Scene of the Crime: Return to Bachelor Moon (16 page)

“I’ll be right back with the syrup,” she said and left the room. She returned only a moment later with a large jug and set it in the center of the table.

“This will be the last meal that I’ll fix. After I clean up the breakfast dishes, I’ll be on my way.”

“Where are you headed?” Andrew asked, his plate already filled with the food she’d delivered.

“I’m thinking New Orleans.”

Gabriel couldn’t help but notice that her gaze had refused to meet his.

“You’ll like New Orleans,” Jackson said. “It’s my favorite place to party in the entire state.”

She smiled at him, and Gabriel found himself jealous that her smile wasn’t directed at him. “I’m not looking for a party. I’m just looking for a life.”

“I wish you all the happiness in the world,” Andrew said around a mouthful of waffles.

She smiled at him fondly. “And I wish you and your almost fiancée happiness, and I hope you never have to eat a convenience-store sandwich again.”

She returned to the kitchen, and Gabriel felt the emptiness inside him. He had to cast her out of his head. He grabbed two waffles and smothered them with syrup, as if the food on his plate could fill the emptiness in his heart.

He ate without enthusiasm, not tasting anything, and afterward he went upstairs to his room to retrieve his laptop. He lingered in his room, not wanting to hang around downstairs while she cleaned up the dishes.

When he finally returned to the dining room, she’d disappeared into her quarters, and Jackson and Andrew awaited him at the dining room table to discuss their investigation.

Just as Marlena walked out of the room with two suitcases in her hands, Jackson’s phone rang. He held up a hand to halt any conversation and listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone. “Yes, sir. Yes, I’ve got it. I’ll tell the others.”

He disconnected and placed his phone on the table. “That was Director Miller. We’re being pulled out of here.”

“Why?” It was Marlena who spoke. “Sam and Daniella and Macy are still missing.” She dropped her suitcases to the floor.

“What’s going on?” Andrew asked.

Jackson frowned. “You two are being sent back to the office in Baton Rouge and I’m heading to the Kansas City office to work a new case. An FBI profiler and her sheriff husband have vanished into thin air from a small town called Mystic Lake.”

“So this may be bigger than the Connelly family,” Andrew replied.

Jackson nodded. “I’m going to see if what they’re dealing with there is what we have here.”

“I called Pamela last night and told her I was leaving today, so she could move in here or whatever.” Marlena’s eyes held a new sadness. “If you all aren’t going to be here, then I can’t imagine what’s going to happen to this place.”

She leaned down and picked up her suitcases, then looked at Jackson. “Find out what’s going on, Jackson. You might be the only one with access to some of the clues that will lead back to Sam, Daniella and Macy.”

He nodded. “I’m going to do my best. I guess we need to head upstairs and pack.” Together he and Andrew headed for the stairs, leaving Gabriel and Marlena alone.

He’d noticed as he’d come down from upstairs that she’d already parked her car in the lot out front. He reached out and took one of her suitcases from her. “Come on. I’ll walk you out.”

* * *

H
ER
FOOTSTEPS
FELT
heavy, even though she knew she should be happy to be finally moving on. She’d hoped that when she left Bachelor Moon, Cory would be in her passenger seat and that Sam, Daniella and Macy would be standing on the porch to wave goodbye.

As devastating as Cory’s betrayal had been, her stupidity over loving Gabriel was almost as hard to deal with. He’d warned her, and she hadn’t heeded his warnings. He’d told her to pretend that their night together had only been a dream, but it was the one piece of reality she wanted to take with her.

They reached her car, and she opened the trunk. She put her suitcase in and then moved aside so he could do the same with the one he carried.

Instead of placing it in the trunk, he dropped it to the ground. “We need to talk,” he said.

“There’s nothing left to say. Two bad guys are in jail, three people are still missing and you’re going back to Baton Rouge while I’m heading to New Orleans.” She didn’t want to talk any more with him. It hurt too much. Even standing here in the midmorning sunshine and looking at him created a deep ache inside her.

“I can’t let you leave here disillusioned and no longer believing in love,” he said, his eyes a dark, troubled blue.

“I think I’ve told you before that, even though you’re a big bad FBI agent, you don’t get to tell me how to think or what to feel.”

“But it’s important to me that you believe in love.” He took a step closer to her, too close.

