by Lynda Chance
Under the Cowboy's Control
by
Lynda Chance
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Under the Cowboy's Control
Copyright © 2011 by Lynda Chance
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Dedication
To Clayton,
My honey in Wranglers and boots
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Chapter One
Travis Blake stood under the stream of hot water and let the heat seep into his tired muscles. Another long, hard week of riding fences and moving cattle on his ten-thousand acre spread was behind him. The sense of satisfaction he got from working the land and making money off the dry, south Texas soil pulsed through his veins.
He had never been afraid of hard work. It made a man strong. It made a man independent.
Fourteen years ago, at the age of eighteen, he had left the miserable life he knew with his drunken, snake-mean father. With a high school diploma and his clothes in a duffel bag, he had spent ten years travelling through Texas and the Western states, at first shoveling manure from one ranch to the next, until he drifted onto the rodeo circuit. He had found a home on the road, moving from one rodeo to the next.
And he was good at it. Damn good.
He had grown up, grown strong, and found out what really made a man.
He wasn't anything like his father; he rarely took a drink of alcohol, and never raised his hand to a woman or child.
Now, at thirty-two years old, he was king of the small empire his bull-riding money had purchased. A sense of well-being and achievement laced his soul, found from hard days working in the saddle. He had achieved a lot in the past years, as he worked to bring this place from the run-down, dried up patch of dirt he had purchased four years ago, to the pristine ranch it was today.
The only family he possessed was his horse, and the cowhands who had been here when he bought the ranch, and who had transferred their loyalty to him, when he put them on his payroll.
The only thing missing was a woman.
Every now and then, when his lusts raged and he couldn't stand it anymore, he travelled the road to Laredo, to one of the many bars there, and picked up a woman for the night. The short interludes were more from necessity than anything else.
The drive was always a pain, and his days were too long and hard to find the time to go very often.
The last four years had been difficult to adjust to in that respect. For ten years, when he had been on the rodeo circuit, there were always groupies. Women who followed the cowboys, from one rodeo to the next. He had been in great demand with them. They fought to sleep in the bed of the world champion. And he had held the title for several years. He had spent few nights alone, and only when he chose to.
And now that made it even more difficult to go without sex.
As the water sprayed over his sore body, he thought of the relief a woman would bring. There were no females within ten miles that he knew of, and certainly none on his ranch. An unmarried woman on the ranch would only bring dissension among the ranks, and that he could do without.
But the thought of a woman, waiting for him after a long, hot day busting his ass on the ranch, brought chills to his spine and a hardness to his groin. Soft hands running down his back, soothing over his tired muscles brought an ache of need.
He gritted his teeth.
He needed a woman. Needed one bad.
He felt like a ticking time bomb that was quickly counting down to zero.
****
Selena walked out of Nueva Laredo, Mexico and into Laredo, Texas through the American checkpoint with a sigh of relief. She had made the crossing back and forth many times in her life. But never to stay. Fear for her future assailed her.
Trepidation was a constant knot in her stomach these days.
Mexico was too dangerous now. She had to leave. She had no choice.
She tried to boost her sinking morale with positive thoughts.
She had a lot of things going for her. She was young, just turned twenty-three. She was healthy, and she was strong. But the thing that gave her the most hope, and the seductive sense of freedom she was experiencing, were the papers she was carrying. Her United States citizenship papers.
Even though she had never been farther than Laredo, she felt like an American today. She had planned and dressed for this day. To fit in, she had on low-rise jeans. She wore Converse on her feet and a Nike baseball cap on her head, her waist length black hair tied in a ponytail and stuffed inside. She had a lightweight American Eagle hoodie tied around her waist, and a change of clothing in the backpack that hung from her shoulder, as well as twenty-five American dollars.
There was nothing else she could do to prepare. She had to say goodbye to her old life and embrace the future.
Half Anglo, half Mexican, her entire life had been in Mexico, and she never thought she would leave her home. But now she was alone in the world. First one parent, then the other, and finally her older brother, all innocent bystanders, killed by the Mexican drug cartel. She was lucky to have made it out alive.
She was never going back.
Three days later, she was only thirty miles out of Laredo and almost out of money.
She was filthy from head to toe, and had a black eye and possibly a broken rib.
She sat and rested in the partial shade thrown off by a mesquite tree. She looked out over land as far as the eye could see, and except for crossing the Rio Grande, she couldn't tell any appreciable difference that she wasn't in Mexico anymore. It all looked exactly the same.
Her circumstances were almost the same as three days ago, but her attitude had turned a one-eighty. Before she left Mexico, she was at least optimistic, with a sketchy plan of finding her paternal grandparents in Houston. But now she was as down on her luck as she could be.
