Puzzled, she raised the curl to her face and sniffed.

Rayna had to lean forward to keep the lock from being pulled out of her head, but she patiently submitted to the examination. “She’s never seen blond hair before, Mama,” she said quietly without looking at her parents.

“Rayna, be careful,” her mother cautioned.

“Oh, she won’t hurt me,” she replied confidently. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”

The little Apache studied the lock of hair and the child it was attached to.

Finally she released it and gathered a handful of her own hair into a tiny fist.

Tears appeared in her dark eyes, and her chin quivered. “Pr’ncess pretty?”

4

Prologue

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Collie gasped and glanced at her equally amazed husband, but Rayna never took her eyes off her sister. “Princess very pretty.” She held out her hand. “Come.”

Dark eyes darted again to Raymond, and when he nodded his head the little Apache took Rayna’s hand.

Collie breathed a sigh of relief. “Raymond, you send for Gatana while I heat some bathwater. It’s going to be a very long night.”

Her prediction proved to be something of an understatement.

5

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1

New Mexico Territory, April 1882

“They’re laughing at us, Samson, and it’s all your fault,” Rayna Templeton muttered as she trudged through the gates at Rancho Verde leading her Appaloosa stallion. Samson whinnied what could have been an apology, but his mistress suspected that he wasn’t at all sorry he’d thrown a shoe for the second time this week. For the last four miles Samson had been quite content to poke along unencumbered by his rider, but Rayna was disgusted and bone-deep weary. She was also covered with dust from her wide-brimmed felt hat to the toes of her leather boots. Since dawn she had been scouring the countryside for calves that had escaped the spring roundup, and now she wanted nothing more than a hearty meal and a hot bath.

But first she had to get past the cowhands who had gathered at the corral to poke fun at her.

“Out fer another stroll, Miss Rayna?” Charlie McGinty hollered, making no attempt to hide the smirk on his weathered face.

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“Yes, indeed, Charlie,” she replied facetiously. “The air is so invigorating at this time of year I just don’t seem to be able to resist.”

While Charlie scratched his head, apparently trying to figure out what

“invigorating” meant, Flint Piper took his turn. “Didja pick any pretty wild-flowers, miss?”

Everyone guffawed at that, and even Rayna had to bite back a smile. Dainty pursuits like picking posies were as foreign to her as words like “invigorating”

were to Charlie. “No, Flint, I’m afraid the verbena and Indian paintbrush are past their prime. There’ll be no flowers on Mother’s dinner table tonight.”

“That’s too bad,” Flint replied. “Miz Collie’s gonna be mighty disappointed.”

Rayna stopped and affected an air of sadness. “No more so than I, Flint.

You all know how much I adore a pretty bouquet.”

The men were still laughing at that when someone else called out an admonition against strolling in the sun without a parasol. He earned a back-slapping guffaw because he’d done such a good impersonation of Rayna’s mother. The object of their mirth put an end to the laughter by dusting her hat on her trousers, sending up a cloud of dirt that set everyone to coughing.

Chuckling, Guillermo Rodriguez jumped off the top rung of the corral fence. “All right, vaqueros, the fun is over. The sun is high and there is still work to be done.”

“Not the least of which is shoeing this horse,” Rayna muttered to the range boss as the other men scattered. “Something has to be done about that new blacksmith, Gil. I knew he was too good to be true when he showed up last week looking for a job. I can do a better job of shoeing horses than he can, and that’s not saying much.”

Rodriguez grinned. “Do you want the job, señorita? I am sure Señora Templeton would be happy to know that you are working closer to home instead of being out on the range every day.”

Rayna slanted an exasperated glance in his direction. “Don’t you start on me, too, Gil.”

“Oh, but the men, they love to tease you, señorita.”

She patted Samson’s neck. “That’s because a walking target is easy to hit.”

He laughed and held out his hand for the reins. “Here, I will take care of Samson—and the blacksmith.”

