Stone Cold Christmas Ranger

“Your parents have a guesthouse and staff?”

“Your father runs a drug cartel?” he returned in the same put-off tone.

She wanted to laugh even though it wasn’t funny in the least little bit. “No one’s going to believe I’m involved with...you.”

Something in his expression changed, a softening followed by an all-too-charming smile that had her heart beating hard against her chest.

“Am I that hideous?” he asked, clearly knowing full well he was not.

“You know what I mean. I look like a street urchin,” she said, waving a hand down her front. “You look like...” She waved her hand ineffectually at him.

He cocked his head. “I look like what?” he asked, and there was something a little darker in his tone. Dangerous. But cops weren’t dangerous. Not like that.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, knowing she had to be blushing so profusely even the bad lighting couldn’t hide it. “A guy who has servants and guesthouses and crap.”

“They’ll believe it because there’s no reason not to. Street-urchin chic or no, my parents wouldn’t doubt me. They might assume I’m trying to give them an aneurism, but they won’t suspect anything.”

Alyssa looked at her bike. She could hop on, flip him off and zoom away. Zoom away from everything she’d built in the past two years, zoom away from everything that had held her prisoner for the first twenty-two.

But she hadn’t left Austin on her release from her kidnapper, and she had people to protect now. She couldn’t leave Gabby and Natalie in the middle of this, even if they were both married to men or living with men who would try to protect them.

She studied Ranger Stevens and knew she had to make a choice. Fight, and trust this man. Or run, and ruin them all.

It wasn’t a hard choice in the slightest. “All right. I’ll go.”

Chapter Four

Bennet drove from the Texas Ranger offices to his parents’ sprawling estate outside Austin. It wasn’t the first time he’d been self-conscious about his parents’ wealth. Most of the cops and Rangers he knew were not the sons and daughters of the Texas elite.

Nevertheless, this was the life he’d been born into, and Alyssa hadn’t been born into a much different one. Just on opposite sides of the law, but if her father was the Jimenez kingpin, then she’d had her share of wealth.

She followed him, the roar of her motorcycle cutting through the quiet of the wealthy neighborhood enough to make him wince. There would be phone calls. There would be a lot of things. But the most important thing was they were going somewhere that couldn’t have been infiltrated.

He drove up the sprawling drive after entering the code for the gate and hoped against hope his father was in DC and his mother was at a function or, well, anywhere but here. Because while they might ignore his presence, maybe, they would never ignore the presence of the motorcycle.

Parking at the top of the drive, he got out of his running car and punched the code into the garage door so it opened.

“This is a guesthouse?” Alyssa called out over the sound of her motorcycle.

Bennet nodded as the garage door went up. He walked back to his car and motioned for her to park inside the garage. Maybe if the evidence was hidden, and it was late enough, it was possible no one would notice the disturbance. A man could dream.

Alyssa walked her motorcycle into the garage and killed the engine. She pulled off her helmet. It seemed no matter how often her hair tumbled out like that, his idiotic body had a reaction. He really needed to get a handle on that.

“Follow me,” he said, probably too tersely. But he felt terse and uncomfortable. He felt a lot of things he didn’t want to think about.

He slid the key he always kept on his ring into the lock of the door from the garage to the mudroom. He didn’t look back to see how she reacted to the rather ostentatious guesthouse as they walked through it. It wasn’t his.

He led her into the living room. “Feel free to use anything in the house. The fridge probably won’t be stocked, but the pantry is. The staff keeps everything clean and fresh for visitors, so—”

“You keep saying ‘staff,’ but I have a feeling what you mean is servants.”

He gave her a doleful look. “I’ll show you to a bedroom and bathroom you can use. I suggest we get some sleep and reevaluate in the morning.”

“Reevaluate what?”

“How we’re going to handle getting me into see your brothers with you.”

“There’s no way. There’s no way. They’ll kill you on sight knowing you’re a Texas Ranger. They have all this time while we’re ‘reevaluating’ to plan to kill you and make it look like an accident, make you just disappear.” She snapped her fingers. “It will be suicide. I don’t think you get that.”

