Willa Longworth

Willa was a woman with one chance at destiny and she wasn’t going to let a man—or her longing for him—get in her way…or was she?

“Life’s like the weather. You can never be sure of it. That’s the miracle, don’t you see?”

Luke McKade

He had done all the right things for the wrong reasons—until he met Willa. From that moment, his life would never be the same.

“You owe me a romp in the hay, Mrs. Longworth.”

Little Red Longworth

This ailing heir wanted someone to care for him during his final days. He found an angel in Willa…and a wife.

“I went to kill me a lawyer and a bastard brother. I got a wife.”

Hesper Longworth

The spiteful sister-in-law doesn’t want Willa to get a single red cent.

“Your unfortunate past is hardly my concern, Willa dear. I’m here to buy you out.”

Brandon Baines

A powerful lawyer with an ego the size of Texas and a dangerous need to keep things—and Willa—quiet!

“It’s just me and you, sweetheart. We’re all alone in the middle of nowhere. Now, where’s the money?”

Also available from ANN MAJOR and MIRA Books

INSEPARABLE

Wild Enough for Willa
Ann Major

www.mirabooks.co.uk

DEDICATION

To my precious daughter, Kimberley Leta Cleaves, who is quirky, funny, warm, witty, young. And because she is all those things, she is a challenge to me as a mother.When somebody asks me, where do you get your ideas, I should tell them from my daughter, who is my very own adorable muse.Thank you for Willa, Kimberley.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I want to thank the following people:

To Tara Gavin and Dianne Moggy for more than I can say

To Karen Solem

To Patience Smith

To Ted, for realizing that dinners and a clean house don’t matter nearly as much as writing

To Karen Olsson and Meg Guerra, who told me about Laredo

To Dorothy Deaver, who decorated Willa’s house

To Steve Stainkamp and Geri Rice

To Chris Misner and Greg McKee for telling me about the computer business

To Patricia Patterson for streamlining my business affairs so I can write

POEM

If I were alone in a desert

And feeling afraid,

I would want a child to be with me.

For then my fear would disappear

And I would be made strong.

This is what life in itself can do

Because it is so noble, so full of pleasure

And so powerful.

But if I could not have a child with me

I would like to have at least a living animal

At my side to comfort me.

Therefore,

Let those who bring about wonderful things

In their big, dark books

Take an animal—perhaps a dog—

To help them.

The life within the animal

Will give them strength in turn.

For equality

Gives strength in all things

And at all times.

—Meister Eckhart (1260–1329)

(Author’s note: As a cat lover, I change dog to cat. When I go alone into my imagination to write, Kanka, my cat, goes with me to help by sitting on my manuscript.)

Contents

Book One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Book Two

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Book Three

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Book Four

Chapter 25

Book One

“What we call the ending is usually the beginning.”

1

Marcie, his gentle, beautiful wife…Dead?

And it was all his fault.

Luke McKade sat alone in his vast penthouse office in southwest Austin. He willed the silence and the dark of his new gorgeous, empty building—the building that Marcie had helped design and decorate—to devour him.

Driven, he always worked later than his employees. Not that tonight was about work.

“Sa-a-ve the baby,” Marcie had whispered in her pronounced Texas drawl with its elongated vowels. She’d gripped him fiercely when he’d knelt over her bed. Her final, hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled. Then she’d died in his arms.

His mind had raced. His heart had thundered. What baby? What baby?

“A son,” the white-coated doctor had confirmed after the autopsy.

Luke wearily massaged the back of his neck. Restless by nature, always on the move, he rarely sat behind his desk this long—and never to reflect on his own shortcomings.

Murder. He’d done murder.

She’d been so beautiful. So gentle. So classy. How he had loved looking at her. She had known how to dress. Other men had envied him, which is why he’d married her.

He pushed his fingers through his untidy wavy black hair. On top of today’s unread newspapers and his managers’ reports from yesterday lay several mangled scraps of paper—his phone messages. Kate, his freckle-faced, madcap secretary with corkscrew red curls, scrawled numbers and names on whatever she had handy.

Among other problems, the Feds were suing him for restriction of trade, and he was trying to float a new IPO. Luke thumbed through the fast-food napkins, Post-it notes, and a couple of pages she’d torn from her calendar, his tension heightening. His lawyers had called. So had his ranch foreman. The name of the president of a rival company was highlighted by a smear of mustard. But what charged Luke was the name, Brandon Baines.

Brandon Baines had called three times.

Baines, big criminal lawyer in Laredo.

Laredo was a border town. As such, it was too far from Mexico City and too far from Washington, D.C. for either nation’s laws to be taken too seriously. Men like Baines could prosper there.

Baines and he had gone to law school together. He’d been like most of their class—rich, handsome, lily-white, ultraconservative—a racist to the core, and worse things, too, underneath his politically correct exterior. Baines hadn’t much cottoned to McKade’s darker skin or rougher, cruder views about life—except where they concerned women.

Baines’s tenacity and killer instincts had brought him fame and fortune in the free and easy Laredo. He had a rare talent for getting down and dirty in the courtroom. No lawyer in Texas had gotten more criminals acquitted than he. With the rise in crime, especially in drug dealing, his talents were in demand. He never gave up on a case. Never. Even when all seemed lost for the guiltiest of his drug-dealer clients, his mantra was, “This is good.”

Luke had forgotten all about Little Red’s imminent release.

I’m gonna shoot myself a lawyer and a bastard.

Luke didn’t like Baines or Laredo even though the two men shared a common enemy.

Little Red Longworth. What was he now—twenty-three?

The Longworths would be happy to have their precious son and brother home in New Mexico again.

Luke swallowed, trying to rid himself of the sudden bad taste in his mouth.

He wadded Kate’s scribblings and pitched them in the trash.

Later. Tomorrow.

Tonight was for Marcie, for his guilt.

Maybe everybody else in the whole damned world thought Marcie had slammed head-on into that limestone cliff all by herself, but Luke McKade knew differently. He’d killed her, and their unborn baby boy, as surely as if his hand had been on her black leather steering wheel.

Somehow it was easier to sit in the solitary gloom of his office with his own regrets than to endure the well-meant comfort of friends, colleagues and employees. He even preferred the fury of his hot-tempered, impossible mother-in-law to their consolation.

Sheila blamed him for the separation…for the accident…for her only daughter’s death.

Luke felt the muscles of his jaw tighten. World-famous in computer circles, he was tall, well built, black-haired. He stayed in shape. During the week he jogged or went to a gym. On weekends he did manual labor on his immense south Texas ranch. Indeed, he was well disciplined in all areas.

Ruthless, his competitors called him. Competent and innovative were the labels his friends attached.

Luke had sea-gray eyes. “And when you smile,” Marcie used to say, “you have the most devastatingly gorgeous face. Your eyes sparkle like dancing waves on a stormy day. I married you for that smile that gives your face so much energy. Now the only time I ever see it is when you perform for the press.”

Marcie had been right. His virile good looks, especially the practiced smile, were a facade. The man behind the mask was cold…dead…and wanted to stay that way.

He hated how he felt tonight—alive, raw, in pain, about to explode. He had to find a way to recap the volcano.

Luke McKade believed in order, in control. He lived by rules—his own. He never drank alcohol in front of his employees, and he wouldn’t be drinking tonight if he hadn’t closed LMK for the funeral.

Luke sat behind a mammoth mahogany desk. Nursing his second whiskey, he clenched Marcie’s framed photograph and stared unseeingly at the brilliant Austin skyline glittering against the black hills.

The world thought he was a hero. He’d had more fun when he’d been poor and fighting to make it. The higher he climbed, the more alienated and lonely he felt…the more powerless.…

Marcie? His brown hand touched the pale cheek behind cold glass. He had more money than Midas. But he couldn’t bring her back. He couldn’t tell her he was sorry.

He began to shake. Such white skin, such warm, soft skin she’d had…compared to his. Her golden hair had felt like the richest silk while his had been black and coarse like his mother’s. She’d been so high-class compared to him. His claim to fame was wealth. And power in the hottest business on the planet. They said he was a modern-day pirate, that he’d gotten where he was by greed and underhanded tactics.

Whatever. He was rich, unimaginably rich, now. CEO of a dozen computer companies, he was a giant in a world he’d helped shape. Known for his razor-sharp intelligence, tough negotiation tactics, and ruthless business instincts, he owned several highly competitive software and Internet businesses.

He’d known that the only reason an impoverished socialite like the exquisite Marcie Wilde had married a driven computer nerd like himself was for his money. He’d thrown that up at her the day she’d asked for a divorce.

“Your money used to be attractive…once,” she’d admitted. “But I always wanted you. I used to think that maybe someday you’d feel that way about me.”

“What the hell did I tell you before we got married—”

“I was in love. I thought I could change you. I thought I could settle till you fell for me, too. I thought I had enough love for both of us. You’re good-looking. Good in bed…at least at first I thought so. Then I realized you weren’t there. It was always your money and always going to be your money. I was like some object you’d bought to show off…a trophy. Nothing more. And I want more, to be more. I deserve more. You’re a dead man, Luke, at least with me.”

“I gave you everything.”

“And it’s killing me. I—I can’t go on like this.…This house we built together is not a home. It’s a monument like the pyramids or the Taj Mahal, tombs built for the dead to impress the living. You’re not rich…not really. You don’t have money. Your money has you.”

You’re killing me.

He’d remembered how eagerly she’d run to the door every night when he’d come home in the beginning of their marriage. Until he’d made it clear he didn’t like such exuberant displays of affection—in bed or out of it. But divorce?

He’d said, “So, how much are you going to take me for?”

“I don’t want a dime of your precious money.”

“One day some slick lawyer will call me and show us both what a liar you are.”

She’d stuck to her noble sentiment, taken a low-paying job. She’d rented a one-bedroom apartment. He’d hired a guy to keep tabs.

Even before she’d called three days ago, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. Still, he’d been surprised and pleased; but furious, too, that he was so happy to hear from her.

She’d said she’d changed her mind about the divorce; she’d had something important to tell him, something too important and too thrilling to discuss over the phone.

“You want more money, don’t you—”

She’d begun to sob. “I wish…I wish I’d never met you.”

He’d been about to apologize.

“You are a bastard.”

Bastard. Her tearful insult had pushed him over some wild edge. He’d been vicious, gotten her completely distraught. She’d slammed the phone down. He’d had a premonition that had taken him to a cold, dark place in his heart and terrified him. Desperately he’d tried to call her back. Six times he’d dialed that number he’d known by heart.

She’d raced out and jumped in her car.

He’d jumped in his.

He’d been the first at the scene.

Marcie couldn’t handle stress or fighting. She hadn’t been the best driver under normal circumstances.

Luke imagined her racing up that narrow road that wound through limestone cliffs out to the lake and to the house in the hills they’d built together as newly-weds.

His house now.

In her fury, she’d taken the turn too fast. There’d been an oncoming car in her lane. She’d swerved and lost control. He saw her slim body hurtling into unforgiving rock.

Too late, he’d realized she’d been coming to tell him about their baby.

“She was a damn fool about you to the end,” Sheila had said. “She truly believed the baby—my grand-baby—might work the miracle she couldn’t. That’s why she was so pathetically eager to attempt a reconciliation. She’d thought that if the two of you adored the same child…Why couldn’t she see what a coldblooded bastard you are? This divorce thing was your fault! You killed her! She loved you—poor fool. Not that you can understand that. You murdered my daughter! And my grandson!”

Marcie had loved him.

Which was the last thing he’d wanted her to do.

She’d been several months along. Why hadn’t she told him she was pregnant sooner?

Words from the mourners came back to him.

“—terrible accident! Not your fault—”

“—leaving him, you know—”

“—do you blame her—”

“—going to take him to the cleaners—”

“—nothing you could have done—”

Never as long as Luke lived would he forget holding her, watching Marcie’s eyes glaze, feeling her slim body go slack in his arms. When she’d told him about the baby he’d realized she’d loved him…not his money.

If only.

