The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

Chapter 3

Bronco heaved a silent sigh of relief as the last of the McCullough ranch’s horse barns and outbuildings sank from sight behind the crest of a juniper-studded hill. He wouldn’t feel safely away until they’d reached timber, but there was at least a measure of comfort in knowing that they were beyond visual range of the ranch and the road leading to it.

He studied the sky, taking note of the thunderheads gathering over the Superstitions, every nerve ending in his body straining for sounds he didn’t want to hear. But he heard only the call of a mourning dove, the screeches of scrub jays feeding among the junipers. He altered his touch on the reins imperceptibly, and Sierra, the long-legged Appaloosa mare he was riding, dropped back even with Linda, the slower stockier gray he’d chosen for his prisoner. Meanwhile the magnificent blood bay at the end of a lead rope adjusted his pace to a graceful trot. Bronco didn’t spare him a glance; he knew the stallion would follow willingly. That was why he’d made sure both saddle horses were mares-Cochise Red would consider them his by right.

With the worst of the pressure off, at least for the moment, Special Agent John Bracco of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms took a moment to study the woman who had complicated his life so unexpectedly.

Other than the fact that she looked every bit as good on a horse as he’d thought she would, Lauren Brown wasn’t what he’d expected-not that he’d had a lot of time to form expectations one way or the other. This thing had come upon him with the speed and unpredictability of an avalanche. One minute all he’d had to deal with was figuring out which of two terrorists acts he was going to have to prevent-the assassination of a presidential candidate or a missile attack on the convention center-preferably while keeping his own cover intact. And the next…well, the woman had practically fallen into their laps.

Bronco was fairly sure Gil had had no idea who Lauren Brown was when she’d first contacted him on behalf of some ranch in Texas about buying his champion quarter horse stud. It wasn’t until the commander had run his customary background and credit check on her that he’d realized what he had. The opportunity had seemed to him God-given, the possibilities she presented beyond even his most optimistic dreams. Even then, smart paranoid that he was, Gil had held off on the final decision to go ahead with the plan until after he’d met the woman. Until he was sure she wasn’t the bait for some elaborate government trap.

A trap. Bronco let out a slow breath. McCullough was indeed riding into a trap, just not the one he’d been looking out for. Like Julius Caesar, whose betrayal had come, not at the hands of Cleopatra or any other woman, but through his closest and most trusted friend.

“He really is magnificent, isn’t he?” Lauren’s voice brought him back from that troubling place. She sounded almost wistful as she watched the stallion dip and weave like a kite at the end of a string, and Bronco knew she must be thinking of the innocent, even joyous quest that had brought her to this. She glanced over at him, and an unexpected smile of irony played around her lips. “I’d sure love to ride him, just once…” She left her words hanging there, sounding like a condemned prisoner’s last request.

No, she wasn’t at all what he’d expected.

What, exactly, had he expected of Lauren Elizabeth Brown, daughter of former U.S. attorney general Everett Charleton Brown? About to become First Daughter, if the polls were to be believed. About to be instantly recognized the world over, with every move, every breath, every step scrutinized and analyzed to death by both the legitimate and tabloid media.

He knew her parents had divorced when Lauren was ten, that her father had subsequently married Dixie Parish, of the folk-singing Parish Family, which counted among its many real-estate holdings that horse ranch in West Texas. He knew she’d been born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, that she was a graduate of Iowa University and Harvard Law School, and that she’d passed the bar on the first try. A bright lady with a bright future-a future that reportedly included marriage to an equally brilliant member of a fine old Des Moines law firm. The media were already salivating over the prospect of a White House wedding. Oh, yes, and there was one brother, Ethan, currently attending UCLA, scheduled to begin his senior year in the fall.

That was what Bronco knew about Lauren Brown-pretty much what the rest of the world knew. What surprised him was the discovery that he would like to have known more. A lot more.

For one thing, he wanted to know what had brought a big-city lawyer to a West Texas horse ranch hundreds of miles from the man she supposedly loved. Bronco had never been in love and didn’t expect to be, but he was pretty sure that if he ever did love a woman enough to want to marry her, he’d want her near him every day of his life. He’d want her voice and her laughter lighting up his days, and her body warming his bed at night. He’d want the scent of her in his sheets and in his pores. If a man and woman pledged to join their lives together, they should be together. And stay together. That was the way he saw it.

