Fire Brand (31 page)

“Yes, it is.”

He sipped the black coffee she'd placed in front of him at the table. “Livestock foreman's got a daughter. She came with him today.”

“Oh, dear,” Mandy replied.

He shrugged. “I took her to lunch at Barbara's Cafe a few weeks ago. Just a casual thing. I met her at the courthouse. She works there. She decided that I was looking for a meaningful relationship. So now she's over here every Saturday like clockwork, hanging out with her dad.”

“That will end when Mr. Darwin comes back,” she said with feeling. “He doesn't like strangers on the place, even strangers related to people who work here.”

He smiled sadly. “Or it will end when I lose my temper and start cursing in Italian.”

“You look Italian,” she said, studying him.

He chuckled. “You should see my cousin Mikey. He could have auditioned for
The Godfather
. I've got Greek in me, too. My grandmother was from a little town near Athens. She could barely speak English at all. But could she cook! Kind of like you,” he added with twinkling eyes. “She'd have liked you, Mandy.”

Her hard face softened. “You never speak of your parents.”

“I try not to think about them too much. Funny, how we carry our childhoods around on our backs.”

She nodded. She was making rolls for lunch and they had to have time to rise. Her hands were floury as she kneaded the soft dough. She nodded toward the rest of the house. “Neither of those poor girls has had a childhood. He keeps them locked up all the time. No parties, no dancing and especially no boys.”

He scowled. “I noticed that. I asked the boss once why he didn't let the girls go out occasionally.” He took a sip of his coffee.

“What did he tell you?”

“That the last employee who asked him that question is now waiting tables in a little town in the Yukon Territory.”

She shook her head. “That's probably true. A cowboy who tried to take Merrie out on a date once got a job in Arizona. They say he's still looking behind him for hired assassins.” Her hands stilled in the dough. “Don't you ever mention that outside the house,” she advised. “Or to Mr. Darwin. I kind of like having you around,” she added with a smile and went back to her chore.

“I like this job. No big-city noise, no pressure, no pressing deadlines on cases.”

She glanced up at him, then back down to the bowl again. “We've never talked about it, but you were in law enforcement once, weren't you?”

He scowled. “How did you know that?”

“Small towns. Cash Grier let something slip to a friend, who told Barbara at the café, who told her cook, who told me.”

“Our police chief knew I was in law enforcement? How?” he wondered aloud, feeling insecure. He didn't want his past widely known here.

She laughed softly. “Nobody knows how he finds out things. But he worked for the government once.” She glanced at him. “He was a high-level assassin.”

His eyes widened. “The police chief?” he exclaimed.

She nodded. “Then he was a Texas Ranger—that ended when he slugged the temporary captain and got fired. Afterward he worked for the DA in San Antonio and then he came here.”

He whistled. “Slugged the captain.” He chuckled. “He's still a pretty tough customer, despite the gorgeous wife and two little kids.”

“That's what everyone says. We're pretty protective of him. Our late mayor—who was heavily into drug smuggling on the side—tried to fire Chief Grier, and the whole city police force and fire department, and all our city employees, said they'd quit on the spot if he did.”

“Obviously he wasn't fired.”

She smiled. “Not hardly. It turns out that the state attorney general, Simon Hart, is Cash Grier's cousin. He showed up, along with some reporters, at the hearing they had to discuss the firing of the chief's patrol officers. They arrested a drunk politician and he told the mayor to fire them. The chief said over his dead body.”

“I've been here for years, and I heard gossip about it, but that's the first time I've heard the whole story.”

“An amazing man, our chief.”

“Oh, yes.” He finished his coffee. “Nobody makes coffee like you do, Mandy. Never weak and pitiful, always strong and robust!”

“Yes, and the coffee usually comes out that way, too!” she said with a wicked grin.

He laughed as he got up from the table, and went back to work.

