Diana Palmer Collected 1-6: Soldier of Fortune / Tender Stranger / Enamored / Mystery Man / Rawhide and Lace / Unlikely Lover

“Beats me, honey.” Dick sighed.

“Here we go again,” she muttered as she cleared her desk and got her purse out of the drawer. “Last time he did this, we were off to Miami to meet a suspected mob informer in an abandoned warehouse at two o’clock in the morning. We actually got shot at!” She shuddered. “I didn’t dare tell my mama what was going on. Speaking of my mama, what am I supposed to tell her?”

“Tell her you’re going on a holiday with the boss.” He grinned. “She’ll be thrilled.”

She glared at him. “The boss doesn’t take holidays. He takes chances.”

“You could quit,” he suggested.

“Quit!” she exclaimed. “Who said anything about quitting? Can you see me working for a normal attorney? Typing boring briefs and deeds and divorce petitions all day? Bite your tongue!”

“Then may I suggest that you call James Bond,” he said, “and ask if he has any of those exploding matches or nuclear warhead toothpicks he can spare.”

She gave him a hard glare. “Do you speak any Spanish?”

“Well, no,” he said, puzzled.

She rattled off a few explicit phrases in the lilting tongue her father’s foreman had used with the ranch hands back during her childhood. Then, with a curtsy, she walked out the door.

Chapter Two (#ulink_0326f2c6-9771-5885-b662-03ba8d581a65)

Gabby had seen J.D. in a lot of different moods, but none of them could hold a candle to the one he was in now. He sat beside her as stiff as a board on the plane, barely aware of the cup of black coffee he held precariously in one big hand.

Worst of all was the fact that she couldn’t think of anything to say. J.D. wasn’t the kind of man you offered sympathy to. But it was hard just to sit and watch him brood without talking at all. She’d rarely heard him speak of his sister, Martina, but the tenderness with which he described her had said enough. If he loved any human being on earth, it was Martina.

“Boss…” she began uneasily.

He blinked, glancing toward her. “Well?”

She avoided that level gaze. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” Her long, slender fingers fidgeted with the skirt of the white suit she was wearing. “I know how hard it must be for you. There’s just not a lot that people can do in these kinds of situations.”

A peculiar smile touched his hard features for a moment. He swallowed a sip of coffee. “Think not?” he asked dryly.

“You aren’t serious about not contacting the authorities?” she persisted. “After all, they’ve got special teams for these sorts of things….”

He glanced down at her. The look stopped her in midsentence. “Those special teams, Darwin, they are not infallible. I can’t take risks with Martina’s life.”

“No,” she said. She stared at his hands. They were so gracefully masculine, the fingers long and tapered and as dark olive as his face, with flat nails and a sprinkling of hair, like that curling around the watch on his wrist. He had powerful hands.

“You aren’t afraid, are you?” he asked.

She glanced up. “Well, sort of,” she confessed. “I don’t really know where we’re going, do I?”

“You should be used to that by now,” he reminded her dryly.

She laughed. “I suppose so. We’ve had some adventures in the past two years.”

He lifted the coffee cup to his lips, staring at her narrowly over the rim. “Why aren’t you married?” he asked suddenly.

The question startled her. She searched for the right words. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I suppose I just haven’t bothered to get involved with anyone. Until almost four years ago, I was living in a small town in Texas. Then I came up here to work for a cousin, he died, you needed an assistant…” She laughed softly. “With all due respect, Mr. Brettman, you’re kind of a never-ending job, if you know what I mean. It just isn’t a nine-to-five thing.”

“About which,” he observed, “you’ve never once complained.”

“Who could complain?” she burst out. “I’ve been around the country and halfway across the world, I get to meet gangsters, I’ve been shot at…!”

He chuckled softly. “That’s some job description.”

“The other assistants in the building are green, simply green, with envy,” she replied smugly.

“You aren’t an assitant. You’re a paralegal. In fact,” he added after another swallow of coffee, “I’ve thought about sending you to law school. You’ve got a lot of potential.”

“Not me,” she said. “I could never get up in front of a courtroom full of people and grill witnesses like you do. Or manage such oration in a summing up.”

“You could still practice law,” he reminded her. “Corporate law, if you like. Or deal in estates and partnerships. Divorces. Land transfers. There are many areas of law that don’t require oratory.”

“I’m not sure enough that it’s what I want to do with the rest of my life,” she said.

He lifted his chin. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

He shook his head, studying the chignon, the glasses she used for close reading and now had perched on top of her head, the stylish white linen suit she was wearing, the length of her slender legs. “You don’t look it.”

“In about twenty years could you repeat that?” she asked. “By then I’ll probably appreciate it.”

“What do you want to be?” he asked, persisting as he leaned back in the seat. His vested gray silk suit emphasized the sheer size of him. He was so close she could even feel the warmth of his body, and she found it oddly disturbing.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she murmured, glancing out the window at the clouds. “A secret agent, maybe. A daring industrial spy. A flagpole sitter.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Of course, those jobs would seem very dull after working for you, boss. And do I ever get to know where we’re going?”

“To Italy, of course,” he replied.

“Yes, sir, I know that. Where in Italy?”

“Aren’t you curious, though?” he mused, lifting one shaggy eyebrow. “We’re going to Rome. To rescue my sister.”

“Yes, sir, of course we are,” she said. It was better to agree with maniacs, she told herself. He’d finally snapped. It was even predictable, considering the way he’d been pushing himself.

“Humoring me, Miss Darwin?” he asked. He leaned deliberately past her to place the now-empty coffee cup on the tray table that was open in front of her. His face was so close that she could smell the spicy cologne he wore, feel the warm, smoky scent of his breath. As his fingers left the cup, he turned his head.

That look caused her the wildest shock she’d ever felt. It was like an earth tremor that worked its way from her eyes to the tips of her toes and made them want to curl up. She hadn’t realized how vulnerable she was with him until her heart started racing and her breath strangled in her throat.

“I hesitated about taking you with me,” he said quietly. “I’d rather have left you behind. But there was no one else I could trust, and this is a very delicate situation.”

She tried to act normally. “You do realize that what you’re thinking about could get her killed?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “But not to act could get her killed quicker. You know what usually happens in these cases, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” she admitted. Her gaze moved down to his broad mouth with its lips that seemed sculpted from stone and back up again to his dark eyes. He looked different so close up.