LITMIR.BIZ

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didn’t sneak over there!”

      “Did, too!”

      “When?”

      “Yesterday afternoon. The day before that, too. He swims there every afternoon…at five.”

      “Wow! That’s just like you…to sneak over there and watch him every day. What if he saw you—”

      Ritz remembered the firelight flashing on that strong bronzed arm he’d held out to her before she’d run.

      “I was sorta hoping he would.”

      Jealousy stabbed Ritz’s heart. Not that she knew why she felt pain.

      They were nearly to the forbidden Blackstone gate. At least it had been forbidden ever since Uncle Buster had lost all his money and shot himself right in front of the funeral home out of consideration for Aunt Pam. Less than a month later his widow had repaid his consideration by marrying Benny Blackstone, the man who had driven him to suicide in the first place.

      It was Ritz’s lifetime ambition to end the feud between her father and Benny Blackstone and become another legendary Keller lady and have her portrait hang in the family gallery beside her ancestors for the next hundred years.

      Only Ritz wasn’t thinking about the dumb feud or her saintly Uncle Buster or even her own grand ambition.

      She was thinking about the magical boy last night and about Cameron’s gigantic thingy. Not that the cowboys had called it that. They had a dirtier word, a word Ritz had memorized on the spot. Not that she dared repeat it—ever.

      It had taken three trainers and Steve to lead the muscular stallion into the breeding room, and his thingy had nearly dragged the ground. The moment he’d seen the mare in full heat, the aroused stallion had gone wild, kicking and screaming. First off, he’d bitten a hunk out of the mare’s shoulder. Then he’d wheeled loose from the trainers, rearing, nearly kicking the stall door to pieces in his rage. He’d even taken a run at Irish, the foreman, Jet’s daddy.

      When Cameron had mated, the noise in the stall had nearly deafened Ritz. All that male energy and fury and power. All that charged, animal excitement. The stallion had reared and bitten and plunged. Ritz had put her hands on her ears and clamped her knees around the rafter. Eyes wide-open, she’d watched him knock the mare down and mount her. Maybe Ritz would have still been there, shocked as all get-out but excited, too, if Daddy hadn’t come in and yelled up at her to get.

      The beautiful boy last night hadn’t seemed nearly so cruel.

      “If…if he’s… I—I mean if it’s as big as Cameron’s…does it make him mad like it does Cameron…I mean when he sees a girl?”

      Both girls got real quiet for a moment as they remembered the blood streaming from the mare’s shoulder after the crazed brute had finished with her.

      “If Roque had seen you, what would he have done to you?” Ritz whispered.

      The boy last night hadn’t fit with the facts that went with him. Roque was Benny Blackstone’s oldest son, the bad son everybody said Benny didn’t like too much. He’d flunked school last year. His mother was a Mexican, a real Mexican, who lived down in Mexico. She was a Spanish teacher and Benny’s second ex-wife. She didn’t let Roque come to Texas much. Only sometimes in the summer. His father only invited Roque because Caleb loved him so much.

      Roque was supposed to be sulky and hateful whenever he did come. His own father hated him. Everybody said it was because he’d nearly gotten Caleb killed that first visit when he raced with the bulls.

      Caleb, the younger, golden brother, was everybody’s favorite, especially his father’s. Caleb’s mother had been Benny’s favorite wife, too.

      Roque was bad with girls. So bad he got sent home early last summer for something he did with Natasha Thomas in the back seat of her car. Natasha was four years older than he was, and she worked in a bar. Worse—she was Chainsaw Hernandez’s girl. Chainsaw was in prison on a drug charge.

      “Remember Natasha?” Ritz added, her stomach quivering as she remembered that wild, haunting Spanish music and Roque’s deliberately provocative, sensual dance. He’d known she was there and had tried to lure her into the amber glow of firelight. “What do you think Roque would’ve done to you—if he’d seen you?”

      Jet smiled so eagerly Ritz wanted to strike her. “He’s so huge.”

      “Well, it…it must be awfully heavy. How does he stuff it into his jeans? How does he even walk?”

      “If you go see, you’ll know for yourself how he stuffs it in, now won’t you? But don’t let him catch you, or he might stuff…”

      Ritz cupped her fingers over her mouth. “You’re lying. He’s not anywhere near that big. You’re just boy crazy.”

      “You will be, too, when you grow up.”

      If you only knew…

      Jet was fifteen. She had curly black hair, blue eyes, and creamy pale skin. Maybe she wasn’t boy crazy. Maybe it was like Jet said—boys were just crazy about her.

      Who could blame them? She had flair and an exciting personality.

      “A flair for trouble,” Mother said.

      Ritz felt a fresh surge of jealousy along with a secret wish to be just like her friend.

      Jet was developed. She had big breasts and a tiny waist and looked way better than any of those skinny models in the magazines. All the other girls at school were still as flat as pancakes—like Ritz. Most of them wore braces, same as Ritz, too. And glasses. Ritz hated her awful wirerimmed glasses.

      “Guess what else?” Jet whispered. “Yesterday I stole his clothes! I watched him run home naked, too!”

      It was still early June. Even so, the afternoon was swelteringly hot. Both girls were so sweaty, they smelled worse than Buttercup.

      “I’d rather see Roque Blackstone naked than see that old captured puma,” Jet said.

      That was saying a lot, but Ritz understood. Still, the cat in its chain-link cage under the live oak tree behind the courthouse had really been something. Maybe not worth plodding twelve endless miles in pea soup humidity under a hot sun. Maybe not worth getting yourself burned purple so your nose would peel off and Mother would get really mad and tell Daddy—but mighty exciting, nevertheless.

      The cat had tricked Ritz into coming up real close. Its eyes had been slitted as if he were dozing. When Ritz had crept too near his chain-link cage, Jet had poked him with a stick. He’d lunged so hard he’d flipped his cage over on top of Ritz. She’d screamed and he’d snarled and yowled.

      Ritz had clutched her silver St. Jude medal and yelped out a quick prayer. Sheriff Johnson had dropped his half-eaten doughnut in the scuffle to pull her away before the cat could claw her. But she wasn’t ever going to forget those pointy gold ears pricking forward after he settled down on his haunches or those big beady eyes tracking her and staring straight through her.

      “Does he eat people?” Jet had wanted to know.

      Jet wasn’t usually as interested in the natural world as Ritz, but the cat had been impressive, even to Jet.

      “Only skinny little girls…like your four-eyed friend here…or a fat, lazy horse, or a brat fool enough to poke him with a stick….” The sheriff’s laughter boomed when Buttercup whinnied. Ritz gulped the last of her cola and hid behind Jet.

      Sheriff Johnson was a stocky man with heavy jowls and a permanently red, large, pie-flat face. Mother said he could mess up a uniform faster than any law officer she’d ever seen but he shared his doughnuts. Once he’d let Ritz wear his badge for a whole day.

      Suddenly Johnson said, “Don’t you worry none. He only eats little girls…only when he can’t get a deer.”

      Jet heaved a deep, relieved sigh, for the ranch was well stocked

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