High drama. Heart-stopping romance.

Legendary family heritage.

TEXAS SHEIKHS

Texas was the only home the Coleman brothers had ever known. But secrets of their past have been unveiled to reveal the truth: royal blood flows through their veins. To forge a new destiny, they will need to draw upon their deep familial bonds and find loves that legends are made of.

Don’t miss any of the exciting stories in this brand-new series!

HIS INNOCENT TEMPTRESS

by New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels

HIS ARRANGED MARRIAGE

by Tina Leonard

HIS SHOTGUN PROPOSAL

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

HIS ROYAL PRIZE

by Debbi Rawlins

Dear Reader,

Spring is the perfect time to celebrate the joy of romance. So get set to fall in love as Harlequin American Romance brings you four new spectacular books.

First, we’re happy to welcome New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels to the Harlequin American Romance family. She inaugurates TEXAS SHEIKHS, our newest in-line continuity, with His Innocent Temptress. This four-book series focuses on a Texas family with royal Arabian blood who must fight to reunite their family and reclaim their rightful throne.

Also, available this month, The Virgin Bride Said, “Wow!” by Cathy Gillen Thacker, a delightful marriage-of-convenience story and the latest installment in THE LOCKHARTS OF TEXAS miniseries. Kara Lennox provides fireworks as a beautiful young woman who’s looking for Mr. Right sets out to Tame an Older Man following the advice of 2001 WAYS TO WED, a book guaranteed to provide satisfaction! And Have Baby, Need Beau says it all in Rita Herron’s continuation of her wonderful THE HARTWELL HOPE CHESTS series.

Enjoy April’s selections and come back next month for more love stories filled with heart, home and happiness from Harlequin American Romance.

Wishing you happy reading,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance

His Innocent Temptress

Kasey Michaels

To Tina Colombo, just because.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kasey Michaels, a New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty books, divides her creative time between writing contemporary romances and Regency novels. Married and the mother of four, Kasey has garnered the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Medallion Award and the Romantic Times Magazine Best Regency Trophy for her writing.

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

Epilogue

Prologue

If it weren’t for Layla, Rose was certain she and her children would be dead.

Four days earlier, Rose’s Ibrahim Bin Habib El Jeved had been husband and father, and ruler of Sorajhee. Loved, adored, a benevolent ruler who always remembered that he served at the favor of his people.

To protect his people, Ibrahim had been negotiating a very public political alliance with a neighboring kingdom on the edge of Saudi Arabia, planning for Sorajhee and Balahar to become allies in the troubled Middle East. He’d even gone so far as to secretly pledge that one of his three young sons would one day marry a daughter of King Zakariyya Al Farid, ruler of Balahar.

Layla’s husband, Ibrahim’s brother, had been very much against the idea. Yes, Azzam was very much against the idea.

And four days ago, during a well-orchestrated demonstration against the proposed political alliance of Sorajhee and Balahar, Ibrahim had been assassinated.

Rose had gone into shock at the terrible news, barely able to function. She had come to Sorajhee as a young bride, leaving her American roots behind her to follow the man she loved with all her heart and mind. Now she was alone, and with three young, vulnerable princes to protect.

Layla had come to her the same day Ibrahim was buried, warning her that Azzam planned to take over the kingdom, first ridding himself of “Ibrahim’s half-breed whelps and their bitch.”

“He said this? He would kill us? Kill my babies?” Rose asked her sister-in-law, her shock giving way to panic and anger. “Ibrahim had considered this, but I never believed him. You and Azzam have been our friends. Our family.”

“Azzam wants his brother’s throne, my sister,” Layla told her, “and if he has to crawl over the bodies of his brother and his nephews, he will do it gladly. Sister, he has already begun. I have learned that it was Azzam’s order, if not his hand, that marked the end of Ibrahim.”

Rose pressed her hands to her cheeks, willing herself past the horror, the anger. She had to set aside her sorrow and pain. She had to consider her children.

Drying her tears, she sat down to think. Small and blond, and looking very much the American that she was, she knew that Azzam and many others believed her to be young and witless. An easy pawn.

An easy target, now that her beloved Ibrahim was gone.

How wrong they were.

She was queen of Sorajhee, mother of the heirs, widow of the sheikh.

But even a wise queen knows when preservation means leaving the field, regrouping, gathering her strength. Protecting her young, as a mother lioness would protect her cubs.

Rose stood and ran to the corner of the room and a small locked chest Ibrahim had shown her months ago, when he had first begun his public negotiations with Balahar. She pulled the slim golden chain from her neck and used the key attached to it to open the chest and retrieve its contents.

“What is this, sister of my heart?” Layla asked, standing behind her, watching.

Rose turned, clutching the wrapped package to her. “The last gift of my husband, Layla. A Swiss bank account with enough funds in it to care for my children, the entire trust fund from my parents, and more. Passports for the four of us.”

“Passports? Sister, consider. Azzam will stop you at the border. Unless…no, it couldn’t work. Azzam would find out and kill me, too. He is my husband, Rose, but I fear him. We must all fear him. Remember, I had been promised to Ibrahim before he met you. Azzam would see me as a traitor who favored the widow of his brother and enemy.”

“Don’t worry, Layla. Most of the work has already been done. These are American passports in my maiden name, Coleman. And very American first names for my boys, names no one will recognize unless they have been warned to look for them. I’ve just got to get the boys across the border and we can fly to safety. I know a way—it has already been planned—but I’ll need your help to get Azzam to let me leave the palace.”

She put her hand on Layla’s cheek. “Sister of my heart, you have warned me. Now help me. Please, help my children.”

THREE DAYS LATER, Rose and her boys were on their way to the summer palace, taking with them a carefully chosen retinue of servants loyal to Ibrahim.

It had been announced in the newspapers that Rose and her sons had voluntarily moved from the palace to retire to the privacy of the country, where they would mourn their husband and father.

The number to the Swiss bank account and the four passports traveled with them, as did a young colt, Jabbar, Ibrahim’s beloved Arabian stallion. No one would expect Rose to flee, not when she was taking a horse with her. Azzam let them go.

They never reached the summer palace. Ten miles outside of the city, Rose and her children stopped at a small house owned by relatives of her maid. They changed clothes and changed transport.

Three hours later, they were across the border to Balahar; five hours later, they were airborne, on their way to England and safety. The servants, well paid, were also on their way to safety from Azzam’s revenge. Jabbar was on another airplane, already winging toward Boston and the necessary quarantine for animals coming into the United States.

Rose held Makin, the oldest of the twins, on her lap as his brother Kadar slept in the aisle seat. Barely more than babies, only three years old, they had no idea what had happened to them, but they could sense the nervousness of their mother and had been fractious and demanding until at last sleep had claimed them.

Their older brother, and heir to the throne of Sorajhee, Alim, was only a year older than the twins, but he had a wisdom and demeanor beyond his four years. He sat beside Rose now, holding her hand, stroking it. “I will protect you, Mama,” he told her solemnly. “It is what my father would want.”

Rose felt tears stinging her eyes as she smiled at her oldest son. How like his father he was, with a thick thatch of night-black hair, a handsome but serious face, and already showing signs of being as tall as Ibrahim. They had named him Alim, which meant “wise and learned,” and Alim seemed to know what was expected of him, even in such a terrible time.

“You will be a little boy, my son,” Rose told him, carefully cradling Makin as she bent to kiss her oldest son’s cheek. “And, one day, you will take your father’s place on the throne of Sorajhee.”

They landed at Heathrow airport, to be met by Rose’s brother, Randy Coleman, who had flown out from his home in Boston the moment he got the wire Layla had sent alerting him that a “precious cargo” would be needing his assistance.

That message had hit Randy square in his stomach, as it was the same one Ibrahim had sent him months ago, another precaution he had taken to protect his family. If Randy received such a message, he was to go directly to Heathrow to pick up his sister and the boys, who would be traveling under the name Coleman. Within minutes of receiving the wire speaking of “precious cargo,” Randy had rented a private jet to take him to England, just as his brother-in-law had requested.

Ibrahim, much as he loved his family and wished to protect them, had known that his duty to his subjects was more important, even more sacred, than his own life. But that didn’t mean he would sacrifice his family, and he had planned well. There had never been more than four passports, for Ibrahim would never leave his people, no matter how desperate the danger.

An hour after arriving at Heathrow, Rose was hugging her boys goodbye in another terminal. She had just given them each a different precious gold ring from Ibrahim’s collection, proof of their royalty. Hung around each small neck on slim golden chains, they were the only tangible memory each would carry of their father until Rose could reclaim their destiny.

“My sweet darlings, don’t cry,” she begged the twins, who clung to her neck as she knelt before them. “Mama will join you soon, and Uncle Randy will take such good care of you, I promise. Alim,” she said, reaching past the twins to gather him close. “You know that I must go back and work to uncover the treachery behind your papa’s death. I cannot do that if I am worrying about you and Kadar and Makin.”

“Aunt Layla will help you?” Alim asked, fighting back tears. “I could help you, Mama.”

“And you will, my darling. You will help me by watching over your brothers and obeying your uncle. And you must tell Uncle Randy all about Jabbar, as your papa has already taught you, help raise him to be the champion your papa knew he would become. Now kiss me, and know I love you. I’ll be with you again soon, I promise.”

Randy, already aware that it would be no use to try to talk his sister out of returning to Sorajhee to rally those loyal to Ibrahim, lifted both twins into his strong arms. He kissed his sister and followed Alim into the passageway leading to the plane, as Rose stood with her hands pressed to her mouth, fighting sobs.

Within days she had lost her husband, and now her sons were leaving her. Pain, real physical pain racked her body, and an emptiness such as she had never felt threatened to swallow her, body and soul. She staggered blindly away, down a narrow side hallway, then dropped to her knees and sobbed as if her heart would break.

“I’ll come back for you, my babies, with your father’s murder avenged and your rights restored to you. I promise you that. But now you must be safe, and there is no safety where I’m going.”

THE DAYS PASSED, the months…and then the news came from Layla. Rose was dead, killed while breaking into Azzam’s chambers armed with a knife, clearly out of her head with grief, planning to murder the new ruler of Sorajhee. Layla warned Randy to hide the children, for they were still in danger from her husband, who was now bent on destroying everyone who could be linked to his dead brother.

