she pushed through the front door, the country-western music pouring through the wall-mounted speakers competed with the remembered clack of pool balls. Haley stood beside an arch formed by branding irons, hidden in its shadows. Narrowing her eyes, she peered through the blue haze. Establishments in this part of South Texas didn’t run to separate smoking sections.
Her gaze skimmed the handful of customers at the long curved bar that wrapped clear around to the back of the lounge. She recognized several patrons. She’d waited on them at the country club. Ignoring the sudden, hopeful gleam in one man’s eye and the welcoming wave of another, she turned her attention to the half dozen tables at the rear of the bar.
With a sudden thump of her heart, she spotted two men nursing dew-streaked long-necks at one of the tables. Her glance skimmed past Tyler Murdoch to lock on Luke. His back was to her, but Haley couldn’t mistake the curly black hair cut military short under his summer straw Stetson or the athletic shoulders stretching the seams of his blue denim shirt. Every inch of Luke Callaghan’s powerful, muscular body was imprinted on her memory.
She’d been in love with him for as long as she could remember. The orphaned son of wealthy parents, Luke had grown up on the Callaghan’s lavish estate just north of Mission Creek, cared for by a devoted housekeeper and an absentee uncle not above dipping into his nephew’s trust fund to maintain his free-wheeling lifestyle. Luke and Haley’s brother had been friends since grade school, then roomed together at V.M.I.—Virginia Military Institute—where Luke and Ricky and three other classmates from the local area had formed their own special clique. The Fabulous Five, Haley had secretly labeled them. A band of brothers so tight and close it seemed that nothing could ever shake their friendship.
Ricky Mercado, the brother she adored.
Flynt Carson, scion of one of the old cattle king families that had settled this corner of South Texas.
Spence Harrison, brown-haired, brown-eyed and all male.
Tyler Murdoch, rugged, rough-edged, with an uncanny flair for anything and everything mechanical.
And Luke. Laughing, blue-eyed Luke Callaghan.
Haley had developed severe crushes on each of her brother’s pals at one time or another, but Luke had stolen her heart. She was so young when she’d first tumbled into love with him, just growing into the seductive curves and smoldering Italian looks she’d inherited from her mother. A typical teenage girl, she’d alternated between outrageously blatant attempts to attract Luke’s attention and tongue-tied shyness when she did.
He’d been kind to her, she remembered on a wave of stinging regret for those golden days of her girlhood. Teasing and big-brotherly and kind. If he’d recognized the signs of adolescent fixation, he never let on.
During her college years she’d seen Luke less frequently, but each time she did, she’d fallen a little more in love with him. He and Ricky and the others had joined the marines by then. They made only brief trips home for the holidays or lightning-quick visits en route to some mission or another. To Haley’s chagrin, Luke didn’t spend enough time at home to notice that Ricky’s sister was now all grown up.
If he hadn’t noticed, however, Frank Del Brio certainly had.
Shuddering, Haley recalled how the handsome older man had started hitting on her soon after her graduation from the University of Texas. It shamed her now to admit that his attentions had flattered her at first. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and six-two of solid muscle, Frank could charm the knickers off a nun if he wanted to. Only after Haley had come to understand how deeply Del Brio was involved in her uncle Carmine’s more dangerous undertakings did she try to break things off.
He’d given her a first taste of his temper then, and of his ruthlessness. Her father was in the family business, too, Frank had reminded Haley with a smile. Not as deep as his brother, Carmine, certainly, but deep enough to make him a target for the feds or for rival mob members if the right hints were dropped in the wrong ears. The threat was still hanging heavy on her mind when Frank slid a diamond ring onto her finger.
Then Ricky and Luke and their friends had volunteered for a highly classified, dangerous mission during the Gulf War. To this day Haley knew only vague details of that mission. Her brother never talked about it. Nor did any of the other four. All she knew was that they’d been dropped behind enemy lines, destroyed a biological weapons manufacturing plant, were captured and spent agonizing months as POWs until their commander, Phillip Westin, mounted a daring rescue raid.
The Fabulous Five came home to a hero’s welcome. Haley would never forget the parade held in their honor one blazing June morning. Or their wild, lakeside celebration that night.
That was the night Haley Mercado died.
Two
More than a decade earlier
“Guys! Hey, guys!”
Waving wildly, Haley shouted to the occupants of the powerful speedboat cutting across Lake Maria.
“Luke! Ricky! Over here, darn it!”
With a disgusted huff that lifted the tendrils of her mink-brown hair, Haley gave it up as hopeless. The long shadows creeping across the lake had reached the dock. They couldn’t see her, and she knew they couldn’t hear her above the engine’s roar.
Retreating to the sleek little two-seater sports car she’d parked at the head of the pier, she groped for the headlight switch. It took several bright flashes, but she finally caught the boaters’s attention. The man at the wheel waved, leaned right and brought the craft into a sharp turn.
Haley drifted back down to the dock to await its arrival. Her brother, Ricky, and his four buddies had been water-skiing all afternoon, slicing through the water with reckless abandon. She could certainly understand their craving to feel the sun and the wind on their skin.
They’d more than earned these hours on the lake, considering the morning they’d just put in. From nine o’clock on, the returning POWs had been on display. After all, folks around here considered them gen-u-ine Texas heroes, not to mention poster ads for the United States Marine Corps. Spit-shined, square-shouldered, and heart-stoppingly handsome in their uniforms, they’d ridden in the parade organized in their honor. Then, of course, they’d had to sit under the hot sun, steaming in their high-collared dress blues, while local dignitaries gave long-winded speeches about South Texas’s own. They’d even signed autographs for the kids who’d swarmed the platform after the speeches.
The minute the crowds had dispersed, however, they’d shed their decorum along with their uniforms and headed for the lake. They’d been here for a good five hours, tossing down beer and celebrating their hard-won freedom. The sun was now a flaming ball hanging low above the hills surrounding Lake Maria. If they didn’t come in and dry off soon, they’d be navigating in the dark. More to the point, they’d miss the lavish barbecue Isadora and Johnny Mercado were throwing at their lakeside cottage to welcome Ricky and his friends home.
Leaning her hips against a piling, Haley peered across the rippling water at the approaching boat. Her heart contracted painfully as she made out the features of the man at the wheel. Luke Callaghan stood wide-legged and strong, his bare chest glistening in the slanting rays of the sun. Leather-tough Tyler Murdoch sat beside him. Although she couldn’t make out the figures in the back of the boat, she knew their faces as well as her own. Too-serious Flynt Carson. Intense, intent Spence Harrison. And Ricky, Haley’s adored older brother.
Thank
