Native Silver (19 page)

Shawnee tried to laugh. “That’s quite an admission.”

Lisa nodded. “The girl is obviously serious.” She
put a hand on Shawnee’s drooping shoulder. “You
aren’t. . . I mean, you haven’t . . .”

Shawnee managed a harried smile. “Fallen for
‘our boy David’ myself? Don’t be absurd. He means nothing to me.”

But she couldn’t persuade even herself to believe
that lie.

But she went back. She resisted his advice that she board Miki there. She couldn’t allow them to get that familiar with her horse. Someone would guess the truth right away. But she did go to use the facilities, and she kept as far away from the others as possible.
 

On the fourth day of the training at Rancho
Verde, there was a surprise. A young girl was riding a magnificent bay alongside Allison when Shawnee
arrived.

“This is Petra,” Allison told her, and for once her
face was full of light and warmth. “My daughter.”

Petra looked very much like a smaller version of her mother, but her eyes danced with merry vitality and her smile was open and welcoming. “I’ve heard so much about you,” she told Shawnee. “Now I get
to judge for myself!”

Shawnee found herself laughing with the girl, even though she wasn’t sure just how she should
take that last statement. But in the days that fol
lowed, she got to know Petra better and realized there was nothing but well-meaning friendliness behind her joking. Petra was also training for the
horse-show, though she had no hope of doing very
well.

“I’m all thumbs and question marks,” she laughed to Shawnee “Luckily, my horse knows what to do.
Without her, I’d get lost going from the corral to the stables.”

But she tried very hard. It was evident she had
ambitions of making her mother proud, one way or
another.

Shawnee and Miki were working hard, too. So
hard, Shawnee told herself, she was successfully blocking out all thoughts of David. But every time
she saw him with Megan Reilly, there was a burning
sensation in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t
explain away.

How long was the woman staying, anyway? She
didn’t dare ask, but every morning when she arrived for training, she hoped to hear that Megan
had gone home.
 

But…what if she was beginning to
consider Rancho Verde her home? That didn’t bear thinking of.

Every few days, David went on short business
trips, usually to San Francisco. Sometimes Megan
seemed to be gone, too. Was she travelling with
him? Shawnee didn’t want to know. It was none of
her affair. David had hardly spoken to her for almost two weeks. Whatever interest he’d had seemed to have been superseded by Megan’s blonde glow.

She stumbled into a picnic one day while riding
across the ranch. Miki began acting strangely as they passed through a thicket of California laurel.
She realized later that the big horse had sensed David nearby, but at the time she thought some
thing was wrong and stopped to loosen the cinch and check Miki’s hooves for pebbles. Suddenly David was standing there beside her.

“Oh!” she cried, startled and jumping half out of
her skin.

“Steady.” He put out a hand to hold her. “You must have your head in the clouds. Miki saw me coming five minutes ago.”

She glanced at him, then at her horse. Miki was snorting and pawing the ground, obviously quite happy to “see” David again, almost purring when David reached out to stroke his nose. Did the man’s charm have to be so ubiquitous?

“What are you doing way out here?” she asked, sounding annoyed to see him, even though her skin was tingling with his presence.

“We’re having some lunch.” He pointed and she turned, catching sight of Megan and Petra seated on a blanket beneath a tree in the distance. She took a few steps sideways into the shade of a stand of bushes, taking herself out of their line of vision.
 

“Will you join us?”

“No, thanks,” she said a little too hastily. “I’ve got to get back.”

His shirt was casually open and looked crisp and cool against his tanned skin. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and cocked his head as he looked at her. “You take good care of your grandfather, don’t you?” he asked softly.

“I try to.”

Suddenly his hand was in her hair, sifting through its silky darkness. “I admire that in you,” he commented. Then he grinned. “But why not? Rancho Verde does that to people. Makes them care almost as much about the past as the present. And breeding will out.”

She was shivering and she knew she had to get away quickly. “You should know,” she mumbled inanely. “You’re the horse-breeder, aren’t you?”

“Right.” His hand tightened in her hair, holding her prisoner. “I’m the expert. Ask me anything about breeding. I know all about it.”

She bit her lip, confused and defensive. “Is Megan Reilly an expert in breeding, too?” she asked, then blinked, wishing she could recall the words.

“Megan?” His grin was devilish. “I don’t know if I should answer for her. Why do you ask?”

“Aren’t you . . . aren’t you and she dating or something?” That was a lame question but she couldn’t seem to say anything right.

“Or something,” he agreed good-naturedly. “Are you suggesting I should be looking her over for breeding qualities the way I look over a good mare for my stock?” He nodded as though considering the problem. “She does have good bone structure, doesn’t she?” He put a hand to his chin as though really thinking it through. “Can’t you just see the beautiful children we would have, she and I?” His voice was light and teasing, but there was something smoldering in his eyes. “They’d be long and lean and elegant, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely,” she snapped. “Perfect little gods and goddesses.”

“You and I, on the other hand . . .” He hooked his clasped hands behind her head, pulling her slowly towards him. “We’d have tough little devils, wouldn’t we?”

“Mongrels,” she agreed, feeling a bit breathless. “Hardly worth imagining.”

“I can imagine them,” he said huskily as he began a sensual assault on the tender skin of her neck. “I can imagine them just fine.”

