The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

Chapter 1

It was a coyote’s wail that broke the fragile bonds of sleep. Lauren opened her eyes to find a thin silvery light streaming through the window bars above her cot-whether from the moon or approaching dawn she had no way of knowing. They’d taken away her watch, along with her shoes.

But they hadn’t bound or gagged her. Thank heaven for small favors. She’d actually enjoyed, if that was the word, a fairly comfortable night on the narrow metal-frame bed, soothed to sleep by the familiar lullabies of lowing cattle and whickering horses. In the old saddle house they’d chosen for her temporary prison, the comforting smells of leather and wool and horse sweat and liniment had taken her back to places of her childhood, to those rare and wonderful long-ago summers of freedom on the Tipsy Pee Ranch.

For that small kindness she supposed she had her jailer to thank-though her stomach clenched and her heart bumped in frustrated anger at the idea of being in the small est way beholden to him. Him. The Indian. The one they called Bronco.

If only… The words hurled themselves like trapped sparrows against the barriers of her mind. If only…

But what could she have done differently? How might she have steered her course away from this disaster?

You know the answer to that, her mind replied. You should have stayed home in Des Moines, taken the firm’s job offer, married Benjamin and never come to Texas at all.

No! Her heart rejected that with a silent cry that was also a plea for understanding. I had to do it. If I’d stayed, part of me-maybe the best part-would surely have died.

So if she truly did believe that coming back to West Texas, to the Tipsy Pee Ranch, had been the right thing to do, where had things gone so wrong? How had she come to be locked up in a makeshift prison somewhere in Arizona with an Apache cowboy named Bronco for her jailer?

As if the very intensity of her thoughts had conjured him up, there was a loud creak and a whisper of cool air, fragrant with mesquite and juniper, and a man’s shape was silhouetted against the window bars. A voice spoke softly, raising the fine hairs on her skin.

“Rise and shine, Laurie Brown. You decent? If you are, I’ll turn on some light.”

Grudgingly she sat up, and even though she was fully clothed, pulled the rough woolen blanket around her. One hand went automatically to her hair, fingers raking through it to comb it away from her face. The aroma of coffee taunted her.

“I’m decent.” She bit the words off like a miser handing out tips, resenting every one. “How about you?” His chuckle was barely a ripple in the darkness.

Light stabbed at her eyes, and she turned her head away from its source, away from him, not wanting to look at him, remember his face or the things she’d thought and felt when she’d first laid eyes on him. Embarrassing, foolish things…

“Next up, comin’ outta chute number three-Johnny Bronco, up on Ol’ Number Seven. This is a local boy, ladies and gentlemen-”

As if too volatile to be contained a moment longer, horse and rider erupted from the gate, interrupting the announcer’s drone like a shout. All around the dusty arena the spectators seemed to draw and hold their collective breath.

Almost against her will, Lauren moved closer to the steel pole-and-bar fence; in spite of her lifelong love affair with horses-or perhaps because of it-she’d never cared much for rodeos. But as she braced a hand on the crossbar and ducked her head to get a clearer view, her pulse began to pound in almost perfect sync with the thud of the bronc’s hooves on the baked earth. She’d never seen a man ride an exploding bomb before.

As always, it was the horse that drew her attention first-though he was no great beauty, a rusty black with the scruffy jug-headed look of a wild mustang; the mean eyes, laid-back ears and bared teeth of a born outlaw. He didn’t just buck with the rhythmic crow-hopping motion of the average bronc, either. This one was a real high roller, employing the wickedly erratic corkscrew action of a Brahma bull.

No way a man could stay up on such a beast for eight seconds, she thought in the instant it took her to transfer her gaze from horse to rider. Then she, like the crowd around her, caught her breath and forgot to let it go again.

Johnny Bronco. Had she heard the announcer right? Could that really be his name? If so, Lauren thought, no man had ever been more aptly named. Like the horse, he was no great beauty-the same powerfully compact hard-muscled body, the same dark angry look, with hair as long and black and coarse, worn in a ponytail that snapped the air in time with the mustang’s tail, like two flags whipped by the same wind. A man too wild and rough-hewn for beauty. And yet…together man and horse were somehow transformed. Together they were beautiful.

