Texas Temptation

by Kathryn Brocato

  “Yes?”

  AJ fumbled for words, not willing to alienate Rosa. The young woman obviously wanted Chance, and AJ couldn’t allow herself the luxury of competing for a man. Not with Rebel’s future at stake.

  “Listen, Rosa, about Chance—”

  She snorted derisively and held up a slender hand. “No, Senorita AJ.” She shook her head, dark curls dancing around her face and shoulders. “You are going to tell me not to worry, that you are not interested in Chance. No?”

  “Well ... yes.”

  “Don’t bother.” Rosa slipped out of bed, reached for her robe and pulled it on, then hugged her arms across her chest as if she were cold. “Look, AJ, truth always speaks. Not always loudly, but always it speaks.” She rubbed her arm absently. “You and Chance … a fool could see that the chispitas, the sparks, are there—no?”

  Lying would be safer. But AJ couldn’t. “Yes, At least for me, there are sparks. But that doesn’t matter. I’m just visiting. I won’t be here for more than a few more days. And besides, Chance and I … well, we have different lives. I can’t … I’m not going to stay in Laredo. I don’t want to encourage him.”

  “Mentirosa!” Rosa taunted, but without malice. “You are not a good liar, mi amiga. And I am your friend. If I had not interrupted, Mike Towers might have.”

  “But you—”

  Rosa sighed heavily, turned away briefly, then faced AJ with resignation. “Chance will never be mine,” she said quietly. “We are friends. I would be more. But he—” She shrugged. “Who can say why these things happen? He will not let me love him. He does not love me.”

  “I’m sorry,” AJ whispered.

  “Again I say—you are a liar. Una mentirosa.” The words were more teasing than accusing, and Rosa smiled. “You are more than a little in love with Chance.”

  AJ didn’t answer. In love with Chance? Ridiculous. He’d saved her from one of Towers’s wild parties and he hadn’t exposed her lies. He’d comforted her and made her feel attractive over the handful of days they’d shared. None of that constituted love. She wasn’t sure she knew what love was, though. Her two-month marriage? Gina’s tormented time at Mike Towers’s side? Gina had believed in love at first sight. She certainly hadn’t found it.

  “You have secrets,” Rosa said darkly. “Like Chance.” She waved a hand at the door. “Secrets apart, and secrets together. Go. No one will know secrets from me. In fact, I myself might have secrets of my own. But AJ—”

  “Yes?”

  “Be very careful.” Rosa’s warning snaked through the dark room. “Do not play with Mike Towers. Sometimes he plays a fool just to trap those around him in lies. Don’t let him trick you. You can only be hurt.”

  “Sorry I woke you, Rosa,” AJ murmured. She walked out of the room, filled with a strange dread. Chance had secrets? She knew that Rosa was right. She had seen Chance in the office that night. Knew, too, that Chance lied about the man she had seen. But could those secrets hurt her? She wouldn’t believe that. She might have to trust someone to save Rebel. She was running out of time and options. Maybe Chance would be her salvation. Anything else would have to wait. And chispitas be damned!

  • • •

  Chance frowned as the helicopter beat its way up into the air, rotors stirring up noise and blasting the tranquil surroundings. Towers traveled a lot, but usually he didn’t come and go with such frequency. And secrecy. The fact that Jaime was accompanying the man everywhere felt wrong, too. Not that Chance wanted to leave the ranch, but he didn’t like the feeling of impending doom that haunted him, cropping up entirely too often.

  “I hate helicopters,” AJ offered, startling him. He started and heard her soft laugh behind him.

  “Some head of security,” she teased. “I sneaked right up.”

  “There was a helicopter taking off,” he protested.

  “Excuses,” she retorted, her eyes dancing. He wasn’t sure why she was in such a good mood—maybe because Towers’s helicopter had already disappeared—but just looking at her made him smile. And wish he could pull her into his arms and kiss her. Sun glinted in her hair, created interesting golden patches on her bare skin. The white eyelet top and turquoise shorts were designed to cool scorching summer temperatures, but seemed to have the opposite effect on him. She looked hot and sexy, and he guessed his temperature was headed up, not down.

