A buzzer sounded, shattering the fantasy. Lauren jerked back from the fence as the bronc hurtled past, the rider gripping the bucking strap with both hands now that the required eight seconds had passed. She felt the spatter of coarse sand against her jeans, smelled the sweat of man and animal, tasted the grit of dust, heard the grunts of effort, the slap of leather against horsehide and the announcer’s voice on the loudspeaker:

“Nice ride! Ladies and gentlemen, how ’bout a nice hand for the hometown boy!”

Needing no encouragement, the spectators cheered and stomped the aluminum-and-wood bleachers, while out in the arena the two pickup riders moved in on either side of the still-agitated bronc. While one leaned over to release the bucking cinch from the black mustang’s flanks and grab hold of his halter, the other moved into position to pluck the rider from his back. Once more Lauren stepped up to the fence, in time to watch Johnny Bronco slip deftly onto the back of the pickup horse, then to the ground. She found herself grinning in admiration as she watched him make his way back to the chutes, walking with the cowboy’s loose-legged stride, slapping away dust and tipping his hat to the crowd in a cursory self-conscious way. Not a man accus tomed to or comfortable with the limelight, Lauren surmised. It was something she understood.

And then suddenly, when he was almost to the fence, he raised his head and seemed to look straight at her. As if he’d sensed my presence…as if he felt my eyes on him…

As quickly as the thought formed in her mind she squelched it, feeling vaguely furtive and embarrassed, as if she’d been caught indulging in an inappropriate private act in public. The romantic lurking inside her had popped up again, in spite of all her efforts to deny-or at least ignore-it. What? she scoffed at herself. Just because the man was obviously Native American, did she automatically assume him to be possessed of heightened spiritual perceptions? Naive nonsense.

But she felt her smile fade as the cowboy’s jet-black eyes went on staring into hers. And once again she drew a breath and forgot to let it go.

He had broad cheekbones, a chin with a slight but definite cleft, and full lips curved in a natural sneer. But it was the eyes that made him seem exotic and somehow dangerous-black and bright as chips of obsidian, with eyebrows that began low beside an arrogant nose and swept up and out from there like a raven’s wings, giving him the fierce wild look of a warrior chieftain leading his hordes into battle across a windswept plain.

The smallest of movements scattered the exotic pictures in her mind. The cowboy’s head and shoulders had realigned themselves ever so slightly, a subtle acknowledgment of her silent scrutiny.

Her embarrassment warmed to a conflagration. It had only been a second, she knew it had, but she felt guilty about staring, as if she’d invaded his privacy in some obscure way.

Then, when he was almost past her, the sneer softened for an instant into a smile. For that instant it seemed to her as if the smile was inside her and touching all her senses at once: she felt it like a warm breath against her skin, heard its music like the tinkle of wind chimes, smelled its fragrance and tasted its sweetness like aching memories of long summer days in childhood. Just for an instant…

Then he was reaching for the top bar and pulling himself up and over the fence with the fluid grace of a wild animal. It was then, with her perceptions returning to dusty sweaty reality, that Lauren realized the spurs on his boots had no rowels.

The breath she’d forgotten a while back gusted from her along with a little exclamation of surprise. A bareback bronc rider without spurs? What was that? She knew competitors in that event, assuming they managed to avoid being bucked off for the mandatory eight seconds, were judged in part on how vigorously they employed their spurs to the animal’s neck and withers. Which was a big part of why Lauren didn’t care for the rough-stock events. Timed events, like roping-now that was different. She considered a well-trained working quarter horse a wonder and a joy to behold, sheer beauty on four hooves, and never tired of watching horses and riders working together in perfect sync. But as far as she was concerned, the bucking events were just so much macho…well, bull. Grown men trying to show one another how tough they were by tormenting bigger, faster and stronger animals, and risking life and limb in the process. What could be dumber than that? But here was a man who’d just taken one of the most breathtaking rides she’d ever seen, and without once resorting to the barbarity of spurs!

“Ma’am?” A short distance away, the man called Bronco had dropped to the ground beside the fence and paused to regard her with those fierce brows pulled down in a frown and a question.

