Cowboy Fantasy
Ann Major

MILLS & BOON

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ANN MAJOR lives in Texas with her husband of many years and is the mother of three grown children. She has a master’s degree from Texas A&M at Kingsville, Texas, and is a former English teacher. She is a founding board member of the Romance Writers of America and a frequent speaker at writers’ groups.

Ann loves to write; she considers her ability to do so a gift. Her hobbies include hiking in the mountains, sailing, ocean kayaking, traveling and playing the piano. But most of all she enjoys her family. Visit her Web site at www.annmajor.com.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Prologue

South Texas

The borderlands

Black feathers spun lazily above in a cloudless, azure sky.

Teo’s head hurt as he lay on the hard earth watching the big black birds. His stomach throbbed queasily.

He didn’t know where he was, only that he was somewhere north of the border, somewhere in Tejas. Somewhere on a huge ranch the coyote had called El Dorado.

Teofilo Perez was ten years old and he was dying.

“Mamacíta!”

Teofilo’s hands clawed sand. Then he remembered.

She’d sent him off to scavenge another part of el dompe with Chaco and his gang. Then she and Papacíto had run away.

When Teo had stayed up all night waiting for them, Chaco had laughed.

“They aren’t coming back. It happens all the time. Todo el tiempo.” Chaco had stared indifferently toward the north. “There are many orphans in el dompe. Left behind when their families disappear over the wire. My father…too.”

Now Chaco was gone as well.

Sweat stung Teo’s eyes like hot tears. Where was he?

Burrs and thorns bit into his back. Here there were snakes and spiders in the high grasses; wild animals, too. If Teo didn’t get up and go on, he’d die.

Then it would all be for nothing.

He was burning up, from the inside out; starving, too. He felt as thirsty for water as a bone-dry sponge. Then the coyotes started howling again, and he tasted the coppery flavor of his own panic.

He had to get up and catch Chaco. He had to keep walking north through the endless sandy pastures choked with mesquite and huisache that led to el norte.

To Houston. To Tiá Irma.

Chaco had warned him to stay out of the open, so La Migra couldn’t spot him from their helicopters.

Teo felt too weak to stand, so he lay on the hard, packed ground, his swollen, sunburned lids blinking, his eyes blurring every time he opened them. Through the screen of his dense lashes a too-bright sun spun above the stunted oak trees, shooting diamond-patterned pricks through the branches. The orange orb grew bigger and bigger until it exploded in a blinding brilliance that flooded the white-heat of that harsh, unforgiving sky.

His last meal had been breakfast two days ago—two boiled eggs and three tortillas that had been gritty and stale. His hands fisted again; he tried to swallow, but his tongue was too swollen and his throat too raw and gritty.

Fat black flies buzzed. Some mysterious creature grunted and snorted in the thicket. Teo shivered as he imagined the claws of a puma or the teeth of a coyote.

“Ayudame, Dios.”

He wanted to go home, not to Cartolandia, which was pocho for Cardboard Land, the barrio where they’d lived near el dompe in Nuevo Laredo. No, he wanted to go back home to his mountainous village, Tepóztlan. But there were no jobs there for Papacíto, no future for any of them. Nothing.

Nada, nada, mi hijo.

Papacíto had said those same words a week ago after government tractors and bulldozers had crushed their shack and bedraggled garden along with thousands of others and left them homeless again.

The next day, Papacíto had run away. Probably to look for work in el norte.

Teo couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in school or even his last bath. He felt like a slab of meat drying in the sun, a worn-out corpse.

Papacíto had promised him a house in el norte with a flush toilet, toys, a garden where he could play.

Swish. Black feathers were falling out of the sky, crash-landing clumsily, settling themselves in the branches of the thorny thicket.

Vultures.

Teo stared stupidly at the big black bird folding his wings. Another bird hopped out of a tree and scuttled closer.

Teo had to get up, but when he struggled to his knees, he reeled dizzily. Once he had crawled on bleeding knees to pray to the Virgin in Mexico City. That memory was followed by a sweeter one. He was home in the cool shade of his porch, lying on his hammock, and his mother and grandmother were singing him a lullaby. He began whispering his Hail Marys.

When he opened his eyes again, he was on the ground, and the buzzards were circling lazily against the pale blue. Through swirls of dust, a lone rider on a big black horse moved toward him. The tall man, whose low-crowned sombrero was the color of dust, wore a strange costume of weathered rawhide. He was as filthy as Teo, yet he sat on his horse with a world-weary cockiness that said he was somebody, more than border trash from el dompe.

Although the man’s coppery face was hard and lean, his teeth were as white as the chicles Teo had sold to the fat gringo turistas. He had a golden mustache.

Terrified, Teo grabbed at his plastic bag of tortillas that Chaco had tied to his belt. In his other hand he gripped the bottle that held the remains of Chaco’s red soft drink. Swaying weakly, drowning in the blinding sunlight, Teo struggled to his feet.

The man called down to him gently in his native tongue, more gently than Papacíto ever spoke. “Cuidado, manito.”

Was he a phantom? A trick, like the trick the coyote had played when he’d dumped Chaco and the other toughs from el dompe here, in the middle of nowhere, swearing that a truck would be waiting for them a little farther where the pasture hit the road past the immigration checkpoint.

The stranger’s manner and the fact that he spoke a lilting, peculiarly accented Spanish was more terrifying than anything.

Then he saw her.

The trees began to whirl, and Teo was on the ground again, his dirty white shirt covered in blood. Only it wasn’t blood. It was the sugary soft drink. He’d spilled the last of Chaco’s precious drink.

Chaco would beat him for sure. Sobbing, he begged God to tell Chaco he was sorry, to tell his mother he was sorry he hadn’t minded when she’d told him to sweep the street or bring her a bucket of water.

When the tall dusty rider got off his horse, Teo screamed and screamed.

