Texas…Now and Forever

by Merline Lovelace

  “I’ve learned to count the steps,” he informed her, shaking loose of her hold. “I manage in my own home.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Just walk ahead of me.”

  He wasn’t just counting his steps, she realized a moment later. He was listening to the echo of her footfalls, first on the drive, then on the stairs, and pacing himself accordingly. Once he’d gained the wide porch, he moved with confidence.

  Skimming his left hand down the door, he found the key slot and inserted a narrow plastic card with his right. The card unlocked the door and activated the lights inside. Brushing past him into the soaring, two-story foyer, Haley waited while he reinserted the card, this time into a wall unit that contained several rows of infrared discs and a palm-size screen.

  “That’s a pretty elaborate security system,” she murmured.

  “Tyler designed it to my specifications. The sensors emit silent pulses instead of sound.” His mouth twisted. “The sequencing of those pulses allows even a person who can’t see to pinpoint the location of an intruder without letting him know he’s being tracked.”

  Like a panther stalking its prey in the night.

  With a little shiver, Haley followed him into the living room just off the hall. The cavernous room faced east, with a long wall of windows to let in the morning light. The windows were shuttered now, and the only illumination came from a desk lamp that flickered on at their approach. The inch-thick Persian area rugs that used to cover the oak floorboards had been removed, she saw. Probably so Luke wouldn’t trip over them. The floor plants were gone, too, no doubt for the same reason.

  The man-size sorrel-leather sofas and chairs were still there, though, arranged in comfortable groupings facing the massive stone fireplace that dominated the room. So was the rack of the Texas longhorns mounted above the mantel. A good twelve feet long, the horns speared to sharp tips.

  Haley’s glance drifted to the exquisitely woven Mexican blanket draped across the back of one sofa. The colorful throw was a treasured gift, she knew, from the couple who’d acted more like surrogate parents to Luke than his own, irresponsible uncle.

  “I hope we didn’t disturb Mr. and Mrs. Chavez, coming in so late like this.”

  “They moved out of the main house into the guest cottage three years ago,” Luke informed her in a clipped tone. “They needed space for their grandkids to romp and tear around when they come to visit.”

  With four bedrooms, a wraparound porch, and a breathtaking view of the lake, the guest cottage was larger than most family homes. The Chavezes’ lively brood would certainly have room to romp. The rest of the staff, Haley remembered, lived off the grounds. So it was just her and Luke, all alone in this two-story mansion.

  As if reading her thoughts, he tossed his hat onto one of the chairs, hitched his hips against a high sofa back and folded his arms. “All right, Haley. No one’s going to interrupt us now. You’ve got a few things to explain. Why don’t you start with your miraculous resurrection from the dead?”

  She ran her tongue over dry lips. She’d held her secrets for so long, guarded every word, measured every lie, that she had to drag the truth from deep inside her.

  “I’ll have to begin before my resurrection.”

  “Begin wherever the hell you want,” he said with brutal callousness. “Just get on with it.”

  Haley shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. It shamed her to admit she’d run away. Shamed her even more to admit the reasons why.

  “I don’t know how much you knew about my family’s business,” she began.

  “I’d heard rumors,” Luke said acidly.

  More than rumors. Hell, he couldn’t have formed such a close friendship with Ricky and not suspected the source of the Mercado family income.

  “Then you have some idea of the kinds of things my uncle Carmine was involved in. He and Frank Del Brio.”

  “Oh, I’ve got a good idea what your fiancé was involved in.”

  Stung by the derision in his voice, Haley fired back. “I didn’t get engaged to him by choice, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. If you didn’t want to marry Del Brio, why the hell did you wear his ring?”

  “Because Frank knew every detail of my father’s involvement in Uncle Carmine’s operations. He threatened to leak what he knew if I didn’t marry him.”

  “I only met your uncle a couple of times,” Luke scoffed, “but I can’t see Carmine Mercado allowing anyone to set up his brother and force his niece into marriage against her will.”

  “Can’t you? Maybe that’s because you’re an outsider. You don’t understand the family. My uncle wanted me to marry Frank. Carmine trusted him. More than he trusted my father by that time. So I went along with the engagement. I had to. But I began plotting my escape the same day.”

  “Right. Your escape.” His jaw hardened. The disdain in his voice took on the cutting edge of disgust. “You don’t have to tell me about your escape. I was there, remember? So were Tyler and Spence and Flynt.”

  His fury flared white-hot. Leaping across the room, it singed Haley from head to toe.

  “Do you know how many frantic hours we spent searching for you? Do you have any idea of the guilt we’ve all carried since that night?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “No, lady, you don’t. You can’t. Any more than you can imagine how it feels to stand trial for the wrongful death of your best friend’s sister.”

  “I didn’t mean for you to take the blame! Any of you! I intended to slip away during the barbecue that night. I’d planned to leave my sandals and coverup by the shore so people would think I’d gone swimming and drowned. But when I went out in the speedboat with you and we almost hit that tree, I—I took advantage of the situation.”

  “You sure did. Just out of curiosity, whose decomposed body did they pull out of the lake?”

