At least Delia was gone. That was something to celebrate.
He’d tried to phone for a limo or a taxi and both the boy and an old man who’d introduced himself as the ranch foreman had looked at him as if he were crazy.
“We ain’t got nothin’ like that here,” the foreman said.
Delia had batted her lashes. “I guess you’ll just have to keep me,” she’d said, though her sweet tone had not matched the sly smile on her lips.
He’d sooner have kept the rattler they’d seen on the road, especially when the rental company said they couldn’t get a replacement vehicle to him until the next morning.
Bad enough he’d be stuck here overnight. He sure as hell wasn’t going to spend it fending off Delia.
So he’d offered the kid with the truck a sum that had made the kid’s eyes bulge to retrieve her luggage from the car, then drive her to the airport. Then he’d closed his ears to what Delia wished him and watched the pickup bounce away.
The foreman had watched, too.
“Should be an interestin’ trip for the lady,” he’d said mildly.
“Should be interesting for both of them,” Lucas had replied, and the old man had grinned.
Then Lucas had asked the million-dollar question. Where was Aloysius McDonough? He might as well have asked about Godzilla, considering the old man’s wide-eyed reaction.
“You come here to see Mr. McDonough?”
No, Lucas had thought, I came for the scenery. Instead he’d smiled politely, or as politely as possible, all things considered.
“Si. He is expecting me.”
“Do tell,” the foreman had answered, spitting a thin brown stream of tobacco juice into the dry dirt. “Well, only thing I can suggest is that you hang around until this evenin’.”
“McDonough will be back by then?”
The foreman shrugged. “Just wait until evenin’, is what I’m sayin’. We got a guest room you can have, if you ain’t particular.”
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
The foreman had led Lucas into the house, through rooms that were shabby but clean to one with a narrow bed and a view of the unchanging land that stretched endlessly toward the horizon.
“You want anythin’, just holler.”
“I’m fine,” Lucas had answered. Then his eyes had narrowed. “Come to think of it…Do you have a boy working here?”
The old man shifted his wad of chewing tobacco from one side of his jaw to the other.
“Ain’t you just seen Davey?”
“Not him. A different kid. One who rides a black stallion without giving a damn for anybody else.”
Nope, the foreman said, he and Davey were the only hands.
Then he’d cackled like a deranged duck. Lucas could hear the sound of his laughter even after he shuffled out of the room.
Now, standing on a sagging porch, Lucas sighed. Who knew what passed for humor in a godforsaken place like this?
Besides, what did it matter? This time tomorrow, he’d be on his way home.
Assuming, he thought irritably, Aloysius McDonough showed up. Where in hell was he? Where was the supposed wonder-mare? Truth was, he doubted if there were any horses here. The corrals were empty; the outbuildings were all in bad shape. The breeze that had come up might just—
What was that?
Lucas cocked his head. He could hear a sound on the wind. A horse. Yes. A whinny. Faint, but distinct.
Maybe McDonough was back.
The sooner he saw the mare—assuming one even existed—and told a couple of polite lies about what a fine animal she was but how, unfortunately, he wasn’t buying horses right now, blah blah blah…
Definitely the sooner he got this over with, the better.
Lucas stepped off the porch and started briskly toward the outbuildings. He was right about their condition. The first, a storage shed, was on the verge of collapse. The barn that came next wasn’t any better.
The third building was a stable, in better shape than the other two. It needed paint and some of the boards would have benefited from a hammer and nails but when he peered in the open door, he saw the signs a horseman learns to recognize as evidence of responsible care.
The floor was clean, the two empty stalls to his left were well-swept. A stack of buckets stood beside a hose and across from stacked bales of hay.
There it was again. The soft whinny of a horse. Yes, there was an animal here.
The mare, he hoped.
Mystery solved.
Lucas hesitated. Protocol demanded a man wait to be asked onto another man’s property. He frowned. To hell with protocol, which also demanded that McDonough should have been here to greet his guest.
Quietly, so he wouldn’t spook the mare, he stepped inside the stable, looked past the row of empty stalls and saw a tail, a rump…
The horse danced back and Lucas’s eyebrows rose.
This was not a mare. Hell, no. It was a stallion. No doubt about that, judging from the rest of what he could see.
Lucas’s eyes narrowed. Not just a stallion. A black stallion.
He took a step forward. A floorboard creaked under his weight and the stallion snorted. Metal tinkled. The animal must still be bridled and tossing its head.
“Easy,” a voice said softly. “Easy, baby.”
Baby? A misnomer if ever he’d heard one, but the voice was right. It was a husky voice. A boy’s voice.
Lucas knotted his hands into fists and strode quickly to the stall. The horse sensed his presence before the kid standing next to it and whinnied with alarm.
Too late, Lucas thought grimly.
He’d found them. The rider and the beast that had ridden him off the road.
The kid, back to the aisle, was still oblivious, holding on to the stallion’s bridle with one hand, speaking softly to the creature as he stroked its ears with the other.
