Mercenary's Woman. Diana Palmer

that cereal from the TV commercial!” he exclaimed, diving into bags as she put the perishable items into the refrigerator. “Thanks, Aunt Sally!” Although they were cousins, he referred to her as his aunt out of affection and respect.

      “You’re very welcome. I got some ice cream, too.”

      “Wow! Can I have some now?”

      Sally laughed. “Not until after supper, and you have to eat some of everything I fix. Okay?”

      “Aw. Okay, I guess,” he muttered, clearly disappointed.

      She bent and kissed him between his dark eyes. “That’s my good boy. Here, I brought some nice apples and pears. Wash one off and eat it. Fruit is good for you.”

      “Okay. But it’s not as nice as ice cream.”

      He washed off a pear and carried it into the living room on a paper towel to watch television.

      Sally went into Jessica’s bedroom, hesitating at the foot of the big four-poster bed. Jessica was slight, blond and hazel-eyed. Her eyes stared at nothing, but she smiled as she recognized Sally’s step.

      “I heard the truck,” she said. “I’m sorry you had to go to town for supplies after working all day and bringing Stevie home first.”

      “I never mind shopping,” Sally said with genuine affection. “You doing all right?”

      Jessica shifted on the pillows. She was dressed in sweats, but she looked bad. “I still have some pain from the wreck. I’ve taken a couple of aspirins for my hip. I thought I’d lie down and give them a chance to work.”

      Sally came in and sat down in the wing chair beside the bed. “Jess, Ebenezer Scott asked about you and said he was coming over tomorrow to see you.”

      Jessica didn’t seem at all surprised. She only nodded. “I thought he might,” Jessica said quietly. “I had a call from a former colleague about what’s going on. I’m afraid I may have landed you in some major trouble, Sally.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      “Didn’t you wonder why I insisted on moving down here so suddenly?”

      “Now that you mention it—”

      “It was because Ebenezer is here, and we’re safer than we would be in Houston.”

      “Now you’re scaring me.”

      Jessica smiled sadly. “I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world. It isn’t something that comes up, usually. But these are odd circumstances. A man I helped put in prison is out pending retrial, and he’s coming after me.”

      “You…helped put a man in prison? How?” Sally asked, perplexed.

      “You knew that I worked for a government agency?”

      “Well, of course. As a clerk.”

      Jessica took a deep breath. “No, dear. Not as a clerk.” She took a deep breath. “I was a special agent for an agency we don’t mention publicly. Through Eb and his contacts, I managed to find one of the confidants of drug lord Manuel Lopez, who was head of an international drug cartel. I was given enough hard evidence to send Lopez to prison for drug dealing. I even had copies of his ledgers. But there was one small loophole in the chain of evidence, and the drug lord’s attorneys jumped on it. Lopez is now out of prison and he wants the person responsible for helping me put him away. Since I’m the only one who knows the person’s identity, I’m the one he’ll be coming after.”

      Sally just sat there, dumbfounded. Things like this only happened in movies. They certainly didn’t happen in real life. Her beloved aunt surely wasn’t involved in espionage!

      “You’re kidding, right?” Sally asked hopefully.

      Jessica shook her head slowly. She was still an attractive woman, in her middle thirties. She was slender and she had a sweet face. Stevie, blond and dark-eyed, didn’t favor her. Of course, he didn’t favor his father, either. Hank had had black hair and light blue eyes.

      “I’m sorry, dear,” Jessica said heavily. “I’m not kidding. I’m not able to protect myself or you and Stevie anymore, so I had to come home for help. Ebenezer will keep us safe until we can get the drug lord back on ice.”

      “Is Ebenezer a government agent?” Sally asked, astounded.

      “No.” Jessica took a deep breath. “I don’t like telling you this, and he won’t like it, either. It’s deeply private. You must swear not to tell another soul.”

      “I swear.” She sat patiently, almost vibrating with curiosity.

      “Eb was a professional mercenary,” she said. “What they used to call a soldier of fortune. He’s led groups of highly trained men in covert operations all over the world. He’s retired from that now, but he’s still much in demand with our government and foreign governments as a training instructor. His ranch is well-known in covert circles as an academy of tactics and intelligence-gathering.”

      Sally didn’t say a word. She was absolutely speechless. No wonder Ebenezer had been so secretive, so reluctant to let her get close to him. She remembered the tiny white scars on his lean, tanned face, and knew instinctively that there would be more of them under his clothing. No wonder he kept to himself!

      “I hope I haven’t shattered any illusions, Sally,” her aunt said worriedly. “I know how you felt about him.”

      Sally gaped at her. “You…know?”

      Jessica nodded. “Eb told me about that, and about what happened just before you came to live with Hank and me in Houston.”

      Her face flamed. The shame! She felt sick with humiliation that Ebenezer had known how she felt all the time, and she thought she was doing such a good job of hiding it! She should have realized that it was obvious, when she found excuse after excuse to waylay him in town, when she brazenly climbed into his pickup truck one lovely spring afternoon and pleaded to be taken for a ride. He’d given in to that request, to her surprise. But barely half an hour later, she’d erupted from the passenger seat and run almost all the half-mile down the road to her home. Too ashamed to let anyone see the state she was in, she’d sneaked in the back door and gone straight to her room. She’d never told her parents or anyone else what had happened. Now she wondered if Jessica knew that, too.

      “He didn’t divulge any secrets, if that’s why you’re so quiet, Sally,” the older woman said gently. “He only said that you had a king-size crush on him and he’d shot you down. He was pretty upset.”

      That was news. “I wouldn’t ever have guessed that he could be upset.”

      “Neither would I,” Jessica said with a smile. “It came as something of a surprise. He told me to keep an eye on you, and check out who you went out with. He could have saved himself the trouble, of course, since you never went out with anyone. He was bitter about that.”

      Sally averted her face to the window. “He frightened me.”

      “He knew that. It’s why he was bitter.”

      Sally drew in a steadying breath. “I was very young,” she said finally, “and I suppose he did the only thing he could. But I was leaving Jacobsville anyway, when my parents divorced. I only had a week of school before graduation before I went to live with you. He didn’t have to go to such lengths.”

      “My brother still feels like an idiot for the way he behaved with that college girl he left your mother for,” Jessica said curtly, meaning Sally’s father, who was Jessica’s only living relative besides Sally. “It didn’t help that your mother remarried barely six months later. He was stuck with Beverly the Beauty.”

      “How are my parents?” Sally asked. It was the first time she’d mentioned either of her parents in a long while, She’d lost touch with them since the divorce that had shattered her life.

      “Your