Randy had already made sure the boys were both legal and hidden as his wards in Boston, using the names on their passports while gaining them the American citizenship that was their right due to their mother. But it wasn’t enough. The press would soon be hounding him, he knew it. Worse, Layla knew where he was, and Layla was with Azzam.

Clearly he needed to do something to make Rose’s sons disappear.

At Layla’s suggestion, Randy returned the three rings to Azzam, telling the man that his nephews were lost in a boating accident off the coast of Cape Cod. There were no bodies to return to Sorajhee to lie with their mother and father. Azzam accepted Randy’s word and returned the rings to him. Randy put the three rings away until the boys were older, to give to them when they could truly understand their heritage and their loss.

As far as the world knew, and the press was avid in following the fate of the martyred Ibrahim’s widow and children, Rose and her children had retired from public life and wanted nothing more than their privacy. Azzam had declared it, therefore it was so. Sorajhee sighed and accepted the word of a Jeved, as it always had, and Azzam closed the borders, declaring that the Fates had spoken. Sorajhee would not ally itself with Balahar.

Randy moved to a ranch near Austin, Texas, just outside a small town called Bridle. Alex, Cade and Mac Coleman moved with him, as did Jabbar, already growing toward the champion Ibrahim had declared he would someday be. Alim and Kadar and Makin were no more.

With his new wife, Vivian, by his side, acting as surrogate mother to the three boys, and with the birth of their own daughter, Jessica, Randy Coleman’s ranch, The Desert Rose, grew to be one of the finest Arabian horse farms in Texas.

Randy brought a partner into the family’s Boston-founded business with him, to help conceal the Coleman name, and Texan Jared Grayson ran the extensive family businesses while Randy and his nephews worked the Arabians. The three boys grew into manhood as Americans, barely remembering their roots in Sorajhee.

But they never forgot Rose, or her promise to return to them….

Chapter One

“Damn it!” Alex Coleman hastily wiped his hands on a towel, then threw it to the ground as he went racing out of the stall and toward the phone hanging on the wall at the far end of the stable. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

This couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t. He hadn’t been expecting the birth this soon, or even considered the possibility of complications.

Hell, he hadn’t expected the pregnancy. Jabbar hadn’t been put to stud in years, having earned his retirement from both the stud and the showring, where he’d been a perennial champion. It was Jabbar who had made The Desert Rose a top breeding farm for world-class Arabians, and his offspring numbered a multitude.

Plus one, if Alex could get Dr. Clark to the ranch in time.

Why had he put his new breeding mare in the pasture with Jabbar? He had thought Khalahari would be safe, be slowly introduced to the ranch, and that Jabbar, in his old age, would ignore the retired showring horse whose injury had taken her from the ring. Alex had bought the mare for almost nothing, but she had such good lines that he hoped one day to breed her. Just not now, and not with Jabbar.

“Somebody must have slipped the old boy some Viagra or something,” his brother Mac had joked when Alex confirmed that Khalahari was unexpectedly carrying Jabbar’s foal.

Consternation had changed to excitement as Alex decided that this could be a fantastic union, producing a true champion to take Jabbar’s place in the ring, in the stud. He didn’t know precisely why he felt that way, but it seemed as if fate, and Jabbar, had decreed it.

Now Khalahari was in trouble, the foal twisted inside her, and Alex knew he could lose them both.

“Come on, come on,” he chanted as he listened to the phone ring, willing Dr. Clark to answer, to be there, to come do his magic as he had done in the past.

“Hello? Dr. Clark’s office.”

Alex began speaking even before the woman had finished her greeting. “This is Alex Coleman out at The Desert Rose. I need the doctor, now.”

“I’ll be right there,” the woman answered.

“What?” Alex held the phone away from his ear for a moment, then realized what was going on. It wasn’t old Doc Clark. He was speaking with the daughter. Hannah? Yeah, Hannah. And fresh from veterinary school. “Not you, woman—your father. I’ve got a prize mare down, foaling, and she’s in big trouble.”

“I understand, Mr. Coleman,” Hannah answered, and he could hear her moving around, probably on a portable phone, gathering supplies or keys or whatever. “My father isn’t available, but I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“Look, sweetheart, I don’t think I’m getting through to you. This is an important foal. Get your hands-on experience somewhere else. With kittens, or something. But get me your dad, now.”

“He’s in Dallas attending a conference, Mr. Coleman, and won’t be home until very late tonight. I don’t think your mare can wait for him. As I said, I’ll be right there. Beggars can’t be choosers, Mr. Coleman. I’m a vet. You need a vet. Now we’re wasting time, aren’t we?”

“But—but I don’t—”

He was talking to the dial tone.

HANNAH MADE IT in fifteen minutes, pushing her four-wheel drive all the way, skidding to a halt in the stable yard as Alex Coleman ran into the yard, waving his arms at her.

Hopping out of the driver’s seat, her bag already in her hand, she got caught in the seat belt and landed on all fours in the stable yard. She quickly got up, brushed herself off, then followed him into the stable at a trot. “Where?” she said, as the man obviously wasn’t going to waste time saying hello.

“The big stall, down at the end, if you can get there without falling on your face again,” Alex told her, leading the way. “It’s a breech. Her first foal, and probably her last.”

“Gee, that pumped me right up, makes me all chock-full of confidence,” Hannah grumbled under her breath as she turned into the stall, tripping over a towel lying on the straw. Some entrance she’d made, pratfalls all the way. But she couldn’t think about that now. Not with the mare lying there, her single visible eye wide and wild with pain.

Hannah’s well-known klutziness, a symptom of her lifelong shyness and her father’s belief that she could never really please him, disappeared in a blink of the mare’s eye, and Hannah became all business.

“Grab her head, and hold it firm while I take a look, see where we are,” she ordered Alex. She was already throwing her fleece-lined jacket into a corner of the stall and rolling up her flannel sleeves. It was early March, and cold as hell outside, and the weatherman had actually promised there’d be an ice storm by nightfall, not that the weatherman was ever right. “Talk to her, let her know everything’s going to be all right.”

“Is it?” Alex asked, his tone caught somewhere between concern and sarcasm. “Oh, all right,” he said, dropping to his knees at the mare’s head. “It’s not like I have a choice, do I?”

Hannah looked at him. Tall, dark and handsome is as tall, dark and handsome does, and at the moment Alex Coleman wasn’t doing it for her at all. Which was strange, because she’d spent the past sixteen years of her life dragging around a crush on the man that probably matched the size of Texas and parts of Oklahoma. Not that he ever noticed. Not that he ever would notice.

Shaking herself back to attention, Hannah pulled on tight latex gloves and examined the mare, being careful to avoid the animal’s sharp hooves as she confirmed Alex’s own conclusion. “Breech, and too late to turn her,” she said, gathering her instruments for what would be a difficult birth.

There were alternatives. Cesarean, for one, but even that was risky, as one of the foal’s legs was already partly out of the birth canal. There was nothing else to do but reach in, find the other leg and pull like hell. Not exactly fancy, but the last resort usually isn’t.

“Can you do it?” Alex asked, obviously figuring out what she planned to do.

“I can do it,” she muttered from between her clenched teeth as she literally reached inside the mare, all the way up past her elbows. “Got it!” she said after long moments of fruitless searching, grabbing onto the foal’s legs, praying the birth canal had softened and widened enough to allow a safe passage for the foal.

“Small foal, thank God,” she said, pressing her head against the mare’s flank as she eased the second leg beside the first and waited for the next contraction. “Probably early?”

“Yes, early,” Alex said, soothing the mare. “She’s rolling her eyes again.”

“Contraction coming. Hold on, here we go,” Hannah said, then took a deep breath. She felt as if her arms were being crushed in a vise, as the mare tried to expel the foal and her arms from its body. She had a moment to rethink the gloves, as she was afraid she might end up losing one of them inside the mare.

“Watch the spine,” Alex warned.

“I…know…that,” Hannah gasped, for the first time worried that her strength wouldn’t be enough. But she’d gotten both back legs clear of the birth canal, and that was the biggest trick. One more contraction ought to do it. “Come on, little lady,” she crooned. “Come on and give us another push. You can do it.”

Her hands and arms still inside the horse, Hannah closed her eyes and visualized the drawings in one of her textbooks. Hands here. Position the foal, trying to turn it so the spine isn’t against the mother’s spine. Be careful of the cord. Wait for the contraction. Pull. Pull.

“Here it comes!” she shouted as the mare’s womb convulsed again and the animal screamed in pain. Half cradling, half turning and pulling, Hannah breathed a silent prayer and, moments later, felt the foal slip into the world. Ass backwards, but here just the same.

“Keep holding her head while I check both her and the foal,” Hannah ordered Alex, deftly dealing with the aftermath of the violent birth.

“What is it? Is it a mare?”

Hannah sneaked a quick look as the foal, typically light, as an Arabian destined to be coal-black looked at birth. “Nope. You’ve got yourself a new stud, Mr. Coleman, and he’s a beauty. Small, but a beauty. Oh, just look at that face! A perfect dish shape. A real champion!”

Within minutes, Khalahari was tending to her foal, both of them standing in the stall, the foal wobbly on his legs but already trying to nurse, and Hannah was stripping off her gloves, trying not to shake. It had been her first breech birth, not that she’d admit as much to Alex Coleman.

“Thank you,” he said as they left the stall, on their way to the large washtub at the other end of the stable. “I’m sorry I was so rough on you, but…well…”

“You thought how could klutzy Hannah Clark know anything about birthing a baby,” she completed for him as he turned on the water and handed her the soap, which she dropped, so that it clunked heavily in the bottom of the metal washtub.

Crisis over, klutziness back. It figured.

“Yeah, something like that,” Alex said, picking up the bar of soap and handing it to her again. “Anyway, I apologize. You did a terrific job.”

“I heard about this foal from my dad,” she told him, concentrating on soaping her hands. “It’s Jabbar’s, isn’t it? The original unplanned pedigree, registered pregnancy.”

“A gift from the Fates,” Alex said, handing Hannah a clean towel. “Desert Rose Khalid. That means—”

“Eternal. Yes, I know. It’s a lovely name.”

