The Texan

by Joan Johnston

  “I can help you find those stolen VX mines,” Bay said. “But you have to take me with you into the Big Bend.”

  “I work alone,” Owen replied. “Besides, you wouldn’t be able to keep up with me.”

  “Of course I would. I’m incredibly fit.” She felt her stomach flutter as his eyes raked her from legs to belly to breasts … and lingered there appreciatively.

  His heavy-lidded gaze lifted to her mouth, and she nervously slid her tongue across her lips. She felt a quiver of anticipation as his eyes locked on hers, hot and needy.

  “You can’t come with me,” he said at last. “You’d be a … dangerous distraction.”

  Praise for New York Times

  bestselling author

  Joan Johnston

  and her previous novels

  The Cowboy

  “A winner.”—Affaire de Coeur

  “A captivating story.”—Under the Covers

  The Bridegroom

  “A guaranteed good read.”

  —Heather Graham, New York Times bestselling author

  “A hauntingly moving love story.”

  —Romantic Times

  The Bodyguard

  “Sensual … Poignant and sensitive.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Now, this is a bodyguard! Kevin Costner, eat your heart out!”

  —The Atlanta Constitution

  Dell Books by Joan Johnston

  Bitter Creek Series

  THE COWBOY

  THE TEXAN

  THE LONER

  Captive Hearts Series

  CAPTIVE

  AFTER THE KISS

  THE BODYGUARD

  THE BRIDEGROOM

  Sisters of the Lone Star Series

  FRONTIER WOMAN

  COMANCHE WOMAN

  TEXAS WOMAN

  Connected Books

  THE BAREFOOT BRIDE

  OUTLAW’S BRIDE

  THE INHERITANCE

  MAVERICK HEART

  and don’t miss …

  SWEETWATER SEDUCTION

  KID CALHOUN

  This book is

  dedicated to my mother,

  the most amazing

  woman I know.

  Acknowledgments

  Serendipity played a big part in the research for this book. I had just decided to set The Texan in the Big Bend and realized my hero would have to know enough about tracking to find someone in the desert, when I opened my copy of Cowboys & Indians magazine and found an article about Robert Haynes, a former Border Patrolman and Texas Deputy Marshal who’d started a business called Lone Star Tracking and was willing to give classes on how to track in the Big Bend.

  I became Robert’s first class—of one. Robert’s sister Cathey Carter provided a cabin for me at Spring Creek, her ranch south of Marathon, Texas, and I spent the weekend as one of the family, learning a little of the skill it takes to find someone who’s running in the desert. It’s harder than you’d think. “It’s compression, not depression.” Robert, you are the greatest! And thank you, Cathey, for your warm Texas hospitality.

  I’m also indebted to Mike Hall, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, who provided the expertise to deliver a foal in trouble. For technical advice and information I’m grateful to the Texas National Guard Public Affairs Office at Camp Mabry and Texas Ranger Headquarters, both located in Austin.

  No writer works in a vacuum. I thank my writing friends for being there to provide support when I needed it.

  Chapter 1

  OWEN BLACKTHORNE STEPPED INTO THE ARmadillo Bar and found trouble waiting for him. “Damn that Creed kid,” he muttered.

  Luke Creed was arguing with the bartender, who was refusing to serve him. The kid should have known better, since he was three years shy of the legal drinking age in Texas. The teenager wore baggy jeans and an oversized black T-shirt that did nothing to hide the Texas-sized chip on his narrow shoulders. His brown hair was cut in short, youthful spikes, but his desperate brown eyes were ages older, angry and bitter and disillusioned.

  The Creed kid had been in and out of trouble constantly over the past eighteen months since his father had been murdered. He blamed the Blackthornes—one and all—for his father’s death. Since there was nothing the kid could do to hurt the powerful family that was the source of his grief, he took out his frustration on the rest of the world.

  Owen stepped up to the bar, letting Luke get a good look at the silver badge on his shirt that announced the arrival of a Texas Ranger.