Until he saw a girl running lightly beside the huge man. Her hair was straight and reddish gold, with deep shifting highlights glinting in the hot blaze of light that flowed all around her.

She was an angel.

His very own angel.

Teo closed his eyes, and a great peace stole over him. He wasn’t afraid to die anymore.

“Angelita!” he whispered.

He opened his eyes. The girl wasn’t an angel. It was his mother, and her voice was as sweet as those songs she used to sing before he went to sleep.

“Don’t be afraid. You are safe, little one.”

With the last of his strength, Teo stretched his thin hand toward her, but she vanished.

There was only the mysterious rider.

Only terror.

Only death in a strange, wild land.

One

South Texas

El Dorado Ranch

A bad woman can ruin the best man alive, same as a bad man can destroy a good woman.

El Dorado Ranch, set as it was right square in the borderlands cactus country of the biggest state in the continental union, might seem too rough a place for sob-sister tales to get a firm hold. But there’s nothing more fascinating than love gone wrong; nothing more fun to talk about, either—especially if it’s the boss’s love life gone wrong.

North Black, for all that his daddy had been a local legend, for all that North had inherited his own natural arrogance and aura of cowboy majesty, for all that he sat that high-steppin’, champion quarter horse, which had set him back a cool half million, for all that his carved leather saddle was trimmed in sterling, for all that he’d been billed by the state’s most popular magazine as the most eligible bachelor in Texas—for all that, this cowboy king was damned near done for.

Nothing is more disagreeable or more difficult to stop than gossip, especially when it’s true. It was common knowledge at El Dorado Ranch—better known, at least in these parts, as North Black’s private kingdom—that the king was on the verge of collapse. And not only because the worst drought in living memory plagued his vast ranch in south Texas. But because an impossible little spitfire had gotten a grip on his heart and then done him wrong.

North was killing himself with overwork, his loyal crew said, doing way more than his share of the real cowboying. Why, the king was up before dawn and working cattle long after dark. Even when his hands quit, he never took a break. His lunch was a sandwich in the saddle topped off with a swig out of his canteen. Evenings, when no serious rustling or poaching mischief was afoot, were spent in his office poring over ledgers or talking on the phone.

Wherever there was trouble—illegals, bulls loose, broken pipes, cut fences, dry water holes, cows lost, a horse that needed to be broken, or more of the Midnight Bandit’s mischief, North took the job on himself. Then there was Gran, who stole his best cowboys to work her garden every time he turned his back.

Nobody blamed North for wanting to work himself to death. Not after what that little witch, Melody Woods, had done to him—time and again.

First, she’d jilted him at the altar like he was a nobody—right there, in front of God, his crew, his friends, his family; hell, in front of the entire damned ranching aristocracy of Texas. She’d made a fool of him, the king, a man known to be too arrogant and too proud.

“She did worse than hurt his pride,” said Sissy, his wild sister, who was worrying about him more than usual. “She broke his heart.” And Sissy knew a thing or two about broken hearts.

“His father would never have lost it over a woman,” Libby Black, his grandmother asserted at every possible occasion. “The ranch came first.”

“You always make El Dorado sound like a religion, Gran,” Sissy said.

“It was till I got some sense and took up gardening.”

“It’s not a religion,” Sissy said. “Not for me.”

“Which is why I put North in charge.”

Not that North ever talked about the impossible Miss Woods. Not even after he’d fallen for her sister, Claire, on the rebound. Fortunately he and Claire had come to their senses, realizing they should be friends rather than lovers.

Gossip had it that Miss Melody Woods had had a hand in the breakup of that romance. That very same night, first chance she got, she’d gone and made a fool of him again.

Yes, sirree. She’d turned the king into a jealousy-crazed maniac in a run-down bar in Rockport, Texas. Hell, that shrimpers’ dive better known as Shorty’s, was so bad, the king would never have set the scuffed toe of his handmade, black boot inside it, if Melody hadn’t lured him there on purpose. For reasons known only to her, she’d danced and gotten those rough, dangerous fishermen in such a rowdy stir, they would’ve given her more than she’d bargained for, if the king hadn’t rushed her and carried her off over his shoulders like he was a caveman and she was his woman.

Only she wasn’t his woman or ever going to be—according to him. The hands knew that because the very next day a couple of greenhorns at El Dorado were stupid enough to make crude bets as to exactly what the king must’ve done to punish Miss Woods in bed later that night. When Lester Rivers got himself liquored up enough to ask the king, who was even taller and broader-shouldered than Lester, for details about their little romp, it had taken Jeff Gentry, his burly foreman and best friend, and W.T., the laziest cowboy on El Dorado, to hold North long enough for Lester to hightail it to Laredo.

Later, the king had thanked everybody, even W.T., for saving him from strangling Lester with his bare hands. Then North had said, very softly, very calmly, but in that voice, everybody in his kingdom, even Gran, understood.

“What happened that night is nobody’s business but mine! Nobody, none of you, is to ever even think about what Melody Woods does in or out of my bed or ever say her name at El Dorado Ranch again! As far as I’m concerned, she no longer exists. Understand? Comprende?”

Nobody had spoken of her, in Spanish or English—at least, not directly and not within the king’s earshot. But the forbidden holds a mighty powerful appeal. Especially for comrades in a cow camp lonely for female companionship, especially when that forbidden female is willowy and sexy and full of surprises as a brand-new kitten.

It was plain to see by the stubborn set of North’s strong, jutting jaw, he wasn’t over that night. Plain to see by his stern silences and his inability to even crack a smile at his men’s dirty banter, that the king hadn’t forgotten the young lady or that night any more than they had.

No, sirree. The king wasn’t through with Miss Melody Woods.

Any more than that little firecracker was through with him.

It was just a matter of time before that pair got into a tussle again.

What would that sexy little gal dream up for an encore?