  “You seem happy,” he said, and she nodded.

  “I just came from upstairs.”

  He swatted at a gnat and frowned at her. “Upstairs? What could possibly be upstairs that made you so happy?”

  “I was playing with Gordito,” she explained. “He’s such a sweet little boy. You know, I don’t remember being around little kids very much. But when I hold that kid—” She shrugged. “I sound like some goofy old woman going gaga over a baby, don’t I?”

  He laughed. “No. You sound like a woman who likes kids. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “Walk with me to the barn?” she invited and he glanced around, then nodded.

  “Sure. Although you usually don’t ask.”

  She didn’t say anything, just walked toward the barn, and Chance followed.

  “You know,” she went on, as they walked, “it’s funny about Gordito.”

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  He didn’t see it coming. “He feels—I don’t know. Like someone I know. Like someone I could love.”

  Her words hit him with the force of a sledgehammer. Again, a blade of guilt sliced through him. He said nothing though, couldn’t, just walked beside her and let her talk.

  “I guess it’s just that he’s so cute,” she decided, eventually.

  “Could be,” he agreed, hoping that he didn’t sound as uncomfortable as he felt.

  Tell her, you bastard. She stopped, smiling up at him, and his chest tightened. When he hadn’t known who she was, everything had been easier. Now, he knew that she deserved the truth about the child upstairs. But what if she couldn’t handle the truth? What if she gave herself away to Mike Towers? What if Towers lost it when he found out he’d been lied to? His head started to throb dully. Decisions. Why did they all have to seem so impossible?

  “You’d make a good dad,” she said lightly. “I’ve seen the two of you together.”

  “My nose would never survive.”

  She laughed, the sound soft and sexy in the mounting morning heat. “That would be a pity,” she conceded. “Losing a nose like that.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, impulsively taking her arm. “Now, if we’re walking, let’s walk. I’m on duty, remember?”

  He escorted her into the cool barn, glancing around as he always did, noticing details. The first stall was empty, the stallion turned out in the paddock outside. The sounds of horses, the smells—everything seemed normal. But Bone had been here. And that spoke worlds.

  AJ walked down the corridor, speaking as always to all the horses, but greeting Rebel with love. The horse was hers; he could see that. Her story must have been true. He thought about Mike’s reaction when he’d reported that yes, AJ was just who she said she was. A young woman recovering from a broken engagement. A woman from Philadelphia with an interest in history and horses. He just hadn’t mentioned that AJ’s main interest was in the multimillion-dollar chestnut stallion standing at stud in his boss’s own barn.

  Towers seemed relieved. Reassured. Still, Chance worried. AJ might be under more pressure to sleep with the man—he had a reputation for impatience, and AJ had delayed him for days already.

  “You know what’s funny?” she asked, coming out of Rebel’s stall and closing the door with a bemused expression.

  “My nose?” he asked, wanting her to laugh again.

  “Besides that,” she said, grinning fleetingly before looking around the barn in consideration.

  “What, then?”

  “Well … with four stallions—very well-known, very expensive stallions—standing at stud, wouldn’t you expect to see mares being brought here to
be bred? I haven’t been here long, but I haven’t seen a single mare here that doesn’t belong to Towers. You don’t make your money just breeding your own mares. And when I looked at the appointment calendar in the office—”

  “Yes?” he prodded.

  “There were names. But not enough. And I didn’t recognize any of them. With the stature of the studs, I should have.”

  His blood froze. For a moment he didn’t breathe. No mares. Bone. She didn’t know what her words had just done. Given him hope. Filled him with fear. And desperation. Mike’s conversation about money came back to him. Stock market losses, people who wanted money, the payoffs that Mike’s shady business dealings probably entailed—a man who needed money. Again.

  Stud fees would bring in money. But the cost of caring for mares, guaranteeing live foals—maybe Towers thought he could pull off insurance fraud one more time and collect millions instead of thousands. If so, he’d need a fall guy. He didn’t have a trainer onsite here. So, who?

