Texas…Now and Forever (7 page)

The enormity of what he was asking of her left Haley speechless. Collins used her stunned silence to press home his point.

“You worked at Mercado Brothers Paving and Contracting for two summers, Miss Mercado. You know the family business. Enough of it to understand what looks right and what doesn't, anyway. We're hoping you can help us ferret out times, dates, drop-off points, contacts. Anything that will tie Del Brio to the smuggling and racketeering operations we know he runs.”

Haley cleared her throat. “Let me make sure I understand you,” she said carefully. “You want me to infiltrate the mob. Spy on Frank Del Brio. Gather evidence against him. And by the way, gather evidence against my father and possibly my brother, as well.”

“We're prepared to offer you a deal. Immunity for your father and brother in exchange for the detailed information we need to indict Del Brio. We'll also place your baby with a family who'll love and protect her while you're undercover.”

“No!” she said fiercely. “No deal! I'm not giving up my baby. She's only two months old.”

“I understand how you feel,” Collins replied gravely. “I know you'd do anything to protect her. Anything.”

“You bastard! You're deliberately playing on my fears for my baby to gain my cooperation.”

“Maybe. But you've got plenty to fear, Miss Mercado.”

She hated him in that moment. He was only voicing the brutal truth she'd already admitted to herself, yet Haley wasn't prepared to hear it said out loud. Nor was she prepared to give up her baby, even temporarily.

“I have to think. I need some space. And some time.”

“I'm afraid time is the one thing you don't have much of, Miss Mercado. We'll give you what we can, though. We've already booked a room for you in a hotel under an assumed name. We'll take you there.”

Another assumed name, Haley thought on a wave of near hysteria. Another carefully constructed identity. More background details to memorize. More lies to dish out. She'd already told so many she wasn't really sure who she was anymore.

 

True to his word, Agent Collins gave Haley space to think. Time ran out all too swiftly, however.

Collins showed up at her hotel room the very next afternoon. Judge Bridges was there, still worn, still haggard. The judge took one look at the
agent's face and moved to stand behind the sofa where Haley sat cuddling Lena.

“What's wrong?” she asked, already afraid of the answer.

“Someone broke into your flat last night, Miss Mercado. Scotland Yard managed to lift some good prints. Evidently the perp was one of Del Brio's henchmen. If we're going to get you out of London and into a new identity, we'll have to move quickly.”

This was the way it would always be, Haley thought with an ache in her chest. Constantly running. Always looking over her shoulder. Worrying every time she dropped her daughter off at day care or nursery school. Unless and until the threat to Lena was removed.

Closing her eyes, she kissed her baby's black, downy curls. She had no choice. She had to help Collins destroy Frank Del Brio and dismantle the operation her uncle had built. But she was damned if she'd place her baby with strangers.

There was only one person she'd trust with Lena. One man who possessed both the power and the resources to protect her. Only one other person with a parent's responsibility.

“All right,” she told Agent Collins. “I'll go back to Texas with you. I'll work undercover. But
I won't place Lena in the care of strangers. I want her to go to her father.”

“That can be arranged.”

The judge eyed her curiously. He'd respected Haley's privacy when she'd declined to identify Lena's father and said merely that she intended to raise her child on her own. Now she she had no choice when he voiced the question she saw on his face.

“Who is the father, Haley?”

“Luke. Luke Callaghan.

T
en days later Haley stared intently into a lighted makeup mirror. She and a small army of FBI agents had been holed up in a motel in Clearwater Springs, twenty miles east of Mission Creek, for more than a week now, perfecting her cover and orchestrating her transition to her new identity.

The transition was now complete. Another stranger stared back at her from the lighted mirror. Frowning, she forked her fingers through what she could only call her mane, now permed and dyed a lighter blond.

“Fluff it up more than that,” the female agent observing her directed. “We're going for real Texas-style big hair here.”

“I was born and lived most of my life in Texas,” Haley said with a wry smile. “I never wore my hair this big.”

“You do now,” the FBI specialist replied, returning her assortment of combs and brushes to a gray steel case. “Don't forget, the intent is to exaggerate, exaggerate, exaggerate. Draw the eye
from those features we didn't have time to alter to those we did. Now pouf those curls out another inch or so.”

Grimacing, Haley complied, then studied the result in the mirror. She had to admit the makeup artist knew her business. The slender Londoner who'd lived in Haley Mercado's skin for so many years had disappeared. In her place stood Daisy Parker.

