He’ll risk his whole heart to save her from the past

Gaby Cane was always a bit afraid of her attraction to Bowie McCayde. Even when she was fifteen and Bowie’s family took her in, she had sensed his simmering resentment. Now ten years later, she’s an aspiring journalist who can hold her own with any man professionally, the dark shadows of years gone by far behind her. Then Bowie strides back into her life—only this time, he needs her, and the pull of loyalty to his family is too strong to ignore.

When Bowie asked Gaby to help save his family’s Arizona ranch, he never expected the girl he once knew to return transformed into a stunning, successful woman. As they work together, Bowie is shocked to find that her innocence and beauty stir a hunger he can’t deny. But the rogue rancher can sense something holding her back, and he’s determined to uncover the terrible secret Gaby is fighting to keep hidden...

Praise for the novels of

New York Times and USA TODAY

bestselling author Diana Palmer

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“The popular Palmer has penned another winning novel, a perfect blend of romance and suspense.”

—Booklist on Lawman

“Readers will be moved by this tale of revenge and justice, grief and healing.”

—Booklist on Dangerous

“Diana Palmer is one of those authors whose books are always enjoyable. She throws in romance, suspense and a good story line.”

—The Romance Reader on Before Sunrise

“Lots of passion, thrills, and plenty of suspense... Protector is a top-notch read!”

—Romance Reviews Today

“A delightful romance with interesting new characters and many familiar faces.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wyoming Tough

Fire Brand

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

It is so fascinating to read a book that I wrote over thirty years ago and to see firsthand how much the world has changed in that time.

When this book was written, I was working for a weekly newspaper and stringing (doing local news and features) for a daily newspaper. What you read is how newspaper reporting was done thirty years ago. The terminology, the way people dress, even the cars they drove, like Bowie’s Scorpion—which was a fantastic, and expensive, new car in the 1980s—is all history now.

Smoking was also a daily habit for me and millions of other people. We smoked in restaurants, in hospital rooms, in emergency rooms, on airplanes, anywhere we liked to. I smoked at my desk in the newspaper office. Everyone that I knew also smoked, including both my parents. These days, smoking is so taboo that I’m not even allowed to have a character who smokes in my books. However, I was adamant to leave this element in the book, to show things as they truly were back in the eighties, and my publisher obliged.

I hope you enjoy this walk through time in this early work of mine. It serves as a lesson in how life has changed, and changed us. I am a person out of place and time. The world I knew, and grew up in, is gone. I have to live in the one that exists, but I am not really happy in it. My grandfather saw the Rockettes on television when he was seventy years old. He rushed to shut it off. It offended him that women showed so much of their bodies. It amused me at the time—I was sixteen—but I am now nearing seventy, and I understand how he felt.

For better or worse, here is the book. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoy it. And God bless everyone!

For Ann and Muriel, who shared Arizona with me—and for Stephanie—with thanks and love.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dear Reader

Dedication

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

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

JUST WHEN GABY thought it couldn’t get worse, it started to rain. She groaned as she tried to adjust part of her raincoat over the lens of her .35 mm camera, and kept shooting, aiming away from the red and blue flashing lights and the spotlights so that she wouldn’t spoil the shot.

“Are you out of your mind?” the thin man beside her grumbled, jerking her back down just as a bullet whizzed past her ear. “Gaby, that was stupid!”

“Shut up and keep taking notes,” she told him absently. The whir of the camera shutter was lost amid the renewed firing. It sounded like an automatic, which it probably was. The armed robber holed up in the old department store building was known to have one. He’d already killed the store manager and negotiations had broken down before they had even begun. “There’s a pregnant hostage in there with him. See if you can find out her name.”

“Will you stop slinging out orders?” he grumbled. “I know how to cover a story.”

Oh, sure you do, Gaby thought irritably, as long as it’s in a boardroom or a good restaurant. Only fate could have managed to leave Harrington alone in the newsroom when she had needed a photographer. And once the shooting in the street started, Harrington had plastered himself against a police car and refused to move. Gaby had no choice but to give him the note pad.

She pushed back her long black hair and snapped the camera lens cap on to keep the rain out of it. She was drenched already, her jeans and bulky pink knit top plastered to her skin under the concealing folds of the beige raincoat. And while she could take a photograph, Harrington’s were better—if he just had the nerve to go with his talent. He was a photojournalist and sometimes did interviews, to fill in for other reporters. He hated taking crime photos.

“I never should have let Johnny talk me into coming with you, you maniac,” Fred Harrington muttered. He glared at her through thick lenses that were spotted with drops of rain. She wondered if he knew how big they made his dark eyes look.

“If Johnny were here, he’d be out there where the Bulletin guy is right now,” she returned, nodding toward a beanpole in baggy jeans with a long ponytail and glasses, wandering into the line of fire. “For God’s sake, Wilson, get out of there!” she yelled across the police car she and Fred were crouched behind.

Wilson glanced her way and raised his hand in a friendly salute. “That you, Cane?” He grinned.

About that time, a disgruntled police officer tackled him and took him down, right on top of his camera.

“Good for you, officer!” Fred yelled.

Gaby elbowed him. “Traitor,” she accused.

“Stupid people should be trampled,” he replied. “Fool! Lunatic!” he called across to the rival paper’s reporter/photographer, who was being led away not too gently by his accoster.

“I love you, too, Harrington!” Wilson called back. “Hey, Cane, how about calling this story in to my editor for me?”

“Eat worms and die, Wilson!” she said gaily.

He stuck his tongue out at her and vanished behind the bulk of the angry police officer.

“Will you two keep it down?” one of the nearby policemen muttered. “Honest to God, you reporters are the biggest pests.”

“Just for that, I’ll misspell your name,” Gaby promised.

He grinned at her and moved away.

“You’re crazy,” Fred said fervently. He was new to the newspaper scene, having preferred photography to journalism—although he could write good cutlines and even do good interviews. He didn’t have the wherewithal for this kind of assignment, though. Gaby usually had the political beat. She and Harrington were only here because the police reporter was out sick. And any news reporter could be commandeered to cover police news in an emergency.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted movement. There was a uniformed man with a rifle running into a building across the street from the abandoned department store building. “Something’s happening,” Gaby said. “Look sharp. You might get a little closer to Chief Jones and see if he can fill you in on what the SWAT team’s going to do.”

Fred glared at her. “Why don’t you do it? I can take photos.”

“Deal.” She handed him the camera and started toward Chief Jones. Then, just as he started shooting, she turned around and removed the lens cap. “It works better that way,” she said, before edging her way along the police car line.

“Hi, Teddy,” she whispered, easing up beside the tall, distinguished police chief. “What’s up?”

“Utility stocks, or so I hear,” he mused.

“Dammit, Teddy, stop that,” she muttered. “It’s been a long day, and I’ve got an engagement party to go to when I get through here.”

“You getting engaged, Gaby?” he asked. “A miracle.” He looked up at the rainy sky.

“Not me,” she said through her teeth. “Mary, down in composing. She and I went through journalism school together.”

“I might have known.” He frowned as his eyes shifted to the roof of the building across the street, where the faint glimmer of metal gave away a marksman.

“Good for you,” Gaby whispered, glancing up with eyes that were such a dark olive shade of green that they looked brown. “The robber will take out that hostage if you don’t do something drastic.”

“We don’t like this sort of thing, you know that,” he sighed. “But he’s killed one man already and there’s a pregnant lady in there and he’s gone wild. We can’t negotiate him out of a damned thing. There’s no power or telephone or heat to cut off and trade him things for, and he won’t talk to us.” He shook his head. “This is a hell of a job sometimes, kid.”

“You’re telling me.”

Three years of work on the Phoenix Advertiser had given her an education in police tactics. She stood crouched beside Chief Jones, waiting for the inevitable shot that would drop the gunman. It was like waiting for death, because a head shot was all the sharpshooter was likely to get, if that much. For one long moment, she contemplated the futility of crime and its terrible cost—to the perpetrators, the public, and the police. And then the shot came. It echoed through the darkness with a horrible finality. If death had a sound, that was it, and Gaby cringed inwardly.

“It’s a hit!” the sharpshooter called down. “I got him.”

“Okay, move in,” Chief Jones told his men solemnly.

“Can I come?” Gaby asked quietly.

He looked down at her with mingled irritation and respect. “Sure, you can come,” he said. “You’ll have nightmares.”

“I’ve always had nightmares,” she said matter-of-factly. She went back to get Fred. “Let’s get some pics and wrap this up so we can make the morning edition,” she told him.

“Pics of what?” he asked.

“Of the gunman,” she said patiently.

“You want me to take pictures of a dead body?”

She took the camera from him with exaggerated patience and followed Chief Jones into the building.

Gaby’s heart went out to the small pregnant woman, who was white-faced, sobbing, and clearly almost in shock, as she was escorted gently from the building. The gunman lay on the floor. Someone had taken off his shabby jacket and put it over his head. He looked fragile, somehow, lying there like that. Gaby took a quick shot of him without really seeing him. She didn’t photograph the hostage. Johnny could scream his head off, but she wasn’t going to capitalize on a pregnant woman’s terror. Later, she could call the hospital and find out the woman’s condition, or she could get the particulars from Chief Jones. She glanced around the room until her eyes caught the sack with the holdup money in it.

A policeman was carefully picking it up, and she looked inside.

“Twenty dollars,” the policeman said. He shrugged. “Not much of a haul for two men’s lives.”

“Does it look like he was a pro?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Too sloppy. A witness who saw him kill the storekeeper said he was shaking all over, and the gun discharged accidentally while he was trying to get away.”

She was writing it all down. “Got a family?”

“Yeah. He’s the youngest of six kids. The older brother’s a drug dealer. The mother goes on the streets from time to time to add to her welfare check.” He smiled at Gaby. “Tough world for kids, isn’t it?”

“For some of them,” she agreed. She shouldered the camera and went back to Chief Jones, who’d just finished talking to the hostage. Gaby asked him the necessary questions, picked up Harrington, and drove back to the office in her white custom VW convertible.

“How come you rate a car this fancy?” Fred asked on the way.

She smiled. “I have rich relatives,” she said.

Well, it was the truth, in one respect. The McCaydes of Lassiter, Arizona, were rich. They weren’t exactly relatives, however.

Her eyes drifted to the traffic. Phoenix was a fascinating city, elegant for its spaciousness, with the surrounding huge, jagged peaks of the southernmost Rockies forming a protective barrier around it. The first time she’d seen the city, she had been fascinated by the sheer height and majesty of those mountains.

In fact, Arizona itself still fascinated her. It was a state like no other, its appearance first frightening and barren. But closer up, it had a staggering beauty. In its vastness, it offered serenity and promise. In its diversity of terrain and cultures, it offered a kind of harmony that was visually melodic. Gaby loved it all, from the wealth and prosperity and hustle of Phoenix, to the quiet desert peace of Casa Río, the twenty-odd-thousand-acre ranch owned by the McCaydes.

“Doesn’t one of your relatives have a construction company in Tucson?” Harrington broke into her thoughts. “McCayde—Bowie McCayde?”

Gaby tingled at the mention of his name. “He’s not a relative. His parents took me in when I was in my teens,” she corrected. “Yes, he inherited McCayde Construction from his late father.”

“There’s a ranch, too, isn’t there?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, there is,” she said, remembering with a smile. “Casa Río—River House. It dates to ten years after the Civil War.” She glanced at him. “You did know that most of southeastern Arizona was settled by people from the South—and that during the Civil War, a Confederate flag flew briefly over the city of Tucson?”

“You’re kidding.”

She laughed. “No, I’m not. It’s true. Bowie’s people came from southwest Georgia. The first settler was a Cliatt, who married a Mexican girl. There’s even a Papago in his lineage somewhere—excuse me, a Tohono O’odham,” she said, using the new name the Papago had adopted for themselves. The name Papago was actually a Zuñi word meaning “Bean People,” so the Papago changed it to words in their own language, which meant “People of the Desert.”

“That’s a mouthful,” Harrington murmured as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I think it’s pretty. Did you know that Apache is a Zuñi word for enemy? And that the word Navajo contains a ‘V,’ and that there is no ‘V’ in the Navajo language? Until recent times many scarcely knew of the word, in fact...”

“Stop!” Harrington wailed. “I don’t want to learn everything about the Southwest in one lesson.”

“I love it,” she sighed. “I love the people and the languages and the history.” Her dark olive eyes grew dreamy. “I wish I’d been born here.”

“Where are you from?” he asked.

It was just a casual question, and she’d brought it on herself, but she quickly changed the subject. “I wonder what they’ll do to Wilson?”

He glared at her, as she’d known he would. “I hope they hang him from the nearest tree. The fool!”

She smiled to herself. “Maybe they will,” she mused.

Her mind wandered as she drove. The rain reminded her so well of a time in her past—the first time she’d seen Casa Río. It was the night she’d met Bowie.

Just thinking of him made her nervous. In a lot of ways, Bowie was her nemesis. He couldn’t be called a brother because she’d never been officially adopted by the McCaydes. She was a stray they’d taken in and assumed responsibility for, but only as a ward. She hadn’t wanted them to adopt her, because then they might probe into her past. But she’d covered herself by giving a very plausible story about having moved every other week with her father, and having no permanent address. That much was almost true.

Bowie was twenty-seven years old the night she showed up at Casa Río in the rain. She had caught first sight of him in the barn, where she was huddled and shivering against the faint evening chill of May.

His sheer size had been overpowering. He was a big, rugged-looking blond man with a physique that any movie cowboy would have envied. He was the head of a growing construction company, and over the years, he’d spent a good deal of his time at building sites, pitching in when deadlines were threatening. That explained the muscular physique, but not the brooding look he wore much of the time. Later, Gaby would learn that he didn’t smile very often. She’d learn, too, that his extraordinary good looks were deceptive. He wasn’t a womanizer, and if he had affairs, they were so discreet as to be almost unnoticed. He was a quiet, introspective man who liked Bach, old war movies, and more than anything else, the land upon which Casa Río sat. Bowie was a preservationist, a conservationist. That, in a builder, was something of an irony, but then, Bowie was full of contradictions. Gaby knew him no better now than she had that first night. He was rarely ever home when she visited his mother, Aggie—it was almost as if he purposefully avoided her.

