Texas Rose

by Marie Ferrarella

  The next moment she saw Matt’s tall frame emerge from the shadows. He was carrying his suitcase in his hand.

  It looked serious. Beth was beside him in an instant.

  She gave him a long, studied look, her eyes resting on the suitcase. “I hope you’re one of those eccentric people who likes to hold their possessions close to them when they go out for a walk.”

  Finding Beth in the living room had taken Matt by surprise. He didn’t think anyone would still be up at this hour. But then, this was the city that never slept, he remembered. Obviously that went for some of its residents, too.

  Because he wasn’t familiar with all of her married names and didn’t know which one she went by, he called her by the one he knew she’d once answered to. “I’m going back home, Miz Wainwright.”

  Not without my niece you’re not, Beth thought.

  She placed her hand over his on the suitcase, her intention clear.

  “Give me the suitcase, boy.” She saw the resistance in his eyes. “I don’t want to wrestle you for it, but I will if I have to. And don’t look at me like that. I’m not some weird old woman. And I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

  Matt laughed. “I wasn’t thinking of you as weird, or old,” he added. He knew vanity when he saw it and although hers had a strange sort of endearing quality about it, he sensed her feelings could be hurt when it came to her age.

  Beth smiled broadly at him, patting his cheek. Such a dear boy. “I knew there was a reason I took to you so fast. Put the suitcase down, boy, and sit for a minute.”

  He didn’t like refusing her, but there was no point in his staying a minute longer. Rose wanted him gone and he wasn’t about to beg her to reconsider. A man had his pride, after all.

  “It’s best if I go.”

  She wasn’t taking that as his final answer. “You young people, you’re all in such a hurry to go someplace and then when you get there, it’s never what you thought you wanted. Stay awhile. Just give things a chance.”

  He had given things a chance, had taken a chance and come out here to coax Rose back. If she’d had any true feelings for him, she wouldn’t have needed much convincing. That kiss on the terrace would have been enough. It had been for him. But maybe Rose was right, maybe it was all strictly physical. People got over physical attraction in time.

  “I was wrong to come here.”

  She shook her head adamantly. “No, you’re wrong to give up.”

  She sounded so convinced. Had Rose said anything to her? “What makes you so sure?”

  Sitting on the sofa, she patted the place beside her. He had no choice but to take the seat—and hope she would say something to convince him.

  “I’m old—Well, older at any rate,” she corrected. “And I’ve been around the block more times than you’ve got fingers and toes, boy. Besides that, I’ve become a great judge of people. I wasn’t watching the two of you for a whole minute before I got hit by the force of what’s between you.”

  She was an actress and given to drama and exaggeration, he reminded himself, refusing to get his hopes up without some kind of real proof. There was no polite way to tell her, so he kept his peace.

  “She told me it was over, Miz Wainwright.”

  “Beth,” she corrected. “Calling me Miz Wainwright makes me think of my mother and I am nothing like my mother,” she assured him.

  Her mother was conservative and straitlaced. She’d stood beside one man all of her life and even as her mother took her dying breath, Beth had never been sure that she had loved her father, but she had stood by him, borne his children and his verbal abuse stoically. At her mother’s deathbed, Beth had vowed that that kind of life would never be for her.

  “Go on, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.” She smiled at him encouragingly.

  He cited the evidence he’d gone over in his mind more than a dozen times tonight. “Rose said it was over. She said it here, she said it in Mission Creek. I’ve got no choice but to believe her.”

  Beth countered simply. “What did her eyes say?”

  He stared at her, confused. He’d expected her to make an impassioned plea on the side of romance, not this. “Her eyes?”

  “Yes, her eyes. A body can say whatever they want. Words are cheap, boy. You’ll come to know that if you don’t already. But what they feel is in their eyes—unless of course they’re with the CIA, the way Clarence was.”

  The woman changed direction faster than a tennis ball in a championship match. “Clarence?”

