“How many girls have you kissed, anyway?”

Ritz slanted a long-lashed glance at his cut lip.

“Not enough. Do you want to be next?” Roque asked.

“No!” All of a sudden, Ritz was staring again at his wide, sensual mouth and wondering what it would feel like on hers.

“Are you sure about that?” He twisted the key and punched on the radio. His fingers tapped on the dash to the salsa beat. “How about we get out and dance?”

“Here?”

His hand brushed her cheek. Electricity sparked through her. She shook her head and he laughed. The shade of the live oaks seemed to wrap them in darkness as they sat there. Beyond his chiseled profile the world was bright, the grasses high and brown, the sky cobalt-blue. And yet being in the darkness with him held more mystery and appeal than anything.

Reaching across her lap, Roque took her hand in his, startling her. When he kissed her fingers, one by one, unfolding them, she burned and ached all over.

“Come on, Ritz, let’s enjoy being outlaws together,” he whispered in a velvet, low tone that was as fascinatingly beautiful as the rest of him.

Also available from MIRA Books and ANN MAJOR

WILD ENOUGH FOR WILLA INSEPARABLE

THE HOT LADIES MURDER CLUB

Marry a Man who will Dance
Ann Major

www.mirabooks.co.uk

I dedicate this book to my beloved mother, Ann Major, whose only advice on the subject of marriage was “Marry a man who will dance.”

Acknowledgments

We make plans. Then real life happens. So it was with this book. I had a vision. Then I wrote something entirely different. During desperate creative moments when I struggled to see my way clear, several people held my hand.

First, I must thank my editor, Tara Gavin, for all that she always does and does so well. All of my books are better because of her. Next, I must thank my husband, Ted, for his infinite patience. My agent, Karen Solem, was extremely helpful. I would like to thank Dianne Moggy and Joan Marlow Golan, as well.

Kay Telle and Cathy Mahon helped me with the horse research by lending me books and letting me visit their horse barns and cherished horses. Dick and Ann Jones are always helpful when it comes to ranching. Geri Rice helped with the completed manuscript and Lydia Suris with the Spanish.

Contents

Prologue

Book 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Book 2

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Book 3

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

Prologue

Beside the fire, as the wood burns black, A laughing dancer in veils of light, Whose dance transforms the darkness to gold

—Adu Abd Allan ben Abi-I-Khisal

Prologue

Houston, Texas

April, 2001

The Harley roared and bucked and writhed under his muscular thighs as wildly as a fresh border whore. And since he was half-Mexican and half-Anglo, and oversexed to boot, Roque Moya was just the man to know.

Not that anyone in Texas called him Moya. Here he was Blackstone, a name he hated, a name most people hated. But not nearly as much as they feared it. His father had seen to that.

The stripes that divided the interstate lanes blurred into a fluid white line flying beneath his wheels. His thickly lashed eyes flashed on the speedometer. One hundred and ten.

He was in too big of a hurry to slow down.

Only when he passed the world famous R.D. Meyer Heart Institute on the outskirts of Houston a few miles later, and the traffic began to thicken, did he use his left foot to gear down.

Fury knotted his gut.

Don’t think about her!

Cities. It was cities he hated. They always seemed like filthy jails. Even up here in el norte, on this side of the border where they were supposed to be safer, cleaner, and more respectable, they were still prisons.

Especially this city which happened to be where his once rich daddy had made himself so notorious by manipulating juries he despised with his well-told lies.

She lived here. She’d married another man and hidden from him here.

His black leather glove gripped the throttle with a vengeance. Thoughts of her up ahead in addition to the soaring speed of his bike gave him an adrenaline rush.

He had a funeral to get to. And he was late. A funeral he was very much looking forward to.

Her husband’s.

Ritz.

He thought of Ritz at the damnedest times. Thought of what she’d done…and what she hadn’t. Thought of her glorious yellow hair blowing in the wind, thought of her blue eyes, how they could change from blue to violet when she got hot for him. She didn’t think she was sexy, but she was.

He had to know why she’d crawled into his bed two months ago, why she’d been so eager to sleep with him, her warm, silky body aquiver. She’d been a perfect fit, better than before.

And yet…she’d kept secrets that night.

If it had been half as good for her as it had for him, why had she gone home to her husband?

Since that night, he’d done some research.

Were all the sordid stories Josh had spread about her true?

Border saint? Or border tramp? Or something in between? Someone far more complex? She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a woman.

And a widow now.

Time to find out who she really was.

He’d waited a hell of a long time for his turn.

Thumpty-thump. His big wheels hit cracked pavement. Big piles of dirt, earth-moving equipment, and cranes littered either side of the interstate. Houston seemed to be falling apart. In the shimmering heat beneath a white soupy sky, the downtown skyscrapers undulated like strippers to the frenzied tempo of his bike. On either side of the freeway, office buildings, signs, restaurants, strip shopping centers, malls and huge parking lots whipped by.

Progress? Were they going to pave the whole damn world? For a second or two he felt like Mad Max roaring to his doom on a crotch-rocket across some crazed, futuristic landscape.

He should have noticed the lanes narrowing, the traffic beginning to hem him in. But he was flying past the blinking yellow lights on the orange barrels and all those little white signs that warned the freeway was under construction before he really saw them.

His mind was on Ritz and the telephone call he had received six hours ago on the ranch.

“…dead!”

“But I thought….”

“Caught us by surprise, too, Roque. Nobody thought he’d go this fast!”

“How?”

“In his sleep…painlessly.”

“How’s she…taking….”

“…too devastated…to even call me! Frankly I’m worried…. And she’s sick. A stomach virus or something.”

For no reason at all that news had gotten him edgy. “How sick?”

“Threw up everywhere. Been at it a week.”

After all she’d been through, nursing a dying man, her formerly rich, famous husband…. His old nemesis, Josh.

So…she’d loved Josh after all. The realization hit him hard.

Ten thousand taillights blazed blood-red. As if on cue, six lanes of vehicles slammed on their brakes all at once.

An eighteen wheeler’s trailer loomed ahead like a solid wall of silver.

“Híjole,” he whispered, easing off the gas, gearing down, braking so fast, his bike went into a skid.

G-forces hurled his powerful, leather-clad body straight at the mirrored trailer. To avoid slamming into it, he put his bike on its side. Sparks flew off his crash bar across asphalt.

Hanging on and hunkering low, a jagged rock sliced his cheek as he hurtled under the eighteen-wheeler. A second later he shot out the other side across two congested lanes of stalled traffic.

An exhaust pipe blistered his stubbly jaw with a wave of hot fumes. A strip of black leather flapped loose from his shoulder.

But he was alive.

“You, son of a bitch!” a man yelled at him.

Gears ground. Brakes slammed again as Roque skidded to a halt just short of the guardrail.

Only when he was stopped did Roque notice the hole in his black jacket and see the blood oozing from his chest.

He was alive. And so was she. All of a sudden he felt a hell of a lot better.

Sudden longing wrenched his being. He saw violet eyes and golden hair spread all over his pillow.

She was free again and so was he.

He lifted the silver St. Jude medal he’d worn around his neck for good luck and kissed it.

Then he began to shake.

“Shit.”

He rolled the throttle and made his rice burner roar.

Where the hell was her house in River Oaks?

Ritz Keller Evans was to the manor born. She was a real lady. Elegant. A princess.

At least she was supposed to be.

She patted her stomach uneasily.

Today she’d certainly dressed the part she was pretending to play—that of Josh’s wealthy, grieving widow.

She wore a black sheath. No jewels. Not even her gold wedding band. That she’d slipped off her finger, maybe a little too eagerly to be buried along with Josh in his coffin.

Her honey-blond hair was swept back. Her skin was so pale and her expression so reserved, few people dared to intrude upon her grief. Very few of the mourners spoke to her. Her own mother and father had refused to come.

Ritz was a Keller, of the legendary Triple K Ranch of south Texas, the last of the big-time, fairy-tale, ranch princesses. And since Texas is founded on the lie that a kingdom of a million acres, thousands of cows and a lot of oil wells should make any girl happy, the headlines about her fascinated a lot of people.

What if they knew the truth? That she was estranged from her family? That she’d slept with her old boyfriend, Roque, the virile cowboy she’d spent years avoiding. Not just any cowboy, but Roque Moya Blackstone, son of odious Benny Blackstone, whom Roque had gotten disbarred. Roque himself was a self-serving, multimillionaire developer of the impoverished colonias she sometimes visited as a nurse. Not so long ago she’d even gotten him fined for building inadequate houses without utilities.

Even if he was Blackstone’s son, being half-Mexican, how could he prey on poor Mexican immigrants?

Better question: knowing who and what he was—how could she have crept into his bed and used him as a stud?

Had she hoped lightning would strike her twice?

Josh’s funeral had her second-guessing herself. She was broke. She hadn’t known what to do with herself when Josh had lost everything and their marriage failed.

Now all she wanted was this baby.

Until Josh’s business had failed and he’d left her, everybody had thought she led a charmed life. Then he’d taken her back, only to die fast. Naturally everybody was curious. Naturally she was photographed, written about, gossiped about

She’d believed in love and marriage and children.

In babies.

How strange that Josh, whom she’d known from childhood, the son of a rancher, should have ended up the richest dot.com king in Houston, only to lose everything as swiftly as he’d made it. Still, for five years they’d lived in this castle in River Oaks, Houston’s most reputed posh enclave for its millionaires and billionaires, especially those who have a flair for high drama or scandal.

Unconsciously she pressed against her thickening waistline. Just as quickly, her slim fingers fluttered away before Mother Evans or any of Josh’s friends could see.

Nobody could know. Not her estranged family. Not Josh’s. Not Jet, her long-time girlfriend, nor Jet’s saintly father, Irish Taylor.

Nobody.

Especially not the baby’s real father.

Not until Josh was properly buried and all his friends and family had gone home; not until Ritz was a long way from Texas and the gossips who watched her every move, would she breathe easily.

This time she had to carry her baby full term. That would be her atonement. What else did she owe him?

She was equally determined there would be no nasty rumors or newspaper smears, no counting up of months, no wondering how Josh could have gotten her pregnant in his condition.

Ritz had known she was pregnant even before there had been any symptoms or visible signs. One day she had awakened in this house of death and broken dreams, and opened her window. The sweet peas that climbed her trellis had glowed brighter and smelled sweeter. She had breathed in their fresh fragrance and felt queasy, and she had known.

She’d whispered the name, “Roque,” and touched her stomach.

Then she’d shivered and snapped the window shut, realizing he was the last person she could ever tell and the last person she could ever desire.

Fear of him made her heart flutter when a very tall, dark masculine figure opened her front door. But it was only Irish Taylor, her father’s brilliant foreman. His craggy face was kind as he nodded at her.

Before the baby, Ritz would have said she wished she’d never met Roque Moya Blackstone. Roque, biker, cowboy, horseman, womanizer. Roque, who was way too sexy whether he covered his black hair with a red bandanna and rode his bike or whether he wore his Stetson and sat astride a prized stallion.

Daddy had always said he was the reason her life had gone wrong. She had learned a long time ago, that nothing was as simple or as black and white as Daddy had said.

Sometimes Ritz wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t seen him dance by firelight on that long-ago summer night. If some shiftless cowboy hadn’t left the Blackstone Ranch gate open the next afternoon. What if the Kellers and the Blackstones hadn’t been feuding? And what if Jet hadn’t given into temptation and locked Ritz inside “the forbidden kingdom?”

What if Jet hadn’t seen Roque naked and stolen his clothes? What if Ritz hadn’t been so curious? What if Roque hadn’t been so stormily virile and turned-on all the time?

What if he hadn’t stolen Ritz’s mare, Buttercup?

What if he hadn’t put his hands around her waist and lifted her up beside him, whispering in that sexy, velvet voice of his, “Do you want to fly?”

But he had done all those things…and more.

She’d only been fourteen.

Too young to fall in love.

Then he had to go and pretend to get hurt saving her and winning her heart. She’d given him her treasured St. Jude medal, and of course, he’d refused to give it back, and ever since, she’d been caught in the tangle of his dark spell.

Yes, looking back, Ritz could pinpoint the exact moment her life took its fatal turn. It had been the night she’d watched Roque Blackstone dance like a savage half-naked on that beach. The driftwood had burned like fire and gold, and she’d felt something alien and thrilling; she’d come alive and been changed…forever.

And a woman is prone to look back, especially at her husband’s funeral—when she’s made huge mistakes, especially man mistakes, that seem to grow and compound and haunt, mistakes that keep on rebreaking her heart until she loses all hope of peace of mind and has no faith that she can ever get her life right—at least where men are concerned.

But now she had his baby to think of and plan for.

Just because she made bad choices, did that mean that her entire life was ruined? That she couldn’t be a good mother? That she couldn’t start over? Somewhere far away from Texas and the scandals of her marriage and the grandeur of the Keller name?

One thing she knew—her heart was broken in so many pieces; it would take her a lifetime to pick them all up. She was through with men and marriage and wealth and fame.

Most of all, she was through with Roque Blackstone, the man who had shattered her as a girl and had the power to shatter her again.

If she could just get through the funeral, she would finally be free to make her own choices.

Until then she had to pretend.

Her lavish ballroom with its elaborate commode, twin fauteuils, and nineteenth century bronzes was so redolent with the cloying sweetness of white roses, Ritz almost gagged. Tables of crab, shrimp, and salmon were piled high. Unthinkingly her hand kept caressing her stomach protectively.

