Protector Page 11

  “It is, if you know who he actually hired,” the man told her with gentle affection. “It is one of my own men, posing as the best assassin in Europe. So do not worry. Your houseguest is perfectly safe for the moment. And if we can find a way to deal with El Ladrón before he suspects the truth, he will be safe forever. At least, from that quarter.”

  She was silent for a long time. It was so much to get used to.

  “Your sheriff, he knows about me,” El Jefe said suddenly.

  “What? How do you know that?” she burst out.

  “I have listening devices in some very odd places,” he said. “He spoke to someone recently about me. He was very upset that he could not tell you who I was, because he made a promise to his own father. He is quite famous for keeping his word. So many people today find it inconvenient or old-fashioned. I consider it a point of honor. I never break my word, once I give it.”

  “He knows.” She was feeling chills all the way to her feet. “He knows.”

  “Yes. It surprises me that he will associate with you, because he blames me for his brother’s death. And you, of course, are my child. My child,” he added softly. “How sweet that word sounds now that I can put a name and a face behind it.”

  “Hayes hates me,” she said unsteadily. “He always has, ever since Bobby died. I never understood why. I thought he meant I was connected with the local drug dealers, but I don’t have anything to do with them. I was too young and too naive to ever hang around people like that when Bobby and I were in school together.” She groaned. “I never knew!”

  “I am deeply sorry,” he replied. “We choose our paths through life without considering that each pebble thrown into a still lake makes ripples that eventually touch everything around it. I chose to be on the wrong side of the law, and even though you knew nothing about it, I still influenced the people around you in a sad way. I am sorry for that.”

  She bit her lip. “Well, at least now I know why he hates me,” she said heavily.

  “You have...feelings for him.” There was a long sigh on the other end of the line. “So I am sorry once more. But it is always good to know the truth. Even when it hurts. We do no service to others by lying.”

  “You are one very strange drug dealer,” Minette said.

  He laughed. “I am just a man.” A voice was muffled in the background. He put his hand over the receiver and mumbled something back. “I must go. I have a visitor.” He laughed. “I think it is my neighbor. This conversation should be quite interesting.”

  “Cy Parks?” she asked, shocked.

  “The same. Do not worry. I have never yet killed a guest.”

  “Promise me,” she returned.

  “Ah, you know me so well already and we have only just met. I do promise. And I promise that El Ladrón will never touch you,” he added quietly. “All the same, be careful of your surroundings. And keep a careful eye on your little brother and sister because, believe me, he will not hesitate to harm them if he can. He considers that any member of an adversary’s family is fair game.”

  “I will.” She paused. “Thank you, for telling me.”

  “It was not a pleasure, except that it pleases me very much to have a child. I am sorry that the news gives you less pleasure than it does me. We will speak again. Farewell.”

  He hung up.

  Minette put the receiver down. Idly she noted a spot of coffee on the desk and grabbed a nearby paper towel to mop it up. Her father was a drug lord. Her father was a drug lord. Her father was...

  “Minette! Can we watch another movie, please? Please?” Julie called from the staircase.

  She swallowed, got to her feet, picked up her cupful of cold coffee and walked out into the hall. “No, sweetheart, tomorrow’s a school day. You and Shane have to go to bed now.”

  “Awwww, do we have to?” Julie moaned.

  “Yes. Go on, get into your pj’s and tell Shane,” she added. “I’m going to heat up my coffee in the microwave and I’ll be up to tell you a story and tuck you in. Go on, now.”

  “Okay!”

  She ran back up the staircase. Minette heated her coffee. She wanted to go into Sarah’s room and cry on her shoulder, but the poor woman had gone to bed earlier with a headache and she hesitated to wake her.

  So she went upstairs, sipped coffee while she read a Dr. Seuss book to the kids and then put them both to bed.

  Then she went out into the hallway. She hesitated at Hayes’s door. But it would do no good to put off this confrontation, she told herself. She had to deal with it, and the longer she waited, the worse things would get. She had to protect Julie and Shane and Aunt Sarah. She wasn’t worried for herself.

  She knocked on the door.

  “Since when do you have to knock on doors in your own house?” Hayes asked amusedly.

  She closed the door behind her, but she stopped at the foot of his bed. Her face was drawn and pale.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked at once, and his concern was obvious.

  She moved one shoulder. “I just got a phone call.”

  “Let me guess, they know I’m here and they’re going to try again,” he guessed.

  She shook her head. “No. Actually,” she said, taking a deep breath, “I just got a phone call from my...father.”

  Hayes sat very still against his pillows. “Your father.”

  She nodded. “El Jefe. Isn’t that what they call him? My father, one of the most famous drug lords in the country. Maybe in several countries.”

  He winced. He’d promised his father that he’d never tell her the truth. He’d blamed her, because her father had supplied the drugs that killed his brother. He’d hated her. But since they’d become so close, his feelings were in flux. He certainly didn’t hate her. And now he felt very guilty that he’d let her find out that terrible news all by herself, without any warning.

  “I should have told you,” he said heavily. “I’m sorry.”

