She didn’t reply, partly because she was still too shaken by the close and unaccustomed brush with violence, but also because the comment made her intensely uncomfortable. Her firsthand knowledge of Native Americans was limited, but she disliked the term half-breed, and had been raised to consider blanket statements about race objectionable on general principles.
Unperturbed by her silence, Gil shook his head. “It’s a sad story, a sad story. Unfortunately not a very unusual one in this part of the country. He grew up around here, you know.”
Lauren nodded; she remembered the rodeo announcer saying he was a “local boy.”
“Yeah, ol’ Johnny was quite a hero in these parts a while back.”
“Really?” Lauren murmured, interested in spite of herself. The beer was warming her insides, easing her pulse back to normal. She focused on her companion’s clean-shaven face and close-cropped gray hair, and tried to block out the images that wanted to linger in her mind—images of a dark angry face, hard-edged features crisscrossed with strands of long black hair…
“Football,” Gil clarified after taking a small drink of the beer he’d been nursing most of the evening. “Best damned wide receiver I ever saw—hands like a magician. All-conference, all-state his senior year—had colleges lined up to offer him scholarships.” He shook his head again and made a smacking sound with his lips. “What a waste.”
“What happened?”
The rancher shrugged. “The drinking got him. Finally either flunked out or got kicked out—depends on who you hear it from. Bronco, he doesn’t like to talk about it much. He always was wild, drank too much even when he was in high school. Came by it naturally—his old man was a drunk, died in a car accident when Bronco was in junior high. Kid never had a chance.”
“He must not be doing all that badly,” Lauren remarked with an edgy shrug. “You hired him.” And then she wondered why she felt a need to defend a man she didn’t know at all, especially from a man who obviously knew him very well.
Pictures flashed in lightning-quick succession through her mind: Bronco up on Old Number 7, whirling in slow motion in a golden fog of sun-shot dust; a pair of scuffed and well-broken-in boots, spurs without rowels; a wry smile in a dark face, and the words spoken in a soft deep voice. Horse and I have an understanding….
“I hired him because when it comes to horses, he’s the best there is,” Gil said as if he’d seen the images in her mind. But his narrowed eyes had a speculative glint that made her squirm inwardly as he watched her. As a lawyer she knew that feeling. It was the one she got when she thought she might have given away too much. Showed the opposition a few too many of her cards. “And because I thought the kid had had some bad breaks,” the rancher went on in a voice with added undercurrents. “I helped him straighten himself out after he got kicked out of the military. Haven’t regretted it yet.”
“Well…” Lauren could think of nothing else to say. She suddenly felt depressed without the least idea why. “I think I’m going to have to call it a night,” she said to Gil. “It’s been a long day.” That’s all it is, she thought. She’d driven more than five hundred miles to get here and had very little sleep, and now the beer. She was just tired.
She settled on a time to meet with Gil the following day and jotted down directions to his ranch. Mindful of the lateness of the hour and the rowdy nature of the crowd, he graciously walked her to her truck, which, since she was pulling a fair-size horse trailer, she’d parked far out on the periphery of the parking lot.
As she crossed the hard-baked dirt, bleached by the light of mercury lamps to the color of old bones, she thought about the man who’d been dumped there only minutes before.
“Don’t worry about Bronco,” Gil said as she unlocked her truck. “My boys’ll see he gets home all right.”
Unnerved by the ease with which the rancher seemed to read her mind, she said dryly, “I’d just hate to think he was somewhere on the road right now.” She climbed behind the wheel and Gil closed the door. He waited with typical Western gallantry until she’d started the engine, then touched the brim of his hat.
“Drive safe now.”
“Yeah, thanks, I will. See you tomorrow.”
He left her with a wave and headed off across the parking lot, but Lauren didn’t watch him go. Nor did she immediately put the truck in gear and pull out onto the highway. Safely, blessedly alone, she sat and stared through the windshield, cringing inwardly as she opened the door on her own self-doubts.
What’s wrong with me? How could I have been so attracted to a man who’s clearly nothing but bad news?
It must be some sort of wild gene, she thought, passed down to her from that pioneer ancestor, the one Aunt Lucy had told her about. How else to explain it? She was Lauren Brown, a bright sensible Iowa attorney, a good girl, one who’d always done the right thing, lived by the rules, lived up to everyone’s expectations. She was engaged to marry the perfect man, a good man, not to mention handsome, witty and kind.
Why, then, had Benjamin never made her feel the way she’d felt tonight, dancing with Johnny Bronco?
Johnny Bronco. What a name! Romantic notions aside, what he was was a half-Indian cowboy with a drinking problem, a propensity for violence and a undeniable way with horses and women. The last man in the world she’d ever let herself get mixed up with. What could she possibly see in a man like that? What could they possibly have in common?
As if in reply, once again a wave of remembered sensation swamped her. Oh, how vivid it seemed—the slide of silken hair through her fingers, the faint smell of leather and sweat, his body heat soaking into her breasts, his hand moving like a magician’s, scattering shivers like pixie dust down her back. Even now, just the memories made her breathing quicken, her nipples harden, her skin prickle and chafe against the restrictions of her clothing.
Awash with longing, throat aching and eyes burning, Lauren angrily threw the truck into gear and drove out of Smoky Joe’s parking lot into the Arizona night.
I should never have danced with him. The thought chilled her even now as she lifted her face to the hot August wind.
She opened her eyes when the gray mare abruptly slowed, then halted. Just ahead, Bronco was waiting for her beside a rock pile, in the shade of a massive bull pine.
Without her noticing, the land had changed dramatically. They’d been climbing steadily, she realized now, and the rolling hills dotted with juniper and sage, mesquite and palo verde had given way to sparse stands of piñons intermingled with bull pines and clumps of scrub brush.
While Cochise Red snuffed the ground and whickered an impatient greeting to the gray mare, Bronco placidly waited for Lauren to come to him, then reached out and took her reins. “We’ll rest here a bit. Give the horses a breather.”
For a moment she sat where she was, glaring resentfully at him while sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat and crawled in a chilly trickle between her breasts. But in a way it was almost a relief to look at him, to see him the way he was today, a vivid flesh-and-blood reminder that he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. The fantasy rodeo rider in a graceful pas de deux with a bucking bronc, the Saturday-night charmer in the red shirt and flowing black hair. Maybe they were parts of the whole and maybe they were no more than clever disguises, but how could she ever know for certain? The only thing she did know was that this man, this Bronco, bore no resemblance