And he wanted to know why a woman raised in a Midwestern city looked so natural and right astride a horse in the mountains of Arizona. This was wild country, the land of his ancestors-Indee, the People. A beautiful land, but harsh and unforgiving of those who didn’t understand and respect her delicate balance. The bones of many strong men lay bleaching in forgotten canyons as mute testimony to that. And yet, this woman, tawny-haired and wraith-slender, seemed almost to belong in this sunburned landscape, as much at home here as the deer and antelope he’d hunted as a boy.

Close on the heels of that thought came another. As he studied her, it occurred to Bronco that in spite of the fact that she’d recently been forcibly abducted by armed men for purposes she could only guess at, she seemed almost happy. She rode with her body relaxed and graceful in the saddle, her face lifted to the warm wind and her eyes half-shut, her mouth softly smiling. As if, he thought as warmth stirred unexpectedly in his own body, in acceptance of a lover’s caress. But why, he wondered, fighting off the image of soft lips, slowly parting, did she seem so unafraid? Had she no concept of the peril she was in? Her apparent innocence irritated him, even as her innate sensuality stirred and excited him.

Irritated, stirred and excited was not what Agent Bracco wanted to be. Not ever, actually, but especially not now, not with so much at stake. He told himself he’d have to do a better job of keeping himself in balance, focused on the task at hand. He couldn’t afford to let himself be distracted just because that task happened to involve shielding and protecting an extraordinarily beautiful woman.

A grim smile stretched his lips as he watched the stallion prancing grandly along behind the little gray mare, so intent on establishing his own sexual dominion that he was oblivious to the lead rope that held him captive. It occurred to him that there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between a man and any other male animal when he allowed himself to be governed by his…testosterone.

For some reason, the words the woman had spoken earlier that morning came back to him, carried on the wind like the scent of a far-off storm: I should never have danced with you.

He looks so hard and dangerous when he smiles like that, Lauren thought. I wonder what he can be thinking.

A shiver passed through her in spite of the Southwestern sun that burned like a branding iron across her shoulders. Because the only thing she knew for certain was that she could never be certain what that man was feeling. What a consummate actor he was! What a talented liar!

She told herself she was upset because she’d misjudged him so badly. That as a lawyer she felt she ought to be more adept at reading people. But in her heart she knew better. The real source of her shame and betrayal lay in the accusation that pounded now inside her head in time to the horse’s hoofbeats.

Not, How could I have been so wrong about him?

But rather, How could I have been so attracted to him?

She couldn’t even look at him now. Whenever she looked at him, her heart would begin to hammer and her eyes burn hot and her mind cloud over with rage. She wanted to fly at him in a screaming spitting clawing fury.

Why, she asked herself, did she feel so ashamed? Because she’d watched him ride and admired his skill?

No, her honest heart answered her. Because you watched him ride and thought him beautiful.

Did she feel such anger because he’d danced with her and then betrayed her?

Again she was forced to hear her own truth: No-because you danced with him and your own body betrayed you.

With her face lifted to the wind and her eyes closed, she could see him standing beside her table at Smoky Joe’s, looking down at her with the little yellow flame from the candle in the globe lamp on the table burning in his eyes. And as she gazed into them, the boisterous crowd seemed to close in around them, surrounding the two of them with a wall of noise and heat and cigarette smoke and darkness, so that all at once she was aware only of him-of his heat, his masculine scent and the blackness of his hair, lying like a skein of silk across one shoulder.

She remembered how warm his hands had been, covering hers. She’d felt the wiry, coiled-spring tension in his hips beneath her palms, the swaying rhythm, blatantly sexy-and her body had grown hot. She’d lost track of the music and the steps of the dance until suddenly she’d found herself face-to-face with him. Face-to-face and chest to chest. Frozen, she’d felt his arms come around her, gathering her in, and the cool silk of his hair against her cheek, his heart thumping in counterrhythm to hers.

Had that been a lie, too? Could he control the timing of his own pulse? With this man, even that seemed possible.

They’d danced that dance and then another, and with each note, each measure, it seemed to her, their bodies had moved infinitesimal fractions of inches closer together, until it felt as if they would melt into each other’s pores.

