The Mercenary and the New Mom

by Merline Lovelace

“I’m not saying Kaisal spilled anything he thought was significant to this woman,” Trey argued, “but we both know how he lays it on when he’s got a female in his gun sights. He probably promised to bury her in diamonds or paint her toenails with gold. Women seem impressed by that kind of thing,” he added flatly.

  “Some women,” Jack agreed, refusing to duck the barb.

  Heather hadn’t made any secret of her fascination with the Wentworth wealth. Sabrina, on the other hand, had been totally unimpressed by both Ali’s extravagant promises and Jack’s family background.

  Or had she?

  Frowning, he stared at Tulsa’s gold-tinted skyline. Like a video on fast forward, scenes from his on-again, off-again association with Sabrina Jensen flashed through his mind.

  That first afternoon at the diner, she’d laughed off both his and Ali’s bids for her attention...until the drunks had identified him as Jack Wentworth, he remembered, his stomach tightening. After that, she’d melted in his arms and invited him to her place that night.

  Big deal. When he’d arrived at her house, she’d accused him of slumming and sent him off.

  No, Jack corrected, he’d backed off...after inviting her to the Blowout, which she’d agreed to readily enough. The excursion had ended on a strained note, true, but not so strained that Jack hadn’t intended to call Sabrina when he returned from Alaska.

  Except she didn’t wait for him to call her.

  His jaw now as tight as his stomach, Jack recalled his surprise and fierce satisfaction when she’d appeared in the lobby this afternoon. She’d said she was just passing by—

  Hell!

  He was still calculating the odds of Sabrina “passing by” that particular building on the exact day he returned to Tulsa when the elevator doors opened.

  “I’ll call you later,” he told Trey slowly. “I need to think about this a little more.”

  He dropped the phone into its cradle and rose, his intent gaze locked on the woman who stepped out of the elevator. She stood for a moment in the slanting rays of the sun, a silhouette of black silk and bare shoulders. The dress was the kind his sister, Josie, would describe as a stud stopper. Short, simple and sexy as hell, its neckline dived to a tantalizing promise in front and even deeper in back, Jack saw when she turned to the attendant. Her hair was swept up in a sophisticated French twist, and she carried herself with such unconscious, pulse-pounding sensuality that even the gray-haired banker abandoned his stock quotes to gape.

  She caught sight of Jack just then, and a shy smile sprang into her eyes. A few moments ago, that curving mouth would have banished everything but the need to slide his hands up her bare back, destroy that smooth twist and kiss her until her bones melted. Now, doubt added a serrated edge to his lust.

  He’d been in the business too long to let that doubt show in his face, but it took a whole lot more effort to keep it out of his voice than he liked.

  “At the risk of sounding sexist as hell, may I say that you do things to that dress that should be declared illegal?”

  “At the risk of sounding smug, thank you.” Despite her flip comeback, Jack’s gruff compliment played havoc with Sabrina’s nerves. The way his eyes seemed to eat at her from the inside out didn’t exactly help matters, either.

  She’d recovered from the shock of signing her name to a charge slip that would take her three months of extra shifts to pay off. She’d also managed to shrug aside the irony of having her hair shampooed and shaped by a stylist who, she’d discovered, owned a Mercedes and a winter retreat in Barbados. She’d even found herself enjoying the luxury of a valet to park Hank’s beat-up truck and a swift ascension in a private elevator to this aerie of eagles.

  She’d felt only a slowly mounting excitement, in fact, until she stepped off the elevator and caught sight of Jack. Now, she could barely remember her name.

  He stopped just close enough to her side to raise the fine hairs on Sabrina’s arms. The skin beneath shivered in delight. Or desire. At this point, she couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Are you hungry?”

  She gulped, hoping the answer didn’t flame on her face.

  “Or would you like a drink first?”

  “I’d better pass on that. I didn’t have lunch. Alcohol does funny things to me on an empty stomach, and I still have to drive home tonight.”

  “Only if you want to.”

