“She’ll grow up. She’s making a nice start, already.”
Leo brushed back his thick, unruly hair. “I was way out of line with her tonight. She said she never wanted to see me again.”
“Give her time.”
“I don’t care if she doesn’t want to see me,” Leo said belligerently. “What the hell do I want with a mud-covered little tomboy, anyway? She can’t even cook!”
“Neither can Tira,” Corrigan pointed out. “But she’s a knockout in an evening gown. So is our Janie, even if she isn’t as pretty as Marilee.”
Leo shrugged. “Marilee’s lost a good friend.”
“She has. Janie won’t ever trust her again, even if she can forgive her someday.”
Leo glanced back at his older brother. “Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to screw up your whole life in a few unguarded minutes?”
“That’s life, compadre. I’ve got to go. You going to be okay?”
Leo nodded. “Thanks for the ride.” He glowered at Corrigan. “I guess you’re in a hurry to get back, right?”
Corrigan’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t want to miss the last dance!”
Or the chance to tell his brothers everything that had happened. But, what the hell, they were family.
“Drive safely,” Leo told Corrigan as he closed the car door.
“I always do.” Corrigan threw up his hand and drove away.
Leo disarmed the alarm system and unlocked the front door, pausing to relock it and rearm the system. He’d been the victim of a mugging last October in Houston, and it had been Rey’s new wife, Meredith, who had saved him from no worse than a concussion. But now he knew what it was to be a victim of violent crime, and he was much more cautious than he’d ever been before.
He tossed his keys on his chest of drawers and took off his jacket and shoes. Before he could manage the rest, he passed out on his own bed.
Janie Brewster was very quiet on the way home. Harley understood why. He and Janie weren’t an item, but he hated seeing a woman cry. He’d wanted, very badly, to punch Leo Hart for that.
“You should have let me hit him, Janie,” he remarked thoughtfully.
She gave him a sad little smile. “There’s been enough gossip already, although I appreciate the thought.”
“He was drinking pretty heavily,” Harley added. “I noticed that one of his brothers took him and Marilee home early. Nice of him to find a designated driver, in that condition. He looked as if he was barely able to walk without staggering.”
Janie had seen them leave, with mixed emotions. She turned her small evening bag in her lap. “I didn’t know he drank hard liquor at all.”
“He doesn’t,” Harley replied. “Eb Scott said that he’d never known Leo to take anything harder than a beer in company.” He glanced at her. “That must have been some mixer you had with him.”
“He’d been drinking before we argued,” she replied. She looked out the darkened window. “Odd that Marilee left with him.”
“You didn’t see the women snub her, I guess,” he murmured. “Served her right, I thought.” His eyes narrowed angrily as he made the turn that led to her father’s ranch. “It’s low to stab a friend in the back like that. Whatever her feelings for Hart, she should have put your feelings first.”
“I thought you liked her, Harley.”
He stiffened. “I asked her out once, and she laughed.”
“What?”
He stared straight ahead at the road, the center of which was lit by the powerful headlights of the truck he was driving. “She thought it was hilarious that I had the nerve to ask her to go on a date. She said I was too immature.”
Ouch, she thought. A man like Harley would have too much pride to ever go near a woman who’d dented his ego that badly.
He let out a breath. “The hell of it is, she was right,” he conceded with a wry smile. “I had my head in the clouds, bragging about my mercenary training. Then I went up against Lopez with Eb and Cy and Micah.” He grimaced. “I didn’t have a clue.”
“We heard that it was a firefight.”
He nodded. His eyes were haunted. “My only experience of combat was movies and television.” His lean hands gripped the wheel hard. “The real thing is less… comfortable. And that’s all I’ll say.”
“Thank you for taking me to the ball,” she said, changing the subject because he’d looked so tormented.
His face relaxing, he glanced at her. “It was my pleasure. I’m not ready to settle down, but I like you. Anytime you’re at a loose end, we can see a movie or get a burger.”
She chuckled. “I feel the same way. Thanks.”
He pursed his lips and gave her a teasing glance. “We could even go dancing.”
“I liked waltzing.”
“I want to learn those Latin dances, like Caldwell and Grier.” He whistled. “Imagine Grier doing Latin dances! Even Caldwell stood back and stared.”
“Mr. Grier is a conundrum,” she murmured. “Not the man he seems, on the surface.”
“How would you know?” he asked.
She cleared her throat. “He stopped me for speeding out on the Victoria road.”
“Good for him. You drive too fast.”
“Don’t you start!”
He frowned. “What was he doing out there? He doesn’t have jurisdiction outside Jacobsville.”
“I don’t know. But he’s very pleasant.”
He hesitated. “There’s some, shall we say, unsavory gossip about him around town,” he told her.
“Unsavory, how?” she asked, curious.
“It’s probably just talk.”
“Harley!”
He slowed for a turn. “They say he was a government assassin at one point in his life.”
She whistled softly. “You’re kidding!”
He glanced at her. “When I was in the Rangers, I flew overseas with a guy who was dressed all in black, armed to the teeth. He didn’t say a word to the rest of us. I learned later that he was brought over for a very select assignment with the British commandos.”
“What has that got to do with Grier?”
“That’s just the thing. I think it was Grier.”
She felt cold chills running up her arms.
“It was several years ago,” he reiterated, “and I didn’t get a close look, but sometimes you can tell a man just by the way he walks, the way he carries himself.”
“You shouldn’t tell anybody,” she murmured, uneasy, because she liked Grier.
“I never would,” Harley assured her. “I told my boss, but nobody else. Grier isn’t the sort of man you’d ever gossip about, even if half the things they tell are true.”
“There’s more?” she exclaimed.
He chuckled. “He was in the Middle East helping pinpoint the laser-guided bombs, he broke up a spy ring in Manhattan as a company agent, he fought with the freedom fighters in Afghanistan, he foiled an assassination attempt against one of our own leaders under the nose of the agency