  The sigh that escaped Beth’s lips was wistful and incredibly youthful. She was momentarily taken back to a time when she was not yet thirty, not yet seasoned in the ways of the world.

  “Clarence Montgomery.” She winked bawdily. “James Bond could have learned a thing or two from him. I know I did.” She realized that she was going off on a tangent. “Sorry, didn’t mean to get off the track. Where was I?”

  “You were asking me if I had looked into Rose’s eyes,” he told her tactfully.

  She beamed. “Oh, yes.” She was looking up into his now. “Did you?”

  Rose had eyes like wild violets in the field. They were absolutely mesmerizing. “That’s where I got lost in the first place.” His mouth curved in self-deprecating humor. “Funny thing is, I might never find my way back.”

  Beth patted his hand reassuringly. “You will, boy, but not if you go running off home.”

  They could go ’round and ’round about this all night, but it still wouldn’t change things. “I wasn’t running. I was being realistic.”

  She pinned him with a knowing look. “You were throwing in the towel.”

  Matt shrugged and looked away. “Maybe I just decided that I didn’t need that vacation, after all.”

  The pressure of her hand over his caught his attention. “Maybe not, but you do need the woman. And she needs you.” She lowered her voice. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  Was Beth just spinning tales, or was this based on something, Matt asked himself. “Why? What did she say? Did she say something about me?”

  He sounded positively eager. Beth was tempted, sorely tempted, to tell him everything. But that would be betraying a confidence and even for the best of reasons, she just couldn’t let herself do that.

  Besides, there were other avenues for her to try first. Like that lovely carriage ride around the park.

  “I looked into her eyes,” Beth told him, resting her case.

  Eyes again. The woman was beginning to sound like a Gypsy fortune-teller, except that rather than using tea leaves or cards, she resorted to eyes. Nice gimmick, but he wasn’t buying it.

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have that gift,” he said, getting up.

  She caught his hand so suddenly, she threw him off balance. With a quick yank, she pulled him onto the sofa.

  “That’s all right, Matt. I’ve got it for you. Stay,” she urged in the face of his reluctance. “At least stay the night.” Beth looked toward the pitch-black world just beyond her terrace doors. “This is no time to go running off in New York City. The place has been cleaned up, I grant you, but this isn’t Mission Creek by a long shot. Don’t go looking for trouble.”

  Especially if trouble was only a few feet away, Matt thought. In the room next to his.

  Still, the woman had a point about leaving in the middle of the night. He didn’t even have a plane reservation. He’d need to make that before he left. “Maybe you’re right.”

  She was beaming again, delighted that he’d caught on so readily.

  “Matthew, my boy, you’ll discover soon enough that I am always right. And when I’m not, I just make myself right.” She winked, making him wonder if she was kidding or not. “Now get to bed. I’ve got your itinerary ready for tomorrow and you’re going to need your strength.”

  He figured it was useless to repeat his plan to leave in the morning. He had an uneasy feeling Beth would confiscate his suitcase and his boots if he said that.

  And maybe she wa
s right. Maybe he was leaving too soon, giving up too quickly. Maybe he was running away at that. Running from something that he couldn’t quite identify, but that scared the hell out of him because of its intensity.

  Better to leave than to stick around. Relationships took too much trouble—had always been his motto. It wasn’t anymore.

  He nodded, temporarily surrendering. “All right, I guess I can stay the night.”

  Rising to her feet, she picked up the suitcase that was beside the sofa. “And then some. Now go on, git,” she said in her finest Texas accent, pointing down the hall to his room.

  He laughed and kissed her cheek.

  “Good night, Aunt Beth.” Matt took the suitcase from her hand.

  Yes, she thought as she watched Matt walk down the hall toward his room, it was going to be all right. She was going to see to it. Rose could be stubborn, but as Archy had once shouted at her while she was still living in the same house as he, there was no one under the sun more stubborn than she.

  Rose woke up feeling more dead than alive.