  The kid quickly made it clear he wasn’t impressed by the badge—or the man wearing it. He turned on Owen and snarled, “Everywhere I go you Blackthornes turn up like a bad smell.”

  Owen ordered a beer from the bartender, at the same time eyeing the boy in the mirror behind the bar, which was lined with twinkling Christmas tree lights year round. In a low voice he said, “Take it easy, kid.”

  Luke puffed up like a banty rooster and said, “Go to hell.” He turned to the bartender, his hands pressed flat on the bar. “I’m thirsty. How about that drink?”

  Before the bartender could respond, Owen laid a dollar on the bar and said, “I’m buying. He’ll have a Coke.”

  “Forget it,” Luke said. “I’m not thirsty anymore.”

  “Then maybe you should leave,” Owen suggested.

  “You and what army are gonna make me?” the kid shot back.

  Owen felt his adrenaline begin to pump. He hadn’t come in here looking for a fight, and the last thing he wanted to do was arrest Luke Creed. He knew what it was like to rage against circumstances over which you had no control. He knew what it was like to hurt inside because someone you cared for was gone forever.

  Maybe the kid was entitled to hate Blackthornes. It was Owen’s mother who’d caused the death of Luke’s father. Because there’d been no proof of what she’d done that would hold up in court, Eve Blackthorne had ended up in a sanitarium instead of jail. Hell. No one said life was fair.

  The bartender set an icy bottle of Pearl, dripping with condensation, in front of Owen. Before he could pick it up, the Creed kid bumped it hard with his elbow. It toppled and fell, shattering on the sawdusted cement floor.

  Owen swore as he jumped back to avoid the shards of broken glass and the yeasty splatter of foaming beer.

  The kid sneered at him in the mirror and said, “Oops.”

  The bar got so quiet Owen could hear every word of the whispery Western ballad Wynonna was singing on the jukebox. He knew the patrons were hoping for a showdown. Owen was determined not to give them one.

  He shoved the broken glass aside with his boot and stepped up to the bar. “Another beer,” he said.

  Luke turned his back to the bar, leaned his elbows on the laminated surface, and set one booted foot on the brass footrail, daring Owen to do something in retaliation. Anything to give him an excuse to strike out.

  Owen figured the situation was about as bad as it could get. Then it got worse.

  He saw the kid’s eyes go wide, then narrow, and followed their focus to the door, where his brother Clay was standing in the entrance to the bar.

  He and Clay were identical twins, both tall and broad-shouldered and lean-hipped. But Owen spent his life outdoors, so his skin was tanned, making his gray eyes look almost silver, and he had his share of crow’s-feet from squinting past the glare of the searing Texas sun. Owen mostly wore Wrangler jeans, a yoked white Western shirt with a bolo tie, and cowboy boots.

  His brother Clay, who’d been elected the youngest ever attorney general of the state of Texas two years ago at the age of thirty, had on a button-down oxford-cloth shirt with a rep striped tie, expensive wool-blend suit trousers, and cordovan shoes. As a concession to their meeting in the bar, Clay had pulled his tie down, and the top button of his
blue shirt was undone to reveal a thatch of dark chest hair.

  “Hey,” Clay said as he stepped up to the bar beside Owen. “What’s going on?”

  The jukebox had begun playing Billy Ray Cyrus’s one-hit wonder, “Achy Breaky Heart.” As they always did on Friday nights in the Armadillo Bar, the drunken crowd sang along at the top of their voices.

  Over the noise, Luke Creed shouted an angry response to Clay’s question. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. Your brother’s being an asshole!”

  “That’s enough, soldier,” Clay admonished.

  “That National Guard bullshit won’t wash in here,” Luke said, his eyes glittering with malice. “We’re not on weekend maneuvers now, Major Blackthorne. I don’t have to obey you.”

  “A little respect for your elders wouldn’t be out of line,” Clay said sardonically.

  “You’re not my company commander unless we’re both in uniform,” the kid retorted. “Otherwise, you’re just another asshole. In your case, a thieving asshole.”

