The Wildcatter

“Cretaceous period,” he told her, helpless to stop himself from showing off, any more than a stallion can stop himself from arching his neck and prancing around a ready mare. “Sixty-five million years old, give or take a couple of million.”

“What is it?” shrilled the little one from the shallows.

He closed his fingers, hiding it from view. “An inoceramus.” To fix his gaze on Risa’s face as she waded warily closer took an effort of will. As the creek bottom shelved upward, she was rising like a nymph from the waves. His eyes yearned to melt down over her, praising every swaying curve and hollow.

“And what’s that?” She stopped with the water lapping her slender waist.

“You tell me.” He offered it, cocked his head in challenge. Her bottom lip pushed out a delectable quarter inch in annoyance, but still she reached. He laid it delicately on her palm. Para tú.

“Risa, what is it?” shrilled her younger sister, bouncing with impatience.

“A fossil.” Intent on its ribbed and fluted shape, Risa turned it slowly. “Some sort of clam.”

She hadn’t said “only a clam.” Abruptly it struck him that liking a woman would be more dangerous than lusting after her.

“It’s really that old?” she added.

He nodded. “Waiting here for us all that time.”

“Let me see!” The little one had waded ashore, tied both the horses, and now launched herself across the stream. Heads almost touching, the mermaids studied the inoceramus while Miguel studied them. Such different coloring, sunset and midnight—rubia y oscura. When you looked for it there was not much resemblance, either to Tankersly or each other, but still, they were unmistakably sisters.

La oscura glanced up at him. “You found it underwater?”

“No. Embedded in the cliff. One finds such in shale.”

“But you’re all wet.”

Miguel had to admit he was. “My horse threw me in the creek.”

His wry look earned him a bubbling laugh from the niña, and a twitch of those luscious lips from her elder sister.

“Then you’ll have to ride back with us,” decided the little one. “Risa’s Sunny can carry two.”

“Thank you,” he said quickly as Risa frowned and her lips parted to counter this offer. No way would he pass it up!

He waited on his ledge while the sisters crossed to the far bank. Turning his face gallantly to the cliff, still he could picture Risa shimmying into her jeans.

“What’s your name?” the little one called, her shyness forgotten.

“Miguel. And you?”

“Tess. Tess Tankersly. And this is Risa.”

Señorita Tankersly to him, till she herself made him free of her name. Still… Risa, whatever it might signify in inglés, in español it meant “laughter.” And if you were to laugh with me?

But such a notion was madness. If all went as he hoped, someday soon he’d have to deal with Tankersly. Negotiations would hardly go well if he’d been sniffing about the rancher’s daughter! Business might be one thing, but the old man would have a better match in mind for his crown jewel, his fire opal, than a flirtation with a Mexican half-breed.

While the girls saddled their horses, Miguel let himself down into the river and waded across. On his dignity, he walked instead of swam. At the lowest point, for five yards or so, only his eyes showed above water. He waggled his eyebrows at Tess and earned another outburst of giggles. He smiled underwater. Ay, chiquitas. She was as easy to entertain as his own little sister had been last time he’d seen her, too long ago.

But Risa was not so easily amused and she stiffened when he mounted clumsily behind her. “I’ve never done this before,” he confessed softly in her ear. What delights he’d been missing! Pale as a gibbous moon, her nape with its waving tendrils of reddish-gold was only inches below his lips.

She jammed her hat into place and its rim established a “don’t trespass” perimeter.

“May I hold on?” he asked as they set off at a trot. His hands would almost span her supple waist; his palms itched with anticipation.

“To the cantle—the back of my saddle—please do,” she snapped.

Tess rode before them, chattering over her shoulder. “So you collect fossils, Miguel?”

“Sí. Also stones. I’m a rock hound.” It was close to the truth.

“I found a piece of fool’s gold last year. On roundup. Would you like to see it?”

“Pyrite? With much pleasure.”

“And I have a chunk of something that I used to think was a diamond when I was little. It’s big as an egg! But I reckon maybe it’s just quartz.”

“More likely,” he agreed. And there were compensations to hanging on to the cantle, he was finding. At this pace, over the rougher patches of trail Risa couldn’t help but bounce a little. Her taut, smooth hips brushed his thumbs more than once. Tipping his head to one side to peer under her hat, he grinned. Her nape was now rosier than pale. Were he to brush his lips, rough with his afternoon beard, right…there, he bet she’d go off like a bottle rocket, all sparks and fizz and a firecracker pop! Ah, rubia, you bring out the bad in me!

“What were you doing back there?” she asked coolly in an undertone. “Aren’t you supposed to be haying?”

His smile faded. “Even a peón gets a day off now and then.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“No?” While he spun his fantasies, he should remember not to forget: she was a ranchera rica and he was a wet-back. He had more hope of collecting fossils on the moon than taking such a one as this in his arms. At least, not while he had hay in his hair.

But someday… He glanced over his shoulder. Tess had chosen the easier grade of the road leading to the ranch yard, instead of the cowboys’ trail. From this height, he could see the tops of the Trueheart Hills jutting east of the valley. He’d lost a precious day, flirting with mermaids.

The growl of an engine mounting the grade behind caused him to swing farther around. Uh-oh! Here came that ancient, caramel-colored Lincoln Town Car that Tankersly flogged around the ranch when he wasn’t riding. He’d driven it down to the hay fields yesterday, gunning it ruthlessly through the muddy irrigation ditches.

“Daddy!” Tess cried, reining in as the car braked alongside them. “Look what Miguel gave me!” She waved the fossil that he’d intended for Risa. Ah, hermanitas.

Little sisters could get a man in all kinds of trouble. Tankersly was bound to resent any and all contact between a summer laborer and his daughters. Miguel met the old man’s stony gaze, his own face expressionless.

“See, Daddy?”

“Huh.” Tankersly hardly glanced at Tess’s prize. His shrewd old eyes were measuring the distance between Miguel’s chest and his beautiful daughter’s shoulder blades to the very last quarter inch.

Or so it seemed to his hired hand, who was braced for the worst. What a fool I’ve been—¡qué tonto! To give this merciless geezer an excuse for firing him before he’d barely started… No woman was worth this!

“You’re wearing your stirrups a notch too short,” he growled at his eldest. “You learn that back East?”

“What if I did?” Risa leaned back in her stirrups till her hat brim brushed Miguel’s mouth.

“Should have sent you west.” The massive old sedan rumbled on past and vanished up the hill.

Not once had Tankersly cracked a smile. So why did Miguel have the strangest feeling that the old man had been pleased?