  She’d spent the better part of the night tossing and turning, unable to sleep because of the man who was only a few negligible feet away from her bed. A man she wanted, despite everything she’d said to the contrary, in her own bed.

  And then when she’d finally managed to doze off in the wee hours of morning, a bout of nausea had overtaken her, sending her running to the bathroom to commune, headfirst, with the porcelain bowl while simultaneously praying that Matt wouldn’t wake up and hear her or suddenly be struck with the need to make use of the facilities himself.

  She swore this baby was sapping everything out of her, making her look pale and drawn. Or was the hopelessness she felt whenever she thought of her situation responsible for the way she looked lately?

  Rose sighed. She was just too exhausted to sort all that out today. She didn’t feel up to dealing with anything, least of all with seeing Matt.

  The knock on her door set her teeth on edge as if long, sharp fingernails scraped across a chalkboard in her brain.

  “Go away, I’m dead,” she called, then pulled the pillow over her head, wishing her words were a prophesy. Could you die from misery?

  From beneath her pillow, she heard the doorknob turn. She knew Beth meant well, but she couldn’t deal with her exuberance, either. Not this morning. Peeking out from beneath her pillow, she began to beg off whatever it was that Beth had in mind.

  Her words froze.

  Matt—not Beth—was standing in her doorway.

  The pillow fell to the floor as she scrambled into a sitting position, dragging her blanket to her as if the man standing there hadn’t already seen her nude, in the afterglow of lovemaking.

  Why couldn’t he leave her alone and just let her die in peace?

  Damn it, even with sleep lacing her lids and her hair all disarrayed, Rose was still the most beautiful woman Matt had ever seen. He felt himself becoming aroused just looking at her.

  If he wasn’t the kind of man he was, he would break out of the restraints he’d imposed upon himself and slip into bed with her this instant. He was certain he could erase the protest from her lips with next to no effort at all.

  The taste of her mouth from last night was still on his lips, the imprint burned into his soul as well as his memory.

  No, he thought again, next to no effort at all.

  He smiled at her, remembering Beth’s pep talk. “Morning.”

  Flustered, Rose blew out a breath. “Yes, it is. But I would have figured that out without you.” She gestured toward the light streaming into her room through the windows. “Is there anything else earth-shattering you want to tell me?”

  She was testy. He wasn’t used to that. But he figured it was a hurdle he was going to have to overcome. Matt leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed at his broad chest. For now he was content to remain here, just looking at her and letting his thoughts drift.

  But knowing it wasn’t possible, he got down to business and answered her question. “I was just wondering when we could get started.”

  “Get started?” she echoed dumbly. Just what the hell was he implying? What had Beth said to him? “Doing what?”

  He looked at her innocently. “You’re supposed to be my tour guide, remember? Your aunt went to the trouble to write up an itinerary for me.”

  She scowled. Itinerary her foot. Beth was supposed to be on her side, not his.

  “Are you still pretending you want to play tourist?” She’d thought they’d gotten beyond that ruse last night. He wasn’t interested in seeing the city; he was interested in reclaiming his pride, which she’d wounded by leaving him.

  He grinned at her and she tried her best not to succumb.

  “It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” His eyes locked with hers. Maybe Beth could read eyes, but he couldn’t. When she wasn’t being angry at him, he hadn’t a clue what Rose was thinking. “This is supposed to be the most fascinating city in the country. So fascinate me.”

  “I’m not the city.”

  “But you know it better than I do,” he pointed out. “You wouldn’t want me to get lost, would you? Suppose I did and something happened to me. You’d never forgive yourself.”

  She sighed. This baby was absorbing all her tolerance, and right now whatever remained of it was being laid siege to by both Matt and her aunt. Being outnumbered didn’t make her feel very friendly.

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  But that was exactly what he was doing. Betting on it. Betting the farm, the ranch and the whole nine yards. He took a step into the room and saw the guarded expression that came over her face.