Luke McKade didn’t believe in second chances.

“Nothing he could have done—”

Luke opened a drawer and slammed Marcie’s picture inside facedown. He wanted to forget her.

He flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Nothing? Like hell!”

He closed his eyes and saw Marcie’s beautiful face, so still and untouched by death as she’d lain in her coffin. The image was etched like a brand in his brain. He’d taught her to lie still when they’d had sex.

Not your fault.

Wrong.

He’d married a vulnerable young woman for her class—to improve his image, to add glamour to the lie that was his life. Everything about Luke McKade was a lie, including his official bio. There was no Luke McKade. The press’s Man of the Year was a myth. Every word in every article, in every magazine and newspaper that had ever been written about him were fantastic fabrications that a poor, ambitious boy with a head full of dreams had invented so that nobody would ever know what he really was—a Pueblo Indian woman’s bastard born in shame and despair to a man…

“Cut!”

Even in his wild, dark mood, Luke wasn’t about to think of his rich, powerful father…or the rest of that blue-blooded bunch he wanted to have nothing to do with in New Mexico.

He yanked Marcie’s picture out of the drawer and set it on his desk. He would keep it there until the sight of her beautiful face no longer made his gut clench. Only then would he put it away.

But he couldn’t look at it. Not tonight.

When he sprang to his feet and headed toward the door, the phone rang.

Curious, he stopped to read his Caller ID.

Brandon Baines.

Baines wasn’t calling about Marcie. Lawyers, who defended Mexican drug lords like Spook Rodriguez and Texas big shots’ kids gone wrong, didn’t call old law school classmates just to be nice.

Five years ago, Luke had sent Baines a client, a very special client.

Baines had screwed up so royally, they hadn’t spoken since.

The client had gotten five years in the federal pen with no chance of an early parole. At the sentencing, the eighteen-year-old client had screamed at Luke, “You deliberately set me up.”

“This is good,” Baines had said without missing a beat. “We’ll appeal.”

“You think this is good—’cause you charge by the hour. I’ll tell you what’s good, you slick, lying jerk. When I get out, I’m gonna shoot myself a lawyer—” the boy had turned on Luke “—and a bastard.”

Luke had lunged at him.

“This is good,” Baines had said, grabbing Luke, holding him back as three deputies stepped protectively in front of the prisoner.

“I’ll show you who the bastard is, you no-good, spoiled, son of a bitch,” Luke had snarled.

“Easy. Little Red’s your half brother, McKade,” said Baines.

“The hell he is. Nobody can know that. Understand? Nobody!”

Luke McKade’s official bio didn’t mention a pampered little brother gone wrong, didn’t mention Big Red Longworth, the famous ex-governor of New Mexico who was their biological father. Luke had deleted those folders from his database. They didn’t exist. He’d deleted them from his heart—an organ that didn’t exist, either.

Killer instincts. Baines didn’t give up easy. When the phone wouldn’t stop ringing, Luke slammed out of his office.

Little Red was due for parole any day.

I’m gonna shoot myself a lawyer…and a bastard.

Maybe the kid was already out. Maybe he was in Austin.…Maybe Baines was calling to warn him.

Luke was on his way home.

If the kid was here or on his way, Luke decided he’d leave the doors unlocked tonight. That way he’d be easy to find.

It was time he and the kid had it out. Way past time.

This is good.

2

The temperature was still ninety degrees when Luke’s Porsche leapt the last cedar-clad hill. Wheels spinning, the Porsche took the drive on two wheels, skidding to a halt. As the garage door lifted, he saw the empty space on the right side of the garage.

Marcie.

She was never coming back.

He parked on her side and got out. She was everywhere, almost a living presence tonight. If their sprawling one-story showplace with its tall chimneys, numerous balconies, and the impressive copper roof had been built with his money, it reflected Marcie’s taste and exquisite beauty. Adjoining the house were guest cottages. Beneath the mansion were the maid, Lucinda’s quarters. Marcie, who had loved to entertain, had thought of every comfort, caring even about Lucinda’s.

Marcie had loved stunning views and had chosen this lot to build their modern dream palace a thousand feet above shimmering Lake Travis. Windows that lacked lake views looked out upon lush gardens with fountains, reflecting pools and bird feeders.

These barren limestone hills covered with cedar and live oak on the outskirts of Austin with their vistas of the jewel-blue lake were fast becoming Texas’s answer to the Mediterranean. Or at least they had been Luke McKade’s answer—until Marcie had walked, taking her furniture and that hideous cat of hers, Mr. Tom. Without her and that spoiled beast she’d been so devoted to, the place felt as cold as a tomb.

Not that there weren’t any number of computer jackals with money to burn who’d made offers on the house the minute Marcie split. Lake Travis was the place to live among his set. Every day more trees were cleared, more castle sites started, each castle having to be bigger and more impressive than the one before.

He wasn’t about to sell. The house was image. He’d live here, in desolate splendor even if it reminded him of her—if it killed him. He’d buy a second car or maybe a new boat first thing Monday, so he could quit staring at that empty spot in his garage.

When Luke pushed open the immense brass-studded, teak front doors, he heard his phone. He raced for it. Brandon Baines was on his Caller ID.

Baines was persistent as hell. He took what he wanted or kept pushing until he got it. He wouldn’t let go of anything or anyone he considered his. He was especially ruthless with women. When they’d been in school he’d gotten a law student, a friend of Luke’s, pregnant. Even after her powerful daddy had made a stink, Baines had considered the girl his property to do with as he pleased.

When Baines had offered her money for an abortion, she’d refused. Her father had thrown her out then. In the end, Luke had let her move in with him for a couple of months until she could get on her feet, a fact that had infuriated the possessive Baines, who’d wanted to run things. When the baby was born, Baines had come to the hospital and tried to force the woman to give up her little girl and come back to him.

When she’d taken her daughter and vanished, Baines had blamed Luke. “Because of you, I’ve got a little bastard out there. The bitch could turn up with her brat at an awkward time.…”

“Because of me, your kid’s alive.”

“You would be partial to bastards—”

Luke’s fist had slammed into that golden jawline before he could finish his sentence. They hadn’t spoken for a year. After that run-in they’d graduated, gotten jobs and been on opposite sides of a case.

The phone started up once more.

Again, Luke avoided it. He went to the window and watched a boat speeding across that brilliant expanse of blue. He picked up his binoculars. A man held a woman with golden hair in his arms as they raced across the lake.

Marcie and he had gone boating most evenings. He hadn’t used the boat once since. Luke watched the white speedboat until it vanished behind an island. When it didn’t reappear on the far side of the island, he knew they’d thrown an anchor out, probably gone below to enjoy each other.

High on his hill, Luke felt alone, cut off from every living being on earth. Suddenly, he felt restless in the big, empty house. He needed to talk to somebody. The phone rang again. Luke went to the kitchen, grabbed a beer out of the fridge and then the receiver.

“Where the hell have you been?” Baines demanded.

“Funeral.” Luke took a long pull from the bottle.

Baines’s quick, inappropriate laugh was a little hollow. “This is good—yours or mine?”

“My wife’s.”

“Sorry. Hey—I heard she left you.”

“We’d decided to get back together.” Not that Baines cared.

“Your brother’s here.”

Alert suddenly, Luke felt his hair spike on the back of his neck. Carefully he kept his voice casual. “Give him my regards.”

“He’s got a gun.”

“So does every other macho Texan.”

“You know what I mean. He threatened—”

“If you’re scared, call the cops. He’s violated parole. They’ll send him back to prison.”

“He’s sick. Cancer.”

Luke sucked in a breath. He was glad Baines couldn’t see him, couldn’t detect…Luke felt cold, so cold. And it was a hot night.

Baines was still talking. “But do you think the crazy little bastard went home to his old man or checked himself into a hospital?”

Old man…

“Didn’t he?”

“Hell, no. Says he’s dying. The cocky little shit says he’s gonna kill himself a lawyer first. You know who…yours truly.” Baines paused. “He’s after Spook, too. And then…after he does us, guess who’s next, old buddy—”

Luke stood unmoving, his hand frozen on his icy bottle. Cancer? Little Red…?

“You really want me to call the cops? That’ll mean publicity. I thought you said you didn’t want anybody to know you had a piece of scum like him for a brother.”

Scum? Once Baines and his rich white law school buddies had called Luke scum.

Cancer? The kid was barely twenty-three. Five years in prison…and now a diagnosis like that. Would he die young like Marcie?

A quietness stole over Luke. His computerlike mind raced. What the hell kind of cancer? Could something be done? Options? Doctors? Experimental treatments? M.D. Anderson Cancer Center?

He thought of the stacks of sealed manila envelopes in that locked safe in his bedroom closet. Reports in those envelopes told all about the kid whose existence Luke publicly denied, whom Luke had denied to himself—until the day the old man had barged into his office and said, “I need a lawyer.”

“I would have thought a man with your connections would have any number of lawyers of his own.”

“I need a dope dealer’s lawyer. I hear you’re friends with that piece of slime in the valley—Brandon Baines.”

“Friends? Call Baines yourself. I’m busy. Kate, show this…er…this gentleman out.”

“You can’t throw me out like I’m nobody.”

“What exactly are we to each other? Are you my father?”

Big Red had glared at him. Then he’d looked away. Finally the old man had broken the silence.

“Baines says he’s too busy to see me.”

“That’s too bad.”

Luke knew, as he’d known that day, a whole lot more about the kid than he had ever let on. Oh, yes he knew a lot. He’d been keeping tabs for years. Even then he’d had a secret filing cabinet bulging with information about the kid.

Not that Luke had personally set foot in New Mexico to get that information. He hated that state, the people and the culture—what they’d done to him; what they’d done to his mother. Most of all what the old man had done to her.

Still, Luke knew the exact day, the exact minute, the exact place Little Red had been born. He had every school picture stapled to a single sheet of typing paper. He knew every basketball game the kid had ever won, knew every grade he’d ever made, knew the kid could add like a computer the same as he could. The kid was lousy in English the same as he was, too. Knew the kid had had a complex in high school because he’d been skinny and unattractive to girls.

Luke even knew the name of the first girl Little Red had screwed in college, knew they’d gotten high on pot and done it in the back seat of the brand-new, red Chevy the old man had given Little Red so he could make a splash in college.

Luke hadn’t had a car in college or law school. He’d had jobs. He hadn’t gotten to screw girls. At least not as often as he’d wanted. He’d had to work too damn hard.

Every time Luke had read a report he had visualized the boy and his charmed life, trying to get into his head the experiences he’d only dreamed about. He had wanted to know what it was like to be beloved and legitimate—to be the pure-white son.

Luke knew the brand of the first cigarette the kid had smoked. Just as he knew when the kid had taken the first false step, made the first bad friend that had led toward his dealing dope for Spook. Luke could have called the old man, could have warned him long before the kid went bad. Big Red had cut the free-spending kid off when he’d flunked out. The kid had been desperate. Instead of getting a real job, he’d started selling dope to friends.

He’d been a natural salesman. Girls had been easy to get after that. His life and travels had made fascinating reading. And the ritzy Longworths had been fooled by the lies the kid told them, believing he was a whiz in the computer business and had a real job.

Will Sanders, a private detective in Albuquerque, still made his monthly visits to Austin to update Luke’s files. Sanders had even had contacts in prison, so Luke knew everything that had happened to Little Red during the past five years, too. He knew about that night seven guys had held the kid down in his cell and nearly killed him.

Luke had taken steps then, used connections to get the kid moved. Gradually, Luke had begun to feel pride about how stoically Little Red had endured prison. A lot of pampered rich kids couldn’t have stood up to the abuse Little Red had suffered.

The kid was out. Free.

But cancer?

The kid needed doctors—fast.

“McKade, have you heard a damn thing I’ve said? He’s got a gun,” Baines repeated.

“And he knows how to use it. Stay out of his sight. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

“Look, I’ve got another big problem that can’t wait. A woman…”

“Hold tight.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Give the kid a target he can’t resist—me.”