  Minette’s eyebrows lifted. “He said you knew. He said you promised your father that you’d never tell me,” she said with sad eyes.

  “I did. How the hell did he know that?” he burst out.

  “He has listening devices. One of his enforcers used to work for some Middle Eastern leader who was killed.”

  “I’ll bet I know the one,” he replied. “That late Middle Eastern madman’s top aide has a degree from MIT and he’s the most dangerous man on two legs with an automatic weapon. They say he’s handsome and personable and if you met him on the street, you’d never guess what he did for a living.”

  “Some combination.”

  “You bet it is. And he’s here, with your father, about to start a drug war.”

  “It’s much worse than that,” she said. The anguish she felt was visible on her pale, drawn face and shimmering eyes.

  He held out an arm. “Come here, sweetheart,” he said in a tone so tender that it made her cry.

  She didn’t even hesitate. She dropped down onto the bed beside him. He curled her into his body with his good arm and held her pillowed against his chest while she cried as if her heart would break.

  “I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket,” she sobbed, “and my father is the worst criminal in the country!”

  “Now, now,” he said, soothing her back with his big hand. “He’s definitely not the worst. Even our best people can’t hang any murders on him. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “we could hang a few on people who have worked for him over the years. And there are many lives lost by people who overdose on illegal drugs,” he added grimly.

  “Rub it in.”

  He held her closer. He felt her pert breasts very firm against his chest, soft under the firmness. It aroused him, and he shifted just a little under the covers so that she didn’t feel it. He genuinely wanted to provide comfort, not sex. Well, right now, anyway.

  “I’m not,” he protested softly. He kissed her beautiful pale golden hair, just at her forehead. “Listen, criminal behavior can come in many forms. So
me who bend the laws are just like other people. Most of them pay taxes, love their families, give to charity, even go to church. Except they make money illegally.”

  Her small, curled fist hit his chest gently. “He’s not normal. And I’m his daughter!” she groaned. “What if those qualities are in me, too? What if I end up on the wrong side of the law?”

  “Bull,” he replied easily. “Environment and upbringing have a lot to do with that.”

  “So does genetics.”

  He shrugged. “We could argue forever. It won’t change anything. You’re not a criminal.”

  “My father is.”

  “Why did he call?”

  She sighed and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “He says his worst enemy decided to target me. That’s why he moved here. He’s going to have people watching me, he says, to keep me safe.”

  Hayes chuckled. “Well, they’ll be in good company. I have it from a reliable source that some of Cy Parks’s men are also watching you.” He leaned closer. “So is Zack, but you’re not supposed to know that.”

  “Great. I’ll be at the head of a parade!”

  “Not a visible one.”

  “When my father hung up, Cy Parks had just walked in his door,” she added.

  “Good Lord, he’s got guts!” Hayes caught his breath. “I guess, considering his past, it’s not so surprising. He always was one to wade into trouble. Did anyone ever tell you what he did in Africa?”

  “No.”

  “An orphaned African child he loved was killed in the country where he and the others in his group were working. The men who did it started firing with machine guns. Cy walked right into the gunfire and got to them. He avenged the child.”

  “How did he live through that?” she asked, aghast.

  “No clue. History says Wyatt Earp did the same thing in a shootout with some of the Clanton gang after the O.K. Corral gunfight. Guy was firing a shotgun, Earp walked right into the fire and shot the man, never was scratched. In fact, there’s no evidence that he ever suffered a gunshot wound in all his time as a lawman. He lived into his eighties.”

  “My goodness. Didn’t he hang out with Doc Holliday?”

  He chuckled. “Did you ever watch that movie Tombstone with Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You should. Except for the ‘red sashes’ the rustlers wore, it’s very true to the historical record. And, in fact, Val Kilmer’s portrayal of Holliday is right on the money, down to the pale face and coughing sprees and drinking. You know, ragged little kids followed Holliday around in every town he visited, because he’d feed them. They asked him once if his conscience didn’t bother him, because of all the men he killed. Know what he said?”

  “No,” she replied, fascinated.

  “That he coughed that up, along with his lungs, long ago. He was only thirty-six years old when he died, with his boots off, of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Two years older than me.”

  That put things into perspective. She snuggled closer, careful not to jar him too much. “Very young.”

  His arm contracted.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said after a minute.

  “For what?”

  “For what my father did,” she said heavily. “For Bobby...”

  He winced. He felt the pain of what he’d done to her over the years, hated her, persecuted her, for something she didn’t even know about. And now that she did know, it seemed so futile, so useless, all that hatred. “No, Minette,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. For blaming you, when you never had a part in it.”

  “You don’t...hate me?”

  He shifted, so that her head fell back against his shoulder on the bed. He looked straight into her black eyes. “I don’t hate you.” His gaze fell to her soft mouth. “I’m not sure that I ever did, really.”

  The way he looked at her made her heart race. She stared at him with fascinated delight, loving the strong lines of his tanned face, the way his thick hair fell naturally into a wave over his left eye, the thickness of it. Her hands longed to tangle in it, the way they had when he’d kissed her...