In retrospect, she realized that her plan, or lack of one, was stupid. She should have stayed in Laredo and tried to find a job. Although Laredo wasn't as safe as some of the more interior cities in Texas, it was a hell of a lot safer than Mexico.
She had been naïve to leave the city limits. She was going to have to go back. The thirty miles to Laredo would be easier to travel than two hundred and ninety miles to Houston.
Looking back, her mistakes were glaringly obvious.
Things started out okay, and the minute the border patrol let her go through customs, she walked straight to the ladies room. She stood in front of the mirror and took a few sustaining breaths while she gave herself a pep talk. She had every right to be here. She would get through this by the Grace of God. Life would go on.
She ran cold water over her wrists, dried her hands, and walked out of the room.
She found the drinki
ng fountain, and she took a couple of sips, and then filled her water bottle with the cold water. She figured she had just saved one of her very precious American dollars.
Roaming the city that first morning, she was able to find the library where she used the internet to verify the route she needed to take from the frayed roadmap of Texas she had gone over so many times. Knowing she wanted to travel to Houston, she quickly figured out how far it was. Over three hundred miles was daunting, but she had known from the beginning that this trip wouldn't be easy.
Her next stop was the bus station, where she was horrified to find out that American dollars didn't go near as far in the States as they did in Mexico. She couldn't afford a ticket.
And that was when she made the crucial mistake.
Being young and sturdy she figured she could set out walking, maybe earning enough on her way to keep from starving. She didn't want to hitch a ride, but the idea was in the back of her mind.
All she knew was she wasn't going back to Mexico, and she felt a compelling need to put as much distance as she could between her and the nation of her birth.
She had been a young female alone in Mexico, and she figured if she stayed, she would be a prostitute or dead within a month. Besides, she reasoned, she had as much right to a better life in the United States as the next person. She was a citizen, after all.
Knowing she wasn't breaking any laws, she set out walking. Her first stop was a grocery store where she bought a large jar of peanut butter, and a loaf of bread. It took four dollars, but she left knowing she wouldn't starve for at least four or five days. She wished she had enough money to load her cell phone with minutes, but it would totally wipe out her funds and she didn't have anybody to call anyway. Her few friends in Mexico would be of no immediate help to her if she got into a sticky situation. She had to save the money for more food.
When she left the outskirts of Laredo behind, walking along the interstate, she felt true fear slither down her spine. She tried to think of this as an adventure, when in reality it was a terrifying experience. And she was smart enough to know the difference. She continued to put one foot in front of the other.
It was May, and the heat of the day was already brutal. Again she tried to think of the bright side, and realized she wouldn't have to fear freezing to death in the middle of the night.
She spent that first night about ten miles outside the city limits of Laredo, behind an abandoned building not far from the side of the road. Somehow, even as terrified as she was, she managed to get about three hours of fitful sleep. She woke up before dawn and brushed her hair, drank some water, and ate a piece of bread with peanut butter she smeared on with her finger.
She was ready to move on.
With despair, she realized how big the world could be and how alone in it she was.
The second day, she put about twenty more miles behind her. She was dead tired, and the blisters on her feet had popped and were oozing puss and blood. She slept behind an abandoned gas station at a crossroads. Sheer exhaustion let her sleep a little more that night.
The third day she ran into the drug runners. Two guys cruised up beside her in a big, white pick-up truck, stopped and demanded her participation with transporting drugs into Houston. She had fought back. As desperate as she was, she wasn't going to do anything that was related to murder or drugs. Or hopefully, God willing, prostitution.
They would have killed her when she resisted, and she received a vicious hit to her ribs and one to her face, but a Texas state trooper had driven by. The men dropped her to the ground, jumped in their truck and fled, the trooper chasing them.
That was the last she had seen of them, or of the state trooper. She picked herself up off the ground and resumed walking. Her face and side throbbed in painful agony. When she came to a dirt road, she turned and followed it away from the paved highway. She needed time to regroup, and to think about her situation. She desperately needed a new plan.
About a half a mile down that sandy road, she found the mesquite tree and collapsed underneath it. Her ribs were killing her and she was starving. But she was too nauseous to eat. She drank a little bit of the precious water, took comfort from the slight protection of the deserted country road, and fell into a troubled sleep.
****
Travis glanced up from the tractor engine he was working on when he heard his name called. He took the dilapidated straw cowboy hat off his head and wiped the sweat from his forehead and waited for Jim, who was walking toward him from the bunkhouse.