Why was he torturing her? Why didn’t he just throw the suitcase into the trunk and let her go? Why on earth did he suddenly want to talk about love?

“I don’t know why what I believe is important to you now,” she replied.

He took yet another step toward her, bringing with him that scent that had always made her feel safe and secure. She wanted to run away from him. She also wanted to run into his arms. Instead she stood frozen in place until he moved so close to her that she could feel his body heat.

“It’s important to me that you believe in love, because you’ve made me believe in it. You’ve made me believe I’m worthy of being loved, of taking a chance and giving a special woman my heart.”

A lump rose in the back of her throat and tears began to burn behind her eyes. “Then I hope you find that special woman.” She was grateful her voice didn’t crack, that she didn’t dissolve into tears. She should be happy that she’d been able to do that for him, that he would go into his future with an open heart.

“I’ve already found her,” he said softly. He raised a hand to touch one of her curls, and then swept his hand down the side of her face in a caress.

Her heart stopped beating and then began to bang rapidly at his words. He dropped his hand from her face and instead streaked a hand through his own hair. Stepping from one foot to the other, he looked decidedly uncomfortable.

“I’m not very good at this,” he confessed, as if she didn’t know him well enough to figure that out, but she had no intention of making it easier on him, despite the fact that her heart was on the verge of soaring.

“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that,” she replied. “Right now you’re just a dream that I was supposed to forget.”

“Marlena, without you I’m a man only half-alive.” His eyes were the blue of truth. “I’m in love with you. I fought against it. I didn’t want it.” He looked down at the ground and then back at her. “I was definitely afraid to give my heart to anyone. I saw a little part of myself in Cory, and it scared the hell out of me.”

“You could never do what Cory did,” she replied, the thought of her brother churning up her heartbreak where he was concerned.

“True, but I was well on my way to being a lonely, bitter man, and then I came here and met you. You made me believe in love, and I don’t want you to go to New Orleans. I want you to come with me to Baton Rouge. I love you, and I don’t want to spend a single day without you in my life.”

“Are you going to keep talking or are you going to kiss me?” she finally said.

His eyes turned the deep blue that always made her heart soar. He pulled her into his arms and lowered his mouth to hers. His kiss spoke all the words he might not have said and more. It tasted of love, of desire and of a sweet commitment she’d never expected to find.

As somebody cleared his voice, Gabriel broke the kiss. Andrew and Jackson stood nearby, their duffel bags in their hands, obviously ready to leave Bachelor Moon behind and get on with new assignments.

“What’s up?” Jackson asked.

Gabriel didn’t break his gaze with Marlena. “Is it a yes?”

“Is this a dream that I have to forget later?”

His gaze softened. “No, this is a reality I want to live for the rest of my life. You and me together—that’s the reality I want.”

“Oh, Gabriel, I want that, too.”

He finally stopped staring at her to look at his partners. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the car keys and threw them to Jackson. “You two go ahead. Marlena and I will head out in her car in a few minutes.”

“Looks like something good came out of our time here,” Andrew said, looking first at Gabriel and then at Marlena, his face wearing a broad smile. “In fact, it looks like something great happened.”

Gabriel reached for Marlena’s hand, and she came willingly to his side. “I found a new partner, and I think it’s going to be one of those forever partnerships.”

“I know it will be,” she replied with conviction and squeezed his hand. Some of her joy tempered as she gazed at Jackson. “I hope you find something in your investigation in Mystic Lake that will lead to answers about the Connellys.”

“That’s the plan,” he replied. “And now we’re heading out. Marlena, I expect I’ll be seeing a lot of you when I get back from this new assignment.”

“And thanks for everything you did for us to make our time here as pleasant as possible,” Andrew added.

She smiled at Andrew. “Go home and put a ring on Suzi’s finger. Life is too short to waste a minute.”

A moment later she and Gabriel watched as the car with the two agents pulled out of sight. She turned back to the man she loved. “Are you sure this isn’t a wonderful dream?”

“I’m sure.” He pulled her back into his arms. “You are the woman I want by my side until the day I die. I want to hear you humming in our kitchen. I want to see that beautiful smile every morning. I want your love surrounding me, as I intend to surround you with all the love I kept bottled up inside me for so many years.”

