Jack gritted his teeth and somehow got through the nightmare of wrapping up Dennis Carmichael’s involvement in the smuggling cartel. Quietly buried without the usual ceremony attending the funeral of an agent killed in the line of duty, Carmichael left behind a stunned wife and two sons—both of whom were border patrol agents stationed in Del Rio.
Then there was Warner’s indictment. Conducted in an Eagle Pass courtroom by a Mexican-American judge who showed every sign of throwing the book at the sneering, buttoned-down Anglo executive, the tension could have been cut and spread on toast.
Jack was left with a crushing two-day headache and a throbbing shoulder and arm.
A week later, he was back in Dallas at INS Headquarters, meeting with his temporary OIC. Vernon Rook had been awarded a promotion, but was still on leave recovering from his head wound. Supervisory Agent Gil Watson had been charged with debriefing and reassigning Jack.
Jack checked his watch, impatient for Watson to get off the phone and release him to go back to El Paso sector.
Is that what you really want, Torres? To go back to the same-old-same-old?
“No, Linda, I’m not smoking. Goodbye. I love you, too.” Watson’s phone clattered into its cradle as he looked with longing at a cigar box on his desk. “All right, Torres. Let’s have us a little powwow.” He picked up a cup of coffee and slurped it, eyeing Jack across the top of the mug. “You’re not lookin’ so hot, kid. General consensus is you need to take a few weeks off and reevaluate your career.”
“Reevaluate—” Jack sat up. “Am I being fired?”
Watson choked on his coffee. “Fired? Are you crazy, boy? You just brought down one of the most influential smuggling rings in Texas border patrol history. Besides the illegals, these guys have been runnin’ guns and coke and more stuff than you can imagine across the border. That’s why they were so upset when you crashed their little party. The big dogs want you in Washington to spearhead a task force for smokin’ out conglomerate smugglers and eliminating ’em at the root.”
Speechless, Jack stared at Watson. “Huh. Washington,” he finally muttered. His long-term career goal was being handed to him about twenty years earlier than expected. Dressing in a suit every day, regular hours, probably a nice apartment and educated co-workers.
A place to settle down with the love of your life.
Who just happened to be a Texas bluebonnet with a family so tight she couldn’t go a week without having dinner with them.
Watson set down his coffee and picked up a cigar. “Now keep in mind, Torres, you’re due for some serious trauma counseling and evaluation. And your testimony is gonna be critical in wrapping up this thing here in Dallas. Plan on sticking around awhile, get your head together and be available to testify.” Watson looked at the cigar and stuck it in his mouth without lighting it. “You got a wife, Torres? No? Well, look for one who won’t try to run your life for you.”
With little fanfare, a bus marked “Immigration Detention and Deportation” pulled out of the Euless border patrol station on the first Friday in August.
“They’ll be home by tomorrow morning.” Jack touched Benny’s shoulder. The two of them stood in the middle of the parking lot after putting the Herrera family on the bus. After testifying, Manny had decided to quietly accompany his wife and children back to Mexico. Tomás and Diego were gone as well.
Benny blinked a couple of times before looking at Jack. “You should have let me tell Meg they were leaving,” she said. “She’ll be really upset that she didn’t get to say goodbye to Tomás.”
Jack looked away. “She’ll get over it.”
Benny gave him a pensive look. “You are such a pollo,” she said conversationally.
Jack laughed. “How do you figure?”
“You’re going to ride off in the sunset and let her think she wasn’t good enough for you.”
“It’s the other way around, and you know it.” He shrugged, easing the ache in his shoulder by supporting the weight of his cast with his good hand. “If she asks, you can tell her I said so.”
Benny gave Jack an annoyed look. “I’m not telling her any such thing, you big baby.” She sighed. “I admit, at first I thought you were the last thing Meg needed. But I’ve watched you grow this summer, and come through some terrible things like a champion. When you showed up here today, I knew the Lord had gotten a serious hold on your life.” She paused, then demanded, “Hasn’t He?”