Alex tipped his head to one side, looked at her quizzically. “Arabic is one of the classes at the veterinary school?”

“Not really,” Hannah answered, avoiding his smile, which had the power to reduce her to a puddle of insecurities and unnamed desires. “Arabians are of special interest to me, because there are so many stables around the area, of course, but also personally. They’re just such beautiful, graceful animals.”

And an Arabian horse never looked better than when Alex Coleman sat one in the costume class of a competition, wearing snow-white Arab costume banded in gold, with a snow-white kaffiyeh on his head, ropes of gold weaving forming the agal that held the headdress in place.

The focus of such an event should still be the mount, the decorative bridle and other trappings, the proud lift of head and tail. But not when any of the Coleman boys were in the saddle, dressed in their ceremonial costumes. Then all eyes were on the dark-haired, dark-eyed men, their uniquely kinglike posture and ease, the deep golden tan of their skin against their kaffiyehs, the almost sensual thrill that filled the air when one of them rode into the ring.

Yes, all three were magnificent, but it had been Alex who had caught Hannah’s attention, and dreams, ever since she’d stood on the sidelines sixteen years ago, at the impressionable age of twelve, and knew that she had just lost her heart to the unattainable.

“Hannah? Hannah, are you listening to me?”

She shook herself out of her dream, rather surprised to see Alex standing in front of her in a deep brown corduroy jacket and skintight jeans. “Huh?” she said, and then blushed to the roots of her honey-blond hair.

“I said, I want to apologize again, and thank you. You came through like gangbusters, totally calm and professional.”

“You say that as if you still don’t believe it,” Hannah remarked, carefully stepping around a fallen rake, mentally seeing herself stepping on the tines so that the handle snapped upward and knocked her cold. Proud of herself, she turned her head to say something else to Alex—she wasn’t sure quite what—and felt her flannel shirt snag on a nail, ripping the sleeve as she instinctively pulled herself free. “Oh, God.”

Alex was biting his bottom lip, manfully trying not to laugh at her, she supposed.

“That’s the nail where we usually hang the rake, using the hole in the handle.”

“Yeah, figures,” she answered, her cheeks so hot they were stinging her eyes. Her stupid deer-in-headlights, too-big baby-blue eyes. Blond hair, blue eyes, and not quite five feet and three inches of too-slender body. All in all, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, she felt about as seductive as a three-year-old with a lap full of dolls.

Still, anyone would think she had clown feet big enough to wear the boxes instead of the shoes, and Mister Magoo eyesight, for the way she was always walking into things, falling over things, knocking things over and generally showing all the grace of a bowlegged kangaroo.

“Maybe if you were to stand still for a minute?”

“Hmm? Oh, all right, Mr. Coleman,” Hannah said, wondering how she had gotten back into the stall, when she had picked up her jacket, her bag. It was like her dad always said, she just didn’t pay attention. Among her other failings, like daydreaming. Boy, had she picked a bad moment to daydream.

“Ah, good. I think I feel more comfortable when you’re standing still,” Alex said. His grin was still gorgeous, full of white teeth and smiling eyes, but this time Hannah wanted to bop him over the head with her medical bag, because he was openly making fun of her.

“You don’t have to keep thanking me, you know. You will get a bill.”

“Which I’ll play, gladly. However, I want to do more than just pay the bill. You can’t know how much Khalid means to me, to The Desert Rose. We’ve put Jabbar to stud any number of times, and kept some of his offspring for ourselves, but most get sold, as you know. Khalid? Well, he’s a gift, from Jabbar to me, to my brothers, my family. He’s special.”

“That’s nice,” Hannah said sincerely. “And almost mystical.”

“Yes. Yes, it is, and so my gratitude should be larger than just saying thank you and then paying the bill. So, if there’s anything else you want—anything, please just ask. I will tell everyone I know about how cool you were under fire, and that they should have no qualms about calling you in when your father isn’t available. But that doesn’t seem like enough.”

Hannah lowered her eyes as the most ridiculous, outlandish, absurd idea flashed into her mind. Boy, could she ever think of a favor Alex Coleman could do for her! But no, that was impossible. First, because she’d never have the courage to ask him, and two, because it was a stupid, personally revealing request. Totally stupid.

“Hannah? How about dinner tonight? It’s not much, but it’s a start, and maybe by then you’ll have thought of something else I could do to show you my gratitude.”

“Dinner?” Hannah’s head flew up so quickly, and she was standing so close to Alex—actually, he was standing so close to her—that she nearly clipped his chin with her head. Stepping back quickly, stumbling for a moment, of course, she looked up at him. “Dinner? Tonight?”

Alex smiled, shook his head. “But no sharp knives,” he teased, taking the medical bag from her hand and walking out of the stable with her, back to her SUV. “I’ll pick you up around six or so, okay?”

She slid onto the seat, praying the keys were still in the ignition, because otherwise she’d be damned if she knew where they could be, and she wouldn’t be able to stick them into the ignition anyway. Her hands were shaking badly, too badly to blame on the damp, biting weather outside the warm stable. “At six. Sounds…sounds fine.”

“Good,” Alex said, slamming the door, then stepping away, probably to make sure she didn’t back up over his toes. Hannah felt his gaze on her until she’d made the turn that would cut off his sight of her, then stopped the SUV, gripped the steering wheel with both hands and tried to get her breathing under control.

He had asked her out! Not a date. Nobody in their right mind could call it a date. It was a thank-you offer. Maybe even a pity offer. But he’d made it, and she’d accepted, and he still wanted to do something else for her. “Anything,” he’d said. “Anything at all.”

Oh, brother. Would she ever get a chance like this again?

ALEX SPENT ANOTHER HOUR in the stable, just leaning over the top of the bottom half of the stall door, watching Khalahari and Khalid.

They would lose Jabbar soon, it was inevitable. He’d had a long, good life, and enriched their lives as much with his presence as with the foals he provided that made up the bedrock of The Desert Rose, the growing legend of The Desert Rose as a premier Arabian stud.

Jabbar. The last legacy of his parents, the only thing besides his two brothers and the golden ring he wore on his right hand, left to remind him of Sorajhee.

There were so few memories, clouded by the passage of time and the fact that he’d only been four-and-a-half years old when he was suddenly ripped from his mother’s arms and put on a plane, traveling halfway across the world to a new land, a new family.

He could remember his father, but only vaguely. A tall man, who never hesitated to bend down to speak to a small child. A man whose face Alex believed he saw in his own mirror as he shaved each morning, now that he was thirty-two, already a year older than his father had been when he was murdered.

Flashes of a long white robe. A bright white smile in a swarthy, sun-kissed face. Big hands, hands that gently held those so much smaller. The soft musical murmur of Arabic, a language Alex once knew but now had almost totally forgotten.

That was a sin, and a shame. But Uncle Randy had seen no need to keep up the boys’ Arabic lessons, or so he’d said, right up until the day he’d sat the three of them down and told them otherwise.

Hiding. They’d been in hiding for twenty-seven years, all of them. Hiding from their Uncle Azzam, who still ruled in Sorajhee. Alex kept up on the news about his homeland, although he didn’t say anything to his brothers, his aunt or his uncle. There was no need to worry them, make them think that he might plan to one day go back, claim his rightful throne.

It was too late for that. Years and years too late. All that was in Sorajhee were the graves of his parents. He didn’t know the people, didn’t even know much of the language. His life, his memories, and those of his brothers, were here in Texas.

Alex knew his father had died trying to make Sorajhee strong, safe from invasion, and that his mother had died to avenge their father and reclaim the throne for her sons. Now, with the passage of years, and the borders still firmly closed, Azzam’s rule was keeping Sorajhee out of the mainstream, keeping open only the ports that were the main income-making industry in the small country. Nobody save the natives of Sorajhee were allowed outside the ports, inside the country that was nearly an island, with only one strip of well-defended border touching the mainland. It was as if Azzam had built a high fence on three sides of the country and marked it “No Trespassing.”

Sorajhee was the past, both because of the time Alex had spent away from the land, and because his Uncle Azzam had decreed it to be so. But Azzam had been lucky so far. Keeping his ports open had kept the greedy eyes of the Middle East turned away from him for years, concentrating them instead on oil-rich countries like the neighboring Balahar.

But nothing stands still, and Alex, from his reading, felt sure that Sorajhee and Balahar would soon have to unite, as his father had prophesied, or they would both be overrun.

No. This was no place for a son of Ibrahim Bin Habib El Jeved. Enough Jeved blood had already been spilled, enough Jeved lives had been altered forever. Let his Uncle Azzam realize his brother had been right, or let him perish. Alex sometimes wondered if he was fatalistic or if what he felt inside him was the age-old Arab belief in fate. Either way, the fate of Sorajhee was not his. That he did know.

Alex had a job, a sacred trust his mother had given him that last day. He was to take care of his brothers, of Jabbar. He was to help his uncle Randy. And that is what he’d done. He was at peace with his past and with his future.

“I just heard,” Cade said, leaning on the wood beside Alex. “I got back from town a little while ago, and Mickey stopped me to give the good news. He’s a beaut, Alex. A true son of his sire. He’ll be black as Jabbar, too. Glorious and proud. But that will take a while.”

Alex smiled at his brother. “First he has to learn to control all four legs at one time,” he said. His brother, youngest of the twins by a few very important minutes as far as the succession went, was the Coleman who had chosen running the business end of The Desert Rose as his life’s work. Both Cade and Mac resembled Alex, but there was something softer, more human, about their dark handsomeness. More of Rose lived in her twins.

Alex flicked at Cade’s lapel. “A suit? You’re wearing a suit? Where did you say you went? And what’s her name?”

“Business, big brother, I went into Austin on business,” Cade corrected him, then shook his head. “Okay, and a girl.”

“There’s always a girl, isn’t there, Cade?” Alex said, turning to walk away from the stall. He was filthy, a little bloody, and suddenly he wanted a hot shower and clean clothes. “If you weren’t so damn good at your job, I’d have to call you a playboy, you know.”

