The Girl with the Golden Spurs

He punched in her number, and a recording answered. He waited a few seconds, before he got up the nerve to stammer hello.

A woman’s soft voice interrupted and said, “Hi there—”

His big hand shook so hard, he punched something and broke the connection. Then he cursed himself for being such an idiot.

Thank God he’d hung up on her. Gulping in a breath, he attached his cell phone to his belt again.

Heartbreak and grief and disillusionment were supposed to age a man, but Caesar knew he looked and felt much younger than he was. Maybe it was all the hard, physical work he’d done on top of the constant mental challenge of running his empire.

Not his empire…the family’s…and it was a big family, not just his immediate family…a difficult family with more than a hundred members… Which meant there were a lot of calves sucking off a single tit, which meant the ranch had to produce.

The ranch had been established during the first half of the nineteenth century, turbulent years in south Texas. Land in Texas had gone from Spanish rule to Mexican rule to the Republic of Texas rule to American rule and then to Confederate and then back to Union rule in the space of sixty years. During this period of chaos, land titles and old Spanish land grants had been the original Caesar Kemble’s for the asking… or as some said now…for the stealing.

Not that the ranch had been easy to defend even back then. Mexican bandits had marauded constantly and stolen cattle. Northern cattle markets had been uncertain. Drought had plagued the ranch, until a constant source of water had been found.

Through all the disasters, generation after generation had bought land and never sold. The challenges in modern times were no less formidable than they had been during frontier times.

The Golden Spurs was constantly being sued. Only Caesar’s love for the land had sustained him through these rough and challenging times.

Not too long ago, a lowlife thief had trespassed on Golden Spurs property to steal gas pipes. He’d used a blowtorch to cut the pipe into movable sizes. The pipe had had a little gas in it and had exploded. The injured thief had sued for damages.

Caesar had blown his stack when the plaintiff’s attorney had grilled him on the stand. As a result the thief had walked away with a huge settlement.

Ever since, his lawyers worked hard to keep him out of the courtroom. Under tough questioning, even after hours of tutoring from his attorneys, he couldn’t be trusted not to speak the truth as he saw it.

So, he stuck to what he was good at—ranching. Cowboying had never been work to him. He’d given the ranch and his family his best years. Not that fifty was old. Still, it was an age when a man thought about his purpose and his legacy, especially when he’d made a helluva lot of sacrifices and had asked others to do the same—and they hadn’t.

All his children and his nephews wanted was the money. Right now they were pestering him for a bigger share of the mineral revenues.

As if they needed more money. Oil money was like play money to them. They bought anything their hearts desired—mansions, foreign luxury cars, airplanes, jewels. The money had made even wimpy little Lizzy confident enough to strike out on her own and try to prove she was somebody.

What the hell was that all about? New York? Crazy town. Too far from Texas. Too many people. City people. None of them with a lick of sense. He’d talked himself blue in the face, trying to get her to come home, but she was as stubborn as her mother.

You were somebody the day you were born, girl. You were born my daughter, he’d thundered yesterday morning when he’d called her.

But, Daddy, that doesn’t mean anything.

It means a helluva lot to everybody in this state but you.

That’s just the problem. I don’t deserve to be famous or rich. I didn’t do anything. And you…you’re always saying I’m wimpy….

I never ever say that, baby girl.

You do! When you’re mad, you do!

Then it’s time you saddled up and changed all that.

I wasn’t born to be a cowgirl. It’s either born in you, or it’s not. At least that’s what you always said, Daddy.

Hell, was your smart-mouth kid throwing your own pearls of wisdom back in your face?

What the hell’s wrong with you? You grew up on a ranch! I taught you everything I know!

Don’t you see, this is why I had to go? I can’t live my life—with you bossing me around all the time. With you trying to make me into something I’m not. I want to make you proud, Daddy—my own way! I’m not a cowgirl! And I don’t want to be rich!

Well, you are. If you marry out of your class, he’ll either want your land or your money!

Like Cole, Daddy? Is that what you’re saying?

Yes, like Cole, damn it!

