Desperado (9 page)

“You never said that,” she replied sadly. “You never even hinted at it.”

His fingers tightened and released on her shoulders. “It’s hard for me to let people close,” he confessed reluctantly, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I lost both parents, my wife, Amy…I don’t have a good track record with…affection.”

He was going to say
love,
but he couldn’t get the word past his lips. She could understand. She’d been betrayed herself, by the people who should have put her welfare first. Trust didn’t come easily to either of them.

She searched his eyes slowly, seeing the deep lines between his elegant eyebrows, the lines of stress between his nose and his mouth, the hard set of his lean face with its olive complexion.

“I know how that feels,” she said slowly. “Except that people have left you because of circumstances they couldn’t control, even Patricia. In my life, the people who were closest to me have betrayed me.”

“Who betrayed you?” he asked softly, discerning that she wanted to talk.

“Just about everybody,” she said after a long moment. She winced, remembering Bart’s horrible act and its ultimate cost. Her eyes closed and opened. “I’ll never trust a man again.”

“Can’t you tell me what happened?” he persisted, tilting her face up.

She searched his eyes slowly. “It would be cruel,” she said absently, and then regretted the slip of the tongue when she saw his intelligent eyes flicker.

The unexpected answer made him curious. “Cruel to me? Why? How?”

She pulled away and moved to her suitcase. “I’m going to put on something else.”

“What’s wrong with shorts?” he asked, diverted. “You’re home.”

She shrugged. “I don’t ever wear shorts except when I’m alone.”

He was watching her, alert, assessing. “Who molested you, Maggie?”

She dropped the pair of jeans she was holding.

He went to the door, closed it, and came back to her, turning her to face him. He forced her eyes up to his. “It was your stepfather, wasn’t it?”

She winced.

“Did you have therapy?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I could never talk about it, to a total stranger.”

His thumbs rubbed gently against her cheeks as he framed her face. “I know a woman. She’s a merc, but she has a degree in psychology. She’s tough and honest. I think you’d like her. She’s the sort of person you could talk to, and she could help you.”

“Do you think so?”

He bent so that she had to meet his eyes. “Do you want to go through life alone, without a family or children?”

“I don’t know if I can have children anymore,” she said huskily and in pain.

His hands stilled on her face. “Why?”

“The beating I took when Bart hit me…was…devastating,” she confessed hesitantly. “I fell into a marble coffee table and
it shattered. I damaged one of my ovaries. The other one works…but the doctors told me that it might be difficult to get pregnant.”

He immediately thought of ways and means to get her that way, and it shocked him. Children, family life, had never been a priority. He was in a line of work that predisposed him to bachelor status.

But she looked torn, wounded, helpless. Inadequate. He thought about the long, lonely years ahead when she would substitute work for love and companionship and the family she could have had. It was a terrible waste.

He scowled as he looked down into her wan face. “Difficult, but not impossible,” he said huskily, and his whole body went taut. He laughed at the unexpected arousal.

“What’s so funny?”

He pursed his lips. “I thought about kids and got aroused. That’s a first.”

She flushed, pulling away from him.

With a long sigh, he pushed his itching hands into his slacks pockets to keep from grabbing her. “Well, it’s a challenge, isn’t it? I love a challenge.”

Her hands were shaking. She folded them at her waist. “I really should change.”

“I really would love to watch,” he said softly, and he didn’t smile. “Your skin has a delicate sheen, like that on a pearl. You feel like the most delicate rose petal, silky and delicious, and the smell of roses clings to you like an aura.” He searched over
her hair, her face, her body, hungrily. “I’ve had women all my adult life, not in droves, but in sufficient numbers to appreciate them. You surpass every one of them, in every way. If I had an ideal of womanhood, you’d be it.”

She didn’t know how to take such sweeping comments. They embarrassed her, even as they flattered her. But this was Cord passing them out, Cord, who had been her most persistent enemy for years.

“Are you…feeling sorry for me,” she queried, “and that’s why you say those things?”

