Lone Star Winter: The Winter Soldier

“I was rich, Lisa,” he told her. “I still am.”

She pulled her coat tighter around her and stared out the window, not speaking. She was shocked and more uncertain about him than ever. He was such a complex person, so multifaceted that just when she thought she was getting to know him, he became a stranger all over again.

“Now what is it?” he asked impatiently.

“I hope you don’t think I agreed to come out with you…that I was eager to let you buy the ranch because…” She flushed and closed her mouth. She was so embarrassed that she wanted to go through the floor.

“If I’m rich, it’s because I know pure gold when I see it,” he said, casting her an amused glance. “Do you think I’ll assume that you’re a gold digger because you came out with me?”

“I kissed you back, too,” she said worriedly.

He sighed with pure pleasure and relaxed into the seat, smiling to himself. “Yes, you did.”

“But it was an accident,” she persisted. “I didn’t plan it…”

“That makes two of us.” He pulled up at the last streetlight before they left the city behind and turned to her. His eyes were narrow and very intent. “There are things in my past that are better left there. You’d never begin to understand the relationship I had with my wife, because you don’t think in terms of material gain. When I was your age, you were the sort of woman I’d run from.”

“Really? Why?” she asked.

He cocked an eyebrow and let his eyes run over her. “Because you told me once that you hadn’t slept with Walt before you married him, Lisa,” he drawled.

She glared at him. “I would have if I’d wanted to,” she said mutinously.

“But you didn’t.”

She threw up her hands, almost making a basketball of her small purse. She retrieved it from the dash and plopped it back into her lap.

“You’re the kind of woman that men marry,” he continued, unabashed. “You like children and small animals and it would never occur to you to be cruel to anyone. If you’d gotten involved with me while I was still in my former line of work, you wouldn’t have lasted a day with me.”

“I don’t suppose I would have,” she had to agree. She looked through the windshield, wondering why it hurt so much to have him tell her that. Surely she hadn’t been thinking in terms of the future just because of one passionate kiss? Of course, her whole body tensed remembering the pleasure of it, the exciting things he’d said…

“And you weren’t Walt’s usual date, either,” he said surprisingly. “He liked experience.”

She grimaced. “I found that out pretty quick. He said I was the most boring woman he’d ever gone to bed with. Except for our wedding night, and the night be fore he was killed, he slept in a separate bedroom.”

No wonder she was the way she was, he mused as the light changed and he sent the big vehicle speeding forward. She probably felt like a total failure as a woman. The child must have been some sort of consolation, because she certainly wanted it.

“I’ll bet you hate admitting that,” he said.

“Yes, I do. I felt inadequate, dull, boring,” she muttered. “He liked blondes, but not me.”

“He liked that parcel service driver plenty,” he recalled, his eyes narrowing. “You were pitching hay over the fence to the cows and he was flirting with her, right under your nose. I never wanted to hit a man more.”

Her lips parted on a quick breath. “You saw…that?”

“I saw it,” he said curtly. “That’s why I stopped by later and said something about the way you were pitching hay by yourself.”

She shifted in the seat. “He said they were old friends,” she replied. “I guess he really meant they were former lovers. He never treated me to that sort of charm and flirting. He really wanted Dad’s ranch. It was a pity I went with the deal.”

“It was his loss that he took you for granted,” he corrected. “You’re not inadequate. You proved that earlier tonight, in the parking lot.”

She cleared her throat. “An incident best forgotten.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She stared at him. “Walt’s only been dead two weeks, that’s why!”

He stopped at a four-way stop and turned in his seat on the deserted road to look at her. “Lisa,” he said quietly, “it wouldn’t have mattered even if he’d still been alive, and you know it. What happened was mutual and explosive.”

“It was a fluke…”

His hand reached out and his fingers traced her lower lip. She couldn’t even speak. “Would you like me to prove that it isn’t?” he asked quietly. “There are plenty of dirt roads between here and home, and the seats re cline all the way.”

“Cy Parks!”

“Best of all,” he mused, “we wouldn’t even have to worry about pregnancy, would we?”

