quicken, her nipples harden, her skin prickle and chafe against the restrictions of her clothing.
Awash with longing, throat aching and eyes burning, Lauren angrily threw the truck into gear and drove out of Smoky Joe’s parking lot into the Arizona night.
I should never have danced with him. The thought chilled her even now as she lifted her face to the hot August wind.
She opened her eyes when the gray mare abruptly slowed, then halted. Just ahead, Bronco was waiting for her beside a rock pile, in the shade of a massive bull pine.
Without her noticing, the land had changed dramatically. They’d been climbing steadily, she realized now, and the rolling hills dotted with juniper and sage, mesquite and palo verde had given way to sparse stands of piñons intermingled with bull pines and clumps of scrub brush.
While Cochise Red snuffed the ground and whickered an impatient greeting to the gray mare, Bronco placidly waited for Lauren to come to him, then reached out and took her reins. “We’ll rest here a bit. Give the horses a breather.”
For a moment she sat where she was, glaring resentfully at him while sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat and crawled in a chilly trickle between her breasts. But in a way it was almost a relief to look at him, to see him the way he was today, a vivid flesh-and-blood reminder that he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. The fantasy rodeo rider in a graceful pas de deux with a bucking bronc, the Saturday-night charmer in the red shirt and flowing black hair. Maybe they were parts of the whole and maybe they were no more than clever disguises, but how could she ever know for certain? The only thing she did know was that this man, this Bronco, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the smiling man she’d danced with two nights ago. In his bleached blue shirt and saddle-worn jeans, with his long hair vanished into a neat club at the nape of his neck and his sweat-stained hat tilted low on his brow, he wore the lean and merciless look of a hunting wolf—or a born outlaw.
Once more, in spite of the heat, Lauren shivered.
Perhaps sensing her rider’s unease, the gray mare sidestepped nervously as she dismounted. Lauren spoke to her softly and gave her a reassuring slap on the withers as she moved away from her.
“You mad at her about something?”
She started, then halted, despising herself for trembling inside as Bronco suddenly appeared beside her, one hand on the gray mare’s bridle, blocking her way.
“Mad?” she said in a voice taut with confusion. “No, I was just… She seemed nervous. I was letting her know it was okay.”
“Let me ask you a question.” Now he spoke in a crooning tone. His hand lay gentle on the mare’s sweat-darkened neck. Lauren focused on that hand and tried to ignore the way her breath caught in her throat as he moved up beside her. “If I was to slap you on your bare skin, exactly the same way you just slapped her, you think you’d like it?”
Her mouth dropped open, but with no hope of a reply.
“Her hide’s as sensitive as yours is,” he went on in that thick seductive murmur. His hands moved on the mare’s neck with a caressing touch, like a lover’s. “She can feel a gnat when it lands on her back. Think what a slap feels like.”
As if she understood, the little mare turned an ear toward him, then her head, and blew a gust of breath against his shoulder. When she playfully nibbled his shirtsleeve, Bronco’s answering chuckle was almost indistinguishable from the sounds the animal made.
“Ever watch the way horses do with each other? They nuzzle. Just touch each other gently with the softest part of their lips. That’s the way you want to touch a horse. You stroke her nice and easy, light little massages like a horse’s nuzzle—see there?”
Lauren nodded, but it was a lie; both he and the horse were a blur. His voice retreated to a distant hum; she felt light-headed. In her mind’s eye she saw his hands, all right, those same hands, but the sleek shiny hide beneath the fingers wasn’t sweat-streaked dappled gray, but a rich deep mahogany.
A voice intruded, Gil McCullough’s voice, droning on and on about the accomplishments, pedigree and breeding track record of the stallion, Cochise Red. But Lauren wasn’t listening. Her heart and all her senses had been hijacked by the magnificent animal cavorting out in the middle of the ring, showing off with a stallion’s flare. The animal—and the man riding him. Oh, but they were beautiful together.
They seemed inseparable, man and horse, like something in mythology, two parts of the same being—the stallion’s body, powerfully and compactly built for short bursts of unbelievable speed, lightning-quick turns and bone-jolting stops, and the man’s as compact and strong, but lean and supple as a whip, with hands as gentle as a lover’s. The man rode leaning well forward over the stallion’s neck, long straight hair mingling with the coarse black mane, and the stallion’s ears flicked as if the man spoke to him in a language only they understood.
Smiling, heart pounding in sheer exhilaration, Lauren turned to Gil McCullough. “Not fair! You knew I wasn’t going to leave here without him once I’d seen him.”
McCullough laughed. “You know what they say—all’s fair in love, war and horse tradin’. Tell you what, let’s you and me go on up to the house, have something cold to drink while we tend to the paperwork.” He waved to Bronco out in the ring, then turned to stroll with her up the hard-baked slope toward the Spanish-style ranch house, which floated like a white ship in a sea of neat green lawn.
They went into Gil’s study, where his wife, a petite middle-aged blond woman introduced to Lauren as Katie, brought them tall glasses of iced tea with lemon. A short time later Bronco came in, accompanied by another man, this one oddly dressed for a ranch hand, Lauren thought, in what appeared to be combat fatigues. There was something hard and cold about his eyes, something that made her uneasy when he looked at her.
McCullough asked her for the keys to her truck. “Ron here’ll get your trailer backed around to the ramp while we’re finishing up the paperwork,” he told her as he handed her keys to the man in fatigues. “Soon as we’re done here, Bronco’ll get ol’ Red loaded up and you’ll be set to go.”
Lauren felt excitement vibrate through her. That magnificent animal was hers—well, okay, Dixie’s. But she could hardly wait to get him home to the Tipsy Pee. She wondered how long it would take her to get up the courage to actually ride him.
She’d had no warning at all. Not the slightest uneasiness, no chilly little frisson or premonition of danger.
She’d laughed as she handed the check to Gil, passing a hand over her brow and joking about the number of zeros. “Well,” she’d said then, taking a deep breath, “I guess I’d better be off. I have a long drive ahead of me.”
Even now, with her eyes closed, she could see Gil’s smile, hear him saying, “Oh, I don’t think you’re going to be goin’ anywhere just yet, Lauren Brown. You’ll be staying on here with us for a while.” And feel again that first little chill, as if someone had drawn an ice cube along her spine.
Though she still had not really understood what was happening. Her eyes had flown first to Bronco—in appeal, for confirmation of the unbelievable. It had been a reflexive thing. But she had found his face impassive, his eyes unreadable as onyx.
“Want you to go along with Bronco here,” Gil had said almost gently. “He’ll take you to your quarters, see you’re comfortable.” As if she’d been a homesick child on the first day of summer camp.
Her mouth had dropped open then, but no sound had come out. She wondered, even if she had screamed, if it would have made any difference. Who would there have been to hear her? McCullough’s wife? That sweet middle-aged woman Katie—was she a party to this…whatever it was?
What in God’s name did they want with her? Was she being kidnapped? Robbed? Or… But beyond that her shocked mind simply refused to go.
Without a sound, Bronco had moved in beside her and taken her arms. Instantly, mockingly, her mind flashed back to the