Alex leaned against the dense flank of his mare and pocketed his phone, satisfied to be making progress on the case. One of his younger agents, Olivia, was almost hyper excited to be assigned to infiltrate Roseland Financing for a day or two.
She'd pretend to be the temp Danni's executive assistant had requested. Her "discovery" of a financially lucrative but shady opportunity would tell them a lot about the kind of businesswoman Danni was.
Pulling in a deep breath, Alex allowed himself a moment to let the peace of the barn seep into him. The structure was one of his favorite places on the ranch. He'd almost been sorry when the Department had installed the hidden safe that his job required. The presence of a high-tech security unit seemed to taint the natural, earthy energy of the outbuilding, but it couldn't be helped.
As if sensing his mood, the Morgan swung her brown head around and snuffled at his shoulder before going back to her hay. Since he'd be busy sticking to Piper over the next several days, he'd also arranged for his neighbor to take the mare and his gelding for a while.
He'd have to figure out a way to slip him some money when he came around in the morning to load them up. Farmers were proud people, and after stumbling around to get his own ranch going, he'd concluded they had every right to be. Working the land and raising animals took a lot out of you.
Yet the other ranchers were always willing to help the new guy, though usually accompanied by a generous load of teasing. Having that kind of support had been the biggest adjustment for him when he'd bought this place eight months ago.
Alex pushed away and gave the horse a pat on the rump before easing out of the stall. He was going to miss them, which surprised him. Not too long ago, he never would have thought that he'd want to be so tied down.
Life could change in an instant, though. He knew that better than anyone.
He shoved away the memories of his brother and closed up the barn. Reliving the past didn't help the present and the present had plenty of its own problems to solve. One of which was waiting for him in the truck.
Giving a low whistle for the dogs, he tramped back toward the house. Time to get his heiress back where she belonged. He was already short an ass after the chewing out Ted had given him over a kiss. He couldn't afford to lose his sanity, too.
The light from the porch came on as he crossed the yard, sending a shaft of dull orange light into the cab of the truck. She had her face pressed against the window like a mischievous six-year-old on a long car ride. Steam fanned out below her pert little nose, her mouth was slightly open and her eyes were solidly closed.
Well, hell. She'd fallen asleep. Soundly, from the looks of it.
Alex shook his head and glanced at the sky in mute appeal. Approaching the truck, he raised his hand, intending to tap on the window. Nipper poked her nose into his thigh and whined.
"She can't stay here," he said softly to the dog. Just the thought of her sleeping in his house made his body perk up in expectation. You'd think he was seventeen the way this woman affected him.
He lowered his hand and stared at her through the window. Even looking ridiculous she was still sexy.
Alex glanced back at the barn and then down at the dogs sitting patiently on either side of him. If he took her back to Mockingbird, he'd have to stay and keep watch. That would be the only way to ensure her safety. But if he was away from the ranch at night with the coyote problems he'd been having, he'd worry about the horses. That could potentially distract him, which could be dangerous.
He quietly eased open the truck door. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
Lifting her gently into his arms, Alex wondered how comfortable he could make a pile of hay and a sleeping bag.
* * *
Piper sat up, alarm shooting through her like a jolt of caffeine. Whose bed was this?
Her half-asleep brain flailed around for a heart-stopping moment. What had happened? She hadn't gotten smashed and gone home with a stranger in years. She was dressed, no headache, no dry mouth, no sore....
Right. She'd fallen asleep in Alex's truck last night.
The vague memory of being lifted by strong arms and held snugly against a warm, excellently male chest trickled into her conscious mind. She covered her face with the pillow and fell back onto the bed.
Hiding did nothing but block the obnoxious light that was spearing in through the broken blinds at the window. Self-reproach still poked her hard in the stomach.
Uncle Theo would not approve of the way she was thinking about his employee. And hers, too, if she wanted to get technical.
She didn't. But she should. Imagining what it would feel like to rub her naked body slowly up his was tacky. Tacky, tacky, tacky.
