“I’m as fat as a sow. I know. And just as ugly.”

Her lower lip jutted out now in a full-fledged pout. “How unchivalrous of you to point that out.”

“Oh, no, querida.” His hands moved to cup her face, and the grin he’d been sporting was replaced by an expression of such earnest warmth that it fairly melted Emily’s heart. “A woman can never look ugly when she is brimming with life.”

Emily couldn’t break her gaze from those incredibly warm eyes. She didn’t want to. All of a sudden, instead of feeling like an awkward, overgrown sow, she felt like a swan, all featherlight and full of grace.

“Go,” he said. “Before I kiss you.” He angled his head toward the door of the saloon.

Suddenly Emily couldn’t think of anything in the world she wanted more than for John to kiss her….

Dear Reader,

Much of the beauty of romance novels is that most are written by women for women, and feature strong and passionate heroines. We have some stellar authors this month who bring to life those intrepid women we love as they engage in relationships with the men we also love!

Mary McBride’s poetic voice and powerful stories have won her numerous historical romance fans. And with the recent debut of her first contemporary romance from Silhouette, Mary’s audience keeps expanding. Bandera’s Bride is a heartwarming Western about two misfits who fall in love through letters. But when Southern belle Emily Russell, now pregnant, decides to travel to Texas to propose marriage to her letter lover, she finds only his half-breed partner, John Bandera. Neither dreams of achieving the other’s love—only they magically do.

Susan Amarillas brings us a new Western, Molly’s Hero, a tale of forbidden love between a—married?—female rancher and the handsome railroad builder who desperately needs her land. In The Viking’s Heart, a medieval novel by rising talent Jacqueline Navin, Rosamund Clavier is the proud noblewoman who falls in love with the fierce Viking sent to escort her to her own arranged marriage. Will she choose love or duty?

And don’t miss My Lady’s Dare, by the sensational Gayle Wilson. This Regency-set tale will grab you and not let go as the Earl of Dare becomes fascinated by another man’s mistress. Nothing is as it seems in this dangerous game of espionage and love!

Enjoy! And come back again next month for four more choices of the best in historical romance.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell,

Senior Editor

Bandera’s Bride

Mary McBride

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Available from Harlequin Historicals and MARY MCBRIDE

Riverbend #164

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The Sugarman #237

The Gunslinger #256

Forever and a Day #294

Darling Jack #323

Quicksilver’s Catch #375

Storming Paradise #424

The Marriage Knot #465

Bandera’s Bride #517

Other works include:

Harlequin Books

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“The Ballad of Josie Dove”

Silhouette Intimate Moments

Just One Look #966

For the men in my life—Leslie, Loren and Merit

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Epilogue

Prologue

Texas, 1866

It wasn’t a perfect partnership, the one between the Southerner, Price McDaniel, and the half-breed, John Bandera. It was as far from perfect as the rugged landscape of south Texas was from the gentle hills of Russell County, Mississippi. The two men had almost nothing in common.

Physically, they were as mismatched as daylight and dark. McDaniel was a slight man with hair as fair as corn silk. John Bandera, the dark half of the equation, had bronze skin and cast-iron black hair. Part Comanche, part Mexican, and part anybody’s guess, he was imposing in size alone, but it was his amber, catlike gaze that kept most men at a wary distance. His partner, Price McDaniel, was usually too drunk to be cautious.

When drunk, which was often, Price was a man given to lengthy proclamations uttered in a drawl that was one third Mississippi and the rest pure Tennessee whiskey. John Bandera rarely drank and said little in return.

The two men didn’t even particularly like each other. Still, they were partners, bound by a single and uncharacteristic burst of heroism at the Cimarron Crossing in 1864 when Lieutenant McDaniel had saved Scout Bandera’s life.

Despite their differences, the partnership—thus far—had proven beneficial for both of them. The year before, after being mustered out of the army, Price had had more money than good sense, and he had wanted to build a ranch in Texas to rival anything back in Russell County, Mississippi, no matter that he didn’t know a longhorn from a mule deer or a heifer from a steer.

John had been broke, physically as well as financially. The army had no use for a scout on crutches and John had needed a place to heal. He’d owed Price for saving his life, and he figured one year of his sweat and expertise would cancel his debt to the Southerner.

Now that year was up.

The house was finally finished. Its pine floors and door frames glowed a rich gold beneath a first coating of shellac. The place still smelled of sawdust, but that raw odor mingled now with the fragrance of oiled walnut and rich leather.

Price McDaniel’s furniture—two wagon loads all the way from Mississippi—had arrived earlier in the day. There were wardrobes, chairs and sofas, dressers, mirrors, all manner of beds and bedding. There was one big swivel chair that matched one enormous desk. And there had also been one cream-colored letter tucked neatly inside the center drawer.

Price had been on a tear ever since finding it. He had read the letter at least a dozen times, and had looked at the enclosed carte de visite long enough and hard enough to wear the chemicals right off the little photograph. At the moment, the picture lay facedown on the desktop, the envelope was strewn in little pieces on the floor, and Price was fashioning the letter itself into a rough approximation of a bird.

“Ladies,” he slurred as he folded one edge of the vellum, then crimped it, “especially those of the Southern persuasion, are like gardenias. Have you ever seen a gardenia, John?”

As lamplight glanced off the fresh pine paneling, it made the half-breed’s eyes all the more amber when he looked up from the list of supplies he was composing—goods intended to see his soon-to-be ex-partner through the coming winter.

“Nope,” he replied, about to add that he’d never seen a lady, either. Instead he returned his attention to his list, knowing Price would go on with his drunken declamation whether anyone was listening or not.

He did, interspersing his words with wet, laborious sighs.

“They’re all pale and creamy and petal-soft. Dewy and cool to the touch. Only you can’t. Touch them, I mean. Southern ladies are just for the looking. Touch them, and they bruise. Just like a gardenia. You remember that, John, if you ever have the supreme misfortune to meet up with one of them.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” His chances of meeting up with a lady, Southern or otherwise, were slim, slimmer, and none, John thought. The notion that he’d ever have the opportunity to touch one struck him as ludicrous. He’d learned early and at the painful end of a switch not to want what he couldn’t have. Ladies were high on that particular list.

He made a last notation now on his own list, then parked the pencil stub behind his ear. “If you’re all done ranting, Price, maybe we could go over a few things.”

The Mississippian smiled sloppily as he lifted the folded letter, held it shoulder-high a second, then launched it across the room. The pale paper flew like a snub-nosed, stubby-winged owl before it plummeted to the floor beside John’s moccasined foot.

He ignored it a moment, then picked it up and smoothed it out across his knee, instantly intrigued by the daintiness of the penmanship, trying to imagine the pale, fine-boned fingers that had drafted each delicate word.

He read not the whole, but separate, beautifully crafted words and phrases here and there. How delighted we all were. Sympathetic to your dire circumstances as a prisoner of war. Russell County. Do remember. Forever your home.

His amber eyes flicked up to meet his partner’s. “You going back?”

Price chuckled softly as he filled his empty glass from the bottle near his elbow, then raised the glass in a wavering salute.

“Here’s to Russell County, Mississippi, where a Russell is always a Russell and everybody else is…everybody else.”

He downed half the whiskey, then continued. “And here’s to Miss Emily Russell. May she bloom and prosper in Russell County soil. Here’s to gardenias in all their pale and untouchable glory.”

Price drained his glass and thumped it down on the desktop. “Here’s to us, partner. And to the frigid day in hell that finds me back in Mississippi.”

“You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question so much as an acknowledgment. A disappointed one. John had hoped for a moment that Price would go home. It was where the man belonged, after all. So what if he had turned his back on the Confederacy in order to get out of a Yankee prison? He hadn’t been the only Rebel prisoner who’d put on a blue uniform and headed west as a Galvanized Yankee.

But he didn’t belong out West anymore. He belonged back home with well-bred gentlemen like himself and with ladies like gardenias. And he was damned lucky, in John’s estimation, to have a place where he belonged.

“I’m staying.” Price’s clenched fists banged hard on the desktop. “Russell County be damned, along with all the Russells in it.” He picked up the little carte de visite and, without even glancing at it, flicked it across the desk toward John. “Good riddance to them all.”

John’s dark hand shot out to catch the photograph before it fluttered to the floor. It felt warm in his palm, almost alive. He stared at its blank side a moment, as if hesitant to look at the face of the woman…no, the lady…whose delicate hand had composed the letter still lying on his leg. What face could be flawless enough? What pose perfect enough? What tilt of chin or hint of smile could be worthy of the lady in his head?