“Well, now I’m insulted. I’d like to be considered a playboy. Has a certain ring to it, you know,” Cade said, obviously joking. “Not that anyone could call you a playboy, big brother. When was the last time you were out on a date? Your Bridle High School senior prom?” They walked across the stable yard together, Cade careful of his dress shoes, heading for the main house.

“Just because I don’t see one girl for drinks at seven, and another at ten for a late dinner, and call that a double date, doesn’t mean I don’t have a social life. As a matter of fact,” he said, knowing he was about to put his foot in his mouth, “I have a date tonight.”

Cade stopped dead outside the front door of the house. “Excuse me? I couldn’t have heard that right. You have a date? Has anyone notified the newspapers? Who is it?”

“Hannah Clark,” Alex muttered under his breath as he opened the front door, gestured for Cade to enter the house ahead of him.

“Oh, Hannah Clark,” Cade said, wiping his feet on the mat, his attention momentarily distracted, as he knew his Aunt Vi didn’t think he was too old to be scolded for tracing stable yard dirt into her house. “Whoa! Wait a minute. Did I just say Hannah Clark?”

“Actually, I said it.” Alex hung his hat on one of the hooks just inside the foyer. “She delivered the foal, a breech, and I wanted to thank her.”

“Uh-huh,” Cade said, watching as Alex stripped off his jacket and hung it on another peg. “Aunt Vi hates when you do that, you know. She says the rack is just for show. You weren’t even supposed to come in the front door in your boots. But, then, having a date with the Hannah Slip-on-a-banana Clark has probably scrambled your brains. Hannah Clark, Alex? Really?”

“Oh, shut up,” Alex said, stomping off to the wing of the house where he and his brothers all had their own rooms.

Chapter Two

Half of Hannah’s wardrobe now resided on her bed, on a small chair in the corner and draped over the desk in front of the windows. And still she didn’t know what she would wear.

Fourteen pairs of jeans. How had she ever accumulated fourteen pairs of jeans? Granted, some of them dated back to her high school days, as she hadn’t grown as much as a quarter inch since the tenth grade. She’d lived in jeans then, as she pretty much lived in jeans now. Jeans, and flannel shirts, or tank tops in the summer.

The only dresses in her closet were the prom gown she’d worn the night Bobby Taylor stood her up for the sophomore Sweetheart dance and the navy-blue suit she’d worn on college interviews. Even the suit had slacks instead of a skirt.

Every penny she’d ever earned at summer jobs had gone toward veterinary school, and every penny she’d earn working with her father—for her father—would go to pay down the student loans she’d taken out when her father refused to help her. She didn’t have “casual” money, go-out-and-shop money.

And she had no reason to buy dresses. Working two part-time jobs all through school had limited her social life, not that anyone had ever asked her out more than once. Shy, tongue-tied, unsure of herself, she hadn’t been any young college guy’s dream of a hot date, and she’d known it. Soon the whole school knew it, and Hannah had plenty of time to keep her grades at a constant 4.0.

“Project at hand, Hannah,” she told herself out loud. “Ancient history is ancient history. Concentrate on the project at hand.” She jammed her fingers into her hair, put her other hand on her hip and glared at her wardrobe. She had no choice. It was the blue suit or jeans, as the pink organza would definitely be too much.

Dropping the large white towel she’d wrapped around herself after her shower, she stepped into panties, located a bra that didn’t have a strap held together with a safety pin, and spent ten minutes trying to remember where she’d stuffed her only pair of panty hose—bottom left desk drawer, under a copy of Common Parasites and Their Animal Hosts.

She couldn’t face the idea of the high-necked white blouse she’d bought to go with the navy suit. It was too virginal, just like everything else about her. Virginal to the hilt. Mold had more of a sex life. Deer ticks. Any one of those common parasites. Anything had more of a sex life than did Hannah Clark.

“Therefore, you don’t have to advertise that fact,” she said, returning the white blouse to the closet. Which left her with a blue suit, and no blouse.

Hannah bit at her bottom lip, shifted her eyes right, as if considering something naughty. And it would be naughty. Definitely.

Still, it beat the hell out of her white blouse.

“You’re twenty-eight years old, so what are you waiting for? Go for it,” she told her reflection as she pushed back her blond hair and leaned toward her reflection in the old, clouded mirror above her dresser. “Lipstick, eye shadow, the perfume sample you ripped out of the magazine in the waiting room downstairs. The whole nine yards. Knock the man off his feet. But not literally,” she added, pointing to her reflection.

Fifteen minutes later, she’d done it. She’d decided against the eye shadow, however, because she couldn’t seem to apply it so that she didn’t end up looking like a raccoon. But her freshly washed hair hung bright and clean almost to her shoulders, rather than in its usual no-nonsense ponytail. Her legs were shaved and encased in silky panty hose. Her legs felt good when she walked, when the lining of her suit slacks slid against her, but not as good as the lining of her jacket felt as it caressed her from the waist up.

All the way up to the top button, which was somewhere south of the beginnings of her cleavage.

Now, if she could keep from slamming her hands against her chest every three seconds just to be sure the top button hadn’t opened, she might be able to carry this off.

She slid back her left sleeve, looked at the utilitarian watch on her wrist. Six o’clock. Alex hadn’t told her exactly what time he’d pick her up—just some time around six—so she wanted to be ready and waiting when he arrived.

He would arrive, wouldn’t he? Hannah’s stomach hit the floor as she considered the fact that the man could phone at any minute to cancel. After all, it wasn’t as if this was some big hot date. He was just thanking her for her work this afternoon. He could have done that with flowers, or just the thank-you she’d already received.

No. He’d asked her to dinner, and Alex Coleman wasn’t the sort who backed out of a commitment. Was he? How the heck would she know? Worshiping a guy from afar like some lovestruck teenager wasn’t the same as knowing the guy. He could be a real louse with great eyes and a bone-melting smile. She may have given him every attribute possible in her fantasies, but that didn’t mean he could live up to any of them.

“You’re driving yourself nuts, you know,” she said as she bent down and fluffed the ancient pillows on the sturdy but relentlessly ugly brown couch in the living room of the small apartment above the office.

“Hannah? Talking to yourself again? I can think of something more productive, like making my dinner.”

“Dad!” Hannah exclaimed, whirling to face her father and forgetting that she was wearing her only pair of heels. Her ankle twisted beneath her and she sat down on the couch with an inelegant thump. “I—I didn’t think you’d be home this early.”

Dr. Hugo Clark was a big man in every way. Six feet tall, he weighed over three hundred pounds, all of which had once been composed of very impressive muscle. That muscle had gone soft a few years ago, but Hannah didn’t see that. To her, Hugo Clark was still the great big man with the disapproving eyes and disappointed expression—at least it was disappointed every time he looked at Hannah, measured Hannah and found her wanting.

“Obviously not,” he said, throwing his fleece-lined plaid jacket on a chair. He never hung up his coat, or anything else. That was woman’s work. “What the hell is that on your mouth?”

Hannah raised a hand to her lips. “Lipstick?”

“You look like a tart. Just like your mother before you. All those years of school, just to make a dead set at some man. Total waste, educating a female, and I always said so. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? That war paint couldn’t be for the animals downstairs. And for God’s sake, put something on. I can damn near see your breasts.”

Hannah squeezed her eyes shut even as she instinctively pressed her hands to her chest, hiding herself from her father’s condemning eyes and blunt speech. Twenty-eight, she reminded herself silently. You’re twenty-eight. You’re a trained, licensed vet. You’re not little Hannah anymore. Don’t let him do this to you.

It didn’t work. Pep talks weren’t Hannah’s forte, and her father had mastered the art of the cutting remark, the insulting put-down. Ever since her mother had run away when she was a child, Hugo Clark had worked on making sure his daughter wouldn’t turn into the same flighty creature Ellen Clark had been.

Twenty-eight years also meant twenty-eight years of being told she was worth nothing, would never be worth anything; told she was stupid and clumsy and unattractive, and probably immoral thanks to her mother’s blood running in her veins.

Worse, she was small like Ellen, and blond like Ellen. If Hugo Clark wanted a whipping boy to take his frustration and hate out on, he’d found it in his daughter, in spades.

Hannah stood up, one hand still pressed to her breast. “I really thought you wouldn’t be home until very late, or even tomorrow. There are…there are some cold cuts in the refrigerator,” she said, heading for the kitchen. “And soup. I made soup yesterday. Let me heat it up for you, make you a sandwich.”

“A sandwich? You call that a meal? Never mind, I’ll go out. I should have known I couldn’t count on you. Never could, never will. Just thank God I called my service and there were no emergencies while I was gone, or you would have screwed that up, too. I can’t understand it. I’ve taught you and taught you to remember your responsibilities, and what do I get? A cold supper and my own daughter tarted up to go out barhopping.”

“There was an emergency,” Hannah said, hoping to stop Hugo before he could launch into another of his long harangues about how much she reminded him of her worthless mother. “Out at The Desert Star. Jabbar’s last foal, a breech birth. Alex Coleman phoned up here on our private line, so the service didn’t know about it.”

“Damn!” Hugo exploded, slamming one beefy fist into his palm. “Lost them both, I’ll bet.”

“No, sir,” Hannah said. At times like these, it was always better to address her father as “sir.”

Her father looked at her curiously. “They handled it on their own?”

“No, sir. I did it. Alex Coleman phoned and I went out, delivered the foal. A beautiful little animal, and probably the next Desert Rose stud.”

“You…you handled it?” Hugo’s black-bean eyes widened in disbelief.

She hadn’t pleased him. Hannah could tell by the look in his eyes, by the set of his body as he stood in front of her, that she had done the very opposite of pleasing him. “I’ll get the soup started,” she said, turning for the kitchen once more.

“The hell you will. I’m going out,” he said, grabbing his jacket and heading for the door. “And you’d better be home by midnight, girlie-girl, or I’m throwing the dead bolt. You hear me?”

“I hear you, sir,” Hannah said, subsiding onto the couch once more, flinching only slightly as the door slammed and she could hear her father’s heavy tread on the stairs.

She shouldn’t have come back. She should have graduated and taken one of the dozen positions offered her, from Texas to Maine. She’d graduated at the top of her class; her options had been almost limitless.

