Cowboy Fantasy
Ann Major
MILLS & BOON
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ANN MAJOR lives in Texas with her husband of many years and is the mother of three grown children. She has a masters degree from Texas A&M at Kingsville, Texas, and is a former English teacher. She is a founding board member of the Romance Writers of America and a frequent speaker at writers groups.
Ann loves to write; she considers her ability to do so a gift. Her hobbies include hiking in the mountains, sailing, ocean kayaking, traveling and playing the piano. But most of all she enjoys her family. Visit her Web site at www.annmajor.com.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Prologue
South Texas
The borderlands
Black feathers spun lazily above in a cloudless, azure sky.
Teos head hurt as he lay on the hard earth watching the big black birds. His stomach throbbed queasily.
He didnt know where he was, only that he was somewhere north of the border, somewhere in Tejas. Somewhere on a huge ranch the coyote had called El Dorado.
Teofilo Perez was ten years old and he was dying.
Mamacíta!
Teofilos hands clawed sand. Then he remembered.
Shed sent him off to scavenge another part of el dompe with Chaco and his gang. Then she and Papacíto had run away.
When Teo had stayed up all night waiting for them, Chaco had laughed.
They arent coming back. It happens all the time. Todo el tiempo. Chaco had stared indifferently toward the north. There are many orphans in el dompe. Left behind when their families disappear over the wire. My fathertoo.
Now Chaco was gone as well.
Sweat stung Teos eyes like hot tears. Where was he?
Burrs and thorns bit into his back. Here there were snakes and spiders in the high grasses; wild animals, too. If Teo didnt get up and go on, hed die.
Then it would all be for nothing.
He was burning up, from the inside out; starving, too. He felt as thirsty for water as a bone-dry sponge. Then the coyotes started howling again, and he tasted the coppery flavor of his own panic.
He had to get up and catch Chaco. He had to keep walking north through the endless sandy pastures choked with mesquite and huisache that led to el norte.
To Houston. To Tiá Irma.
Chaco had warned him to stay out of the open, so La Migra couldnt spot him from their helicopters.
Teo felt too weak to stand, so he lay on the hard, packed ground, his swollen, sunburned lids blinking, his eyes blurring every time he opened them. Through the screen of his dense lashes a too-bright sun spun above the stunted oak trees, shooting diamond-patterned pricks through the branches. The orange orb grew bigger and bigger until it exploded in a blinding brilliance that flooded the white-heat of that harsh, unforgiving sky.
His last meal had been breakfast two days agotwo boiled eggs and three tortillas that had been gritty and stale. His hands fisted again; he tried to swallow, but his tongue was too swollen and his throat too raw and gritty.
Fat black flies buzzed. Some mysterious creature grunted and snorted in the thicket. Teo shivered as he imagined the claws of a puma or the teeth of a coyote.
Ayudame, Dios.
He wanted to go home, not to Cartolandia, which was pocho for Cardboard Land, the barrio where theyd lived near el dompe in Nuevo Laredo. No, he wanted to go back home to his mountainous village, Tepóztlan. But there were no jobs there for Papacíto, no future for any of them. Nothing.
Nada, nada, mi hijo.
Papacíto had said those same words a week ago after government tractors and bulldozers had crushed their shack and bedraggled garden along with thousands of others and left them homeless again.
The next day, Papacíto had run away. Probably to look for work in el norte.
Teo couldnt remember the last time hed been in school or even his last bath. He felt like a slab of meat drying in the sun, a worn-out corpse.
Papacíto had promised him a house in el norte with a flush toilet, toys, a garden where he could play.
Swish. Black feathers were falling out of the sky, crash-landing clumsily, settling themselves in the branches of the thorny thicket.
Vultures.
Teo stared stupidly at the big black bird folding his wings. Another bird hopped out of a tree and scuttled closer.