This one! His heart bunched up in his throat when he gazed at Emily Russell, and as his sun-bronzed thumb smoothed over the photograph, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see her lovely image begin to wither and fade. What was it Price had said? Touch them, and they bruise.

John had to clear his throat before he spoke, but there was still an unfamiliar, nearly ragged catch.

“She’s a lady, Price. You ought to write her back.”

“Like hell,” his partner snorted, replenishing his glass, sloshing whiskey over the rim. “Since when are you so concerned with proprieties?”

Since a minute ago, John wanted to say, but he merely shook his head and muttered, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Price rolled his eyes. “Well, you go on and write her, then, if you feel so strongly about it. Go on, John. Be my guest. Write the lady back.”

He did. Then, although he’d meant to leave when that first year was up, John Bandera hung around waiting for a reply.

When it came—addressed to Price—he wrote her back.

And waited again. And again.

Six years later, long after his drunken partner had pulled up stakes and disappeared, John Bandera was still there, still writing letters signed “Price,” still loving the lady so like a gardenia.

Chapter One

Mississippi, 1872

“Emily Russell, you are not leaving. I forbid it. Now, you put that suitcase down. Do you hear me? Put it down.”

“I do hear you, Dodie. You’re screeching like an owl, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if everybody in Russell County hears you.”

“You wouldn’t be doing this if your brother were here. After all Elliot’s done for you, too. How can you be such an ungrateful wretch?”

Emily shoved past her wailing sister-in-law, charged through the front door, and dropped her final piece of luggage on the verandah.

“There.” She shaded her eyes against the bright morning sun, searching past the long sweep of driveway toward the street beyond. “Now, where in blazes is Haley Gates? He promised me he’d be here by ten o’clock.”

“If I know Haley Gates,” Dodie muttered, “he’s probably facedown in the hay in somebody’s barn.” Then she reached for the leather handle of a carpetbag. “I’m taking this back inside.”

Emily jerked the bag away. “You’ll do no such thing. I’m going, Dodie. And that’s that.”

“To Texas!” The young woman threw up her hands. “Texas! Where you’ll be set upon by wild Indians. Maybe even scalped. Lord knows any savage would love to whack off those blond curls of yours.”

“I’ll be sure and keep my bonnet tied tight, then.” Emily peered down the street in the opposite direction. “I’ll scalp that Haley if he’s not here in two more minutes.”

Dodie sighed mightily, then sank into a high-backed wicker chair. “Elliot’s going to be beside himself when he gets back from New Orleans to find you’ve taken off like some thief in the night. You know that, don’t you? He’ll be furious. He feels so responsible for you.”

“It’s ten o’clock in the morning, Dodie, and I’m not a thief. I’m not a prisoner, either. At least not anymore.”

“A prisoner! What a spiteful thing to say, Emily, when all we’ve done is look out for your best interests since Mother and Father Russell passed away. Why, I’m sure those two must be fairly twirling in their graves right now, seeing what their foolish, dreamy daughter is up to.”

Emily almost laughed at that image of her prim and proper parents. But Dodie was probably right. If they knew what she was doing, her parents would most definitely spin in their shady little graves. As for being dreamy…Well, Dodie was probably right about that, too. But Emily wasn’t foolish. Not now, at least.

Dodie sighed again, louder and longer. “Oh, how I wish that nice Mr. Gibbons hadn’t gotten the croup and died. He was going to propose marriage, Emily. After all those years of being so shy and tongue-tied whenever he was around you, I simply know he’d worked up the courage to pop the question. I could see it in his eyes.”

“Perhaps,” Emily said. And she would have married Alvin Gibbons, too, she thought. She would have had to marry him, and then they would have lived unhappily ever after. Only now her longtime, flesh-and-blood suitor was dead and Emily was on her way to Texas to find a man she didn’t know in the flesh, but in letters. All those lovely letters.

“I’d like to scalp that no-good Price McDaniel for luring you away like this,” Dodie moaned.

“He didn’t lure me.” Emily almost laughed at her sister-in-law’s melodramatic despair. If anybody deserved to be melodramatic and despairing right now, it was Emily herself. “Price doesn’t even know I’m coming.”

“Well, that’s just fine and dandy. You’re traveling five thousand miles to see a man—a traitor, by the way—who may or may not even be there when you arrive.”

“It’s not five thousand miles. And Price is not a traitor. He did what he had to do, Dodie, to get out of that horrible Yankee prison camp. You know that.”

“He should have come home.”

Emily gave an indignant snort. “To what sort of welcome?”

They had had this argument before, a hundred times perhaps during Emily’s six-year correspondence with the self-exiled Price McDaniel. But what her sister-in-law failed to recognize was that, during those six years, Emily had fallen in love with the man. She hadn’t told a soul, though.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She had confessed her love to Price in a ten-page, heartfelt letter she had written on New Year’s Eve, then sealed and mailed with such high hopes on the first day of 1872.

If you think me bold and brazen, dearest Price, then I am guilty as charged. Your Emmy loves you and would even be so bold as to propose a life together in the flesh rather just on paper. Send for me, Price. Oh, my dearest. Marry me.

His response had arrived, like clockwork, as all his previous letters had, and she had opened it with a brimming heart and trembling hands only to read his bitterly fond and conclusive farewell.

Someday I hope you can forgive me for misleading you. Dearest Emmy, I will not write again.

That evening she had wept on Alvin Gibbons’s shoulder, and he—suddenly not so shy—had consoled her gently, if not a bit too thoroughly, just two weeks before he sickened and died.

“For God’s sake,” Dodie exclaimed now. “You barely knew Price when he was here and you haven’t heard a word from him in months. How do you know he’s still in Texas? How do you know he’s still alive? Or that he even wants to see you?”

“I know,” Emily lied, when what she knew was only that she had to leave. Today. Now. It wouldn’t be long before everyone in Russell County knew that she—poor Emily, the dreamy spinster, the maiden lady whose shy suitor had passed away three months ago—was going to have a child.

Haley Gates had a tendency to spit when he talked, in part from his habit of dipping snuff and in part from the absence of front teeth, so while Emily sat beside him on the wagon seat, she was glad he kept his face forward and his eyes on the backsides of his mules. She was glad, too, that he had lapsed into silence after an hour-long discourse on who was up to what in Russell County. The man took extraordinary pleasure in pawing through almost everybody’s dirty laundry. Almost everybody. Her own secret, she supposed, was still safe.

But if he said one more time just how brave she was for going out West alone, Emily couldn’t decide whether she was going to hit him or to ask him to turn the wagon around and take her home. She didn’t feel brave. She felt sick and scared to death.

Even so, there was no going back. Her decision wasn’t based so much on the scandal her family would have to endure or her own sorry future as a fallen woman, but on the pitiful prospects for a child born out of wedlock in an unforgiving community.

She glanced at the unfortunate man beside her. Haley Gates was nearly forty years old, but tongues still wagged about his illegitimate origin, and more people than not referred to him as Sally Gates’s bastard boy.

That wouldn’t happen to her child, by God. He or she was going to have a chance in this unforgiving world. Emily meant to see to that, no matter how sick or scared she felt. No matter how ashamed she felt for closing her eyes that night and pretending Alvin Gibbons was the man she loved, that his hands were Price McDaniel’s hands, that his kisses were the ones she craved, and that he loved her as desperately as she loved him.

“…friends or kinfolk?”

With a jolt, Emily realized that Haley had been speaking to her and she hadn’t comprehended a single word he’d said. She apologized.

“Oh, that’s all right, Miss Emily. A mind tends to wander on a pretty day like this.” He spat, this time intentionally, over the side of the wagon. “I was just asking who you planned on visiting in Texas. I didn’t know any Russells had ever left the county.”

“Only my uncle Randolph,” she said. “And he went east to Washington, D.C.”

“So you’re visiting a friend, then?”

“Yes. A friend.”

What did it matter now, telling Haley the truth? she wondered. Knowing Dodie’s proclivity for gossip, she was certain the entire Ladies’ Aid Society already knew her destination. And if the venerable LAS knew, then everybody in seven counties was sure to know within a week.

“I’ve been corresponding with Price McDaniel,” she said as matter-of-factly as she could. “He chose to stay out West after the war to raise cattle. And he’s cordially invited me to visit his ranch.”

Haley took one hand from the reins in order to scratch his head. “McDaniel. McDaniel. That doesn’t strike any particular bell.”

