Stone Cold Christmas Ranger. Nicole Helm

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СКАЧАТЬ chair and was sitting in its debris, the picture fisted in her hand.

      “Alyssa?”

      When she finally brought her gaze to his, those brown eyes were wide and wet and she was clearly in shock.

      “Where’d you get this?” she demanded in a whisper, her hands shaking. Hell, her whole body was shaking. Her brown eyes bored into his. “This is a lie. This has to be a lie.” Her voice cracked.

      “You know her?” he asked, gently rubbing a hand up and down her forearm, trying to offer something to help her stop shaking so hard.

      Alyssa looked back down at the picture that shook in her hands. “That’s my mother.”

      * * *

      THE TEARS WERE sharp and burning, but Alyssa did everything she could to keep them from falling. She forced herself to look away from the picture and shoved it back at the Texas Ranger, whatever his name was.

      It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Her mother had left her. She’d been seduced away by some rival of her father’s. That was the story.

      Not murder.

      It didn’t make sense. None of it made any sense. She tried to get ahold of her labored breathing, but no matter how much she told herself to breathe slowly in and out, she could only gasp and pant, that picture of her mother’s lifeless face seared into her brain forever.

      Murder.

      She realized the Ranger had stopped rubbing her arm in that oddly comforting gesture and instead curled long, strong fingers around both her elbows.

      “Come on,” he said gently, pulling her to her feet.

      Since the debris of the rickety chair that had broken underneath her weight was starting to dig into her butt, she let him do it. Once she was standing somewhere close to steady on her feet, he didn’t release her. No, that strong grip stayed right where it was on her elbows.

      It was centering somehow, that firm, warm pressure. A reminder she existed in the here and now, not in one of the different prisons her life had been.

      She blinked up at the Texas Ranger holding her steady. There was something like compassion in his blue eyes, maybe even regret. His full lips were downturned, slight grooves bracketing his mouth.

      He was something like pretty, and she’d rather have those cheekbones and that square jaw burned into her brain than the image of her dead mother.

      “If I’d had any idea, Alyssa...” he said, his voice gravel and his tone overly familiar.

      She pulled herself out of his grasp, pulled into herself, like she’d learned how to do time and time again as the inconsequential daughter of a criminal, as a useless kidnapping victim.

      She’d spent the last two years trying to build a life for herself where she might matter, where she might do some good.

      This moment forced her back into all the ways she’d never mattered. What other lies she’d accepted as truth might be waiting for her?

      She closed her eyes against the onslaught of pain. And fear.

      “My brothers didn’t murder my mother, Ranger Stevens,” Alyssa managed, though her voice was rusty. “I know they’re not exactly heroes, but they never would have killed my mother.”

      “Okay.” He was quiet for a few humming seconds. “Maybe you’d like to help me find out who did.”

      She didn’t move, didn’t emote. She’d worked with law enforcement before, but she was careful about it. They usually didn’t know her name or her friends. They definitely didn’t know her connection to the Jimenez family.

      This man knew all of that and had to look like Superman in a cowboy hat on top of it. The last thing she should consider was working with him.

      Except her mother was dead. Murdered. A Jane Doe for well over a decade, and as much as she couldn’t believe her brothers had anything to do with her mother’s murder—murder—she couldn’t believe they didn’t know. There was no way Miranda Jimenez had stayed a Jane Doe without her family purposefully making sure she did.

      Alyssa swallowed. Making sure her mother had stayed a Jane Doe, all the while making sure Alyssa didn’t know about it. Her brothers had always claimed they were protecting her by keeping things from her, and it was hard to doubt. They had meant well. If they hadn’t, she’d have been dead or auctioned off to some faithful servant of her father’s before she’d ever been kidnapped.

      Ranger Stevens released her, and she felt cold without that warm, sturdy grip. Cold and alone. Well, that’s what you are. What you’ll always have to be.

      “Take some time. Come to grips with this new information, and when you’re ready to work with me, give me a call.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed her a card from it.

      She took the card. That big star emblem of the Rangers seemed to stare at her. It looked so official, so heroic, that symbol. Right next to it, his name, Bennet E. Stevens. Ranger.

      She glanced back up at him, and was more than a little irritated she saw kindness in his expression. She didn’t want kindness or compassion. She didn’t know what to do with those things, and she already got them in spades from Gabby and Natalie and even to an extent from their law enforcement significant others.

      Everyone felt sorry for Alyssa Jimenez, but no one knew who she really was. Except this man.

      “Do you have a phone number I can reach you at?” he prompted when she didn’t say anything.

      She didn’t want to give him her number. She didn’t want to give him anything. She wanted to rewind the last half hour and go with Gabby to the hospital. She would have avoided this whole thing.

      Not forever, though. She was too practical to think it would have lasted forever.

      “Fine,” she muttered, because, as much as she knew she’d end up working with this guy, the promise of solving her mother’s murder was too great, too important, and she didn’t want to give him too much leverage. She’d make him think she was reticent, doing him a favor when she finally agreed.

      She grabbed a pen and scrap of paper from her desk and scrawled her number on it. He took it, sliding it into his pocket along with the pictures he’d retrieved. She’d wanted to keep them, but she had to keep it cool. She’d get them eventually.

      “I’ll be in touch, Alyssa,” he said with a tip of his hat. He paused for a second, hesitating. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said gravely, before turning and exiting her office.

      She let out a shaky sigh. The worst thing was believing that kind of crap. Why would he be sorry? He didn’t know her or her mother. It was a lame, placating statement.

      It soothed somehow, idiot that she was. She shook her head and collected her belongings. She’d stop by the hospital to check on Natalie and Gabby, and then she’d go home and try to sleep. She’d give it a day, maybe two, then she’d call Ranger Too-Hot-For-Her-Own-Good.

      She locked up and exited out the back, pulling her helmet on before starting СКАЧАТЬ