That she’d 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 she’d slept with her old boyfriend, Roque, the virile cowboy she’d 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 she’d even gotten him fined for building inadequate houses without utilities.
Even if he was Blackstone’s son, being half-Mexican, how could he prey on poor Mexican immigrants?
Better question: knowing who and what he was—how could she have crept into his bed and used him as a stud?
Had she hoped lightning would strike her twice?
Josh’s funeral had her second-guessing herself. She was broke. She hadn’t known what to do with herself when Josh had lost everything and their marriage failed.
Now all she wanted was this baby.
Until Josh’s business had failed and he’d left her, everybody had thought she led a charmed life. Then he’d taken her back, only to die fast. Naturally everybody was curious. Naturally she was photographed, written about, gossiped about
She’d believed in love and marriage and children.
In babies.
How strange that Josh, whom she’d 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 he’d made it. Still, for five years they’d lived in this castle in River Oaks, Houston’s 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 Josh’s friends could see.
Nobody could know. Not her estranged family. Not Josh’s. Not Jet, her long-time girlfriend, nor Jet’s saintly father, Irish Taylor.
Nobody.
Especially not the baby’s 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.
She’d whispered the name, “Roque,” and touched her stomach.
Then she’d shivered and snapped the window shut, realizing he was the last person she could ever tell and the last person she could ever desire.
Fear of him made her heart flutter when a very tall, dark masculine figure opened her front door. But it was only Irish Taylor, her father’s brilliant foreman. His craggy face was kind as he nodded at her.
Before the baby, Ritz would have said she wished she’d never met Roque Moya Blackstone. Roque, biker, cowboy, horseman, womanizer. Roque, who was way too sexy whether he covered his black hair with a red bandanna and rode his bike or whether he wore his Stetson and sat astride a prized stallion.
Daddy had always said he was the reason her life had gone wrong. She had learned a long time ago, that nothing was as simple or as black and white as Daddy had said.
Sometimes Ritz wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t seen him dance by firelight on that long-ago summer night. If some shiftless cowboy hadn’t left the Blackstone Ranch gate open the next afternoon. What if the Kellers and the Blackstones hadn’t been feuding? And what if Jet hadn’t given into temptation and locked Ritz inside “the forbidden kingdom?”
What if Jet hadn’t seen Roque naked and stolen his clothes? What if Ritz hadn’t been so curious? What if Roque hadn’t been so stormily virile and turned-on all the time?
What if he hadn’t stolen Ritz’s mare, Buttercup?
What if he hadn’t put his hands around her waist and lifted her up beside him, whispering in that sexy, velvet voice of his, “Do you want to fly?”
But he had done all those things…and more.
She’d only been fourteen.
Too young to fall in love.
Then he had to go and pretend to get hurt saving her and winning her heart. She’d given him her treasured St. Jude medal, and of course, he’d refused to give it back, and ever since, she’d been caught in the tangle of his dark spell.
Yes, looking back, Ritz could pinpoint the exact moment her life took its fatal turn. It had been the night she’d watched Roque Blackstone dance like a savage half-naked on that beach. The driftwood had burned like fire and gold, and she’d felt something alien and thrilling; she’d come alive and been changed…forever.
And a woman is prone to look back, especially at her husband’s funeral—when she’s made huge mistakes, especially man mistakes, that seem to grow and compound and haunt, mistakes that keep on rebreaking her heart until she loses all hope of peace of mind and has no faith that she can ever get her life right—at least where men are concerned.
But now she had his baby to think of and plan for.
Just because she made bad choices, did that mean that her entire life was ruined? That she couldn’t be a good mother? That she couldn’t start over? Somewhere far away from Texas and the scandals of her marriage and the grandeur of the Keller name?
One thing she knew—her heart was broken in so many pieces; it would take her a lifetime to pick them all up. She was through with men and marriage and wealth and fame.
Most of all, she was through with Roque Blackstone, the man who had shattered her as a girl and had the power to shatter her again.
If she could just get through the funeral, she would finally be free to make her own choices.
Until then she had to pretend.
Her lavish ballroom with its elaborate commode,