“Well, he’s been gone for quite some time. He had no sisters or brothers, and his parents passed away several years ago. They lived in that big white house on Solomon Street.”

“Oh, those McDaniels.” Haley slapped his knee. “I remember them, all right. Why, I even helped tote all that furniture they shipped to Texas.”

“Yes. I remember, too.”

What Emily remembered was slipping an envelope into a drawer of an enormous walnut desk, and then a month later being surprised by a thoughtful reply, written in a bold and quite masculine hand. The tone of the letter had been serious and almost poetic, which surprised her even more, because her memory of Price had been that of a laughing and rather cavalier young man, given more to pranks than poetry.

How the war had changed him, she had thought at the time, and then with each successive letter, she found herself increasingly glad that the callow youth she recalled had been forged into such a strong yet gentle man.

Then, month by month, letter by letter, Emily had fallen in love. It had been her distinct impression, even her devout belief, that Price’s feelings for her were of an equal depth and weight. Dear Miss Russell had long ago been replaced by Dear, then Dearest Emily. The second to the last letter—the one to which she had responded with such candor and passion—had begun My Dearest Emmy.

That one—the one with half its inked words dripping down the pages from her happy tears—was now wrapped in a lace hanky and tucked deep inside the reticule on her lap. Price’s other letters, tied with silk ribbons, a different color for every year, were secure in her leather valise. And although she had packed most of her clothes and other belongings for the trip to Texas, nothing really mattered but the letters that had come to be her most valuable possessions, indeed her only priceless worldly goods.

“All that furniture,” Haley murmured, shaking his head. “I sure do remember now that you mention it, Miss Emily. Wonder if all them dressers and desks and whatnots made it to Texas all right. Did you ever hear?”

Emily smiled wistfully. “The desk arrived, Haley. That’s all I know for sure.”

The levee in Vicksburg was crowded when they arrived later that afternoon. Haley’s mule-drawn wagon wasn’t the worst-looking vehicle at the steamboat landing, but it didn’t rank far above most of the produce wagons parked there. For one bleak moment, Emily felt that she had come down a peg or two in the world until she reminded herself of her fallen status and decided she was lucky indeed to even be able to afford a wagon ride, not to mention the passage she had booked on the Memphis Zephyr, whose smokestacks were already billowing with steam.

“I must hurry, Haley,” she said, clambering down from the wagon seat before he could come to her aid, then reaching for the valise that held her precious letters. “If you’ll carry my other bags to the gangplank, I’d be most appreciative.”

Emily hurried across the cobblestones to show her ticket to the captain.

He squinted at her from beneath the polished brim of his cap. “You traveling alone, Miss Russell?”

After she nodded, the man handed her ticket back, then lightly touched her arm. “I’ll keep a special eye out for you. Fine family, those people of yours. I’ve met your uncle, the legislator, on one or two occasions.”

“How nice,” she replied while thinking that her uncle Randolph would likely be the first to disown her in light of her condition.

“You give him my regards when next you see him, will you?”

“Indeed I will, Captain.”

“Is that your man with your luggage?” he asked, angling his head toward Haley, who was just then waging a losing battle with a small steamer trunk, a suitcase, and two carpetbags.

The captain gestured to one of his crewmen, a muscular man. “See that Miss Russell’s luggage makes it to her stateroom, will you?”

Then, after the captain turned to greet other passengers, Emily walked back to bid farewell to Haley.

He stood, gazing forlornly at the ground, the worn toe of one boot lodged between two cobblestones.

“Well, I guess it’s time for you to get on board,” he said. Then he looked up and gave her a wide but toothless grin. “I kinda wish I was going with you, Miss Emily. Out West, you know. Where things is all brand-new.”

“Brand-new,” she echoed, despite the lump in her throat, suddenly feeling far sorrier for Haley than she did for herself. “Well, come along then,” she said, surprising herself by how much she meant it. “Come west with me where things are indeed all brand-new.”

Haley toed the cobblestones again. “It’s tempting, Miss Emily. But there’s my ma back in Russell County, you know. She’s doing poorly, and I think she’d just plain up and die if I left her.”

Emily was so touched by the man’s loyalty to his mother that her eyes brimmed with tears. You’re a lucky woman, Sally Gates, she thought, and your bastard boy turned out to be your blessing, didn’t he? I hope I’m just as fortunate.

“Haley, I know I was only supposed to pay you six bits for the ride.” Emily dug in her reticule as she spoke. “But, here. I want you to take this.” She pressed a five-dollar gold piece in his hand.

“Aw, Miss Emily. That’s too much.”

The Memphis Zephyr’s steam whistle gave three long, shrieking blasts, nearly deafening Emily.

“I said that’s way too much,” Haley shouted.

“I must run or I’ll miss my boat.” She bunched up her skirts and began to hasten toward the gangplank, then called back over her shoulder. “You keep that, Haley. Buy something nice for your mama.”

“That’s awful nice of you, Miss Emily. You have a safe trip now and you enjoy all them brand-new things out West, you hear? When you come home, I hope you’ll tell me all about ’em.”

“I’ll do that, Haley,” she lied, trying to smile through her tears and waving from the deck while the steamboat’s gangplank rose as if it, too, were waving a long and last goodbye to Mississippi and everyone in it.

Chapter Two

John Bandera was tired to the marrow of his bones. He was just back from Abilene after a hellacious late spring drive that had lost him two good men and at least two hundred head of cattle. The longhorns that had managed to survive the trip had jittered themselves to skin and bones, so instead of collecting the usual fifty bucks a head at the end of the trail, John had considered himself damned lucky to get thirty. He’d paid his men their wages, then seen to their bail when necessary, and finally settled up the considerable damages they’d wrought at four different saloons before setting out on his own, solitary, hard ride back to south Texas.

It was good to be home, he thought, as he lifted a worn and dusty boot up onto the porch rail and angled his chair onto its back legs. Dios. It was pure heaven to be home. Maybe he’d rename the ranch. Pure Heaven, maybe. Or simply Home.

He’d hated it six years ago when Price had insisted they name their newly acquired property The Crippled B. John had still been hobbling around on crutches then after breaking his leg in Arizona. He remembered his partner’s mysterious and drunken grin when he’d slurred, “It’s the perfect name, amigo. Don’t you see? It’ll keep them guessing which one of us it means.”

“B for Bandera,” John had muttered. “The crippled one.”

“Is it?” Price had replied. “It might just be B for bastard.”

Now, sitting on the porch the two of them had built, John thought that Price probably had been right about the ranch’s name after all. It had only taken a few months for John’s busted leg to heal, but his partner had indeed turned out to be a crippled bastard who came to despise the ranch and the ranching along with just about everything and everyone else in Texas, and whose only friend turned out to be the whiskey bottle forever in his grasp.

Then one morning, without a warning or a farewell—fond or otherwise—both the bottle and Price McDaniel had simply disappeared. He’d sent a wire a few months later, asking John to send him two thousand dollars in care of a woman in Denver, no doubt for one last, lethal binge. The check had been cashed, but there hadn’t been another word from Price McDaniel. For all John knew, his partner was dead.

In the three years since Price’s disappearance, John Bandera had done the work of two men—maybe even three or four—expanding The Crippled B and turning it into one of the best ranches in south Texas.

Now, though, after this grueling drive to Abilene, it was time to rest, just for a while, during the last blaze of August heat, before the autumn work began. Maybe he’d even spend a week in Brownsville or Corpus Christi, he thought. A long, slow, sleepy week in a big brass bed with rumpled sheets and a tawny señorita might be what he needed to ease not just his body, but his mind, as well. His heart, however, was another matter.

He sighed, squinting into the bright distance at nothing in particular, refusing to think about that, unwilling to tap into that constant, bitter ache that was forever just beneath the surface, resisting even the thought of her name. Almost. But not quite.

Emmy. Dios, how he loved her! How he missed her wonderful letters. He’d ridden back from Kansas hoping, almost praying, that she’d written to him one more time in spite of the fact that he’d told her not to. She hadn’t written, though.

A distant swirl of dust claimed his attention. From the main house, which was built on what passed for a hill in this flat country, it was possible to see several miles in every direction. And now, near the crossing at Sweetwater Creek, John could just make out the dark silhouette of a mud wagon hitched to a pair of horses.

Damn, he thought. He’d hoped to have the house to himself for a few days, but now it looked as if his housekeeper, Señora Fuentes, and her daughter, Lupe, were coming back earlier than expected from their sojourn in Nuevo Leon.

