The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

that moment of truth out there in the middle of the flood, when he’d realized he’d rather take a chance on losing his own life than let Lauren give up hers. And that it had nothing to do with duty, responsibility or honor.

His uncle Frank didn’t have anything more to say, either; both of them knew that kind of trouble was something a man had to work out for himself.

There was silence in the dusty brown Ford pickup as they drove away from Grandmother Rose’s, until Lauren turned to look back through a haze of dust at the brush corral under the cottonwoods. She looked for a long time, until the dirt road dipped into a dry wash and even the tops of the trees disappeared from view.

When she turned and faced forward again, Bronco cleared his throat and said gruffly, “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be there when you can get back for him. Be well taken care of, too.”

She nodded, and he could see her swallow a couple of times before she spoke. “I know. It’s just…hard to believe it’s really over.”

Bronco laughed-one brief dry note. “It’s not over yet. We’re still a long way from Dallas.”

Chapter 14

A long way. And to Bronco, not nearly long enough.

Can’t believe it’s over, she’d said. But for him, it wouldn’t really be over until Dallas, until he’d found a way to hand Lauren Brown over to her father or, at the very least, someone in authority who could get word to her father that she was safe, preferably in time to prevent the breakdown of the American political system. And then, if all went well, he’d never see her again. He’d slip away, reunite with SOL and continue his job of monitoring the country’s underground militia and forget he’d ever been so stupid as to fall in love with the daughter of the next president of the United States.

The president’s daughter! Even in his mind the words sounded incredible. The problem was, the words didn’t seem to be getting through to his heart. All his heart remembered was the way she’d looked at him, standing in the spring, eyes drenched and dark with trust…the lush scent of her body, the warm ripe feel of her in his arms, her sobs of passion and joy.

John Bracco had always believed he’d never know the joys of home, family and a lifelong mate. Loving a woman had seemed too great a risk. But now, all he could think about were this woman’s arms around him, the pounding of her heart against his ear, drowning out the rush and roar of the flood, and her voice, like a mantra of hope, I won’t leave you, Johnny. I won’t leave you.

“How far is it to Dallas?” Lauren asked.

Bronco’s heart gave a guilty leap as he glanced at her, though he knew there was no way she could know what he’d been thinking. His runaway pulse and singing senses would be invisible to her, safely hidden behind the impassive mask he’d carefully cultivated and conveniently blamed on his Apache heritage. “About a thousand miles,” he replied.

“I suppose flying’s out of the question.” Her tone was dry, and he answered her the same way.

“Without money, credit cards and picture ID, yeah, I’d say so.” And, he silently added, without the federal ID and ATF contact codes he’d kept safely hidden in a secret compartment in his electric shaver, now lost to the flood.

There was a long pause while the pickup rattled over a section of corduroy. When the road’s surface evened out enough to allow conversation again, Lauren said without conviction, “You could drop me off at the nearest police station.”

Bronco glanced at her. “Yeah, and you’d tell ’em what?” he asked quietly. “Some crazy story about being Rhett Brown’s daughter, and you were kidnapped recently by a secret militant antigovernment organization named SOL, but now you’ve managed to escape and survive a flash flood? You think they’re going to believe you? Unless this has leaked to the news media, which I doubt, how often has your picture been in the papers or on national TV recently? Even Gil didn’t know who you were until he ran a routine check to see if that check of yours was good.”

She made a soft sound and muttered, “So that was it.”

“You’d probably convince somebody eventually, but no telling how long that might take. In case you’ve lost track of what day it is, time is something we don’t have much of.”

He didn’t tell her that it might be worse for her if her story was believed. She had no idea, and neither did he, how many of these local law-enforcement people were either sympathetic to or outright members of SOL. He knew for a fact some were, and he wasn’t willing to take the risk. He hadn’t brought her this far only to dump her out of the frying pan and into the fire. She was his responsibility. He’d see her safely home-all the way home.

All that was true. But only his heart knew about the cold little shiver of rejection that had gone through him at the thought of giving her up into someone else’s keeping. Once he did that, it was truly over. He’d never see her again, unless it was on the evening news. Whether it was wise or not, he wanted to postpone that inevitable moment as long as possible.

He looks so bitter, so disappointed, Lauren thought. Because he’d failed in his purpose, the cause he believed in had been defeated, at least for the moment, and his compatriots were either dead, captured or scattered to the four winds.

But looking at him now it was so hard-impossible-to believe he could have been part of the paramilitary conspiracy to kidnap her and blackmail her father into giving up the presidential nomination. Oh, his warrior’s features were hard enough, his glittering black eyes fierce enough to make him seem capable of almost any kind of cruelty or violence. But she no longer saw him only with her eyes. And what her heart saw was the incredible gentleness of his hands, the soul-stirring sweetness of his smile, the passion of self-sacrifice in the voice that shouted from the flood to leave him there and go.

Her heart was pounding as she cleared her throat and asked hesitantly, “What about a phone?”

He gave a shrug and his huff of laughter. “You can try.”

Bronco leaned against the fender in the lengthening shade of his uncle’s pickup truck and glugged a grape soda while he watched Lauren feed quarters into a pay phone that teetered like a small forlorn tree on the edge of the dirt parking lot. The grape soda made him think of the past, the rare sweet indulgences of his childhood-the early years, the happy years, before. Watching Lauren made him think of the future, and how he was going to learn to survive all the bleak years…after.

He saw her cradle the receiver yet again and knew from the way she stood without moving and the dejected slump of her shoulders that she’d run out of options. He wasn’t surprised; at this point her whole family was probably holed up in a hotel room somewhere in Dallas, ready to share Rhett Brown’s big night. Or ready to rally around when he dropped the bombshell.

He’d tried to think who he might call, but without his ID numbers and contact codes, he’d never get through the security net to his contact at ATF. He felt a frustrating sense of failure at his own helplessness, cursed himself for not memorizing those damn codes. He’d had them memorized once upon a time, but they’d gotten more and more complex over the years, and he’d been undercover a long time.

As she approached, he observed with pangs of guilt and regret how gaunt and heat-frazzled she looked in Rachel’s borrowed clothes, jeans that were too big for her and a faded flowered cotton blouse. Uncle Frank’s pickup truck wasn’t equipped with air-conditioning.

“Any luck?” he asked gruffly, handing her a grape soda.

She shook her head. “Everybody’s in Dallas.” She took the bottle from him, gave it a funny little “Huh!” look and tilted it to her lips. After the first gulp she lowered it with a surprised laugh. “I haven’t had one of these since I was a kid.”

“Me, either.” He raised his bottle to her and she clinked hers against it. Then they both stood there while the sun went down behind the pickup truck, drinking grape soda and smiling at each other with their eyes. As far as Bronco was concerned, that grape soda was wasted money, because his mouth was bone-dry.