Overprotective Cowboy: A Mulbury Boys Novel (Hope Eternal Ranch Romance Book 2) Page 7

  “Do you work on the ranch?” he asked.

  Obviously, Ted thought, but he just said, “Yep.”

  “Do you know if they’re hiring?”

  “I don’t know,” Ted said.

  “Who would I talk to?”

  Ted hesitated, because he didn’t want to give out names. Though, perhaps this man just wanted a job. If he went to the house and spoke to Ginger, maybe she could learn his name. Plenty of people owned and drove blue trucks, and this one didn’t have a grasshopper.

  “Were you just driving around looking for someone to talk to?” Ted asked instead of answering his question.

  The man shrugged and looked away. Ted tried to memorize his face, from the long, sloped nose, the medium-brown hair, the regular brown eyes. There was nothing memorable about him, other than he wore a jacket in this weather. Normal jeans. Regular tennis shoes. The jacket was blue and white and zipped all the way up. Ted started to choke just looking at the guy.

  “What’s your name?” he tried. “I can give it to the ranch owner. She’ll call you if she needs another man.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I was just hoping something would fall into my lap.” He glanced at Ted and gave a small smile. He waved and turned to go back to his truck. Ted watched him go, and the moment he got behind the wheel and closed the door, Ted turned and started back to the ranch.

  He’d find Emma in the West Wing, and he needed to talk to her as soon as possible. It took longer than he’d like to get back there, and he was sure the blue truck would be gone, but he had the license plate. He could describe him to Emma and see if it was the same person.

  He was panting and sweating when he made it to the steps that led into the house. He burst through the door and called, “Emma?”

  His boots clunked against the floor as he hurried down the hall and into the kitchen. “Emma?” Her office had to be somewhere nearby. Right? But he didn’t know where, and he didn’t want to start poking around the West Wing. In fact, he shouldn’t be here at all. Ginger had told him the men didn’t come over here uninvited.

  His heartbeat rippled, and he turned toward the hall where he knew the bathroom was. “Emma?”

  “Yes,” she said to his left “I’m right here.” She appeared in a doorway, a gray and white cat at her feet. She bent and picked it up. “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw the guy in the blue truck,” Ted said, striding toward her. “I got the license plate. Let’s look him up.” He grinned at her as he approached.

  She looked at him with shock in her eyes. “Wait. What?” She fell back into the doorway as he pressed past her.

  “You have a computer, right?” He entered the office before she could answer. Sure enough, she had a computer on the large desk in front of the window. “Yes, you sure do.” He tossed her another grin as he continued into her office.

  He took a seat in front of her computer, well-aware of what he’d just done. He slowed down a little bit and looked back to where she still stood in the doorway, that cat in her arms.

  “Can I use this?” he asked.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Look up the license plate number,” he said.

  “How do you do that?” She finally took a few steps into the office, but she sure didn’t seem to want to. She used the feline as a shield between them, but the cat meowed, and she put him down. He came toward Ted as if they’d be best friends.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Frisco,” she said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. The air conditioning sure did work well in the West Wing, and Ted envied her. She wasn’t wearing shoes either, and he liked her hair in a high ponytail and the vulnerability in her face. She still had makeup on, and Ted was starting to realize she wore it every day, even if she didn’t leave the West Wing.

  The cat rubbed against Ted’s ankles, and he didn’t hate it.

  “You have a way with critters,” Emma said, giving him a smile. She didn’t come any closer though, and Ted suddenly felt her nerves.

  “Yeah.” Ted looked at the computer screen. “I won’t close any of this. I just need the Internet.”

  “How do you look up a license plate?” she asked.

  “In another life,” Ted said. “I was a lawyer.” He glanced at her. “And we learn all kinds of tricks to get information.” He didn’t want to get too deep into what he’d done as a lawyer, because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to keep his questions to himself.

  He clicked and started typing. “There are a lot of things that are public,” he said. “If you know where to look.”

  “What kind of lawyer were you?” Emma asked.

  Ted heard the trepidation in her voice, and he forced himself not to look at her. Instead, he kept his focus on the computer screen as the State of Texas website came up. “I worked as an assistant prosecutor,” he said. “In the Southern District Federal Court System.”

  “Wow,” she said. “That sounds so fancy.”

  Ted chuckled as he typed in the license plate division. “It was a massive organization,” he said. “We spanned a couple dozen counties, and there were almost two hundred prosecutors in the office.”

  “Hmm,” she said, and Ted sensed she had other questions she wanted to ask.

  He swiped and tapped to get to the note he’d taken for the license plate, and he typed it into the system.

  “Kind of funny how a lawyer ended up in prison,” she said, trying to be oh-so-nonchalant.

  “Oh, you want to know why I went to prison.” Ted leaned away from the computer, because the information was right there on the screen. He didn’t have the same skills with names as he did faces, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  He looked at her, his eyebrows raised.

  “I could just look in your file,” she said. “But I thought I’d ask right from the horse’s mouth.”