“Damn,” he muttered out loud, then hauled his weary bones out of his chair to retrieve the spyglass he kept on a table just inside the front door. The last thing he needed at the moment was a resumption of young and buxom Lupe’s relentless onslaught on his senses. He never would have hired the Mexican widow last year if he’d known that the bargain included the señora’s seventeen-year-old, hot-blooded daughter.

He swore again, lifting the spyglass and fitting it to his eye, prepared to see the gray head of his housekeeper and Lupe’s raven waves through the open sides of the wagon. But he wasn’t prepared—never in a million years—for the sudden sight of golden curls, catching the late afternoon light like sunflowers, jouncing as the mud wagon hit every bump and rut in its path.

John’s heart stood absolutely still and his mouth went as dry as ash. Every nerve in his body snapped to attention as if he had just caught sight of a band of renegade Comanches riding in to pick off some of his cattle and maybe take a life or two in the process.

He swore as he ripped the telescope away, then rubbed his eye and blinked hard. Maybe he still had trail dust clogging his sight. Madre de Dios, let it be that. Please, let it be that. Or maybe he was so exhausted that his longtime fantasy lover had appeared before him like a blond mirage. Or maybe, more likely, he was so long lovesick that he’d finally and utterly and irretrievably lost his mind.

His hand was shaking so hard when he lifted the glass to his eye again that he was forced to raise his other hand to steady it. He scanned the landscape, sighted the wagon once again, and focused on the woman in it.

Emmy!

Damn her. Damn her to hell and back. Damn every sweet, pale yellow hair on her beautiful head. Even a mile away, he imagined he could see the bright sky-blue of her eyes, and while he was at it, he damned those, too.

Then John Bandera cursed himself and wished that he was dead. His love was coming to him, and his life was ruined.

Emily’s heart was racing far faster than the matched pair of grays pulling the mud wagon. She felt as if she’d been traveling for three long years, yet it had been a mere three days since she’d boarded the steamboat in Vicksburg then transferred to a larger boat in New Orleans for her passage along the Gulf coast to Corpus Christi.

All the way her emotions had been a wild mixture of hope and fear, of bright anticipation and dark dread. But now, nearing The Crippled B Ranch, a calmness unlike any she had ever experienced seemed to settle over her. It wasn’t so much that she knew how things would turn out, but that—no matter how events transpired—she was certain now that she had done the right thing in coming here.

The landscape, flat and coarse with mesquite trees and prickly pear, was exactly as Price had described it in letter after letter. Every inch of the place was surprisingly familiar, as if Emily had seen it all before. The mesquites were indeed like the sheer green lace he’d described and the sky truly did extend from east to west with hardly a cloud to mar it. Wildflowers bloomed in profusion the way he had claimed, and they did indeed combine in a huge and extraordinary carpet of reds and blues and yellows.

The grazing cattle lifted their long-horned heads when her wagon passed, gazed at her placidly, then returned to their assorted feasts. She’d seen scores of antelopes and deer, and had even glimpsed a wild boar snuffling around the twisted roots of a mesquite bush.

Everything seemed familiar because Price had taken such pains to paint wonderful, vivid pictures for her in his letters. At least he hadn’t misled her in that regard. Emily felt almost as if she’d been here before. Everything was just as she’d expected.

Except the heat. It was ungodly. Hellacious. Price had written that it was hot here, but he hadn’t said that a body could very nearly melt as hers had been doing all day. Of course, Price never wore petticoats nor a corset that even lightly laced felt more like hot iron bands encircling her rib cage.

The man who was slouching up front driving the ramshackle mud wagon wore a wide-brimmed hat to shade himself, but even so his plaid shirt was soaked through with perspiration. Emily didn’t feel all that much sympathy for him, however, since he’d charged her an outrageous sum to take her the thirty-five miles from Corpus Christi to The Crippled B. He hadn’t said more than three or four gruff words to her since departing the coastal town, and Emily had found herself longing for the cozy chatter of Haley Gates and wondering a little sadly what he was doing right now back in Mississippi. Home seemed so far behind her. And ahead? She hadn’t the faintest idea.

For a moment then, for a frightened heartbeat, her courage failed her. This southern part of Texas, this land of new beginnings was dangerous, a harsh place with thorns on its lacy trees and four-foot-wide horns on its cows. Mississippi seemed civilized, even gentle, in comparison. Safe, too. Perhaps she should have stayed home in spite of the coming scandal. At least people there knew her and cared about her, if only enough to gossip.

This driver was the first real Texan she had met, and not only was he sullen, but he didn’t seem too familiar with the territory, either. When she pointed out landmarks that Price had mentioned—the Culley ranch with its twisted fences or a particularly lovely grove of live oaks—the driver would just shrug and mumble that they’d soon be getting there.

And now they were. They were here. Emily’s heart fairly clanged in her chest when the horses’ hooves rattled the boards that spanned Sweetwater Creek. Unlike the green and rippling creeks back home, this one was just a narrow river of dust right now as it waited for the winter rains. Her mouth went as dry as the creek.

Then, suddenly, catching sight of Price’s house atop a rise in the distance, Emily forgot to be afraid. The sun was setting behind the two-story frame structure with the covered front porch, setting it off like a little jewel against a background of brilliant reds and pinks and oranges. It was exactly as she had pictured it. No. It was better…

…because, standing on the front porch, she could see a man with a spyglass trained in her direction. Was it Price? Oh, please, she prayed. Let it be Price. Let him call me Emmy. Don’t let him turn me away. Don’t let him turn us away.

Señora Fuentes’s chickens squawked and scattered when the mud wagon clattered into the yard. In the corral, the horses came to the near rail to sniff the changing currents in the air and to investigate the newcomers. But none was so curious as John Bandera as he stood leaning against a porch rail, arms crossed over his chest and his right leg cocked in a casual pose that belied the turmoil in his gut and the panic in his brain.

He had decided to lie. If he knew anything, he knew that much. He would tell the woman—his beloved Emmy—that Price was still away in Abilene, that his return was uncertain. Beyond that, he hadn’t the slightest notion what he’d say or do.

But the lie was a good enough place to start. It was the only place. Later, when he was able to think more clearly, he would figure out how to construct a tangled web around it. Right now all he could do was stare stupefied at the woman in the back of the wagon.

She was here! She was real! He couldn’t quite believe it.

She was his treasured carte de visite come to lovely life. Her hair was more golden, more glorious than he’d ever thought to imagine. Her eyes were round and deep and beautiful as cornflowers. Her skin was as pale and luminous as dawn.

Six or seven years had passed since the image he treasured had been captured, and those years had added a sensuous fullness to her mouth that hadn’t been there before, as well as a healthy, feminine roundness to the rest of her. Emily Russell was more beautiful than John had ever dared dream, and for a minute he found himself wishing she had turned out ugly or deformed in a way that had been disguised in her photograph. He damned her again for being beautiful.

“Hey, you,” the driver called from his seat on the wagon. “This woman is looking for The Crippled B Ranch.”

“She’s found it,” John said, slowly straightening up and heading down the porch steps, his gaze fixed on Emily the way a compass fixes on north while he tried to maintain a neutral expression. It wasn’t easy, pretending he didn’t recognize the love of his life, ignoring the heartbeats that were about to hammer a hole right through the front of his shirt.

“Then you’re McDaniel?” the driver asked.

“No. I’m…”

“John Bandera,” Emily called happily, leaning out the mud wagon’s open window. “I’d know you anywhere, I believe, from Price’s description.”

When she extended a white gloved hand toward him, John felt his own hand drawn to hers like filings to a magnet.

“I’m Emily Russell,” she said. “From Russell County, Mississippi. Perhaps Price has mentioned me?”

John nodded. Then, suddenly aware that he had held her hand too long for a mere hello, he let go and stepped back.

“I know he isn’t expecting me.” She was looking around the ranch now, her blue eyes sparkling with delight.

“Price isn’t here.”

He might as well have said that Price was dead for the way the delight dulled in her eyes and the happiness drained from her expression.

She sat back. “Wh-where…?”

“In Abilene.”

“Abilene?” The way she said it the Kansas cow town sounded distant as a planet. “And when…?”

“I don’t expect him back for quite some time, Miss Russell.”

“I see.”

No, she didn’t see at all, Emily thought. Disappointment was fairly crushing her, squeezing her heart and turning her brain into a tight, aching knot. “I’ve come so far. Such a long way.” Her own voice sounded even farther away.

