by Ann Major
“You think I’m trash now, don’t you?”
Her directness rendered him speechless.
“I didn’t sleep with Tavio,” she whispered, frantic for him to believe her.
“I don’t care!”
“Okay. I don’t know why I bothered to defend myself—to you, of all people.”
She hated him for being able to compel her just by sitting across from her. “I hate you,” she whispered in a low, seething tone. Then she instantly regretted saying anything.
“Good.” He flashed her a ruthless white grin. “I wish to hell you’d figured that out before you seduced me and got yourself pregnant! Because now—for better or worse—we’re stuck with each other!”
“You can leave, for all I care! I don’t ever want anything from you again,” she said.
“You want out of here, don’t you?”
He took her silence to mean yes.
“You’re not calling the shots anymore, darlin’. I am. Listen, because I’m only going to say this once. You have to do exactly what I say. Exactly. Your life and mine depend on it.”
Also by ANN MAJOR
THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN SPURS
THE HOT LADIES MURDER CLUB
MARRY A MAN WHO WILL DANCE
WILD ENOUGH FOR WILLA
INSEPARABLE
ANN MAJOR
THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
Nobody has time to write!
So many people support me in big and little ways so that I can get a few words down on paper.
Professionally, I want to thank Tara Gavin, Karen Solem, Nancy Berland and all the talented people they work with. I want to thank everybody at MIRA. I want to thank fans, especially those who have taken the time to send me encouraging letters.
Personally, I thank Ted and my mother, who go without things they need too often, so that I can get the work done. My children and grandchildren are wonderful, too. I must also thank all my friends, who understand when I forget to return their phone calls.
I dedicate this book in loving memory to Sondra Stanford.
Smart Cowboy Saying:
When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
—From “Cowboy Quotes, Sayings and Wisdom”
www.Cowboyway.com
Contents
Prologue
Book One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Book Two
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Book Three
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Prologue
Black Oaks Ranch
South Texas
“When I’m through with you, you’ll have nothing and be nothin’, boy! Mia will finally see what a lowlife you are!”
Rain slashed the windshield so hard Shanghai Knight could barely see to drive. He speeded up anyway, slamming his foot down on the gas pedal with such a vengeance his truck weaved recklessly through the slippery mud.
He couldn’t get away from the Golden Spurs Ranch fast enough. Damn. He was such an idiot!
As if to knock some sense into himself, he hit his brow with the bottom edge of his fist. He’d give anything if Caesar Kemble’s taunts would stop repeating themselves inside his head like a broken record.
When he rubbed his right cheek and jaw, he only aggravated the painful bruise that Caesar had caused when he punched him, so Shanghai clamped both hands back on the steering wheel. It galled him to remember what quick work Caesar had made of him in front of Mia.
A few punches in the ribs and a few more below the belt, and all the fight had been knocked clean out of him long before Caesar’s men had picked him up and shoved him down the ranch house steps into the mud.
Every time he thought about Caesar standing over him in his dining room with his fists raised and that nasty grin on his face, Shanghai wanted to wheel around and go back. Looking prettier than a picture, Mia had knelt beside Shanghai stroking his face. How he’d hated her, of all people, for being a witness to his humiliation.
The wealthy Kembles despised the lowly Knights, and the Knights held an ancient grudge against the Kembles for stealing their ranch. Shanghai and Mia never should have become involved with each other.
They wouldn’t have if Caesar hadn’t damn near backed over her at Old Man Pimbley’s gas station when she’d been two. Shanghai had been twelve at the time and sneaking a smoke out back. At the risk of his own neck, not that he’d ever been one to mind that much, he’d thrown his smoke down and run screaming toward the truck. Not that Caesar had noticed. When he’d kept on backing, Shanghai had dived behind the truck and thrown her to safety. One of the big back tires had broken his leg.
When his cigarette butt had started a grass fire out back, Caesar and Old Man Pimbley had cussed him out for his trouble although Caesar had relented and paid to get his leg set. But the local gossips had made Shanghai into something of a hero, which had truly galled Caesar.
As Mia grew up she’d heard the story, and like the gossips, seen him as a hero, too. Thus, she’d developed a bad habit of following him around, her whiskey-colored eyes sparkling with adoration. He’d liked somebody admiring him, especially since it had rankled Caesar so much, until he’d started chasing girls his own age. Then her habit had gotten annoying since she was always watching him at the damnedest times.
Once when he’d been dating two girls at the same time, she’d called them both and told each one about the other. Mia knew how to make trouble, all right.
What did she think of him now?
Hell, why should he care?
Not many people admired the Knights much anymore. The Kembles were everything in Spur County—mainly ’cause they’d stolen from the Knights. Shanghai had grown up poor while Mia had been a princess from birth. If he worked for the rest of his life he’d never be able to earn a fraction of her wealth.
