The Girl with the Golden Spurs (22 page)

She laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’re not Jack.”

“Why?”

Her eyes went hotter than ever. “Because it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

She was right. He’d known from the first minute he’d seen her, before he’d even touched her, that she was the woman he’d been waiting for all his life.

Her eyes locked on his again and stole a piece of his soul. She knew she had him.

“It wouldn’t have mattered? You’re
her
best friend,” he lashed.

“Last I hear God doesn’t hand out a rule book. Until he does, I’ll make my own rules.”

He frowned.

“And you don’t care. Not the least little bit,” she said.

He was furious at her for being amused, furious at Joanne for bringing this force of nature into his life because even then he sensed Electra would consume him.

“Joanne’s inside.” He stormed past her out to the barn.

Instead of looking for Joanne in the house like a proper maid of honor, Electra stalked him to the barn stall that smelled of oats, molasses, hay and horse.

When she closed the door, locking them inside the stall together, a drum began to beat in his head. He had never felt
so overwhelmed by the virile male beast that raged inside of him. He’d intended to saddle Raven and disappear until he regained his own will.

Barns and horses could calm him as nothing else could. He loved grooming them and riding them. Just watching them drink through their lips that seemed to be closed or watching them gobble great mouthfuls of grain or chase the pile of kernels around their feeding tubs could make him smile.

But not tonight. Not with her here, too
.

“I came here to be alone. If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from me,” he growled as she approached him.

“Sometimes playing dumb is way more fun.” She removed the rose from her ear and slid the soft petals against her cheek, then lower down her own swanlike throat. Then she pulled a strap of red gown down and caressed her breast.

The stall still smelled of fresh hay and horses, but now of
her
and of that damnable red rose that she slid between her teeth, too.

“So that’s how you want to play it,” he said.

She lifted the rose to his lips and slowly, languorously teased his flesh with those sweet velvet petals until he wanted to scream.

The next thing he knew, red silk was sliding off her voluptuous body, and she was gloriously naked.

Instinct told him not to touch her, that she would not be a trivial affair, that if he so much as laid a hand on her, she would own him forever.

But he was a man possessed. Even when she began to laugh, he had to have her.

He seized her and threw her savagely against the wall of the stall. “What’s so funny?”

“Life isn’t a serious affair, or haven’t you heard?” She stared at him, her lavender eyes blazing. “Why are you just
standing there like a big old bull, snorting and panting? Hasn’t anybody ever taught you to make love, cowboy?”

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“I’ll bet you’re a fast learner. Talented, too.” She took his big rough hands in hers and moved them over her body, holding them against her breasts for a long time, smiling whenever he touched her in a way that gave her the most pleasure. He ripped off his clothes.

“There’s no hurry,” she said.

She’d made him wait. She made him be gentle. She began by licking him everywhere and running those soft rose petals over his arms and legs and engorged penis.

Finally, when she let him take her, and her body was twisting and writhing beneath him and she laughed no more, he knew he could never let her go. When he exploded inside her and told her how he felt, that he loved her, that he would always love her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close as though she could never let him go, either.

To his surprise, she began to cry.

“Why aren’t you laughing now?” he murmured.

“Because some day I will have to let you go. Because I could never live here for long or belong to any one person—even you. And you can never live anywhere else.”

“What are you saying?”

“The truth. I love you. I will always love you. But in my own way. Which isn’t your way, my love.” Her voice was so sad, it made his own heart feel heavy.

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong about me. I tried once to live as others do, but I hurt people. In time I always have to be free.”

That night he hadn’t believed she was the woman she said she was. He’d believed what they’d shared—what they’d felt—had been bigger than both of them and that in time, she
would change for him. For how does one let go of one’s own soul and go on living?

But they had.

When he’d finally understood her and realized that there was a wildness in her that was like the wildness of an untamed creature. Not a vicious wildness, just something free and true that was her nature. She could no more be domesticated and live happily than a panther or a deer or a javalina. She was no bronc to be tamed to the saddle, nor a tree with roots. She was like the wind that blew freely.

In the end, he’d loved her enough to let her go.

There were footsteps in the hall. The door opened. He felt a whoosh of air, and a cone of whiteness from the hall flashed across the ceiling tiles.

It wasn’t Joanne or his nurse because they always spoke to him.

“Goodbye, Caesar,” said a harsh, yet familiar and beloved voice.

His tension eased until he heard rustling near his IV tube. Then alarms went off inside him. In vain he struggled to twist his head.

What was going on?