Not that Cole was quite as ornery as he’d been before he’d married Mia. Since the plane crash, he’d been annoyingly easy to deal with. There wasn’t a more talented cowboy on the ranch. Most of the hands worked in pairs to trap the worst of the bulls that had gone wild, but, hell, just like Caesar’s brother Jack, Cole rode alone. He understood bulls, understood their natures. He knew the exact second they’d turn and charge. And he was ready. Not that Caesar ever praised Cole aloud.

As for his own kids—not one of them appreciated what Caesar had done. Not one of them wanted to do an honest day’s work. Of late he’d begun to wonder if any of what he’d thought was so damn important mattered at all.

Had all the years he’d spent teaching Lizzy about the ranch and the business been a waste? From the moment she’d been old enough to sit in his lap, he’d taken her with him on mornings when the work would be light. Many an afternoon he’d ridden home with her limp and sunburned in his arms.

He’d hired the best riding teachers, bought her the best rifles. He’d sent her to A&M and forced her to study ranch management, refusing to pay for another major, refusing to listen when she’d said she wanted to study English and be a writer.

Her brothers and sister had been jealous, wanting to know why he spent so much more time on her than the rest of them. The reason was a secret that Caesar hoped he’d take to his grave.

Lizzy wasn’t doing all that great in Manhattan. As always, Caesar had his sources. His kids couldn’t keep anything from him.

She’d be back. Damn it, she’d be back.

When Caesar was out of sight of the imposing white, red-roofed ranch house, he pulled in on the reins and let his gaze sweep the flat, coastal pasture. The sea of brown grasses seemed to stretch endlessly, but that was an illusion, as much in life is.

He frowned, not that anything was amiss with the brush-choked creek or the prickly pears along the barbed wire fence or the herd of cherry-red cattle grazing placidly. Or with the black buzzards lazing high above him on an updraft.

A red fox stood still in the distance, watching him warily from the edge of oak trees. Caesar breathed deeply, liking the rapport he felt with the wild fox as much as he liked the smell of the grass and the feel of the warm wind against this cheek. After a minute or two the fox scurried back into the thick brush.

Once Caesar had felt safe and confident here, safe in the knowledge that he was in charge, that his kingdom was secure for future generations. No more. The world was changing too fast and there was no one in the litter he trusted to follow him. The ranch and what it stood for was threatened on all sides.

Besides, the family wanting more of the oil and gas money, every month was a new challenge. The Golden Spurs wasn’t just a ranch. It was a global, international, multifaceted, family-owned corporation that had diversified into other businesses, and it had to compete globally. The suits in San Antonio and an uppity, younger CEO, Leo Storm, constantly tried to dictate to Caesar.

Not that the problem that had been eating at him ever since Jim, his lawyer, had called last night was global. Another group of local jackals, distant kin of Cole Knight, had discovered yellowed copies of the same documents Shanghai had shoved in his face years ago, claiming the second generation of Kembles had stolen from their adopted sister. Just like Shanghai, the greedy bastards had had the effrontery to call his great-great-granddaddy a betraying thief and a liar, and, thereby, claim not only a large section of the ranch but all the royalties earned on the oil and gas the ranch had pumped out of the ground for the last sixty years—plus interest.

But what really galled Caesar was the fact that the lawsuit was the result of a tip from someone in the family, who’d leaked secret information from the ranch’s sealed archives. Walker? Cole maybe?

Cole was at the center of a lot of the recent crises, and yet that very fact made Caesar suspect it was someone else. Cole had married himself square into the family. He was Vanilla’s father. He owned considerable stock in the ranch.

If not Cole, it was damn sure somebody.

Who the hell was the traitor?

Caesar was mad, so spitting mad he had one of his headaches. His ancestors would have fought their enemies with six-shooters. But in these new days, killing came at a price. Thus, this was a problem for his high-priced, fast-talking attorneys.

“If anybody calls you, just refer them to me. Act reasonable,” Jim had cautioned him just this morning.

“Act reasonable?” he’d thundered. Not that he’d said much more. Jim cost too much. Billable hours, he called it.

