Mission: Christmas: The Christmas Wild Bunch / Snowbound with a Prince

“Yes, back in Cuzco. He was a Peruvian medical doctor.” Dallas shrugged. “Things got complicated. I was in a black ops, and he was a renowned heart surgeon. Between our two schedules, we rarely saw one another, and even then, if I got called back to BJS for an emergency, I was gone. His family put a lot of pressure on him to drop me, and eventually, he did.”

“Families can do that,” Mike agreed. He felt elated she was sharing with him. “Now, my family is very laid-back. I’m the oldest, with two younger sisters, Julie and JoAnn.”

“Laid-back. Hmm. Like you, right?” Dallas chuckled.

Mike smiled back and scanned the gray sky and scudding clouds. Rain splattered across the cockpit window, but less and less frequently the farther south they flew. “I’m laid-back, too.”

“Oh, right. Mr. Intense. You lock on to a druggie through your binoculars, and you’re like a laser-fired rocket.” She laughed wryly. “Give me a break, Murdoch. You’re the least laid-back dude I’ve ever known, a bloodhound on a scent!”

“So, you don’t like intense dudes? They’re a turnoff? A surgeon isn’t exactly a laid-back sort, either. They are well known type A personalities.”

A smile lurked on her lips. “Murdoch, you’re fishing. What’s this all about?”

“Well…” he sighed, sitting back, sipping his coffee. “I wanted to invite you out to dinner tonight after we get back. I know a really nice Mexican couple in Nogales who’ve been friends of mine for years. I thought you might like to have some good home cooking, Mexican style. Since you spent six years in Peru, I thought you’d probably enjoy Latin food.”

“Now that’s a provocative invitation,” Dallas said, trying to look serious. She noticed his black, straight brows moving downward. “Good food is always a draw for me.”

“You mean you’d come along for the food? And not because you’re with me?”

“You’re incorrigible, Murdoch.”

He grinned wolfishly and added, “Maria is a damn good cook. Her husband, Alfredo, is a businessman. He owns a trading post on both sides of the border. I think you’d enjoy them. They’re very intelligent, compassionate people with big hearts. Did you know that at Christmas, they take thousands of dollars worth of gifts to orphanages in Sonora? Alfredo likes to dress up as Santa Claus, and Maria becomes Mrs. Claus. They’re a hoot, the two of them.”

“They sound like really nice people,” Dallas said. “Yeah, I’d love to have dinner with them.”

“How about with me?”

“Oh, Murdoch, will you stop?”

Feeling pleased, he decided not to push her anymore. Dallas had colored prettily beneath his cajoling. She looked even more desirable with pink cheeks and that softness in her golden eyes. “I guess I can stop goading you,” he said, “since you’ve agreed to have a date with me.”

“It’s not a date.”

“What would you call it?”

“Just two friends having dinner with other friends.”

“I guess I’ll let you get away with that definition—for now.”

Seeing her smile elated Murdoch as never before. He was curious. Why did Dallas refuse to call it a date? Was she drawn to him at all, or did she really see him as just a friend? That wasn’t a status Murdoch wanted with her.

The plane bumped then leaped about fifty feet upward as it hit an air pocket. Dallas quickly stabilized it. She was a damn fine pilot, but so was he.

“You know,” he said, putting the cap back on the thermos and getting down to business, “you and I have the best stats for October. We made five busts. Just think, about 4,500 pounds of marijuana and coke aren’t gonna hit U.S. markets.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “Does my heart good.”

“Yeah, we are a good team,” Dallas told him. “Better than I thought, given our rough landing when I first got here.”

“That’s over,” Mike assured her. “I apologized. I had my nose bent out of joint over my divorce.”

“I don’t ever want to divorce. I want to fall in love and have it last forever. Maybe that’s idealistic in a world where half the marriages crash and burn, but my parents are still married. That’s what I want.”

“Ahh, now I get it.” Mike touched the center of his forehead and closed his eyes. “Great seer that I am, the reason why you want me only as a friend is you’re afraid I’ll dump you somewhere down the road, and you’ll be alone with no hope of a forever marriage.”

“Get real, dude!”

Chortling, Mike opened his eyes and shared her laughter. He loved the fact that every time they flew, Dallas opened up to him a little more. At last he felt as if he’d touched the real core of her, and not the X.O. who was his boss. “Hey, I’m a responsible kind of guy. I like long-term.”

“Yeah, sure you do. How long were you married before, Cowboy?” That was his nickname in the Border Patrol.

“That’s not fair.”

“Sure it is. I’m a forever kind of gal. You’re not, judging from your track record.”

“Don’t shoot me down so fast, darlin’.” He saw her eyes go wide then grow warm over his endearment. Mike had discovered that Dallas needed male attention in small dollops. She didn’t like brutish men, that was for sure. He never saw her go to the Nogales nightclubs to dance and drink. She stayed at the base or went to her apartment nearby, but never partied. He’d often wondered why, but now, knowing that she was incredibly responsible, dedicated to her career, and looking for a long-term relationship, he began to understand her actions.