  He looked at AJ and peered slowly around the barn at the horses. If Towers moved again, if Bone slaughtered one or more of these animals, he might be able to prove his uncle’s innocence. If the method of attack were the same, or if he could videotape Bone’s actions—witnesses might place Bone at his uncle’s barn, even all those years ago.

  He swallowed hard, remembering the way the other horses had been destroyed. He couldn’t stand by and let that happen. Approaching Bone, making an offer—could that work? If he could get the man to talk, he wouldn’t have to let him act. Did killers like Bone brag about their past work to provide a sort of gruesome reference? Otherwise, Chance would have to wait until Bone acted, and horses could die—even AJ’s horse.

  “Chance?” AJ put a hand on his arm, concerned. “What in the world are you thinking?”

  I’m thinking that I might destroy the two things that could matter the most to you, and that if I don’t, there’s no escape for my uncle. He sighed and gave her hand a slight squeeze. “I’m thinking you shouldn’t have been going through Mike’s books,” he said. “But since you did, why don’t you show me?”

  The office, as usual, was empty; no one seemed to pay much attention to the coming and going of the grooms outside in the corridor. Still, Chance made sure that they slipped into the room unobserved, realizing that just his being here with AJ might anger Towers. She seemed unaware of any possible problems, though, going to the desk and extracting a large, leather appointment book.

  “Look.” She beckoned for him to come closer, and he bent over to see. “All the stallions were booked. Then, suddenly—the appointments stop.”

  “But wouldn’t that make sense?” he argued, already knowing that it didn’t. “Breeding season is over—”

  “But farms book months, sometimes years ahead,” she countered. “If Towers were only going to stand Rebel on this side for a year, as you said, then it makes even less sense that he wouldn’t book as many mares as he could. And not one of the stallions has any future bookings.”

  “Hmmm.” He took the book from her, flipped through the pages, then handed it back with a frown. “Strange,” he muttered.

  “I don’t understand it.” She put the book in the desk, then sank down in the chair and leaned back, looking over his shoulder at something beyond him. Her concern hurt. He wanted to reassure her, tell her not to worry. But he couldn’t. Nor could he tell her about his suspicions as to why Towers hadn’t accepted bookings. He couldn’t tell her his real motivation for putting up with Towers; she might confront the man in an effort to save Rebel. Thinking of Bone, though, he realized abruptly there was an even more desperate reason to keep the truth from her: if she knew Bone had killed horses before, that knowledge might endanger her.

  “So … anything else in the desk you want to tell me about?” he asked lightly, and she pulled her gaze away from the wall and refocused on him.

  “I’m not as big a snoop as all that,” she protested, and leaned forward to pull open a desk drawer. “I only wanted to see what bookings Rebel had. Mom always chooses so carefully when she has a mare bred. That’s one reason I thought we should wait a year with Rebel—it would take her that long to find just the right mares.”

  He watched her rifle through the contents of the desk, thinking she’d never make it as a private eye; she tumbled and moved things with complete disregard for their original order.

  She looked up once, and caught him smiling at the image of her as some kind of secret operative.

  “What?”

  “Never go into espionage.” His smile broadened. “They wouldn’t need concealed video to track you.” He kneeled down to pick up a scrap of paper that had fallen under the desk. Unfortunately, being on his knees next to those long, bare legs of hers was disconcerting. Too damn disconcerting. Too damn tempting. His body tightened with desire. He could lean over, place a kiss against her thigh—

  “This is Gina’s handwriting,” she murmured in a choked voice.

  She looked as if she’d been punched, holding the small piece of paper with a trembling hand. “It’s a name,” she said. “And part of a phone number, I think. Numbers.” Her lips pursed. “And hearts. I don’t think Gina ever wrote a word on a notepad or piece of paper she didn’t doodle on.”

