Desperado

He caught her hand and held it tightly while he looked into her wide eyes. Abruptly he dragged her palm to his mouth and kissed it with something like desperation, burying his mouth in it. His eyes closed as he savored the softness of it.

She felt the fever in him, but didn’t understand it. He didn’t want her, not really. He never had. But he looked...tormented, somehow.

He drew her hand back to her cheek and looked at her with passion. “I hurt you every time I touch you,” he whispered harshly. “Don’t you think I know it?”

She couldn’t drag her eyes away from his. “You have nothing to give me. I know. I’ve always known.” She laughed painfully. “It doesn’t seem to matter.”

He drew her close and held her, his arms strong around her, his mouth against her hair. He took a deep breath and felt all the anger and misery of the past few years drain out of him. He laid his cheek against her dark, soft hair and closed his eyes. It was like coming home.

She held him, too, drinking in the clean, spicy scent of his muscular body as she tried valiantly to ignore the fever of passion his touch kindled. It gave her comfort, as it did him. He wasn’t an emotional person. He kept his deepest feelings hidden carefully inside. Maggie knew all about that, because she did the same thing. If people could get close to you, they could hurt you. It was a lesson Maggie and Cord had learned early in their lives. It had made them cautious about involvement.

His hand brushed the length of her hair and he smiled lazily. “I love long hair,” he murmured.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. He knew she kept it long because of him.

“We’re poison to each other. Maybe,” he began slowly, “it would be for the best if you did start over somewhere else, somewhere...far away.”

“Better for me, certainly,” she murmured huskily. Her fingers caressed his hair at the temple. “But who would take care of you if I did?” she added, her voice teasing to disguise her hunger for him.

His indrawn breath was audible, and his arms loosened, freeing her abruptly. “I don’t need taking care of!” he said shortly.

The truce was over. Just that quickly. She smiled sadly as she watched him get to his feet and move away from the bed. “Don’t pop any blood vessels over a figure of speech,” she chided. She searched his hard face quietly, savoring its nooks and crannies. Soon, she thought, it would be out of her sight forever.

“I’m through with what passes for love,” he said with cold sarcasm. “Just in case you start seeing me as a long-range project.”

“Does June know?” she asked wickedly.

He glared at her. “June is none of your business!”

Her eyebrows arched. “Excuse me! We can just forget that I barged into your hotel room and started making passionate advances toward you!” she added facetiously.

His eyes were smoldering now. “I’m leaving.”

“I noticed,” she agreed.

He got as far as the bedroom door, and then he remembered Gruber. He’d almost lost his eyes, if not his life, to the man’s vengeance. Maggie was alone and vulnerable, and Gruber had contacts here.

“I still want you out at the ranch,” he said curtly.

“Save your breath,” she said pleasantly. “I’m not going.”

“If anything should happen to you...” he began tightly, and was amazed at the fear that clenched his heart. If anything happened to her, he’d be alone in the world. He’d have no one at all.

“My, my, wouldn’t that uncomplicate your life?” she inserted pertly.

“That isn’t true,” he snapped.

“Yes, it is,” she replied. “You just don’t like admitting it. I can call the police anytime I need help, they said so on television just last night. Meanwhile, I’ll find a job as quickly as I can and light a fire out of Houston.” She smiled deliberately. “Won’t that give you a whole new lease on life? I won’t even ask you to send me a Christmas card!”

He started to speak, and he couldn’t. He just glared.

She struck a seductive pose, knowing it would infuriate him. There was no danger in enticing Cord, he was impervious. She tugged the pajama top lightly away from her long neck. “Want to ravish me before you go?” she offered with mischievous eyes. “I can call room service and get them to send up an emergency condom,” she added, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.

“Damn you!” he bit off furiously. He turned abruptly and slammed out of the door without a backward glance.