Her face was scarlet; she knew it was. He was making her breathless with that torturous brush of his fingers, and she was vulnerable. She’d never really known desire until tonight, and she wished she could turn the clock back a day. Life was difficult enough without this new complication.

He drew in a long breath and lifted his hand back to the steering wheel. “God knows I want to,” he said shortly, “but you’d die of shock and never speak to me again afterward.”

“I…certainly…would,” she faltered, pushing her hair back unnecessarily just for something to do.

He shook his head. He’d known her such a short time, really, but she seemed to hold his attention even when he wasn’t with her. Every future event he thought of these days, he considered her part in. It was disturbing to know that he considered her part of his life already.

She fiddled with the top button on her coat. Her eyes were restless, moving from the dark horizon to the occasional lighted window flashing past as the utility vehicle picked up speed. What he’d said disturbed her, mostly because she knew it was true. She’d have gone anywhere with him, done anything with him. It made her guilty because she should be mourning Walt.

“Don’t brood,” Cy told her. “You’re safe. No more torrid interludes tonight, I promise.”

She fought a smile and lost. “You’re a terrible man.”

“You have no idea how terrible.” He paused to look both ways before he crossed a lonely intersection. “Harley’s fired your part-time hired hands, by the way.”

“He’s what?”

“Calm down. They were being paid for work they didn’t do. That’s economically disastrous.”

“But who’ll get in the hay and brand the calves…?” she worried.

“You didn’t hear the noise? Harley got the tractors out in your hay field early this morning. The haying’s done. The corn crop is next. I’m hiring on four new men. Harley will supervise them, and your place will live up to its promise.” He glanced at her. “You haven’t decided not to sell it have you?”

“I can’t afford to keep it,” she confessed. “I’m glad you don’t plan to build a subdivision on it or something. It’s been in my family for a hundred years. Dad loved it with all his heart. I love it, too, but I have no idea how to make it pay. I’d like to see it prosper.”

“I think I can promise you that it will.”

She smiled, content with just being next to him. He turned on the radio and soft country music filled the cab. After a few minutes, her eyes slid shut as all the sleep less nights caught up with her.

She was vaguely aware of being gently shaken. She didn’t want to be disturbed. She was warm and cozy and half-asleep.

“No,” she murmured drowsily. “Go away.”

“I have to,” came a deep, amused voice at her ear. “Or we’ll have a scandal we’ll never live down. Come on, imp. Bedtime.”

She felt herself tugged out of the seat and into a pair of warm, hard arms. She was floating, floating…

Cy didn’t wake her again. He took off her shoes, tossed the cover over her, put her glasses on the bedside table and left her on the bed in her nice dress and coat. He didn’t dare start removing things, considering his earlier passionate reaction to her. But he stood beside the bed, just watching her, enjoying the sight of her young face relaxed in sleep. He wondered how old she was. She never had told him.

He turned and went back out into the hall, pausing to check the lock on the back door in the kitchen before he went out the front one, locking it carefully behind him. He still wasn’t convinced that Lopez wouldn’t make a beeline for Lisa if he thought his men could get away with harming her. Cy was going to make sure that he didn’t.

He stopped by the bunkhouse to have a word with Nels before he went home and climbed into his own bed. He stared at himself in the bedroom mirror, his eyes narrow and cynical as he studied his lean, scarred face and equally scarred body. He was only thirty-five, as Lisa had already guessed, but he looked older. His eyes held the expression of a man who’d lived with death and survived it. He was wounded inside and out by the long, lonely, terrible years of the past. Lisa soothed the part of him that still ached, but she aroused a physical need that he’d almost forgotten he had. She was a special woman, and she needed him. It was new to be needed on a personal level. He thought about the child she was carrying and wondered if it would be a boy or girl. She’d need someone to help her raise it. He wanted to do that. He had nobody, and neither did she. They could become a family—for the child’s sake.

He turned off the lights and went to bed. But his dreams were restless and hot, and when he woke up the next morning, he felt as if he hadn’t slept at all.

Harley got the calves branded and the corn in the silo in quick order.

“You’ve got a knack for inspiring cowboys to work, Harley,” Cy told him one afternoon a few days later.