Since Jim had assured him there was nothing he could personally do about the problem except make it worse, Caesar had come out here to give himself an hour or two to settle down. He could have driven the pickup, but he preferred to ride Domino when he needed to get himself together. There was a purposefulness to the sounds of hooves on the ground and the movements of Domino through the grasses.

He was glad he’d escaped Joanne. One look at his face and she would have grilled him for sure. She saw too much. She wanted things from him he couldn’t give. Besides, she could have been the one who leaked the information.

Funny, he hadn’t realized how demanding she’d be when they’d struck their deal and he’d agreed to marry her. He’d thought she was meek and mild. He’d thought she’d be easier.

Caesar was staring across the thorny brush country beneath the hot blue sky when his phone rang. Expecting Jim again, he yanked it off his belt.

“Hi, there.” The voice was soft and breathy, and before he could speak, his armpits were damp and his body burned as hot as a smoldering tree stump.

“How’d you get my number?”

“Caller ID, big boy. You called me a while ago. Am I right?” She giggled. “Now don’t be shy. Guess what I’ve got on.”

Not much, I reckon. He imagined Cherry in bed, young and voluptuous, naked, with her long white wavy hair flowing over soft pillows. He imagined her breasts and her pubic hair, which she’d told him she’d died hot pink.

“Hot pink…just for you,” she’d teased. “And I shaved it into the shape of Texas. Wanna see?”

“Hi, there back,” he said, feeling excited and yet easier, too. “So—what are you wearing, honey?”

“Not much more than a burning bush.” She laughed.

He envisioned fluffy coils of hot pink hair shaped like Texas and laughed, too.

“I didn’t think you would ever call me,” she said.

A beep cut into their conversation. “Damn,” he muttered. “Gotta get this.”

“Don’t hang up again,” she pleaded.

“I’ll call you right back.”

“Bye. But don’t be too long,” she cooed, a pout in her voice. Then she blew him a kiss.

He clicked over to the incoming call, cursing the timing.

A strange, disembodied voice broke up amidst too much static.

He jammed the phone against his ear, trying to get the gist of what the man, if it was a man, was saying.

Two words stung him like poison. Dead. Electra.

His heart beat dully as he remembered a girl with long, pale curls lying underneath him, her hair looking like ripples of moonlight on a dark, boiling sea. More images were burned into his brain and heart. Electra running, her long legs so graceful. Electra smiling, her lavender eyes as intense as lasers. Electra, laughing, always laughing, Electra, wild, beautiful, incredible Electra, his love.

“She can’t be dead,” Caesar said. “Who is this?”

“Dead,” the terrible voice confirmed.

Caesar gripped the phone tight in his fist. “Then how? Where? Who the hell are you?”

“Nicaragua,” the caller said without identifying himself.

Electra was a damn fool. He’d told her to stay out of hot spots like that. She was nearly forty-eight, old enough to know better. Funny, when he thought of her, she was forever young. She always looked young when he saw her pictures in the newspapers.

Forty-eight was too young to die. How many times had he warned her about those countries? He’d even gone down to Columbia once and rescued her when she’d gotten herself kidnapped.

“How? How did she die?”

“Did you know she kept a journal…so she could write a book? An intimate tell-all?” Laughter.

Caesar remembered the way she used to sit up at night, writing with the lamp shining on her blond curls. Just like Lizzy. His head began to pound. His throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow.

“She wasn’t a virginal, saintly heroine, was she? Any more than you’re the legendary, responsible Texas hero. Or the faithful husband. You ever wonder who else she slept with…or how you rate?”

Hell, yes, he’d wondered. “Bastard! Who the hell are you? What do you want?”

More laughter. “She wrote about you. Did you know that? Does Lizzy know who her real mother is?”

“What the hell do you want?”

“The world is full of shortages. You have so much.”

“Who else have you told?”

“Nobody…yet.”

“How did she die?” he repeated.

Laughter. “In her bed.”

“How?”

“The bitch got what she deserved. Other people you love will die, too, if you don’t release more of the oil and gas revenues to the rightful shareholders.”

So the bastard had killed her. Moreover, the lowlife wanted money. Everybody always wanted money.