“Such a charming picture,” Lucas snarled, clapping his big, callused hand over the boy’s.
“Hey,” the boy said indignantly.
“Hey, indeed,” Lucas said with grim satisfaction, and swung the kid around.
It was him, all right. Beat-up ball cap. Grimy T-shirt. Dirty jeans, dirtier boots…
Except, when the kid’s cap fell off, Lucas’s jaw dropped.
The rider wasn’t a boy.
She was a woman.
CHAPTER TWO
A WOMAN?
Maybe not. Maybe she was a teenaged brat. It was difficult to tell.
The rider’s face was smeared with dirt, one streak angling across a sharp cheekbone, another across the bridge of her nose. Her hair, a long, heavy braid of inky-black, fell over her shoulder and across her breast.
Lucas’s gaze followed the path of that braid…and knew she was most definitely a grown woman.
Her T-shirt was sweat-soaked. It clung to her body, the cotton wet and all but translucent as it molded her rounded breasts and taut nipples.
Lucas’s body reacted, enraging him even more. To be damned near ridden down, then laughed at by an adult female, and now to have an atavistic reaction to that female…
He heard the harsh rasp of her indrawn breath. Instantly he cupped her jaw and silenced her scream before it started.
“Do not,” he said grimly, “do anything you’ll regret.”
She stared at him through wild eyes. He let it go on for a long moment, relishing every instant before he finally spoke.
“Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me, amada.” He smiled thinly. “I’d hate to think our meeting was not as memorable for you as it was for me.”
Something flashed in the depths of those amazingly blue eyes. She remembered him, all right.
Except, this time he was the one laughing, she was the one in danger. And she knew it. What he’d seen in her eyes was fear.
Good. A woman might well show fear when confronted by a man her horse had almost trampled.
The big stallion snorted and shifted his formidable weight with surprisi
ng delicacy on hooves the size of dessert plates. Lucas moved his grasp to the woman’s arm and dragged her toward him.
She didn’t make it easy. Her lean, feminine body was surprisingly well-muscled, especially when she dug in her boot heels, but she was no match for him. Not in size or weight or tight-lipped anger. A couple of seconds and he had her trapped between him and the wall.
“It was an accident.”
“Ah. You do remember me after all.”
“You were standing in the middle of the road—”
“Is standing in the road against the law in Texas?”
She was trying to control her fear or, at least, trying to mask it. And she was doing a fairly good job. The steadiness in her voice might have fooled him if he hadn’t seen the race of her pulse in the hollow of her throat.
“Trespassing on private property is.”
“That road isn’t private property. Besides, whatever happened to southwestern hospitality? I’m visiting. Surely that’s permitted in Texas.”
“All right. You made your point. Now do yourself a favor and go away before I—”
“Before you what?” Lucas jerked his head toward the stallion. “Before you get on the back of that beast and try to run me down again?”
“I did not try to run you down,” she said coldly. “If I had, you wouldn’t be here making an ass of yourself.”
“Such bravado,” he said softly.
“What do you want?”
“Why, what could I possibly want?” He reached out, ran a lazy hand down her throat; she jerked like a skittish mare under his touch. “Just a little chat.”
That put the balance of power back where it belonged. Fear blossomed in her eyes again.
“If you think I’m alone here—”
“Of course you’re not alone.” His voice was deliberately soft, his tone just this side of condescending. “There’s an old man up at the house who could surely help you—if he were thirty years younger. And there’s a boy. Well, there was a boy.”
Her face paled. “What have you done with Davey?”
Lucas gave a negligent shrug. “I took care of him.”
Her pupils widened, the darkness all but swallowing the blue fire of her eyes.
“Tell me what you’ve done with Davey.”
“Davey’s welfare is not your problem.”
Her chin lifted. She was defiant, despite her fear. He had to give her grudging credit for that.
“I sent him on an errand.”
“To where?”
“Damn it,” he growled, “the boy is fine! I’m not interested in discussing him.” He tightened his grasp on her wrist. “I’m talking about you, señorita. You could have killed me.”
“But I didn’t. That’s what matters. Bebé and I didn’t harm a hair on your head.”
“Bebé,” he scoffed. “A charming name for a behemoth.”
“If you hadn’t been standing in the middle of the road—”
“If you’d been in control of that monster—”
“Standing in the middle of the road, fooling around with a gadget anyone with half a brain would know couldn’t possibly work out here—”
“Nothing works out here,” Lucas snapped, “not even human courtesy. I was not, as you so generously put it, ‘fooling around’ with my phone. My car broke down, or didn’t you notice it by the side of the road?”
“Of course I noticed! I sent Davey back to get you.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Is that what you call that silly excuse for transportation?” she said sweetly. “A car?”
“Please,” Lucas said coldly, “don’t hold back. There’s no need to watch what you say on my account.”
“Well, you set yourself up for it, didn’t you? Expecting a mobile phone to work out here, driving a thing like that on back roads…”
Dios, this was the stupidest quarrel he’d had since he was eight and in a nose-to-nose battle over whether Real Madrid or Futbol Club Barcelona fielded the better soccer team.