“I get out there and work with them, and make them ashamed of being lazy,” Harley told him with a grin. “Most of them can’t keep up with me.”

“I noticed.” Cy leaned back against the corral fence and stared at the younger man evenly, without blinking. “You were out near the warehouse last night. What did you see?”

“Three big trucks,” Harley said solemnly. “One had some odd stuff on the back. Looked like oil drums lashed together.”

That was disturbing. Cy knew that drug dealers threw portable bridges across rivers to let trucks full of their product drive to the other side. What Harvey was de scribing sounded like a makeshift pontoon bridge. Cy and the mercenaries he’d worked with had used them, too.

“Did you get a look at what was in the trucks?” he asked.

Harley shook his head. “The doors were closed and locked. I was afraid to risk trying to pick a lock, with all that hardware around. Those guys had Uzis.”

“I know,” Cy said without thinking.

Harley’s eyebrows went up, and he grinned in a fairly condescending way. “Do you now? Are you using Uzis to load cattle these days, boss?”

Cy realized what he’d said and chuckled. “I wasn’t listening. Sorry.”

“No problem. I noticed a couple of new faces over there,” he added. “Tough-looking men, and they weren’t wearing suits.”

“Get back out there tonight,” Cy told him. “And be very careful, Harley. I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.” He didn’t add that he was worried about Lisa. He saw her every other day, and the paperwork had just been completed and signed, ready for the transfer of money and deeds. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Lopez had an informant in town who’d tell him that. It might prompt the drug lord to hasty action, if he thought Lisa was selling the ranch in order to move away. He couldn’t know that Cy planned to rent her the ranch house. He wouldn’t like having to search for her.

Knowing that bothered him, and he mentioned it to Lisa when he stopped by to see her the next day. Harley had seen yet another unfamiliar face on the ware house property, and he’d also seen flat after flat of jars being moved inside the structure. The drug dealers were getting ready to begin operations. Things would heat up very soon, or Cy missed his guess. He didn’t want Lisa in the middle of it.

“Have you got family you could visit out of state?” he asked without preamble as he joined her in the living room, where she had gas logs burning in the fire place.

She curled up on the sofa in her jeans and knit turtleneck white sweater and stared at him curiously. “I don’t have family anywhere,” she confessed. “Maybe a cousin or two up around Fort Worth, but I wouldn’t know where to look for them.”

He sighed heavily and leaned forward in the chair with his arms crossed over his knees. “All right,” he said, seeming to come to a decision. “If you leave the house from now on, I want to know first. If you can’t get me, you call Eb Scott.”

“Why?”

He knew she was going to ask that. He didn’t have a very logical reply. “I don’t know what Lopez is up to,” he said honestly. “He may have given up on ideas of targeting you. On the other hand, he may be lulling us into a false sense of security. I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

“That suits me,” she said agreeably.

“Do you have a phone by your bed?”

“Yes,” she said. “It makes me feel more secure.”

He stood up. “Don’t forget to keep your doors locked, even in the daytime, when you’re home alone.”

“I’m not, much,” she said without thinking. “Harley comes by every day to check on me, sometimes twice a day.”

His eyes narrowed. He didn’t like that, although he said, “Good for Harley.”

She caught a nuance of something in his tone. “Do you mind?” she asked deliberately. He’d been remote and she’d hardly seen him since the night of the opera. She wondered if he’d been avoiding her, and she concluded that he was. His manner now was standoffish and he seemed in a hurry to leave. She wanted to know if he was the least bit put out by Harley’s attentiveness.

“It’s your life,” he said nonchalantly, tilting his wide-brimmed hat over one eye. “He’s a steady young man with a good future.”

He couldn’t be thinking…or could he? She started to tell him that Harley was friendly, and that she had no romantic interest in him. But before she could, Cy was already on his way out the door.

She went after him, trying not to be undignified and run. She didn’t catch up to him until he was going down the steps.

“When do we close on the sale?” she asked, having no other excuse for following him.

He turned at the door of the utility vehicle. “The first of next week, Kemp said. It will take that long to get the paperwork filed.”

“Okay. You’ll phone me?”

“I will. Or Kemp will.”

