How many girls have you kissed, anyway?
Ritz slanted a long-lashed glance at his cut lip.
Not enough. Do you want to be next? Roque asked.
No! All of a sudden, Ritz was staring again at his wide, sensual mouth and wondering what it would feel like on hers.
Are you sure about that? He twisted the key and punched on the radio. His fingers tapped on the dash to the salsa beat. How about we get out and dance?
Here?
His hand brushed her cheek. Electricity sparked through her. She shook her head and he laughed. The shade of the live oaks seemed to wrap them in darkness as they sat there. Beyond his chiseled profile the world was bright, the grasses high and brown, the sky cobalt-blue. And yet being in the darkness with him held more mystery and appeal than anything.
Reaching across her lap, Roque took her hand in his, startling her. When he kissed her fingers, one by one, unfolding them, she burned and ached all over.
Come on, Ritz, lets enjoy being outlaws together, he whispered in a velvet, low tone that was as fascinatingly beautiful as the rest of him.
Also available from MIRA Books and ANN MAJOR
WILD ENOUGH FOR WILLA INSEPARABLE
THE HOT LADIES MURDER CLUB
Marry a Man who will Dance
Ann Major
www.mirabooks.co.uk
I dedicate this book to my beloved mother, Ann Major, whose only advice on the subject of marriage was Marry a man who will dance.
Acknowledgments
We make plans. Then real life happens. So it was with this book. I had a vision. Then I wrote something entirely different. During desperate creative moments when I struggled to see my way clear, several people held my hand.
First, I must thank my editor, Tara Gavin, for all that she always does and does so well. All of my books are better because of her. Next, I must thank my husband, Ted, for his infinite patience. My agent, Karen Solem, was extremely helpful. I would like to thank Dianne Moggy and Joan Marlow Golan, as well.
Kay Telle and Cathy Mahon helped me with the horse research by lending me books and letting me visit their horse barns and cherished horses. Dick and Ann Jones are always helpful when it comes to ranching. Geri Rice helped with the completed manuscript and Lydia Suris with the Spanish.
Contents
Prologue
Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book 2
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Book 3
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Prologue
Beside the fire, as the wood burns black, A laughing dancer in veils of light, Whose dance transforms the darkness to gold
Adu Abd Allan ben Abi-I-Khisal
Prologue
Houston, Texas
April, 2001
The Harley roared and bucked and writhed under his muscular thighs as wildly as a fresh border whore. And since he was half-Mexican and half-Anglo, and oversexed to boot, Roque Moya was just the man to know.
Not that anyone in Texas called him Moya. Here he was Blackstone, a name he hated, a name most people hated. But not nearly as much as they feared it. His father had seen to that.
The stripes that divided the interstate lanes blurred into a fluid white line flying beneath his wheels. His thickly lashed eyes flashed on the speedometer. One hundred and ten.
He was in too big of a hurry to slow down.
Only when he passed the world famous R.D. Meyer Heart Institute on the outskirts of Houston a few miles later, and the traffic began to thicken, did he use his left foot to gear down.
Fury knotted his gut.
Dont think about her!
Cities. It was cities he hated. They always seemed like filthy jails. Even up here in el norte, on this side of the border where they were supposed to be safer, cleaner, and more respectable, they were still prisons.
Especially this city which happened to be where his once rich daddy had made himself so notorious by manipulating juries he despised with his well-told lies.
She lived here. Shed married another man and hidden from him here.
His black leather glove gripped the throttle with a vengeance. Thoughts of her up ahead in addition to the soaring speed of his bike gave him an adrenaline rush.
He had a funeral to get to. And he was late. A funeral he was very much looking forward to.
Her husbands.
Ritz.
He thought of Ritz at the damnedest times. Thought of what shed doneand what she hadnt. Thought of her glorious yellow hair blowing in the wind, thought of her blue eyes, how they could change from blue to violet when she got hot for him. She didnt think she was sexy, but she was.
He had to know why shed crawled into his bed two months ago, why shed been so eager to sleep with him, her warm, silky body aquiver. Shed been a perfect fit, better than before.
And yetshed kept secrets that night.
If it had been half as good for her as it had for him, why had she gone home to her husband?
Since that night, hed done some research.
Were all the sordid stories Josh had spread about her true?
Border saint? Or border tramp? Or something in between? Someone far more complex? She wasnt a girl anymore. She was a woman.
And a widow now.
Time to find out who she really was.
Hed waited a hell of a long time for his turn.
Thumpty-thump. His big wheels hit cracked pavement. Big piles of dirt, earth-moving equipment, and cranes littered either side of the interstate. Houston seemed to be falling apart. In the shimmering heat beneath a white soupy sky, the downtown skyscrapers undulated like strippers to the frenzied tempo of his bike. On either side of the freeway, office buildings, signs, restaurants, strip shopping centers, malls and huge parking lots whipped by.
Progress? Were they going to pave the whole damn world? For a second or two he felt like Mad Max roaring to his doom on a crotch-rocket across some crazed, futuristic landscape.
He should have noticed the lanes narrowing, the traffic beginning to hem him in. But he was flying past the blinking yellow lights on the orange barrels and all those little white signs that warned the freeway was under construction before he really saw them.
