Stone Cold Christmas Ranger

by Nicole Helm

  Without Bennet even moving from the window seat, the lights flicked off.

  “Your computer—”

  He made a move with his arm without even looking and suddenly he was pulling a curtain from behind him to enclose the little window seat alcove. The room was completely dark.

  “Good night, Alyssa,” he said from behind the curtain.

  Since it was dark and he was behind a curtain, she indulged in the childish impulse to stick her tongue out at him.

  “It’s too quiet in here,” she grumbled.

  “No, it isn’t, because you keep whining.”

  She scowled and shifted deeper into the unbelievably soft sheets. She wasn’t tired in the least, but she also wasn’t whining. She was going insane. The walls were closing in, and at least complaining kept them at bay for a while.

  How could she sleep when she was locked up again? Oh, this was by far the nicest room she’d been locked in, but amenities didn’t matter when you were essentially a prisoner. Hands tied from doing anything because they didn’t know what the hell was going on.

  She scowled over at the curtain Bennet was behind. The irritating thing was she understood why they had to do all this. She just hated it. Hated feeling locked up and ineffective. She wanted to do something. Even if it meant smashing her elbow into some assailant’s nose.

  At least that had been action. At least that had felt good. She wanted something that felt good instead of dark and oppressive. Instead of like her life would only ever be some terrible, lonely prison.

  But she wasn’t exactly alone right now, curtain or no curtain. Her mind drifted to her kiss with Bennet. Fake kiss. Except no matter how the pretense had been fake, the kiss hadn’t been. His mouth had been on hers, and more than once his hands had been on her.

  Sometimes he looked at her and she was almost certain that whatever she’d felt in the midst of that fake kiss—attraction and need and the desperate curiosity of what more he could do with that all-too-charming mouth of his—he felt it, too.

  She didn’t know why he’d be attracted to someone like her, and she realized she probably wasn’t the world’s leading expert in men and attraction, but she also wasn’t stupid. He’d gently bandaged her head, but on occasion his gaze had drifted to her mouth.

  That meant something. She’d spent the past two years in the orbit of Gabby and Jaime, who couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other no matter how committed they got. So, she may not have experience with attraction or lust or anything, but she did know what it looked like.

  She’d really like to know what it felt like. She’d spent the past two years building something of a free life, but she hadn’t dated or flirted or even put herself out there in any way, shape or form because she’d been waiting for something to come to her.

  Like all her life she’d waited for freedom. What a waste all that waiting was.

  “Bennet?” she asked into the quiet of the room.

  “What?”

  “How many women have you kissed?”

  He made a sound, something like a cough or rough inhale. “I... How is that relevant to anything?”

  “I didn’t say I was going to ask you a relevant question. I’m just asking you a question.”

  He cleared his throat. “I... I don’t know. I don’t have a running tally.”

  “Oh? That many.” And on some level she wanted to know everything about them. Why he’d kissed them. How far it had gone. What he’d felt.

  And on some level she wanted to elbow every woman in the nose just as she’d done to the man who’d attacked her.

  “It isn’t about how many, it’s just... I’d have to do the math and... Why are you asking me this?”

  “Well, you know, I’ve only kissed you.”

  There was a moment of heavy silence. “That wasn’t a kiss,” he said, his voice something closer to a growl.

  “Oh? What was it then?”

  “A...charade.”

  “A charade,” she repeated, because even though it had been an act, a fake, charade seemed such an oddly proper word.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But I was just thinking if I’m going to die—”

  He jerked the curtain open, the harsh computer light glinting off the angry expression on his face. “You’re not going to die.”

  “You can’t promise I’m not going to die, and God knows someday I will. So. You know. I should probably know what it’s like.”

  “What what’s like?”

  “Sex.”

  He didn’t move, didn’t speak, and she was almost certain he didn’t even breathe. Which was kind of funny, all in all. That it just took the mention of sex to catch Ranger Stevens off guard.

  And since he was off guard, she slid out of bed and walked over to him. He watched her approach warily, but he didn’t ward her off, and he didn’t tell her to stop. She walked all the way until her knees were all but touching the window seat. She looked down at him.

  He held her gaze, but he still didn’t say anything. Everything she knew about Bennet suggested he’d be the kind of man who’d make the first move, and yet he just sat there. Not making any move.

  “It would be something of a no-no, wouldn’t it?” she asked, her voice a little breathless with something like nerves but not quite that. Adrenaline, maybe. Anticipation. “Because I’m involved in this case.”

  “First of all, please never say the phrase ‘no-no’ again. Second of all, yes. It would be incredibly wrong. On every level.”

  “Come on. Not every level.”

  “Okay, nine out of ten levels,” he returned, and she could tell he was trying very hard not to be amused.

  “So, maybe we explore that one-out-of-ten level,” Alyssa offered hopefully, covertly moving to take the computer off his lap. Except as she glanced at the screen she noticed something oddly familiar. Something she hadn’t seen in years.