That sounded less than friendly. She wrapped her arms around her chest and leaned against one of the posts that held up the long porch. “That’s fine, then,” she said with forced cheer. “Thanks.”

He opened the door and hesitated. “Are you in a rush to close?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to know when I’d need to start paying rent. I was going to go see Mr. Kemp next week about that job.”

She thought he didn’t want her around, and that was so far from the truth that it might as well have been in orbit. But he didn’t want to rush her, frighten her. Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted anymore.

“I’ll see you Monday,” he said, and got into the vehicle without another word. He didn’t even look back as he drove away.

Lisa stared after him with her heart around her ankles. So much for her theory that he was attracted to her. She supposed that he’d had second thoughts. It might be just as well. He was mourning his son, whom he’d obviously loved even if it wasn’t his own child, and she was a recent widow expecting a child of her own. She’d been spinning daydreams and it was time to stop and face reality. Cy wasn’t her future even if she’d hoped he was hers. She turned and went back into the lonely house, pausing to close and lock the door behind her.

Chapter Five

The first time she heard the noise at the window, Lisa thought it was a squirrel. The old house seemed to at tract them. They often scurried over the roof and came leaping down into the limbs of the big pecan trees that surrounded the porches. But she usually didn’t hear them in the wee hours of the morning, and so loud that they woke her up. She tried to go back to sleep, but then the noise came again. This time it didn’t sound like a squirrel. It sounded more like a window being forced open.

Lisa slipped out of bed in her sweatpants and white cotton top, hesitating at the door that led into the hall. The noise had come from the room next door, the one Walt had occupied for most of their married life.

She heard a faint rubbing noise, like one a man might make climbing in a window. Her heart began racing and she dashed down the hall in her bare feet, down the wooden steps and into the kitchen. Her glasses were still in the nightstand drawer by her bed, and she could barely make out familiar objects in the dim light. She was headed for the back door when she was caught and lifted and a big, gentle hand was clapped over her mouth while she struggled pitifully in an embrace of steel.

“It’s all right,” Cy Parks whispered at her ear. “It’s all right, we know there’s someone trying to break in up stairs. Micah’s rappeling from the roof down to the window of the room across the hall. He’ll have him in a minute. Don’t scream or you’ll give him all the warning he needs to get away. Okay?”

She nodded.

He eased her back onto her feet, taking her soft weight against the black sweater he was wearing with black jeans, one lean arm holding her just under her breasts. She saw the glimmer of metal in his other black-gloved hand. Her frightened eyes drifted up to his face, and all she could see of it was his eyes. He was wearing some sort of black mask.

While she was studying him, she heard a loud thud, followed by a louder groan.

“All clear!” came a loud, deep voice from upstairs.

“Stay here.” Cy let her go and went past her and up the staircase with an economy of motion that made her very glad she wasn’t the enemy.

She leaned back against the counter and almost jumped out of her skin when the back door opened and Eb Scott came in pulling his mask off, grinning.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “But the man Cy had staying in the bunkhouse spotted two suspicious figures outside your window. Unless you’re expecting Romeo, it’s a bit late for social calls.”

“I was asleep,” she said, shaken. “I heard the noise and thought it was a squirrel. I was trying to get out the back door when Cy grabbed me.” She whistled. “I thought my number was up.”

“Good thing you slept light,” Eb said solemnly. “We barely got here in time.”

“Who is it, do you think?” she asked.

“One of Lopez’s goons,” Eb told her flatly. “And this definitely confirms our worst fears. Lopez is after you.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” she said, still shaken from the experience. “Why is he after me?” She brushed back the long, tangled curtain of hair from her flushed cheeks. She felt sick.

“He’s going to set an example for anybody else who might consider trying to infiltrate his organization,” Eb told her. “It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. He doesn’t care. Your husband betrayed him and he wants you to pay for it, too. He wants all the government agencies to know the price for selling him out—their lives and their families’ lives.”

The fear made a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. She sank down into one of the kitchen chairs with a protective hand over her belly. She felt twice her age.

She heard heavy footsteps on the staircase and out the front door before Cy came back into the room, tearing off his mask. He looked even more formidable than usual, and that said something about his present demeanor, Lisa thought.