Yet she had come home to work with her father, to help him. To prove to her father that she wasn’t worthless, that she was a good veterinarian, a competent doctor. To face him as an adult, maybe even as an equal, and prove to him—and to herself—that his lifelong assessment of her had been wrong.

“I could probably give a shrink enough ammunition to have me on the couch for the next five years,” she told herself as she stood up, sighed and walked back to her bedroom to put on the white blouse.

ALEX PARKED HIS four-wheel drive next to the SUV Hannah had driven out to The Desert Rose, noticing that she’d had it washed since that afternoon. An odd thing to do, considering it wasn’t quite spring yet, and cold, complete with rainy weather and muddy roads. His own vehicle had a crust of mud nearly up to the bottom of the windows, and he doubted he would do much more about it for the next few weeks than let nature give it an occasional bath.

Then again, Hannah was Hugo Clark’s daughter, and the man was a stickler for some things. Obviously a clean vehicle was one of them, although the man’s personal appearance wasn’t exactly out of GQ. Big and strong had softened to large and sloppy the past seven to ten years, about the same length of time Hannah had been away at school and he’d been left alone, his wife having taken off many years before that, heading for brighter lights and a bigger city.

“And away from Hugo,” Alex added out loud, shaking his head. Hugo Clark was one hell of a vet, the best around, but he had all the personality of a bear with a thorn in his paw.

Alex had never thought about it before, but now he found himself wondering what it must have been like for Hannah to grow up, motherless, with Hugo Clark for a father. It couldn’t have been much fun.

He knew that he and his brothers had been lucky. Uncle Randy and Aunt Vi had raised them as if they were their own, and even as they all missed their biological parents, none of them could ever say they were neglected or left hungry for love.

Alex looked at the dark two-story building in front of him; the boxlike veterinary office and the small apartment on the second floor. Quite a difference from The Desert Rose. Cheerless, with no grass, no flowers or trees. Just a cement area for parking and a double string of animal pens running the length of the cemented rear yard. Banded by streets at the front and on one side, there was a vacant gas station across the side street, while the other side of the building lined up closely with a small manufacturing plant, and the rear butted up against a small tire yard and automobile graveyard.

Hugo Clark served as vet for large animals for the most part, servicing his clients and patients on ranches more often than in his own office, which he reserved for treating dogs and cats and rabbits and, probably, the occasional armadillo. It wasn’t as if he needed a fancy office.

He certainly could afford a separate home for himself and his daughter, though, that was for sure, as he was the most prominent vet in the Bridle area. Alex wondered, just for a moment, why Hugo hadn’t taken more care about where he raised his daughter, then forgot about it as he remembered that he was here to take that daughter out to dinner.

Cade had teased the hell out of him before he left the ranch, warning him to wear steel-tipped shoes if he planned to take Hannah dancing, and reminding him of the day Hannah had come to the ranch with her father and fallen headfirst into a pile of manure.

Poor kid. She sure was a nervous sort. High-strung, like a young filly. Awkward, like a foal just finding its legs. Raw, unschooled, and yet with an air of promise about her, as if, with the right trainer, she could be a real champion.

Not that he would be volunteering for the job. He was here to thank her for the splendid job she’d done that afternoon. She’d saved the mare, he was sure of that, and probably the foal, as well. She’d been calm, focused, secure in her knowledge and not at all afraid to give him orders, take charge, take action.

And then, once the foal had been delivered, she’d reverted to type, turning back into Hannah Slip-on-a-banana, tripping over her own feet, stumbling over her own words, and generally reverting to the klutz he’d known and mostly ignored ever since he could remember.

But did he know her at all, beneath the shy, almost nerdy outside that she showed the world while trying to hide herself from it? Obviously not, because he hadn’t believed she could handle the mare, hadn’t even suspected the strength in her slim body, the calm purpose she could exhibit, the self-confidence that had practically oozed from her pores as she did the job she had been trained to do.

Hannah Clark wasn’t quite Jekyll and Hyde, but it was rather like there were two of her—the competent doctor, and the insecure, stumbling girl who’d always stood very much in her father’s shadow.

Not that Alex planned to look any more deeply into Hannah’s life, the hows and the whys of it. He was here to take her out to dinner, thank her again and then forget about her until the next time they needed a vet at The Desert Rose.

He’d knocked on the door twice, with no answer, and finally tried the knob, which turned easily, opening onto a set of narrow, steep wooden steps. No wonder she didn’t hear his knock. He’d thought there might be one or two rooms downstairs, and the bedrooms upstairs, but it would seem that the entire first floor had been turned into offices, leaving the second floor for all of their living purposes.

Talk about your cramped quarters. Alex already could tell, from looking at the building, that there couldn’t be more than four rooms upstairs, none of them very large. Hugo Clark probably filled up each of them every time he entered a room, leaving very little space for his shy, easily spooked, motherless child.

Damn, now he was getting melodramatic. Alex smiled, blaming his more imaginative and passionate side on his Arab roots, but also pleased to know that he was, even in Texas, very much his father’s son.

He climbed the steps in the dark, having checked the light switch and finding the bulb burned out at the top of the stairs, and knocked on the door, which opened almost immediately.

He blinked twice, adjusting to the light spilling out into the stairway, then smiled at Hannah, who seemed to be blocking his way into the apartment.

“I’ll get my purse and be right with you,” she said without preamble, turning away from the door. Alex stepped back just in time, as the door closed in his face. He grinned, shook his head and headed back down the stairs, figuring it safer than standing on the top step to wait for Hannah to come barreling through the doorway and knock him down those same steps.

He stood in the small dark hallway, listening as at least three locks were turned, then looked up when Hannah, holding tightly to the railing, came toward him. Her legs were long, for such a petite woman, and her slacks were slim, allowing him to imagine how straight her legs could be underneath them.

But that was about all he could imagine. She wore a dark jacket, fully buttoned, and a white blouse that, by all rights, should have been cutting off circulation to her brain. The entire effect, minus the slacks and her sweep of blond hair, was like one big No Trespassing sign.

Not that the woman had anything to worry about on that head. It wasn’t as if Alex had a death wish, and trying to get close enough to clumsy, nervous, klutzy Hannah Clark to kiss her wasn’t something a guy would think about without first reviewing his health insurance. The only other time Alex could remember kissing as a sport not without potential mishap was the time he’d kissed Melody Pritchert when they’d both had teeth braces, and they’d gotten their hardware stuck together.

Kissing Hannah Clark would probably start with him putting his arm out to hold her and having her react like a startled mare, rearing up, and end with his arm in a cast.

“You look very nice tonight,” he said almost automatically as Hannah hesitated on the bottom step, looking at him as if she had no idea what came next and hoped to hell he had a clue or they were both in big trouble.

“Thank you,” she said formally, then pressed her lips together as if she didn’t trust herself to say anything more without giving away nuclear secrets or some such thing.

“You’re welcome,” he said, taking her hand so that she’d come with him out of this dark, confining hallway. Otherwise, he believed they might end up standing there all night. “I made reservations for six-thirty, so we’d better get a move on, all right?”

After a false start that called a halt until Hannah bent down to replace her left shoe, they actually made it out the door and into Alex’s vehicle without further mishap. He sighed as he closed the passenger door, hoping Hannah would put on her seat belt without incident, and wondered if he should be offering up the rest of the evening for some poor souls somewhere.

NERVOUS WAS SUCH A LAME WORD for the feeling that had invaded Hannah when she’d heard Alex’s knock. There should be a bigger word, one that sounded the way it felt—a real bam of a word. A ka-pow-ee sort of word that gave true meaning to the slam-in-the-gut sort of terror Hannah had felt, was still reeling from as she sat across the table from the man of her dreams and wondered, not for the first time, what had possessed her to order linguine with clam sauce.

With garlic.

But the garlic wasn’t the worst of it, especially since she certainly wasn’t counting on a good-night kiss.

It was the linguine that had proved a challenge too great for her and her trembling hands. Linguine twirling, to Hannah’s mind, could qualify as an Olympic sport, with degree-of-difficulty scores for picking the right amount to put on the fork, for twirling, for getting the slippery noodles into your mouth without dribbling the ends onto your chin.

She’d seen the grin twitching at the corners of Alex’s mouth when she’d finally figuratively thrown in the towel and cut the linguine into pieces. But anything was better than having to rescue another forkful of the stuff from her lap.

“So,” Alex said as the waiter cleared the plates, “what made you decide to come back to Bridle after veterinary school? I would have thought you’d get as far from here as possible.” As he said the words, he winced, adding, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You’re talking about my father,” Hannah said, believing she knew what he meant. “Dad’s getting on, and I thought he needed me. He married late in life, you understand, and I was born when he was nearly forty. Besides, I want to work with horses, and this is horse country with a vengeance. Your stables alone keep us pretty busy.”

“True enough,” Alex said, picking two slices of chocolate cake from the serving cart the waiter had pushed up to the table and handing one to Hannah. “Coffee?”

She nodded and the waiter poured cups for each of them.

“You know, Hannah, I stood in front of your apartment tonight and realized that you might have had it pretty tough, growing up there without a mother.”

“And with my father,” Hannah said, feeling disloyal, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Something about the look in Alex’s eye had kept her talking all through dinner, and telling the truth more often than not. In fact, the only flat-out lie she’d told was to say that college had been a lot of “fun.” College had been work, which she had liked, but it certainly hadn’t been fun.

“He’s very…direct.”

“Blunt,” Hannah translated.

“Maybe a little stern.”

“Rigid,” Hannah amended.

Alex grinned. “Opinionated?”

“If that’s your opinion,” she shot back, then almost gasped when Alex laughed. What was she doing? She was teasing with him, bantering back and forth. And it was fun. “Want to go for the gold?” she heard herself ask. “And number one of the top ten reasons Hugo Clark is not exactly a barrel of laughs is…?”

Alex’s grin faded as he sat forward, propped his chin on his hands and looked at her. Through her.

She waited, trembling, wishing she’d kept her big mouth shut.

“He doesn’t appreciate what he has?” Alex asked at last, his voice low, intimate.

Hannah bowed her head, concentrated on pleating her napkin in her lap, then mentally slapped herself for fidgeting and folded her hands on the edge of the table. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Wrong. Somebody should have noticed sooner,” Alex told her sincerely, then rocked her to her core by adding, “I should have noticed sooner. Life with Hugo hasn’t been a picnic, has it, Hannah-banana?”

