Diana Palmer - Bound by Honor - Mercenary's Woman

“I’ll do anything I have to, to protect you and Stevie,” Sally agreed at once.

“I knew you would.”

She toyed with her nails again. “Jess, has Ebenezer ever been serious about anyone?”

“Yes. There was a woman in Houston, in fact, several years ago. He cared for her very much, but she dropped him flat when she found out what he did for a living. She married a much-older bank executive.” She shifted on the bed. “I hear that she’s widowed now. But I don’t imagine he still has any feelings for her. After all, she dropped him, not the reverse.”

Sally, who knew something about helpless unrequited love, wasn’t so quick to agree. After all, she still had secret feelings for Ebenezer…

“Deep thoughts, dear?” Jessica asked softly.

“I was remembering the reruns we used to see of that old TV series, The A-Team,” she recalled with an audible laugh. “I loved it when they had to knock out that character Mr. T played to get him on an airplane.”

“It was a good show. Not lifelike, of course,” Jessica added.

“What part?”

“All of it.”

Jessica would probably know, Sally figured. “Why didn’t you ever tell me what you did for a living?”

“Need to know,” came the dry reply. “You didn’t, until now.”

“If you knew Ebenezer when he was still working as a mercenary, I guess you learned a lot about the business,” she ventured.

Jessica’s face closed up. “I learned too much,” she said coldly. “Far too much. Men like that are incapable of lasting relationships. They don’t know the meaning of love or fidelity.”

She seemed to know that, and Sally wondered how. “Was Uncle Hank a mercenary, too?”

“Yes, just briefly,” she said. “Hank was never one to rush in and risk killing himself. It was so ironic that he died overseas in his sleep, of a heart condition nobody even knew he had.”

That was a surprise, along with all the others that Jessica was getting. Uncle Hank had been very handsome, but not assertive or particularly tough.

“But Ebenezer said he served with Uncle Hank.”

“Yes. In basic training, before they joined the Green Berets,” Jessica said. “Hank didn’t pass the training course. Ebenezer did. In fact,” she added amusedly, “he was able to do the Fan Dance.”

“Fan Dance?”

“It’s a specialized course they put the British commandos, the Special Air Service, guys through. Not many soldiers, even career soldiers, are able to finish it, much less able to pass it on the first try. Eb did. He was briefly ‘loaned’ to them while he was in army intelligence, for some top secret assignment.”

Sally had never thought very much about Ebenezer’s profession, except that she’d guessed he was once in the military. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. A man who’d been in the military might still have a soft spot or two inside. She was almost certain that a commando, a soldier for hire, wouldn’t have any.

“You’re very quiet,” Jessica said.

“I never thought of Ebenezer in such a profession,” she replied, moving to look out the window at the November landscape. “I guess it was right there in front of me, and I didn’t see it. No wonder he kept to himself.”

“He still does,” she replied. “And only a few people know about his past. His men do, of course,” she added, and there was an inflection in her tone that was suddenly different.

“Do you know any of his men?”

Jessica’s face tautened. “One or two. I believe Dallas Kirk still works for him. And Micah Steele does consulting work when Eb asks him to,” she added and smiled. “Micah’s a good guy. He’s the only one of Eb’s old colleagues who still works in the trade. He lives in Nassau, but he spends an occasional week helping Ebenezer train men when he’s needed.”

“And Dallas Kirk?”

Jessica’s soft face went very hard. At her side, one of her small hands clenched. “Dallas was badly wounded in a firefight a year ago. He came home shot to pieces and Eb found something for him to teach in the tactics courses. He doesn’t speak to me, of course. We had a difficult parting some years ago.”

That was intriguing, and Sally was going to find out about it one day. But she didn’t press her luck. “How about fajitas for supper?” she asked.

Jessica’s glower dissolved into a smile. “Sounds lovely!”

“I’ll get right on them.” Sally went back into the kitchen, her head spinning with the things she’d learned about people she thought she knew. Life, she considered, was always full of surprises.

EBENEZER WAS A MAN of his word. He showed up early the next morning as Sally was out by the corral fence watching her two beef cattle graze. She’d bought them to raise with the idea of stocking her freezer. Now they had names. The white-faced Black Angus mixed steer was called Bob, the white-faced red-coated Hereford she called Andy. They were pets. She couldn’t face the thought of sitting down to a plate of either one of them.

The familiar black pickup stopped at the fence and Ebenezer got out. He was wearing jeans and a blue checked shirt with boots and a light-colored straw Stetson. No chaps, so he wasn’t working cattle today.

He joined Sally at the fence. “Don’t tell me. They’re table beef.”

She spared him a resentful glance. “Right.”

“And you’re going to put them in the freezer.”

She swallowed. “Sure.”

He only chuckled. He paused to light a cigar, with one big booted foot propped on the lower rung of the fence. “What are their names?”

“That’s Andy and that’s…Bob.” She flushed.

He didn’t say a word, but his raised eyebrow was eloquent through the haze of expelled smoke.

“They’re watch-cattle,” she improvised.

His eyes twinkled. “I beg your pardon?”

“They’re attack steers,” she said with a reluctant grin. “At the first sign of trouble, they’ll come right through the fence to protect me. Of course, if they get shot in the line of duty,” she added, “I’ll eat them!”

He pushed his Stetson back over clean blond-streaked brown hair and looked down at her with lingering amusement. “You haven’t changed much in six years.”

“Neither have you,” she retorted shyly. “You’re still smoking those awful things.”

He glanced at the big cigar and shrugged. “A man has to have a vice or two to round him out,” he pointed out. “Besides, I only have the occasional one, and never inside. I have read the studies on smoking,” he added dryly.

“Lots of people who smoke read those studies,” she agreed. “And then they quit!”

He smiled. “You can’t reform me,” he told her. “It’s a waste of time to try. I’m thirty-six and very set in my ways.”

“I noticed.”

He took a puff from the cigar and studied her steers. “I suppose they follow you around like dogs.”

“When I go inside the fence with them,” she agreed. She felt odd with him; safe and nervous and excited, all at once. She could smell the fresh scent of the soap he used, and over it a whiff of expensive cologne. He was close at her side, muscular and vibrating with sensuality. She wanted to move closer, to feel that strength all around her. It made her self-conscious. After six years, surely the attraction should have lessened a little.

He glanced down at her, noticing how she picked at her cuticles and nibbled on her lower lip. His green eyes narrowed and there was a faint glitter in them.

She felt the heat of his gaze and refused to lift her face. She wondered if it looked as hot as it felt.

“You haven’t forgotten a thing,” he said suddenly, the cigar in his hand absently falling to his side, whirls of smoke climbing into the air beside him.