Diana Palmer - Bound by Honor - Mercenary's Woman

He was surprised by her matter-of-fact manner. He’d wondered for years how she might react when she learned about what he did for a living. He’d expected everything from revulsion to shock, especially when he remembered how his former fiancée had reacted to the news. But Sally wasn’t squeamish or judgmental.

He’d seen her hand jerk back and it had wounded him. But now, on hearing her opinion of his work, his heart lifted. “I didn’t expect you to credit me with noble motives.”

“They are, though, aren’t they?” she asked confidently.

“As a matter of fact, in my case, they are,” he replied. “Even in my green days, I never did it just for the money. I had to believe in what I was risking my life for.”

She grinned. “I thought maybe it was like on television,” she confessed. “But Jess said it was nothing like fiction.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he mused. “Parts of it are.”

“Such as?”

“We had a guy like ‘B.A. Barrabas’ in one unit I led,” he said. “We really did have to knock him out to get him on a plane. But he quit the group before we got inventive.”

She laughed. “Too bad. You’d have had plenty of stories to tell about him.”

He was quiet for a moment, studying her.

“Do I have a zit on my nose?” she asked pleasantly.

He reached out and caught the hand she’d started to lift toward him earlier and kissed its soft palm. “Let’s get to work,” he said, pulling her along to the mat. “I’ll change into my sweats and we’ll cover the basics. We won’t have a lot of time,” he added dryly. “I expect Jess to call very soon with an ultimatum about Dallas.”

JESS AND DALLAS HAD SQUARED OFF, in fact, the minute they heard the truck crank and pull out of the yard.

Dallas glared at her from his superior height, leaning heavily on his cane. He wished she could see him, because his eyes were full of anger and bitterness.

“Did you think I wouldn’t see that Stevie is the living image of me? My son,” he growled at her. “You had my son! And you lied to me about it and wouldn’t ask Hank for a divorce!”

“I couldn’t!” she exclaimed. “For heaven’s sake, he adored me. He’d never have cheated on me. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’d had an affair with his best friend!”

“I could have told him,” he returned furiously. “He was no angel, Jess, despite the wings you’re trying to paint on him. Or do you think he never strayed on those overseas jaunts?” he chided.

She stiffened. “That’s not true!”

“It is true!” he replied angrily. “He knew he couldn’t get anybody pregnant, and he was sure you’d never find out.”

She put a hand to her head. She’d never dreamed that Hank had cheated on her. She’d felt so guilty, when all the time, he was doing the same thing—and then judging her brutally for what she’d done. “I didn’t know,” she said miserably.

“Would it have made a difference?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it would have.” She smoothed the dress over her legs. “You thought Stevie was yours from the beginning, didn’t you?”

“No. I didn’t know Hank was sterile until later on. You told me the child was Hank’s and I believed you. Hell, by then, I couldn’t even be sure that it was his.”

“You didn’t think—” She stopped abruptly. “Oh, dear God, you thought you were one in a line?” she exploded, horrified. “You thought I ran around on Hank with any man who asked me?”

“I knew very little about you except that you knocked me sideways,” he said flatly. “I knew Hank ran around on you. I assumed you were allowed the same freedom.” He turned away and walked to the window, staring out at the flat horizon. “I asked you to divorce Hank just to see what you’d say. It was exactly what I expected. You had it made—a husband who tolerated your unfaithfulness, and no danger of falling in love.”

“I thought I had a good marriage until you came along,” she said bitterly.

He turned, his eyes blazing. “Don’t make it sound cheap, Jess,” he said harshly. “Neither of us could stop that night. Neither of us tried.”

She put her face in her hands and shivered. The memory of how it had been could still reduce her to tears. She’d been in love for the first time in her life, but not with her husband. This man had haunted her ever since. Stevie was the mirror image of him.

“I was so ashamed,” she choked. “I betrayed Hank. I betrayed everything I believed in about loyalty and duty and honor. I felt like a Saturday night special at the bordello afterward.”

He scowled. “I never treated you that way,” he said harshly.

“Of course you didn’t!” she said miserably, wiping at tears. “But I was raised to believe that people got married and never cheated on each other. I was a virgin when I married Hank, and nobody in my whole family was ever divorced until Sally’s father, my brother, was.” She shook her head, oblivious to the expression that washed over Dallas’s hard, lean face. “My parents were happily married for fifty years before they died.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t work,” he said flatly, but in a less hostile tone. “That’s nobody’s fault.”

She smoothed back her short hair and quickly wiped away the tears. “Maybe not.”

He moved back toward her and sat down in a chair across from hers, putting the cane down on the floor. He leaned forward with a hard sigh and looked at Jessica’s pale, wan face with bitterness while he tried to find the words.

She heard the cane as he placed it on the floor. “Eb said you were badly hurt overseas,” she said softly, wishing with all her heart that she could see him. “Are you all right?”

That husky softness in her tone, that exquisite concern, was almost too much for him. He grasped her slender hands in his and held them tightly. “I’m better off than you seem to be,” he said heavily. “What a hell of a price we paid for that night, Jess.”

She felt the hot sting of tears. “It was very high,” she had to admit. She reached out hesitantly to find his face. Her fingers traced it gently, finding the new scars, the new hardness of its elegant lines. “Stevie looks like you,” she said softly, her unseeing eyes so full of emotion that he couldn’t bear to look into them.

“Yes.”

She searched her darkness with anguish for a face she would never see again. “Don’t be bitter,” she pleaded. “Please don’t hate me.”

He pulled her hand away as if it scalded him. “I’ve done little else for the past five years,” he said flatly. “But maybe you’re right. All the rage in the world won’t change the past.” He let go of her hand. “We have to pick up the pieces and go on.”

She hesitated. “Can we at least be friends?”

He laughed coldly. “Is that what you want?”

She nodded. “Eb says you’ve given up overseas assignments and that you’re working for him. I want you to get to know Stevie,” she added quietly. “Just in case…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop it!” he exploded, rising awkwardly from the chair with the help of the cane. “Lopez won’t get you. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you.”

She leaned back in her chair without replying. They both knew that Lopez had contacts everywhere and that he never gave up. If he wanted her dead, he could get her. She didn’t want her child left alone in the world.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” Dallas said tautly, refusing to think about the possibility of a world without her in it. “What do you take in yours?”

“I don’t care,” she said indifferently.

He didn’t say another word. He went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee while Jessica sat stiffly in her own living room and contemplated the direction her life had taken.