“This is good.”

Luke slammed the phone down, his gut churning. He waited a minute, grabbed his cell phone to call his pilot.

No! He’d drive.

He didn’t bother to pack. He was out the door, running.

The smell of raw sewage hung in the air, no doubt, vapors from the Rio Grande. Heat glued Luke’s white collar to his neck. His long-sleeved, cotton shirt felt heavy and wet against his armpits. He wore jeans, boots, and a black Stetson. Three blocks shy of the posh, tourist zone of Nuevo Laredo with fancy restaurants like his favorite, El Rancho, and glitzy silver and leather shops, Luke stomped through paper cups, papaya peels, plastic bags, broken bottles, not to mention the human debris—beggars and pimps.

Familiar territory to a man with his past.

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico was an old city with a crumbling infrastructure. Like all poor places it was noisy, hot and dirty. It was in-your-face, gutsy, colorful and alive.

A shiny, low-riding American sedan cruised up to Luke, its radio blaring. A skinny, Mexican punk with a silver crucifix dangling from his glistening brown neck got out. The boy rushed him from the darkness, flipping pictures of naked girls.

Gleaming white smiles in pretty brown faces. Iridescent straight black hair. Breasts. Thighs.

Girls who didn’t look a day over fifteen. Girls willing to do whatever perversion a man could pay for. There were illustrations of those perversions.

Unsure of Luke’s nationality, the boy switched back and forth from English to Spanish.

“Meester…pretty girls.…Putas.…Muy baratas.… Cheap! They do anything.”

Luke shook his head, waving him off, only to have a dozen more swarm him.

“¡Vayate!” Luke growled, knowing but not caring that he probably botched the grammar.

“Chinga…”

The boys made vile hand gestures, such gestures having a rich obscene vocabulary all their own in Mexico. Aloud, they cursed him with a virulent stream of Mexican profanity. Then on the next breath, they sauntered jauntily across the street to cajole a fat-stomached tourist in Bermuda shorts who was smoking a cigar. Rap music pulsed from the low-slung sedan as the gringo leered at their pictures and then pulled out a fat wallet.

“Putas. Very pretty.”

Fun and games? In Mexico? Tonight?

They do anything.

It had been a while since Luke had had a woman. Sucker that he was, he’d been true to Marcie. It struck him he’d been waiting for her call and not her lawyers. His pride, his stupid pride had killed her.

I’m sorry. Why had that been so hard to say?

Sweat dripped from Luke’s brow. The heat. The damned desert heat. In July, even at night, Nuevo Laredo was like a furnace, baking him from above and below.

Why the hell hadn’t Baines done what Luke had told him? Why couldn’t he have stayed put in the good old U.S. of A.? But, no. Baines, like a lot of lawyers, had a penchant for drama. He was up ahead, leading this caravan of fools through the dense NAFTA traffic.

Little Red was not far behind.

Baines had gotten a green light when he’d crossed the border. His companions were a gorilla in a jogging suit, a small, skinny guy with greasy, black hair and a goatee, and a yellow-haired whore in red polka dots who was so pretty she made Luke’s stomach knot.

The Americans had stopped Little Red. But the paunchy-gutted idiots in their tight uniforms had let him go. When Luke got across the traffic-clogged border, which was bumper to bumper with eighteen-wheelers, he found Baines’s and Little Red’s cars two blocks from the main drag, their doors open in a dirt lot as if the occupants had scrambled out of them and taken off running. The radios had been ripped out. In another hour, the tires would be gone, too.

Beside Baines’s car, Luke had found his brother’s wallet, all the money gone and a high-heeled, red pump. Was the shoe the whore’s?

So where were they? He’d asked questions. Paid people. So far, he’d come up with zip.

Suddenly something that looked like bright red hair shimmered under blue neon a few blocks ahead. When Luke sprinted, a beggar with a mouthful of black teeth grabbed his ankle. Stumbling, he threw a fistful of pesos at the woman. Pushing himself free of her, he raced toward blue neon.

The redhead had vanished. Luke ran until he was thoroughly out of breath and thoroughly lost. When he stopped, he was on some dusty, rutted lane that wound in an indefinite course through a warren of shabby, graffiti-splashed buildings. Breathing hard, Luke rocked back on his heels.

Buildings? The houses were crude shacks made of sticks, adobe and cinder block. They leaned against one another like a row of dominoes ready to fall.

Hell on earth had to be junked cars lining a road like this. Hell was dirty, mean-looking, starving cats and dogs, half-naked kids with big brown eyes and ragged clothes. For an instant Luke was back at the pueblo. Then he stopped himself, not letting himself go there.

A lone rooster wandered in circles in the middle of the road. What was the use? Little Red could be anywhere. Luke might as well find a bar, have a tequila, the good kind, and pray for a break. But as he was scanning the houses for a familiar landmark so he could retrace his steps, a woman screamed.

Harsh slaps quieted her.

Then a gun popped, and she screamed again.

“Get off her, so I can kill myself a lawyer!”

Luke knew that voice.

The kid!

Another low-throated cry. This time Luke placed it as coming from the cinder block shack two houses down.

The silence that followed unnerved him. A brown bottle in the gutter caught Luke’s eye. He needed a weapon. Crouching, he swiped his sweaty hands on his jeans and then grabbed it by its long neck.

When the girl screamed again, he knocked the bottom off against a wall. Pulse pounding in his temple, Luke pressed himself into the warm shadows and inched nearer the house.

When he was close enough, he yelled from the street. “Damn you, Little Red…you’re crazy to carry a gun into Mexico. Cops down here will lock you away. You’ll never get out.”

“This is good,” mocked his brother drunkenly. “Not before I kill me a lawyer and…and…a bastard.…You’re next—Indian.”

The door banged. Bloody fingers against his golden face, Baines staggered outside. As always he was dressed impeccably in a dark custom-made suit. His two goons, the giant in the jogging suit and the runt with the slicked-back hair, stumbled outside behind him, grabbing Baines before he fell.

“Run, you sons of bitches,” Little Red whooped, rushing after them. “Vengeance is mine.”

The three men took off running. Luke sidestepped into a black pocket between two houses. Something he’d read in one of Sanders’s reports came back to him. Little Red had starred in a dozen plays in high school.

“Corny. Prison damn sure didn’t dim your flair for cheap drama, did it, kid?” he shouted.

“Where the hell are you?” Elbowing his way into the shadows, Little Red waved his gun. “Step out where I can see you.”

“This isn’t a high school play—kid. And you ain’t Rambo. And I ain’t stupid.”

The gun swung wildly.

Luke shrank against the wall.

“Luke! You…you…coward! You bastard!”

Silence.

Then a roach scurried out of the dark past the rooster. Scrawny wings spread.

When Little Red fired, the confused rooster flapped straight at Little Red.

“Sonofabitch!” Swatting wildly at the bird, the kid dropped the gun.

Racing footsteps at the other end of the alley.

Mr. This-is-good and his goons hadn’t gotten far after all.

Little Red roared in rage, then gleefully scooped up his gun and lurched after them.

Silently, swiftly, Luke pursued them.

He got ten feet before she yelled. Then she moaned.

When nobody answered, a final hoarse cry was swallowed, strangled, broken off.

She was scared. The bastards had left her all alone in that shack.

Luke remembered the gunshots and stopped running. With acute frustration he watched Little Red’s bright red head vanish into darkness.

She could be hit. Dying.

Marcie.

3

“Help…” This girl’s Texas drawl was as pronounced as Marcie’s. Thus, the e was elongated.

Luke stared at the black door as if it were the gate to hell.

“Please…” Again her prominent vowels seemed endless. “P-le-e-ease…”

“Marcie?” he whispered.

No. But this girl’s faint cries held raw urgency. He drew in a savage breath and then pushed against warped wood that creaked heavily on ancient hinges.

“Help…”

He cursed the dark and Mexico and the heat that had him dripping with sweat. Most of all he cursed the whore and her soft, alluring drawl that compelled him into this black and forbidding shack.

A bar of moonlight backlit his tall, muscular body and the broken bottle he held raised above his black head. More of that same silver light slipped through the cracks in the mortar left by shoddy workmanship and glistened against dirty, broken windowpanes.

The room was squalid, hot and hellish; its ceiling so low he had to stoop slightly. Plywood had been nailed against a hole in the wall. Corrugated tin was both ceiling and roof. The dirt floor was carpeted with cigarette butts and loose boards. Then he saw a Mexican bullwhip coiled like a black snake around a brand new, red high-heeled pump on the dirt floor, this shoe an exact match to the one he’d found earlier.

He picked the shoe up, turning it in his palm, and whistled. “Cinder-eff-ing-rella!”

“Who are you—Prince Charming?” drawled a small wavery voice, in an attempt at bravery. “What gives? A prince in blue jeans and cowboy hat?”

He liked her spunk.

The yellow-haired girl was tied by her wrists and ankles with remnants of her own nylons to a metal bed in the middle of the room. She lifted her drugged gaze to his.

A board groaned under his weight.

Her eyes bulged when she saw the bottle. Trying to free herself, she squirmed on the bare mattress. Moonlight rippled over her long shapely legs that were spread widely apart.

The room seemed to shrink, and the confines of it were suddenly more stifling. He drew a sharp breath.

Masses of reckless, yellow hair framed her exquisite oval face.

Sexy. Sexy as hell.

He thought, Wow.

He muttered, “Damn.”

It was only natural to want to keep his reaction to himself and to be repelled by it. He averted his eyes from the girl’s face and her awesome legs. But he felt like he’d fallen into a sensual barrel of forbidden delights. A girl with looks like hers made a man think of only one thing.

Images of those endless legs, a short polka-dot dress pushed above shapely thighs, black lace bikini panties and a garter belt had burned themselves into his testosterone-charged brain. Her breasts bulged against a low neckline. And that face…with those slanting eyes that caught the moonlight. Those full red lips…

Ah, such a face would give a saint wet dreams. Not that McKade was a candidate for sainthood. For as surely as there was a devil in hell keeping tabs, McKade’s name would be scrawled in roaring flames at the top of that fiend’s list of sinners.

“Are you going to he-e-e-l-p me…or…”

“Shhh…”

Why did she sound so much like Marcie? Why did she have to be blond?

Don’t look at those legs, or at that face. Don’t notice that her skin is pale and luminous, her shapely lips so moist and bright with paint they make your mouth go dry.

Her makeup, her costume, the mere fact Baines and his goons had brought her here and tied her to this bed to play kinky games told Luke what she was—a whore. As a kid, he’d had fun with her kind.

Was this hellhole her room? Or Baines’s?

Glazed, startlingly blue eyes, lined in heavy black, stared up at him. “It’s our honeymoon. Love me. Love me…P-please…just love me.”

Love?

What Luke felt had a lot more in common with what she would do for a dollar than with love. He wanted sex; she sold sex.

She moistened her lip with her tongue. Then she seemed to suffer a moment’s shortness of breath beneath his direct gaze.

His stomach lurched. She represented sex and the forbidden, all the vices he’d learned young and tried to rise above when he’d crawled out of the gutter. She had designed herself to bring out the beast in him.

She did.

“Shhh…”

With a muted whimper, followed by more slurred endearments, she strained toward him. Black stockings jerked, and she collapsed against the bed.

She was drunk or very high on something. Yet not so high that she wasn’t conscious of him. Nor did she act ashamed to be lying there with her breasts and legs so exposed. Instead, she twisted her hips deliberately to entice him, begging, “Love me.…”

At that honey-soft plea, his breath stalled. His body hardened. Her cheap beauty and suggestive posture paralyzed him. For a second or two, he even forgot about the heat.

He hadn’t changed. His fine suits, his fine house, the fine wife he’d buried only this afternoon…The fine schools he’d attended but hadn’t fit into…His whole damn life was a lie.

This girl was real. Too damn real. And she made him real.

“Don’t play your whore tricks on me,” he snarled even as he sank down on the bed beside her.

