Texas…Now and Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  “In exchange for what?” Haley asked, wary of strangers bearing gifts.

  “We’ll talk about that later.”

  “No, we’ll talk about it now. I want to know exactly what you want from me, Mr. Collins.”

  Palming his thick reddish hair, the agent chose his words carefully. “The FBI has been building a case against your uncle Carmine for years. After his health had begun to fail and Frank Del Brio moved up to number two in your uncle’s organization, we’ve shifted a lot of our attention and our assets to him. We thought we had him nailed awhile back on extortion and racketeering charges, but the bastard eliminated both of our key witnesses.”

  “So how do I make up for the loss of those witnesses?”

  His hazel eyes drilled into hers. “We need someone inside, Miss Mercado. Someone who understands the power structure. Someone who wants to take down Frank Del Brio as much as we do.”

  The enormity of what he was asking of her left Haley speechless. Collins used her stunned silence to press home his point.

  “You worked at Mercado Brothers Paving and Contracting for two summers, Miss Mercado. You know the family business. Enough of it to understand what looks right and what doesn’t, anyway. We’re hoping you can help us ferret out times, dates, drop-off points, contacts. Anything that will tie Del Brio to the smuggling and racketeering operations we know he runs.”

  Haley cleared her throat. “Let me make sure I understand you,” she said carefully. “You want me to infiltrate the mob. Spy on Frank Del Brio. Gather evidence against him. And by the way, gather evidence against my father and possibly my brother, as well.”

  “We’re prepared to offer you a deal. Immunity for your father and brother in exchange for the detailed information we need to indict Del Brio. We’ll also place your baby with a family who’ll love and protect her while you’re undercover.”

  “No!” she said fiercely. “No deal! I’m not giving up my baby. She’s only two months old.”

  “I understand how you feel,” Collins replied gravely. “I know you’d do anything to protect her. Anything.”

  “You bastard! You’re deliberately playing on my fears for my baby to gain my cooperation.”

  “Maybe. But you’ve got plenty to fear, Miss Mercado.”

  She hated him in that moment. He was only voicing the brutal truth she’d already admitted to herself, yet Haley wasn’t prepared to hear it said out loud. Nor was she prepared to give up her baby, even temporarily.

  “I have to think. I need some space. And some time.”

  “I’m afraid time is the one thing you don’t have much of, Miss Mercado. We’ll give you what we can, though. We’ve already booked a room for you in a hotel under an assumed name. We’ll take you there.”

  Another assumed name, Haley thought on a wave of near hysteria. Another carefully constructed identity. More background details to memorize. More lies to dish out. She’d already told so many she wasn’t really sure who she was anymore.

  True to his word, Agent Collins gave Haley space to think. Time ran out all too swiftly, however.

  Collins showed up at her hotel room the very next afternoon. Judge Bridges was there, still worn, still haggard. The judge took one look at the agent’s face and moved to stand behind the sofa where Haley sat cuddling Lena.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, already afraid of the answer.

  “Someone broke into your flat last night, Miss Mercado. Scotland Yard managed to lift some good prints. Evidently the perp was one of Del Brio’s henchmen. If we’re going to get you out of London and into a new identity, we’ll have to move quickly.”

  This was the way it would always be, Haley thought with an ache in her chest. Constantly running. Always looking over her shoulder. Worrying every time she dropped her daughter off at day care or nursery school. Unless and until the threat to Lena was removed.

  Closing her eyes, she kissed her baby’s black, downy curls. She had no choice. She had to help Collins destroy Frank Del Brio and dismantle the operation her uncle had built. But she was damned if she’d place her baby with strangers.

  There was only one person she’d trust with Lena. One man who possessed both the power and the resources to protect her. Only one other person with a parent’s responsibility.