* * *

That night he was researching a story about an attempted Texas Thoroughbred kidnapping on the internet when Sari walked in the open door. He was perched on the bed in just his pajama bottoms with the laptop beside him. Sari had on a long blue cotton nightgown with a thick, ruffled matching housecoat buttoned way up to the throat. She jumped onto the bed with him, her long hair in a braid, her eyes twinkling as she crossed her legs under the voluminous garment.

“Do that when your dad comes home, and we'll both be sitting on the front lawn with the door locked,” he teased.

“You know I never do it when he's home. What are you looking up?”

“Remember that story last week about the so-called traveling horse groomer who turned up at the White Stables in Lexington, Kentucky, and walked off with a Thoroughbred in the middle of the night?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, just in case he headed south when he jumped bail, I'm checking out similar attempts. I found one in Texas that happened two weeks ago. So I'm reading about his possible MO.”

She frowned. “MO?”

“Modus operandi,” he said. “It's Latin. It means...”

“Please,” she said. “I know Latin. It means method of operation.”

“Close enough,” he said with a gentle smile. His eyes went back to the computer screen. “Generally speaking, once a criminal finds a method that works, he uses it over and over until he's caught. I want to make sure that he doesn't sashay in here while your dad's gone and make off with Grayling's Pride.”

“Sashay?” she teased.

He wrinkled his nose. “You're a bad influence on me,” he mused, his eyes still on the computer screen. “That's one of your favorite words.”

“It's just a useful one.
Snit
is my favorite one.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“And lately you're in a snit more than you're not,” she pointed out.

He managed a smile. “Bad memories. Anniversaries hit hard.”

She bit her tongue. She'd never discussed really personal things with him. She'd tried once and he'd closed up immediately. So she smiled impersonally. “So they say,” she said instead of posing the question she was dying to.

He admired her tact. He didn't say so, of course. She couldn't know the memories that tormented him, that had him up walking the floor late at night. She couldn't know the guilt that ate at him night and day because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when it really mattered.

“Are you okay?” she asked suddenly.

His dark eyebrows went up. “What?”

She shrugged. “You looked wounded just then.”

She was more perceptive than he'd realized. He scrolled down the story he was reading online. “Wounded. Odd choice of words there, Isabel.”

“You're the only person who ever called me that.”

“What? Isabel?” He looked up, studying her softly rounded face, her lovely complexion, her blue, blue eyes. “You look like an Isabel.”

“Is that a compliment or something else?”

“Definitely a compliment.” He looked back at the computer screen. “I used to love to read about your namesake. She was queen of Spain in the fifteenth century. She and her husband led a crusade to push foreigners out of their country. They succeeded in 1492.”

Her lips parted. “Isabella la Catolica.”

His chiseled lips pursed. “My God. You know your history.”

She laughed softly. “I'm a history major,” she reminded him. “Also a Spanish scholar. I'm doing a semester of Spanish immersion. English isn't spoken in the classroom, ever. And we read some of the classic novels in Spanish.”

He chuckled softly. “My favorite was Pio Baroja. He was Basque, something of a legend in the early twentieth century.”

“Mine was
Sangre y Arena
.”

“Blasco Ibáñez,” he shot back. “
Blood and Sand.
Bullfighting?” he added in a surprised tone.

She laughed. “Yes, well, I didn't realize what the book would be about until I got into it, and then I couldn't put it down.”

“They made a movie about it back in the forties, I think it was,” he told her. “It starred Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth. Painful, bittersweet story. He ran around on his saintly wife with a woman who was little more than a prostitute.”

“I suppose saintly women weren't much in demand in some circles in those days. And especially not today,” she added with a wistful little sigh. “Men want experienced women.”

“Not all of them,” he said, looking away from her.

“Really?”

He forced himself to keep his eyes on the computer screen. “Think about it. A man would have to be crazy to risk STDs or HIV for an hour's pleasure with a woman who knew her way around bedrooms.”

She fought a blush and lost.

He saw it and laughed. “Honey, you aren't worldly at all, are you?”

