Bound by Honor: Mercenary's WomanThe Winter Soldier Read online

  “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 father spends most of his time at work while Beverly goes the party route every night and spends every penny he makes. Your mother is separated from her second husband and living in Nassau.” Jessica shifted on the bed. “You don’t ever hear from your parents, do you?”

  “I don’t resent them as much as I did. But I never felt that they loved me,” she said abruptly. “That’s why I felt it was better we went our separate ways.”

  “They were children when they married and had you,” the other woman said. “Not really mature enough for the responsibility. They resented it, too. That’s why you spent so much time with me during the first five years you were alive.” Jessica smiled. “I hated it when you went back home.”

  “Why did you and Hank wait so long to have a child of your own?” Sally asked.

  Jessica flushed. “It wasn’t…convenient, with Hank overseas so much. Did you get that tire replaced?” she added, almost as if she were desperate to change the subject.

  “You and Mr. Scott!” Sally exploded, diverted. “How did you know it was bald?”

  “Because Eb phoned me before you got home and told me to remind you to get it replaced,” Jessica chuckled.

  “I suppose he has a cell phone in his truck.”

  “Among other things,” Jessica replied with a smile. “He isn’t like the men you knew in college or even when you started teaching. Eb is an alpha male,” she said quietly. “He isn’t politically correct, and he doesn’t even pretend to conform. In some ways, he’s very old-fashioned.”

  “I don’t feel that way about him anymore,” Sally said firmly.

  “I’m sorry,” Jessica replied gently. “He’s been alone most of his life. He needs to be loved.”

  Sally picked at a cuticle, chipping the clear varnish on her short, neat fingernails. “Does he have family?”

  “Not anymore. His mother died when he was very young, and his father was career military. He grew up in the army, you might say. His father was not a gentle sort of man. He died in combat when Eb was in his twenties. There wasn’t any other family.”

  “You said once that you always saw Ebenezer with beautiful women at social events,” Sally recalled with a touch of envy.

  “He pays for dressing, and he attracts women. But he’s careful about his infrequent liaisons. He told me once that he guessed he’d never find a woman who could share the life he leads. He still has enemies who’d like to see him dead,” she added.

  “Like this drug lord?”

  “Yes. Manuel Lopez is a law unto himself. He has millions, and he owns politicians, law enforcement people, even judges,” Jessica said irritably. “That’s why we were never able to shut him down. Then I was told that a confidant of his wanted to give me information, names and documents that would warrant arresting Lopez on charges of drug trafficking. But I wasn’t careful enough. I overlooked one little thing, and Lopez’s attorneys used it in a petition for a retrial. They got him out. He’s on the loose pending retrial and out for vengeance against his comrade. He’ll do anything to get the name of the person who sold him out. Anything at all.”

  Sally let her breath out through pursed lips. “So we’re all under the gun.”

  “Exactly. I used to be a crack shot, but without my vision, I’m useless. Eb will have a plan by tomorrow.” Her face was solemn as she stared in the general direction of her niece’s voice. “Listen to him, Sally. Do exactly what he says. He’s our only hope of protecting Stevie.”

  “I’ll do anything I have to, to protect you and Stevie,” Sally agreed at once.

  “I knew you would.”

  She toyed with her nails again. “Jess, has Ebenezer ever been serious about anyone?”

  “Yes. There was a woman in Houston, in fact, several years ago. He cared for her very much, but she dropped him flat when she found out what he did for a living. She married a much-older bank executive.” She shifted on the bed. “I hear that she’s widowed now. But I don’t imagine he still has any feelings for her. After all, she dropped him, not the reverse.”

  Sally, who knew something about helpless unrequited love, wasn’t so quick to agree. After all, she still had secret feelings for Ebenezer…

  “Deep thoughts, dear?” Jessica asked softly.

  “I was remembering the reruns we used to see of that old TV series, The A-Team,” she recalled with an audible laugh. “I loved it when they had to knock out that character Mr. T played to get him on an airplane.”

  “It was a good show. Not lifelike, of course,” Jessica added.

  “What part?�
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  “All of it.”

  Jessica would probably know, Sally figured. “Why didn’t you ever tell me what you did for a living?”

  “Need to know,” came the dry reply. “You didn’t, until now.”