His mind was on Ritz and the telephone call he had received six hours ago on the ranch.
dead!
But I thought.
Caught us by surprise, too, Roque. Nobody thought hed go this fast!
How?
In his sleeppainlessly.
Hows shetaking.
too devastatedto even call me! Frankly Im worried. And shes sick. A stomach virus or something.
For no reason at all that news had gotten him edgy. How sick?
Threw up everywhere. Been at it a week.
After all shed been through, nursing a dying man, her formerly rich, famous husband. His old nemesis, Josh.
Soshed loved Josh after all. The realization hit him hard.
Ten thousand taillights blazed blood-red. As if on cue, six lanes of vehicles slammed on their brakes all at once.
An eighteen wheelers trailer loomed ahead like a solid wall of silver.
Híjole, he whispered, easing off the gas, gearing down, braking so fast, his bike went into a skid.
G-forces hurled his powerful, leather-clad body straight at the mirrored trailer. To avoid slamming into it, he put his bike on its side. Sparks flew off his crash bar across asphalt.
Hanging on and hunkering low, a jagged rock sliced his cheek as he hurtled under the eighteen-wheeler. A second later he shot out the other side across two congested lanes of stalled traffic.
An exhaust pipe blistered his stubbly jaw with a wave of hot fumes. A strip of black leather flapped loose from his shoulder.
But he was alive.
You, son of a bitch! a man yelled at him.
Gears ground. Brakes slammed again as Roque skidded to a halt just short of the guardrail.
Only when he was stopped did Roque notice the hole in his black jacket and see the blood oozing from his chest.
He was alive. And so was she. All of a sudden he felt a hell of a lot better.
Sudden longing wrenched his being. He saw violet eyes and golden hair spread all over his pillow.
She was free again and so was he.
He lifted the silver St. Jude medal hed worn around his neck for good luck and kissed it.
Then he began to shake.
Shit.
He rolled the throttle and made his rice burner roar.
Where the hell was her house in River Oaks?
Ritz Keller Evans was to the manor born. She was a real lady. Elegant. A princess.
At least she was supposed to be.
She patted her stomach uneasily.
Today shed certainly dressed the part she was pretending to playthat of Joshs wealthy, grieving widow.
She wore a black sheath. No jewels. Not even her gold wedding band. That shed slipped off her finger, maybe a little too eagerly to be buried along with Josh in his coffin.
Her honey-blond hair was swept back. Her skin was so pale and her expression so reserved, few people dared to intrude upon her grief. Very few of the mourners spoke to her. Her own mother and father had refused to come.
Ritz was a Keller, of the legendary Triple K Ranch of south Texas, the last of the big-time, fairy-tale, ranch princesses. And since Texas is founded on the lie that a kingdom of a million acres, thousands of cows and a lot of oil wells should make any girl happy, the headlines about her fascinated a lot of people.
What if they knew the truth? That she was estranged from her family? That shed slept with her old boyfriend, Roque, the virile cowboy shed spent years avoiding. Not just any cowboy, but Roque Moya Blackstone, son of odious Benny Blackstone, whom Roque had gotten disbarred. Roque himself was a self-serving, multimillionaire developer of the impoverished colonias she sometimes visited as a nurse. Not so long ago shed even gotten him fined for building inadequate houses without utilities.
Even if he was Blackstones son, being half-Mexican, how could he prey on poor Mexican immigrants?
Better question: knowing who and what he washow could she have crept into his bed and used him as a stud?
Had she hoped lightning would strike her twice?
Joshs funeral had her second-guessing herself. She was broke. She hadnt known what to do with herself when Josh had lost everything and their marriage failed.
Now all she wanted was this baby.
Until Joshs business had failed and hed left her, everybody had thought she led a charmed life. Then hed taken her back, only to die fast. Naturally everybody was curious. Naturally she was photographed, written about, gossiped about
Shed believed in love and marriage and children.
In babies.
How strange that Josh, whom shed known from childhood, the son of a rancher, should have ended up the richest dot.com king in Houston, only to lose everything as swiftly as hed made it. Still, for five years theyd lived in this castle in River Oaks, Houstons most reputed posh enclave for its millionaires and billionaires, especially those who have a flair for high drama or scandal.
Unconsciously she pressed against her thickening waistline. Just as quickly, her slim fingers fluttered away before Mother Evans or any of Joshs friends could see.
Nobody could know. Not her estranged family. Not Joshs. Not Jet, her long-time girlfriend, nor Jets saintly father, Irish Taylor.
Nobody.
Especially not the babys real father.
Not until Josh was properly buried and all his friends and family had gone home; not until Ritz was a long way from Texas and the gossips who watched her every move, would she breathe easily.
This time she had to carry her baby full term. That would be her atonement. What else did she owe him?
She was equally determined there would be no nasty rumors or newspaper smears, no counting up of months, no wondering how Josh could have gotten her pregnant in his condition.
Ritz had known she was pregnant even before there had been any symptoms or visible signs. One day she had awakened in this house of death and broken dreams, and opened her window. The sweet peas that climbed her trellis had glowed brighter and smelled sweeter. She had breathed in their fresh fragrance and felt queasy, and she had known.