The organist was playing “Amazing Grace.” The newspaper obituary had been long and impressive. Everything about the grand River Oaks funeral, even his young widow in black, about whom so much had been written, was just as the deceased had planned it—solemn, stately, regal, in a word—perfect.

As outwardly perfect as the sham that had passed for his life.

His mother, queen for the day in her rustling black silk and showy diamonds, was a whirlwind of decorum and efficiency mincing from room to room in that tippy-toed gait that made Ritz want to scream. Mother Evans’s smile was even more fixed and pompous than Josh’s had been in his coffin, and she greeted everyone, except Ritz, with moist eyes and a soft, saccharine voice. From time to time she even brushed a nonexistent tear from her well-powdered, parchment cheek.

No wonder Josh had been unable to love Ritz or make her feel as Roque had. But there was no going back, no changing Josh…or his mother. Or herself.

Plump old Socorro knew the truth and sympathized. But then she had always had a soft spot for Roque.

Poor Socorro. Usually, she spent her days ironing upstairs where she could smoke and hide out and watch her telenovelas. Today Mother Evans had Socorro racing in and out of the kitchen with heavily laden trays.

The good reverend could not seem to stop with the Bible verses, either.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life…Look at the birds of the air…consider the lilies of the field.

One more verse and Ritz was afraid she’d pop out of her black sheath.

Grief? Nerves? Guilt? Terror?

All of the above.

But it was her fear of Roque that turned her fingers into claws around her china coffee cup and made her head drum.

What if he did come?

Not much longer…and this day that Josh had so painstakingly planned would be over. Ritz had tried to talk him into a simple ceremony, but he’d selected his favorite Armani suit, saying he wanted his embalmed body to rest in state in the grand salon of their mansion for the whole day before the funeral.

So, all of yesterday, legions of Houston dignitaries had trooped by his polished casket to tell Ritz how wonderful he looked and how exhausted she appeared, poor dear. She’d stood there, enduring hugs and murmured condolences, feeling sicker and sicker, until Josh’s owlish, gray face in the casket had started to spin, and she’d fainted.

The dead roses along with the aroma of smoked salmon were really getting to her. So, she moved out of the dining room. Oh, how she longed to breathe fresh air—to never ever come back inside this ostentatious house that she couldn’t afford on six acres in Houston’s posh heart.

“She’s shameless…all that bleached yellow hair,” pronounced her busybody neighbor, Mrs. Beasley to Mother Evans as Ritz glided past them.

The scarlet poppy on Mrs. B’s big black hat swished back and forth like a conductor’s wand.

Mother Evans fixed Ritz with a chilly smile.

“I live next door.” The old lady’s voice lowered to a whisper, assured that everybody including Mother Evans would stop talking and listen. “The things that have gone on in this house since he married her—”

Ritz stared at a vase of roses on the fabulous commode by Riesener that Josh had found in Paris.

“—all those young boys—”

When? Oh when would it ever be over?

One minute Mrs. Beasley was queen of her gossipy little clique.

“—never loved your poor boy—”

But I thought I did.

“—high school sweethearts—”

Socorro let out a muffled cry. The front door slammed open, and a gust of hot, humid air swirled inside along with the tall, lean man clad in black leather.

Noses high in the air, everybody turned to gape at the biker with the windburned face, who stood framed in the rectangular white glare.

Only when he knew he had their attention did he shut the door, and so quietly, his gentleness was hostile. Like a magnet, he pulled every well-bred woman’s gaze into his bad-boy orbit.

“Roque….”

A green wave of nausea hit Ritz. Her heart began to pound like a rabbit’s. She didn’t know whether to freeze or run.

It wasn’t him—

Who else had high cheekbones that looked like they’d been hacked with blades? Who else would show up at a funeral with a red bandanna tied like a skullcap over his head to hold back blue-black hair that was way too long? Who else would sport a silver stud at his earlobe…in River Oaks…on such a sacred day?

Her head buzzed.

Or show so little respect to a man of Josh’s stature as to wear a black leather jacket with a four-inch rip at the shoulder?

Roque’s black-lashed, green eyes drilled Ritz. The frank sexuality in them turned her insides to water as they had that first night when he’d danced so wildly before that leaping fire.

She fought to look anywhere but at him.

Impossible.

She winced and had to hold herself in check when she saw that there was blood on his cheek and that he was limping a little.

A dozen voices interrupted Mrs. B.

“What’s Blackstone doing here?” Irish, Ritz’s father’s foreman, demanded almost savagely.

Roque’s green eyes never left her.

Ritz felt as if electric currents vibrated in the air around her.

When she stiffened, the lines under his eyes tightened imperceptibly.

His skin was so brown. Everybody else was so white.

“Excuse me,” she whispered to no one in particular, desperate to get away from him and everybody else’s prying eyes.

A waiter held up a platter of lobster and pink salmon on a bed of parsley and offered to make her a plate. The fishy odor made her throat go dry. Hot little salty drops popped out on her forehead.

She couldn’t breathe. “No…please…just…take it…back to the kitchen…anywhere…”

She fought the urge to be sick and then bent double.

The last thing she saw was Roque. His swarthy, piratical face went white and his green eyes brightened with fierce concern. Then he rushed to help her.

“No…no….”

Tight spasms sent the contents of her stomach roiling up her throat.

The shock of his warm fingers at her waist made her forget everything else.

“Don’t touch me!”

“You okay?” he rasped.

Her cup and saucer smashed to the floor.

She tried to stand up and spin free of him, but his hand locked on her arm like a vise.

She expected his nastiest, most mocking smile.

The tenderness in his rough voice took her breath away as he dabbed at her mouth with his bandanna. His black hair fell in wild disarray around his shoulders.

“Are you going to have a baby?” His voice was raw; his glittering eyes stark and naked.

No. No. Just say no.

But she couldn’t. All the lies she should have shouted died in her throat.

“So it’s mine.” Again, his eyes met hers squarely, honestly.

“No. Of course not.” She fought to loosen herself from his bruising grip.

“You owe me the truth—this time!”

Still, she could only stand there, mute, agonized.

Finally, she pushed against his chest, but the more she fought, the more like steel his hands and arms and huge body became. She kicked at him and lost her balance, the leather sole of her shoe sliding on the polished floor.

Her hand hit the parquet floor before he could catch her. A sliver of china slashed her arm. Blood pooled.

Somebody screamed.

A woman.

Surely not her.

Then why was everybody staring at her? And why was Roque’s brown face spinning like a carved god’s in the midst of Josh’s shocked friends?

“I’ve got you now,” he said gently. “You’ve cut yourself.”

Livid red dribbled from her arm onto his brown hand and then to the white china chips. He lifted her to her feet.

Jet and Irish, dark figures in black, raced through the fascinated throng of mourners.

“—darling! Your coffee cup—” Somehow Mother Evans and Irish deftly pushed Roque aside.

“—shattered it!” Jet said.

“Your arm! Oh, dear!” Mother Evans began to fuss. “And you were sick again…Your dress!”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Irish said, examining her arm, and although he was a cowboy, he would be the one to know.

Jet took over. “Socorro, get me a towel.”

And still, Mrs. Beasley couldn’t stop.

“—Josh was a gardener, grew all his own roses. She cut every one for the funeral, and then forgot to put them in water and let them wither—”

“—too bad she couldn’t be faithful—”

“—big money—”

“—hers. Keller money, you know—”

“—thought they cut her off—”

Through it all, Roque stared at her. Only at her.

“—all that messy yellow hair. She doesn’t look like a border saint to me—”

“—there’s too many of them—”

“—shouldn’t help them—”

“—overrunning us—”

“—her work at the colonias was just her excuse to get away from Josh so she could sleep with all those other men—”

Roque’s aquiline features hardened.

Her own nerves clamored as if every cell in her being was tuned to him. Only to him.

She was pregnant…with his child…again. And he knew it.

He wasn’t a powerless boy from Mexico, the despised son of his evil rich white father anymore.

Jet had the towel around Ritz’s arm now and was squeezing. “It’s just a scratch. You’ll be fine in a minute.”

“Thank you,” Ritz whispered brokenly. “I—I think I need to go upstairs and lie down.”

“—didn’t shed a single tear at the wake,” came the unstoppable Mrs. Beasley.

“I did, too!” Ritz whispered. “When I was chopping onions…for Mother Evans’s caviar.”

Just then Roque’s dark, masculine eyebrow flicked upward in sardonic mockery.

“Shh,” Jet said.

“I promised Josh I would cry. That’s why I chopped….”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jet said, pulling her gently away from the others.

“No…not that way…” she pleaded when Roque stepped in front of them.

But it was already too late.

“I’ll take it from here,” Roque said, blocking their path. His jaw was square, his fierce eyes dark emerald. The cut on his cheek blazed.

Everybody held his breath, but anyone who expected a scene was disappointed. Jet stepped meekly aside. And Ritz let herself be led by Roque Blackstone upstairs to her bedroom.

Not even Irish attempted to rescue her.

The minute they were in her room Roque closed the door, his eyes zeroing in on the pile of slashed strips of black fabric scattered messily all over the floor and then on her open suitcases spread across her bed.

Ritz went white. Why hadn’t she thought? She should have directed him to any other room. But she’d been too upset to think.

Roque knelt and lifted a scrap of black wool and then another of silk and waggled them beneath her nose. “What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing.” She took a breath. “While you amuse yourself, I’ll go brush my teeth.”

Next he leaned across her bed to finger a lacy bra and a pair of sheer panties that spilled out of her suitcase. “Nothing? Taking a trip?”

Her cheeks heated. “Give those to me!” When she tried to snatch her panties from him, he held on, stretching the elastic.

“Nice panties,” he said. “Fit for a princess.” He let them go with a snap.

“I—I…went to the closet to hunt for a black dress…to wear today,” she began in a rush, wadding her panties, throwing them at her suitcase.

“Really?” he drawled even as he absorbed every detail about her, every nuance of expression—reading her.

She turned her back on him and headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She wasn’t about to tell him she’d been like a crazy woman last night. That suddenly she’d been snipping, first her best black silk, then her favorite black wool jersey, not that she could have worn anything that hot today.

She’d cut and torn—until she had piles of tiny squares that she couldn’t cut any smaller. Even then she’d started shredding the remnants.

Hours later, Jet, who was a fancy lawyer now, had found her in the middle of the bed, yanking at the tangles of black threads like a madwoman.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t cry and I’m supposed to wear black. Only I cut up my best black dresses,” Ritz had said. “Even my slinkiest black nightgown.”

“Well, you wouldn’t want to wear a slinky nightgown to a funeral.”

Ritz had started laughing and hadn’t been able to stop.

When Ritz came out of the bathroom, Roque’s face was hard. Every muscle in his body was like a coiled spring. No, Ritz couldn’t tell him any of that.

Suddenly she burst out laughing just as she had last night with Jet.

“Get a grip,” he said quietly, rushing toward her. “It’s a good thing you’re packed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re pregnant with my child.”

“No….”

“A very simple test will prove me right.”

“You wouldn’t….”

His hard eyes lingered on her belly. “I would do anything to protect my unborn child this time—even marry you.”

“I…I’m never ever getting married again.”

“Oh, yes, you are. Very soon. To me, querida.”

“No!” Blood pounded in her head. This couldn’t be happening!

“Why, are you doing this…You…you…don’t love me….”

“You couldn’t get pregnant by your fancy husband, could you?” he whispered, his low voice dangerously smooth. “Or by any of your other lovers? You needed a stud. Someone you knew for sure could get you pregnant—even if I am a Mexican.”

She began backing away from him toward her bed.

“You slept around on him, didn’t you?”

Her stiff steps were awkward, but she didn’t deny what he accused her of.

“Didn’t you?” he demanded in a harsher tone. “I was nothing to you. Then you went back to him so you could pass my kid off as his.”

“No….”

“How many others did you sleep with…before you crawled into my bed?”

“That’s not what happened and you know it.”

He grabbed her, crushing her arms as he pulled her into a tight embrace. “Don’t lie to me—ever again.”

Her breathing was rapid and uneven.

“You still think you’re the princesa and I’m the Mexican lowlife.”

She couldn’t look up at him, not even when his hand lifted her chin and she felt him stripping her with his eyes.

“You used me as a stud—Well, querida, this Mexican stallion comes with a stud fee. And that fee is marriage…to me.”

“But you don’t want this baby. You just want the ranch.”

He drew a long contemptuous breath. “Do you ever think about that little grave with all the buttercups on top of it?”

She whitened.

“You’re not killing another baby of mine.”

His voice was so sharp and hate-filled; his words cut her like blows.

She gasped. “You’re crazy.”

“Yes, I am,” he murmured, drawing in a harsh breath as he pulled her closer. “Kiss me and we’ll seal this crazy deal.”

“What?”

“We’re going to be married. Man and wife. And all that that means.”

“I—I just want to be myself. Me. For once. Not somebody’s wife. Never yours!”

“You should have thought about that before you used me to get pregnant.”

She mistrusted the look in his eyes and the hardness in his voice. But before she could twist free, he crushed her body into his. Even as she fought him, his lips covered hers.

There was domination as well as the desire to punish in his devouring kiss. Always before he’d been so gentle, so infinitely tender.

And yet, even as his mouth ravaged hers, underneath this assault, surely this brutal stranger was Roque. Roque whose bronzed body was made of molten flesh. Roque, who was so fantastic and tender in bed. Roque, who always made love to her for hours. Roque, who turned her into a wanton. Roque, who made her forget why their love could never be whenever he so much as touched her.

