He knew exactly how he liked his women.
Sweet-smelling, with perfume in their hair, not hay. Smiling and soft-spoken, not glowering and acid-tongued. He liked to see them use feminine wiles, not pseudomasculine bravado.
He supposed some might think this woman had a pretty face, if you overlooked the smudges and smears. And, yes, her hair was an extraordinary shade of black, the color of a raven’s wing. He suspected it would be heavy as raw silk, if she ever let it out of that unflattering braid and brushed it into smooth, shiny waves.
He could even admit that the rest of her had promise, too. The high, full breasts. The slender waist and curved hips. The long, long legs that could draw a man deep inside her heat…
“Who are you?”
Her voice pulled him back to reality. “What?”
“I said, what’s your name?”
The tone of command was back. It made him angry enough to draw himself up to his full six foot two and respond with the icy hauteur of a man who was never questioned.
“I am Lucas Reyes.”
To his surprise, her face turned white. She had heard of him, then. He found himself taking some satisfaction in that.
“No! You can’t be!”
“I assure you, señorita, I am.”
“Lucas Reyes? Prince Lucas Reyes? Of the Reyes Ranch in Spain?”
Was his hot-tempered hoyden going to throw herself at his feet? Women sometimes did, if not literally.
For some insane reason, the possibility that she would turn out to be such a woman made him even angrier, angry enough to respond with disdain.
“Not of the Reyes Ranch,” he said, lifting his hand from her wrist. “To all intents and purposes, I am the Reyes Ranch.”
The woman shook her head. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Really?” he purred, folding his arms.
“I sent a letter—”
“You sent a letter?”
“I mean—I mailed a letter. To Prince Felix Reyes. Your father.”
“My grandfather. And what did this letter say?”
“It—it told you not to come.”
“If there was a letter,” Lucas said sharply, “neither my grandfather nor I ever saw it.” He flashed a cold smile. “So, I am here, as planned. Perhaps we can agree that it is even possible I might—what was your charming phrase? I might know one end of a horse from the other.”
The woman drew herself up. “Your visit is pointless. You’ll have to leave.”
“Are you giving me orders, señorita?”
“Just go, that’s all.”
His gaze swept over her. “What do you do here? Are you the cook? The maid? Do you muck out the stalls?”
“I do all those things.”
His mouth twisted. “And warm McDonough’s bed as well?”
Her hand was a blur in the rapidly fading light. Lucas caught it before she could slap him and twisted it behind her, forced her to her toes. She looked up at him through eyes gone so dark they were almost black.
“What’s the matter, amada? Did I strike too close to home?”
“You can’t talk to me that way! Not in America, you can’t. We don’t give a damn for stupid titles. For princes who’ve never sweated for a day’s wages. For—for men who wouldn’t know how to be men if their lives depended on it.”
“Watch yourself,” he said quietly.
He could almost see her struggling between defiance and caution. He knew which she’d choose before she did.
“Or you’ll do what, almighty prince? Subject me to the bastinado?”
Maybe it was the flippant tone. The insulting words. The mention of an ancient punishment.
Or maybe it was her easy dismissal of him as a man, a dismissal made by a woman who knew nothing about being a woman.
“Why would I do that,” he growled, “when there are much better things to do with a woman?”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Kissed that sullen, angry mouth.
She fought him. Hands, teeth, the attempted thrust of a knee. She fought hard but Lucas threaded his hands into her hair, tipped back her head and kissed her again, harder this time, parting her lips with his so that she had no choice but to accept the swift thrust of his tongue.
Her hands came up between them, palms slapping against his shoulders, thumbs scrabbling for his eyes. He shifted his weight, pushed her back against the stable partition and went on kissing her.
She tasted of heat.
Of rage.
Of the untamed land she rode.
And, impossibly, of wildflowers that would come to life from barren soil after a summer rain.
She smelled of them, too. Not of horse, as he’d expected, or leather, but of flowers. Sweet. Exciting. And yet, somehow, tender and innocent as well.
Even struggling against him, she was soft in his arms. Incredibly soft.
Her mouth, her skin were like silk. The feel of her breasts against his chest. Her belly against his…
He swept one hand down the long length of her back. Stroked her as he would a mare afraid of a stallion’s possession. Drew her toward him. Against him. Softened the pressure of his mouth on hers.
And heard the choked cry of her surrender.
She rose toward him. Her hands slid up his chest. “Don’t,” she whispered, but her mouth, that sweet mouth, was opening to his.
“Béseme,” Lucas said thickly. “Kiss me, amada. Like that. Yes. Just like—”
The stable door banged open. The woman stiffened in his arms.
“Hello? Somebody in here?”
It was the foreman. Lucas tried to draw the woman deeper into the shadows but she shook her head, made a whimper of distress against his lips.
“Don’t listen,” Lucas whispered. “Don’t answer.”
“Hey!” The faint scuff of boots, then the foreman called out again. “Who’s there?”
Her hands came up, slammed against Lucas’s chest. “Let go,” she whispered.
“That isn’t what you wanted a minute ago.”