  “I could bring you breakfast. There’s some fruit salad left over from last night.”

  Rose made a face. “Just apple juice.” It was all she could hold down in the morning lately, and at times not even that.

  “No coffee?”

  The mere mention made the walls of her stomach pucker and twist.

  “No, no coffee.” She began to get out of bed, then stopped. He was still standing there, watching her. “Do you mind? I have to get up and get ready.”

  “You didn’t mind me watching you get dressed the last time,” he reminded her, a hint of a wicked smile on his lips.

  She remembered. Remembered slipping on her dress while wrapped in his warm gaze.

  She struggled to keep back the thrust of desire before it could take hold.

  “That was then, this is now.” When he made no move to leave, Rose picked up a shoe and threw it in his direction. “Go.”

  “I’m going, I’m going.” He laughed, ducking, as he left the room. The shoe landed against the closed door and fell to the floor.

  Six

  In the temporary housing of the Men’s Grill, Spencer Harrison frowned as he flipped his cell phone closed. There’d been no answer. Again. This looked as if it was getting serious.

  He liked to think that he wasn’t given to needless worrying, although since entering his third decade and after becoming the local D.A., Spence had found himself doing a great many more worst-case scenarios than ever before. Including the period of time when he’d been a marine and he, Tyler, Ricky and Flynt had been held captive by the enemy.

  Spence’d been the one who’d told the others to not give up hope, firmly believing that someone—most likely their commander, Phil Westin—would find them and help them fight their way out of the hell-hole. And they had. Westin had engineered a plan that had freed them. An ex-juvenile delinquent earmarked for an early end, Spence had been miraculously plucked out of the destructive path his life had been headed and given another chance. Optimism had been his hallmark ever since.

  Even so, experience had begun to slowly sink in, tempering his optimistic bent. He’d known early on that life had a nasty habit of rising up and hitting you right between the eyes when you least expected it.

  Hell, just look at what was happening with the commander. Westin had been sent to Central America o
n a secret mission to thwart a drug lord whose long tentacles were insidiously reaching more and more people in Texas. If anyone could bring down this El Jefe character, Spence knew it would be Westin.

  Had he still been a marine, Westin’s current status would have been M.I.A. No one knew where he was.

  And now, on top of that, Spence couldn’t reach Luke.

  As far as he knew, none of the others had seen Luke for several weeks, either. Granted Luke Callaghan was the original millionaire playboy who owed no explanations to anyone. At thirty-four Luke could certainly take flight at a moment’s notice if he wanted to, and he usually did.

  But this time…Spence mused thoughtfully, studying the way the amber liquid coated the sides of his glass as he tilted it. This time it felt different. Luke could always be reached before, either by the pager built into his Rolex, or via the cell phone he was literally never without.

  But Spence’d been unable to successfully reach Luke using either device.

  Then an uneasiness had taken hold of him and began to eat away at him.

  Spence knew for a fact that the celllular server Luke used, a high-tech, state-of-the-art service that was utilized by the government, didn’t experience downtime or out-of-calling-range regions. So what was going on?

  Where the hell was Luke?

  A slight commotion at the entrance had Spence raising his eyes and looking in that direction. Just in time to see Tyler Murdoch and Flynt Carson walking in. He’d called each of them, asking them to meet him here.

  “So here we are, back at the old watering hole,” Flynt said, nodding a greeting at Spence as he took his seat.

  Taking the chair on the other side of him, Tyler looked around.

  From where he sat, the ex-demolitions expert looked a little uneasy. Curious, Flynt asked, “What is it?” as he looked at the man next to him.

  Tyler would have never admitted this to another living soul, but he trusted Flynt and Spence beyond all reason. He’d trusted both with his life and if he were ever in any dire situation, he would have rested easier knowing that the man coming to his aid was either one of them, or Luke, Westin or even Ricky Mercado for that matter, despite the recent unpleasantness that had flared up between Ricky and the others.