Bound by Honor: Mercenary's Woman

“I don’t give them anymore,” he returned. “But I do give advice, and you’ve just seen the results of not listening. At least you had the sense to leave a message on my answering machine. But what if I hadn’t checked my messages, Sally? Would you like to think where you’d be now? Want me to paint you a picture?”

“Stop!” She put her face in her hands and shivered.

“I won’t apologize,” he told her abruptly. “You did a damned stupid thing and you got off lucky. Another time, I might not be quick enough.”

She swallowed and swallowed again. “The…conquering male,” she choked, but she wasn’t teasing now, as she had been that afternoon when he’d told her to get the tire fixed.

He drew her hands away from her face and looked into her eyes steadily. “That’s right,” he said curtly, and he wasn’t kidding. “I’ve been dealing with vermin like that for almost half my life. I told you there was danger in going out alone. Now you understand what I meant. Get that damned tire fixed, and buy a cell phone.”

Her head was spinning. “I can’t afford one,” she said unsteadily.

“You can’t afford not to. If you’d had one tonight, this might never have happened,” he said forcefully. The heat in his eyes made her shiver. “A man is physically stronger than a woman. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, that’s the honest truth. Unless you’ve trained for years, like a policewoman or a federal agent, you’re not going to be the equal of a man who’s drunk or on drugs or just bent on assault. Law enforcement people know how to fight. You don’t.”

She shivered again. Her hair was disheveled. She felt bruises on her arms where she’d been restrained by those men. She was still stunned by the experience, but already a little of the horror of what might have happened was getting to her.

He let her wrists go abruptly. His lean face softened as he studied her. “But I’ll say one thing for you. You’ve got grit.”

“Sure. I’m tough,” she laughed hollowly, brushing a strand of loose hair out of her eyes. “What a pitiful waste of self-confidence!”

“Who the hell taught you about canned self-defense?” he asked curiously, referring to the can of spray on the ground.

“There was this television self-defense training course for women,” she said defensively.

“Anything you spray, pepper or chemical, can rebound on you,” he said quietly. “If the wind’s blowing the wrong way, you can blind yourself. If you don’t hit the attacker squarely in the eyes, you’re no better off, either. As for the whistle, tonight there would have been no one close enough to hear it.” He sighed at her miserable expression and shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you to run?”

She lifted a high-heeled foot eloquently.

He leaned closer. “If you’re ever in a similar situation again, kick them off and try for the two-minute mile!”

She managed a smile for him. “Okay.”

He touched her wan, drawn face gently. “I wouldn’t have had that happen to you for the world,” he said bitterly.

“You were right, I brought it on myself. I won’t make that mistake again, and at least I got away with everything except my pride intact,” she said gamely.

He unfastened her seat belt, aware of a curtain being lifted and then released in the living room. “I sent Dallas straight here as soon as I got the message,” he explained, “to watch out for Jess and Stevie. You should have let me know about this night meeting much sooner.”

“I know.” She was fighting tears. The whole experience had been a shock that she knew she’d never get over. “There was a third man, on the porch. He said that Lopez wouldn’t like what they were doing, calling attention to themselves.”

He stared at her for a long moment, seeing the fear and terror and revulsion that lingered in her oval face, watching the way her hands clenched at the shirt he’d fastened over her torn bodice. He glanced at the window, where the curtain was in place again, and back to Sally’s face.

“Come here, sweetheart,” he said tenderly, pulling her into his arms. He cuddled her close, nuzzling his face into her throat, letting her cry.

Her clenched fist rested against his black undershirt and she sobbed with impotent fury. “Oh, I’m so…mad!” she choked. “So mad! I felt like a rag doll.”

“You do your best and take what comes,” he said at her ear. “Anybody can lose a fight.”

“I’ll bet you never lost one,” she muttered tearfully.

“I got the hell beaten out of me in boot camp by a little guy half my size, who was a hapkido master. Taught me a valuable lesson about overconfidence,” he said deliberately.

She took the handkerchief he placed in her hands and wiped her nose and eyes and mouth. “Okay, I get the message,” she said on a broken sigh. “There’s always somebody bigger and you can’t win every time.”

“Nice attitude,” he said, approving.

She wiped away the last trace of tears and looked up at him from her comfortable position across his lap. “Thanks for the hero stuff.”

He shrugged. “Shucks, ma’am, t’weren’t nothin’.”

She laughed, as she was meant to. Her eyes adored him. “They say that if you save a life, it becomes yours.”

His lips pursed and he looked down at where the jacket barely covered her torn blouse. “Do I get that, too?”

“Too?”

He opened the shirt very slowly and looked at the pale flesh under the torn blouse. There was a lot of it on view. Sally didn’t protest, didn’t grab at cover. She lay very still in his arms and let him look at her.

His pale eyes met hers in the faint light coming from the house. “No protest?”

“You saved me,” she said simply. She sighed and smiled with resignation. “I belonged to you, anyway. There’s never been anyone else.”

His long, lean fingers touched her collarbone, his eyes narrow and solemn, his expression serious, intent. “That could have changed, tonight,” he reminded her quietly. “You have to trust me enough to do what I tell you. I don’t want you hurt in this. I’ll do anything I have to, to protect you. That includes having a man follow you around like a visible appendage if you push me to it. Think what your principal would make of that!”

“I won’t make any more stupid mistakes,” she promised.

“What would you call this?” he mused, nodding toward the ripped fabric that left one pretty, taut breast completely bare.

“Cover me up if you don’t like what you see,” she challenged.

He actually laughed. She was constantly surprising him. “I think I’d better,” he murmured dryly, and pulled the shirt back over her, leaving her to button it again. “Dallas is at the window getting an education.”

“And I can tell how much he needs it,” she said with dry humor as Eb helped her back into her own seat.

“That makes two of you,” Eb told her. His eyes were kind, and now full of concern. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes.” She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob. “Eb, is it always like that?”

He frowned. “What?”

She looked up into his eyes. “Physical violence. Do you ever get to the point that it doesn’t make you sick inside?”

“I never have,” he said flatly. “I remember every face, every sound, every sick minute of what I’ve done in my life.” He looked at her, but he seemed to go far away. “You’d better go inside. I’ll take you and Stevie out to the ranch Thursday and Saturday and we’ll put in some more time.”

“For all the good it will do me,” she managed to say nervously.

“Don’t be like that,” he chided. “You got overpowered. People do, even ‘big, strong’ men. There’s no shame in losing a fight when you’ve given it all you’ve got.”

She smiled. “Think so?”