That long-ago rainy night, he’d been in evening clothes. Gaby’s frightened eyes had followed him as he stared into a stall and rubbed the velvet nose of the big Belgian horse that occupied it. He turned on the light, and she could see that his blond hair was very thick and straight, conventionally cut with a side part, and neatly combed, despite the hour. His profile had been utterly perfect; a strong, very handsome, very definite face that probably drew women like honey drew butterflies. He had a straight nose and a square jaw, and deep-set eyes under heavy brows. His mouth had a chiseled look, and there was something faintly sensuous about it. Gaby tried not to notice sensuality—she was afraid of men.

But masculine perfection like Bowie’s was hard to ignore. She watched him as she might have watched a sunset, awed by its impact. The black suit he’d been wearing clung with a tailored faultlessness to his powerful body, emphasizing his broad chest, the length of his muscular legs, the narrowness of his hips, the width of his shoulders. He bent his head to light a cigarette, and she saw the faint orange flair of the match turn his tanned face just briefly to bronze.

She must have accidentally moved and made noise, because all of a sudden he whirled toward her with an economy of movement. His eyes narrowed.

“Who the hell is that?” he asked. His voice was deep, curt, without an accent, and yet there was something faintly drawling about it.

She hesitated, but when he started toward the empty stall where she was huddled in fresh hay, she stood up and moved out into the aisle, terrified of being hemmed in.

“I’m not a burglar or anything,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m sorry about this, but it’s so cold, mister, and I just needed to get in out of the rain.” She sneezed loudly.

He stared at her quietly, his deep-set black eyes frightening. “Where did you come from?”

Her heart hammered in her chest. She hadn’t expected that question, and she wasn’t used to telling lies. Her father, a lay minister, had drummed morality into her at an early age, and honesty was part of her upbringing. Now, it was hard not to tell the truth. She lowered her eyes. “I’m an orphan,” she said miserably. “I was looking for a cousin, a Sanders, but a neighbor said the family moved years ago.” That much was true. “I don’t have anyplace to go...” Her lower lip had trembled. She was so afraid—not only of him, but of having the recent past come down on her head. Her big, olive-green eyes had stared up into his, pleading.

He didn’t want her around. That much was obvious. She could almost see courtesy going to war with suspicion in his mind.

“Well, I’ll take you inside and let my mother deal with you,” he said then. “God knows, she’s partial to girls, since she never had one of her own.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. She could still see herself as she’d been that night, her long black hair straggly around a pinched white face. Her clothes had been so worn that they had holes in a few places—especially her faded jeans and denim jacket. She’d had only a coin purse with her, which contained a one-dollar bill and some change, and there was a handkerchief in her jacket pocket. There was no learner’s permit, no credit card, nothing to give her away or help anyone trace her back to Kentucky.

“What’s your name, kid?” the big man had asked. He towered over her, enormously tall and powerful. She was five foot six, but he had to be at least six foot three.

“Gabrielle,” she stammered. “Gabrielle Cane.” That was her real name, but she’d deliberately hesitated before she gave him her last name, to make it seem as if it was a false one. “Most people call me Gaby.” Her eyes surveyed the neat barn, with its wide brick aisle and well-kept interior. “What is this place?”

“It’s called Casa Río—River House. In the old days, the river ran within sight, but its course changed over the years. Now you can’t see the river, and there isn’t any water in it for most of the year,” he’d replied. “My parents own it. I’m Bowie McCayde.”

“Your parents live here?” she asked nervously.

“Yes, they live here.” His voice had been curt. “I have an apartment in Tucson. My father is in the construction business.”

That would explain his dark tan and the muscles rippling under that jacket. He had big, lean hands, and they looked strong, too. She shifted and sneezed again.

“Come on, we’ll go inside.” He’d reached out to take her arm, but she moved back jerkily. She had plenty of reason not to like being touched, but instead of being angry, he only nodded at her reticence. “You don’t like being touched. Okay. I’ll remember,” he’d added, and he had.

The biggest surprise of her life had been meeting Aggie McCayde. The only woman she’d known for any length of time had been the matriarch of the big race horse farm where her father had been working, in Lexington, Kentucky. Her own mother had died when she was barely old enough to go to school, so Agatha McCayde came as a very big surprise to a girl used only to the company of her father. Aggie took one look at the sneezing fifteen-year-old and immediately began fussing over her. Her husband Copeland had welcomed the girl with equal kindness, but Bowie had kept apart, looking irritated and then angry. He left for Tucson a day early, as she’d later learned. When he saw how Gaby was fitting in with his parents, his visits became fewer and briefer. He seemed to have difficulty getting along with Copeland and Aggie, a problem that Gaby didn’t have at all. She opened her heart to the older couple as they opened their heart and home to her.

For the first time in her life, she was cosseted and spoiled. Aggie took her shopping, watched over her when the nightmares came and she woke up sweating and crying in the night. The older woman listened to her problems when she enrolled in the local high school that fall, helped her overcome her difficulty fitting in because she was so shy and uneasy. Aggie even understood when Gaby didn’t date anyone. That wasn’t really so much design as circumstance, she recalled. She wasn’t a pretty teenager. She was skinny, shy, and a little clumsy and nervous, so the boys didn’t exactly beat a path to her door. Aggie loved her and doted on her, which was why Bowie really began to resent her. She noticed his attitude, because he made no attempt to hide it. But incredibly, Aggie and Copeland didn’t seem to notice that they were treating her more like their child and Bowie more like an outsider. By the time she realized it, the damage was done. She knew Bowie resented her. That was one reason she’d opted for college in Phoenix, but it had been difficult there—much more difficult than she’d realized—because her old-fashioned attitudes and her distaste for intimacy put her apart from most of the other students. She formed friendships, and once or twice she dated, but there was always the fear of losing control, of being overpowered, long after the nightmares had become manageable and the scars of the past had begun to heal.

Gaby had had one violent flare-up of sensual feeling—oddly enough, with Bowie. Aggie had pleaded and coaxed until he’d taken Gaby to a dance at college. He’d been out of humor, and frankly irritated by the adoring looks of Gaby’s classmates. He was a handsome man, even if he was the only one who didn’t seem to know it, and he drew attention. He’d held her only on the dance floor, and very correctly. But there had always been sparks flying between them, and that night, physical sparks had flown as well. Gaby had seen him in a different light that one night, and she let months go by afterward before she went to Casa Río. After that, Gaby began to concentrate more than ever on her studies, and on the job she’d taken after classes at the Phoenix Advertiser. Between work and study, there had been no time for a personal life.

Now the job took most of her time. In a city the size of Phoenix, there was always something going on. When she began to work full time, the excitement of reporting somehow made everything worthwhile; she was alive as she never had been before. But the surges of adrenaline had awakened something else in her. They’d prompted a different kind of ache—a need for something more than an empty apartment and loneliness.

She was twenty-four years old now, and while the job was satisfying, it was no longer enough. She hungered for a home of her own and children, a settled life. That might be good for Aggie, too. The older woman had been lonely since Copeland’s death eight years before. Gaby helped her to cope after it happened. Bowie had resented even that, irritated that his mother had turned to her adopted child instead of her natural one. But now Aggie was globetrotting, and even though Gaby only spent the occasional weekend at Casa Río, she was missing the small, dark-eyed woman whose warmth and outgoing personality had brought a frightened teenager out of a nightmare.

That bubbly personality was one that Gaby had developed when she had begun to work with the public. Inside, she was still shy and uncertain, and she found it difficult to relate to men who looked upon casual sex as de rigueur. In her upbringing, sex meant marriage. That was what she really wanted from life, not an affair. It helped, of course, that she’d never been tempted enough to really want a man. Except Bowie.

She pulled her mind back to the present and drove up in front of the building that housed the newspaper she and Fred worked for. She only hoped there wasn’t going to be another last-minute story to cover. She was tired and worn, and she just wanted to go back to her apartment and sleep for an hour before she tried to fix herself something to eat. She remembered the engagement party and groaned. Maybe she could find an excuse to miss it. She hated social gatherings, even though she was fond of Mary, the girl who was getting engaged.

She and Fred waved as they passed Trisa, the receptionist, and entered the newsroom. Gaby didn’t even look around; she was so tired that she just dropped into the chair at her computer terminal with a long sigh. Almost everyone on the newspaper staff was around. Johnny Blake came out of his office, his bald head shining in the light, his thick brows drawn together as he listened to Fred’s version of what had happened.

“That the long and short of it, Cane?” he asked Gaby. As she raised her eyebrows, Fred mumbled something about getting the film to the darkroom and eased quickly away.

Johnny glared at her without smiling. “Get the story?” he asked.

“Sort of.”

He stared. “Sort of?”

“It’s your fault,” she told him. “Harrington and I aren’t cut out for police reporting. You made us go.”

“Well, I couldn’t go,” he said. “I’m in management. People in management don’t cover shootouts. They’re dangerous, Cane,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper.

She glared at him. “This, from a man who volunteered to cover the uprising in Central America.”

“Okay, what went wrong?” he asked, sidestepping the remark.

She told him. He groaned. “At least we did get some good copy,” she comforted him. “And I got a shot of the gunman, along with some swell shots of the police in the rain surrounding the building,” she added dryly.

“One shot of the hostage would have been worth fifty shots of the police in the rain!” he raged. “You and your soft heart...!”

“Wilson, from the Bulletin, got lots of nice pictures of the stand-off,” Gaby told her boss, rubbing salt in the wound. “And probably one of the hostage, too.”

“I hate you,” he hissed.

She smiled. “But the police tackled him and broke his camera and probably exposed every frame he shot.”

“I love you,” he changed it.

“Next time, don’t send Harrington with me, okay?” she pleaded. “Just let me go alone.”

“Can’t do that, Cane,” he said. “You’re too reckless. Do you have any idea how many close calls you’ve had in the past three years? You never hold anything in reserve in that kind of situation, and thank God it doesn’t happen often. I still get cold chills remembering the bank robbery you had to cover. I hate asking you to sub for the police reporter.”

“It was only a flesh wound,” she reminded him.

“It could have been a mortal wound,” he muttered. “And even if you aren’t afraid of Bowie McCayde, the publisher is. They had words after the bank robbery.”

That came as a surprise. Aggie hadn’t said anything about it, but she had probably sent Bowie to throw the fear of God into Mr. Smythe, the publisher.

“I didn’t know that,” she said. She smiled. “Well, he’ll never find out about today, so there’s no need to worry... What are you staring at?”

“Certain death,” he said pleasantly.

She followed his gaze toward the lobby. Bowie McCayde was just coming in the door, towering over the male reporters and causing comments and deep sighs among the female ones. He was wearing a gray suit, his blond head bare, and held an unlit cigarette in his hand. He looked out of humor and threatening.

Gaby’s heart jumped into her throat. What, she wondered, was he doing in Phoenix? She hadn’t seen him for two months—not since they’d celebrated Aggie’s birthday at Casa Río. It had been an unusually disturbing night because just lately, Bowie had a way of looking at her that made her nerves stand on end.

Her breathing quickened as he approached, the old disturbing nervousness collecting in her throat to make her feel gauche and awkward. Just like old times, she thought as his black eyes pinned her to the spot while he strode across the newsroom. She was capable and cool until she got within five feet of this man, and then she just went to pieces. It was a puzzle she still hadn’t worked out. It wasn’t really fear—not the nauseating kind. It was more like excitement...

“Hello, Bowie,” she said awkwardly.

He nodded curtly to Johnny and scowled down at Gaby. “I’m taking you out to supper,” he said without a greeting or an invitation, ignoring her soaked clothes and straggly hair. “We’ve got to talk.”

She wondered if she’d heard him right. Bowie, taking her out?

“Something’s wrong,” she guessed.

“Wrong?” He waved the unlit cigarette in his hand. “Wrong?! My God.”

“Is it Aggie?” she asked quickly, her olive eyes mirroring her concern.

Bowie stared at Johnny until the shorter man mumbled an excuse, grinned at Gaby, and beat a hasty retreat to his office. Bowie had that effect on a lot of people, Gaby thought with faint amusement. He never said anything harsh—he just stared at people with his cold black eyes. One of his construction company executives had likened it to being held at bay by a cobra.

“Yes, it’s Aggie,” he muttered. Gaby felt faint.

CHAPTER TWO

BOWIE REALIZED BELATEDLY why Gaby’s face had turned white. “No, no,” he said shortly, noting her horrified expression. “She’s not hurt or anything.”

She relaxed visibly and put a hand to her throat. “You might have said so.”

“Are you through here?” He looked around as if he couldn’t see what she had to do anyway.

“I need to file my story before I go.”

“Go ahead. It’ll keep.” He walked back out into the lobby and sat down on one of the sofas. Trisa leaned her chin on her hands and sat watching him shamelessly while he read a magazine. If Bowie even noticed, there was no sign of it.

Gaby had to drag her own eyes away. He was most incredibly handsome, and totally unaware of it.

She turned on her word processor, got out her notes, and spent fifteen minutes condensing two hours of work into eight inches of copy one column wide.

Bowie was still reading when she came out of the newsroom, after calling a quick good night to Johnny.

“I’m ready...oh, no,” she groaned.

Carl Wilson, the Bulletin reporter, was just coming in the door with a Band-Aid over his nose, breathing fire.

“So there you are, you turncoat,” he growled at her. His ponytail was soaked, and Bowie was giving him an unnerving appraisal. He turned his back to get away from that black-eyed stare. “This is the last straw, Cane,” he raged. “I know you’ve got the whole damned police force in your pocket from your old days on the police beat, but that was a low blow. My camera’s busted to hell, my film’s exposed...!”

“Poor old photographer,” she said comfortingly. “Did the big bad policeman hurt its little nose?”

He actually blushed. “You stop that,” he muttered. “You told them to do it.”

“Not me,” she said, holding up one hand.

Bowie had gotten to his feet now and his narrow black eyes were watching closely.

“If you didn’t point me out, who did?” Wilson persisted, eyeing Bowie warily as he spoke.

“You were walking right into the line of fire,” she reminded him. “We all saw you.”

He sighed miserably. “First my car gets towed away, despite the press sticker, because I parked in front of a fire hydrant. Then I get tackled and my film is ruined...it’s somebody’s fault!” he added with a pointed glare.

Gaby grinned. “God must be mad at you,” she told him. “He’s getting even with you for the Garrison story you conned me out of last week. You do remember having your crony at City Hall send me out to the parking lot while you got the final word on the new landfill site?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “That was in the line of duty. We’re rivals.”