“It was. Of course it—”
Lucas kissed her again. Her mouth softened, clung to his for a second before her sharp little teeth sank into his bottom lip.
He thrust her from him, dug in his pocket for a handkerchief that he pressed to his mouth. He looked at the scarlet drops of blood that stained the fine white linen, then at her.
“Reckless with men as well as with horses,” he said coldly. “Dangerous behavior for a woman, amada.”
Her eyes blazed into his. “You were right when you said there was nothing you would want here. Do yourself a favor, Your Highness. Go back to a world you understand.”
“With pleasure—as soon as I’ve met with your employer.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Whatever I wish to happen will happen,” Lucas said harshly. “The sooner you get that through your head, the better.”
He thought she was going to answer but maybe she’d finally figured out that arguing with him was pointless because, instead, she dug a key from her pocket and flipped it at him.
“There’s a station wagon parked in back. It’s old and it’s not all gussied up so you won’t like it very much, but it’ll get you to Dallas.”
Lucas let the key fall at his feet.
“Shall I tell you what you need, señorita? Better still, shall I show you?”
“Okay,” the foreman growled. “Whoever’s in here, you better show yourself.”
The woman’s eyes blazed into Lucas’s one last time. Then she swiveled on her heel and walked away.
“George,” he heard her say brightly, “why don’t we go to the office and look at that catalog you mentioned yesterday?”
Her voice faded. Lucas’s anger didn’t.
Did she really think he would tuck his tail between his legs and run? It would have taken a Texas twister to move him now.
He had come here to meet with Aloysius McDonough and that was what
he would do. He owed that to his grandfather.
As for what he owed the woman…A muscle bunched in his jaw.
He would deal with her, too.
She didn’t know how to handle a horse or a potential client, if there had actually been a mare worth buying in this desolate place.
She sure as hell didn’t know how to handle a man.
Perhaps McDonough liked being toyed with. Lucas didn’t.
McDonough needed to know what had happened here today. The woman’s incompetence. Her rudeness.
Her provocative sexual games.
Lucas strode from the stable.
If anyone was going to be ordered off this sorry bit of real estate, it sure as hell would not be him.
CHAPTER THREE
BY LATE afternoon, the clouds that had hung over the horizon most of the day finally began moving.
Better still, as far as Lucas was concerned, they were building, turning into impressive thunderheads as they drew closer. Unless he was reading the signs wrong, the oppressive heat that held the valley in an iron grasp was about to break.
He threw open the guest room window in hopes of catching a breeze. There was none but the scent of rain was definitely in the air.
It couldn’t come soon enough.
The guest room was boxy and hot. An ancient electric fan stood on an oak dresser but there was no way to coax more than a flutter from it. Under normal circumstances, he’d have been out the door hours ago but these were not normal circumstances.
He was as good as trapped here, thanks to a promise he’d foolishly made to his grandfather.
At least he hadn’t seen the woman again. He’d gone straight through the front door, up the stairs to this room without seeing a soul. As far as he could tell, he was alone in the house.
Just where in hell was Aloysius McDonough?
Lucas looked impatiently at his watch. Five-thirty. If McDonough didn’t show up soon…
If he didn’t, what?
No matter what happened, he was stuck here until tomorrow, when the car rental agency delivered a replacement vehicle.
Maybe it hadn’t been so smart to ignore the car key the woman had tossed him in the stable. Maybe he should go back and search for it.
Or maybe he should search for her.
Lucas snorted. He wouldn’t do, either. He’d wait this out, go home and tell his grandfather that McDonough had been too ashamed to show up and admit there was no mare for sale.
Thunder rumbled in the distance and a spiked streak of lightning sizzled from the almost-black sky. The storm was coming on quickly now, turning day into night.
Hard to believe that only yesterday he’d been in Manhattan at about this same hour, having drinks with his two oldest friends, Nicolo and Damian. Drinks, some laughter…and then dinner.
Lucas’s belly growled.
He hadn’t eaten since early morning. There seemed to be an entirely different meaning to hospitality on El Rancho Grande. First, you damn near rode a man down, then you didn’t show up for an appointment and if neither of those things got rid of an apparently unwanted guest, you tried starving him out.
Lucas folded his arms and glowered at his reflection in the age-speckled mirror over the dresser.
The possibility of that key still lying on the stable floor was growing more and more appealing. Why, when you came down to it, should he feel obligated to stay here? Hell, he’d kept his promise to come to this—this alien outpost.
It was Aloysius McDonough who hadn’t kept his.
Was that enough reason to disappoint Felix? Lucas sighed at the obvious answer and began to pace.
He had to calm down. Otherwise, by the time McDonough deigned to show up—assuming that ever happened—he’d say or do something rash. And he didn’t want that.
Who was he kidding?
He wanted exactly that. More to the point, he wanted to tell McDonough what a fool he was to run a ranch straight into the ground, to employ a woman who dressed like a man, had the surliness of a man…
And could turn hot and female despite all of that.
Was it an act? The way she’d responded when he’d kissed her? She’d inferred that it was, but Lucas was not a fool.
