Texas Proud and Circle of Gold

by Diana Palmer

  He rolled over, shivering, and pulled her hard against his side. “Don’t move,” he whispered unsteadily. “Just lie still. Please, honey. Help me. I hurt like hell!”

  She managed that, just. She was on fire and he’d stopped. Why had he stopped? She wanted him so desperately, just as desperately as he wanted her.

  But sanity slowly returned. Was this what she really wanted, to have sex with a man on a sofa in a room with an unlocked door, a man to whom she had no real ties except physical ones? She was religious. She didn’t believe in sex before marriage. But she wanted Mikey. She wanted him so badly that she’d have given in right here, without a single protest. In fact, she’d done that. But he’d stopped. She could feel how difficult it had been for him to do that. His body was shaking with unfulfilled needs. Now she felt guilty that she’d let it go so far. How would she have felt afterward? She didn’t even know how to protect herself. What if she’d become pregnant? How would she live with that in a small town where everybody knew her, and knew that the only man she’d kept company with in recent years was the one lying so stiffly beside her right now? It would be no secret who the father was. Mikey had a casino in Las Vegas. He was a big-city man. It was highly unlikely that he’d throw all that up to live in a little town like Jacobsville with a woman who might end up an invalid in a very few years.

  Besides that, he had a past, and bad men were after him because of a man he worked with, who was hiding from assassins. This was a terrible time to start an affair. In fact, she had to admit she wasn’t the sort of woman who could even have an affair. It just wasn’t like her, despite her aching hunger for Mikey and the violent attachment that she felt to him.

  He was breathing easier now. He stretched and laughed softly when he felt her breasts against his bare rib cage.

  “Well, that was a damned near thing,” he whispered as he turned over, rolled her onto her back, and looked at her pretty firm pink breasts with their hard, dusky crowns. He touched them very gently. “I didn’t want to stop.”

  “We’re on a sofa,” she began, flushing.

  “Honey, all I had to do was push your pants down and go into you,” he whispered blatantly, smiling at her expression. “It wouldn’t have taken three minutes, as hot as I was. That’s how easy it would have been. You didn’t realize, did you?”

  She caught her breath. “Not really,” she confessed. “I haven’t ever...”

  “I noticed.” He bent and brushed his mouth over her bare breasts. “God, woman, you’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “I’ll dream of you every night of my life after this!”

  “You will?” She thought how comfortable she was with him, how easily they’d slipped into intimacy. It felt so right. She wasn’t even embarrassed.

  He chuckled. “Yes, I will.” He lifted his head and drew in a breath. “When all this is over, you and I are going to sit down and have a very serious talk.” He brushed back her damp, disheveled hair. “Very serious.”

  She smiled slowly, her heart lifting. “Okay.”

  He laughed. “Everything’s so easy with you, Bernie,” he said, touching her cheek gently. “You never make waves, do you?”

  “Not much, no.”

  “I love that about you,” he said. “I feel at ease with you. Safe.”

  “I feel that way with you, too.”

  His big hand brushed tenderly over her breasts. “I guess we should put our clothes back on and watch the movie,” he said with a sigh.

  She nodded.

  He pulled her up beside him, but before she could pull her sweater and bra back down, he turned her into his lap and pulled her inside his shirt, shivering as he felt her bare skin rub gently over his. His arms contracted hungrily and he held her, rocking her, in a blistering silence of passion.

  “You’d do it with me, wouldn’t you?” he whispered at her ear.

  “Yes,” she replied in a husky, shaky little voice.

  “I don’t even have anything to use,” he confessed gruffly. He held her even closer. “You know what? I don’t think I’d mind.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  His hand went to the base of her spine, and he rubbed her against the hardness of him, holding her there firmly. “I like babies,” he whispered.

  She shivered. “Oh, Mikey,” she sobbed, and her arms tightened.