Caesar had no doubt he was talking to the traitor.

A warrior’s scream rose inside him, like the screams of cattle in a burning barn. He must have made some sound because vultures exploded out of nearby oak tree and circled slowly, as if he were a stricken creature.

“You won’t be around forever, old man. When you’re gone, whatever will happen to Lizzy?”

Caesar cursed. Then pain, the likes of which he’d never felt before, burst inside his head. His right hand lost its grip on the leather reins, and he cried out.

The pain subsided as quickly as it had come, as it always did. Other than feeling curiously empty as if a part of himself was gone, he felt all right. It was nothing, he told himself. Nothing. He’d had headaches all his life. He was too young for it to be anything serious. Just in case, he pulled an aspirin out of his pocket and chewed it, swallowing the bitter taste.

“Who are you? Who the hell gave you this number?”

Laughter. Peals of it. Then the line went dead.

He had no idea how long he sat in the saddle thinking about Electra, wondering what had happened to her, before the phone rang again. Quickly he answered it.

“Hi there. I got worried when you didn’t call right back.” Cherry’s voice was soft and friendly, but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t say anything.

“Hey, big boy, are you there? Are you okay?”

Caesar cleared his throat and tried to focus. “I can’t talk right now.”

“I’m sorry.” She sounded genuinely sympathetic. “So, do you want to get together?”

He didn’t answer. That he was even considering cheating on Joanne with a woman like Cherry had to be a sign that the tremendous strain he’d been under was taking its toll.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” he said. “Look, I shouldn’t have called you—”

“You won’t be sorry,” her low, sultry voice promised. “I swear. I think this is fate. Your name starts with C—my name starts with C. I looked up your birthday. You’re a Taurus and I’m an Aquarius.”

What the hell did that have to do with anything?

“I’m free…late, every single night,” she whispered, “after I finish dancing. We could unwind…after a long day. I’m off all day Sunday, and I never go to church. Get your cowboy son-in-law or his pilot to fly you up here again.”

“You’re awful sure of yourself.”

“You called me,” she said.

He remembered Electra and his wild passion for her that had lasted even until now. Sorrow, not lust, gripped his heart.

“You called me back—twice. Don’t chase, girl. If I want you, I’ll do the chasin’. Frankly, I’m not in the mood.”

“Ohhhh!” She sucked in a breath. “Go to hell. Go straight to hell.”

When she slammed the phone down so hard she made his ear pop.

She was a pistol.

A woman like her could take a man’s mind off his worries. His sorrows…

All things considered, he had half a mind to call her back.

Two

Six months later

Manhattan,

Upper West Side

The cell phone rang just as Lizzy made it up the concrete stairs outside her brownstone with baby Vanilla. Golden leaves fluttered on the trees that lined her street. Not that she paid much attention to the afternoon’s beauty.

She was too preoccupied at her front door as she buzzed Bryce, her present live-in, who didn’t answer. When he didn’t, it was panic time.

Bouncing her fidgety niece up and down instead of searching for the phone, Lizzy hit the buzzer again as waves of uneasiness washed over her. Her brother, Walker, was visiting them. Why wasn’t he home?

Lizzy hated the way she overreacted to everything, but when Bryce didn’t answer, butterflies whirled in her stomach. Not good butterflies, either.

Lizzy had been trying to make her mark in Manhattan for over five years. She’d started out as a cat-and dog-sitter and then a nanny. Next she’d read manuscripts for her landlord, who was a publisher. But when she’d passed on a couple of shallow novels that had turned out to be bestsellers, her landlord had suggested that she stick with cats and dogs and children. Lizzy was in television production at the moment, but like every other job she’d had here, she wasn’t as good at it as she was at dog-sitting. Her boss, Nell, had said, “You didn’t really acquire…an…er…broadening…education on the university level, now did you? Besides that, you don’t get New York or our audience.”

Lizzy’s love life hadn’t been a roaring success, either, at least not until Bryce. Yes, she had high hopes for Bryce—he was part of her fantasy. A successful woman, at least a woman with a drop of Texas blood in her, always had a man to share her success with. Okay, so for her, the right man had come before the right career.