  “What is this a picture of?” she asked breathlessly, this time not nerves or anticipation or anything other than the excitement they might find a lead.

  “What... What?” Bennet asked, clearly not making the leap to work quite as quickly as she had.

  “The picture you have on the screen,” she said, pointing at it as she leaned in closer. “What’s it of?”

  “Uh... I... The FBI believes the man on the right is Salvador Dominguez. It’s the only known picture of him law enforcement has as far as I know.”

  “And the man next to him?”

  “No one’s identified him. It’s too shadowy, he’s looking away from the camera and there’re no markings to give any clues.”

  “But there is an earring.”

  Bennet squinted at the screen. “I suppose.”

  “It’s one of my brothers.”

  His head jerked toward hers. “How do you know that?”

  “The earring. It’s a J with dragon horns. It was my father’s. Now, that definitely isn’t my father. This guy is too tall, too broad. But it’s one of my brothers, I can almost guarantee it. My father wouldn’t have given that earring to anyone else. When was this photo taken?”

  “Last month.”

  “So, one of my brothers is photographed talking with the head of a rival cartel a month ago.”

  Bennet blew out a breath. “Well, it looks like we might have our inciting incident, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what I have to do with it, though.”

  “Your brothers love you. To bad men trying to hurt each other, love is a weapon. A weakness.”

  She glanced at Bennet, feeling unaccountably sad for some reason. “That isn’t just to bad men trying to hurt each other, Bennet. Love is always a weapon.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” he replied steadfastly, his blue eyes an odd
shade in the light of the laptop screen.

  Her chest felt tight, and her heart felt too much like it was being squeezed. She’d wanted to feel something, but not this. Not anything to do with love, especially when it came to her brothers. If they loved her, that love had only ever been used as a weapon, no matter what Bennet thought.

  “Well, I guess we’ve got something to go on now,” she said, straightening and wrapping her arms around herself. She felt sad and alone and suddenly she wouldn’t mind just going to bed and being locked away. “I’ll take my sleeping shift, then.”

  Before she realized what he was doing, Bennet had his hand fisted in her shirt and jerked her down so that she had to grab his shoulders or risk just falling into his lap.

  Then his mouth was on hers. Gentle, and something that kind of made her want to cry because there’d been so little of it in her life. Softness. His lips caressed hers, his tongue slowly tracing the outline of her bottom lip, and all she could do was soak it up.

  She felt like melted wax and a firework ready to burst all at the same time, and underneath her hands his shoulders were just these steady rocks to lean on.

  He pulled away, though his hand was still fisted in her shirt, and his breath wafted across her still-wet lips.

  “That was a kiss,” he murmured. He released her and grabbed the curtain. “Now go to sleep,” he ordered, and snapped the curtain closed between them.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bennet woke with a start and then a groan of pain. He’d dozed off on the stupid window seat and now his neck and shoulders were paying the price, the cuts on his back throbbing. He rubbed his eyes, realizing through the gauzy fabric of the curtains that covered the window, daylight shone far brighter than he’d have liked.

  He should have been up hours ago. He should have never fallen asleep. Sleep was wasting precious time they didn’t have to unravel all of these confusing clues.

  He fumbled for the curtain that separated the window seat from the room and managed to shove it open.

  Alyssa was sitting in the bed, cross-legged with his laptop perched on her thighs. There was a tray of fresh fruit and bagels and a coffeepot on the bed next to her.

  “How’d you get that?”

  “Ms. Kinsey brought up the food and coffee—much better than yours, FYI. The laptop? I took it while you snored away. Very unattractive, I might add.”

  Bennet grunted irritably, remembering exactly why he’d allowed himself to doze off on the window seat.

  The thought of waking up Alyssa, asleep in his bed, warm and soft and more alluring than she had any right to be, had been a little too much to bear at two in the morning. He’d been afraid that if he’d even simply nudged her shoulder he’d want to touch all of her.

  And that was most wholeheartedly a no-no. Which made kissing her last night inexcusable and irrational and something he had no business considering in the light of the morning.

  “Coffee?” she asked sweetly.

  “Are you always this obnoxious in the morning?”

  “Morning is the absolute best time of day.”

  He grabbed the coffeepot and one of the mugs and poured. “You’re evil.”

  She laughed, and no matter how much he hated mornings or the awful, digging pain in his neck and the fact his back felt like it was on fire, he liked hearing her laugh. He liked a few too many things about Alyssa Jimenez, drug kingpin’s daughter.

  Yeah, that was never going to fly in any of his lives—Texas Ranger, politicians’ son. The conclusion of this case would be the conclusion of their time together.

  You can’t promise I’m not going to die, and God knows someday I will. So. You know. I should probably know what it’s like.

  Those words kept bouncing around in his brain, completely unwelcome. Someday she would know what it was like, but it wouldn’t be with him. For all the reasons he’d gone through a million times over.

  “Find anything?” he asked, easing onto the other side of the bed, enough space and a tray of food between them, to keep his head on the case.

