For a hundred and forty years, Kembles had been working this land. They’d endured bandit raids, Union soldiers, drought, the Depression, inheritance taxes and now, in the twenty-first century, family dissention and constant lawsuits. They’d come close to selling out and giving up on the ranch dozens of times. Then oil and gas had been discovered, and there was too much at stake to sell out.
“As long as the family sticks together, the ranch will survive,” was the family motto.
Being a Kemble was like being part of a football team or being a believer in a cult religion, or maybe it was worse, more like the Mafia, because it was family. There was a do-or-die feel to being a Kemble. You were supposed to feel your Kembleness in your bones, to dedicate your entire life to the ranch. Or you were the worst kind of traitor.
So Lizzy felt terrible that she’d been born with this weird feeling that she didn’t belong here and that she lacked the talent to ever be a rancher. This lack in herself filled her with self-doubt. She wanted to please her father by becoming the perfect cowgirl more than anything, but she didn’t think she ever could. As if he sensed this, her father, who was not normally intuitive, had done everything in his power to turn her into a proper Kemble.
“Keep your eye on me, honey,” Daddy had said only this morning when she’d begged to stay home. “And you’ll be fine.”
Easier said than done. Daddy was everywhere at once.
The sun was a fat red ball low against the horizon, but that didn’t mean her daddy would order the cowboying to stop anytime soon. She was tired of the hot rivulets of wet dust running down her face and throat. More than anything she wanted to wash her pale, curly hair so it was no longer matted with dirt and sweat. She’d been in the saddle so long, her butt felt numb and her legs ached. Her throat was dry from all the blowing dust. She probably had chiggers, too.
Nearby a calf escaped, and Hawk waved his cowboy hat and whooped at it. There was laughter and gritos as he and his terrier, Blackie, galloped toward the squealing calf in pursuit. Lizzy jumped forward causing Pájaro’s hooves to tap skittishly.
“Easy, boy,” Lizzy said. Phobic about dogs, Pájaro danced backward. Tensing, Lizzy pulled back on the reins. She hated it when horses did anything except walk in a straight line. She’d been bitten, thrown and kicked too many times to remember, and that wasn’t even counting today.
It had all started on her fifth birthday when she’d begged Daddy for a doll, a beautiful Madame Alexander doll in a gorgeous velvet black dress, but he’d given her a dreadful Arabian mare named Gypsy instead. Daddy had told Lizzy the best way to make friends with the huge, snorting beast was to give her an apple. Only when she’d tiptoed fearfully up to the mare with the crescents of apple in her palm, the brute had snorted and then bitten off the tip of the little finger on Lizzy’s left hand. Mia had grabbed the apple and fed the beast expertly. Not that Daddy had even noticed her doing so.
At the plastic surgeon’s, Lizzy had cried and cried about wanting a doll instead of a biting horse. Not that her daddy had had the least bit of sympathy.
“Don’t be such a big crybaby, Lizzy. She knew you were afraid.”
How do you not be afraid when you are?
Ever since Gypsy, Lizzy had had problem relationships, you might say, with horses and cows—with any large animal, really.
But she loved her daddy. And her daddy was determined to make a cowgirl of her or kill them both trying. So, here she was, out in the blazing sun, in thorny brush country, getting herself all sore and sunburned to make her daddy proud.
“You were born to this life, honey,” Daddy was constantly saying, but there was always a lack of conviction in his voice that scared Lizzy deep down and made her wonder why he was trying so hard to prove she belonged.
Even though he took her everywhere, constantly instructing her about the operation of the ranch, somehow, she never quite felt a true kinship with the Golden Spurs. It was as if her life were a puzzle, and a big piece in the middle was missing.
“Why can’t I do the cowgirl stuff then?” she had asked him.
“Because you’re stubborn and you’ve made up your mind you can’t. Change your mind, and you’ll change your result.”
And so their discussions went, if you could call them discussions. Daddy, who never listened, always did ninety percent of the lecturing, and if she said anything, that just kept the unpleasant conversation going.
Sometimes she made small improvements in her horsemanship. But who wouldn’t have, considering how many hours had gone into her training? Sometimes she went for months without a mishap, but she always backslid.
No father ever spent more time grooming an heiress for the running of his empire. Before she’d been old enough for school, he’d carried her with him everywhere, whether on horseback or in his pickup or in the ranch’s plane. He’d taken her to San Antonio to the board meetings, introducing her to everyone important, who had anything to do with the ranch. He’d taken her to feedlots, to auctions. He’d let her play at his feet when he’d worked in his office.
Sam and her siblings had begged her father to take them, but almost always, he’d insisted upon Lizzy going because ranching came so naturally to the rest of the brood. He’d taught her to shoot and to ride, but she disliked guns and horses. The other children had watched her leave with her father for her lessons or trips, their eyes narrowed and sullen with jealousy….
One minute Lizzy was hovering on the edge of the herd, watching her daddy, mother, her uncles, cousins, brothers and her sister do the real work while she tried to stay out of their way and endured the blistering day. Then she saw him—a real live Border bandit…or maybe a drug runner—lurking in the brush, staring holes through her, stripping her naked.
Just why she didn’t weep or scream in terror, she’d never know. Maybe it’s true what they say about curiosity killing cats.
He was half-hidden in the mesquite and granjeño and palmetto fronds. Hunkered low over his saddle, the lone cowboy drilled her with such angry, laser-bright blue eyes she knew he was bad. Even after he realized she’d spotted him, he didn’t avert his predatory gaze or smile or even bother to apologize.
No, bold as brass, his narrowed eyes roved from her face to her breasts and her thighs.
Rigid with shock and not a little fear, she glowered back at his harsh, set face.
“Who do you think you are—trespassing, spying on me?” she said, wishing for once that she was carrying a hateful gun like her daddy always advised.
“If your daddy wasn’t a thief, you’d be trespassing, honey. This was Knight land for five generations.”
English. He spoke English. Drawling, lazy, pure Texas English, but English. “So, you’re Cole…”
Naturally she knew that Cole Knight was as bad as any bandit. Worse—if her daddy had his say.
Cole lifted his hat and nodded, his hostile, white smirk mocking her. “Pleased to meet you, darlin’.” Not that he looked pleased.
She wasn’t about to say she was pleased to meet him.
He had longish black hair, dark skin and radar eyes that saw through a girl.
“I’ve heard all about you,” she said. “You’re known to have a nasty vengeful disposition. You’re a gambler, too, and you’ve got a bad reputation with girls.”
“Did your daddy tell you all that, little girl?”
She refused to give him the satisfaction of admitting it, but she felt herself get hot and guessed her blushing was telling him more than she wanted it to.
“Cole Knight is set on revenge against me, honey,” her daddy had told her, and more