Sooner or Later

  When the farmhouse Carlos had mentioned came into sight, Letty sagged with relief. The straps from the backpack dug into her shoulders, and her calves ached from walking at Murphy’s killing pace.

  “Wait here,” Murphy ordered in the imperious tone he used with her. He guided her under the protection of a large tree.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I can’t and won’t explain my motives everytime I ask you to do something,” he snapped. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She opened her mouth to argue and knew it would be useless.

  Carlos had already told them his cousin would see to their needs. If it had been up to her, she would have walked up to the farmer’s front door, knocked politely, and explained who she was. But not Murphy. He apparently felt it was necessary to break in like a criminal.

  Unfortunately the moonlight wasn’t bright enough for her to see where he’d gone. The man all but disappeared into the shadows. Either that or she’d viewed too many James Bond movies.

  With her back braced against the tree trunk, Letty sat. She must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing she knew, Murphy had returned.

  “We’ll spend the night in the barn,” he whispered.

  She rubbed the sleep from her face and nodded. Anything with the word “sleep” in it appealed to her.

  “There’s a small catch.”

  She raised questioning eyes to him.

  “We stay together.”

  She frowned, not understanding the problem since she thought that was why she’d hired him.

  “In other words, we sleep next to each other.”

  9

  Men baffled and exasperated Marcie Alexander. She stood in the room in the back of her beauty shop and mulled over her life to this point.

  For her first thirty-one years the only place she found herself capable of communicating with the opposite sex was in bed. Well, she was finished with that, finished with having her friends marry and start a family while she waited on the sidelines, and for what? To get passed over again and again.

  She’d never had a problem attracting a man. At certain times in her life she’d dated three or four at a time. But instead of feeling wanted and charmed, she felt more like an air traffic controller.

  Finding men had always been a snap, especially the needy kind. From the time she was sixteen and lost her virginity in the backseat of a car at a drive-in movie during Raging Bull, she’d maintained steady relationships with the opposite sex. Unfortunately her relationships rarely lasted more than a month or two at a stretch.

  As the years progressed, Marcie had learned a painful lesson. Men flattered her, courted her, borrowed money from her—which they seldom repaid—and then promptly deserted her. The pattern rarely changed. She’d fallen in and out of love so often, it had all become a revolving door.

  Men flocked to her. Mostly penniless ones with problems for her to solve. She specialized in rescue operations. For years she was convinced that all these poor, misunderstood men really needed was the love of a good woman.

  In her search for a husband, Marcie had gone so far as to take out a loan in order for Danny, the man of the hour, to hire an attorney so he could get a divorce. It was understood that once he was free from his battle-ax of a wife, he’d marry her. It took Marcie two months to learn he’d never been married. The money had paid for a weekend in Vegas with another woman. It had taken her sixteen months to pay back the bank.

  What hurt most was that a couple of her beauty school friends had been married twice. They’d already started families with two different men while Marcie had yet to snag even one husband.

  Every time she saw another one of her friends with a baby and a doting husband, her heart ached. She wanted it all. A husband, a gentle, kind man who would love her to distraction. One man enough to keep her satisfied in life and in bed.

  Heaven would testify that she’d done her best to land herself a lifetime mate. But in her long, often tumultuous search, Marcie had met only one such candidate. Johnny.

  She was crazy about him the minute she laid eyes on him in the Pour House, a local bar. Her mistake, she realized, was sleeping with him too soon. Way too soon.

  He’d gone home with her on some phony excuse and, against her better judgment, stayed the night. Hard as she tried, Marcie couldn’t make herself regret it. Sex with Johnny had been incredible. Probably the best of her entire life.

  The following morning, after he’d left her, Marcie feared she’d never hear from him again. She’d nearly wept tears of joy when he showed up on her doorstep a month later. She’d already decided that, if given a second chance with him, she wouldn’t make the same mistake. She’d been waiting all her life for a man like Johnny, and come hell or high water she was going to find a way to marry him.

  Unfortunately Johnny made her weak, and before she’d realized what was happening, they were back in the bedroom again. This time he stayed the entire weekend. Nothing interrupted them. Not televised football. Not phone calls. Nothing. He didn’t even want her to cook, had insisted on ordering out and paying for it himself. When he left her that time, Marcie was so completely exhausted she’d had to stay home from work for two days.

  If ever there was a man capable of keeping her happy, it was Johnny. It went without saying that if she wanted to marry him, she’d need to play her cards right, and that meant careful planning.

  She was well aware that becoming intimate before forging an emotional bond was a tactical error. Johnny had to want her for more than her body. Marcie knew it, yet she’d allowed herself to be manipulated right back into bed. Mainly because he was such an incredible lover.

  As time progressed he stopped by more and more often, but rarely for longer than two or three days. Sometimes he’d show up unexpectedly at the shop and every now and again at her apartment. He wouldn’t believe it if she told him, so she never did, but she hadn’t been to bed with another man since they’d met.