Teo had to get up, but when he struggled to his knees, he reeled dizzily. Once he had crawled on bleeding knees to pray to the Virgin in Mexico City. That memory was followed by a sweeter one. He was home in the cool shade of his porch, lying on his hammock, and his mother and grandmother were singing him a lullaby. He began whispering his Hail Marys.
When he opened his eyes again, he was on the ground, and the buzzards were circling lazily against the pale blue. Through swirls of dust, a lone rider on a big black horse moved toward him. The tall man, whose low-crowned sombrero was the color of dust, wore a strange costume of weathered rawhide. He was as filthy as Teo, yet he sat on his horse with a world-weary cockiness that said he was somebody, more than border trash from el dompe.
Although the mans coppery face was hard and lean, his teeth were as white as the chicles Teo had sold to the fat gringo turistas. He had a golden mustache.
Terrified, Teo grabbed at his plastic bag of tortillas that Chaco had tied to his belt. In his other hand he gripped the bottle that held the remains of Chacos red soft drink. Swaying weakly, drowning in the blinding sunlight, Teo struggled to his feet.
The man called down to him gently in his native tongue, more gently than Papacíto ever spoke. Cuidado, manito.
Was he a phantom? A trick, like the trick the coyote had played when hed dumped Chaco and the other toughs from el dompe here, in the middle of nowhere, swearing that a truck would be waiting for them a little farther where the pasture hit the road past the immigration checkpoint.
The strangers 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 wasnt blood. It was the sugary soft drink. Hed spilled the last of Chacos 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 hadnt minded when shed 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 wasnt afraid to die anymore.
Angelita! he whispered.
He opened his eyes. The girl wasnt an angel. It was his mother, and her voice was as sweet as those songs she used to sing before he went to sleep.
Dont 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 theres nothing more fascinating than love gone wrong; nothing more fun to talk about, eitherespecially if its the bosss 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 hed been billed by the states most popular magazine as the most eligible bachelor in Texasfor all that, this cowboy king was damned near done for.
Nothing is more disagreeable or more difficult to stop than gossip, especially when its true. It was common knowledge at El Dorado Ranchbetter known, at least in these parts, as North Blacks private kingdomthat 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 troubleillegals, bulls loose, broken pipes, cut fences, dry water holes, cows lost, a horse that needed to be broken, or more of the Midnight Bandits 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 himtime and again.
First, shed jilted him at the altar like he was a nobodyright there, in front of God, his crew, his friends, his family; hell, in front of the entire damned ranching aristocracy of Texas. Shed 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.
Its 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 hed 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, shed gone and made a fool of him again.
Yes, sirree. Shed turned the king into a jealousy-crazed maniac in a run-down bar in Rockport, Texas. Hell, that shrimpers dive better known as Shortys, was so bad, the king would never have set the scuffed toe of his handmade, black boot inside it, if Melody hadnt lured him there on purpose. For reasons known only to her, shed danced and gotten those rough, dangerous fishermen in such a rowdy stir, they wouldve given her more than shed bargained for, if the king hadnt rushed her and carried her off over his shoulders like he was a caveman and she was his woman.
Only she wasnt his woman or ever going to beaccording 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 mustve 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 nobodys 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 Im concerned, she no longer exists. Understand? Comprende?
Nobody had spoken of her, in Spanish or Englishat least, not directly and not within the kings 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 Norths strong, jutting jaw, he wasnt over that night. Plain to see by his stern silences and his inability to even crack a smile at his mens dirty banter, that the king hadnt forgotten the young lady or that night any more than they had.
No, sirree. The king wasnt 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 mens yelps along with that damn cows stomping and grunting and snorting inside the jug at the far end of the huge barn would have set a sane mans nerves on edge. North was hardly sane.
He hadnt been himself since that night when Melody had danced for the world and then refused to dance with him in private. To make matters worse, Dee Dee Woods, Melodys socially ambitious mom, had him on the phone and was unraveling the fraying ends of his frazzled psyche with her shrill demands.