Texas…Now and Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  His entire body went taut at the touch. Memories of that night two years ago knifed into him. She’d welcomed him so eagerly that night, so generously. As though she’d been waiting for him all her life. When he’d come out of the shower the next morning, though, she’d disappeared.

  Luke had made a few inquiries about her. After the mission that had taken him high into the Andes, he’d exercised some of his special contacts within the government in an attempt to locate the gorgeous blonde. He’d finally concluded the lady had had her reasons for slipping away with the dawn. Only recently had he begun to connect the beautiful stranger with the waitress who’d started work at the Lone Star Country Club right about the time his buddies discovered a baby on the ninth tee.

  His baby. The child he’d never seen. The child who’d been kidnapped right before his return to Mission Creek. The child, he was now certain, this cold-hearted witch had callously abandoned.

  “We’ll talk outside,” he growled.

  Behind him, Tyler called a quiet question. “Need me to come along, buddy?”

  “No. This is between Daisy and me.”

  The brutal grip on her arm told Haley this confrontation was going to be even tougher than she’d anticipated. Luke held her manacled, as though he didn’t trust her not to bolt. He also, she noted in the small corner of her mind that wasn’t numb with fear for her child, threaded his way through the tables with an assurance that gave no hint of his impaired sight. He let her guide him, following her lead with a sure tread, but to a casual observer they must have looked like any couple slipping away from the noisy bar to one of the motel units out back.

  Deliberately, Haley blanked her mind to the night when they, too, had done just that. This wasn’t about her and Luke, or about that night. This was about Lena. Only about Lena.

  After the air-conditioned smoke of the bar, the humid June night wrapped around them like a sponge. Haley didn’t mind the heat or the humidity or the dust that swirled on the night air. After all those years living in London’s damp, misty climate, she and Lena had come home to wide-open skies and the blazing Texas sun. She could only pray that they’d never have to leave again.

  “My car’s parked near the back of the lot,” she told Luke.

  “Lead the way.”

  The beat-up sedan the Bureau had supplied her with when she’d first gone undercover looked like a small, stray dog amid the herd of muscled SUVs and pickups. The white van that had followed her from the safe house was still parked a few rows from the rust-spotted sedan. Haley didn’t see the agents who’d driven it, but suspected they weren’t far away. After all, she was the FBI’s best hope—their only hope!—for luring Frank Del Brio out of hiding.

  She reached for the handle of the passenger door, thinking Luke would slide into the seat so they could talk inside the vehicle, but he used his grip on her arm to swing her around. The sedan’s roof was to her back. A large and obviously angry Luke crowded close at her front. Too close.

  Planting his hands against the car, he caged her. The brim of his Stetson shadowed his face, but she couldn’t miss the muscle that ticked in the side of his jaw as he fought for control.

  “You’re her, aren’t you?”

  “Her?” she murmured, stalling for time while she tried to figure out where to begin her tangled explanations.

  The question seemed to add to the anger that radiated from Luke in waves. The muscle at the side of his jaw jumped again.

  “Don’t mess with me, lady.”

  Haley had known him all her life. She’d also spent the most passionate night of her life in his arms. Yet this was a Luke Callaghan she’d never seen. Hard. Cold. Dangerous. He might have thoroughly intimidated her if she hadn’t lived with fear so long that she’d learned to tip her chin and stare it straight in the eye.

  “You’re the woman I hooked up with here at the Saddlebag two years ago.” It wasn’t a question this time, but a flat statement. “You weren’t passing yourself off as Daisy Parker then, but it was you.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  His breath hissed out. For a moment, maybe two, that night hovered between them. Haley ached to reach up, to touch his cheek. To beg him to fold her into his arms again and to let her lose herself in his heat and strength. Suspecting what was to come, she kept her fists clenched tightly at her sides.

  “We made more than love that night, didn’t we? We made a baby.”

  “Yes,” she whispered again.

  “So you brought our daughter back to Mission Creek. Thought you’d cash in on her, big time.”