He’d guided her with a touch so light and sure she wasn’t even aware of it. She’d followed him effortlessly, as if they’d been moving together, dancing together for years, a lifetime. She’d felt weightless, light as cottonwood fluff floating on a summer wind. At the back of his neck, her fingers had begun of their own volition to explore the dark mystery of his hair, while on her back she’d felt his fingers moving, slowly navigating the bumps and hollows of her spine.

And then suddenly, just like that, it had ended. Bronco had taken her back to McCullough’s table and left her there with polite but cursory thanks. Lauren had been so shaken she’d barely registered the conversation from that point on, was only dimly aware that she’d nodded acceptance of McCullough’s asking price for Cochise Red without so much as an argument and agreed to go out to his ranch and take a look at the stallion the following day.

She didn’t see what started the fight. All at once, it seemed, Smoky Joe’s had erupted in bedlam. There was a roar of sound, and the crowd surged like a single entity toward the back of the room, toward the area near the dance floor.

Unaccustomed to violence of any kind, Lauren uttered an exclamation of alarm as she started to rise. Gil McCullough, who had begun to swear matter-of-factly in a low voice, gestured for her to stay put and at the same time waved a couple of his men, who’d been leaning against the bar nearby nursing long-necked bottles of beer, over to the table.

About then the crowd parted raggedly and Johnny Bronco emerged, struggling and swinging clumsily in the grip of two beefy-looking guys wearing black cowboy hats and vests that said “Smoky Joe’s” across the back. Before Lauren had time to draw breath, they’d hustled Bronco out the front door.

The two Smoky Joe’s employees walked back into the bar, dusting their hands and grinning, waving to mixed cheers and boos from the crowd. They gave a thumbs-up to a couple of uniformed deputy sheriffs sitting at the bar, who merely smiled and shook their heads before returning to their burger and fries. McCullough leaned back in his chair and spoke to his men.

“See he gets home,” he growled in an undertone, then turned back to her with a smile of apology. “Ol’ Bronco’s the best damned horse wrangler west of the Mississippi, but he can’t hold his liquor worth beans. Never could. It’s a racial thing, I guess. He’s a half-breed Apache, you know.”

Lauren sat silently, sipping her beer. She didn’t reply, partly because she was still too shaken by the close and unaccustomed brush with violence, but also because the comment made her intensely uncomfortable. Her firsthand knowledge of Native Americans was limited, but she disliked the term half-breed, and had been raised to consider blanket statements about race objectionable on general principles.

Unperturbed by her silence, Gil shook his head. “It’s a sad story, a sad story. Unfortunately not a very unusual one in this part of the country. He grew up around here, you know.”

Lauren nodded; she remembered the rodeo announcer saying he was a “local boy.”

“Yeah, ol’ Johnny was quite a hero in these parts a while back.”

“Really?” Lauren murmured, interested in spite of herself. The beer was warming her insides, easing her pulse back to normal. She focused on her companion’s clean-shaven face and close-cropped gray hair, and tried to block out the images that wanted to linger in her mind-images of a dark angry face, hard-edged features crisscrossed with strands of long black hair…

“Football,” Gil clarified after taking a small drink of the beer he’d been nursing most of the evening. “Best damned wide receiver I ever saw-hands like a magician. All-conference, all-state his senior year-had colleges lined up to offer him scholarships.” He shook his head again and made a smacking sound with his lips. “What a waste.”

“What happened?”

The rancher shrugged. “The drinking got him. Finally either flunked out or got kicked out-depends on who you hear it from. Bronco, he doesn’t like to talk about it much. He always was wild, drank too much even when he was in high school. Came by it naturally-his old man was a drunk, died in a car accident when Bronco was in junior high. Kid never had a chance.”

“He must not be doing all that badly,” Lauren remarked with an edgy shrug. “You hired him.” And then she wondered why she felt a need to defend a man she didn’t know at all, especially from a man who obviously knew him very well.

