Ann Major - Marry A Man Who Will Dance

“Híjole!” His brilliant eyes devoured her flat chest and then her skinny, sunburned legs as he cursed low in Spanish.

She blanched at his rough language.

“Tú hablas….” he whispered when he realized he was scaring her even more.

She nodded and then stared at his scarred boots and at her own pigeon-toed feet. “Por supuesto.”

“Lo siento,” he muttered in apology.

Spanish was the working language on the Triple K. She was a Keller. Everybody spoke Spanish. Everybody except Jet. But Jet was a natural at music and was learning it fast. She had a gift for imitating sounds, same as she had a gift for boys. Ritz wished she had Jet’s gifts. But other than being a Keller, she was plain and ordinary—as Roque had just so cruelly pointed out.

He gave her skinny body another of those insolent sideways glances that sent her heart rushing in stilted, painful beats.

“Quit looking at me,” he whispered in a raw tone, “with those big blue eyes that eat me alive. And…and I didn’t meant to scare you…or hurt your feelings.”

“You just can’t help yourself.”

“What are you—thirteen…to my eighteen?”

“Fourteen!”

“You’re too damn young to be hanging around me.”

“So, give me my horse and I’ll…”

“You’re skinny and not even pretty.”

Tears pricked. “You said that already!”

“And you’ve got spots.”

“Freckles!” Ritz shouted. “What’s wrong with freckles?”

“Same thing that’s wrong with your last name and all that metal in your mouth. I don’t like them.”

Just when she was feeling weird and sad and hurt, his low tone gentled. “You’ve got pretty hair, though. Mexicans have a thing for yellow hair. At least I do even though I don’t see colors like other people. Yours is really something. Who knows…in another year or two…maybe you’ll be even prettier than your friend. You’ve got something…she doesn’t. I’m not sure what it is exactly.” His voice had gone smooth.

She felt a strange, powerful pull to move toward him. “I don’t care what you think! Just give me my horse!” But she put her hand over her lips to hide the beginnings of a smile.

“Your horse?” he began in a teasing vein that made her blush again. “We’ll see whose horse she is. We’ll both call her. We’ll see who she chooses. I’ll even let you go first, guera,” he offered magnanimously, eyeing her yellow hair.

Guera was slang in Mexico for blonde.

When she shook her head, causing her hair to bounce on her shoulders, he laughed. “Scaredy-cat. Go on. Call her. If she comes. She’s yours.”

“It’s a trick!” Ritz muttered, catching a breath and then cupping her hands to the sides of her mouth and calling out, “Buttercup!”

Munching grass, Buttercup didn’t even raise her head or prick her ears. When Ritz called her again, the obstinate beast chewed lazily.

“I need an apple,” Ritz said.

“Give?” her foe taunted.

“Buttercup!” Ritz cried, her voice tinged with desperation.

“That’s no way to coax a pretty lady,” Roque said smugly, directing his brilliant gaze to the mare. He swaggered toward the beast, his brown hands outstretched.

Buttercup jerked her head out of the grass and flicked her nose out at him. She snorted, her nostrils flaring. Her black tail lifted and seemed to float in the wind like an inky banner.

When he had her full attention, he splayed his long fingers open like claws.

Ritz sprang in front of Roque and called again. “Buttercup! Come here, sweetheart!”

“Cheater,” he purred. He stood so close she could feel the heat of his breath against her neck.

The sun was gone. The tall grasses and big sky were aflame, the horizons ringed in pink.

“Buttercup,” Ritz pleaded, truly scared now.

Buttercup nibbled, her nose low to the ground. Roque strutted toward the horse, squared his body to hers and stared directly at her.

The mare bolted.

“My turn,” Roque said jauntily.

“You made her run away just when I was trying to call her.”

“I can make her come back, too.”

“I hate you!”

“You sure about that?” He laughed and began clucking to Buttercup.

The mare stopped running. Roque squared his shoulders and stared fixedly at her again. Again, Buttercup ran from him.

“She doesn’t want you, either.”

“She’ll change her mind after I court her a little. All the girls, big and little, want Roque Moya. Just you watch.”

“You are disgusting.”

“Your sexy friend doesn’t think so. Maybe someday…when you grow up and I court you, you’ll change your mind, too.”

Was he flirting with her?

No way.

But if he was, it was a heady game to play with a bad wild boy like him, a Blackstone.

“Watch me, Four Eyes,” he said softly. “She’ll come to me.”

And the mare did. In less than twenty minutes. He didn’t even have to call her. Buttercup just stopped running and started watching everything he did as if hypnotized. Soon the mare’s head dropped, and she walked slowly toward him, licking and chewing. Only she didn’t have any grass in her mouth. Roque kept his body at a forty-five degree angle to the horse, avoiding eye contact as she approached.

Sensing some baffling, silent chemistry between Roque and her horse, Ritz held her breath. Furious as she was, she felt a strange thrill when Buttercup walked up to the fiend and held her nose less than an inch from his broad shoulder.

Ritz wanted to shout, “She’s mine! Mine!”

But what he’d done was so fantastic, she didn’t want to break the spell.

When Roque turned and walked away from Ritz, Buttercup followed. They walked in a circle before returning. Finally Roque faced the horse and lifted his hand, stroking Buttercup between the eyes. Then he stared at Ritz and grinned.

Ritz was stunned.

“He can talk to horses.” Caleb’s eyes shone.

Ritz had forgotten Caleb was even there. “How?”

“Not in words, but Roque says horses talk just the same. He’s going to teach me their language.”

“Their language?”

“Horse. He read about it in a book and taught it to himself, and he can hardly read.”

It was obvious the younger Blackstone was much in awe of his older brother. Even though she didn’t want to admit it, he wasn’t stupid like people said he was. He was smart and different—special.

“I can, too, read!” Roque blurted, stung.

“I want to learn horse, too!” The words just popped out of her mouth.

“Do you want to start now?”

She scowled at Roque when he flung himself to the ground and began yanking his scuffed black boots off. He pulled off his socks, too, and wiggled his long, naked toes.

Why was watching him do the most ordinary things so fascinating? The keen sweetness of hay being cut somewhere made her heart ache. Or was it just him, balling his dirty socks and stuffing them into his boots that made her feel so strange?

If Ritz had thought more about boys before last night and this afternoon than she’d ever admit, she felt possessed now. Roque’s dark sensual male beauty made her long to be older and prettier—desirable.

“There’s sticker burrs,” she said lamely when he finally stood up.

“So?”

She tried not to look at his gorgeous black head when he turned. But his bold green eyes claimed her somehow, holding her with that same, mysterious force she hadn’t understood last night.

“I’m not going to walk,” he said. “I’m going to fly. Do you want to learn to fly, princesa?”

He extended his brown hand just as he had last night, inviting her to put hers inside it. She stared at those long, tapered fingers and then at the purple-black grasses that curled away from them in endless waves. With a shiver, she shook her head.