“Yes, and some of us hit below the belt,” she added with a meaningful stare. “But I didn’t have the policeman tackle you. You should know better than to walk through a hail of bullets. Policemen get nervous about that sort of thing.”

“You should know,” Wilson muttered. “Didn’t you get shot in the last stand-off, after the bank robbery?”

She cleared her throat, aware of Bowie’s thunderous expression. “This time, I was safely behind some police cars—not taking a stroll in front of the sniper.”

“Is that so.” Wilson pursed his lips. “Well,” he said slowly, “I might be persuaded to forgive you—if you can spare a shot of the victim.”

“No chance.”

“Okay, I’m easy. How about the police surrounding the building? Come on, Cane, my job’s on the line,” he coaxed.

“If Johnny finds out, mine will be, too,” she assured him. “Do what the rest of us do. Go and beg from the News-Record. They go to press every Tuesday, so this story will be old news by the time their next edition comes out. They’ll share with you.” She grinned as she said it. The News-Record was a small weekly newspaper, but its reporters were always on the spot when news broke, and they didn’t mind sharing one of their less important photos with the big dailies—as long as their photographer got a credit.

He sighed. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers. Okay, doll, thanks anyway.”

He started to bend down to kiss her cheek, but she stepped back jerkily. “You’ll give me Bulletin germs!” she exclaimed, making a joke out of it.

He shook his head. “Leave it to you. Thanks anyway, Cane.” He chuckled, and walked out the front door whistling.

Bowie hadn’t said anything. He had a cigarette in his hand, and he was watching her like a hawk. “Bullets?” he asked, moving closer.

“A robbery. The perpetrator got twenty dollars. He killed a store manager and took a pregnant woman hostage, and threatened to kill her. They had to drop him.” She lowered her eyes. “He was little more than a boy. The police reporter is out sick, so I had to cover the story. I don’t do the police beat anymore,” she added, trying to ward off trouble.

“Bullets?” he repeated, his voice deeper, rougher this time.

She looked up. “I’m twenty-four years old. This is my job. I don’t need your permission to do it. It was just this one time...”

“Count your blessings,” he said curtly. He glanced toward the receptionist, who smiled at him, and turned away uncomfortably. “Let’s go.”

Gaby winked at Trisa as they passed her, but Bowie kept his eyes straight ahead, pausing only to open the door for Gaby and lead her to his black Scorpio.

She sank into the soft leather seat with a sigh, and let her eyes wander over the dashboard. It was a honey of a car. She wished she could afford one.

He got in beside her, making sure her seat belt was fastened before he clicked his own into place and started the car. “Does your receptionist make a habit of staring at people that way?” he asked irritably as he pulled out into traffic. “I was beginning to feel like a museum exhibit.”

“Look in a mirror sometime,” she murmured only half humorously. “I used to have girlfriends by the dozen in college until they learned that you didn’t live at Casa Río. It rather spoiled their dreams of the perfect weekend vacation.”

He gave her a cold glance. “I hate being chased.”

“Don’t look at me.” She held up her hands in mock horror. “I’m the last woman you’ll ever have to beat off.”

“So I’ve noticed.” He eased the car into another lane. “You still don’t like being touched, I see.”

“Wilson is a womanizer,” she murmured. “I don’t like that kind of man.”

“You don’t like men, period. You’re damned lucky that Aggie doesn’t know what a hermit you are. She’d have you on the guest list of every party that featured even one single man.”

“I know.” She sighed and glanced at his perfect profile. “You won’t give me away, will you?”

“Have I ever?”

She ran a hand over the back of her neck. “We don’t see that much of each other, so how do you know about my social life?”

He lit another cigarette. “You’re soaked. Do you want to go to your apartment and change before we go to the restaurant?”

“Yes, I’d like to, if you don’t mind.” Then she thought about Bowie in her apartment, and something inside her retreated.

He saw that hunted look out of the comer of his eye. “You’re safe with me, Gaby. I hoped you knew that without my having to say it.”

She swallowed. He read her all too well. She stared at her slender, ringless fingers. “I know. I’m just a little shaken by this afternoon. I don’t do police news anymore, and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody shot.”

“What a hell of a line of work you chose,” he said.

“I like it, most of the time.” She clasped her fingers, because reaction was beginning to set in. It always amazed her how calm she was while she was getting a story, but after covering this kind of story she went to pieces after the numbness wore off. Sometimes she had nightmares and there was usually nobody to talk to about them. She couldn’t tell Aggie, because the older woman disapproved of her work anyway and had tried to get her to quit. She had no close friends.

“You said you aren’t still on the police beat?” he asked conversationally.

“No. Because after Aggie had you tell Mr. Smythe to take me off it even though I asked Johnny Blake to put me back on he wouldn’t.” She glanced at him. “I don’t miss it anyway. I love political reporting.”

“That’s reassuring,” he said dryly.

“Aggie did put you up to it, didn’t she?” she asked. “Speaking of Aggie, what’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you over dinner.” He parked the car in front of the apartment building where she lived—a sprawling white complex with a swimming pool and tennis courts and security people.

“I’ve moved since you were in Phoenix last,” she said suspiciously. “How did you know where I live?”

“Come on. You’re soaked.”

She threw up her hands. “Do you ever answer questions?”

“You’ll catch cold if you don’t get out of those wet things,” he replied nonchalantly, still sidestepping her queries—as usual.

He got out of the car, opened her door, and let her go first in the slight drizzle. It was getting dark already, and she was too tired to pursue it.

Her apartment was done in whites and yellows, with oak furniture, Mexican pottery, and a few modem paintings. It was bright and open and sunny, and she had plants growing everywhere.

“It looks like the damned Amazon jungle,” he observed, staring around him.

“Thank you.” She took off her raincoat. “I’ll only be a few minutes. There’s brandy on the table if you want a drink.”

“I’m driving,” he reminded her.

“I’ll, uh, just get changed,” she stammered. He made her feel ridiculously weak. She dodged into her bedroom and closed the door.

It was the first time she’d ever had a man in her apartment. She was all thumbs while she took a quick shower, washed and dried her hair, and put on a neat gray crepe dress with white collar and cuffs, and shoes to match. She curled her hair into a neat bun atop her head, added a dash of pink lipstick, some powder, and a hint of perfume, and went to join Bowie.

He was standing at her window, looking out, his black eyes narrow and brooding. He turned as she came back, his appraisal electrifying as it slid boldly down her body and back up to her face.

“Is it too dressy?” she asked nervously.

“I’d have said it was twenty years too old for you,” he replied. “You’re an attractive young woman. Why do you dress like a matron?”

She bristled. “This is the latest style...”

“No, it isn’t. It’s a safe style. You’re covered from neck to calf, as usual.”

Her face was going hotter by the minute. “I dress to please myself.”

“Obviously. You sure as hell won’t please a man in that rig.”

“For which you should be grateful,” she said with a venomous smile. “You won’t have to fight me off all evening.”

He considered that carefully, his sensuous lips pursed, a faint twinkle in his black eyes as the cigarette smoked away in his hand. “I’ve never made a pass at you, have you noticed? What is it now—eight years?”

“Nine,” she said, averting her eyes to the window.

“And I know as little about you now as I did that first night,” he continued. “You’re an enigma.”

“I’m also starving,” she said, changing the subject with a forced, pleasant smile. “Where are we going to eat?”

“That depends on you. What appeals to you?”

“Something hot and spicy. Mexican.”

“Fine by me.” He held the apartment door open for her, one of his habits that secretly thrilled her. Aggie had raised him to be a gentleman, and in times when most men left women to open their own doors and lift their own burdens, Bowie was a refreshing anachronism. He was courteous, but not chauvinistic. Two of his executives were women, and she knew for a fact that he had hired a female architect and several female construction workers. He never discriminated, but he did have a few quirks—such as insisting on opening doors and carrying heavy packages.

They went to a festive Mexican restaurant just two blocks from Gaby’s apartment, and were given a table on a small patio near a wealth of potted trees and flowers.

“I love this,” Gaby sighed, fingering some begonias in a tub.

“You and Aggie have this hangup about flowers, I’ve noticed,” he murmured. He laid his cigarette case on the table and glared at it. “I hate damned cigarettes.”

Gaby’s eyebrows lifted. “Then why smoke?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nerves?” she asked daringly.

He leaned back, crossing his long legs under the table. His black eyes pinned hers. “Maybe.”

“About Aggie,” she guessed, because she couldn’t imagine making any man nervous, least of all Bowie.

“About Aggie,” he said flatly. He fingered the case, smoothing over his initials. J.B.M., it read—James Bowie McCayde. He’d never liked his first name, so he’d always been called Bowie.

“What’s she done?”

“It isn’t what she’s done, so much as what she’s about to do.” He leaned forward suddenly. “She’s bringing a man home to Casa Río.”

“Aggie’s bringing a man... I need a drink—something big.”

“That’s what I felt, too. It isn’t like her.”

The waiter came, but Bowie ordered coffee, not drinks, and sat patiently while Gaby read the entire menu twice before settling for a taco salad.

“My God, you didn’t need a menu to order that,” he said curtly when the waiter had gone.

“You didn’t need one to order steak ranchero, either,” she told him with a grin, “but you read the menu.”

“I wanted to make sure they still had steak ranchero.”

She shrugged. “Who is this man?” she asked.

“I don’t know him. She met him on a cruise down to Jamaica. His name is Ned Courtland.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Neither do I. She says he’s a cattleman from somewhere up north.” He glowered at the table. “More than likely, he’s got a couple of calves in a lot out back and he’s looking for a rich widow.”

“Aggie wouldn’t get mixed up with a gold digger,” she began but she was wondering about it herself.

“Aggie’s human, and she misses my father. She’s ripe for a holiday affair.”

She stiffened. “Aggie isn’t the type to have affairs, any more than I am.”

His head lifted and his black eyes scanned her face. He seemed to see right into her brain with that unblinking appraisal. It upset her and she moved her hand too quickly, almost overturning her water glass.

“Careful.” He righted the glass, his big, lean hand momentarily covering hers. Its warm strength sent an electric sensation up her arm. She lifted her eyes to his, curious and questioning, and he stared back at her with a faint scowl, as if the contact bothered him, too.

She didn’t try to pull her hand away. She was nervous of Bowie, but she’d never had any physical distaste for him, as she did with other men. She liked the touch of his skin against hers very much, and every once in a while, she found herself staring at his mouth with frank curiosity. She wondered how it would feel to kiss him, and that shocked her. She’d been kissed, but it had been somehow mechanical. She’d never really wanted it with anyone except Bowie—not that he knew. She’d made very sure that he hadn’t. He was the kind of man who took over people. She couldn’t bear the thought of that, ever.

He drew his hand back slowly, aware of an annoying surge of pleasure at the feel of those slender fingers under his. Gaby was off limits, he had to remember that. Aggie would cut his hands off if he tried anything with her baby.

Aggie had never made any secret of her love for Gaby, nor had his father. They seemed to stop caring about him the day Gaby had moved into Casa Río, and he felt like a spare person in the family. Gaby had robbed him of his rightful place. He tried not to show that resentment, but he frequently felt it. It had been Gaby at his father’s bedside when he died, because his father had called for Gaby before he had asked for his son. By the time he got to Copeland, it had been too late. He’d resented that, too. Aggie hadn’t seemed to notice. She was affectionate, but she reserved her displays of emotion for Gaby. Not once in recent years had she offered to embrace her son.

Gaby was blissfully unaware of his anger, but she had her own secrets, he was sure of it. Her attitude had puzzled him for years. It was odd to find a fifteen-year-old alone in a barn, especially one with no apparent background. His parents had been too fond of her to make inquiries, but Bowie hadn’t. He’d wanted to know all about her, but he had drawn a total blank. All his contacts and all his money hadn’t managed to ferret out one piece of information about her that he didn’t already have. He suspected that she had a past, but he had no idea what it was—or even where. She’d covered her tracks with excellent shrewdness, and that made him more suspicious about her.

“Why did you come to see me?” she asked to break the uneasy silence.

“You’ve got to help me do something about Aggie.”

Her eyebrows went up. “What did you have in mind?”

He paused as the waiter put a plate of steak medallions covered with Monterrey Jack cheese, onions, and peppers before him, and Gaby’s taco salad was placed before her. Two cups of steaming coffee, with a small pot of cream, came next. The waiter smiled and left.

“Well?” she prompted, her eyes anticipating with delight the fresh slices of avocado and the sour cream topping her enormous taco salad in its crispy shell.

“I want you to take a vacation.”

She stared at him blankly. “A what?”

“A vacation. It’s May. You didn’t take one at Christmas. You could take it now.”

“I’m sure you’re going to want me to spend it at Casa Río,” she murmured. She sighed. “Aggie and a man—my gosh.” She looked up, and now she was feeling some concern of her own. “He must be some fast worker if he’s gotten her this involved this quickly.”

“I know. That’s why I’m worried. If I didn’t have this project under way in Calgary, I’d camp down there myself. You know Aggie never minds if we come to stay, or how long for.” He glowered at the tablecloth. “Why can’t she stay home and start a business, or something constructive? Why hare off to the Caribbean and drag strange men home with her?”

Gaby almost grinned, but it was pretty serious. Aggie hadn’t dated anybody, except for a friendly dinner now and again with couples from the construction firm, who thoughtfully provided single men for her inspection. That hadn’t worked. Aggie was still a dish at fifty-six, and her short black hair was only flecked with silver. She had a nice figure. Gaby’s eyes narrowed. Aggie had been alone a long time; perhaps being flattered and escorted had played on her loneliness. She thought about some faceless man playing her adopted mother for a fool and got madder by the minute.

“I’ll go see Johnny Blake first thing in the morning,” Gaby murmured. “I’ll ask Aggie if I can stay a couple of weeks.” She looked up. “What if she says no?”

“When has she ever said no?” he asked testily, his black eyes questioning hers. “I don’t know how we can stop her, but we can certainly slow her down if she’s serious. In the meantime, we’ll find out what we can about her beau.”

“He could be on the level...” she murmured thoughtfully, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt for Aggie’s sake. If Aggie was really smitten, this could prove to be a nightmare for everyone concerned. Trying to dissuade a determined woman was difficult at best, and Aggie had a temper that would match even Bowie’s when she was aroused.

“He could be anything or anyone,” Bowie countered. “Con men prey on women her age. It’s nothing against her,” he added when Gaby opened her mouth to protest the insinuation. “You have to admit that this is unusual behavior for her. She’s been loyal to my father’s memory for a long time.”