His men’s yelps along with that damn cow’s stomping and grunting and snorting inside the jug at the far end of the huge barn would have set a sane man’s nerves on edge. North was hardly sane.

He hadn’t been himself since that night when Melody had danced for the world and then refused to dance with him in private. To make matters worse, Dee Dee Woods, Melody’s socially ambitious mom, had him on the phone and was unraveling the fraying ends of his frazzled psyche with her shrill demands.

“I said supper!”

He held the phone away from his ear. How could such a pretty woman have such a grating voice? “Tonight? Your house? I don’t think that’s a good—”

“But Melody’s safe and sound in Austin.”

He knew better than to argue.

“Sam and I miss you. That’s why when your accountant said you were coming to town, I decided to call.”

He missed them, too. “Just a second, Dee Dee. We’ve got a cow in labor, and Jeff’s yelling so loud—”

On a shudder, North pressed the cordless telephone tighter against his ear and bolted himself inside the stall with his pet llamas. Camels, he called them when he was feeling affectionate or worried, which was all the time, ever since Little Camel had been born so puny.

Not that it was any quieter inside their stall. Not with that distressed cow in labor, bawling and fit to be tied again.

“What was that you said, Dee Dee?” North demanded.

He liked Dee Dee Woods even if she’d set her sights on him as a future son-in-law for all the wrong reasons.

“I heard you’d be in town,” Dee Dee shrieked. “So, I called to invite you to supper.”

The cow started kicking so loud North could barely hear her.

“It’ll just be Sam and me…I promise!”

“All right.”

“Seven-thirty sharp.”

He said bye and hung up.

“Boys,” he shouted. “I was on the phone. Y’all were hollering so loud, I couldn’t hear myself think. I just did a very stupid thing.”

“W.T. let go, and she kicked me—two hooves, square in the chest!” Jeff yelled back at him. “Get down here, King!”

North was so mad he stayed put.

Damn it. It was Jeff’s fault he’d said yes to Dee Dee Woods. Gentry deserved to sweat. Hell, droplets of the stuff were trickling from North’s wet black hair, soaking his denim shirt and blue surgical overalls as he considered sitting down to dinner in the Woodses’ house again.

He’d said yes.

Not to worry. You have a date with Maria on Saturday. You’re through with Melody.

Just talking to her mother had brought everything back, especially that night.

North stood alone in a stall, occupied not by a cow or horse, but by that unlikely pair of camels and wondered if he should call Dee Dee back and send his regrets.

He began to frown in earnest as he stroked the mama llama. Then he eyed her gangly newborn more worriedly. The mother was dark brown with black patches on her face and rump. Her milk wouldn’t come, and the baby—an impossibly skinny runt who was all ribs and neck and match-stick legs—couldn’t suckle.

For some foolish reason, even after nights spent chasing the Midnight Bandit, North had been getting to the barn at 4:00 a.m. to play nursemaid to the shy baby llama, warming bottles, cradling him, feeding him. Even so, Little Camel wasn’t putting on weight.

Jeff yelled, “Time to play vet, King.”

“See you later, Little Camel,” North whispered with more affection than he wanted to feel.

The shy, scared baby reminded him of…

He saw a little girl on the ground, her skirts hiked, her skinny knees torn and bloody; worse, her smoky-blue eyes dark with fear. Abruptly the king stopped that memory.

His defiant boot heels echoing all the way to the rafters, North stalked across the concrete floor of his barn toward the scuffle of his men and the cow in that distant stall.

It was late August and 113 degrees in the shade outside if it was a degree. Inside the barn felt like a sauna. He could almost feel the beige dust that coated his wavy hair and dark skin turn to mud and ooze under his collar.

North was exhausted, on edge, but he forced himself to concentrate on the job ahead instead of on…on Melody.

Damn her hide…or rather her silky, golden skin. And she was soft—he’d never forget how good she’d felt the first time he’d accidentally touched her and she’d jumped as if she’d been shot. Not that every nerve in his body hadn’t popped like sparklers, too.

Why the hell had Dee Dee called? He didn’t want Melody on his mind. For months he’d refused to think about her.

He didn’t still want her, still dream about her. He didn’t. Not after what she’d done. Not after what she hadn’t done.

But if some idiotic part of him still did want her, that was the part he was trying damned hard to kill by working himself so hard. His misplaced affection for the wrong woman had jeopardized not only his pride and his heart, but also his family and their ranch.

He had a position to uphold. When he married, if he married after what she’d put him through, it would be to a mature, sensible woman who understood ranching, who could contribute something of value to El Dorado, who would lend sanity to his hard life instead of chaos, who could make commitments and stick to them. He wanted a harmonious marriage to a woman, who could show a man she loved him in a warm womanly way, to a woman like Maria Langly, who had been born and bred to ranch life, just as he had.

North was fighting for his ranch, his legacy and his world. His back was against the wall. He had no time to waste on a woman who’d never known for sure whether she wanted him, a woman who would never be anything but trouble.

Unbidden came the vision of a long, cool slip of a girl in skintight jeans and a halter top. Melody did have the cutest and most mischievous smile and the softest honeyred, straight hair. She smelled good, too. And, boy, when that little exhibitionist hadn’t been driving him crazy, or turning him on, she sure had made him laugh. Nobody had ever been able to make him forget, at least for a little while, the ranch and the heavy responsibilities he’d assumed too young.

She was cute. Trouble was, she knew it. She’d reveled in making him forget that he was supposed to be stern and tough, that as the largest landowner in south Texas, he was supposed to set an example for his men, for the whole damn ranching community in these parts.

Hell, his granddaddy had taken him up on his saddle when he was five. They’d worked cattle together, and all the while the old man had been whispering that when he was a man, all this—meaning the cattle, the vast acreage—would be his responsibility. His father, Rand Black, had been a legend. North was determined to carry on his daddy’s legacy and support the people whose families had lived here for generations, who depended on him for their very livelihoods.