On a whimper, she shrank from him. Her wide eyes fixed on the broken bottle in his hand. Strips of black nylon held fast and put her at his mercy.

He saw a brown boy, facedown, in a vacant lot and the bullies standing over him, kicking dirt and rocks at him.

“Be still. I won’t hurt you. I’m going to cut you loose.”

She watched him. He fought not to look at her. Still, sitting on her bed, their hips touching, he felt joined to her in ways he didn’t understand.

He caught the scent of her perfume. Gardenias. Sweet, sweet gardenias. The fragile scent took him back to a summer day, to a cool, shady garden, to a haughty white woman who’d frowned at him with fury when he’d picked that single perfect blossom. He remembered her children in the same garden and the bouquets they’d held.

No.

The heat of the whore against his hip was a wholesome pleasure compared to his bitter memories. Perspiration beaded his brow. Better her. Better this hellish shack than his own shameful past.

The girl stared at his face unblinkingly. “Hawaii? Love…”

He waved the razor edges of the brown glass under her chin. Then he deliberately sliced a brown fingertip across the glass that was like a blade. Blood bubbled, oozed. A single drop splashed her cheek.

She started, whimpered.

“Hold still. Understand? So I don’t cut you.”

Her expression was grave, but she didn’t move when he began sawing with the bottle.

After a few swipes, the nylon gave, and her limp arm fell across her breast. Trouble was, he had to lean across her to reach her other wrist.

The second he felt her female flesh molding his, something hot and dangerous consumed him.

His heart slowed to painful thuds. Male nerve cells registered body heat, registered gardenias, woman smell. Registered her. She fit him like a glove.

She was available. She would do anything.

Wildfire.

Her breasts pressing into his chest made him dizzy. His hand began to shake so badly he had to stop so he wouldn’t cut her.

She held her breath.

So did he.

Get a grip. Don’t let her know. Work fast.

Again, jagged brown glass sheered the flimsy nylon.

But she knew. The instant she was free, her hands were all over him.

“I love you. Love me. I love you. Love me,” she pleaded in Marcie’s drawl.

Her hands. Her body.

Marcie’s voice.

Love me. That constant refrain pounded through him like a drumbeat. Eagerly her hands moved over his torso.

He had to get away. It had been a mistake to lean over her. Her skillful, expert hands, her whore’s hands knew exactly what to do to arouse a man like him.

Lightly, ever so lightly, she stroked. Sliding across his chest, her heated fingertips had his damp shirt out of his pants in no time, his belt unbuckled. Then like heat-seeking missiles, her hands were inside his jeans, circling him with her fist.

Low moans rose from her throat, her excitement matching his when she found him already hard.

Marcie used to moan like that. Until he’d forbidden her to make that sound in bed. You’re not a whore. You’re my wife.

He’d liked what Marcie had done too much. He’d known she’d win him through sex. It was a way to that deeper part of him he’d sealed and locked, so he’d be safe. With a whore, he could let go in bed. Because there were other lines he wouldn’t cross with a whore.

The girl writhed. To hold her still, he threw a leg over her thighs. She wiggled, snugged herself closer. He slashed her ankle bindings loose with the broken bottle. Their hips joined.

Meltdown.

Wrapping herself around him, she clung.

For years he’d been alone—his whole damn life. This woman, the soft warmth of her, erased all that. He gulped in air as her fist caressed him.

“Love me.…”

“You’re a whore.”

He saw tearing pain in her gaze. She froze, and he was moved beyond words by the sheen of tears misting her black-lashed blue eyes, by the way she drew back with proud dignity. “I love you…B-B…”

But whatever drug she was on got the best of her. Before Luke could register the name she called him, she wiggled closer, bringing her lips up to his. She caught her lower lip with her teeth. When she released it with a soft kiss, the swollen softness was pink, wet and shiny. And so damned kissable.

She kissed him, and her adoration, sweetness and innocence amazed him. Her seeming innocence, he amended.

He held his breath, his heart beating hard and fast. Don’t. Don’t.

But she kept at it, this spontaneous nibbling of his lips. She had a marvelous mouth. And not just to look at. She tasted, oh, God, she tasted delicious and so damned innocent…and so utterly utterly sweet.

Her tongue teased his, traced along the upper edges of his teeth. Nobody kissed like that but an expert.

Almost at once, he was shaking. Hardly knowing what he did, his mouth opened. He wanted more.

Gently, marveling at the softness of her skin, he let his knuckle touch her face. She didn’t recoil. For a long moment he just held her. He felt her breasts rising and falling beneath his chest.

Ravenous, he began to kiss her. “You are beautiful,” he breathed, his lips moving from her mouth, to her cheek, to her throat. Suddenly, he could contain himself no longer. Peeling her panties lower, he pushed her down into the mattress and straddled her. He tore at his jeans, unzipped his fly and shoved his jeans down. Somehow he had the presence of mind to fumble in his wallet for a condom. He tore it out of its package, put it on.

“How many others…besides me? How many, damn you? Brand Baines? Those jerks with Baines, too? What games did you play with them?”

“Only you, Brand…” She raised soulful eyes to him.

She didn’t even know who he was, didn’t care.

Then she saw him. Really saw him.

“You’re not—Brand!”

“How many—”

“Where am…” She moaned, shut her eyes, thrashed her golden head back and forth. “Oh, dear!”

“You’re in a shack. You were playing bondage games with three men.”

Another voice, bright and sassy, not Marcie’s. “Don’t you dare say things like that to me, mister.” But she was very pale. “Why, who are you anyway?”

In the next breath she saw the nylon around her wrist and moaned. “Bondage? You—you monster!”

“Me? This little game was all your idea!”

Panicking, wild to escape him now, she pounded on his chest, kicked at his legs. “No…No…No…”

He hated teases. “Whores don’t say no.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I can or cannot do. I can too say no if I want to. No…No…”

“No?” He laughed harshly, covering her sputtering lips with his hand. “I can have you. Anybody can. You can’t say no. Not now.”

“No,” she mumbled and most defiantly against his thick fingers. Then she bit him, rather ferociously.

“Ouch!” His hat fell off.

Furious, he jammed a knee between the girl’s legs, positioned himself to lunge. She was too slim, too small to stop him.

“You want me to tie you up again. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She countered with a piteous, mewing sound. Terrified eyes locked on his for a long, shocked moment. Then she slumped lifelessly.

Blood pumped. Take the sexy, sassy witch.

Rigid, she lay beneath him, blue eyes wide-open.

They were isolated. She was helpless. He could do whatever the hell he wanted.

So, do it. Nobody would know. Not even her.

He was swollen, on fire. The room was an oven. His black hair dripped perspiration onto the bed, onto her pale skin that gleamed with sweat, too. The need to take and ravage was so powerful, it almost robbed him of his humanity.

I can say no if I want to. No…No…

Sassy. Even when her face had been bloodless and she’d been so scared.

“Oh, God…” Had it come to this?

Panting hard, he drew back and moved a hand in front of her face. She didn’t blink, didn’t even see the five splayed fingers. He ran his hands through his soaking hair, smoothed it back, inhaled a ragged breath.

Something really was wrong with her. He fingered her wrist, found a pulse.

Wild with relief that at least she was alive, he pushed himself off her. He sat in the hot, stifling dark, cursing himself and her blasphemously. Through gritted teeth, he sucked in more deep breaths as he fought to regain normalcy…sanity…decency.

When she just lay there, her glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling, he got scared, too. Lifting her, he began to shake her.

“Wake up.”

She frowned, struggling to focus on his scowling face. “Sleepy…You are being most unpleasant.…”

Near panic, he dressed quickly, pulled her panties up those incredibly long legs, smoothed her dress. Touching, redressing her stirred him almost more than he could bear.

“Stand up.”

“Can’t…Dizzy…”

“Keep talking.” He slapped her. Not hard. But hard enough to leave a red mark on her pale cheek. He instantly regretted having done so.

“You’re mean.”

He grabbed her shoe and his Stetson. When he jammed her bare foot into the high-heeled red pump, she couldn’t balance and swayed into him.

“Oops.”

He grabbed her. “What kind of pills are you on?”

“You really are most disagreeable.…I’m a good girl. I don’t do drugs.”

“Liquor then? How much?”

“Brand…Drink…Not liquor, though.”

Luke didn’t know much about drugs.

“Whatever it was, you’re higher than a kite.”

Bottom line. He had to get her out of here. “Put your arms around my neck.”

“Are we going on our honeymoon?” Then she realized who she was really with. “I think you’d make the most dreadful bridegroom.”

Jostling her into his arms seemed to waken her. She was lighter than he expected. Effortlessly, he carried her outside into the close, hot, humid dark, which reeked of diesel fumes, charcoal smoke and other fouler pollutants.

“Are we in Maui yet?” she asked, a tinge of desperation in her dazed, curious voice.

They were standing on a crumbling sidewalk in front of a shack smeared with graffiti. He’d nearly raped her. She’d called him a monster.

She thought they were on their honeymoon.

He played along. “Can’t you hear the surf and see the hula dancers?”

“Maui. Darling. Just like you promised.”

Her wistful eyes and impish smile of sheer joy both dazzled him and terrified him.

Darling. The word, the way she said it wrapped itself around her soul. And his.

And her smile. That incandescent smile.

He wanted that irresistible smile to be for him. For him alone.

She took off his hat, turned it over and then plopped it on her own golden head. It swallowed her. She looked like a little girl playing cowgirl.

His gut clenched. So did his heart.

He could feel nothing for her. Nothing.

4

“Oops.” The yellow-haired whore shot him an irreverent grin.

His heart paused for a beat or two.

Cute. Childlike. Sassy.

All woman.

Those were Luke’s first thoughts when she tiptoed out of the hotel bathroom in a blue terry cloth robe, nearly tripping on the hem of the voluminous thick folds that swallowed her.

“I’m sorry. Do you need to go—” She blushed slyly at this mention of bathroom activities, and scooted against the wall. She ran her fingers through golden, damp curls. “How long was I?”

Not that she looked like she cared in the least.

“An hour. More than an hour,” he grumbled, not because he was angry, but because he’d been too aware of her in there and she was too damn pretty with all that honey-gold, flyaway hair cascading in rippling spirals all over her slim shoulders.

“Sorry,” she whispered without the least bit of sincerity. Fingertips fluttered quickly to her lips.

She didn’t look like a whore anymore. Then she stared at him suspiciously, and he almost wished she did. He had the strangest feeling he didn’t have her figured at all. But that was absurd.

She was tall, five eight if she was an inch. Yet she seemed smaller. She was too thin for his usual taste, but her delicately boned frame and her natural grace made her easy on his eye. And those soft, ample breasts and long, shapely legs made him forget how skinny she was in other places. Not that he could see much of her lush curves with so much blue terry cloth swaddling them, hem puddling at the slim ankles, thick, long sleeves dangling over her nervous fingertips.

Without her makeup, with her cheeks flushed from the long bath, without the tight polka-dot dress to cheapen her beauty, she looked sweet and young—as delectably innocent as a high school virgin, as classy as the priciest cover model, but a bit bratty, too.

The deep blue intensified the brilliant color of her eyes. It was those eyes, the way they sparkled with such mischief, that made her look…What? Sort of spontaneous and unpredictable.

She was so alive, incandescent, mesmerizing, sexier than hell. She drew him. Indeed, she had some gut-clenching power over him no woman had ever had. Or maybe, it was just that he felt so damned lonely and vulnerable after Marcie.

The girl’s golden hair shone, and he wanted to slide his fingers through its lustrous thickness. Who was he kidding? He wanted to do way more than that. Sex appeal—she had it in spades. At least for him. Which put him on dangerous ground.

With looks like hers, she could make a fortune. She was wasting herself on the border.

Maybe he should hire this lively girl on a permanent basis—to service him. Him alone. He wouldn’t share.

He could hire somebody to teach her how to talk and act at his parties. In the right clothes, she’d prance about palaces like a thoroughbred. Just like he did. Nobody would ever know they were a pair of fakes from the gutter.