  Sabrina sucked air into suddenly collapsed lungs. She stared up at him, feeling every watt of the electricity in his glittering blue eyes.

  “What happened to not pushing too hard or too fast?”

  The voltage pegged another few marks on the meter. Sabrina figured she’d wear the scorch marks for the next month.

  “I wasn’t pushing, sweetheart. Just offering an option.”

  She started to suggest that he drop the sweetheart bit, as she had the first day he’d laid it on her. For some reason, the words wouldn’t come out. Probably because she was starting to like the sound of it coming from Jack. Or maybe because her whole back from her heels to her hair caught fire when he put his hand at her waist to guide her into the dining room.

  She recovered in time to smile at the waiter holding out her chair. Plucking the napkin folded into the shape of an oil derrick off the snowy linen, the server laid it across her lap. The menu he handed her gave no prices. For a moment, Sabrina ascribed that omission to a chauvinism that went even deeper than the bank accounts of the club’s exclusive membership. Then she realized that only members could pay for the meals consumed here.

  Not that money ever changed hands at the club, she guessed, glancing around. These captains of the oil industry wouldn’t be so crass as to actually count out their bills in public. They probably didn’t even sign the chit, simply trusted the century-old establishment to forward a bill each month for food, drinks and the cigars displayed in a climate-controlled glass humidor right next to the largest, most gorgeous arrangement of bloodred gladiolas Sabrina had ever seen. Tall crystal vases holding individual stems of the same flowers graced the edge of each table, giving the diners an illusion of privacy.

  The waiter took their order for iced tea and disappeared. Jack didn’t bother to open his menu.

  “I can recommend the prime rib.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  Grinning, Sabrina skimmed the entrees, which consisted of beef, beef and more beef. Ah! At the bottom of the second page were a few fish and game dishes for the clogged arteries in the club.

  “Nothing on the menu can compare to that hamburger you dished up at the diner,” he told her, “but the prime rib is cooked over a mesquite fire.”

  “That’s good enough for me!”

  The waiter reappeared at almost the same instant the embossed leather menu snapped shut. When they’d both placed their orders, Jack picked up the conversation.

  “You said you were in town this afternoon on business,” he said casually. “I was too glad to see you to ask what kind of business.”

  “I brought the sign in for restoration, the one from over the diner’s front door.”

  “Good Lord. That thing must weigh a ton!”

  “Closer to a ton and a half.”

  “How’d you get it down?”

  “A couple of our regulars helped.”

  “Is there enough left of it to restore?”

  “According to Brite Lites, there is.”

  Jack cocked his head, his eyes thoughtful. “From what I understand, neon is an expensive art form. Won’t it take a lot of onion burgers and smothered steak to restore a sign that large?”

  Sabrina crossed her forearms on the table and hunched forward, secretly pleased at being able to share the details of her long-planned project with someone who would understand them.

  “I whittled down some of the cost by hauling the thing into the shop myself. I also got our soft drink distributor to kick in for his free advertising once the sign is restored.”

  She was so caught up in relating her co
up that she almost missed the quick slide southward Jack’s gaze took. Too late, she realized that a hunch wasn’t the best position to assume in this dress. She leaned back, her face warming as the black silk settled in more discreet folds over her breasts.

  Jack’s eyes cut back to her face. He made no apology for enjoying the scenery, but he saved his skin by not commenting on it.

  “So the sign brought you to Tulsa,” he said with a composure that had deserted Sabrina. “What brought you into the building?”

  “The Wentworth Building?”

  No way was she going to admit to prurient curiosity over anything and everything about Jack Wentworth. Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug.

  “I told you. I was just passing by and decided to take a peek.”

  “That’s right. You did tell me.”

  His slow drawl held no trace of amusement or disbelief, but Sabrina wouldn’t have blamed him for either. Next time, she vowed, she would have some excuse handy for tracking a man down to his home lair. Thankfully, their salads arrived at that moment, accompanied by a gold-weave basket giving off heavenly hot dough smells. She sniffed appreciatively as the waiter placed a crusty dinner roll on her bread plate, followed by a pat of pale golden butter decorated with the club’s crest.

