Finally, she pushed against his chest, but the more she fought, the more like steel his hands and arms and huge body became. She kicked at him and lost her balance, the leather sole of her shoe sliding on the polished floor.

Her hand hit the parquet floor before he could catch her. A sliver of china slashed her arm. Blood pooled.

Somebody screamed.

A woman.

Surely not her.

Then why was everybody staring at her? And why was Roque’s brown face spinning like a carved god’s in the midst of Josh’s shocked friends?

“I’ve got you now,” he said gently. “You’ve cut yourself.”

Livid red dribbled from her arm onto his brown hand and then to the white china chips. He lifted her to her feet.

Jet and Irish, dark figures in black, raced through the fascinated throng of mourners.

“—darling! Your coffee cup—” Somehow Mother Evans and Irish deftly pushed Roque aside.

“—shattered it!” Jet said.

“Your arm! Oh, dear!” Mother Evans began to fuss. “And you were sick again…Your dress!”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Irish said, examining her arm, and although he was a cowboy, he would be the one to know.

Jet took over. “Socorro, get me a towel.”

And still, Mrs. Beasley couldn’t stop.

“—Josh was a gardener, grew all his own roses. She cut every one for the funeral, and then forgot to put them in water and let them wither—”

“—too bad she couldn’t be faithful—”

“—big money—”

“—hers. Keller money, you know—”

“—thought they cut her off—”

Through it all, Roque stared at her. Only at her.

“—all that messy yellow hair. She doesn’t look like a border saint to me—”

“—there’s too many of them—”

“—shouldn’t help them—”

“—overrunning us—”

“—her work at the colonias was just her excuse to get away from Josh so she could sleep with all those other men—”

Roque’s aquiline features hardened.

Her own nerves clamored as if every cell in her being was tuned to him. Only to him.

She was pregnant…with his child…again. And he knew it.

He wasn’t a powerless boy from Mexico, the despised son of his evil rich white father anymore.

Jet had the towel around Ritz’s arm now and was squeezing. “It’s just a scratch. You’ll be fine in a minute.”

“Thank you,” Ritz whispered brokenly. “I—I think I need to go upstairs and lie down.”

“—didn’t shed a single tear at the wake,” came the unstoppable Mrs. Beasley.

“I did, too!” Ritz whispered. “When I was chopping onions…for Mother Evans’s caviar.”

Just then Roque’s dark, masculine eyebrow flicked upward in sardonic mockery.

“Shh,” Jet said.

“I promised Josh I would cry. That’s why I chopped….”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jet said, pulling her gently away from the others.

“No…not that way…” she pleaded when Roque stepped in front of them.

But it was already too late.

“I’ll take it from here,” Roque said, blocking their path. His jaw was square, his fierce eyes dark emerald. The cut on his cheek blazed.

Everybody held his breath, but anyone who expected a scene was disappointed. Jet stepped meekly aside. And Ritz let herself be led by Roque Blackstone upstairs to her bedroom.

Not even Irish attempted to rescue her.

The minute they were in her room Roque closed the door, his eyes zeroing in on the pile of slashed strips of black fabric scattered messily all over the floor and then on her open suitcases spread across her bed.

Ritz went white. Why hadn’t she thought? She should have directed him to any other room. But she’d been too upset to think.

Roque knelt and lifted a scrap of black wool and then another of silk and waggled them beneath her nose. “What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing.” She took a breath. “While you amuse yourself, I’ll go brush my teeth.”

Next he leaned across her bed to finger a lacy bra and a pair of sheer panties that spilled out of her suitcase. “Nothing? Taking a trip?”

Her cheeks heated. “Give those to me!” When she tried to snatch her panties from him, he held on, stretching the elastic.

“Nice panties,” he said. “Fit for a princess.” He let them go with a snap.

“I—I…went to the closet to hunt for a black dress…to wear today,” she began in a rush, wadding her panties, throwing them at her suitcase.

“Really?” he drawled even as he absorbed every detail about her, every nuance of expression—reading her.

She turned her back on him and headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She wasn’t about to tell him she’d been like a crazy woman last night. That suddenly she’d been snipping, first her best black silk, then her favorite black wool jersey, not that she could have worn anything that hot today.

She’d cut and torn—until she had piles of tiny squares that she couldn’t cut any smaller. Even then she’d started shredding the remnants.

Hours later, Jet, who was a fancy lawyer now, had found her in the middle of the bed, yanking at the tangles of black threads like a madwoman.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t cry and I’m supposed to wear black. Only I cut up my best black dresses,” Ritz had said. “Even my slinkiest black nightgown.”

“Well, you wouldn’t want to wear a slinky nightgown to a funeral.”

Ritz had started laughing and hadn’t been able to stop.

When Ritz came out of the bathroom, Roque’s face was hard. Every muscle in his body was like a coiled spring. No, Ritz couldn’t tell him any of that.

Suddenly she burst out laughing just as she had last night with Jet.

“Get a grip,” he said quietly, rushing toward her. “It’s a good thing you’re packed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re pregnant with my child.”

“No….”

“A very simple test will prove me right.”

“You wouldn’t….”

His hard eyes lingered on her belly. “I would do anything to protect my unborn child this time—even marry you.”

