Chapter One

Cal Hollister nursed his pi?a colada, only half watching the flamenco dancers on the dance floor at Fernando's in San Antonio. He wasn't sure why he kept coming here, except that she'd enjoyed the music back in the days when they were friends. Before the big blowup that had left him reeling with shock and fury.

He was drop-dead gorgeous. Tall, broad-shouldered, with thick blond hair and black eyes. Women noticed him. He never even looked up.

He sipped his drink, his mind far away. It had been seven years. All that time. He'd married a San Antonio socialite only two days after the woman from his past had brought the world down on his head. His socialite had herded him, drunk and in anguish, to a justice of the peace. And he'd texted the woman who betrayed him with bitter, shaming words and the news that he was now married. At the time, it had seemed exactly the right thing to do.

She, the socialite—Edie Prince by name—had always said that the other woman was too young and carefree to settle down. She'd convinced him that revenge was his best bet, and he'd said it was justified.

But the breakup was bad timing. He'd just come home from a devastating mission that had left him sick of his own hopeful new career and aching all over for Amelia. Her grief had led to an unforgettable night in bed, one that led to tragedy.

Guilt had ridden him hard afterward. At her grandfather's funeral, he'd taken Edie with him, just so he wouldn't have to face Amelia alone. He knew it had hurt and confused her. But then, he was confused, too. He'd thought mercenary work was right up his alley, with his background in police work. Well, it wasn't. He'd seen things, done things, that haunted him still.

He'd stayed away from Amelia for weeks while he got counseling, put his life back together, changed jobs and became settled. He'd finally come to terms with his feelings for her. He even had a set of rings in his pocket. He'd been looking forward to starting a new life. Then Amelia's great-aunt, in a fit of rage, had called him to say that Amelia had solved their little problem and now there were no complications, so he was free to seduce another innocent woman, wasn't he?

He took another swallow of the drink. That news had started him on the downward spiral that led him right into marriage with his worst nightmare. So long ago. So much pain. He'd given Amelia hell, not allowing her to even get a word in edgewise, not giving her a chance to defend herself, explain herself. And to complicate matters, a few days later, at the end of a drinking binge that had almost landed him in jail, he'd married Edie. Biggest mistake of his life.

It was a shame that he'd sobered up soon afterward. Because Edie had faults that he hadn't known about when he'd put that ring on her finger. He hadn't known that she was a blatant alcoholic; that she used drugs; that she was a habitual liar. He'd found all those things out one by one.

She'd said they could have children, but that was before he found out that she'd had a hysterectomy some years before, and that she'd never wanted children.

They were a nuisance, she told him, and she wasn't risking her figure to add another squalling brat to the world.

It had only taken him a few days to realize that what he really felt for her, when he wasn't drunk, was contempt. He'd married her out of spite, to rub it in that Amelia meant nothing to him, that he'd never cared for her.

It had been a lie. His life had been hell for three long years before Edie finally drank too much one night and, after adding narcotics to the mix, had put herself in the morgue.

Cal, who'd given up mercenary work to hire on with the San Antonio Police Department, had climbed from patrolman to sergeant, then to lieutenant. He was now captain of the detective squad, a testament to his ability to manage cases and get along with politicians and protesters alike. Promotions that usually took years had taken him far less time, through a series of lucky breaks and ability.

But his job, although satisfying, was just a job. He went home to an empty house on his Jacobsville ranch, where he lived alone. He'd given Edie's house to a distant cousin of hers, who promptly sold it. Cal hadn't wanted it. The place held too many memories of his drunken wife making his life hell. He moved into an apartment and then, not long afterward, bought a small ranch in Jacobsville, where he and Amelia had first met.

People in his department noticed that he never dated. They assumed it was because he was still mourning his late wife. Nothing was further from the truth. He'd hated Edie with a passion. When he was finally cold sober, he slowly came to realize that he might not have had the whole story about what had happened in the past. But after he married Edie, he hadn't done any checking. He didn't want to know. Amelia was out of his life, and he could never trust her again, even if they met again someday.

He didn't know where she was, or what she was doing. He'd heard rumors that she was involved in some covert work, but that didn't sound like the young girl who'd listened, fascinated, to his stories about his mercenary years. She was soft and gentle, not at all the sort of person to involve herself in violence.

He grieved for the young girl she'd been when they'd first known each other. He never should have touched her in the first place, but he'd wanted her so desperately, for so long, until she was all he thought about. What happened was...inevitable, he supposed. But what came after had destroyed him.