Something should be done about the way Alex affected her. She just couldn't decide what.
Firing him and then launching a feminine assault seemed a viable option. Except Alex needed the money. Breaking his contract would be even more despicable than the naughty fantasies.
She didn't have to fire him, her half-asleep brain suggested. She could throw her short list of sexual morals out the window and give in to her lust. Uncle Theo's disapproving face intruded on her thoughts.
Piper growled and flung the pillow back toward the headboard where it hit with an unsatisfying puffy thump. Indecisiveness and censure was so unlike her where attractive men were concerned. She didn't like it.
Sitting up she swung her feet to the floor and blearily assessed Alex's bedroom. Classic scifi movie posters covered the walls, two piles of folded clothes sat on the dresser, dirty jeans and T-shirts were tumbled into the corners like piles of autumn leaves and a coffee stain graced the carpet by the door. Ugh.
Boy did this guy need some serious help.
Piper inspected the sheets and blanket rumpled around her hips. He got points for clean bedding, at least.
She stood and stretched, her stomach gurgling with hunger. She hadn't eaten much dinner last night. Maybe a guy who kept his linens clean also kept a stocked refrigerator.
Shower first. Then food.
Ignoring her shoes, which had been placed neatly beside the bed, Piper padded into the bathroom. She'd braced herself for extreme nastiness considering the state of his bedroom, but the tiny space wasn't too bad. More points for Alex.
After a quick wash-up, she headed into the hall. The half-way open door across from Alex's bedroom beckoned to her curiosity. Was her reluctant host still sound asleep in the other room?
With a gentle push of two fingers, the door swung wider. Piper stuck her head in, ready to tease him about sleeping in.
Surprise coursed through her as several things struck her at once. First, the room was pristine, second, it was empty as in never-been-used empty, and third it was not a man's room, a guest room, or a storage room.
This room was meant for a little girl.
Piper drifted past the doorway, her astonishment deepening with every observation. The single bed was neatly covered with a soft, deep-pink cotton quilt, and a foot-high plushy horse stood expectantly in front of artistically piled yellow and white pillows. A small wooden desk, pressboard with veneer, she'd guess, sat in the corner with paper and a new art caddy arranged on it.
A toy box sat nearby. The three-drawer dresser matched the desk in style and had a large mirror above it, but only one item on its surface—a five-by-three photo of a woman and a little girl.
Her heart caught in her throat and she crept over to the dresser. Picking up the picture, she studied the woman and child. The woman was pretty, slightly heavier than average, and had a gentle smile that didn't quite reach her sad eyes.
The dark-haired child hadn't even attempted a happy subterfuge. Instead, solemn light brown eyes stared from a round, pale face. Her mouth, so like her mother's, was pressed tightly together as if she'd been making a valiant attempt not to cry as the photo was taken. Piper looked into those eyes and sympathy trembled through her.
Alex had a daughter.
Her hand started shaking and she gently set the picture down. Was this why he couldn't lose his job? Was he supporting a child? A wife? But he'd said he wasn't married. He must be divorced; denied his little girl until he could prove he could care for her.
Suddenly feeling like the worst sort of intruder, Piper slipped from the room and quietly closed the door behind her. She shouldn't have gone in, but she was glad she had.
Knowing Alex had a family changed everything.
* * *
Alex's stomach growled as the aroma of frying bacon drifted out onto the front porch. The enticing smell was almost enough to make him forget the ache in the small of his back from sleeping in the hayloft.
Oblivious to his discomfort, his ecstatic dogs wove back and forth in front of the door, their mouths hanging open in anticipation of locating the origin of the best scent in the world.
He wondered about the source too, but for an entirely different reason. As far as he knew, there wasn't a single person in his house at the moment who was likely to know how to cook.
Ordering Nipper to behave, he cautiously opened the door and stepped inside. He wasn't sure what to expect. Smoke? Fire? An omelet chef buzzed in from Dallas?
