The Winter Soldier. Diana Palmer

reason for not telling her. “Yes,” he said bluntly. “I was a mercenary. A professional soldier for hire to the highest bidder,” he added bitterly.

      “But with principles, right?” she persisted. “I mean, you didn’t hire out to Lopez and help him run drugs.”

      “Certainly not!”

      “I didn’t think so.” She leaned back against her seat, weary. “It must take a lot of courage to do that sort of work. I suppose it takes a certain kind of man, as well. But why did you do it when you had a wife and child?”

      He hated that damned question. He hated the answer, too.

      “Well?”

      She wasn’t going to quit until he told her. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Because I refused to give it up, and she got pregnant deliberately to get even with me.” He didn’t stop to think about the odd way he’d worded that, but Lisa noticed and wondered at it. “I curtailed my work, but I helped get the goods on Lopez before I hung it up entirely and started ranching full-time. I’d just come back from overseas when the fire was set. It was obvious afterward that I’d been careless and let one of Lopez’s men track me back to Wyoming. I’ve had to live with it ever since.”

      She studied his lean, stark profile with quiet, curious eyes. “Was it the adrenaline rush you couldn’t live without, or was it the confinement of marriage that you couldn’t live with?”

      His green eyes glittered dangerously. “You ask too damned many questions!”

      She shrugged. “You started it. I had no idea that you were anything more than a rancher. Your foreman, Harley Fowler, likes to tell people that he’s one of those dashing professional soldiers, you know. But he isn’t.”

      The statement surprised him. “How do you know he isn’t?” he asked.

      “Because I asked him if he’d ever done the Fan Dance and he didn’t know what I was talking about.”

      He stopped the truck in the middle of the road and just stared at her. “Who told you about that? Your husband?”

      “He knew about the British Special Air Services, but mostly just what I told him—including that bit about the Fan Dance, one of their rigorous training tests.” She smiled self-consciously. “I guess it sounds strange, but I love reading books about them. They’re really something, like the French Foreign Legion, you know. A group of men so highly trained, so specialized, that they’re the scourge of terrorists the world over. They go everywhere, covertly, to rescue hostages and gather intelligence about terrorist groups.” She sighed and closed her eyes, oblivious to the expression of the man watching her. “I’d be scared to death to do anything like that, but I admire people who can. It’s a way of testing yourself, isn’t it, so that you know how you react under the most deadly pressure. Most of us never face physical violence. Those men have.” Her eyes opened.

      “Men like you.”

      He felt his cheeks go hot. She was intriguing. He began to understand why Walt had married her. “How old are you?” he asked bluntly.

      “Old enough to get pregnant,” she told him pertly. “And that’s all you’re getting out of me.”

      His green eyes narrowed. She was very young, there was no doubt about that. He didn’t like the idea of her being in danger. He didn’t like the idea of the man Luke Craig had sent over to look out for her, either. He was going to see about that.

      “How old are you, if we’re getting personal?” she asked.

      “Older than you are,” he returned mockingly.

      She grimaced. “Well, you’ve got scars and lines in your face, and a little gray at your temples, but I doubt you’re over thirty-five.”

      His eyebrows arched almost to his hairline.

      “I’d like you to be my baby’s godfather when he’s born,” she continued bluntly. “I think Walt would have liked that, too. He spoke very highly of you, although he didn’t say much about your background. I was curious about that. Now I understand why he was so secretive.”

      “I’ve never been a godfather,” he said curtly.

      “That’s okay. I’ve never been a mother.” She frowned. “Come to think of it, the baby hasn’t been a baby before, either.” She looked down at her flat belly and smiled tenderly, tracing it. “We can all start even.”

      “Did you love your husband?”

      She looked up at him. “Did you love your wife?” she countered instantly.

      He didn’t like looking at her belly, remembering. He started down the road again, at a greater speed. “She said she loved me, when we married,” he said evasively.

      Poor woman, Lisa thought. And poor little boy, to die so young, and in such a horrible way. She wondered if the taciturn Mr. Parks had nightmares, and guessed that he did. His poor arm was proof that he’d tried to save his family. It must be terrible, to go on living, to be the only survivor of such a tragedy.

      They pulled up in front of her dilapidated ranch house. The steps were flimsy and one of the boards was rotten. The house needed painting. The screens on the windows were torn, and the one on the screen door was half torn away. In the corral, he could hear a horse whinny. He hoped her fences were in better shape than the house.

      He helped her down out of the truck and set her gently on her feet. She was rail-thin.

      “Are you eating properly?” he asked abruptly as he studied her in the faint light from the porch, scowling.

      “I said you could be the baby’s godfather, not mine,” she pointed out with an impish smile. “Thank you very much for the ride. Now go home, Mr. Parks.”

      “Don’t I get to see this famous puppy?”

      She grimaced as she walked gingerly up the steps, past the rotten one, and put her key in the lock. “He stays on the screen porch out back, and even with papers down, I expect he’s made a frightful mess… That’s odd,” she said when the door swung open without the key being turned in the lock. “I’m sure I locked this door before I… Where are you going?”

      “Stay right there,” he said shortly. He opened the truck, took out the .45 automatic he always carried and cocked it on his way back onto the porch.

      Her face went pale. Reading about commandos was very different from the real thing when she saw the cold metal of the pistol in his hands and realized that he was probably quite proficient in its use. The thought chilled her. Like the sight of the gun.

      He put her gently to one side. “I’m not going to shoot anybody unless I get shot at,” he said reassuringly. “Stay there.”

      He left her on the porch and went carefully, quietly, through the house with the pistol raised at his ear, one finger on the trigger and his other hand, in spite of its injury, supporting the butt efficiently. He swept the house, room by room, closet by closet, until he got to the bedroom and heard a sound inside. It was only a sound, a faint whisper. There was a hint of light coming from under the door, which was just slightly ajar.

      He kicked the door open, the pistol leveled the second he had a clear view of the bed.

      The man’s face was a study in shock when he saw the expression on Cy Parks’s dark face and the glitter in his eyes. Bill Mason, Luke Craig’s erstwhile cowboy-on-loan, was lying on the bed in his shorts with a beer bottle in one hand. When Cy burst in the door, he sat up starkly, his bloodshot eyes blinking as he swayed. He was just drunk enough not to realize how much trouble he was in.

      “You’re not Mrs. Monroe,” he drawled loudly.

      “And you’re not Mr. Monroe. If you want to see daylight again, get the hell out of that bed and put your clothes on!”

      “Okay. I mean yes, sir, Mr. Parks!”

      The