“I told you I had some ideas.”

“Like what?”

“Like what we’re doing right here.”

She threw her arms up in the air, clearly frustrated with him. “What are we doing right here?

“If your brothers think that we...” He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with his own idea, with telling it to her, with enacting it. But it made sense. It was the only thing that made sense. No matter how much he didn’t want to do it. “If your brothers think we are romantically involved, there’s a chance they wouldn’t touch me. If I were important to you.”

Alyssa blinked at him for a full minute. “First of all,” she said eventually, “even if that was remotely true, if they have my office bugged, they know we just met. It was part of that conversation.”

“We’ll say it was a lure.”

“You can’t be this stupid. You can’t be.”

That offhanded insult poked at a million things he’d never admit to. “I assure you, Ms. Jimenez, I know what I’m doing,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and giving her a look that had intimidated drug dealers and rapists and even murderers.

Alyssa rolled her eyes. “Spare me the ‘Ms. Jimenez’ crap. It makes far more sense for me to go there on my own and handle things my own way. You can trust me when I say I want to get to the bottom of my mother’s murder more than you do. I have no reason not to bring you whatever information I find so my mother’s murderer can be brought to justice.”

“I think you’re bright enough to realize all of this is so much more than a murder case. The things your brothers are involved in aren’t that easy. It’s not something I can trust a civilian to go into and bring me back the information I need to prosecute. I need to go in there with you. I need to investigate this myself.”

She shook her head in disgust, but she didn’t argue further. Which was a plus.

“How far are you willing to go?” she demanded.

“As far as I need to. This case is my number one priority. I won’t rest until it’s solved.”

She sighed while looking around the living room. “I can’t sit anywhere in here. I’ll stain all this white just by looking at it.”

He rolled his eyes and took her by the elbow, leading her to a chair. It was white, and it was very possible she’d get motorcycle grease or something on it, but it would be taken care of. Stains in the Stevens world were always taken care of.

He pushed her into the chair. She sat with an audible thump. “What about this? You tell them I’m a double agent. That I want to be a dirty cop.”

“They wouldn’t believe that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are the antithesis of a dirty cop. You look like Superman had a baby with Captain America and every other do-gooder superhero to ever exist. No one would believe you want to be a dirty cop.”

“Have you ever had any contact with a dirty cop?”

“Well, no.”

He took a seat on the couch, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. He never took his eyes off her—this was too important. “It has nothing to do with what you look like and everything to do with how desperate you are. How powerful you want to feel. Cops go dirty because... Well, there are a lot of reasons, but it’s not about how you look or where you’re from. It’s about ego, among other things.”

“Okay, it’s about ego, which I’ll give you you’ve got, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to believe any of it.”

“It doesn’t mean they won’t.”

“You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”

“We can do it the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is where you work with me. The hard way is where you work against me. Either way, I’m doing it.”

She sighed gustily, but he could see in the set of her shoulders she was relenting. Giving in. One way or another, she was going to give in.

“Fine. But we’re not doing it your way. If we’re doing it together, when it comes to my brothers, we do it my way. I tell them I’m using you to get information. I don’t know if they’ll buy it hook, line and sinker, but it’s better than all your ideas.”

“Gee, thank you.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave your ego at the door, Mr. Texas Ranger.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Alyssa rubbed her temples. She had to be exhausted and stressed and emotionally wrung out from the things she’d found out today.

“Let’s go to bed. We’ll work out the details in the morning.”

She sighed and pushed herself out of the chair. “Fine. Lead me to my castle.”

“You’re awfully melodramatic for a street urchin.”

“I’m not the one living in this place.”

“I don’t live in this place,” he muttered, standing, as well.

“You also don’t live in an apartment above a garage.”

“Is that where you live?” Which was neither here nor there, knowing where she lived or anything about her current life. All that mattered was her connection to the Jimenez family.

“Yes. I live in an apartment above the garage of my friends’ house. My friends who are now in danger because of me, because of this.” She let out a long sigh and faced him, her expression grave, her eyes reflecting some of the fear she’d kept impressively hidden thus far. “I need them safe, Ranger Stevens.”