What he saw was more shocking than all of that put together—The Roseland heiress happily traipsing around his kitchen barefoot, wearing an apron, and humming quietly. He would have laid down money that Piper couldn't even boil water, but here she was cooking like she knew what she was doing.
She looked up and gave him a bright smile. The grin didn't quite get into her eyes and his instincts kicked up. Something was going on and from what he already knew about her, he was sure he wasn't going to like it.
"You're up," she said, her tone as shiny as her teeth. "Where did you sleep?"
"Barn," he said cautiously.
Her grin faltered. "Really? I thought that only happened in movies."
"Have sleeping bag will travel. What are you making?"
"Breakfast. I'm starved. I made plenty to share." She gave the dogs salivating at her from the living room a dubious look. "With humans, anyway."
"They think they're human. Doesn't that count?"
Her brows rose. "Do they? How can you tell?"
"You haven't been around animals much, have you?" He reminded the dogs to stay back and maneuvered around them and into the kitchen.
She'd cleared a spot on the cluttered table and put down a plate piled up with crisp bacon. She turned back to the stove and poured a bowl of scrambled eggs into the greasy frying pan. His mouth started watering.
"Dad had dogs before he met Mother, but she doesn't approve of pets living indoors. She had him give them away, along with most of his furniture."
"Most but not all, I'm guessing. I noticed an interesting mix of decorating tastes through the house."
Stepping behind her, he peered over her shoulder. Her hair smelled like breakfast with the underlying scent of his shampoo and his traitorous anatomy sprang to attention. Backing away, Alex leaned against the doorframe and tried to ignore the impatient, aching throb. He was an idiot, he chastised himself. All he'd done was get a whiff of the blasted woman's hair.
"He put his foot down about some of his favorite pieces," she said.
"Like the ice-cream parlor set?"
She beamed at him over her shoulder. "You noticed that? He bought it off Mr. Baskin back in the sixties."
"I liked it," he said by way of a noncommittal answer while his mind chewed over the problem of being insanely attracted to Piper.
As subtly as he could, Alex backed up a couple more steps and thought about baseball, just for variety.
"I've been considering our situation," Piper said as she moved eggs around in the pan. "I shouldn't have gone along with the engagement idea. It was wrong of me."
A fissure of alarm itched across his shoulders. "If you back out, what will you tell your family? That it was all a joke?"
"Why not? They're used to my craziness. They'll roll their eyes and talk at me about being more responsible, then in a few days it'll blow over."
"Roll their eyes?"
"And blab at me. Then I look contrite while I think about where I want to go for lunch or what sales are running." She scraped eggs onto two plates, then put the pan and spatula in the sink.
"Or...maybe I could tell them I found out you were married," she said in that overly-mild way women had when they were fishing for information. She set the plates onto the table and settled herself into one of his rickety, mismatched chairs.
Something was definitely up. Straddling the chair across from her, he watched her tuck into the food like a lumber jack. For someone so small, she sure could pack it away.
"You going to eat?" she asked.
"If there's any left."
"You can only blame yourself if there isn't." She helped herself to more bacon.
Alex grabbed several pieces before it was too late. "Where do you put it all?" he asked as he broke a slice and tossed one half to each dog.
"Fast metabolism. Runs in my family."
"Explains the hyperactivity."
She nodded at his plate. "What do you think?"
Alex cautiously tasted the eggs. The salty, bacony flavor of them filled his mouth. "Remarkable," he said around the bite.
Her face brightened. "Really?"
"On so many levels."
"Ha, ha." Giving him a smug look, she claimed the last pieces of bacon.
"I deserved that," Alex said, shoving a fork full of eggs into his mouth.
"Yes, you did."
They ate in companionable silence for a moment. "I also think we should stay engaged," he said, scraping the last of his breakfast off his plate.
She gave him a wary look. "Only because you're not thinking it through."
"We agreed the pretense was the perfect solution."
"Things have changed. It will be too confusing."
