by Diana Palmer
“Jake told me about that, too,” he said. He studied her. She looked older, worn, thinner. “You’ve had a hell of a time, haven’t you, Tat? I’m sorry I made things worse.”
She didn’t answer him. She was hoping he’d just leave. He was upsetting her.
He felt that discomfort. He didn’t blame her. He got to his feet. “I won’t be around long,” he said after a minute. “This will probably be my last assignment in the States for a while.”
She nodded. She didn’t look up.
He clenched his jaw. There was something between them. Something that his remembered hatred of her didn’t explain. “Why is it like this?” he asked suddenly.
“Excuse me?” she faltered.
“Why am I...this way with you?” he added. “You tagged after me like my own shadow when you were a kid. You went everywhere with me...!”
“That was years ago, Rourke,” she said, unconsciously using the name everyone else did, not calling him by the name that was familiar, that made her feel unique in his life.
He registered it, but not consciously. “We were together in Barrera,” he began.
“Yes, at the awards ceremony.”
He felt as if someone had hit him in the gut. “What awards ceremony?”
“You said...”
“At the camp,” he emphasized. “After that cold-blooded minion of Sapara’s tortured you,” he added.
“Oh. Yes.” She could have bitten her tongue through for that stupid slip.
“He paid for what he did to you,” he said coldly.
She nodded.
His mind was working. He was getting flashes of color. The camp. The assault on Sapara’s position. The little dictator who’d killed so many innocent people, flustered, cowardly without his minions, trying to escape Machado, trying to explain his treachery.
What had he overheard K.C. say about Sapara, just recently? Something about a helicopter. He couldn’t remember. Funny memory, that.
“You shouldn’t be trying to lift the baby by yourself,” he said suddenly, frowning. “He isn’t six weeks yet, is he?”
“Almost.”
He hesitated. His face softened. “You had a baby in your arms in the refugee camp in Ngawa,” he said abruptly. “You looked beautiful to me, even with your clothes stained and your hair unwashed. I thought I’d bury you that time, Tat. You’d been captured and threatened with execution. My God, you’ve got more lives than a cat!”
The comment shocked her into looking up. What was that expression on her lovely, sweet face? Hope?
“I’d forgotten, hadn’t I?” he asked. “I got you out, just before the offensive.” He scowled. “I’m always getting you out of trouble, always there when you’re traumatized. I always have been. So why is it like that, if I hate you so much?”
For a few seconds, hope had washed over her like liquid joy. And now it was gone. Gone again.
She managed a faint smile. “I’ve never known,” she replied.
Her eyes were soft, china blue and beautiful, warm with feeling. “So beautiful,” he said without thinking. His jaw tautened. His one pale brown eye flashed.
“Truce over,” she said at once, getting up with obvious effort. “And I have to go. Mariel will have lunch.”
“Oh, now, Mrs. Carvajal, don’t you dare try to lift that baby!”
A tall, handsome man came closer, grinning. “I’ll be happy to carry him for you. I’m going that way, anyhow. Mr. Craig sent me into town to the hardware store to get some more butane for branding.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Lopez.” She glanced at Rourke, whose expression was unreadable. “Stanton Rourke, this is Jack Lopez.” She introduced him. “He’s been helping me with groceries just lately. I have a hard time lifting things. We met at Barbara’s Café and he volunteered.” She smiled up at the man, relieved that she didn’t have to bear the explosion that she’d expected from Rourke when his eye had flashed at her.
“No problem to help a new mother,” the cowboy said, with a faint accent. He tipped his hat at Rourke. He stared at him intently for a minute, but Rourke’s expression didn’t change. “Nice to meet you.” He bent over and picked up the little boy, holding him gingerly in one arm while Tat struggled to pick up and fold the blanket.
“Here, I’ll do that,” Jack said quickly. He picked up the bag with diapers and wipes, and the blanket while holding Joshua easily in one arm. “Ready?” he asked.
