Man in Control
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Diana Palmer
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One
There was no way out of it. Margie Cobb had invited her to a party on the family ranch in Jacobsville, Texas. Jodie Clayburn had gone through her entire repertoire of excuses. Her favorite was that, given the right incentive, Margie’s big brother, Alexander Tyrell Cobb, would feed her to his cattle. Not even that one had worked.
“He hates me, Margie,” she groaned over the phone from her apartment in Houston, Texas. “You know he does. He’d be perfectly happy if I stayed away from him for the rest of my natural life and he never had to see me again.”
“That’s not true,” Margie defended. “Lex really likes you, I know he does,” she added with forced conviction, using the nickname that only a handful of people on earth were allowed to use. Jodie wasn’t one of them.
“Right. He just hides his affection for me in bouts of bad temper laced with sarcasm,” came the dry reply.
“Sure,” Margie replied with failing humor.
Jodie lay back on her sofa with the freedom phone at her ear and pushed back her long blond hair. It was getting too long. She really needed to have it cut, but she liked the feel of it. Her gray eyes smiled as she remembered how much Brody Vance liked long hair. He worked at the Ritter Oil Corporation branch office in Houston with her, and was on the management fast track. As Jody was. She was administrative assistant to Brody, and if Brody had his way, she’d take his job as Human Resources generalist when he moved up to Human Resources manager. He liked her. She liked him, too. Of course he had a knockout girlfriend who was a Marketing Division manager in Houston, but she was always on the road somewhere. He was lonely. So he had lunch frequently with Jodie. She was trying very hard to develop a crush on him. He was beginning to notice her. Alexander had accused her of trying to sleep her way to the executive wash-room…
“I was not!” she exclaimed, remembering his unexpected visit to her office with an executive of the company who was a personal friend. It had played havoc with her nerves and her heart. Seeing Alexander unexpectedly melted her from the neck down, despite her best efforts not to let him affect her.
“Excuse me?” Margie replied, aghast.
Jodie sat up quickly. “Nothing!” she said. “Sorry. I was just thinking. Did you know that Alexander has a friend who works for my company?”
There was a long pause. “He does?”
“Jasper Duncan, the Human Resources manager for our division.”
“Oh. Yes. Jasper!” There was another pause. “How do you know about that?”
“Because Mr. Duncan brought him right to my desk while I was talking to a…well, to a good friend of mine, my boss.”
“Right, the one he thinks you’re sleeping with.”
“Margie!” she exploded.
There was an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. I know there’s nothing going on. Alexander always thinks the worst of people. You know about Rachel.”
“Everybody knows about Rachel,” she muttered. “It was six years ago and he still throws her up to us.”
“We did introduce him,” Margie said defensively.
“Well, how were we to know she was a female gigolo who was only interested in marrying a rich man? She should have had better sense than to think Alexander would play that sort of game, anyway!”
“You do know him pretty well, don’t you?” Margie murmured.
“We all grew up together in Jacobsville, Texas,” Jodie reminded her. “Sort of,” she added pensively. “Alexander was eight years ahead of us in school, and then he moved to Houston to work for the DEA when he got out of college.”
“He’s still eight years ahead of us,” Margie chuckled. “Come on. You know you’ll hate yourself if you miss this party. We’re having a houseful of people. Derek will be there,” she added sweetly, trying to inject a lure.
Derek was Margie’s distant cousin, a dream of a man with some peculiar habits and a really weird sense of humor.
“You know what happened the last time Derek and I were together,” Jodie said with a sense of foreboding.
“Oh, I’m sure Alexander has forgotten about that by now,” she was assured.
“He has a long memory. And Derek can talk me into anything,” Jodie added worriedly.
“I’ll hang out with both of you and protect you from dangerous impulses. Come on. Say yes. I’ve got an opportunity to show my designs. It depends on this party going smoothly. And I’ve made up this marvelous dress pattern I want to try out on you. For someone with the body of a clotheshorse, you have no sense of style at all!”
“You have enough for both of us. You’re a budding fashion designer. I’m a lady executive. I have to dress the part.”
“Baloney. When was the last time your boss wore a black dress to a party?”
Jodie was remembering a commercial she’d seen on television with men in black dresses. She howled, thinking of Alexander’s hairy legs in a short skirt. Then she tried to imagine where he’d keep his sidearm in a short skirt, and she really howled.
She told Margie what she was thinking, and they both collapsed into laughter.