  He shivered, too. “Oh, God, I’ve got to get up and lock the door,” he groaned. “On the sofa, on the damned carpet, against a wall—I have to have you, right now!”

  “Yes,” she whimpered, pushing closer. “Yes!”

  He eased her away from him, his eyes blazing as he looked at her breasts. “I’ll lock the door...” he said.

  Just then, footsteps sounded down the wood floor of the hall and there was a sudden knock at the door.

  “How’s the movie going?” Sari called.

  Mikey and Bernie looked at each other in a moment of shocked embarrassment while they waited for that doorknob to turn...

  Chapter Nine

  “Just a sec!” Mikey called in a strained, deep voice.

  There was a muffled laugh from the door. “Mandy’s got more coffee. Come on out when your movie finishes.”

  “We will. Thanks!” he called back.

  The footsteps withdrew.

  He let out the breath he’d been holding. Bernie sat beside him as if in a daze, her top still up around her neck, her breasts pressed hard into the thick hair on Mikey’s broad chest. He looked down at her with wonder.

  “I guess the jig would have been up if Sari had opened that door,” he laughed.

  She smiled dreamily up at him. “I guess.”

  He drew in a hard breath. “I suppose we’d better stop while we’re ahead.” He drew back and looked down at her bare breasts with fascination. “Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of women undressed,” he murmured. “But none of them were half as beautiful as you are, honey.” He stroked her soft, firm breast and leaned down, putting his lips reverently to it. “I’ll live on this my whole life.”

  Her heart skipped. She just looked at him with everything she felt for him in her green eyes. His jaw clenched. He still wanted her, now more than ever. But he managed some control as he pulled down the bra and fastened it, then drew the sweater down over her waist.

  She smiled and fastened the buttons of his shirt. He looked rumpled and his hair was mussed from her hands in it. She loved the way he looked. He was a little flushed, too, and his dark eyes danced as they met hers.

  “You’d like Vegas,” he said. “For visits, anyway, it’s an exciting place. Plenty of music and neon lights. An oasis in the desert.”

  She put her hands on his chest, over the buttoned shirt. “I don’t guess you’d like a little Texas town that draws the sidewalks in at dusk,” she said without meeting his eyes.

  “I’d like wherever you called home, Bernie,” he said solemnly. “We come from different places. But that doesn’t mean both of us can’t adapt to something else, even if it’s just for a little while.” He bent and kissed her very softly. “I didn’t want to stop. You go to my head like whiskey. It was like sailing on the clouds.”

  She laughed and pressed close. “For me, too.”

  His arms contracted, holding her close and rocking her. “We’d better finish watching the movie. There may be a quiz after.”

  She laughed with pure delight. “Okay.”

  He drew her gently down beside him and clasped her hand tight in his. They watched the screen until the credits came on. Mikey turned off the entertainment center and drew Bernie along with him out the door and into the kitchen.

  Paul and Sari looked up as they came into the room. Both were grinning.

  “Yeah, we got a little friendly,” Mikey said defensively. “It was me, mostly.”

  “It was me, too,” she said, and smiled up at him.

  �
��You don’t need to excuse anything to us,” Paul chuckled. “We’ve only been married three years.”

  “He means, we’re still on our honeymoon,” Sari teased. “So how about that coffee?”

  “Sounds lovely,” Bernie said, and stars were in the eyes she turned toward Mikey, who looked like a cat who’d just eaten a canary.

  * * *

  That expression went along with Bernie to work the following Monday, where Jessie saw it and grew sarcastic and insulting.

  “We all heard about you and Mikey going over to his cousin’s place. Some mansion,” Jessie drawled sarcastically, glancing at Sari as she paused by Bernie’s desk. “Got your eyes on that nice rich fish, don’t you? But do you think a little hick like you could land a man that sophisticated?”

  Bernie’s face flamed, but she didn’t back down. “Backgrounds don’t make much difference when people have feelings for one another,” she said.