A loose tumble of butterscotch curls framed her face. Botoxin injections had added a ripe, sensual fullness to her lips. Her eyebrows were now thicker, darker. Purple shadow and the liberal application of mascara and liner gave her eyes a sultry air. A short black skirt and a blouse unbuttoned to display a hint of cleavage completed the transition. The look stopped short of barroom cheap, but definitely came down on the other side of refined.

It would do, she thought grimly. It would have to do.

Besides, the only person she really had to fool was Luke Callaghan. The cosmetic surgery she'd undergone in London had altered her enough that she'd be a stranger to everyone except him. Hopefully, he wouldn't match this gum-snapper with the sophisticate who'd flamed in his arms.

An impatient rap rattled the bedroom door. “Are you finished in there? It's almost six-thirty.”

“We're finished,” the agent called. Closing her steel case, she gave Haley a warm smile. “Good luck, Miss Mercado. Sorry. I mean, Miss Parker.”

The two women emerged into a small sitting room still curtained against the night. Dawn was beginning to break, though. Faint fingers of pink showed at the edges of the blinds. This was it. The first day of her new life as Daisy Parker.

Taking in a deep breath, she faced the team of FBI operatives who'd assembled to craft and train this new entity. Communications technicians. Documentation specialists. Evidence-gathering experts. The language coach who'd spent hours coaxing Haley to grossly exaggerate her native Texas drawl and smother the faint British lilt she'd so carefully cultivated.

Planting his hands on his hips, their team leader ran a critical eye over his creation. “Good,” Sean Collins murmured in approval. “Very good. You'll fit right in with the other waitresses at the Lone Star Country Club.”

“If I get the job.”

“You'll get it. Don't forget, Daisy Parker has waited tables at some of the best clubs and restaurants in Dallas and Fort Worth. If the manager checks your references, he'll get nothing but glow
ing reports from your former employers. Just don't drop too many trays your first day or two.”

“I'll try not to.”

The bald-headed language coach wagged an admonishing finger. “Tut, tut! Let's have that again, shall we?”

With a sardonic glance in his direction, Haley laid it on with a trowel. “Ah'll surely to goodness try not to drop anythang, cowboy.”

“Excellent,” the coach beamed. “Excellent.”

Special Agent Collins checked his watch. “All right, folks. This is it. Operation Lone Star is officially under way. You ready, Judge?”

All eyes turned to Carl Bridges. He glanced down at the baby tucked into the combination baby carrier/car seat by his side and nodded. “I'm ready.”

“Wait!”

Haley rushed across the room. She'd kissed and cuddled Lena for hours last night. The good-natured baby had cooed happily, waving her fat, dimpled fists and blowing bubbles from her rosebud mouth until she'd dropped into sleep. This morning Haley had barely gotten her diapered, changed and fed before the FBI makeup artist arrived with her box of magic tricks.

Now that the moment of separation had arrived, Haley had to hold Lena again, had to kiss her soft
curls and breathe in her powdery scent one last time. Collins had warned Haley that this undercover operation could take months. The thought of missing all those weeks of her baby's development drove a stake right through her heart.

Folding back the baby's fluffy pink blanket, she tucked the well-fed, sleepy child against her. Doubts about the elaborate scheme Carl Bridges had worked out to deliver Lena to her father without revealing the identity of her mother had her throwing an anxious look at the judge.

“You're sure Luke will be at the country club this morning?”

Understanding her reluctance to part with her baby, Carl Bridges nodded and went over the same ground they'd already covered half a dozen times.

“Luke, Flynt Carson, Tyler Murdoch and Spence Harrison have a standing six-fifteen tee time every Sunday morning. Depending on how crowded the course is, they generally finish the first nine holes around eight.”

“Yes, but—”

“I called Luke last night on the pretext of wanting to invite him to lunch at the club. He suggested brunch instead, after he and the others finish their round. He'll be there, Haley.”

“Daisy,” Collins corrected from across the
room. “We all have to start thinking of her as Daisy.”

“Daisy,” the judge echoed. “Don't worry, missy. I won't put Lena on the ninth tee box until I see Luke and the others holing out on number eight.”

“You're sure they won't be able to see you?”

“I'll be in the groundskeeper's shed. It's separated from the tee box by a thick hedge. I found a spot where I can slip Lena's carrier through the hedge, watch the guys approach, then skedaddle.”

“What about the note? Do you think we got the wording right?”

Patiently, he quoted from memory the phrases the entire FBI team had helped draft and redraft.