  Ted nodded. “I don’t mind telling you, but I have something I want to ask you too.” He couldn’t have planned his opportunity to find out about her connection to Robert Knight better than this.

  “All right,” she said.

  “For real?” Ted asked. “I’m not going to tell you, and then you won’t like my question, so you won’t answer?”

  “Maybe you better tell me the question first.” Emma reached up as if she’d tuck her hair, but it was all up in that ponytail.

  Ted kept his gaze on hers, hoping and praying that she wouldn’t stalk away from him once he revealed the question. “I have seen you before,” he said slowly, trying to find the right words. “And I know where now.”

  Her eyes rounded and widened and stayed that way. She clenched her arms across her middle, and Ted paused for a moment.

  “You were in one of my case files when I was a lawyer,” he said. “You were a known associate of a man named Robert Knight, and I want to know what that association was, and if you’re in any trouble now because of it.”

  Emma’s eyes filled with tears, and Ted got at least one of his questions answered with that. She was in trouble now, and it most likely had something to do with Robert Knight.

  “I can—” he started, but she spun on her heel and beelined for the door.

  “Help you,” Ted said to himself and the empty office. Sighing, he returned his attention to the computer screen and copied down the name tied to that license plate. After all, he didn’t have access to a computer in the Annex, and he wasn’t giving up on solving this mystery, even if he couldn’t get the information straight from Emma.

  He stood up, sighing, and he’d taken two steps toward the doorway when Emma filled it again.

  Chapter Eight

  Emma had just needed a moment. A moment to wonder how, out of the millions of people in Texas, she’d come face to face with the one who’d seen her face in a case file. She wondered what that photo looked like, and she guessed not great.

  She certainly wouldn’t have the perfectly pointed and slanted wings of her eyeliner. Her hair had probably been
the mousy brown variety, not the nearly black hair she had now. Emma hadn’t gone to great lengths to change her appearance, but she wasn’t the same woman she’d been a decade ago.

  “I can answer your question,” she said, though her stomach rioted against her. He hadn’t asked about Missy, and she wouldn’t have to go that far to tell him that yes, she’d once been Robert Knight’s girlfriend.

  She’d never heard the words “known associate.” It sounded so lawyerly, and she was keenly interested to know how a prosecutor had pivoted completely to become a prisoner. Ted suddenly possessed more power, because now Emma knew he was smart. Smart enough to go to law school, and smart enough to work in a huge office with other prosecutors.

  “Okay,” Ted said. “I went to a low-security facility with camp capability for aggravated assault of a police officer.”

  Emma absorbed what he’d said. “You beat up a police officer…and went to a jail…camp?”

  Ted burst out laughing, but he had to know she didn’t understand anything he’d just said.

  “I was at an office party,” he said, perching on the edge of her desk. With the warm afternoon light coming in behind him, he was absolute perfection, right in front of her. “It was Wells Brown’s birthday. Kellie had brought in a cake. I was cutting the cake when some clients came in, shouting and causing a big thing.”

  Ted looked straight at her while he spoke. “Apparently, our office had been under scrutiny for some prosecutorial misconduct, and they wanted to see how we’d react when confronted with difficult clients. One of them rushed at us, and Kellie got knocked down. I sort of lost my temper, and I pushed the guy back.”

  Emma decided right then and there she didn’t like this story. She wanted to tell him she didn’t need to know, but she didn’t know how to ask him to stop now.

  “Well, I had the knife in my hand, and he was a cop, and things got way out of hand from there.”

  Emma took a breath, her pulse racing. “Did you use the knife?”

  “No,” he said. “But it was in my possession. I may or may not have issued some threats, and the guy was an undercover cop.”

  “Did you issue threats?”

  “I don’t remember it,” Ted said. “But a couple of people gave testimony that I did.” Ted lifted his hand and ran it up the back of his head. “So I probably did. I can have a temper sometimes.” He resettled his hat on his head, which he’d lowered now so she couldn’t see his eyes. “And since they were already investigating our office for misconduct, it was easy to put it all on me.”

  “All of it?”

  Ted didn’t need to confirm. The flashing glint in his eyes said it all. “I got a six-year sentence, which probably would’ve only been twelve to fifteen months if the office hadn’t already been under investigation, and if that ‘client’ hadn’t been an undercover cop.” He shrugged, but Emma knew there was a huge difference between one year and six.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “A low-security facility with camp capability is the lowest form of security for prisons in the Bureau,” he said. “The men at the camp actually leave the facility and stuff. I stayed in the low-sec, because that’s where my friends were, and there were more opportunities for classes and recreation. The camp is really crowded.”

  “You said something about having your own room,” she said. “Did you not have your own cell there?”

  Ted shook his head and smiled. “No cells in a low-security facility,” he said. “We live in dormitories. Sixteen men in each unit.”

  “You slept in a room with fifteen other men.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Emma wanted to know a lot more, but she told herself to stop. There was plenty of time to get to know Ted better.

  No, she told herself. There’s plenty more time to get more information from Ted.

