Always, always he made her want and ache and need. She sighed, starved for more, so much more, and yet hating herself because she felt that way.
“Marriage is the only way I know how to stop you,” he said hoarsely, warningly, as if he despised both her and despised himself.
“You can’t be serious…about this. About…us.”
His fathomless eyes bored into hers. “Are you going downstairs to tell them our happy news?”
When she hesitated, his gravelly tone grew ever more bitter with sarcasm. “Or do you want me to do it?”
Nobody could peel their eyes off the white marble staircase. But like any audience when the stars go offstage, Josh’s mourners were getting restless.
“—simply awful…her up there…all this time…with him—”
“—today of all days—”
“I really need to pick Chispa up at the groomer’s before he closes. If I leave her there too long she always potties on the front seat.”
“We can’t just go…not without telling her goodbye. How would that look?”
“As if she cares about that?”
The idle chatter caused a mad rushing in one person’s ears.
Then a door clicked open upstairs, and two tall, black-clad bodies appeared on the white marble landing beneath the glittering Murano chandelier and stood there for a long moment, waiting.
The voices and laughter died abruptly and a brittle hush settled over the house. Everybody, especially the observer, was impatient for the final curtain of Ritz’s little farce.
Something was dreadfully wrong.
Blackstone’s dark hand gripped Ritz’s as he dragged her forward to the railing. Her yellow hair had come loose and spilled like butter over her shoulders. Her stricken eyes glowed like dying purple stars in a porcelain doll’s face. She was so white. He was so dark.
She was the perfect tragic queen.
Beautiful. Spellbinding.
Even if she was heartbroken, Roque made her come alive. She seemed ablaze.
Had the horny bastard screwed her up there in the bedroom? Did he think the Triple K was already his?
Blackstone. The name alone made the observer’s flesh crawl. But a practiced smile masked the wild hatred as well as the other dark emotions that flare so easily in the damaged soul.
Without further preamble, Blackstone said, “We’re getting married.”
When a look of terror flashed across Ritz’s face and she tried to free herself, Blackstone yanked her closer.
His triumphant eyes roamed, meeting the observer’s ever so briefly, causing as always that involuntary little shudder of fear before the rage took over.
Had he seen what was there?
No. Ritz wasn’t the only one who could pretend.
The smile, the perfect facade was in place.
Nobody suspected. Not Ritz. Not Moya.
Nobody would—until the killings started again.
Then it would be too late.
Book 1
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?
—William Butler Yeats
1
South Texas
Border ranch lands
1990
“Do you want to see a naked boy?” Jet whispered, her giggles sly and excited, her breath hot and tickly against Ritz’s ear.
Ritz shivered when she remembered the boy, not a boy really, a man, dancing by his campfire on the beach last night. He’d sensed her there in the darkness. He’d moved away from the fire, held out his hand. Her blood had beat like a savage’s. She’d wanted to dance, too. But she’d run. Not that she was about to admit last night to Jet.
“First the sheriff’s puma! Now a naked boy!” Ritz said offhandedly. “Mother’s always saying you’re a born troublemaker.”
“Oh, she is, is she? But, I’m fun, and you’re boring. It didn’t take much to talk you into sneaking off to see the puma!”
“There’ll be hell to pay when I get home, though!”
The two girls were riding bareback. Ritz’s skinny, sunburned legs dangling lazily in front of Jet’s more shapely denim-clad limbs as Buttercup clopped along.
Ritz forced herself to think about cats instead of the boy last night, so she wasn’t really listening. Pumas, to be exact. Very large pumas that followed the rivers up from Mexico just to eat little girls in Texas. Especially now, ’cause the Mexicans down in the Yucatán were burning off their crops.
Or at least that’s what she thought Sheriff Johnson had said.
And ever since they’d left the courthouse in Carita, Ritz’s eyes had been fixed on the fence lines on either side of the ranch road the Kellers were forced to share with the Blackstones. Particularly, she watched the Blackstone’s ten-foot-high electric game fence. The grass over there was so much higher—high enough for a big cat to crouch in.
As usual, she’d forgotten her hat, a mistake Jet, who was careful of her pale skin and more fragile beauty, never made. If Mother would be mad they’d sneaked off—she’d really be in a rage that Ritz was sunburned.
It was a six-mile ride into town. So, it was a six-mile ride back. Which meant—they’d been in the sun way too long. And since they were nearly home, facing Mother was a growing worry. Not that Mother would punish, but she’d tell Daddy.
So every so often, Ritz forgot about cats for a second or two and licked her blistered lips, but that only made them sting worse.
“I said I know where there’s a cute naked boy!”
This time Jet’s lascivious challenge penetrated.
Did she know about last night?
“You wanna see him or not?”
Ritz burst into nervous giggles. Then she hid her face in case Jet might suspect.
“Not just any boy,” Jet persisted.
“Who?”
“Promise you won’t tell your mother—”
“Do I ever—”
“Roque Blackstone.”
“Oh, God!” Ritz clamped a hand over her mouth. She knew. Somehow she managed to make her tone innocent. “Imagine! Just like the puma—Roque Blackstone is up from Mexico!”
Jet lowered her voice. “And his thingy is almost as big as Cameron’s.”
“No! No way! You’re kidding!” Surely she would have noticed that last night.
Cameron was Ritz’s daddy’s bad-tempered blood bay stallion, the very same horse that had tried to kick her brother, Steve, and four cowboys to death two days ago.
“Well, you’ll just have to sneak into the forbidden kingdom and see for yourself…little girl, same as I did. Then you’ll know for sure.”
More giggles. More pretended innocence. “You didn’t sneak over there!”
“Did, too!”
“When?”
“Yesterday