Nuzzling her baby's downy curls, Haley fought a wave of fierce, last-minute doubts. “I hope we're doing the right thing!”

“I hope we are, too,” Sean Collins muttered.

He'd argued against leaving Lena with Luke, who lived right there in Mission Creek. He'd wanted to place her with a couple in Nebraska so
Haley wouldn't catch glimpses of her child and become distracted. “Out of sight, out of mind” was his strategy.

She'd pointed out that she'd worry far more about Lena if she couldn't see her occasionally and know she was being well cared for. Collins had caved finally, with the caveat that the note indicate that Lena's mother had departed the area. The last thing he wanted was for folks to connect the baby found on the ninth tee with the new waitress at the Lone Star Country Club.

“It's getting late,” the judge warned. “I'd better take her, Haley.”

“Daisy!” Collins snapped. “Haley Mercado is dead. From now on we all think and talk Daisy Parker, even in our sleep!”

“Duly noted,” the judge retorted, a half a breath away from cutting the FBI agent down to size. “Here, let me have her, Daisy.”

Haley swore she wouldn't cry. She hadn't cried since the day her mother died. She didn't have any tears left to shed. But her throat felt as though she'd swallowed a bucket of broken glass when she dropped a feather-light kiss on her daughter's crown and passed her to Carl.

She couldn't know that was the last time she'd hold her child for more than twelve terrifying months.

Present day

N
ow, over a year later, Haley stood in the shadows of the Saddlebag's noisy bar and wondered how it all could have gone so wrong.

She'd done exactly what Sean Collins had asked. She'd spent more than a year undercover. She'd gathered more than enough evidence for the FBI to take down Frank Del Brio and destroy his network. She'd dodged and sidestepped and somehow managed to keep from tangling herself in the web of lies she'd lived with daily.

In that time her uncle Carmine had died. Carl Bridges had been murdered. And Frank had managed to strip away Daisy Parker's layers one by one. The bastard had not only escaped the net the FBI had tried to throw over him, he'd kidnapped her baby.

Now her cover was blown. Operation Lone Star was falling apart. And Luke Callaghan had yet to hold his child in his arms.

That wasn't entirely her fault, Haley reminded herself with an ache just under her ribs. Carl Bridges had placed Lena right where the four Sunday morning golfers would find her. Who could have anticipated that water from the sprinkler-wet hedge would drip onto the note and obliterate the father's name? Or that Luke wouldn't show that morning, of all mornings?

He'd been gone for months. Long, angonizing months, while Haley watched from a distance as Flynt and Josie Carson cared for Lena. Endless, torturous months, when she lived every hour of every day on the edge. And then, when Luke finally returned to Mission Creek, he was blind in both eyes.

Her heart aching, Haley stared across the smoke-filled bar at the man she'd been in love with for as long as she could remember. His back was to her, but she recognized the short, curly black hair showing under his straw Stetson. Recognized, too, the strong column of his neck and the athletic shoulders under the denim shirt. She should. She'd run her hands and mouth over those strong, muscled shoulders repeatedly the night they'd created their child. The child she'd do anything—anything!—to get back safely.

Dragging in a ragged breath, she threaded a path though the tables. The man sitting opposite Luke
saw her first. Tyler Murdoch's brown eyes narrowed as he tracked her approach. He lounged in a comfortable slouch, his chair tilted back against the scarred paneling. The lazy sprawl didn't fool Haley. Nor did she fail to note how he kept his back to the wall. Evidently his recent marriage to a fiery Spanish interpreter hadn't dulled the mercenary's razor-edged instincts.

“Look's like we've got company, buddy. It's Daisy Parker, the waitress from the country club.”

She caught Murdoch's murmur. Caught, too, the way Luke's head cocked to one side. Just an inch. Maybe two. Like a cougar listening to the rustle of the dry Texas grass. Or a stallion scenting danger on the wind.

Her heart hammering, Haley stopped beside his chair. The stress of the past months showed on his face. Beneath the rim of his hat, she could just make out the trace of white scars from the shrapnel that had blinded him. Could see, as well, the deep grooves bracketing his mouth.

Despite the scars, despite the strain carved into his face, Luke Callaghan was still the most elemental male Haley had ever encountered. His startlingly blue eyes might not register anything except darkness now, but they stared straight ahead with disconcerting directness. And his mouth. Lord, his mouth! Haley could almost feel it on hers again as
she drew her tongue nervously across her lower lip. Shedding her poured-on Texas twang like last year's winter coat, she murmured a soft, urgent request.

