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“What happened that night is nobody’s business but mine! Nobody, none of you, is to ever even think about what Melody Woods does in or out of my bed or ever say her name at El Dorado Ranch again! As far as I’m concerned, she no longer exists. Understand? Comprende?”
Nobody had spoken of her, in Spanish or English—at least, not directly and not within the king’s earshot. But the forbidden holds a mighty powerful appeal. Especially for comrades in a cow camp lonely for female companionship, especially when that forbidden female is willowy and sexy and full of surprises as a brand-new kitten.
It was plain to see by the stubborn set of North’s strong, jutting jaw, he wasn’t over that night. Plain to see by his stern silences and his inability to even crack a smile at his men’s dirty banter, that the king hadn’t forgotten the young lady or that night any more than they had.
No, sirree. The king wasn’t through with Miss Melody Woods.
Any more than that little firecracker was through with him.
It was just a matter of time before that pair got into a tussle again.
What would that sexy little gal dream up for an encore?
His men’s yelps along with that damn cow’s stomping and grunting and snorting inside the jug at the far end of the huge barn would have set a sane man’s nerves on edge. North was hardly sane.
He hadn’t been himself since that night when Melody had danced for the world and then refused to dance with him in private. To make matters worse, Dee Dee Woods, Melody’s socially ambitious mom, had him on the phone and was unraveling the fraying ends of his frazzled psyche with her shrill demands.
“I said supper!”
He held the phone away from his ear. How could such a pretty woman have such a grating voice? “Tonight? Your house? I don’t think that’s a good—”
“But Melody’s safe and sound in Austin.”
He knew better than to argue.
“Sam and I miss you. That’s why when your accountant said you were coming to town, I decided to call.”
He missed them, too. “Just a second, Dee Dee. We’ve got a cow in labor, and Jeff’s yelling so loud—”
On a shudder, North pressed the cordless telephone tighter against his ear and bolted himself inside the stall with his pet llamas. Camels, he called them when he was feeling affectionate or worried, which was all the time, ever since Little Camel had been born so puny.
Not that it was any quieter inside their stall. Not with that distressed cow in labor, bawling and fit to be tied again.
“What was that you said, Dee Dee?” North demanded.
He liked Dee Dee Woods even if she’d set her sights on him as a future son-in-law for all the wrong reasons.
“I heard you’d be in town,” Dee Dee shrieked. “So, I called to invite you to supper.”
The cow started kicking so loud North could barely hear her.
“It’ll just be Sam and me…I promise!”
“All right.”
“Seven-thirty sharp.”
He said bye and hung up.
“Boys,” he shouted. “I was on the phone. Y’all were hollering so loud, I couldn’t hear myself think. I just did a very stupid thing.”
“W.T. let go, and she kicked me—two hooves, square in the chest!” Jeff yelled back at him. “Get down here, King!”
North was so mad he stayed put.
Damn it. It was Jeff’s fault he’d said yes to Dee Dee Woods. Gentry deserved to sweat. Hell, droplets of the stuff were trickling from North’s wet black hair, soaking his denim shirt and blue surgical overalls as he considered sitting down to dinner in the Woodses’ house again.
He’d said yes.
Not to worry. You have a date with Maria on Saturday. You’re through with Melody.
Just talking to her mother had brought everything back, especially that night.
North stood alone in a stall, occupied not by a cow or horse, but by that unlikely pair of camels and wondered if he should call Dee Dee back and send his regrets.
He began to frown in earnest as he stroked the mama llama. Then he eyed her gangly newborn more worriedly. The mother was dark brown with black patches on her face and rump. Her milk wouldn’t come, and the baby—an impossibly skinny runt who was all ribs and neck and match-stick legs—couldn’t suckle.
For some foolish reason, even after nights spent chasing the Midnight Bandit, North had been getting to the barn at 4:00 a.m. to play nursemaid to the shy baby llama, warming bottles, cradling him, feeding him. Even so, Little Camel wasn’t putting on weight.
Jeff yelled, “Time to play vet, King.”
“See you later, Little Camel,” North whispered with more affection than he wanted to feel.
The shy, scared baby reminded him of…
He saw a little girl on the ground, her skirts hiked, her skinny knees torn and bloody; worse, her smoky-blue eyes dark with fear. Abruptly the king stopped that memory.
His defiant boot heels echoing all the way to the rafters, North stalked across the concrete floor of his barn toward the scuffle of his men and the cow in that distant stall.
