Lone Star Winter: The Winter Soldier. Diana Palmer

all right, we know there’s someone trying to break in up stairs. Micah’s rappeling from the roof down to the window of the room across the hall. He’ll have him in a minute. Don’t scream or you’ll give him all the warning he needs to get away. Okay?”

      She nodded.

      He eased her back onto her feet, taking her soft weight against the black sweater he was wearing with black jeans, one lean arm holding her just under her breasts. She saw the glimmer of metal in his other black-gloved hand. Her frightened eyes drifted up to his face, and all she could see of it was his eyes. He was wearing some sort of black mask.

      While she was studying him, she heard a loud thud, followed by a louder groan.

      “All clear!” came a loud, deep voice from upstairs.

      “Stay here.” Cy let her go and went past her and up the staircase with an economy of motion that made her very glad she wasn’t the enemy.

      She leaned back against the counter and almost jumped out of her skin when the back door opened and Eb Scott came in pulling his mask off, grinning.

      “Sorry,” he said quickly. “But the man Cy had staying in the bunkhouse spotted two suspicious figures outside your window. Unless you’re expecting Romeo, it’s a bit late for social calls.”

      “I was asleep,” she said, shaken. “I heard the noise and thought it was a squirrel. I was trying to get out the back door when Cy grabbed me.” She whistled. “I thought my number was up.”

      “Good thing you slept light,” Eb said solemnly. “We barely got here in time.”

      “Who is it, do you think?” she asked.

      “One of Lopez’s goons,” Eb told her flatly. “And this definitely confirms our worst fears. Lopez is after you.”

      “But I didn’t do anything!” she said, still shaken from the experience. “Why is he after me?” She brushed back the long, tangled curtain of hair from her flushed cheeks. She felt sick.

      “He’s going to set an example for anybody else who might consider trying to infiltrate his organization,” Eb told her. “It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. He doesn’t care. Your husband betrayed him and he wants you to pay for it, too. He wants all the government agencies to know the price for selling him out—their lives and their families’ lives.”

      The fear made a tight knot in the pit of her stomach. She sank down into one of the kitchen chairs with a protective hand over her belly. She felt twice her age.

      She heard heavy footsteps on the staircase and out the front door before Cy came back into the room, tearing off his mask. He looked even more formidable than usual, and that said something about his present demeanor, Lisa thought.

      “Micah’s taking the guy over to the sheriff,” he said. “He suddenly doesn’t speak English, of course, and his friend lit a shuck while he was breaking into the house. We won’t be able to prove a thing beyond the obvious.”

      “He’ll be out on bond by tomorrow afternoon and out of the country an hour later,” Ebenezer added.

      Cy’s expression was homicidal before he turned his glittery green eyes on Lisa. “You can’t stay here a day longer,” he said flatly. “Lopez doesn’t make the same mistake twice. You’ve been put on notice. The next time, there won’t be a near miss.”

      She ground her teeth together. “This is my ranch. I haven’t sold it to you yet, and I’m staying here,” she said furiously. “I’m not going to let some sleazy drug king pin force me into hiding out like a scared kid!”

      “Commendable courage,” Cy remarked with a stoic expression. He reached into his belt and pulled out something dark. “Here.”

      He tossed her his automatic. She caught it and then dropped it with a gasp of pure horror.

      “You’d better pick it up and learn to shoot straight and under fire,” he said coldly. “You’d better learn to shoot to kill while you’re at it. Because that—” he indicated the gun “—is the only way you’ll survive if you insist on staying here alone. We were almost too late tonight. Next time, we might not be so lucky.”

      She glared at him, but she didn’t argue. “I hate guns.”

      “Good God, so do I,” Cy told her. “But when you get in a war, you don’t throw potatoes at the enemy.”

      “Then what do I do?” she asked Cy.

      Cy told her. “Go pack a bag. You’re leaving.”

      “Leaving for where?” she demanded, standing up with both hands on her hips. “I told you already, I’ve got no family, no close friends, and no place to go to!”

      “Yes, you have. The Expedition’s outside. I’ll send Harley over in the morning to pick up your VW and bring it over, too.”

      Her dark eyes widened. It didn’t help much, her glasses were upstairs on the bedside table and all she could see of Cy was a blur. “I can’t go home with you. I’ve only been widowed a short time!”

      “I’ve only been widowed three years,” he reminded her. “So what?”

      “I can stay with Callie Kirby!”

      “Callie’s apartment isn’t big enough for Callie, much less Callie and you,” he said. “I’ve got three bedrooms. You can even have a bathroom of your own.”

      She didn’t want to give in. But the memory of someone trying to break in the house scared her. She knew that she couldn’t shoot an intruder. That left her few options.

      “When you make up your mind, I’ll be in the truck,” Cy told her.

      He actually walked out the door. Eb followed him with an amused grin that he didn’t let Lisa see.

      Lisa glared after him, hesitant and bristling with hurt pride. But in the end, she went upstairs, changed into jeans and a shirt and packed a small bag. Ten minutes later, he opened the door of the utility vehicle so that she could climb in with her tote bag.

      “If Harley so much as grins, I’ll kick him in the shins,” she said after she’d fumbled her seat belt together.

      “So will I,” Cy promised her.

      She glanced at him from the warm folds of her flannel-lined denim jacket. “Would you have shot that man?”

      “If there hadn’t been another way to stop him, yes.”

      “I couldn’t shoot anybody,” she said.

      “I know. That’s why you have to stay with me until we get Lopez.” He glanced at her. “It won’t be so bad. I can cook.”

      “So can I.”

      “Good. Fair division of labor.” He glanced at her with a faint smile. “When the baby comes, we’ll take turns getting up for his meals.”

      She felt a warm glow wash over her. She smiled, too. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to sleep if he was hungry,” she mused dreamily. “I’d get up, too.”

      He remembered his wife complaining bitterly about lost sleep, making formula, giving bottles. She hated everything to do with the baby, and couldn’t begin to understand his affection for the tiny little boy, who wasn’t even…

      He closed his mind to the anguish that memory fostered, and concentrated on his driving instead.

      Apparently Cy’s men were asleep in the bunkhouse, because the ranch house was quiet when they arrived. He helped Lisa out of the vehicle and carried her suitcase into the house.

      “You’ll probably like this room. It faces the rose garden,” he added with a smile.

      She looked around at the simple, old-fashioned room with its canopied double bed and gauzy white curtains and white furniture. “It’s very