He scowled. “Why would I pity you?”

Because she knew pity. She had an intimate knowledge of it. People were sorry for you, they tried to spoil you to make up for the trauma. They wanted to help, and when words were all they had to use, they flattered. But the words meant nothing.

“So many secrets, Maggie,” he murmured as he watched her ponder his remarks. “You don’t trust me, either, do you?”

“It’s not personal,” she said in a stark whisper while her eyes mirrored troubling memories.

“If I’m slow, and careful, and I don’t pressure you,” he said gently, “can I win your trust?”

“What would you expect in return?” she asked with helpless suspicion.

That was when he realized what a long, slow road it was going to be. And it wouldn’t be an overnight victory.

His lips parted as he looked at her and hungered for her. He
frowned, because he hadn’t thought much about the end result, only the path that led to it. He cocked his head. “I’m thirty-four,” he said slowly. “I’ve lived fast and hard. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and I’ve done a lot of them for nothing more noble than money. But this Gruber thing has changed me. Now, I want to stop him and his cronies, and it isn’t for money.” He hesitated, choosing his words. “If I had a child, of eight or nine, and had to see it become nothing more than a slave in a cocoa field, or a mine, or a sweatshop—and I could do nothing to save it because I had no money at all…” He drew in a sharp breath.

“Cocoa field?” She moved closer to him, curious. “Little children?”

He nodded. “Little children. Some are sold for as little as eleven or twelve dollars, because their parents can’t provide for them and hope they’ll find a better life working for some multinational corporation in another country. But what happens is the children are taken away, worked up to eighteen hours a day and beaten when they don’t work. And they’re never given a dime for their labors.”

She gasped. “Good Lord! How can things like that happen in a civilized world?”

“Civilization isn’t all that far-reaching,” he told him. “Especially in developing nations, which need economic assistance just to keep their people from starving. Many of them look the other way when their own citizens become slave dealers. But Gruber is setting a precedent—he’s organizing a global
labor pool to sell to those corporations which will deal with him, to cut their production costs in a tightening retail market that lowers their profits.”

“That’s dirty,” she said icily.

“Dirty. Cowardly. Merciless. Yes, it is. And very few of the nations outside the industrial ones can, or will, crack down on the labor exploitation. Some of it has been exposed on television news programs, but it was mostly the use of child labor to produce retail merchandise for resale in this country and others. And it was a sanitized version. They don’t show the scarred little bodies, or the malnutrition, or the squalor in which these children live.” His face hardened. “Gruber also has a nice little prostitution racket going, with the same source, which exploits young girls as sexual slaves. Imagine a twelve-year-old girl who’s never known a man, in a brothel where she’s worked like a mule.”

She could. She lowered her eyes, sickened. “He should be stopped.”

“I agree. But—” he added, cupping her face in his hands “—you don’t need to be involved in this. By sticking your nose into it with Kit, you’ve put yourself square on the firing line. I can’t let you get hurt. I’ll go see Lassiter tomorrow and we’ll make plans. I know more about Gruber than he does, and I have access to information even he can’t get. I’ll share.”

Her eyes widened with fear. “But you could be hurt, too…!”

“Oh, I like that,” he said in a husky tone. “I like having you afraid for me. You always have been. Why didn’t I see it?”

“You didn’t want to,” she said abruptly. “You’ve given up seeing things that make you feel.”

He nodded slowly. “Yes. And so have you.”

She couldn’t deny it. “People can hurt you if you let them get too close,” she murmured absently, lost in his dark, warm eyes.

His thumb smoothed gently over her parted lips. “As I hurt you,” he said quietly. “You can’t imagine how much I regret what I did to you, that night,” he added with genuine sorrow. “For years I dreamed how it would be, to make love to you slowly and gently, to bring soft little moans out of your throat and make you fly into the sun with delight. And when the opportunity finally presented itself,” he said on a heavy, harsh sigh, “I damaged you, in every way possible.”