  She did her best not to wolf down the butter-drenched roll, but it took some doing. The diner didn’t come close to turning out bread this crusty on the outside and so exquisitely soft on the inside. She chewed, swallowed, and contemplated the wire basket for a moment. Deciding to save herself for the feast to follow, she turned her head to contemplate Jack instead.

  “I forgot to ask you the other night. Did your friend Al get home okay?”

  Casually, he buttered a man-size hunk of roll. “Why do you think he was on his way home?”

  The question stumped her. She stared at him blankly for a moment, thinking back.

  “I don’t know. I guess because he kept trying to convince me to fly off to Qatar with him. I assumed he meant then, not sometime in the indeterminate future. Where the heck is Qatar, anyway?”

  “It’s a small country, just a spur of the Arabian Peninsula that juts into the Persian Gulf.”

  That didn’t tell her a whole lot. She and Rachel had traveled a good bit in their years on the road with their father. They’d since taken a couple of trips to Mexico and one to Saskatchewan, but hadn’t quite made it to the Arabian Peninsula. From the extensive TV coverage of the Gulf War, though, she retained a mental image of a huge, hazy triangle dominated primarily by Saudi Arabia and Iraq, with the tiny Kuwait caught between.

  “So did Al get wherever he was going in one piece? No further run-ins with drunken riggers?”

  “No, no further run-ins.”

  “Good. What about you? What took you to Alaska?”

  Sabrina sneaked another roll and popped a warm, unbuttered chunk into her mouth. A full mouth was one way to stop the questions rolling out of her like trucks off an assembly line, she thought with an inner grimace.

  Okay, so she was curious. She and Jack had done more eating and dancing than talking the night of the Blowout. Unfortunately, the dancing had ended abruptly when she’d pulled out of his arms, and the talking never quite resumed after that.

  Even more to the point, this suited executive bore so little resemblance to the lean-hipped rigger who’d driven up to...and away from...her house that night that she felt just a bit off balance. Or maybe it was the way his eyes cut into her tonight, as though he were seeing someone he, too, found totally different.

  Jack’s reply banished the odd notion. His voice was easy, his answer relaxed. “I went up to check out a leak in one of our pipelines.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Our people had it contained, but we’re testing some new microbe absorbents. I wanted to see how well the little critters gobbled up the spill.”

  As he related the details of his trip, Jack felt the tension in the muscles at the back of his neck imperceptibly ease. If Sabrina was pumping him for information, she was about as subtle as a steel bit augering through solid rock. He couldn’t convince himself that she was playing the same dangerous game he and Trey had played for so many years.

  Dammit, he’d lived parts of his life in the shadows for so long he was starting to see ghosts where there were none. Unless his instincts had taken a serious wrong turn in the past few days, the woman sitting opposite him had nothing to do with the attack by the two supposed drunks. Or with the rumors starting to surface about Ali’s visit to the United States. What’s more, Sabrina had disclosed a legitimate reason for coming into the city today, if not into the Wentworth Building.

  That Jack ascribed to the same chemistry that had kept his nerves doing their own version of a two-step since the moment he’d laid eyes on her. The dance tempo picked up considerably each time his gaze drifted to the curve of her breasts displayed so enticingly by that invitation to sin she was wearing.

  By the time their dinner arrived, Jack had forced himself to fully relax. Watching Sabrina demolish her dinner helped the process considerably. She didn’t play coy when it came to food, he noted with the first hint of real amusement since Trey’s phone call. If he remembered correctly, she’d packed away as many ribs as he had the night of the Blowout. She dug into her prime rib with the same unabashed appreciation.

  Carving the two-inch thick slab of aged beef with the skill of someone who knew her way around a sharp knife, she savored each morsel. Jack, in turn, found himself savoring the laughter that came into her eyes when the talk turned from oil-gobbling microbes to the OSU Cowboy’s chances for another winning season, to family in general and siblings in particular.

