The Borrowed Ring

“You still haven't answered my questions,” she prodded gruffly.

Another brief hesitation and then he said, “I can't tell you much. Only that you've stumbled into a very complicated situation—as I assume you've figured out for yourself.”

“Go on.”

“Judson Drake thinks I have a wealthy wife back in Texas. He invited me to bring her along on this trip, but I had a convenient excuse to explain her absence. When you showed up at the farm, asking for me by name when no one should have known I was there—and asking with a very obvious Texas twang, by the way—Bernard put two and two together. I admit he isn't the sharpest thorn on the rosebush, but even he can handle that level of mathematics.”

“So why didn't you tell him that I'm not your wife? As clever as you are,” she said, adding an extra helping of sarcasm to her “Texas twang,” “you should have been able to come up with some sort of explanation for my arrival. Say, oh, the truth, for example.”

“Wouldn't have worked. My background, according to what Drake has been told, is one of upper-middleclass comfort. Private schools, public college, fortuitous marriage to a woman with money. Nowhere in that story is a mention of foster care. The truth about how I know you could have blown everything.”

“So the wife is as fictional as your upper-middle-class background?”

His face expressionless again, he nodded.

“Why have you told them these things?”

“I can't go into that right now.”

“You expect me to simply accept what you've told me and go along with this charade for the next two or three days?”

“I wish I could say you have the option of saying no. Unfortunately you don't. These are dangerous people, Brittany—”

“B.J.”

“Sorry. B.J. These men will not accept a change in my story now. One hint that I've tried to deceive them, and you and I will both quietly disappear. That's how they operate.”

“Then why are you here?”

He took a sip of his soda before saying, “There's a great deal of money involved for anyone who is clever enough to get a piece of it.”

“Money?” She stared at him with narrowed eyes. “You're doing this for money?”

He shrugged and drained the remainder of his soda.

B.J. set her water aside. She simply didn't know whether she could believe a word he said.

She had thought he might try to tell her he was an undercover operative for some branch of law enforcement. Would that have been any easier for her to believe? And if so, would it have been because she wanted to think Daniel was on the right side of the law?

“So what you're telling me,” she said slowly, “is that you're running some sort of scam on some very dangerous men. And I'm stuck helping you pull it off because I accidentally arrived at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“That pretty well sums it up.”

“If I refuse, I might just 'quietly disappear.' And if I agree, I could end up making some big mistake, and then we'll still end up dead.”

“You won't make a mistake. All you have to do is remember a few details I'll tell you before we go out again.”

“And what do I tell my family when I call them?”

“You can't call them. I don't trust either the land lines or the airwaves here. Either one could be monitored.”

She shook her head. “You're going to have to figure out some way to let me call. Unless you want my uncles arriving in the middle of your big plan, of course.”

Which didn't sound like such a bad idea to her, actually.

“How would they know where to find you? You didn't have time to call anyone when we left.”

“For that matter, I don't know where we are exactly,” she admitted. “But I wouldn't be particularly surprised if my uncles track me down within twenty-four hours. You do remember who they are, don't you?”

He frowned. “I'm well aware that your uncle Jared is a rancher, since I spent nearly a year living with his family.”

“And my uncles Tony, Joe and Ryan are private investigators. Very good ones. And very protective of all their family members—even one who is on their payroll. Me.”

“You work for the D'Alessandro and Walker agency?”

“So you do remember them.”

“Vaguely. It seemed like your family found an excuse nearly every week to have some sort of party at the ranch. I couldn't help but remember a few details about them.”

“Then you should also recall that we're an extremely close family.” Almost suffocatingly close sometimes, she almost added. “They'll start looking.”

“You can send them an e-mail,” he said after a moment. “I have a small computer in my luggage. You can use that. Don't keep a copy.”

“And what should it say?” she asked.

“That you've decided you need a few days of vacation and they don't need to worry about you. You're twenty-seven years old. You don't have to ask permission to take a few days off, do you?”

He remembered an awful lot about her. Of course, she knew he was twenty-nine, because he was two years older than she, almost to the day.

“It's not something I've done before. Take off on impulse, I mean.” Even though she had often wished she could.

“Then it's about time you did, wouldn't you say?”

“Maybe. But this wouldn't exactly be my first choice of vacations.”

“Yeah?” Looking more masculine than he should have against the froufrou fabric, he stretched an arm along the back of the sofa. “So what would be your first choice?”

“Well…I don't know. I haven't really thought about slipping off on my own.”

His beautifully shaped lips curved into a very slight smile. “Liar.”

Okay, so maybe she had indulged in a few daydreams lately about getting away from the usual routines. “I guess I've thought about it once or twice,” she muttered.

“To where?”

“Anywhere. I've hardly been out of Texas. I've always wanted to go someplace really different and exotic—like—like Singapore. Or Hong Kong. Or Bali.”

And then she shook her head impatiently. “Darn it, you're doing it again. Distracting me from the questions you don't want to answer.”