That was true. Gaby’s mind conjured up a picture of big, blustering Copeland McCayde, Aggie’s exact opposite in every way. He’d been rather domineering and not very affectionate, but Aggie seemed to have loved him dearly.

“People aren’t responsible when they’re in love,” Bowie said.

She studied him. “Are you speaking from experience?”

He lifted his eyes to hers, catching her startled expression. “What do you think?” he asked levelly. When she turned her head, he added, “You can surely see how a woman could get in over her head—especially a lonely woman with no social life to speak of.”

The way he was looking at her made her uneasy. “We are talking about Aggie, aren’t we?” she asked hesitantly.

“Of course.” But he smiled in a way she’d never seen him smile. Her heart jumped. “I imagine just having you around will be more than enough of a deterrent,” he said easily. He lifted his fork. “Eat that before it gets cold.”

She glowered at him. The taco salad was delicious, warm and spicy in its nest of shredded lettuce and cheese with the cool tomato garnish, and just enough. By the time she reached the layer of refried beans at the bottom, it was all she could do to eat half of them.

“No appetite?” he remarked dryly, polishing off the last of his steak and most of the bread.

“I’m not half your size,” she replied. “If I ate what you did, I’d have to be carried out of here on a fork lift.”

“I’m not that heavy,” he said.

“I didn’t say you were heavy. You’re big.” Her eyes slid shyly over his broad shoulders and chest. “I’ll bet most of your men don’t argue with you.”

“One or two try occasionally,” he mused.

“And become little greasy spots on the pavement,” she concluded.

He laughed deeply, his black eyes losing some of their cold glitter. “Construction people are pretty tough, as a rule,” he reminded her. “They’ll only work for a man they respect. Pretty words don’t put up buildings.”

“You’ve put up your share. I remember when I was still in my teens that you used to go out on the construction gangs with the men when you got behind on a contract.”

“I’d die sitting behind a desk all the time,” he agreed. “I like the outdoors.”

It showed. He was brawny and rock-hard, and his tan didn’t stop at his neck. Gaby had seen him without a shirt more than once, and knew that that dark tan went right to his belt, and probably below it. She flushed, remembering the rough texture of his skin, the feathering of hair down his broad chest and flat stomach. What a time to have total recall, she thought frantically.

He saw that hunted expression on her face and wondered idly what had caused it. She was something of a curiosity in his life. He didn’t know exactly how he felt about her, but she was definitely a disturbing influence.

“Well?” he asked curtly.

She jumped, gasping.

“For God’s sake,” he said harshly. “What’s the matter with you?”

She flinched at his tone. She couldn’t bear a loud voice, and of course, he was used to construction gangs and slinging out orders right and left. “It’s the shooting,” she lied. “I’m still shaky.”

That calmed him down magically. “Proof that you need some time off,” he said, because it reinforced his demand.

“Okay,” she said quickly. “I’ll try to keep the lovebirds in line.”

“Good. How about dessert?”

The beast, she thought, observing him. He’d gotten his own way, as usual, and he was feeling smug. She hated that arrogance in his face, but she’d never seen anyone relieve him of it.

“I don’t like sweets,” she said.

“Pity. I do.” And to prove it, he ordered the biggest strawberry shortcake she’d ever seen and proceeded to demolish it to the last crumb.

He drove her back to her apartment. It wasn’t until he’d walked her to her door that she remembered Mary’s engagement party.

“I forgot about Mary’s party!” she blurted out.

“Who’s Mary?” He frowned.

“A girl I’m friendly with at work. She’s just gotten engaged. There’s a party, and I’m supposed to be there.”

“Do you want to go?”

She sighed. “Not really, but I should. I’ll...”

“Come on, then. It’s early. You can still go.”

She hesitated. “With you?” she asked, her voice softer than she realized.

He stopped and looked down at her, aware of a faint shift in their turbulent relationship. “Yes,” he said quietly. “With me.”

Her breath had stopped somewhere south of her windpipe. She felt the ground going out from under her. She didn’t understand what was happening, and it was a little scary.

Bowie seemed to know that, because he smiled, relieving some of the tension.

“Will she mind if you bring an escort?” he asked.

“Oh, no, of course not. She’s wanted to meet you.” She hesitated. “If you don’t have anything else to do?” she probed delicately.

He shook his head. “I came to see you.”

She felt ridiculously pleased. She smiled shyly, unaware of the effect that smile had on her companion. “All right, then. She lives six blocks away, near the interstate ramp.”

“Then let’s go.”

He took her arm slowly, watching to see how she reacted. When she didn’t try to pull away, he let his hand slide down until it touched hers, and then his fingers caught hers and linked into them.

She felt her breath catch. It was new and exciting to hold hands with him, although she tried not to read anything into it. Bowie was just being kind, she told herself.

He drew her along with him. He liked that soft, slender hand in his. It made him feel twice as tall as he already was to hold it, but he didn’t really understand why. He and Gaby had never been friends. They were more like remote acquaintances, with Aggie their only common ground. But the more he saw of Gaby, the more she intrigued him.

“You’re sure you don’t mind?” she asked, as he put her in the car again.

He glanced at her quietly. After a minute he cranked the engine. “No. I don’t mind.”

But he didn’t say another word all the way to Mary’s house, and Gaby herself fell uncharacteristically silent. Just being near Bowie was suddenly dangerously exciting. She didn’t know why, and that was as disturbing as the new emotions that were curling around her like sensuous, seeking hands.

CHAPTER THREE

MARY LIVED WITH her fiancé, Ted, in a very nice suburb of Phoenix. The lights were blazing in the windows and music was drifting down to the street, where Bowie magically found a parking space, without even looking. Considering the number of cars, it looked as if Ted and Mary had invited every single person they knew in the world.

“They live together already?” Bowie asked, frowning as he looked down at her when he helped her out of the passenger side.

“Just because you and I were raised with eighty-year-old attitudes doesn’t mean the rest of the world was,” she said with a rueful smile. “They’re engaged, and although it’s been a bit rocky, they’ve been together for a whole year. It’s a new world, Bowie.”

He looked down at her. “When I care enough to live with a woman, I’ll care enough to give her my name first.”

She stared into his black eyes, trying to imagine Bowie in love with a woman. He seemed completely self-contained on the surface—a man’s man with everything going for him, to whom a woman would be only an amusement. But Aggie said that he read love poems sometimes in the silence of his own room, and that he liked Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto—a romantic piece if ever there was one. He was fascinating in his complexity—a modern man with a very old-fashioned outlook on life. Aggie had raised him that way, just as Gaby’s father had raised her in the church, even though he’d dragged her from pillar to post until that tragic night they’d parted.

“What are you thinking?” he asked curiously.

“That you’re not like any man I’ve ever known,” she blurted out.

“Should I be flattered?”

“Yes, I think so,” she said honestly, her voice soft and quiet in the stillness, broken only by faint strains of music.

He found himself smiling at the admission. In all the years he’d known Gaby, she’d always backed away from anything personal. This had to be something of a milestone. Perhaps she was lonely, and the loneliness was breaking through that shell of reserve she wore. He knew the very color of loneliness. It drove him sometimes. He’d been by himself for a long time, but there had always been the need for another voice in the darkness—a hand to reach out to when the world came too close. Gaby stirred that need in him, but he hesitated to let her get close. There was something vaguely mysterious about her. It attracted him, even as it made him wary.

Without replying, he turned and guided her along the driveway with him, pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He smoked his cigarette quietly. “Looks like a Florida setting, doesn’t it?” he mused, nodding toward the grove of palm trees.

She leaped at the normalcy. The tension between them was growing. “Yes. Someone told me once that there were no palm trees around here a hundred years ago. They aren’t native to Arizona—they’re supposedly imports.”

“Do tell?” He smiled down at her. “How about the rattlesnakes?”

“They’re natives,” she said dryly.

He chuckled, easing her between two parked cars, so close that her breasts brushed against his chest just briefly in a contact that made him distinctly aware of her.

The smile faded as he held her there, looking down into her puzzled eyes with an equal curiosity. His body throbbed to the beat of the music inside the house while his eyes held hers in a new, different kind of look. Without really understanding why, he moved deliberately closer for just a second, pressing her back against the car behind her, and he felt her breath catch as his body touched hers in a contact neither of them had ever sought before.

Her perfume drifted up into his nostrils. He could feel the faint tension in her posture, the drawing back as her hands came up to her waist in an almost defensive position. He wondered idly if the nervousness was caused by fear or attraction. His eyes fell to her soft mouth and he was surprised to find it trembling.

Gaby had never allowed herself this close to Bowie before, and now she understood why. His size was intimidating, but there was something more—something deep and still and frightening. He made her tremble. It was the second time in her life that she’d felt the sting of pleasure that came from a man’s warm, strong proximity. She wanted to run away and toward him at the same time, and her confusing feelings puzzled her.

For long, static seconds, neither of them moved. It took the sudden opening of the back door to break the spell.

Embarrassed, Gaby went ahead of him to be hugged and kissed by Mary, while Ted looked on with something less than joy in his expression at the guests. Mary worked in the composing room of the newspaper, while Ted was assistant sales manager. She’d known them both ever since she’d gone to work at the paper.

“This is Bowie,” she introduced the tall, handsome man beside her, hoping she didn’t look as disoriented as she felt.

Mary’s Ted wasn’t bad-looking, but there was only one Bowie. Mary stared up at him with undisguised fascination, barely aware that he shook her hand and said all the polite things.

“My goodness,” Mary exclaimed, and then caught herself and laughed. “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. McCayde. Gaby talks about you all the time.”

“Does she?” Bowie looked at a beet-red Gaby with undisguised amusement that hid the remnants of an explosive tension.

“She threatens the other reporters with you,” Ted said with faint sarcasm, grinning wickedly at Gaby.

“I do not!” Gaby exclaimed.

“Liar.” Ted laughed. “She waves you like a flag when anybody comes too close. She’s the original ‘Miss Don’t Touch’ at the office.”

Bowie’s eyebrow went up in an expressive arch, not only at the implication, but at Ted’s frankly insulting way of putting it. His black eyes kindled as he stared at Ted.

“Stop embarrassing my friend,” Mary said with a nervous laugh, nudging Ted. “Come on in and have some champagne and canapés,” she added, taking Gaby away. “You’ll have to overlook Ted. He’s been sampling too much punch,” she added, with a cool smile in her fiancé’s direction.

“That’s what impending marriage does to a man,” Ted replied with just a little too much venom, despite his forced smile. “Why women think all the trimmings are necessary is beyond me. She’s got a house and a man and a good job, but she has to have a wedding ring.”

Mary flushed and got Gaby out onto the balcony. “He doesn’t want to go through with it,” she confessed miserably. “He says that marriage is just a social statement. But my parents don’t feel that way, and neither do his.” Mary fiddled with the soft ruffle at her bodice. “Plus, I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

“Mary!” Gaby said. “Congratulations...!”

“Ted says he doesn’t want the responsibility of a wife and child. But it will just kill my parents if the baby’s born out of wedlock,” she groaned, lifting her eyes to Gaby’s shocked ones.

“Ted will get used to the idea,” Gaby said gently. “And everything will work out just fine.”

Mary laughed coolly. “Will it?” she said. “He’s started talking about that new girl with long hair who’s working with the Sports Editor.” She looked resolute. “If he wants out, he can go and move in with her. My parents said that if I didn’t go through with the wedding, I could come home, and I think I will.” Her face tautened. “I’m going to let him go. I know that’s what he really wants.”

“If it’s what you really want, too,” Gaby replied.

“When you love someone, isn’t that the same thing?” Mary asked with a tired smile. She pressed Gaby’s arm. “Come and have some champagne. And don’t worry about me,” she added when she saw the concern on the other woman’s face. “I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

Gaby took a glass of champagne punch, but she didn’t touch it. She wandered around, talking halfheartedly to the other guests while her eyes searched for Bowie. She found him, finally, by the picture window, looking bored. Which was odd, because he’d been cornered by one of the prettiest women who worked at the office—Magda Lorne, the Society Editor.

Magda was small and dark and beautiful. Gaby secretly envied her that petite beauty and her success with men. Although there’d never been any friction between them, the sight of her long, red fingernails crawling on Bowie’s sleeves made something explosive stir in Gaby.

She moved toward the two of them, surprised by the expression on Bowie’s tanned face when he looked at her. She was afraid her irritation was showing, and she wasn’t sure she liked that faint pleasure in his smile.

“I wondered where you’d gone,” he murmured as she joined them.

“I was talking to Mary. Hello, Magda,” she said politely.

“Hello. I was just getting to know your stepbrother,” she sighed, her dark eyes flirting with Bowie’s.

“Bowie isn’t my stepbrother,” Gaby said politely, surprised at the anger that remark produced in her. “We aren’t related.”

“Really, dear?” Magda asked. “I didn’t realize. I’m sure you said something about having a big brother...”

“There’s Art,” Gaby said, nodding toward the reporter Magda was currently dangling from her string. “He’s looking this way.”

“Oh, brother,” Magda muttered. Then she forced a smile and glanced up at Bowie. “Perhaps I’ll see you again. I’d love a ride home...”

“I came with Gaby,” Bowie said, his eyes saying more than he did. “I’ll leave with her.”

He never dressed up his words, Gaby mused, watching Magda blush at the bluntness of the remark. She stammered something and beat a path over to Art, who beamed at the sight of her.

“Does she make a habit of that?” Bowie asked as he lit a cigarette.

“Of what?”

“Trying to steal men away from their escorts.”

“She’s very popular...” she began.

“Popular, the devil,” he said with a narrow, half-amused gaze. “She’s a born flirt with acquisitive eyes and an ego that probably has to be fed ten times a day. She’s the type who runs a mile at the first suggestion of intimacy.”

Her eyes studied his face inquisitively. “Magda?” She was surprised because she’d always thought of the other woman as being something of a femme fatale.

“Magda.” He blew out a thin cloud of smoke. “It’s an act, can’t you see? A facade to hide her lack of confidence.”

“Remind me never to try and hide anything from you,” she said with a laugh that hid nervousness. He saw deep.

“And this engagement won’t make it to the altar.” He lifted his cigarette to his mouth again, took a draw, and put it out while Gaby studied him with wide eyes. “He’s cutting at her already. Why? Is she pregnant?”

She gasped.

