His big hand moved to circle and warm the hard mound, their baby, and she sighed. Against her cheek, Roman grinned and she punched him lightly. “Okay, I’m not worried about Paloma Forbes returning to Jasmine. She’s half owner of the feed store, and since Rio went to buy her out, he’s been acting like a growly old bear. Else thinks he’s found ‘the one.”’
“Boone kept files on all of us grandchildren, and his file on Paloma said she’s not looking. Something happened in her early twenties and she hasn’t dated since. Roman, can’t you tell Paloma who she is—Boone’s granddaughter? She’s had such a rough life. As a child, her mother drove her ruthlessly. She was left in hotels, locked in rooms alone and poorly fed and clothed—until it was time for her to perform.”
“All of you have had a hard time, but I promised Boone that I wouldn’t tell anyone but my wife—and his grandchildren, when it was time for them to know. It’s not time yet, to tell Paloma. Boone wanted them to come here, to love the land, before telling them. You know, she’s the image of his mother. Tough, too. ‘Made to stand the weather.’ She won’t give up her half of the feed store. But Rio never backs off once he’s set on a course.”
Kallista punched his side again. “You’re enjoying this. Women dote on your brother. He’s easygoing and lovable... and used to doing as he pleases.”
Roman grinned again. “So is she. She’s the payback for the easy life Rio’s had with women, though he hasn’t been in the dating game for years.”
Roman turned to bend over his wife, love in his eyes. “If Rio decides she’s the one, he’ll go after her. Just like I went after you.”
“You’ve got that turned around, big boy. I bagged you—you didn’t have a chance. And you deliberately gave Rio Paloma’s location to start the fireworks, didn’t you? Stop smirking and kiss me.”
“She’s here. That Paloma Forbes woman. Turned up riding a big, flashy motorcycle. She’s walking around the place and snooping. Dressed all in black leather. She’s an Amazon—hard to picture her as some high-class piano player—and I don’t like the look in her eye...I seen it before, just before women start messing with things they hadn’t ought to,” Pueblo Habersham had whispered into the telephone when he thought Paloma wasn’t listening. “Get over here, Rio, and get her out of here. She ain’t sweet, like she was as a kid with Boone. She just comes right to the point and asks questions bald-like. I’m only the manager. I ain’t no encyclopedia.”
Paloma placed her biker boots on a sack of chicken mash, stripped off her black leather jacket and settled back to wait It had taken her two nonstop weeks to complete her affairs, and now in the middle of April, she was exhausted and ready for the seclusion of Boone’s cabin. Boone. Was he her father? Why had her mother kept that secret all those years?
The rough-hewn timbers running across the old feed store ceiling were the same, the wooden bins of bulk garden seed, even the small barrel seats used by Jasmine’s elderly spit-andwhittle males. The smells, dark and laden with memories, surrounded her. She listened to the baby chicks cheep in their cardboard boxes and thought of how Boone had brought her here to buy feed for his animals. She’d always loved him. She’d measured every man she met by Boone and none had come close. Once, she thought she was in love, but that bnef affair ended painfully, her lover moving to another virgin, another conquest.
As an adult, she couldn’t bear to return to Jasmine, to see the man who’d rejected her. When Boone died, the happiest part of her life had been torn away. She’d come now to answer Rio’s challenge, or was it her own? She had to resolve her tangled emotions, her feelings about Boone, her suspicions that he was her father. Lou, her booking agent, had turned pale when she told him that she wanted a year off to rest and to resolve the past. “You’re giving me a heart attack, kid. Say you don’t mean it. You’ll ruin everything we’ve bmtt—” But in the end, Lou agreed that she badly needed a break. “You’re too thin, kid. Try to get healthy, will you? You got from April to next Apdl—one year to rest. Next time I see you, no circles under your eyes, got it?”
Paloma spread her slender capable fingers, studying them. This feed store was all she had of Boone. She couldn’t let go, couldn’t sell it to Rio, not yet. She couldn’t bear to see Llewlyn House or Boone’s grave. Her last tour had swelled her bank balance and she didn’t have to worry about money. Now it was time to sweep away the old, and create a new life for herself. For months, she’d felt like a mechanical woman, though only she knew her performances lacked the fire she could give them. At first, the passionate storms within her had fired her career, but now she had to find peace. She’d start by cleaning the feed store, placing her music aside long enough to discover who she was and what she wanted. Was she her mother’s daughter? Boone’s?
April to next April. Would she be able to make peace with a lifetime of Boone’s rejection in just one year? Was she his daughter? Why hadn’t he wanted her? Paloma glanced outside the feed store to the snow-covered Rocky Mountains and damned Rio Blaylock for challenging her to face her fears.
For the past few months, she’d wondered about her career. She was tired, edgy and had just realized she did not love playing the piano. She hated concerts, was drained after them. Was that her mother’s gift to her—to be owned by the life her mother had created?
Paloma watched Rio’s black pickup glide into the parking lot and smiled. She was really going to enjoy this payback.... She listened to Rio’s boots hitting the ancient boardwalk outside, and savored the impatient, angry tattoo.
Rio stepped into the cluttered feed store office, a small section of adobe brick warmed by an ancient cast-iron heating stove. A lean, tall Westerner, dressed in a lined flannel jacket, he hadn’t softened in the three months since she’d seen him. Beneath the dark stubble on his jaw, a cord moved rhythmically as if in anger. He whipped off his black Western hat, slapped it against his leather chaps and found her instantly, his black eyes narrowing. She denied the little shiver lifting the hairs on her nape. She’d faced hard audiences before, and the best method was to step right up and launch into the job she had to do. Right now, that was keeping her control and putting this cowboy in his place. She lifted her eyebrows and met his stormy gaze. “Did I catch you at a...” She paused to wrap her next words in a smirking insinuation. “Busy time? You weren’t interrupted, were you?”
“You picked a fine time all right,” he stated in a low dangerous tone and took off his denim jacket to reveal a battered red plaid work shirt. The thermal shirt beneath it was frayed. He tossed the jacket to a rickety chair and Paloma disliked the sudden raw sensual impact to her body as Rio turned his back, a powerful, graceful sinewy male. He took his time pouring coffee from a battered pot atop the old woodstove and turned slowly to her. His black eyes leveled coolly at her over the coffee mug. “I take it you came to do business.”
“I have.” She almost felt sorry for the confident, impatient male in front of her, his hair shaggier than when they’d met, just past his collar. He hadn’t bothered to shave. With the shadows of the large, old room hovering around him and the weathered logs as a backdrop, Rio could have been a mountain man coming down to purchase his goods at the old trading post.
The man lacked a soft melody. He was too earthy, too raw, too—just too. And just the sight of him set her off, reminding her of how he’d left the bus, tossing her fears at her feet. He really-shouldn’t have kissed her-palm, those warm lips resting against her skin, branding her. A guarded, solitary woman, she couldn’t forgive the intimacy, the trespass.
“Good. Name the final price, I’ll write the check and you can be on your way.” Rio took the checkbook from his shirt pocket