Stone Cold Christmas Ranger. Nicole Helm

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СКАЧАТЬ some half-cocked Texas Ranger wanting to talk to her.

      Not that Alyssa needed Gabby’s protection, but it was still interesting to watch.

      “The nerve of that guy, thinking he can question you about something that doesn’t even have anything to do with you!”

      Alyssa sat with her elbows resting on her knees in a folding chair in the corner of her very odd little office. It was a foreclosed gas station in a crappy part of Austin, and Alyssa hadn’t made any bones about making it look different from what it was. Shelves still stood in aisles, coolers stood empty and not running along the back wall. The only thing she’d done was add some seating—mostly stuff she’d found in the alley—and a desk that had a crack down the middle.

      Her clientele didn’t mind, and they knew where to find her without her having to advertise and attract potential...legal issues.

      The only time the office space bothered Alyssa was when Gabby insisted on showing up. Even though Alyssa knew Gabby could take care of herself—she’d recently graduated from the police academy, and she’d survived eight years as a prisoner of The Stallion to Alyssa’s two—Alyssa hated bringing people she cared about into this underworld.

      “Alyssa. Are you listening?”

      Alyssa shrugged. “Not really. You seem to be doing an excellent job of yelling all by yourself.”

      Gabby scowled at her, and it was moments like these Alyssa didn’t know what to do with. Where it felt like she had a sister, a family. People who cared about her. It made her want to cry, and it made her want to...

      She didn’t know. So, she ignored it. “I can talk to some Texas Ranger. I talk to all sorts of people all the time.” Criminals. Law enforcement. Men who worked for her brothers, men who worked for the FBI, including Gabby’s fiancé. Alyssa knew how to talk to anyone.

      Maybe, just maybe, it made her a little nervous someone so close to Natalie and Gabby had possibly discovered her connection to one of the biggest cartels operating in the state of Texas, but she could handle it.

      “Crap,” Gabby muttered, looking at her phone. “Nat went into labor.”

      “Well, hurry up and get to the hospital.”

      “Come with me.”

      “No.”

      “Alyssa, you’re ours now. Really.”

      “I know,” Alyssa replied, even though it had been almost two years since escaping The Stallion and she still wasn’t used to being considered part of the family. “But all that pushing and yelling and weird baby crap? I’m going to have to pass. I’ll come visit when it’s all over, so keep me posted. Besides, I have some work to catch up on. My trip to Amarillo took longer than I expected.”

      She’d brought a rapist to justice. Though she’d brought him in for a far more minor charge, the woman who’d come to her for help could rest assured her attacker was in jail.

      It wasn’t legal to act as bounty hunter without a license, but growing up in the shadow of a drug cartel family, Alyssa didn’t exactly care about legal. She cared about righting some wrongs.

      Some of that pride and certainty must have showed in her expression because Gabby sighed. “All right, I won’t fight you on it. Get your work done and then, regardless of baby appearance, at least stop by the hospital tonight?”

      “Fine.”

      Gabby pulled her into a quick hug, another gesture Alyssa had spent two years not knowing what to do with. But the Torres sisters had pulled her in and insisted she was part of their family.

      It mattered, and Alyssa would do whatever she could to make sure she made them proud. She couldn’t be a police officer like Gabby, or a trained hypnotist assisting the Texas Rangers like Natalie, but she could do this.

      “See you tonight,” Gabby said, heading for the door.

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      Gabby left, and Alyssa sighed. Maybe she should have gone. Natalie had had a difficult pregnancy, enough so that her husband was taking almost an entire month off work to be home with her and the baby the first few weeks. And, no matter how uncomfortable Alyssa still was with the whole childbirth thing, they were her family.

      Her good, upstanding chosen family. Who don’t know who you really are.

      Alyssa turned to her work. There was some paperwork to forge to collect her fee for the last guy she’d brought in, and then she had to check her makeshift mailbox to see if any more tips had been left for her. She worked by word of mouth, mostly for people who couldn’t pay, hence the forging paperwork so she could pretend to be a licensed bounty hunter and collect enough of a fee to live off of.

      Her front door screeched open, as the hinges weren’t aligned or well oiled. She glanced over expecting to find a woman from the neighborhood, as those were usually her only word-of-mouth visitors.

      Instead, a man stepped through the door, and for a few seconds Alyssa couldn’t act, she could only stare. He was tall and broad, dressed in pressed khakis and a perfectly tailored button-down shirt, a Texas Ranger badge hooked to his belt. He wore a cowboy hat and a gun like he’d been born with them.

      Alyssa’s heart beat twice its normal rhythm, something unrecognizable fluttering in her chest. His dark hair was thick and wavy, and not buzzed short like most Texas Rangers she’d come into contact with. His eyes were a startling blue, and his mouth—

      Wait. Why was she staring at his mouth?

      The man’s brows drew together as he looked around the room. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, are you... You are Alyssa Jimenez, aren’t you?”

      “And you must be the Texas Ranger Gabby’s trying to hide me from,” Alyssa offered drily. “How did you find me?”

      “I followed Gabby.”

      She laughed, couldn’t help it. She’d expected him to lie or have some high-tech way for having found her not-publicly-listed office. But he’d told her the truth. “Awfully sneaky and underhanded for a Ranger.”

      His mouth curved, and the fluttering was back tenfold. He had a movie-star smile, all charm and white teeth, and while Alyssa had seen men like that in her life, she’d never, ever had that kind of smile directed at her.

      “You must know Ranger Cooper, antithesis of all that is sneaky and underhanded. We aren’t all like that.”

      Something about all that fluttering turned into a spiral, one that arrowed down her chest and into her belly. She felt oddly shaky, and Alyssa had long ago learned how to ward off shaky. She’d grown up in isolation as part of a criminal family. Then she’d been kidnapped for two years, locked away in little more than a bunker.

      She was not a weakling. She was never scared. The scariest parts of her life were over, but something about this man sent her as off-kilter as she’d ever been.

      It wasn’t fear for her life or the need to fight off an attacker, but she didn’t know what it was, and that was the scariest thing of all.

      “Why are you here?” she СКАЧАТЬ