She deliberated on what to say, on how to answer him. It was surprising that he’d thought about it before it happened. “I didn’t know…that it would hurt so much.” She couldn’t tell him that she had all too much knowledge of what happened between men and women, or that her past had convinced her that sex would be easy for her if she could stomach it.

“You weren’t ready for me,” he said simply. “I didn’t arouse you.”

She searched his hard face with curious eyes. “Is that what happened, in your study the other night?” she asked in a small voice. “Is that…how it would have been if you’d been sober?”

“Yes,” he replied. He traced her mouth with his forefinger. “I would have done that, and more.”

“And it wouldn’t…have hurt?”

“Maybe a little,” he said honestly. He caught both her hands in his and held them. “A virgin’s body is tight inside,” he said. “It can be uncomfortable for a woman if she’s not aroused properly first. The rush, plus the alcohol, is what made it so painful for you.”

“Oh.”

His fingers entwined with hers, liking their warm softness in his grasp. “At least, there wasn’t a physical barrier to get out of the way.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t bear the memory. She couldn’t even talk about it.

He seemed to understand. He bent and kissed her eyelids. “I’m not making accusations. I know you were a virgin, Maggie.”

“How?” she blurted out.

“Because everything I did shocked you,” he said flatly. “And because you were obviously uncomfortable just at the last.”

She colored, keeping her face down. Her hands, in his, were nerveless. “I was afraid of it.”

“Of the pain,” he agreed.

“No. Of the…” She swallowed. “It kept feeling better and better, and I thought I was going to burst wide open. I was afraid of the pleasure, it was going to be too much…”

He jerked her into his arms and held her hard, bruisingly hard. She could hear his heartbeat, strong and fast against her breasts. He groaned once, harshly, and held her even closer.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

His cheek rubbed against hers. “At least you had something,” he muttered.

Her fingers worried the pocket of his shirt. “If I’d given in, if I hadn’t fought against it, what…would have happened?”

“Have you ever had a climax?” he whispered.

She jerked in his arms. She knew what he meant, even if she hadn’t experienced it.

“No,” she said after a minute.

His mouth touched her face lightly, his lips hot and hungry as they moved onto her mouth and kissed it with growing insistence.

“Suppose,” he whispered roughly, “you let me give you one.”

Her heart jumped. His hands had moved down to her hips and were pulling them rhythmically into his, in the same way he had in the study, on the chaise lounge. Her body began to tauten, to burn with curiosity and growing pleasure.

Her nails dug into his chest, but she didn’t protest. She was curious. She was alive. She was hungry.

He moved, so that one long, lean leg slid in between both of hers and began to move in a slow, deadly rhythm. Her body followed its darting motion, lifting toward it, hungry for the closeness of him.

“I can give you heaven,” he murmured against her parted lips. “Let me.”

She opened her mouth to his hot, deep kiss, moaning when it sparked off even more drugging sensations of pleasure.

“Yes?” he whispered into her mouth. “Maggie, yes?”

She wanted to say the word. She shouldn’t. It was wrong. He would despise her. He would taunt her with it, as he had before. He would…oh, if only he would never stop!

She moaned and her mouth tugged away from his just a breath, just enough to get that one word out that would open the gates to paradise, that would make her his woman, truly his woman…!

The knock on the door was hard, loud and cruel. He jerked back from her like a man in a daze, shivering with reaction, with frustrated desire, with shocked wonder at her headlong response.

“Yes?” he called harshly.

“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Romero, but there’s a Dane Lassiter on the phone, asking for you!” came June’s hesitant voice.

C
ord was still unsteady on his feet when he picked up the telephone receiver in the living room.

“Romero,” he said in a voice that sounded strangled. No wonder. He’d almost seduced Maggie right there, when he’d promised not to.

“Dane Lassiter,” came the reply in a deep, slow voice. “I just had a call from Logan Deverell about a photograph his wife and Maggie Barton conspired to get at lunchtime. Has Maggie told you?”

“Yes,” he replied curtly.

