Smooth-Talking Texan. Candace Camp

Señora Fuentes’s brows drew together darkly. “He doesn’t have any cousins old enough to—you don’t mean Julio!”

      “No. His name was Enrique Garza.”

      “I don’t know this man,” Señora Fuentes said pugnaciously. “Who is this Garza? There is no cousin named Garza.”

      “I beg your pardon?” Lisa looked at her blankly.

      “Benny has no cousin named Enrique Garza.” Señora Fuentes looked at her suspiciously.

      Lisa simply gazed back at her, nonplussed. “But I—he came into my office and said he was Benny’s cousin. He explained Benny’s situation to me and said he wanted to help him.”

      “He is one of them,” Benny’s grandmother said flatly, her lips drawing into a thin line.

      “Who?”

      “The bad men. The ones he goes to see. Cholos. Vatos.” Her lips twisted bitterly, and tears sprang into her black eyes. “I will lose him. Like I lost Pablo.”

      “Señora Fuentes…” Lisa reached out to touch the woman’s arm, sympathy springing up in her at the woman’s evident sorrow. “Can I help you?”

      But the other woman twisted away. “No.” She cast Lisa a dark glance. “Go away from here. You have done enough.”

      She turned and walked back into the house. Lisa watched her go, feeling vaguely guilty. Finally, with a sigh, she turned and went back to her car. She got in and turned the car around, driving back the way she had come. There was no reason for her to feel guilty, she told herself. She had gotten her client out of jail; she had protected his rights. The sheriff had had no business taking him in in the first place.

      But logic had a hard time standing up against the look of suffering in the old woman’s eyes. Lisa kept thinking about it, wishing that she could have made Benny’s grandmother understand that she had helped Benny.

      A few blocks down the street, she saw Benny walking along, hands jammed in his pockets, head down. She pulled her car to a stop beside him and pushed the button to roll down the window. “Benny? Do you need a ride?”

      He looked over at her and started to shake his head, but in the next instant, he stopped, then said, “Hey, yeah.” He walked over to the car and leaned down, looking into the window. “You could drop me off at the café, if you don’t mind.”

      “No, it’s okay. Where is it?”

      It didn’t take long to reach the café. It was on the same main street of Angel Eye that they had driven along when they’d left the courthouse, but farther out, almost on the edge of town. It was a small, plain building set back from the road, with a modest sign at the front of the parking lot proclaiming it to be Moonstone Café.

      “Moonstone Café? That’s an odd name.” Lisa said as she turned into the parking lot. She had thought that an eating place in this little town would be named something like Earl’s Diner or Martha’s.

      “Yeah. Lady owns it is from Dallas,” Benny said, as if that fact would explain all peculiarity. “It’s good. You should try it.”

      “Maybe I will.”

      “Well…thanks.” Benny got out of the car and gave her an awkward wave, then walked into the restaurant.

      Lisa watched him go. It occurred to her that she was hungry. And it was the end of the day; everyone would have left the office by the time she got there. Perhaps she should give this oddly named restaurant a try. The mere fact that its owner was from Dallas gave it some appeal to her.

      She parked her car and followed her client through the front door of the restaurant. A slim woman with thick curling dark hair turned from the cash register and smiled at her.

      “One for dinner?” she asked. Lisa nodded, and the woman led her toward a booth in front of one of the windows.

      Lisa glanced around the restaurant as she followed the woman. It was a neat, clean place, nothing fancy, just wooden tables and comfortable chairs and booths, but it was obviously popular. Even as early as it was, several of the tables were occupied. There was a smell of fresh-baked bread in the air, mingling enticingly with garlic and spices.

      She noticed that her client was standing near the kitchen door, talking with a pretty, slender Hispanic girl. Benny’s face was more animated than it had been the entire time she had been around him, and the way he stood before the girl, bending down toward her in a tender, even protective way, spoke volumes about what he felt for her. And, given the glow on the young girl’s face as she looked back at him, it appeared that she returned the feeling.

      The woman who had seated her followed her gaze, and she smiled. “Ah, young love.” She handed a menu to Lisa. “Don’t worry. Teresa will be over here in a minute. She’s a good waitress. You new around here?”

      “I live in Hammond,” Lisa replied. “But I’m new there. I’m from Dallas.”

      “Yeah?” The other woman smiled. “Me, too. I’m Elizabeth Morgan. I own the Moonstone.”

      “Lisa Mendoza. Nice to meet you. So you moved here from Dallas?”

      Elizabeth Morgan laughed at the tone of amazement that crept into Lisa’s voice as she asked the question. “I wanted to get far away from Dallas.”

      “Well, you certainly achieved that.”

      “Yeah. It’s pretty different. But I like a little town. It’s…cozy, I guess. I was starting over, and it wasn’t as expensive to start a restaurant in a small town.”

      “Don’t you miss Dallas?”

      “Sometimes.” Elizabeth shrugged. “I mean, it’s nice to have a big choice of movies to go see, malls to go shopping at, other restaurants to eat in. But you know, frankly, when you run a restaurant, you’re tied to it. Twenty-four seven. You don’t get out that much to do any of those things, and if I want to, well, San Antonio’s not that far away. The rest of the time, there’s the fact that it takes me five minutes to get to work; there’s very little turnover in employees; and I know most of my customers by name. I like that.”

      They were interrupted at that point by the arrival of the young girl who had been talking to Benny earlier. “I’m sorry,” she said a little breathlessly. “Sorry, Ms. Morgan.”

      Elizabeth smiled and nodded to Lisa. “I’ll get back to my job and let you order now. It was nice chatting with you.”

      She moved away, and the girl went into her spiel. “My name is Teresa, and I’ll be waiting on you this evening. Could I get you a drink while you look over the menu?”

      Lisa ordered and settled back into the booth to relax. Benny, she noticed, had disappeared. She found her thoughts turning to Sheriff Sutton. The man was damnably attractive. She remembered that moment in his office when they had been only inches apart, white-hot anger coursing through her, and mingled with it, feeding off it, had been a pulsing, primitive desire. She had felt it coming off him, too, humming and magnetic.

      It was absurd, of course, Lisa reminded herself. They were, literally, on opposites sides. And she felt certain that they had nothing in common, no real attraction except for that strange, momentary response. A chemical reaction, that’s all. Some animal impulse, spurred by a signal too primal for her to even notice—a scent or a visual stimulus—the line of his leg against his uniform, perhaps, or his long, mobile fingers, thumb hooked into the belt of his uniform, or the well-cut lips…

      Lisa realized with a start that she was sitting staring at the table dreamily, a faint smile curving her mouth. She had started out analyzing her bizarre response to the man, and she had wound up daydreaming about him like a teenager in class!

      She was glad when Teresa brought her salad, giving her something to concentrate on besides the sheriff. The meal, she discovered to her delight, was delicious—the salad crisp and dark green, the barest of balsamic