The Winter Soldier. Diana Palmer

prescriptions, Mr. Parks,” Bonnie said with a grin, holding up a prescription sack. She bent to pick up the package, a strand of her short blond hair falling around her pretty bespectacled face. “And Dr. Coltrain said that if you don’t take this pain medication, he’ll have me flogged,” she added impishly.

      “We can’t have that, I guess,” Cy murmured dryly.

      “Glad you agree.” She accepted his credit card as Lisa turned to go.

      “You drive into town?” Cy asked the widow.

      “Uh, well, no, the car’s got a broken water pump,” she confessed. “I rode in with old Mr. Murdock.”

      “He’ll be at the lodge meeting until midnight,” he pointed out.

      “Just until nine. I thought I’d go to the library and wait.”

      “You need your rest,” Cy said curtly. “No sense in waiting until bedtime for a ride. I’ll drive you home. It’s on my way.”

      “Go with him,” Bonnie said firmly as she waited for Cy to put his credit card back into his wallet and sign the ticket. “Don’t argue,” she added when Lisa opened her mouth. “I’ll phone the lodge and tell Mr. Murdock you got a ride.”

      “Were you ever in the army?” Cy asked the young woman with a rare twinkle in his green eyes.

      She grinned. “Nope. But it’s their loss.”

      “Amen,” he said.

      “Mr. Parks…” Lisa began, trying to escape.

      Cy took her arm, nodded to Bonnie and herded Lisa out of the pharmacy onto the street where his big red Ford Expedition was parked. On the way they ran into the second pharmacist, a dark-eyed woman with equally dark hair.

      “Hi, Nancy!” Lisa said with a grin.

      Nancy gave a gamine smile. “Don’t tell me, the line’s two miles long already.”

      “Three. Want to go home with me?” Lisa asked.

      Nancy sighed. “Don’t I wish. See you!”

      Nancy went on toward the pharmacy and Lisa turned back to let Cy open the door of the Expedition for her. “Imagine you with a red vehicle,” she said dryly. “I would have expected black.”

      “It was the only one they had in stock and I was in a hurry. Here.” He helped her up into the huge vehicle.

      “Gosh,” she murmured as he got in beside her, “you could kill an elephant with this thing.”

      “It’s out of season for elephants.” He scowled as she fumbled with the seat belt. “That’s hard to buckle on the passenger side. Here, like this…” He leaned close to her and fastened it with finesse despite his damaged left hand and arm. It required a closeness he hadn’t had with a woman since his wife and son died in the fire. He noticed that Lisa’s eyes were a very soft dark brown and that her complexion was delicious. She had a firm, rounded little chin and a pretty mouth. Her ears were tiny. He wondered what that mass of dark gold hair looked like at night when she took the hairpins out, and his own curiosity made him angry. With compressed lips, he fastened the seat belt and moved away to buckle his own in place.

      Lisa was relieved when he leaned back. He made her nervous when he was that close. Odd, that reaction, she thought, when she’d been married for two months. She should be used to men. Of course, her late husband hadn’t been that interested in her body. He didn’t seem to enjoy sleeping with her, and he was always in such a rush that she really didn’t feel any of the things women were supposed to feel. She recalled that he’d married her on the rebound from the woman he really wanted, and the only thing about Lisa that really appealed to him had been her father’s ranch. He’d had great ideas about starting an empire, but it was only a pipe dream. A dead dream, now. She stared out at the small town as they drove through it on the way out to their respective ranches.

      “Do you have anyone managing the ranch for you?” he asked when they were on the lonely highway heading out of town.

      “Can’t afford anyone,” she said wistfully. “Walt had big plans for the place, but there was never enough money to fulfill them. He borrowed on his salary and his life insurance policy to buy the steers, but he didn’t look far enough ahead to see the drought coming. I guess he didn’t realize that buying winter feed for those steers would put us in the hole.” She shook her head. “I did so want his plans to work out,” she said wistfully. “If they had, he was going to give up undercover work and come home to be a rancher.” Her eyes were sad. “He was only thirty years old.”

      “Manuel Lopez is a vindictive drug lord,” he murmured. “He doesn’t stop at his victims, either. He likes to target whole families. Well, except for small children. If he has a virtue, that’s the only one.” He glanced at her. “All the more reason for you to be looked after at night. The dog is a good idea. Even a puppy will bark when someone comes up to the door.”

      “How do you know about Lopez?” she asked.

      He laughed. It was the coldest sound Lisa had ever heard. “How do I know? He had his thugs set fire to my house in Wyoming. My wife and my five-year-old son died because of him.” His eyes stared straight ahead. “And if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll see him pay for it.”

      “I had…no idea,” she faltered. She winced at the look on his face. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Parks. I knew about the fire, but…” She averted her eyes to the dark landscape outside. “They told me that Walt only said two words before he died. He said, ‘Get Lopez.’ They will, you know,” she added harshly. “They’ll get him, no matter what it takes.”

      He glanced at her and smiled in spite of himself. “You’re not quite the retiring miss that you seem to be, are you, Mrs. Monroe?”

      “I’m pregnant,” she told him flatly. “It makes me ill-tempered.”

      He slowed to make a turn. “Did you want a child so soon after your marriage?” he asked, knowing as everyone locally did that she’d only married two months ago.

      “I love children,” she said, smiling self-consciously. “I guess it’s not the ‘in’ thing right now, but I’ve never had dreams of corporate leadership. I like the pace of life here in Jacobsville. Everybody knows everybody. There’s precious little crime usually. I can trace my family back three generations here. My parents and my grandparents are buried in the town cemetery. I loved being a housewife, taking care of Walt and cooking and all the domestic things women aren’t supposed to enjoy anymore.” She glanced at him with a wicked little smile. “I was even a virgin when I married. When I rebel, I go the whole way!”

      He chuckled. It was the first time in years that he’d felt like laughing. “You renegade.”

      “It runs in my family,” she laughed. “Where are you from?”

      He shifted uncomfortably. “Texas.”

      “But you lived in Wyoming,” she pointed out.

      “Because I thought it was the one place Lopez wouldn’t bother me. What a fool I was,” he added quietly. “If I’d come here in the first place, it might never have happened.”

      “Our police are good, but…”

      He glanced at her. “Don’t you know what I am? What I was?” he amended. “Eb Scott’s whole career was in the Houston papers just after he sent two of Lopez’s best men to prison for attempted murder. They mentioned that several of his old comrades live in Jacobsville now.”

      “I read the papers,” she confessed. “But they didn’t mention names, you know.”

      “Didn’t they?” He maneuvered a turn at a stop sign. “Eb must have called in a marker, then.”

      She turned slightly toward him. “What were you?”

      He