Pictures flashed in lightning-quick succession through her mind: Bronco up on Old Number 7, whirling in slow motion in a golden fog of sun-shot dust; a pair of scuffed and well-broken-in boots, spurs without rowels; a wry smile in a dark face, and the words spoken in a soft deep voice. Horse and I have an understanding…

“I hired him because when it comes to horses, he’s the best there is,” Gil said as if he’d seen the images in her mind. But his narrowed eyes had a speculative glint that made her squirm inwardly as he watched her. As a lawyer she knew that feeling. It was the one she got when she thought she might have given away too much. Showed the opposition a few too many of her cards. “And because I thought the kid had had some bad breaks,” the rancher went on in a voice with added undercurrents. “I helped him straighten himself out after he got kicked out of the military. Haven’t regretted it yet.”

“Well…” Lauren could think of nothing else to say. She suddenly felt depressed without the least idea why. “I think I’m going to have to call it a night,” she said to Gil. “It’s been a long day.” That’s all it is, she thought. She’d driven more than five hundred miles to get here and had very little sleep, and now the beer. She was just tired.

She settled on a time to meet with Gil the following day and jotted down directions to his ranch. Mindful of the lateness of the hour and the rowdy nature of the crowd, he graciously walked her to her truck, which, since she was pulling a fair-size horse trailer, she’d parked far out on the periphery of the parking lot.

As she crossed the hard-baked dirt, bleached by the light of mercury lamps to the color of old bones, she thought about the man who’d been dumped there only minutes before.

“Don’t worry about Bronco,” Gil said as she unlocked her truck. “My boys’ll see he gets home all right.”

Unnerved by the ease with which the rancher seemed to read her mind, she said dryly, “I’d just hate to think he was somewhere on the road right now.” She climbed behind the wheel and Gil closed the door. He waited with typical Western gallantry until she’d started the engine, then touched the brim of his hat.

“Drive safe now.”

“Yeah, thanks, I will. See you tomorrow.”

He left her with a wave and headed off across the parking lot, but Lauren didn’t watch him go. Nor did she immediately put the truck in gear and pull out onto the highway. Safely, blessedly alone, she sat and stared through the windshield, cringing inwardly as she opened the door on her own self-doubts.

What’s wrong with me? How could I have been so attracted to a man who’s clearly nothing but bad news?

It must be some sort of wild gene, she thought, passed down to her from that pioneer ancestor, the one Aunt Lucy had told her about. How else to explain it? She was Lauren Brown, a bright sensible Iowa attorney, a good girl, one who’d always done the right thing, lived by the rules, lived up to everyone’s expectations. She was engaged to marry the perfect man, a good man, not to mention handsome, witty and kind.

Why, then, had Benjamin never made her feel the way she’d felt tonight, dancing with Johnny Bronco?

Johnny Bronco. What a name! Romantic notions aside, what he was was a half-Indian cowboy with a drinking problem, a propensity for violence and a undeniable way with horses and women. The last man in the world she’d ever let herself get mixed up with. What could she possibly see in a man like that? What could they possibly have in common?

As if in reply, once again a wave of remembered sensation swamped her. Oh, how vivid it seemed-the slide of silken hair through her fingers, the faint smell of leather and sweat, his body heat soaking into her breasts, his hand moving like a magician’s, scattering shivers like pixie dust down her back. Even now, just the memories made her breathing quicken, her nipples harden, her skin prickle and chafe against the restrictions of her clothing.

Awash with longing, throat aching and eyes burning, Lauren angrily threw the truck into gear and drove out of Smoky Joe’s parking lot into the Arizona night.

I should never have danced with him. The thought chilled her even now as she lifted her face to the hot August wind.

She opened her eyes when the gray mare abruptly slowed, then halted. Just ahead, Bronco was waiting for her beside a rock pile, in the shade of a massive bull pine.

Without her noticing, the land had changed dramatically. They’d been climbing steadily, she realized now, and the rolling hills dotted with juniper and sage, mesquite and palo verde had given way to sparse stands of piñons intermingled with bull pines and clumps of scrub brush.

While Cochise Red snuffed the ground and whickered an impatient greeting to the gray mare, Bronco placidly waited for Lauren to come to him, then reached out and took her reins. “We’ll rest here a bit. Give the horses a breather.”