"Boss. You better come with me and see what we got down at the bunkhouse." Jim leaned over and spat a stream of tobacco juice in the dirt.
"What's up that you can't handle? I've got grease up to my armpits." He glanced up and gave his foreman a cursory look and then went back to what he was doing.
"Got us an illegal that's beat up pretty bad. Juan found him along county road up by the north pasture. I think you better come take a look."
"Call the sheriff. He'll be out in thirty minutes, or he'll send the border patrol." Travis stood and picked up a rag and started wiping his hands.
"I don't know if we should do that, Boss. He's just a kid, probably only a teenager and he told Juan he's not illegal. Says he's an American citizen. I think you should come take a look. He don't look Mexican. Except for the black hair. He's sunburned, but he's got white skin. I think we ought to find out for sure before we call Sheriff Parker. You know how he is. Bastard thinks you're guilty unless you can prove your innocence. I don't think this kid would stand a chance in his custody. If what he's saying is true, then he risked a lot walking all this way. We might be sending him to his grave if we turned him in and he got sent back." Jim turned and spat on the ground again.
Travis tossed the rag on the tractor seat. "Shit. Okay. I really don't have time for this crap. Let me get cleaned up and I'll be down there in a few minutes."
****
Selena clutched her hoodie to her chest and tried to breathe without blacking out.
She looked around at the five cowhands crowding in the back of the room, all staring at her with curious eyes. She sat on a narrow bunk in the corner of a small room with her back against the roughhewn wood. Bunks just like she was sitting on lined one wall. A large table with chairs took up most of the space on the other side.
She had been sitting here for the last hour ever since the man named Juan had found her on the side of the road. He had asked her about her injuries, questioning her in Spanish, and then gently lifted her and put her in the truck and brought her here. The move had sent arrows of agony through her ribs. She had briefly blacked out once.
When she left Mexico, she hadn't intended to masquerade as a boy. The thought never even crossed her mind. She only wanted to blend in. Putting her hair up in the baseball cap had been designed for comfort. Her hair was long and thick and she knew it would be hot.
But when the man had said, w hat's your name, boy, some feminine instinct made her answer, Manuel.
She never intended to lie. It just slipped out of her mouth. She hoped it would give her some sense of protection.
Looking up now at the room filled with five rough men in various ages and sizes, she was glad she had told the lie. They were inquisitive enough about her without knowing she was female. She saw their eyes, studying her intently.
Now she sat on the bunk and waited for the Segundo to bring back the boss who would make the decision whether or not to call the authorities about her.
She thought maybe that was the best thing, but Juan kept telling her otherwise. He was very old, about sixty, and he was the only one who spoke fluent Spanish. He was very gentle and nice to her, and he reminded her of the grandfather in Mexico she remembered from when she was younger. She would trust his judgment. She really had no other choice at the moment. She could understand most English words, but she hadn't learned to speak it properly yet. Juan was the only one here she could easily communicate with.
Juan said the boss was a
fair man, and everything would be fine if she truly was a citizen. She could tell the older man was skeptical. And that presented a problem.
If she let them see the papers she kept inside her Bible, they would find out she was a girl. For now pretending to be a boy was probably her safest course.
The door clicked opened and the Segundo named Jim walked in followed by another man. Her eyes settled on the second man and watched him look around the room and find her. Her breath tangled up in her throat when his eyes found hers. Deep, dark, velvet brown eyes watched her. The impact of those dark brown eyes was disturbing. He was intensely masculine, and Selena gripped the hoodie to her chest more tightly.
Well over six feet of cowboy prowled toward her. His hair was dark, and he had on a ragged white t-shirt with no sleeves. He wore faded Wranglers and his boots were dirty and scuffed. His biceps bulged as he stopped at the end of the bunk and crossed his arms over his chest.
He had rough good looks, with several scars marring his face. One slashed down the left side of his face, a thin line that showed against his tan. Another dissected his bottom lip, leaving it puffy and white. His eyes were beautiful and deep brown, his eyebrows arrogant hooks above them.
Her gaze slowly moved down his body, trying to assimilate the size of him. His shoulders were wide, his hips narrow, and steely muscles ran up and down his length. Her heart skipped several beats, and then wildly began pushing blood through her veins. Her hands began to tremble where she clutched the jacket to her and the breath hitched in her throat.
She looked back at his face and found him still watching her.
Selena lowered her eyes in self-defense.
****
Travis looked from the dejected figure on the bunk to the men hanging around the room.
"Don't ya'll have anything better to do?" Four men in the room took one last look, and then filed out.
Jim and Juan lingered. Juan spoke. "You're going to need me to translate, Boss.
Manuel doesn't speak English."