Lizzy’s fantasy was also to be a beautifully groomed, kick-ass career girl, somebody with short, smooth, glossy black hair instead of long, platinum corkscrew curls. She wanted to be a real live heroine with a fantastic wardrobe; a fighter, who might get knocked down, but who could always joke about life’s little upsets with snappy, sexy one-liners.

Lizzy most certainly did not want to be somebody who didn’t even get jokes half the time, even dumb blond jokes, or somebody who was tongue-tied, shy, repressed and riddled with self-doubt. Most of all she did not want to be a crybaby.

Heck, maybe she should see a shrink again, but that would be admitting she was still a mess.

The phone in her purse stopped ringing.

Love means letting go of fear.

Why had that particular pearl from some dumb pop-psychology book she’d read on the sly sprung into her mind at this exact second? Was it true? If it was, had she ever really been in love?

She’d been crazy-lovesick over Cole, but there had been a darkness in him she couldn’t reach. And that had scared her. Maybe that’s why she’d finally let Daddy convince her to break up with him. No, the real reason was he was pure country, and since she was no good at any of that, she was determined to be a big-city career girl—not to mention the fact that all Cole’d ever really wanted was a piece of the Golden Spurs.

The phone in her purse rang again and each ring got louder. This time she managed to get the thing out and up to her ear—no easy accomplishment since she was juggling the baby on her hip, her briefcase on one shoulder, a diaper bag as well as her purse on the other, while holding her door keys and buzzing Bryce, too.

“Did I call at a bad time?” her mom asked in a faint, lifeless voice as Lizzy got the big doors unlocked.

“G-great time, Mom,” she lied, looking up at the staircase that vanished into the darkness long before it even reached the third floor where she lived.

“How’s Vanilla?” her mother asked softly.

Lizzy could hear her mother’s white fantailed pigeons cooing in the background, which meant her mother must be in their coop, tending to them. She knew her mom had more on her mind than the baby, but the baby was a safe topic. Hopefully Mom wasn’t going to rehash her dad’s betrayal and the impending divorce and settlement.

What had gotten into Daddy six months ago?

Sex. Pure raw sex. Bryce had said this in that definitive, annoying know-it-all, male tone that drove her crazy and made her doubt herself—and him—in the wee hours of the night.

Men want more sexual partners than women. Everybody knows that, honey. And more juice…

More sexual partners? Juice? I, for one, didn’t know that. Is that what you want, Bryce?

Lizzy hated being caught in the middle of her parents. In the past she’d never been close to her mother, who used to be stern and strict and so in control. Now her mother called her in the afternoons, and her father called her every morning, each wanting her to reassure them.

This morning her father had called before her alarm had even gone off, and he’d sounded anxious.

“You have to come home, damn it.”

And really be caught in the middle? No, thank you. “I was just there. I’m still playing catch-up. I do have a life here, you know.”

“If something happens, promise you’ll come home.”

He was anxious. “Daddy, what’s wrong?”

“Just promise, damn it.”

Both her parents wanted her home. They were living on separate floors of the house and driving each other crazy. They didn’t understand about her impossible job at the television station or about Bryce, who wanted her all to himself.

“Bring him to the ranch,” her father had bellowed.

Not yet. Not yet. Guys changed when they realized who she was.

When they realized how rich she was.

“Bring him to the museum opening,” her father had insisted.

In less than a month the Golden Spurs would celebrate its birth with the opening of a ranch museum. Her parents along with Walker, who’d been the ranch archivist, had hired designers, artists and a sculptor. Before Daddy had quarreled with Walker and Walker had quit, her parents had worked on the project together. Since Cherry had entered the picture, her mother had done most of the work on the museum opening alone.

While the museum and the celebration weren’t generating the headlines the board would have liked, her daddy’s six-month affair with Cherry and her parents’ divorce were the talk of Texas. As soon as possible, her father, a high-profile rancher, who’d once seemed so sane and stolid and respectable—if overbearing—would be free to marry Cherry Lane, the stripper he’d met in a saloon in Houston where he’d gone with other cowboys for a night’s entertainment.