Desperado (21 page)

Several months later, Cord was helping herd a small group of purebred young bulls to the waiting trucks when a speeding sports car scattered them all over the yard.

He cursed, but not loudly, because Maggie flew out of the car and ran toward him at breakneck speed.

He kicked one booted foot out of the stirrup and reached down to pull her up in front of him on the saddle when he realized that she wasn’t even slowing down.

“Would you mind telling…” he began.

Her ardent mouth stopped him in midsentence. He kissed
her back hungrily, instantly aroused by her headlong passion and wondering dimly if it would be possible to seduce her on horseback in front of the whole damned crew.

“Here, feel,” she whispered against his hard mouth, pulling one of his hands to her flat stomach.

“Maggie, there are damned cowboys everywhere,” he tried to get out.

“There’s a baby in here,” she whispered, pushing his hand closer.

He stiffened. He lifted his head and stared at her blankly while the tearful joy in her green eyes and the laughter coming from her throat managed to sink in.

“You’re pregnant?” he asked on an explosion of breath. “Pregnant?”

“Very, very pregnant,” she murmured against his mouth. She linked her arms around his neck. “Three months. I didn’t even have morning sickness and I thought I couldn’t get pregnant, and then I realized we hadn’t had any monthly problems.”

“
We
hadn’t had any monthly problems?” he asked with growing delight and amused affection.

She hit him. “It’s our baby. We’re both having it. Now, listen. Anyway, I went to see the doctor and he did this one little blood test. I drove so fast getting here to tell you…!”

Sirens interrupted her.

“Oh, dear,” she said nervously as she looked behind her. Two state highway department vehicles were drawing up a few
yards away, lights flashing. Cowboys who had stopped loading to watch the boss get kissed half to death were now watching, with interest, the arrival of a herd of policemen.

Two uniformed officers got out of separate Texas Department of Public Safety highway patrol cars and walked around the sports car toward the man and woman sitting so close together on the horse.

“I’m very sorry,” Maggie began hopefully.

“Lady, you were going eighty in a fifty-five!” the older of the two men replied, ticket book in hand.

“
And
you passed both of us on the four-lane like we were backing up!” the younger one added belligerently.

“She’s pregnant,” Cord told them blatantly, chuckling as Maggie squirmed sheepishly and made the horse jump. He calmed it with a gentle hand on its neck. “We’ve been married four months, but a doctor told her years ago that he didn’t think it would be possible in the first place. So we’re having sort of a miracle. And a baby,” he added, grinning from ear to ear.

The older man looked at the younger man.

“The law is the law,” the older one said doggedly.

“Sure it is, and we can give out warnings to people we don’t need to arrest,” the younger one said, grinning. “I’d put a newly pregnant woman at the top of the list. So tell her not to do it again and then we can congratulate them and go back to work.”

The older officer studied the people on horseback. He scowled. “You look familiar,” he told Cord.

“I should,” Cord replied with a grimace, having belatedly recognized the other man. “You were just leaving to join the highway department force when I was a rookie on the Houston police force here, years ago.” He noted the stripes on the man’s sleeves. “You’ve come up in the world.”

The man looked back at him and his stoic expression softened. “So have you, apparently, but that’s not where I remember you from, I’m sure of it,” he replied, with a long look at Maggie. He pointed a finger at her. “You stop speeding in my county,” he admonished. “Babies don’t do well at supersonic speeds. Got that?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” she promised and grinned. “I’ll teach him to obey all the traffic laws.”

“Her,” Cord corrected. “We’re having a girl.”

She opened her eyes wide. “God doesn’t take orders.”

“We can ask nicely,” he retorted. “I like little girls. We can teach her to breed bulls.”

“We can teach her to catch crooks, too,” she pointed out.

“That’s where I’ve seen you!” the older policeman suddenly blurted out, slapping his forehead. “You’re the two who broke up the international child slavery ring! Both your pictures were in the paper, along with the front-page story. You actually shot it out with the head guy in Amsterdam! And the Lassiter Detective Agency turned in two local businessmen who were up to their necks in the conspiracy. I used to work with Dane Lassiter before he became a Texas Ranger, years ago.”

The younger officer was staring from Maggie to Cord
while the older one was speaking and he grinned. “Son of a gun. It is them!”

Maggie felt like the heroine of a cliff-hanger movie serial. She chuckled, tightening her arms around Cord’s neck. “I’ll say something nice about you when I write my memoirs, if you won’t arrest me,” she promised.