  “Watch yourself, kid,” Owen said in a measured voice.

  But Luke was on a rant and reason wasn’t working on him. “I know you stole those missing VX mines,” he shouted in Clay’s face. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m gonna find a way to prove it. One of you Blackthornes is finally gonna get what’s coming to you.”

  “You’re talking like a fool,” Clay said, his voice even softer, which told Owen just how angry he was.

  “I’m no fool,” the kid snapped. “I know what I know.”

  “Exactly what is it you know about those nerve gas mines?” Owen asked Luke. Every law enforcement agency in Texas, and a bunch of federal agencies as well, had spent the past week searching for three crates of missing VX nerve gas mines. The mines had been discovered in mislabeled crates during recent maneuvers by a unit of the Bitter Creek National Guard and had been on their way to a disposal and storage facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, when they were hijacked.

  “I know your brother met with someone at the armory two days before the mines were stolen,” the kid said to Owen. “I heard the two of them talking about the schedule for when the mines were gonna be shipped to Arkansas. They shut up quick enough when they saw me watching them.”

  The kid focused his gaze on Clay and said, “But I heard what you said. I know you took those mines. I’ll figure out why you took them and where you put them and then you’ll end up in jail, where all you Blackthorne bastards belong!”

  “Don’t make accusations you can’t back up,” Clay said in a deadly voice.

  “Who’s gonna stop me?” the kid demanded.

  Owen could see the kid was itching to take a swing and was on the verge of stepping forward to block him, when the door to the bar swung open, and the kid’s sister stepped inside.

  Owen watched as Bayleigh Creed did a quick visual search of the dining booths on the other side of the bar, where she obviously expected her brother to be. When she didn’t locate him there, her gaze found its way back to the bar, where Luke was posed in a pugnacious stance. Owen saw the alarm in her eyes before she headed in their direction.

  Owen had just enough time to admire the look of her in butter-soft jeans that cupped her butt and emphasized her flat belly and slender legs, before Luke threw a punch. The kid’s fist hit Clay square on the nose and sent him staggering backward, as bright red blood spilled onto his starched blue shirt and his silk Armani tie.

  Owen grabbed Luke by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants, and to the strains of “Achy Breaky Heart,” frog-marched the kid past his sister, yanked open the door, and threw him out into the street.

  “Go home and cool off,” he said.

  The kid’s sister shoved her way past him and hurried to her brother’s side. The asphalt parking lot was full of potholes, and the kid must have tripped on one, because he’d fallen forward onto his hands and knees.

  “Luke, are you all right?” she cried.

  The boy shoved his sister away as he rose to his feet. “Leave me alone.”

  Owen wondered if Bayleigh Creed was smart enough to know that her brother was more upset that she’d witnessed what had happened than he was about landing on the ground. From what Owen could see in the glow of blue neon light that spelled out “Armadillo Bar” in cursive across the whitewashed adobe wall, the kid was fine, and his job was done. He turned to head back inside the darkened bar.

  He hadn’t gone two steps before the boy shouted, “Hey, you!” and shoved him in the back.

  Owen heard the kid’s sister gasp as he turned to face the battling mosquito that refused to go away. He didn’t want to swat it flat. It took all his self-control to keep his balled fists at his sides. He spread his legs in a wider stance, to give him leverage if it came to a fight.

  “What is it you want, kid?”

  “I want you Blackthorne bastards to pay for what you did to my dad.”

  There was nothing Owen could say to that. “You’d better take your brother home,” he said to the kid’s sister. “And tuck him into bed.”

  “Why, you—”

  The kid charged, and Owen hit him once in the stomach, doubling him over.

  Bayleigh Creed whirled on him like an avenging fury, her thick auburn hair swinging across her shoulders as she turned, her blue eyes blazing. She got into his space pretty quick, and he fought the urge to back up as she poked him in the chest with a pointed finger and said, “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

  He saw the sprinkle of childish freckles across her nose and almost laughed. He managed to cough instead. His own size? He looked pointedly down at her, then looked her up and down. Slowly. Thoroughly. Until he saw the dark flush rising on her cheeks.

