Marry A Man Who Will Dance. Ann Major

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      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 afternoon. The day before that, too. He swims there every afternoon…at five.”

      “Wow! That’s just like you…to sneak over there and watch him every day. What if he saw you—”

      Ritz remembered the firelight flashing on that strong bronzed arm he’d held out to her before she’d run.