“I thought so,” he mused. “And he feels trapped and wants out. That’s what I mean about marriage, Gaby. People who are sure of what they feel for each other don’t need a trial run.”

“How do you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Read people like that.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems to come naturally.” He glanced down at her. “Except with you. Do you know, Gaby, I’ve never been able to read you. I’d hate like hell to play poker with you. You’ve got that kind of face.”

“Oh, I’m an open book,” she said offhandedly.

“No.” He glanced around half irritably. “Have you been here long enough? It’s been over half an hour since we got here.”

He hated parties and dressing up, she knew, and especially when most of the women present were trying to seduce him with their eyes. He had to be the only person in the room who didn’t know how devastatingly handsome he was.

“Yes, I’ve been here long enough,” she agreed. “And I’m rather tired.” It was all catching up with her—the shooting, the news about Aggie’s new man friend, the truth of Mary and Ted’s relationship. She’d never been so depressed.

They excused themselves, wished Ted and Mary happiness with forced smiles, and left.

Bowie parked the car in front of Gaby’s apartment complex and cut the engine. He leaned back in the seat, his hand loosening his tie and unbuttoning his jacket. His head went back with a hard sigh.

“I’ve got to get up in the morning and fly to Canada. Damn it, I hate these trips out of the country,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m getting too old to enjoy them anymore.”

“You aren’t old,” she protested.

“Thirty-six next birthday.” His head turned and his black eyes sought hers in the glaring light from the streetlamps overhead. “Twelve years older than you, cupcake.”

She laughed at the description. “I’m not a cupcake.”

“That’s better. You’ve been gloomy all night.”

“The man they shot was just a boy,” she replied. She leaned back, too, her eyes quiet as they looked through the windshield at the city lights and deserted street. “He had a big family and grew up in the kind of god-awful poverty you read about and wish somebody could do something about. He killed a man and died for twenty stupid dollars, Bowie.”

He stretched, drawing the fabric of his white shirt taut across the firm muscles of his broad chest and flat stomach. “People have died for less. It was his turn.”

“That’s unfeeling,” she accused.

“Is it?” One big arm slid behind her bucket seat and he studied her thoughtfully. “He tried to hold up a store. That was stupid. There are poor people all over the world who live honest lives and made the best of what they have. A man with a gun isn’t going to accomplish a damned thing except his own destruction. That’s basic.”

“It’s still terrible,” she said.

“Why don’t you find something else to do with your life?” he asked. “You’re too soft to be a reporter.”

“What would you suggest I do?” she asked.

“You could come home to Casa Río and help me fight the combine that’s trying to move in next door to us,” he suggested.

“What combine?”

“Some agricultural outfit called Biological Agri-market—Bio-Ag, for short. They’re trying to buy up land in the valley to support a superfarm—the farm of the future, they call it. But I’m afraid that what they’re actually after is a quick profit and some devastating ecological impact.”

“They can’t damage the environment,” she assured him. “First, they have to file an environmental impact statement; then, they have to go through the planning and development commission...”

“Hold it a minute,” he said. “Lassiter doesn’t have a planning commission, and our particular valley isn’t zoned.”

She searched his eyes. “Still, won’t the development have to go through regular channels?”

“If they can get the land,” he agreed. He smiled coolly. “Hell will freeze over before they get any of mine.”

“Then you don’t have a problem.”

“That’s debatable.” He lit a cigarette, cracking a window to let out the smoke. “Some of the town fathers in Lassiter are being courted by the developers. They’re promising jobs and a lavish local economy, and they’re greasing palms right and left.” He smiled at her. “I had a threatening phone call yesterday. The word is that I’m holding up progress single-handedly by refusing to sell land to the development. It seems that Casa Río has the best soil for their purposes.”

“Lassiter could use more jobs, Bowie,” she began slowly. “I know how you feel about the land...”

“Do you?” His voice was like cold steel. “Apaches used to hunt on our range. My great-great-grandfather made one of the first treaties with the Chiricahua Apaches, and there’s a petroglyph that marks the spot where they agreed on it. Cochise camped at one of the river crossings with his people. There was a small fort, and part of the adobe is still standing, where McCaydes helped the Apaches fight off Mexican raiders. There are Hohokam ruins a thousand years old on that land. The Hohokam had a superior civilization that ultimately spawned the Pima and the Tohono O’odham. And the Earps and Doc Holliday rode through on their way to Tombstone. How do you compare that history with a few jobs—jobs that may not even last, for God’s sake, if the developers go bust. And what about the ecology, Gaby?” he persisted, eyes blazing with bad temper. “Imagine all that damned silt pouring into the San Pedro and its tributary near us, when we’re already facing a devastating future. We’ve got the Central Arizona Project and the Salt River Project, and cities are buying ranches all over Arizona for the water rights, but we’ve got to be careful about our water resources, or they may dry up. It’s too risky a venture, despite the potential economic value. What’s worse, I think those Bio-Ag people really have their eyes on our water rights. First in time, first in right, remember? You need easy access to water to farm.”

Gaby studied him quietly. She knew he was a tireless worker for historic preservation. “You’re very knowledgeable,” she remarked.

“It’s an interest of mine. I’m a builder,” he reminded her. “I have to know a lot about the environment and the ecology to be responsible. I don’t want to leave behind a legacy of ruined land for quick gain. There are too many people doing that already—throwing up buildings for a profit without considering how much damage they’re doing to the local ecology.”

“I had to learn about some of that for stories I’ve done,” she replied.

“Silt from irresponsible building practices fills up rivers and streams. That has impact not only on our water resources, but on wildlife, and even the quality of life along those rivers and streams,” he replied. “It’s a subject worth talking about. We’ve been lucky here in Arizona. We have legislators who were looking out for our water rights years before it was a popular subject. We’ve done things to ensure a future water supply. Other states haven’t been quite as responsible, and they may suffer for it someday.”

“But you don’t want developers on Casa Río land,” she said.

“That’s it in a nutshell. Threats notwithstanding, I won’t let Casa Río be used to make money for greedy outsiders.”

“How do you know they’re greedy?” she asked.

“How do you know they’re not?” he shot back.

She gave up. It was impossible to hope for more than a draw when she fought verbally with Bowie. “Stalemate,” she murmured humorously. “I won’t fight with you. I’m too tired.”

“You’re still coming home to watch Aggie for me?” he persisted.

“Yes. If you think it’s necessary.” She paused with her hand on the door handle, oddly reluctant to go inside. “Bowie, you don’t really think her friend is a gold digger, do you?”

“I don’t know, Gaby. Until I do, I have to assume that he is. I don’t want Aggie hurt.”

She smiled at him gently. “Why do you call her Aggie, instead of mother?” she asked.

“She’s never been quite motherly to me,” he replied with a narrow smile. “Even if she has to you.”

There was a faint bitterness in his deep voice.

Time to go, quick, she thought. She clutched her purse. “I had a good time. Thanks for taking me to Mary and Ted’s party.”

“My pleasure.” He was still staring at her, much too closely. “What day are you going down to Casa Río?”

“Probably Tuesday,” she said. “I’ve got a big political interview Monday afternoon. When does Aggie get there?”

“Tuesday night.”

“See?” She smiled. “Perfect timing.”

“For God’s sake, don’t leave them alone for a second.” Instead of frightening her, his irritated expression delighted her. It was nice to know that Bowie was human, after all. At times, he seemed rather impervious to emotion. He was very much a cool, intimidating stranger to Gaby—or he had been, until tonight. She’d learned a lot about him, and she liked what she’d found out.

“Which one of them do you propose that I sleep with?” she asked.

He was still deep in thought. He glanced at her. “Hmmmmm?” he asked absently.

She leaned closer. “Do you want me to bunk down with Aggie, or her new beau?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered. “Just don’t leave them alone together for long.”

“I’ll do my best. But they’re both adults.

“I realize that. But he could take over Casa Río. It’s happened before in second marriages. He could wind up with everything Aggie owns, and throw her to the dogs to boot! And if he did it in the right way,” he added with an intent stare, “we wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on.”

“I see what you mean,” she murmured. “Well, I’ll do what I can. But he may turn out to be a nice man, you know.”

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “How is it that you don’t trust people, but you never seem to expect the worst until you’re confronted with it?”

She shrugged. “It’s a knack. Like your uncanny ability to read people’s minds. Thank God I’m not on your wavelength.” She grinned. “I don’t want you wandering around in my brain.”

“Don’t you?” He reached out and touched her high coiffure, very gently. “I don’t like your hair up like that. I like it long and loose. You’re too young to walk around like a matron, Gaby—and much too pretty.”

She flushed. The touch of his hand on her hair was electric. “I’m...not pretty,” she stammered, and tried to laugh.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” He dropped his hand and chuckled as he lifted his cigarette to his mouth to finish it and put it out. “When I get that trite, it’s time to go to bed. I’m sleepier than I realized.”

“Do you have to drive all the way back to Tucson tonight?” she asked, concerned.

“No. I’m staying with a friend.”

She felt something possessive stir in her and hoped that he wouldn’t be able to see the sudden freezing of her features. A friend. A female friend? She knew that Bowie was no innocent, but until now she’d never wondered about his private life. What if he had a woman here in Phoenix...?

“I went to school with him, and we were in the same company for six months in Vietnam, until he was rotated out.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything to add to that. He was giving her a strange look already. “Well, good night, and thanks for the ride,” she said with relief as she stepped out and shut the car door.

Gaby hurried to her apartment. She noticed Bowie didn’t leave until she’d opened her door and gone inside. Through the curtains she saw the Scorpio finally pull away.

She didn’t move from the window for several minutes. Tonight had been a bad mistake. Going out with Bowie, for any reason, was going to have to be avoided from now on. He made her feel vulnerable, and that was the one thing she couldn’t afford to be. Especially not with Bowie.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN BETWEEN WORRYING about Aggie and trying to come to grips with her sudden attraction to Bowie, Gaby spent her weekend going shopping and to a movie. By the time Monday morning rolled around, her eyes were dark-shadowed and she was ready for the diversion of work.

As she plodded through rush-hour traffic, her mind was busy with the speech she was going to make to Johnny Blake about her two-week vacation. It wasn’t really a bad time to take one—news was slow. And if she could sell him on covering the story developing in Lassiter, he might see it as a working holiday and be more receptive to it. Lassiter was southeast of Tucson, and out of Phoenix’s reporting area, but it would certainly make state news if things got hot enough. She could tell Johnny that, anyway. He liked a story that got picked up by the wire services. It made the paper look good.

Gaby thought that she might even enjoy spending some time at Casa Río. But whether or not Aggie was going to welcome her presence was anybody’s guess. How was she going to explain her sudden need for a vacation this time of year?

The other drawback was proximity to Bowie. The night before, she’d seen him in a totally new light. She couldn’t forget the touch of his big fingers around hers, or the way he’d suddenly come close to her at Mary’s engagement party as they’d gone between the parked cars. Her entire body had rippled with delicious feeling, and that frightened her. She didn’t really want to risk letting Bowie come close.

When she got to the office, Johnny was on the phone, murmuring into the receiver while he looked at her with a blank, preoccupied stare.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. Look, why don’t you stick around there for another thirty minutes and see if you can’t get one of the jurors to one side. We need some idea of what’s going on. Don’t compromise their integrity—just see if you can get a handle on how the deliberations are going, okay? Good man!”

He hung up with a grimace. “Well, that’s as good as it’s going to get today, I suppose. I don’t know how we’re going to manage anything passable about the Highman case unless we can coax a juror into talking.”

“Try a juror’s wife,” she suggested with a grin.

He chuckled. “No wonder I keep you on, Cane.” He nodded. “You’ve got a devious mind.”

“Shrewd sounds better. Johnny, can I go home for two weeks? Before you speak,” she added, holding up a hand when he looked as if he might explode, “I’ve got an angle. I need a vacation. But there’s a big agricultural outfit called Biological Agri-market—Bio-Ag—trying to buy up land around Lassiter for some huge truck farming operation. It would have a favorable impact on the local economy, but its water usage and destruction of historic landmarks make it pretty controversial. There have already been a couple of death threats. I could sort of get a handle on things and have my vacation at the same time. What do you think? It could be statewide news,” she added quickly. “We’d scoop all the Tucson papers. We might even get picked up on the wires.”

He was thinking now, his lips pursed. “Statewide, huh?”

“That’s right.”

His small eyes narrowed. “Is anybody we know involved in this, Cane?” he probed.

She laughed. “Bowie. He’s going to fight it tooth and nail.”

“In that case, pack your bags. I still remember when he took on that cut-rate construction company project that cost two lives. Anything he does makes news these days. He’s a troublesome...” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

“He isn’t family,” she said, and was suddenly glad that he wasn’t. A picture of his hard, handsome features floated unwanted into her mind and she found herself feeling much too eager to go back to Casa Río.

“Yes. I keep forgetting that,” he murmured, watching her warm color. “Well, Cane, you have a nice vacation. Don’t forget to finish up your assignments today. You can leave first thing in the morning.”

“Yes, sir!” She grinned. “Thanks, boss.”

“Don’t thank me.” He held up a hand and smiled modestly. “I am but a poor, humble editor, doing his best to save democracy for future generations. Four score and seven...”

“You might write down that speech on the back of an envelope,” she suggested as she went out the door of his office. “Who knows? You could go down in history.”

He sighed. “Only if I changed my last name to Lincoln. Go to work!”

“You bet!”

The political interview was one she’d been angling toward for weeks. An older state representative—one of sixty representatives in the State House—had been accused of taking kickbacks on a highway project he’d supported. The charge didn’t quite ring true to Gaby, who knew the politician. He had a reputation for honesty that was nothing short of fanaticism.

What made the interview so special was that Gaby was the only member of the press that Representative Guerano would talk to.

“Where’s Wilson?” the white-haired legislator asked, darting quick glances around as they sat in the comparative security of his office in the state capitol building. “Is he disguised as a lamp?”

Gaby laughed. Her wild journalistic colleague had that kind of reputation, and it was really a pity that he worked for a rival paper. “Despite Wilson’s knack for turning up in odd places, he could only know about this meeting from me, and I don’t consort with the opposition.”

Representative Guerano chuckled deeply. “Good for you. Okay. What do you want to know, young lady?”

“Who’s after you and why, of course,” she replied with a twinkle in her olive eyes. “I don’t believe for a minute that you’ve taken money from anybody.”

He smiled gently. “God bless you for that blind trust. As it happens, you’re right. But I only have suspicions, no hard evidence. And I’m hardly in a position to start throwing stones.”