Why hadn't she told him about the child? Didn't she realize that he'd have married her at once? He'd planned it even before he knew there was a child. He adored her. When he'd gone on that last mission, he'd almost ended up shot because he was thinking about her instead of the danger he was facing.

Only to be presented with evidence that she'd gotten rid of his child. She'd gone to a clinic. She hadn't wanted him, or the baby, and she hadn't even bothered to tell him. He'd been bitter. So bitter. He'd called her names, raged at her, damned her for what she'd done. But here he sat, after all these years, in Fernando's. Hoping she might walk in some day, because he'd brought her here at least twice to introduce her to the addictive tango. And he'd taught her to dance it.

It was stupid. She'd never come back. Her life was elsewhere, somewhere. Hell, she might even be married by now.

That thought depressed him even more. He finished his drink just as he spotted his friend Clancey sitting with her little brother, Tad, and her new husband, Colter Banks. Clancey had worked for him several years ago. He was fond of her and Tad. They were like the family he didn't have. He'd looked out for them until Banks came along. Well, he liked Banks, and it was good to see Clancey and Tad settled. But he was alone again. He didn't have friends, unless you included Father Eduardo, a fellow merc who'd taken the collar. He had a church in San Antonio smack dab in the middle of gang territory. But Los Serpientes had learned the hard way not to attack this priest. He'd put them in the hospital. Seven armed men, and he'd put them all down. Two had joined his church afterward. He chuckled silently. Father Eduardo was a local legend.

He paid the check and walked over to the table where Clancey was sitting with her family.

Clancey invited him to sit down after introducing her cousin from Chicago. The woman was nice-looking, but she was a brunette. Cal wouldn't have been interested even if she'd been a blond, though. He was still buried in thoughts of the past, in misery and anguish for what he'd lost.

Just as he started to excuse himself and go home, he saw her. There, at the counter, picking up an order. She hadn't aged a day! It had been years, and she was just the same as he remembered her.

He murmured something, unaware that his companions were staring at him. Amelia. His heart tried to climb into his throat. Same pretty figure, same pretty face, same blond hair in a bun atop her head. He'd have recognized her in a crowd of thousands.

She turned with her purchase, still smiling, until she spotted Cal. The smile was suddenly gone, wiped away like magic, to be replaced by a look of such anger that he felt those eyes making holes in him.

Amelia, he thought in anguish.

But if she felt anguish, it didn't show. She glared at him, turned and walked out of the restaurant. He murmured something to the people at the table and went out after her. He got to the sidewalk, and she was just gone, just like that.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared out at the misting rain with dark eyes that mirrored his misery. So many years without a sight of her, and here she was, back in San Antonio. But where? Doing what? He was going to have to do some digging. He had to find a way to talk to her. Somehow.

Amelia Grayson had darted around the corner of Fernando's and hailed a cab back to her new apartment.

Her heart was going like a fast watch, and she could barely catch her breath as she told the cab driver where to take her. She hadn't expected to see Cal. But, of course, she knew that he'd always gone there on Friday nights when he was in town to watch the flamenco dancers. And the tango.

He was a past master at tango, one of the few men she'd ever known who could dance it. In fact, he'd taught her, in the days when they were like one person, when the world began and ended with him in her life.

That was over. He'd never given her a chance to explain what had happened. It no longer mattered, anyway, she told herself. If somebody cared for you, they wanted an explanation. They wanted your side of the story. It wasn't like that with Cal. He'd attacked her verbally the minute he saw her. Accusations, blame, hatred, in the space of seconds, after they'd been so close that they almost breathed together.

He'd gone out of town on police business for two weeks. She'd been living with a hateful great-aunt here in the city, one now long dead and forgotten. After a tragic loss, and two days in the hospital, she'd left her great-aunt's house and gone straight to Eb Scott with her bags packed and her heart encased in ice. He'd always said he wouldn't train women, but she changed his mind. She told him what had happened. She lost her job, her home, her child... Cal. Everything. She had no place to go. So how about training her?

And he had.

Amelia hailed a taxi to her apartment. She just sat there, after giving the driver her address, in the back seat, staring into space. Seeing Cal so unexpectedly had opened gaping wounds.

The woman he'd married seven years ago was a socialite she knew. The woman had been a pest. She came down from the city on weekends to pester Cal, who seemed to find her amusing. At least, he never sent her away. Amelia had been furiously jealous, but he'd only laughed and said the woman was harmless; just bored and flamboyant. He'd known a dozen like her.