The last time they’d made love, he’d kissed every inch of her skin from the hollow beneath her throat to the tips of her toes.

On a shudder she nestled closer to him, opening her lips to his endlessly, inviting his tongue. When she arched, his body tensed. He groaned. In the next breath, he ripped his mouth from hers.

Always, always he made her want and ache and need. She sighed, starved for more, so much more, and yet hating herself because she felt that way.

“Marriage is the only way I know how to stop you,” he said hoarsely, warningly, as if he despised both her and despised himself.

“You can’t be serious…about this. About…us.”

His fathomless eyes bored into hers. “Are you going downstairs to tell them our happy news?”

When she hesitated, his gravelly tone grew ever more bitter with sarcasm. “Or do you want me to do it?”

Nobody could peel their eyes off the white marble staircase. But like any audience when the stars go offstage, Josh’s mourners were getting restless.

“—simply awful…her up there…all this time…with him—”

“—today of all days—”

“I really need to pick Chispa up at the groomer’s before he closes. If I leave her there too long she always potties on the front seat.”

“We can’t just go…not without telling her goodbye. How would that look?”

“As if she cares about that?”

The idle chatter caused a mad rushing in one person’s ears.

Then a door clicked open upstairs, and two tall, black-clad bodies appeared on the white marble landing beneath the glittering Murano chandelier and stood there for a long moment, waiting.

The voices and laughter died abruptly and a brittle hush settled over the house. Everybody, especially the observer, was impatient for the final curtain of Ritz’s little farce.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

Blackstone’s dark hand gripped Ritz’s as he dragged her forward to the railing. Her yellow hair had come loose and spilled like butter over her shoulders. Her stricken eyes glowed like dying purple stars in a porcelain doll’s face. She was so white. He was so dark.

She was the perfect tragic queen.

Beautiful. Spellbinding.

Even if she was heartbroken, Roque made her come alive. She seemed ablaze.

Had the horny bastard screwed her up there in the bedroom? Did he think the Triple K was already his?

Blackstone. The name alone made the observer’s flesh crawl. But a practiced smile masked the wild hatred as well as the other dark emotions that flare so easily in the damaged soul.

Without further preamble, Blackstone said, “We’re getting married.”

When a look of terror flashed across Ritz’s face and she tried to free herself, Blackstone yanked her closer.

His triumphant eyes roamed, meeting the observer’s ever so briefly, causing as always that involuntary little shudder of fear before the rage took over.

Had he seen what was there?

No. Ritz wasn’t the only one who could pretend.

The smile, the perfect facade was in place.

Nobody suspected. Not Ritz. Not Moya.

Nobody would—until the killings started again.

Then it would be too late.

Book 1

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

—William Butler Yeats

1

South Texas

Border ranch lands

1990

“Do you want to see a naked boy?” Jet whispered, her giggles sly and excited, her breath hot and tickly against Ritz’s ear.

Ritz shivered when she remembered the boy, not a boy really, a man, dancing by his campfire on the beach last night. He’d sensed her there in the darkness. He’d moved away from the fire, held out his hand. Her blood had beat like a savage’s. She’d wanted to dance, too. But she’d run. Not that she was about to admit last night to Jet.

“First the sheriff’s puma! Now a naked boy!” Ritz said offhandedly. “Mother’s always saying you’re a born troublemaker.”

“Oh, she is, is she? But, I’m fun, and you’re boring. It didn’t take much to talk you into sneaking off to see the puma!”

“There’ll be hell to pay when I get home, though!”

The two girls were riding bareback. Ritz’s skinny, sunburned legs dangling lazily in front of Jet’s more shapely denim-clad limbs as Buttercup clopped along.

Ritz forced herself to think about cats instead of the boy last night, so she wasn’t really listening. Pumas, to be exact. Very large pumas that followed the rivers up from Mexico just to eat little girls in Texas. Especially now, ’cause the Mexicans down in the Yucatán were burning off their crops.

Or at least that’s what she thought Sheriff Johnson had said.

And ever since they’d left the courthouse in Carita, Ritz’s eyes had been fixed on the fence lines on either side of the ranch road the Kellers were forced to share with the Blackstones. Particularly, she watched the Blackstone’s ten-foot-high electric game fence. The grass over there was so much higher—high enough for a big cat to crouch in.

As usual, she’d forgotten her hat, a mistake Jet, who was careful of her pale skin and more fragile beauty, never made. If Mother would be mad they’d sneaked off—she’d really be in a rage that Ritz was sunburned.

It was a six-mile ride into town. So, it was a six-mile ride back. Which meant—they’d been in the sun way too long. And since they were nearly home, facing Mother was a growing worry. Not that Mother would punish, but she’d tell Daddy.

So every so often, Ritz forgot about cats for a second or two and licked her blistered lips, but that only made them sting worse.

“I said I know where there’s a cute naked boy!”

This time Jet’s lascivious challenge penetrated.

Did she know about last night?

“You wanna see him or not?”

Ritz burst into nervous giggles. Then she hid her face in case Jet might suspect.

“Not just any boy,” Jet persisted.

“Who?”

“Promise you won’t tell your mother—”

“Do I ever—”

“Roque Blackstone.”

“Oh, God!” Ritz clamped a hand over her mouth. She knew. Somehow she managed to make her tone innocent. “Imagine! Just like the puma—Roque Blackstone is up from Mexico!”

Jet lowered her voice. “And his thingy is almost as big as Cameron’s.”

“No! No way! You’re kidding!” Surely she would have noticed that last night.

Cameron was Ritz’s daddy’s bad-tempered blood bay stallion, the very same horse that had tried to kick her brother, Steve, and four cowboys to death two days ago.

“Well, you’ll just have to sneak into the forbidden kingdom and see for yourself…little girl, same as I did. Then you’ll know for sure.”

More giggles. More pretended innocence. “You didn’t sneak over there!”

“Did, too!”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon. The day before that, too. He swims there every afternoon…at five.”

“Wow! That’s just like you…to sneak over there and watch him every day. What if he saw you—”

Ritz remembered the firelight flashing on that strong bronzed arm he’d held out to her before she’d run.

“I was sorta hoping he would.”

Jealousy stabbed Ritz’s heart. Not that she knew why she felt pain.

They were nearly to the forbidden Blackstone gate. At least it had been forbidden ever since Uncle Buster had lost all his money and shot himself right in front of the funeral home out of consideration for Aunt Pam. Less than a month later his widow had repaid his consideration by marrying Benny Blackstone, the man who had driven him to suicide in the first place.

It was Ritz’s lifetime ambition to end the feud between her father and Benny Blackstone and become another legendary Keller lady and have her portrait hang in the family gallery beside her ancestors for the next hundred years.

Only Ritz wasn’t thinking about the dumb feud or her saintly Uncle Buster or even her own grand ambition.

She was thinking about the magical boy last night and about Cameron’s gigantic thingy. Not that the cowboys had called it that. They had a dirtier word, a word Ritz had memorized on the spot. Not that she dared repeat it—ever.

It had taken three trainers and Steve to lead the muscular stallion into the breeding room, and his thingy had nearly dragged the ground. The moment he’d seen the mare in full heat, the aroused stallion had gone wild, kicking and screaming. First off, he’d bitten a hunk out of the mare’s shoulder. Then he’d wheeled loose from the trainers, rearing, nearly kicking the stall door to pieces in his rage. He’d even taken a run at Irish, the foreman, Jet’s daddy.

When Cameron had mated, the noise in the stall had nearly deafened Ritz. All that male energy and fury and power. All that charged, animal excitement. The stallion had reared and bitten and plunged. Ritz had put her hands on her ears and clamped her knees around the rafter. Eyes wide-open, she’d watched him knock the mare down and mount her. Maybe Ritz would have still been there, shocked as all get-out but excited, too, if Daddy hadn’t come in and yelled up at her to get.

The beautiful boy last night hadn’t seemed nearly so cruel.

“If…if he’s… I—I mean if it’s as big as Cameron’s…does it make him mad like it does Cameron…I mean when he sees a girl?”

Both girls got real quiet for a moment as they remembered the blood streaming from the mare’s shoulder after the crazed brute had finished with her.

“If Roque had seen you, what would he have done to you?” Ritz whispered.

The boy last night hadn’t fit with the facts that went with him. Roque was Benny Blackstone’s oldest son, the bad son everybody said Benny didn’t like too much. He’d flunked school last year. His mother was a Mexican, a real Mexican, who lived down in Mexico. She was a Spanish teacher and Benny’s second ex-wife. She didn’t let Roque come to Texas much. Only sometimes in the summer. His father only invited Roque because Caleb loved him so much.

Roque was supposed to be sulky and hateful whenever he did come. His own father hated him. Everybody said it was because he’d nearly gotten Caleb killed that first visit when he raced with the bulls.

Caleb, the younger, golden brother, was everybody’s favorite, especially his father’s. Caleb’s mother had been Benny’s favorite wife, too.

Roque was bad with girls. So bad he got sent home early last summer for something he did with Natasha Thomas in the back seat of her car. Natasha was four years older than he was, and she worked in a bar. Worse—she was Chainsaw Hernandez’s girl. Chainsaw was in prison on a drug charge.

“Remember Natasha?” Ritz added, her stomach quivering as she remembered that wild, haunting Spanish music and Roque’s deliberately provocative, sensual dance. He’d known she was there and had tried to lure her into the amber glow of firelight. “What do you think Roque would’ve done to you—if he’d seen you?”

Jet smiled so eagerly Ritz wanted to strike her. “He’s so huge.”

“Well, it…it must be awfully heavy. How does he stuff it into his jeans? How does he even walk?”

“If you go see, you’ll know for yourself how he stuffs it in, now won’t you? But don’t let him catch you, or he might stuff…”

Ritz cupped her fingers over her mouth. “You’re lying. He’s not anywhere near that big. You’re just boy crazy.”

“You will be, too, when you grow up.”

If you only knew…

Jet was fifteen. She had curly black hair, blue eyes, and creamy pale skin. Maybe she wasn’t boy crazy. Maybe it was like Jet said—boys were just crazy about her.

Who could blame them? She had flair and an exciting personality.

“A flair for trouble,” Mother said.

Ritz felt a fresh surge of jealousy along with a secret wish to be just like her friend.

Jet was developed. She had big breasts and a tiny waist and looked way better than any of those skinny models in the magazines. All the other girls at school were still as flat as pancakes—like Ritz. Most of them wore braces, same as Ritz, too. And glasses. Ritz hated her awful wirerimmed glasses.

“Guess what else?” Jet whispered. “Yesterday I stole his clothes! I watched him run home naked, too!”

It was still early June. Even so, the afternoon was swelteringly hot. Both girls were so sweaty, they smelled worse than Buttercup.

“I’d rather see Roque Blackstone naked than see that old captured puma,” Jet said.

That was saying a lot, but Ritz understood. Still, the cat in its chain-link cage under the live oak tree behind the courthouse had really been something. Maybe not worth plodding twelve endless miles in pea soup humidity under a hot sun. Maybe not worth getting yourself burned purple so your nose would peel off and Mother would get really mad and tell Daddy—but mighty exciting, nevertheless.

The cat had tricked Ritz into coming up real close. Its eyes had been slitted as if he were dozing. When Ritz had crept too near his chain-link cage, Jet had poked him with a stick. He’d lunged so hard he’d flipped his cage over on top of Ritz. She’d screamed and he’d snarled and yowled.

Ritz had clutched her silver St. Jude medal and yelped out a quick prayer. Sheriff Johnson had dropped his half-eaten doughnut in the scuffle to pull her away before the cat could claw her. But she wasn’t ever going to forget those pointy gold ears pricking forward after he settled down on his haunches or those big beady eyes tracking her and staring straight through her.

“Does he eat people?” Jet had wanted to know.

Jet wasn’t usually as interested in the natural world as Ritz, but the cat had been impressive, even to Jet.

“Only skinny little girls…like your four-eyed friend here…or a fat, lazy horse, or a brat fool enough to poke him with a stick….” The sheriff’s laughter boomed when Buttercup whinnied. Ritz gulped the last of her cola and hid behind Jet.

Sheriff Johnson was a stocky man with heavy jowls and a permanently red, large, pie-flat face. Mother said he could mess up a uniform faster than any law officer she’d ever seen but he shared his doughnuts. Once he’d let Ritz wear his badge for a whole day.

Suddenly Johnson said, “Don’t you worry none. He only eats little girls…only when he can’t get a deer.”

Jet heaved a deep, relieved sigh, for the ranch was well stocked with deer. But Ritz had felt sorry for the deer.

“So, what’s he doing here?” Jet had asked. “How’d you catch him?”

Johnson had shoved his Stetson back and mopped his red brow. There were dark sweat stains under his sleeves. “If it’s hot here, it’s hell down in Mexico. Those damn Mexicans have been burning off their crops down in the Yucatán, and the fires got out of control, so now all the animals are on the move. Pumas follow the rivers, you know.”

“What about creeks?” Ritz asked in a trembling tone, pushing her glasses up her perspiring purple nose.

Keller Creek traced a meandering, north-south path through the Triple K when there was water in it.

“Same thing as a river. Cats come out when the sun’s going down. They crouch low in tall grasses to stalk their prey.”

“Do they really eat horses?”

“Sure they do.” He leaned down so his jowly face and bulging brown eyes were level with theirs. “Cats are killers. They eat anything that moves. They’ll jump you from a tree. Had a horse a cougar jumped once. No man ever spread his legs across that mare’s back again.”