To Lauren time seemed to slow, as around horse and rider the dust rose and caught the sunlight, becoming a swirling golden cloud, a medium more dense, yet more forgiving than air. Within it the two appeared to twist and turn with the effortless grace of dancers, so that the gritty battle of wills between man and animal became more like a form of epic ballet.

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…”

“Sorry,” Lauren said cheerfully, dusting her hands as she yielded to the guiding hand on her elbow. “Actually-” and she flashed a smile at the official “-I’m looking for someone. Gil McCullough. You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find him, would you? I’m supposed to talk to him about a horse.”

“Gil?” The official’s eyes and body language registered surprise. Clearly he’d pegged her as a flatlander and a tourist in spite of her scuffed boots, well-worn jeans and light- blue long-sleeved shirt, Western-style but plain-working ranch-hand clothes. Probably her blond hair, she thought, and wished she’d thought to stuff it all up inside her hat and out of the way. In this crowd she stood out like a sore thumb-which, come to think of it, probably explained why the bronc rider had noticed her. So much for the notion of kindred souls.

“Well,” the official said affably, “he’s got a’ plenty of ’em.” He jerked his head in the direction of the campers and horse trailers parked in rows behind the arena. “That’s his outfit over there-white trailers with the big ol’ orange sun on ’em? Just go on over there and ask around. Somebody’ll know where he’s at.”

Lauren murmured her thanks, but instead of looking toward the trailer, her eyes were searching the hard-baked landscape and the clumps of cottonwoods that skirted it for some sign of the cowboy known as Bronco. But he appeared to have vanished into the crowds milling around the bucking chutes and refreshment stands. Or maybe, she thought, he’d simply been swallowed up in the shimmering heat waves, like a desert mirage.

A collective gasp rose suddenly from the crowd in the bleachers as a rider bit the dust-hard. The official headed for the arena fence as the announcer’s voice provided reassurance-“He’s okay, ladies and gentlemen, he’s okay. Let’s give the man a big hand-that’s all the reward he’s gonna get today.”

While the crowd cheerfully applauded the hapless rider, Lauren went off to find the man she’d come all the way to Arizona to see. With any luck, if she could manage to talk McCullough down enough on his asking price, tomorrow she’d be heading home to West Texas with one of the best quarter horse studs east of the continental divide for company.

“…expecting company-”

“What?” Lauren interrupted, and gave her head a shake, momentarily confused at hearing the word in her mind spoken out loud and panicked to realize she hadn’t any idea of the context.

Bronco’s eyes gave her no clue. “We’d just as soon you not be here when it arrives.” He glanced at his wrist. “Your ten minutes are now eight. If you plan on breakfast before we mount up, I’d suggest you get to it.” He thumbed the latch and pushed open the heavy wood-plank door.

The chilled air made Lauren gasp, lending a note of panic to the question she’d meant to ask with more dignity and calm:

“Are you going to kill me?”

Bronco halted as if she’d thrown something at him, one foot still on the plank step, the other already on the ground. Then he pivoted slowly back to face her. With his arms braced, one on the door, the other on the frame, he appeared to bar the way as if he actually thought she might try a break for freedom.

In contrast to the tension and the unspoken dominance in his posture, his chuckle sounded almost friendly. “Kill you? Why would we do that? You’re worth too much to us alive.”

“Worth what? Us? We? Wait-” Who are you people?

But the door had closed between them, and her only answer was the heavy thunk of the steel bar dropping across it.

Lauren stood and stared at the rough boards while her heart bumped painfully against her breastbone and her eyes burned in their sockets. Silent sobs scoured her throat. But though her jaws cramped and her body trembled with the strain, she held them back. She would not cry. If she did…well, for one thing, she’d never forgive herself.

Besides, something told her that once she gave in to the fear she was beaten. She didn’t know who these people were or why they’d taken her prisoner, or why they thought she’d be of value to them, but as long as she was alive and kept her wits about her, they hadn’t won. No sir. It would take a lot more than being locked up in a saddle house to defeat Lauren Elizabeth Brown! Hadn’t her aunt Lucy told her once that she was descended from a woman who’d survived an Indian attack by setting fire to her own homestead, then tying her baby up in her apron and climbing down into a well? And come to think of it, hadn’t Aunt Lucy herself, all of five feet tall and a hundred pounds soaking wet, once thwarted her own kidnappers by setting fire to the Chicago high-rise they were holding her in?

