a couple of years earlier. Apparently Quinn was as far as his affection for humans would go, for he treated everyone else with contempt. He cast a dismissive glance toward Cater now, then twined himself around Quinn’s legs, complaining at length until Quinn dished out some food for him.

Cater sat down at the old wooden table in the kitchen, watching Quinn. It amused him a little that Quinn, the hard-bitten cop, was the sentimentalist of the family and had been the one horrified when their father intended to give away the old wooden kitchen table that had sat in their grandparents’ kitchen since the 1920s. He had taken it back with him to his apartment in San Antonio and since then had been adding furniture that complemented it, until now his small house was almost entirely furnished with Texas farmhouse antiques. The furniture suited the little house, too. It had been built in the 1920s, with the sharply peaked gables of the era that always brought to Cater’s mind the witches’ houses of his childhood fairy tales. The house had been run-down, and Quinn maintained that he had bought it because it was such a bargain, but anyone who had seen the amount of time and sweat he had poured into restoring and repairing the building knew that it had been much more a labor of love and art than a business decision.

“You come down early for Daniel’s wedding?” Quinn asked, setting down two bottles of beer on the table and swinging one of the chairs around to straddle it as he faced his brother, crossing his arms on the back of the chair.

“Yeah. I sent off my proposal for my next book, and I figured I would take a few days’ rest. A week after the wedding I have to go on tour, so I thought a reward in advance was in order.”

“Your new book’s out?”

“Next week.” He grimaced. “It’d be great if it weren’t for two weeks of living in hotels and flying so many places I hardly know where I am.”

“Shall I get out the violin?” Quinn joked.

“I know. I know. I’m an ungrateful jerk. I should be glad people want to meet me and buy my book. And I am. I just hate all those airports.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, being a country boy myself.” Quinn took a swig from the bottle. “Where’s Cory? Did he come down with you?”

Cory was another brother, the youngest child in the family, now in his senior year at the University of Texas at Austin. He lived in a garage apartment behind Cater’s turn-of-the-century house.

“Nah. He’s coming down Friday. He’s doing his student teaching this semester, thinks the school would crumble if he missed a day or two.”

Quinn shook his head. “Who’d a thought that boy would decide to be a schoolteacher? After all the trouble he used to cause.”

Cater snorted. “Look who’s talking. You are, if I remember correctly, the one who set fires in the trashcans behind the high school.”

“Now, that was all a mistake,” Quinn protested.

“Sheriff didn’t seem to think so.”

Quinn groaned. “I thought Dad was going to bust a blood vessel that time.”

“It was your getting in trouble with Sheriff Woods,” Cater said. “He didn’t want to have to be beholden to the man.”

“Yeah, I know. Woods was a dangerous guy, whether he was a friend or an enemy.”

“What do you know about him?” Cater asked casually.

“Not much. Mostly what everybody else knew, I guess. You didn’t cross the man, not in this county. Other than that…well, he was a political power, the kind that swung elections, even if he had to vote all the residents of the cemetery to do it. It would be my guess that there were a few skeletons in his closet.”

“You know anything about his death?”

Quinn shook his head. “No. Nothing but the facts of it. I was in college when it happened. Long time, probably ten years, before I came back here. Why?”

“I’m looking into it a little. I’ve been thinking about writing a book about it.”

“Oh, great!” Quinn groaned. “As if I didn’t have enough problems…. First I got some crime ring operating here, only I can’t figure out what the hell is going on or who’s behind it—all I know is that a suspicious number of young men are going in and out of old man Rodriquez’s house at all hours, some of them complete strangers to this town. Lots of different cars parked there, some of them nice. Then I have to be insanely attracted to this defense attorney who’s threatened to sue me, and now my own brother is going to stir up some ancient scandal in the sheriff’s office!”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not even certain about doing it yet. I have another book to write first. I’m only toying with the idea. Murdered sheriff…scandal…pretty intriguing stuff. But it’ll be fiction. I’ve never written true crime. I’ll use it as a starting place.”

“That’s faint comfort,” Quinn retorted. “Everybody will know it was a true story, so they’ll believe whatever you write is true, even the stuff you make up.” He pointed his index finger at his brother warningly. “Just don’t involve the guy who becomes sheriff a decade later.” He paused, then added with a grin, “’Course, I guess if you wanted to make him the hero who solves everything, you could.”

