Dang, there was that smile againâ
the one that made Chance want to haul her off that horse and kiss her until they both felt like whooping and hollering.
Yeah, he knew what Gabriella was playing at. He was only too happy to play along.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, it dragged a different thought along for the ride. What if thisâthe sob story about her mom, the smiles, especially the kissâall of it was just playing? What if she was playing him?
Heâd thought her brother had been one of his best friendsâa man he could trust with his life. Where had that gotten him?
What if she was just trying to muck up the works with her bright smiles and warm looks and sweet, hot kisses? What if she was trying to get him distracted or off balance?
What if she was using him?
But why? That was the question he couldnât answer.
He wanted to protect her, by God.
But who would protect him from her?
* * *
What a Rancher Wants Texas Cattlemanâs Club: The Missing Mogul novel âLove and scandal meet in Royal, Texas!
Award-winning author SARAH M. ANDERSON may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out West on the Great Plains. With a lifelong love of horses and two history teachers for parents, she had plenty of encouragement to learn everything she could about the tribes of the Great Plains.
When she started writing, it wasnât long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and to see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought theyâd go.
When not helping out at her sonâs school or walking her rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well-tolerated by her wonderful husband. Readers can find out more about Sarahâs love of cowboys and Indians at www.sarahmanderson.com.
One
â¡Dios mÃo!â Gabriella del Toro hissed under her breath. Blood welled up from the cut sheâd inflicted upon herself with the can opener. She sighed. As if anything else could have gone wrong.
From his seat at the breakfast table, Joaquin, her bodyguard, looked up from his tablet. âIâm fine,â she said, answering his unspoken question. âJust a cut.â
She looked down at the injury. She had not anticipated that fixing some broth and toast for her brother, Alejandro, would be so difficult. But then, everything was difficult right now. While she had spent time in the kitchen back at Las Cruces, the ancestral del Toro estate west of Mexico City, sheâd never actually prepared anything more than tea and coffee. Their cook had thought that preparing meals was beneath the lady of the house, even if the lady had been only twelve. No one had thought to teach Gabriella the first thing about cooking since...her tÃa had tried to show her how to make tortillas from scratch.
Gabriella had been seven the last time Papa had taken her and Alejandro to see their motherâs sister. A full twenty years had passed since then.
As Gabriella rinsed the cut under the faucet and wrapped her wounded finger in a towel, she mentally bemoaned how this must look. She was the daughter of Rodrigo del Toro, one of the most powerful legitimate businessmen in all of Mexico. She was one of the most sought-after jewelry designers in Mexico City. She regularly transformed hunks of metal and pieces of rock into wearable art with a Mayan influence.
But at this moment, she was every heiress stereotype rolled into one. She couldnât even open a can of soup.
The bleeding staunched, she went looking for a bandage. She heard Joaquin stand and trail her out of the kitchen, although he kept a polite distance. Sheâd rarely been apart from the large, mostly silent man since her father had hired him to protect her when she had been thirteen. She was now twenty-seven. Joaquin Baptiste was nearing forty, but he had showed no signs of slowing down. Secretly, Gabriella hoped he never would. He was far more concerned with her happiness than her fatherâor even her brotherâhad ever been. That, and he had never let any harm befall her. Even if it did make dating...challenging.
She walked to the bathroom and found a box of bandages in a cabinet, mentally cursing her clumsiness the whole time. The cut was on the edge of her index finger. It would make holding pliers while she shaped wire almost impossible.
Gabriella caught herself. Her pliers were not here, nor were any of her other jewelry-making supplies. It had not been possible to pack up all her tools. Besides, she had been under the impression that they would only be in America long enough to collect Alejandro.