  “I don’t know. I’m guessing Frank arranged to have that body dropped in the lake to solidify the case against you. He would have wanted you and the others to pay for his fiancée’s supposed death.”

  Luke gave a short, bitter laugh. “That’s understating the case considerably. Del Brio did everything but bribe the jury. Hell, for all I know, he probably did that, too.”

  “Carl said he tried.”

  “Carl? Carl Bridges?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me get this straight. You were in communication with my attorney?”

  “Yes.”

  “During the trial?”

  “Before, during and after,” she admitted. “The judge helped me slip out of the country. He arranged for a fake passport and got me set up in London. He was also the one who told me about the trial. I know you won’t believe me, Luke, but I wouldn’t have let you or the others take the blame. I was ready to jump a plane and come home as soon as I heard charges had been filed against you.”

  “Sure you were.”

  “The judge talked me out of it. He swore he’d get you off. I sent proof that I was still alive, just in case, but he never had to use it.”

  “So why did you come back?” he demanded. “That night, two years ago, when I bumped into you at the Saddlebag, why did you come out of hiding then?”

  “I came back to see my mother. She was in the hospital. She’d been badly beaten. It was made to look like a mall mugging, but it was a warning to my father to tow the line.”

  That pulled Luke up short. With a low, savage oath, he pictured the woman who’d always treated him with the loving warmth she showed her own son.

  “I’d heard Isadora was hospitalized, but after the trial things got so bad between me and your family that I didn’t want to upset her with a visit. She died soon after that, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  She couldn’t have feigned the raw pain in her reply. A good chunk of Luke’s anger melted as the enormity of what she was telling him sank in.

  “I need a drink,” he muttered. “How about you? I keep some cog
nac here in the bar, but I could brew coffee or—”

  “Cognac’s fine.”

  Measuring his steps, he crossed to the built-in bar and felt for the Waterford decanter glinting in the soft light. The heavy crystal stopper chinked as he removed it and nudged brandy snifters under the decanter’s lip. After pouring healthy portions for both of them, he carried the snifters back across the room and held one out.

  When Haley reached for it, her fingers brushed his. The heat was still there, Luke discovered with a jolt. The same glowing spark they’d fanned into flames two years ago.

  Retreating, he moved to the sofa. Haley followed his lead. Luke heard the soft whoosh of the leather cushions as she settled in a chair on the far side of the marble slab that served as a coffee table.

  “So you came home to visit your mother,” he said, picking up where they’d left off. “After which you stopped in at the Saddlebag for a drink and we ended up in bed.”

  “Yes.”

  He heard the wince in her voice at his phrasing, followed by a blunt honesty that surprised him.

  “Just for the record, I don’t regret that night, Luke. I could never regret it. It gave me Lena.”

  The anger he’d tried to bank came back, swift and fierce. “Funny. For a moment there, you sounded as though you almost regret abandoning our child.”

  “I didn’t abandon her!”

  The fragile crystal sang out as Haley snapped it down onto the coffee table.

  “I couldn’t keep Lena with me while I was undercover.”

  That caught Luke’s attention. In the past hour he’d come up with a dozen different reasons in his mind for Haley to be posing as a waitress at the Lone Star Country Club. The possibility that she might be acting as a federal agent wasn’t one of them.

  “I’ve been working with the FBI for over a year now,” she revealed, “helping them build a case against Frank.”

  Well, that explained the guys who’d jumped them in the parking lot. Frowning, Luke tried to sort through the details of her incredible story.

  “I don’t understand. You engineered your own death. You lived in London for years under an assumed identity. You’d just had a baby. Why did you suddenly decide to go to work for the feds?”

  “The FBI said they had evidence my mother didn’t die of natural causes. Someone injected potassium chloride into her IV.”

  Luke shot upright, splashing cognac onto his hand. “The hell you say!”

  “The FBI thinks she was killed because she wouldn’t disclose the identity of the stranger who…who visited her in the hospital.”

  The small, anguished quaver wasn’t lost on Luke. He stored it away to think about later, when he had time to sort through his thoughts. Right now it was all he could do to absorb the tale she went on to tell of tampered mail and phone hang-ups.

  “I realized I’d never be safe as long as Del Brio was free,” she finished. “More to the point, I knew Lena would never be safe. That’s why I decided to cooperate with the FBI. First, though, I had to make sure Lena was cared for while I was undercover.”

  “So you left her on the golf course?” he asked incredulously. “That’s your idea of ensuring she was cared for?”

  “She was left where her father would find her. Only you were gone that particular Sunday.” Her tone took on an edge of sharp accusation. “You stayed gone for months. Dammit, where were you when your daughter needed you?”

  Not particularly happy at being put on the defensive all of a sudden, Luke fired back. “One, I didn’t know I had a daughter. Two, I didn’t know she needed me. Three— Oh, hell. Three doesn’t matter. All that matters now is Lena.”

  Haley could have wept with relief. After all the hurt and anger and guilt, they agreed on the only point that mattered. Her hands clutched tight, she waited while Luke downed the rest of his cognac with a distinct lack of respect for its age.