Clarisse nodded.
“See you,” Rourke said, and it was almost a threat as he glared at the other man.
She managed a faint smile. But she didn’t answer him as they walked away.
12
Rourke was working surveillance on a small business that was suspected of involvement in an international kidnapping ring. Young women would be lured in with prospects of exciting work and travel, and then sold into prostitution all over the world. It was a sordid business, especially when some of the women they handled were barely fourteen years old. There was a tie to drug trafficking, as well, because the women were usually heavily medicated before they were put to work in brothels, to make sure they didn’t protest.
He was in San Antonio, taking a lunch break, when he spotted Clarisse walking out of a high-end baby boutique. She was alone, he noted, as she went toward the new Jaguar sedan she’d bought. Odd, how he felt when he looked at her.
He hated the idea of other men watching her, touching her. He’d accused her for years of being promiscuous. It was why he’d asked her, sarcastically, if she knew who had fathered her child. But she didn’t dress like a siren. She didn’t act like one. Why did he class her in that company?
So many questions, he thought miserably, and no answers. He’d avoided K.C., avoided the States, even avoided his friend Jake Blair in recent months until he’d come over for this assignment. Perhaps he didn’t really want to remember the recent past. Which provoked another question. Why?
Tat’s marriage was still a puzzle. He remembered Ruy Carvajal from years past. The Manaus physician had attended Tat’s mother when she died. He’d taken care of Tat when her father and sister were killed on the river. He was always around, a kindly sort of man with no real fire or spark. And he was well over twenty years older than Tat. So why had she married him? It had to have been after she went rushing to Nairobi to see Rourke when he was shot.
That was a very unpleasant memory, one which did him no credit. He’d raged at her, accused her of stealing his mother’s ring, thrown her out of the house. He grimaced. Her child was only a few weeks old, and it had been months ago that he’d been shot. He did the math. Tat had been pregnant. She’d been pregnant when he’d made her feel small for caring about him, for worrying. His eye closed on a wave of shame. He could have caused her to lose her child.
Had she been married to Carvajal at the time? But if she had, why had she been wearing that engagement ring, the one Rourke’s father—rather, the man he’d thought was his father—had given his mother before they were married?
He drew in a breath. It hurt, trying to remember. It hurt more, looking at Tat as she paused to smile at a young child on the street, holding its mother’s hand. She’d loved kids. He remembered her in a refugee camp, holding a baby. He scowled. Ngawa. Yes. She’d been in Ngawa and he’d gone to get her out. Since she was eight, he’d been her protector, her hero. Any tragedy in her life drew him, immediately. But if he hated her—why had he always gone?
He kept getting flashes of memory. A Latin dance club. He and Tat were dancing together. He only remembered doing the tango at one such club, and it was in Japan, years before. He hadn’t danced with Tat then, either. There was another memory, of a wedding gown and a shadowy priest.
He laughed. He was getting fanciful. His mind, the neurologist had told him, would most likely create new pa
thways to memories he’d lost, in time. Well, perhaps it was creating false ones. He was certain that he’d never contemplated marriage until now, with Charlene. He grimaced. The girl was juvenile. Worse, she was obviously attracted to her father’s young business partner. Not that Rourke really wanted to marry her. He’d made sure all his friends knew he planned to marry her, though, so it would get back to Tat. He scowled. Why did he want to hurt her?
She was on the move again, opening the door of her Jaguar. Just as she got in, he noticed a movement behind her. A man in a dark sedan pulled in behind her. Rourke had spent his life following people, on the job. He knew surveillance when he saw it.
He told his team leader he had to go out for a bit. He radioed another operative and gave him a description of the Jaguar and its direction of travel. Then he went looking.
* * *
Tat went into a small bed-and-bath boutique and found a shower curtain she liked. She smiled at the young clerk as she paid for it and carried it outside in a bag. She’d had to park almost half a block away. As she walked, a man fell into step behind her.