Cater’s snort promised little hope of that happening. “Yeah, right. But what I want to know is—what’s this about a defense lawyer? Male or female?”

“Female, you idiot. Her name’s Lisa Mendoza, and she’s about as pretty as they come. And she thinks I’m a redneck good ol’ boy who’s harassing her client and miscarrying justice whenever I get the opportunity.”

“I see. Doesn’t sound too hopeful.”

Quinn grinned in his familiar cocky way. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring her around.”

Cater couldn’t resist smiling at his brother’s attitude, but he shook his head. “One day, brother, you are going to take a hard fall at the hands of some woman, and then you’ll find out what it’s like.”

Quinn offered him a faint smile, saying, “Who knows? Maybe I already have.”

Lisa blasted down the farm-to-market road toward Hammond, scarcely noticing anything she passed. Afterward, she was grateful for the rural lack of traffic on the road, as well as the absence of police. Her mind was not on her driving.

She had never experienced a kiss like that before. It was like something out of a book, a movie. She had enjoyed the kisses she had shared with other men, had felt passion and desire. But this! This was different. Never before had she felt as if every nerve in her body was standing on end, or as if she burned from the inside out. When Quinn had kissed her, she had melted. Electricity had shot through her. Every romantic cliché she could think of had happened to her—only it had not been clichéd at all, but real and thrilling.

It was crazy, she thought. Wonderful, too, but definitely crazy. She did not even like the man. He was arrogant, cocky, and bullheaded. He obviously didn’t care about following the dictates of the law, only about getting what he wanted, and it was clear from that grin that he was used to getting what he wanted from women, as well. He was precisely the sort of man whom she most disliked.

So how could a kiss from that man have affected her like that? How could he have made her feel as if she were about to fall into an old-fashioned swoon?

Lisa had always been someone in control of herself and her life. Even her teenage years had contained only a minimum number of tantrums and crushes. Mostly she had maintained an even keel: dating, studying, working—keeping everything in proportion. She was an intelligent girl, accustomed to being ruled by her head, and she had always hated the classic stereotype of the tempestuous, passionate Latina.

Somehow Quinn Sutton had shattered all that with one kiss.

She turned into the parking lot of her apartment, faintly surprised to find that she had already made it home. She parked and turned off the engine, then sat for a moment, her hands still gripping the steering wheel. Her head dropped to her hands.

It was vital that she get a grip on this, she told herself. She was not about to start letting her passions rule her life at this late date. What had really happened this afternoon, anyway? It was not as if she had fallen in love with the man or fallen into bed with him, she pointed out reasonably. They had shared a kiss, that was all, and Quinn Sutton had proved to be a superior kisser to anyone she had ever met. That was all.

It was what she made of it that was important, and the worst thing would be to attach a significance to the moment that it did not have. The thing for her to do, she knew, was to get on with her life. The things that were important to her were her work and her family; Quinn Sutton did not matter to either of those things, except as a possible adversary. The odds were that she would not even see him again.

Firmly she ignored the deflation that went through her at that thought. The thing to do, she decided, was to put the kiss out of her mind, to reject it as the aberration that it was. With that resolve, she got out of her car, locked it, and went inside her apartment, doing her best to ignore the weakness that remained in her legs.

An evening of cleaning up her apartment helped to quell thoughts of her encounter with the sheriff—although she found herself all too often simply standing and staring sightlessly at the wall, work forgotten, and she had to shake herself and return to the job at hand. The evening crept by, and it was something of a relief when it grew late enough for her to go to bed. But she found once she lay down that sleep would not come. Instead, her mind returned to her encounter with Quinn Sutton. She went over their arguments, coming up with clever retorts that she had not had the presence of mind to think of at the time and remembering, too, the tilt of his head, the way his shoulders filled out his uniform, his walk as he strode across the restaurant toward her. The eyes of every woman in the place had been on him, she was sure of that.

Most of all, she relived that moment in the parking lot when he had kissed her, feeling all over again—though never, disappointingly, with quite the same intensity—the sensations that had flooded her when his lips touched hers. No matter how she tried, she could not banish the thought from her mind, and as a result, half the night had gone by before she at last fell asleep.