“Do you know who the man in the photo with Adams is?”

“I know all right. The photo Kit Deverell took was of Alvarez Adams and a man named Raoul Gruber. Gruber traffics in child labor and he’s opening up new areas of exploitation in West Africa and Central America, more
children to make money for the multinational corporation he heads. Gruber planted the bomb that almost blinded me. Maggie put her life on the line when she met up with him. I made her come out to the ranch with me, so that I can protect her.”

There was a brief silence. “I see.”

“You didn’t know?”

“I knew Adams. I’ve been working on him for four months, trying to find enough evidence to force his arrest for importing and exploiting illegal aliens. I knew that he had a colleague named Gruber, and my information was that JobFair had links to him. I didn’t know that the man in Kit’s photo was Gruber. I phoned you because I thought you might be able to identify him.”

“I can identify him, all right. Gruber’s a killer,” he added. “He doesn’t stop at men. He’s killed children. I know him from years past. He suckered my group into a coup attempt in Africa that cost us several men. We ended up fighting kids with automatic weapons. We went after Gruber, but he ducked out of the country and we couldn’t trace him.”

There was another pause. “It’s like peeling an onion,” Lassiter said deeply. “Just when you get to what you think is the last layer, a new one presents itself.”

“I want to talk to you in person,” Cord said. “I have access to sources of information that you don’t. I can give you Gruber and probably Alvarez.”

“I don’t want them,” came the suddenly amused reply, “but
I’d love to give them to a government agency that does. My client isn’t that generous. His family would like Adams served up cold.”

“His family?”

“I can’t divulge much,” Lassiter said. “But I can tell you that Adams was involved in the abduction and murder of two of their sons. They were accidentally taken in a raid on a small Central American village, and when the authorities got too close, Gruber simply had them all eliminated. The parents have a rich cousin who came to me in an attempt to provide evidence of it. I was investigating Adams, but then the trail led to Gruber. Adams has no record for violent crime. Gruber does. I think my clients fingered the wrong man.”

“They have, if my information is accurate,” Cord said. “And I think it is, because I got it from a member of the U.S. Senate, who wants Gruber shut down as badly as I do.”

“You have nice connections,” Lassiter mused.

“Oh, I’ve got some even better than that,” Cord chuckled, “including a foreign head of state. I’ll give you as much help as I can.”

“I understand that Logan Deverell and his wife have had a hell of a mixer about her actions today,” Lassiter remarked. “I don’t think she’ll be taking any more photographs for me, even if I’m allowed to keep her in the agency. Logan didn’t know about Gruber, but he did know that Adams is dangerous. He was pretty mad.”

“Maggie’s impulsive,” Cord said quietly. “She doesn’t always think things through before she acts. I gather that Kit is much the same.”

“The difference is that Kit has a two-year-old son. She can’t afford to put herself at risk. I’m in all morning tomorrow. How does eight-thirty suit you?”

“Suits me fine,” Cord said. “I can drop Maggie off at her office on the way.” He hesitated. “Listen, I don’t like the idea of letting her go back to work at all, but I don’t fancy another confrontation—I had to pick her up and carry her out of the hotel to get her to the ranch.”

“I’ve got operatives with no pending cases,” Lassiter said immediately. “Maggie will be safe in this building. I give you my word.”

“Don’t underestimate Gruber,” came the terse reply. “I did, and it almost cost me my life.”

“We learn from mistakes, if they don’t kill us. I’ve made my share of them, too. I’ll see you at eight-thirty.”

“Fine.”

Cord hung up and traced a line down the receiver while he thought about Maggie’s situation. He wouldn’t be overprotective, but he didn’t want her anyplace where Gruber might be able to abduct her. Gruber wouldn’t hesitate at killing her. She didn’t seem to understand how dangerous the man was. Cord would have to keep a close eye on her without appearing to. She was fiercely independent.

By the time June had a late supper on the table, Maggie was back in her jeans and short-sleeved knit sweater, with her hair in a ponytail and no makeup. She looked young and oddly carefree.