“Okay,” she capitulated at last. “I’ll come. But if I break a tree limb over your brother’s thick skull, you can’t say you weren’t forewarned.”
“I swear, I won’t say a word.”
“Then I’ll see you Friday afternoon about four,” Jodie said with resignation. “I’ll rent a car and drive over.”
“Uh, Jodie…”
She groaned. “All right, Margie, all right, I’ll fly to the Jacobsville airport and you can pick me up there.”
“Great!”
“Just because I had two little bitty fender benders,” she muttered.
“You totaled two cars, Josie, and Alexander had to bail you out of jail after the last one…”
“Well, that stupid thickheaded barbarian deserved to be hit! He called me a…well, never mind, but he asked for a punch in the mouth!” Josie fumed.
Margie was trying not to laugh. Again.
“Anyway, it was only a small fine and the judge took my side when he heard the whole story,” she said, ignoring Margie’s quick reminder that Alexander had talked to the judge first. “Not that your brother ever let me forget it! Just because he works for the Justice Department is no reason for him to lecture me on law!”
“We just want you to arrive alive, darling,” Margie drawled. “Now throw a few things into a suitcase, tell your boss you have a sick cousin you have to take care of before rush hour, and we’ll…I’ll…meet you at the airport Friday afternoon. You phone and tell me your flight number, okay?”
“Okay,” Josie replied, missing the slip.
“See you then! We’re going to have a ball.”
“Sure we are,” Josie told her. But when she hung up, she was calling herself all sorts of names for being such a weak-ling. Alexander was going to cut her up, she just knew it. He didn’t like her. He never had. He’d gotten more antagonistic since she moved to Houston, where he worked, too. Further, it would probably mean a lot of work for Jodie, because she usually had to prepare meals if she showed up. The family cook, Jessie, hated being around Alexander when he was home, so she ran for the hills. Margie couldn’t cook at all, so Jodie usually ended up with KP. Not that she minded. It was just that she felt used from time to time.
And despite Margie’s assurances, she knew she was in for the fight of her life once she set foot on the Cobb ranch. At least Margie hadn’t said anything about inviting Alexander’s sometimes-girlfriend, Kirry Dane. A weekend with the elegant buyer for an exclusive Houston department store would be too much.
The thing was, she had to go when Margie asked her. She owed the Cobbs so much. When her parents, small Jacobsville ranchers, had been drowned in a riptide during a modest Florida vacation at the beach, it had been Alexander who flew down to take care of all the arrangements and comfort a devastated seventeen-year-old Jodie. When she entered business college, Alexander had gone with her to register and paid the fees himself. She spent every holiday with Margie. Since the death of the Cobbs’ father, and their inheritance of the Jacobsville ranch property, she’d spent her vacation every summer there with Margie. Her life was so intertwined with that of the Cobbs that she couldn’t even imagine life without them.
But Alexander had a very ambiguous relationship with Jodie. From time to time he was affectionate, in his gruff way. But he also seemed to resent her presence and he picked at her constantly. He had for the past year.
She got up and went to pack, putting the antagonism to the back of her mind. It did no good to dwell on her confrontations with Alexander. He was like a force of nature which had to be accepted, since it couldn’t be controlled.
The Jacobsville Airport was crowded for a Friday afternoon. It was a tiny airport compared to those in larger cities, but a lot of people in south Texas used it for commuter flights to San Antonio and Houston. There was a restaurant and two concourses, and the halls were lined with beautiful paintings of traditional Texas scenery.
Jodie almost bowed under the weight of her oversized handbag and the unruly carry-on bag whose wheels didn’t quite work. She looked around for Margie. The brunette wouldn’t be hard to spot because she was tall for a woman, and always wore something striking—usually one of her own flamboyant designs.
But she didn’t see any tall brunettes. What she did see, and what stopped her dead in her tracks, was a tall and striking dark-haired man in a gray vested business suit. A man with broad shoulders and narrow hips and big feet in hand-tooled leather boots. He turned, looking around, and spotted her. Even at the distance, those deep-set, cold green eyes were formidable. So was he. He looked absolutely furious.
She stood very still, like a woman confronted with a spitting cobra, and waited while he approached her with the long, quick stride she remembered from years of painful confrontations. Her chin lifted and her eyes narrowed. She drew in a quick breath, and geared up for combat.
