THAT MYSTERIOUS TEXAS BRAND MAN Read online

  "Like a cat," she replied, and she felt his hand close around hers. Warm, strong, gentle all at the same time. That tingling awareness danced up her arm and made her go soft inside. She'd told herself she wanted to get him in here so they could talk, and maybe she'd drag something out of him about himself. Because she had to know. She had to know. But when he touched her, she realized she wanted more than just to know about him. A lot more.

  He took her to the kitchen sink, anchored her hands on its edge and then moved away. When he came back it was with the coffee carafe. She felt it when he pushed it under the spigot and cranked on the faucets. "I know you promised to make the coffee," he said. "But I don't want the water poured down my shirt, so…"

  "Very funny. I'm not a klutz … just not a bat like you."

  He moved away and she heard him pouring the water into the coffeemaker. Then he was back. "Where's the coffee?"

  "On the shelf just above the pot. Filters, too."

  She heard him moving around some more, then there was a click, and the coffeemaker started gurgling. He took her by the hand again and led her unfailingly through her own house to the living room and the sofa. "You seem to know your way around here pretty well," she said, already suspicious.

  "I was here earlier today."

  Of course he was. He'd installed some kind of contraption on the back door. But she hadn't imagined him inside the house.

  "I had to look around. See where the weaknesses are, where you're vulnerable."

  "Oh."

  "I hope you're not angry."

  She shrugged. "Apparently my locks aren't that good."

  "Not for a professional." His voice came from yet another locale. She was swinging her head in a different direction every time he spoke.

  "Will you sit down? You're making me nuts."

  "Sorry." He sat down. Right beside her on the sofa. So close she could have easily tipped her head to the side and let it rest on his shoulder.

  She licked her lips.

  "You need dead bolts," he was saying, so absorbed in his job that he apparently hadn't noticed that he could put his arm around her with barely any trouble at all. Or blow in her ear if he wanted, with the merest crook of his neck. "You already know about the sensor I put on the back door, so I'll know any time it opens. But the windows need locks—"

  "The windows have locks."

  "First floor, yes. But the second-story windows don't."

  "So you're expecting your cousin Spider-Man?"

  He laughed. Soft, sexy. And then he leaned back on the sofa and released a breath. "You're cute as hell."

  "Am I?"

  "Yeah." He sat up a little, reached out to brush a wisp of hair from her forehead. "I like you, Casey Jones. You're tough, you're smart."

  "And I'm cute," she said. "Don't forget that part."

  "I'm not likely to forget that part." His voice was low.

  She leaned back and closer to him at the same time, knowing he knew it and hoping he didn't mind too much. "How long have you been … you know, the Guardian?"

  He was relaxed. His guard was down. And she was taking advantage. She knew that. But she couldn't help herself. She was so curious, so interested.

  "For almost thirteen years now. I was nineteen."

  Thirteen years ago. Casey's brain worked rapidly. That would mean in 1985 he was nineteen, so he was thirty-two now, and he was born in '66. Probably in or near Silver City.

  She filed the information away, vowing to remember. Then she sighed. "So you aren't immortal after all."

  "Immortal?" He glanced down at her, his face so close to hers she could feel his breath.

  "Well, I did some reading about you before I contacted you. I mean, I wanted to be sure you were for real."

  "And what did you learn?" His voice wasn't as relaxed anymore. It was wary now.

  "Nothing to learn. It just seemed odd to me when I met you that first night that you weren't … older. I mean, the Silver City Times mentioned you way back in, oh, I don't know—forty-eight or something like that."

  "Did they?"

  She tilted her head. She was giving too much away. He was really suspicious of her now. She sighed and leaned against him. "It doesn't matter."

  "Doesn't it?"

  "Not in the least," she muttered. "Not to me. I'm just glad you're here. I don't know what I would have done—"

  "You'd have done fine," he said softly. She thought a relieved breath escaped him. Thought perhaps his body's tension eased a bit. "You're resourceful."

