LITMIR.BIZ

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attention before the gate slammed and really spooked her.

      “Come here, girl….”

      Buttercup’s nose was in the air, and her staring eyes that were ringed with black, rolled. Then the mare bolted straight for the gate. Dark mane flying, tail arched high and snapping like a flag, she went off at an angle. She was through the gate, galloping down the caliche road, stirring up puffs of white dust as she dashed toward the woods that concealed the pond and the forbidden Blackstone Ranch Headquarters.

      “We’ll never get her back now,” Ritz said gloomily after she disappeared into the trees.

      “Oh, yes, you will.”

      “Me?”

      “You want to get the ranches back together, don’t you? Hey!” She glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s five o’clock. Your horse just ran straight for the pond where Roque skinny-dips.”

      Ritz felt a pang of pure misery mix with wild fear as she watched the dust settle on the caliche road while Jet knelt down to search for the bit of gold she’d seen. Ritz’s gaze wandered from the road back to the ugly yellow signs Benny Blackstone’s cowboys had posted on his game fence.

      Every time her daddy drove by them, the yellow signs made him madder than spit. He said they mocked him and her—and everything Keller.

      No trespassing.

      Posted.

      Keep Out.

      Jet jumped up from the ground, dusting off an open, bronze, hasp lock. “It’s the lock! And a key, too! We can ride inside now…anytime we want to.”

      “I don’t want to. Not ever. Daddy would…”

      “Daddy doesn’t have to know. What are you so afraid of anyway?” Jet said. “You used to get to play there, didn’t you?”

      “Every Sunday,” Ritz admitted.

      “After church with your rich cousins.”

      “Carol and Kate. We fished for guppies.”

      “Right before Daddy and I moved here,” Jet added, that odd, jealous note creeping into her voice.

      “They’re not rich anymore, though,” Ritz said softly, to mollify her.

      Jet shrugged. “I used to be rich, too. Daddy was famous—”

      She was always bragging like that. Maybe because like a lot of people, she felt put down by the Keller name and ranch.

      “You told me.” Lots of times.

      “We lived in a great big house—bigger and newer than yours.”

      “Where?”

      Jet rushed on. “My mother kept our mansion perfect, too. Not dusty like yours.”

      “I don’t live in a mansion!”

      Jet was always talking about her perfect mother. But if she was so perfect, where was she?

      “So—how come you came here?”

      Jet stared at the sky. “Are you going to get your dumb horse or not?”

      Jet didn’t talk much about her father or the double-wide mobile home they shared now. Irish was nice, nicer than her own father, but if you saw Irish and Jet together, they never laughed or talked or even looked at each other much.

      Jet was her best friend, but Ritz had only been inside her trailer once…to see why Jet hadn’t come to school. The living room had been dark and messy with beer cans and dirty dishes and trash everywhere. Irish had come to the door in a dirty T-shirt and stared down at Ritz. Usually he was neat and polite. Not that day. He’d simply said that Jet was sick and for her to go home.

      When Ritz had told her mother, she’d taken the Taylors homemade soup and offered to clean the place for him. But Irish had kept the screen door closed and refused.

      Jet stared at the gate and then down the caliche road. “You’d better get Buttercup.”

      “I’m not going in there!”

      “Roque’s brown all over…even down there. And his thingy is big and thick and long! And…and when he saw me, it stuck out.”

      Ritz blushed as she remembered his tall, male body undulating to that wild, Spanish tempo. “He’s disgusting.”

      Jet laughed. “He’s hot.”

      Ritz turned her back to her friend. What would she do if Buttercup didn’t come back?

      At least it felt cooler standing in the shade of the gate. The prevailing southeasterly wind from the bay played across the grasses. Ritz’s damp blouse ballooned with air and little tendrils of her yellow hair blew against her brow and throat.

      She was working hard not to think about last night or Cameron or what Roque’s tanned, aroused body might look like when a burst of dark fire flew out of the distant trees.

      Buttercup tossed her black mane and galloped straight at her.

      Ritz sighed in relief. “I won’t have to go in there after all.”

      “Maybe she saw his big thingy!”

      “Would you shut up?”

      When Buttercup got near the gate, Ritz held out her hand and called her name. A hinge groaned. Then the gate swung back and forth, causing the mare to snort and dance skittishly.

      “Hold the gate, Jet, while I go get her.”

      The wind shifted and a cooling breeze struck Ritz as she ran onto Blackstone land. Buttercup raced off, hoofs thundering, her black tail high and pluming out. Finally she stopped a hundred yards away and watched Ritz, eyes wary, ears pointed. Then she lowered her head to the grass.

      “Why do you even bother calling her?” Jet taunted as she slung a leg over the gate to watch. “She never comes to you.”

      Ritz forgot her friend and concentrated on coaxing the mare closer. Only when she finally got the reins and turned to yell in triumph, Jet was gone.

      When she raced over to the gate, it was closed and locked. In a panic, Ritz tugged at the lock and rattled the gate. Then Buttercup pinned her ears back.

      A tiny pulse pounded in Ritz’s throat. The horse needed water. Oats. There was no telling what the Blackstones might do to her mare if they found her.

      Ritz was trapped inside the forbidden kingdom.

      If his wide brown shoulders and lean torso had her in to a dither last night, what would happen if she came face-to-face with naked Roque Blackstone?

      2

      It had been a hellish hour. Ritz had pranced back and forth in front of the gate astride Buttercup, torn between abandoning the mare and staying with her. All her grand dreams of ending the feud were as nothing.

      Oh, why couldn’t Mother or Ramón drive by and rescue her?

      Ritz was hot and tired and thirsty. So was Buttercup.

      Maybe just maybe, Ritz could get out of this trap if she rode all the way down to the beach.

      Maybe. The beach was five miles away. Probably another fence would cut her off before she got there.

      A red sun hung low in a rosy horizon. With a frown, she pushed her glasses up her nose and studied the caliche road and the oak mott atop the ancient dunes. Tangles of thick, thorny brush—mesquite, huisache and oak and prickly pear trailed down the sides of the dunes. Her gaze wandered over the greenery twisting across the flat pasture following the course of Keller Creek.

      Surely Roque wouldn’t still be naked at that pond on the other side of those trees. Not that she’d risk going that far. She’d only go as far as the oak mott, to the edge of the

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