Maggie watched him go with sparkling eyes. She could always throw him off balance like that, from their earliest acquaintance. It made her proud, because even his precious Patricia had never been able to do that. It was the one weapon in her arsenal, and a great pride-saver. It was all bluff, of course. She tingled from head to toe just thinking about how it might have been if he’d taken her up on it.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1eb2a19b-9960-53b5-867e-26a2d171a9f7)

CORD’S VISIT UNSETTLED Maggie. It was several minutes before she could get herself together enough to shower and dress and go downstairs for breakfast. She had a light meal and looked up the addresses of several employment agencies in the phone book. Then she started making the rounds.

She’d just come out of the third office on her list, with no results, when she walked straight into a tall brunette she hadn’t noticed rounding a nearby corner.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Maggie exclaimed, steadying the taller woman. “I wasn’t even looking where I was...” She hesitated. The other woman was familiar. “You’re Kit Deverell!” she exclaimed, smiling broadly. “I met you and your husband at an investment seminar year before last. We’ve seen each other at several seminars since. I’m Maggie Barton.”

Kit Deverell’s eyes lit up with recognition. “Of course! You’re Cord’s foster sister.”

Maggie’s face closed up at once, defensively.

Kit grimaced. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have blurted that out. You see, my boss is Dane Lassiter, who founded the Lassiter Detective Agency here in town. He met Cord some years ago after he started the detective agency—one of his operatives was a rookie when Cord was, and knew him!”

“Yes. I’ve...heard Cord mention him once or twice, at odd times when we were speaking to each other,” she added with a grin.

“You don’t get along well, do you?” Kit asked sympathetically. “I shouldn’t have mentioned Cord. What are you doing at an employment agency, for heaven’s sake?” she added. “You’re vice president at Kemp’s Investment Agency, aren’t you?”

Maggie nodded. “I was. I gave it up to take a job in Qawi. But it didn’t pan out,” she summarized, avoiding the reason. “Now I’m out of work.”

“But Logan’s got an opening in his investment firm,” Kit continued, chuckling. “Isn’t that fate at work? Really, his partner quit and went to work over in Victoria. He’s pulling out his hair trying to manage all the accounts by himself. Please come and interview,” she added, tugging at Maggie’s arm. “He’s got me doing stock research in my spare time, and I hate it! I work for Lassiter as a skip tracer, you see. I had to fight Logan, but it’s not dangerous work and we have a really good babysitter for our son, Bryce. Logan’s brother’s wife, Della, is pregnant and unable to work because of complications. You’d be saving my life if you could take some of the strain off. Would you? Please?”

Maggie laughed with pure delight. “If there’s a job going, I’d love to interview. Actually I sort of had in mind a position that would get me out of the country. But perhaps I can take the job temporarily, while your husband looks for someone permanent and I look for something international...”

“That would work,” Kit said with a grin. “Come on!”

* * *

MAGGIE WENT TO interview. Logan Deverell was a huge man with dark hair, not overweight, but tall and muscular. He obviously doted on his wife, and vice versa.

“You’re the answer to a prayer,” he said after they shook hands and the three of them were seated in Logan’s spacious office, his long oak desk covered with photos of Kit and a mischievous-looking little boy of about two years of age. “Tom Walker and I were partners, until he moved to Jacobsville. Then I took on another partner. He married several months ago, but he just quit and moved to Victoria, where his wife has family. She’s expecting their first child. So here I am, empty-handed and up to my neck in clients.”

Maggie chuckled. “I’m glad I happened along, then. I gave up a lucrative position to rush back here, because I heard that Cord was blinded.” She sighed and smiled self-consciously. “I had hoped to find something permanent overseas.”

“We’ll keep our ears open,” Logan promised, “if you’re serious. But meantime, how about signing on with me? You can even have your own office,” he added with a chuckle. “We acquired the suite next door. Lassiter and his people have the whole third floor. We went in together and bought the building. What we don’t use ourselves, we rent out. It pays for itself.”

“And,” Maggie pointed out, “it’s a good investment.”

He laughed out loud. “So it is.”

He outlined her duties, and her salary, and she was delighted to take the job on a temporary basis. She still wanted to get out of Houston. Living near Cord was painful now that she’d decided to burn her bridges. She’d spent enough of her life aching for a man who didn’t care about her.