Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,29
some time ago about that.
He chuckled. “That’s the thing, kid. There’s a lot of stuff I can change. I just don’t know how to go about it without getting thrown in the slammer.”
She laughed because she thought it was a joke.
He smiled. It wasn’t a joke at all. He had men who could take on a contract killer with great success, but it would put him in bad stead with the FBI and the US Marshals Service, which was helping protect him. His hands were tied. He couldn’t put Paulie on the firing line by acting on his own. Besides, if he helped put Cotillo away, it put him in a great bargaining position with Uncle Sam. He might need a favor one day. It was to his advantage not to use his usual methods of dealing with threats.
“If you get arrested, I can bake a nail file in a cake and come to see you,” she said with a wicked little grin.
He sighed. “Honey, they don’t have iron bars on the outside of cells anymore. They’re all inside and all the doors lock along the way. You’d never get out that way.”
She frowned. She’d never been in a real jail, but he seemed to know a lot about them. She reasoned that he’d probably been with his cousin to see somebody in jail on a case or something. It didn’t worry her.
He glanced at her and smiled. She really didn’t see the bad part of him. It was amazing—that she had such insight but didn’t see wickedness in his actions. Probably she didn’t look for it. Apparently, her own life had been a sheltered one.
* * *
The big house at Graylings was ablaze with lights when Mikey pulled up into the driveway. There were two black sedans and a black SUV. The sedans had government license plates.
“Feds,” Mikey said with a sigh as he helped Bernie out of the car.
She glanced at the backs of the cars parked side by side. She smiled. “Government plates. I guess they think people won’t know as long as they don’t have flashing lights on top,” she teased.
He chuckled. “Good one.” He caught her hand in his as they walked up to the front door. He drew in a breath. “Listen, kid,” he said as they reached it, “there are things going on that I can’t tell you about.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, and looked up at him with perfect trust. In fact, she was in so far over her head that she wouldn’t have minded if he robbed banks for a living.
He smiled slowly. “You’re almost too good to be true,” he chuckled. “Don’t you have any wicked, terrible things in your past?”
The door opened, but not before he saw the expression that washed across her face, quickly hidden when Sari Fiore opened the door and grinned at them, holding hands.
“Sorry to have to break up your date,” she told Bernie, “but we didn’t have a choice. You can keep me company while the men talk. Mandy’s gone to bed with a headache, so I’m alone. Well, almost alone,” she amended when three men walked into the hall.
“Hey, Mikey,” Paul Fiore greeted his cousin.
“Hey, Paulie.”
“You know McLeod already,” he said to Mikey, indicating a big, dark man, “and this is Senior FBI Agent Jarrod Murdock from our San Antonio office.”
“I heard about you,” Mikey mused as he looked at tall, blond Murdock, an imposing man who never seemed to smile. “Didn’t they threaten to dress up like a ninja and throw you in the back of a pickup if you made coffee again...?” he teased.
Murdock made a face. “Not my fault I can’t make good coffee,” he scoffed. “I wasn’t raised to be a woman.”
The two women present gave him a wide-eyed, shocked look.
He cleared his throat. “Well, men aren’t built right to make coffee,” he amended. “Our hands are too big.” He added that last bit tongue in cheek. And he wasn’t smiling, but his pale blue eyes were twinkling just the same.
“That’s the only comment that saved you from a picket line outside your office,” Sari said in a mock threatening tone.
“God forbid!” Murdock said. “They’d fire me for sure.”
“Not really,” Paul commented. “You’re too good a shot. You and Rick Marquez’s wife hold the record for the most perfect scores in the city in a single year.”
“She missed one shot last month,” Murdock replied. He grinned. “Morning sickness. So I hold the record right now.”