“You staying or going, lady?” the driver asked impatiently. “If you’re going back to Corpus, it’ll cost you triple, seeing as how it’s gonna be dark pretty soon.”

Emily didn’t answer. Staying? Going? She barely understood the meaning of the words, much less how they pertained to her. Dark? Was it? She felt numb all of a sudden, and dumb. For a moment she wondered if a sunstroke had robbed her of her ability to speak and to move.

The driver was angled around in his seat, staring at her, his eyes mere slits beneath his twisted brows. John Bandera was staring at her, too, but there was no reading his dark face. He might as well have been a cigar store Indian with rigid, wooden lips and deep, expressionless eyes.

“Well?” the driver snapped. “What’s it going to be, lady? You staying or going? I ain’t got all day.” He tapped a restless boot on the floorboards.

“She’s staying.”

Now, with a scowl carved deeply into his face, John Bandera reached for her valise, then the carpetbags and the big steamer trunk, and finally—not quite so roughly—for Emily herself.

“Come on,” he said, his big hands circling her waist, lifting her up and out and setting her down before she was even aware that she was moving.

“How much does she owe you?” he asked the driver.

“Already paid for the one-way trip,” the man replied.

“Fine.” Having said that, Bandera slapped the haunch of the horse closest to him. “So long, then,” he said, stepping back and drawing Emily with him as the wagon took off with such a lurch that the driver nearly pitched backward over his wooden seat.

They stood there a moment, the two of them, in the tan cloud of dust the horses had kicked up, watching the mud wagon bumping wildly away while the driver tried to hold on to his hat and the reins.

Go? Stay? Emily really hadn’t made up her mind yet, but here she was anyway. She wondered if the driver would hear her if she called him back.

But just then, without a word, Price’s scowling partner picked up her valise and wedged it under one arm before he collected her heavy trunk and both carpetbags. Still silent, he turned and headed toward the house with all of her worldly possessions.

Emily, obviously unwelcome, followed slowly in John Bandera’s wake.

“You’ll be comfortable in here. For now, anyway.” John dropped the carpetbags on Señora Fuentes’s quilt-covered bed. “My housekeeper and her daughter are off in Mexico for a while,” he said, then quickly corrected himself. “Our housekeeper, I mean.”

“That would be Mrs. Fuentes,” she said, standing in the doorway. “Price has written me about her. About her chickens and her garden and her daughter, Lupe.” She laughed softly. “Why, I almost feel as if I’ve met them both.”

Still with his back to her, John closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Dios. This wasn’t going to work. His brain was already dizzy from trying to keep things straight and his tongue was tangling around every word he spoke.

He should have sent her away. He should have paid the damned driver his triple fare and had him take the woman back to Corpus Christi. He should have said, “Price McDaniel’s gone, lady. Long gone. Chances are good he’s dead. Your trip was for naught. Adios.” That, after all, was the truth.

“It was kind of you to let me stay, Mr. Bandera.”

She was right behind him now, so close that if he turned he could take her in his arms the way he’d longed to do, ached to do, year after year, night after night after night.

When he did turn, she stepped back, obviously uncomfortable, perhaps even afraid. He was a stranger, after all. He wasn’t Price.

“You’re probably hungry, Miss Russell,” he said. “I’ll fix us something to eat.”

“That would be wonderful.” She was pulling off her gloves now, one dainty finger at a time. “I wish you’d call me Emily. I feel as if I’ve known you long enough and well enough, Mr. Bandera, to call you by your Christian name. May I? John?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

She tossed her gloves on the bed. “Good.” Then she started plucking the pins from her prim little hat. “You’ll think this strange perhaps, John,” she said, “but this place, The Crippled B, feels more like my home in many ways than Mississippi ever did.”

John didn’t respond. He was already on his way out of the room, hurrying, fleeing, before his Emmy pulled the last pin loose and uncovered all those glorious golden curls.

Exhausted as she was, Emily lay awake for a long time that night in the housekeeper’s narrow bed with its starched muslin sheets and ancient, threadbare quilt. She tried with all her might to think about Price, but her mind kept returning to John Bandera. What a peculiar man he was, and not in the least as Price had described him.

She recalled one particular letter in which Price had referred to his partner as a mongrel. Emily had written back, asking for details. “His mother was a Comanche,” Price had replied. “As for his father, I assume the man was white, light-eyed, and quite tall—as John is over six feet—and the culprit was probably fleet of foot since he didn’t stick around to even witness the birth of his child.”

“Bandera’s a man of few words,” another letter had said. Having met John now, Emily thought that was an exaggeration. He was a man of fewer than few words. It was her impression this evening that speech was almost painful for him and that he was grateful for their frequent lapses into silence, and then thoroughly relieved when it came time to say good-night.

A very peculiar man. And at the same time an extraordinarily handsome man whose features seemed to blend the very best of his diverse bloodlines. His long, dark Indian hair had the merest suggestion of curl, a gift of his father no doubt, along with the amber light that glowed in his dark eyes. His features weren’t finely sculpted the way Price’s were, but rather ruggedly chiseled from brow to jaw.

He was as different from Price as night from day, and yet there had been a time or two during their meal when John had somehow reminded her of Price, not in looks but in his speech. Not that there was so much of that, but once or twice he’d used a word or turned a phrase that sounded uncannily like Price. It probably shouldn’t have surprised her, though, since the two of them had been together—in the Army and now at The Crippled B—for eight years or so. It only made sense that they would pick up each other’s habits, mannerisms, and patterns of speech.

She fell asleep finally, wondering what Price’s voice sounded like and if it was as deep as John Bandera’s and if the Mississippian she loved so well had acquired the subtle Spanish accent that made the sound of his partner’s voice so sensuous and exotic.

He may have been a man of few words, but those few were certainly like music.

Chapter Three

The Crippled B’s beautiful, but uninvited guest slept late the following morning, for which John was grateful since it gave him some additional and very necessary time to get not only his house in order, but his mind as well.

The night before, after Emily had gone to bed, John had gathered up all of her letters, along with her photograph in its hammered tin frame, then locked them away in the safe where he kept the deeds to all his property and the cash he kept on hand to meet the monthly payroll.

Right now there wasn’t anybody to pay, thank God, or to tell Emily Russell that they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Price McDaniel in three years. John decided that he didn’t have much cause to worry about Señora Fuentes or her daughter, Lupe, since neither one of them spoke more than one or two words of English.

As far as he knew, Emily’s knowledge of Spanish was limited to a few assorted words he’d written in a couple of his letters to her. Besides, Price had left long before John had hired the housekeeper. As far as he knew, Señora Fuentes and her daughter didn’t even know his missing partner’s name.

It was different, though, with some of the longtime ranch hands, the ones who’d been around from the beginning of The Crippled B. Fortunately, two of the old-timers, Diego and Hector, only knew enough English to order a halfway decent meal in an Abilene cafe. But then there was Tater Latham. The lanky Kansan not only spoke English, but spoke it at such length and at such great volume that people were always telling him to shut up. Tater, when he returned, could be a problem.

The obvious solution, of course, was sending Emily back to her home in Mississippi. And during a long night with hardly any sleep, John had decided to do just that. Send the beautiful Miss Russell back to Russell County where she belonged.

But not yet.

Dios, not just yet.

Although he had fallen in love with his Emmy’s words on paper, it had only taken him moments to realize that those words had been a perfect reflection of the flesh-and-blood woman. She was as bright as she was beautiful. As kind as she was fair.

She was a lady through and through, and yet far more sensuous than he’d ever have believed with her full lips and her direct blue gaze. Her accent reminded him of Price, but his partner’s voice had been salted with sarcasm while Emily’s flowed like the sweetest clover honey.

And lady that she was, she’d given him not the slightest indication that the color of his skin offended her or his accent grated on her ears or his lack of proper parentage affected her at all. She seemed oblivious to any difference.

Last evening John had even caught himself studying her calm expression and thinking that maybe it didn’t matter to his Emmy one bit that he wasn’t a blue-eyed, fair-haired, fine-blooded gentleman like Price. But, of course, it had to matter. How could it not? Miss Emily Russell of Russell County, Mississippi, was just too kind and too polite, too much of a lady, to allow her disdain and her distaste to show.

“You’re a damned fool,” John muttered to himself. “Loco. Estupido.”