  She barely reached his shoulder. Both of his hands would have fit around her waist. She curved in all the right places, even if there wasn’t as much up top as he normally liked. Although, honestly, more than a handful was wasted.

  “The kid came here looking for trouble,” Owen said at last. “He found it.” Even as he spoke, Owen realized explanations were futile.

  He was a Blackthorne; she was a Creed. Their families had been feuding for generations. It didn’t matter what he said. She was going to side with family.

  “You shouldn’t have provoked him,” she said, her chest heaving in a way that drew his attention. “He’s had a hard time dealing with Dad’s death.”

  “I’ll say,” Owen muttered.

  She glared at him, and he noticed her eyes weren’t blue anymore, they were kind of violet. He wondered if they turned dark like that every time she got mad.

  “He’s just a kid,” she said. “If you Blackthornes would leave him alone—”

  “I can fight my own battles,” her brother said as he straightened. He glowered at Owen. “I’ll find enough proof this time to make sure that another one of you Blackthornes doesn’t get away with murder.”

  Owen’s eyes narrowed. “Are you accusing Clay of having something to do with the death of that Texas Ranger in the Big Bend?”

  “It’s all part of the same thing, isn’t it?” Luke said. “That hijacked army truck was left just outside the borders of the Big Bend. Then that Texas Ranger goes into the Big Bend hunting for those mines. Supposedly, he’s the best tracker in Texas, and he always finds what he’s looking for.

  “Suddenly, pow! He gets shot between the eyes. I figure whoever stole those mines killed that Ranger to keep him from talking. And your brother stole those mines.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Owen said.

  The kid smirked. “I’m going to make sure that brother of yours ends up on death row. See if I don’t!”

  “Luke,” the kid’s sister said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be making accusations—”

  “Stop treating me like I’m some stupid kid,” the boy interrupted. “I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Why don’t you come home with me and—”

  “And what?” the kid snarled. “Swallow my medi
cine like a good boy? I’m gonna choke to death if I have to swallow any more—” The kid made a growling sound in his throat.

  But Owen had no trouble filling in the missing word. Pride. It all came down to that, he realized. The Creeds had nearly lost Three Oaks when Jesse Creed died, and the family had been forced to come up with millions of dollars to pay estate taxes on the ranch. Even now, the Creeds fought every day to make ends meet. To add insult to injury, the rich and powerful Blackthornes were responsible for this latest trial for the proud but struggling Creeds.

  “Go home, kid, and sleep off whatever it is you’ve got in your system. You’re delusional,” Owen said.

  “The hell I am!” the kid flared.

  A few cowhands had collected around them, patrons of the bar who’d arrived but couldn’t get through the front door because of the altercation between Owen and Luke.

  “Get going or get arrested,” Owen said flatly.

  “I’m going,” Luke said, his throat working and his eyes glazed with angry tears. “But tell your brother he isn’t going to get away with it. I won’t stop till I can prove he’s guilty.”

  He watched Bayleigh Creed’s wide, frightened eyes as her brother jumped onto his Harley, kicked it to life, and roared down Main Street so recklessly he nearly ended up a smear on the pavement.

  “Luke,” she cried. “Stop!”

  But it was too late. The kid was gone.

  He noticed she was trembling. “Maybe you’d better come inside and sit down,” he said.

  “You can go straight to hell.” She turned and marched past him. She’d taken about three steps when she stopped, pivoted, and marched right back past him in the opposite direction, her back ramrod straight. A moment later she reached her pickup, yanked the battered door open, and stepped inside.

  She was a spitfire, all right. His eyes crinkled at the corners and his mouth cocked up on one side in an almost-grin as he remembered her challenge. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size? “I don’t think you’d qualify, Mizz Creed,” he murmured, as he stared at the disappearing tail-lights on her truck. He shook his head and laughed.