It was late August and 113 degrees in the shade outside if it was a degree. Inside the barn felt like a sauna. He could almost feel the beige dust that coated his wavy hair and dark skin turn to mud and ooze under his collar.
North was exhausted, on edge, but he forced himself to concentrate on the job ahead instead of on…on Melody.
Damn her hide…or rather her silky, golden skin. And she was soft—he’d never forget how good she’d felt the first time he’d accidentally touched her and she’d jumped as if she’d been shot. Not that every nerve in his body hadn’t popped like sparklers, too.
Why the hell had Dee Dee called? He didn’t want Melody on his mind. For months he’d refused to think about her.
He didn’t still want her, still dream about her. He didn’t. Not after what she’d done. Not after what she hadn’t done.
But if some idiotic part of him still did want her, that was the part he was trying damned hard to kill by working himself so hard. His misplaced affection for the wrong woman had jeopardized not only his pride and his heart, but also his family and their ranch.
He had a position to uphold. When he married, if he married after what she’d put him through, it would be to a mature, sensible woman who understood ranching, who could contribute something of value to El Dorado, who would lend sanity to his hard life instead of chaos, who could make commitments and stick to them. He wanted a harmonious marriage to a woman, who could show a man she loved him in a warm womanly way, to a woman like Maria Langly, who had been born and bred to ranch life, just as he had.
North was fighting for his ranch, his legacy and his world. His back was against the wall. He had no time to waste on a woman who’d never known for sure whether she wanted him, a woman who would never be anything but trouble.
Unbidden came the vision of a long, cool slip of a girl in skintight jeans and a halter top. Melody did have the cutest and most mischievous smile and the softest honeyred, straight hair. She smelled good, too. And, boy, when that little exhibitionist hadn’t been driving him crazy, or turning him on, she sure had made him laugh. Nobody had ever been able to make him forget, at least for a little while, the ranch and the heavy responsibilities he’d assumed too young.
She was cute. Trouble was, she knew it. She’d reveled in making him forget that he was supposed to be stern and tough, that as the largest landowner in south Texas, he was supposed to set an example for his men, for the whole damn ranching community in these parts.
Hell, his granddaddy had taken him up on his saddle when he was five. They’d worked cattle together, and all the while the old man had been whispering that when he was a man, all this—meaning the cattle, the vast acreage—would be his responsibility. His father, Rand Black, had been a legend. North was determined to carry on his daddy’s legacy and support the people whose families had lived here for generations, who depended on him for their very livelihoods.
Melody never bowed down and worshiped him like everybody else around here. So, why the hell had he loved this defiant brat since she’d been a young girl? She wasn’t even any good in bed. She was too uptight and skittish to be sexy in private. At least with him. No, she preferred public displays of wanton affection that drove him and every other guy who caught her performance wild. Always, she left him hot and hard and frustrated, and jealous as all get out. When they were alone, and he made a move, she got as scared and shy as his baby camel. He loathed everybody thinking she was hot and easy when that’s the last thing she was.
Except for that last night.
You’re not supposed to think about her or what happened, ever again. You’re supposed to work—till you forget her.
So, how come you accepted a dinner invitation tonight in Corpus Christi from her mother?
Because Dee Dee swore Melody’s in Austin and you won’t see her. Or talk about her. Because it was so hot and loud in the barn you hadn’t been able to think.
Liar.
You want to see Dee Dee’s most recent pictures of her on the fridge. You want Dee Dee to drop those annoying little hints…
Forget her!
North was trying. He’d all but imprisoned himself on his ranch. He had 800,000 acres of baking shin oak and prickly pear and thousands of head of cattle to protect him from that clueless she-devil, who had a lot of growing up to do up in Austin.
North could hear his stressed cattle outside squalling as his men cut them from the herd and drove them into pens and chutes, some to be kept and fed, some to be vaccinated and tagged, some to be loaded onto the cattle trucks that were discreetly hidden in mesquite thickets.
Tough times made for brutal decisions.
No matter how much land or money a rancher had, he was powerless against the weather and the hard realities of market prices. Due to the drought, he’d run out of grass. The beef market was flooded. The cost of feed was too high to keep the herd. Then last night the Midnight Bandit had cut his fence and tried to rustle a truckload of cows again.
Outside the barn, horses neighed and sputtered. The cattle roared, and his men shouted. These were the familiar, beloved sounds of home to North. And of doom.