  "You think so?"

  "The way you got me to contact you is proof enough of that," he told her.

  "I've wondered about that again and again. What made you decide to help me after I pulled a trick like that?"

  He shrugged. She was close enough now that she felt the movement. "I had several reasons."

  Her hand touched his cheek. "Will you tell me what they were?"

  He nodded. Shuddered. Gently covered her hand with his and moved it away. "I was intrigued. I wanted to meet the woman with the brass to try something like that."

  "And that was all?"

  "Oh, no." He sat a little straighter, putting a bit of distance between them. "There was more. There was … there was the fact that I'd have to come to Texas."

  "You needed to get away from the Silver City press," she filled in.

  "I think it might have been more than that. Something … something about Texas rang a bell in my mind."

  "You've been to Texas before? Where?"

  "I don't know." His voice was deadly serious. "Parts of my childhood are…" Then he caught himself, seemed to shut off the flow of words.

  She sat straight, straining her eyes in the darkness. "You mean you don't remember?"

  "I've said way too much." He turned his head.

  "Something horrible happened to you, didn't it?"

  He shook his head. "Don't ask me, Casey."

  "You said something about a sister. A sister you lost. How did you lose her? Was she … was she killed?"

  He was silent for a long time. Slowly, he said, "Suffice it to say, I know what it's like to love a sister and to lose one. And it's just one more reason I decided to help you."

  Her heart stopped. Right there, on those words, it just stopped. And this time when her hands came to his face, he let them remain there.

  "I don't know why I'm telling you any of this."

  "Yes, you do," she whispered. "You know you do."

  He shook his head. "It's not something I talk about."

  "With me it is."

  "That doesn't make any sense and you know it Casey. It's only a chemical reaction between us. Right?"

  "If that's all it can be." She straightened her fingers until they threaded into his hair, massaging his scalp gently. "Go on. Your sister…"

  "She was … she was only four." The words seemed to spill from him without his permission. "Six years younger than me." He drew a shuddering breath and lowered his head. "She was killed. Our parents, too."

  Tears pooled in her eyes, and she leaned closer to kiss his cheek. "It's all right."

  "No, Casey." He removed her hands but held them clasped in his. "It's not all right. Never has been, and never will be. I've said way more than I should have. If you were a reporter, you'd have enough to nail me by now. But I thought if you knew, you'd understand why there can never be anything…"

  "Between us? Between you and anyone in the world?"

  He nodded. "I'm a loner. It's the way I like it, and it's not going to change."

  Oddly, she no longer gave a damn about the information she was gleaning, the secrets she was learning. All she could think about was how it would have destroyed her to have lost her mom, her dad, and Laura, all at once. And how retreating behind a secret identity and leading a life of utter solitude was probably a fairly mild reaction compared to the one she'd have had, had it been her in his place.

  And all she wanted to do right then was hold him and make it all right. B
ut he'd erected a barrier—seemed to think that his telling her these things would strengthen the wall. God, he couldn't have been more wrong.

  Then, as they sat facing each other in the darkness, a click sounded, and light flooded the room.

  She saw him … but only briefly. Only enough to note the glistening of his lashes. And then he jerked her into his arms, hard and fast, pressed his mouth to hers and kissed her with everything in him.

  "What the heck is going on down here?" Laura asked in surprise.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  Her mouth was warm on his. Silken but firm. Subtly demanding. Confident … yet trembling. Marcus had been taken off guard, one minute horrified at his unmasking, the next kissing Casey in some misguided attempt to keep her from seeing his face. She would close her eyes and her sister would turn off the lights and retreat in silence. But it didn't work that way. He was under attack, even though he was the one who'd instigated the kiss. Emotional and physical attack. And it was every bit as dangerous as if she'd taken a swing at him or fired a weapon. Her response to his kiss made him reel. The passion of it, the honesty. He tasted tears on her lips, and something inside him shuddered. He didn't know how to react. His mind seemed to shut down, refusing to function. His eyes first widened, then went so blurry he had to close them. And even as he did, the shock faded. His breath soughed out of him and, amazingly enough, into her. She inhaled his sigh, drank it in, devoured it.