He reached across the table, took her hands in his. “I’m glad you came home, Hannah. And I’m glad we’re here tonight, as adults, rather than as the sometimes rotten kids some of us used to be. Not you, but me. Let me make it up to you.”

“Make it up to me?” Hannah’s mouth was so dry she was surprised she could even form words. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, exactly,” Alex said, releasing her hands and handing her a fork so that she could eat the cake in front of her. “And I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of do-gooder, or a penitent making up for past sins. Still, I do remember the way you were pretty much on the outside of things growing up, even if you were younger than I, and Cade and Mac as well. I remember you coming to The Desert Rose with your dad just about once a week, and I remember the way we used to tease you.”

Hannah poked the fork into the cake, breaking off a piece but not daring to lift it to her mouth just yet. “It wasn’t so bad. Except maybe the day Mac tossed me into the watering trough. It was hot, and he said I looked like I needed some cooling off. He was just having fun, and I couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve at the time. I think I thought it was fun, too, until everybody else started to point and laugh.”

Alex winced. “Where was your dad?”

“Standing there, laughing,” Hannah told him, remembering how her father had laughed with the boys, as if it had all been a very funny joke, until she’d stood up in the trough and everyone could see that her white T-shirt had become pretty close to transparent after her dunking. Then he’d grabbed her by the elbow, dragged her to the truck and lectured her all the way home about how real ladies don’t show everyone “their wares” like common sluts.

Hannah frowned now and decided maybe she’d been closer to thirteen the day of the dunking. She wasn’t sure, but she did know she woke up the next morning to see a training bra lying on the bottom of the bed. She’d looked at it, then cried for hours, wishing her mother would please come home and tell her what to do with it.

Some time after that, she’d wished her mother home again to explain what was happening to her body, why she was bleeding and feeling so sore and sick. She couldn’t ask her father, she already knew that. So she had searched his bookshelves until she found one that explained what “going into heat” meant. Until tenth-grade biology class, she’d actually feared that each time she “went into heat” the boys in her class would know and try to go after her like stallions.

What a fear-ridden childhood she’d had. Alone, lonely and filled with fear. And all the time made very well aware that she was as worthless and shiftless and potentially wanton as her mother.

“Hannah? Hannah, what are you thinking? You have such a strange look on your face.”

“Hmm?” she said, coming out of her private thoughts, to realize she’d finished her cake, and to become aware that she’d been lost in those private thoughts while Alex sat there, ignored. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said quickly, reaching for her water glass and knocking it over on the table. “Oh! Look what I’ve done!”

Alex calmly patted the wet spot with his napkin, telling her, “It’s all right, Hannah. Look—” he said, knocking over his own water glass “—we might just be starting a new after-dinner ritual, washing the tablecloth while it’s still on the table.”

Hannah’s eyes were wide as she looked at what he’d done. “Well, that’s just plain silly.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Alex agreed, and then he smiled. He smiled so completely and happily that Hannah smiled with him, and a part of her that never seemed to relax slowly warmed, defrosted and allowed her to laugh in real enjoyment.

Alex laughed with her, laughed even louder when the waiter came rushing over to the table with a pile of dry napkins to blot the spills. “We’ve started a new tradition,” he told the waiter. “After-dinner spills. What do you think? Will it ever catch on?”

“I really couldn’t say, sir,” the waiter said sternly. “I’ll get your check.”

“He’s not very happy,” Hannah said, watching the waiter walk off, his spine rigid. “I guess that means you’ll have to leave him a big tip.”

“Oh, yeah,” Alex said, nodding. “A really big tip. But it was worth it to see you smile, hear you laugh. You do both much too seldom, Hannah.”

She dropped her gaze, then dared to look up at him again. “Don’t do that or I’ll get all nervous again, and I don’t think there’s a tip large enough to cover me knocking over the entire table when I stand up. And that’s possible, you know, knowing my history.”

“Hannah Slip-on-a-banana,” Alex said, also sober once more. “I wonder—how much do you think that name had to do with your little mishaps? It’s got to be really difficult to be graceful when everyone’s waiting for your next misstep. After a while, you’d have to start believing everyone’s right, and just plain give up trying.”

Hannah melted. Right there in the restaurant, with the waiter placing a burgundy leather folder in front of Alex and waiting until he’d produced a credit card to pay the check, Hannah Clark melted. He knew, Alex Coleman knew. For the first time in her life, she felt as if someone understood her, even cared about her, cared enough to consider how she got to be the local joke, the clumsy child, the awkward adolescent, the shy teenager. The oldest virgin in Texas, perhaps in all of the United States.

“Do…did you really mean it earlier when you said you’d like to make it up to me—you know, for that stuff we talked about?”

Alex pulled back her chair and helped her to her feet, then led her out of the restaurant. “Yes, Hannah, I did,” he said as he fished in his pocket for his keys, then opened the door into the night. “Why? Have you thought of a way I could begin repaying you? Tipping over my water glass seems somehow inadequate.”

How would she say it? Could she say it? She couldn’t believe she was even thinking it.

“Well,” she said at last, once they were in the car, “there is something…”

Chapter Three

The last time Alex had nearly run his own car off a road had been when he had just turned sixteen and decided that driving and smoking menthol cigarettes “went together.” He’d taken his first drag, choked, dropped the cigarette between his legs and nearly taken out Mrs. Rafferty’s hand-painted mailbox.

This time it was a U.S. mailbox at the corner of Fifth and Main that nearly bit the dust. But then, he was older now, and the shock had been bigger. Therefore, the mailbox should be bigger, too.

“You…you want me to what?” he said as he recovered, slowed the vehicle to look over at Hannah in the darkness.

She had sunk down in the seat, sitting on her spine, her head on her chest. “You did ask,” she said in a small voice.

“Well, hell, yeah—but what kind of answer was that? I mean, you could give a guy a little warning. You know, something like, ‘Hey, Alex, I’m going to drop a bomb now. Maybe you’ll want to duck and cover.”’

“Never mind, okay?” Hannah said, pushing herself upright once more. “Forget it. Just—forget it.”

“Forget it? How am I suppose to forget it? You just asked me to rid you of your…to…you want me to—oh, hell, Hannah. You can’t still be a virgin. You’re what—twenty-six, twenty-seven?”

“Twenty-eight,” she told him, her high-buttoned blouse choking her, half from sliding down in the seat and partly because she may just have swallowed her tongue. She wasn’t quite sure. But if she choked to death in the next five seconds, she really didn’t think that would be a bad thing. “I’m twenty-eight and never been more than kissed. It’s embarrassing.”

“How? Nobody knows but you. And now me,” Alex added, shaking his head. “And that’s another thing, Hannah. Why me?”

“Good question,” Hannah mumbled, mortified. What had gotten into her? She hadn’t had any wine, so she couldn’t use drunken stupidity as an excuse. “It’s just that…well, you did ask what you could do for me. And you said I could ask anything, anything at all, and I…well, I really would like your help.”

Alex pulled up in the small cement parking lot beside the veterinary office and cut the engine. “My help. Hannah, it isn’t as if you asked me to change a tire or help you move—which I think you ought to consider, not that it’s any of my business. But asking me to…to—”

“Make me a woman is how I think I said it,” Hannah said, helping him and cringing at the same time. The only thing worse than saying the words again would be to hear him say them.

“Yes, that,” Alex said, pushing his fingers through his hair. “Is it really so necessary to you?”

Hannah nodded. “Maybe it’s stupid, but yes, I do think it’s necessary.” She turned toward him, trying to explain. “It’s time I grew up—all the way up. I thought I had, but then I came home, and I’m right back where I started. Unsure of myself, wondering who and what I am. Falling back into old patterns, probably unhealthy patterns. I still feel like a girl. A young, clumsy little girl. I’m twenty-eight, Alex. Twenty-eight! It’s time I grew up.”

“Having sex doesn’t make you a grown-up, Hannah. Just ask all the teenage mothers, if you don’t believe me.”

“You…you’d be careful,” she said, averting her gaze once more, grateful for the relative dark inside the vehicle, even with the streetlight shining at the corner. “You wouldn’t let that happen to me.”

“No, of course I wouldn’t let anything like that happen to—what the hell am I saying? Hannah, no. It’s a crazy idea. I’m sorry, but it just is.”

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Just forget I asked. And you’re right, it is a crazy idea.”

“So you’re not going to go out hunting for someone else to…to make you a woman?”

Hannah bowed her head, bit her lips. She’d been right. It was worse when he said it.

“Hannah? Answer me. You are going to give up the idea, right?”

She looked over at him in the darkness. He couldn’t know, must never know. She’d rather go to her grave a repressed virgin than give herself to anyone but this man she’d dreamed of all her life. All she’d wanted was this one time, this one memory, before she went back to her unfulfilled and unfulfilling life. Was that too much to ask? Apparently it was.

“Hannah? Would you please answer me?”

“Good night, Alex,” she said, opening the door and quickly hopping out of the vehicle. “I had a wonderful time.”

“Hannah!” he called after her as she ran toward the door. Then he sat back in his seat and slammed his fists against the steering wheel. “Damn it! Now what do I do?”

THE THRONE ROOM in the great palace of Sorajhee, located in the capital city of Jeved, had always been one of the most beautiful chambers, its simple Moorish architecture accented with golf leaf, its tall, ornamental windows looking out over the perfect blue of the Persian Gulf.

From this room, from the jewel-encrusted throne set at the top of a pedestal surrounded by steps on which the guilty, the penitent and the hopeful petitioner had all prostrated themselves, the Jeved family had ruled for generations.

Today the air in the throne room was tense, almost trembling, as Azzam, ruler of Sorajhee, looked down at his counterpart from Balahar, King Zakariyya Al Farid.

“Will you speak, my friend, or only continue to pose, impressing me with your power, which is no less or greater than mine own?” King Zakariyya Al Farid turned away from Azzam and walked to the gilt chair that had been set out for him, his white robes flowing around him as he sat, placing his forearms on each arm of the chair. “Well, Azzam? Do we talk like men or must I remind you that I am here as your invited guest?”