The sun was hot but it had nothing on the feel of his skin against hers. She thought she was fighting, fighting so hard, to push him away, but when she opened her eyes, she found she hadn’t moved a
muscle. He was kissing her, kissing her like she’d
never been kissed before, and she was floating
above the clouds, hoping it would never stop. His
mouth on hers was sweet persuasion and she opened to his caress, meeting his ardor with a
burst of her own desire that seemed to spring out of
nowhere.

But it was wrong, and she knew it. As suddenly as she had succumbed, she began to withdraw.

He released her mouth but still held her in his
arms, his slightly rough face rubbing gently against
her cheek. She gasped, fighting back against the sizzling sensuality.
 

“Oh, Shawnee, you’ve got so much passion simmering inside you, you’re going to explode if you don’t
let it out,” he whispered near her ear.

“No!” Her voice sounded strangled and she said it again, more forcefully this time. She pushed him back, though she had to
fight herself as much as him to do it. She stared at him, shaking her head, trembling. Every time he kissed her it got harder and harder to resist him. This had to stop.
 

“Don’t do this again, David! I can’t handle it. You’ve got to stay away from me. Just stay away!” She pulled back without looking into his face. She wasn’t sure what she would see there. Derision? Amusement? Anger? She didn’t want to know.
 

Swinging up on Miki, she pressed
her knees into his sides. The big horse sprang into
action, carrying her out over the hills and far away from the man who tore her heart into pieces and left
her limp with confused emotion.

She couldn’t sleep that night. Turning on the light and pulling out the book and papers Reid had given her, she began to read more about the Santiagos and their influence on this valley—her valley. Her home. She read long into the night and when she slept, she dreamed about Spanish caballeros, and every one of them had David’s laughing dark eyes.
 

She had to force herself to go back the next day.
If she hadn’t been sure that Miki was gaining a lot
from the practice, she would have avoided having
to see David again. But when they did come face
to face, his eyes showed no memory of what had happened the day before. She sometimes wondered if she’d dreamed that, too.

She stopped Miki near Petra’s horse that morning and swung down to stand beside the girl and
watch her mother perform a particularly difficult
gate-opening.

Petra let out a long, yearning sigh. “I’ll never be
as good as she is,” she said softly. “I know she’s
disappointed in me.”

Shawnee looked at her pretty face and she couldn’t help but like her.
“Sure you will,” she said comfortingly. “All you need is the desire. You can do almost anything if
you want to badly enough.”

Petra shrugged. “Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I don’t want to enough.”

Shawnee lifted her face to the hot sun, closing
her eyes against the glare. “What do you want?” she asked idly. “What do you want most in the world?”

There was a long silence and finally she turned
towards the girl, opening her eyes in time to see the
silver tear that slid down the tanned cheek before
Petra brushed it away.

“What I want most in the world,” she said in a
strangled voice, “is for my mother and father to get
back together again.”

Shawnee’s heart twisted painfully and she wished
desperately that she’d never brought the subject
up. But it was out in the open now. She was stuck with it. “Is there . . . any chance?” she asked care
fully.

Petra shook her head, blinking back more tears. “No. Oh, my mother says she stills loves him. But
she can’t accept the things he does.”

Shawnee shifted her weight uncomfortably. She
didn’t want to pry, but she did want the girl to feel
free to confide if that was what she wanted to do.

“You see,” Petra went on, her voice suddenly strong and brave, “my father went out with other women. And my mother couldn’t take it. She
wasn’t used to that. In the circle she married into,
such things are common practice. But the Santiagos
don’t do it. They never have. Commitment and
honor are very important to them.”
 

She pulled out a tuft of grass and threw it to the wind.
 

“My grand
father lived for my grandmother. Uncle Stewart is devoted to his wife and he would never think of looking at another woman.” She shrugged. “It will
be the same when David marries Megan. That’s just the way it is for the Santiagos.”

When David marries Megan. When David marries Megan.
 

Petra was still talking, but those words
were echoing in Shawnee’s mind and she didn’t
hear another thing. So it was true. Perhaps a date had even been set. And here was Petra, telling her that the Santiago men were always true to their women.
 

Then what—what did David want with
her? Why was he making her come here to train?
Why was he always looking at her as though
there were some secret between them? She had to
know.

She started towards home, then stopped, turned
back towards the ranch, and forced herself to enter
the yard where she could see David sitting with Megan at a wrought-iron table beneath the pepper
trees. David’s horse was standing nearby, as
though he’d just ridden in from working on the
ranch.
 

She rode up close and they both watched her
approach. They each held tall, cool drinks in their hands. From the looks of it, they were enjoying a
nice drink before a long, lazy lunch. Megan looked light and cool in a white organdie dress. Shawnee
felt grubby and hot in comparison.

“I’d like to talk to you for a moment,” she told David shortly.

He met her gaze and seemed to read a challenge in her eyes, then spread his arms wide. “Talk away,”
he said softly.

Shawnee looked significantly at Megan. “Alone,
please.”

David’s glance had a devil’s gleam. “Megan is one
of my dearest friends,” he said. “You can talk in front of her.”

The blonde smiled vacuously. Shawnee glanced
at her, then back at David. There was no way she
could broach this subject in front of the woman who
might be marrying him. No one had even bothered
to introduce her to Megan, and though it was
probably just an oversight, she wasn’t going to act like some humble vassal in the presence of the lord
and lady. That was the position he was putting her
in. Anger flashed through her veins.
 

Let him marry
Megan. She hated him anyway!

But she calmed down quickly. There was no way she was going to let them see how this made her feel.