For a moment she sat where she was, glaring resentfully at him while sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat and crawled in a chilly trickle between her breasts. But in a way it was almost a relief to look at him, to see him the way he was today, a vivid flesh-and-blood reminder that he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. The fantasy rodeo rider in a graceful pas de deux with a bucking bronc, the Saturday-night charmer in the red shirt and flowing black hair. Maybe they were parts of the whole and maybe they were no more than clever disguises, but how could she ever know for certain? The only thing she did know was that this man, this Bronco, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the smiling man she’d danced with two nights ago. In his bleached blue shirt and saddle-worn jeans, with his long hair vanished into a neat club at the nape of his neck and his sweat-stained hat tilted low on his brow, he wore the lean and merciless look of a hunting wolf-or a born outlaw.

Once more, in spite of the heat, Lauren shivered.

Perhaps sensing her rider’s unease, the gray mare sidestepped nervously as she dismounted. Lauren spoke to her softly and gave her a reassuring slap on the withers as she moved away from her.

“You mad at her about something?”

She started, then halted, despising herself for trembling inside as Bronco suddenly appeared beside her, one hand on the gray mare’s bridle, blocking her way.

“Mad?” she said in a voice taut with confusion. “No, I was just… She seemed nervous. I was letting her know it was okay.”

“Let me ask you a question.” Now he spoke in a crooning tone. His hand lay gentle on the mare’s sweat-darkened neck. Lauren focused on that hand and tried to ignore the way her breath caught in her throat as he moved up beside her. “If I was to slap you on your bare skin, exactly the same way you just slapped her, you think you’d like it?”

Her mouth dropped open, but with no hope of a reply.

“Her hide’s as sensitive as yours is,” he went on in that thick seductive murmur. His hands moved on the mare’s neck with a caressing touch, like a lover’s. “She can feel a gnat when it lands on her back. Think what a slap feels like.”

As if she understood, the little mare turned an ear toward him, then her head, and blew a gust of breath against his shoulder. When she playfully nibbled his shirtsleeve, Bronco’s answering chuckle was almost indistinguishable from the sounds the animal made.

“Ever watch the way horses do with each other? They nuzzle. Just touch each other gently with the softest part of their lips. That’s the way you want to touch a horse. You stroke her nice and easy, light little massages like a horse’s nuzzle-see there?”

Lauren nodded, but it was a lie; both he and the horse were a blur. His voice retreated to a distant hum; she felt light-headed. In her mind’s eye she saw his hands, all right, those same hands, but the sleek shiny hide beneath the fingers wasn’t sweat-streaked dappled gray, but a rich deep mahogany.

A voice intruded, Gil McCullough’s voice, droning on and on about the accomplishments, pedigree and breeding track record of the stallion, Cochise Red. But Lauren wasn’t listening. Her heart and all her senses had been hijacked by the magnificent animal cavorting out in the middle of the ring, showing off with a stallion’s flare. The animal-and the man riding him. Oh, but they were beautiful together.

They seemed inseparable, man and horse, like something in mythology, two parts of the same being-the stallion’s body, powerfully and compactly built for short bursts of unbelievable speed, lightning-quick turns and bone-jolting stops, and the man’s as compact and strong, but lean and supple as a whip, with hands as gentle as a lover’s. The man rode leaning well forward over the stallion’s neck, long straight hair mingling with the coarse black mane, and the stallion’s ears flicked as if the man spoke to him in a language only they understood.

Smiling, heart pounding in sheer exhilaration, Lauren turned to Gil McCullough. “Not fair! You knew I wasn’t going to leave here without him once I’d seen him.”

McCullough laughed. “You know what they say-all’s fair in love, war and horse tradin’. Tell you what, let’s you and me go on up to the house, have something cold to drink while we tend to the paperwork.” He waved to Bronco out in the ring, then turned to stroll with her up the hard-baked slope toward the Spanish-style ranch house, which floated like a white ship in a sea of neat green lawn.

They went into Gil’s study, where his wife, a petite middle-aged blond woman introduced to Lauren as Katie, brought them tall glasses of iced tea with lemon. A short time later Bronco came in, accompanied by another man, this one oddly dressed for a ranch hand, Lauren thought, in what appeared to be combat fatigues. There was something hard and cold about his eyes, something that made her uneasy when he looked at her.