Cord watched her covertly while she talked to June about a new fabric that had turned up in clothing lines, soft and nice-looking. The two women seemed to get along very well. Cord was glad about it, and sorry that he’d tried to give Maggie a wrong impression of his relationship with the younger woman. It could have had disastrous consequences.

He noticed that Maggie was reluctant to meet his eyes, but he caught her glancing at him once, and it made him feel lighter than air.

Neither of the Travises knew why Maggie had come to the ranch, but Cord had to tell them. When he wasn’t around, for any reason, he had to have someone aware of the danger.

“I want you to tell Davis, too,” Cord told Travis when he’d summarized the problem. “If I’m not here, the two of you have to make sure the ranch is secure. Gruber will hesitate to rush in if he knows I’m here, but I’m not sure how many contacts he has, or what they know.”

“I’m glad you agreed to come out here, where Cord can look out for you,” June told Maggie with genuine concern.

Maggie looked uncomfortable.

Cord pursed his lips. “Oh, she didn’t come voluntarily,” he told them. “I carried her out of the hotel over my shoulder, kicking and screaming.”

“In front of God and the whole world!” she exploded, flushing. “And what you told that elderly couple…!”

He chuckled. “Well, it kept you diverted so that you didn’t rush back upstairs, didn’t it?”

She sighed angrily. “Honest to God, if Amy could see you now.” She shook her head.

“She’d probably be laughing her head off in the hereafter,” he finished for her, his dark eyes twinkling.

June glanced from one to the other and smiled. She’d never heard Cord Romero laugh until Maggie came back into his life. When she and her father had first come to work for him, he was a little intimidating, and he never seemed to smile. He was all business, and there were some wary, tough-looking men going in and out of the house at odd hours. June had been nervous around him most of the time. But now, with Maggie, he was like a different person. She got a glimpse of the man he had been, perhaps, before his line of work made him hard and cold. She wondered if he realized how much Maggie had changed him already.

“Barefoot and in shorts,” Maggie scoffed, sipping coffee. “If any of my clients had seen me…!”

“You’d be doing more business than you could handle,” Cord mused. “I know—” he held up his hand “—that was a sexist remark. But, honey, you do look enchanting in a pair of shorts and with your hair down.”

Maggie looked flustered. She couldn’t even come up with a snappy reply. She finished her coffee instead.

Later, they went into the living room to watch television, but Maggie was uneasy.

“You don’t really think Gruber will come after both of us, do you?” she asked.

Cord smiled. “Of course he will,” he replied. “I’m going to see Lassiter in the morning and we’re going to talk about strategies. I’ll drop you off at your office on the way. I’ll come with Davis to pick you up after work, too.”

She started to protest. Her mouth was open. But all at once, she closed it. This was his business. He made his living anticipating dark threats, danger, violence. If the man did have evil in mind, there wasn’t anybody better than Cord to deal with it.

“What? No protests?” Cord exclaimed.

She shifted on the sofa. “You’re very good at what you do,” she replied softly. Her eyes touched his face. “I know you can deal with anything that comes up.”

He was pleasantly surprised at the remark. He smiled. “Thank you,” said softly.

“I’m not flattering you,” she returned. “I mean it.”

His eyes searched hers. “You feel safe with me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” she proclaimed with a gleam in her eyes.

He chuckled. “Now, that really is flattery,” he told her. He switched channels. “Remember this?” he asked, turning to a TV station that aired episodes of classic TV shows. They were running a police drama that Cord and Maggie shared a love for many years back.

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I used to sit and watch it with you, on the rare occasions when you came home for weekends.”

“I still watch it.”

She smiled shyly. “So do I.”

“At least,” he said, almost to himself, “some of the memories are good ones.”

Maggie slept soundly for the first time in years, cocooned in the soft bed in the room that Cord had decorated just for her. She still could hardly believe that he’d gone to that much trouble. Especially with the difficulties they’d had being civil to each other in the recent past.