“Surprised? Well, don’t feel self-righteous. You killed for the ranch, too. You killed your own brother, Jack, didn’t you?”

No!

Caesar felt a strange, stinging heat in his veins, and he knew.

“I set you up with Cherry to ruin your reputation, so you’d be removed from your position. Too bad for you they kept you on.”

He was going to die.

Images flashed before him. He saw Lizzy as she’d looked leaning over his bed, her hair falling softly against his cheek.

He’d thought she’d looked more like her mother every day. He saw his sons and Mia, and then Joanne. He saw Jack’s broken body in the dunes.

Then he saw Electra. She stood in a circle of pink light at the end of a brilliant tunnel, and she was holding out her arms to him.

There was a roaring sound, and he was rushing toward her.

A voice behind him called, “Adios, Caesar.”

Then he heard laughter.

The murderous bastard was laughing at him.

I trusted you!
Caesar wanted to scream, to cry out a warning, but his lips seemed made of stone and wouldn’t move.

Slowly, slowly, the ceiling tiles above him dissolved and were lost forever in the darkness.

BOOK THREE

Smart Cowboy Saying:

If you find yourself in a hole the first thing you do is stop digging.

—Anonymous

E
lectra Scott
. Lizzy couldn’t think about anything else except that the woman was her real mother.

Lizzy’s back hurt and her shoulders felt numb when she got up from the computer. She rolled her shoulders forward and then backward before beginning to pace.

After breakfast Cole had shown Lizzy exactly how to buy and sell livestock on the Internet. Then he’d left her a list of livestock that needed to be sold and asked her to e-mail the owners of a couple of bulls he was interested in buying. Not that she’d been able to concentrate with her mind on Electra. Still, she’d tried. But when she’d finished e-mailing the bull owners, she’d typed Electra Scott’s name into the search engine and hit Enter.

A wealth of stories about her famous biological mother abounded on the Internet. Electra had had shows everywhere and numerous grand openings. All her photographs showed her dressed as a gypsy—just as Lizzy preferred to dress—and she was always laughing.

More than anything Lizzy wished she could hear her mother laugh. Lizzy had discovered that she’d done a series of extraordinary photographs during her stay on the Golden
Spurs, and had them published in a book. She wondered if maybe one or two would be suitable for the museum, which was about the history and life on the ranch. She would probably have to fight Joanne. Still, it was something to think about.

Electra Scott had traveled the world doing her thing. Nothing had stopped her except a murderer, who’d assaulted her in the primitive hut where she’d been camping in Nicaragua while she photographed endangered tropical birds. The camp had been in a remote area. Somehow she’d been raped and strangled without her staff hearing a thing.

With growing dismay, Lizzy read two more stories about her mother’s death.

“Why did you have to die before I ever got to meet you?”

Lizzy felt sad until she remembered that her mother had always known where she was and had never taken the trouble to meet her or even call her. Then anger washed away her sorrow.

The phone rang and Lizzy jumped. Sam was calling her from his cell phone.

“I can barely hear you,” she said.

“I’ve been in San Antonio in a meeting with Leo. Bobby Joe and I are on our way back to the Chaparral Division. Thought maybe we’d stop by for lunch, if you were going to be in. We want to check out the progress on the museum.”

“That would be lovely, Sam. I’ll look forward to seeing the two of you.”

“It looks incredibly historic,” Sam said after he finished reading the plaque in front of the museum. “I can’t believe after all that’s happened—I mean the fires, Cherry and Caesar—that it’s this near completion. I wish Bobby Joe hadn’t decided to stay at the ranch house. He loves history.”

Lizzy smiled. “It’s the old carriage house, you know. Joanne said it would be perfect for the museum.”

“Gussied up a bunch.”

“The wonders of paint,” Lizzy said.

“And money,” Sam countered with a warm smile.

She tucked her arm through his. She’d missed Sam. That was the trouble with growing up. You left people who were dear to you behind. When neither person was good about keeping in touch, you lost each other.

The white, two-story museum beneath the shade of the tall live-oak trees looked inviting as they walked up the sidewalk arm in arm, their faces dappled by the spreading shadows of the live-oak branches.

“I like the courtyard area,” he said, noting the grassy lawn shimmering in the sunlight around back.

“We’re going to put some old buggies and wagons out there. We’ll have information stations, similar to those found in zoos that will tell the history of the ranch as visitors wander the courtyard. Just wait until you see the murals.”