Melody never bowed down and worshiped him like everybody else around here. So, why the hell had he loved this defiant brat since she’d been a young girl? She wasn’t even any good in bed. She was too uptight and skittish to be sexy in private. At least with him. No, she preferred public displays of wanton affection that drove him and every other guy who caught her performance wild. Always, she left him hot and hard and frustrated, and jealous as all get out. When they were alone, and he made a move, she got as scared and shy as his baby camel. He loathed everybody thinking she was hot and easy when that’s the last thing she was.

Except for that last night.

You’re not supposed to think about her or what happened, ever again. You’re supposed to work—till you forget her.

So, how come you accepted a dinner invitation tonight in Corpus Christi from her mother?

Because Dee Dee swore Melody’s in Austin and you won’t see her. Or talk about her. Because it was so hot and loud in the barn you hadn’t been able to think.

Liar.

You want to see Dee Dee’s most recent pictures of her on the fridge. You want Dee Dee to drop those annoying little hints…

Forget her!

North was trying. He’d all but imprisoned himself on his ranch. He had 800,000 acres of baking shin oak and prickly pear and thousands of head of cattle to protect him from that clueless she-devil, who had a lot of growing up to do up in Austin.

North could hear his stressed cattle outside squalling as his men cut them from the herd and drove them into pens and chutes, some to be kept and fed, some to be vaccinated and tagged, some to be loaded onto the cattle trucks that were discreetly hidden in mesquite thickets.

Tough times made for brutal decisions.

No matter how much land or money a rancher had, he was powerless against the weather and the hard realities of market prices. Due to the drought, he’d run out of grass. The beef market was flooded. The cost of feed was too high to keep the herd. Then last night the Midnight Bandit had cut his fence and tried to rustle a truckload of cows again.

Outside the barn, horses neighed and sputtered. The cattle roared, and his men shouted. These were the familiar, beloved sounds of home to North. And of doom.

For more than a hundred years this ranch had been owned and run by Blacks. The pictures of his ancestors hung inside the ranch house, their grim expressions setting standards and demanding impossibilities of him in these modern times.

Inside the stall now, North was still sweating profusely as he picked up a scalpel, still in its wrapper. He picked up the irritated, very pregnant cow’s tail, then let it drop. She didn’t react.

“Looks like the spinal’s okay, King,” Jeff said behind him.

“Good.”

Jeff was wide as a beam and nearly as tall as North; he was red-haired, bowlegged, narrow-eyed, and bullheaded. But a lady’s man nonetheless. His daddy had been the ranch foreman before him, and his daddy before him. Jeff had grown up on the ranch just like North had. They were closer than most brothers. El Dorado was that kind of place.

“So, let’s get to work—fast,” Jeff urged.

North inspected the shaved area and the black lines Jeff had drawn along the reddish brown hide. When he was satisfied, he injected a topical anesthetic along every inch of the line. After he sliced through the hide with the scalpel, Jeff injected more anesthetic inside the incision. North began to cut deeper.

There were a lot of bleeders, but North deftly stopped them. Within a minute he was popping hooves out of the cow’s belly and Jeff was pulling the rest of the calf free. They worked together, in harmony, as they always did, smiling at each other after it was over because it was a helluva rush to look into those wet brown eyes and witness the beginning of a new life.

Another life saved.

But for what? North wondered silently as he knew Jeff did. If it didn’t rain? For an early death in a slaughter-house…his short life bartered for a few peanuts? Worse, he might get himself rustled and hauled south to Mexico.

Again, North thought of Melody who’d become a vegetarian just to spite him after her first and only visit to the ranch.

North frowned as he dropped antibiotics into the uterus and then began to sew up the cow, barking questions at Jeff to distract himself from Melody. “Calf breathing okay?”

North remembered Melody saying after he’d finished a long day at the squeeze chute, “I won’t ever eat a hamburger again. I keep seeing a cute little brown-eyed calf peeping its head out of my hamburger bun and pleading for help.”

He stared at the cute new calf. It galled him that Melody thought he didn’t care about his animals.

“He’s a cute little cuss, ain’t he, King?”

Forget Melody Woods.

“Get him tagged and shot!”

Within minutes, North was done and striding out of the barn in shotgun chaps made of scarred leather. He made his way toward the cloud of dust that muted the harsh sun somewhere up above in that bluish white sky.

He pulled his bandanna up and took Mr. Jim’s reins. As he rode toward the herd, Jeff and the other cowboys seemed to float in a golden haze of dust.

When North got closer, Mr. Jim shook his long red mane and neighed. His vaqueros nodded in deference, and Mr. Jim reared.

“Easy, champ,” North whispered to Mr. Jim.

He flicked the reins and began shouting orders to his men in fluent Spanish right before he galloped into the herd. Then, and only then, as he cut cattle alongside his day-labor cowboys, was he able to forget the impossible Melody Woods.

Because he had to drive in to Corpus Christi, he quit earlier than he had in weeks. Before going to the house, he returned to the barn.

The calf he’d delivered was doing fine, so he made a final stop at that stall occupied by the mama llama and her pitifully skinny baby.

“Jeff,” he shouted.

Jeff came running. Hell, everybody came running when the king yelled.

Everybody except…her.

When the baby llama forgot his shyness for the first time and moved toward him trustingly on shaky legs, North melted. He remembered a skinny little girl on the ground, drying her tears with the back of her hand before throwing herself into his arms.

“How long since my baby camel here ate?” North demanded in an oddly rough voice.

“Three hours. Want me to feed her again?”

“Him. No,” North said, surprising himself as he strode toward the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of fresh milk. “Warm this. I’ll do it.”

“You’re wasting a lot of time on that runt,” Jeff said as North squatted near the fragile newborn.

