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Her tense body relaxed. “No, thanks,” she said stiffly. “You’re entitled to your opinion of me. I’m aware that it’s gone down a few notches lately.”
He took a draw from the cigarette and studied her flushed face quietly. “For just a minute, that cool little mask you always wear slipped. You wanted to hit me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said curtly, averting her eyes.
“Why didn’t you?”
She shifted restlessly. “Because I’ve never imagined that you were the kind of man to turn the other cheek.”
“I wouldn’t have hit you back, if that’s what you mean.” He leaned across to open the door, and she felt the brief, hard pressure of his arm across her soft breasts. She sat like a statue until he moved away, and only then did she realize that she’d stopped breathing for an instant.
“What would you have done?” she asked in a strangely breathless tone.
He studied her through a wisp of smoke, his lips pursed thoughtfully. “What do you think?” he asked in a blatantly sensuous tone.
“I think it’s late,” she said.
“Later than you think, honey. I’ll send Josito for you about seven, okay?”
She searched his eyes, finding questions instead of answers. He made her nervous, he frightened her.
“We’ll take it slow and easy,” he said softly, his eyes giving the words a different, exciting meaning.
Incredibly, she blushed, while he searched her eyes until she thought her frantically beating heart would burst.
“Maybe it would be better if I didn’t,” she said in a whisper, thinking out loud.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he said. “We’ve always trusted one another, Satin.”
She laughed self-consciously. “I must be more exhausted than I imagined,” she said, staring at him. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight.”
“Don’t you, honey?”
She swung her long legs to the ground and got out of the low-slung car. “Thanks for bringing me home,” she said in a strained tone.
“Will you be all right?” he asked, and there was genuine concern in his voice.
“Of course I will,” she said firmly. “I don’t need taking care of, you know. I’m very independent.”
“So am I, but who sat up with me for two nights when I had the flu?” he asked, his mustache curling.
She flushed, remembering how she’d helped Josito sponge him down during that unusual illness. John never got sick, but he’d been far from well that night. It had taken both of them to hold him down until the fever broke. And she remembered vividly the feel of his hair-roughened skin under her hands as she’d bathed him to bring down the fever….
“Who else was there?” she muttered self-consciously. “Josito couldn’t manage alone.”
He smiled at her, a quiet, tender smile that made her want to fling herself into his arms. “I’d have done the same for you,” he said. One eye narrowed and the mustache twitched wickedly. “In fact, I’d have enjoyed it tremendously.”
The thought of his big, rough hands touching her the way she’d touched him made her go weak in the knees. It was an odd reaction, a frightening one.
“Go home,” she grumbled, slamming the door.
She started toward the house, digging for her key.
“Seven a.m. sharp!” he called out the window.
She turned and gave him her best fairy-princess curtsy before he reversed the Ferrari and roared away into the night with a chuckle.
Chapter Three
John’s ranch was small by Texas standards, but then it wasn’t his main source of income. Oil was, and the ranch was more of a hobby than a business. He raised thoroughbred Santa Gertrudis cattle, and his champion bulls brought high prices at market. The older ones, the ribbon winners whose photographs lined the walls of his office and his den, were worth up to a half-million dollars apiece. Even the young bulls brought good prices, though, for their superior bloodlines.
Riding along beside John, between the neat white fences that separated the pastures stretching to the flat horizon, she was struck by the difference in him. He was in denims and boots and that battered black Stetson he wore around the ranch—this was a far cry from the elegantly dressed man who’d driven her home the night before.
“You’re staring again,” he observed with a wry glance, the habitual cigarette in his long, brown fingers.
“I was just thinking how different you are here,” she admitted.
His eyes ran over her slender body in jodhpurs and a short-sleeved green print blouse. The morning was cloudy and a little chilly, but she hated the idea of a sweater. John must have, too, because his denim shirt was rolled up to his elbows.
“I like you in green,” he said thoughtfully.