  “All right,” she told Agent Collins. “I’ll go back to Texas with you. I’ll work undercover. But I won’t place Lena in the care of strangers. I want her to go to her father.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  The judge eyed her curiously. He’d respected Haley’s privacy when she’d declined to identify Lena’s father and said merely that she intended to raise her child on her own. Now she she had no choice when he voiced the question she saw on his face.

  “Who is the father, Haley?”

  “Luke. Luke Callaghan.

  Seven

  Ten days later Haley stared intently into a lighted makeup mirror. She and a small army of FBI agents had been holed up in a motel in Clearwater Springs, twenty miles east of Mission Creek, for more than a week now, perfecting her cover and orchestrating her transition to her new identity.

  The transition was now complete. Another stranger stared back at her from the lighted mirror. Frowning, she forked her fingers through what she could only call her mane, now permed and dyed a lighter blond.

  “Fluff it up more than that,” the female agent observing her directed. “We’re going for real Texas-style big hair here.”

  “I was born and lived most of my life in Texas,” Haley said with a wry smile. “I never wore my hair this big.”

  “You do now,” the FBI specialist replied, returning her assortment of combs and brushes to a gray steel case. “Don’t forget, the intent is to exaggerate, exaggerate, exaggerate. Draw the eye from those features we didn’t have time to alter to those we did. Now pouf those curls out another inch or so.”

  Grimacing, Haley complied, then studied the result in the mirror. She had to admit the makeup artist knew her business. The slender Londoner who’d lived in Haley Mercado’s skin for so many years had disappeared. In her place stood Daisy Parker.

  A loose tumble of butterscotch curls framed her face. Botoxin injections had added a ripe, sensual fullness to her lips. Her eyebrows were now thicker, darker. Purple shadow and the liberal application of mascara and liner gave her eyes a sultry air. A short black skirt and a blouse unbuttoned to display a hint of cleavage completed the transition. The look stopped short of barroom cheap, but definitely came down on the other side of refined.

  It would do, she thought grimly. It would have to do.

  Besides, the only person she really had to fool was Luke Callaghan. The cosmetic surgery she’d undergone in London had altered her enough that she’d be a stranger to everyone except him. Hopefully, he wouldn’t match this gum-snapper with the sophisticate who’d flamed in his arms.

  An impatient rap rattled the bedroom door. “Are you finished in there? It’s almost six-thirty.”

  “We’re finished,” the agent called. Closing her steel case, she gave Haley a warm smile. “Good luck, Miss Mercado. Sorry. I mean, Miss Parker.”

  The two women emerged into a small sitting room still curtained against the night. Dawn was beginning to break, though. Faint fingers of pink showed at the edges of the blinds. This was it. The first day of her new life as Daisy Parker.

  Taking in a deep breath, she faced the team of FBI operatives who’d assembled to craft and train this new entity. Communications technicians. Documentation specialists. Evidence-gathering experts. The language coach who’d spent hours coaxing Haley to grossly exaggerate her native Texas drawl and smother the faint British lilt she’d so carefully cultivated.

  Planting his hands on his hips, their team leader ran a critical eye over his creation. “Good,” Sean Collins murmured in approval. “Very good. You’ll fit right in with the other waitresses at the Lone Star Country Club.”

  “If I get the job.”

  “You’ll get it.
Don’t forget, Daisy Parker has waited tables at some of the best clubs and restaurants in Dallas and Fort Worth. If the manager checks your references, he’ll get nothing but glowing reports from your former employers. Just don’t drop too many trays your first day or two.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  The bald-headed language coach wagged an admonishing finger. “Tut, tut! Let’s have that again, shall we?”

  With a sardonic glance in his direction, Haley laid it on with a trowel. “Ah’ll surely to goodness try not to drop anythang, cowboy.”

  “Excellent,” the coach beamed. “Excellent.”

  Special Agent Collins checked his watch. “All right, folks. This is it. Operation Lone Star is officially under way. You ready, Judge?”

  All eyes turned to Carl Bridges. He glanced down at the baby tucked into the combination baby carrier/car seat by his side and nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “Wait!”