Women could give award-winning performances at the drop of a hat.
They could weep, if they thought tears could get them what they wanted. They could smile, if they believed that was the better choice. They could pretend that whatever interested you interested them, that they wanted nothing but you, not your title or your wealth or your power.
Oh, yes.
He knew all that and more. A man couldn’t reach the age of thirty-two, couldn’t have the wealth he had been born to, the even greater wealth he’d accumulated by expanding the Reyes empire, without meeting more than his share of women who were experts at plotting and planning and lying.
A thin smile crossed his mouth.
The one thing they couldn’t lie about was sex.
Not that an occasional woman didn’t try.
“Ohhh, Lucas,” one had whispered the first time they’d made love.
The moans, the whispers, had all sounded right, but she’d been faking it. He’d known it instantly.
A woman’s eyes blurred with desire when what she felt was real. Her pulse increased with the heavy beat of her blood. She trembled like a willow in her lover’s arms.
The woman in his bed that time had been lying, but that hadn’t angered him.
It had challenged him.
Slowly, deliberately, he’d set out to turn that carefully spoken “ohhh” into a whisper of true passion, and he had done it.
Of course he had.
He knew what tender female flesh begged for a man’s touch, what hidden place would heat under a man’s lips.
Without question, he knew that the woman he’d kissed a couple of hours ago had not been acting. Like it or not, she’d been as turned on by that kiss as he’d been.
Lucas frowned.
As he was now.
Dios, he truly was in desperate shape! He needed a drink, a meal, an evening back in the real world. That the memory of a woman who’d done nothing but provoke him should have such an effect on him was ridiculous.
Perhaps he’d been too hasty, sending Delia away. An hour with her in the old-fashioned bed in this room and—
And what?
Who was he kidding?
An hour with Delia, with any of the women who’d passed through his life, and he’d still want the woman from the stable in his arms, her mouth opened to the thrust of his tongue, her breasts naked and hot against his chest. There’d been something about the feel of her skin, the shock of her surrender…
Hell.
Aloysius McDonough could take this excuse of a ranch, this forgotten appointment and stuff them. It was one thing to pay a visit out of respect for Felix but another to be made a fool of.
Lucas strode to the door, flung it open—and found the laconic foreman just about to knock.
“There you are, mister.”
“But not for long,” Lucas said flatly. “I’m done waiting.”
“That’s what I come to tell you. You don’t have to wait no more.”
“Damned right, I don’t. A while ago, the woman who works here—”
“Ain’t no woman works here.”
For some reason, the confirmation of what Lucas had already figured made him even angrier.
“Your boss’s woman, then,” he snapped. “She gave me the key to an old car she said was parked behind the stable but I didn’t…” Why was he explaining himself? “I want that key now.”
“You just said—”
“I know what I said,” Lucas growled. “Surely there’s a second key. I want it.”
“I come to tell you what I been told to tell you. You can come on down to Mr. McDonough’s office now.”
“You mean, he’s finally here?”
But he was talking to himself. The foreman was already shuffling down the hall.<
br />
He was half-tempted to go after the man, grab him by the collar and pin him against the wall—which only proved how out of control he’d let things get.
Instead he took a steadying breath.
What was that American saying about killing two birds with one stone? He could see McDonough, then demand the damned key to the damned car and say goodbye to this damned place.
He could hardly wait.
The office was tucked behind what Lucas assumed would be known as the front parlor in a house the age of this. It was a big room furnished in oak and leather, but what caught his attention were the prints and photographs framed and hung on the walls.
Horses. Colts. Paddocks and barns and stables. It took a minute to realize the pictures were of the ranch as it must have once been. Handsome, well-tended and prosperous.
McDonough had lied about the mare he claimed to have for sale. He’d somehow let this place tumble into ruin. But he had once run it properly and understood what it meant to be a horseman.
“Depressing as all get-out, isn’t it? Kind of a sad chronicle of what used to be, could have been…well, you get my drift.”
Lucas swung around. A man stood in the doorway, mouth curved in a smile that could only be categorized as nervous.
He damned well should have been nervous, Lucas thought coldly, taking in the figure of his host.
Aloysius McDonough was not at all what he’d expected.
He’d envisioned a tall man, whipcord thin and weather-hardened, wearing a dark suit, bolo tie and polished boots, maybe even a Stetson.
Obviously, he thought wryly, he’d seen one too many Hollywood Westerns on late-night TV during his days at Yale.
McDonough was short and pear-shaped, dressed in a pale gray suit and shiny wing-tips. His hair was arranged in an elaborate comb-over that emphasized his balding scalp. His face was florid and damp with sweat.
Lucas disliked him on sight.
And thought, immediately, of the obscenity of the black-haired rider warming the man’s bed.
Everything inside him tensed, so much so that when McDonough held out his hand, he could only stare at it. The man’s wary smile dipped and Lucas took a breath and forced himself to accept the extended hand, which was as soft and clammy as he’d known it would be.
The Spanish Prince s Virgin Bride Page 3