She smiled, shaking back her loosened hair, and then wondered at the way his eyes followed the movement. “They say it’s a restful color,” she murmured.
“Just what I need,” he replied dryly. “I didn’t get much sleep.”
She stared at him, the smile fading. She tugged on the reins and increased the pressure of her knees, forcing the little Appaloosa mare she was riding into a canter. She could have ridden the horse right over John Durango. Damned arrogant man, flinging his one-night stand in her face!
He effortlessly caught up with her on his big Appaloosa gelding.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he growled.
She wouldn’t look at him. “Nothing,” she said tersely. “Are those cows new?” she asked, changing the subject.
“No, they’re not new. Answer me.”
She flashed him a glance before she urged the mare into a gallop, leaning over her mane. The wind lashed her face, tore through her hair. She needed the burst of excitement that the speed gave her. She needed the element of danger.
She raced wildly down the wide dirt road between the pastures, laughing, her hair trailing behind her. He’d never catch her now!
But he was right alongside, his eyes biting into hers, and all at once he leaned over and caught the reins in a big, strong hand, easing her mare to a canter, a trot, and then reining her in completely. They were beyond the road now, in the meadow, in a grove of tall pecan trees near the highway.
Madeline glared at him. “I was having fun…!”
“You were about to break your damned neck!” he countered, faintly pale beneath his dark tan, his craggy face unusually hard. “What’s gotten into you, you little fool?”
“Don’t shout at me!” she defended.
“I’m not shouting!” His eyes narrowed and he drew in an annoyed breath. “I could beat the breath out of you when you do crazy things like this, Madeline, I swear to God….” He dismounted, almost jerking her off the horse. He glared down at her, his mouth making a thin line, his eyes blazing. His big hands were gripping her shoulders painfully, and he shook her once, roughly.
“John!” she burst out, shocked. “I was just riding. I’ve done it before!”
His eyes bored into hers and suddenly the world spun crazily around her and the universe dissolved into a pair of steely gray eyes. Her hands were pressing unconsciously against the front of his denim shirt, where it was casually unbuttoned over his massive chest. She moved slightly, and her fingers came into sudden, staggering contact with hair and warm, damp flesh.
He flinched at the light contact, his eyes dilated, his heavy brows drew together.
Sensing something new, something vulnerable in him, she moved her hands deliberately, sensuously, under the edges of the shirt and ran them tentatively across his chest, her lips parting as she felt the tensing, the sudden thunder of his heart under them.
His eyes seemed to blaze down at her. His fingers tightened painfully on her shoulders, his body tensed. She’d never seen John out of control, she’d never seen him anything but in perfect command of himself. But he looked as if he were about to explode, and the dangerous game she was playing only excited her.
She moved closer, her eyes studying the contours of his mouth as her fingers grew bolder and her palms flattened against his powerful chest.
All at once he caught her wrists and jerked them away. “That’s enough,” he growled harshly. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”
While she was trying to figure that out, the sound of an approaching car diverted his scorching eyes from her face.
“Oh, hell, tourists,” he said curtly, glaring toward a big touring car with two women in the front seat.
He let Madeline go as the car stopped nearby and the elderly blonde at the wheel leaned out the window, smiling pleasantly.
“Howdy!” she called.
John’s mustache twitched. “Howdy,” he drawled back.
“Is this the way to Houston?” came the reply.
“Only if you plan to cut the road as you go,” John said pleasantly. “This is the Durango ranch.”
“It is?” The woman’s huge blue eyes got wider, matching the cornflowers on her printed blouse. She murmured something to the thinner woman beside her and leaned farther out the window. “This is Big John Durango’s ranch?” she persisted.
John grinned slyly. “Heard of him?”
“My goodness, yes! I retired from business this year, and I never miss my financial magazines. Why, when oil was making headlines, John Durango was a cover story! Imagine, a man that handsome being a tycoon as well!”
