Fire Brand Read online

  Bowie was twenty-seven years old the night she showed up at Casa Río in the rain. She had caught first sight of him in the barn, where she was huddled and shivering against the faint evening chill of May.

  His sheer size had been overpowering. He was a big, rugged-looking blond man with a physique that any movie cowboy would have envied. He was the head of a growing construction company, and over the years, he’d spent a good deal of his time at building sites, pitching in when deadlines were threatening. That explained the muscular physique, but not the brooding look he wore much of the time. Later, Gaby would learn that he didn’t smile very often. She’d learn, too, that his extraordinary good looks were deceptive. He wasn’t a womanizer, and if he had affairs, they were so discreet as to be almost unnoticed. He was a quiet, introspective man who liked Bach, old war movies, and more than anything else, the land upon which Casa Río sat. Bowie was a preservationist, a conservationist. That, in a builder, was something of an irony, but then, Bowie was full of contradictions. Gaby knew him no better now than she had that first night. He was rarely ever home when she visited his mother, Aggie—it was almost as if he purposefully avoided her.

  That long-ago rainy night, he’d been in evening clothes. Gaby’s frightened eyes had followed him as he stared into a stall and rubbed the velvet nose of the big Belgian horse that occupied it. He turned on the light, and she could see that his blond hair was very thick and straight, conventionally cut with a side part, and neatly combed, despite the hour. His profile had been utterly perfect; a strong, very handsome, very definite face that probably drew women like honey drew butterflies. He had a straight nose and a square jaw, and deep-set eyes under heavy brows. His mouth had a chiseled look, and there was something faintly sensuous about it. Gaby tried not to notice sensuality—she was afraid of men.

  But masculine perfection like Bowie’s was hard to ignore. She watched him as she might have watched a sunset, awed by its impact. The black suit he’d been wearing clung with a tailored faultlessness to his powerful body, emphasizing his broad chest, the length of his muscular legs, the narrowness of his hips, the width of his shoulders. He bent his head to light a cigarette, and she saw the faint orange flair of the match turn his tanned face just briefly to bronze.

  She must have accidentally moved and made noise, because all of a sudden he whirled toward her with an economy of movement. His eyes narrowed.

  “Who the hell is that?” he asked. His voice was deep, curt, without an accent, and yet there was something faintly drawling about it.

  She hesitated, but when he started toward the empty stall where she was huddled in fresh hay, she stood up and moved out into the aisle, terrified of being hemmed in.

  “I’m not a burglar or anything,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m sorry about this, but it’s so cold, mister, and I just needed to get in out of the rain.” 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 something about getting the film to the darkroom and eased quickly away.

  Johnny glared at her without smiling. “Get the story?” he asked.

  “Sort of.”

  He stared. “Sort of?”

  “It’s your fault,” she told him. “Harrington and I aren’t cut out for police reporting. You made us go.”

  “Well, I couldn’t go,” he said. “I’m in management. People in management don’t cover shootouts. They’re dangerous, Cane,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper.

  She glared at him. “This, from a man who volunteered to cover the uprising in Central America.”

  “Okay, what went wrong?” he asked, sidestepping the remark.

  She told him. He groaned. “At least we did get some good copy,” she comforted him. “And I got a shot of the gunman, along with some swell shots of the police in the rain surrounding the building,” she added dryly.

  “One shot of the hostage would have been worth fifty shots of the police in the rain!” he raged. “You and your soft heart...!”

  “Wilson, from the Bulletin, got lots of nice pictures of the stand-off,” Gaby told her boss, rubbing salt in the wound. “And probably one of the hostage, too.”

  “I hate you,” he hissed.

  She smiled. “But the police tackled him and broke his camera and probably exposed every frame he shot.”

  “I love you,” he changed it.

  “Next time, don’t send Harrington with me, okay?” she pleaded. “Just let me go alone.”

  “Can’t do that, Cane,” he said. “You’re too reckless. Do you have any idea how many close calls you’ve had in the past three years? You never hold anything in reserve in that kind of situation, and thank God it doesn’t happen often. I still get cold chills remembering the bank robbery you had to cover. I hate asking you to sub for the police reporter.”

  “It was only a flesh wound,” she reminded him.