Everything about tonight was pure, raw hell. The weather was wild and wet, the road bad and Shanghai was breathing hard and driving way too fast. He’d made a fool out of himself, and tomorrow after Mia and Caesar got through bragging to all their friends, everybody in three counties would know.
If he had a fault, it was pride. He didn’t like feeling like he was nothing. He realized now that it was too late, that maybe he shouldn’t have gone alone to Caesar Kemble for a showdown on Kemble’s vast Golden Spurs spread.
Suddenly up ahead Shanghai saw the dark, familiar outline of the small, hunting cabin where he’d spent many a night when his daddy was drunk or just plain too mean to live with. Shanghai stomped on the brakes, causing the big old truck to skid on its bald tires. It hurtled through the mud and rain at a frightening speed and slammed into the bottom step that led up to the porch.
Wood splintered. Cursing silently, he cut the engine. He didn’t know what to do.
If he went home, his daddy might be drunk. If his old man saw his face, he’d figure out what had happened. Whether Shanghai confessed or not, his daddy would most likely start a fight. Caesar was going to do what he was going do.
Caesar hadn’t even bothered to read a single page. He’d said simply, “This don’t mean nothin’! Hell, you’re nothin’, kid.” Then he’d punched him in the jaw and knocked him out cold.
A girl’s screams had startled him back to consciousness. He’d been sprawled flat on his back under the table when he’d felt little bits of shredded papers raining down on him and the tenderness of soft cool fingers brushing his face.
He’d said, “Ouch!”
Then she’d been yanked away by her father.
“Mia! I’ll tan you, too, if you don’t get back upstairs with Lizzy where you belong!” Caesar had yelled at her.
“You’d better not kill him!” she’d whispered fiercely, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I don’t need your help, little girl. I’ll be just fine!” Shanghai had muttered, feeling shamed by her tenderness but most of all by the fact that she’d seen his sorry ass sprawled on her floor.
“Fine? That’s why you’re lying there flat on your backside all busted up?”
Her words had hit a nerve. He prided himself on being tough.
He’d stared at her through slitted lashes, pretending to ignore her ’cause Mia hated being ignored more than she hated anything. Even so, he saw the redheaded teenager place her hands on her hips as she hovered over him like a guardian angel. Tonight she’d worn skintight jeans, a T-shirt and red boots. When she’d sprinted back up the stairs, he’d noticed that she filled out her jeans and T-shirt with a woman’s shape now.
She was too young to look so grown-up. Mia had exasperated and charmed him for years by chasing him anytime she got the chance. He would have felt easier with the bean-pole shape, freckle-faced kid that she used to be.
Mia had made a habit of disappearing from the Golden Spurs Ranch for long stretches and wandering about the county on horseback. Anytime she’d gotten hurt, she’d come crying to Shanghai. Anytime she’d made a good grade or had won a prize at school, she’d had to tell him first even if it meant riding over to Black Oaks.
Once when her daddy had told her he was going to shoot a torn-up mongrel sheepdog she’d found bleeding to death on the highway, she’d carted the pup to Shanghai in her red wagon.
He’d told her her daddy was right for once, and it would be a kindness to shoot him. But when she’d left the mutt and her wagon, the beast had given him a baleful stare. Shanghai had taken the dog to the vet and nursed it back to health. He still remembered how her eyes had shone, when she’d come back for her wagon a month later and had seen the black-and-white mutt napping on his front porch.
“Don’t you dare tell anybody I saved him,” he’d warned her. “They’d think I was plum crazy.”
“Cross my heart.” She’d hesitated. “What do you call him?”
“Dog.”
She’d knelt and petted the animal. “Can I name him?”
“What’s wrong with Dog?”
“I—I’d call him Spot.”
“That’s as bad as Dog.”
“Not quite, is it, Spot?”
Spot had wagged his tail fit to be tied, and it was Spot from then on.
Shanghai put the memories of her childhood aside. She was a Kemble and all grown-up now.
No sooner had her door slammed upstairs tonight than Caesar had resumed tearing up the documents. Then he’d started pounding the table. Shanghai had found himself staring up at the underside of the table where the name, Mia, was scrawled dozens of times in bright red crayon alongside Lizzy’s name, and he’d imagined Mia a cute kid with red pigtails under the table up to mischief with her sister.
Then Caesar had distracted him by raking the last of the ruined documents he’d brought onto the floor beside Shanghai and shouting they were garbage just like he was.
“Get out, you lowdown, lying thief. You aren’t a damn bit better than your daddy. And we all know what he is—a lousy, no-good drunk. But at least he knows that he lives under my protection, which is more than I can say for you. You think you’re somethin’! Well, you’re nothin’! When I tell him what you tried to do tonight in my house, in front of my little girl…you’ll be lucky if he ever lets you set foot in his place again. He owes me. And so do you. So does this whole damn community. You Knights don’t have any friends around here unless I allow it. Don’t you ever forget it. Without me—you’re nothin’, boy. Nothin’!”
