by Janet Dailey
"There have been ranches in Florida, and cowboys, before the first white man ever discovered there were tumbleweeds in Texas. Ponce de Leon brought the first boatload of Andalusian cattle here in 1521. The shoot-outs, the lynchings, the rowdy saloons were all romanticized in Westerns, but it all happened here first." His gaze skimmed her face with wicked arrogance. "Driving cattle across palmetto prairies, fighting wolves and malaria fever and swamp mire that would suck up a full-grown steer, sitting around a camp fire beneath trees ghostly draped with moss didn't appeal to the Zane Greys and Remingtons who built the myth of the cowboy."
"Florida is oranges, Disney World and Miami Beach, not cowboys." Barbara's image of her native state was undergoing a whole new evaluation.
"Cow hunters or cracker cowboys, that's what they were usually called. Cow hunters for the obvious reason that so much of this land was unfenced that they had to hunt the high grasses, swamps and cypress forests for the cows. Cracker cowboy comes from the rawhide whips they carried—" Jock's hand touched the side of his saddle and Barbara noticed the coiled whip tied there "—and the cracking sound the whip made that could be heard for miles when the cowboys were rounding up cattle. The three things a cowboy needed then he still needs today—a good horse, a whip and a good cow dog."
"And Sandoval Ranch is yours." Barbara looked at him. She had always been aware of the strength in him, but now she saw the command the heavy responsibility of being in charge of all this resting easily on his broad shoulders.
"Yes." In that single word there was a wealth of pride and possession, understated and simple.
Barbara remembered his earlier reference to his inheritance of the land. "It's been in your family for generations."
"In the Malloy family, yes. My father left it to me when he died, just as Todd's father left him the hotel on that expensive strip of sand."
The reference to Todd brought silence. The ground beneath their horses became marshy and Jock angled the gray gelding toward a raised strip of land. It was a dike to hold back the seeping waters of a cypress pond. As Barbara rode the chestnut along the crest, her gaze wandered over the raw, wild beauty of the exposed and tangled roots of the cypress giants. Primitive and unspoiled, it was no different from what it had been a hundred—two hundred years ago.
Where the pasture ground became firm again, Jock reined his mount down the sloping side of the dike. Barbara followed, her saddle shifting slightly beneath her. It affected her balance for only an instant, but Jock noticed it and reined his horse to a stop.
"I'll tighten the cinch," he stated, swinging out of his saddle and forcing Barbara to do the same.
She stepped to one side as he flipped her stirrup across the saddle seat to tighten the girth.
Chapter Four
HIS HEAD WAS BENT to the task, his masculine profile sculpted out of teakwood, hard grained and strong. Barbara watched him, her hand absently stroking the silken hip of the chestnut gelding, its feel reminding her of Jock's tautly muscled flesh. Sunlight glistened in the brown hair curling near the collar of his shirt. The impulse was strong to run her fingers through its sensuous thickness. She balled her hand into a fist to resist the almost blatant invitation.
"I take it you didn't tell Todd about me." The lightning shaft of his glance stabbed her in accusation.
Barbara stiffened defensively. "He knows there was another man, but I never told him who."
"Why?" Jock let the stirrup fall and turned to face her, resting an arm on the cantle.
"Why should I?" she flashed. "I may be engaged to him, but that doesn't give him the right to know the name, date and place of every man I've ever gone out with. Todd knows I've…been with another man, but he doesn't expect a graphic description of who, what and where. And I don't expect him to tell me about the women he's been with."
"The circumstances have changed. Or hadn't you noticed?" His low voice was dry with challenge.
"How could I know you would turn out to be Todd's brother?" Barbara replied sharply, all her raw tension surfacing. "He kept referring to you as J.R. and he never said anything about different fathers and last names. The way he talked about this place, I thought it was a citrus farm. And you, you never said anything about having a brother. I can't remember you mentioning anything about your family. You were always too busy—" The rest of the sentence became lodged in her throat.
But Jock finished it. "—making love to you."