“I may not know Gabby very well, but I’ve worked with Jaime on occasion, and Vaughn has been my partner for a long time. I care about your friends. They’re my friends, too. Nothing’s going to happen to them.”

“My, you are a confident one.”

But no matter how sarcastically she’d said it, he could see a slight relaxation in her. His confidence gave her comfort. “Confidence is everything.”

“Except when you have nothing.”

Bennet didn’t know what to say to that, so he led her down a hallway to the bedrooms. The farthest one from his. It would be the best room for her, not just for keeping her far away from him. He wasn’t that weak to need a barrier, or so he’d tell himself.

“That door back there leads to a private bathroom. Feel free to use it and anything in it. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Hey, have you heard anything from Vaughn about Nat?”

Bennet looked down at his phone. “I don’t have any messages.”

“I don’t know what to tell them. They’ll expect me to visit, and...” She shook her head, looking young and vulnerable for the first time since she’d seen the picture of her mother.

He wanted to help. He wanted to soothe. Which was just his nature. He was a guy who wanted to help. It had nothing to do with soft brown eyes and a pretty mouth.

“You’re a bounty hunter, right? Well, an unauthorized and illegal one, anyway.”

She frowned at him. “Yes. I have my reasons.”

“Criminals always do.” But he grinned, hoping the joke, the teasing, would lighten her up, take that vulnerable cast of her mouth away. “Tell them you had an important case, and you’ll be back as soon as possible. You’re not going back to your place, so it’s not like they’ll have any reason to believe you’re in town.”

“I don’t like lying to them.”

“It’s not my favorite either, but—”

“I know. It’ll keep them safe, and that is the most important thing to me.”

“It’s important to me, too. Never doubt that.”

She nodded, hugging herself and looking around the room. “You know this kind of insane show of wealth is usually the sign of a small dick, right?”

He choked on his own spit. That had not been at all what he’d expected her to say, but from her grin he could tell that’s exactly why she’d said it.

“I suppose that’s something you’d have to take up with my father, since this is neither my show of wealth, nor is that a complaint I’ve ever received.”

Two twin blotches of pink showed up on her cheeks, and Bennet knew it was time to close the door and walk away before there were any more jokes about...that.

“Are you sure your parents won’t get wind of this?”

“Unless it furthers their political agenda, my parents won’t be sticking their nose anywhere near it. They’ll stay out of it and safe.”

“Political agenda?”

“Oh, didn’t you put it together?” he asked casually, because he knew much like her small-dick comment had caught him off guard, this little tidbit would catch her off guard.

“Put what together?”

“My father is Gary L. Stevens, US senator and former presidential candidate. My mother is Lynette Stevens, pioneer lawyer and Texas state senator. You may have heard of them.”

She stared slack-jawed at him, and he couldn’t ignore the pleasure he got out of leaving her in shock. So he flashed a grin, his politicians’ son grin.

“Good night, Alyssa.”

And Bennet left her room, closing the door behind him.

* * *

ALYSSA TOSSED AND TURNED. Between trying to come to full grips with the fact that Bennet Stevens was the son of two wealthy and influential politicians, and Gabby being mad about her taking a job before coming to see the baby, she couldn’t get her mind to stop running in circles.

She hated when someone was mad at her and had every right to be. She hated disappointing Gabby and Nat. But this was keeping them safe, and she had to remember that.

And more than all of that, the thing she kept trying to pretend wasn’t true.

Her mother had been murdered. She knew Ranger Stevens suspected her brothers. No matter what horrible things they were capable of, though—and they were enormously capable—Alyssa rejected the idea they could be behind the murder of her mother. Their mother.

Maybe she could see it if her father was still in his right mind, but he had succumbed to some kind of dementia before she’d even been kidnapped. He was nothing but a titular figure now, one her brothers kept as a weapon of their own.

Once it was finally a reasonable hour to get up, Alyssa crawled out of the too-comfortable bed and looked at herself in the gigantic mirror. She looked like a bedraggled sewer animal in the midst of all this pristine white.