“More of a guest who invited himself, Zak, don’t you think?” Azzam stood, motioning for one of his servants to bring another gilt chair and place it near Zakariyya’s. “Very well. We will talk, old friend,” he said as yet more servants brought a small table to place between them, then loaded it down with golden plates filled with figs and dates, small, rich squares of baklava and a pot of strong tea. “We will talk of what the nightingale has told me.”

“How poetic. And what has the nightingale told you, my friend?”

“Whispers, my friend. Whispers of Farid planning to unite Balahar with the enemy of Sorajhee. I would slit the nightingale’s throat, should I know this to be the truth, that the alliance between Balahar and Sorajhee is no more.”

“What alliance would that be, Azzam? That dream was no more the day your brother died, my friend. I know that, the world knows that, and you most certainly should. Our last treaty was made more than fifty years ago, and never did have teeth,” Zakariyya said, selecting a fig, turning it in his bejeweled fingers as if inspecting it, then popping it into his mouth.

He was a large man, with large appetites, but his oil-rich country was still small, just a dainty nibble for any larger country with its own appetite that wished to swallow it up. The age-old, tenuous and outmoded treaty with Sorajhee of both Azzam’s and Zakariyya’s fathers’ time no longer kept Balahar safe, and Zakariyya knew it. Azzam knew it. The time to act had been decades ago, and had passed along with Azzam’s fallen brother, that brother’s fallen sons.

King Zakariyya kept his expression carefully blank as his mind became busy. There was no good, strong alliance. So why this meeting? What purpose would it serve? Or had his spies been doing more than repeating women’s prattling? Was there truth to that gossip about Queen Layla, about the sons? Had he cast out his political nets on the strength of that gossip, in hope, and now stood ready to reap a great catch?

“You declared that there would be no political alliance, by deed if not by word, Azzam,” he continued, “even knowing of Ibrahim’s secret agreement with me that a son of Jeved would wed a daughter of mine, to insure our alliance. Now the sons of Ibrahim and both their parents are dead these many years—ask others to believe your lies that they are in seclusion, my friend, not me—and you have only daughters.”

Azzam half closed his eyes, hiding their expression behind his heavy lids. He would overlook Zakariyya’s less than veiled hint that the sons of Ibrahim had been martyred along with their father. Zakariyya had delivered an even deeper insult to his manhood, or so it would seem if Zakariyya had been able to father any children of his own, which he hadn’t. What was worse? Azzam’s three daughters and the fact that he’d been unable to sire any children at all within his harem, let alone a son—or Zakariyya’s adopted son and daughter, proof that his only wife was barren.

Children were a treasure everywhere, but here, in the Middle East, and with a succession to assure and a country to protect, often with alliances through marriage of royal children, they were essential.

Azzam’s brother had fathered three sons—two at one time—and Rose had proved fruitful enough to have borne many more children, many more male babies, each birth pushing Azzam further and further from the throne he’d coveted, believed to be his right as his father’s son.

“And how is your son, Zakariyya?” Azzam asked, wishing to draw attention away from himself and his daughters. Away from the badly broken alliance between Sorajhee and Balahar.

“Sharif is well, as always. Headstrong, but a good, loyal son,” Zakariyya said smoothly. “We are so grateful to your Layla for bringing him to us as a newborn, gifting us with such a precious honor. My people accept him, love him, and Balahar is stronger for Sharif.”

“My wife meant to assuage some of your wife’s grief when her child was stillborn, and the foundling was in a need as great as your own. I rejoice that Layla showed such a generous spirit, and that your Nadirah found solace with her adopted son. Indeed, you are twice blessed by another’s misfortune, as your adopted daughter came to you only because her American parents perished. She is a woman grown now. How does she fare?”

“Serena is more the Arab than those with the blood of the Middle East flowing through their veins. She is my pride, and her mother’s treasure until that dear woman’s death. She would have been a splendid princess of Sorajhee. But, alas, we all know this to be impossible.”

Azzam lifted a hand to his mouth and gnawed on his knuckle, knowing the moment had come for him to tell Zakariyya what he knew, or at least what he thought he knew. “My friend, perhaps…perhaps it is not impossible for our countries to resume the alliance.”

Zakariyya spread his hands, palms up. It was time to pull in the net and inspect the catch. “My friend, although I have not yet announced it publicly, I have already begun talks with—”

“Not this new political alliance I’ve been told you are considering, Zak. Such alliances are only bits of paper. I’m speaking of a blood alliance. I’m speaking of the promise made between you and my brother. You were right to question the story that Rose and her sons are hidden away in Sorajhee all these years, in seclusion, but you are wrong to believe that I had them killed.”

“Really?” Zakariyya steepled his fingers in front of him and waited, not quite as patiently as it might seem to Azzam. He had allowed rumors of negotiations with another neighboring country, but he had done so only after hearing from his agents in Sorajhee, only in the hope that he would be sitting here today, listening to Azzam’s words.

“There has been treachery, Zakariyya, but not of my making. Treachery, and many lies. I believed them all dead, much as it shames me to admit to being so gullible, so eager to accept news that benefited me. Ibrahim’s American wife may still be alive, her children still alive,” Azzam said quickly, motioning for his chief adviser, Abdul-Rahim, to step closer. “Tell him,” he ordered. “And spare me nothing in the telling.”

“Sire,” Abdul-Rahim said, bowing. “It gives me great pain to repeat the words, knowing they may be true.”

Zakariyya held up his hands, effectively silencing the advisor. He would never admit to the spies he had planted here in the palace, but he saw no reason to draw out Azzam’s humiliation. “Then it is true? I have heard rumors over the years, but since half were that you had the queen and her boys killed, and half were that you keep them imprisoned somewhere, I could be sure of nothing. Ibrahim’s wife, the beautiful Rose—she’s alive? And the sons?”

He sat forward in his chair, no longer bothering to keep up the pretext of kingly unconcern, longing for the words that would tell him the information brought to him was correct. “What of the sons?”

Abdul-Rahim bowed, cleared his throat. “We are sure of nothing, Your Highness. But as Sorajhee comes closer to danger from our neighbors, and as word of Balahar’s negotiations with those neighbors comes to our ears, negotiations that would further weaken us…”

“Yes? Speak clearly, man. You have been given permission.”

The advisor folded his hands together in front of him. “It is Her Highness, you understand. Queen Layla. She has…she has become volatile, Your Highness. Agitated. And she has said some things within the harem…”

“Layla is losing her mind, her reason,” Azzam said abruptly, and the advisor bowed again, backing away from the two royals, and quickly took his leave. “My wife is going mad, Zakariyya, and she is saying things that threaten my own sanity.”

Zakariyya popped another fig into his mouth, careful not to look at Azzam, for the man had his pride and that pride must be respected at all costs. Even as the man figuratively bared his breast and groveled before him. Zakariyya had all but invited himself here, to Sorajhee, to learn the truth. He did not feel comfortable watching his old friend fall to pieces. “If you do not wish to continue, I understand.”

“I have to continue. Layla is distressed, and has begun to say things, disjointed fragments that, when strung together, form a necklace of treachery, betrayal and even murder. Allah forgive me, Zakariyya, but I have come to believe that Layla ordered the murder of my brother.”

Zakariyya wiped his fingertips on a damp linen napkin. Now here was something he had not suspected. Still, it was not the news he wished to hear. “You will pardon me, old friend, if I tell you that this information only changes the culprit, not the murder itself. I have always thought Ibrahim was assassinated on your orders. The man beheaded for the crime was only the weapon, not the plan.”

“I would never—” Azzam shrank in his chair, the brother now, and not the king. “No, I won’t lie. Not anymore. It is past time for truth. I organized the demonstration against Ibrahim—that much is true—as I wanted him to realize the people were against any further political alliance with Balahar. Even more, I wanted to stop your secret alliance that would have bound Ibrahim’s son to your yet unborn daughter. Zakariyya, I made no secret of the fact that I, not Ibrahim’s son, should have succeeded him. If his son and heir was also heir to Balahar, I could not have overcome this union to take my proper place. I needed the people on my side, rallying around me. We Jeveds rule at the pleasure of our people, as you know, and I’d hoped to make Ibrahim hear what the people wanted.”

Zakariyya relaxed, now on more comfortable ground. Speaking of political treachery, oddly, was much easier than discussing Azzam’s pain over his wife. “What you believed they wanted, Azzam,” Zakariyya pointed out silkily. “We all know what our people want, what all people want. They want peace. A strong political alliance between our two countries would have gone a long way to assure that peace. The marriage between our families would have completed the job. Now, as the years pass, that peace becomes more and more elusive. This is why I am here, Azzam. This is why you need me now, just as I still need you, since I would rather ally Balahar with Sorajhee than seek elsewhere for protection. Azzam, my Sharif has a great love of American slang. A pity at times, but I remember one phrase he uses that seems apt at this moment. Could it be possible, my old friend, that we cut to the chase? In other words, tell me all that you know and, together, we might see what we can do.”

“Thank you, my friend.” Azzam stood, beginning to pace. “Abdul-Rahim has taken what Layla has said in her ramblings, and combined it with what he learned while interviewing Layla’s servants. If we are to believe what we have heard, Rose is most definitely alive.”

“Where? Where is she?”

Azzam stopped pacing, turned to look at Zakariyya. “Rose tried to kill me, old friend. About a month after Ibrahim died, I found her in my rooms, a knife in her hand. Clearly Rose had lost her mind to grief.”

“Understandable,” Zakariyya said, nodding. “She believed you murdered her husband, and must have been convinced you would murder her sons as well. Were you wounded?”

“Only in my heart,” Azzam said, retaking his seat, curling his fingers around the ends of the chair arms, his knuckles going white. “I will not deny wanting the throne, Zakariyya, but I would never murder my brother or his sons in order to gain it.”

“But Layla would?”

“Yes. Allah forgive us, yes. If her ramblings are to be believed, she pretended to be Rose’s friend and savior, helping Rose to flee the country with her sons, then come back here to unmask me as Ibrahim’s murderer, assure the throne for her sons. Layla probably gave Rose the knife she had with her that night, and helped her get through my guards, all the way to my bedside. And I was blind to it. Blind to it all.”