What was wrong with this woman? Arguing with him, angering him when for all she knew, he was a madman come to do her harm. And when in hell, how in hell, had she managed to turn the tables?
He was the injured party here, not she.
“Anyway,” she said, “this is all beside the point. I didn’t hurt you. Except…well, maybe your pride. I mean, we both know you ended up in a ditch…”
Lucas saw her lips twitch. Could a man’s blood pressure rise to the point where he exploded?
“And,” he said silkily, “you found it amusing.”
“No,” she said, but there was that twitch again.
“You know,” he said softly, “a smart woman might consider a simple apology appropriate just about now.”
That gave her pause. He could almost see her weighing her options. She was alone with a stranger, nobody to turn to for help.
On the other hand, he had a strong suspicion the word “apology” was not a normal part of her vocabulary.
A long moment passed. Then she huffed out a breath that lifted the silky, jet-black curls from her forehead.
“Yes. Okay. I shouldn’t have laughed.”
“Or tried to run me down.”
“I told you, I did not try to run you down.” She hesitated. “But I guess it was impolite to find the situation amusing.”
“The understatement of the century.”
“It’s just that…it was—it was interesting. You, dressed as if you might actually know one end of a horse from another—”
“Which,” he said coldly, “is surely an impossibility.”
“And your lady friend…Was that get-up left over from Halloween or what?”
If this was her idea of an apology, he could only imagine what she would consider an insult.
“My lady friend,” he said, lying through his teeth in a last desperate attempt at maintaining the upper hand, “was simply wearing what any attractive woman would wear.”
“To a masquerade party, maybe.”
She was right, but he’d be damned if he’d let her know it.
“To ride a horse in Central Park,” Lucas said, lying again and fervently hoping all the horses who called Manhattan home would forgive him. He took a step back, his hand still wrapped around her wrist, and gave her a long, slow look. “But then, what would you know about being a woman in a place like New York?” He took another long, lazy look at her, from her toes to the top of her head. “You are a woman, aren’t you, amada? Under all that ridiculous clothing?”
Dios, he thought, hearing himself, picturing himself, what was he doing? The leer, the line—it was all such bull.
And yet, to his surprise, it had its effect.
The rider blinked. One blink, that was all, but enough to tell him she’d suddenly remembered she was in a situation she didn’t control.
“Okay.” Her tone was cool but, yes, there was an underlying tremor. “I’ve apologized. Now you can let go of my wrist, say adios and get out of here.”
“Tomorrow,” Lucas said softly.
“Tomorrow, what?”
“I’ll leave tomorrow, when the rental agency sends a replacement for my car.”
“You are not spending the night on this ranch!”
“Somehow, I doubt that is your decision to make.”
The stallion snorted and stamped a powerful hoof.
“Bebé’s upset,” the woman said.
“So am I.”
“He can be dangerous, especially if he thinks I need protection.”
“I assure you, amada, I can be far more dangerous than the horse.”
He let the softly spoken words hang in the air, watching with grim satisfaction as they had their desired effect.
At last, she took a deep breath.
“Whatever you’re thinking—”
“I suspect I’m thinking the same thing you are,” Lucas said with a thin smile.
He could almost see her in frantic debate with herself. Part of her wanted to spit in his eye b
ut another part—the wiser part—was reminding her that this was not a good situation.
“Look,” she finally said, “I didn’t try to ride you down on purpose. Bebé is fast. And I was bent over his head, talking to him—”
“What?”
“He’s high-strung. Listening to me soothes him. Horses respond to a person’s voice.”
“They respond better to riders who can control them.”
“What could you possibly know about horses?”
Lucas grinned. “Perhaps a little something.”
“Really?” She stood glaring at him, one booted foot tapping the wide-boarded floor, and he knew the wiser part of her had lost the argument. “For instance? What ‘little something’ do you know?”
“I know that this so-called ranch is on its last legs.”
Color swept into her face. “Really.”
“I know that you have no stock, aside from that creature you call Bebé.”
Her chin jerked up. “So?”
“So,” Lucas said coldly, “that is the reason I was asked to come here.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean, you were asked to come here? By whom?”
“By the owner. I was told there was a mare for sale.”
“A mare?”
“Si. Breeding stock for me.”
She was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. For once, he could hardly blame her.
“For my stallions,” he amended. “My Andalusians. Pura Raza Espanola.” Lucas’s gaze hardened. “But there is no mare here. No PRE stock at all—not even that ugly thing you call a stallion. Or would you like to pretend I am wrong about that, too?”
The woman wet her lips with a quick sweep of her tongue. He found himself following the simple action with hungry concentration, though why he would was beyond him.
She had spirit and fire but she was not the kind of woman who would ever interest him.
He’d seen females like her all his life. They hung around ranches. Around horse shows. Their passion was horses. They dressed like men, rode like men. As far as Lucas was concerned, they might as well have been men.
The Spanish Prince s Virgin Bride Page 2