She must have left the baby with her housekeeper, or with Tippy Grier, Rourke reasoned. He followed along behind her unknown shadow, his pale brown eye narrow with subdued anger. Nobody was hurting Tat on his watch.
He rounded a corner. She was going into another shop, this one an exclusive coffee shop. The tall man surveilling her was paused in an alley, quietly watching, not drawing attention. He didn’t even hear Rourke come up behind him until he felt the cold metal of the .45 Colt ACP shoved into his spinal column.
Rourke felt the man tense and moved back. “You try it, and you’ll be a few grams heavier, mate,” he said curtly, because he knew the counterattack the man was pondering.
“Rourke!”
His surprise was visible as the man turned. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“I’m Kilpatrick. I work for Eb Scott.”
Rourke made a face and lowered the pistol. “Then what in the seven hells are you doing shadowing Clarisse Carrington?” he demanded.
“Mrs. Carvajal, you mean?”
“Ya.” He hated her married name.
Kilpatrick shrugged. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “Eb just said to keep her under constant surveillance or he’d stick lighted matches under my fingernails.”
“Who ordered the surveillance?” Rourke persisted.
“Cash Grier. Go figure.” He chuckled. “I guess he and Tippy are worried about her settling in here.”
Sure. That was why men were watching her, he thought sarcastically. But he didn’t say it out loud. “Thanks, mate. Sorry about the...well, you know,” he added sheepishly as he shoved the pistol back into the holster under his jacket.
“No problem. I’ll just go change my trousers now,” Kilpatrick said with a wicked grin.
Rourke clapped him on the shoulder and walked off.
* * *
He wormed his way into Cash’s office during the lunch hour. Carlie Farwalker was eating a sandwich at her desk, as she did when her husband, Carson, was doing overtime at the local hospital as an intern. She was obviously pregnant and beaming.
“Is he about?” Rourke asked with a smile, nodding toward Cash’s office.
“Yes. You can knock and go in, he’s just doing paperwork,” she said.
“Thanks. You look blooming,” he added.
She laughed. “We’re so, so happy.”
“So your dad told me. Nice of him to give me a room,” he added. “I’m so sick of hotels.”
“He likes the company. He’s lonely since I moved out.”
“He told me that, too. Give your husband my regards. I’ll try to make time to see him before I leave town.”
“Do that. He’d love to see you.”
Rourke remembered Carson as he had been. Amazing, the change in that lobo wolf, to end up married with a child on the way, working his way through an internship at Jacobsville General Hospital. But then, life was surprising.
He smiled at Carlie, knocked on Cash’s office door and went in.
* * *
Cash wasn’t as friendly as Carlie. In fact, he glared at Rourke with pure venom.
“Did you teach your wife that expression, then?” Rourke mused as he closed the door behind him. “Because I can feel a rash breaking out all over my backside already!”
“Embarrassing Clarisse will land you in trouble if you try it again,” Cash promised him. “And if you think you’ve seen the extent of my wife’s temper, you’re badly mistaken.”
Rourke sighed. He sat down in front of Cash’s desk and crossed his legs. “I don’t know why I hit out at her,” he confessed.
“Neither do I,” the other man replied. He put aside a stack of reports. “I thought you were getting married.”
Rourke looked uncomfortable. “She’s very young and infatuated with her father’s business partner,” he said. “I sort of pushed her into the engagement.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I knew it would get back to Tat,” he said solemnly.
“Good God,” Cash said softly, because he knew how Clarisse felt about Rourke. Surely, Rourke did, too. “Is that your idea of entertainment? Torturing a woman who’s just lost her husband, and almost her life?”
Rourke felt the flush high on his cheekbones. “Tat and I go back a long way,” he said without answering the question. It made him sick to contemplate how far he’d gone in his attempts to push Tat out of his life.
“Don’t make it hard for her,” the older man said, and his eyes were like ice. “Or you’ll have more trouble than you can handle. Finish your project and go home.”