Suddenly Caesar’s red face had changed. “You’ve given me an idea, boy. A helluvan idea. A real winner. I know how I’ll get rid of all you Knights, once and for all.” He’d gone to a small cabinet, opened a drawer and pulled out a couple of fresh decks of cards. “I’ll hunt up that daddy of yours, and we’ll have us a friendly, little game of poker. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll have a few drinks. Then I’ll tell him what you did here tonight.”
“No….”
Caesar had laughed at him.
Shanghai despised himself because in the next breath he’d begged and apologized.
“Please—I’m sorry. Please—leave him alone!”
Caesar had guffawed again. “Everybody in three counties knows that cards and liquor are a fatal combination for your old man, boy. Kinky! Eli! Get him out of here!” Caesar turned back to Shanghai. “When I’m through with you, you’ll have nothing and be nothin’, boy! Mia will finally see you for the lowlife you are!”
“Don’t you go near my daddy!”
When Shanghai had fought Eli and Kinky, Caesar had called for more cowboys. It had taken five of the bastards to fling Shanghai down the stairs into the rain.
When Shanghai had pulled himself to his feet, the last thing he’d seen was pretty Mia Kemble leaning out of her upstairs window. When he’d looked up, she’d thrown something down to him and then banged her window shut.
Pretending not to give a damn about her, he’d rammed his dripping Stetson with his lucky turkey feather on his head even harder than she’d slammed her window. Curious, he’d picked up the object she’d thrown. When he’d realized it was a red rose, he’d pitched it back into the mud.
Now that he was at his hunting cabin, Shanghai dreaded his daddy finding out that he’d gotten in a fight with Caesar. He might never let Shanghai go home again. His father didn’t care if the Kembles had robbed the Knights of practically all their land. He just wanted to drink and gamble. Caesar kept offering to buy their last fifty thousand acres and his father kept refusing to sell, mainly because he and Cole begged him not to. The land was Shanghai’s heritage, Cole’s, too; part of their souls.
No use thinking about it. Shanghai knew he’d started something tonight that couldn’t be stopped.
As he got out of his truck, he stood in the rain for a moment to inspect the mangled bottom step he’d just smashed. Damn.
He sprang to the second step, which was still sound, just as the sky flashed livid white fire and then went black again. Every timber of the tiny hunting cabin shook when thunder exploded again.
He threw open the front door, ripped off his wet, Western shirt and hung it on the back of a tattered leather chair where it dripped water onto the scarred oak floor. Then he went to the fridge and grabbed a couple of beers. He downed the first beer and paced restlessly.
He was twenty-four. What the hell was he going to do with the rest of his life? Cowboying and rodeoing were all he really liked to do. Not that he could stay here when there was no future at Black Oaks. At least not in the business of cows and calves and horses. Livestock prices had collapsed too many times, and Daddy had borrowed way too much money. There was only his kid brother, Cole, to consider.
Hell, Cole was twenty-one, which mean
t he was all grownup…even if he was still in college. It was time for Cole to be on his own.
Shanghai didn’t want to leave his home, but he hadn’t liked feeling like nothing on Caesar’s floor with Mia watching. If he stayed here, he’d be nothin’ all his life.
He sank wearily into the leather chair near the open window. The only thing he’d ever done to make money besides working Black Oaks was rodeoing. He was good at bronc ridin’ and bull riding. When he donned buckskin chaps with silver conchos, pointed cowboy boots with spurs and his Stetson, people cheered and screamed and then patted him on the back when he rode well. They went wild when he won. Pretty women threw themselves at him.
He was too tall and powerfully built for the sport, and he’d have to be damn good—the best ever—to make it really pay. Good or bad, you could get yourself stomped or gored to death in front of thousands. Champions died of injuries as small as a broken rib nicking an artery.
What choice did he have?
Hell, he’d been beaten up all his life, hadn’t he? A man could become famous riding bulls, as famous as any Kemble, at least for a spell.
Nobody wrote country songs about lawyers or doctors, did they? He reckoned he could take about as much pain as any man.
His black brows slashed together as he watched the rain hammer the earth. Caesar had destroyed the sheaves of old journals and ancient bank documents he’d slung on the table—all the evidence he’d been gathering for nearly two years to prove that his family, the Knights, had as much right to the Golden Spurs Ranch and its staggering mineral riches as the Kembles did.
What should he do next?
A bolt of lightning crashed again. Shanghai’s heart beat faster. He rubbed his sore jaw. After his quarrel with Caesar Kemble, the storm more than matched his mood. Since Caesar had refused to even talk about making a fair settlement, maybe he should think about finding a real lawyer. But he couldn’t go to a lawyer until he reassembled at least some of the evidence Caesar had destroyed. Besides lawyers cost money.
Even though it was so obvious the Knights had been swindled, his father had told him not to fight the Kembles.