  “If you knew Ebenezer when he was still working as a mercenary, I guess you learned a lot about the business,” she ventured.

  Jessica’s face closed up. “I learned too much,” she said coldly. “Far too much. Men like that are incapable of lasting relationships. They don’t know the meaning of love or fidelity.”

  She seemed to know that, and Sally wondered how. “Was Uncle Hank a mercenary, too?”

  “Yes, just briefly,” she said. “Hank was never one to rush in and risk killing himself. It was so ironic that he died overseas in his sleep, of a heart condition nobody even knew he had.”

  That was a surprise, along with all the others that Jessica was getting. Uncle Hank had been very handsome, but not assertive or particularly tough.

  “But Ebenezer said he served with Uncle Hank.”

  “Yes. In basic training, before they joined the Green Berets,” Jessica said. “Hank didn’t pass the training course. Ebenezer did. In fact,” she added amusedly, “he was able to do the Fan Dance.”

  “Fan Dance?”

  “It’s a specialized course they put the British commandos, the Special Air Service, guys through. Not many soldiers, even career soldiers, are able to finish it, much less able to pass it on the first try. Eb did. He was briefly ‘loaned’ to them while he was in army intelligence, for some top secret assignment.”

  Sally had never thought very much about Ebenezer’s profession, except that she’d guessed he was once in the military. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. A man who’d been in the military might still have a soft spot or two inside. She was almost certain that a commando, a soldier for hire, wouldn’t have any.

  “You’re very quiet,” Jessica said.

  “I never thought of Ebenezer in such a profession,” she replied, moving to look out the window at the November landscape. “I guess it was right there in front of me, and I didn’t see it. No wonder he kept to himself.”

  “He still does,” she replied. “And only a few people know about his past. His men do, of course,” she added, and there was an inflection in her tone that was suddenly different.

  “Do you know any of his men?”

  Jessica’s face tautened. “One or two. I believe Dallas Kirk still works for him. And Micah Steele does consulting work when Eb asks him to,” she added and smiled. “Micah’s a good guy. He’s the only one of Eb’s old colleagues who still works in the trade. He lives in Nassau, but he spends an occasional week helping Ebenezer train men when he’s needed.”

  “And Dallas Kirk?”

  Jessica’s soft face went very hard. At her side, one of her small hands clenched. “Dallas was badly wounded in a firefight a year ago. He came home shot to pieces and Eb found something for him to teach in the tactics courses. He doesn’t speak to me, of course. We had a difficult parting some years ago.”

  That was intriguing, and Sally was going to find out about it one day. But she didn’t press her luck. “How about fajitas for supper?” she asked.

  Jessica’s glower dissolved into a smile. “Sounds lovely!”

  “I’ll get right on them.” Sally went back into the kitchen, her head spinning with the things she’d learned about people she thought she knew. Life, she considered, was always full of surprises.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EBENEZER WAS A MAN of his word. He showed up early the next morning as Sally was out by the corral fence watching her two beef cattle graze. She’d bought them to raise with the idea of stocking her freezer. Now they had names. The white-faced Black Angus mixed steer was called Bob, the white-faced red-coated Hereford she called Andy. They were pets. She couldn’t face the thought of sitting down to a plate of either one of them.

  The familiar black pickup stopped at the fence and Ebenezer got out. He was wearing jeans and a blue checked shirt with boots and a light-colored straw Stetson. No chaps, so he wasn’t working cattle today.

  He joined Sally at the fence. “Don’t tell me. They’re table beef.”

  She spared him a resentful glance. “Right.”

  “And you’re going to put them in the freezer.”

  She swallowed. “Sure.”

  He only chuckled. He paused to light a cigar, with one big booted foot propped on the lower rung of the fence. “What are their names?”

  “That’s Andy and that’s…Bob.” She flushed.

  He didn’t say a word, but his raised eyebrow was eloquent through the haze of expelled smoke.

  “They’re watch-cattle,” she improvised.

  His eyes twinkled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “They’re attack steers,” she said with a reluctant grin. “At the first sign of trouble, they’ll come right through the fence to protect me. Of course, if they get shot in the line of duty,” she added, “I’ll eat them!”

  He pushed his Stetson back over clean blond-streaked brown hair and looked down at her with lingering amusement. “You haven’t changed much in six years.”