"Yes," she snapped, unnerved by the way he was studying her with half-closed eyes.
"Are you sleeping with Todd?" It was a shot from the hip that drew blood.
"No!" And Barbara immediately wished she had told Jock it was none of his business. Instead she had to defend her answer. "I'm not so rash anymore. I don't race blindly into a relationship or a man's bed since I met you."
"Good." Jock straightened away from her saddle and Barbara took it as an indication he expected her to mount.
She wanted back in the saddle with the solidness of the chestnut beneath her instead of legs that were trembling. But when she took the step forward to mount, his arm crossed in front of her to block the movement. Barbara found herself enclosed in a trap. She leaned away from any contact with his hard, lean frame and closer to the saddled horse.
"Good, because I would hate to be put in a position where I would have to beat up my own brother for taking what was mine."
"I'm not yours." Her denial was taunt and breathless, the wary blue of her eyes darting over the complacent expression on his rugged face, a face that was much too close.
"Regardless of that ring on your finger, you gave me rights over you six months ago." His hand touched her shoulder, then glided to her throat to stroke the underside of her chin with his thumb. Her pulse surged and fluttered madly at the caress. She was taking deep breaths to control the excited tightening of her stomach.
"Stop pretending that I was anything more to you than a one-night stand!" she protested stridently, needing to remind herself as much as him of the fact.
"One night?" Jock taunted with a roguish glint in his look.
She choked. "What does it matter how many? It was just a fling, a way to pass the time."
"A highly pleasurable way, wasn't it?"
"No." Which was an outright lie that challenged him.
When Barbara realized his intentions, her hands came up to ward him off, but it was already too late. His mouth was on hers, his hand cupped to her neck and his thumb digging under the point of her chin to prevent her from eluding his searching kiss.
Her hands strained against his chest to keep his body at a distance, but it took more effort to ignore the pleasant sensation of male sinew and bone beneath her fingers. When the hard point of his tongue probed the tightly closed line of her lips, a response quivered through her. Barbara fought it and his seductive insistence.
"Open your mouth," he growled against her lips, filling her lungs with his breath. It was warm, drugging air that muddled her already hazy thinking. "Open it, honey."
"No." And the door was opened to admit the piercing sweetness of his erotic kiss.
It enflamed her, burning up her paper-thin control. His arms went around her to gather her close and Barbara melted into his embrace. She was riding a shooting star, arching high in the heavens, and she didn't care when it might come down. Jock's hands had slid beneath her T-shirt to explore her skin and start their own fires.
The blood running through her veins became molten lava, a primitive heat that gelled everything in its path. A hand slipped inside the waistband of her denims to the hollow of her spine and arched her to his thrusting hips. Her fingers became hungry for the hair-roughened texture of the skin beneath his shirt and forced their way inside to let springy chest hairs tickle her sensitive palms.
The fiery comet she was riding was climbing too high. The crash to earth and reality would be too devastating. Barbara had to get off. She dragged her lips from his and shuddered as his mouth scorched her jaw and throat.
"It's over between us, Jock," she insisted in a tormented whisper. "Why can't you let it die? Why can't you forget?"
"Can you forget?" he demanded hoarsely, a rough gravelly edge to his low voice. "Can you forget what it's like to have my hands on you? To have my kisses wash your flesh? Can you?"
Barbara groaned in answer because she couldn't forget. That was her punishment. The raw, wild memories lived with her, as intimate as their affair had been. She had survived its ending, but could she endure this attempt to revive it? Her eyes were tightly closed, trying to shut him out. But Jock would have none of it. His hands shook her roughly.
"Look at me!" he commanded. "You want me the same way I want you. Look at me and deny that's the truth."
The violent shaking forced her to look at him. Her tortured gaze went from the gold glaze of his eyes to the well-cut mouth still warm from her lips down to the rumpled and unbuttoned front of his shirt. She had done that, fought aside his shirt to reach that naked male flesh. Barbara couldn't deny the truth. She had lost her pride and self-respect in her abandoned response to his embrace. So she clung to the one good thing that had happened to her.