  “All right,” he said grimly. “The past is past. Let’s cut to tonight. I want to know exactly how Del Brio contacted you. Exactly what he said, word for word. Any background noises or sounds you might have picked up. Any significant nuances in his voice.”

  An hour later Haley was limp with exhaustion. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours since the shoot-out three nights ago. Frantic fear for Lena and worry over her father had wrung her inside out. Luke’s relentless grilling sapped the small reserve she had left.

  “That’s it,” she said hoarsely after she’d repeated every detail for the fourth time. “That’s how Frank left it. He’ll let me know when and where to deliver the ransom.”

  “We have to assume he’ll know how to reach you. He tracked you to the FBI safe house. He’ll track you here. I’ll contact Sheriff Wainwright and…”

  “No!”

  Haley’s sharp protest earned her a swift frown.

  “Frank said not to let Justin or the FBI in on the ransom delivery,” she reiterated. “That’s why I came to you, Luke. I can’t…I won’t risk Lena’s life in another shoot-out.”

  He conceded with a curt nod.

  “All right. But we’ll need help to pull this off. I’ll get Spence and Tyler over to rig some electronics on the phone lines. Flynt can go to the bank for me tomorrow and retrieve the two million. In the meantime…”

  “In the meantime?”

  “You’d better get some rest. You sound as if you’re about to drop.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You can’t help your daughter if you’re too exhausted to think straight,” he said with brutal candor. “Stretch out on the couch here if you don’t want to go upstairs, but for God’s sake get some sleep.”

  She couldn’t have climbed that wide, curving staircase if she’d wanted to.

  “All right. I’ll take the couch. Do you mind if I use the phone first to call the hospital? I want to check on my father.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” he said, then added gruffly, “he was holding his own when I called ICU this afternoon.”

  “You checked on my dad?”

  “Your parents were good to me, Haley. After you died—disappeared—I couldn’t bridge the gap that opened between us, but I still cared about them. Go ahead, make your call. I’ll wait in the den and make mine when you’re finished.”

  He was almost out of the room before Haley worked up the courage to call to him.

  “Luke.”

  He half turned, angling his head in that careful, listening way. “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For listening. For putting the past behind you. Most of all, for helping me with Lena.”

  His face hardened. “She’s my daughter. Whatever I can do for her, I will. We’ll work out the arrangements for her future when we get her back.”

  As he made his careful way down the hall, Haley felt the blood drain from her face. Good Lord! Did Luke intend to battle her for custody? Could he use the fact that she’d had to place her baby in safekeeping against her? Would she wrest Lena away from Frank only to lose her to her father? The prospect tightened the band of fear around her heart.

  She couldn’t handle another crisis right now, Haley decided bleakly. She’d just check on her father, then curl into a tight ball here on the sofa, close her eyes and picture her baby’s happy face.

  Ten

  Luke stood in the den he’d converted to a clean, utilitarian office and tried to rein in his chaotic thoughts. He still couldn’t quite believe the woman down the hall was Haley Mercado. Sweet, curvaceous Haley Mercado.

  He’d known her since grade school, for crissake! He’d watched her transition from coltish girl to precocious teen. By the time he and Ricky and the others returned from the Gulf War, Haley had blossomed into full, sensual womanhood. Luke might have seriously reconsidered his self-imposed hands-off policy at that point, but muscle-bound Frank Del Brio had beat him to the punch. He’d claimed Haley as his and, assuming any of the incredible story she’d just strung out was true, had driven her t
o incredibly desperate measures to escape him.

  Was the story she’d just fed him true?

  Despite his anger, his instincts said yes. He’d spent enough time with Ricky to sense how closely Johnny Mercado flirted with danger. Luke could well believe he’d gotten himself in so deep that Del Brio had plenty to coerce Haley with. Looking back, he could almost—almost!—understand her crazy reasoning for deciding to disappear.

  Damn! For more than a decade she’d pretended to be dead, only to then risk everything by going undercover for the FBI. His first call would be to the Bureau, he decided grimly. He’d sure as hell get verification before he—

  A small sound cut into his whirling thoughts. Every one of his senses went on instant alert. He stood still, listening intently.

  The muffled noise came from the living room. Trailing his fingers along the wall, Luke moved silently down the hall.

  She was crying. Quietly. Agonizingly. From the sound of it, she’d buried her face in cushions, but nothing could completely drown the wrenching sobs.

  Luke stood just beyond the arch, his jaw working. This woman had played him for a world-class fool. Repeatedly. First by letting him and his friends take the fall for her death. Then by pretending she was a stranger that night at the Saddlebag. Not to mention failing to inform him about the small matter of their child. Luke sure as hell wasn’t going to let her twist him inside out again.

  Gritting his teeth, he started back for the office. He took two steps. Three. Stopped.

  The utter desolation in those muffled sobs ripped at him. Swearing viciously, he swung around again. A moment later he gathered her into his arms.

  Startled, she tried to jerk away. “Wh-what are you doing?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  Holding her loosely, he eased them onto the sofa. The leather whooshed under his weight, the cushions tilting so that Haley rolled against him. Gulping, she tried to halt the wrenching sobs.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— I don’t—”