“I'm alternately backward or unliberated, to hear my classmates tell it. But mostly they tolerate my odd point of view. I think one of them actually feels sorry for me.”

“Twenty years down the road, they may wish they'd had your sterling morals,” he replied. He looked up, into her eyes, and for a few endless seconds, he didn't look away. She felt her body glowing, burning with sensations she'd never felt before. But just when she thought she'd go crazy if she didn't do something, footsteps sounded in the hall.

“So there you are,” Mandy exclaimed. “I've looked everywhere.” She stared at them.

Paul made a face. “Do I look like a suicidal man looking for the unemployment line to you?” he asked sourly.

Both women laughed.

“All the same, don't do that when your dad's home,” she told Sari firmly.

“I never would, you know that,” Sari said gently. “Why were you looking for me?”

“That girl at college who can't ever find her history notes wants to talk to you about tomorrow's test.”

“Nancy,” she groaned. “Honestly, I don't know how she passed anything until I came along! She actually called up one of our professors at night and asked if he could give her the high points of his lecture. He hung up on her.”

“I'm not surprised,” Paul said. “Better go answer the questions, tidbit,” he added to Sari.

“I guess so,” she said. She got off the bed, reluctantly. The way he'd looked at her had made her feel shaky inside. She wanted him to do it again. But he was already buried in his computer screen.

“There was an attempted horse heist just two days ago up near San Antonio,” he was muttering. “I think I'll call the DA up there and see if he's made any arrests.”

“Good night, Paul,” Sari said as she left the room.

“Night, sprout. Sleep well.”

“You, too.”

* * *

Mandy led her into the kitchen and pointed to the phone.

“Hello, Nancy?” Sari said.

“Oh, thank goodness,” the other girl rushed. “I'm in such a mess! I can't find my notes, and I'll fail the test...!”

“No worries. Let me get mine and I'll read them to you.”

“You could fax them...”

“You'd never read my handwriting,” Sari laughed. “Besides, it will help me remember what I need for tomorrow's test.”

“In that case, thanks,” Nancy said.

“You're welcome. Give me your number and I'll call you back. I'll have to hunt up my own notes.”

Nancy gave it to her and hung up.

Sari came back down with the notes she'd retrieved from her bulky book bag. She phoned Nancy from the kitchen, where Mandy was cleaning up, and read the notes to her. It didn't take long.

“I'll see you in class,” Nancy said. “And thanks! You've saved my life!” She hung up.

“She says I saved her life,” Sari said, chuckling.

Mandy gave her a glance. “If you want to save two lives, you'll stay out of Mr. Paul's bedroom.”

“Mandy, it's perfectly innocent. The door's always open when I'm in there.”

“You don't understand. It's how it looks, that easy familiarity between you two. It will carry over to other times, in daylight. If your father sees it, even
thinks
that there might be something going on...”

“I don't do it when he's here.”

“I know that. It's just...” She grimaced. “I don't know where he put all the cameras.”

Sari's heart jumped. “What cameras?”

“He had it done while you girls were at school. He had three security cameras installed. He sent me out of the house on an errand while they were put in place. I don't know where they are.”

“Surely he wouldn't have them put in our bedrooms,” Sari began worriedly.

“There's no telling,” Mandy said. “I only know that he didn't put one in here. I'd have noticed if anything was moved or displaced. Nothing was.”

Sari chewed on a fingernail. “Gosh, now I'll worry if I talk in my sleep!”

“The cameras are why you should stay out of Mr. Paul's bedroom. Besides that,” she added under her breath, “you're tempting fate.”

“I am? How?” Sari asked blankly.

“Honey, Mr. Paul takes a woman out for a sandwich or a quick dinner. He never goes home with them.”

Sari flushed with sudden pleasure.

“My point is,” the older woman went on, “that he's a man starved of...well...satisfaction,” she faltered. “You might say something or do something to tempt him, is what I'm trying to say.”