When they went inside, the wooden floors creaked. Lizzy expected Walker or Mark to greet her, but the three large rooms painted with brilliant, lively murals that depicted the ranch’s history, were empty. They went through the rooms, their eyes lifted, staring up at the paintings.

“They’re wonderful,” Sam said. “Impressive.”

“Mark’s a very sensitive artist. He studied in Mexico.”

“Looks like he was influenced by Diego Rivera. Too bad so many of the ranch’s artifacts are in archives or in other museums,” Sam said.

“Well, for now we have the sculptures of the family, an audio tour and a video. It will take a visitor two hours to tour the museum. Oh, I found a wonderful book of photographs of the ranch in the library by Electra Scott. We’re going to put the book in a lighted case and leave it open. Each month the curator will flip to a new page.”

Looking back, Lizzy would never be able to remember
the exact moment she realized that she and Sam weren’t alone in the building. Maybe she heard a voice or a whisper. Maybe she simply
knew
. Maybe Walker simply chose this moment and this way of telling her himself.

As she approached the little room that was to be the museum office and stock room, which was near the glass case that would hold the items to be sold, she heard whispers. Then papers rustled, and a chair squeaked in the stock room.

“Hello?” she called, her voice echoing strangely.

A chair crashed to the floor. Suddenly Mark and Walker emerged, their faces darkly flushed. Mark’s shirt wasn’t buttoned all the way to his throat.

Lizzy swallowed. Had Daddy caught them together like this?

After a long moment, Lizzy went up to them and took their hands in hers and spoke as if nothing was wrong. “The murals are too wonderful for words. You’ve both done a great job.”

Walker’s eyes met hers. She saw his love for her as well as his love for Mark. For the first time, she saw the man he really was.

She leaned into her tall brother and whispered against his ear, “Nothing has changed. Not really. Not for me.” Then she smiled at Mark.

“You’re wrong,” Walker said gently. “Everything has changed for me. I don’t have to live a lie. At least not with you. And that’s everything to me. Too many people are forced to live lies.”

She turned to introduce Mark to Sam and was surprised that Sam had left without her.

Feeling rejected and embarrassed for Walker’s sake, she ran toward the door. This sort of thing must be harder for men, she thought. But truth was truth. One had to accept it.

“Sam?” she called out when she didn’t see him.

Cole drove up in a swirl of caliche dust and jumped out of the black truck. His face was dark with strain. “Lizzy. Finally. I’ve been looking everywhere. Called you on your cell.”

“I guess I left it in my car.”

“It’s your father—” he said and broke off.

A thick silence fell between them, but he said nothing more.

“Is he—” She couldn’t finish her question.

His handsome face blurred as dread slithered through her.

“But they moved him out of ICU!” she murmured. “He was getting better!”

When Cole still didn’t answer, she sucked in air as panic raced through her. Then she hurtled into his arms.

“We aren’t supposed to touch,” he muttered.

“Damn you. Just hold me.”

“There, there, Lizzy,” he murmured, stroking her hair. “You wouldn’t have wanted him to go on the way he was, now would you?”

“My mother’s dead and now Daddy, too.”

“Joanne’s fine. I just spoke to her.”

“You don’t understand. You don’t know,” she wailed.

“Know what?”

“The truth. About my real mother. Electra Scott.”

He stiffened. Then she told him everything she’d learned about her biological mother through broken sobs, and he went on holding her and caressing her. Finally, when she quieted, she let him go.

“I’ll call Mother…. I—I mean Joanne, as soon as I pull myself together.” She wiped at her eyes and cheeks with the back of her hands.

“But are you going to be all right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Then Sam came around from the back of courtyard, and she jumped guiltily away from Cole. Not that it wasn’t natural for him to comfort her under the circumstances. Even so, she felt her cheeks flame as Cole told him about Caesar.

“You tell Walker, and I’ll drive Lizzy back to the house,” Sam said, his tone grave.

Lizzy started to object. She wanted to be with Cole. More than anything she wanted to be with Cole.

But she turned and followed Sam to his truck.

Lizzy slipped into the darkened horse barn and then stood still, unable to see much inside the closed building after the bright sunlight outside. So, she just stood there, waiting for her eyes to adjust, listening to the familiar sounds of the horses blowing and snorting inside their stalls.

Although she knew her father was dead, the reality of it hadn’t really sunk in yet. Her mind and heart were numb. Even so, she knew that something terrible, something irrevocable had happened to him, and she felt an overpowering need to be with him, a need to run into her daddy’s strong arms as she had when she’d been a frightened little girl.