Static buzzed on his walkie-talkie. Grabbing it, he barked, “You girls better get. You’ve got that long ride and I’ve got work to do. Cattle rustlers. You be careful going home, you hear? Don’t you get yourselves gobbled up by a cat, you hear!”

Ritz had been watching the sun sink ever lower, wiping the sweat off her lenses, and on the lookout for cats ever since. Every time Buttercup pricked her ears back or snorted, Ritz imagined pointy ears in the high brown grasses. Every time they passed a hole animals had dug to burrow under Benny Blackstone’s high electric game fence, she wondered if a puma could slink under it.

The caged puma and the cool safety of the air-conditioned courthouse were nearly six miles behind them now. So were the frosty colas out of the courthouse soda pop machine. If Ritz didn’t get a drink real soon, her tongue was going to swell and her throat was going to close.

It was really, really hot, hotter than it usually was even in the dead of summer. The grasses that had been fresh and green and sweet smelling in May were already seared brown around the edges. The last of the red and yellow wildflowers were wilted and dusty, and the air smelled a little smoky.

Ritz squinted up at the cloudless sky. A blindingly bright sun broiled them from above while the black asphalt steamed them from below. Their sleeveless, cotton blouses and cutoffs were so wet; they stuck to their bodies like glue. On Jet, the effect was so sexy, the sheriff’s young deputy had eagerly rushed off to buy her a cola. Ritz had thrust out her flat chest and stared at him hopefully, but in the end she’d had to dig in her pockets and plunk in her own quarters.

Ritz’s sunburn made her feel feverish. Her temple throbbed. She was almost glad Jet had mentioned Roque. At least, thinking about his thingy had distracted her from being so scared of cats.

“He must’ve been something running home naked….”

Roque was so dark and handsome and fierce. Even before she’d snuck up on him last night, she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off him. Not that she got to see him much. There was the dumb old feud. He was a Blackstone, and she was a Keller. Their families avoided each other.

Last summer though, she’d seen him once at the hardware store in town buying fencing. She’d stared at him, and he’d taken off his aviator glasses and stared back so intently, she’d grabbed a pair of pliers as if she was interested in them. Only she hadn’t been able to pretend. It was like he smelled her fascination. That single glance before he shoved his glasses back in place had set her heart racing.

It had been weird, the way she hadn’t even looked at those pliers. Just at him. Her hands had begun to shake, and she’d dropped the pliers with a clatter. He’d dashed over, as silently as a cat, and she’d stared at his weird silver-toed boots.

Then Daddy had yelled at her and she’d run. Roque had laughed and thrown the pliers into the pile of stuff the Blackstones were buying.

“His father beats him,” Jet said out of the blue.

“How come?” Ritz asked, remembering the way Roque had swayed, bronzed and shirtless, before the fire.

“He’s crazy. First time he came, the cowboys were working cattle, and he jumped in the pens with the bulls. He set off a string of firecrackers and nearly got himself trampled. Then Caleb jumped in, too. Only he fell. Even though Roque dived under a bull to save him, his daddy beat Roque and would’ve killed him if Pablo hadn’t stopped him. He’s got scars…everywhere.”

Ritz shivered, remembering the purple marks on his back. Just thinking about Roque getting beatings after saving his brother made Ritz feel sorry for him.

To their right, on Keller land, a patch of dense brush was thick with mesquite and live oak. Ahead, she could see their tall white, ranch house with its welcoming shady verandas shimmering in the heat waves. Soon they would be past the Blackstone gate and on their own private road.

On the left, a caliche road meandered from the Blackstone gate across open pasture vanishing into the distant trees.

Ritz shuddered. The gate gave her nightmares. Used to, it had never been locked. Used to, Blackstone Ranch had made up two divisions of the Triple K. Used to, Uncle Buster had been alive and married to Aunt Pam, and Ritz’s cousins, Kate and Carol had lived there.

Benny Blackstone had married Aunt Pam just a month after Uncle Buster had died. Bad things had happened behind the gate ever since.

When the gate rattled, Buttercup’s forelegs skewered to the right.

“It’s just a silly old gate, girl,” Ritz said even as she grabbed the mare’s neck and clung.

In Ritz’s nightmares the ten-foot high electric fence that separated the Triple K and Blackstone Ranch had been cut, and the gate was swinging back and forth. Always she was running down the caliche road to find her cousins. Always, she ended up in Campo Santo, the ancient Keller cemetery, standing over two open graves.

Sometimes she’d wake up screaming. Then she’d remember Kate and Carol lived up in San Antonio now with Grandma Keller because Benny Blackstone didn’t want them. He only wanted Aunt Pam, who was beautiful and famous. He only wanted his own boys, even Roque, the bad one he beat.

All of a sudden the lopsided shadow of the Blackstone’s massive gate slanted across the road, swallowing them whole as it did in her nightmare.

Ritz made a strangling sound. Clutching the reins and knotting fingers into Buttercup’s mane, she urged the mare faster.

Wings whooshed above them. Jet clenched Ritz’s waist tighter and then pointed toward the gate. “What’s that?”

Shadows of black wings swept low along the grassy shoulder beside the game fence.

Buttercup pinned her ears back and jerked her head.

“Easy. Easy,” Ritz said as the big black bird made a crash landing on a thick gray stone post.

“It’s just a buzzard. That’s all,” she said to Jet.

“Not that dirty old buzzard, silly!” Jet pointed at a bit of gold glitter beside the fence post. “That! It looks like…a…lock….”

Then the wind played in the tops of oaks and rustled the brown grasses so that the bit of gold vanished.

Jet was about to jump down and run see what it was, when another wild gust of wind swung the gate away from the posts.

“Why, it’s open,” Ritz breathed.

Like in my nightmares.

The metal gate banged back into the loose chain hanging down from a stone pillar with a thud that made the chain rattle and the buzzard take off.

Not one for loud sounds, Buttercup snorted and shot forward. When she started bucking, the girls tumbled backward onto sizzling asphalt.

Jet screeched and sprang to her feet. “Ritz, watch out!”

Dark forelegs crashed dangerously near Ritz’s head. Then the gate swung eerily and Buttercup wheeled away.

Ritz clapped her hands to get Buttercup’s attention before the gate slammed and really spooked her.

“Come here, girl….”

Buttercup’s nose was in the air, and her staring eyes that were ringed with black, rolled. Then the mare bolted straight for the gate. Dark mane flying, tail arched high and snapping like a flag, she went off at an angle. She was through the gate, galloping down the caliche road, stirring up puffs of white dust as she dashed toward the woods that concealed the pond and the forbidden Blackstone Ranch Headquarters.

“We’ll never get her back now,” Ritz said gloomily after she disappeared into the trees.

“Oh, yes, you will.”

“Me?”

“You want to get the ranches back together, don’t you? Hey!” She glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s five o’clock. Your horse just ran straight for the pond where Roque skinny-dips.”

Ritz felt a pang of pure misery mix with wild fear as she watched the dust settle on the caliche road while Jet knelt down to search for the bit of gold she’d seen. Ritz’s gaze wandered from the road back to the ugly yellow signs Benny Blackstone’s cowboys had posted on his game fence.

Every time her daddy drove by them, the yellow signs made him madder than spit. He said they mocked him and her—and everything Keller.

No trespassing.

Posted.

Keep Out.

Jet jumped up from the ground, dusting off an open, bronze, hasp lock. “It’s the lock! And a key, too! We can ride inside now…anytime we want to.”

“I don’t want to. Not ever. Daddy would…”

“Daddy doesn’t have to know. What are you so afraid of anyway?” Jet said. “You used to get to play there, didn’t you?”

“Every Sunday,” Ritz admitted.

“After church with your rich cousins.”

“Carol and Kate. We fished for guppies.”

“Right before Daddy and I moved here,” Jet added, that odd, jealous note creeping into her voice.

“They’re not rich anymore, though,” Ritz said softly, to mollify her.

Jet shrugged. “I used to be rich, too. Daddy was famous—”

She was always bragging like that. Maybe because like a lot of people, she felt put down by the Keller name and ranch.

“You told me.” Lots of times.

“We lived in a great big house—bigger and newer than yours.”

“Where?”

Jet rushed on. “My mother kept our mansion perfect, too. Not dusty like yours.”

“I don’t live in a mansion!”

Jet was always talking about her perfect mother. But if she was so perfect, where was she?

“So—how come you came here?”

Jet stared at the sky. “Are you going to get your dumb horse or not?”

Jet didn’t talk much about her father or the double-wide mobile home they shared now. Irish was nice, nicer than her own father, but if you saw Irish and Jet together, they never laughed or talked or even looked at each other much.

Jet was her best friend, but Ritz had only been inside her trailer once…to see why Jet hadn’t come to school. The living room had been dark and messy with beer cans and dirty dishes and trash everywhere. Irish had come to the door in a dirty T-shirt and stared down at Ritz. Usually he was neat and polite. Not that day. He’d simply said that Jet was sick and for her to go home.

When Ritz had told her mother, she’d taken the Taylors homemade soup and offered to clean the place for him. But Irish had kept the screen door closed and refused.

Jet stared at the gate and then down the caliche road. “You’d better get Buttercup.”

“I’m not going in there!”

“Roque’s brown all over…even down there. And his thingy is big and thick and long! And…and when he saw me, it stuck out.”

Ritz blushed as she remembered his tall, male body undulating to that wild, Spanish tempo. “He’s disgusting.”

Jet laughed. “He’s hot.”

Ritz turned her back to her friend. What would she do if Buttercup didn’t come back?

At least it felt cooler standing in the shade of the gate. The prevailing southeasterly wind from the bay played across the grasses. Ritz’s damp blouse ballooned with air and little tendrils of her yellow hair blew against her brow and throat.

She was working hard not to think about last night or Cameron or what Roque’s tanned, aroused body might look like when a burst of dark fire flew out of the distant trees.

Buttercup tossed her black mane and galloped straight at her.

Ritz sighed in relief. “I won’t have to go in there after all.”

“Maybe she saw his big thingy!”

“Would you shut up?”

When Buttercup got near the gate, Ritz held out her hand and called her name. A hinge groaned. Then the gate swung back and forth, causing the mare to snort and dance skittishly.

“Hold the gate, Jet, while I go get her.”

The wind shifted and a cooling breeze struck Ritz as she ran onto Blackstone land. Buttercup raced off, hoofs thundering, her black tail high and pluming out. Finally she stopped a hundred yards away and watched Ritz, eyes wary, ears pointed. Then she lowered her head to the grass.

“Why do you even bother calling her?” Jet taunted as she slung a leg over the gate to watch. “She never comes to you.”

Ritz forgot her friend and concentrated on coaxing the mare closer. Only when she finally got the reins and turned to yell in triumph, Jet was gone.

When she raced over to the gate, it was closed and locked. In a panic, Ritz tugged at the lock and rattled the gate. Then Buttercup pinned her ears back.

A tiny pulse pounded in Ritz’s throat. The horse needed water. Oats. There was no telling what the Blackstones might do to her mare if they found her.

Ritz was trapped inside the forbidden kingdom.

If his wide brown shoulders and lean torso had her in to a dither last night, what would happen if she came face-to-face with naked Roque Blackstone?

2

It had been a hellish hour. Ritz had pranced back and forth in front of the gate astride Buttercup, torn between abandoning the mare and staying with her. All her grand dreams of ending the feud were as nothing.

Oh, why couldn’t Mother or Ramón drive by and rescue her?

Ritz was hot and tired and thirsty. So was Buttercup.

Maybe just maybe, Ritz could get out of this trap if she rode all the way down to the beach.

Maybe. The beach was five miles away. Probably another fence would cut her off before she got there.

A red sun hung low in a rosy horizon. With a frown, she pushed her glasses up her nose and studied the caliche road and the oak mott atop the ancient dunes. Tangles of thick, thorny brush—mesquite, huisache and oak and prickly pear trailed down the sides of the dunes. Her gaze wandered over the greenery twisting across the flat pasture following the course of Keller Creek.

Surely Roque wouldn’t still be naked at that pond on the other side of those trees. Not that she’d risk going that far. She’d only go as far as the oak mott, to the edge of the creek, in the hopes that it might still be running even this late in the year.

She nudged Buttercup. Even if it was dry, at least she and Buttercup could rest and cool off in the shade.

As they made their way toward the trees, she couldn’t help remembering less anxious outings when she’d come here with her cousins and Uncle Buster, who had always said this was the prettiest pasture on the Triple K Ranch.

Blackstone Ranch now.

Oh, how she’d loved Uncle Buster. He’d been a lot like her daddy except way more fun.

A yowl from the brush pierced the silence. A little brown rabbit sprang up underfoot. Buttercup reared. Clenching her legs tight and seizing fistfuls of black mane, Ritz held on as the rabbit made a wild dash for it.

Letting out a war whoop, Ritz and Buttercup raced after it.

Crazed with fear, the rabbit dived into a hole.

Buttercup circled, pawing and snorting.

Then Ritz remembered where she was and glanced nervously toward the oak mott.

No sign of a cat…. Nor a tall, dark naked man-boy.

Pressing her calves tighter, she and Buttercup were soon inside the shade of the oak trees. The creek was no more than a narrow trickle of water spilling over rocks and sand and damp brown leaves. Four yellow birds fluttered in the sand near a clump of Spanish dagger, chirping.

The banks were stony, littered with sticks, and thorny with yellow-berried Granjeno, which made for dangerous riding, so Ritz dismounted Buttercup, because she was too precious to her to risk a leg injury.