Jack grinned at Meg’s drill sergeant/beauty queen roommate. “Yes, ma’am. He has.”
“Well, then, if you can trust Him with Your life, don’t you think you can trust Him with Meg’s? What exactly are you afraid of?”
Jack’s grin faded. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Benny snorted.
Jack looked away, squirming. “Okay, well, I’m having a hard time picturing her choosing me over her family. And she just got that promotion she’s been working for all summer.”
He stood there with the sun beating down on his head, feet sticking to the melting asphalt, and Meg’s genius roommate parsing him like a badly constructed sentence. Man, it was time to get out of this city.
“Jack, look at me.”
He did and found warm compassion in Benny’s dark eyes. “If anybody understands feeling unworthy, it’s me. I grew up in foster care just like you did, and I was a prostitute by the time I was fourteen.”
Jack could only stare at her with his mouth ajar. “No way.”
“Uh-huh. It took me a long time to be able to believe it when somebody said they loved me.”
“Meg never said she loves me,” he muttered.
“Oh, she’s said it all right, in everything she’s done since she met you. I’m telling you, if you want to be a man, you better give her a chance to say it in words.”
On the morning of the “Wedding of the Century,” as the Fort Worth Star-Telegram termed the impending nuptials of Miss Rosalee Ashton Grover-Niles, Meg was on the way home from picking up her formal from the dry cleaners when she decided to take a detour. Still dressed in cut-offs and T-shirt, she drove out to Silver Hill and parked in the center of the carriageway, then got out and climbed into the bed of the pickup for a survey of her handiwork.
Silver Hill was exquisite in its late summer finery. Her new crew wasn’t as efficient as the old one, but they’d still managed to finish most of the details to her satisfaction.
If she couldn’t have her own wedding, she was determined to make Rosalee’s as close to perfect as possible.
The sprinklers were still going, one on either side of the drive, sending a soothing, undulating shooshing sound into the quiet morning. Meg frowned. The one on the left looked like it was hitting the side of the carriage house instead of the lacy blossoms of the oak leaf hydrangea on the corner.
She was about to jump to the ground and move the sprinkler when the raucous sound of a motorcycle from a nearby side street cut into the peaceful scene. She paused with one foot on the side of the truck bed.
Motorcycles were an oddity in this part of town. Heart thumping, she moved to the tailgate of the truck, watching the curve around which the motorcycle would appear. She hadn’t heard a word from Jack in nearly three weeks. It seemed inconceivable that he would have left town without saying goodbye, but she wasn’t going to throw herself at him. He’d hurt her enough already.
The motorcycle roared around the street corner. It was a Harley the same color as Jack’s, and it turned into the carriageway.
But its rider wore light-gray dress slacks, a short-sleeved silky black shirt and a tie. And there was no thick black ponytail at the back of his neck. Disappointed, Meg put her hands in her pockets and waited.
The helmet came off, and a bunch of startled butterflies took flight in Meg’s stomach. This guy looked like Jack, but in an alternate universe sort of way. His dark hair was cut short around the ears, textured and slightly wavy at the top. Not one earring or whisker in sight.
He slung his neatly pressed pants leg across the bike and smiled at her.
Ah, there he was. My Jack.
Panic set in. “Did you say hi to the aliens for me?”
“What aliens?” Jack’s smile disappeared.
“The ones who abducted you and held you hostage,” she said patiently. “I assume that’s why you disappeared without even saying ‘I’ll be back.’” Her Schwarzenegger accent was getting better all the time. She was going to have to take it on the road.
Jack had the grace to wince. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Sure, I like having people tell me to go away.”
Meg was enjoying the feeling of superiority that came from talking to the top of Jack’s head, but that sprinkler was driving her crazy. She jumped to the ground, waited until it slung its spray away from her, then dodged in to adjust it.
Jack got off the motorcycle and approached, keeping a wary eye on the water hose. She turned around and watched him standing there looking sexy and classy and endearingly familiar. She glanced at her beautiful black formal hanging in the truck, then looked down at her grubby knees and the grass clippings that stuck to her socks. Ugh.
