Read Online Her Last Defense by Vickie Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

her cup. “So, what were you doing responding to a plane crash out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night? Seems like a strange place to find a Texas Ranger.”
    He paced to the door of the tent, back. “We go where we’re needed.”
    “Big crime wave in Hempaxe, Texas, population 384, is there?”
    “I was…on leave. Staying at a cabin on Lake Farrell. Saw the plane go down.”
    “Skip Hollister said he knew you when you were a boy. Did you grow up around here?”
    He shook his head. “Just summers.”
    “Where did you live the rest of the year?”
    “You got a sudden desire to write my memoir?”
    “Just trying to make conversation.”
    He stared at her a moment, then shook his head. “Sorry. Cop habit, not giving out personal information. The cabin belonged to my grandpop. I visited for a couple of months in the summer, traveled all over the world repairing oil rigs with my dad the rest of the year.”
    “You didn’t have a permanent home?”
    “Just hotels and oil-field bunkhouses.”
    Pity twisted through her chest like a corkscrew. She couldn’t imagine moving all the time. Not having a place to call home. A doorframe to notch the kids’ heights in as they grew.
    She wanted to tell him she was sorry, comfort him somehow, but he neatly changed the subject before she had a chance.
    “What about you?” he asked. “What did you do as a kid, besides play so far out in the bayou the gators couldn’t find you.”
    She smiled as she remembered throwing that tidbit of her childhood over her shoulder at him as she’d marched off into the woods that afternoon. It was true, if a bit of an exaggeration.
    “How does a girl from the bayou wind up as a virus hunter for the CDC?”
    “What better place to learn about bugs than the bayou? The ones I play with now are just a lot smaller.” The warmth of the coffee spread through her chestalong with memories of happier days. “Truth is, there was a time when I wanted nothing more than to hang out my shingle as a family doctor in some small town where I could make a difference.”
    “So why didn’t you?”
    “Sometimes fate has other plans for us.”
    And sometimes we’re too afraid to poke our heads out of our shells and see what fate has in store.
    After a disastrous affair with a visiting surgeon who’d told her he loved her, but neglected to mention the wife and two kids waiting for him in California during her second-year residency, Macy had found the solitary world of viral research science comforting. Unlike people, viruses were predictable. They could be studied. Understood. The laboratory environment, with its bulky suits and airtight work chamber provided her some necessary emotional distance from her coworkers.
    Even her relationship with David had been cool. Sterile. He had appreciated her for her mind. She liked his ambition. If there wasn’t much chemistry between them, there was at least safety.
    She’d thought safety was enough, until recently when she’d found herself awake until all hours, reading steamy romance novels and crying over old Bogart and Bacall movies.
    Like a tulip bulb that had lain dormant in the frozen ground until spring, she found herself slowly coming to life. Reaching for the sun. Warmth.
    She needed heat in her life. Passion. Laughter and tears. So she’d broken off her engagement to David. Andnow he was dead, and here she was with the Ranger, the wrong kind of man for her in the wrong place at the wrong time…and all she could think was she wished he would put his arms around her. Just hold her for a moment.
    Like that was going to happen.
    Embarrassed to realize her eyes had filled with tears—and that the Ranger had reached down to wipe them away with his thumb—she swiped at her face with the sleeve of her sweater and sniffed. He pulled his hand back, his inscrutable expression unchanged, but the air between them had changed. Charged.
    “I suppose you’ve always known you wanted to be a Texas