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