tilted low on his brow, he wore the lean and merciless look of a hunting wolf—or a born outlaw.
Once more, in spite of the heat, Lauren shivered.
Perhaps sensing her rider’s unease, the gray mare sidestepped nervously as she dismounted. Lauren spoke to her softly and gave her a reassuring slap on the withers as she moved away from her.
“You mad at her about something?”
She started, then halted, despising herself for trembling inside as Bronco suddenly appeared beside her, one hand on the gray mare’s bridle, blocking her way.
“Mad?” she said in a voice taut with confusion. “No, I was just… She seemed nervous. I was letting her know it was okay.”
“Let me ask you a question.” Now he spoke in a crooning tone. His hand lay gentle on the mare’s sweat-darkened neck. Lauren focused on that hand and tried to ignore the way her breath caught in her throat as he moved up beside her. “If I was to slap you on your bare skin, exactly the same way you just slapped her, you think you’d like it?”
Her mouth dropped open, but with no hope of a reply.
“Her hide’s as sensitive as yours is,” he went on in that thick seductive murmur. His hands moved on the mare’s neck with a caressing touch, like a lover’s. “She can feel a gnat when it lands on her back. Think what a slap feels like.”
As if she understood, the little mare turned an ear toward him, then her head, and blew a gust of breath against his shoulder. When she playfully nibbled his shirtsleeve, Bronco’s answering chuckle was almost indistinguishable from the sounds the animal made.
“Ever watch the way horses do with each other? They nuzzle. Just touch each other gently with the softest part of their lips. That’s the way you want to touch a horse. You stroke her nice and easy, light little massages like a horse’s nuzzle—see there?”
Lauren nodded, but it was a lie; both he and the horse were a blur. His voice retreated to a distant hum; she felt light-headed. In her mind’s eye she saw his hands, all right, those same hands, but the sleek shiny hide beneath the fingers wasn’t sweat-streaked dappled gray, but a rich deep mahogany.
A voice intruded, Gil McCullough’s voice, droning on and on about the accomplishments, pedigree and breeding track record of the stallion, Cochise Red. But Lauren wasn’t listening. Her heart and all her senses had been hijacked by the magnificent animal cavorting out in the middle of the ring, showing off with a stallion’s flare. The animal—and the man riding him. Oh, but they were beautiful together.
They seemed inseparable, man and horse, like something in mythology, two parts of the same being—the stallion’s body, powerfully and compactly built for short bursts of unbelievable speed, lightning-quick turns and bone-jolting stops, and the man’s as compact and strong, but lean and supple as a whip, with hands as gentle as a lover’s. The man rode leaning well forward over the stallion’s neck, long straight hair mingling with the coarse black mane, and the stallion’s ears flicked as if the man spoke to him in a language only they understood.
Smiling, heart pounding in sheer exhilaration, Lauren turned to Gil McCullough. “Not fair! You knew I wasn’t going to leave here without him once I’d seen him.”
McCullough laughed. “You know what they say—all’s fair in love, war and horse tradin’. Tell you what, let’s you and me go on up to the house, have something cold to drink while we tend to the paperwork.” He waved to Bronco out in the ring, then turned to stroll with her up the hard-baked slope toward the Spanish-style ranch house, which floated like a white ship in a sea of neat green lawn.
They went into Gil’s study, where his wife, a petite middle-aged blond woman introduced to Lauren as Katie, brought them tall glasses of iced tea with lemon. A short time later Bronco came in, accompanied by another man, this one oddly dressed for a ranch hand, Lauren thought, in what appeared to be combat fatigues. There was something hard and cold about his eyes, something that made her uneasy when he looked at her.
McCullough asked her for the keys to her truck. “Ron here’ll get your trailer backed around to the ramp while we’re finishing up the paperwork,” he told her as he handed her keys to the man in fatigues. “Soon as we’re done here, Bronco’ll get ol’ Red loaded up and you’ll be set to go.”
Lauren felt excitement vibrate through her. That magnificent animal was hers—well, okay, Dixie’s. But she could hardly wait to get him home to the Tipsy Pee. She wondered how long it would take her to get up the courage to actually ride him.
She’d had no warning at all. Not the slightest uneasiness, no chilly little frisson or premonition of danger.
She’d laughed as she handed the check to Gil, passing a hand over her brow and joking about the number of zeros. “Well,” she’d said then, taking a deep breath, “I guess I’d better be off. I have a long drive ahead of me.”
Even now, with her eyes closed, she could see Gil’s smile, hear him saying, “Oh, I don’t think you’re going to be goin’ anywhere just yet, Lauren Brown. You’ll be staying on here with us for a while.” And feel again that first little chill, as if someone had drawn an ice cube along her spine.
Though she still had not really understood what was happening. Her eyes had flown first to Bronco—in appeal, for confirmation of the unbelievable. It had been a reflexive thing. But she had found his face impassive, his eyes unreadable as onyx.
“Want you to go along with Bronco here,” Gil had said almost gently. “He’ll take you to your quarters, see you’re comfortable.” As if she’d been a homesick child on the first day of summer camp.
Her mouth had dropped open then, but no sound had come out. She wondered, even if she had screamed, if it would have made any difference. Who would there have been to hear her? McCullough’s wife? That sweet middle-aged woman Katie—was she a party to this…whatever it was?
What in God’s name did they want with her? Was she being kidnapped? Robbed? Or… But beyond that her shocked mind simply refused to go.
Without a sound, Bronco had moved in beside her and taken her arms. Instantly, mockingly, her mind flashed back to the night before, to the dance floor in Smoky Joe’s—same hands, same body, same wiry strength, same all-enveloping heat. The irony of it was so shocking she gave a small incensed gasp. Bronco muttered something she couldn’t hear, and then she was moving, moving against her will, her feet going along with her body as if they’d had no other choice.
Had there been a choice? If she’d had presence of mind to go limp, what would it have gained her? Only, she was certain, the indignity of being carried. No, she’d had only one chance, and that had come later, outside, when Bronco had paused for some reason at the place where the lawns ended in a low stone wall and two steps dropped down to the hard-baked dirt. It was then, operating on pure gut instinct, that Lauren had seized the moment and stomped down with all her strength on his instep.
Her valiant effort produced only a muffled grunt. Instead of releasing her, Bronco’s grip on her arms tightened. There was a flash of blinding breath-stopping pain, and his voice, whispering the warning against her ear, so soft it sounded obscenely like an endearment. “Let’s have an understanding—you don’t try to get away, and I don’t have to hurt you.”
And then, in a more normal voice, a lazy almost insolent drawl, he’d said, “Look here, Laurie Brown, where do you think you’re gonna go? Look around you.”
