Fire Brand. Diana Palmer

She sneezed loudly.

      He stared at her quietly, his deep-set black eyes frightening. “Where did you come from?”

      Her heart hammered in her chest. She hadn’t expected that question, and she wasn’t used to telling lies. Her father, a lay minister, had drummed morality into her at an early age, and honesty was part of her upbringing. Now, it was hard not to tell the truth. She lowered her eyes. “I’m an orphan,” she said miserably. “I was looking for a cousin, a Sanders, but a neighbor said the family moved years ago.” That much was true. “I don’t have anyplace to go...” Her lower lip had trembled. She was so afraid—not only of him, but of having the recent past come down on her head. Her big, olive-green eyes had stared up into his, pleading.

      He didn’t want her around. That much was obvious. She could almost see courtesy going to war with suspicion in his mind.

      “Well, I’ll take you inside and let my mother deal with you,” he said then. “God knows, she’s partial to girls, since she never had one of her own.”

      She breathed a sigh of relief. She could still see herself as she’d been that night, her long black hair straggly around a pinched white face. Her clothes had been so worn that they had holes in a few places—especially her faded jeans and denim jacket. She’d had only a coin purse with her, which contained a one-dollar bill and some change, and there was a handkerchief in her jacket pocket. There was no learner’s permit, no credit card, nothing to give her away or help anyone trace her back to Kentucky.

      “What’s your name, kid?” the big man had asked. He towered over her, enormously tall and powerful. She was five foot six, but he had to be at least six foot three.

      “Gabrielle,” she stammered. “Gabrielle Cane.” That was her real name, but she’d deliberately hesitated before she gave him her last name, to make it seem as if it was a false one. “Most people call me Gaby.” Her eyes surveyed the neat barn, with its wide brick aisle and well-kept interior. “What is this place?”

      “It’s called Casa Río—River House. In the old days, the river ran within sight, but its course changed over the years. Now you can’t see the river, and there isn’t any water in it for most of the year,” he’d replied. “My parents own it. I’m Bowie McCayde.”

      “Your parents live here?” she asked nervously.

      “Yes, they live here.” His voice had been curt. “I have an apartment in Tucson. My father is in the construction business.”

      That would explain his dark tan and the muscles rippling under that jacket. He had big, lean hands, and they looked strong, too. She shifted and sneezed again.

      “Come on, we’ll go inside.” He’d reached out to take her arm, but she moved back jerkily. She had plenty of reason not to like being touched, but instead of being angry, he only nodded at her reticence. “You don’t like being touched. Okay. I’ll remember,” he’d added, and he had.

      The biggest surprise of her life had been meeting Aggie McCayde. The only woman she’d known for any length of time had been the matriarch of the big race horse farm where her father had been working, in Lexington, Kentucky. Her own mother had died when she was barely old enough to go to school, so Agatha McCayde came as a very big surprise to a girl used only to the company of her father. Aggie took one look at the sneezing fifteen-year-old and immediately began fussing over her. Her husband Copeland had welcomed the girl with equal kindness, but Bowie had kept apart, looking irritated and then angry. He left for Tucson a day early, as she’d later learned. When he saw how Gaby was fitting in with his parents, his visits became fewer and briefer. He seemed to have difficulty getting along with Copeland and Aggie, a problem that Gaby didn’t have at all. She opened her heart to the older couple as they opened their heart and home to her.

      For the first time in her life, she was cosseted and spoiled. Aggie took her shopping, watched over her when the nightmares came and she woke up sweating and crying in the night. The older woman listened to her problems when she enrolled in the local high school that fall, helped her overcome her difficulty fitting in because she was so shy and uneasy. Aggie even understood when Gaby didn’t date anyone. That wasn’t really so much design as circumstance, she recalled. She wasn’t a pretty teenager. She was skinny, shy, and a little clumsy and nervous, so the boys didn’t exactly beat a path to her door. Aggie loved her and doted on her, which was why Bowie really began to resent her. She noticed his attitude, because he made no attempt to hide it. But incredibly, Aggie and Copeland didn’t seem to notice that they were treating her more like their child and Bowie more like an outsider. By the time she realized it, the damage was done. She knew Bowie resented her. That was one reason she’d opted for college in Phoenix, but it had been difficult there—much more difficult than she’d realized—because her old-fashioned attitudes and her distaste for intimacy put her apart from most of the other students. She formed friendships, and once or twice she dated, but there was always the fear of losing control, of being overpowered, long after the nightmares had become manageable and the scars of the past had begun to heal.

      Gaby had had one violent flare-up of sensual feeling—oddly enough, with Bowie. Aggie had pleaded and coaxed until he’d taken Gaby to a dance at college. He’d been out of humor, and frankly irritated by the adoring looks of Gaby’s classmates. He was a handsome man, even if he was the only one who didn’t seem to know it, and he drew attention. He’d held her only on the dance floor, and very correctly. But there had always been sparks flying between them, and that night, physical sparks had flown as well. Gaby had seen him in a different light that one night, and she let months go by afterward before she went to Casa Río. After that, Gaby began to concentrate more than ever on her studies, and on the job she’d taken after classes at the Phoenix Advertiser. Between work and study, there had been no time for a personal life.

      Now the job took most of her time. In a city the size of Phoenix, there was always something going on. When she began to work full time, the excitement of reporting somehow made everything worthwhile; she was alive as she never had been before. But the surges of adrenaline had awakened something else in her. They’d prompted a different kind of ache—a need for something more than an empty apartment and loneliness.

      She was twenty-four years old now, and while the job was satisfying, it was no longer enough. She hungered for a home of her own and children, a settled life. That might be good for Aggie, too. The older woman had been lonely since Copeland’s death eight years before. Gaby helped her to cope after it happened. Bowie had resented even that, irritated that his mother had turned to her adopted child instead of her natural one. But now Aggie was globetrotting, and even though Gaby only spent the occasional weekend at Casa Río, she was missing the small, dark-eyed woman whose warmth and outgoing personality had brought a frightened teenager out of a nightmare.

      That bubbly personality was one that Gaby had developed when she had begun to work with the public. Inside, she was still shy and uncertain, and she found it difficult to relate to men who looked upon casual sex as de rigueur. In her upbringing, sex meant marriage. That was what she really wanted from life, not an affair. It helped, of course, that she’d never been tempted enough to really want a man. Except Bowie.

      She pulled her mind back to the present and drove up in front of the building that housed the newspaper she and Fred worked for. She only hoped there wasn’t going to be another last-minute story to cover. She was tired and worn, and she just wanted to go back to her apartment and sleep for an hour before she tried to fix herself something to eat. She remembered the engagement party and groaned. Maybe she could find an excuse to miss it. She hated social gatherings, even though she was fond of Mary, the girl who was getting engaged.

      She and Fred waved as they passed Trisa, the receptionist, and entered the newsroom. Gaby didn’t even look around; she was so tired that she just dropped into the chair at her computer terminal with a long sigh. Almost everyone on the newspaper staff was around. Johnny Blake came out of his office, his bald head shining in the light, his thick brows drawn together as he listened to Fred’s version of what had happened.

      “That the long and short of it, Cane?” he asked Gaby. As she raised her eyebrows, Fred mumbled