  “Mine lives in Oklahoma City,” Sabrina told him between bites of prime rib, reinforcing the information Jack had already received. “We’re twins, but it’s hard to believe we erupted from the same gene pool.”

  “Let me guess. She isn’t into Woody Guthrie and old neon signs.”

  Her eyes lit with a combination of exasperation and love. “Rachel isn’t into anything that lasts longer than a coat of nail polish, including but not limited to jobs, residences and men.”

  “Sounds a lot like my younger brother, Michael,” Jack said dryly. “He claims he likes to keep his options open.”

  “That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.”

  She pushed the remainder of the prime rib around on her plate. There wasn’t enough left for two ticks to make a meal of.

  “Rachel and I pretty much grew up on the road with our dad. She still has road tar in her blood.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Nope. I’m happy right where I am, up to my elbows in onion burgers. I’ll be even happier when I finish my degree and take over the diner from Hank.”

  “The first in your chain of Route 66 eateries stretching from Chicago to Santa Monica.”

  “Or at least from Tulsa to Oklahoma City,” she replied, grinning.

  “Speaking of which, I saw something today that might interest you.” Jack leaned forward, offering the treat he’d been saving for the right moment. “One of the long-term leases I looked at this afternoon includes a dilapidated old motel on the property. It’s vintage thirties, on a stretch of broken asphalt that used to be the Mother Road. The owner wants us to bulldoze the buildings and clean up the land as part of a package deal.”

  “Oh, no! What a shame we can’t save old landmarks like that!”

  “From what I saw, this one’s gone well beyond saving. I’d guess that the roofs caved in on most of the cabins two decades ago. But I can put you in touch with the owner if you want to root around for any salvageable items before we plow the place down.”

  She sat up straight, her face alive with the thrill of the hunt. “Would you?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow with the information.”

  He should have known her prickly pride would kick in.

  “Make sure the owner understands I’m willing to pay for anything I find.”
<
br />   “He’d probably pay you to cart it off..”

  “I don’t want any favors,” she insisted stubbornly. “I’ll negotiate with him for any bits and pieces I salvage.”

  Jack lifted both palms, conceding the point, and settled back to watch as she polished off the last of her dinner A few moments later she sat back with another sigh, this one of utter repletion.

  While the waiter poured coffee, her glance roamed the dining room. It had filled in the past hour. The hum of conversations that had carried from the boardroom to the bar to the table rose above rattling cutlery and the clink of ice against glass.

  Her eyes grew thoughtful. Determination settled like a mask over her features as she sipped her coffee and took in the power deals being brokered all around her. For a moment, Jack caught a remarkable resemblance between Sabrina of the creamy skin and silky hair and the gruff, irreverent, irascible old pirate who was his grandfather.

  They’d get along, he thought with a hitch in his gut. Like Sabrina, Joseph Wentworth had decided to put his roots down in Oklahoma soil. In Joseph’s case, that soil had subsequently oozed black. The old man had lived, breathed and slept the oil and gas business for sixty years. He’d never understood his grandson’s restlessness, had roared like a lion with a thorn stuck in its gums when Jack had decided on a stint in the navy after graduating from college. Nor did he know about the secret, often dangerous tasks Jack now performed for the government. He sure as hell wouldn’t be happy about them if he did.

  Sabrina wouldn’t understand the hidden slice of his life either, Jack suspected. Unlike her twin, she craved stability. Security. Something to anchor her firmly in the world she intended to create for herself.

  She’d build her string of diners. Jack didn’t have any doubt. Like his grandfather, she knew exactly what she wanted and was going after it. He was just making a mental note to quietly grease the financial skids for her when she took a final sip from her coffee cup and brought her gaze back to his.

  “Thanks for dinner, Jack, and for the chance to rub elbows with the movers and the shakers. If I want to join your ranks, I’d better hit the road, then hit the books. I’ve got an early class tomorrow.”