John looked sickeningly modest. He tilted his hat back on his head. “What kind of business were you in, ma’am?” he asked with characteristic curiosity.
“Corporate law,” the woman said, smiling.
“Tough profession,” he said.
“Not really. It just takes some study and a lot of practice.”
Catching her breath, Madeline wondered at his charm. The blond woman was staring at him intently. “Do you suppose we might actually get a glimpse of Mr. Durango as we head back toward the highway?” she asked, wide-eyed.
John pursed his lips. “Well, ma’am, he’s a hard man to hold still, if you know what I mean. Most likely he’s carousing in the pool with his women right now. He makes me do all the work while he lives up to his playboy reputation.”
Madeline had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling out loud. John’s face was deadpan, wearing a look of pure disgust.
“You work here?” the blonde asked.
“Yes, ma’am, like a mule, and that man won’t even pay me the back wages he owes me.”
“You oughtn’t let him get away with it,” the woman told him. “I’d sue him.”
“Well, if I didn’t owe him so much money, I might do that,” John agreed.
“Owe…him money?” The tourist’s eyes widened. “For what?”
“Oh, little ticky things. Like rent on this here horse.”
The blonde looked horrified, and Madeline was digging her nails into her palms to keep from howling.
“He makes his men pay rent on their horses—’his’ horses—to work ‘his’ cattle?” the tourist burst out.
“Well, he don’t take in much money on the cattle, so he had to make it up somehow, I reckon,” John said with a shrug. “Of course, it’s not hard to see how he got so rich when you consider how much money we all owe him in gambling debts.”
“You all owe him gambling debts?”
“Well, yes, ma’am,” John continued in his slowest drawl. “You see, he gets us drunk every Friday night and suckers us into playing poker with him. I reckon I owe him less than the others, though. I’ve paid my bill down to where I only got twenty thousand dollars more to pay off.”
“Oh, my God,” the tourist gasped.
John shook his head good-naturedly. “Could be worse,” he assured her.
“I don’t see how!”
John was more than willing to tell her. “He could make me sleep in the bunkhouse with the boys. Got rattlers in there ten feet long, big around as my leg.” He slapped his broad, denim-encased thigh. “Never could find a gun powerful enough to kill them things, so what you have to do is make pets of them. But snakes just don’t take to me like they do to some of them other boys, so Big John lets me sleep in the big house.”
The blonde was beginning to look suspicious. “Snakes ten feet long? Is that what they call a Texas tall tale?”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” John assured her. “I only lie when Big John tells me to, like when the income tax people ask questions about his trips to Europe and the thirty dependents that he swears are his illegitimate children—youngest girl’s twenty, you know….”
The blond woman started to laugh. She kept on until tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her companion was giggling audibly. Madeline let go of her own self-control at last, doubling over with laughter.
“Thank you for the profile, Mr. Durango,” the tourist laughed at John, her eyes twinkling. “Next time I read a story about you in some magazine, I’ll be one of the privileged few who know what a scalawag you really are. Making your men rent their horses…!”
He chuckled. “I’ve thought about it sometimes,” he swore. He pulled out his wallet and handed her a card. “I can always use a good attorney,” he told her. “If retirement gets too tough, give me a call.” He winked at her. “You’re too damned young to retire, honey.”
Madeline could have kissed him when she saw the older woman’s face begin to glow.
“Thank you,” came the heartfelt reply. “Now which way do I go to get to Houston?”
After the tourists had driven away, John mounted his gelding, waiting for Madeline to follow suit. He lit a cigarette with steady fingers and led the way toward the barn where his prize bulls were quartered like royalty. They had their own air-conditioning as well as a heating system for winter.
“You scalawag, you,” Madeline muttered, trying to tease him out of his black mood.
He didn’t even spare her a glance. He was still furious, and she didn’t know how she was going to explain her own actions. How could she, when she didn’t understand them herself?
“John, what was your father like?” she asked suddenly.