Once again his lips claimed hers, taking her breath away. She was leaving Bachelor Moon with the heartbreak of her brother’s betrayal, with unanswered questions about the missing people she loved, but she’d also leave with the man she knew would fulfill her dream of love forever.

He might have needed a special woman to awaken his capacity to love, but he was the special man she’d wanted, the man who would be her best friend, her lover and eventually her husband.

She would embark on her new life not alone but with Gabriel, the man she knew would make all her dreams of love and family come true.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from SPY IN THE SADDLE by Dana Marton.

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Chapter One

As Shep Lewis, undercover commando, strode into his team’s office trailer on the Texas-Mexico border with his morning coffee, his bad mood followed him. To do anything right, a person had to give his all—and he did, to each and every op. But it didn’t seem to make a difference with his current mission.

He adjusted his Bluetooth as Keith Gunn, one of his teammates—currently on border patrol—talked on the other end. They all took turns monitoring a hundred-mile stretch along the Rio Grande, in pairs.

“Do you think they’ll really send in the National Guard to seal the border?”

“They won’t,” Shep said between his teeth. “It would just delay the problem.” For some reason, the powers that be didn’t see that the National Guard was a terrible solution, which frustrated him to hell and back.

His six-man team had credible intelligence that terrorists with their weapons of mass destruction would be smuggled across somewhere around here, on October first—five short days away. His team’s primary mission was to prevent that. Switching out players for the last five minutes of the game was a terrible strategy.

They had the exact date of the planned border breach. If they could somehow discover the exact location, they could lie in wait and grab those damned terrorists as they crossed the river. The bastards would never know what hit them.

The National Guard coming in to seal the border could not be hidden, however. Which meant the terrorists would move their crossing to a different place at a different time and might slip through undetected. The sad fact was, even the National Guard didn’t have the kind of manpower to keep every single mile of the entire U.S. border permanently sealed.

“The op has to be small enough to keep undercover to succeed,” he said, even if Keith knew that as well as he did.

“Except, we don’t have the exact location for their crossing.”

“We will.” But he silently swore. They were running out of time, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher—national security and the lives of thousands.

There could be no more mistakes, no distractions. They had five days to stop the biggest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. Failure wasn’t an option.

Keith cleared his throat. “The FBI’s guy will be here today.”

“Don’t remind me.” Frustration punched through Shep. Everybody seemed to have a sudden urge to meddle. “Where are you?”

“Coming in. Ryder’s cutting the shift short. He wanted to talk to the whole team at the office.”

“More good news?”

“He didn’t say. We’ll be there in ten.”

They ended the call as Shep strode through the empty office that held their desks and equipment, passed by the interrogation room to the left, then team leader Ryder McKay’s office. Ryder had been on border patrol this morning with Keith.

Voices filtered out from the break room in the back, so Shep kept going that way.

“She burned down his house, stole his car and got him fired from his job.” Jamie Cassidy’s voice reached him through the partially closed door.

Okay, that sounded disturbingly familiar. Shep’s fingers tightened on the foam cup in his hand as he paused midstep, on the verge of entering. His mood slipped another notch as old memories rushed him. He shook them off.
No distractions.

“She broke his heart,” Jamie added.

All right, that’s enough.
Shep shoved the door open, maybe harder than he’d intended.

He stepped into the room just as Ray Armstrong said in a mocking tone, “Must have been some love affair.” He glanced over and grinned. “Hey, Shep.”

Shep shot a cold glare at the three men, all hardened commando soldiers: Jamie, Ray and Moses Mann.

The latter two had the good sense to look embarrassed at being caught gossiping like a bunch of teenage girls. Jamie just grinned and reached back to the fridge behind him for an energy drink.

The fridge and wall-to-wall cabinets filled up the back of the break room, a microwave and coffee machine glinting in the corner. In front of the men, high-resolution satellite printouts covered the table.

This close to D-day, they didn’t take real breaks anymore. They worked around the clock, would do whatever it took to succeed.

Yesterday’s half-eaten pizza, which they were apparently resurrecting as breakfast, sat to the side. Jamie pushed it farther out of the way as he lifted the drink to his mouth with one hand while he finished marking something on one of the printouts with a highlighter.

“So—” He looked at Shep when he was finished, too cheerful by half. “Want to tell us about her?”

