Kitabı oku: «Marry A Man Who Will Dance», sayfa 2

1

South Texas

Border ranch lands

1990

“Do you want to see a naked boy?” Jet whispered, her giggles sly and excited, her breath hot and tickly against Ritz’s ear.

Ritz shivered when she remembered the boy, not a boy really, a man, dancing by his campfire on the beach last night. He’d sensed her there in the darkness. He’d moved away from the fire, held out his hand. Her blood had beat like a savage’s. She’d wanted to dance, too. But she’d run. Not that she was about to admit last night to Jet.

“First the sheriff’s puma! Now a naked boy!” Ritz said offhandedly. “Mother’s always saying you’re a born troublemaker.”

“Oh, she is, is she? But, I’m fun, and you’re boring. It didn’t take much to talk you into sneaking off to see the puma!”

“There’ll be hell to pay when I get home, though!”

The two girls were riding bareback. Ritz’s skinny, sunburned legs dangling lazily in front of Jet’s more shapely denim-clad limbs as Buttercup clopped along.

Ritz forced herself to think about cats instead of the boy last night, so she wasn’t really listening. Pumas, to be exact. Very large pumas that followed the rivers up from Mexico just to eat little girls in Texas. Especially now, ’cause the Mexicans down in the Yucatán were burning off their crops.

Or at least that’s what she thought Sheriff Johnson had said.

And ever since they’d left the courthouse in Carita, Ritz’s eyes had been fixed on the fence lines on either side of the ranch road the Kellers were forced to share with the Blackstones. Particularly, she watched the Blackstone’s ten-foot-high electric game fence. The grass over there was so much higher—high enough for a big cat to crouch in.

As usual, she’d forgotten her hat, a mistake Jet, who was careful of her pale skin and more fragile beauty, never made. If Mother would be mad they’d sneaked off—she’d really be in a rage that Ritz was sunburned.

It was a six-mile ride into town. So, it was a six-mile ride back. Which meant—they’d been in the sun way too long. And since they were nearly home, facing Mother was a growing worry. Not that Mother would punish, but she’d tell Daddy.

So every so often, Ritz forgot about cats for a second or two and licked her blistered lips, but that only made them sting worse.

“I said I know where there’s a cute naked boy!”

This time Jet’s lascivious challenge penetrated.

Did she know about last night?

“You wanna see him or not?”

Ritz burst into nervous giggles. Then she hid her face in case Jet might suspect.

“Not just any boy,” Jet persisted.

“Who?”

“Promise you won’t tell your mother—”

“Do I ever—”

“Roque Blackstone.”

“Oh, God!” Ritz clamped a hand over her mouth. She knew. Somehow she managed to make her tone innocent. “Imagine! Just like the puma—Roque Blackstone is up from Mexico!”

Jet lowered her voice. “And his thingy is almost as big as Cameron’s.”

“No! No way! You’re kidding!” Surely she would have noticed that last night.

Cameron was Ritz’s daddy’s bad-tempered blood bay stallion, the very same horse that had tried to kick her brother, Steve, and four cowboys to death two days ago.

“Well, you’ll just have to sneak into the forbidden kingdom and see for yourself…little girl, same as I did. Then you’ll know for sure.”

More giggles. More pretended innocence. “You 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 with deer. But Ritz had felt sorry for the deer.

“So, what’s he doing here?” Jet had asked. “How’d you catch him?”

Johnson had shoved his Stetson back and mopped his red brow. There were dark sweat stains under his sleeves. “If it’s hot here, it’s hell down in Mexico. Those damn Mexicans have been burning off their crops down in the Yucatán, and the fires got out of control, so now all the animals are on the move. Pumas follow the rivers, you know.”

“What about creeks?” Ritz asked in a trembling tone, pushing her glasses up her perspiring purple nose.

Keller Creek traced a meandering, north-south path through the Triple K when there was water in it.

“Same thing as a river. Cats come out when the sun’s going down. They crouch low in tall grasses to stalk their prey.”

“Do they really eat horses?”

“Sure they do.” He leaned down so his jowly face and bulging brown eyes were level with theirs. “Cats are killers. They eat anything that moves. They’ll jump you from a tree. Had a horse a cougar jumped once. No man ever spread his legs across that mare’s back again.”

Static buzzed on his walkie-talkie. Grabbing it, he barked, “You girls better get. You’ve got that long ride and I’ve got work to do. Cattle rustlers. You be careful going home, you hear? Don’t you get yourselves gobbled up by a cat, you hear!”

Ritz had been watching the sun sink ever lower, wiping the sweat off her lenses, and on the lookout for cats ever since. Every time Buttercup pricked her ears back or snorted, Ritz imagined pointy ears in the high brown grasses. Every time they passed a hole animals had dug to burrow under Benny Blackstone’s high electric game fence, she wondered if a puma could slink under it.

The caged puma and the cool safety of the air-conditioned courthouse were nearly six miles behind them now. So were the frosty colas out of the courthouse soda pop machine. If Ritz didn’t get a drink real soon, her tongue was going to swell and her throat was going to close.

It was really, really hot, hotter than it usually was even in the dead of summer. The grasses that had been fresh and green and sweet smelling in May were already seared brown around the edges. The last of the red and yellow wildflowers were wilted and dusty, and the air smelled a little smoky.

