Desperado by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

expecting their first child. So here I am, empty-handed and up to my neck in clients.”
    Maggie chuckled. “I’m glad I happened along, then. I gave up a lucrative position to rush back here, because I heard that Cord was blinded.” She sighed and smiled self-consciously. “I had hoped to find something permanent overseas.”
    “We’ll keep our ears open,” Logan promised, “if you’re serious. But meantime, how about signing on with me? You can even have your own office,” he added with a chuckle. “We acquired the suite next door. Lassiter and his people have the whole third floor. We went in together and bought the building. What we don’t use ourselves, we rent out. It pays for itself.”
    “And,” Maggie pointed out, “it’s a good investment.”
    He laughed out loud. “So it is.”
    He outlined her duties, and her salary, and she was delighted to take the job on a temporary basis. She still wanted to get out of Houston. Living near Cord was painful now that she’d decided to burn her bridges. She’d spent enough of her life aching for a man who didn’t care about her.
    Although, just for a few seconds in her hotel bedroom, his eyes had burned with desire. He’d wanted her. But that had never been enough for Maggie. She wanted his love. Just as she knew that she’d never have it. She could close her eyes and taste his breath on her mouth, feel the strength of his arms warm and comforting around her. If only she could have that, just for herself, for the rest of her life. It would have been worth more than the most luxurious lifestyle imaginable.
    Presumably Cord wanted to live and die alone. Maggie didn’t. Perhaps she might even meet a man she could settle for. She might actually get over Cord. Anything was possible. Even with her past.
     
    She started work at Deverell’s the next morning. It was complicated business, but she liked his spin on stocks and bonds, and she liked the mutual funds he recommended. He had a state-of-the-art computer system and an expert who did nothing but scan the Internet for stock prices and update information. Logan was honest, straightforward, and he didn’t pretend that he knew everything. He had a built-in sense of diplomacy that Kit told her privately was a hoot—Logan had a temper and he wasn’t shy about showing it. He was only diplomatic when it suited him.
    Her fifth day on the job, she and Kit went out to lunch together with Dane Lassiter’s wife, Tess. Dane and Tess had a little boy and a little girl, and Tess seemed to regard both children as miracles. Later, Kit told her that Dane had been convinced that he couldn’t have a child. Tess had loved him helplessly, obsessively, for years. It had taken an unexpected pregnancy and a near-tragedy to convince Dane that love was worth taking a chance on. Despite their stormy beginnings, the Lassiters were quite an item around town. It was rare to see one without the other, and they usually traveled as a family unit off the job.
    Maggie got to meet Dane Lassiter that same day. The former Texas Ranger was tall and dark, not really a handsome man, but with an authority and self-confidence that were striking. There was just enough arrogance with it to make him attractive. He’d started out with the Houston Police, where he stillhad contacts and from which he’d garnered his first operatives when he opened the detective agency. One of his men and Cord had been police officers together in Houston.
    When they got back to Logan’s offices, Kit told Maggie that the Lassiters were working on a very hot and dangerous assignment—trying to shut down an international agency that was really a smuggler of human cargo. They didn’t stop with illegal immigrants in the United States, either. The agency dealt in child slave labor in west Africa and South America, procuring young children to work in mines and on huge farms and ranches. They even dabbled in child pornography, with a branch office in Amsterdam. They