  “Neither have you,” she retorted shyly. “You’re still smoking those awful things.”

  He glanced at the big cigar and shrugged. “A man has to have a vice or two to round him out,” he pointed out. “Besides, I only have the occasional one, and never inside. I have read the studies on smoking,” he added dryly.

  “Lots of people who smoke read those studies,” she agreed. “And then they quit!”

  He smiled. “You can’t reform me,” he told her. “It’s a waste of time to try. I’m thirty-six and very set in my ways.”

  “I noticed.”

  He took a puff from the cigar and studied her steers. “I suppose they follow you around like dogs.”

  “When I go inside the fence with them,” she agreed. She felt odd with him; safe and nervous and excited, all at once. She could smell the fresh scent of the soap he used, and over it a whiff of expensive cologne. He was close at her side, muscular and vibrating with sensuality. She wanted to move closer, to feel that strength all around her. It made her self-conscious. After six years, surely the attraction should have lessened a little.

  He glanced down at her, noticing how she picked at her cuticles and nibbled on her lower lip. His green eyes narrowed and there was a faint glitter in them.

  She felt the heat of his gaze and refused to lift her face. She wondered if it looked as hot as it felt.

  “You haven’t forgotten a thing,” he said suddenly, the cigar in his hand absently falling to his side, whirls of smoke climbing into the air beside him.

  “About what?” she choked.

  He caught her long, blond ponytail and tugged her closer, so that she was standing right up against him. The scent of him, the heat of him, the muscular ripple of his body combined to make her shiver with repressed feelings.

  He shifted, coaxing her into the curve of his body, his eyes catching hers and holding them relentlessly. He could feel her faint trembling, hear the excited whip of her breath as she tried valiantly to hide it from him. But he could see her heartbeat jerking the fabric over her small breasts.

  It was a relief to find her as helplessly attracted to him as she once had been. It made him arrogant with pride. He let go of the ponytail and drew his hand against her cheek, letting his thumb slide down to her mouth and over her chin to lift her eyes to his.

  “To everything, there is a season,” he said quietly.

  She felt the impact of his steady, unblinking gaze in the most secret places of her body. She didn’t have the experience to hide it, to protect herself. She only stood staring up at him, with all her insecurities and fears lying naked in her soft gray eyes.

  His head bent and he drew his nose against hers in the sudden silence of the yard. His smoky breath whispered over her lips as he murmured, “Six years is a long time to go hungry.�
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  She didn’t understand what he was saying. Her eyes were on his hard, long, thin mouth. Her hands had flattened against his broad chest. Under it she could feel thick, soft hair and the beat of his heart. His breath smelled of cigar smoke and when his mouth gently covered hers, she wondered if she was going to faint with the unexpected delight of it. It had been so long!

  He felt her immediate, helpless submission. His free arm went around her shoulders and drew her lazily against his muscular body while his hard mouth moved lightly over her lips, tasting her, assessing her experience. His mouth became insistent and she stiffened a little, unused to the tender probing of his tongue against her teeth.

  She felt his smile before he lifted his head.

  “You still taste of lemonade and cotton candy,” he murmured with unconcealed pleasure.

  “What do you mean?” she murmured, mesmerized by the hovering threat of his mouth.

  “I mean, you still don’t know how to do this.” He searched her eyes quietly and then the smile left his face. “I did more damage than I ever meant to. You were seventeen. I had to hurt you to save you.” He traced her mouth with his thumb and scowled down at her. “You don’t know what my life was like in those days,” he said solemnly, and for once his eyes were unguarded. The pain in them was visible for the first time Sally could remember.

  “Aunt Jessica told me,” she said slowly.

  His eyes darkened. His face hardened. “All of it?”

  She nodded.

  He was still scowling. He released her to gaze off into the distance, absently lifting the cigar to his mouth. He blew out a cloud of smoke. “I’m not sure that I wanted you to know.”

  “Secrets are dangerous.”

  He glanced down at her, brooding. “More dangerous than you realize. I’ve kept mine for a long time, like your aunt.”

  “I had no idea what she did for a living, either.” She glared up at him. “Thanks to the two of you, now I know how a mushroom feels, sitting in the dark.”

  He chuckled. “She wanted it that way. She felt you’d be safer if she kept you uninvolved.”