“Lady, you should write books, not memoirs, after what I read in the newspapers,” the older officer said. “With a story like that to tell, what a bestseller it could be!”

She thought about that and lights flashed in her head. “You know,” she began slowly, and with growing enthusiasm, “that’s not a bad idea!”

Six months later, Maggie turned in a novel about international espionage to an editor in New York who’d read the earlier draft and contracted to publish it. Simultaneously, Maggie produced a baby boy. It came as a surprise, because neither parent had wanted to know the sex of their child until it was born. They’d chosen names for either sex, but Cord was certain they’d be using Charlene Maria.

When they were home with the baby, sitting on the front porch late in the afternoon, Cord looked down at the child in her arms and sighed lovingly. “Jared Mejias Romero,” he murmured proudly. “I am very happy to be your father. But we still need a little sister for Daddy to spoil.”

“Daddy can spoil Jared until that happens,” Maggie told him with a grin, knowing he was perfectly pleased that they had a
healthy baby. “Maybe they’re right and lightning can strike twice. But even if it can’t, I’m very happy with what we got.”

“So am I.” He kissed her and then his son as they sat in the swing on the warm, enclosed sunporch and watched the big bull eat hay from the back of a pickup truck in the pasture beside the driveway. It was February now, still very cold, and sunset was just brushing the clouds. The horizon was ablaze with color. “My wife, the writer,” he murmured. He glanced at her whimsically. “Still, it beats having you run around in a trench coat packing a gun.”

She shot him a wicked grin. “Think so? I do have to have fresh material if I get offered another book contract.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not signing on to bust up any more illegal labor rackets, or defuse any bombs, or help Bojo with any more missions, in case you ever wondered,” he informed her. “I raise cattle now. Period.”

“Cattle are exciting. Just look at old Hijito there,” she mused, studying him. She pursed her lips as a new plot announced itself in her head. “Hmm. Suppose somebody stole him and it came out that he had a microchip hidden in his ear tag that could prove someone guilty of the attempted assassination of…hey, where are you going? Cord! Come back here!”

He kept going, laughing all the way down the hall. Maggie turned her eyes to the sleeping face of her baby in his warm little footy pajamas and thought about all the long, hard, painful years that had led her to this place, this time, this happiness.

By facing her pain and her past, she’d stepped into a new world of joy. If only she’d known long ago that the only way to cope with the darkness was to turn and face into it, instead of running away from it. If only…!

But she had Cord and a baby, and life was sweeter than she’d dreamed it could be. Regrets were like the clouds on the horizon, soon blown away by the lazy summer winds and lost in the splendor of the sunset; just as the endurance of pain was rewarded by unexpected pleasure once the ordeal ended. It was one of the shimmery curiosities of life that God kissed the emotional cuts, just as mothers and fathers kissed the real ones. A physicist would quote Newton’s Third Law—every action produced an equal reaction. But Maggie liked her poetic version better.

She kissed the tiny forehead softly, so as not to wake the baby, and her heart lifted like a rocket with joy. Down the hall, she heard familiar footsteps coming back to her, beating a firm, steady tattoo that echoed in her heart.

“I thought it was clouding up to snow,” Cord remarked as he reached down to take his son in his arms and relieve her tired arms. “But look at that sunset!”

She smiled up at him. “The clouds are all gone, my darling, they’ve drifted away on the wind,” she said softly. “Remember the old saying, ‘red skies at night, sailor’s delight’? Just look at that sky!”

He drew her up with him. “I’m no sailor, and you’re getting fanciful,” he teased. “Come and let’s have supper. I’m starving!”

She reached up and kissed him. “You’re always starving.” She grinned wickedly and wiggled her eyebrows. “Lucky me!”

“No,” he whispered lovingly, and kissed her back. “Lucky me!”

She clung to his arm as they walked down the hall with their son, watching his father look at him with the most beautiful, loving expression she’d ever seen in those dark eyes, for anyone other than herself.

“You know,” she said, thinking aloud, “I think babies are more exciting than international intrigue.”

He chuckled. “We’re in a perfect position to find out.”

“Yes, we are.” She sighed contentedly. “We are, indeed.” She looked up at him. “For a desperado,” she murmured, “you make a pretty good family man.”

“Thank you. I’ll recommend you for promotion when we’re recruited by the French Foreign Legion.”

“All right! Do they take women now, and can the baby come, too?” she asked excitedly. “How do we join?”

He aimed a swat at her backside that she dodged skillfully and with a laugh, reminding her that some desperadoes never really lose the habit. And she wouldn’t have had him any other way.