  “As if he’d have feelings for you,” Jessie said with a laugh. “I don’t know him personally, but I know about him. He’s had women who were movie stars, and debutantes and millionaires’ daughters. He’s not likely to take up with a woman who’s looking at a wheelchair a few years down the road.”

  “That’s enough,” Sari said icily, standing up. “One more word and Mr. Kemp is going to get an earful.”

  Jessie knew when to quit. She shrugged. “Just stating facts, that’s all.”

  “Ooh, somebody’s so jealous she can’t stand it,” Olivia drawled with an amused look at Jessie. “What’s the matter, sweetie, did he slap you down over at the courthouse and you’re getting even?”

  Jessie actually flushed. ‘He did not,” she spit. “I could have him if I wanted him.”

  “Do be my guest and try,” Olivia taunted. “We heard that you made him sick.”

  Jessie was almost vibrating by now. She started to speak just as Mr. Kemp’s door opened and he came out. She went quickly to her desk with a forced smile at the boss and pretended to work.

  Kemp, no fool, looked from Bernie’s flushed face to Sari’s angry one and drew a conclusion. He didn’t say a word, but the look he gave an oblivious Jessie wasn’t one that would have encouraged her about her longevity in this office.

  Glory Ramirez came in the door, a little fatigued. “Court is bound over until tomorrow,” she told Mr. Kemp. Glory was an assistant DA, like Sari.

  “Does it look like the jury will convict?” Sari asked.

  Glory made a face. “Who knows what a jury will do?” she asked with a sigh. “I hope I’m good enough to put this guy away. He lured a fourteen-year-old girl in with promises of true love and she fell for it. He’s thirty-five,” she added coldly.

  “What a mess,” Sari said.

  “It’s worse than that. She’s pregnant,” Glory said.

  “Oh, that’s no problem,” Jessie laughed. “She can just go to a clinic and have them take it out.”

  “She and her people are deeply religious,” Glory replied. “Not everybody thinks of termination as birth control, Jessie.”

  There was a whip in her voice. The other women knew why. Glory had lost her first baby after a horrible fight with her husband when they were first married, before they really knew much about each other. It had taken her two years to get pregnant again. She and Rodrigo had one child, a boy, and Glory’s precarious health made another unlikely. Her blood pressure was extremely high and she’d already had angioplasty for a blocked artery that had caused a mild heart attack.

  “You people take everything so seriously,” Jessie muttered.

  “Babies are serious business,” Mr. Kemp broke in. Everybody except Jessie knew that he’d been in love and engaged, and his fiancée had died after a local woman spiked her drink with a drug. The fiancée had been pregnant at the time, and the child died with her.

  “Babies are a nuisance. They cry and keep everybody upset, and you never get your waistline back again. I’d never want one,” Jessie said.

  “I would,” Bernie said on a long, happy sigh.

  “Good luck with that, in your physical condition,” Jessie said sarcastically.

  “If I could have a child, with my blood pressure, there’s no reason Bernie couldn’t have one with her limitations.”

  Bernie smiled at her. “Thanks.”

  “Not a chance I’d take,” Jessie muttered.

  “Thank you for your input, Miss Tennison, and how about that call I asked you to make half an hour ago to the DA in Bexar County on the Ramsey matter?” Kemp asked shortly.

  Jessie flustered. “Oh. Sorry. I forgot. I’ll get him for you right now, Mr. Kemp!”

  Kemp gave her an angry glance, smiled at the other women and went back into his office.

  * * *

  Bernie went to lunch at Barbara’s Café and there was Mikey, holding down a table for them. He got up as she joined him, after she’d given her order and paid for it.

  “I could have gotten the tab, honey,” he said.

  “I can pay for my own stuff,” she teased. “But thanks for the thought.”

  His hand slid over hers and held it tight. “You don’t look so good. Bad morning?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “But it’s improving already,” she added with a loving glance at his handsome face.

  He grinned. “That’s better. I like it when you’re happy.”