  “Cash in on her?” Shocked, she gaped up at him. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

  He leaned closer, crowding her against the car. “I’m guessing you came back intending to initiate a nice fat paternity suit. But her millionaire father was gone. Out of the country. Unreachable. So you dumped the kid on the golf course at the country club, where some other rich sucker was sure to find her, and walked away.”

  “No! That’s not how it happened!”

  “That’s exactly how it happened. Flynt Carson told me he and Tyler and the others found the baby in a carrier, with only a blurred note that gave her name. Christ, how could you abandon your own child like that?”

  “I didn’t abandon her! You don’t understand—”

  “You’re right, I don’t.” Scorn laced every word. “I don’t understand how any mother could leave her child in the care of total strangers. But I’m getting the picture now. I’m also beginning to understand why Lena was supposedly ‘kidnapped’ from Flynt Carson’s ranch.”

  “Supposedly?” Her voice spiraled to a near screech. “There’s no ‘supposedly’ about it!”

  “Come on, sweetheart. You don’t have to play-act anymore. You dumped the kid because no one knew where I was and you got desperate. You could have waited until I came back to Mission Creek to establish paternity. The DNA results would have made that a breeze. But you hit on a better scheme, didn’t you? Instead of child support spread out over a number of years, you decided on a nice, fat ransom paid all up front. You won’t get it,” he warned in a voice so cold it could have cut glass. “You won’t get a cent from me that way.”

  “Oh, God!” Stunned, she tried to wrap her mind around his accusations. “You think I arranged to have my own child kidnapped so I could extort money from you?”

  His lip curled. “Prove me wrong, Daisy. Tell me you didn’t come to the Saddlebag tonight to deliver a ransom demand.”

  “Luke, listen to me. You’ve got this all backward.”

  “How much?” he snarled. “Tell me, dammit! What’s the asking price for a baby these days?”

  “All right! They want two million!”

  “Two million, huh?”

  Luke would have paid ten. An hour ago he would have cashed in every stock and bond he owned to buy the safe return of his child.

  He didn’t understand this urgent need to hold this daughter he’d never seen. He wanted a family, sure. Someday. He’d spent most of his childhood in boarding schools under the loose guardianship of his uncle, but Stew had shown far more interest in the leggy showgirls he wined and dined in Vegas than in his nephew.

  The military had become Luke’s substitute family. First at V.M.I., then in the marines. Although he’d shed his uniform after being charged with contributing to Haley Mercado’s death, the tight bonds forged during his years in the service had provided all the kith and kin he’d needed. Until he’d learned he had a daughter.

  Tyler Murdoch had delivered the news. Deep in a steamy jungle, right after the explosion that had sent shards of shrapnel slicing into Luke’s face.

  The knowledge that he’d fathered a child had sustained Luke throughout the painful operations that followed. He’d come home to Mission Creek blind but determined to do right by his daughter. Determined, too, to find the woman who’d abandoned her. He’d pictured her frightened. Desperate. Unable to care for her baby and driven to the extreme of leaving h
er on a golf course. He could have forgiven her that.

  What Luke couldn’t forgive was that the baby had been kidnapped just days before his return to Mission Creek. The timing was too close to write off as mere coincidence. More to the point, the evidence he’d so painstakingly gathered over the past months implicated this waitress in Lena’s disappearance.

  Disgust bit into him, so deep and bitter he could taste it. He still didn’t know who she really was or where she’d sprung from, but he was sure of one thing. When they recovered Lena—which they would—there was no way in hell Luke would leave his daughter with this sorry excuse for a mother.

  Bringing his face down to within inches of hers, he stripped matters to their core. “Let’s get one thing absolutely straight between us, lady. You’re not getting one cent from me, let alone two million. But you are going to take me to wherever you’ve stashed our baby. We’ll sort matters out from there.”