“Tell you what,” she said, leaning forward. “You tell me who, when, and why, and I’ll tell Johnny Blake. We’ve got an investigative reporter on our staff who can dig blood out of turnips.”

His tired blue eyes brightened. “Think so?”

“I do, indeed. Meanwhile, you give me a nice interview and I’ll print both sides of the controversy, just the way a good journalist should.”

“Isn’t this sticking your neck out?” he asked curiously.

She shook her head. “It’s good journalism. We like to print the whole truth. Sometimes we can only print half. But we never give up until we get to the bottom of scandals. That’s the only way to do it, to be fair to everyone involved.”

He nodded. “I can understand that. But meanwhile, a lot of damage has been done to my reputation.” He leaned back, looking every day of his sixty years. “You don’t know what a living hell it is to be at the center of a scandal, young lady. My family’s suffered much more than I have, but even if I’m cleared, the implication is still there. My career is finished, either way.”

Gaby was getting cold chills, because she had a pretty good idea of what a scandal could do to even ordinary people, much less people in the public eye. Her background, if it were ever revealed, could do untold damage to the McCaydes.

She snapped herself back to the present. “All I can promise you is that I’ll do a good story and that Johnny will put it in a prominent place. If you deny the charges and we can print your side of it, some people may listen.”

“If you mean that, about an investigation, I’ll give you all the help I can, and so will my staff.”

She nodded. “I can promise you that we’ll give it our best shot.”

“Then, let’s get to it. Ask whatever you like.”

It was a good piece—one of the best Gaby had ever done. And once it was in print, it would be a good time to leave the area for a while, until the heat died down. She never ran from trouble, but sometimes it was advantageous to walk around it.

Johnny Blake was delighted. He took the few unverifiable bits of information he’d been given and handed them over to Lang, the paper’s investigative reporter. Like a bulldog with a bone to chew, the veteran journalist went straight to work. Lang had contacts that none of the other reporters did. His stock of sources read like a Who’s Who of organized crime, but he always got what he needed, with enough printable sources to support the story. Other papers had tried to lure him away with everything from company cars to incredible salaries, and one of the television networks had even dangled an anchor spot at him. Lang just plugged away at his desk, amused at his notoriety, and never gave it a second thought. Gaby liked him. He was an old renegade, with a shady past and plenty of grit and style. He might not be society, but he was a reporter’s reporter. He’d clear Guerano, and Johnny Blake would have his big story for the month. The only casualty might be Guerano himself, because it was hard to undo a public accusation. With the best will in the world, the dirt stuck.

That night as Gaby packed she worried about encroaching on Aggie’s privacy, about interfering. She really was concerned, and knew she was just going to have to risk irritating her. The next morning she put two suitcases in her little white VW convertible, left her plants with a neighbor to water, and set out for Casa Río.

The ranch was over twenty thousand acres in size, as many southeastern Arizona ranches were. The sheer immensity of open space was staggering to Eastern tourists. Even to Gaby, who’d lived here for years, the scope of it was almost unbelievable. One mountain was crossed, ending in an endless valley. That reached to another mountain, and beyond it was another endless valley, and so on. Cattle and horses grazed lazily beyond the highway, because open range was the law in Arizona. Considering the size of the ranches, it was understandable. Fencing thousands of acres would cost a fortune, and with the depressed cattle market, ranchers would certainly be hard-pressed to come up with the kind of money Gaby imagined it would cost.

The thought piqued her curiosity. She and Bowie had never talked about the cattle operation at Casa Río. Her dark olive eyes narrowed as she drove down the endless highway toward Tucson. She wondered about the impact of an agricultural operation on Bowie’s cattle. Not only would the enormous project use great volumes of water—which was still scarce in this part of Arizona—but it would use pesticides that would leach into the soil and add pollutants to the precious water remaining. Arizona rivers, with the notable exception of the Colorado, mostly ran only during the rainy months, when there was flash flooding. Wells provided the majority of the water in southeastern Arizona. There had already been one television special which had alleged that there were toxins in the drinking water around Tucson. Perhaps some conversations with the local U.S. Soil Conservation Service office in Lassiter might be of benefit. Gaby could see that if she wanted to do a proper job on this story, she was going to be involved in a lot of research.

She stopped to eat in Tucson before heading south through Tombstone to Lassiter. This was familiar territory. Lassiter was bordered on the east by the Chiricahua Mountains, where the Chiricahua Apache once reigned supreme. To the south and west was Tombstone, the site of the O.K. Corral gunfight, high atop its mesa. Far to the southeast was Douglas, on the Mexican border, and to the west were the Dragoon Mountains, where Cochise’s Stronghold was located. Near Bowie’s ranch was the famous Sulphur Springs Valley, once home to the Clanton clan, the archenemy cowboys who had faced the Earps and Doc Holliday at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone. It was a fiercely historic area, and although Gaby had no roots of her own, part of her could understand and appreciate Bowie’s love of the land. But as she drove through the desolate country, dotted only here and there with an occasional ranch far off the road, she wondered if Bowie had considered the job potential the agricultural giant would present here. It would require not only laborers, but heavy equipment operators, technicians, engineers, clerical people, truckers, and packers. The people who worked there could spend their paychecks in Lassiter, which would raise the tax base and help increase services to the townspeople. The unemployment ratio in Lassiter had been high, because a number of small ranches had gone under in recent years. Unskilled labor had no place to go except to one of the cities of larger towns in the area. A few local people worked in Tombstone during Hellrado Days in October—the anniversary of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral—where the Old West was re-created for the benefit of hundreds of tourists. But that was seasonal work, and many people in the area needed jobs that would last year-round.

The two sides of the story kept her mind busy all the way to Lassiter. She drove through it with a nostalgic smile. It was typical of most small Arizona towns—a combination of past and present, with adobe architecture in half its buildings, and modern design in the rest.

The pavement was cracked in most places, and the people walking about reflected the poor economy in the way they dressed. There was a lack of entertainment facilities for young people, since most teenagers left Lassiter for work in other towns when they graduated from its one high school. She looked at the landscape and tried to envision Bio-Ag’s huge operation settling here. Irrigated fields would spread to the horizon and the desert would bloom. She sighed, smiling at her own vision.

There were only a few shops in town these days, and half of them were boarded up from lack of commerce. The town had two policemen, neither of whom stayed too busy, except over the weekend when the local bar filled up and tempers grew short. There was a fire department, all volunteer, and a motel-restaurant. Several government agencies had offices here, some of which were only open part of the week. There was a newspaper—a very good one for a town that small—the Lassiter Citizen. And there was a radio station, but it was a low-budget operation with high school students manning the control room most of the afternoon and early evening. If Bio-Ag came, there would be some more advertising revenue for the media, and certainly plenty of newsworthy copy to help fill space.

Bowie would fight it, with his environmental priorities, and there were enough special interest groups to help him. Bio-Ag would need an ally. She smiled, thinking of ways to circumvent Bowie’s efforts.

The road wound around past the sewage treatment plant and reservoir; then, it became a straight shot out to Casa Río. It was visible in the distance, far off the main highway, on a wide dirt road with fields that combined wildflowers and improved pasture. Bowie’s Brahman cattle grazed in that area, where cowboys during roundup would draw straws to see who had to brave the thickets of brush to roust out the strays. Prickly pear cactus, ocotillo, cholla, creosote, sagebrush and mesquite were enough of a threat, without the occasional potholes and diamondback rattlers that could give a horseman gray hairs.

On the other hand, there was clean air, open country, the most spectacular scenery on earth, and the glory of palo verde trees in the spring. There were red-winged blackbirds, sage hens, cactus wrens, and owls. There were rock formations that looked like modern art, and wildflowers bursting from the desert. Gaby had the top of the VW convertible down, and her eyes drank in the beauty of the landscape unashamedly. She had her memories of Kentucky—of lush green pastures and white fences and huge groves of trees—but they were pale against this savage beauty.

She crossed over the bridge that sheltered a tributary of the San Pedro. It was early for the summer “monsoons,” so there was barely a trickle of water in the creek bed. It was more of a sandy wash right now than the swollen, deadly creek it became after a good, heavy rain. Past the bridge was a long ranch road that led back from the flat valley into a small box canyon. There, in a small grove of palo verde and mesquite trees, stood Casa Río.

It was old. The beautiful parchment color of the adobe walls blended in with the mountains behind it. The house was two stories high, and despite its stately aged appearance, with wrought iron at the windows, and the courtyard gate that led to the porch, it had every modem convenience. The kitchen was like something out of a Good Housekeeping layout. Behind the house was a garage, and adjoining the house was an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool that was heated in winter. There were tennis courts and a target-shooting range, and a neat stable and corral where the breeding horses were kept. Farther away was the working stable, the barn, and a modern concrete bunkhouse where the six full-time bachelor cowboys lived. The foreman, assistant foreman, and livestock manager—all three married men with families—had small houses on the property.

The driveway led around the house to the garage, but Gaby parked at the front gate, leaving her luggage in the trunk. She admired the only real home she’d ever known. There were flowers everywhere—pots and planters of geraniums and begonias and petunias. There were blooming rose bushes in every shade imaginable to either side of the house. The small courtyard garden had a winding, rock-inlaid path to the long front porch under the overhanging balcony that ran the width of the house. A staircase with inlaid tiles led up the side of the porch to the second-story balcony through a black wrought iron gate. There was a towering palo verde tree just beside it, dripping yellow blossoms, and a palm tree on the other side of the house. Ferns hung from the front porch, where wicker furniture beckoned in the shade of the balcony.

She opened the big black, wrought iron gate and walked into the garden, smiling with pure pleasure as she meandered down the path, stopping to smell a rose here and there.

“Always you do this,” came a resigned, Spanish-flavored voice from the porch. A familiar tall, spare figure came into the light, his silvery hair catching the sunlight. “Bienvenida, muchacha.”

“Montoya!” She laughed. She held out her hands, to have them taken in a firm, kind grasp. “You never change.”

“Neither do you,” he replied. “It is good to have you here. I grow weary of cooking for myself and Tía Elena. It has been lonely without the Señora Agatha and Señor Bowie.”

“Have you heard from Aggie?” she asked.

“Sí. She arrives today or tomorrow.” He glanced behind him and leaned forward. “With a strange hombre,” he added, “and Señor Bowie does not like this. There will be trouble.”

“Tell me about it,” Gaby groaned. “He talked me into coming down here as a chaperone, and God only knows what Aggie’s going to say when she finds me here.”

“When she finds you both here,” he corrected.

“¿Qué hablas?” she asked, lapsing into the natural Spanish that seemed so much a part of Casa Río because its staff and Bowie spoke it so fluently.

“Señor Bowie came an hour ago,” he said. “He seems to have had no sleep, and he has already caused Tía Elena to hide in the bathroom.”

She felt a ripple of pure excitement that she shouldn’t have felt at the remark. “Bowie’s here? But he’s supposed to be in Canada...”

“Not anymore,” Montoya sighed. “He left the project in the hands of his foreman and caught a plane to Tucson. He says that he cannot stand by and let his mother make such a mistake. He is going to save her.”

He said the last tongue in cheek, and Gaby smothered a laugh. “Oh, my.”

“If you laugh, niña, make sure the señor does not see you do it,” he said dryly. “Or you may have to join Tía Elena in the bathroom. He has the look of the coyote that tried to eat our cat last week.”

“That bad, huh?” She shook her head. “Well, I’ll go see what I can do. Poor Aggie.”

“We know nothing of this man,” Montoya reminded her. “He could be right, you know.”

“He could be wrong, too.”

“The señor?” Montoya put his hand over his heart. “I am shocked that you should say such a thing.”

“I’ll bet,” she mused, grinning as she went past him. “Where is he?”

“In the house.”

“Where in the house?”

Montoya shrugged. “¿Quíen sabe? I have better sense than to look for him.”

She gave him a mock glare and went inside. Tía Elena, fifty, and severe as night in her black dress with her hair pulled back into a bun, peeked around the corner, her black eyes wary.

“It’s only me,” Gaby teased. She hugged the thin older woman and laughed. “Still hiding, I see.”

“Is it any wonder?” Elena asked, shaking her head. “I do nothing right, you see. The bed is made with colored sheets, the señor wanted white ones. I have polished the floor too much and he does not like it that it is slippery. The bathroom smells of sandalwood, which he hates; the air conditioner is set too low, and he is roasting; and I am certain that before dark he will find a way to accuse me of having the clouds too low and the sand too deep in the backyard.”

Gaby laughed softly. Bowie on a rampage could do this even to people who’d lived with him for years. She patted Tía Elena on the shoulder gently. “It will all blow over,” she promised. “It always does.”

“I am too old for such storms.” Elena sighed. “I will make a salad and slice some meat for sandwiches. The señora and her friend will arrive soon.” She threw up her hands. “No doubt the señor will accuse me of trying to poison the meat...” she muttered as she went back into the kitchen.

Gaby went down the long hall of the first floor, skirting the staircase that led to the upstairs bedrooms, past the sweeping Western motif of Bowie’s study, past the elegant grandeur of the traditional living room, past the library with its wall-to-wall bookcases, pine paneling, and leather furniture, past the huge kitchen, and down the covered walkway to the pool house. And there was Bowie.

He was cleaving the water with powerful strokes, easily covering the length of the Olympic-sized pool and turning with quiet strength to slice back through the water to where Gaby stood watching.

His head came out of the pool, his blond hair darker wet than dry, his black eyes examined her curiously. She was wearing designer jeans, but they weren’t tight. The long, trendy, red-and-gray overblouse disguised her figure, except for its slenderness and the elegance of her long legs. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail with a red ribbon, and her dark glasses were still propped on her head.

“Taking inventory?” she asked.

“Not particularly. You’re late.”

“I’m early, and what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Canada,” she reminded him.

“I couldn’t stop worrying about Aggie,” he said simply.

He put his big hands on the side of the pool, and with devastating ease, pulled himself out. As he got to his feet, Gaby found herself gaping at the unfamiliar sight of him in nothing but white swimming trunks.

They were very conventional trunks, but they did nothing to disguise the sheer magnificence of his powerful body without clothing. She’d seen him this way before a time or two, but it had never affected her so much. Bowie had a physique that was nothing short of breathtaking. He was a big man, formidable in height as well as size, but there wasn’t a spare ounce of excess weight. He was perfectly proportioned—streamlined from his broad, hair-covered chest to his lean hips, flat stomach, and long, powerful legs. He had a natural tan that the sun only emphasized, its darkness enhancing his blond hair and giving his body a particularly masculine glow. He wasn’t pale or flabby, and while there was hair on his chest and flat stomach and legs, it wasn’t unsightly.

