Cruz turned and threw himself onto his palomino stallion. He raked its belly with his spurs and the beast bounded away as though the hounds of hell were chasing him.

Sloan’s body trembled with agitation as the dust settled. She was completely unaware of Rip until she heard him slump back into the rocker. She watched her father warily, wondering what he would say now that Cruz was no longer a buffer between them. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“What kind of claim does he have on you, Sloan? What have you gotten yourself into this time?”

“I don’t need you to judge me,” she snapped. “I only did what I thought I had to do to get Cruz to take the baby.”

“You should have kept the boy.”

“It was Tonio’s child!”

“It was your child-my grandchild.”

“It was a child born of deceit. I would have hated Cisco, though he was faultless. Don’t you understand? I couldn’t keep him. I was too angry-”

“Peace!” Rip interrupted. “Peace, I say.”

Sloan bit her tongue and slowly sank into the rocker next to Rip’s. She leaned her head back against the varnished wood and began to rock gently back and forth. The steady creaking sound made by the two rockers soothed the tension between them as the deepening twilight claimed the land.

“Do you plan to go to Dolorosa?” Rip asked.

“I can’t be his wife.”

“He’ll be back.”

“I know. Don’t worry. I can handle Cruz.”

As darkness fell, Stephen, the slave who had managed Rip’s household since Amelia’s death, when Cricket was still a child, lit the lanterns inside the house. The bright yellow light spilled through the front windows, enabling Sloan and Rip to see each other’s faces.

“It’s too bad things worked out the way they did. I know you miss seeing your boy-”

Sloan felt her stomach begin to churn at the further mention of her son. “Please. I don’t-”

“Don’t interrupt me, girl. And don’t contradict me!”

Sloan wrapped her arms tightly around herself, but she remained silent.

“I know your sister Bay finally got you and Cisco together this past year at her husband’s ranch. I know that about the time you started letting yourself care for your son, he got hurt and nearly died. I also know that as soon as he got well again, you stopped seeing him. I’m sure you had your reasons for that.”

Sloan’s glance skittered off Rip as she recalled holding her three-year-old son for the first time since she’d handed her day-old baby to Cruz. Cisco’s skin had been incredibly soft against her cheek. She had loved the feel of his chubby legs wrapped around her waist and his arms clinging to her neck as he murmured a mixture of English and Spanish childwords at her neck. She had suddenly felt the full brunt of what she had done.

It had been too easy to love her son. When he had been attacked by a renegade Comanche and nearly killed, she had been thoroughly shaken to realize how devastated she would have been by such a loss.

It had been frightening to realize that even the tender love of a mother for her son was fraught with danger. It was better, she had decided, not to love at all. It seemed the only way to avoid the pain that seemed irrevocably to come along with loving.

“You can’t keep ignoring the fact you’ve got a child,” Rip continued. “When you’re as old as I am, you realize you don’t get a second chance in this life. If I had a son out there somewhere, you can believe he’d know I cared about him.”

But he didn’t have a son, Sloan mused, which was why she and her sisters had taken the place of sons in her father’s dreams. How different things would have been if he’d had even one son instead of three daughters.

Sloan rarely let herself think what her life might have been like if she had not been her father’s heir. Would she have been so ready to reject love if she had not been so sure she would always have the demands of Three Oaks to fill up the lonely hours?

Sloan realized she ought to seek out Cruz and speak with him, to settle this matter once and for all. His cause was hopeless. She would never allow herself to love him. And she could never be the willing and obedient wife she was sure he expected her to become.

He would do much better to marry the young woman he had brought home with him from Spain, the one who had a long Spanish name regal enough to be joined with his. She had heard the señorita was unbelievably beautiful… and most certainly a virgin.

She turned her head to tell Rip what she had decided and realized he had fallen asleep. His body was no longer equal to the demands he put on it. The stroke had taken his strength and left him only his will.

In sleep he looked a gentle man, yet she knew he wasn’t. He was as hard and uncompromising as the land he had fought to tame. And he had raised her in his image.

Her future was tied to Three Oaks. She loved the land, and it gave her joy to see its burgeoning harvest. Somehow she would convince Cruz Guerrero she had nothing left to give to a man.


Cruz had not anticipated, when he made a personal vow to repay the Republic of Texas for Antonio’s treachery, that the Republic would recruit him as a double agent. But it had.

Because of his brother’s previous connection to the Mexican government, it had been easy to convince the British government that he was willing to spy on the Republic in order to help Mexico in its dealings with Texas.

Recently, he had been ordered to find out what plans the British government was cooking up with Mexico to interfere with President Houston’s plans to get Texas annexed by the United States. When necessary, he was to feed misleading information to the British.

While he was anxious to have Sloan in his household, having her around was going to complicate his work as a spy considerably. If he could have explained everything, he was sure she would have understood and approved his actions. Unfortunately, he was bound to secrecy.

After her experience with Antonio, Cruz was certain that if Sloan got an inkling of his activities, she would draw all the wrong conclusions. Therefore, he planned to speak today with the British agent he regularly dealt with and make certain that the man never came to Rancho Dolorosa again.

Cruz was careful not to be seen entering the upstairs hallway of Ferguson ’s Hotel. He quickly found the room where he was to meet with his contact, who reported directly to the British minister to Mexico. Cruz knocked twice, waited a moment, and knocked once more.

“Who’s there?”

“The Hawk,” he murmured, giving the code name the British government had assigned to him.

The door opened, revealing a short, rotund Englishman dressed foppishly in bright-colored silks and satins. Sir Giles Chapman had purposely adopted the foolish clothes as a disguise. Together with his bloodshot eyes and florid jowls, they had kept many a man from discovering the shrewd brain that resided beneath his shiny bald pate. Sir Giles gestured with beringed fingers for Cruz to enter, then checked the hall one last time before he closed the door behind him.

“Do you have your report for the minister with you?” Sir Giles asked, his British accent crisp and authoritative.

“I have written everything down.”

Sir Giles nodded his head in distracted acknowledgment as he accepted the missive. He smiled as he finished reading the document. “So. President Houston is still leaning toward keeping Texas an independent nation rather than accepting the offer of annexation from the American government?”

“It appears that way from everything I have been able to learn.”

Sir Giles snickered. “Thank goodness Houston hasn’t changed his song over the summer. There were rumors… Well, it’s good to know that at least we don’t have to concern ourselves with trying to delay an offer of annexation from the United States.”

“I have not told you anything in this report that your own British chargé to Texas could not have found out for you,” Cruz pointed out.

“Yes, but the official version of Texas policy given to our chargé might not have agreed with the version you’ve given us. And that, my good man, is where your true value lies. I will expect another report next month, or sooner if the political climate changes. Do you understand?”

“But of course.”

“Is that all?”

“There is one thing more,” Cruz said.

The Englishman raised an inquiring brow.

“I am taking a wife. Since her political sympathies are not precisely in accord with mine, I must ask that you no longer attempt to reach me at my hacienda.”