For more than a hundred years this ranch had been owned and run by Blacks. The pictures of his ancestors hung inside the ranch house, their grim expressions setting standards and demanding impossibilities of him in these modern times.
Inside the stall now, North was still sweating profusely as he picked up a scalpel, still in its wrapper. He picked up the irritated, very pregnant cow’s tail, then let it drop. She didn’t react.
“Looks like the spinal’s okay, King,” Jeff said behind him.
“Good.”
Jeff was wide as a beam and nearly as tall as North; he was red-haired, bowlegged, narrow-eyed, and bullheaded. But a lady’s man nonetheless. His daddy had been the ranch foreman before him, and his daddy before him. Jeff had grown up on the ranch just like North had. They were closer than most brothers. El Dorado was that kind of place.
“So, let’s get to work—fast,” Jeff urged.
North inspected the shaved area and the black lines Jeff had drawn along the reddish brown hide. When he was satisfied, he injected a topical anesthetic along every inch of the line. After he sliced through the hide with the scalpel, Jeff injected more anesthetic inside the incision. North began to cut deeper.
There were a lot of bleeders, but North deftly stopped them. Within a minute he was popping hooves out of the cow’s belly and Jeff was pulling the rest of the calf free. They worked together, in harmony, as they always did, smiling at each other after it was over because it was a helluva rush to look into those wet brown eyes and witness the beginning of a new life.
Another life saved.
But for what? North wondered silently as he knew Jeff did. If it didn’t rain? For an early death in a slaughter-house…his short life bartered for a few peanuts? Worse, he might get himself rustled and hauled south to Mexico.
Again, North thought of Melody who’d become a vegetarian just to spite him after her first and only visit to the ranch.
North frowned as he dropped antibiotics into the uterus and then began to sew up the cow, barking questions at Jeff to distract himself from Melody. “Calf breathing okay?”
North remembered Melody saying after he’d finished a long day at the squeeze chute, “I won’t ever eat a hamburger again. I keep seeing a cute little brown-eyed calf peeping its head out of my hamburger bun and pleading for help.”
He stared at the cute new calf. It galled him that Melody thought he didn’t care about his animals.
“He’s a cute little cuss, ain’t he, King?”
Forget Melody Woods.
“Get him tagged and shot!”
Within minutes, North was done and striding out of the barn in shotgun chaps made of scarred leather. He made his way toward the cloud of dust that muted the harsh sun somewhere up above in that bluish white sky.
He pulled his bandanna up and took Mr. Jim’s reins. As he rode toward the herd, Jeff and the other cowboys seemed to float in a golden haze of dust.
When North got closer, Mr. Jim shook his long red mane and neighed. His vaqueros nodded in deference, and Mr. Jim reared.
“Easy, champ,” North whispered to Mr. Jim.
He flicked the reins and began shouting orders to his men in fluent Spanish right before he galloped into the herd. Then, and only then, as he cut cattle alongside his day-labor cowboys, was he able to forget the impossible Melody Woods.
Because he had to drive in to Corpus Christi, he quit earlier than he had in weeks. Before going to the house, he returned to the barn.
The calf he’d delivered was doing fine, so he made a final stop at that stall occupied by the mama llama and her pitifully skinny baby.
“Jeff,” he shouted.
Jeff came running. Hell, everybody came running when the king yelled.
Everybody except…her.
When the baby llama forgot his shyness for the first time and moved toward him trustingly on shaky legs, North melted. He remembered a skinny little girl on the ground, drying her tears with the back of her hand before throwing herself into his arms.
“How long since my baby camel here ate?” North demanded in an oddly rough voice.
“Three hours. Want me to feed her again?”
“Him. No,” North said, surprising himself as he strode toward the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of fresh milk. “Warm this. I’ll do it.”
“You’re wasting a lot of time on that runt,” Jeff said as North squatted near the fragile newborn.
“I guess I’m a sucker for lost causes.”
Melody had said he had no heart.
The barn phone began to ring as North cradled the llama across his knees and offered him the bottle. As the camel nibbled tentatively, W.T. banged inside the stall with the cordless. The llama shivered and stopped suckling. If anybody had the look of a dimestore cowboy, it was W.T. Scuffed high-heeled boots, wide hat, the shiftless fraud carried himself with more style than anybody on El Dorado.
“Take it easy when you come in here,” North whispered testily.