Alexander Tyrell Cobb was thirty-three. He was a senior agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Usually, he worked out of Houston, but he was on vacation for a week. That meant he was at the family ranch in Jacobsville. He’d grown up there, with Margie, but their mother had taken them from their father after the divorce and had them live with her in Houston. It hadn’t been until her death that they’d finally been allowed to return home to their father’s ranch. The old man had loved them dearly. It had broken his heart when he’d lost them to their mother.
Alexander lived on the ranch sporadically even now, when he wasn’t away on business. He also had an apartment in Houston. Margie lived at the ranch all the time, and kept things running smoothly while her big brother was out shutting down drug smugglers.
He looked like a man who could do that single-handed. He had big fists, like his big feet, and Jodie had seen him use them once on a man who slapped Margie. He rarely smiled. He had a temper like a scalded snake, and he was all business when he tucked that big .45 automatic into its hand-tooled leather holster and went out looking for trouble.
In the past two years, he’d been helping to shut down an international drug lord, Manuel Lopez, who’d died mysteriously in an explosion in the Bahamas. Now he was after the dead drug lord’s latest successor, a Central American national who was reputed to have business connections in the port city of Houston.
She’d developed a feverish crush on him when she was in her teens. She’d written him a love poem. Alexander, with typical efficiency, had circled the grammatical and spelling errors and bought her a supplemental English book to help her correct the mistakes. Her self-esteem had taken a serious nosedive, and after that, she kept her deepest feelings carefully hidden.
She’d seen him only a few times since her move to Houston when she began attending business college. When she visited Margie these days, Alexander never seemed to be around except at Christmas. It was as if he’d been avoiding her. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, he’d dropped by her office to see Jasper. It had been a shock to see him unexpectedly, and her hands had trembled on her file folders, despite her best efforts to play it cool. She wanted to think she’d outgrown her flaming crush on him. Sadly, it had only gotten worse. It was easier on her nerves when she didn’t have to see him. Fortunately it was a big city and they didn’t travel in the same circles. But she didn’t know where Alexander’s office or apartment were, and she didn’t ask.
In fact, her nerves were already on edge right now, just from the level, intent stare of those green eyes across a crowded concourse. She clutched the handle of her wheeled suitcase with a taut grip. Alexander made her knees weak.
He strode toward her. He never looked right or left. His gaze was right on her the whole way. She wondered if he was like that on the job, so intent on what he was doing that he seemed relentless.
He was a sexy beast, too. There was a tightly controlled sensuality in every movement of those long, powerful legs, in the way he carried himself. He was elegant, arrogant. Jodie couldn’t remember a time in her life when she hadn’t been fascinated by him. She hoped it didn’t show. She worked hard at pretending to be his enemy.
He stopped in front of her and looked down his nose into her wide eyes. His were green, clear as water, with dark rims that made them seem even more piercing. He had thick black eyelashes and black eyebrows that were as black as his neatly cut, thick, straight hair.
“You’re late,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice, throwing down the gauntlet at once. He looked annoyed, half out of humor and wanting someone to bite.
“I can’t fly the plane,” she replied sarcastically. “I had to depend on men for that.”
He gave her a speaking glance and turned. “The car’s in the parking lot. Let’s go.”
“Margie was supposed to meet me,” she muttered, dragging her case behind her.
“Margie knew I had to be here anyway, so she had me wait for you,” he said enigmatically. “I never knew a woman who could keep an appointment, anyway.”
The carry-on bag fell over for the tenth time. She muttered and finally just picked the heavy thing up. “You might offer to help me,” she said, glowering at her companion.
His eyebrows arched. “Help a woman carry a heavy load? My God, I’d be stripped, lashed to a rail and carried through Houston by torchlight!”
She gave him a seething glance. “Manners don’t go out of style!”
“Pity I never had any to begin with.” He watched her struggle with the luggage, green eyes dancing with pure venom.
She was sweating already. “I hate you,” she said through her teeth as she followed along with him.
“That’s a change,” he said with a shrug, pushing back his jacket as he dug into his slacks pocket for his car keys.
A security guard spotted the pistol on his belt and came forward menacingly. With meticulous patience, and very carefully, Alexander reached into the inside pocket of his suit coat and produced his badge and ID. He had it out before the guard reached them.
The man took it. “Wait a minute,” he said, and moved aside to check it out over the radio.
“Maybe you’re on a wanted list somewhere,” Jodie said enthusiastically. “Maybe they’ll put you in jail while they check out your ID!”
“If they do,” he replied nonchalantly, “rent-a-cop over there will be looking for another job by morning.”