  “Looking for trouble?” he asked huskily.

  “Pardon me?”

  He chuckled. “I look that way at a steak when I’m hungry,” he mused.

  “Oh!” She averted her eyes and flushed.

  “No, don’t do that. I like it,” he whispered, tilting her face back so that he could look into her embarrassed eyes. “I like it a lot.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. His head bent. He brushed his lips over hers softly, slowly, parting them so that he could catch the upper lip in his teeth and nibble at it.

  She had no experience of such things. Her life had been devoted to the two children she’d inherited from her stepfather and stepmother, to the newspaper. But Hayes didn’t seem to mind that she came with a ready-made family. He smiled against her lips, shifted and kissed her again, with hunger but also with restraint.

  She relaxed. She hadn’t realized how tense she was. She hoped Hayes wasn’t going to ask for more than she could give. She was a person of faith. She believed certain things were right and others were wrong, and she wasn’t going to change her beliefs because of anyone else’s opinion.

  “You think I’m just out for a good time, don’t you?” he whispered as he kissed her.

  “I...don’t know.”

  He lifted his head and searched her eyes. “We live in a goldfish bowl. I can keep a poker face, but you can’t. If we get involved, everybody’s going to know about it.”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea, then?”

  He pursed his lips and studied her with smiling eyes. “Oh, I didn’t say that. I’m thirty-four. I live with a giant iguana. Women won’t date me because they think Andy will eat them. On the other hand,” he pointed out, “you have two little dependents that you’re not about to jettison because some guy thinks you’re more attractive without them.”

  “Fair assessment,” she had to agree.

  “I like kids.”

  She smiled. “I like iguanas.”

  His eyes opened wide. “You what?” he asked.

  “I like iguanas,” she said. “I had one for a pet when I was about sixteen. I kept him for two years, but one morning I found him dead in his cage. I begged my stepfather to have him autopsied, because I was afraid it was something I’d done wrong. It wasn’t—he had something wrong with him, internally. I never quite understood what. But the vet said that animals in the wild try to hide things that are wrong with them because it can be fatal to show weakness. The thing is, an iguana’s metabolism is so slow that by the time you see something wrong, it’s too late to save the animal.” She sighed. “I just never saw anything wrong. He seemed perfectly fine. He was eating and drinking...”

  “And sometimes animals just die. So you like iguanas. How about that?”

  “Andy doesn’t like women,” she reminded him.

  “He doesn’t like most women.”

  “So there’s hope?”

  He laughed and bent to kiss her again. “There’s always hope. It’s the last thing we lose.”

  She touched his lean cheek, and slid her hand into the thick hair at the back of his head. “Hope is good.”

  He kissed her harder. “Yes.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked against his mouth.

  “I can think of a few things...”

  “About my father?” she qualified.

  He lifted his head with a sigh. “I can’t think of a few things. But I’ll work on it.” He bent and started kissing her again, with more insistence this time, and she went under like a person on chloroform.

  “Minette! I’m thirsty! Can I have a drink of water?” she heard through a veritable fog of passion.

  Hayes lifted his head. He stared at her blankly.

  “Be right there!” Minette called back. She sighed. “Sorry.”

  He managed a smile. “Thi
nk of it as home-based, verbal birth control,” he mused.

  “Hayes!” She thumped him, but gently.

  “Sorry. Couldn’t resist it.”

  She smiled. She leaned up, bravely, and kissed him very softly. “I have to go.”

  “I know. We’ll talk again in the morning, and see what decisions we can make,” he replied. His face grew harder. “I think I need to have a little talk with your dad myself.”

  “You’ll ask Coltrain first,” she informed him when she was back on her feet.

  “Yes, Mom,” he returned.

  She shook her finger at him. “I am not your mother.”

  “I’ll say.” He gave her a long, deep appraisal. “Nice. Very nice. If you ever cut that hair, I’ll wear mourning for a year,” he added softly. “I love the way it feels in my hands.”

  She flushed. “It’s a lot of work...”

  “I look terrible in black,” he pointed out.

  She laughed. “Okay.” She went to the door. “If you go to see him, I’m going with you,” she said. “I want to know what he looks like.”

  “There used to be a Wanted poster in the post office...”

  “Stop that.”

  She went out and closed the door.

  Chapter 8

  Minette told Aunt Sarah over the breakfast table about her real father.

  Sarah grimaced. “I had a feeling he was someone on the outside of the law,” she said. “I only got bits and pieces from your mother, but they did add up.” She shook her head. “I was very fond of her, you know. She gave me a home when I had no place to go, after my husband died. I lost everything. He was a gambler,” she said heavily. “He gambled away everything we had and then drank himself to death because of it. He was a good man. He just had this habit he couldn’t break.”

  “What a shame.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t get him to go to a counselor to talk about it. He said people would think he was crazy. What a terrible way we used to treat people with mental problems,” she added. “Now, there’s a treatment for almost anything. It wasn’t the way of things twenty years ago and more,” she added.

  “I know. I’m so sorry. But having you here is wonderful for me,” Minette said. “I couldn’t make it without you.”