Lauren had to wait for the crowd’s roar as a new rider burst from the chute, a moment that seemed to take forever, tethered as she was to those terrible eyes. When it had subsided, it was all she could do to hang on to her poise as she made a gesture toward his scuffed dust-caked boots and tried to explain. “I was just noticing you don’t wear spurs. How’d you get that horse to buck like that?”

It seemed another interminable time before he answered her. A time in which his face remained absolutely deadpan, only those obsidian eyes moving as they subjected her to a thorough and frank appraisal. “Horse and I have an understanding,” Johnny Bronco finally drawled.

His voice was a surprise-warm and deep, but with an unexpected roughness to its texture. Like a bearskin rug.

“An understanding…”

Under those forbidding brows, his eyes glittered now with something she’d have sworn was amusement. “He makes me look good, I don’t hurt him. That way we both come out ahead.” He touched a finger briefly to the brim of his white cowboy hat before he turned.

As she watched him walk away, his contestant’s number flapping between his broad shoulders, Lauren discovered that she was smiling, and that, for no apparent reason, her heart was beating hard and fast.


An understanding…

He’d spoken almost those same words to her yesterday, she remembered, moments after she’d tromped on his instep with the heel of her cowboy boot. Just after he’d subdued her with embarrassing ease.

“Let’s you and me come to an understanding, Laurie Brown,” he’d whispered in her ear in that skin-shivering voice that she imagined must resemble the warning growl of an alpha-male wolf. “You don’t give me trouble and I don’t hurt you. That way we both come out of this unbloodied.”

She thought she must have begun hating him at that moment.

“Brought you some breakfast,” he said now, his tone so indifferent, his face so empty of expression she wondered if she’d imagined that chuckle. He placed a foil-covered paper plate on the foot of the cot and held out a heavy crockery mug, adding, “Coffee?” with aloof courtesy, like a waiter.

Lauren took the mug and curled her hands around it, judging for a moment its weight and the heat of its contents and considering its possible effectiveness as a weapon.

It was a fleeting thought. Gazing into the shimmering black liquid, she saw instead a pair of glittering eyes, and was sure that her captor would already have read the notion in her mind. She remembered all too well the feel of his hands on her arms, the hard press of his body, like something not made of human flesh, bone and sinew, with reflexes quicker than thought. She remembered pain, too bright and sharp to bear but gone before she even had time to gasp. And still not something she cared to experience again anytime soon.

She ducked her head and sipped the steaming brew, then shuddered and thrust the mug away. “I take it with cream and sugar.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said dryly as he moved to the door in that silent gliding way that was so different from the cowboy’s swagger she’d seen yesterday, watching him cross the rodeo arena. He paused with a hand on the door latch. “This morning you’ll drink it black. And you’ve got ten minutes to do it in. I’ll be back to take you to the john, then we ride.”

“Ride!” Lauren rose, clutching the blanket to her chest with one hand, the mug of coffee with the other. “Ride where? Where are you taking me?” Oh, how she hated the stark hope and fear in her voice.

A moment later she wondered if that might have been what made him hesitate, then turn his head to regard her along one shoulder. His dark gaze swept over her once, up and down, before he replied in a dispassionate tone that made her think, for some reason, of cops and military officers. “You’re being moved to a secure location.”

“Secure!” Jangling with adrenaline, she cast a wild look around her. “Who do you people think I am-Houdini?” And how, she thought hopelessly, will anyone find me then? At least they can trace me this far. People knew I was coming here to see, of all things, a man about a horse…


“Miss?”

Lauren started as a hand touched her elbow. She turned slowly, reluctant to leave behind the image of the black-ponytailed bronc rider nimbly dodging a collision with two miniature cowboys chasing each other through the sparse crowd with war whoops and whirling lariats. One frame stayed in her mind, though, as she faced the bronze-skinned barrel-chested man who’d spoken to her. It was that of a gloved hand resting briefly, almost tenderly, on a child’s dark head, and a chuckle drifting back to her on the dust-spangled wind.

“Miss,” the barrel-chested man said again, in a firm but deferent tone that identified him unmistakably as officialdom-even before Lauren noticed the red ribbon emblazoned with “Official” attached to the pocket of his white Western-style shirt. “I’m gonna have to ask you to move away from the fence, if you would. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. If you’ll take a seat in the bleachers…”