"You said they were used to your antics. They won't be concerned when we call it off."
She made an exasperated sound. "Not my family. I'm talking about— Oh, never mind. I'm putting a stop to the whole thing before anyone else knows about it and that's final."
Alex got up from the table and carried his plate and fork to the counter. He ignored the dog's mournful expressions as he plugged the sink and started filling it with soapy water. "I'll feel professionally obligated to tell your stepmother about the breach in estate security, the vandalism and the note if you do that."
She stopped eating and gaped at him. "That's blackmail. And completely self-destructive. When I say self-destructive, I mean suicidally insane, just so you know. Do you even realize what Mother's capable of?"
He shrugged and started piling dirty dishes into the water. "I won't have a choice. If she notices me sneaking around in the bushes keeping an eye on things, she'll think I'm the stalker. I can't have that on my record or afford to bail myself out of jail."
"You can't tell her."
"Then I'm your fiancé. At least until I catch the bad guy."
She pushed back her chair and grabbed up the rest of the dishes, aggravation tightening her face and setting her shoulders into a stiff line of resistance. "I can't believe you can be so nonchalant about this."
Marching over to the sink, she shoved the plates at him.
He caught them before she drove the edges right through his stomach and out the other side. "It's a brilliant cover story, Piper. There's no reason to change it."
She glared at him, her eyes flashing like a Brazilian emerald. "No reason? None at all? Not one?"
Something had sure gotten her dander up, but for the hell of him, he couldn't decipher what. "We're adults. We can handle this."
Her face blazed with a protective, fierce beauty and his heart gave a stuttering hitch in his chest.
"Alex Jensen, you cannot let your little girl think she's about to get a new mommy. It's wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong and I won't be a part of it!"
* * *
Piper's outrage burned all the way into her stomach. How could any man be so obtuse? So, unfeeling? So—
Alex's dark brows shot up. "My what?"
"Don't pretend with me. I saw her picture. I saw her room. You can't do this to her!"
His gaze hardened. "You beat all, you know that?"
"Getting a new parent is very serious to a child."
"I take it you're talking from experience?"
"No, of course not. I just know how sensitive...well, a little. But that's not the point. The fact is—"
"Oh, I think that's very much the point." He took a step toward her, his expression thunderous.
Piper silently vowed to stay strong. She would not be intimidated. She had a little girl to defend.
"Been snooping around my house, Piper?" he growled, stopping a bare six inches from her.
His heat blasted into her body, making her breasts tingle. She lifted her chin and looked him squarely in the eyes. It was like trying to face down an angry wolf. Her legs felt unpleasantly trembly, but she held her ground. "I went into the guest room to tell you I would make breakfast. I saw the picture and I left."
"After concluding what?"
"The truth you've been hiding. You're divorced and you have a daughter."
"Wrong."
He leaned in, forcing her to pull back or break eye contact. "Don't poke around in my private life. Now get your purse and meet me in the truck. I'm taking you home."
He kept her impaled with his furious gaze for a moment longer and then turned and stalked out the door. The dogs hurried after him, barely getting through before the screen door slammed behind them.
Feeling like she'd avoided disaster by a slim minute, Piper cleared her throat and nervously attempted to smooth away some of the wrinkles in her silk dress.
She would never have pegged Alex for the emotional type. Obviously, she was wrong. He felt very strongly about his daughter. That was a good thing, she told herself. Showed he was human. Protective. A good father.
He'd probably been deeply hurt when his wife refused to let him see the girl. She couldn't entirely blame the woman, after all look at the state of his house, but still, it wasn't right to keep a man from his child.
She glanced around the room and spotted her purse laying on the chewed up sofa. Lifting the soft leather handbag up by two fingers, she frowned at the damaged furniture.
The whole thing was really quite tragic. No wonder the man was so grumpy. If only there was something she could do about it.
An idea popped into her head and her spirits perked up. There was something she could do. In fact, she could do a lot. She'd have to take Alex in to Houston to keep him away from the ranch, but that was a small price to pay all things considered.