  And he realized he was finally reacting. Oh hell, was he ever reacting. Her lips were succulent and undulating, parting and closing in a slow, hypnotic rhythm that made him react—made him move his mouth over hers, bury his fingers in her hair, pull her closer. The shock was gone. Desire was the only thing making his heart pound and his skin dampen now. Pure gut-wrenching, mind-blowing desire.

  He'd never felt it before. He'd thought he had, but he knew right then that he hadn't. Not until the first time he'd kissed Casey Jones. If that first kiss had been a promise, this one was its fulfillment. No one had ever touched him until Casey Jones.

  "Er, excuse me. I, uh, didn't realize…"

  The sound of her sister's startled, still-sleepy voice was enough to remind him that he was doing exactly what he'd been determined not to do. But as he backed away from Casey's hungry mouth, he realized he had bigger problems on his hands, and then he wondered how he could have been thinking of anything else.

  She'd seen his face.

  Casey Jones had seen his face.

  He blinked at her in the blinding light. Her brown eyes roamed his face as if memorizing every inch of it before they lit with recognition. She remembered him from the hotel.

  Without taking her eyes off him, she said, "That's okay, Laura. This is, um, the blind date I was telling you about."

  "I figured that out all by myself, sis. It's not like you date so much you'd be seeing two different guys in the same week." She wandered toward the kitchen, and Marcus thought he heard her mutter, "Or in the same year, for that matter."

  But he was still staring at Casey. Still shuddering from her kiss. Still feeling as if the bottom had fallen out of his stomach from the lights coming on so suddenly, ending the life he'd lived for more than twenty years. So long he didn't know any other way of life.

  "So you're the guy from the pool."

  He only nodded, battling the urge to cover his face with his hands or torn away or something. Anything.

  "If I'd known, I wouldn't have been so…" Her voice trailed off as she searched his face. "Don't look like that." It was a whisper. Her hand reached out as if to touch his cheek, hesitated, then lowered again.

  "Like what?"

  "Like my seeing your face is the end of the world as you know it."

  He lowered his head, shaking it slowly. "You just don't get it, do you, Casey? It is."

  "Why?" He didn't answer, but she persisted. "Why Guardian? Because I'm going to rush out to the press with a full description? Or do you think I'll run off posters with your face on them and plaster them all over town?"

  He lifted his head slowly. "No one has ever known what the Guardian looks like," he told her.

  "So now someone does." She tilted her head to one side, looking every bit as innocent as a woodland fawn. "You can trust me, you know."

  He searched her brown eyes and tried to ignore that softening sensation in his heart. Because it was accompanied by panic. He shook it off, that softening. But the panic remained. "No, I don't know that at all."

  "Well, you can."

  He shrugged, then glanced toward the kitchen when he heard Laura rattling pots and pans—deliberately, he thought. That particular sort of rattling didn't sound as if it served any other purpose besides making noise.

  "What about her?" he asked.

  "She doesn't even know your face is a secret in the first place, so why would she go rushing off to describe you to anyone? It's not as if she can spot you in a crowd, nudge the person beside her and say, 'That's him. That's the Guardian.' She doesn't even know you're the Guardian. And I'm not going to tell her."

  "Aren't you?"

  Her eyes were very serious, very deep. "I promise."

  He closed his eyes, tilting his head up. She was making it all sound so simple. So easy. But if it was that simple, why did he feel so violated? As if strangers had broken into his solitary hideaway and made themselves at home. Touched his most prized possessions. Ruined his haven.

  "Come on, just meet her. You'll feel better once you do."

  She got to her feet, tugged on his arm. He sat there, staring down at her hand on his arm, felt the recurrence of the heat sizzling at that tiny point of contact.

  "What about…?" He didn't finish.

  "That kiss? It's okay to say it, you know."