Quietly, so as not to startle the birds, Ritz grounded the mare. The birds fluttered to the high green branches that arched above like a natural cathedral. Buttercup sunk her muzzle and guzzled sloppily from a little pool. Ritz knelt on the bank, dabbing cool water onto her red face and sunburned arms. She kept thinking about Roque Blackstone and wondering how she’d ever get out.

When she’d cooled off a bit, she just sat there, mesmerized by the guppies flashing in the dark waters. Wishing she had jars to catch them with, she forgot she was trapped in the forbidden kingdom with a naked boy.

Scooping up a handful of water and two guppies, she smiled as they wriggled their tails spraying wet pearls of sunlight. Releasing them, she saw Buttercup a good ways downstream nibbling mesquite beans.

Buttercup was not to be trusted, so Ritz got up to go after her. Then she spied a darling black spider curled up in a white flower. When she peeled back the petals, the spider curled up as small as a pill bug.

“Don’t be afraid, little spider.”

Little legs tickled her ankle. When she brushed at the bug, she saw an amber colored army of ants racing along a miniature highway in the tall brown grasses. Every ant returning to the mound carried a leaf bigger than it was. She fell to her knees to watch them. Every ant coming out of the mound bumped into every ant carrying a leaf.

“Why?” she wondered aloud, spellbound. “Do you have a secret language?”

For a long time, she was aware of nothing but the ants. Then a large animal sneezed. She jumped to her feet.

“Buttercup?”

The yellow birds weren’t singing anymore. The last of the red-gold sunlight flickered in the twisted, wind-skewered branches. An owl went, “whoo, whoo, whoo.”

Where was Buttercup?

Ritz ran in the direction where she’d last seen her. When she stopped to get her breath, she was in a part of the oak mott she’d never been in before. Shrouded eerily with mistletoe, the trees were like dancers frozen in some dark spell.

The owl hooted again.

Sometimes witches took the shape of owls and changed little girls into birds…at least, in one of Ritz’s favorite fairy tales. Ritz shivered.

The trees, the creek—all that had seemed so familiar and wondrous were suddenly strange and terrifying. She was all alone. Without the wind to rattle the palmetto fronds and stir the brown leaves that littered the ground, it was too quiet.

She stared up into the branches looking for cats. Then she remembered the No Trespassing signs, and a pulsebeat pounded in her temple.

This was Blackstone land. Why hadn’t she climbed the gate and run home? She had to get home—fast—really fast, before something really bad happened. She would have to end the feud some other day when she was bigger and braver.

“Buttercup? Where are you—”

There was no answering snicker. The sun went behind a cloud and the glade darkened. Branches moaned in the wind. Leaves rained down and scuttled at her feet.

Then a twig crackled behind her.

Sobbing with fury and terror, she whirled. Sunlight and shadows played across the grass. Alert, triangular, gold ears above the waving brown tips pointed straight at her.

A cat!

Her heart slammed against her rib cage.

Another gust of wind sent more leaves flying. The grass waved. The big ears disappeared.

Oh, my God! Where was he? Her eyes glued to the spot where those ears had been, she pushed her glasses up. Then she stealthily tiptoed backward, moving robotically, one careful little half step at a time because she knew she wasn’t supposed to run. Not from a cat—they liked to chase things.

To a big cat, she’d be no more than a mouse was to Molly, Mother’s gray Persian that was forever catching birds…just to play with them and kill them. A big cat would bite her neck, crunch her bones, toss her around like a rag doll, paralyze her and then drag her off to some tree or hole—

Last year she’d seen a dead little filly over near the beach house that a cat had gotten. There’d been nothing left but bones and strips of hide and a few strands of black mane and tail blowing in the wind.

She conjured this image so vividly, she forgot not to run. With a panicky yell, Ritz twisted and sprinted full out toward the sunny pasture and pond.

Her sneakers flew across fallen branches, logs and rocks, splashing sloppily through the mud and water. When her foot got stuck between two rocks in the slippery ooze, a rattler hissed from the bank. At the sight of those brown coils, she yanked at her ankle with the frenzy of a coyote chewing its leg off to get out of a trap.

Then she was free, sobbing but running wildly. Thorns scratched her legs. Cutoffs weren’t right for such dense brush. Cowboys wore leather leggings and jackets and gauntlet-type gloves.

Her right toe hit a rock wrong, and she pitched forward, hitting the ground so hard, it knocked the breath out of her. Her bleeding palms burned from skidding across gravel and sticker burrs, but she was too stunned and too terrified by what she saw beyond the trees to even whimper.

There he was!

Not naked!

Worse!

Bold as brass, Roque Blackstone stared straight at her, unzipped his fly and shook his big thingy out.

Just like last night, she covered her eyes with her fingers and crouched as still as a mouse and prayed, hoping he hadn’t heard her, hoping he hadn’t really seen her.

Finally her terrible curiosity got the best of her and she peeked through her slitted fingers.

“Oh, my God!”

His skin was as brown as mahogany. He had it pointed at her now and was deliberately spraying a rock not five feet in front of her with a stream of yellow pee.

Adrenaline. Sweat. Sheer terror.

Slowly, when nothing happened, her dreadful curiosity took the ascendancy of her common sense.

She squinted and tried not to see that part of his anatomy. Only somehow that was all she saw. It was big and long and purple-pink. It stuck straight out. At her!

Don’t look at it!

She couldn’t seem to stop.

Like last night, he had the same chiseled face of a prince out of one of her favorite storybooks. Just the sight of his wind-whipped black hair, along with his awe-inspiring muscular chest, his broad shoulders, and his lean, brown, rangy body sent funny little darts zinging through her stomach. And she hadn’t even looked…not really down there. At least not on purpose.

But she had because, truth to tell, she was as fascinated by him as Jet was. Maybe more so.

He shook it after he finished, and then it got hung up in his jeans and he couldn’t zip his fly. She forgot all modesty and observed his deft brown fingers that yanked up and down at the zipper. Suddenly he stopped fiddling with his zipper and stared straight at her.

Hot color scorched her cheeks. Not that she closed her eyes or even blinked. But her glasses fogged. She took them off and wiped them with the grubby tail of her shirt. Then she shoved them onto her nose.

He was big, way bigger than her brother, Steve, but not nearly as big as Cameron. Which was such a relief she hugged herself. Still, he was wild and bad, and it showed somehow on his face. It was like he was a prince under a witch’s spell, or maybe he was a pirate who had walked out of a legend into real life. Or maybe somehow she’d plopped herself inside a storybook and was about to be a princess or a maiden and have a big adventure.

He was a Blackstone. The bad Blackstone brother, who did bad things to girls. He was old—eighteen or so.

He’d even flunked a year.

Holding her breath, Ritz slithered backward, away from him, keeping to her awkward crouch until the trees completely hid her and she could run for home. Then she ran, just like she’d run last night. Even as she felt some weird pull not to.

No sooner had Roque finished unsnarling the blue-white threads from his zipper than a horse snickered in the distance, somewhere off to the south. The sound brought a strange peace to him, especially this evening.

He loved horses. A lot more than he loved people. They connected him somehow to a larger, truer, and very ancient world.

His dark fury returned. Why couldn’t people just leave him the hell alone? Caleb? His father? Most of all, his father!

Something stirred in the thick foliage of the oak mott. A branch bent gently. Shadows danced.

Dios, he’d forgotten about her. Was she hiding in the mogotes (thick patches) and cejas (thickets) like before? Like last night?

Yesterday she’d stolen his clothes and laughed when he’d run. Then she’d snuck up on him when he’d lit a fire on the beach and danced. Sucking in a fierce breath, Roque jerked his dick inside his pants and zipped his fly.

Had she seen him? Shyness made him flush.

If she had seen him, he hoped it hadn’t turned her off. He wanted to kiss her, to see how far she’d go. Maybe she’d have some pot or booze. She was the kind who would. He wanted to forget about his father. He had to forget.

The air was cool and breezy after the long, hot afternoon. The glassy pond with the ducks and willows and the taller oaks along the southern bank was a place Roque often came to sit and watch the grass blow and the clouds sail in the utter silence and stillness. Not that it was all that pretty really with the water so low and so much muddy shoreline exposed. But it had a wild, lovely aspect that had grown on him.

Sometimes he sunbathed on a rock. Sometimes he walked in the woods or swam in the raw. Sometimes he just felt homesick for his mother and his sisters who spoiled him, for all his boisterous Moya aunts and uncles and cousins, for Mexico, its art, its music, its people, its passion. Not that he really belonged down there, either.

He had a gringo father, who’d divorced his mother and broken her heart. Mamacita never let him forget it, either. Neither did his uncles. Still…nobody up here knew how to cook like his mother. Nobody made him tamales Yucatán or did anything special for him. Nobody except Caleb.

Sometimes Roque just daydreamed. About horses sometimes. About girls mostly. About white girls when he was up here.

Not tonight.

Not when his father had just beat the shit out of him at the corral.

For nothing.

Not for nothing. ’Cause he was a Mexican. ’Cause he was scared he’d hurt his precious Caleb.

As if he’d ever hurt Caleb.

The only reason Roque had started coming to Texas a few years back was that when Caleb had found out he had an older brother, he’d begged to meet him. Their father couldn’t deny Caleb anything.

Roque had felt so angry and out of place on that first visit, he hadn’t known what to do with himself. One afternoon when Pablo and his men had been working cattle, Roque had gotten so bored, he’d set off a string of firecrackers and thrown them into the pen. When the livestock stampeded, he’d dived into the pen with them. What a thrill that had been—whooping and yelling and running with those bulls while their hooves pounded the earth. He hadn’t cared whether he’d lived or died. Then Caleb’s thin, fearful cry had rent the air.

Through a blur of horn and red flank, he’d watched Caleb’s bright head bob and then disappear. Roque had grabbed onto the biggest bull’s horns and hung while the beast pushed through the others. Miraculously Roque had reached Caleb before he was trampled. All Caleb suffered was a broken wrist and a bad case of hero worship, but to this day, their father still believed Roque had deliberately stampeded the bulls because he was so jealous of Caleb that he wanted to kill him.

All of a sudden Roque wanted to be as bad as his father always told everybody he was. He wanted to screw and drink and get wasted with a pretty, wild girl—to forget, to go dead on the inside, to lose the hate, or at least some of its edge…just for a little while. He was too Mexican to ever fit in up here.

Where the hell was she?

Suddenly the hair on the back of Roque Moya’s neck stood on end. Good, he wasn’t wrong about her. He stared at the woods and felt her eyes on his fly. He was about to call her bluff and go after her when he heard flying footsteps and shouts right behind him.

“Roque—”

His father? Roque felt a surge of panic and despised himself. His daddy’s eyes had gone colder than a rattler’s right before he’d lifted that chain a while ago. Roque leaned down, his hand closing around a rock. If his father so much as raised a hand to him ever again…

Whirling, staring over his shoulder, he caught a whiff of cow dung and fresh grass. Then he saw that familiar, beloved, bright head bobbing against the pink sky.

Caleb. His slim, lithe form dashed through the waist-high grasses toward him. Caleb, who followed him everywhere.

Fury mingled with jealousy. Then his heart swelled with love. Damn, you Caleb! Damn you for being so smart and sweet…and brave…and perfect. For being the easy kind of kid fathers were proud of. He made straight A’s. He liked books. He could read better than most college kids, which was galling to Roque, who practiced reading secretly every night.

Roque was good at math like his Moya uncles, who were engineers, but math bored him. He preferred liberal arts. Not that he did well in them. Whenever he tried to read, words got all mixed up on the page. Spelling was even harder, but at night before they went to bed, Caleb often tried to teach him. If alone, Roque would struggle over the words for hours.

When Caleb saw him look his way, his warm white grin spread from ear to ear the way it always did. Involuntarily Roque smiled back. Caleb, not the money his rich daddy bribed Mamacita with, was the only reason Roque ever came to Texas.

Roque dropped the rock and stared from his little brother to the green line of oaks where he knew she was waiting for him. Since last night he’d hoped she was a real puta in heat. Not that he’d ever had a puta. Still, he told himself he hoped she wanted a bellyful as much as she’d wanted an eyeful.

Gringas. He hoped his macho tíos were right when they said that gringas were even hornier than most men. Even the pretty, young ones. His uncles were always telling him that a real man screwed every pretty girl he could. Once, anyway. This girl had black curls and big boobs and the whitest, softest skin he’d ever seen on any girl, even a guera.

He had to ditch Caleb—and fast.

With seeming casualness, Roque began unbuttoning his loose white shirt. When Caleb was within earshot, Roque said, “Didn’t I tell you not to follow me unless I invited you along?”

“Can I…”

“Daddy said I wasn’t supposed to go near you! So—no!”

The sparkle went out of Caleb’s face and he looked down. “It’s a free country,” he said sullenly, kicking rocks. “Since when do you care what Daddy says?”

“Since this!”

Roque peeled his bloodstained cotton shirt off, and Caleb winced at the blood-crusted wounds crisscrossing Roque’s already scarred brown back.

His little brother loved him…so much. In his own way, every bit as much as Mamacita did.

Caleb—the favorite son. The perfect son. The white white son.

“Why don’t you ever just tell him you’re sorry, Roque, so he’ll stop?” Caleb demanded in a soft, worried voice.

“’Cause I’m not. ’Cause I hate him for always thinking I want to hurt you.”

Caleb gasped. “You’re dumb. If—”

“Don’t say that!”

