Desperado Read Online Free

Houston.
    “Sorry to wake you, but we’re in town now. Do you have any idea where you want me to take you?” Davis asked gently.
    “To a nice, comfortable, cheap hotel,” she murmured dryly. “I’m living on my savings until I get another job, and they don’t amount to much.”
    He grimaced. “You should have told him.”
    “Oh, no!” she disagreed. She smoothed her pink-tippedfingernails over her white purse. “I’m not his responsibility. I only wanted to take care of him. Funny, isn’t it? He doesn’t need anybody. He never has.” She turned her eyes out the window. She wasn’t a weepy sort of person. She was strong and spirited and independent. The hard knocks of her life had made her strong. But she was tired and sleepy and she felt Cord’s cold rejection deeply. She was momentarily weak and she didn’t want Davis to see it.
    Davis mumbled something under his breath. It sounded like “damned idiot,” but Maggie wasn’t rising to the bait.
    “It isn’t right,” he said angrily. “Letting you out the door without even knowing if you had a way back to town.”
    “Don’t you dare tell him about the suitcase or the trip,” she said impatiently when she saw the look on his face. “Don’t you dare, Red!”
    “I won’t tell him about the suitcase,” he agreed, mentally crossing his fingers. “There’s a good hotel downtown, not expensive, where my mother stays when she comes to see me,” he added quickly. “You’ll like it.”
    She nodded. “Okay. That’ll do. I think I could sleep for a week.”
    “I don’t doubt it.”
    “Tomorrow, I’ll get a newspaper and find a job.” She yawned again. “Things will look bright tomorrow.”
    “I’m sorry you had such a rough day,” he told her as he pulled up in front of a nice, but nondescript hotel downtown.
    “They’re all rough days, lately,” she murmured with a smile.“Life is trial by fire, didn’t you know? It’s an obstacle course. If you survive it, you get to wear wings and float around feeling sorry for the living!”
    “Think so?” he teased.
    “Of course, when I think about Cord, I want to come back as a stump and trip him twice a day,” she commented dryly. She turned toward him. “Thanks for the ride, Red. Thanks a lot. It would have been a long walk.”
    “No problem.”
    He went around and got her suitcase out for her. She walked into the hotel dragging it behind her. Davis thought he’d never seen such poise, and the thought “grace under fire” came unwillingly to his mind. And Cord Romero could turn his back on a woman like that! The man had to be nuts.
    Maggie checked in, went up to her room, locked the door, took off her pantsuit and fell into the bed. She put Cord’s handsome face out of her mind firmly and closed her eyes. She was asleep seconds later.
     
    Back at the ranch, Cord was sipping coffee and going over ledgers on his computer. He’d spent a lot of time away in recent months, and it was tough catching up on business.
    He wondered sometimes why he didn’t just sell the ranch and move into an apartment. He was all on his own, and he never planned to marry again. Life would be less complicated if he lived out of a suitcase, as he’d done most of his adult life except during his brief marriage. But he loved his cattle, andthe pair of Andalusian horses he’d purchased on his last visit to his cousin in Andalusia, in the south of Spain not too long a drive from the Rock of Gibraltar.
    He leaned back and stared blankly at the black type on the computer screen. He couldn’t get Maggie’s eyes out of his thoughts. When she’d first seen him, before he spoke, those green eyes had been alive with concern, with pleasure, with tentative affection, with joy. So soon, they’d faded to dullness and the joy in them had eclipsed into a sadness that was painful to recall, although she’d quickly hidden it.
    It didn’t take good eyesight to recognize her unrequited love for him. At some level, he’d