  Haley snapped. After all she’d been through, after all the stress and false identities and lies she’d been forced to live, Luke Callaghan had the nerve, the unmitigated, unfettered, unqualified gall, to accuse her of using her own baby in a scheme to extort money from him! With a surge of fury, she shoved at his chest and opened enough space between them to spit out her rage.

  “Listen and listen good, cowboy! You’re dead wrong on every count but one. The man who snatched our child has demanded a ransom, but I didn’t come here intending to shake you down for the two million. I don’t want your money, Callaghan!”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s right, dammit!”

  He looked anything but convinced. “Then what do you want?”

  “Your help. You’re the one man I can take with me when I go after my baby.”

  “Right.” Skepticism cut deep into his voice. “Because you’ve suddenly decided to admit I’m her father?”

  “No, you jackass. Because you’re blind.”

  He reared back, jerking away as if she’d hauled off and open-handed him. He recovered almost immediately, though. She’d give him that. Whatever else Luke had lost in the jungles of Central America, he could still spring to the attack with lethal agility.

  “Why don’t you run that by me one more time?” he suggested with biting derision. “I’m having a little trouble understanding exactly how my impaired vision plays in this situation.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly how it plays. I just got a call from the kidnapper. He told me to get together two million in unmarked, nonsequential bills. He said he’d contact me later with instructions on when and where to deliver it. At the same time, he swore… He warned…”

  She choked. Swallowing hard, she forced out the words that sliced at her throat like shards of glass.

  “He warned that I’d never see Lena alive again if there was a police officer or a federal agent anywhere within a hundred miles when I make the delivery. That’s why I’m asking—why I’m begging you to go with me. He’d suspect anyone else, think I was trying to set him up, but he wouldn’t…That is, he couldn’t…”

  “He wouldn’t worry about a blind man.”

  She bit her lip, hating to throw his disability in his face but determined to use whatever weapon she could.

  “Look, all I need is for you to distract Frank, to divert his attention for a few seconds. I’ll take it from there.”

  “Frank?” His black brows came together. “Are you talking about Frank Del Brio?”

  “Yes. We suspected it all along. After the shoot-out the other night, we were certain. But until he called a little while ago, we didn’t know what he wanted for her.”

  Luke reached for her again, his hands fumbling until they locked around her upper arms. He pulled her up, as if to feel and not just hear what she had to say.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” he demanded fiercely. “Who the hell are you, Daisy? And what’s your connection to the Texas mob?”

  She hesitated, trying to decide which bomb to drop first, searching for a way to lay bare the secrets she’d buried deep inside her for so long.

  Suddenly the slamming of car doors ricocheted through the night, followed by the thud of running footsteps. The sound triggered an instant response in Luke. Shoving Haley behind him, he spun to meet the threat he could hear but not see. Pinned against the car, she wiggled frantically until she made out the shadowy figures rushing toward them with weapons drawn.

  “Move away from her!” the lead runner shouted.

  She felt Luke tense, sensed him readying to spring.

  “It’s okay!” Grabbing the sleeve of his blue denim shirt, she held him back. “They’re FBI!”

  “What?”

  The two agents fanned out to either side, weapons held high, no doubt remembering Sean Collins’s terse instructions to keep his star witness safe at all costs.

  “Move away from her, Callaghan. Slow and easy. Keep those hands right where we can see them.”

  Luke complied. He took a step to the side, his hands held at waist level.

  Breathing out a sigh of relief, Haley shoved her hair out of her eyes and eased out from behind the protective shield of his body. The lead agent kept Luke covered while he speared her with a quick glance.

  “You okay, Miss Mercado?”

  The man beside her went still. Absolutely still.

  “Mercado?” he echoed softly. Dangerously. “Did he just call you Miss Mercado?”

  Nine

  Haley swallowed a curse. She’d imagined a hundred different scenarios in which she finally revealed her real identity to Luke. None of those scenarios had been played out in a parking lot, with guns drawn.