Shep stepped closer, in a way that might or might not be interpreted as threatening. They’d all been frustrated to the limit lately, and a good fight would let off a lot of pressure. “I liked you better when you were a morose bastard.”

Ray leaned back in his chair. “He’s mellowed a lot since hooking up with the deputy sheriff.” He turned to Jamie. “She’s definitely changing you, man.”

And not to his advantage, Shep wanted to add, but that wasn’t entirely true, so he didn’t say it.

Jamie didn’t seem concerned about the perceived mellowing. A soft look came over his face as he capped his highlighter. “Love changes everything.”

“Really?” Shep narrowed his gaze at them. “Four of the roughest, toughest commandos in the country and we’re going to sit around talking about love? What the hell? Are we still part of the top secret Special Designation Defense Unit, or is this now the Wrecked by Cupid Team? Have changes been made while I’ve been out?”

He believed in true love. He’d seen it work; his parents had had it. But he also knew that—like anything else important—it only worked if you gave it your all. People like him, and the other guys on his team, could never do that.

He wasn’t the type to do things halfway, anyway. He either charged full steam ahead or wouldn’t even start. Love just wasn’t in the cards for him.

“Romance is the kind of—” he began, trying to be the voice of reason.

But Mo gave a warning cough.

He would. He was another recent, unfortunate casualty.

He looked Shep straight in the eye. “Love is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Shep wished the best for him and Jamie, but in his heart of hearts, he had doubts about their long-term chances. Yet what right did he have to be discouraging? He laughed it off. “It’s sad to see battle-hardened soldiers turn sappy.” He shook his head, looking to Ray for support, a good laugh or some further needling in Jamie’s direction.

But, in a stunning display of betrayal, Ray turned against him. “So what’s this about your psycho girlfriend?” he asked between two bites of cold pizza, sitting a head taller than anyone else in the room.

If Mo was built like a tank, Ray was built like a marauding Viking—his true ancestry. Jamie, between them, was the lean and lithe street fighter.

They didn’t intimidate Shep one bit. “We’re not talking about me.”

A roundhouse kick to Jamie, then vault on Ray, knock him—chair and everything—into Mo. That would put an end to all the smirking.

Except that Ryder, the team leader, had forbidden fighting in the office after an unfortunate incident when they’d first set up headquarters here. As it turned out, even though the reinforced trailer was bulletproof, the office furniture, in fact, was not indestructible.

So Shep threw Jamie only a glare instead of a punch that would have been way more satisfying. “She was a kid, all right? I wasn’t her boyfriend. I was her parole officer. End of story.”

“He never pressed charges,” Jamie told Mo under his breath in a meaningful tone, obviously in the mood to make trouble this morning.

Shep threw his empty coffee cup at him. “Didn’t anybody ever teach you to mind your own business?”

Jamie easily ducked the foam missile. “How about you tell us about her and then it’ll all be out in the open? It’d be good to know what we’re dealing with here.”

When they built ski resorts in hell and handed out free lift passes.

“Any reason we’re discussing Lilly Tanner this morning?” Saying her name only made him flinch a little. His eyes didn’t even twitch anymore when he thought of her.

Ray suddenly busied himself with the printouts on the table. Jamie had a look of anticipatory glee on his face.

A cold feeling spread in Shep’s stomach. “How did her name come up?”

He’d made the mistake of mentioning her to Jamie when they’d been on patrol together a while back. He hadn’t expected that she would become the topic of break-room discussion. Jamie wouldn’t have brought her up for gossip’s sake. But then why?

“She’s the consultant the FBI is sending in,” Mo said with some sympathy. He might have been built like a tank, but he did have a good heart.

Shep stared, his mind going numb. Individually, all of Mo’s words made sense. But having them together in a sentence defied comprehension. “Has to be a different Lilly Tanner.”

The one he’d known over a decade ago had been a hellcat. He’d always figured she would end up a criminal mastermind or an out-of-control rock star—she had the brains and deviousness for the first, the voice and the looks for the second.

Jamie tapped the highlighter on the table and grinned. “She’s the one. I checked when I heard the name.”

He didn’t like the new, cheerful Jamie. He was used to the pre-love morose Jamie who could curdle milk with just a look. As a good undercover commando should.