  In their times together, she noted that he rarely spoke about himself. But then they seldom talked other than superficially, which was fine. The trust would come in time. If she had to pick up snatches of his life here and there, that was okay with her, too. She was a patient woman.

  What made Johnny special was that he proved to be an unselfish lover, inventive and generous. A fair portion of her previous lovers had been sexual brontosauruses. The type who considered lovemaking to consist of ripping off her clothes, throwing her down on the bed, completing the act while grunting as though in the midst of a cardiac arrest, then rolling over and promptly falling asleep.

  The men Marcie had loved generally knew little about foreplay. This was where Johnny excelled. No one needed to tell her he was a rare breed. She’d been around long enough to appreciate a lover with a slow touch. One who titillated her verbally, who seduced her with words before he so much as kissed her.

  It amazed Marcie how well he read her moods. There were times when she was too desperate for him to wade through the long, slow process of being undressed and adored as he stripped away each piece of clothing.

  Johnny gauged her mood without her having to say a word. He’d smile, his mouth soft and sexy, then quickly dispense with the preliminaries. Before long he had her pinned against the wall, her skirt up around her waist. By the time he finished she was breathless and limp with satisfaction.

  After she’d been seeing him fairly frequently, there’d been a lull. Several months passed without a word. At first she suspected he might be married. But having fallen into that trap before, she’d come to recognize the signs. Not Johnny. He was a free spirit, a salesman whose job often took him away for weeks on end.

  It killed her not to question him, but if he wasn’t willing to tell her of his own volition, then she didn’t ask. To the best of her knowledge there was no faster way to get rid of a potential husband than to make demands on him. From her experience, if she mentioned the word “commitment,” she might as well hold ope
n the front door as he raced past. Mow a man down with questions and chances were the relationship wouldn’t rebound.

  Marcie had made far too many mistakes in her life to fall prey to those traps. She wanted Johnny and was willing to be patient.

  After a lengthy silence, Marcie figured she’d lost him for good. That was when she’d taken a long hard look at her life. Frankly, she hadn’t liked what she’d seen, so she’d made some basic changes. Cleaned up her act, so to speak.

  The first thing she’d decided was that she wouldn’t go to bed with a man again until there was a ring on her finger. When she’d first made the decision, it had sounded drastic even to her own ears. She’d enjoyed an active, healthy sex life from the time she was a teenager. But to her surprise, she found she rather enjoyed being celibate.

  Clothes shopping took an entirely different slant. No longer did she judge an outfit by how sexy a man would find her or how seductive she looked. She purchased clothes that felt good, clothes that made her feel good about herself.

  Once she looked at herself differently, she learned to view men by more than how much they needed her. She was no longer interested in rescue operations. The money and emotional energy she saved made her feel years younger.

  She wanted to marry Johnny, but if she couldn’t have him, then she had no option but to move on to greener pastures. So she’d gone on a campaign to find herself a husband. One who didn’t frequent a bar.

  A sign of exactly how serious she was came the day she applied for and received a library card. Because she hadn’t paid nearly enough attention in school, her reading skills weren’t what they should have been. She started out borrowing books on tape. That satisfied her for a while, but shortly afterward she progressed to reading the books by herself. Especially the self-help ones.

  It wasn’t long before she recognized that she was a woman who loved too much.

  Too much. Too often. Too soon.

  Now, just when she believed she was about to achieve her goal and meet someone decent, Johnny popped back into her life. Well, she wasn’t the same woman he’d left behind. Besides, there was Clifford. She’d been dating him for two months, which was something of a record. It was certainly the longest time she’d gone out with a man without going to bed with him.

  Clifford Cramden owned a plumbing company, played on the local softball team, and hadn’t once asked for a loan. Well, he had run out of check blanks that once, but he’d repaid her promptly. He wasn’t a bad kisser. Their petting had gotten heavy a couple of times, but he’d always put an end to the foreplay before it got out of hand. Only once had he suggested spending the night. Marcie had gently rejected the idea, and he hadn’t pressed her. He wouldn’t be any kind of man, she decided, if she didn’t tempt him sexually.

  They were at the point in their dating where Marcie felt free to talk about “their relationship.” For the first time in her life, she was on first base, and she wasn’t about to let a weekend fling with Johnny ruin that.

  It sounded good when she reasoned it out. Johnny was in town briefly, looking for a good time, and she was a good-time girl. Or had been.

  If ever a woman stood at the crossroads, it was Marcie. The minute Johnny had walked into her back room she’d seen the need flash in his eyes. Heaven help her, she’d wanted him too. That she’d been able to refuse him confirmed how much she’d changed.

  Johnny would be back. Marcie would bet her last dollar on that. He wasn’t used to losing, wasn’t accustomed to not having what he wanted, when he wanted it. Next time, she suspected, he’d come with a whole lot more than a bouquet of cheap flowers.

  “Marcie.”

  “In here,” she answered, calling over her shoulder.

  “Someone’s come to see you.”