It was such a glaring contrast. Though she’d grown up surrounded by a certain amount of wealth, it had all been the dark-and-dirty kind. She’d lived in a sketchy guarded-to-the-hilt home for most of her life, and then been kidnapped into a glorified bunker.

But what did contrasts matter when she was simply out for the truth? She tiptoed down the hallway, wondering where Ranger Stevens had secreted himself off to last night. What would he look like sleep-rumpled in one of those big white beds?

She was seriously losing it. Clearly she needed something to eat to clear her head. She headed for the kitchen, but stopped short at the entrance when she saw Ranger Stevens was already sitting there in a little breakfast nook surrounded by windows.

“Good morning,” he offered, as if it wasn’t five in the morning and as if this wasn’t weird as all get out.

“Morning,” she replied.

On the glossy black table in front of him, he had a laptop open. He was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, and while the button-down shirt he’d been wearing last night hadn’t exactly hidden the fact this man was no pencil pusher, this was a whole other experience.

He had muscles. Actual biceps. Whether it was on purpose or not, the sleeves of his T-shirt hugged them perfectly and made her realize, again, how unbearably hot this man was. And how unbearably unfair that was.

“There’s coffee already brewed. Mugs are in the cabinet above it. As for breakfast, feel free to poke around and find what you’d like.”

“Not much of a breakfast eater,” she lied. She didn’t know why she lied. She just felt off-kilter and weird and didn’t want to be here.

“I’d try to eat something. Got a lot of work to do today.”

“Don’t you have to go to, like, actual work?”

“My actual work is investigating this case.”

“If my brothers get ahold of you and you don’t report for work, what’s going to happen then?”

He looked at her over his laptop with that hard, implacable Texas Ranger look she thought maybe he practiced in the mirror. Because it was effective, both in shutting her up and making those weird lower-belly flutters intensify.

“I’ll handle my work responsibilities,” he said, his voice deep and certain.

Alyssa rolled her eyes in an effort to appear wholly unaffected. She walked over to the coffeepot. She didn’t drink coffee, but she figured she might as well start. That’s what adults did after all. They drank coffee and handled their work responsibilities.

“Sugar is right next to the pot. No cream, but milk is in the fridge.”

“I drink it black,” she lied. She tried to take a sophisticated sip, but ended up burning her tongue and grimacing at the horrible, horrible taste.

“You take it black, huh?” And there was that dangerous curve to his mouth, humor and something like intent all curled into it. She wanted to trace it with her fingers.

So, she scowled instead. “Let’s worry less about how I take my coffee and more about what we’re going to do.”

“First things first, we’re going to go back to your office and check for a bug. We need to know exactly what your brothers know about me and what I’m looking for.”

She wasn’t in love with him deciding what they were going to do without at least a conversation, but unfortunately he was right. They needed to know for sure what was going on.

“Once we’ve figured that out, we’ll move on to trying to lure your brothers out.”

“I’m guessing my leading their cronies to Texas Rangers headquarters and yelling probably did it.”

“Probably, but we need to make sure. We also need to make sure it seems like we don’t want to be caught.”

She studied him then because there was something not quite right about all this.

“This is official Ranger business, right?”

He focused on the computer. “What do you mean ‘official’?”

“This isn’t on the up-and-up, is it?”

His mouth firmed and his jaw went hard and uncompromising. He was so damn hot, and she kind of wanted to lick him. She didn’t know what to do with that. She’d never wanted to lick anyone before.

“I’ve been okayed to investigate this case,” he ground out. “It’s possible we’ll have to do some things that aren’t entirely by the book. I might not tell my superiors every single thing I’m doing, but this is one of those cases where you have to bend the rules a little bit.”

“Doesn’t bending the rules invalidate the investigation?”

“Depends on the situation. Do you want to find the answers to your mother’s murder or not?”

Which she supposed was all that really mattered. She wanted to find the answers to her mother’s murder. Everything else was secondary. “Okay. Well, let’s go, then.”

His mouth quirked, his hard, uncompromising expression softening. “Aren’t you going to finish your coffee?”