“I guess I’m a sucker for lost causes.”

Melody had said he had no heart.

The barn phone began to ring as North cradled the llama across his knees and offered him the bottle. As the camel nibbled tentatively, W.T. banged inside the stall with the cordless. The llama shivered and stopped suckling. If anybody had the look of a dimestore cowboy, it was W.T. Scuffed high-heeled boots, wide hat, the shiftless fraud carried himself with more style than anybody on El Dorado.

“Take it easy when you come in here,” North whispered testily.

“Border Patrol. Delfino’s at the gate in his Dodge Ram-charger demandin’ access—”

North grabbed the phone. “Delfino, you’d better be here to tell me you’ve got a lead on the Midnight Bandit. He damn near made off with a truck—”

“No. Some half-starved illegals. Kids. Not ten miles south of your headquarters. From our helicopter. Brush too dense to land.”

“Damn,” North muttered.

Tough as it was in Texas, it was tougher in Mexico. And getting tougher. Ejidos, small Mexican settlements, sprang up along the southern edge of El Dorado almost weekly. The people who lived in them were unemployed. They didn’t have a damned thing to do but watch the goings-on at El Dorado.

North had started wearing his Colt when he worked remote pastures of his ranch. He never knew anymore who or what he might run into on his own land. Anytime he spotted illegals, he called the Border Patrol.

Melody’s voice piped up in his mind. “Americans spend more than four billion dollars a year on pet food. You know what else, Bertie? We don’t spend a fourth of that on food to feed starving people in third world countries.”

Bertie. That was Melody’s special name for the king. If ever there was a sissy nickname—

More and more, intense, desperate men seemed to be making border crossings. Not just men these days. Women and children, who were pitifully unprepared to attack the desert.

Delfino repeated that single word, “Kids.”

Ten miles. Illegals never carried much food or more than a gallon of water. In this heat, on foot, they’d be dead before they reached his headquarters.

North nodded glumly. “Keep an eye out for my bandit, you hear?”

After North hung up, the llama suckled indifferently. Still, North fed the baby camel with a vengeance till the bottle was completely empty. When he was done, he touched his brow to the furry ear. “You’re not going to starve on me, Little Camel. Not if I can help it!”

When North was done, he found Jeff in the tack room. “You gonna take care of Little Camel, here, while I’m gone to Corpus?”

“Corpus?” Jeff shot him a look. “What about Saturday and Maria and me and Tina?”

“Right. Saturday. Maria.” North took his sweat-stained Stetson off, raked brown fingers through his black hair, set his hat back on. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” His deep voice lacked enthusiasm.

“We’ll cook ’em steaks, take ’em ridin’ around on the ranch, show off the spread, impress ’em and bed ’em,” Jeff reminded him. “Just like old times…before her.”

“Right. Just like old times.”

Jeff resented Melody more than anybody else on the ranch. North and he had gone to college together, double-dated together. They’d been inseparable until Melody.

“Don’t you worry none about Little Camel, King.”

North showered and changed into a pair of faded jeans with razor-sharp creases, a long-sleeved white shirt and his best boots—his uniform, Melody used to say. Then he stomped out to his white pickup. First thing he saw was his Colt in its holster on the seat.

He was licensed to carry. Quickly wrapping the belt around the holster, he got inside and jammed it into his glove compartment.

Once he left the ranch, the flat, familiar highway was clogged with speeding NAFTA trucks all the way to Robstown where he turned off for Corpus Christi.

The drive through flat, unremarkable countryside was so familiar it soon grew boring. Maybe that’s why he noticed the bumper stickers peeling off the eighteen-wheeler in front of him. One was about beautifying Texas and the need to put a Yankee on a bus.

The other was about Humpty Dumpty being pushed.

North grinned. Melody loved bumper stickers.

Melody. He’d been thinking about her way too much. He should have canceled dinner at the Woodses’.

Too late. Dee Dee was a superb cook. Sam knew everything there was to know about football. North’s own father had died young. Too young. Not that North let himself dwell on that.

Hell, his own mother certainly didn’t dwell on it. She was in Europe blowing her fortune on the immense schloss of a Bavarian count she’d met in Paris.

The Woodses had always made a helluva fuss over North, a helluva lot more of a fuss than Melody or his own mother or even Gran ever had. Besides, he did have appointments with his accountant and cattle buyer in Corpus Christi. A frozen dinner in his bachelor apartment there held no appeal.

But the Woodses were her parents, and he was dating Maria now.

Only one date so far.

Not counting next Saturday.

An hour later, he was knocking briskly on the front door of the Woodses’ two-story home, fighting to pretend he felt cool and was in control. When nobody answered, he jammed his fist on the doorbell. He turned to go when he heard lightly racing footsteps.

The door was thrown open by a slim hand with glossily white fingernails that had ridiculous little silver moons etched into them.

Little silver moons.

They sparkled, winking at him. Even before he saw the rest of her, the jolt of male-female awareness that shuddered down his spinal column told him to bolt.

Instead he drawled lazily, “Hello there, Melody.”

Two

“Smile, Bertie boy. It’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.”

Something about Melody’s low, Southern voice, something in the images she conjured was so damn sexy, so damn blatant. He began to dream about how good it could be if she put those lips to work.

“Naughty, naughty,” she whispered, reading his mind.

“What the hell…”

“Relax. I didn’t mean anything. I got that line off some bumper sticker when I was driving home today.”

So, she’d been reading bumper stickers, too.

He moved closer. Big mistake. She smelled too good.

“I’ve got one for you, too, darlin’. Humpty Dumpty was pushed.”

She laughed.

To keep from grinning back, he bit his tongue till he tasted blood.

Peeking from behind the door, Melody batted her long, burnished lashes at him, just as she had that night when she’d come looking for him at his apartment. When the lash work got no visible reaction, her impish smile brightened, and she began to tease him in earnest.