Bowie wasn’t unaware of that keen, helpless scrutiny. He rested his hands on his hips, his black eyes narrowed, as he studied her expression with open curiosity. She’d never looked at him in quite that way before, and he found it disturbing. He found her disturbing. It hadn’t been only Aggie’s unknown suitor who’d brought him here today. He’d brooded all weekend about the way he’d felt when he’d taken Gaby to supper in Phoenix. It had worked on him until he’d put the Canada construction project in the hands of his project foreman and hot-footed it down to Lassiter.

Gaby didn’t know that, and he had too much intelligence to let her know. He was sure that if he signaled his interest, she’d turn tail and run. The very way she dressed spoke volumes about her repressions.

“Why don’t you get into a swimsuit? I’ll race you across the pool,” he said with a faint smile.

She lifted her eyes to his and felt her heart race in her chest. “I didn’t bring one,” she fabricated. She didn’t own one.

“There are several in the pool house,” he replied.

“I have to unpack,” she said. “And get my things out of the car...”

“Montoya will already have done that, and Tía Elena will have your things in the drawers before you can get upstairs,” he mused. “If she’s out of the bathroom.”

“I hear that you sent her in there in the first place,” she said with a nervous laugh.

“Lies. All lies. I’m not half as bad as my publicity around here,” he told her. He pursed his lips, letting his eyes search over her flushed face. “The water’s cool, Gaby,” he coaxed, a note in his voice that Gaby hadn’t heard before.

Her body tingled. It was so tempting. But she might be unleashing emotions that she couldn’t handle. She knew Bowie only as Aggie’s son, as the heir to Casa Río. It would be dangerous to start thinking of him as anything more personal. A man his size was a considerable threat out of control...

“Maybe later,” she said, forcing a smile. “Okay?”

He didn’t press his luck. He didn’t want to scare her off. He smiled back, his black eyes kind. “Okay, honey.”

The endearment made her knees weak. That smile had done some damage, too. Bowie was by far the handsomest man she’d ever seen in her life. She could only imagine how many hearts he’d broken over the years.

“Just what are we supposed to be doing here?” she asked, biting her lower lip. “Aggie’s going to be furious, and she’ll know immediately why we’re here.”

“We’ll throw her off the track,” he promised. “You aren’t backing out on me?”

“Heavens, no,” she said. “I don’t want Aggie hurt any more than you do. But if we look like we’re interfering, she may very well send us both packing. Right now, it’s her house. We’re interlopers, even if we are family to her.”

“I know that, too. I don’t like trespassing on her privacy. I didn’t do it much, even when Dad was still alive.”

“I guess you resented me more than you ever said,” she ventured, studying him.

He smiled faintly. “From time to time. I didn’t fall in line when he wanted me to; then, we didn’t speak for two years while I was in Vietnam. After I got back, I worked in a construction gang for a rival company. It was Aggie who persuaded me to talk to my father, and he eventually wore me down. That was the year before you showed up. There’d been no time before, and there was none after. You were their hearts. They both wanted a daughter. They got me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I never knew the whole truth.”

“You still don’t. But it was a long time ago. No need to brood about it, tidbit. Did you have to fight for your time off?”

“I told Johnny I’d get him a great scoop on that agricultural conglomerate that’s trying to locate here.”

His face went hard. “Is the job all you think about?”

“That’s not fair,” she replied. “I had to have an excuse. You don’t just walk out the door and tell your boss you’re taking a vacation!”

“Why in hell not?” he demanded. “My God, Gaby, you’ll inherit part of Casa Río. There’s more than enough here to support both of us for life.”

“I don’t want part of Casa Río!” she shot back. She knew she must be pale; she could feel the blood running out of her cheeks. “It’s your birthright, not mine. If there’s any outsider here, it’s not your mother’s friend, it’s me!”

He moved toward her, big and confident and a little frightening because of the sheer size of him. She had to look up to see his eyes, and all the while she was aware of the hard muscle of his body, the broadness of his chest, the masculine beauty of the darkly tanned hands holding the towel as he patted his chest with it absently to absorb the moisture.

“I don’t think of you as an outsider, despite the fact that we don’t see much of each other,” he said quietly. “And I don’t resent what Aggie feels for you—not anymore.”

“Oh, I know that, but it should be yours. You love it more than I ever could. Someday you’ll marry and have sons to inherit it...” She stopped because the thought of Bowie marrying someone and having children upset her.

“Oddly enough, Gaby, I don’t get along very well with most women,” he told her honestly. “I don’t flatter, I say what I think, and I expect intelligent conversation.” He smiled lazily. “Shall I tell you what most of my escorts expect from me, or are you sophisticated enough to guess?”

She was and she could. “You can hardly blame them,” she said defensively, and her eyes ran over him softly, making fires where they touched. “My gosh...!” She averted her eyes from his chest and shoulders.

He felt the impact of her eyes like brands on his skin. He moved a step closer, so that with one more step he could have stood against her. The nearness of her slender body, even in its habitual camouflage, made his breathing rough. He looked at her soft mouth and wondered again how it would taste under his in passion. He wondered if Gaby had ever known passion.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he said deeply. “I meant, my escorts expect some tangible evidence of my regard: a diamond necklace, roses at breakfast—that sort of thing.”

She lifted her eyes to his hard mouth and forced them all the way to his black eyes. “What a pity they don’t know you,” she murmured. “You aren’t at all the kind of person who deals in buying and selling bodies.”

He felt his body go taut and hoped to God she didn’t notice what was happening to him. Her unexpected perception aroused him totally. “How do you know that?” he asked.

She smiled softly. “I don’t know. Aggie talks about you a lot, and so do other people. I’ve learned a lot about you that way.”

He didn’t have room to talk. He’d learned a lot about her the same way. He liked very much what he saw. She had a lovely figure, and a sexy, soft mouth. Besides that, she had a big heart, plenty of spirit, and an impish sense of humor. He’d never really known anyone like her.

“I’ve got to get dressed,” he said, forcing himself to think sensibly and not give in to the urge to make a grab for her. “Montoya said that Aggie was on the way.”

“And you want to be ready—lying in wait to ambush them, right?” she teased, wondering why it felt so natural to play with Bowie.

He smiled back. “That’s the general idea.”

“It’s never wise to mix in other people’s business.” She sighed.

“I know that, too,” he told her. “Get going. I’ll be along in a minute or two.” He would, when he got himself under control again, he thought ruefully. He was reacting to her in a totally unexpected way. He had to curb his instincts before he frightened her.

“Okay.”

It was almost a relief to get away for a few minutes and gather her shattered nerves. Being close to him produced the most incredibly sweet sensations. She wondered how it would have felt if she’d gone in the pool with him—if he’d held her while they were both barely dressed. She wondered if his hands were as capable and expert as they looked, and how it would be if she let him touch her with them. The most erotic images danced in her brain—Bowie towering over her in the shallow area of the pool; his hands peeling away the top of her swimsuit, baring her to his eyes; bending, putting his hot mouth over her soft skin...

Blushing furiously, she moved quickly out of the pool area, her legs feeling like rubber beneath her.

She’d only gotten as far as the hall when a commotion outside caught her attention. She went quickly to the front porch, just in time to see Montoya embracing a radiant Aggie. And a few steps behind her was the source of all the excitement at Casa Río—a tall, lean figure of a man about Aggie’s age, looking perfectly at home, his eyes, steady and adoring, on Agatha McCayde.

CHAPTER FIVE

NED COURTLAND WASN’T as big as Bowie. He was lean and fairly tall, with dark eyes and skin and silver-streaked black hair. He looked pleasant enough, but there were hard lines in his face and a stubborn set to his chin. Gaby, who’d had years of practice sizing up potential interviewees, would have pegged him as a man who presented a calm front but had a strong will and a formidable temper. He had the look of authority that usually came with money. But all that, she reminded herself, could be part of his act if he was looking to deceive Aggie.

“Hello, darling,” Aggie said, laughing as she hugged Gaby. “What in the world brings you down here?”

“A two-week vacation that Johnny talked me out of last year,” she said with commendable acting ability. “And I seem to have arrived at a very bad time...” Her eyes went past Aggie to Ned Courtland.

“Not at all!” Aggie scoffed, although the man behind her didn’t seem overjoyed to find a resident house guest. “Ned, come here and meet Gaby. She’s the next best thing to a daughter in my life. I’ve told you all about her. Gaby, this is Ned Courtland from Wyoming.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Courtland,” Gaby said politely, and shook hands with him. He had a strong grip, and his eyes didn’t waver as they met hers. Good traits, she thought absently.

“Same here, Miss Cane,” he replied. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“I could postpone my vacation,” Gaby offered, feeling guilty and half mad at Bowie for dragging her into this.

Aggie made a familiar gesture with her hand. Her salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, with bangs, and she was wearing a red pantsuit that emphasized her olive complexion and dark, snapping eyes. She was still a pretty woman, and as capable in business as her late husband had been. She was not an easy woman to fool. Of course, she had been lonely, Gaby recalled.

“You aren’t about to postpone your vacation,” Aggie said firmly. “We’ll enjoy having you around while Ned gets an eyeful of the Arizona cattle business. He has cattle of his own, you know,” she added, and glanced up at the tall man with pure adoration in her eyes.

He smiled at her just faintly. “Just a few head, Aggie,” he murmured. “Don’t make me into a cattle baron.”

He didn’t look like one, Gaby had to agree. He was wearing a simple gray suit, which looked very nice on him, but it wasn’t an expensive suit. With it he wore cowboy boots and an inexpensive felt cowboy hat. The hat was cocked at a jaunty angle, but that seemed to suit him. Gaby wondered what secrets lurked in that calm, quiet face. Mr. Courtland didn’t look like a gigolo, whatever he really was.

“I have just this minute told Tía Elena to start setting the table for lunch.” Montoya grinned. “I will help her get the food to the table. Uh, shall I call Señor Bowie?”

Aggie blinked. “Call him in Tucson, you mean?”

“Actually, he’s in the swimming pool,” Gaby said, grimacing at Aggie’s rapidly changing expression. “He got here just after I did.”

“How sweet of the dear boy to come down to meet his tired old gray-haired mother, fresh from the cruise ship in Miami and the plane at the Tucson airport,” Aggie said through her teeth and a forced smile. “Do run and have him join us, Gaby.”

“I’ll do that very thing,” Gaby promised. She grinned at Mr. Courtland. “Bowie’s nice; you’ll like him,” she added, ignoring Aggie’s raised eyebrows and popping eyes.

“Nice? We are speaking of my son?” Aggie prompted.

“The big blond one.” Gaby nodded. She cleared her throat and moved toward the house. “I’ll go and get him. Excuse me, won’t you?”

She whirled and ran like wild for the pool area out back. Now Bowie had done it! It would take Aggie about ten seconds to put the whole plot together, and she was going to be out for blood when she realized what they were up to. She wouldn’t consider that they were trying to protect her. She’d think of it as meddling, and what’s more, she’d be right!

Gaby opened the door and scanned the pool, but Bowie was nowhere in sight. Perhaps, she thought, he’d already dressed and gone back into the house. But on an impulse, she went to the shower room and pushed open the door, not really expecting to find him there.

It was a mistake not to knock—she realized that immediately. He’d obviously just come out of the shower, because he was drying his hair. He lifted an amused eyebrow at her shocked stance and red face. He was totally nude from head to toe.

“Yes?” he asked in a perfectly normal tone.

Gaby knew that most twenty-four-year-old women had seen men like this. She had, in pictures, once or twice. But in the flesh, it was different, and especially when the man was Bowie. Without the civilizing veneer of clothes, he was devastating. He was tanned all over—lean muscle from head to toe, perfect symmetry, fine lines, blatant masculinity in every ripple and curve. She stared because she couldn’t help it. He was magnificent, in every sense of the word.

“I’m...sorry,” she croaked, trying to avert her eyes. “I didn’t think you were in here, so I didn’t knock. I should have...!”

“It’s all right,” he said softly. He tossed the towel aside and moved toward her, conscious of her jerky stance, her quick backward step. But he didn’t stop until he was towering over her. “There’s no need to run, Gaby,” he said. “I’m not dangerous.”

“Oh, I know that,” she wailed. “But Bowie...!”

“You’ve never seen a man like this,” he finished for her. “Okay. Now you have. It’s no big deal, honey. Even if I’m not in the habit of stripping in front of women, I guess I don’t really mind letting you look at me. What’s so important that it brought you flying in here?”

She knew her mind had stopped working. He made it sound matter-of-fact, but hadn’t he mentioned something about not letting other women see him this way? She was too confused to pick up on that.

“It’s Aggie,” she said, hot in the cheeks as she tried not to look.

His big hand tilted her eyes up to his black ones. “Aggie and her friend?”

She nodded. “Ned Courtland.”

His face went hard and his eyes began to glitter. “So he’s here. What’s he like?”

“He’s tall and rather intimidating, really,” she faltered. “Like you,” she added with forced laughter.

His fingers touched her cheek and he smiled at her. “Am I? In that case, I suppose I’d better put some clothes on. Hand me my jeans, honey, will you?”

He was getting really free with that endearment, and the thought sent tingling waves of feeling through her slender body. She searched around until she found his jeans, and by the time she had, he was wearing white briefs and shouldering into his blue plaid shirt.

She handed him the jeans with fingers that trembled. They were heavy, sporting the picture jasper belt buckle that Aggie had given him for Christmas last year.

As he took the jeans his free hand touched hers, curling around it. He eyed her with quiet concern. “It’s over. Nothing happened. You got an eyeful, but you’re old enough. No harm done.”

“Except to my nerves,” she said with a shy smile. “I’m sorry I came running in like that.”

“And I’ve already told you, I didn’t mind. Or would it make you feel better to know that if you’d been any other woman, I would have minded?”

She lifted her eyes, frowning. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got my own hangups.” He pulled on the jeans and fastened them with quick, deft movements. His lean fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt, concealing the thick hair and hard muscles of his chest while he studied Gaby’s frankly curious eyes.

“Then I’m flattered,” she said, and tried to appear less embarrassed than she was.