He swore again as he jerked open the center drawer of the desk, withdrawing a sheet of paper to make a list of supplies they’d be needing soon for The Crippled B. Maybe, he hoped, tallying pounds of flour and salt and chicken feed, and figuring yards of hemp rope and muslin and wire would take his mind off the woman who was sleeping nearby in Señora Fuentes’s bed.

He’d only managed to write a few items on the page when he heard her honey voice.

“Good morning, John.”

She seemed to float into the front room, her blue silk wrapper whisking about her legs and her golden hair spilling over her shoulders like warm morning sunshine. Then she stood still, staring at the desktop.

“Oh, you’re busy writing. I’m so sorry, John. I didn’t intend to interrupt you.”

“No. It’s all right. You’re not interrupting at all. I was just…”

The words stuck in his throat all of a sudden when he looked down at the list and the dark, distinctive penmanship there. Had she seen it? With a flick of his wrist, he turned the telltale paper over.

“This can wait,” he told her, putting down the pen and rising from his chair.

Emily continued to stare at the desk, though, with a wistful slant to her mouth and an odd, distracted light in her eyes.

“I was just thinking about Price,” she said almost dreamily. “I imagine this is where he sits when he composes letters, isn’t it?” She gestured to the chair John had just left.

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

She moved forward then, reached for the steel pen he’d only just put down, and held it delicately, as if it might break from a mere touch.

“You must think me very silly to be so sentimental about an inanimate object like this. It’s just…” She clutched the pen tighter. Her eyes shone with tears. “When do you think Price will be returning from Kansas? Will it be days? Weeks?”

“I don’t know.” Never, he longed to say. Jamas.

Under the golden shawl of her hair, John could see her delicate shoulders slump a fraction. He ached to take her in his arms, to comfort her. He had to clench his fists to keep his hands from reaching out. She was so fragile just then, so pale and vulnerable, and he thought of how Price had described the Southern belles he claimed to know so well. Gardenias, he’d called them. Touch them and they bruise.

Emily put the pen down with exquisite care, sighed, and then turned to him, attempting to smile.

“Well, enough of that. Nobody likes a sad and weepy female for a guest, do they? I’ll try to be better company, John. I promise. Now, don’t let me take up any more of your time. I don’t want to keep you from your work.”

He shrugged again. “There’s not so much of that this time of year.”

He wished there were. He wished he had a ton of work to distract him. A score of horses to be broken. A hundred mavericks to be branded. A thousand back-breaking chores. Anything to put some distance between himself and this woman. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. Distance.

“I was planning to ride out today and check on a few of the line shacks,” he said. “To see if they need repairs.”

Emily was gazing at him so intently now, such bright curiosity shining in her eyes, that he found himself uttering words he’d never intended.

“You could come along if you want. With me, I mean. See some of the ranch.”

Then, before he could take the invitation back, Emily’s whole face fairly glowed. “Oh, I’d love that,” she said. “I’ll hurry and get dressed.”

Emily surveyed as much of herself as possible in the little mirror that hung between Señora Fuentes’s wooden crucifix and a candle sconce. She’d laced her corset as loosely as she could before putting on her lightest gabardine dress. She looked healthy and plump, she decided, rather than three, nearly four months pregnant. And she was looking forward to her excursion around The Crippled B.

“Best bring some extra belongings,” John had told her, and when she’d raised an eyebrow, he had added, “This is Texas. We may not make it back tonight.”

She had simply nodded in agreement, and now she wondered why the prospect of overnighting in the wilds with a near stranger—half Indian, at that—didn’t bother her in the least. Quite the contrary as a matter of fact. She was looking forward to seeing as much as possible of Price’s ranch and, somewhere deep inside her, in some curious little corner, she was looking forward to being with John Bandera, listening to his deep, Spanish-accented voice, stingy though he was with it, and looking into his dark amber eyes.

“Why, Emily Russell, you shameless hussy!”

She grinned at her own reflection in the mirror, thinking that being out West had already stripped her of more than a few constraints of polite society. There was the loose corset, of course, but that was a necessity in her condition. But she had also brushed out her hair and pulled it back with a blue ribbon, something she never would have done back home. Nor would she have found herself so drawn to a man who was little more than a stranger. Or attracted to anyone, for that matter.

The incident with Alvin Gibbons had had nothing to do with physical attraction, but everything to do with her broken heart and devastated hopes. There hadn’t been a second she’d spent with Alvin that she hadn’t wished that he were Price. On the night that they made love, she almost managed to convince herself that he truly was Price.

Funny, she thought. All of a sudden she didn’t feel so brokenhearted anymore or quite so hopeless. No doubt that was because she was here, at The Crippled B, surrounded by Price’s land and his possessions. Now, if only Price himself were here, everything would be perfect. Or almost.

She smiled softly, remembering the feel of his pen in her hand a while earlier. That little piece of steel and all the poetry that had flowed from it had changed her life, she thought. She could only pray now that it was for better rather than worse.

Then she sighed, picked up the carpetbag she’d packed, and went to meet John Bandera for their excursion.

John had already stacked an assortment of lumber and tools in the wagon bed. Then, just as he was lifting a keg of nails, he caught sight of Emily coming from the back of the house. He nearly dropped twenty pounds of iron right on his toes.

She looked so pretty and prim in her tan getup with all its pleats and swags and bows. Like a little birthday cake swirled with pale chocolate icing. Like the best of birthday gifts. He had to firm his lips against the smile that was itching across them.

“You can’t wear that hat,” he said almost gruffly as she approached, narrowing his eyes on the straw and velvet concoction atop her head. “You’ll burn to a crisp. This is—”

“Texas! Yes, I know.” She laughed as she brought a beige silk parasol from behind her skirt, then snapped it open and lifted it above her head. “There. Will that do, John?”

He grinned in spite of himself, thinking he’d never seen anything quite so charming or half as silly. “Fine with me, if you want to hold that umbrella for ten or twelve hours.”

“It might even shade us both,” she said.

John had no intention of sitting that close. Where the hell had his head been when he’d conjured up this trip, then suggested she come along? Hell, if he’d used his head six years earlier instead of his heart, if he’d never sent that first fateful letter, he wouldn’t be in this situation now, would he?

While Emily waited in the dainty shade of her parasol, he finished loading the wagon. He tossed his saddle in and then brought his favorite mare from the corral, slipped the bridle over her head, and secured the reins to the tailgate.

“That’s it,” he said. “Let’s go.”

She stood on the opposite side of the wagon, smiling pleasantly, twirling her parasol, making no effort to move. He found himself staring at her stupidly while it slowly dawned on him that it had been a while since he’d been with a person hindered by her own clothes, one who required assistance getting into, out of, up on, down from, and around.

Madre de Dios. That meant he was going to have to assist her, to act as if he wasn’t terrified to clasp his hands about her waist, to feel the size and the warmth of her through her dress when he lifted her up. And then he was going to have to let her go, to pretend that touching her meant nothing to him at all when it meant everything, when it was all that he’d longed to do and dreamed about for years.

For a second John was tempted to unload the wagon and drag all the lumber and tools back into the barn, to tell Emily the weather looked bad or the horse looked lame or the axle looked cracked or any excuse he could conjure up to stay here, not to have to put his hands on her.

Caught in his quandary, John didn’t immediately notice that Emily had already taken matters—as well as her skirt—into her own hands. She had collapsed the little umbrella in order to grasp the back of the wagon seat to haul herself up, but in another second it was going to be confounded Emily who collapsed if he didn’t help.

John sprinted around the rear of the wagon and got his hands up just as she was coming down, then he stood there—half dazed and wholly mute—with his arms full of his Emmy, her twenty yards of skirts and petticoats, and her damn blasted parasol.

The little shriek she’d uttered when first falling turned into a bright peal of laughter now and her blue eyes sparkled up into his, reminding him of high mountain lakes and wide summer skies and how much he’d loved the sense of humor that always came through in her letters, making him laugh out loud when he read them. He wanted to laugh now in concert with Emily, but he didn’t. He didn’t dare.

Instead, he let out a scorching curse in Spanish before he growled, “You need to be more careful. You almost broke your blasted neck.”

She blinked at his harsh tone and her laughter stopped immediately. The light in her eyes darkened. The lovely sparkle disappeared.

He shifted her abruptly in his arms, then lofted her brusquely onto the seat. “Hang on, will you? It’s a long drop to the ground.”

Emily nodded, thinking suddenly that the drop was longer and more treacherous than John could know for someone in her delicate condition, a fact that she’d breezily ignored when she’d attempted to climb into the wagon without his aid.