  Something in Samantha’s voice alerted her that it wasn’t one of her LOLs. Marcie worked wonders with older women’s hair. Her little old ladies loved her, and she showered them with attention.

  “Who?” she asked. She knew her schedule, and she was finished for the day. From the inflection in Samantha’s voice, she guessed it was a man. Probably Johnny.

  “Come and see.”

  She came out from the back, wiping her hands dry on a towel, praying for the strength to resist him. If ever a man could push her buttons, it was this salesman.

  She saw the huge teddy bear first.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” Clifford’s head appeared from behind the stuffed animal. His grin stretched wide.

  “Clifford.” Her relief was so great, she nearly succumbed to tears.

  “Just a little something special so you’ll know how much I love you.”

  10

  He should be asleep, Murphy thought darkly. He would be, too, if the little hellion next to him hadn’t irritated him to this extent.

  Carlos’s friend had generously put them up for the night, a risky proposition for a man who jeopardized his life doing a favor. After all, he and Letty were strangers, and this man owed them nothing, least of all his hospitality.

  Murphy was the one who’d insisted they stay in the barn. From the look Miss Holier-Than-Thou had given the stall, one would think she’d expected him to locate a Hilton Hotel just for her comfort. Concierge level!

  What irked him was that he was even in Zarcero. All he’d been looking for when he’d traveled to Texas was a little rest and relaxation. Instead he was risking his ass for a man already dead because this woman was convinced her brother was alive.

  As best Murphy could figure it, there’d obviously been a lapse in his sanity. He’d spent less than two days with Letty Madden and couldn’t imagine enduring that many more.

  Even asleep she irritated him. The pristine postmistress lived in fear that he’d take advantage of her. Well, Murphy had news for her. He’d rather become a monk than lay a finger on her.

  Her problem, he decided, was that the woman didn’t know what she wanted herself. Her mouth said one thing and her body another.

  He doubted she’d be that forthright or honest about her own needs. She batted her eyes at him, moistened her lips, and tempted him beyond what any red-blooded man should be asked to endure.

  One night with her had only created a need for more, but he wasn’t game. This woman was trouble. Big trouble.

  She’d have to strip naked and beg him to make love to her before he’d so much as touch her again. Even then, he’d need to think twice.

  The outraged virgin could—He stopped. Letty was no longer a virgin. She’d surrendered that to him in exchange for his help.

  Regret settled squarely, heavily, on his shoulders. Regret and guilt. He was uncomfortable with both emotions. Uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

  Murphy wished to hell he could remember what had happened between them, but try as he might, the memory was lost.

  Letty slept soundly at his side. They shared a common blanket, which she’d insisted they place on top of the straw instead of using it for warmth.

  Her deep, even breathing lulled him into a state of semiwakefulness. With his hand tucked behind his head, he lay on his back and forced his body to relax.

  It’d be light in another couple of hours. He’d prefer to travel at night. Both Carlos and Juan, the farmer, had warned him about guerrillas who roamed the countryside. Murphy wished he had the luxury of waiting, but he needed a vehicle and there wasn’t exactly a used-car lot for him to choose from.

  Without a means of transportation, it would take them several days to find their way into San Paulo, the capital. From what Letty had told him, Luke’s mission was situated in Managna, less than ten miles outside of the capital.

  San Paulo was located in the central part of the country, in a lush green valley. No matter which route he took, they had to get through the dense mountains.

  His best chance, he decided, was to make his way into the nearest village and steal a jeep, preferably one from the army. Thievery didn’t bother him while on an assignment, especially when he was able to abscond with the adversary’s pro
perty.

  Letty rolled from her back onto her side, facing him. Apparently she was cold, because she snuggled up against him tighter than a miser’s budget. He was still figuring out how to ease himself away from her when she pressed her head against his shoulder, using him as a pillow.

  With anyone else he might have shared his body’s warmth, but he wasn’t about to be accused of anything untoward with her. The woman was under the misconception that he lusted after her every minute of the day and night. Well, it’d be a cold day in hell before he’d give her that satisfaction.

  Murphy squeezed his eyes closed, determined to ignore her close proximity. He’d partially succeeded when she moaned. He frowned, wondering if he’d imagined it.

  Then she did it again, louder this time, as if she were in a great deal of pain. Murphy waited, unsure what he should do. Her head rolled from side to side, and a low, almost wailing sound slid from her lips.

  “Letty,” he whispered, not wanting to startle her awake. But he couldn’t very well have her raise a commotion. A woman’s scream had a way of echoing through the night. The last thing they needed was for her to send out an announcement of their arrival to a rebel outpost.

  No sooner had the thought entered his head than Letty bolted upright and let loose with a bloodcurdling cry that roused the chickens and just about everything else.

  Rarely had Murphy moved faster. He had her flipped onto her back with his hand planted over her mouth before another second passed.

  Her frantic eyes flew open and met his in the dim moonlight. What happened next surprised him even more than her scream. She released a soft sob and wrapped her arms around his neck as if she intended never to let go. Next she buried her face in his neck and began to sob.