"I love Todd," she whispered. Todd, whose gentleness had helped her off her knees and made her lift her chin. Todd, who made her feel safe and protected, not threatened by emotions she couldn't control.
His mouth thinned into a ruthless line. The brutal grip of his fingers was gradually relaxed until Barbara was standing alone and he was stepping away.
"It isn't going to work, Barbara." He left her to walk to his horse.
For an instant she couldn't fathom his statement. Then its meaning struck her and she reached for the saddle horn to keep from reeling. Her blue eyes were stark with pain and flat with discovery.
"You are going to tell Todd, aren't you?" she said.
"I am not a nameless nonentity who went in and out of your life." Jock's back was to her as he looped the reins over the gray's neck before mounting. "If you don't tell Todd about our affair, I will. We may have had different fathers, but he is my brother. Nothing has ever come between us before…not until now. If you marry him, I'll never be able to look at you without remembering what went on between us before your marriage. Todd deserves to know why I'll be avoiding him in the future."
The tiny hope that Jock might keep their previous relationship a secret died a cold death. In her heart Barbara knew Todd had to be told. It was only fair. Now Jock had issued an ultimatum. If she didn't tell him, he would.
She climbed into the saddle and gave the chestnut its head. It followed the gray gelding when Jock started it forward. Her shoulders sagged under the weight of her decision. She didn't notice the pastures of high grass give way to orderly rows of fruit trees. When her horse stopped in front of a metal building, Barbara heard the murmur of voices and the hum of machinery.
"Where's Todd?" It was Jock who asked the question, and Barbara turned in her saddle to see him talking to an elderly man.
"Here he comes." The man gestured to the yawning door of the building.
Todd was walking toward her, all smiles and gladness. "I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you."
He reached up to span her waist with his hands and lift her from the saddle. Barbara was too numbed to refuse his assistance. Her wide, troubled eyes searched his handsome face as he set her on the ground. When Todd bent his head to kiss her, the gray horse snorted, sharply reminding Barbara of Jock's presence. Before Todd's mouth brushed hers, she turned away.
"I'm sorry I'm late," she apologized stiffly. "I overslept."
"You needed the rest." But his brown eyes had narrowed to study the lines of stress in her face. Todd smoothly concealed the look when he lifted his gaze to Jock. "Thanks for bringing her over here, J.R."
"Don't thank me, Todd. You might regret it." Jock's answer was terse, its message a mystery to his brother but not to Barbara. "I'll see you later at the house." He jabbed a heel into the gray's belly and the horse bounded forward into a canter.
Barbara slid a glance at Todd's puzzled expression as he watched Jock ride away. She wished that he didn't have to know the truth, that things could be the way they were before they had arrived here at the ranch.
"Come on. I'll show you around the shed." He was smiling again when he looked at her.
Gathering the threads of her courage, Barbara shook her head to refuse the invitation. "Not now. There's something I have to tell you first."
"Can it wait?" Todd asked with a quizzical expression. "Ramon is free now to guide you through the place, but he's tied up later. We're having lunch with Ramon and his family."
"Yes, Jock mentioned that," she admitted and took a breath to continue her explanation.
"You'll like Ramon. He's like an uncle to J.R. and me. We slept as many nights at his place as we did at the ranch house when we were kids—"
"Todd," she broke in impatiently. "Please, I have to talk to you?"
"You make it sound urgent."
"It is. I…I'm sorry about Ramon, but this isn't going to be easy and I don't want to put it off." She might not find the courage to tell him if she had to wait.
"Okay." His caressing hand was absently rubbing her spine but it didn't have the power to provoke a searing response. His touch was pleasurably sane. "Let me introduce you to Ramon, then we'll go walk in the grove."
Ramon Morales was the elderly man Jock had questioned. His dark eyes were sharply intelligent and the smile he gave Barbara was warm. On another occasion she would have enjoyed meeting him, but now she was too tense to show more than polite courtesy to him.
