Cindy Gerard – Lone Star Knight (страница 3)

Matt scrubbed a hand over his face as he stood like a shadow in the doorway of Helena’s room. He didn’t know if he felt better or worse for the three hours of sleep Justin had insisted he grab. He figured he had to feel better than she did.

He didn’t much like fighting this constant urge to go to her. Just talk to her. Maybe make her smile as she’d smiled for him one night that now seemed a lifetime ago.

Her smiles aren’t your concern, though, are they? he reminded himself grimly. Her protection was.

And yet, she looked so lost as she sat there. So absolutely alone. Nothing like the self-assured, sensual woman who’d shamelessly and skillfully flirted with him on the dance floor at the club. It tore him up, that look, and yet he didn’t want her to know he was there—watching that silken length of pale blond hair fall across her face as she hung her head and battled the tears welling up in her eyes. He didn’t want her to know he was remembering the texture and the scent of her hair trailing across his fingers as they’d danced around the room while he’d smiled into her laughing eyes.

Pride, he’d discovered this past month, was a quality Lady Helena owned in abundance. She wouldn’t want to know that anyone had witnessed her struggle—or her pain. Neither would she want to know that he’d been holding vigil outside her room. Or that the reason he was here was to protect her from an unknown enemy, with an as-yet-undetermined agenda. He didn’t want her to know it either. She had enough to deal with without adding a possible threat to her life to the list.

He cupped his palm to his nape, stepped silently away from the door and tried to sort it all out in his mind. He wasn’t exactly up on his cloak-and-dagger etiquette—it had been a while since he’d been called on to draw from his military background—but he’d come up to speed in a hurry. Anyone wanting to get to Helena was going to have to get through him.

Damn, he didn’t like what was happening. Didn’t like any of it. The only good news unearthed lately was that the investigation into the plane crash had turned up evidence that it had actually been an accident that had caused the emergency landing, not sabotage as they had originally suspected. An engine fire had caused some of the systems to lock up, including the landing gear. On impact, liquor bottles in the bar had broken, the electrical systems inside the luxury charter jet had shorted out and sparks had ignited the flammable liquor. Helena, sitting closest to the bar, had paid the biggest price.

So yeah, thankfully, they’d ruled out sabotage, but nothing else was resolved. He wished to hell he could get a handle on it.

“Okay, Walker,” he muttered and sank down on the small sofa by the window in the corridor just outside Helena’s room, “start at point A.”

Point A, the Lone Star jewels—three precious gems entrusted through generations to the Club members’ keeping—had been stolen. Before this nasty business, he’d never actually seen the jewels. Like every Cattleman’s Club member, he had sworn to protect them as part of Royal’s legacy of prosperity. Like every other Royal resident, he’d known of them through folklore and legend and had, from time to time, wondered if they actually existed. Well, he wasn’t wondering any longer. He’d seen two of them himself after Justin had recovered them at the crash site. The black opal—representing justice—was magnificent. The emerald—representing peace—was dazzling. He’d held both in his hands and damn if he hadn’t felt a dynamic sense of—

Of what? He shook his head, not wanting to believe that even now, almost two months later, he was still convinced that they’d warmed his palm with energy and heat.

He shrugged that off and concentrated on point B—the missing stone, a rare red diamond. The diamond represented leadership and completed the circle of prosperity upon which Royal was dependent. The big question that remained was where the devil was it? And if it wasn’t found and reunited with the other stones, would Royal’s thriving economy fold like a tower of cards as the legend predicted?

Since he didn’t have the answers to any of those questions, he moved ahead to point C. Riley Monroe was dead. Riley had been a fixture behind the bar at the Cattleman’s Club even before Matt had been initiated into the ranks. Anger didn’t begin to cover what he felt for the scum who had killed him. And all because they’d wanted the jewels.

That indisputable conclusion only brought up more questions. How had an outsider actually found out about the jewels’ existence, discovered their hiding place and then stolen them? Why were the opal and the emerald on that plane bound for Asterland? Again, another dead end, another set of unanswered questions.