“I need to talk to you, Luke. Privately. Please!”

 

Luke recognized her voice.

He'd always heard that people who'd lost their sight honed their other senses to a razor's edge. If so, these past six months had proved him the exception to the general rule. Neither his sense of smell nor his tactile abilities had sharpened to any appreciable degree since the explosion deep in the jungles of Central America that had left him totally blind, until this last week when he'd begun to see dark shadows. He wouldn't have said that his hearing had improved all that much, either, but this woman's voice was burned into his memory.

He'd heard it before right here at the Saddlebag. Two years ago. She'd spoken with more of British lilt then. Not with Daisy Parker's thick, down-on-the-border accent, nor the subtle one he heard now. The suspicions about the waitress Luke had been harboring for some weeks now hardened into certainty.

“I want to talk to you, too,” he ground out in a tone so low and dangerous she took an involuntary step back.

He heard the small shuffle. The sudden, nervous movement had him shoving back his chair. Following the sound, he reached out. His hand closed around her upper arm, but not before his knuckles made contact with a full, lush breast.

His entire body went taut at the touch. Memories of that night two years ago knifed into him. She'd welcomed him so eagerly that night, so generously. As though she'd been waiting for him all her life. When he'd come out of the shower the next morning, though, she'd disappeared.

Luke had made a few inquiries about her. After the mission that had taken him high into the Andes, he'd exercised some of his special contacts within the government in an attempt to locate the gorgeous blonde. He'd finally concluded the lady had had her reasons for slipping away with the dawn. Only recently had he begun to connect the beautiful stranger with the waitress who'd started work at the Lone Star Country Club right about the time his buddies discovered a baby on the ninth tee.

His baby. The child he'd never seen. The child who'd been kidnapped right before his return to Mission Creek. The child, he was now certain, this cold-hearted witch had callously abandoned.

“We'll talk outside,” he growled.

Behind him, Tyler called a quiet question. “Need me to come along, buddy?”

“No. This is between Daisy and me.”

The brutal grip on her arm told Haley this confrontation was going to be even tougher than she'd anticipated. Luke held her manacled, as though he didn't trust her not to bolt. He also, she noted in the small corner of her mind that wasn't numb with fear for her child, threaded his way through the tables with an assurance that gave no hint of his impaired sight. He let her guide him, following her lead with a sure tread, but to a casual observer they must have looked like any couple slipping away from the noisy bar to one of the motel units out back.

Deliberately, Haley blanked her mind to the night when they, too, had done just that. This wasn't about her and Luke, or about that night. This was about Lena. Only about Lena.

After the air-conditioned smoke of the bar, the humid June night wrapped around them like a sponge. Haley didn't mind the heat or the humidity or the dust that swirled on the night air. After all those years living in London's damp, misty climate, she and Lena had come home to wide-open skies and the blazing Texas sun. She could only pray that they'd never have to leave again.

“My car's parked near the back of the lot,” she told Luke.

“Lead the way.”

The beat-up sedan the Bureau had supplied her with when she'd first gone undercover looked like a small, stray dog amid the herd of muscled SUVs and pickups. The white van that had followed her from the safe house was still parked a few rows from the rust-spotted sedan. Haley didn't see the agents who'd driven it, but suspected they weren't far away. After all, she was the FBI's best hope—their only hope!—for luring Frank Del Brio out of hiding.

She reached for the handle of the passenger door, thinking Luke would slide into the seat so they could talk inside the vehicle, but he used his grip on her arm to swing her around. The sedan's roof was to her back. A large and obviously angry Luke crowded close at her front. Too close.

Planting his hands against the car, he caged her. The brim of his Stetson shadowed his face, but she couldn't miss the muscle that ticked in the side of his jaw as he fought for control.

“You're her, aren't you?”

“Her?” she murmured, stalling for time while she tried to figure out where to begin her tangled explanations.

The question seemed to add to the anger that radiated from Luke in waves. The muscle at the side of his jaw jumped again.

“Don't mess with me, lady.”

Haley had known him all her life. She'd also spent the most passionate night of her life in his arms. Yet this was a Luke Callaghan she'd never seen. Hard. Cold. Dangerous. He might have thoroughly intimidated her if she hadn't lived with fear so long that she'd learned to tip her chin and stare it straight in the eye.

“You're the woman I hooked up with here at the Saddlebag two years ago.” It wasn't a question this time, but a flat statement. “You weren't passing yourself off as Daisy Parker then, but it was you.”