"I'm sorry, but something has come up that Barbara needs to talk to me about," Todd explained. "I'm sure she would have learned much more from you, but I'll take her through the operation later."
"You will come to lunch?" Ramon questioned.
"Of course," Todd insisted, but Barbara wondered if he would want to after he heard what she had to say.
After apologizing again for keeping Ramon from his work, Todd promised to meet him at his house. Barbara's stomach was churning as they walked away from the man toward the trees. The air was heavily scented with oranges, weighted down by the hot sun. A faint breeze stirred the green leaves of the stunted orange trees. Barbara would have continued walking, but once they were out of sight of the sheds, Todd stopped.
"Would you like to explain to me what it is that's upset you?" he probed gently.
She moved a step beyond him before halting. Her nervous hand reached to trace the round circumference of an orange. "The man I had an affair with—"
"That's in the past, Barbara," Todd interrupted. "I thought we had agreed to forget about it."
"You don't understand," she breathed in agitation. "That man was Jock."
It was out and she suddenly couldn't breathe. Unwillingly Barbara turned to see the look of stunned shock and disbelief on his face.
"There must be a mistake," he murmured.
"I wish there was," Barbara replied in a stark voice. "I didn't know he was your brother. I never connected Jock Malloy with the brother you called J.R. I assumed you had the same last names. If I had known—" What was the use? She hadn't known. Now it was too late. The diamond ring sparkled on her finger in a silent reminder. Barbara took hold of it and pulled it off. "You'll want this back."
"No." His hand covered hers, folding the ring into her palm while his brown eyes searched her face. "I don't want it back unless you want to give it back. Do you still love him, Barbara?"
"I—" She shook her head mutely, unable to answer that question. The conflict of her heart and mind must have been expressed in her eyes, because Todd wrapped her in his arms and held her tight, resting his chin on the top of her black curls. "He was going to tell you," she mumbled into his shirt. "I had to tell you before Jock did."
"How does he feel about you?"
"He still wants me." The admission came out in a bitter laugh.
"And you?"
"Oh, he
can still make me want him." It was a self-deprecating answer, exposing her shame. It brought a sob to her throat, but she took a deep breath and forced it down. As much as she wanted the comfort of Todd's arms, she couldn't in good conscience accept it. She firmly pried herself away from his chest. "I can't stay here, Todd. I have to leave."
"No. You are wrong. You have to stay and you have to face him," he insisted. "Hiding won't do any good. After a bad fall, you have to get back on the horse."
"But not the same horse!" Barbara protested.
"What happened, Barbara? Between you and J.R., I mean. You said he didn't want you around anymore. I know my brother can be harsh at times, but not totally insensitive in the way you have made him sound." He frowned.
"In his way, I suppose he let me down easy. Jock just didn't know how far I had to fall," she said, trying to laugh but not succeeding very well. It hadn't been funny. Even in retrospect, it wasn't now. "After he'd asked me to come with him to his ranch—Sandoval, as it turns out—I refused for all the reasons I've already told you. Later on that same day, I went into the bedroom and found him packing to leave…"
Barbara could remember it all so clearly, walking into the bedroom, seeing him folding his shirts so neatly and laying them in the suitcase. A sweet pure love had seared her. She had walked up behind him and wound her arms around his middle to hug his back. Jock had stopped packing to half turn. Barbara had ducked under his raised arm to be held in his embrace. Instead of kissing her as she had expected, he had locked his hands behind her back for a moment and looked down at her. If he had repeated his previous invitation, she would have accepted in a flash.
Jock hadn't. Instead, he had unwound her arms from around him and held her hands in front of him. For the rest of her life, she would hear the words of rejection he had uttered then. "I have enjoyed being your lover, Barbara, but it's time we became friends."
Every nerve in her body had screamed with pain at the statement. Somehow she had managed to force out a husky laugh and pull her hands from his loose hold to turn away. Jock hadn't attempted to stop her. She had been dying with love for him and he had been casually asking to become her friend.