So Amelia hadn't fussed. But the woman, Edie Prince, didn't like her and made a point of trashing her clothes, her accent, anything she could find to pick on. Cal didn't seem to notice. He said she was just kidding, and Amelia shouldn't take her seriously.

That must have included not believing her when she said that Cal was just playing with Amelia because she was a novelty in his life, but he was going to marry Edie, so Amelia might as well enjoy Cal's company in the little bit of time left to her.

Amelia didn't believe her. The socialite had just laughed. She'd see, she'd replied. And soon. Then, Amelia's grandfather had died. She and Cal had grown quickly intimate, but he'd backed off at once. She hadn't understood what had happened to him in Africa, not until she joined Eb Scott's counterterrorism unit. She did now, too late. Cal had been coping—rather, not coping—with trauma from what he'd seen and had to do in Ngawa. He'd been confused and upset, and she hadn't understood that it was just too much too soon.

But the baby was a fact. Her great-aunt, with whom she'd lived up in Victoria after her grandfather's sudden death, had been a fanatic about the family name never being soiled. And here was her great-niece, living with her, pregnant out of wedlock! Worse, Amelia was planning to keep the baby! Everyone in town would know. Great-Aunt Valeria was horrified. She'd acted out of that horror and caused a much worse tragedy.

When Amelia got out of the hospital, she had an aide go and pack her things and bring her suitcase to the hospital. The pain was too raw to allow her to even speak to the woman who'd done so much damage. From the hospital, she went to Eb.

So much pain. So much anguish.

And the worst was yet to come. Cal called her and she wasn't able to get one word in about what had really happened. He'd made his opinion of her known, railed at her, raged at her. He'd been drunk out of his mind, but she didn't know that. And he didn't know that Edie had phoned her earlier to thank her for getting rid of that little complication that Cal didn't want anyway.

Not three days after the accident, Cal married the flamboyant socialite. Everybody in town knew because Cal had put the announcement in the local newspaper. Amelia had lunched at Barbara's Café in Jacobsville on her way to Eb Scott's place, with sympathetic glances making her uncomfortable. It was a small town, and most people knew that she and Cal had been close. When couples broke up, it was food for gossip. Especially when one partner married someone else after the breakup. They thought of Amelia as family, and they were protective of her. It wasn't until much later, when she was doing jobs for Eb, that she'd learned Cal had bought a ranch in Jacobsville. But he had to shop for it in San Antonio. The owner of the feed store wouldn't trade with him. Through the anguish, it was one of the few things that amused Amelia in between jobs.

There wasn't much in-between time. She mostly worked as a bodyguard and traveled with her clients. Right now, she was between assignments, or she wouldn't have been around San Antonio. She had an apartment there because she wasn't living in the same town with Cal. She'd had enough of gossip. Even kindly gossip. She'd never forgotten that last day in the hospital. While she lay awake that night, she had a thought. Cal had worked for Eb Scott, who had a counterterrorism school in Jacobsville. He trained mercs and did jobs for many governments including, it was gossiped, ours. She'd heard that he'd trained at least one woman from overseas who was going to work for a foreign government. That meant that he might take on Amelia, if she could convince him. She wasn't afraid of much, and her grandfather had taught her to shoot a gun. It wasn't much, but it might get her foot in the door.

So the next morning, quaking inside, she'd phoned Eb and got an appointment to talk to him. She'd hitched a ride with an orderly at the hospital who lived in Jacobsville. He dropped her off at Eb's huge compound.

He'd given her a strange look when she told him why she was there.

"I can do it, Mr. Scott," she said quietly. "I may look like a wimp, but I'm not. And," she added quickly, "I have an undergraduate degree in chemistry."

That had raised both his eyebrows. "Chemistry?"

She nodded. "Plus, one of the guys auditing my class had done demolition work while he was in the service." She smiled slyly. "He taught us how to make deadly substances out of common household chemicals." She leaned forward. "I can make bombs," she added.

"Well, damn." He burst out laughing. "I have to confess, this is the most interesting interview I've conducted recently."

She grinned. "I learn fast, study hard, and I won't run under fire."

"Why do you want to do this sort of work?"

She sighed and sat back in the chair. "I've just been thrown over by the only man I ever cared about, because of something he thought I'd done that I didn't do. He wouldn't listen when I tried to tell him the truth."

"You might try to make him listen," he began.

"He got married two days ago," she said flatly.