McCullough asked her for the keys to her truck. “Ron here’ll get your trailer backed around to the ramp while we’re finishing up the paperwork,” he told her as he handed her keys to the man in fatigues. “Soon as we’re done here, Bronco’ll get ol’ Red loaded up and you’ll be set to go.”

Lauren felt excitement vibrate through her. That magnificent animal was hers-well, okay, Dixie’s. But she could hardly wait to get him home to the Tipsy Pee. She wondered how long it would take her to get up the courage to actually ride him.

She’d had no warning at all. Not the slightest uneasiness, no chilly little frisson or premonition of danger.

She’d laughed as she handed the check to Gil, passing a hand over her brow and joking about the number of zeros. “Well,” she’d said then, taking a deep breath, “I guess I’d better be off. I have a long drive ahead of me.”

Even now, with her eyes closed, she could see Gil’s smile, hear him saying, “Oh, I don’t think you’re going to be goin’ anywhere just yet, Lauren Brown. You’ll be staying on here with us for a while.” And feel again that first little chill, as if someone had drawn an ice cube along her spine.

Though she still had not really understood what was happening. Her eyes had flown first to Bronco-in appeal, for confirmation of the unbelievable. It had been a reflexive thing. But she had found his face impassive, his eyes unreadable as onyx.

“Want you to go along with Bronco here,” Gil had said almost gently. “He’ll take you to your quarters, see you’re comfortable.” As if she’d been a homesick child on the first day of summer camp.

Her mouth had dropped open then, but no sound had come out. She wondered, even if she had screamed, if it would have made any difference. Who would there have been to hear her? McCullough’s wife? That sweet middle-aged woman Katie-was she a party to this…whatever it was?

What in God’s name did they want with her? Was she being kidnapped? Robbed? Or… But beyond that her shocked mind simply refused to go.

Without a sound, Bronco had moved in beside her and taken her arms. Instantly, mockingly, her mind flashed back to the night before, to the dance floor in Smoky Joe’s-same hands, same body, same wiry strength, same all-enveloping heat. The irony of it was so shocking she gave a small incensed gasp. Bronco muttered something she couldn’t hear, and then she was moving, moving against her will, her feet going along with her body as if they’d had no other choice.

Had there been a choice? If she’d had presence of mind to go limp, what would it have gained her? Only, she was certain, the indignity of being carried. No, she’d had only one chance, and that had come later, outside, when Bronco had paused for some reason at the place where the lawns ended in a low stone wall and two steps dropped down to the hard-baked dirt. It was then, operating on pure gut instinct, that Lauren had seized the moment and stomped down with all her strength on his instep.

Her valiant effort produced only a muffled grunt. Instead of releasing her, Bronco’s grip on her arms tightened. There was a flash of blinding breath-stopping pain, and his voice, whispering the warning against her ear, so soft it sounded obscenely like an endearment. “Let’s have an understanding-you don’t try to get away, and I don’t have to hurt you.”

And then, in a more normal voice, a lazy almost insolent drawl, he’d said, “Look here, Laurie Brown, where do you think you’re gonna go? Look around you.”

That was when she realized her truck and horse trailer were gone. They had been taken from her along with her freedom, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

But she wasn’t giving up. She’d wait…and she’d watch. When the moment came, she’d be ready.

“Are you okay?”

Lauren opened her eyes and found herself clinging to the gray mare’s saddle, engulfed in a wave of dizziness. Bronco’s arm slid around her, under her arm and folded across her rib cage.

“You need to sit down for a minute?”

She felt as though she couldn’t breathe, as though he’d taken all her oxygen. She managed to gasp, “Don’t touch me!” fighting the weakness, feeble with rage.

He let go of her with a little snort of laughter and muttered, “Suit yourself,” then stepped away. She was left clinging to the saddle, feeling weak-kneed and childish.

“Am I allowed to go to the bathroom?” she asked, teeth clenched.

His reply came from the other side of the gray mare. “Doubt if you’ll find a bathroom, but you’re welcome to use a bush.”

Her heart pounded. Was this the moment? How quickly could she mount up-more quickly than he could grab the reins? Don’t be stupid. He’s got a faster horse than you have, and he knows the terrain. Be patient, Lauren. This is not the time.

As she stalked into the brush she heard Bronco call, “I’d check real good for rattlers if I were you.”