Ever since her arrival in Texas, she’d felt young and adventurous. That wasn’t good. At twenty-six, she wasn’t all that young. At more than three months gone with child, she shouldn’t feel the least inclined to adventure. In any condition, she shouldn’t be so excited about the prospect of an excursion with a man she barely knew.

What would people in Russell County think of her outrageous behavior? What would Price think when he learned that she had gone off so cavalierly with his partner? Surely he wouldn’t approve.

But no sooner had that idea struck her, than she realized just how ludicrous it was to worry about Price’s or anybody’s approval or disapproval. Her reputation was already ruined. She was already a fallen woman. All things considered, how much farther was there for her to tumble?

Emily snapped open her parasol and positioned it over her head just as the wagon seat canted leftward, pressing her—shoulder to thigh—against John for a moment before he shifted away.

“You ready?” he asked.

For what? Emily thought suddenly before she nodded an enthusiastic yes.

“Vamanos,” John said, and his big, dark hands gently flicked the reins.

By three that afternoon the sun was still beating down on them like a white-hot hammer. To the west, mirages pooled in the distance under miles of dry mesquite. To the south, however, the sky had been darkening ominously for the past hour and now it was taking on a sickly greenish cast that John didn’t like one bit.

Emily wasn’t faring too well in this heat, in his opinion, even though she kept protesting that she was used to it back home in Mississippi. They’d stopped for a bit to eat at noon, but after a single hard-boiled egg she’d begun to look queasy. When she excused herself and disappeared around a live oak, John was fairly sure he heard that hard-boiled egg coming right back up.

Now, with what looked to be a good-sized storm moving toward them, he cursed himself once more for bringing her along. He should have kept a weather eye on the sky instead of a lover’s eye on her. He should have considered her comfort instead of his own misguided desire to be close to her. She wasn’t some sturdy, rawboned farm girl, used to scorching heat and hardships. She was, as Price had said, a gardenia. And even though John had never seen one of those, he could well imagine their pale delicacy after seeing Emily.

He wrenched his gaze from the approaching storm to look at her now, and her eyes met his as frankly as they always did, while her mouth curved into a lovely and contented smile.

“I’m so enjoying this, John. It’s hard to believe we’ve been traveling for over five hours and we’re still on your land.” Her smile grew even lovelier and warmer. “You and Price have done very well for yourselves.”

“I guess,” he said. “It’s not so hard, though, when one partner’s all money and the other’s all muscle.”

She gave him an odd look then, and John immediately realized he was quoting directly from a letter he had written her several years ago. A letter Price had written her.

“That’s what Price always said, anyway,” he added quickly. “What he says, I mean.”

Damnation! He was digging himself in deeper every time he opened his mouth. There was so much he couldn’t say that he couldn’t even begin to remember it all.

“Price loves this place,” she said. “Maybe he didn’t at first, but I’ve gotten the impression over the years that The Crippled B truly has come to be his home. I suspect it’s the same for you.”

“Do you?”

She nodded. “I’ve been watching you today. Watching the way your eyes fairly drink in the landscape. The way you smile at the young calves chasing after their mothers and at the deer when they disappear into the brush. I saw the worry in your eyes when you pointed out those coyote tracks a few miles back.”

Now she tilted a little grin at him and wagged a finger. “You can’t fool me, John Bandera.”

“No?”

“No. You love this place every bit as much as Price does.”

“Maybe,” he said, remembering how his missing partner came to hate the dust that settled over everything and the relentless heat and, toward the end, even the sight of a longhorn. Price had even started talking about going back to Mississippi—the lesser of two evils, he had claimed—before he suddenly took off for parts unknown and no doubt just as evil once he arrived.

Emily closed her parasol now, for the sun had been obliterated by thick, churning clouds. A gust of wind tugged at her hair ribbon. “One thing Price mentioned that he especially loves here is being able to see weather coming in. He says…Oh, how did he describe it? That it’s a little like watching a herd of buffalo stampeding across the sky.” Her gaze lifted. “He’s right. I can see it for myself. It does look like a great wild herd of buffalo.”

Green buffalo, John thought. Fierce ones, too, and coming on fast. He and Emily were about to be trampled by their thundering hooves. He thought briefly of whipping the horse and trying to outrun the storm, but he realized it was no use. Though he’d only been in one twister before, years ago in Indian Territory, he’d learned only too well that you didn’t run from these wind devils. You hid.

The roiling clouds were beginning to dip all around them now and the wind was starting to pick up dust and dead leaves and dry sticks. The pressure in his ears shifted suddenly, and just then a bolt of lightning split the sky to the south, then another, and another.

He pulled the wagon up, and at the same time did a quick and desperate reckoning of the terrain. The dry, narrow bed of an arroyo lay just a hundred feet or so to the left. They could make it—maybe—if they ran.

Chapter Four

“Maybe we should crawl under the wagon,” Emily called out to him over the fury of the rising wind.

“Too dangerous,” John called back.

He was quickly undoing the reins he’d tethered to the tailgate in order to free his wild-eyed, panicky saddle horse. There wasn’t going to be time to unhitch the luckless gelding up front. Then, when the first hailstones pounded down on his shoulders and the brim of his hat, he realized there was barely time to make it to the creek bed.

Emily was a tangle of windblown skirts trying frantically and unsuccessfully to climb down from the wagon seat, when he reached her.

“Here. Come on.”

With one swift and not-so-gentle motion, John wrenched her down onto the ground, then propelled her in the direction of the creek.

The whole world had gone a wet and queasy green around them with long, skittish bolts of blue lightning striking ever closer and the resultant thunderclaps almost deafening them now. Hailstones, big as babies’ fists, bounced around them as they ran, and turned the ground beneath them treacherously slick.

Emily’s face was pale and her eyes were huge with terror as she stumbled along beside him. Dios! She had every right to be terrified. He suspected his own dark face went a few shades paler when he glimpsed the caroming, twisting, screaming cloud that was riding down on them.

Once they reached the arroyo, John didn’t stand on ceremony. He pushed Emily facedown in the shallow ditch, then immediately threw himself on top of her, trying his best to hunch his shoulders and arms over her head, to create whatever barrier he could between the woman and the storm. He twisted his fingers in some exposed roots and held on for all he was worth.

The tornado sounded like a locomotive at full throttle when it blasted by. John couldn’t tell exactly how close it was, but its winds pulled at his shirttail and pant legs as if they meant to strip him naked or even to the bone.

All the while, the hard, frozen rain was battering him relentlessly. Some of the hailstones felt more like boulders or cannonballs when they slammed into him, so he tried to flatten himself even more to keep Emily out of the line of fire.

“It’s all right, Emily,” he whispered close to her ear. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

His words were as much to reassure himself as they were to comfort her, for John wasn’t sure how long he could keep from being ripped away by the fierce winds or withstand the heavy onslaught of the hail or even keep his own weight from crushing the delicate body pressed into the ditch beneath him.

It had probably been two dozen years since he’d been inside a church, more than that since he last confessed his sins to a padre, but now the words of the Ave Maria came back to him and he whispered them again and again, adding a prayer of his own.

Santa Maria, por favor, do not let us perish here. Or take me, if you must take someone, but let this woman live.

The storm roared over them like a fast freight train, and then, just as quickly as it had emerged, it disappeared. The hard hail reverted to a soft rain and the brutal winds dwindled to a wet breeze. The lightning and the thunder ceased. A few feeble rays of sunshine fingered through the clouds.

“Thank God,” Emily breathed into the wet sleeve that was still shielding her head. Only now was she truly aware of the warm weight upon her. She tried in vain to move, to turn.

“John?” It came as no surprise that her voice was trembling along with all the rest of her. “John, are you all right?”

He shifted a bit, but it was another moment before he answered. “Fine. You? Are you all right?”

“Yes, I think so. My God, that was close.”

He grunted in reply— “Too close!”—and rolled to his left, allowing Emily to sit up. After she blinked the grit from her eyes and looked around, all she could do was moan softly. “Oh, my God.”

For as far as she could see in every direction, the ground was covered with white balls of ice, some of them almost as big around as grapefruits. She’d seen hail before but never anything bigger than peas or marbles. This was the eeriest sight she’d ever witnessed as the sun began to filter through the clouds and to glisten on the bleak ice field around them.

Why, the landscape was so pearly white they could have been on the moon, for all she knew. Where in the world was the wagon? And where were the horses? Where was…well…everything? Even the few mesquite trees still standing nearby were bent in the direction of the storm and nearly barren of their leaves.