Eb drew in a breath. He knew Cal Hollister, and his temper. The man was like a stone wall when he made up his mind. And if he'd married someone else, he was through with poor Amelia. Everybody already knew.

"It's not really a life for a woman," he began.

"I have nothing left to lose," she said simply and without self-pity. "There are lots of roofs. I only need to step off one of them."

He grimaced. He'd misjudged the level of her desperation. She kept her emotions under tight control, but she was in deep pain, and it showed.

"So it's you or Australia."

He stared at her. "Australia?"

"It's what the mob guys call it. Down under? Hint, hint?"

He got it and shook his head. "You're so young," he began.

"Misery doesn't have an age limit. I need to get out of Texas and do something with my life, while I still have one." Her dark eyes were quiet. "I know about the work you do. It's not only important—it saves lives. I know what your agents have done over the years. It's a record anyone would be proud of. I'd like to be a part of that. I'm good at chemistry, top of my class. I'll bet you've got somebody on staff who can teach me how to do demolition work for real."

"In fact, I do, part-time. I've got Cord Romero."

"I've heard about him," she recalled. "Stuff of legends."

"He is. He's with the FBI and gets antsy from time to time, but he's not risking his wife, Patricia, to try and slide back into merc work. So when he's climbing the walls, he comes down here to teach for a day or two a month."

She grinned. "I'd be a good student. I promise."

He shook his head and sighed. "Okay. But there will be lots of rules."

"I love rules," she said.

"And the work will be dangerous."

"I love dangerous, too."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure that if I don't find something challenging to do, that I'll mourn myself to death, Mr. Scott," she replied, and just for a few seconds, the depth of her anguish was visible.

He hesitated, but only for a minute. "All right."

She smiled. "Thanks. So, when do I start?"

"Tomorrow morning, at eight. You'll live in."

"Thank you. I was hoping I wouldn't have to pitch a tent on Victoria Road."

"You've got a house..."

She shook her head. "It's already on the market," she said, and her face hardened to stone. "I'd dig ditches before I'd live in a house with my great-aunt again, after what she did. And I was let go at my place of employment day before yesterday."

"Why?" he asked.

Her eyes met his. "Because I was in the hospital unconscious and didn't call to tell them that." She sighed "It's been a pretty harsh week."

"We all have those," he replied. "We get through them."

"That's what I'm counting on. A new job. A new life."

"It will be hard," he cautioned.

"Life is hard."

"Point taken." He stood up. "Welcome aboard, Amelia." And he smiled.

The first two weeks were the hardest. Amelia had never had to learn a martial art. She was out of shape, because the job she'd had in San Antonio was working in a warehouse doing inventory and putting up stock. That wasn't hard. Martial arts was.

Fortunately, she loved it at once, and excelled at it. Decked out in her new kit, she performed the katas with grace and energy, enjoying the feeling it gave her to learn something new and potentially lifesaving.

Guns came harder. She was a dead shot with a light pistol, but she couldn't cock the .45 auto she was given, so Eb switched her to a Glock. It was a lighter weight and fit her hands perfectly. She spent a lot of time on the firing range, using both hands, as she'd been taught, along with the different stances that were common to police department protocol.

"Not bad, Amelia," Eb said on her third week at it as he studied the placement of bullets in the target. All, every one, was dead center.

"I love it. Shooting is fun!"

He chuckled. "It is, here, because the targets don't shoot back!" he reminded her.

"Not to worry, sir, I can duck with the best of them!"

"Lies," a deep voice drawled from nearby.

She grinned at Ty Harding, who was also taking Eb's courses. He was tall and good-looking, with long dark hair, dark eyes and a handsome face. They'd graduated high school together. Ty had had a crush on her, but she never felt that way about him, so he'd settled for friendship.

"You think so?" she chided. "Okay, shoot at me. Go ahead. I'll show you how to duck and make it look graceful!"

"You do it and I'll send you to Guatemala to hunt narco lords," Eb threatened him.

Ty made a face. "You let her get away with murder."

"Not yet," Eb chuckled. "Okay. Back to work!"

She learned martial arts and gun safety. And within the first two months, Cord Romero showed up to teach her demolition.

"My wife made me give it up," he grumbled as he taught her how to assemble an IED—an improvised explosive device. "Just because a bomb went off once, only once!"

"A bomb...?" she exclaimed, all eyes.