She’d be more suited to him than the highbred socialites he dated. She knew what women were really for. He wouldn’t let her near those self-help books and women’s magazines that had made Marcie so dissatisfied. No expensive shrink like Marcie’s for this girl.

This girl turned him on. He needed a simple, basic relationship with a woman. Sex. A woman like her wouldn’t demand what he wasn’t capable of giving.

“Long bath,” he said, attempting to consider her as coldly as he would any commodity he was interested in buying.

But she wouldn’t have it. She glared back at him with an impish ferocity that stunned him.

No. Don’t even think about it. This girl spelled trouble. Besides, a woman of any sort was the last thing he needed as a permanent fixture. Especially when he was still so raw from Marcie…

“I always take long baths,” the girl retorted. “Not that my habits are any of your business, mind you.” She softened this bit of rudeness with the most enchanting blush; she squirmed, too, toes curling into the carpet. Sensing danger, but not about to run from him, her long-lashed, blue eyes flashed. Her mixture of boldness, reticence and obvious discomfiture around him caused a tightness in his chest.

He remembered their fight. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t totally unreasonable of her to distrust him. He’d forced her to walk and drink coffee until she’d collapsed in angry tears and called him a bully. When her mind had cleared, she’d thrown everything he’d told her about Mexico right back at him.

“Why, you raped—”

“I saved your cute little ass,” he’d thundered. “You were tied to bedposts…half-naked…alone…like some damsel in distress in a porn comic book.”

“And what do men in those comic books do to such women?”

“The point is I got you out of Mexico.”

“You’re determined to paint yourself as a hero and me as a—” She’d blushed then. “You don’t know anything.”

He’d learned quickly she blushed at nearly everything. Then she’d looked stricken and profoundly ashamed. Naturally, she’d launched an attack. “You almost raped me—”

“Almost being the operative word. You teased me, kissed me. You wouldn’t even know about it if I hadn’t told you.”

“Ha! I’m surprised you did,” she’d huffed. “I’m sure the only reason you did was to put me down. You just love telling me how low and awful you think I am. You called me a—”

Whore? He’d restrained himself and hadn’t said the word out loud again. “Your career of choice was all too obvious.”

She’d blushed again, bitten her lips. “Ha! And are you always right about everything?”

He’d laughed. “Don’t act so coy. You came on to me like a pro. You put your hands on me, remember? You unzipped me, fondled me, begged me for it.”

“Because I—” She went stock-still. Her blush was no longer becoming. Her face had deepened to angry purple.

Were those tears glistening behind her eyelids, too? Tears of outrage? She had a misplaced temper, this girl.

“If I did those things…” Her lip quivered. “Not that I’m at all sure I should believe you…I—I must have thought you were somebody else…somebody decent…although how I could have thought such a thing about you—even drugged—I’m sure I can’t imagine.”

The indignation and despair in her soft voice jarred him. Still, he defended himself with a burst of temper equal to hers.

“That same decent somebody who drugged you and tied you to those bedposts and left you there for anybody to find?” he shouted. He never shouted. Not at underlings. “Lucky for you I came along and not somebody else.”

“Lucky? You’re judging me…when you don’t know anything about me. You said yourself you nearly raped me.…”

“Don’t be inane,” he said in a low, controlled voice. “I stopped when you said no.”

“Then why did you feel guilty enough to confess?” Her voice was equally controlled. But she stuck her pretty little nose in the air and faced him with a startling amount of belligerent spirit. “You say I fainted. You say you’re my hero. How do I know what you really did?”

“I stopped.” He ground his words like meat through a grinder.

“You don’t look like a man who would stop once he got started.”

Her perverse compliment maddened him. The gall of this girl!

“I got you the hell out of Mexico. It cost me five hundred dollars cash to bribe the border guard.”

“You bribed a border guard?” Her eyes widened. “I wish they’d thrown you in jail. I would have liked seeing you behind bars—caged.”

“Well, they didn’t, because like everybody else in this world, especially you, they’re for sale, sweetheart.”

“You must have a limited and unlikable bunch of acquaintances.”

“Carrying unconscious young females across international borders is a highly suspicious activity. I had to pay them. They were strangers, not acquaintances.”

“I don’t much like you—even if you are as handsome as Mr. Darcy.”

Handsome? She thought him handsome. “Who the hell is Mr. Darcy? A client?”

“Do you read? Never mind. An almost rape?” She eyed him skeptically. “Bribing a government official? You are a man who’s capable of highly suspicious activities.”

“Then we’re a matched pair.”

“No, we aren’t.”

Huffiness. Morality. From the likes of her?

“I found you tied to bedposts,” he thundered.

“You keep saying that! If that’s so, you’ve made the most of it ever since!”

“You were drugged.”

She glared at him. “I don’t take drugs and I don’t like being insulted.”

“Do you like being alive and in one piece on this side of the border?”

“I do,” she admitted. “Thank you. But I don’t much like sharing a…a cage with a beast like you.”

“I’m not a beast.”

Her lack of gratitude, her refusal to admit her own shortcomings, her ability to see the worst in him—everything about her maddened him. But what really set him on edge was her standing there in the bathroom doorway in that robe, looking sexy as hell as she stared daggers through him.

“Come out for God’s sakes. I won’t bite.”

Shyly, she took a trembling step. “I have to go home.”

“Not till I’m sure you’re okay…safe.”

“You don’t care about my safety,” she said in that soft, knowing tone. “I know why you won’t let me go. What sort of games do you play, Mr. McKade, with your women?”

His pulse accelerated. “I worked my ass off to sober you up. I fed you supper…breakfast.…”

“You made me eat eggs. I don’t like eggs.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“I told you.”

“For God’s sakes, I’m not running a short-order grill. I ordered eggs. I ate them myself.”

“But you like eggs.”

“You have the most illogical mind.”

“Don’t say that.”

As if she were remembering the other battles they’d fought, she stared past him, to the closet, to the skeleton key in the closet door. “You deliberately scared me.”

“Relax. Forget that,” he growled, ashamed of that little episode.

“You threatened to lock me in there.”

“You ran out.”

“Because you’re a big bully.”

“Only sometimes…when pushed.”

“All the time, I bet.”

“I couldn’t let you run off drugged—”

“Quit saying I was drugged.”

“When you quit calling me a bully.” His heart darkened with a bitter memory. There was ice and yet pain, too, in his deep voice. “Where I come from…it was bully…or be bullied.” Why had he said that? Why had he betrayed himself to the likes of her?

She lifted her chin, studied him. “I bet you were the biggest, baddest bully of all.”

He glared. She chewed on her bottom lip, considering him with one of those intense glances that unsettled him and made him wonder what she might do next.

They were in Little Red’s hotel suite. The room key had been in his brother’s wallet. Luke had brought her here on the thin chance his brother would show up…alive…and he could, thus, kill two birds with one stone.

His brother’s suite had seemed as good a place as any to sober her up. Once, after pouring countless cup-fuls of coffee down her, when he’d been forcing her to pace the room with him, she’d panicked and broken out of the suite. He’d caught her in the hall, shoved her back inside, and pushed her into the closet. She’d pounded wildly on the door. He’d opened it and told her to be quiet, threatening to tie her up the way Baines had or gag her and lock her in the closet if she didn’t behave.

She stared at the skeleton key in the lock of the closet door and went still.

“My aunt used to lock me up…in the dark,” she said. “And tonight…” Her eyes filled with terror.

“Difficult aunt.”

“Oh, she was. She was a lot like you. She believed all people were for sale, too, especially women. She even saw marriage in that light. She was always saying, ‘It’s just as easy to marry a rich man as a poor man.”’

“Every woman I know thinks like that.”

“Not me. I believe in love, in chemistry, in magic—in excitement.” She snapped her fingers. “Or I used to. Till Brand.” Her voice dropped. “Till you.” Again her eyes held fear although she strove to talk about something else. “My aunt and I drove each other to distraction. But she taught me to read and to appreciate the fine arts. On the whole, she was a lot nicer than you.” She tried to smile. “And at least she was very well educated and way more honest about what she was up to than you are—McKade.”

“Call me Luke.”

“I’m not sure yet if I want to know you that well.”

“You’re rude.”

“Me, rude? That’s rich.”

“Ungrateful too,” he accused.

She seemed to make an effort to concentrate on what he was saying instead of on what she was so afraid of.

“My aunt used to say I was a brat. And maybe I was…sometimes. I used to follow her when she didn’t know it. I was too curious about what went on.…There were the most fascinating rumors about her, you see. And I was way too lively just to accept what she said as gospel.” She was silent. “As if anything she could say would be gospel.” Her voice changed. “I am a brat by day…and brave…but by night…I’m afraid of the dark.”

“You chose an odd line of work, considering that fear.”

“Ha! You don’t listen any better than—”

“And you’re afraid of me.”

She shook her head. “Not of you…”

She didn’t fool him. If she wasn’t afraid, why did she keep glancing from him to the bed? Why was she pressing herself against the wall?

He advanced upon her, to prove his point. “Feel better after your bath?” he asked silkily.

But she didn’t back away as he’d expected. “My brain still feels…weird.…Like the thoughts are drifting…not connecting.”

“Why don’t you get some sleep then,” he suggested.

“What will you do?”

“Watch over you.”

“Just watch?”

“Disappointed?” he inquired softly.

She blushed. “Do you ever stop with the sex talk?”

“That might be hard…with you around. I can’t seem to forget I found you higher than a kite tied to a bed.” He picked up the red polka-dotted dress. “This little number was shrink-wrapped to your body.” He wadded it up and threw it at her. “What kind of girl wears black mesh hose and a dress like this two sizes too small?”

Unfolding the suggestive garment, her eyes rounded. She jiggled the dress and made the flounces bounce. “Oh, my!”

“Not much dress. Lots of girl,” he said.

“It isn’t mine!” She threw it at him and stalked toward the bed away from him.

“You were quite…fetching in it,” he taunted darkly.

Another blush. She sank into a chair.

“You want me to be some idiot you can fool with your fake blushes and little-girl smiles and sly glances.”

“I know about you, too. You brought me here…because you thought I was that kind of girl. That’s why you won’t let me go. I wonder…If I did what you wanted, would you let me go then?”

He stared at her, scared to the quick and yet darkly thrilled, too, by her tantalizing suggestion.

She shut her eyes. “It’s all so extraordinary…like a bad dream.” Her hollow, fearful tone floated to him. “Brand said he’d marry me. At least I think he did. But…”

She rubbed her forehead, her eyelids and strained to think. “Only…only…maybe he did ask me to put that awful rag on. I thought he took me to Mexico to get married.”

“Some wedding dress.”

She stared about the room as if seeing ghosts, seeming to hear and see him only vaguely. “He gave me…Oh, dear…No…He couldn’t have drugged…” Frowning, she stared at the dress he’d dropped on the floor.

“What?”

“Was I really wearing that?”

He nodded.

“Brand loved me.”

A low moan rose in her throat. Her hand went to her belly. Then her face changed as if she’d come to a decision. Big blue eyes widening on his strong face, she looked up at Luke. There was something so proud, so desperate and so responsible in her gaze. He felt a fierce, insane need to protect her.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, feeling ridiculous.

“If Brand did that…” She rubbed her temples. “He wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t even listen. He won’t stop now, either.…He’s very determined. He’s rich, powerful.…”

“So am I.”

She stared at him. Her eyes lit up, as he’d known they would at the mention of his fortune.

“You have to help me. I have to get out of Laredo away from Brand—tonight.”

“No way.”

“I can’t let him find me.” For an instant she looked on the verge of panic.

He remembered his old friend, the pregnant law student who’d felt she had to run away from Baines.

As this girl studied him, she seemed to regain a bit of control. After a while, she even forced a slow, sexy smile. “What if…if I was the kind of woman you think I am…and you want me to be…the girl of your most lurid comic book dreams?”

He sucked in a breath. Here we go.

“We’re alone. In your hotel room.” Her gaze drifted suggestively to the bed. “What if I’d do anything? Absolutely anything? Would you help me?”