Emily tried to stand up only to discover that her liquid knees would not support her, so she collapsed back in a heap of wet and muddy skirts.

“Here.” John had gotten to his feet and now he extended his open hand to her. “Come on.”

His grip was warm and firm when he pulled her up, but as he did, Emily heard his sharp intake of breath and the Spanish curse he bit off.

“What is it, John?”

“It’s nothing. I’m okay.” His amber eyes searched her face, before his gaze traveled the length of her. “And you? No broken bones? Bruises?”

Emily shook her head and tried to mount a small smile. “Just quaking knees. That was the worst storm I’ve ever seen. It’s a miracle we weren’t killed.”

He was surveying the landscape around them now, glaring at the chunks of ice as if they were animate things still capable of doing damage. His breathing, Emily noticed, was shallow and his lips drawn together in a hard line. She could tell he was in pain, and could see that he was trying to conceal it from her.

“John?”

He swore softly again and stepped up out of the little, ice-covered creek bed. “Come on. If you’re steady enough to walk, we’ll look for the horses and the wagon. It won’t be long before it gets too dark to find them.”

“I’m steady enough,” she said. “But you—”

“Good,” he said, cutting her off. He grasped her elbow then to keep her from slipping on the melting carpet of ice. “Let’s go.”

The sun was just about to slide over the western horizon and darkness was coming on fast from the east when John finally, grudgingly admitted defeat.

They weren’t going to find the wagon, and even if they did manage to locate it, it wasn’t going to be in one piece. The damn thing had probably been blown to bits, and all of those bits were probably whirled and scattered over five counties. He didn’t even want to consider the whereabouts of his favorite mare or the fate of the poor gelding.

Nor did he want to think too much about his own condition. As the hours progressed and his pain increased substantially, he’d concluded that one of those cannonball hailstones had broken at least one of his ribs. It was his punishment, no doubt, for bringing Emily along today and putting her in harm’s way. And now he’d be paying even more for his crime tonight when they’d have to sleep here, in the open, together.

He’d have paid double the contents of his safe right now for a bottle of tequila to ease his pain and to turn his thoughts away from the woman who’d been walking by his side for the last few hours, uncomplaining, even cheerful, in contrast to his increasingly black mood.

“We’ll stop here,” he told her.

“Yes,” she answered with a sigh. “I suppose we should.”

She sounded tired now, more than John had realized. Even so, she managed to smile.

“I’ve never camped out before, you know.” She looked up at the darkening sky. “I’ve never slept under the stars.”

He knew. It was something they’d discussed back and forth in their letters. She envied him, she’d written, for being able to sleep under heaven’s starry canopy. And John had often dreamed about just this, sharing these same stars with his Emmy and introducing her to Polaris and Cassiopeia and Orion, one arm draped around her delicate shoulders and the other arm pointing skyward, knowing it would never happen. Only now it was.

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he said gruffly. “I’ll have you back to the house tomorrow. Back to a decent bed.” And then, just under his breath, he added, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry!” she exclaimed. “Why, John Bandera, I honestly believe you’re holding yourself personally responsible for the storm. It’s little wonder you and Price make such good partners. I believe he’d have a similar reaction.”

She wagged a finger at him, then laughed gaily. “But Price has assured me that sleeping out under the stars is better than any church for being close to God.”

Recognizing his own heartfelt words, John scowled. “I didn’t know my partner was such a philosopher.”

“I’m sure there’s quite a lot about him you don’t know.” There was no smugness in her voice. Merely certainty. And an undisguised affection. “I believe men tend to open up their feelings more readily to the opposite sex.”

“Maybe so.”

She gave him a look that was part pity, part female curiosity. “I take it, then, that you’ve never philosophized or shared any of your tender feelings with another?”

“You take it any way you see fit, Emily. Me and my tender feelings need to gather up some firewood now before it’s too dark.”

He stalked away from her as well as a man with a bashed rib cage could stalk. By the time he’d gathered ample brush and had coaxed it into a decent fire, John could feel the flames warming the sheen of sweat on his face. His side felt as if there was an arrow buried deep within it. There was no use ignoring it anymore, or pretending that he wasn’t hurt and even in some degree of danger. If that invisible arrow of a rib were to shift and puncture his lung, his Emmy was going to be in big trouble.

He lowered himself gingerly to the ground and began to unbutton his shirt just as Emily came up behind him with an armload of brush.

“I knew it,” she exclaimed, dropping her bundle of firewood and then dropping herself in a heap of skirts beside him. “You are injured, John. What is it? How bad is it? What can I do to help?”

She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and the touch instantly reverberated throughout John’s body. Now, in addition to his broken rib and bruised muscles, he suffered the piercing and indescribable pain of desire.

“It’s not so serious,” he said, trying not to wince when he eased his shirttails from under his belt. “Just a bruised rib, I think. I’m going to tear up my shirt and use it as a binding.”

“You’ll do no such thing.” She shot to her feet. “I won’t allow it.”

He gritted his teeth, then lofted his gaze to the starry sky, seeking the patience he didn’t feel just then. He was aching too damn much to spare Miss Emily Russell’s delicate feelings of politeness and prudery.

“Look,” he said bluntly, “I’m a stranger to you. I know that. And I know it isn’t polite or fitting to take off my shirt in front of you. But you’re going to have to trust me about this, Emily. It’s very, very necessary.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, John.”

She was standing behind him so he couldn’t see her expression or just what she was doing, but the next sounds he heard were the unmistakable rustlings of a woman divesting herself of a petticoat or two.

“What I meant was,” she continued, “that it’s foolish for you to rip up your shirt when I have all this silk and muslin doing nothing but puffing out my skirt.”

She plopped back down beside him, her arms full of white lacy garments. “There. You see? Now, please just tell me how wide I should tear the strips.”

Her voice, as well as the brass tack glitter in her eyes, brooked no argument, so John held up his thumb and forefinger, indicating a decent width for a bandage.

“Two inches, give or take, I’d say,” he murmured.

“All right.” She began ripping. And ripping. No sooner had she shredded one petticoat than she began on the other. John watched in appreciative silence while her fingers fairly flew. In a matter of minutes, she was done with the ripping and had begun knotting the lacy strips together.

He stole a glance or two at her determined face. Her mouth was a study in purposefulness, and when her tongue peeked out a fraction to wet her lips, he felt his body tighten instantly at the sight. The thought of how he’d react if he actually kissed those lips made his mouth so dry he almost couldn’t speak. Not the words he wanted to say, anyway.

“I’m grateful, Emily,” he said at last. “I’ll repay you for your loss as soon as we get back to the ranch.”

“Nonsense. I’ll be glad not to have to carry the weight of these petticoats on our walk tomorrow.” She pulled the final white knot tight. “There. Now let’s get you out of that shirt.”

He started to shrug out of it on his own, but then there were her hands all of a sudden and her cool fingertips guiding him, gliding down his back and arms while her mouth made all sorts of soft and sympathetic little noises.

“Oh, you poor dear,” she exclaimed. “I’ve never seen such bruises. Especially here.”

Her light touch on the site of his injured rib was as exquisite as it was painful. John sucked in his breath.

“I can manage,” he said, reaching for one end of the long knotted strip.

Emily jerked it out of his hand. “I’m sure you can, but I suspect I’ll manage better. Just tell me whether it’s too tight. It should be tight, shouldn’t it, if it’s to do you any good?”

She was already beginning to wind the petticoat strips around his chest, her hair brushing his skin, her breath warm and sweet on his cheek, his neck, his shoulders. For a moment John felt almost guilty, as if he had deliberately conjured up the violent storm and its aftermath for the sole sake of this moment of intimacy. He closed his eyes the better to savor it. He’d dreamed of this—her!—so very long.

“There.” She wove the ragged end of the bandage through the strips already in place. “That ought to do it. For now at least.”

John drew in a tentative breath, deeper than the shallow ones he’d been practicing for the last few hours. It was better. He let the breath out as a rough sigh of relief.

“Much better,” he said. “Muchas gracias, Emily. I’m in your debt.”

She sat back now and laughed. “De nada, John. Did I say that right?”

He nodded, trying to suppress a smile.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I don’t think Price would ever forgive me if I didn’t do all I could for his partner when he was in trouble, do you?”

He could feel his expression alter and hoped she wouldn’t be able to read the disappointment that seemed to wash over his face at the mention of Price’s name. Their moment of intimacy, so precious to John, had just blown away like smoke.

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