Cord was gorgeous. He had a wife that he rarely talked about, but most people knew that he'd been a merc before he joined the FBI. Tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired, olive complexion. His foster sister, Maggie, was also gorgeous. Eb Scott was engaged to her, although Ty Harding said that it was mostly just friendship. Maggie and Cord had been foster children, both adopted by the same woman. Maggie, so he said, went out of her way finding things to irritate the man she truly loved, which was Cord.

"I had my mind on something besides what I was doing," Cord explained. "So pay attention. When you defuse a bomb, there's nothing in the world except you and the bomb. Got it?"

"Got it," she promised.

"Okay. Now, this is how you connect the wires..."

She knew already how to combine chemicals to produce toxic substances, so adding that to ordnance in bomb-making was second nature. Cord had lots of experience at the art, and she paid close attention. As he explained to her, that knowledge might one day save her life, or someone in her group.

"Why chemistry?" he asked as they went on to a new project.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "I've always loved it. One of the first presents my parents ever gave me was a junior science chemistry set." She made a face. "I blew up the coffee table."

He chuckled. "I blew up a snake."

"A snake?"

"I improvised some fireworks. Mamie, my adopted mother, had no idea that I knew any such thing. One day while she and Maggie were out shopping, I bundled together some gunpowder and other substances in the outbuilding. I accidentally dropped the device right onto a rattlesnake." He grinned. "I didn't mourn much."

"Neither would I!"

He laughed. "When Mamie saw the damage to the yard, she started to fuss, but Maggie said that it was a great way to get poisonous snakes out of the way and she should encourage me to use my skills." His eyes sparkled. "Mamie gave in. I learned demolition mostly the hard way until much later, when I trained in it."

"Was your dad really a bullfighter?" she asked.

"Indeed he was, and very famous. So was my grandfather." He shook his head. "Bullfighting has a bad rep these days, but in the early nineteenth century, it was the mark of a man, to be able to walk into an arena armed with only a cape and fight a bull that could weigh half a ton. And you only had a cape and courage to do that. The bull had the advantage. They were huge, and their horns weren't blunted."

"I read about them," she said. "I got library books about Manolete."

"Yes, one of the most famous of them all. They called him El Monstrou, and it wasn't an insult. He was magnificent, they say. There's a monument to him, a statue, where he's buried."

"He got gored in the ring," she recalled.

"He did, but it wasn't the bull that killed him. It's said that he was given a blood transfusion with the wrong blood type." He shrugged. "There was a lot of gossip about his death."

"That's so sad."

He nodded. "The world was a different place in the late 1940s, just after the war. The bulls who killed matadors were as famous as the men who died in the ring," she added. She glanced at him. "They say it was that way with men who sang opera, back in the same period of time. They were treated like royalty in Italy, even in America!"

"Now, don't tell me you like opera," he teased.

"I love it. Anything Puccini wrote," she sighed. She glanced at him and chuckled. "I know. I'm a Texas girl. I should love country-western music. And I do. But I've rarely met any sort of music I didn't like."

"That's good," he said. "There's nothing worse than a music bigot."

She burst out laughing.

"And don't you forget it," he added. "Now, back to work!"

She went to bed tired every night, but her new life was exciting, and she loved every facet of it. She still mourned Cal, though. It seemed some days that she'd dreamed the brief period of time she'd had with him when they'd been so close.

The cab driver spoke again as he pulled up at her apartment building. "Miss, we're here," he said, a little louder, interrupting her thoughts about the past.

She caught her breath. She'd been lost in flashbacks and hadn't heard him. "Oh. Sorry!"

He laughed. "I do the same thing. I drift off into the past. Sometimes it is good to look back and remember good times."

"These weren't so good," she said as she paid him. "But life is all lessons."

"Indeed it is. Have a good night."

"You, too."

Her apartment was one of the newer ones, very homey with all her little touches, and it had a great view of the River Walk. She had a small balcony. She liked sitting out on it and watching the boats go up and down with tourists on them while mariachis played nearby. San Antonio was a fascinating place to live. She never grew tired of it, although she'd been away for some time guarding ex-merc Wolf Patterson and his new wife.

Now that Wolf's enemies had given up or been killed, she wasn't really needed there anymore. She'd checked in with Eb Scott, but he had nothing at the moment, so she was taking a well-deserved vacation for a couple of weeks.

It had been going well, until tonight. She hadn't expected that she'd walk into a bad memory in Fernando's. A very bad memory.

She made herself a cup of coffee and ate her supper on the balcony, while her stubborn mind climbed back into the past in Jacobsville. She remembered the first time she'd seen Cal Hollister...