His palms dampened. The smile was overkill. Her lash work had done the trick. So had the comment about what he could do with his lips.

No wonder the ambitious Dee Dee had called this morning. A mother knew when her daughter was in the mood to start something. In Dee Dee’s mind he was a prize catch and a big enough dope to fall for her little girl all over again.

“What the hell are you doing home?” he demanded.

“Hi there to you, too—Bertie.”

His mouth thinned. “Don’t call me that unless…”

“Then, hi there, Rancher Black,” she said sassily.

“North will do just fine.”

“Aye. Aye.” Instead of saluting, she touched her lip with a fluttery white fingertip and blew him a kiss.

Little moons sparked.

His lips actually got hot.

Hell, it was August.

His sneer was slow and deliberate, “So, you’ve come back—” Then he added, “What the hell for?”

She flinched at those secret code words, just as he did. Her beauty upset him even more. Her long, straight, reddish-gold hair framed the slender oval of her flushed face. Her golden skin was damp as if she’d just stepped from the shower. And those half-scared, flirty, smoky-blue eyes ate him alive. Why, oh why, did she have to smell of soap and perfumed bath oils?

Even without makeup, she was naturally, heart-wrenchingly beautiful, more beautiful and innocent looking and yet voluptuous than he remembered. She’d come looking for him after her little dance in Shorty’s, after their wild kisses in the parking lot. No sooner had he pulled her inside his place that night, the night he’d wanted her so damn much, he’d felt as if he’d die if he couldn’t have her.

She’d let him take her to bed. But first, she’d actually stripped for him.

“You say I only want to perform in public. Not tonight. Tonight I want to dance just for you. Do you want to dance with me?”

“I’m not the exhibitionist. I’ll watch.”

“You’re gonna have fun. I promise.” Her eyes had gleamed, teasing him, luring him.

She’d put a CD in his player, turned his lights way down and had begun to move in the velvet shadows. For a long time all she’d done was sway back and forth to the heavy beat and run her hands over her body. When he’d joined her, she’d let him grasp her by the waist, pull her close, let him put his hands wherever he wanted, let him strip her ever so slowly. She hadn’t even fought him when he’d undone the buttons of her blouse, one by one. She’d danced and smiled and lured them both to their doom.

The ground rocked under him as he stood on her porch. His heart thudded.

“You look too damn good, darlin’,” he whispered.

“So do you,” she said in a sad, lost tone that matched his own.

Just those words, and he wanted to touch her so bad he hurt. But he remembered the dangerous place that desire had led them to so many times before, so he knotted his callused hands, slipped them into his hip pockets. He took a deep breath and a long step backward.

Instead of her usual grunge attire, she wore some sort of silky, scarlet sarong that clung to her curves so tightly, he saw nipples. And that there was no panty line. It wasn’t hard to imagine her body since he knew exactly what she looked like with nothing on. Show but don’t let him touch, being her motto.

“How the hell could you answer the door in that? I could’ve been anyone.”

“It would have been a whole lot less dangerous if you had been,” she teased before she realized what she was doing. “I was expecting you.”

Her pupils darkened with alarm, but not before her husky voice had rippled over every raw nerve ending, making his skin sting as if he was on fire the way it had that night.

“But you have no right, no claim on me or what I wear…or don’t wear—ever again, Rancher Black.” She lifted her chin, challenging him to more verbal dueling.

“You’re right, of course—Miss Woods!”

No doubt she’d purchased the improbable garment somewhere in the Orient when she’d run away from him on that freighter and driven him mad with jealousy, rage and fear. When she’d finally turned up safe and sound, she’d thrown his life into turmoil all over again when she’d almost seduced him. Then she’d gone off to India.

“I was in the shower,” she said demurely without lifting her gaze to his. “My muscles were stiff after the long drive.”

All of a sudden he had a stiff muscle problem and a mighty keen need for a cold shower, too.

“Would you prefer it if I’d answered the door stark naked?” she teased.

The vision of her naked in a shower stall brought a rush of heat and made the muscle in question pull even tighter. Just for an instant he remembered her in a black lace bra and matching panties and a black velvet hat after he’d removed her blouse and jeans. For no reason at all, he was tugging at his collar.

“Don’t worry…Bertie. If I’d known you were going to be in such a bad mood, I wouldn’t have answered the door at all.”

“Why aren’t you in Austin where you belong?” His voice was as cold as ice.

“Why did you say yes to my mother? This is my parents’ house. It’s your own fault if you’re not where you belong— out on your big ole ranch. Playing king, doing your big man things. Ordering everybody in your kingdom around.”

That wasn’t how it was. Not that he let on.

“Is that what you think of me and my business?”

“Isn’t that what you want everybody to think?”

“I have responsibilities.”

“And they came before me.”

His family hadn’t thought so. “They’re a part of who I am.”

“And I don’t know who I am. Is that what you’re saying?”

In bed or out of it, he almost shouted. Instead he flushed darkly. “My ranch wasn’t the problem.”

“You give everything of yourself to that ranch.”

“Because I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because my father died that’s why!” North remembered the fire. He remembered running. He remembered screaming for help.

“Why you, Bertie?”

“Just…just…” An emotion built and burst inside him, so he waited. “Just because,” he finished darkly, remembering his father’s funeral. “I’m his son. That’s all.”

Her eyes seemed to see inside him, into that shadowy secret place.

She smiled. “You can tell me.”

He glared. “Can I? If you were me, would you trust you…after…”

They’d hardly said hi, and already they were at it.

Yet he preferred arguing and probably so did she—to remembering that night and what had happened in his apartment and what hadn’t.

She was pale and yet breathing hard, every bit as agitated as he was. Those fingers with the little silver moons were tugging at her silken sash. “How can we be discussing this…like it still matters? When nothing about us matters…anymore.”