  Haley rushed across the room. She’d kissed and cuddled Lena for hours last night. The good-natured baby had cooed happily, waving her fat, dimpled fists and blowing bubbles from her rosebud mouth until she’d dropped into sleep. This morning Haley had barely gotten her diapered, changed and fed before the FBI makeup artist arrived with her box of magic tricks.

  Now that the moment of separation had arrived, Haley had to hold Lena again, had to kiss her soft curls and breathe in her powdery scent one last time. Collins had warned Haley that this undercover operation could take months. The thought of missing all those weeks of her baby’s development drove a stake right through her heart.

  Folding back the baby’s fluffy pink blanket, she tucked the well-fed, sleepy child against her. Doubts about the elaborate scheme Carl Bridges had worked out to deliver Lena to her father without revealing the identity of her mother had her throwing an anxious look at the judge.

  “You’re sure Luke will be at the country club this morning?”

  Understanding her reluctance to part with her baby, Carl Bridges nodded and went over the same ground they’d already covered half a dozen times.

  “Luke, Flynt Carson, Tyler Murdoch and Spence Harrison have a standing six-fifteen tee time every Sunday morning. Depending on how crowded the course is, they generally finish the first nine holes around eight.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I called Luke last night on the pretext of wanting to invite him to lunch at the club. He suggested brunch instead, after he and the others finish their round. He’ll be there, Haley.”

  “Daisy,” Collins corrected from across the room. “We all have to start thinking of her as Daisy.”

  “Daisy,” the judge echoed. “Don’t worry, missy. I won’t put Lena on the ninth tee box until I see Luke and the others holing out on number eight.”

  “You’re sure they won’t be able to see you?”

  “I’ll be in the groundskeeper’s shed. It’s separated from the tee box by a thick hedge. I found a spot where I can slip Lena’s carrier through the hedge, watch the guys approach, then skedaddle.”

  “What about the note? Do you think we got the wording right?”

  Patiently, he quoted from memory the phrases the entire FBI team had helped draft and redraft.

  Luke—

  I’m your baby girl. My name is Lena. Please take good care of me until my mommy can come back for me.

  Nuzzling her baby’s downy curls, Haley fought a wave of fierce, last-minute doubts. “I hope we’re doing the right thing!”

  “I hope we are, too,” Sean Collins muttered.

  He’d argued against leaving Lena with Luke, who lived right there in Mission Creek. He’d wanted to place her with a couple in Nebraska so Haley wouldn’t catch glimpses of her child and become distracted. “Out of sight, out of mind” was his strategy.

  She’d pointed out that she’d worry far more about Lena if she couldn’t see her occasionally and know she was being well cared for. Collins had caved finally, with the caveat that the note indicate that Lena’s mother had departed the area. The last thing he wanted was for folks to connect the baby found on the ninth tee with the new waitress at the Lone Star Country Club.

  “It’s getting late,” the judge warned. “I’d better take her, Haley.”

  “Daisy!” Collins snapped. “Haley Mercado is dead. From now on we all think and talk Daisy Parker, even in our sleep!”

  “Duly noted,” the judge retorted, a half a breath away from cutting the FBI agent down to size. “Here, let me have her, Daisy.”

  Haley swore she wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t cried since the day her mother died. She didn’t have any tears left to shed. But her throat felt as though she’d swallowed a bucket of broken glass when she dropped a feather-light kiss on her daughter’s crown and passed her to Carl.

  She couldn’t know that was the last time she’d hold her child for more than twelve terrifying months.

  Eight

  Present day

  Now, over a year later, Haley stood in the shadows of the Saddlebag’s noisy bar and wondered how it all could have gone so wrong.

  She’d done exactly what Sean Collins had asked. She’d spent more than a year undercover. She’d gathered more than enough evidence for the FBI to take down Frank Del Brio and destroy his network. She’d dodged and sidestepped and somehow managed to keep from tangling herself in the web of lies she’d lived with daily.

