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      For Matt and Elisha

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 1

      Tiffany saw him in the distance, riding the big black stallion that had already killed one man. She hated the horse, even as she admitted silently how regal it looked with the tall, taciturn man on its back. A killer horse it might be, but it respected Kingman Marshall. Most people around Jacobsville, Texas, did. His family had lived on the Guadalupe River there since the Civil War, on a ranch called Lariat.

      It was spring, and that meant roundup. It was nothing unusual to see the owner of Lariat in the saddle at dawn lending a hand to rope a stray calf or help work the branding. King kept fit with ranch work, and despite the fact that he shared an office and a business partnership with her father in land and cattle, his staff didn’t see a lot of him.

      This year, they were using helicopters to mass the far-flung cattle, and they had a corral set up on a wide flat stretch of land where they could dip the cattle, check them, cut out the calves for branding and separate them from their mothers. It was physically demanding work, and no job for a tenderfoot. King wouldn’t let Tiffany near it, but it wasn’t a front-row seat at the corral that she wanted. If she could just get his attention away from the milling cattle on the wide, rolling plain that led to the Guadalupe River, if he’d just look her way…

      She stood up on a rickety lower rung of the gray wood fence, avoiding the sticky barbed wire, and waved her creamy Stetson at him. She was a picture of young elegance in her tan jodhpurs and sexy pink silk blouse and high black boots. She was a debutante. Her father, Harrison Blair, was King’s business partner and friend, and if she chased King, her father encouraged her. It would be a marriage made in heaven. That is, if she could find some way to convince King of it. He was elusive and quite abrasively masculine. It might take more than a young lady of almost twenty-one with a sheltered, monied background to land him. But, then, Tiffany had confidence in herself; she was beautiful and intelligent.

      Her long black hair hung to her waist in back, and she refused to have it cut. It suited her tall, slender figure and made an elegant frame for her soft oval face and wide green eyes and creamy complexion. She had a sunny smile, and it never faded. Tiffany was always full of fire, burning with a love of life that her father often said had been reflected in her long-dead mother.

      “King!” she called, her voice clear, and it carried in the early-morning air.

      He looked toward her. Even at the distance, she could see that cold expression in his pale blue eyes, on his lean, hard face with its finely chiseled features. He was a rich man. He worked hard, and he played hard. He had women, Tiffany knew he did, but he was nothing if not discreet. He was a man’s man, and he lived like one. There was no playful boy in that tall, fit body. He’d grown up years ago, the boyishness burned out of him by a rich, alcoholic father who demanded blind obedience from the only child of his shallow, runaway wife.

      She watched him ride toward her, easy elegance in the saddle. He reined in at the fence, smiling down at her with faint arrogance. He was powerfully built, with long legs and slim hips and broad shoulders. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, and with his checked red shirt open at the throat, she got fascinating glimpses of bronzed muscle and thick black hair on the expanse of his sexy chest. Jeans emphasized the powerful muscles of his legs, and he had big, elegant hands that hers longed to feel in passion. Not that she was likely to. He treated her like a child most of the time, or at best, a minor irritation.

      “You’re out early, tidbit,” he remarked in a deep, velvety voice with just a hint of Texas drawl. His eyes, under the shade of his wide-brimmed hat, were a pale, grayish blue and piercing as only blue eyes could be.

      “I’m going to be twenty-one tomorrow,” she said pertly. “I’m having a big bash to celebrate, and you have to come. Black tie, and don’t you dare bring anyone. You’re mine, for the whole evening. It’s my birthday and on my birthday I want presents—and you’re it. My big present.”

      His dark brows lifted with amused indulgence. “You might have told me sooner that I was going to be a birthday present,” he said. “I have to be in Omaha early Saturday.”

      “You have your own plane,” she reminded him. “You can fly.”

      “I have to sleep sometimes,” he murmured.

      “I wouldn’t touch that line with a ten-foot pole,” she drawled, peeking at him behind her long lashes. “Will you come? If you don’t, I’ll stuff a pillow up my dress and accuse you of being the culprit. And your reputation will be ruined, you’ll be driven out of town on a rail, they’ll tar and feather you…”

      He chuckled softly at the vivid sparkle in her eyes, the radiant smile. “You witch,” he accused. “They’d probably give me a medal for getting through your defenses.”

      She wondered how he knew that, and reasoned that her proud parent had probably told him all about her reputation for coolness with men.

      He lit a cigarette, took a long draw from and blew it out with faint impatience. “Little girls and their little whims,” he mused. “All right, I’ll whirl you around the floor and toast your coming-of-age, but I won’t stay. I can’t spare the time.”

      “You’ll