  He didn’t look at the paper, didn’t need to, and she slipped it in her pocket. He knew the name. Lenny. Her lover. The man she’d cheated on her husband with. The man who died with her when she fled the ranch. He hoped AJ wouldn’t ask, but he wasn’t surprised when she held the note out to him.

  “Do you know this Lenny? Some friend of Mike’s, I guess?”

  He hated lying. “Yeah, I think so. I don’t really remember.” He shrugged, propped a hip on the edge of the desk. “I spent very little time here when Gina was alive.” That was true, at least. He saw no reason to tell her what he had learned from Mike. And María. And several others who had been paid to keep tabs on Gina Towers. Even after Towers brought her to this side of the river, she’d apparently been eager for company—male company. Towers had been infuriated to find that his wife was cheating on him with one of his accountants.

  “I miss her,” AJ murmured.

  He made a noncommittal sound that he hoped bordered on sympathetic. “We’d better get out of here.” He glanced around the area around the desk, checking that she hadn’t dropped any other bits of evidence on the floor. “I should be making my rounds, AJ.”

  “Sure.” She stood up, still teary-eyed. Her sadness tore at his heart. Without thinking, he stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. Held her close, offering comfort. She sighed slightly and leaned against him for a moment. The feel of her against him was—good. She felt good. After a second, she sighed again, more deeply, worked her hands up between them, and gently pushed away from his embrace.

  “Get to work,” she ordered, making an obvious attempt at levity. “No point in upsetting any old apple carts.”

  He nodded in agreement and turned to leave, but she stopped him.

  “Chance?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded and walked out, wondering how long before he had to hurt her. He knew a large part of the truth about Gina. About Gordito. About Rebel and the absence of bookings. And like that weary old saying, the truth did hurt. Always. Especially since he’d played a part in Gina’s death.

  • • •

  AJ watched him go, the scrap with Gina’s handwriting still fresh in her mind. She patted her pocket. Once Gina had married, she and AJ had become strangers. Any crumb of information, even something as insignificant as a name written in her unique way, seemed a connection to the woman her sister had become before she died.

  Had Gina realized that the gift she had given Mike Towers—the loan of Rebel for a year—had turned into the outright theft of the stallion? If so, it would have tortured her.

  She had written AJ for only the third time during her marriage, and the tone of the le
tter hinted at unhappiness but not desperation. At the time, AJ assumed that Gina was merely down over being so far away, and the miscarriage she’d mentioned in passing in the letter. Now she wondered. But now—there could be no answers.

  She looked around. Chance wasn’t here. Mike Towers wasn’t here. Her breath quickened. Chance didn’t seem to have predictable duties. In fact, he seemed more often than not to be watching her, but since he’d just walked off—

  The tack room. She didn’t know where the horses’ bridles and saddles were kept. She’d seen a couple of youngsters working out on the small training track early in the morning. No one seemed to exercise the stallions, a crime in itself. Rebel would be jumpy and hard to control, but if she needed him to go—no horse would catch him.

  Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. Please don’t let Chance come back. Don’t let anyone see me.

  She didn’t find tack stored in the stallion barn. As quickly as possible, she crossed over into the mares’ barn, ignoring the nickers directed her way until she saw a groom taking out a wheelbarrow of soiled hay. She lifted a hand in his direction and approached the nearest stall, crooning at its occupant and hoping her penchant for visiting the horses was well known enough that the groom wouldn’t approach her. Or call Chance.

  When he disappeared out the door, she hurried down the stall. The office was near the center of the barn. She pushed the door, finding it open, and went in, looking around.

  Bingo. A second door inside the office opened into a pantry-like room. Bridles hung on hooks, along with a few exercise saddles, blankets, and miscellaneous grooming and medical supplies.

  None of the bridles was labeled. She chose a headstall that should slip over Rebel’s head quickly and debated the use of a saddle. Riding a Thoroughbred like Rebel full out and bareback was a fool’s errand. The driving muscles, the sweat he’d work up almost immediately in the hundred-degree heat—the saddle made sense, and throwing it on would be quick work. But Chance or anyone else could appear in seconds.