He’d loved the horse barn. It was his favorite place on the whole ranch. If his soul was anywhere, she would find him in the barn.

Apparently Kinky had reacted to the terrible news the same way she had because he was mucking out a stall, a job he never did. When he heard her, he came out with his pitchfork, took off his hat and smiled at her sadly.

“Your daddy’s got some big boots that need filling, girl. It’ll be a spell before people get used to his being gone.”

She moved farther inside the barn. The names of the horses were on the doors of the stalls. She paced back and forth, touching each name with her hand: Ringo, Sleepy, Drake and Star.

“Which one is Star?”

“Star is that sweet gray gal with the white star on her forehead.”

Lizzy turned and smiled at the mare, who was watching her, too.

“Like a lot of women, she loves attention,” Kinky said. “Pet her.”

Lizzy went up to Star and began stroking her. “Remember how I was always so afraid of horses when I was a little girl,” Lizzy said.

“You took more than your share of falls.”

The mare nuzzled Lizzy’s hair. “She won’t bite, will she? I haven’t got a finger to spare.”

“She’s the gentlest, sweetest mare we got. You just keep on talking to her and petting her, and she’ll treat you right.”

Lizzy went on stroking the animal. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“You could make sure everybody has water. The buckets are over there by the door.”

“Sure.”

Lizzy left Star and did barn chores for nearly an hour, glad to have physical work like carrying water buckets to distract her. When she was done with that task, Kinky tied Star to a post so Lizzy could brush and comb her and spray her for flies.

“She’d let you do that all day,” Kinky said when Lizzy set the brush and comb down.

“What if I took her out on a short ride?”

“Mr. Cole wouldn’t like it.”

Lizzy bristled. “But Daddy would. Remember how he always wanted me to be a good rider.”

“But you haven’t ridden in a long time, honey. I don’t think you ought to ride alone, especially not the first time…and when you’re upset. Besides, your uncle B.B.’s got some brand-new hunters on his lease.”

“I’ve got to do this for Daddy.”

“If you’re set on this, at least let me go with you.”

“I need to be alone right now, Kinky.”

“Sometimes you’re as stubborn as your father, girl. It wasn’t his best trait, you know.”

His eyes narrowed and his bottom lip protruded when she lugged Star’s equipment from the tack room and began to tack her up. Nor did he offer to help—not with the saddle blanket, nor the saddle, not even when she struggled to lift it. Nor with the bridle or the bit, either.

When she kissed Star on the nose before slinging herself into the saddle and urging the animal out of the barn, Kinky growled, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Thanks for all the help,” she teased above the clatter of hooves on concrete as she leaned forward and patted Star on the neck. “And don’t you dare tell Cole.”

“Keep her away from water, you hear? Don’t try to swim her. Water’s the only thing that spooks her. Took her to the beach once. Boy did the surf make her crazy.”

Naturally Lizzy was a little nervous because she hadn’t ridden in so long, and because she harbored a secret prejudice that horses were stupid and tricky and hated her. Kinky’s being so against her riding and his warnings didn’t help any.

Soon, however, the feel of the leather reins lying lightly in her fingers reminded her of whom she was supposed to be—a Kemble, Caesar Kemble’s daughter. She dug her feet into the stirrups, thrust her chin out and sat a little straighter in the saddle.

I can do this!

The sight of Star’s gray ears flicking back and forth, the powerful neck bobbing in front of her and her mane bouncing as the mare’s easy, rhythmic gait carried them along began to feel so good and so right she wanted to lift her face to the sun and shout, “Look at me, Daddy! Look at me! I can do it!”

Maybe he could see her. Maybe he knew
.

“You be back before dark, you hear,” Kinky shouted from the barn, “Or Mr. Cole will have my hide.”

“Don’t you dare tell Cole. He’s not in charge of me. In fact he wants nothing to do with me.”

“He wants too much to do with you, girl. That’s his whole damn problem.”

It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and bright and still, so still sounds traveled well. Lizzy chose to follow one of Joanne’s meandering golf cart trails that cut through thick tangles of brush. Occasionally they came to a break in the trees, and she spotted javalina once, then a cautious red fox. She saw deer, cattle and a flock of turkeys, too.

Her instinct to ride out alone in the brush country with just the brush and the grass and sky turned out to be just what she needed. The emptiness of the wildness felt so elemental, she could almost breathe in the power off the land. The smell of the woods and grass and the sightings of the critters lifted her and made her know that her problems were pretty small in the scheme of things. She remembered how Daddy used to ride out alone when he was tense, and how he’d always come back in a better mood.