“So dumb, your dumb zipper’s half open! If you hadn’t mouthed off, I could’ve explained and your back wouldn’t look like hamburger meat.”

Roque fumbled with his fly until he got the zipper up.

His father had grown angrier at each stroke. Caleb was the one who had run forward and risked the chain himself by grabbing their father’s hand. Not the cowboys. Not even Pablo, the ranch manager…Pablo, his friend. They’d just stood there, their boots planted in the thick dirt, their black heads hung low, some of them snickering nervously.

“I told you to get lost. I came here to be by myself so I can think.”

“I won’t say anything. Think away.” Caleb circled him, his green eyes almost popping out of his freckled face as he edged closer to get a better look at his brother’s bloody back.

Roque wadded his shirt into a ball and pitched it angrily into the pond. Nothing was working out. He glanced toward the trees. No sign of the brazen girl, who had stolen his clothes yesterday.

Caleb squatted down and rocked back on his heels. “He beat you even worse than last time….”

“I said scram.”

“You didn’t have to smart off.”

“Git—Daddy’s pet.”

Caleb, who was fourteen, rubbed his glistening eyes in shame. Then he shook his head proudly making his blond bangs fly.

Suddenly hoofbeats rumbled. Both boys swiveled when the strange, sorrel horse shot out of the forest, interrupting their standoff. The mare stopped when she heard them, her chest heaving. Her ears were pointed straight at them.

“That’s the Keller girl’s horse,” Caleb said.

La princesa. Roque had seen her once or twice. She was very white, plain, and ever so haughty.

“Not anymore. Be quiet and watch this.” Roque whistled to the mare.

Her friend must’ve ridden over. He’d steal her horse to pay her back for stealing his clothes.

The mare tore a mouthful of grass out of the ground. Watching him, she began to munch warily.

In long graceful strides, Roque moved through the grass toward her.

“What are you going to do?”

“Get lost, kid. You’ll only get in my way.” He paused. “If Daddy catches you with me, he’ll beat me. Is that what you want?”

Caleb went so white every freckle stood out. His thin shoulders sagged. Roque was stunned when his own dark heart twisted with remorse.

“Get,” he said.

“Who wants to catch a dumb old horse anyway,” Caleb said.

Roque really felt chagrined when Caleb turned his back on him and started walking home.

“Caleb…”

Roque forced himself to let it go. “I’m a real jerk, kid,” he muttered to himself. “Just like Daddy! The sooner you get that, the better for all three of us. When I go home this time, I’ll stay there. I’ll forget I ever had a gringo brother. I will! If it’s the last thing I ever do, I will!”

Catching her horse soon distracted him from his guilt trip. It wasn’t long before Roque had the reins and was stroking the mare’s dark nose with the flat of his hand. She was leaning her head into his every touch, nuzzling his open palm.

“Friends?” he whispered when he mounted her.

A dazzling white smile crept across Roque’s lean, tanned face. He made a clicking noise. “Where’s your sexy mistress, girl?”

If only she would be as easy to seduce as her horse.

Ritz was running down the caliche road when she heard the violent thunder of hooves thudding behind her.

She turned. Roque Blackstone was galloping Buttercup straight for her, stirring up thick clouds of white dust. His hair streamed like wet black ink back from his dark face. His wet shirt was plastered against his lean body. His eyes flamed a savage, incandescent green.

With a yell, she tried to run faster. Just when she thought he’d surely trample her or grab her up by the hair and scalp her, the furious pounding stopped. Then Ritz was enveloped in dust so thick, she had to put her hands up over her tear-filled eyes as she began to cough.

Buttercup snorted and stomped the earth.

When she could breathe again, Ritz sprinted for the gate.

“Whoa, girl! Whoa!” yelped a harsh, male voice. “You can’t outrun me or my horse.”

She stopped. “My horse!”

“Yours?” He laughed, the soft, velvety sound jeering her. “Who the hell are you?” His green eyes raked her skinny body.

He was looking at her, his eyes burning, challenging her the way all those other boys challenged Jet.

Oh, if only I were as gutsy as Jet—

Roque Moya had a peculiar effect on her. Last night she’d felt all grown up and on fire. Suddenly she felt strange, almost gutsy. Almost pretty.

“Ritz Keller! That’s who!” she snapped, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“You really think you’re somebody, don’t you? A real princesa?”

Up close his eyes were so fierce, she felt consumed by their unholy fire. “I’m not scared of you, Roque Blackstone!”

Liar.

“So, you know who I am?”

She almost stopped breathing when he smiled. Jet would have smiled back and said something clever.

“You’re a Blackstone—the worst of a bad bunch. You flunked…”

His face twisted. “If you don’t like us, what the hell are you doing on Blackstone land, Meeez Know-it-all Keller? Where’s your pretty friend?”

“Jet?”

“Are you like her? Did you come to watch a meens swim naked and steal heez clothes?”

“Man?” she corrected, tilting her nose in the air.

He flushed.

Sassily she put her hands on her hips. “You’re no man.”

“Like you’re some expert—”

“You’re just a stupid, mean boy nobody likes. Not even your father!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Last year he sent you home…to Mexico ’cause… ’cause…”

Roque swore violently under his breath, first in Spanish and then in English. “’Cause a bad girl told my father she liked me…too much—Four Eyes.”

“Well, I don’t like you.” Ritz stuck out her tongue.

He laughed. “Most girls do. That gets boring after a while.”

“You are too conceited to believe.”

Another quick burst of his male laughter made her heart skitter.

“I’m not boy-crazy…not like Jet.”

“Jet.” He purred. “So, that’s her name. She is pretty, your boy-crazy friend. Older. She follows me.”

The red sky burned green.

“She’s only a year and a half older!”

“More than that,” he said, peeling clothes from her skinny frame with his indecently bright, emerald eyes. “You’re a baby. She’s a woman. Last night she…”

“Are you going to give me my horse or not?”

He shook his head. “She’s mine now.”

He pranced back and forth. “And you’re on Blackstone land.”

A red sun slanted a kaleidoscope of rays behind him, giving him the devil’s own halo while keeping that pretty face of his in the dark. She had to squint to make out his well-shaped, glossy, black head and that hair that was so long it whipped against his hard, dark jawline and tangled with the ends of the scarlet bandanna he wore at his neck.

With the sun at his back, he was mostly a black figure. Still, she got an eyeful of sleek, brown torso under that wet shirt that seemed made of nothing but ripply muscle. Indeed, even up close, every part of him seemed made of muscle, too—his squared-off shoulders…his arms…his lean waist and…his legs. He looked better by sunlight than by firelight.

Black jeans clung to those powerful legs. Jet said boys who wore jeans that tight were too nasty for nice girls to talk to. And here she was—Ritz Keller, fourteen years old, talking to just such a boy.

She’d watched him dance, seen his thingy. Catching a scared, little breath, she remembered he wasn’t nearly as big as Cameron. And he wasn’t as mean, either, no matter what people said about him.

“Like what you see, squirt?” he whispered.

“You’re a nasty boy.”

“I just like girls. And girls like your friend, Jet, like me back.”

If you only knew.

Buttercup snorted and blew, moving skittishly to one side, thereby changing the angle of the sun, so that Ritz could finally see the conceited brute’s face, or at least three-quarters of it.

Up close he looked bad and wild like the rock stars on Jet’s posters that hung all over her bedroom walls. But he was way more handsome. His blatantly masculine face seemed hacked from hot, sun-baked stone. A sheen of perspiration set him aglow and made him seem like a god come to life. He had a high brow, an aquiline nose, and a wide, sexy mouth. Thick, spiky black lashes shaded green eyes so bright and feral, they literally knocked the breath out of her.

For a long moment, she couldn’t move or breathe a word.

He went equally still.

Nervously she pushed her glasses up. For a long second their gazes remained fixed.

“You’re bad,” she said.

“Stupid, too?” he mocked, using those eyes of his to twist her around his little finger.

Ritz stiffened.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated.

She didn’t dare look at him again. “I-I’m here…to get…to get…t-that horse, my horse, Buttercup!”

“My Buttercup now.” His voice deepened and roughened, bringing those little shivers again.

“You have to give her back!”

“Make me, squirt.”

Her hands balled into fists. When she lunged, Buttercup trotted off.

“W-who is she, Roque?” another boy cried out from the tall grasses as he ran toward her.

Ritz whirled so fast, the blond kid nearly fell.

“You!” Roque said. “Caleb, I told you to git.”

Caleb held up his hands. His smile was so engaging, Ritz smiled back, which only made his older brother’s scowl darken.

It wasn’t hard to see why Caleb was more popular than Roque. He was just a boy not much older than she. He had blond hair, green eyes, and sandy eyebrows and lashes. His freckled nose was almost as red and blistered as hers.

He was nice cute; not nasty cute like Roque. Not intimidating cute, either.

“Don’t forget,” Roque jeered. “He’s a hated Blackstone, too.”

“I’m Ritz Keller, that’s who, and if you and your brother will give me my horse…”

“You’re trespassing!” the younger boy whispered to Ritz, grinning at his brother to win his approval.

“Well, Caleb, somebody left your gate open and Buttercup ran inside. I had to come after her. Your big brother here is riding a horse with a Triple K brand. In other words, he’s a horse thief.”

“If she’s yours, why’d she run from you?” Roque demanded.

“Do you know anything? Anything at all about horses?” she demanded, tilting her head as imperiously as a queen.

“I caught yours, didn’t I?”

“Just give her back.”

“If I do that—then you’ll ride away. I want to know more about your pretty friend.”

“Well, she doesn’t like bullies or horse rustlers…or stupid…”

“You have a saying up here in Gringolandia, Señorita Smartie Pants. Finders. Keepers.”

“She said you’re ugly naked!”

“Híjole!” He pulled back a little on the reins and leaned down.

“So, you came to see for yourself!”

“You’re disgusting!”

“Then why the blush?”

She looked down, but she felt his eyes on her face and got hotter.

“Go home, little girl, before you get into real trouble. Tell your friend she can swim in our pond…anytime.” His lilting purr sent a hot shiver through her. “Tell her, I’ll be waiting for her tomorrow.”

“I’m not going without Buttercup.”

“All right.” Holding the reins, Roque sprang lithely off Buttercup, landing so close beside her, she jumped back. Then he slapped Buttercup on the rump and sent her trotting off.

“We’re going to let Buttercup decide,” he said, “who she wants, you…or me.”

“No—”

“Because you know she’ll choose me,” he jeered.

“You’re very sure of yourself,” she said.

“Sí. It’s one of my failings.”

She felt her jaw go slack. Her heart raced. She thrust out her chin anyway. “A Keller’s way is better than a Blackstone’s any day.”

He grinned. “You’re going to be hell on wheels when you grow up,” he murmured. “A while ago you asked me if I knew anything about horses. What if I told you I had a way with horses, same as I do with little girls? Big girls, too?”

It was getting dark. In the queer half-light, with his intense aristocratic features, he was absolutely stunning—tall, muscular, graceful even. Not awkward like the other boys she knew. She remembered him dancing and how she’d longed to dance, too.

“You can’t beat me… ’cause I’m a Keller.”

“Little Killer Keller,” he purred. “I can beat you any day.”

“Wanna bet?”

3

A warm gust of air stirred Ritz’s golden curls and ruffled Buttercup’s tail. Sighing in exasperation, Ritz scowled at her mare.

“So, we’ll let Buttercup decide who she wants?” Roque repeated.

She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t have to play your silly game. This stubborn, mulish, black-tailed idiot is mine.”

“Careful how you talk to her, or she won’t choose you.”

Ritz tossed her head and would’ve spun away, but he grabbed her arm.

“Ouch. You’re hurting me.”

“Okay. Okay.” Instantly the long brown fingers loosened. His dark face was grim. “So, you don’t have to play my game or prove anything. Maybe I just want to teach you something.”

“You left marks.” She rubbed her elbow.

The long shadows made his face darker, crueler. But when he fixed his bold green eyes on her, his expression softened. “Okay. I’m sorry. I don’t ever like hurting anybody, especially not somebody smaller or…a girl. I have two big sisters.”

“Down in Mexico?”

Instead of answering, he blurted, “I’m not a bully! Not like my father!”

His hot gaze and the pain in his voice stripped her soul and demanded intimacies she didn’t understand and wasn’t ready to share. His wild eyes slid from her face to the red place above her elbow. “I could show you marks!” He began unfastening his shirt, but when she shrank from him, misreading his intent, he sucked in a hard breath.

“Híjole!” His brilliant eyes devoured her flat chest and then her skinny, sunburned legs as he cursed low in Spanish.

She blanched at his rough language.

“Tú hablas….” he whispered when he realized he was scaring her even more.

She nodded and then stared at his scarred boots and at her own pigeon-toed feet. “Por supuesto.”

“Lo siento,” he muttered in apology.

Spanish was the working language on the Triple K. She was a Keller. Everybody spoke Spanish. Everybody except Jet. But Jet was a natural at music and was learning it fast. She had a gift for imitating sounds, same as she had a gift for boys. Ritz wished she had Jet’s gifts. But other than being a Keller, she was plain and ordinary—as Roque had just so cruelly pointed out.

He gave her skinny body another of those insolent sideways glances that sent her heart rushing in stilted, painful beats.

“Quit looking at me,” he whispered in a raw tone, “with those big blue eyes that eat me alive. And…and I didn’t meant to scare you…or hurt your feelings.”

“You just can’t help yourself.”

“What are you—thirteen…to my eighteen?”

