Man In Control

“You were never fat,” he shot back angrily. “You were voluptuous. There’s a difference.”

She glanced at him. “I was terribly overweight.”

“And you think men like to run their hands over bones, do you?”

She shifted in her seat. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You had a low self-image. You still have it. There’s nothing wrong with you. Except for that sharp tongue,” he added.

“Look who’s complaining!”

“If I don’t yell, nobody listens.”

“You never yell,” she corrected. “You can look at people and make them run for cover.”

He smiled without malice. “I practice in my bathroom mirror.”

She couldn’t believe she’d heard that.

“You need to start thinking about a Halloween costume,” he murmured as he made a turn.

“For what? Are you going to hire me out for parties?” she muttered.

“For our annual Halloween party next month,” he said with muted disgust. “Margie’s invited half of Jacobsville to come over in silly clothes and masks to eat candy apples.”

“What are you coming as?”

He gave her a careless glance. “A Drug Enforcement Agency field agent.”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling of the car.

“I make a convincing DEA field agent,” he persisted.

“I wouldn’t argue with that,” she had to agree. “I hear that Manuel Lopez mysteriously blew up in the Bahamas the year before last, and nobody’s replaced him yet,” she added. “Did you have anything to do with his sudden demise?”

“DEA agents don’t blow up drug lords. Not even one as bad as Lopez.”

“Somebody did.”

He glanced at her with a faint smile. “In a manner of speaking.”

“One of the former mercs from Jacobsville, I heard.”

“Micah Steele was somewhere around when it happened. He’s never been actually connected with Lopez’s death.”

“He moved back here and married Callie Kirby, didn’t he?. They have a little girl now.”

He nodded. “He’s practicing medicine at Jacobsville General as a resident, hoping to go into private practice when he finishes his last semester of study.”

“Lucky Callie,” she murmured absently, staring out the window. “She always wanted to get married and have kids, and she was crazy about Micah most of her life.”

He watched her curiously. “Didn’t you want to get married, too?”

She didn’t answer. “So now that Lopez is out of the way, and nobody’s replaced him, you don’t have a lot to do, do you?”

He laughed shortly. “Lopez has a new successor, a Peruvian national living in Mexico on an open-ended visa. He’s got colleagues in Houston helping him smuggle his product into the United States.”

“Do you know who they are?” she asked excitedly.

He gave her a cold glare. “Oh, sure, I’m going to tell you their names right now.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic, Cobb,” she said icily.

One thick eyebrow jerked. “You’re the only person I know, outside work, who uses my last name as if it were my first name.”

“You don’t use my real name, either.”

“Don’t I?” He seemed surprised. He glanced at her. “You don’t look like a Jordana.”

“I never thought I looked like a Jordana, either,” she said with a sigh. “My mother loved odd names. She even gave them to the cats.”

Remembering her mother made her sad. She’d lost both parents in a freak accident during a modest vacation in Florida after her high school graduation. Her parents had gone swimming in the ocean, having no idea that the pretty red flags on the beach warned of treacherous riptides that could drown even experienced swimmers. Which her mother and father were not. She could still remember the horror of it. Alexander had come to take care of the details, and to get her back home. Odd how many tragedies and crises he’d seen her through over the years.

“Your mother was a sweet woman,” he recalled. “I’m sorry you lost her. And your father.”

“He was a sweet man, too,” she recalled. It had been eight years ago, and she could remember happy times now, but it still made her sad to think of them.

“Strange, isn’t it, that you don’t take after either of them?” he asked caustically. “No man in his right mind could call you ‘sweet.’”

“Stop right there, Cobb,” she threatened, using his last name again. It was much more comfortable than getting personal with the nickname Margie used for him. “I could say things about you, too.”

“What? That I’m dashing and intelligent and the answer to a maiden’s prayer?” He pursed his lips and glanced her way as he pulled into the road that led to the ranch. “Which brings up another question. Are you sleeping with that airheaded boss of yours at work yet?”

“He is not airheaded!” she exclaimed, offended.

“He eats tofu and quiche, he drives a red convertible of uncertain age, he plays tennis and he doesn’t know how to program a computer without crashing the system.”

That was far too knowledgeable to have come from a dossier. Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve had him checked out!” she accused with certainty.

He only smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.

Two

“You can’t go around snooping into people’s private lives like that,” Jodie exclaimed heatedly. “It’s not right!”

“I’m looking for a high-level divisional manager who works for the new drug lord in his Houston territory,” he replied calmly. “I check out everybody who might have an inkling of what’s going on.” He turned his head slightly. “I even checked you out.”

“Me?” she exclaimed.