  “I usually am.” She didn’t mention the confrontation with Jessie or the woman’s harsh words. She pushed them to the back of her mind while she and Mikey had nice pieces of roast beef with perfect mashed potatoes and gravy and home-cooked green beans.

  “This is so good,” she sighed. “I love to cook, but it’s hard for me to stand for long periods of time. Still, I used to do it when I lived at home with my parents.”

  “We were going to talk last night,” he mused.

  She flushed.

  He laughed sensuously. “We didn’t do a whole lot of talking, though, did we, baby,” he whispered. “It’s hard to think of things like that when I’m with you. I just go nuts when I touch you.”

  “I go nuts, too,” she whispered back, and her face colored even more as she looked at his mouth and recalled the havoc it could create suckling at her breast. She caught her breath just with the memory of how it had felt.

  “Oh, this won’t do,” Mikey said, and shifted uncomfortably. “We’d better not think too much about last night. Especially in a roomful of people.”

  She laughed softly.

  He laughed, too.

  “What sweet memories we’re making, honey,” he murmured as he forced himself to go back to his roast beef. “And we’ll make plenty more, I promise you.”

  “You still have your shadow, I see,” she replied under her breath, glancing out the front window at the black sedan parked there.

  “They’re being careful. After all, one guy almost got by them.” He made a face. “It makes me wish I’d made fewer enemies along the way. This isn’t the first time I’ve had somebody come after me over territory.”

  She was looking at him with open curiosity.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Nothing much. Just... Well, there’s a coin-shaped depression in your back,” she began. “I felt it last night.”

  “Noticed, did you?” He wasn’t offended. He just smiled. “Yeah, I caught a bullet there when I was overseas in the Middle East. Punctured my lung and almost killed me, but I survived.”

  “I’m so glad you did,” she said demurely, and she was unspeakably grateful that it had happened in a combat zone and not as a result of conflict with gangsters. He spoke of that world as if he knew it very well. Certainly he had to, if he was mixed up with a Mafia don whom he was protecting. It made her just a little uneasy. She didn’t know much about organized crime. What she’d seen in movies and read in books was unlikely to be a mirr
or of the real thing. That word Mikey had used, omertà, she’d seen it in print somewhere. She couldn’t recall where. She was going to do a search on Google when she got home that night, just to see if she could find the connection. No need to tell Mikey. She looked at him with hungry eyes that she couldn’t help. He was becoming the most important thing in her life.

  But what if Jessie was right? Mikey was rich and sophisticated. Yes, he liked going out with her and kissing her, but that wasn’t a future. She knew some gangsters married, but most of them seemed to just live together. Or so she thought. And she couldn’t do that.

  It would break her heart if Mikey didn’t feel the same way she did. If he was only playing with her, she was going to die.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked. “You look tragic.”

  She forced a smile. “It’s been a long morning, that’s all,” she said brightly. “Lots of people breaking the law. Of course, that’s not a bad thing for us.”

  “Not at all.” He looked up and his dark eyes sparked.

  Bernie followed his gaze and there was Jessie, just picking up a salad and coffee at the checkout. It was on a tray, which meant she wasn’t leaving.

  “The bubonic plague has arrived,” Mikey muttered.

  “Well, hi there, Bernie. I didn’t know you were coming here for lunch. And Mikey, how’s it going with you?” she added, almost purring.

  He looked up at her with cold eyes and took a minute to answer. “We’re having a private conversation, if you don’t mind.”

  Jessie shrugged. “Well, excuse me, I’m sure,” she drawled. She went to a table nearby, at the window, and put down her food.

  Bernie was crestfallen. She’d hoped to have a nice quiet lunch with Mikey, but Jessie was already staring at them. Cooking up plots. Bernie was certain that the woman was searching for ways to split her from Mikey, because Mikey was rich and Jessie wanted him.

  “Don’t look like that,” Mikey said, smiling at her. “She’s trying to upset you. Don’t let her.”