He tucked his shirt into his jeans, and his black eyes held hers. “I’ve never made love to a woman, except in the dark.”

“Oh.” She shifted restlessly. Now that she’d seen him, all sorts of thoughts were flailing about in her brain—shocking things. She turned away while he got into his socks and boots.

“How did Aggie take your arrival?”

“Fine—until Montoya told her you were here,” she told him, glancing back with a nervous but mischievous smile.

“She’s livid. I think we’re both going to be on the lunch menu as entrées.”

“Think so?” He got up, pausing to run his comb through his thick, straight hair in the mirror. It looked like burnished gold, and he kept it conventionally short and neatly trimmed. She loved the very way he moved, with such elegance and grace.

“I offered to go back to Phoenix, but she wouldn’t hear of it,” she said, searching for something to break the silence.

“You can’t go back to Phoenix and leave me here to deal with this,” he said shortly. He pocketed the comb and turned, looming over her. “Aggie’s obviously in the throes of infatuation, and God knows what kind of man he is.”

“You might give him the benefit of the doubt,” she suggested, brushing back an irritating strand of black hair.

“Not before I size him up.” He looked down at her for a long, tense moment, until her knees felt rubbery all over again. “Don’t start avoiding me now,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m not embarrassed, and there’s no reason for you to be. Okay?”

She nibbled her lower lip. “Okay.” Her eyes fell to his polished boots. “You have this way of making the most extraordinary things seem perfectly natural.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been called extraordinary before.”

She glanced up, laughing, because his tone had been droll and dry. His eyes were twinkling with humor. All the tension left her. “Pity,” she murmured and turned away quickly.

He chuckled, moving to open the door for her. “Next time, go swimming when I ask you to,” he said at her temple when she passed him, “and you’ll know when I’m in the shower.”

She met his eyes briefly. “I haven’t been swimming in years, you know,” she said abruptly, without even meaning to. “I don’t own a bathing suit.”

His eyes lost their amused glow and narrowed, searching hers in a silence that took fire. “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped hiding your body and took a woman’s natural pride in it, little one?” he asked quietly. “Wearing a sexy outfit isn’t going to put you in danger with me. And I’ll fight off the rest of the male population for you, if that’s what frightens you.”

For once she was without her customary defenses. “You would?” she asked hesitantly, her olive eyes wide and unblinking.

That gaze knocked him in the stomach. She had eyes that seduced. She probably didn’t even know it, but she was working on him in ways he hadn’t expected.

“Yes,” he said, answering her at last. “I would. I might take you out to dinner and dancing one night.”

Her breath stilled and then became quick and sharp. “You might?”

His lips parted. He was talking to her, but the words were superfluous. The real communication was between his black eyes and her olive ones, and the tension was beginning to build in a feverish way.

“Why not?” he asked, his voice becoming deep and slow, like dark velvet. “Do you dance?”

“Not really. Don’t you remember? At that dance in college, I stumbled all over you and finally gave up.”

He did remember, all too well.

“You might try teaching me again,” she ventured.

He felt his body going taut. The effect of the words was visible and he thanked his lucky stars that she was too green to see it. “Yes. I could teach you.” It wasn’t dancing he was thinking about. His eyes dropped to her soft mouth and lingered there. He could teach her passion. It was there, inside her, he knew it. All it would take was a little tenderness...

“Bowie?” she whispered.

His eyes lifted slowly to hold hers. He was close enough that she felt the warmth of his body striking into her, and she could feel the coiled strength in him as his hand came up very slowly to her upper arm. His fingers spread over it, encompassing it, testing its silky warmth.

“I want your mouth,” he whispered. His hand pulled her gently toward him, moving her inches closer, so that they were almost touching.

She let him. The sensations she was feeling were new and overwhelming. It was like being drugged, she thought, and the dragging sensation in her stomach and upper thighs was oddly crippling. She was trembling inside, in a way she’d never expected. Her breasts ached. It was as if just the feel of those black eyes on her mouth had made some basic change in her chemistry. She felt the threat of his great strength at the same time she wanted to feel his body against the length of hers. She wanted to put her arms around him and be hugged until her breasts ached, kissed until her mouth was swollen and sore. She went pale. Was she going to be able to face the past at last and move into womanhood?

It almost seemed so. Her lips parted on a shaky breath, and her eyes searched Bowie’s fierce ones.

“Do you want my mouth on yours, Gaby?” he asked huskily, and his head started to bend. His gaze fell to her parted lips. “Do you want to feel me kissing you?”

“Oh... God,” she groaned, her legs going weak as the passionate need snapped in her. “Bowie...!”

She was reaching up to him, shaking with anticipation. And that was when the voice, stark and bleak, shattered the fever that was building in the pool house.

“Sẽnor Bowie!”

Bowie’s hands contracted sharply on Gaby’s arms, almost bruising. His eyes met hers, black with frustration and shocked fury. Then she was free and he was striding out into the hall.

“What is it, Montoya?” he asked in a steely but perfectly normal tone.

“Lunch is served, sẽnor,” Montoya called, grinning at the end of the hall. “Is Gaby with you?”

“She’s around somewhere. I’ll go hunt her up.” He paused, waiting until Montoya disappeared back into the dining room before he turned and motioned to Gaby.

She walked out into the hall on shaky legs, avoiding his eyes. But he didn’t move and she cannoned into him.

“It’s only a reprieve,” he said quietly, holding her wide eyes. His face was hard and his expression dogged. “I’m going to have that kiss. I’m going to take the breath out of your body and the strength out of your arms, and you’re going to want me like hell. That’s a promise.”

He slid his hand into hers and pulled her along with him toward the dining room, his profile intimidating. His fingers contracted and he glanced down. “Don’t start looking for excuses, either,” he added. “You and I aren’t related in any way. We can hold hands, we can go on dates. We can even make love. There aren’t any barriers.”

Her breath felt shaky. “That’s what you think,” she said under her breath.

“I’ll get past those hangups, honey,” he mused. “I’m not a rounder by any stretch of the imagination, but I know very well what to do with a woman. I won’t hurt you—not ever.”

She wanted to argue, to tell him that she couldn’t, she wouldn’t. There were so many secrets from the past, so much hidden pain and fear and guilt. But she couldn’t pour all that out. She couldn’t let Bowie know what had happened—she couldn’t let him get close to her at all. That knowledge was like a thorn in her heart. She wanted him—really wanted him. It was a new and exciting feeling. But what a pity to find it now, with the one man in the world she didn’t dare love. Her love could destroy everything the McCaydes had built up for themselves. And she couldn’t even tell Bowie why. She should never have gone near him in the first place.

She tried to disengage her fingers from his strong, lean ones, but he refused to let go as they walked into the dining room.

When Aggie looked at them, she knew why. Aggie had been sure that Bowie and Gaby had come down to protect her from her new friend, but when she saw them holding hands and felt the blinding tension radiating from their set faces, she formed a new opinion. She pursed her lips and her eyes began to show sheer pleasure rather than astonishment.

Gaby looked up at Bowie to see a raised eyebrow and an amused twinkle in his dark eyes. She glared at him. So that was his game—throwing Aggie off the track with a red herring. She wondered how much of what he’d said to her in the pool house had been part of the plan. Had he meant it, or had he just been stirring her up so that Aggie would read even more into her expression?

She didn’t trust men at the best of times, but she’d always felt that she could trust Bowie. Now she wasn’t sure anymore. She felt vulnerable and afraid.

“Hello, mother,” Bowie said. He let go of Gaby’s hand and seated her before he leaned over to kiss Aggie’s cheek. “How was Jamaica?”

“Jamaica was lovely,” Aggie murmured dryly. She glanced at her friend and put her thin hand over his big one. “Bowie, this is Ned Courtland.” She made a caress of his name.

“How do you do?” Bowie said pleasantly enough, but his features were rigid and his eyes were already damning the other man to hell.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Ned returned in a slow drawl. “How are you, son?”

Bowie bristled, but he didn’t rise to the bait. He smiled coolly. “I hear you run a few head of cattle.” He sat down beside Gaby and lit a cigarette, his first that afternoon. “What do you think of the Japanese outlook?”

Ned raised thick eyebrows. “Well,” he began, “I don’t much care for Japanese food, to be honest, but I guess I could learn.”

Bowie’s expression, in another place, would have been comical. He leaned forward, his smoking cigarette in one lean hand resting on the other forearm. “I meant the export of beef to Japan.”

“Oh, that.” Ned smiled. “Damned if I know much about it.”

Bowie’s eyes were speaking volumes, and Gaby could see Aggie starting to fidget as Montoya brought coffee and Elena set platters of food on the table.

“There’s been a movement afoot to encourage the Japanese to import more American beef,” Gaby began, trying to help things along.

Ned glanced at her in an odd way. “Is that so?”

“There’s a hell of a lot more to the situation than that,” Bowie said irritably, glaring at her.

“I refuse to talk shop at the table,” Aggie said shortly, her dark eyes challenging her son. “Eat your lunch, Bowie, then you and Gaby and I might show Ned the operation here.”

“What a wonderful idea,” Gaby agreed enthusiastically. “Casa Río has some beautiful purebred Brahmans.”

“I hate Brahmans,” Ned said pleasantly, and smiled as if at some secret joke, his lean hands ladling chili into a bowl from the red pot on the table. “Ugliest damned cattle in the world.”

“Yes, they are,” Aggie chuckled, “but very suited to desert conditions.”

Bowie finished his cigarette and put it out with a deliberate motion that meant trouble.

“What breed of cattle do you like, Mr. Courtland?”

“Call me Ned.” He pursed his lips as he sampled the ham. “I like red and white ones.”

Gaby picked up her napkin and smothered a helpless laugh in it. Aggie was doing the same thing. Bowie looked as if he might take a bite out of his plate and then Mr. Courtland.

“Have some ham, Bowie.” Gaby offered the platter to him quickly.

He searched her eyes with pure malice, but he took the hint. He fell to eating while Aggie and Gaby caught up on each other’s gossip. Mr. Courtland seemed pretty intent on his own food, but there was a definitely amused gleam in his dark eyes the one time Gaby got a good look at them.

After lunch, Gaby stuck to Bowie like glue, torn between her growing attraction for him and her need to help Aggie ward off his temper before it exploded over Mr. Courtland.

The pasture stretched all the way to the main highway. Parts of it were fenced, only to keep in certain cattle. The rest, like most ranch land, was open range, and the cattle wandered where food and water were available. Bowie had plenty of windmills that pumped out groundwater into troughs for the cattle. All the same, the groundwater table on his land was dropping steadily. There were small streams running out of the mountains, but not nearly enough to supply his vast herds of cattle with adequate drinking water. It was this facet of ranching that the proposed agricultural project threatened. Agriculture used tremendous amounts of water for irrigation, and drawing it out of an already stressed aquifer only made the water table drop even lower. Besides that was the danger of pesticides leaching into that ground water and contaminating it, and the erosion from the disturbed soil. Agriculture was big business all over Arizona, but more and more farmland was being sold as agricultural ventures failed. Farmland was being developed into housing and business enterprises, which used less water.

But Gaby had a sneaking suspicion that Bowie would be just as opposed to a housing project or an industrial park on his land—maybe more so. It was the history and heritage of the land that he wanted to preserve, and its natural beauty. He had a keen sense of continuity, of saving his heritage for posterity—laudable goals that were hard-kept against the kind of public opinion that was polarizing against him. Unemployed workers wanted jobs. Conservation was all well and good, but it didn’t pay bills and feed hungry children.

“We have some fine grazing land here,” Aggie was telling Ned, sighing over the panorama that spread to the mountains on the horizon. “Despite the desert environment, there’s plenty of food for the livestock.”

“We can even feed them prickly pear—cholla and oco-tillo, too, but the thorns have to be burned off first,” Bowie offered.

“How do you get enough water to them?” Ned asked.

“We use windmills to pump it out of the ground,” Aggie said.

Ned frowned. “Why not pump it out of the river?”

Aggie laughed. “Ned, our rivers aren’t like yours up in Wyoming. Ours only run during the rainy season. We wouldn’t know what to do with a river that ran year-round.”

“My God,” Ned said reverently.

“Do you have prickly pear up your way, Mr. Courtland?” Gaby asked politely.

He shook his head. “Lodgepole pine, aspens, prairie grass. It’s an easier country for cowboys, except in the winter. We lose a hand or two every winter to wanner country. Six-foot snowdrifts just don’t appeal to everybody.”

“We get snow here once in a while,” Aggie said. “Up around Tucson, the saguaro cacti get a white dusting of it. It sure is pretty. Did you know that saguaro grows nowhere else in the country except in southern California, Arizona, and Mexico?”

“I thought I’d seen a few in west Texas and New Mexico.” Ned frowned.

“Organ pipe cactus, maybe, or cardon cactus.” Aggie nodded. “But not saguaro. There’s a lot to learn about them.”

“For example?” Ned grinned.

“Well, they can live for over a hundred and fifty years. They can weigh up to three tons. They’re pleated so that they can expand during the rainy season like an accordion. They’re woody inside. The fruit was and is gathered by the Papago Indians to make jelly and a fermented drink...”

“Tohono O’odham,” Gaby corrected. “They changed the name.”

Aggie made an irritated sound. “You and your Papago history. Well, I can’t pronounce that and I won’t try.”

“Yes, you will.” Gaby chuckled.

“Yes, I will,” Aggie sighed. “But it’s hard.”

“All the same, it’s their own word, in their own language, not a borrowed name in Zũni, which Papago is,” the younger woman replied. “Tohono O’odham means ‘People of the Desert.’”

“You people sure do know a lot about where you live,” Ned commented.

“Oh, we haven’t started yet.” Aggie smiled. “We’ll have to take you out on the reservation and show you the White Dove of the Desert—the San Xavier Mission—and buy you some Papago fry bread and take you through the Saguaro National Monument and out to Old Tucson where they make Western movies.”

“And that’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Gaby added as they walked toward the fence. “You could stay busy for weeks and still not see half the sights. Tombstone is just a few minutes down the road, and it’s a must-see.”

“Will it spoil your day if I tell you I’ve been there?” Ned chuckled. “When I was a boy, it was the dream of my life to stand where the Earps did. I spent a week in Tombstone when I was in my twenties, and I’ve never forgotten a thing about it.”

“So this isn’t your first time in Arizona?” Bowie asked as he bent his head to light a cigarette. He was bareheaded, and the sun burnished his blond hair like a halo.

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