Fishing around in her purse, she pulled out her cell phone.
* * *
Damn her for sticking her nose in where it didn't belong. Now what? He was going to have to pretend Jessica was his daughter?
Alex drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for Piper to show. He could have easily used the idea of Jess to his advantage, but he refused to do that. Everything in his life was a boat load of lies. He wouldn't drag what was left of his family into it, not for any reason.
He slammed his palm down on the rim of the steering wheel and then fisted his fingers around the sting. He loved his job, but he also hated the way assignments constantly interfered with his private life.
Nipper stuck her nose through the gap in the window behind him and made a snuffling sound followed by a quiet whine. He leaned his head against the headrest. Ever since yesterday his temper had been running hot and cold. That wasn't like him.
Alex closed his eyes and pulled in a slow breath. Reaching through the window, he rubbed the soft fur behind the dog's ears and tried to let his tension go.
He'd faced down hit men, kidnappers and scum of all kinds. Then some frivolous, blonde scrap of a woman comes along and cranks his body and emotions up to fifth gear. When a man was faced with something like that, the only sane thing was to run like hell. But he'd been ordered to stick to her and her family like black on tar until the investigation was over. No wiggle room for bolting.
The irony of his situation wasn't lost on him and a reluctant smile tugged at his mouth. Skulking out intel on the Roselands, no problem. Discovering what connection, if any, there was between them and the South American cartel, piece of cake. Corralling one ditzy, sexy as hell girl? About to kill him.
The door to his house opened and the perpetrator of his current torture trotted out. She sashayed down the steps, her heart-stopping legs flashing under the swing of her pinkish-colored dress. She looked extremely pleased with herself.
Alex sat up, suddenly alert. Uh, oh. What had Piper done, now?
She opened the truck door and treated him to a flash of toned thighs as she climbed in. He ordered himself not to be influenced and gave her a stern look. "What's going on?"
She glanced at him, her clear green eyes and parted cupid bow mouth the picture of innocence. "I've decided to let you drive me to Houston."
He frowned, momentarily stalled by the sudden change in subjects. "I'm taking you home."
"I'll just take a cab after you leave," she said, her tone tense and breezy.
His suspicions deepened. "You called Ted, didn't you? Wanted him to make me play nice and call off the engagement, but instead he told you that you have to keep me around."
"I don't know what you mean." She fussed with her skirt, getting it just so under and around her before buckling her seat belt.
"It bothers you when you don't get your way, doesn't it?"
"I did not call him, I...." Her mouth compressed, then she tossed a belligerent scowl at him. "Okay, I did. He said the engagement sticks until further notice. I tried to explain about your daughter, but he wouldn't hear a word of it. Happy now?"
"Yes." Alex started the engine.
She gave him a final, poignant glare and then turned to stare out the side window. "You smell like hay," she said in a tone that implied he smelled like something very different.
"Thanks."
"I'm trying to be polite."
"You're failing."
"You're a scruffy mess. When we get to Houston, I have plans for you."
Normally a line like that would have him hoping for a long, slow shower followed by silk sheets. But this was Piper, and she was pissed. He doubted a matching dress, nails, and lipstick girl like her meant sex in conjunction with "scruffy" and "plans."
"I don't shop or do manicures, and I'm not getting a haircut," he said in a level tone. "You're going to run your errands, then I'm taking you back to Mockingbird so I can investigate your stalker problem."
"I see. While you're handing out orders, you might want to consider what kind of a forced engagement you'd like to have."
"What do you mean?"
"Smooth or rough? Cooperative or belligerent. I'm good with either kind." She gave him a sweet, barracuda smile.
He returned it with a baleful look of his own that he hoped was adequately discouraging. "In other words, one way or the other you're going to get your revenge on me if I don't behave."
Her soft, pink lips curved up at the corner in a self-satisfied and entirely hot way. "Head for Watson Street."