The Girl with the Golden Spurs. Ann Major

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СКАЧАТЬ it was someone else. Cole had married himself square into the family. He was Vanilla’s father. He owned considerable stock in the ranch.

      If not Cole, it was damn sure somebody.

      Who the hell was the traitor?

      Caesar was mad, so spitting mad he had one of his headaches. His ancestors would have fought their enemies with six-shooters. But in these new days, killing came at a price. Thus, this was a problem for his high-priced, fast-talking attorneys.

      “If anybody calls you, just refer them to me. Act reasonable,” Jim had cautioned him just this morning.

      “Act reasonable?” he’d thundered. Not that he’d said much more. Jim cost too much. Billable hours, he called it.

      Since Jim had assured him there was nothing he could personally do about the problem except make it worse, Caesar had come out here to give himself an hour or two to settle down. He could have driven the pickup, but he preferred to ride Domino when he needed to get himself together. There was a purposefulness to the sounds of hooves on the ground and the movements of Domino through the grasses.

      He was glad he’d escaped Joanne. One look at his face and she would have grilled him for sure. She saw too much. She wanted things from him he couldn’t give. Besides, she could have been the one who leaked the information.

      Funny, he hadn’t realized how demanding she’d be when they’d struck their deal and he’d agreed to marry her. He’d thought she was meek and mild. He’d thought she’d be easier.

      Caesar was staring across the thorny brush country beneath the hot blue sky when his phone rang. Expecting Jim again, he yanked it off his belt.

      “Hi, there.” The voice was soft and breathy, and before he could speak, his armpits were damp and his body burned as hot as a smoldering tree stump.

      “How’d you get my number?”

      “Caller ID, big boy. You called me a while ago. Am I right?” She giggled. “Now don’t be shy. Guess what I’ve got on.”

      Not much, I reckon. He imagined Cherry in bed, young and voluptuous, naked, with her long white wavy hair flowing over soft pillows. He imagined her breasts and her pubic hair, which she’d told him she’d died hot pink.

      “Hot pink…just for you,” she’d teased. “And I shaved it into the shape of Texas. Wanna see?”

      “Hi, there back,” he said, feeling excited and yet easier, too. “So—what are you wearing, honey?”

      “Not much more than a burning bush.” She laughed.

      He envisioned fluffy coils of hot pink hair shaped like Texas and laughed, too.

      “I didn’t think you would ever call me,” she said.

      A beep cut into their conversation. “Damn,” he muttered. “Gotta get this.”

      “Don’t hang up again,” she pleaded.

      “I’ll call you right back.”

      “Bye. But don’t be too long,” she cooed, a pout in her voice. Then she blew him a kiss.

      He clicked over to the incoming call, cursing the timing.

      A strange, disembodied voice broke up amidst too much static.

      He jammed the phone against his ear, trying to get the gist of what the man, if it was a man, was saying.

      Two words stung him like poison. Dead. Electra.

      His heart beat dully as he remembered a girl with long, pale curls lying underneath him, her hair looking like ripples of moonlight on a dark, boiling sea. More images were burned into his brain and heart. Electra running, her long legs so graceful. Electra smiling, her lavender eyes as intense as lasers. Electra, laughing, always laughing, Electra, wild, beautiful, incredible Electra, his love.

      “She can’t be dead,” Caesar said. “Who is this?”

      “Dead,” the terrible voice confirmed.

      Caesar gripped the phone tight in his fist. “Then how? Where? Who the hell are you?”

      “Nicaragua,” the caller said without identifying himself.

      Electra was a damn fool. He’d told her to stay out of hot spots like that. She was nearly forty-eight, old enough to know better. Funny, when he thought of her, she was forever young. She always looked young when he saw her pictures in the newspapers.

      Forty-eight was too young to die. How many times had he warned her about those countries? He’d even gone down to Columbia once and rescued her when she’d gotten herself kidnapped.

      “How? How did she die?”

      “Did you know she kept a journal…so she could write a book? An intimate tell-all?” Laughter.

      Caesar remembered the way she used to sit up at night, writing with the lamp shining on her blond curls. Just like Lizzy. His head began to pound. His throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow.

      “She wasn’t a virginal, saintly heroine, was she? Any more than you’re the legendary, responsible Texas hero. Or the faithful husband. You ever wonder who else she slept with…or how you rate?”

      Hell, yes, he’d wondered. “Bastard! Who the hell are you? What do you want?”

      More laughter. “She wrote about you. Did you know that? Does Lizzy know who her real mother is?”

      “What the hell do you want?”

      “The world is full of shortages. You have so much.”

      “Who else have you told?”

      “Nobody…yet.”

      “How did she die?” he repeated.

      Laughter. “In her bed.”

      “How?”

      “The bitch got what she deserved. Other people you love will die, too, if you don’t release more of the oil and gas revenues to the rightful shareholders.”

      So the bastard had killed her. Moreover, the lowlife wanted money. Everybody always wanted money.

      Caesar had no doubt he was talking to the traitor.

      A warrior’s scream rose inside him, like the screams of cattle in a burning barn. He must have made some sound because vultures exploded out of nearby oak tree and circled slowly, as if he were a stricken creature.

      “You won’t be around forever, old man. When you’re gone, whatever will happen to Lizzy?”

      Caesar cursed. Then pain, the likes of which he’d never felt before, burst inside his head. His right hand lost its grip on the leather reins, and he cried out.

      The pain subsided as quickly as it had come, as it always did. СКАЧАТЬ