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