Untameable: Merciless. Diana Palmer

call me …!”

      He put down the receiver and let out a puff of air. That was when he noticed Joceline, outside the door he’d forgotten to close. She was very pale and she didn’t speak. She walked in, forced a smile and laid a document on his desk. While he was trying to find something to say, and worrying about how much of that conversation she’d overheard, she walked out and closed the door.

      Joceline sat down at her desk heavily and tried to block out the sound of Jon’s mother’s voice, which had been audible even several feet away from the telephone. Most agents used cell phones, and eavesdropping wasn’t really possible, but Jon used a landline in the office. And Cammy Blackhawk’s voice carried. Joceline felt sick to her stomach as she registered the other woman’s overt hostility toward her.

      She knew that people talked about her. Gossip was unavoidable in her situation, even in modern times, in a city. Cammy Blackhawk was a throwback to another generation, one just slightly less tolerant and open-minded than younger people today. It didn’t help that Joceline was hopelessly in love with her attractive boss, or that she had uncomfortable dreams about him.

      He enjoyed being single. He rarely dated, and even when he did, it was usually a professional woman, an attorney or a district court judge. Once it had been an attractive public defender. But it was usually only one date. Like the one he’d had with Joceline. She didn’t dare think too much about that.

      She was curious about why he didn’t date. She couldn’t ask him, of course. It was far too personal a question. But she’d overheard him talking to his brother once about how aggressive women could be. Knowing that his supposedly chaste reputation was like a red flag to a permissive female, she imagined that he’d been faced with imminent seduction more than once and didn’t like it. As his mother was moral, so was he. They were both conservative to the back teeth, in fact.

      Joceline looked at the photo of Markie that she kept in her wallet. He was a mix of his mother and father. He had his father’s elegant straight nose and his black hair. His father was good-looking, and smart. She hoped that Markie would follow his father in that respect.

      She sighed over the photograph. Her fascination with her pregnancy had grown by the day while she carried Markie. He was a beautiful child, blue-eyed and slender, with a mischievous expression that was characteristic of him. He loved to play hide-and-seek. He enjoyed video games, especially Super Mario Brothers. He was constantly begging for a puppy or a kitten, but she’d explained gently that it was impossible. He was in day care while she worked, although now he was in preschool part of the day, and day care the rest, and they had no yard for a dog to play in. They had no room, either. It was a one-bedroom apartment, and Markie slept in a small bed near hers. It was wiser that way at night, due to medical problems that she’d never shared with her boss. She worried about her child constantly. There were good medications for his condition, but the ones she used didn’t seem to work, especially in the spring and fall of the year. The leaves were just starting to fall in San Antonio as the weather turned cooler, and Markie was having more trouble than usual. It was no wonder that she had dark circles under her eyes and was late to work. Especially after a night like last night …

      “… I said, did Riley Blake call?” Jon repeated.

      Joceline jumped and dropped the small plastic photo insert she’d been holding.

      Frowning, Jon picked it up. He stared at the child in the photograph with curiosity. “He looks like you,” he said finally as he handed the insert back to her.

      She put it away quickly. “Yes,” she stammered. “Sorry, sir.”

      He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at her with open curiosity. “We have those bring-your-child-to-work days here, but you never bring your son with you.”

      “It would be inconvenient,” she said. “Markie is a bit of a pirate when he’s in company. He’d be making hats out of files and standing on the desk,” she added with a laugh.

      His eyebrows arched. Cammy had said that Jon had been singularly mischievous as a young boy.

      Joceline glanced at him. “They think he may have attention deficit disorder,” she said. “They wanted to put him on drugs….”

      “What? At his age?” he exclaimed.

      She shifted. “He’s in preschool,” she said. “He unsettles the other children because he’s hyperactive.”

      “Are you going to let them medicate him?” he asked, with real interest.

      She looked up, her blue eyes troubled. “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly. “It’s a hard issue to deal with. I thought I’d discuss it with our family doctor and see what he thinks, first.”

      “Wise.” He drew in a long breath. “That’s a decision I’d have a hard time with, too.”

      She managed a smile. “Times have changed.”

      “Yes.”

      She searched his black eyes and her body tingled. She looked away quickly. This would never do. She fumbled her purse back under her desk. “I was going to print out that brief for you,” she said, opening a file on the computer. “And you’re having lunch with the deputy sheriff in that potential federal kidnapping case.”

      “Yes, we thought we’d discuss the case informally before lawyers become involved.”

      She gave him a droll look. “I thought you were a lawyer.”

      “I’m a federal agent.”

      “With a double major in law and Arabic studies and language.”

      He shrugged. His dark brows drew together. “How did you manage college?”

      She blinked. “Excuse me?”

      “You work endless hours and you have a small child,” he said. He didn’t add that he knew her finances must have been a problem, as well.

      She laughed. “I went on the internet. Distance education. I even got a degree that way.”

      “Amazing.”

      “It really is,” she agreed. “I wanted to know more about a lot of subjects.” Her favorite was sixteenth-century Scotland. One of her other interests was Lakota history, but she wasn’t telling him that. It might sound awkward, since that was his ancestry.

      “Sixteenth-century Scottish history,” he mused. He frowned. “You didn’t have a case on my brother, did you? That’s his passion.”

      She gave him a glowering look. “Your brother is terrible,” she said flatly. “Winnie Sinclair must have the patience and tolerance of a saint to live with him.”

      He glared at her. “My brother is not terrible.”

      “Not to you, certainly,” she agreed. “But then, you’ll never have to marry him.”

      He chuckled.

      “My mother was a MacLeod,” she added. “Her people were highland Scots, some of whom fought for Mary Queen of Scots when she tried to regain the throne of Scotland after being deposed by her half brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray.”

      “A loyalist.”

      She nodded. “But my father’s family were Stewarts with the Anglicized, not the French, spelling, and they sided with Moray. So you might say they united warring clans.”

      “Did your parents fight?”

      She nodded. “They married because I was on the way, and then divorced when I was about six.” Her eyes became distant. “My father was career military. He remarried and moved to the West Coast. He died performing maneuvers in a jet with a flying group.”

      “Your mother?”

      “She remarried, too. She has a daughter … a little younger than me. We … don’t speak.”

      He