She could almost hear Aunt Lucy’s funny rusty-nail voice saying, “Just don’t lose your head, Lolly Brown. Keep your wits about you, and you’ll be all right.”

Keep your wits about you. Think, Lolly, think!

Lolly. She hadn’t thought of that childhood nickname in years. Her brother Ethan had begun calling her that because when he was little he couldn’t pronounce the name Lauren. She remembered how she’d hated it when he’d learned that stupid song: “Lollypop, Lollypop, oh, Lolly Lollypop…” She’d punched him good for singing it, too, more than once. But nobody had called her that since…oh, Lord, it must have been since she was ten or eleven years old. Yes, it had been-the year her parents divorced, the year she’d gotten her first horse, Star. The year Dixie had come to live with them. The year…

Then the memories were tumbling in on her, memories of the one time before in her life when she’d known fear like this. When she’d felt as utterly and desperately alone. This wasn’t the first time she’d been taken and held against her will.

That other time, of course, she hadn’t been alone. Even now, sixteen years later, she could feel Ethan’s small hand creeping into hers, feel his warm body snuggling against her for warmth and comfort, hear his quivering voice whispering, “Lolly? Will you sing me a song?” even though he knew she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Ethan-her baby brother-twenty-two years old now, and a premed junior at UCLA. But she could still remember as if it were yesterday the overwhelming burden of responsibility that had made her feel even more alone. This time, at least, she had only herself to think about.

Oh, but that’s not true.

No, it wasn’t true at all. Because suddenly she knew why she was here, locked in this saddle house on an Arizona horse ranch. She knew why she was worth something to these people, even if she didn’t know exactly who they were.

It was because they knew who she was.

“Hi, I’m Lauren Brown-we spoke on the phone? About that bay stud you have for sale?”

Gil McCullough’s vivid blue gaze narrowed as it swept over her in openly masculine appraisal, producing a charming fan of creases in the tanned skin at the corners of his eyes. He held the hand she’d offered just a beat longer than necessary, while his smile broadened to reveal strong vaguely predatory teeth.

“Well, hello, Lauren Brown. I sure do remember our phone conversation, but tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting to see you till tomorrow.” And yet his tone said plainly he didn’t mind all that much that she’d come early. It was a ploy Lauren recognized, designed to disarm her and at the same time put her on the defensive.

In fact, the man McCullough was himself a type she recognized, and about what she might have expected from the brief conversation she’d had with him on the phone. He was big, lean and weathered, with a full head of silver-gray hair worn in a crewcut, a cowboy’s squint and a strong clean-shaven jaw. A handsome man, which she also could have guessed, given his supreme self-confidence and slightly seductive tone on the telephone. The only surprise was an almost military bearing that set him well apart from the ranchers she’d come to know back in Texas. Most of them, neighbors of the Tipsy Pee, were rump-sprung, stove-up and gimpy-legged by the time they were fifty, from too much time spent either on top of or getting thrown off some four-legged beast or other. She’d have to peg Gil McCullough as more the executive type, one who’d come to ranching as a hobby after acquiring his wealth in some other more dependable line of work. The type who patrolled his lands and herds from four-wheel-drive vehicles and sleek single-engine airplanes. In any case, an alpha male through and through, absolutely certain of his dominance over men and women alike.

Fortunately Lauren wasn’t intimidated by such men. Or attracted to them, either. She couldn’t be and have much hope of surviving-and thriving-in the legal profession. She’d managed to do both those things by meeting such men head-on, armed with her own arsenal of brains and self-assurance-tempered, when necessary, with a judiciously applied veneer of feminine charm.

“When necessary” meant she wasn’t above employing a healthy dollop of that charm now. Which was why, before answering, she took off her hat and finger-combed her blond hair back from her damp forehead as she slanted a smile to meet the rancher’s mildly rebuking frown. “Well, now, Mr. McCullough-”

“Aw, call me Gil, honey-please.”

“Well, Gil, honey,” she said softly, teasingly, “you know, you weren’t very forthcoming about giving me a price. I figured I’d better get on over here and talk to you face-to-face, see if we can agree on the numbers before I take a look at the horse.”