Leaning forward, he propped his forearms on his thighs and stared at his loosely clasped hands. Okay. Point D. Milo Yungst and Garth Johannes. Talk about cloak-and-dagger.

When the four other club members who were in the know on this mission had last met, he’d confided to them his concerns about the pair.

“I don’t care that Yungst and Johannes are representatives from the Asterland government. I don’t give a good damn that they were sent to investigate the plane crash.”

He’d looked around the private meeting room at the Cattleman’s Club at Justin Webb, Aaron Black, Sheikh Ben Rassad and Dakota Lewis. “I don’t trust them. And I don’t like their methods. I like even less the interrogation tactics they used on Pamela.”

He’d seen from the dark scowl on Aaron’s face that he was in agreement. Pamela had been on the plane with Helena and Jamie Morris. Pamela was also Matt’s good friend. He’d given her away the day she’d married Aaron. Now that she was his wife, Aaron had more than a vested interest in Pamela’s welfare.

And that’s what brought Matt to point E and the reason he was here, outside Helena’s hospital room. It was at that meeting that they’d decided Jamie and Helena needed protection. Ben had been assigned to guard Jamie. Matt had volunteered to watch over Helena—an assignment the five of them had agreed was necessary until they unraveled the mystery and were sure the women were safe.

At least it had started out as an assignment. Maybe it was fatigue—maybe not—but he was finally ready to admit that somewhere along the line, it had ended up feeling like more.

Well, he couldn’t afford to let it be more. Couldn’t let her be more. Not to him. And still, it was the more that compelled him to rise and walk back to her room. Shoving his hands in his back pockets, he leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb and studied the beautiful, tortured profile that had haunted him for as many nights as he’d known her.

In the diluted light, he looked at her solemn profile. He looked at her damaged hand, at her leg in an immobilizing cast that ran from toe to mid-calf. His mouth set in a grim line, he tried to shake one niggling question. If this was just an assignment, why did he find himself wanting to heal those hurts that her eyes betrayed but that she would never admit to?

Two

Helena knew she was dreaming. She knew it because in the dream she was perfect and she was whole. Still…it felt so immediate, so real and oh, so preferable to the nightmare that always concluded with searing flames and brutal pain.

Oh, yes. She liked this dream so much better.

In it, she was in the middle of a grand ballroom. A gentle mist drifted at her feet as if conjured by a medieval mage from a swirl of stardust and moonbeams. She floated with the fantasy of it, seeing herself as she’d once been. Her left hand was smooth and pale, a perfect, graceful backdrop for the pearl-and-ruby ring that had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s before her.

Her dress was the same blue as her eyes. It was also strapless and shamelessly seductive. The parchment-thin, watery silk clung to the full curve of her breasts, nipped in at her waist then hugged her hips to end at mid-thigh and reveal the long, unblemished length of her legs, showcase her slender ankles in three-inch heels.

That there were no scars to hide, no broken bones as yet unhealed, wasn’t even the best part. The best part was the tall, gallant Texan who held her in his arms, his green eyes glittering, his captivating smile an irresistible mix of affable charm and unapologetic interest.

She laughed at something he said, for he was enchanting, this man whose eyes gleamed with a desire he did not attempt to hide. His arm tightened around her waist as he danced her effortlessly through open French doors and out into a warm, starry night. Even the moon, it seemed, was in league with his not-so-subtle seduction as he waltzed her to an intimate corner of a flagstone terrace made secluded by a vine-draped arbor, fragrantly blooming cactus and whispering crape myrtle.

When she smiled and backed away from him toward the low stone wall that encompassed the terrace, he let her go with a lingering caress, a brush of fingertip to fingertip, and a meaningful look in his eyes.

He wanted her.

Despite the warmth of the Texas night, she shivered in anticipation of the passion those green eyes promised.