  “It could have been a mortal wound,” he muttered. “And even if you aren’t afraid of Bowie McCayde, the publisher is. They had words after the bank robbery.”

  That came as a surprise. Aggie hadn’t said anything about it, but she had probably sent Bowie to throw the fear of God into Mr. Smythe, the publisher.

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. She smiled. “Well, he’ll never find out about today, so there’s no need to worry... What are you staring at?”

  “Certain death,” he said pleasantly.

  She followed his gaze toward the lobby. Bowie McCayde was just coming in the door, towering over the male reporters and causing comments and deep sighs among the female ones. He was wearing a gray suit, his blond head bare, and held an unlit cigarette in his hand. He looked out of humor and threatening.

  Gaby’s heart jumped into her throat. What, she wondered, was he doing in Phoenix? She hadn’t seen him for two months—not since they’d celebrated Aggie’s birthday at Casa Río. It had been an unusually disturbing night because just lately, Bowie had a way of looking at her that made her nerves stand on end.

  Her breathing quickened as he approached, the old disturbing nervousness collecting in her throat to make her feel gauche and awkward. Just like old times, she thought as his black eyes pinned her to the spot while he strode across the newsroom. She was capable and cool until she got within five feet of this man, and then she just went to pieces. It was a puzzle she still hadn’t worked out. It wasn’t really fear—not the nauseating kind. It was more like excitement...

  “Hello, Bowie,” she said awkwardly.

  He nodded curtly to Johnny and scowled down at Gaby. “I’m taking you out to supper,” he said without a greeting or an invitation, ignoring her soaked clothes and straggly hair. “We’ve got to talk.”

  She wondered if she’d heard him right. Bowie, taking her out?

  “Something’s wrong,” she guessed.

  “Wrong?” He waved the unlit cigarette in his hand. “Wrong?! My God.”

  “Is it Aggie?” she asked quickly, her olive eyes mirroring her concern.

  Bowie stared at Johnny until the shorter man mumbled an excuse, grinned at Gaby, and beat a hasty retreat to his office. Bowie had that effect on a lot of people, Gaby thought with faint amusement. He never said anything harsh—he just stared at people with his cold black eyes. One of his construction company executives had likened it to being held at bay by a cobra.

  “Yes, it’s Aggie,” he muttered. Gaby felt faint.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BOWIE REALIZED BELATEDLY why Gaby’s face had turned white. “No, no,” he said shortly, noting her horrified expression. “She’s not hurt or anything.”

  She relaxed visibly and put a hand to her throat. “You might have s
aid so.”

  “Are you through here?” He looked around as if he couldn’t see what she had to do anyway.

  “I need to file my story before I go.”

  “Go ahead. It’ll keep.” He walked back out into the lobby and sat down on one of the sofas. Trisa leaned her chin on her hands and sat watching him shamelessly while he read a magazine. If Bowie even noticed, there was no sign of it.

  Gaby had to drag her own eyes away. He was most incredibly handsome, and totally unaware of it.

  She turned on her word processor, got out her notes, and spent fifteen minutes condensing two hours of work into eight inches of copy one column wide.

  Bowie was still reading when she came out of the newsroom, after calling a quick good night to Johnny.

  “I’m ready...oh, no,” she groaned.

  Carl Wilson, the Bulletin reporter, was just coming in the door with a Band-Aid over his nose, breathing fire.

  “So there you are, you turncoat,” he growled at her. His ponytail was soaked, and Bowie was giving him an unnerving appraisal. He turned his back to get away from that black-eyed stare. “This is the last straw, Cane,” he raged. “I know you’ve got the whole damned police force in your pocket from your old days on the police beat, but that was a low blow. My camera’s busted to hell, my film’s exposed...!”

  “Poor old photographer,” she said comfortingly. “Did the big bad policeman hurt its little nose?”

  He actually blushed. “You stop that,” he muttered. “You told them to do it.”

  “Not me,” she said, holding up one hand.

  Bowie had gotten to his feet now and his narrow black eyes were watching closely.

  “If you didn’t point me out, who did?” Wilson persisted, eyeing Bowie warily as he spoke.

  “You were walking right into the line of fire,” she reminded him. “We all saw you.”