The only thing he liked less at the moment was the thought of Lilly Tanner reappearing in his life. The possibility caused a funny feeling in his chest. “They’ll have to send someone else.”

“Unlikely.” Ray grimaced. “We’ve been read the riot act.”

“Sorry about that.” Jamie had the decency to look apologetic at least. “My bad.”

He’d crossed the border and taken out someone he’d thought to be the Coyote, the crime boss who set up the transfer of terrorists into the U.S. Except the man Jamie had shot had been a plant. The Coyote had gotten away, and the Mexican government was having a fit over a U.S. commando entering their sovereign territory.

Hell, none of the team blamed Jamie. But now the FBI was sending in their own man...
woman.

Shep closed his eyes for a pained second.

His team would either stop those terrorists from entering the country with their chemical weapons or die trying. The last thing they needed was the FBI meddling and putting roadblocks in their way at the eleventh hour.

Ray shrugged. “D.C. city girl coming to the big bad borderlands. Give her a few days and she’ll be running back to her office, crying.”

Shep swallowed the groan pushing up his throat. The Lilly Tanner he’d known didn’t run crying to anyone. He was about to tell them that, but gravel crunched outside as a car pulled up, then another.

“Ryder and Keith are coming in early,” he told the others. Maybe Jamie was wrong. Their leader would have the correct information.

Keith, the youngest on the team, came through the door first, tired and rumpled after a long night on the border. He did the best with people they caught sneaking over. One of his grandfathers was Mexican. He had the look and spoke the language like a native. People told him things they wouldn’t have told the rest of the team.

He looked around and apparently picked up on the tension in the air because he raised a black eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”

Shep couldn’t bring himself to answer. He sank into the nearest chair and reached for a slice of cardboard pizza, then stared at it for a second. He wasn’t even hungry.

“The FBI agent who’s coming... She’s a woman,” Mo said. “She’s—”

Ryder pushed in. “I was just talking to the Colonel, too. Lilly Tanner. Isn’t it great?”

Shep’s jaw tightened. “How do
you
know about Lilly?” He shot a dark look at Jamie. Couldn’t he keep his mouth shut?

But Jamie shrugged with wide-eyed innocence.

“She’s Mitch Mendoza’s sister,” Ryder said.

A moment of confused silence passed as the men looked at each other, processing the unexpected information.

Jamie spoke first. “The one he’s been looking for?” His sister was married to Mendoza, so this was family business for him. “I thought her name was Cindy.”

“Got changed at one point along the way. You can ask her all about it when she gets here.”

Mo clapped Jamie on the back. “Hey, that makes her your sister-in-law, doesn’t it?”

A stunned smile spread on Jamie’s face as he nodded. “Kind of. Yeah.”

Ryder headed to the back for coffee. “Mitch found her just recently. Different name and everything, but it’s definitely his sister. They had the DNA test done to confirm it.”

Shep rubbed his temple where a headache pulsed to life suddenly.

Mitch Mendoza, another member of the SDDU, Special Designation Defense Unit, the large team that Shep’s smaller group belonged to, came from a family destroyed by drugs. He’d been a teenager when his father had sold his little sister for coke. Mitch had been looking for her ever since.

And now he’d found her at last.

Except that through some bizarre turn of events, Mitch’s Cindy Mendoza was Shep’s Lilly Tanner. Shep swallowed. And she was coming here.

He tried to remember if he had any aspirin in his desk drawer. “They’ll have to send someone else.”

Jamie lifted an eyebrow, a warning look forming on his face. “She’s my family,” he said, in case somehow Shep didn’t get that.

He did.
Shoot me now.

“She can’t be my Lilly Tanner. There must be a hundred Lilly Tanners out there.” He stubbornly clung to denial.

“She’s yours.” Jamie extinguished that hope with ruthless efficiency. “I ran a background check on her when I got the name. Right age. Came from the juvie system. Right city.”

Shep pushed to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Mo wanted to know.

“Taking a break.” He needed an hour at the gym.

He needed a little time to clear his mind so he could focus fully on his work. His thoughts were all over the place, and he had plenty to get done today.

No distractions.
He had to erase the picture that filled his mind: the seventeen-year-old bundle of holy terror that had made him quit the juvenile justice system.
Sort of.
Okay, fine, they fired him because of her.