Ritz squinted up at the cloudless sky. A blindingly bright sun broiled them from above while the black asphalt steamed them from below. Their sleeveless, cotton blouses and cutoffs were so wet; they stuck to their bodies like glue. On Jet, the effect was so sexy, the sheriff’s young deputy had eagerly rushed off to buy her a cola. Ritz had thrust out her flat chest and stared at him hopefully, but in the end she’d had to dig in her pockets and plunk in her own quarters.

Ritz’s sunburn made her feel feverish. Her temple throbbed. She was almost glad Jet had mentioned Roque. At least, thinking about his thingy had distracted her from being so scared of cats.

“He must’ve been something running home naked….”

Roque was so dark and handsome and fierce. Even before she’d snuck up on him last night, she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off him. Not that she got to see him much. There was the dumb old feud. He was a Blackstone, and she was a Keller. Their families avoided each other.

Last summer though, she’d seen him once at the hardware store in town buying fencing. She’d stared at him, and he’d taken off his aviator glasses and stared back so intently, she’d grabbed a pair of pliers as if she was interested in them. Only she hadn’t been able to pretend. It was like he smelled her fascination. That single glance before he shoved his glasses back in place had set her heart racing.

It had been weird, the way she hadn’t even looked at those pliers. Just at him. Her hands had begun to shake, and she’d dropped the pliers with a clatter. He’d dashed over, as silently as a cat, and she’d stared at his weird silver-toed boots.

Then Daddy had yelled at her and she’d run. Roque had laughed and thrown the pliers into the pile of stuff the Blackstones were buying.

“His father beats him,” Jet said out of the blue.

“How come?” Ritz asked, remembering the way Roque had swayed, bronzed and shirtless, before the fire.

“He’s crazy. First time he came, the cowboys were working cattle, and he jumped in the pens with the bulls. He set off a string of firecrackers and nearly got himself trampled. Then Caleb jumped in, too. Only he fell. Even though Roque dived under a bull to save him, his daddy beat Roque and would’ve killed him if Pablo hadn’t stopped him. He’s got scars…everywhere.”

Ritz shivered, remembering the purple marks on his back. Just thinking about Roque getting beatings after saving his brother made Ritz feel sorry for him.

To their right, on Keller land, a patch of dense brush was thick with mesquite and live oak. Ahead, she could see their tall white, ranch house with its welcoming shady verandas shimmering in the heat waves. Soon they would be past the Blackstone gate and on their own private road.

On the left, a caliche road meandered from the Blackstone gate across open pasture vanishing into the distant trees.

Ritz shuddered. The gate gave her nightmares. Used to, it had never been locked. Used to, Blackstone Ranch had made up two divisions of the Triple K. Used to, Uncle Buster had been alive and married to Aunt Pam, and Ritz’s cousins, Kate and Carol had lived there.

Benny Blackstone had married Aunt Pam just a month after Uncle Buster had died. Bad things had happened behind the gate ever since.

When the gate rattled, Buttercup’s forelegs skewered to the right.

“It’s just a silly old gate, girl,” Ritz said even as she grabbed the mare’s neck and clung.

In Ritz’s nightmares the ten-foot high electric fence that separated the Triple K and Blackstone Ranch had been cut, and the gate was swinging back and forth. Always she was running down the caliche road to find her cousins. Always, she ended up in Campo Santo, the ancient Keller cemetery, standing over two open graves.

Sometimes she’d wake up screaming. Then she’d remember Kate and Carol lived up in San Antonio now with Grandma Keller because Benny Blackstone didn’t want them. He only wanted Aunt Pam, who was beautiful and famous. He only wanted his own boys, even Roque, the bad one he beat.

All of a sudden the lopsided shadow of the Blackstone’s massive gate slanted across the road, swallowing them whole as it did in her nightmare.

Ritz made a strangling sound. Clutching the reins and knotting fingers into Buttercup’s mane, she urged the mare faster.

Wings whooshed above them. Jet clenched Ritz’s waist tighter and then pointed toward the gate. “What’s that?”

Shadows of black wings swept low along the grassy shoulder beside the game fence.

Buttercup pinned her ears back and jerked her head.

“Easy. Easy,” Ritz said as the big black bird made a crash landing on a thick gray stone post.

“It’s just a buzzard. That’s all,” she said to Jet.

“Not that dirty old buzzard, silly!” Jet pointed at a bit of gold glitter beside the fence post. “That! It looks like…a…lock….”

Then the wind played in the tops of oaks and rustled the brown grasses so that the bit of gold vanished.

Jet was about to jump down and run see what it was, when another wild gust of wind swung the gate away from the posts.

“Why, it’s open,” Ritz breathed.

Like in my nightmares.

The metal gate banged back into the loose chain hanging down from a stone pillar with a thud that made the chain rattle and the buzzard take off.

Not one for loud sounds, Buttercup snorted and shot forward. When she started bucking, the girls tumbled backward onto sizzling asphalt.

Jet screeched and sprang to her feet. “Ritz, watch out!”

Dark forelegs crashed dangerously near Ritz’s head. Then the gate swung eerily and Buttercup wheeled away.

Ritz clapped her hands to get Buttercup’s 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.