“I…I’m never ever getting married again.”

“Oh, yes, you are. Very soon. To me, querida.”

“No!” Blood pounded in her head. This couldn’t be happening!

“Why, are you doing this…You…you…don’t love me….”

“You couldn’t get pregnant by your fancy husband, could you?” he whispered, his low voice dangerously smooth. “Or by any of your other lovers? You needed a stud. Someone you knew for sure could get you pregnant—even if I am a Mexican.”

She began backing away from him toward her bed.

“You slept around on him, didn’t you?”

Her stiff steps were awkward, but she didn’t deny what he accused her of.

“Didn’t you?” he demanded in a harsher tone. “I was nothing to you. Then you went back to him so you could pass my kid off as his.”

“No….”

“How many others did you sleep with…before you crawled into my bed?”

“That’s not what happened and you know it.”

He grabbed her, crushing her arms as he pulled her into a tight embrace. “Don’t lie to me—ever again.”

Her breathing was rapid and uneven.

“You still think you’re the princesa and I’m the Mexican lowlife.”

She couldn’t look up at him, not even when his hand lifted her chin and she felt him stripping her with his eyes.

“You used me as a stud—Well, querida, this Mexican stallion comes with a stud fee. And that fee is marriage…to me.”

“But you don’t want this baby. You just want the ranch.”

He drew a long contemptuous breath. “Do you ever think about that little grave with all the buttercups on top of it?”

She whitened.

“You’re not killing another baby of mine.”

His voice was so sharp and hate-filled; his words cut her like blows.

She gasped. “You’re crazy.”

“Yes, I am,” he murmured, drawing in a harsh breath as he pulled her closer. “Kiss me and we’ll seal this crazy deal.”

“What?”

“We’re going to be married. Man and wife. And all that that means.”

“I—I just want to be myself. Me. For once. Not somebody’s wife. Never yours!”

“You should have thought about that before you used me to get pregnant.”

She mistrusted the look in his eyes and the hardness in his voice. But before she could twist free, he crushed her body into his. Even as she fought him, his lips covered hers.

There was domination as well as the desire to punish in his devouring kiss. Always before he’d been so gentle, so infinitely tender.

And yet, even as his mouth ravaged hers, underneath this assault, surely this brutal stranger was Roque. Roque whose bronzed body was made of molten flesh. Roque, who was so fantastic and tender in bed. Roque, who always made love to her for hours. Roque, who turned her into a wanton. Roque, who made her forget why their love could never be whenever he so much as touched her.

The last time they’d made love, he’d kissed every inch of her skin from the hollow beneath her throat to the tips of her toes.

On a shudder she nestled closer to him, opening her lips to his endlessly, inviting his tongue. When she arched, his body tensed. He groaned. In the next breath, he ripped his mouth from hers.

Always, always he made her want and ache and need. She sighed, starved for more, so much more, and yet hating herself because she felt that way.

“Marriage is the only way I know how to stop you,” he said hoarsely, warningly, as if he despised both her and despised himself.

“You can’t be serious…about this. About…us.”

His fathomless eyes bored into hers. “Are you going downstairs to tell them our happy news?”

When she hesitated, his gravelly tone grew ever more bitter with sarcasm. “Or do you want me to do it?”

Nobody could peel their eyes off the white marble staircase. But like any audience when the stars go offstage, Josh’s mourners were getting restless.

“—simply awful…her up there…all this time…with him—”

“—today of all days—”

“I really need to pick Chispa up at the groomer’s before he closes. If I leave her there too long she always potties on the front seat.”

“We can’t just go…not without telling her goodbye. How would that look?”

“As if she cares about that?”

The idle chatter caused a mad rushing in one person’s ears.

Then a door clicked open upstairs, and two tall, black-clad bodies appeared on the white marble landing beneath the glittering Murano chandelier and stood there for a long moment, waiting.

The voices and laughter died abruptly and a brittle hush settled over the house. Everybody, especially the observer, was impatient for the final curtain of Ritz’s little farce.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

Blackstone’s dark hand gripped Ritz’s as he dragged her forward to the railing. Her yellow hair had come loose and spilled like butter over her shoulders. Her stricken eyes glowed like dying purple stars in a porcelain doll’s face. She was so white. He was so dark.

She was the perfect tragic queen.

Beautiful. Spellbinding.

Even if she was heartbroken, Roque made her come alive. She seemed ablaze.

Had the horny bastard screwed her up there in the bedroom? Did he think the Triple K was already his?

Blackstone. The name alone made the observer’s flesh crawl. But a practiced smile masked the wild hatred as well as the other dark emotions that flare so easily in the damaged soul.

Without further preamble, Blackstone said, “We’re getting married.”

When a look of terror flashed across Ritz’s face and she tried to free herself, Blackstone yanked her closer.

His triumphant eyes roamed, meeting the observer’s ever so briefly, causing as always that involuntary little shudder of fear before the rage took over.

Had he seen what was there?

No. Ritz wasn’t the only one who could pretend.

The smile, the perfect facade was in place.

Nobody suspected. Not Ritz. Not Moya.

Nobody would—until the killings started again.

Then it would be too late.

Book 1

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

—William Butler Yeats

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.

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