“Fourteen!”

“You’re too damn young to be hanging around me.”

“So, give me my horse and I’ll…”

“You’re skinny and not even pretty.”

Tears pricked. “You said that already!”

“And you’ve got spots.”

“Freckles!” Ritz shouted. “What’s wrong with freckles?”

“Same thing that’s wrong with your last name and all that metal in your mouth. I don’t like them.”

Just when she was feeling weird and sad and hurt, his low tone gentled. “You’ve got pretty hair, though. Mexicans have a thing for yellow hair. At least I do even though I don’t see colors like other people. Yours is really something. Who knows…in another year or two…maybe you’ll be even prettier than your friend. You’ve got something…she doesn’t. I’m not sure what it is exactly.” His voice had gone smooth.

She felt a strange, powerful pull to move toward him. “I don’t care what you think! Just give me my horse!” But she put her hand over her lips to hide the beginnings of a smile.

“Your horse?” he began in a teasing vein that made her blush again. “We’ll see whose horse she is. We’ll both call her. We’ll see who she chooses. I’ll even let you go first, guera,” he offered magnanimously, eyeing her yellow hair.

Guera was slang in Mexico for blonde.

When she shook her head, causing her hair to bounce on her shoulders, he laughed. “Scaredy-cat. Go on. Call her. If she comes. She’s yours.”

“It’s a trick!” Ritz muttered, catching a breath and then cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth and calling out, “Buttercup!”

Munching grass, Buttercup didn’t even raise her head or prick her ears. When Ritz called her again, the obstinate beast chewed lazily.

“I need an apple,” Ritz said.

“Give?” her foe taunted.

“Buttercup!” Ritz cried, her voice tinged with desperation.

“That’s no way to coax a pretty lady,” Roque said smugly, directing his brilliant gaze to the mare. He swaggered toward the beast, his brown hands outstretched.

Buttercup jerked her head out of the grass and flicked her nose out at him. She snorted, her nostrils flaring. Her black tail lifted and seemed to float in the wind like an inky banner.

When he had her full attention, he splayed his long fingers open like claws.

Ritz sprang in front of Roque and called again. “Buttercup! Come here, sweetheart!”

“Cheater,” he purred. He stood so close she could feel the heat of his breath against her neck.

The sun was gone. The tall grasses and big sky were aflame, the horizons ringed in pink.

“Buttercup,” Ritz pleaded, truly scared now.

Buttercup nibbled, her nose low to the ground. Roque strutted toward the horse, squared his body to hers and stared directly at her.

The mare bolted.

“My turn,” Roque said jauntily.

“You made her run away just when I was trying to call her.”

“I can make her come back, too.”

“I hate you!”

“You sure about that?” He laughed and began clucking to Buttercup.

The mare stopped running. Roque squared his shoulders and stared fixedly at her again. Again, Buttercup ran from him.

“She doesn’t want you, either.”

“She’ll change her mind after I court her a little. All the girls, big and little, want Roque Moya. Just you watch.”

“You are disgusting.”

“Your sexy friend doesn’t think so. Maybe someday…when you grow up and I court you, you’ll change your mind, too.”

Was he flirting with her?

No way.

But if he was, it was a heady game to play with a bad wild boy like him, a Blackstone.

“Watch me, Four Eyes,” he said softly. “She’ll come to me.”

And the mare did. In less than twenty minutes. He didn’t even have to call her. Buttercup just stopped running and started watching everything he did as if hypnotized. Soon the mare’s head dropped, and she walked slowly toward him, licking and chewing. Only she didn’t have any grass in her mouth. Roque kept his body at a forty-five degree angle to the horse, avoiding eye contact as she approached.

Sensing some baffling, silent chemistry between Roque and her horse, Ritz held her breath. Furious as she was, she felt a strange thrill when Buttercup walked up to the fiend and held her nose less than an inch from his broad shoulder.

Ritz wanted to shout, “She’s mine! Mine!”

But what he’d done was so fantastic, she didn’t want to break the spell.

When Roque turned and walked away from Ritz, Buttercup followed. They walked in a circle before returning. Finally Roque faced the horse and lifted his hand, stroking Buttercup between the eyes. Then he stared at Ritz and grinned.

Ritz was stunned.

“He can talk to horses.” Caleb’s eyes shone.

Ritz had forgotten Caleb was even there. “How?”

“Not in words, but Roque says horses talk just the same. He’s going to teach me their language.”

“Their language?”

“Horse. He read about it in a book and taught it to himself, and he can hardly read.”

It was obvious the younger Blackstone was much in awe of his older brother. Even though she didn’t want to admit it, he wasn’t stupid like people said he was. He was smart and different—special.

“I can, too, read!” Roque blurted, stung.

“I want to learn horse, too!” The words just popped out of her mouth.

“Do you want to start now?”

She scowled at Roque when he flung himself to the ground and began yanking his scuffed black boots off. He pulled off his socks, too, and wiggled his long, naked toes.

Why was watching him do the most ordinary things so fascinating? The keen sweetness of hay being cut somewhere made her heart ache. Or was it just him, balling his dirty socks and stuffing them into his boots that made her feel so strange?

If Ritz had thought more about boys before last night and this afternoon than she’d ever admit, she felt possessed now. Roque’s dark sensual male beauty made her long to be older and prettier—desirable.

“There’s sticker burrs,” she said lamely when he finally stood up.

“So?”

She tried not to look at his gorgeous black head when he turned. But his bold green eyes claimed her somehow, holding her with that same, mysterious force she hadn’t understood last night.

“I’m not going to walk,” he said. “I’m going to fly. Do you want to learn to fly, princesa?”

He extended his brown hand just as he had last night, inviting her to put hers inside it. She stared at those long, tapered fingers and then at the purple-black grasses that curled away from them in endless waves. With a shiver, she shook her head.

“Scaredy-cat.” He laughed. As she gasped, he sprang up on Buttercup’s back, urging the mare forward with his toes into a springing trot.

“Get off her,” she whispered.

“I won, remember.”

Soon he had Buttercup cantering round and round in a perfect circle. They were so beautiful, Roque with his black hair and Buttercup with her black mane streaming in the wind as they danced in that sea of tall grasses.

Even before Roque stood up and went dangerously faster, Ritz was trembling with a mixture of fright and wonder.

“Don’t,” she pleaded silently.

But he stretched both his arms out like wings.

“No…no…” Even as she begged, her heart thrummed, and her spirit sang along with those thudding hoofs.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.”

Roque’s wickedness and wildness made him seem like a god, who was connected by spirit and blood to the mare he rode, connected to the endless sea of purple grasses, to the darkening sky itself, to the whole universe—connected even to her. She’d felt the same thing last night, only now her feelings were stronger.

Buttercup galloped so fast, Roque did indeed seem to fly. When Caleb spread his own arms like wings and ran after his brother, she did the same thing. The three of them soared on their make-believe wings, running round and round, both flying and dancing.

Caleb and she ran after him until they collapsed in laughter, breathing hard. Ritz put her hand over her heart as the galloping horse and the bad Blackstone boy flew away. She began to laugh, forgetting all sense of ownership when Roque turned, and she realized he was galloping back to her.

“He’s magical,” she whispered. “He’s like a centaur.”

Buttercup slowed and Roque sat down again and smiled down. A stillness descended upon her when he came close and held out his hand to his brother.

“Do you want to fly?”

Caleb shook his head.

“I do!” she cried in an eager voice that did not belong to her.

Roque gave her a long look. Then he leaned down. This time when he extended his hand toward her, she grabbed it.

Sweet heat flicked through her veins like summer lightning. Oh, what had gotten into her? Was it his wildness? His badness?

Caleb shrieked with joy and ran up to them. Kneeling, he cupped his dirt-encrusted hands. As bravely as Jet, Ritz put her foot in his fingers and sprang up in front of Roque. His warm hands circled her waist, burning her skin through her thin blouse.

When he urged Buttercup into a trot, she forgot all about hating him.

Never had cantering been such a glorious experience. It was like dancing. A chemistry flowed between the three of them. They weren’t just a boy and a girl and a horse. They belonged to an ancient world and a primitive time that was truer than anything modern, a paradisiacal time before man had been expelled from the kingdom of nature.

He stood up and then helped her to stand, too. When she teetered, crying out to him, he steadied her until she got her balance. Soon she was holding her arms out just as he had. Slowly his thrilling hands at her waist fell away. Then he extended his arms behind hers, and they were flying together, racing in that endless magical pasture, the thudding rhythmic hooves singing in her blood.

For a few brief moments there was no high game fence, no feud. It was just Roque and her and the magic between them. Then a black pickup sped toward them on the caliche road, belching angry white fantails of dust.

For a few brief moments longer, horse and riders were free, and the range was as wild and open as their hearts. Ritz’s hair blew against Roque’s dark face, so that she felt herself part of him as well as part of the sky.

Then the truck braked. Benny Blackstone hopped out, shaking his fists and cursing when he saw Caleb running toward the galloping riders with his arms outstretched. Not that Ritz really heard Ben.

Buttercup’s hoofs were thudding, and she felt too wonderful. Even when Roque turned Buttercup, so that they seemed to charge the truck and Caleb, she was only vaguely aware of his father.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Ben leaned inside the cab and pull his Winchester off the gun rack behind the driver’s seat.

“Caleb—” Ben shouted. “Sunny—”

Caleb stopped, but Buttercup kept galloping at him, Benny raised the rifle to his chest.

Caleb yelled when his father aimed at Roque, “No! Daddy! No!”

Roque let out an Indian war whoop and charged faster.

The Winchester cracked. And still Roque charged.

Almost carelessly Benny ejected the empty shell and raised the rifle again. The gun popped a second time, bouncing rocks in front of Buttercup. The mare reeled. With a scream, Ritz tumbled backward into Roque.

He grabbed her, rocking precariously, grabbing wildly at the air. Buttercup reared.

“Dios,” he muttered as her forelegs came down with a thud.

Ritz’s heart was pounding when he slipped. Still, holding her, he shielded her somehow. His body struck the rocks first. She fell on top of him, crushing him against the ground. Something inside her knee popped. When she tried to stand up, she couldn’t.

Mad with fear, Buttercup circled them frantically, got too near and stepped on Roque’s arm.

The bone snapped, but Roque didn’t utter a sound. He lay in a broken heap like a doll thrown down by an angry child, his dark face as white as bone.

“Sunny!” Benny shouted. “Are you crazy? He was trying to kill you! How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from him?”

Caleb ran to Roque. “You shot him—deliberately! There’s…there’s blood on the dark grass.” Caleb drew back a hand, wet with the stuff, and began to cry.

Ritz knelt over Roque and choked on a sob. “Roque! He’s not moving.”

Through her sobs Ritz heard Caleb’s muted pleadings. His father stalked toward them, his Winchester lowered now, his expression grim.

“Move, kids.” Benny sank to his knees and examined Roque. When he was done, he stroked Roque’s black hair for a long moment. “He’ll be all right.” His voice was strange, hoarse. “Take more than a fall to kill a devil like him. Broken arm. Let’s hope it’ll teach him a lesson. He shouldn’t have charged me. Run get a blanket, Sunny.”

When Caleb loped off, Benny fiddled with his radio, shaking it and cursing. In a few minutes Caleb was leaping back through the tall grasses with the blanket. His father took it and threw it over Roque.

“You’d better git,” he said to Ritz.

“My knee—”

“Damn. I can’t get anybody on the radio. I’m going to have to call the ambulance from the house. Can you stay here with him until I get back? I’ll phone your parents and tell them what’s happened. If he comes to, don’t let him move—”

Her eyes widened. “You can’t call my daddy! When you come back…if you’ll just put me on Buttercup and leave the gate open….”

He shook his head. “I’m liable for you. You stay here. Roque’s just crazy enough to hurt himself if he comes to alone and is disoriented in the dark.”

She looked at Roque’s crumpled body and then at the black sky. Then she rubbed her burning eyes and nodded. “Daddy’s going to be so mad.”

Benny stood up. “Come on, Sunny.”

“I want to stay with Roque, too!”

“This wouldn’t have happened, if you’d stay away from him.”

Benny Blackstone seized Caleb by his collar and pulled him, his boots scuffling across the rocks, all the way to the truck. They roared away in geysers of white dust.

Ritz swallowed a hard lump in her throat. Roque lay so still. He was very white, and his hair spilled like rich black chocolate across the rocks and grass.

“Roque?” Leaning closer, she caught his scent, which was musky, and clean, all male. “Roque!” she yelled.

When he didn’t answer, she brushed a lock of his hair from his brow and gasped. His beautiful face was swollen and out of shape.

“Oh! No!” She pressed her hand to his temple. When her finger came away sticky, she didn’t dare shake him. “Roque! Please…Please wake up!”

High above them, the evening star twinkled like a lonely sentinel in an opalescent, purple sky. Then a gray owl swished low over their heads toward the oak mott, melting into the dense shadows of the brush. A chorus of night bugs began to sing.

His pulse! That’s what she was supposed to check for!

At the thought of laying even a single fingertip on that dark throat, she sucked in a quick breath. With an eye on his still, white face, she lowered her hand and ran it along his warm skin all the way to the base of his throat.

Finally, when her fingers were still, she felt a flutter. She pressed harder, and the pressure of his heart’s slow, steady thudding, made her own heart leap.

“Don’t die,” she whispered. “Please…please…”

She lifted her St. Jude medal and said a fervent prayer to the saint. And then she looked up at the new stars and the moon and prayed to God, too.

