LITMIR.BIZ

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here in el norte, on this side of the border where they were supposed to be safer, cleaner, and more respectable, they were still prisons.

      Especially this city which happened to be where his once rich daddy had made himself so notorious by manipulating juries he despised with his well-told lies.

      She lived here. She’d married another man and hidden from him here.

      His black leather glove gripped the throttle with a vengeance. Thoughts of her up ahead in addition to the soaring speed of his bike gave him an adrenaline rush.

      He had a funeral to get to. And he was late. A funeral he was very much looking forward to.

      Her husband’s.

      Ritz.

      He thought of Ritz at the damnedest times. Thought of what she’d done…and what she hadn’t. Thought of her glorious yellow hair blowing in the wind, thought of her blue eyes, how they could change from blue to violet when she got hot for him. She didn’t think she was sexy, but she was.

      He had to know why she’d crawled into his bed two months ago, why she’d been so eager to sleep with him, her warm, silky body aquiver. She’d been a perfect fit, better than before.

      And yet…she’d kept secrets that night.

      If it had been half as good for her as it had for him, why had she gone home to her husband?

      Since that night, he’d done some research.

      Were all the sordid stories Josh had spread about her true?

      Border saint? Or border tramp? Or something in between? Someone far more complex? She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a woman.

      And a widow now.

      Time to find out who she really was.

      He’d waited a hell of a long time for his turn.

      Thumpty-thump. His big wheels hit cracked pavement. Big piles of dirt, earth-moving equipment, and cranes littered either side of the interstate. Houston seemed to be falling apart. In the shimmering heat beneath a white soupy sky, the downtown skyscrapers undulated like strippers to the frenzied tempo of his bike. On either side of the freeway, office buildings, signs, restaurants, strip shopping centers, malls and huge parking lots whipped by.

      Progress? Were they going to pave the whole damn world? For a second or two he felt like Mad Max roaring to his doom on a crotch-rocket across some crazed, futuristic landscape.

      He should have noticed the lanes narrowing, the traffic beginning to hem him in. But he was flying past the blinking yellow lights on the orange barrels and all those little white signs that warned the freeway was under construction before he really saw them.

      His mind was on Ritz and the telephone call he had received six hours ago on the ranch.

      “…dead!”

      “But I thought….”

      “Caught us by surprise, too, Roque. Nobody thought he’d go this fast!”

      “How?”

      “In his sleep…painlessly.”

      “How’s she…taking….”

      “…too devastated…to even call me! Frankly I’m worried…. And she’s sick. A stomach virus or something.”

      For no reason at all that news had gotten him edgy. “How sick?”

      “Threw up everywhere. Been at it a week.”

      After all she’d been through, nursing a dying man, her formerly rich, famous husband…. His old nemesis, Josh.

      So…she’d loved Josh after all. The realization hit him hard.

      Ten thousand taillights blazed blood-red. As if on cue, six lanes of vehicles slammed on their brakes all at once.

      An eighteen wheeler’s trailer loomed ahead like a solid wall of silver.

      “Híjole,” he whispered, easing off the gas, gearing down, braking so fast, his bike went into a skid.

      G-forces hurled his powerful, leather-clad body straight at the mirrored trailer. To avoid slamming into it, he put his bike on its side. Sparks flew off his crash bar across asphalt.

      Hanging on and hunkering low, a jagged rock sliced his cheek as he hurtled under the eighteen-wheeler. A second later he shot out the other side across two congested lanes of stalled traffic.

      An exhaust pipe blistered his stubbly jaw with a wave of hot fumes. A strip of black leather flapped loose from his shoulder.

      But he was alive.

      “You, son of a bitch!” a man yelled at him.

      Gears ground. Brakes slammed again as Roque skidded to a halt just short of the guardrail.

      Only when he was stopped did Roque notice the hole in his black jacket and see the blood oozing from his chest.

      He was alive. And so was she. All of a sudden he felt a hell of a lot better.

      Sudden longing wrenched his being. He saw violet eyes and golden hair spread all over his pillow.

      She was free again and so was he.

      He lifted the silver St. Jude medal he’d worn around his neck for good luck and kissed it.

      Then he began to shake.

      “Shit.”

      He rolled the throttle and made his rice burner roar.

      Where the hell was her house in River Oaks?

      Ritz Keller Evans was to the manor born. She was a real lady. Elegant. A princess.

      At least she was supposed to be.

      She patted her stomach uneasily.

      Today she’d certainly dressed the part she was pretending to play—that of Josh’s wealthy, grieving widow.

      She wore a black sheath. No jewels. Not even her gold wedding band. That she’d slipped off her finger, maybe a little too eagerly to be buried along with Josh in his coffin.

      Her honey-blond hair was swept back. Her skin was so pale and her expression so reserved, few people dared to intrude upon her grief. Very few of the mourners spoke to her. Her own mother and father had refused to come.

      Ritz was a Keller, of the legendary Triple K Ranch of south Texas, the last of the big-time, fairy-tale, ranch princesses. And since Texas is founded on the lie that a kingdom of a million acres, thousands of cows and a lot of oil wells should make any girl happy, the headlines about her fascinated a lot of people.

      What if they knew the truth? That she was estranged from her family? That she’d slept with her old boyfriend, Roque, the virile cowboy she’d spent years avoiding. Not just any cowboy, but Roque Moya Blackstone, son of odious Benny Blackstone, whom Roque had gotten disbarred. Roque himself was a self-serving, multimillionaire developer of the impoverished colonias she sometimes visited as a nurse. Not so long ago she’d even gotten him fined for building inadequate houses without utilities.

      Even if he was Blackstone’s son, being half-Mexican, how could he prey on poor Mexican immigrants?

      Better question: knowing who and what he was—how could she have crept into his bed and used him as a stud?

      Had she hoped lightning would strike her twice?

      Josh’s funeral had her second-guessing herself. She was broke. She hadn’t known what to do with herself when Josh had lost everything and their marriage failed.

      Now all she wanted was this baby.

      Until Josh’s business had failed and he’d left her, everybody had thought she led a charmed life. Then he’d taken her back, only to die fast. Naturally everybody was curious. Naturally she was photographed, written about, gossiped about

      She’d

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