The Secret Brokers (8 page)

Dallas nodded and then waved his hand at Harley. “Does Gwen know you feed her dog?”

Hickman wiped his hands together. “I always bring the big guy a treat. Keeps him quiet.”

Dallas contemplated the two agents for a moment. “Who’s the officer in charge of this case?” he finally asked.

Both men appeared surprised by the question.

“What are you going to do?” Taylor challenged. “Check up on us?”

“Just give me a name,” Dallas insisted.

Taylor laughed. “Do you believe this guy?” he argued, turning to his partner.

Hickman stared at Dallas. “Dan Wilbur, out of the Washington Bureau
,
is running the case.”

“Dan Wilbur?” Dallas chuckled. “Is he still over the Organized Crime Division?”

“You know Wilbur?” Taylor questioned, sounding surprised.

“Of course he does,” Hickman replied to his partner as he kept his eyes on Dallas. “He wouldn’t have asked who the officer in charge of our case is unless he was familiar with protocol. And look at his gun. Sig P226.” Hickman nodded at Dallas. “When did you leave the Bureau?”

Dallas sighed. “A long time ago. I’ll call Dan in the morning. In the meantime, don’t feed the dog. Gwen will probably have a fit if she finds out you guys have been bribing her guard dog with chicken wings.” He started for the house.

“So what are you doing here, August? Private duty?” Taylor pestered behind him.

“Like I said guys,” Dallas called out over his shoulder. “I’m a friend of the family.”

When Dallas stepped back inside the front door, Gwen was waiting for him.

“I see you met the fed boys,” she said as Dallas shut the door behind him. “Taylor and Hickman work the night shift. Crawford and Brewster work the day shift.”

“You could have told me that before I went out there waving this around,” he complained as he held up his gun.

She shrugged “You didn’t ask, so I gathered you would eventually figure it out on your own.” She made a move to walk by him when Dallas reached for her arm.

“This attitude of yours is really starting to piss me off,” he growled as he pulled her against him. “I didn’t come here to get my ass shot off, and I sure as hell don’t want any trouble with the feds. Now either you can start helping me by telling me everything I need to know, or I’m going to make your life a real hell for the next two weeks.”

Gwen turned to face him. Her lips were inches from his. “You forget—I’m not the one who wanted you here. So if your ass gets shot off, why should I give a damn?”

Dallas tightened his grip on her arm. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”

She leaned her body into his and placed her hand on his naked chest. “And what are you going to do about it?”

Dallas felt the heat from her body as her breasts pressed against him. When he pushed her away, he could smell the hint of jasmine in her hair.

“Get back upstairs and lock yourself in your bedroom,” he ordered.

“By the way, nice PJ’s,” she remarked and then she disappeared up the stairs.

Dallas looked down at his blue pajama bottoms. For the first time since he had seen Harley go trotting off toward the front gate, he felt the cold night air envelop him. Then he remembered the warmth of Gwen’s body next to his, and his lips curled into a playful grin.

As Dallas made himself comfortable on the couch, he realized something. For the first time in a long while, he had lived a few uninterrupted minutes without thinking of Nicci. The pleasure of Gwen’s body against his had not brought to mind the inevitable comparisons between the two women. In fact, he was rather surprised that he had not thought of Nicci at all. Maybe he was finally on the road to recovery and was beginning to put the past behind him. Now if he could only figure out the future, and how he was going to survive two weeks with the infuriating Gwen Marsh.

The following morning Dallas awoke to a wet nose rubbing against his cheek. He sat up on the couch and found Harley standing beside him. Gazing about the room, he saw that it was still dark outside and checked the stainless steel watch on his wrist for the time. As he threw off the blanket and put his feet on the cold hardwood floor, Harley turned from Dallas and went clamoring into the kitchen. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee tempted Dallas off the couch. When he stood up, a twinge from his back made him grimace slightly. He began to move about, trying to work out the stiff muscle, but the lure of coffee once again called to his fatigued body. Grabbing at his aching back, Dallas slowly made his way to the kitchen.

When he rounded the doorway, he found Gwen, wrapped in a robe, and sitting on a stool at the kitchen island with a red mug in her hand.

“Good morning,” she said, sounding unusually chipper.

Dallas gave her a stern reproach with his cool eyes as he made his way across the room to the coffee pot. He searched the cabinet above the coffee maker for a mug and then reached for the pot.

“Not a morning person, eh?” Gwen softly mocked behind him.

“What did you do? Take a happy pill this morning?” Dallas asked as he poured the black liquid into his white ceramic cup.

“Just like mornings, unlike some people,” she chided, rolling he eyes.

He turned to face her. “Try sleeping on your couch and see how you feel the next day,” he stated, stretching out his stiff back once more.

“Told you Lawrence snored.”

Dallas took a needed sip of his coffee. “You didn’t tell me Lawrence snored like a freight train.”

“You didn’t ask,” she smugly returned as she got up from her stool. “I’m going to go upstairs to change before heading to the barn to feed everyone.”

Dallas came up to her side. “I’ll throw on some clothes and join you.”

“Join me, hell. I hope you packed some old blue jeans in with that gun of yours, because you’re going to help me this morning.” She made her way toward the kitchen door. “Might as well put that fine ass of yours to work around here helping out.”

“I’m so glad you noticed,” Dallas mumbled behind her.

Gwen stopped at the doorway and turned to him. “I’m reclusive, not dead, Mr. August.” She smiled at him. “Now don’t get cocky.” She exited the kitchen, nursing her coffee mug in her hands.

Dallas leaned against the kitchen island and took another sip of his coffee. Harley whined at him from the other side of the kitchen. He turned to see the dog standing in front of his empty food bowl.