Hardly knowing that her fingers unfastened the silver chain, she removed the medal. She caught her breath. Aunt Pam had given her Uncle Buster’s medal at his funeral. Ritz had promised to treasure it always.

With a heavy sigh, Ritz fastened the medal around Roque’s dark neck.

“Save him,” she murmured. “Please, Uncle Buster and St. Jude, and you, too, God.”

Roque’s eyes remained tightly closed.

After that, time passed in slow motion. Ritz rubbed her neck, and felt all alone and scared as she thought of the puma and those pointy ears she’d seen earlier.

When a pack of coyotes began to yip off to the north, she began to shake as hard as a rabbit or whatever little animal they were terrorizing. The sky and brush blackened ominously.

Aloud Ritz said, “Roque, I’ll stay out here all night long—in the dark, no matter how scared I get, if you just, please…please…don’t die…. I’ll even take back every mean thing I said. You’re not nasty…or…or pure sin…just ’cause you wear tight jeans. I’m sorry I watched you pee. It was fun flying with you. The most fun I ever had in my whole life…until you charged—”

Clasping his lifeless hand, she bent closer, so that she could broadcast straight into her powerful medal.

“You won Buttercup—fair and square. You can have her, too…if you’ll only wake up. And…and…you’re not stupid, even if you flunked a grade. Nobody but a rare, genuine genius could talk horse…could learn it from a book…when you can hardly read. And…and it wasn’t Jet last night…. It was me! I watched you dance, so don’t you dare die.”

Horror mingled with delight when he stirred and she felt his gaze.

“You’re just scared there won’t be anybody to teach you horse if I die,” jeered a thready voice that made her heart leap.

4

Its wings spread wide, a hawk circled low over Roque. Talons curling, the bird hurled itself at the highest branch of a tall live oak, stilling the roar of the cicadas’ night chorus. In that brief silence, the dark field felt warm. Then the humid wind licked his skin, bringing with it the sweet, familiar smells of grass and salt and sea, and the cicadas began to sing again.

Not that Roque noticed any of those things on a conscious level. The hot little daggers of pain that spiked up his arm were so fierce they dulled his awareness of all else. He couldn’t move his arm or feel his fingers.

The hollow beneath his right eye felt stretched and itchy. His temple throbbed. Half of him was numb; the other half burned. He wanted to twist and writhe and howl like a wolf at the bright sliver of moon hanging straight over him. But the ragged whisper he uttered cost him so dearly, he bit his lips.

“Roque? Did you say something?”

Had he? He tried to speak again.

He heard her gasp, felt her fingertips on his mouth. Then pain blurred everything into nightmare again. He was in the wire mesh round pen. Caleb was begging him to teach him to ride, and since their father was gone for the day he’d said yes. But suddenly his father, who’d looked shorter and squattier than usual in baggy jeans and custom-made boots and yet unreasonably terrifying, was stomping toward him, yelling and swearing nonsense that he was trying to kill Caleb again.

Pausing to grab a chain off the nail outside the tack room, he’d pushed Pablo and two cowboys out of his way.

“Nobody had better interfere with me—y’all hear!” When the cowboys lowered their heads, Benny raised the chain. “You trying to kill Sunny on that damn horse, you stupid Mexican son of a bitch!”

Mexican. The way his father said it, had made Roque writhe.

“I begged him to teach me, Daddy,” Caleb said.

“Every summer he comes, you want to race bulls or something else crazy!”

“No, Daddy—”

He slammed the chain down on Roque’s back.

Roque screamed. Caleb jumped as if he’d been hit. The next blow cut Roque’s thighs and sent him sprawling facedown into wood shavings. He hit the ground so hard he swallowed dust laced with horse dung.

As he spit and choked, Caleb hurled himself at his father’s knees.

“You idiot!” Benny yelled at Roque. “You won’t stop until you kill my good son—you, who never should have been born!”

Again the chain zinged, this time gouging out a hunk of flesh. Roque rolled into a ball, grabbed his knees.

“Say you won’t disobey….”

“You’re not my father!”

“Say you’re sorry!”

“Go to hell.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me, Daddy!” Caleb shouted. “He’s not stupid. He was teaching me horse and…and to ride.”

When Benny raised the chain again, Caleb let go of his father’s leg and threw himself on top of Roque. “He’s sorry, Daddy.”

Caleb’s thin body was hot, and he was crying as he circled Roque’s neck with his arms. “If you hurt him, I’ll…. I-I’ll run away to Mexico! I’ll be a Mexican, too!”

“Get off me, kid!” Roque whispered. “I don’t want you to hate him…or love me.”

“But I do…love you.”

Her soft voice cut through Roque’s anguish and pain. Her gentle fingers trailed his throat, soothed. He strangled a curse.

Dios. Pain stabbed him again.

“I’ll even give you Buttercup!” the girl said.

Chinga!

She was holding something and praying to St. Jude. Roque wasn’t religious. Still, he’d been brought up Catholic.

He hung on every syllable of the girl’s prayer and went still when she fastened her St. Jude medal around his neck. When her voice died, her hand skimmed along his throat and jawline. She lifted her medal and kissed it.

So, it had been her last night. Her. He’d wanted to hold this girl close and dance near the fire, to dance. Suddenly he wanted to feel those lips on his skin.

“So, you’re just scared there won’t be anybody to teach you horse if I die. I—I could teach you to kiss too,” he whispered.

She dropped the medal and jumped back.

Híjole!

He stole a peek. Big glasses. Smudged clothes. She wasn’t much to look at—at least, not yet. Better to keep his eyes closed. But she sure as hell had a pretty voice, especially when she prayed. Those low, husky tones shouldn’t belong to a bratty little girl with wires in her mouth. That voice went with a real woman.

Dios. She was just a kid. Younger than Caleb.

Her fingers came back, cautiously gliding along his skin as she prayed again, her comforting words and warm breath falling against his earlobe.

Uno. Dos. Tres… He never made it to ten. The pressure against his fly was too extreme.

Pervert. She was a kid. Fourteen. Not even pretty.

When her gaze drifted down his body, he broke into a sweat. Then he slitted his good eye wider. Even though he was partially color blind, his vision at night was extraordinary. Like a cat, he could see shapes and figures that were invisible to anyone with normal eyesight.

Like now. Every freckle on her pert, slightly upturned nose stood out. Her tears glistened like diamonds. More than a hundred yards away, he saw Buttercup grooming herself.

A sliver of moon in a vast black sky peppered with stars enveloped them. Cicadas were buzzing louder than ever. In the moonlight her ugly glasses glimmered on her thin, unsmiling face. If only she’d been pretty like her friend with the big boobs.

It was hard to imagine her ever growing a figure or ever being beautiful. But she’d spied on him last night and today she’d stood up to him. She’d flown with him. He’d had fun with her before he’d fallen and hit his head. With her he didn’t feel homesick.

Nobody here, except for Caleb, ever made him feel as if he belonged.

But she did. Maybe she was a Keller, but she was an innocent, shy and sweet. As sweet as Mamacita when he’d had the mumps.

Chinga!

She was sweeter than Ana and Carmela, his sisters, when they were in good moods and hovered over him.

I can’t like you, girl! You’re the high and mighty Keller princess!

“Don’t die.” She squeezed his hand.

“I’m just a Mexican,” he growled. “You couldn’t care less whether I live or die.”

She ripped her silky fingers that had his groin in an uproar from his throat.

“Be…be careful,” she said in that supersweet voice. “I think your arm…. It’s all funny and twisted.”

“It’s broken. What’s it to you?”

She shoved her ugly wire-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Nothing. I’m only waiting for your father to come back. He’s sending an ambulance.”

“So, how come you didn’t take your horse and run when you could, little girl?”

“’Cause… ’cause my knee got hurt.”

“Aren’t you scared of being out here all alone in the dark? You ran last night….”

She hesitated and then shook her head. “I didn’t want to run. I wanted to dance.”

“You’re all alone with me,” he whispered, “in the dark. I could make you kiss me.”

She was slower to answer. “I’d stomp on your broken arm if you did.”

He laughed. Then he puckered his mouth and leaned toward her. “Last chance to get your kissing lesson from the best kisser in Mexico.”

“No…” Holding her knee, she scooted a few inches away from him.

He lay beside her, silent, wondering what to say to make her come back, but he couldn’t think of anything. All too soon he heard his daddy’s pickup roaring along the caliche road even before he saw his lights. Finally it stopped. The headlights went out.

Flashlights bobbed. Dogs yapped. Benny Blackstone shouted above their frenzied barks. Then an ambulance screamed on a distant ranch road.

“Over here,” Ritz called.

His father waved his flashlight.

Suddenly everything dimmed—their voices, her plain, skinny face—even the barking dogs racing toward him.

“I don’t feel too good,” he whispered right before he began to shake. “Kiss me.” When she still hesitated, he said. “If I die, you’ll never get to—”

She put her arms around him and kissed his cheek really fast. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I came to this pond hating life here, hating—I…I…” He stopped himself before he blurted something really stupid. On a different track, he said, “I don’t want you scared of me. And…and…. Hey, there’s a key to the gate in my left pocket. Get it. Take your old horse.”

“Where is she?”

“Over there.” He pointed. “I don’t want her. I never did. I was just teasing you because I wanted to meet your sexy friend.”

“Jet?” Her voice quavered.

“You’re okay…for a skinny kid.”

“But you wish I was Jet?”

“I’ll decide later…when you’re older. You might be pretty. Not that it would matter. You’re a Keller, so you’ll have to hate me.”

“So, you think I…I might be pretty someday?”

He stared at her face as if it were very difficult to imagine her pretty. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”

The fierce hope that shone in her eyes cut him somehow. He closed his eyes to shut her out.

To his surprise he felt her lips, soft and warm and yet fervent somehow hesitantly graze his.

He kept his eyes closed long after the kiss was over, savoring the taste of her innocence. All this from a girl who’d been scared to dance.

He had to forget her.

Somehow he knew he never would.

“Did that boy put his hands in your pants and feel you up?”

“Daddy!” Ritz squealed, her fingers closing around the key Roque had given her. “How could you think that?”

Irish was sitting behind her in the back seat.

Mortified, she covered her eyes. It was an old habit, something she’d done as a child when she’d felt shy and needed to shut out someone or something that was suddenly too much.

“I know his type,” her father said.

“Easy, Art,” Irish mumbled behind her.

Irish had come along to check her knee. He said it was a ruptured ACL, and he’d stabilized it with an old knee brace he’d brought along.

“But you don’t know him,” Ritz said.

Her father grunted.

“Have you ever spoken to him—even once?”

“He wants to kill his own brother. Last year they caught him half-naked in the back seat of Natasha’s car with his hands down her pants.”

“Jet said Natasha had her hands in his—”

“What would you—a fourteen-year-old girl—know about trash like that?”

Irish kicked the back of the seat and then said, “Sorry.”

Art slammed the fist holding his cigarette against the dash and shot sparks everywhere. Ritz had to brush at her clothing frantically.

“You planning to be his next slut, girl?”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Irish admonished.

“Well, are you?” Art thundered. “Did you know he’s been seen riding around with Chainsaw Hernandez, that no-good ex-con?”

You don’t know everything, Daddy!

The rebellious thought crystallized into one of those life-changing epiphanies. Her father was used to giving commands, used to being the last authority on every subject.

“Talk to me.” When she didn’t, her father fumed. “What’s gotten into you?”

Roque Moya, that’s what!

He’d made her braver somehow, and even though she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in before—she wasn’t as scared.

The truck hurled itself down the rutted ranch road like a stampeding bull. For once Ritz was glad her daddy was smoking. The acrid fumes gave her an excuse to cough and sputter and wave her hands. Her eyes teared. Her throat burned.

“You’re just fourteen. I guess that makes you prime for the pickin’ for a low-down Mexican cur like Moya.”

Ritz didn’t dare defend him out loud again, so she coughed and waved her hands.

Her father, who was usually so careful never to smoke around her, took another long drag. Irish opened his window.

Smoke spewed out of her father’s flaring nostrils and spiraled up from the cigarette’s tip. Another coughing spasm had Ritz leaning forward and clenching the dash. Through tears she made out the blur of red ambulance lights.

“Roque…”

“You’re to stay away from that boy—you hear me, girl?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Her voice sounded so weird and small and unreal.

“You should see yourself! Staring after those lights like a boy-crazy fool! He’s no damned good, I tell you! And if you mess around with him, he’ll bring you down to his level! You’re not to think about him—ever.”

Her father yanked the steering wheel to the left. When the truck rumbled over a cattle guard, she whirled around to see if the lights were still there, but Irish’s broad frame blocked her view. By the time she moved, the black night had swallowed the lights whole.

Ritz placed a hand over her heart. “What if he dies?”

Her daddy’s cigarette flamed brighter than an infected boil. “You should be worrying about your mother. She’s frantic about you. Ever since you threw the kitchen rugs on the porch without even shaking them and ran off, she’s been driving the roads and calling everybody.”

“Did Jet put you up to this?” Irish asked softly.

“No!”

Art squashed out his cigarette. Then he rolled down his window. He sighed heavily and pulled another cigarette out of his pocket.

“Boss—”

“Don’t nag, Irish!” But Art didn’t light it. They were nearly home, and Mother didn’t like him smoking because of his high blood pressure.

Ritz glanced his way. In the flying darkness, all she could make out was his white hair and his rigid black shape. She hoped his neck wasn’t that awful bright red—his fighting color, as Mother and Irish called it.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.