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 master’s 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.
Teo’s head hurt as he lay on the hard earth watching the big black birds. His stomach throbbed queasily.
He didn’t 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!”
Teofilo’s hands clawed sand. Then he remembered.
She’d 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 aren’t 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 father…too.”
Now Chaco was gone as well.
Sweat stung Teo’s 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 didn’t get up and go on, he’d 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 couldn’t 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 ago—two 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 they’d 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 couldn’t remember the last time he’d 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