  He met her gaze. "I didn't mean for it to be—"

  "So utterly shattering?" she asked, her voice going hoarse. "Especially since you've already made it clear that nothing can happen between us."

  "Right."

  "It was for my sister's benefit," Casey said slowly. "Don't worry. I understand that it didn't mean a thing. Right?"

  "Yeah," he said, watching her face, the way her cheeks colored and she couldn't quite meet his eyes. "Exactly right."

  "I never thought otherwise." Her throat moved as if she were trying to swallow and couldn't. Marcus knew that she was lying through her pretty teeth. That kiss had been the farthest thing from "nothing." It had been something. Something to the tenth power.

  Something he'd better not let happen again.

  He couldn't seem to stop shaking in reaction to a deep-down chill that wouldn't let up. He felt more vulnerable than he ever had in his life. They'd seen his face. And Casey … Casey seemed to see a good deal more than just that. For a man who'd spent his life isolated, unconnected to anyone, it was a lot to deal with all at once.

  He was still struggling with this odd feeling of being stripped bare in front of two strangers as Casey coaxed him into the kitchen. Her sister rose from the table, where she'd been sipping a cup of what smelled like hot cocoa, and extended a delicate hand.

  "So, do I finally get an introduction?"

  "Sure," Casey said, glancing from Marcus to her sister and back again with a nervous little smile. "Go ahead. Introduce yourself."

  There was something about the younger woman. She looked haunted—hiding so many secrets in her eyes he couldn't believe she'd be the least bit interested in his.

  "Marcus," he muttered, even before he realized he was going to say it. He'd better get on the ball here or they'd have his life story written in his own hand for the asking. He stopped himself before he said any more.

  Laura lifted her brows, met his eyes suddenly, then looked away. As if something he'd said or done had bothered her. As if she knew. And she did. She knew all about secrets.

  "Laura," she replied, and her smile seemed like a cover. What she was covering he couldn't begin to guess. "You must be something pretty special."
r />   "Must I?"

  She nodded. "To have made my sister notice you—yeah, at least. At most, you'd need two heads and a bullhorn."

  He grinned at that. Casey was right. He liked this girl. Her hair was just as black as midnight, pulled up in back into a high ponytail that bounced when she moved. And her jet eyes were more than just secretive. They were alive, and warm, and magical.

  "Maybe she's just been waiting for the best," he said with a wink, and when Laura laughed, his stomach seemed to puddle inside him like melting chocolate. He didn't like the feeling at all. And he didn't like the way these two women got to him.

  "I like this guy," Laura said, and as if to prove it, she turned to reach for another mug and proceeded to make him a cup of cocoa. "Here you go, Mar—" She seemed to stumble over his name, then just skipped it and started over. "Here you go," she said. "I can't judge you thoroughly unless I see how you react to hot cocoa."

  He took the cup from her. It felt warm in his hands, the fragrant steam rolling up to his senses. She nodded toward the table, and he sat, shifted in the chair and tried to settle down. This was too cozy. Too damned intimate. He should have left the second the lights had come on. Hell, he should have left long before then.

  Instead he sat there, a beautiful woman on each side of him. Both of whom disturbed him in far different ways. Laura had fixed a cup for Casey, as well, so the three of them sat there with their cocoa like some kind of Christmas-card painting.

  Then Casey reached over and snapped on the radio, and a seasonal standard filled the room with jingle bells and merry voices. It was all he could take.

  He put down his cup and got to his feet. "I have to go."

  "Marcus, don't…" Casey got up, too, one hand on his arm.

  Laura lowered her head. "Hey, I'm sorry, you two. I didn't mean to break up your evening. I just … I couldn't sleep, and I heard someone down here and I thought…"

  Marcus saw the fear before she concealed it once more. "You didn't break anything up—"

  "That's not how it looked to me."

  "Laura," Casey began with an exasperated glance and a roll of her eyes.

  "Laura, I'm not leaving because of you," Marcus said.