  Nor had she expected this sudden, Arctic silence. Disbelief, yes. Anger, of course. The kind of deep, visceral anger a man once accused of causing Haley Mercado’s death was entitled to feel. She suspected that would come, though, and soon.

  Delaying the inevitable, she answered the agent’s question first. “Mr. Callaghan wasn’t threatening me. We were just talking.”

  “Didn’t look much like talking from where we sat,” he returned. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes.”

  He eyed Luke speculatively. “Want us to hang loose while you finish your chat, Miss Mercado?”

  “No. Please, just leave us alone.”

  “All right. If you say so. But we’re close if you need us.”

  They retreated to the van, shutting the doors behind them. Stillness settled over the parking lot once more. The hot, dusty quiet plucked at Haley’s raw nerves like a hag with boney fingers. Bracing her shoulders, she turned to Luke.

  He might have been carved from the granite dug out of the hills of north Texas. He stood rigid, unmoving, his eyes narrowed to slits. As if he could actually see her. As if he was trying to strip away the layers of lies and deceit with which she’d cloaked herself.

  “I wanted to tell you the truth, Luke. You and the others. I couldn’t.”

  He didn’t answer. The silence stretched tight and thin. He broke it with a savage command.

  “Get in the car.”

  “What?”

  His jaw worked. “Get in the car. You’ve got some serious explaining to do, Miss Mercado. I’ve got a few things to say to you, too, but I’ll be damned if I’ll say them in a parking lot with the FBI and God knows who else listening in.”

  The white van followed them all the way to Luke’s sprawling estate on Lake Maria.

  Since the Callaghans had made their millions in oil and the stock market, the property Luke had inherited didn’t run to thousands of acres like the cattle ranches owned by the Carsons and Wainwrights, Mission Creek’s two most prominent families. The house sat on five hundred acres of prime real estate, though, bounded by the lake to the east and low, rolling hills to the west.

  Haley pulled up at massive wrought-iron gates, which slid open at a click of the thin, quarter-size remote dangling from the key ring Luke dug out of his pocket. When she drove through, the gates slid shut again.

&nbs
p; “Stop here for a moment,” Luke snapped.

  Aiming the remote at some invisible target, he clicked out a code. Haley neither saw nor heard any evidence of the security system he was obviously reactivating, but she guessed it would be elaborate given his long and frequent absences from Mission Creek.

  While her rust-spotted sedan idled just inside the gates, the FBI van rolled to a halt outside. Its headlights blazed in her rearview mirror. She half expected the driver to lean on the horn and demand entrance, but he must have radioed the FBI command center for instructions. A moment later the van backed up and parked beside the stone gate-post.

  Seeing the FBI settling in on the other side of the gate raised an odd, prickly sensation on Haley’s skin. She’d worked with them for more than a year, passing information, receiving coded instructions. Now Sean Collins’s team was on the other side of the fence, literally, and she was on her own.

  No, not on her own. She was with Luke.

  The prickly sensation intensified, raising goose bumps all up and down her arms.

  “It’s set,” the man beside her said tersely. “Just follow the drive. The house is about a mile up.”

  “I know.”

  Her soft reply didn’t go down well. Like Haley, Luke had to be remembering the little sister who’d tagged along when Ricky had come to shoot pool or to check out the lasted foal sired by the Callaghan championship stud. The same little sister Luke had believed dead all these years.

  “That’s right,” he bit out. “You do.”

  He stared straight ahead into his own private darkness while Haley negotiated the drive. The tires swooshed on the tarmac. A smooth, manicured lawn rolled down to the lake. A shiver rippled along her spine as she glanced off to the left. She couldn’t see the water in the darkness, but she knew it was there.

  She had so much to explain, so much to account for. Dreading the ordeal ahead, she brought the car to a stop under a tall portico supported by white columns on either side. A massive wrought-iron coach lamp hung suspended by chains, illuminating the wide front steps and double doors framed by additional lamps. Easing out from behind the wheel, Haley rounded the front of the car to take Luke’s arm.