  Maybe.

  “Well, I found that no matter how hard or zoomed in I look at the picture, I can’t tell which of my brothers is in that picture. I have committed Salvador Dominguez’s face to memory, though, and I can’t help but thinking he’s behind yesterday.”

  “Agreed.”

  “How did you connect my mother to me when she was a Jane Doe?”

  “Happenstance. I was searching old case files and happened to notice a similarity in a murder that was committed by a known member of the Jimenez cartel. The victim in that murder had the exact same wounds and was buried in the exact same way not too far from where...”

  She’d looked away, but he understood that thinking of her mother’s wounds and where her body was found was too much even for Alyssa.

  “What I didn’t know when I came to see you was that my Jane Doe was a Jimenez.”

  “Who was the man convicted of the other murder?”

  “Dom Coch... Holy hell. Dom Cochrane. Spelled differently, but that’s too much of a coincidence to the name your brother gave us.”

  “I don’t remember anyone named Dom, but I wouldn’t have known everyone, I guess.”

  Bennet gestured for her to hand over the laptop. She did so, and he logged into the Ranger system while he sipped his coffee. “I’m going to do some searches for Dom Cochrane and see what pops up.”

  Alyssa took one of the bagels off the tray between them and spread cream cheese across the top. She frowned at it while Bennet typed the name into the database.

  Something was bothering her, and she wasn’t saying what. He didn’t like knowing she was keeping something from him, even if it was feelings rather than information. He wanted to know everything. About the case. About her.

  Which was the absolute last thing he needed right now. He tried to focus on the results of his search, but Alyssa licked a smudge of cream cheese off her thumb. Which he shouldn’t watch. Or think about.

  Either she felt his gaze or just happened to look over, but somehow their gazes met as her thumb disappeared into her mouth. Everything inside him tightened and ached, and would it really be that bad to indulge in something this potent? He’d still solve the case, and maybe it was morally ambiguous to get involved with someone connected to one of his cases, but hell, Vaughn had done it, and he was the most morally upstanding person Bennet had ever met.

  A sharp knock sounded at the door, and they both nearly jumped a foot, the tray tipping over and spilling the remaining bagels onto the bed.

  “Who is it?” Bennet growled.

  “Kinsey.”

  He shoved the computer off his lap and strode over to the door, doing everything he could to take his mind off the completely untimely erection.

  He opened the door a crack. “Yes?”

  Kinsey looked vaguely amused, but her message was brief.

  “Ms. Delaney is here with the dresses. Shall I send her up here?”

  “That would be perfect. Thank you.”

  Kinsey nodded and Bennet shut the door. He had half a mind to bang his head against it. Instead, he turned back to the bed to find Alyssa staring at him, her eyebrows drawn together.

  “You really grew up like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Servants? Everything at your beck and call. Dresses... Wait.” She sat up straighter on the bed. “What did she say about dresses?”

  Bennet tried not to smile, but half his mouth curved of its own accord. “You’ll need something for the ball.”

  “But...”

  “We can’t exactly go to the mall after you’ve been attacked, so I asked Kinsey what we could do. She suggested calling one of my mother’s personal shoppers with your size and have them make a house call.”
/>
  “B-but... I can’t afford...”

  “Alyssa, honestly.”

  “I don’t want you paying for stuff,” she said stubbornly.

  “Except I’m the one forcing you to go to this gala, and you’ll need to fit in if we have hope of getting any information. Which means jeans and a T-shirt aren’t going to cut it, and neither is...well, no offense, darling, but anything you’d pick out on your own.”

  She scowled at him, which was good. Better her to be angry with him than anything else.

  “And, just so you can settle into the idea before Friday night, I’ll also be hiring a hair and makeup person to do all that stuff women do.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Hell if I know, but the person I hire will, and that’s all that matters. Now, you can pick whatever dress you’d like. Cost is no option.”

  “Oh, well, then why don’t you shower me with jewels, too,” she returned sarcastically.

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  She opened her mouth, likely to say something scathing, but another knock sounded at the door.

  Bennet opened it, smiling at Tawny Delaney, whom he’d met on occasion at events such as the Christmas gala. Her father was in oil and a dedicated donor to his father’s many political endeavors.

  Tawny also might have been on the list of women he’d kissed, and he couldn’t help but be glad Alyssa didn’t have any such list.

  “Ben. It’s so good to see you again,” Tawny said, smiling up at him.

  “Thank you for coming,” he returned, ushering her in. A man with a rolling rack of what Bennet could only assume were dresses began to push the rack inside, but Bennet slapped a palm to the rack.

  “I’ll take it from here, sir. You can wait down in the foyer, if you’d be so kind.”

  “Ben?”

  “Sorry. Can’t be too careful right now.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s fine,” Tawny replied, though she looked a little nervous. “Where’s our client?”

  Bennet gestured to the bed, where Alyssa was sprawled out, defiantly so, scowling. Bennet wanted to laugh even though it was ridiculous.