“Micah’s taking the guy over to the sheriff,” he said. “He suddenly doesn’t speak English, of course, and his friend lit a shuck while he was breaking into the house. We won’t be able to prove a thing beyond the obvious.”

“He’ll be out on bond by tomorrow afternoon and out of the country an hour later,” Ebenezer added.

Cy’s expression was homicidal before he turned his glittery green eyes on Lisa. “You can’t stay here a day longer,” he said flatly. “Lopez doesn’t make the same mistake twice. You’ve been put on notice. The next time, there won’t be a near miss.”

She ground her teeth together. “This is my ranch. I haven’t sold it to you yet, and I’m staying here,” she said furiously. “I’m not going to let some sleazy drug king pin force me into hiding out like a scared kid!”

“Commendable courage,” Cy remarked with a stoic expression. He reached into his belt and pulled out something dark. “Here.”

He tossed her his automatic. She caught it and then dropped it with a gasp of pure horror.

“You’d better pick it up and learn to shoot straight and under fire,” he said coldly. “You’d better learn to shoot to kill while you’re at it. Because that—” he indicated the gun “—is the only way you’ll survive if you insist on staying here alone. We were almost too late tonight. Next time, we might not be so lucky.”

She glared at him, but she didn’t argue. “I hate guns.”

“Good God, so do I,” Cy told her. “But when you get in a war, you don’t throw potatoes at the enemy.”

“Then what do I do?” she asked Cy.

Cy told her. “Go pack a bag. You’re leaving.”

“Leaving for where?” she demanded, standing up with both hands on her hips. “I told you already, I’ve got no family, no close friends, and no place to go to!”

“Yes, you have. The Expedition’s outside. I’ll send Harley over in the morning to pick up your VW and bring it over, too.”

Her dark eyes widened. It didn’t help much, her glasses were upstairs on the bedside table and all she could see of Cy was a blur. “I can’t go home with you. I’ve only been widowed a short time!”

“I’ve only been widowed three years,” he reminded her. “So what?”

“I can stay with Callie Kirby!”

“Callie’s apartment isn’t big enough for Callie, much less Callie and you,” he said. “I’ve got three bedrooms. You can even have a bathroom of your own.”

She didn’t want to give in. But the memory of someone trying to break in the house scared her. She knew that she couldn’t shoot an intruder. That left her few options.

“When you make up your mind, I’ll be in the truck,” Cy told her.

He actually walked out the door. Eb followed him with an amused grin that he didn’t let Lisa see.

Lisa glared after him, hesitant and bristling with hurt pride. But in the end, she went upstairs, changed into jeans and a shirt and packed a small bag. Ten minutes later, he opened the door of the utility vehicle so that she could climb in with her tote bag.

“If Harley so much as grins, I’ll kick him in the shins,” she said after she’d fumbled her seat belt together.

“So will I,” Cy promised her.

She glanced at him from the warm folds of her flannel-lined denim jacket. “Would you have shot that man?”

“If there hadn’t been another way to stop him, yes.”

“I couldn’t shoot anybody,” she said.

“I know. That’s why you have to stay with me until we get Lopez.” He glanced at her. “It won’t be so bad. I can cook.”

“So can I.”

“Good. Fair division of labor.” He glanced at her with a faint smile. “When the baby comes, we’ll take turns getting up for his meals.”

She felt a warm glow wash over her. She smiled, too. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to sleep if he was hungry,” she mused dreamily. “I’d get up, too.”

He remembered his wife complaining bitterly about lost sleep, making formula, giving bottles. She hated everything to do with the baby, and couldn’t begin to understand his affection for the tiny little boy, who wasn’t even…

He closed his mind to the anguish that memory fostered, and concentrated on his driving instead.

Apparently Cy’s men were asleep in the bunkhouse, because the ranch house was quiet when they arrived. He helped Lisa out of the vehicle and carried her suitcase into the house.

“You’ll probably like this room. It faces the rose garden,” he added with a smile.

She looked around at the simple, old-fashioned room with its canopied double bed and gauzy white curtains and white furniture. “It’s very pretty,” she murmured.