“How would you know what my project is?” Rourke mused.
“Get real. I may not do covert jobs anymore, but I know people who do.”
Rourke shrugged.
“What do you want?”
Rourke leaned forward, his one pale brown eye narrow and intent. “I want to know why you’re having one of Eb Scott’s men shadow Tat.”
Cash hesitated. “And how would you know that I am?”
“I walked up behind him and stuck a .45 in his ribs,” he replied. The eye narrowed. “Why?”
Cash didn’t dare tell him the truth. There was always the chance that Rourke might let something slip because of that traumatic injury and put Clarisse in greater danger. He lifted his chin. “She’s had a problem with a persistent admirer,” he said finally.
Rourke drew in a breath. That he could believe. She was beautiful enough to cause men to obsess. “I see.” His eye narrowed. “Would it be that Jack Lopez character who works for Luke Craig?” he added. “Because he seems to be everywhere she is lately.”
Cash frowned. “No. It’s not him. He looks out for her.”
Rourke didn’t add that he was uncomfortable with the idea of another man signing on as Tat’s protector. That was his job. It always had been.
“Who told you I was behind it?” Cash asked abruptly.
“Birds,” Rourke said easily, nodding. “They speak to me. Usually, it’s crows, but I have had the odd piece of intel from grackles... Why are you laughing?”
Cash waved a hand at him. “Go back to work, and let me finish these damned reports before I’m buried in them.”
Rourke got up. “I did apologize, you know,” he said after a minute. “I had no idea that Tat was married. Certainly I didn’t know what she’d been through.”
“An amazing young woman,” Cash said. “To survive the death of her entire family, kidnapping, torture...and still be able to smile.”
“She was always like that,” Rourke said, an odd softness in his voice. “She looks like a cream puff, but she’s got grit.”
“Yes.”
Rourke
paused at the door. “Who’s after her?” he asked.
“Someone local,” Cash said. “Not anyone dangerous,” he added, lying with a smile, “just a boy who’s overly infatuated. We don’t think he’d harm her. We’re just being careful.”
Rourke nodded. He went out the door, closing it behind him.
* * *
It was a long week. He was sick of black coffee and darkened rooms and spotting scopes and listening to endless rounds of audio tape as they tried to get enough evidence to arrest the suspect in the trafficking ring.
On Saturday, there was a dance in Jacobsville in the park. A local band played for it. There were concession stands and a wooden platform had been constructed to double as a dance floor. Whole families came, enjoying the warm spring weekend. Tat was there, with the woman who kept the baby for her. She was dancing with a tall, good-looking cowboy when Rourke leaned against a tree to watch. That Lopez man again, he thought disgustedly.
He was wearing khakis. He looked, and felt, out of place in a town where most men wore jeans and boots and big hats. But he was right at home in the small-town atmosphere.
He didn’t like that man dancing with Tat. He didn’t know why. He had no reason to feel jealous of her. The man didn’t seem dangerous. He was pretty sure he wasn’t a stalker. Still, there was something oddly familiar about him. Disturbing.
Tat was wearing a long denim skirt with a short-sleeved blue-checked blouse and flat shoes. She looked young and beautiful in the fading sunlight as lights came on automatically in the park and the dancing platform lit up with fairy lights.
Tat, dancing. Why did that disturb him?
The dance ended. She and the cowboy went back to the table where Mariel was holding the baby.
On an impulse he didn’t even understand, Rourke went to the bandleader and had a brief conversation with him.
The rhythm changed. Rourke went to the table where Tat was sitting with her cowboy friend and the woman who was holding the baby.
He didn’t ask. He caught her hand in his and tugged her along with him to the wooden platform.
The song was a tango. Cash Grier and Tippy were on the dance platform turning heads. Cash’s eyebrows raised as Rourke drew Tat against him, and an amused smile touched his mouth.