“Yes, it was.”

His breath hissed out. For a moment, maybe two, that night hovered between them. Haley ached to reach up, to touch his cheek. To beg him to fold her into his arms again and to let her lose herself in his heat and strength. Suspecting what was to come, she kept her fists clenched tightly at her sides.

“We made more than love that night, didn't we? We made a baby.”

“Yes,” she whispered again.

“So you brought our daughter back to Mission Creek. Thought you'd cash in on her, big time.”

“Cash in on her?” Shocked, she gaped up at him. “What in God's name are you talking about?”

He leaned closer, crowding her against the car. “I'm guessing you came back intending to initiate a nice fat paternity suit. But her millionaire father was gone. Out of the country. Unreachable. So you dumped the kid on the golf course at the country club, where some other rich sucker was sure to find her, and walked away.”

“No! That's not how it happened!”

“That's exactly how it happened. Flynt Carson told me he and Tyler and the others found the baby in a carrier, with only a blurred note that gave her name. Christ, how could you abandon your own child like that?”

“I didn't abandon her! You don't understand—”

“You're right, I don't.” Scorn laced every word. “I don't understand how any mother could leave her child in the care of total strangers. But I'm getting the picture now. I'm also beginning to understand why Lena was supposedly ‘kidnapped' from Flynt Carson's ranch.”

“Supposedly?” Her voice spiraled to a near screech. “There's no ‘supposedly' about it!”

“Come on, sweetheart. You don't have to play-act anymore. You dumped the kid because no one knew where I was and you got desperate. You could have waited until I came back to Mission Creek to establish paternity. The DNA results
would have made that a breeze. But you hit on a better scheme, didn't you? Instead of child support spread out over a number of years, you decided on a nice, fat ransom paid all up front. You won't get it,” he warned in a voice so cold it could have cut glass. “You won't get a cent from me that way.”

“Oh, God!” Stunned, she tried to wrap her mind around his accusations. “You think I arranged to have my own child kidnapped so I could extort money from you?”

His lip curled. “Prove me wrong, Daisy. Tell me you didn't come to the Saddlebag tonight to deliver a ransom demand.”

“Luke, listen to me. You've got this all backward.”

“How much?” he snarled. “Tell me, dammit! What's the asking price for a baby these days?”

“All right! They want two million!”

“Two million, huh?”

Luke would have paid ten. An hour ago he would have cashed in every stock and bond he owned to buy the safe return of his child.

He didn't understand this urgent need to hold this daughter he'd never seen. He wanted a family, sure. Someday. He'd spent most of his childhood in boarding schools under the loose guardianship of his uncle, but Stew had shown far more interest
in the leggy showgirls he wined and dined in Vegas than in his nephew.

The military had become Luke's substitute family. First at V.M.I., then in the marines. Although he'd shed his uniform after being charged with contributing to Haley Mercado's death, the tight bonds forged during his years in the service had provided all the kith and kin he'd needed. Until he'd learned he had a daughter.

Tyler Murdoch had delivered the news. Deep in a steamy jungle, right after the explosion that had sent shards of shrapnel slicing into Luke's face.

The knowledge that he'd fathered a child had sustained Luke throughout the painful operations that followed. He'd come home to Mission Creek blind but determined to do right by his daughter. Determined, too, to find the woman who'd abandoned her. He'd pictured her frightened. Desperate. Unable to care for her baby and driven to the extreme of leaving her on a golf course. He could have forgiven her that.

What Luke couldn't forgive was that the baby had been kidnapped just days before his return to Mission Creek. The timing was too close to write off as mere coincidence. More to the point, the evidence he'd so painstakingly gathered over the past months implicated this waitress in Lena's disappearance.

Disgust bit into him, so deep and bitter he could taste it. He still didn't know who she really was or where she'd sprung from, but he was sure of one thing. When they recovered Lena—which they would—there was no way in hell Luke would leave his daughter with this sorry excuse for a mother.

Bringing his face down to within inches of hers, he stripped matters to their core. “Let's get one thing absolutely straight between us, lady. You're not getting one cent from me, let alone two million. But you are going to take me to wherever you've stashed our baby. We'll sort matters out from there.”

Haley snapped. After all she'd been through, after all the stress and false identities and lies she'd been forced to live, Luke Callaghan had the nerve, the unmitigated, unfettered, unqualified gall, to accuse her of using her own baby in a scheme to extort money from him! With a surge of fury, she shoved at his chest and opened enough space between them to spit out her rage.