Anything. Pictures of women playing in provocative love games flipped in his mind. The pictures changed. Every face, every lewd position was of her.

Heat spiraled inside him. “One minute you play a whore, the next a virgin. Don’t tempt me unless you mean it.”

“Or the big tough, rich guy will grab me?” She trembled, hugging herself. Her blue eyes grew even more enormous. Then she licked her mouth with her tongue. “Anything,” she purred.

The imaginary pictures of her flipped again. He had a fleeting sensation of shame. She was in some sort of trouble. What kind of heel took advantage of a desperate woman, even a whore, who needed his help?

A man who came from the gutter. A man who used every opportunity for his own gain. A saint would have been tempted by her, and he was no saint.

She was so damn pretty she made every male sense knife sharp. His bones melted. His weaker nature won. Down in hell his name on that list blazed brighter. “Anything?”

She nodded.

“What do I have to do?”

“Money. And I need a ride north.”

“How much money?”

Her eyes locked on his. “A lot.”

“Undress.”

“Cash…before I—I begin—”

“Strip first.”

Meekly lowering her lashes, she gulped in a deep breath. For courage, he thought. Then she slanted her eyes at him as her fingers fumbled with the sash of his robe.

“Take your time,” he said with a touch of irony.

Untying the rope of blue cloth, she coiled the sash between her fingers.

He appraised what he could see of her body, watched her fingers stroke blue cloth. “So, I was right about you?”

Her wounded eyes stung him. She flung the sash full-force at his face.

That temper of hers turned him on. He caught the sash, recoiled it and plunged it inside his pocket. “Take it all off.”

She paled.

He grinned. “Act like you’re having fun.”

She brought a hand to her throat protectively. “You better hope I’m never in the position to exact revenge.”

“You said anything.”

“A gentleman would help a lady for nothing.”

“Gentlemen are an extinct breed.”

She gave him the once-over. “How right you are.”

“Nor does the term lady apply to any female in this room.”

“Ha! Someday I’ll make you regret this.”

“You blame me…for your idea!”

“It’s always the man’s fault.”

“Right,” he said.

With a little shrug, she flashed him an infectiously warm smile, covering it with fluttery fingertips. Then she squared her shoulders and blew him a kiss. The next thing he knew she winked and began to hum a ribald burlesque tune.

While he watched, she mimicked a stripper’s high-stepping strut, moving fast as was her custom, peeling the terry cloth back and giving her full, shapely breasts a little jiggle for him.

Lust arced through him. He began to burn.

His response paralyzed her. Her quick steps faltered; her humming paused in midnote. Her outstretched leg hung suspended in the air. She stared at it in openmouthed astonishment as if she were terrified to find it there.

Long seconds passed in which each was too aware of the other. Then she recovered, threw her head back, cupped her breasts as if to offer them to him.

She looked so damn cute, so eager, holding her breasts like that.

Available. She was like a fantasy in a dream. Only she was real.

She let the robe slide from her slim, rounded shoulders, down the length of her voluptuous body. His heart thundered.

His sea-gray gaze flicked over full, soft breasts, her narrow waist, and the fullness of her hips…and those incredible legs that went forever.

She blushed, as if stunned by what she was doing, and then quickly averted her gaze to the blue pool of terry cloth at her feet. Her modesty only enhanced her charm and beauty. He wanted to grab her, take her.

“You won’t say no again…just when things get interesting?” he rasped, taking a step toward her. When her smile froze, her fingers falling from those voluptuous lips, and she shrank back an inch or two instinctively, he softened his tone. “You didn’t answer me.”

She bowed her head, her cheeks crimson in shame. “I won’t say no…if you make me go through with this.…”

His eyes narrowed. He moved in for the kill, took her chin in his callused hand before she could escape. “How much?”

“W-what?”

He studied her slender neck, her swollen mouth. “How much do you charge…for this little dance…for all the rest?”

He loathed himself when she looked from him to the bed and began to shake. Then he saw the tears glistening in her eyes. “A thousand dollars,” she snapped. “But you have to take me with you…tonight.” Her strangled voice was so low and hot with that temper of hers he could barely hear her. “Like I said, I need a ride.”

“You’re gonna get the ride of your life.”

Hot color crept up her throat, warming the skin beneath his fingertips.

“You like thinking of me as an object, a toy you can play with, don’t you? But if you give me the money…and help me…” She shut her eyes. “I—I’ll try not to let myself care what you think.”

She was so soft. His blood pumped at an alarming rate. His breathing was so shallow and quick, he couldn’t get enough air.

“I want my thousand dollars now.”

“A thousand dollars. You’d better be good. You’d better do—anything.”

“Oh, dear.” Then she said, “You got it!”

He pulled out his wallet, counted ten bills and laid them across her open palm. She took her time, folding them. In slow motion, she set them down one by one on the table.

That done, she lifted her gaze from the ten green bills. Squaring her shoulders, she faced him, wild emotion flaring in her pale face. “Go ahead,” she whispered, fighting to keep her voice steady. Her body went stiff.

Instead of seizing her as a girl in her business, no doubt, expected, he knelt at her feet as if in worship, his fingertips starting at her toes. Tracing the arch of her narrow foot, he noted how she quivered, goose-flesh springing beneath his lightest touch. When his hand reached the top of her thigh, he forced her legs open.

“My, my…a natural blonde.”

His gaze climbed, fixed on her face. “I have a thing for blondes.”

Her eyes were closed. Was she pretending he was someone else? Brand maybe? Or imagining this wasn’t happening? What was she thinking? He had to know. She had to know she was with him. For some inane reason that was vital. More vital than sex itself.

“Open your eyes,” he commanded.

Her cheeks flamed. Her black lashes fluttered reluctantly.

“Are you sure about this?” he demanded.

Her eyes clung to his in mute desperation, but she nodded.

“Smile, then.”

Her bottom lip wobbled, but she tried. Dear God, she tried. Despite her smile, a tear trickled down her flushed face.

He jerked his hand away. The fact that she didn’t want to look at him, that when she forced that tremulous smile, she wept, angered him. Had she wept in that shack with those goons?

“A girl of your…er…talents ought to be able to act like she wants it…as bad as her client.”

More tears welled. “I’m trying. It’s just that with you…” Her smile died. Her control slipped. She lifted her nose in outrage, stared down its length. Her wet, dilated eyes cut him like daggers. “With you, it’s difficult.”

“More difficult than with other men?” he growled.

“I imagine so.”

“You did say…anything,” he reminded her, trying not to show the dark jealous emotion that had begun to gnaw at him. “And I have a lifetime of fantasies. The girls in my dreams never cry.”

“Would I be the girl of your dreams…if I didn’t cry?”

“No way.”

A blink brought more of the same liquid pooling in those beautiful eyes. “Then turn off the light if you can’t handle a real girl’s tears.”

“Can’t handle—”

She stabbed at the switch behind her. Darkness enveloped them. Then she reached for him. “Dream on,” she whispered.

He felt her shaking, felt her reluctance, knew she was still crying. When he kissed her, she shuddered.

She didn’t want to do this. And, damn it, he wanted her to.

Why the hell did that matter? He would handle it.

She’d sold herself. This was business. He could use her any way he liked.

“What’s your name?” he demanded even as his hand blindly touched her wet cheek to comfort her.

After a breathless pause, she said quaveringly, “Willa.”

More than sex, he wanted to hold her close, to make her feel safe—which was ludicrous.

“I’ve never paid a woman for sex before.”

“You’re the first for me, too.”

Guilt crept over him. If she was telling the truth, if she wasn’t a whore, some desperate need he knew nothing about was driving her to this.

She was a whore. Of course, she was a whore.

He’d bought companies, ruined men of far more worth than she.

His gut knotted.

“Get into bed,” he growled.

As her bare feet scampered in the dark, pictures of a naked golden girl in a dozen way-out fantasies flipped in his imagination.

Sheets rustled. He heard her reluctant sigh.

He was as hard and hot as a brick just out of the kiln.

He couldn’t wait.

She didn’t want him.

Why the hell did that matter?

5

Willa de Mello was afraid of the dark, afraid of going to sleep, afraid of bad dreams. Especially when there was a big bad wolf lounging in the stuffed armchair right beside her.

So, she lay in the dark and wondered how in the world she would get away from Luke McKade. Not that she was really worried. For all his macho bravado, the big, oversexed lug was a pussycat…at least compared to Brand.

She’d known he wouldn’t force her to do it. Not if she didn’t want to. A man like him lived for challenges. He was so conceited he truly believed it would be child’s play to win her, before he bedded her.

Willa was a cat lover. Thus, she understood predators. Cats liked to stalk and wait, to play a bit with their prey. They savored the chase, anticipating the treat. In his mind the treat was a yellow-haired party girl. A lot of men had been fooled by her hair color and sexy looks.

Ha! This was one lady who wasn’t about to serve herself on a silver platter to another oversexed rogue, even if he had paid a thousand dollars for the meal. Under different circumstances, he might have been fun. Not tonight. But Brand, what he’d nearly done, had changed Willa forever. Willa’s secret agenda was a matter of life and death.

Not that McKade wasn’t attractive, if a girl went for tall dark and disturbingly handsome and rich and powerful, which did have a certain appeal to a fan of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters’ novels. But Willa was way too disillusioned and in way too much trouble to take on a new man, especially another know-it-all bully who thought the worst of her. All her life she’d been misunderstood. If her appearance didn’t get her into trouble, then her wacky responses to life and literature did.

What she’d been looking for was someone who believed in her, who accepted her—who respected her, who saw past her sexpot, dumb-blond good looks. She’d known she had to have a man who didn’t mind a woman who was a little different. A man who didn’t expect her to be a deb or a Martha. Here in Laredo, the highest class debs were known as Marthas and Marthas were the equivalents of New Orleans Mardis Gras queens. And Willa had thought, until tonight’s rude awakening, she’d found such a man in Brand.

Desperate moments. Wild impulses. Reckless deeds.

She was used to this sort of thing. Like a cat, she would land on her feet.

It isn’t just you anymore though. You can’t keep flying by the seat of your pants, Willa dear.

Her conscience always had Mrs. Connor’s voice. Dear, soft-spoken Mrs. Connor had been her favorite art teacher at Trinity Elementary. Mrs. Connor hadn’t minded if she hadn’t colored in between the lines, if she’d drawn her own pictures instead. When all the other kids had been coloring red apples on apple trees in their workbooks, Willa had drawn an upside down orange tree floating on a cloud because there had been an orange grove right in her backyard. And sometimes, when she’d lain under her favorite orange tree and stared up at the branches, she’d seen clouds floating above her tree.

If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Connor, Willa wouldn’t have majored in art in college. She wouldn’t have become the biggest success in her class by going on to the grand career of painting T-shirts for a living. Of course, real artists despised her. Or, at least, Willa imagined they did. But she did make a good living. Which was more than a lot of real artists could say.

If things were half as bad as McKade described, you were in a heap of trouble tonight, girl.

Willa always talked back to Mrs. Connor.

Tied to a bed in that vulgar, uncomfortable costume? Who me? McKade probably ripped it off some other woman and then embellished what happened to exaggerate his own importance and humiliate me.

As if he read her rebellious thoughts and saw through her denial, McKade grumbled and shifted his large body in that chair that was much too small for him. Poor boy. He probably wanted to attract her attention, so she’d feel sorry for him and invite him to bed.

Ha!

Not that she wasn’t grateful. If it hadn’t been for him, there was no telling what might have happened to her. But Willa didn’t have the sort of mind to dwell on such things. She believed life was an adventure. She believed in destiny, that everything that happened was supposed to happen—and all for the best. One didn’t have to understand. One had to accept and go on.

But tonight…Brand…

If half of what McKade said was true, and deep down she knew it was, tonight things had gone way too far. Well, she was safe now, or she would be when she got out of town and escaped McKade.

Soon.

Willa was warmhearted and irrational. High drama was her forte. From birth she had been a handful, getting herself into more mischief than ten curious little girls.

