Three Cowboys

Three Cowboys: Virgil\Morgan\Wyatt (Harlequin Intrigue Series) by Julie Miller, Dana Marton and Paula Graves

Julie Miller

VIRGIL

Prologue

“Amiga.” Brittany Means rubbed her cheek against the itchy burlap of her pillow and tried to reclaim the blank oblivion of sleep. But a swat on her bottom jolted her from her drowsy state.

“Wake up!”

She sat bolt upright on the crackling straw mattress. “Hey! What’s...?” Her stomach churned at the sudden movement and she leaned over the edge of the bed and retched onto the dirt floor. She nearly tumbled over the edge herself when her hands refused to move where she wanted them to. Brittany steadied the ball bearings ping-ponging through her skull before opening her eyes again. Straw mattress? Dirt floor? Her hands weren’t working because they were bound together at the wrists with several loops of gray duct tape. Alarm replaced the turbulence in her stomach as she awkwardly pushed herself back into a sitting position to face the black-haired man sitting at the foot of the bed. “What’s going on? Where am I?”

“At the end of your little joy ride with my nephew.” The man’s Latin accent was thick, but his words were sharply articulate, his English perfect. He was a lot older than she, in his forties or fifties, probably. She supposed he was good-looking, the way somebody’s dad might be. But his black eyes were hard. And cold. This small room in the middle of nowhere had to be ninety-plus degrees and smelled of man sweat. But Brittany shivered at the chilling lack of compassion in the man’s dark eyes.

What had happened to her? The last thing she remembered was speeding across the Mexican border just outside Serpentine, Texas, where she’d grown up. She and her impromptu date for the day, Julio Rivas, were delivering hay to his uncle’s alpaca ranch.

Her life had been in absolute upheaval the past few months since her mother’s death. She’d had a blowup with the man who claimed to be her father that morning about staying home for Christmas break instead of going on a skiing trip with her friends at school. Brittany had jumped at the opportunity to cut classes and get to know the mysteriously aloof senior a little better. Feeling the wind in her long, dark blond hair, and snuggling up beside Julio’s bad-boy body had been the perfect antidote for the raging hurt bottled up inside her. They’d stopped for lunch. Julio had kissed her. And then...?

She cursed at the big blank spot in her memory. Panic pumped her heart faster as she tugged against the duct tape and took in the adobe walls, wood beams and stone fireplace of the room. It was like one of the old kitchens she’d seen on a field trip to the Alamo in San Antonio. Only that room had been well-preserved in the name of history as students and tour guides filed past. This room was used and dirty and filled with several men—two big bruisers at the door, a man wearing enough silver and turquoise and cologne to tell her he thought he was a player and a couple more who wore guns on their belts and rifles strapped over their shoulders. There was one scruffy old guy who looked like he might be the only one who actually knew about alpacas and ranch life. And even he was armed. But there was no one her age here, and certainly no sign of Julio. If she was a bound prisoner, what had happened to him?

The player in the black felt hat flashed a bright white smile and laughed. “The sedative has worn off and the muchacha is back with us now, patrón. I see it in her eyes—she is afraid.”

That fear pricked goose bumps across her skin. Brittany pulled her gaze from his leering grin and turned to the man with the cold eyes who was clearly in charge of this gathering. “You’re Julio’s uncle?”

“Many people call me that. Julio has a cousin who works for me. I am Javier Calderón.”

Javier Calderón? Mexican-drug-lord Calderón? The-reason-she’d-been-warned-to-stay-out-of-certain-neighborhoods-in-Serpentine-after-dark Calderón? How did she...?

She might have a wild streak and abandonment issues, but she was just a kid in high school. And she didn’t do drugs. This had to be a joke. Only, the duct tape and guns and raging headache left over from whatever they’d given her were no joke. “Where’s Julio?”

“The boy does not matter. I sent him away yesterday.”

“Yesterday?” How long had she been here? Why couldn’t she shake this groggy lack of focus? “What do you want with me?”

“A simple phone call.” Her bound wrists wouldn’t cooperate when Javier Calderón scooted across the bed and she tried to retreat. Rough hands saved her from falling, but pushed her forward while Calderón thrust a cell phone into her fingers. The number was already ringing. “Talk to your daddy. It’s time he started cooperating with us.”

She was in trouble. Grounded for life kind of trouble. She’d-be-lucky-if-grounding-was-the-worst-thing-that-happened-to-her kind of trouble.

“I want Julio,” she begged, as each ring of the phone counted down like a death knell in her hands.

“We don’t care what you want.” Player boy, with all the shine on his clothes and hat, sank onto the bed behind her, his hand settling far too familiarly on her thigh, his body brushing against her back and blocking any chance of escape.

But she was more afraid of the unblinking threat in Calderón’s cold, dark eyes. “Talk to your papa, amiga. Tell him you are my prisoner. Say exactly what I tell you to.”

Brittany didn’t know whether to be mad at Julio for handing her over to these horrible men, or worried that the betrayal hadn’t been his fault—that he’d been drugged the way she must have been, or beaten up...or something worse. Calderón hadn’t said exactly where he’d sent Julio, or what condition he’d been in when he left.

Out of desperation, her spine solidified with the stubbornness that had gotten her into a lot of trouble during her seventeen years. She didn’t know where that toughness came from, but she’d talked her way out of worse than this. Well, not really. But she wasn’t going to submit to their pawing and bullying without a fight. She tossed the phone to smack Pretty Boy’s offending hand away. “Don’t touch me!”

The man laughed. “Ah, she is definitely Justice McCabe’s daughter.”

Oh, how she loathed that name. Up until three months ago, Justice McCabe had simply been a wealthy rancher who raised cattle and horses on the outskirts of Serpentine. An old cuss whom people gossiped about and revered. He’d been a nebulous entity with a town library and a barn at the county fairgrounds named after him.

And then the cancer took her mother and she’d learned the truth.

She was Justice McCabe’s bastard daughter from some stupid affair. A child who’d never meant more to him than a monthly paycheck to support her mother.

“Get with the program, amigo,” she mocked, her turbulent emotions getting the better of her common sense. “My father barely even knows me. I only live with him now because my mom died. She always told me my father was dead—until she realized I’d have no place else to go. I wish he was dead.”

Calderón’s answer was frightening with his calm tone and precise movements. He picked up the phone and dialed the number again. “That was your mother’s choice, not his.”

“Whatever. He doesn’t care about what happens to me. What if he doesn’t answer?”

“Enough with your poor-little-me whining.” With the darting accuracy of a rattlesnake, he pinched her chin in a hard grasp and shoved the phone against her ear. “The only thing Justice McCabe values more than his land is his family. He will answer.”