But it was different, now. There was a tenderness between them that delighted her, surprised her. She felt as if she had, truly, come home. Cord was gentle, teasing, relaxed. Despite the turbulent physical passion they shared, they could sit and watch television like friends, or talk about politics and current news events without quarreling. They had more in common than they ever had before.

Cord hadn’t touched her again after the passion they’d shared in her bedroom. But he’d walked her to her door and touched her hair in the ponytail, and smiled down at her before he went to his own room. She felt cherished. Whatever came of their new relationship, it was a wonderful glimpse into a world she’d never known.

Maggie dressed in a neat navy blue business suit for work the next morning, arriving for breakfast with her purse and laptop in hand.

Cord was wearing slacks and a rib-necked silk shirt with a
sports coat. He looked powerful and very sexy. Maggie’s hands itched to smooth over that shirtfront that revealed every muscular inch of his broad chest.

“You look nice,” he remarked with a smile. “Very neat and professional.”

“I’m a corporate woman,” she informed him with a grin. “I have to project a classy image.”

“You project a classy image in shorts,” he said, knowing it would prick her temper.

It did. She glared at him over bacon and eggs. “I don’t have to use sex to get clients.”

“I don’t remember insinuating that.”

She ate a forkful of eggs with attitude. “I’ve seen women do it.”

“Not you. Never you.” He leaned back, his breakfast finished, with his coffee mug in his hand and just looked at her. “You do nothing suggestive. You don’t wear clothes that even hint at the curves underneath. You walk in a businesslike way. You don’t flirt. You don’t entice.” He sighed, frowning. “It’s a good business image. But you’re denying your sex appeal entirely.”

“Business demands that,” she replied quietly.

“A woman doesn’t become a man just because she wears a pin-striped pantsuit and a blouse with a tie,” he replied. “But it makes her look like a hybrid. Men work in previously feminine job slots, like florists and fabric salesmen, but they haven’t started wearing skirts. I think a woman should be able to take pride in her femininity without being accused of using
it to further her career. But that’s not the problem with you, is it, Maggie? Your prickly hang-ups show even in the way you dress,” he said gently. “It amazes me that it took me almost eighteen years to see it.”

She didn’t know how to handle the conversation. He was getting into uncomfortably personal areas. He was a gifted interrogator, and he knew people very well, right down to their bones. She didn’t want him delving too deeply into her past.

“Logan gave Kit hell yesterday about that photo,” he remarked.

“They have a little boy,” she recalled. “I guess he was upset that she’d done something potentially dangerous.”

“He wasn’t the only one,” he replied solemnly. “I’m the risk-taker in this family. I’ve handled dangerous situations most of my adult life, and I’m damned good at it. You stick to your stock quotes and leave detective work to the experts.”

He was right, but she didn’t like admitting it. “Oh, right, let’s keep fragile little women out of the line of fire!”

“Fragile, hell,” he said with an amused glance. “You’re exactly the sort of companion I’d want in a firefight. You’ve got nerve, and you don’t back away, ever.”

That surprised her. She stared at him with evident confusion.

“But this isn’t a firefight, it’s a covert covering action,” he continued. “And you’re outgunned. Gruber has hired thugs in his organization who have a genius for getting into and out of protected places. I’ve had to call in markers from half a dozen colleagues just to keep the ranch safe.”

“Huh?”

He just smiled. “Ready to go to work?” he asked, checking his watch.

“Sure. Anytime you are.”

She got her laptop and her purse and followed him out. He paused to speak to June on the way, cautioning her about keeping doors locked and windows shut. He put on his dark glasses before they went outside.

They moved to the garage just in time to see a tall man in dark clothing carrying some sort of electronic device leading a huge black-and-brown German shepherd out of the building. He gave Cord a curt nod, but didn’t stop to speak.

“Thanks, Wilson,” Cord called. The other man threw up a hand.

“What was he doing?” Maggie asked warily when Cord walked to the driver’s side of the black sports car he drove.