Was it any wonder? After all, she’d barely been five before she was the tragic heroine of a grand adventure. Her adoring parents, both every bit as whimsical and reckless as she, had been swept off their yacht in a stormy sea only seconds after they’d lashed poor Willa to the mast.

Willa had survived two days and two nights in that storm while the boat broke up beneath her. Like the ancient mariner in her favorite poem, she’d gone mad with grief and fear, but she’d found her courage, too. That was why, or so her imminently practical if ever-so-scandalous aunt, Mrs. Brown, said, “Willa’s exasperating because she can’t take life, or at least what normal girls consider life, seriously. She can’t plan for the future. She’s too busy living.” Not that the tyrannical Mrs. Brown was always so philosophical about Willa’s shortcomings.

To Willa, the moment was all. Nobody had more fun than Willa. Nobody got into more trouble. As a little girl, she hadn’t cared a fig about making good grades.

“She even fails subjects she’s a whiz in,” her teachers complained. “She could be so brilliant in math. And she’s fast when she takes a notion to be.”

But math had bored Willa. Why should a little girl waste precious life working problem after problem she already knew how to do? Especially when one preferred staring at mysterious creatures such as butterflies or pill bugs and wondering what the world was like to them? Did pill bugs have schools that were dreadfully boring with dull books and endless, repetitive exercises?

She never painted the same design twice on her T-shirts. She never cooked a recipe the same way, either.

Willa, the woman, had a fatal weakness for the wrong kind of man, the bossy, judgmental McKade running true to her type. He wanted to tie her down but blamed her for his own desire.

But surely, surely he wasn’t as horrible as Brand.

Ditch McKade. The sooner the better, said Mrs. Connor.

But he’s so cute. And he thinks I’m cute.

A girl does love to have fans.

I’d think you’d have learned your lesson.

He’s fun to tease.

With McKade on her mind, Willa drifted off to sleep and was instantly enveloped in nightmarish visions from hell.

Ever since her parents’ accident, she’d had bad dreams. Tonight, the monster was Brand. As always he was dressed elegantly. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Unaware that she clawed the sheets, unaware of Luke McKade growing alert in his dark chair, she moaned aloud.

Dreams move more quickly than reality and make connections and reveal secrets that terrify. At first, Brand was sweet and loverly—her very own Prince Charming. Then he was holding a plastic bag over her face and she was gasping, clawing holes in it to get air.

The bag shredded. Brand laughed and said he’d been trying to pull it off.

Then she told him about the baby.

“A baby?” He was smiling; that meant he wasn’t listening. “This is good, princess.”

“Oh, Brand, I’m so in love.”

He was laughing, but there was something dark about his eyes. “In love? With me? This is good. I love you, too.”

“What about our baby?”

“Willa, my princess, you’re so young.”

“You said you loved me.”

“And I do. But are you ready for a baby?”

“I’m pregnant. We have to marry.”

“Of course we do.”

She could tell he wasn’t listening.

“You’ll tell your parents?”

“The sooner the better. They’ll love you. We’ll have a huge wedding. We’ll go to Hawaii for our honeymoon. We have a house in Maui, you know. This is good.”

“We’ll be so happy…as happy as I was when I was a little girl and my parents were alive.”

She thought of all the sexy, shameful things Brand had forced her to do even when she’d told him she hadn’t wanted to. Oh, she’d tried so hard to please him. So hard, she often hated herself after they’d finished making love.

Irrational fear consumed her. Suddenly, she was running from something dark and monstrous that had a fiery green tongue.

Brand was so beautiful and golden, so rich and powerful. She had loved him ever since she’d been a little girl. He’d been so much older, he’d never noticed her back then.

If Brand was smiling, why was she terrified?

Not going to be a baby. Not going to be a baby.

Who had said that?

“Let’s get married tonight. In Mexico.” How Brand’s green eyes had sparkled.

“What about your parents? Our big wedding?”

“We’ll tell them later, my love. We’ll have a second wedding.” He’d made her drink…to toast the baby. She’d choked on the bitter stuff and then gotten woozy.

“Not good for the baby…”

“There’s not going to be a baby.”

That’s when he’d said it. Brand had said it. In Mexico. In the shack. Before he’d told her what he was really going to do.

Two men held her. She was weak, drunk or drugged, not herself in any case. Brand was ripping off her nylons, not caring that those awful men with those lust-filled eyes were watching them. She didn’t care much, either, not when she knew what he was up to. He was tying her hands and her ankles to the bed.

The baby. Don’t hurt the baby.

Brand leaned over her with a syringe. She felt a sharp prick in her left arm. His face whitened in a blinding blaze that looked a lot like a halo.

“There’s not going to be a baby. Everything will be okay. You love me, and I love you. And we’ll go on as before.”

Before her eyes a green horn sprouted from Brand’s thatch of golden curls, and his halo fell and dangled there. Brand winked at her, his green eyes sparking fire.

She screamed and screamed. Somebody else was there—a wiry, sickly looking fellow with haunted eyes and greasy, spiked red hair. Moonlight glinted off something black in his hand.

Brand dove behind her, using her as a shield.

She was staring up into stormy gray eyes. “Don’t shoot my baby!”

Gunshots. Little bits of concrete falling onto her face.

They were all gone. Except McKade looming over her, his contemptuous, piercing gaze more lustful than Brand’s or his men’s. When she struggled, McKade brandished a broken beer bottle near her face, slicing his own finger with those razor-sharp edges. A drop of his blood fell onto her cheek. Who could have illusions about such a man?

She wanted Brand, who was elegant and golden, Brand whose family was rich and famous and respectable.

By comparison, McKade was big-boned and rough, his appetites blatantly carnal.

Brand was her Prince Charming…not…

Not going to be a baby.

A tongue of green fire shot out of McKade’s mouth.

Then Brand, toppled halo and all, returned. The vision caught fire and turned the most livid shade of green.

She began to scream.

It was deliciously disconcerting to awake in Mc-Kade’s arms, her lips pleasantly smothered against the villain’s warm, wide furry chest, the very same villain who’d caused her nightmare. Brand had made her do awful things in bed. McKade, who had rescued her, had not forced her to earn that money.

Then McKade, his voice tense with the strain, said, “Not going to be a baby. What did you mean? Whose baby?”

“Nobody’s,” she lied, nestling closer because his warmth was so lovely. The last thing she would tell him about was the baby.

She was pregnant.

The powerful father of her baby, for all his surface charm, didn’t want her or their child. He would have killed her. McKade had saved her from Brand and other worse dangers in Mexico. He’d saved her baby. But McKade didn’t respect her. A man of his obvious limitations never would. And he certainly wasn’t the fatherly type.

Not going to be a baby. Oh, yes, yes. She was going to have her baby.

I saved your cute little ass.

McKade wanted that cute little ass. He’d paid a thousand dollars for it.

And he would get it, pregnant or not, if she didn’t get out of town—fast. She couldn’t go home. No telling who Brand had at her aunt’s house waiting for her to return. Too bad for McKade that her purse, her car and her money were at her aunt’s because that meant she needed his. If he was as rich as he said he was, he could get more.

McKade’s large hand stroked her hair, her back. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

Safe? When the Baineses controlled Laredo? When Brand had said he’d never let her go? When the rogue who’d found her tied up in Mexico, and bought her because he thought her cheap and awful, held her in his arms? When the brain beneath her mussed curls was spinning worriedly with ideas about how to best him?

Safe? With him? If he thought that, then he was even more clueless than she’d thought.

The impossible devil laughed, the pleasant rumble deepening the grooves that bracketed that beautiful, ever so sensual, male mouth.

Safe? She hardly knew him, but the chemistry or whatever it was that was between them was so volatile they’d almost had sex twice. She felt as if she were a delectable mouse waiting for some big cat to pounce. After Brand, she was afraid of sex.

She stared up at McKade, and was aware of harshly carved features, of his animal white smile, of that unruly lock of midnight-black hair that tumbled over his brow. A sensible woman would be terrified to bump into a man like him in a dark alley.

Sensible? Nobody had ever accused Willa of that failing.

Safe? The sooner she outwitted this beguiling devil and got out of his clutches, the better.

“Thirsty,” she whispered, shuddering against his chest so he’d go, so she could think, if that’s what her churning mental processes could be called.

He left her, splashed water into a glass in the bathroom, but returned too soon, the mattress dipping beneath his weight once more.

He lifted her into a sitting position again, holding her against his heated length while she sipped from the glass. When she’d gulped it all down, he set the glass aside and continued to hold her.

Leave. Leave.

Of course, he didn’t. His head was too thick-boned and dense for telepathy to work. Slowly, shyly, she became aware of that heavily muscled, big-boned body against hers, aware of his heat seeping inside her, aware of her nipples hardening against his massive chest. Meltingly pleasant sensations rippled through her.

She sighed blissfully. Then she caught herself.

Aware of her response, he tensed.

It was just the terror of her nightmare that made her so vulnerable. That made him feel so good…so natural. So right. She’d been shy about sex…even with Brand, only letting him because she’d loved him so much. Only playing the games he’d wanted later because she’d wanted to win his love.

Letting a man hold her like this wasn’t sex. Still, it was exciting. Her feelings were like those of a seventeen-year-old girl with a first crush. How, after all she’d been through, all he’d put her through, could she feel…It was too soon after Brand.

He saved you.

McKade.

The clever rascal was using that to his own advantage.

“I’m okay,” she said, so he would leave.

“Good.” His voice was gruff. He almost pushed her away as he shoved himself up from the bed. “No more bad dreams, promise?”

The minute he stood up, his wide muscular shoulders were silhouetted against the light from the window. Suddenly, irrationally, she ached to have him back. “What do you want from me?”

“Sex. A thousand dollars’ worth.”

“And that’s all?”

“Of course.”

“Then why didn’t you take—”

“All in good time. When you feel better.”

“I’m surprised you have any qualms.”

“I want to get my money’s worth.”

“You’re vile.”

“And you’re such an excellent judge of character.”

She drew a sharp, little breath. She was stung, but she liked sparring with him. It distracted her from her more serious problems.

“If you’re disappointed we didn’t…” His suggestive voice was low and hoarse. “If you’re feeling lusty…just say the word. I’ll be happy to oblige.”

“Go back to your chair.”

He laughed but obeyed. She clutched her sheets and was secretly bereft and disappointed.

As soon as he was safely ensconced, she said, “McKade, if you were the last man on earth, I wouldn’t want you.”

“Then, pretend, the way you pretended when you danced. If you’re half as good at sex as you were at stripping, we’ll be dynamite together.”

“Good night, McKade.”

“Good night, Willa.”

He snapped out the light and fell silent. Suddenly, the darkness and the walls seemed to close in on her. She was a little girl tied to the mast again. She was a woman tied to that bed in that fetid shack.

He’d come, saved her.

Saved her baby.

No matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to get over that.

“McKade?”

“Change your mind about sex?”

“Is that all you think of?”

“When I’ve got a thousand bucks of my money on the line and a girl like you in my bed—”

“I’m beginning to think your bark’s worse than your bite.”

“I’ve got a helluva bite. I promise you’ll love it.” His voice was a soft, sensual rumble. “Just say the word and I’ll nibble you all over.”

“Would you quit!”

When he fell silent, the shadows in the room seemed to darken. When she’d been a little girl, her aunt had told her the witches lived in the closet and they’d get her if she got out of bed.

Willa had thought the witches had yellow eyes and long black fingernails. On a shudder, she closed her eyes. Terrifying darkness enveloped her. Instead of witches she saw Brand. Her eyes snapped open.

Willa got out of bed and scrambled across the floor to McKade’s chair. Her hands climbed his jeans, fingernails clawing the denim. Huddling at his feet, she seized his long fingers and held on tightly. His long, brown fingers closed over hers.

He drew a breath. So did she.

“I’m scared of the dark.”

“You’ve been through a lot.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

So, she told him about her parents, about the accident, about the two days and nights before she was saved.