“You didn’t have Queen Rose brought to trial, executed, that I know. You said only that she and her sons had retired to a life of seclusion and mourning. What did you really do, Azzam? Whatever did you do?”

“I ruled, Zakariyya. I ruled my mourning, shattered country as best I could. And because I was so busy, I allowed Layla to talk me into sending Rose to an asylum for those with illness of the mind. I believed her when she told me the boys had gone to their uncle in America, then all had died in a boating accident. I have believed Layla all these years, but now I know she lied. I turned my head, preferred not to hear, and allowed Layla to make my sister-in-law a political prisoner. I cannot be entirely sure of Rose’s fate anymore, but the sons are still living somewhere in America. Layla stalks the harem nightly, wringing her hands, beating at herself for not having them killed when she had the chance.”

The sons. The sons were also alive. His spies had learned the truth. It was almost more than he could hope to have heard. Zakariyya’s heart sang, but he kept his expression blank. “So now you question the boys’ fates as well? Where is this uncle?”

“Texas,” Azzam said quietly. “Randy Coleman owns a ranch called The Desert Rose there. A horse farm. Arabian horses.” He looked at Zakariyya. “The first stud is retired now, but that stud’s name is Jabbar.”

“Ibrahim’s favorite,” Zakariyya whispered. “I remember. And the boys? Are they there?”

Azzam nodded, unable to speak. “Abdul-Rahim is convinced Coleman’s three sons are Ibrahim’s. Grown men now, all three, and one of them promised to a daughter of Balahar. Your daughter Serena, Zakariyya.”

Zakariyya was quiet for some moments. “You will contact this Coleman?” he asked at last. “Ibrahim’s widow is his sister.”

Azzam nodded. “It will be done in good time, but not yet. I want to do more than simply tell him his sister may be alive, in an asylum somewhere in Europe. Unfortunately, I know not where as yet, but I will. It is my duty to find her, and pray that she is saner than my poor, misguided Layla, who now suffers the fate she wished upon Queen Rose.”

“And if Coleman’s sons are really the heirs of Ibrahim, and the true heirs to the throne of Sorajhee? What then, my old friend?”

Azzam’s expression was bleak. “As it has always been for the Jeved of Sorajhee, as it has been for the Al Farid of Balahar. It will be as my people will. This I promise you, Zakariyya. If the people wish it, I will step aside. There has already been too much pain.”

SHORTLY AFTER DAWN, Alex made his way to the stables to look in on Khalahari and the foal, Khalid. He stood just outside the last stall in the stable that held more than fifty splendid Arabians, and marveled at the sight of Jabbar’s son.

The foal finished feeding, then shook his head and looked straight at Alex. The small animal’s head lifted proudly before it turned away, disdainful of the interruption by a mere man.

“Oh, you’re a prince, all right,” Alex said, grinning. “But learn who is the master here, Khalid. Although I suppose you already have decided that, haven’t you?”

“Morning, Alex,” Mac said, walking toward him down the length of the stables. “I’ve come to see the new stud. Cade told me he’s a beaut.”

Alex turned to look at his brother. Cade’s mirror image. How changed they both were from the small, whimpering, motherless babies that had traveled with him to Boston, to their new lives. The softness of their mother was still in their faces, a gentleness of feature that might be discernible only to Alex, but there just the same, always filling his heart with memories of the woman who had loved them all enough to leave them.

The twins were thirty-one now, the same age their father had been when he’d been cut down, assassinated by some madman who believed bloodshed was the way to peace. While Cade was a major force in the running of the Coleman businesses, Mac had proved himself to be a gifted trainer. It was Mac who trained the boarder horses for the ring, as well as some of The Desert Rose’s own bloodline.

Cade was the playboy, Mac the relentless worker. Cade was a brilliant businessman beneath his banter, and Mac could care less about the business. To him, life was his horses and The Desert Rose. Especially now that he had been unlucky—damned unlucky—in love, and had all but given up on women. Horses he could trust, or so he said.

“May I take a closer look?” Mac asked, already opening the door to the stall and stepping inside. “Ah, Alex, he’s magnificent!” Mac bent down, eye to eye with Khalid, and the foal allowed his attentions, even seemed to welcome them. There wasn’t a horse in the world who didn’t, not when Mac was the man who approached.

Alex smiled at his brother as he leaned on the low door and watched Khalid and Mac bond.

Uncle Randy and Aunt Vi had done a splendid job in raising the sons of Ibrahim Bin Habib El Jeved, for Alex wasn’t so dedicated to his brothers that he believed he had done so well all on his own. He was only a little over a year older than Mac and Cade, but he was still the older brother. He had been given a mission by his mother, and he had always taken his responsibility seriously. Even now, with the twins grown, Alex felt responsible for them, as he had always taken on the role of big brother for Randy and Vi’s daughter, Jessica. Sometimes he thought he felt responsible for the whole world.

That thought brought him back to Hannah Clark, and the mind-blowing request she had made of him last night. He did feel some responsibility for Hannah’s self-conscious demeanor, her shy and awkward bumbling and stumbling. After all, she’d been at The Desert Rose weekly with her father, and if Alex had not joined in the lighthearted but—he saw now—painful teasing his brothers had indulged in, he certainly had done nothing to stop it.

He’d never looked beyond the nervous smile or the pratfalls, the stumbles, the awkward child who sometimes seemed to have her legs on backwards, and her tongue in a knot. He’d never considered her as a person, another motherless child like himself, but without the love of someone like Aunt Vi. A boy needed his mother, certainly. But a girl without a mother, and with a bombastic, sarcastic, hardheaded and bitter man like Hugo Clark for a father needed one most of all.

Could Alex absolve himself from all blame for the way Hannah Clark had turned out? He certainly hadn’t helped her, not in all the years she’d hung around the fringes of The Desert Rose, watching and hoping and either teased or ignored.

Now she’d done him a favor and asked a favor in return. She didn’t see that she had grown into a competent veterinarian, a woman who didn’t mumble or falter or feel insecure when it came to helping a distressed mare in real danger.

Hannah had been competent and assured the entire time she’d dealt with Khalahari, only reverting to type after the job was done, the mare and foal safe. There was a part of Hannah Clark that had grown, matured. Triumphed.

But she didn’t see that, obviously, and Alex highly doubted that she had heard a single word of praise from Hugo.

And yet she’d come back to Bridle, come back to her father. He was getting older, she’d said, and she’d come back to help him, be the dutiful daughter. Why was it that so often the most undeserving parents were gifted with the most loyal love? Was the need for a parent’s love, a parent’s acceptance, that strong?

Probably, or else Hannah would have been long gone, never returning after getting her degrees, which she’d instead carried home to Hugo who, if Alex read the man correctly, never uttered a word of praise for her accomplishment.

That wasn’t Alex’s fault, damn it, and he knew it. And yet…and yet he felt this responsibility, this need to help Hannah realize who she was, how wonderful she was all by herself.

Wonderful? Alex shook his head, wondering where that word had come from. Yes, he’d been impressed with Hannah the vet, definitely. But he had also been impressed with her conversation, the flashes of wit and humor that she tried to hide. And he’d been just about blown away by that damn top button on her blouse, spending at least half the night wondering what would happen if he reached across the table and undid it.

“Alex?” Mac said as Alex stepped back, allowing Mac to exit the stall. “Cade told me you took Hannah Clark to dinner last night.”

“To thank her for saving Khalahari and Khalid, yes,” Alex said, turning with his brother and walking back down the length of the stables.

“I don’t think I’ve seen her since she got back from veterinary school. How is she?” Mac asked, stopping at the door to the stables and looking out at another cold, damp morning. “Still the klutz? Good old Hannah Slip-on-a-banana.”

“She’s twenty-eight and a damn good vet, Mac,” Alex said angrily. “I think we can safely retire that old joke now.”

“Hey, hey! Calm down, brother. I didn’t mean anything by it. What happened? Did the clumsy duckling turn into a graceful swan?”

Alex felt the muscles in his jaw tensing as he bit down hard, nearly grinding his teeth. “Look, Mac, I know you’ve sworn off women, but take it easy, okay? Hannah’s a nice kid.”

“Kid? Alex, you just reminded me that she’s twenty-eight now. Hardly a kid. Now, if I promise to be nice, will you tell me what she looks like all grown up? I remember blond hair in pigtails.”

Alex closed his eyes, surprised at how clearly he could picture Hannah in his mind. Her thick, naturally blond hair swinging just at her shoulders. Those huge blue eyes that were too often shadowed by some inner pain. A full mouth that smiled too seldom. Her body, petite yet strong, her slim shoulders seemingly weighted down with problems much too heavy for her to carry.

“No more pigtails,” he said at last, because suddenly that was all he wanted to say about Hannah Clark. Everything else was both too personal and too confusing. “See you back at the house, Mac. And don’t get caught up in anything out here, okay? You know Vi expects us all to be on time for breakfast.”

“Your wish, as always, is my command, Oh big brother of mine,” Mac said with a sharp salute, then smiled before turning back into the stables.

Alex shook his head. Mac would forget. He’d find a hoof he thought needed cleaning and do it himself rather than ask the ranch hands—Jan or Mickey or Hal—to do it. And Cade would eat his pancakes so they wouldn’t get cold, and so that Vi wouldn’t fret, worried that Mac, a big strong man, would fade away into nothing because he forgot to eat.

Just another day at The Desert Rose. Another dawn, another challenge, another day.

Except that today, everywhere Alex looked, he saw a skinny little kid in pigtails, hiding behind a post, peering at his brothers and himself, her big blue eyes filled with longing.

Chapter Four

Hannah sat in the front seat of her father’s SUV, her head in her hands, sobbing.

The storm raged both inside and outside, a storm of weeping from the gray skies and the flood of tears Hannah no longer fought to control. She was cold, wet, covered in mud and heartbroken.

She was also stranded on the side of the road, her front left tire shredded and flat because she had failed to clear the edge of the cow-catcher on the road leading from the Bates ranch. Instead of using the main road, she’d opted for a shortcut, knowing her SUV was capable of going off the road to avoid the cow-catcher, but her tears had blinded her, and her mind hadn’t been concentrating on her driving.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.