  In that time her uncle Carmine had died. Carl Bridges had been murdered. And Frank had managed to strip away Daisy Parker’s layers one by one. The bastard had not only escaped the net the FBI had tried to throw over him, he’d kidnapped her baby.

  Now her cover was blown. Operation Lone Star was falling apart. And Luke Callaghan had yet to hold his child in his arms.

  That wasn’t entirely her fault, Haley reminded herself with an ache just under her ribs. Carl Bridges had placed Lena right where the four Sunday morning golfers would find her. Who could have anticipated that water from the sprinkler-wet hedge would drip onto the note and obliterate the father’s name? Or that Luke wouldn’t show that morning, of all mornings?

  He’d been gone for months. Long, angonizing months, while Haley watched from a distance as Flynt and Josie Carson cared for Lena. Endless, torturous months, when she lived every hour of every day on the edge. And then, when Luke finally returned to Mission Creek, he was blind in both eyes.

  Her heart aching, Haley stared across the smoke-filled bar at the man she’d been in love with for as long as she could remember. His back was to her, but she recognized the short, curly black hair showing under his straw Stetson. Recognized, too, the strong column of his neck and the athletic shoulders under the denim shirt. She should. She’d run her hands and mouth over those strong, muscled shoulders repeatedly the night they’d created their child. The child she’d do anything—anything!—to get back safely.

  Dragging in a ragged breath, she threaded a path though the tables. The man sitting opposite Luke saw her first. Tyler Murdoch’s brown eyes narrowed as he tracked her approach. He lounged in a comfortable slouch, his chair tilted back against the scarred paneling. The lazy sprawl didn’t fool Haley. Nor did she fail to note how he kept his back to the wall. Evidently his recent marriage to a fiery Spanish interpreter hadn’t dulled the mercenary’s razor-edged instincts.

  “Look’s like we’ve got company, buddy. It’s Daisy Parker, the waitress from the country club.”

  She caught Murdoch’s murmur. Caught, too, the way Luke’s head cocked to one side. Just an inch. Maybe two. Like a cougar listening to the rustle of the dry Texas grass. Or a stallion scenting danger on the wind.

  Her heart hammering, Haley stopped beside his chair. The stress of the past months showed on his face. Beneath the rim of his hat, she could just make out the trace of white scars from the shrapnel that had blinded him. Could see, as well, the deep grooves bracketing his mouth.

  Despite the scars, despite the strain carved into his face, Luke Callaghan was still the most elemental male Haley had
ever encountered. His startlingly blue eyes might not register anything except darkness now, but they stared straight ahead with disconcerting directness. And his mouth. Lord, his mouth! Haley could almost feel it on hers again as she drew her tongue nervously across her lower lip. Shedding her poured-on Texas twang like last year’s winter coat, she murmured a soft, urgent request.

  “I need to talk to you, Luke. Privately. Please!”

  Luke recognized her voice.

  He’d always heard that people who’d lost their sight honed their other senses to a razor’s edge. If so, these past six months had proved him the exception to the general rule. Neither his sense of smell nor his tactile abilities had sharpened to any appreciable degree since the explosion deep in the jungles of Central America that had left him totally blind, until this last week when he’d begun to see dark shadows. He wouldn’t have said that his hearing had improved all that much, either, but this woman’s voice was burned into his memory.

  He’d heard it before right here at the Saddlebag. Two years ago. She’d spoken with more of British lilt then. Not with Daisy Parker’s thick, down-on-the-border accent, nor the subtle one he heard now. The suspicions about the waitress Luke had been harboring for some weeks now hardened into certainty.

  “I want to talk to you, too,” he ground out in a tone so low and dangerous she took an involuntary step back.

  He heard the small shuffle. The sudden, nervous movement had him shoving back his chair. Following the sound, he reached out. His hand closed around her upper arm, but not before his knuckles made contact with a full, lush breast.