“I was dehydrated and sunburned, but most of all, ever since, I’ve been terrified of the dark. Tonight when I was alone in that shack, it was like that storm. I had lost everything…all my illusions. The shack was so dark. I—I could hear things crawling. I—I couldn’t have stayed there two days…and two nights…wondering what would happen to me.…I would have gone really mad, died of fear. I know I would have. You came. You saved me.”

He stood up. Slowly, he pulled her up with him. He said nothing, he just held her, and never had rougher hands felt more gentle. After a long time, he lifted her into his arms and carried her back to the bed where he tucked her under the crisp sheets.

When he rose to go, she blindly circled his neck with her arms and held on. “Move your chair closer.”

His fingers tightened on hers. “Be careful what you ask for.” His eyes blazed.

She let him go.

When he’d scooted the wooden legs across the floor and sat down, she fell asleep almost instantly. This time, because she knew he was there to keep her demons and her aunt’s witches at bay, her dreams were pleasant.

6

“I’m going to kill me a bastard.”

Willa’s eyes slitted open. Blearily, she fought to focus on the blaze of pink splashed on the far wall. Through the screen of her dense lashes, she saw that the fake leather chair beside the bed was empty.

McKade. He was gone. He’d left her. But her fuzzy thoughts were brain chatter, delivering no emotional punch. Then she heard more chatter. No, raised voices from the next room!

“You can’t tell me what to do, you bastard. You’re nothing to me. Nothing.”

“Ditto, you histrionic, self-destructive…punk.”

“You’d give anything to be me, to be his real son.…”

“You’re wrong.” But McKade’s voice was soft, and strangely hoarse.

“You don’t like being our bastard, do you?”

“If you shot him, you sorry sonofabitch, and talked to the press about me, my name might get in the papers.”

“Your precious name? What a laugh.”

For an instant, Willa was back in the shack. The redheaded man, no boy, the redheaded boy with the scary eyes was waving his gun and acting crazy. He was here, threatening McKade of all people.

No. She was dreaming.

“You’re going home, Little Red,” McKade said in that firm, irritating, grimly condescending tone she resented every bit as much as this kid did—at least when Mr. Macho directed it at her. “Home to New Mexico.” McKade paused. “You’re going to behave and keep your filthy mouth shut.”

“Save your high-and-mighty act for someone who doesn’t know about your mother—”

You tell him, kid, Willa thought.

McKade must have launched his big body at the brat. Willa heard the rumble of heavy furniture, the crack of bone and sinew and then what sounded like both men rolling and fighting on the floor.

The kid had a gun.

Don’t shoot the big lug. Please, don’t shoot him.

Was that her or Mrs. Connor, pleading for Mc-Kade’s life?

“Hold your tongue, you sonofabitch!”

Despite the life-and-death drama in the next room as well as the squabble in her own heart, Willa awoke slowly, the way she liked to, drifting through pink clouds.

“Don’t shoot me.” The kid’s voice this time.

Oh, goody, McKade had the gun. He wasn’t going to get all shot to pieces this nice pink morning. Not that she cared.

Then a lamp crashed.

Oh, please don’t do murder.

Muffled male curses and scuffling sounds broke through her muzzy consciousness, and she began to fret about McKade again. Oh, dear. Why couldn’t they just cool it? Men were so difficult, such attention-getters. And they were making a horrendous mess that some poor woman would have to clean up.

“Bastard.”

“You crazy, sonofa…”

She knew that tone. McKade was getting mad. Really mad. A fearsome, yet thrilling vision of a huge powerful street warrior, holding a broken beer bottle, towering over her, ready to do battle for her, rose in her mind’s eye.

“What the hell did you think you were doing? A gun? In Mexico?”

Shrill hysterical laughter. The boy’s. Then his whining voice. “What do I have to lose?” He sounded desperate.

There was a great clump. They must’ve hurled each other to the floor again. Bodies rolled. She heard grunts, fists slugging flesh again.

And then silence.

McKade? Was he hurt?

More likely, the boy was dead.

They’d put McKade behind bars.

Curiosity, not concern for McKade, got the best of her. She pulled sheets and blankets around her and rushed into the living room. McKade was sprawled on top of the skinny redhead. The two men’s entwined bodies lay beside a toppled chair, a fallen lamp and shards of glittering glass. Not that either of them were cut. McKade, his silver eyes wild with the lust of battle, was stretching a hand toward the gun that lay six inches beyond his reach.

No man in such a mood could be trusted with a gun. Certainly not McKade. Quick as a flash, she stepped on his wrist and reached down and snatched the weapon away.

He yowled. “Give me that!”

She jumped to safety. “Get off him, you big bully.” Then she scooted backward toward the bedroom. Not that she stopped her bossy scolding. “You’re twice his size! You’ll kill him!”

“Give me the gun and get back in the bedroom where you belong.”

“And let you blow that poor child’s brains out?”

“For the last time! Mind your own business, Willa!”

“You saved me last night from my own stupidity. I’m returning the favor.”

McKade lunged. She raced for the bedroom and locked the door behind her. The gun dangled from her fingers and she opened a narrow glass door that led out onto the balcony.

Where to hide this awful instrument of death?

Where? There were four stories down to bushes, dirt and cactus, where it could be buried.

Where? Nowhere!

Besides, if she dropped the gun, it might explode or something. Like men, loaded guns were not to be trusted.

Leaving the glass door open, she ran back inside and nearly tripped over the red dress. McKade had a key in the lock of the adjoining door. Grabbing the horrid heap of silk flounces, she dashed into the bathroom, slammed the door and locked it.

She eyed the gun, scanned the dull, sterile, white-tiled cubicle. Where? Where?

Nowhere.

Somewhere a door slammed open. “Willa!” thundered that most irritating of bullying voices.

She knew that yowl. Knew that fist pounding her bathroom door. The door rattled alarmingly.

“Just a minute, dear,” she cooed with wifely, saccharine sweetness.

“Willa!” he muttered. “Quit acting like a fool!”

She stared at the black gun.

Where?

Absolutely nowhere. Still, she had to put the gun somewhere. So in desperation, she opened the toilet tank and dropped it into the water.

Plop. Gurgle. Lots of satisfying bubbles.

Did bullets rust? She scooted the lid back in place, seized the postage-stamp bit of silk and wriggled into it as best she could. As she adjusted the flounces that barely covered her derriere, McKade kept up his furious pounding. When she was dressed, or rather squeezed into the awful playsuit, frilly skirt and all, she stared at herself in the mirror.

Oh, dear, dear, dear, said Mrs. Connor.

Breasts. Legs. All those wild curls. That drowsy look in her hot, sexy eyes. And that telltale blush that betrayed an alarming amount of excitement. Terrible as last night had been, there was nothing like danger and drama to give life a keen edge, or to make a girl who’d been blinded by love see clearly.

Brand had been the biggest mistake of her life. He hadn’t respected her, hadn’t seen past her sexy, good looks.

She studied her reflection. Cheap. Tarty. Come on, honey.

But cute.

No wonder a man of McKade’s low sexual instincts had formed the same opinion Brand had had, that she was a party girl who would put out.

Do not concede a moral inch.

Thank you, Mrs. Connor. McKade had no right to judge her on her appearance. It was most unreasonable. But she would use it. Maybe if she could get his mind on sex, she could outthink him.

Don’t get all conceited because you turn him on.

“Thank you, Mrs. Connor,” she whispered to the tart in the mirror.

Willa, of course, prided herself on being unreasonable. Most unreasonable. After all, it was a woman’s prerogative. If McKade was such a fool not to see the intelligent, vital woman inside the tarty, bimbo getup; if he was such a cad he’d take advantage of a desperate woman he deserved whatever he got.

Her wanton reflection jumped—due to McKade’s bellowing and male bluster on the other side of the door. She watched the door rattle, almost relishing his thunder.

How long could the big lug keep that up? Such fierce male energy—it was rather exciting having all that bluster and determination directed at her. She decided to wait and see how long he could rant.

For no reason at all, she wondered what he’d be like in bed. All that energy. Would he attack? Or be gentle? He certainly had a lot of bad-boy passion. She turned him on, too.

Only when McKade stopped slamming his fist against the door, and all got quiet outside, did her curiosity get the better of her.

She fluffed her hair, threw back her head, opened the door, and went into the bedroom in the tight red dress. McKade’s eyes blazed, so she wiggled her hips like a burlesque queen, strutting almost…just to get his goat…and to unhook the wires to his brain, too. McKade liked it when she strutted her stuff.

One minute, the men had been glowering at each other by the glass door. Then she sashayed out like a stripper about to start her act and tension charged the three of them like a jolt of blue-hot electricity. Her wanton wiggle was like a match, arcing into a pool of gasoline.

McKade’s gaze grew fiercer. A slow smile broke across his disreputable captive’s thin face. When the boy ogled her, McKade got so mad he looked like he was about to blow a gasket. Which, oddly enough, greatly pleased Willa.

“Don’t even think about her,” said McKade. “She’s mine.”

The kid’s smile thinned sardonically. “Really? She doesn’t look to me like she belongs to anybody.”

The kid, Little Red, with the crazily spiked orange-red hair, was growing on her fast.

“Where’s the gun?” McKade demanded.

She notched her nose up defiantly. “I said, you don’t have to shout. The last thing you two need is a gun.”

“I like her sass,” Little Red said.

“Shut up.” McKade scowled at Willa. “Is it out here?”

“Do you ever listen?” she demanded.

“No, he does not,” said Little Red. “What’s a nice girl like you doing shacked up with a rude jerk like him?”

“We’re not shacked up,” said Willa huffily.

“Good for you,” said Little Red.

“Not yet,” growled McKade.

“You didn’t shoot Brand, did you?” she asked, batting her lashes at the kid, mainly because it had such a powerful effect on McKade. His face had gone as dark as a prune.

Little Red looked sullen…until he caught on she was flirting with him to bedevil McKade.

“I bet you’re a good shot,” she said to the boy.

McKade swore in an undertone. “He missed, didn’t he?”

“The asshole stole my rented car,” explained Little Red.

Which meant Brand could and would come after her. Which meant that she had to get out of here fast.

“Sorry to break up this little party,” said McKade. “But I’m taking you back to New Mexico, kid.”

“Can I come, too?” Willa asked.

The men were too wrapped up in their own war to answer her.

“Nobody, especially not you, is gonna tell me what to do—you—you bastard,” the kid whispered.

McKade grabbed the boy by the collar, shook him and then shoved him roughly out the door.

Bastard. Willa made a mental note. That particular word really got to McKade.

They slammed the door in her face. She opened it and rushed outside into the hall after them. “Don’t you two dare leave without me.”

McKade shot her an insulting grin over his wide shoulder. “So, get that cute polka-dotted fanny of yours in gear, girl. You’ve yet to earn your keep.”

Her keep! The nerve! But she rushed back into the room, grabbed the thousand dollars off the table, came outside, and stuck it between her breasts, while both men watched her little maneuver so appreciatively that the elevator door closed and the elevator went down without them.

“You’re really paying her? You’re really that hard up?” asked Little Red with lewd interest. He lowered his voice. “How much?”

Willa pulled out the bills and flapped them saucily. “A thousand dollars.”

“Would you choose me…if I gave you more?”

“Butt out,” growled McKade.

“Sure. I’ll go to auction. Go ahead. Make me an offer,” Willa snapped sassily, not because she was serious, but because this game might have possibilities, because she felt afraid and chose to mask her fear with an air of bravado. McKade’s scowl had gone as black as a prune again. As always, the dramatic held appeal.

The madder McKade got, the slower he would think. And why couldn’t she amuse herself? Why shouldn’t she distract herself from the very real terrors of last night? After all, she knew she had no intention of sleeping with either of them. So, why not play their silly little male game and pretend she was a slave, up for grabs on an auction block?

“Money, lots of it. And me,” said McKade.

“Marriage,” said Little Red without missing a beat.

Marriage. One little word. Willa felt breathless.

Marriage.

Suddenly, the stakes had changed.

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