She supposed she could at least be civil. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Healing.” He lifted his sleeve, showing the edge of the bandage. “They took the cast off. Want to see?”
“Sure.” She sauntered toward him as if her stomach weren’t doing handsprings. She got close enough to smell the subtle spice of him and stopped. “Well, maybe not. Why’d you cut your hair?”
“So your father wouldn’t throw me out of the house when I asked him for the favor of his daughter’s hand in marriage.”
“So my—what?”
He suddenly looked insecure. “Well, he struck me as the kind of guy who’d appreciate the old-fashioned effort. He took it pretty well, all things considered.”
“Wait just a minute.” Meg took an ill-considered step backward and felt a wave of water swipe her across the back of her legs. “Yow!” She leapt to the side. “Jack, are you telling me you’ve talked to my dad about—” She stopped. Maybe she’d misunderstood.
He nodded. “I wanted to make sure your parents know I’m a straight-up guy with a good job. By the way, I just got a promotion.”
Meg had the unstable feeling of having a rug yanked out from under her feet. “Okay. And just when did this interview take place?”
“Last night.”
“And my mother was there?”
“Well, yeah. That was sort of the whole point.”
“And she didn’t say one word to me when she called this morning—” Meg put her hands to her hair. “She let me dress like an extra from The Dukes of Hazzard, knowing you were coming over here looking like a movie star—”
“A movie star? Really?” Jack’s face lit, and she almost forgot about the last few miserable weeks.
Then she remembered just how unfair this whole setup was. She slowly began to walk backward until she was right in front of the sprinkler, letting the water splash the backs of her legs, zoom over her head, and whirl away again.
“If you want me, come and get me,” she said.
Jack watched the sprinkler shoosh its way back around to fling water over Meg’s shoulder. “You are so low.” But he took off his shoes and socks, leaving them on the sidewalk.
Meg smiled. “I figure you’re better off knowing exactly what you’re getting into.”
“Oh, believe me, I counted the cost,” Jack said. “Do you know how much this shirt set me back?”
“About a week’s salary, I would say.” Meg grinned as water began to drip down her face. He was stalking toward her, with that intense, bad-to-the-bone look on his face, and her heart whirled around like the sprinkler. His shirt and pants were dark with wet splotches, but he kept coming. She danced out of his reach, arms flung wide, skipping in a circle that kept him in the middle of the spray.
He followed. “When I catch you, you’re going to be sorry.”
“I don’t think so.”
He suddenly jumped across the sprinkler head, snatching her to him, water pelting them both up the middle. “You’re it,” he said, and kissed her.
A few minutes later, they came up for air. “You can do that again if you want to,” Meg said breathlessly.
He started to, then put his hand across her mouth as though removing temptation. “Wait a minute. There’s something you have to do first.”
“What’s that?” she mumbled.
“You haven’t said it yet.”
“Said what?”
“You know what.”
“Oh.” Yes, she knew what. She moved his hand. “Why don’t you say it first?”
“I love you, Meg.”
“Jack, how many languages do you speak?”
“Four. Why?”
“I want one in each language, then I’ll say it. One down, three to go.”
“No fair.”
“If you want fair, go pester some other girl.”
“I think what we have here is a Mexican standoff.”
“Oh, you are so funny.”
Suddenly Jack pulled her close again and put his mouth next to her ear. “Okay, you want French?” he whispered. “Je t’adore. Spanish? Te quiero tanto. Italian? Ti amo, il mio inamorata.”
Meg’s knees were weak by this time. She went limp in Jack’s arms. “Oh. My. Goodness.”
“You want to translate that?” he said, a pleased smile curling his lips.
“You know I love you.”
“I thought so.” Jack sighed and kissed her again.
Look for the next book in
THE TEXAS GATEKEEPERS series,
SOUNDS OF SILENCE,
in December,
only from Elizabeth White
and Love Inspired Suspense!