Then she saw him – a real live Border bandit – lurking in the brush, staring holes through her, stripping her naked.

      Just why she didn’t weep or scream in terror, she’d never know. Maybe it’s true what they say about curiosity killing cats.

      Hunkered low over his saddle, the lone cowboy drilled her with such angry, laser-bright blue eyes, she knew he was bad. He had to be Cole Knight, one of the neighbours her daddy regularly cussed out. Even after he realised she’d spotted him, he didn’t avert his predatory gaze or smile or even bother to apologise.

      He was as bad as any bandit.

      “I’ve heard all about you,” she said. “You’re known to have a nasty, vengeful disposition. You’re a gambler, too, and you’ve got a bad reputation with girls.”

      “Did your daddy tell you all that?”

      When he edged his mount closer to hers, she instinctively backed hers up. He smiled and let his hot, sinful eyes devour the length of her body. “You’re not scared of me, now, are you?”

      Also available from Ann Major

      THE HOT LADIES MURDER CLUB

      ANN MAJOR

      THE GIRL with the GOLDEN SPURS

      To all my soul mates out there, especially in Texas,

      who wanted to grow up and become cowboys, only to have their mothers warn them, “Make up your mind, girl, because you can’t do both.”

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      I must thank Tara Gavin for her friendship, support, trust, talent and faith.

      And Karen Solem, who is a genius.

      And Nancy Berland, who is also a genius.

      And Dianne Moggy and everybody at MIRA Books for the wonderful job they are doing!

      And Kelly Nemic.

      And all my ranching friends who tell me stories – the Joneses, the Bateses, the Telleses, Becky Rooke and my aunt Mabel.

      And Amber Maley, who works in the sheriff’s office at Rockport, Texas.

      And Lady Liddington, who was my best friend from junior high through university.

      PROLOGUE

       Smart Cowboy Saying:

      Just ’cause trouble comes visiting doesn’t mean you have to offer it a place to sit down.

       —Anonymous

      Prologue

      The devil had dealt from the bottom of the deck one time too many.

      An eye for an eye, the Bible said. Or at least Cole Knight had heard somewhere the good book said something like that. To tell the truth, he wasn’t much of a Biblical scholar. But he loved God, he loved the hot, thorny land under his boots that by all rights should have been his, and he loved his family—in that order. He was willing to die for them, too.

      Maybe that was overstating the case. In fact, Cole Knight wasn’t much of anything. Wasn’t likely to be, either. Not if Caesar Kemble and his bunch had their way.

      But where was it written you couldn’t kill a man on the same day you buried your good for nothin’ father and set things right? Especially if that man was the cause of your old man’s ruin? And yours, too?

      Hell, it was about time somebody stood up and demanded justice. The Knights had as much right—more right—as the Kembles to be here.

      Cole Knight belonged here. Trouble was, he didn’t own a single acre. The Kembles had stripped him to the bone.

      The feud between the Kembles and the Knights went back for more than a hundred and forty years. It had all begun when the first Caesar Kemble, the original founder of the Golden Spurs Ranch, had died without a will, and his son Johnny Kemble had cheated his adopted sister, Carolina Knight, out of most of her share. The Knights were direct descendants of Carolina Knight, whose biological father, Horatio Knight, had been a partner of the original Caesar Kemble. When Horatio and his wife had been killed in an Indian raid, Caesar had adopted their orphaned daughter.

      As if being cheated hadn’t been bad enough, four more generations of Kembles had continued to cheat and collude and steal even more land from the Knights. Not that the Knights were saints. Still, the Knights’ vast holdings, which had once been even bigger than the Kembles’, had shrunk to a miserable fifty thousand acres. Then worst of all, not long ago, Cole’s father had lost those last fifty thousand acres in a card game.

      Thus, Black Oaks had faded into oblivion while the Golden Spurs had become an international agribusiness corporation with interests in the Thoroughbred horse industry, the oil and gas industry, cattle ranching, recreational game hunting and farming. The Golden Spurs developed cattle breeds, improved horse breeds and participated in vital environmental research. The Kembles owned hundreds of thousands of acres and mineral rights to vast oil and gas reserves and were Texas royalty, while the Knights were dirt.

      Cole had already been to the barn to saddle Dr. Pepper. No sooner had Sally McCallie, the last hypocritical mourner, waddled out of the dilapidated ranch house than Cole was out of his sticky, black wool suit and into his jeans and boots. A few seconds later his long, lean body was stomping down the back stairs into the sweltering, late July heat and the rickety screen door was banging shut behind him.

      There was finality in that summertime sound. Thrusting his rifle into his worn scabbard, he seized the reins and threw himself onto Dr. Pepper. His daddy was dead, his bloated face as gray and nasty under the waxy makeup as wet ash, and Cole’s own unhappy boyhood was over.

      It was just as well. Not that he had much to show for it. He’d had to quit college after his older brother, Shanghai, who’d been putting him through school, had unearthed some incriminating original bank documents and journals, which proved Carolina had been swindled. When Shanghai had threatened to sue the Kembles, Caesar had run him off or so people had thought. His disappearance was something of a mystery. Shanghai had left in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye. Without Shanghai’s help and with an ailing father to support, Cole hadn’t had money to pay tuition much less the time to spend on school.

      Twenty-four and broke, Cole was the last of the line and going nowhere. At least that’s what the locals thought. Like a lot of young men, he seethed with ambition and the desire to set things right. He wanted the ranch back, not just the fifty thousand acres, but the rest of it, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to get it.

      Too bad he took after his old man, local folk said. Too bad his brother Shanghai, who’d shown such promise as a rancher, had turned out to be as sorry as the rest of the Knights when he’d abandoned his dying father.

      Cole felt almost good riding toward the immense Golden Spurs Ranch. Finally he was doing something about the crimes of the past and present that had made his soul fester. Partly he felt better because he couldn’t get on a horse without relaxing a little. Cowboying had been born in him. It was as natural to him as breathing, eating and chasing pretty girls.

      For the past three years, Cole had wanted one thing—to get even with Caesar Kemble for cheating his daddy out of what was left of their ranch and for running his brother off. Those acres weren’t just land to Cole. They’d been part of him. He’d dreamed of ranching them with his brother someday.

      Not that his daddy had given much of a damn that the last of the land that had once been part of their legendary ranch had been lost.

      “Leave it be, boy,” his daddy had said after Cole