Though normally Rayna stabled her own mount, she handed the reins over gratefully. “Thank you, Gil. And by the way, I struck gold this morning. I rounded up ten head and drove them into the corral above Diablo Canyon.

There are two maverick calves and a sleepered yearling in the bunch.”

“Bueno!” he said, his eyes shining with respect. A sleepered yearling was a calf with an earmark but no brand—indicating that the animal had escaped spring roundup for two years in a row. That usually meant the herd he traveled 7

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in was quite wild, and single-handedly corralling a wild herd was no small feat.

“I will send Flint and Charlie out now to bring them in for the brand.”

“Thank you, Gil.”

“Will you be riding out again today?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied, removing her rifle from its scabbard.

“I’ve eaten enough dust for one day.”

“Bueno.”

Slinging her saddlebags over one shoulder, she patted Samson’s hindquar-ters as the range boss led him away to the stable. The house lay in the opposite direction, and Rayna headed for the nearest entrance, through the walled garden that sheltered the hacienda’s western exposure. The iron gate creaked a scratchy welcome as she slipped inside and moved across the flagstone patio toward the house.

The magnificent old two-story home had been constructed in the Spanish style over sixty years ago. Shady galerías encircled it on both floors inside and out, and each room had doors that led to the exterior galleries and interior courtyard.

The stucco hacienda had a long and colorful history, having survived Mexico’s revolt against Spain and the American incursion that subsequently wrested the territory from Mexico. What mattered to Rayna, though, was that Rancho Verde was the only home she had ever known. She loved the house and the lush green Rio Grande valley that sheltered it. She loved the mountains and deserts beyond the valley, too. It was a harsh land that could be cruel and unrelenting, but it was her home.

Her mother had insisted that she and her sister, Skylar, received a proper education back east, so Rayna had seen other parts of the country—places where water was never scarce, neighbors were plentiful, and the greatest danger to life and limb was being run over by a runaway carriage on a cobble-stone street. Her brush with civilization had done nothing to change her opinion of Rancho Verde. It was the most beautiful place on earth.

The house was quiet when Rayna slipped through the arcade that connected the patio with the courtyard. Through the open doors of the dining room on the other side of the enclosure she spotted one of the servants laying the table for supper, and she heard muted voices drifted down from the upper floor. Anxious to tell her father about the bonanza she’d corralled, she headed across the courtyard to the study. The desk was littered with open ledgers, but Raymond Templeton was nowhere to be seen.

Disappointed, Rayna ejected the shells from her Winchester, placed it in the polished gun case by the door, and returned her cache of ammunition to the drawer below the rack. She performed the ritual with the ease of someone who had been well trained in the proper care of weapons, as indeed she had 8

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been. Rayna had been working the ranch alongside her father for as long as she could remember, and only a fool roamed the countryside unarmed.

That chore completed, she returned to the courtyard and dashed up the nearest staircase with her usual abandon.

“Unless you’re trying to escape a stampede, I suggest you slow down, dear.”

Her mother’s quietly spoken admonition brought Rayna up short, and she turned. Collie Templeton was approaching the stairs with an armload of fresh linens. “No stampede, Mother. I was just trying to see how quickly I could get into my room and out of these dusty clothes.”

Collie gave her daughter a once-over as she started up the stairs. “In this instance I could almost approve of your haste. Did you have trouble with Samson again?”

“How did you know?”

Collie’s blue eyes, so much like her daughter’s, glittered with amusement.

“Marie spotted you walking in.”

Rayna groaned. “Marie and everyone else on the ranch. I told Gil to get rid of that new blacksmith. He’s absolutely worthless.” She extended her arms.

“Here, let me help you with those.”

“Not until you’ve had a bath, young lady,” she replied sternly, shifting her bundle out of Rayna’s reach. “Consuelo would skin you alive if she had to wash these over again.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Rayna argued good-naturedly as she turned and strolled with her mother down the gallery. “She’s been threatening that for years and hasn’t caught me yet.”