He didn’t smile as he said it, and Jodie knew he meant what he was saying. Alexander had a vindictive streak a mile wide. There was a saying among law enforcement people that Cobb would follow you all the way to hell to get you if you crossed him. From their years of uneasy acquaintance, she knew it was more than myth.
The security guard came back and handed Alexander his ID. “Sorry, sir, but it’s my job to check out suspicious people.”
Alexander glared at him. “Then why haven’t you checked out the gentleman in the silk suit over there with the bulge in his hatband? He’s terrified that you’re going to notice him.”
The security guard frowned and glanced toward the elegant man, who tugged at his collar. “Thanks for the tip,” he murmured, and started toward the man.
“You might have offered to lend him your gun,” she told Alexander.
“He’s got one. Of a sort,” he added with disgust at the pearl-handled sidearm the security guard was carrying.
“Men have to have their weapons, don’t they?” she chided.
He gave her a quick glance. “With a mouth like yours, you don’t need a weapon. Careful you don’t cut your chin with that tongue.”
She aimed a kick at his shin and missed, almost losing her balance.
“Assault on a law enforcement officer is a felony,” he pointed out without even breaking stride.
She recovered her balance and went out the door after him without another word. If they ever suspended the rules for one day, she knew who she was going after!
Once they reached his car, an elegant white Jaguar S-type, he did put her bags in the trunk—but he left her to open her own door and get in. It wasn’t surprising to find him driving such a car, on a federal agent’s salary, because he and Margie were independently wealthy. Their late mother had left them both well-off, but unlike Margie, who loved the social life, Alexander refused to live on an inheritance. He enjoyed working for his living. It was one of many things Jodie admired about him.
The admiration didn’t last long. He threw down the gauntlet again without hesitation. “How’s your boyfriend?” he asked as he pulled out into traffic.
“I don’t have a boyfriend!” she snapped, still wiping away sweat. It was hot for August, even in south Texas.
“No? You’d like to have one, though, wouldn’t you?” He adjusted the rearview mirror as he stopped at a traffic light.
“He’s my boss. That’s all.”
“Pity. You could hardly take your eyes off him, that day I stopped by your office.”
“He’s handsome,” she said with deliberate emphasis.
His eyebrow jerked. “Looks don’t get you promoted in the Drug Enforcement Administration,” he told her.
“You’d know. You’ve worked for it half your life.”
“Not quite half. I’m only thirty-three.”
“One foot in the grave…”
He glanced at her. “You’re twenty-five, I believe? And never been engaged?”
He knew that would hurt. She averted her gaze to the window. Until a few months ago, she’d been about fifty pounds overweight and not very careful about her clothing or makeup. She was still clueless about how to dress. She dressed like an overweight woman, with loose clothing that showed nothing of her pretty figure. She folded her arms over her breasts defensively.
“I can’t go through with this,” she said through her teeth. “Three days of you will put me in therapy!”
He actually smiled. “That would be worth putting up with three days of you to see.”
She crossed her legs under her full skirt and concentrated on the road. Her eyes caressed the silky brown bird’s-eye maple that graced the car’s dash and steering wheel.
“Margie promised she’d meet me,” she muttered, repeating herself.
“She told me you’d be thrilled if I did,” he replied with a searing glance. “You’re still hung up on me, aren’t you?” he asked with faint sarcasm.
Her jaw fell. “She lied! I did not say I’d be thrilled for you to meet me!” she raged. “I only came because she promised that she’d be here when I landed. I wanted to rent a car and drive!”
His green eyes narrowed on her flushed face. “That would have been suicide,” he murmured. “Or homicide, depending on your point of view.”
“I can drive!”
“You and the demolition derby guys,” he agreed. He accelerated around a slow-moving car and the powerful Jaguar growled like the big cat it was named for. She glanced at him and saw the pure joy of the car’s performance in his face as he slid effortlessly back into the lane ahead of the slow car. He enjoyed fast cars and, gossip said, faster women. But that side of his life had always been concealed from Jodie. It was as if he’d placed her permanently off-limits and planned to keep her there.
“At least I don’t humiliate other drivers by streaking past them at jet fighter speed!” she raged. She was all but babbling, and after only ten minutes of his company. Seething inwardly, she turned toward the window so that she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“I wasn’t streaking. I’m doing the speed limit,” he said. He glanced at the speedometer, smiled faintly and eased up on the accelerator. His eyes slid over Jodie curiously. “You’ve lost so much weight, I hardly recognized you when I stopped by to talk to Jasper.”