He watched that rhythmic tugging of those little half moons at her sash as if hypnotized. “My thoughts exactly, darlin’.”

So why was there a painful lump in his throat? Why that painful thickening lower down that stretched his jeans and made him too conscious of her easy power? Why were the memories of his childhood all mixed up with the crazy sexual frustration of that last night? Why this insane desire to yank that infernal sash loose, slide his hands inside that silk robe and pull her against his body when he knew why wanting her was so impossible?

Why couldn’t she be normal? Why did she have to be the sexiest woman alive and not sexy at all?

Those moving fingertips with the little moons that twinkled slid along red silk. He felt his collar tighten like it was really choking him. “Stop playing with that damned sash!”

“Sorry.”

“Do I come in or go?” he growled when her slim hands were still at last. “It’s been a long day.”

“Oh, do come in, Rancher Black,” she teased, pushing the door wider.

“Quit calling me that!”

When she didn’t move out of his way, he was forced to sidle so close to her he almost brushed against her. Which was what she must have wanted because when he was almost past her, she reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder.

“North, I…” Even before the panic flared in her eyes, she chopped off the end of her sentence.

Instantly his muscles contracted beneath the liquid heat of her slim hand. His black head jerked, startling her, and for a long moment they both stared at those fingertips with the tiny silver moons. She’d scarcely touched him, but the effect on his senses was electrifying.

He remembered that last night when her hands had been all over him. She’d been eager, as eager as he. And then suddenly, she’d gotten scared.

“North…” Her little girl voice died in her throat as she splayed her fingers, causing the tiny little moons to twinkle.

He felt her, remembered her in every pore. They’d lain in his bed that night, his body pressed firmly against hers, her lips against his throat, her breast against his chest, the rest of their bodies touching all the way down. She’d felt so right. She always did.

He’d held her for a long time, stroking her hair, trying to gentle her as he might a frightened colt. But she’d gotten frightened again and gone back to the wild on him anyway.

“Don’t start in on me again, darlin’…unless you intend to finish what you start…this time.”

Her hand tightened and then fell away slowly, and still he couldn’t move past her any more than she seemed able to escape him.

“I want to forget you,” he said, but his gaze was on her pink lips.

“That does seem like the sensible solution to our problem.”

“Your problem,” he said in a flat tone.

“And yet—”

“There is not going to be a yet—damn you.”

She blushed. Her eyes remained downcast. “What if I can’t be as sensible or as rational as you? What if I—”

“Not if you crawled—”

She went white at that code word.

“You broke up with me, remember?” he said in a softer tone.

“And you’ll never be able to forgive—” Her husky voice had dropped, too—to something that sounded close to shame or regret.

“That’s right.”

Leave her alone. Cool off. Talk football outside with Sam.

But she looked so small and vulnerable. Suddenly he couldn’t stop staring at her lips and wondering how long since anybody had kissed their wet, pink fullness. Wondering who else knew how they tasted. These thoughts got him so riled, North pushed his way inside, grabbed her, backed her against the red flowers on the foyer wallpaper and pressed his body firmly against hers.

She swallowed. Her eyes shone nervously; her cheeks blazed a brighter hue, but for once, she didn’t try to run.

Suddenly his breathing was fast and irregular. “Why? Why do you always goad me? Why do you always have to push?”

“I—I don’t know. I-it’s just the way I am with you. I don’t like it that I do it, either. North—”

“Shut up,” he said silkily.

Then he touched her cheek with the back of his hand, ran it along her throat. Her skin was smooth and soft. Womanly soft. And hot. So hot. She was burning up just like he was.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

He stroked her hair. “Not just yet. You touched me. You led me on.”

“You’re too easy.”

He grinned. “If only you were as easy.”

She shut her eyes as if to shut him out.

“Your desires are every bit as deep and dark as mine,” he murmured. “Have you found someone else to satisfy them?” Just asking her drove him crazy.

Her lashes fluttered. Her smoky eyes darkened. “No…”

“How long…since you’ve been held? Kissed?”

“Not since…that night.” She turned deep red.

“Me, either.”

Why the hell had he admitted that? Unwanted desire for her wound him tighter. When she tried to run, he seized her arm again. “Not yet, darlin’. You’re not going anywhere. Not just yet. Not till I’ve had a final taste.”

Melody was tall, but he dwarfed her. Easily he scooped her closer. When he snugged her hips against his, she quivered, and even the slight response on her part that warred with the wild panic in her eyes made him explosively needy. Always, always she drove him past the limits of his careful control.

“Why do you always bully me?” she whispered.

“Sometimes I think because you want me to.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What do you want, Melody? What’s so wrong—”

An electric silence hummed between them. She was nervy, yet secretly thrilled and eager, too.

“You scare me,” she said breathily.

“You scare you. You ought to know by now I would never hurt you. Or force you—”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“I just want to touch you.” He wanted to slide his fingers inside her again, to know she was wet as she’d been that night, despite all her puritanical and hung-up assertions to the contrary.

She shut her eyes, half opened her mouth and sank back against the wall. “If only—”

God, it had been so long. Six months since that wonderful, awful night. He had told himself, never, ever again—not with her. Then the minute he set eyes on her, the minute she touched him, she had him again. More than anything he craved to kiss her, to run his hands through her long, soft hair, to do all the things she’d forbidden him to do.

What would she do this time if he tried? What would she say? What would he do if she ever let him? He’d wanted her so damn much. He’d waited so long.

Maybe he would have held himself in check if Melody hadn’t reached up and brushed her fingertips against the crisp black hair above his white collar. Maybe. But even though her touch was light and tentative, he felt her feverish response behind it, and that alone set him off.

He seized her shoulders to pull her toward him, wondering if this time she’d—

His head came down. Her lips pursed eagerly as she lifted them. In the fraction of a second before their mouths touched, he thought she whispered, “I’m sorry, North. So, sorry.”

