Ann Major - Marry A Man Who Will Dance

“How many girls have you kissed, anyway?”

Ritz slanted a long-lashed glance at his cut lip.

“Not enough. Do you want to be next?” Roque asked.

“No!” All of a sudden, Ritz was staring again at his wide, sensual mouth and wondering what it would feel like on hers.

“Are you sure about that?” He twisted the key and punched on the radio. His fingers tapped on the dash to the salsa beat. “How about we get out and dance?”

“Here?”

His hand brushed her cheek. Electricity sparked through her. She shook her head and he laughed. The shade of the live oaks seemed to wrap them in darkness as they sat there. Beyond his chiseled profile the world was bright, the grasses high and brown, the sky cobalt-blue. And yet being in the darkness with him held more mystery and appeal than anything.

Reaching across her lap, Roque took her hand in his, startling her. When he kissed her fingers, one by one, unfolding them, she burned and ached all over.

“Come on, Ritz, let’s enjoy being outlaws together,” he whispered in a velvet, low tone that was as fascinatingly beautiful as the rest of him.

Also available from MIRA Books and ANN MAJOR

WILD ENOUGH FOR WILLA INSEPARABLE

THE HOT LADIES MURDER CLUB

www.mirabooks.co.uk

I dedicate this book to my beloved mother, Ann Major, whose only advice on the subject of marriage was “Marry a man who will dance.”

We make plans. Then real life happens. So it was with this book. I had a vision. Then I wrote something entirely different. During desperate creative moments when I struggled to see my way clear, several people held my hand.

First, I must thank my editor, Tara Gavin, for all that she always does and does so well. All of my books are better because of her. Next, I must thank my husband, Ted, for his infinite patience. My agent, Karen Solem, was extremely helpful. I would like to thank Dianne Moggy and Joan Marlow Golan, as well.

Kay Telle and Cathy Mahon helped me with the horse research by lending me books and letting me visit their horse barns and cherished horses. Dick and Ann Jones are always helpful when it comes to ranching. Geri Rice helped with the completed manuscript and Lydia Suris with the Spanish.

Prologue Prologue Beside the fire, as the wood burns black, A laughing dancer in veils of light, Whose dance transforms the darkness to gold —Adu Abd Allan ben Abi-I-Khisal

Book 1 Book 1 O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance? —William Butler Yeats

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Book 2

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Book 3

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Epilogue

Beside the fire, as the wood burns black, A laughing dancer in veils of light, Whose dance transforms the darkness to gold

—Adu Abd Allan ben Abi-I-Khisal

Houston, Texas

April, 2001

The Harley roared and bucked and writhed under his muscular thighs as wildly as a fresh border whore. And since he was half-Mexican and half-Anglo, and oversexed to boot, Roque Moya was just the man to know.

Not that anyone in Texas called him Moya. Here he was Blackstone, a name he hated, a name most people hated. But not nearly as much as they feared it. His father had seen to that.

The stripes that divided the interstate lanes blurred into a fluid white line flying beneath his wheels. His thickly lashed eyes flashed on the speedometer. One hundred and ten.

He was in too big of a hurry to slow down.

Only when he passed the world famous R.D. Meyer Heart Institute on the outskirts of Houston a few miles later, and the traffic began to thicken, did he use his left foot to gear down.

Fury knotted his gut.

Don’t think about her!

Cities. It was cities he hated. They always seemed like filthy jails. Even up here in el norte, on this side of the border where they were supposed to be safer, cleaner, and more respectable, they were still prisons.

Especially this city which happened to be where his once rich daddy had made himself so notorious by manipulating juries he despised with his well-told lies.

She lived here. She’d married another man and hidden from him here.

His black leather glove gripped the throttle with a vengeance. Thoughts of her up ahead in addition to the soaring speed of his bike gave him an adrenaline rush.

He had a funeral to get to. And he was late. A funeral he was very much looking forward to.

Her husband’s.

Ritz.

He thought of Ritz at the damnedest times. Thought of what she’d done…and what she hadn’t. Thought of her glorious yellow hair blowing in the wind, thought of her blue eyes, how they could change from blue to violet when she got hot for him. She didn’t think she was sexy, but she was.

He had to know why she’d crawled into his bed two months ago, why she’d been so eager to sleep with him, her warm, silky body aquiver. She’d been a perfect fit, better than before.

And yet…she’d kept secrets that night.

If it had been half as good for her as it had for him, why had she gone home to her husband?

Since that night, he’d done some research.

Were all the sordid stories Josh had spread about her true?

Border saint? Or border tramp? Or something in between? Someone far more complex? She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a woman.

And a widow now.

Time to find out who she really was.

He’d waited a hell of a long time for his turn.

Thumpty-thump. His big wheels hit cracked pavement. Big piles of dirt, earth-moving equipment, and cranes littered either side of the interstate. Houston seemed to be falling apart. In the shimmering heat beneath a white soupy sky, the downtown skyscrapers undulated like strippers to the frenzied tempo of his bike. On either side of the freeway, office buildings, signs, restaurants, strip shopping centers, malls and huge parking lots whipped by.

Progress? Were they going to pave the whole damn world? For a second or two he felt like Mad Max roaring to his doom on a crotch-rocket across some crazed, futuristic landscape.

He should have noticed the lanes narrowing, the traffic beginning to hem him in. But he was flying past the blinking yellow lights on the orange barrels and all those little white signs that warned the freeway was under construction before he really saw them.

His mind was on Ritz and the telephone call he had received six hours ago on the ranch.

“…dead!”

“But I thought….”

“Caught us by surprise, too, Roque. Nobody thought he’d go this fast!”

“How?”

“In his sleep…painlessly.”

“How’s she…taking….”

“…too devastated…to even call me! Frankly I’m worried…. And she’s sick. A stomach virus or something.”

For no reason at all that news had gotten him edgy. “How sick?”

“Threw up everywhere. Been at it a week.”

After all she’d been through, nursing a dying man, her formerly rich, famous husband…. His old nemesis, Josh.