“Right. I looked different when I was fat.”
“You were never fat,” he shot back angrily. “You were voluptuous. There’s a difference.”
She glanced at him. “I was terribly overweight.”
“And you think men like to run their hands over bones, do you?”
She shifted in her seat. “I wouldn’t know.”
“You had a low self-image. You still have it. There’s nothing wrong with you. Except for that sharp tongue,” he added.
“Look who’s complaining!”
“If I don’t yell, nobody listens.”
“You never yell,” she corrected. “You can look at people and make them run for cover.”
He smiled without malice. “I practice in my bathroom mirror.”
She couldn’t believe she’d heard that.
“You need to start thinking about a Halloween costume,” he murmured as he made a turn.
“For what? Are you going to hire me out for parties?” she muttered.
“For our annual Halloween party next month,” he said with muted disgust. “Margie’s invited half of Jacobsville to come over in silly clothes and masks to eat candy apples.”
“What are you coming as?”
He gave her a careless glance. “A Drug Enforcement Agency field agent.”
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling of the car.
“I make a convincing DEA field agent,” he persisted.
“I wouldn’t argue with that,” she had to agree. “I hear that Manuel Lopez mysteriously blew up in the Bahamas the year before last, and nobody’s replaced him yet,” she added. “Did you have anything to do with his sudden demise?”
“DEA agents don’t blow up drug lords. Not even one as bad as Lopez.”
“Somebody did.”
He glanced at her with a faint smile. “In a manner of speaking.”
“One of the former mercs from Jacobsville, I heard.”
“Micah Steele was somewhere around when it happened. He’s never been actually connected with Lopez’s death.”
“He moved back here and married Callie Kirby, didn’t he?. They have a little girl now.”
He nodded. “He’s practicing medicine at Jacobsville General as a resident, hoping to go into private practice when he finishes his last semester of study.”
“Lucky Callie,” she murmured absently, staring out the window. “She always wanted to get married and have kids, and she was crazy about Micah most of her life.”
He watched her curiously. “Didn’t you want to get married, too?”
She didn’t answer. “So now that Lopez is out of the way, and nobody’s replaced him, you don’t have a lot to do, do you?”
He laughed shortly. “Lopez has a new successor, a Peruvian national living in Mexico on an open-ended visa. He’s got colleagues in Houston helping him smuggle his product into the United States.”
“Do you know who they are?” she asked excitedly.
He gave her a cold glare. “Oh, sure, I’m going to tell you their names right now.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic, Cobb,” she said icily.
One thick eyebrow jerked. “You’re the only person I know, outside work, who uses my last name as if it were my first name.”
“You don’t use my real name, either.”
“Don’t I?” He seemed surprised. He glanced at her. “You don’t look like a Jordana.”
“I never thought I looked like a Jordana, either,” she said with a sigh. “My mother loved odd names. She even gave them to the cats.”
Remembering her mother made her sad. She’d lost both parents in a freak accident during a modest vacation in Florida after her high school graduation. Her parents had gone swimming in the ocean, having no idea that the pretty red flags on the beach warned of treacherous riptides that could drown even experienced swimmers. Which her mother and father were not. She could still remember the horror of it. Alexander had come to take care of the details, and to get her back home. Odd how many tragedies and crises he’d seen her through over the years.
“Your mother was a sweet woman,” he recalled. “I’m sorry you lost her. And your father.”
“He was a sweet man, too,” she recalled. It had been eight years ago, and she could remember happy times now, but it still made her sad to think of them.
“Strange, isn’t it, that you don’t take after either of them?” he asked caustically. “No man in his right mind could call you ‘sweet.’”
“Stop right there, Cobb,” she threatened, using his last name again. It was much more comfortable than getting personal with the nickname Margie used for him. “I could say things about you, too.”
“What? That I’m dashing and intelligent and the answer to a maiden’s prayer?” He pursed his lips and glanced her way as he pulled into the road that led to the ranch. “Which brings up another question. Are you sleeping with that airheaded boss of yours at work yet?”
“He is not airheaded!” she exclaimed, offended.
“He eats tofu and quiche, he drives a red convertible of uncertain age, he plays tennis and he doesn’t know how to program a computer without crashing the system.”
That was far too knowledgeable to have come from a dossier. Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve had him checked out!” she accused with certainty.
He only smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