  “That’s it?” Ted asked. “You’re stopping there?”

  “Do you want some ice cream?” Emma hooked her thumb over her shoulder, and she turned and started for the door again. “I do, and Lord knows I need it to tell my part of the story.” She went into the kitchen, and Ted followed her. He sat at the bar while she busied herself with pulling open the freezer and taking out a couple of boxes of ice cream bars.

  “These are double chocolate, and these are almond,” she said, extending them both toward him.

  “Almond,” he said, reaching for one of those. She selected the same and put the rest away. She turned toward him, and he’d already unwrapped his treat.

  “You know,” he said. “I could really get used to coming here in the afternoon and enjoying air conditioning and ice cream.”

  “If you buy your own ice cream bars,” she said. “You can enjoy your own air conditioning and ice cream next door.” She gave him a pointed look, to which he laughed. Emma liked that he was carefree and casual, and she wondered if she’d experienced the same happiness that spilled from Ted at all in the past decade.

  She pretended. She put on the happy face. She painted on her pretty makeup and her smile. But she wasn’t sure she was truly happy. Not the same way Ted seemed to be.

  “Yeah, but it’s better here,” Ted said, smiling at her.

  She unwrapped her ice cream bar and kept her eyes on it. “I was Robert Knight’s girlfriend a while back.”

  “How far back?”

  “Oh, let’s see,” she said as if she didn’t know exactly when she’d met him and they’d started dating. “Eleven or twelve years ago.”

  Ted nodded. “Where’d you meet him?”

  She swallowed, because she didn’t want to say that. “I’ve never talked to a lawyer. I feel like I need a lawyer.”

  Ted shook his head and took another bite of his ice cream bar. “I’m not a lawyer anymore, Emma.”

  “No?”

  “No, ma’am. I got disbarred when I got convicted.” He glanced at her, and her heart positively hurt for him. A flash of pain crossed his face, but it didn’t stay long. “It was a good run, and I’m okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He finished his ice cream bar. “That’s it? You were Robert Knight’s girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How long?”

  “Five or six months?” she said, making it sound like a question. It had actually been eight months, as they’d dated for almost the entire school year.

  “Did you know he was in a crime family?”

  “Not at first,” she said. “But yes, I eventually realized how he made his money.”

  “And how was he doing that when you were with him?”

  “It was my understanding that he was doing something fraudulent with real estate.”

  “Really?” Ted looked at him. “It wasn’t drugs?”

  “His brother ran that, I think,” Emma said, her mind spiraling into a dark corner that she didn’t let herself visit very often.

  “Larry?”

  “Yeah,” Emma said. “Larry. I only met him once, and he was…creepy.” She shuddered and took a bite of her ice cream.

  “I’ll bet,” Ted said.

  “What were you guys investigating them for?”

  “Everything you can think of,” Ted said. “No one ever talked to you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh, do not ‘sir’ me,” Ted said, chuckling. “I’m not your father.”

  Emma giggled, the cold ice cream settling easily in her stomach. “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-nine, ma’am.”

  “I’m thirty-seven.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” he said. “I have some manners.”

  Emma nudged him with her shoulder. “You have plenty of manners.” She licked her stick clean and tucked it into the wrapper.

  “Thank you, Emma.” Ted reached over and took her hand in his, real slow, as if giving her an opportunity to pull away. She didn’t, and her fingers settled easily between his as if their hands had been made to connect.

  “I like it when you say my nam
e like that,” she said, surprised at everything happening right now.

  His phone rang, but he held her gaze for an extra moment before pulling it out with his free hand. He set it on the counter in front of him and said, “It’s my mom.” He tapped the call on and touched the speaker button. “Hey, Ma.”

  “Teddy,” she said, and Emma’s fingers automatically tightened. Ted met her gaze, and fireworks popped through her bloodstream.

  Teddy? she mouthed, her eyebrows going up.

  He grinned and shook his head as his mother started talking about when she could come visit. His sister was going to drive, and his brother was going to come with his father another time. Emma deduced that Ted’s parents were divorced, and she was glad when she heard them say they’d be there on Saturday.

  She’d be gone Saturday, and if he was preoccupied, she wouldn’t have to explain anything to him.

  “All right, Ma,” he said. “See you then. Love you.” He tapped the phone button, and the call ended. He glanced at Emma.

  Before he could say anything, she asked, “Can I call you Teddy?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

  “No?” She giggled again, a thread a happiness pulling through her. True happiness. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

  “No,” he said. “Two people on this planet call me Teddy, and I don’t want you to be one of them.”

  “Who besides your mom?”

  “Nate,” Ted said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “We bonded in prison,” Ted said with a shrug. “He’s my brother now.”

  Emma liked the idea of that, and she realized in that moment how many holes she had in her life. She didn’t have anyone like a Nate in her life. Even Ginger, though Emma pretended like they were close, she’d held at arm’s length. She knew Ginger really well, and she loved her like a sister.

  But she wasn’t a sister, not the way Ted had just come out and said, He’s my brother now.