“And don’t feed Harley,” Gwen ordered from the stairs. “He got enough chicken wings last night from the feds.”

Dallas nodded at the dog. “Sorry, but you’re busted, big guy.”

Harley lay down on the floor next to his bowl and sighed.

“I’m glad I’m not the one who has to live with her,” Dallas commented as he took his coffee mug and headed out of the kitchen.

***

His arms filled with timothy hay, Dallas walked down the shed aisle of the barn to the stall of a horse called Whippadu.

“Make sure you put the hay in the net by his stall door and refill his water,” Gwen instructed from the stall next door.

“I heard you the first time,” Dallas barked as he struggled to put the hay in the tangled web of netting.

Flakes of the itchy, yellow hay covered his face, arms, and hair. He tried to wipe away the remnants of hay from his arms just as the slender bay, Whippadu, began to nibble at the hay still stuck in his hair.

“Thanks for the help,” Dallas murmured to the horse.

The odor inside of the stall made Dallas turn his head to the side and blow out a breath through his mouth.

“How do you put up with the smell?” he called to her.

“You get used to it,” Gwen replied from outside of the stall. “It’s like being in a springtime meadow to anyone who grew up riding horses.”

A fly buzzed past his face and he immediately started swiping the air around him with his hand. The horse shied away from him and walked over to his hay net.

“What is your problem?”

Dallas turned to see Gwen staring at him from the aisle as she stood behind a wheelbarrow filled with feed.

“I don’t like bugs,” he grumbled.

“You don’t like bugs!” Gwen exclaimed, and then broke out into a fit of laughter. It was a light, harmonious sound that Dallas never expected from such a serious person. He watched as her eyes brightened and the tension in her face eased.

Gwen wiped a tear away from the corner of her eye. “Some bodyguard you are. I suppose if a swarm of locusts descends on the place, I’m on my own.” She shook her head as she scooped up a bucket of feed and walked over to Whippadu’s stall.

“I’m only supposed to protect you from two legged assassins. With the six-legged kind, you’re on your own.”

Gwen poured the feed into the horse’s bucket. “I’ll make sure I grab for the Raid in case any cockroaches carrying semi-automatics stop by.” She put the bucket down on the ground and gently stroked Whippadu’s brown nose.

“How did you get started in all of this?” Dallas inquired as he watched her interacting with the horse.

Gwen shrugged. “I always loved animals, especially horses. I began riding when I was a kid. It was the one thing I was better at than my brothers; they thought horses were for girls. So I worked my butt off
;
trained morning, noon, and night. Within a few years, I became one of the top riders in the state. That is when I started learning about racehorse rescue. A lot of the other riders had bought racehorses off the track and trained them to jump. I found my first racehorse soon after I won my first state championship. By the time I was fourteen I had four horses. By the time I was eighteen, I had sold those four and found eight more.” She stroked the long white blaze on the front of Whippadu’s head.

“And after that?” he persisted.

She turned to him. “After that I went off to college. By the time I went to nursing school, I had gotten out of riding completely. But I knew I would always go back to it one day. When I married Doug, I began riding again.”

Dallas pulled a hose over to the side of the horse’s stall and began filling the water bucket by the stall door.

“How did you and Doug meet?”

Gwen took in a deep breath as she stepped aside from Whippadu. “I was in nursing school, doing a rotation at Charity Hospital. Doug was doing his residency in cardiology when I was in ICU. We started talking and then he asked me out.”

“And when did you find out he was gay?”

Gwen picked the bucket up from the ground. “On our first date. He said he wanted to be friends and that being with a woman…well, he told me he had tried it once, but it wasn’t his thing.”

“That would have been enough for most women to walk away,” Dallas commented as he pulled the hose away from the water bucket. “Why did you stay with him?”

Gwen looked down at the bucket in her hands. “That first night, after our pseudo-date, he walked me to my front door. My brother, Jackson, was waiting up. He was always the overprotective type and never liked Doug. When Jackson and Doug started shouting at each other on our front doorstep, I grabbed my brother’s arm and tried to push him back inside the house. Jackson pushed me away and I fell hard to the sidewalk. Doug went ballistic and punched my brother in the face, breaking his nose.” She raised her eyes to Dallas. “All my life I had been fighting with my brothers, competing with them for every scrap of attention from our father. For the first time, someone was watching out for me. Doug started checking in on me, taking me out to dinner, and coming over to my house. We became the best of friends. I knew he never wanted anyone to find out about his lifestyle, but when he proposed marriage, at first, I was against it.”

“And what changed your mind?” Dallas questioned, encouraging her to continue.

She tossed the bucket back in the wheelbarrow beside her. “I thought about it and figured why not? It got me out of the house and away from my brothers. Doug promised to take care of me. And trust me, raising a father and two brothers most of my life, I
was ready to be taken care of.”

“So after your mother died, you were left to care for everyone?”

“After she shot herself, my father withdrew from me and my brothers and…” She shook her head. “They were completely lost, so I stepped in. I got everyone back on track and started telling the men what to do to get their minds off the shooting.”

“Six seems awfully young to take charge of a household. Wasn’t there anyone else around to help?”

She snickered under her breath. “Ed Pioth is not the kind of man to accept help from anyone. Everyone who did come to offer assistance, he turned away.”

“And when did you decide you wanted to get away from your father and brothers?”

Gwen stepped behind the wheelbarrow. “Nice try, Dallas. Stop picking my brain and trying to find my weaknesses.”
She pushed the wheelbarrow over to the next stall. “All you need to know is that it took me a few years to gather up the courage to walk away from my marriage, but I finally did.”

Gwen made her way down the aisle, filling feed buckets, and saying hello to each and every horse along the way.