She glanced at the mug, and she knew he was testing her. Teasing her maybe. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “You make shitty coffee.”

He barked out a laugh, and she was all too pleased he was laughing at something she’d said. All too pleased he would tease her. Pay attention to her in any way.

It was stupid to be into him. So she’d ignore that part of herself right now. Ignore the flutters and the being pleased.

A door opened somewhere, and Bennet visibly cringed when a voice rang out.

“Bennet? Are you here?”

It was a woman’s voice. Did he have a girlfriend? Something ugly bloomed in her chest, but Bennet offered some sort of half grimace, half smile. “Well, Alyssa, let’s see what kind of actress you are.”

He pushed away from the table, and an older woman entered the room. He held out his arms.

“Mother. How are you?”

“Surprised to find you here.” She brushed her lips across the air next to Bennet’s cheek.

Alyssa pushed herself into the little corner of the countertop, but Bennet wasn’t going to let her be ignored. He turned his mother to face her.

“Allow me to introduce you to someone,” he said easily, charmingly, clearly a very good actor. The woman’s blue gaze landed on Alyssa.

“This is Alyssa... Clark,” Bennet offered. “Alyssa, this is my mother, Lynette Stevens.”

“Alyssa Clark,” Mrs. Stevens repeated blandly.

Alyssa didn’t have to be a mind reader to know Mrs. Stevens did not approve. She might have squirmed if it didn’t piss her off a little. Sure, she looked like a drowned sewer rat and was the daughter of a drug kingpin rather than Texas royalty, but she wasn’t a bad person. Exactly.

Alyssa smiled as sweetly as she could manage. “It’s so good to meet you, Ms. Stevens. I’ve heard so much about you,” she said, adopting her most cultured, overly upper-class Texas drawl.

Mrs. Bennet’s expression didn’t change, but Alyssa was adept at reading the cold fury of people. And Mrs. Stevens had some cold fury going on in there.

“I didn’t realize you were seeing anyone at the moment, Bennet,” Mrs. Stevens murmured, the fury of her gaze never leaving Alyssa.

“I don’t tell you everything, as you well know.”

“Yes, well. I just came by to see what all the noise complaints were about. If I’d known you were busy, I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

“It was no bother, but I do have to get ready for work.”

“And what’s Ms. Clark going to do while you work?”

“Oh, I have my own work to do,” Alyssa said. She smiled as blandly and coldly as Bennet’s mother.

“Yes, well. I’ll leave you both alone then. Try to avoid any more noise disturbances if you please, and if you’re around this evening, bring your young lady to dinner at the main house.”

“I’ll see if our schedules can accommodate it and let Kinsey know,” Bennet replied, and Alyssa had not seen this side of him. Cool and blank, a false mask of charm over everything. This was not Ranger Stevens, and she didn’t think it was Bennet either.

“Wonderful. I hope to see you then.” She gave Alyssa one last glance and then swept out of the kitchen as quickly as she’d appeared.

Alyssa looked curiously at Bennet. “That’s how you talk to your mother?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Why did she hate me so much?”

“You’re not on her approved list of women I’m allowed to see.”

“She doesn’t have a list.”

Bennet raised an eyebrow. “It’s laminated.”

Alyssa laughed, even though she had a terrible feeling he wasn’t joking. “So, she wants you to get married and have lots of little perfect Superman babies?”

“It’s a political game for her.”

“What is?”

“Life.”

Which seemed suddenly not funny at all but just kind of sad. For her. For Bennet. Which was foolish. She’d grown up in a drug cartel. What could be sad about Bennet’s picture-perfect political family?

“Why’d you give her a fake name when you introduced me?”

“Because her private investigators will be on you in five seconds. If you’ve ever stripped, inhaled, handed out fliers for minimum-wage increases, I will know it within the hour. But a fake name will slow her down.”

“She checks out all your girlfriends?”

“All the ones I let her know about. Which is why I don’t usually let her know. Which I imagine is why she’s here at five in the morning and overly suspicious. But you don’t have to worry.”

“Because you didn’t give her my real name?”