True Blue & Carrera's Bride: True Blue / Carrera's Bride. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ He smiled. “No, it’s not.”

       “Want some coffee?”

       “Yes!” he said at once, pulling off his suit coat and loosening his tie as he followed her to the kitchen. He swung the coat around one of the high-back kitchen chairs at the table and sat down. “I’ve been on stakeout, with convenience-store coffee.” He made a face. “I think they keep it in the pot all day to make sure it doesn’t pass for hot brown water.”

       She laughed as she made a fresh pot. “There’s that profit margin to consider,” she mused.

       “I guess.”

       “Did you catch a crook?”

       “We did, actually. That new face recognition software we use is awesome. Pegged the guy almost immediately.”

       “New technology.” She shook her head. “Cameras everywhere, face recognition software, pat downs at the airport…” She turned and looked at him. “Isn’t all that supposed to make us feel safer?”

       “No, it’s supposed to actually make you safer,” he corrected. “It makes it harder for the bad guys to hide from the law.”

       “I guess so.” She got out cups and saucers. “I made apple pie.”

       “You don’t even need to ask. I had a hamburger earlier.”

       “You live on fast food.”

       “I work at a fast job,” he replied. “No time for proper meals, now that I’m in a position of responsibility.”

       She turned and smiled at him. “I was so proud of you for that promotion. You studied hard.”

       “I might have studied less if I’d realized how much paperwork would be involved,” he quipped. “I have eight detectives under me, and I’m responsible for all the major decisions that involve them. Plus I have to coordinate them with other services, work around court dates and emergency assignments… Life was a lot easier when I was just a plain detective.”

       “You love your job, though. That’s a bonus.”

       “It is,” he had to agree.

       She cut the pie, topped it with a scoop of homemade ice cream and served it to him with his black coffee. She sat down across from him and watched him eat it with real enjoyment, her hands propping up her chin, elbows on the tablecloth.

       “You love to cook,” he responded.

       She nodded. “It isn’t an independent woman thing, I know,” she said. “I should be designing buildings or running a corporation and yelling at subordinates.”

       “You should be doing what you want to do,” he replied.

       “In that case, I am.”

       “Good cooks are thin on the ground.” He finished the pie and leaned back with his coffee cup in his hand, smiling. “Wonderful food!”

       “Thanks.”

       He sipped coffee. “And the best coffee anywhere.”

       “Flattery will get you another slice of pie.”

       He chuckled. “No more tonight. I’m fine.”

       “Are you ever going to take a vacation?” she asked.

       “Sure,” he replied. “I’ve already arranged to have Christmas Eve off.”

       She glared at him. “A vacation is longer than one night long.”

       He frowned. “It is? Are you sure?”

       “There’s more to life than just work.”

       “I’ll think about that, when I have time.”

       “Have you watched the news today?” she asked.

       “No. Why?”

       “They had a special report about violence on the border. It seems that the remaining Fuentes brother sent an armed party over the border to escort a drug shipment and there was a shootout with some border agents.”

       He grimaced. “An ongoing problem. Nobody knows how to solve it. Bottom line, if people want drugs, somebody’s going to supply them. You stop the demand, you stop the supply.”

       “Good luck with that” She laughed hollowly. “Never going to happen.”

       “I totally agree.”

       “Anyway, they mentioned in passing that one of the captured drug runners said that General Emilio Machado was recruiting men for an armed invasion of his former country.”

       “The Mexican Government, we hear, is not pleased with that development and they’re angry at our government because they think we aren’t doing enough to stop it.”

       “Really?” she exclaimed. “What else do you know?”

       “Not much, but you can’t repeat anything I tell you,” he added.

       She grinned. “You know I’m as silent as a clam. Come on. Talk.”

       “Apparently, the State Department sent people into our office,” he replied. “We know they talked to our lieutenant, but we don’t know what about.”

       “State Department!”

       “They do have their fingers on the pulse of foreign governments,” Rick reminded her. “If anybody knows what’s really going on, they do.”

       “I would have thought one of those other government agencies would have been more involved, especially if the general’s trying to recruit Americans for a foreign military action,” she pondered.

       His eyebrows arched.

       “Well, it seems logical, doesn’t it?” she asked.

       “Actually, it does,” he agreed. “I know the FBI and the CIA have counterterrorism units that infiltrate groups like that.”

       “Yes, and some of them die doing it,” Barbara recalled. She grimaced. “They say undercover officers in any organization face the highest risks.”

       “The military also has counterterrorism units,” he replied. He sipped his cooling coffee. “That must be an interesting sort of job.”

       “Dangerous.”

       He smiled. “Of course. But patriotic in the extreme, especially when it comes to foreign operatives trying to undermine democratic interests.”

       “Doesn’t the general’s former country have great deposits of oil and natural gas?” she wondered aloud.

       “So we hear. It’s also in a very strategic location, and the general leans toward capitalism rather СКАЧАТЬ