McCullough laughed playfully, showing those formidable teeth. “Well, yeah, but that’s the idea, don’t you see? You’ve got to come see ol’ Cochise Red before I tell you my price.”

Lauren laughed, too, even producing a dimple. “Oh, but that’s not fair. See, I know what you’re up to. You’re trying to get me out there to see him so I’ll fall in love with him. Get me so set on having him, I’ll agree to any price!” Several of the men lounging in the cottonwood shade near the camper laughed, and someone called, “She’s got your number, Gil.”

McCullough drew himself up in mock offense, a subtly aggressive posture disguised as banter. “You bet I am. Hey, listen-let me tell you something. Cochise Red’s one helluva horse. Whoever gets him’s gonna have to pay me what he’s worth. And tell you something else-whoever meets my price is gonna get their money’s worth.”

“Oh, I believe you, Gil,” said Lauren earnestly. “Everything I’ve seen and heard so far tells me I’m probably going to get my heart broken, but-” she sighed heavily and ducked her head in order to settle her hat back in place “-you have to understand, if it was my money I was spending…” She looked up again, and this time injected wistfulness into her smile. “But unfortunately, it’s not up to me. I’m just the agent for the Parish family-I thought you understood that. I’m authorized to go only so high, and if your asking price is beyond my limit, well, much as I hate to think I’ve come all this way for nothing, there’s just no point in taking it any further. Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. McCullough. Maybe we can do business another time.” She tilted her head in a little nod of farewell, then pivoted and began to walk away, hips swaying, fingertips tucked in the pockets of her jeans, head down, watching her boots scuff through the dust. A picture of dejection, with a tinge of sex appeal.

She’d gone maybe five steps-which was a couple more than she’d estimated it would take-when McCullough fell into step beside her and draped a fatherly arm across her shoulders. She halted instantly, and he took the arm away when she turned.

“Ah, hell,” he said, and appealed briefly to the cloudless sky as if for guidance, his squint perplexed. “You know what, I’d really hate for you to come all the way from Texas for nothing. What you and me need to do is sit down somewhere, have us a cold beer and a nice dinner, and talk. What do you say?”

“Well, I-”

“Tell you what.” His hand was on her shoulder again, his head lowered close to hers. “Right now I’ve got to go find my heeler-sounds like they’ve started in on the steer wrestlin’, and that means team ropin’s comin’ up next. But why don’t we-”

“You rope?” Lauren was surprised; she hadn’t taken him for the working type.

McCullough winked, showing those teeth again. “I like to keep my hand in now and then.” He reached out to waylay a cowboy with a contestant’s number on his back coming from the direction of the arena. “Hey, Dub, seen Bronco anywhere?”

The cowboy jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Last I seen he was over at the stock pens.”

McCullough laughed. “Talkin’ the steers into lettin’ him rope ’em, I imagine.”

“Bronco,” said Lauren, when the cowboy had shared the joke and the laughter and moved on. “Is that the same one I just saw up on a bareback bronc?”

“That’s the one.”

Lauren smiled as McCullough walked her on, his arm friendly across her shoulders. “Does he rope as well as he rides?”

“Honey,” the rancher drawled, “anything involving a horse, there’s nobody in this world better. Tell you what,” he added more briskly, giving her a quick squeeze before releasing her, “why don’t you meet me for dinner tonight? A lot of the rodeo crowd, they like to get together evenings at Smoky Joe’s-know where it is? Can’t miss it-just out side of town on the highway. You’ll hear it before you see it. ’Bout eight o’clock? Good-we’ll see you there.”

And he left her to go angling off toward the livestock pens with that curiously military stride, now and then nodding to acquaintances as he moved through the crowd.

Left behind, Lauren exhaled in an exasperated gust. Then she shrugged and glanced at her watch. Maybe she’d stick around and watch the team-roping before heading back into town. After that she’d see about checking into a motel, maybe catch up on the sleep she’d missed last night before it was time to put on her war paint and strap on her armor and head for the showdown with McCullough.

She smiled to herself, exhilarated at the thought of the battle ahead. She knew McCullough’s type. If she played him right, the stallion Cochise Red was as good as hers.