But before he could deepen their kiss, he heard the brisk patter of Dee Dee’s footsteps. Quickly he straightened, and Melody twisted her crimson face away, so her mother couldn’t read her.

“Is that you, North!” Dee Dee shrieked from the other end of the hall as she rushed down the hall that was papered to look like a voluptuous garden gone wild in spring.

He froze.

Melody jumped free and began smoothing her hair.

“North…Melody…”

Dee Dee, who was golden and gorgeous and looked years younger than she was, smiled as they hastily backed away from each other and began to fidget—Melody with her sash after she’d finished on her hair and he with his tight collar.

“It’s so good to see you, dear.” Dee Dee smiled knowingly as she came forward and stretched on tiptoes as if to peck his dark cheek. All he felt when her glossy lips hovered close was the stir of her warm breath against his skin. “I’m the chairman of the charity ball, so I was on the phone and couldn’t get the door.”

“You said Melody was in Austin.”

“Did I?” Dee Dee smiled up at him artlessly. “You know Melody. She’s as fickle as Texas weather, and I suppose we’re about due for a norther.”

“After this hellish summer, something a little cool…and frosty might be a welcome change,” he agreed thickly, his eyes on Melody.

“Sam’s out back,” Dee Dee said. When an alarm buzzed in her kitchen, she started. “Why don’t you join him, dear? And while you’re outside, make sure he doesn’t burn up my rib eyes. Meanwhile, I’ll go get you a beer out of the fridge.” Then she flew to the kitchen to check on whatever she had in the oven.

“It’s only one evening together,” North muttered in a hoarse whisper to Melody. “Surely we can be civil and behave ourselves in front of your parents for a few hours—for their sake. For ours, too.”

“Only one night?” Melody looked a little strained as she smiled up at him. “Oh, no, North. I quit my job. I’m home to stay. Or at least I’ll be at Nana’s. You and I could see each other anytime—that is, if we wanted to.”

“Which we don’t.”

“Speak for yourself. The last thing I intend to do where you’re concerned—is behave myself.”

Nana was her grandmother.

“I thought south Texas bored you.”

“I was wrong…about a lot of things.”

He remembered her apology right before their kiss. “What things? What do you mean?”

“I’ll be around. That’s all.”

“You said you loved Austin because it was wild. That south Texas and I bored—”

Her parting shots had cut him to the quick. At one point she’d said he was so ultraconservative that she felt stifled and dead anytime she was anywhere near him.

“Well—” She paused. “I’m here for a while. Not because of you, but because I’m going back to school. To get a masters and a teaching certificate.”

“Teaching? You said you didn’t want to settle for any sort of traditional roles like wife or teacher that women used to be forced into by macho men.”

“I was a child. Naturally I wanted to be glamorous and special.” She paused. “I guess I figured out I like kids. I figured out some other stuff…that I like, too.”

Like men? Like sex? Like me?

As if she read his mind, Melody notched her chin upward a bit defiantly, and he found himself drinking in the beauty of her long slender neck and wondering if she really might be referring to sex.

“With this degree and certificate,” Melody continued, “I can work anywhere in the world. I’ll be independent.”

So that was it! She hadn’t come back because of him. This was about her infernal determination to be independent of him. To stay single.

Not that he cared.

“So you still want to travel?” he whispered, making his voice both insolent and admiring. “To see the world?”

“To be free,” she agreed, but her tone was low and urgent as if this really was important to her, as if making him understand mattered.

“Sexually free?”

She turned red again. “Is that all you ever think about?”

“That does seem to be a burning issue when you’re around.”

“Which is why I wanted to get as far away from you as I possibly could!”

“To have more of your little adventures?”

Her eyes blazed. “You don’t get me at all. I should’ve known better than to try to talk to you. You wouldn’t understand.”

He understood, all right. She teased him. Did she want real adventures with other, wilder men, who weren’t so predictable, who didn’t bore her—as he did?

“You might get into trouble. I worry about you.”

“Well, don’t.” Her eyes smoldered. “This isn’t about you, North.”

Something cold coiled around his heart, and then he saw that she was trembling.

“You’re right, of course,” he forced himself to agree. “We broke up. Or rather, you broke up with me. You said we’re—”

“Finished. And you said—” Her voice was tight and sad, and he realized his parting shots had hurt her, too.

He’d said she was doing him a favor.

She was right. They were finished. It was what she’d wanted, what he wanted, too. He was a rancher, born and bred—traditional to the core. He couldn’t change that. He couldn’t—not for her, not after everything she’d done.

Even so, the thought of other men touching her…of her touching them…

That shouldn’t have bothered him. But his stomach twisted, and a bleak, lonely wave of despair washed over him as he considered working his ranch, dating other women, even Maria—while Melody had romantic adventures.

“I—I guess I’ll go and get dressed,” she said after an awkward spell.

When she left him, North’s gaze followed her. Her waist was slim, the flare of her hips and thighs enticingly sweet. That short red silk thing made her look leggy and coltish. He couldn’t seem to move till she disappeared from his view.

Then he adjusted his collar and raked his hand through his hair. So what if he had to endure one miserable night with her?

They’d catch up on old times. Then he really would forget her. He’d see Maria on Saturday, and maybe he’d find a bad girl on the side to sleep with. From now on, he’d drown himself in other women instead of work.

The only reason Miss Melody Woods was getting to him tonight was that she’d burned him so bad, he’d avoided all women since her.

Until Maria, he reminded himself. Maria was perfect for him. At least Jeff said so.

Could he help it if Melody looked good enough to eat, and that he was starved?

One night with her.

What could possibly go wrong?

Smile. It’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.

Why did those infernal words keep repeating themselves like a broken record? Why did he keep imagining her mouth on his body?

He didn’t like the heat those images brought.

One night.

That was all.

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