“Hey, to me, a divorce is a sign that two people can’t work out their differences. If you couldn’t do it in your first marriage, Murdoch, why should I look at you as serious stuff?”

“Well,” he said, eyeing her intently, “maybe you don’t know the whole story behind my divorce. Maybe they don’t all happen because two people are too lazy or selfish to work things out.” He opened his hands. “My parents have been married since they were both eighteen, and they’re fifty now. Have they had tough times? You bet. Did they struggle? Oh, yeah, I saw it. But the one thing that kept them together was that they loved one another. It’s the glue that’s gotten them through a lot of tough times.”

“Precisely. That’s what I’m talking about—commitment based on love.” Dallas scanned the clearing sky. Between the gray, horizontal stratus clouds were hints of blue. In another hour they’d be out of the remnants of the hurricane and into sunshine as they made their way to Hermosillo.

She shot him a dark look. “So, if your parents are forever people, what happened to you, Murdoch?”

Okay, it was his turn to be vulnerable. Mike was uncomfortable with her flat stare, but he wanted her so damn bad, in every way, that he decided to lay the truth on the table between them. “I wanted a forever marriage, too, Dallas. I didn’t plan to get married young—I figured if I married when I was older, I’d be better able to handle the rigors of it all. About five years ago, I met Galina Baranova, who was an interpreter for the Border Patrol. She was a recent immigrant from Moscow and a whiz at languages, speaking at least five fluently. I was stationed in El Paso, Texas, when I started working with her. I fell in love with her on the spot. But she wasn’t who I thought she was.”

“Oh?” Dallas gave him a worried glance and saw his expression go sad.

“She was with the Russian mafia.” He sighed. “To make a long story short, she was an ace of a con artist. She’s a genius, really. She became a mole for the Russian mafia back in Moscow. In her job as translator, she flew all over the Southwest and had access to many of the deep, dark secret records the BP kept on drug smuggling movements coming up from South America and Mexico. She was able to let her cohorts know well ahead of time when certain drug shipments were being watched, and they would change course, and we’d lose track of them. This went on for two years, until I started getting suspicious. One time, I found by accident a piece of paper in Galina’s purse. I’d been digging for money in her billfold, because I was out of cash and needed some before I went to work. The paper was a list of drug smuggling operations, and she’d made a notation in one corner—the name of her contact in Mexico. We got the FBI on it, and they apprehended the dude and interrogated him back in D.C.” Grimacing, Mike said quietly, “About two weeks later, the FBI came to our house and arrested Galina. They hadn’t told me beforehand.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dallas said. She reached out and gripped his hand. “That must’ve been tough.”

Her palm was warm and soft. Greedily, Murdoch laced his fingers with hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. This was the first time he’d ever shown his affection to Dallas. Would she realize what she meant to him? As he released her hand, he saw her blush. There was such innocence to her, despite her being a combat veteran. That was the part he wanted to access, to know, to care for, to love and cherish—forever.

The realization of how he felt slammed into him, and he tried to come to grips with it. Ever since Dallas had shown up in his life, he’d desired her. Sure, at first he had only wanted to get her to bed. But then, over the course of the last month, he had started yearning for a lot more from her. His dreams, although torrid, were about more than just sex. What he felt was much deeper than that, he realized now.

“Hey,” he called softly. When Dallas turned, he saw a velvety quality in her eyes he’d never seen before. Instantly, his heart opened even wider. That mouth of hers was begging, just begging, to be kissed. Her attraction was clearly written across her suddenly very vulnerable features.

For the first time, Mike saw the real Dallas Klein. And, God forgive him, he just about died and went to heaven. “Don’t feel sorry for me, darlin’. What I would like is a clean slate between the two of us. I think we cleared some important hurdles at three thousand feet here, don’t you?” He flashed her an impish grin, having found out a long time ago that humor could frequently soothe a fractious confrontation. And right now, if he was reading Dallas correctly, he could see her reassessing him. Maybe even thinking about a possible relationship with him. Never had he wanted anything more.

“I’m glad we cleared the air, Mike. I didn’t know the details about your divorce. That had to be horrible on you. The shock…If you entered that marriage with the idea it was forever…Well, what a heartbreaking situation.”

“That’s why I was hitting the Nogales nightclubs when you arrived. I was drinking to stop the pain I was feeling,” he admitted quietly. After looking around, which was his habit as a copilot, he returned his gaze to her. “And you really snapped me out of it that first day we flew together.” Giving her another boyish grin, he said, “Thanks. I needed that.”

“What? Being laid out flat on your back on the tarmac?”

Murdoch chuckled. “Yeah, I’d been drinking heavily, almost nonstop, for two weeks. It wasn’t like me, but I had to do something to dull the pain.”

“Helluva way to do it,” Dallas commented, searching the airspace below them. The sky was lightening up even more. The Cessna chugged like the stalwart workhorse it was. “Sometimes we all have to hit brick walls, Mike. Maybe I was your wall.”