A sharp crack sounded outside the idle carriage, and Honor McCrae recoiled in her seat. Pressing a hand over her heart, she recovered with a surge of annoyance. Blasted bullwhips!

Her nerves were as frayed as old hemp. After a grueling four-month journey on the Santa Fe Trail, a journey fraught with dry water holes, crippled mules, and an Indian attack, she wouldn’t have thought anything could startle her anymore. And now the merchant caravan had stopped just shy of its destination so the vainglorious wagoners could prepare for their grand entry into Santa Fe. Merciful heaven, they only had a few miles to go!

From the seclusion of her enclosed carriage, Honor peeked around the curtain. Outside, chaos reigned as seventy-three wag-oners, many with large Mexican families and extra hired hands, wove new snappers into the tips of their twenty-foot whips. The air crackled with popping sounds like musket fire.

Far in the distance, she saw a cluster of mud-brick houses bak-ing in the sun. Santa Fe, New Mexico—and Fergus. Nervous ex-citement formed a knot in her stomach at the thought of her half-brother waiting to meet her. She yearned to feel his welcoming arms around her and hear him tell her everything would be all right. Once he knew about the trouble brewing back home in Vir-ginia, he would understand why she’d come out West to find him.

She settled back on the padded seat and agitated the stifling air with her fan. Once she got to the safety of his ranch, there would be no more running and hiding and pretending she was someone else. Fergus would take care of everything.

Suddenly, the door of her coach flew open. A man bounded in. The stranger brought with him a draft of hot air laden with the scent of wood smoke and desert sage.

Her heart lurched. “Who are you? What do you want?” She reached for her folded parasol.

“Quiet!” The intruder yanked the door shut and peered warily through a gap in the curtain hanging over the window. From under a dusty felt hat, his black wind-tossed hair hung nearly to his shoul-ders. He wore a hunting shirt over buckskin trousers, cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt. A rectangular slab of bronze with an engraved military insignia served as a belt buckle. A large sheathed knife and a holstered pistol added to his menacing appear-ance.

“You’re not with the caravan.” Gripping the parasol tightly in both fists, she held it up in front of her. “I know all the wagoners and drovers—”

He scowled fiercely in her direction. Looking powerful and dangerous, his presence overwhelmed the enclosed carriage. “I said keep quiet.”

He wasn’t a lawman—he wore no badge. But that didn’t mean much.

“If Henry Teitelbaum sent you, it’s too late. You tell him that!” Her voice rose shrilly. “I’m in Mexico now, and you can’t make me go back.”

As he shifted toward her, she swung her parasol at his head.

He batted it aside and slid across the leather seat, crowding her into the corner. She opened her mouth to yell, but his hand cut off her strangled cry. As he drew his long-barreled pistol from its holster, she shrank against the seat.

“Shut your mouth,” he growled in her ear. “I don’t want to have to shoot anybody.”

Intense slate-gray eyes loomed inches from her own. She read grim determination there, and a haunted look that testified to an accumulation of experience it would take her a lifetime to match.

He looked deep into her eyes.

She forgot to breathe.

The rib-thumping cadence of her heart drowned out all other sounds. The carriage that had been her sanctuary for four months had turned into a death trap. Sickened by fear and the salt-taste of his fingers against her mouth, she fought a gagging reflex. Desper-ately, she drove her nails into his wrist.

With a curse, he jerked away his hand, then poked the barrel of his pistol into her cheek. “If you scream, so help me God—”

Scream? She wished she could. Terror had constricted her throat. Not that it would do much good to scream. With all the shouting and cracking of whips, she’d be lucky if anyone heard her. She shuddered, realizing that a bullet through her head would take her life without raising much of a fuss at all.

She managed a hoarse croak. “Whatever he’s paying, I’ll give you more. I don’t have much money, but I’ve got—”

“Forget the money! Are you Honor McCrae?”

“No! You have the wrong person!” Convulsively, her fingers closed on the purple velvet reticule lying in her lap. Inside the bag, hard knobs and angles outlined her small pocket pistol.

“Green eyes, dark red hair. You have to be her.” He pro-nounced the words with a slight burr. She’d heard that same accent among certain European immigrants, but couldn’t place it.

She took a deep breath, drawing a measure of comfort from the hard shape of her pistol in the bag. Carefully, and without tak-ing her eyes from his face, she rotated the reticule on her thighs. She dared not risk opening the drawstring closure to grope inside, but she could possibly fumble the tiny weapon into position and fire it through the soft cloth.

After a moment of silence, the intruder slowly eased back on the seat across from her, a challenge burning in his stormy gray eyes. Her lower legs, all mixed up with his in the narrow space be-tween the seats, rubbed against his high-topped boots. She wanted to kick her way free, but was scared to move a muscle. The butt of his pistol rested on his thigh now, his fingers curled around it, the barrel aimed at her belly.

His searching gaze swept over her. “I can’t imagine there would be more than one white woman on this damn ox-train. I doubt another made the trip all year.”

That much was true. The only other women in the caravan had black hair and brown skins and they were returning to Mexico from a trading expedition with their husbands.

“What do you want?” At last, she found the trigger of her own weapon through the purple velvet. With an unobtrusive motion, she aimed the snubbed barrel at his heart. With the slightest movement of one finger, she could blow a hole in the stranger and send him to Kingdom Come—put out that fierce light in those dark eyes forever.

“I bring a message from your brother, Fergus McCrae.”

She stared at him. “You know Fergus?” Her gaze dropped to his pistol. The large bore at the end of the barrel gaped at her like an empty socket. “An old friend of the family, I suppose?”

“You might say. When you get to Santa Fe, you’re to make immediate arrangements to return to the States.”

“But why?”

“Fergus doesn’t want you here. This is no place for a woman like you.”

She took a slow breath, trying to grasp what he was saying. Turn back? “Now, see here, Mister. I’ve come a long way to find my brother.” Her small black hat had been pushed askew by the violence and a hatpin pricked her scalp, but she dared not relin-quish the hold on her reticule or the pistol inside. “He wouldn’t send a message like that. Not without a good reason.”

“He has his reasons.”

“I—I don’t believe you.” Studying his face, she searched for a clue to the truth. “Has anything happened to him? He’s meeting me in Santa Fe, isn’t he?”

An expression of regret or something like it crossed his face. He shook his head. “He won’t be there.”

At the dire implications of his words, cold dread seeped through her insides. “You’re lying. Fergus would never trust a des-perado like you to deliver a message to me. If he did, he wouldn’t expect me to accept it.”

The man took a slow inventory of her person. She glared at him in silent indignation as his gaze wandered downward to the scooped neckline of her green silk dress, then shifted lower yet. She was fully aware that without the petticoats she should be wear-ing, her limp skirt molded itself to her legs, and its dusty hem re-vealed bare ankles sticking out of worn-out shoes. Her face burned. No gentleman would indulge himself in such blatant inter-est in anything below a woman’s neck. Her hand trembled in her desire to slap his face.

His gaze settled on her reticule. “Either you take me at my word or go ahead and use your little peashooter on me right now.”

She swallowed hard. “My little peashooter, as you call it, will blow a hole in you the size of my fist!” As she tried to find some moisture in her dry mouth, she wondered if the stalemate offered her any advantage at all. Was he as loath to shoot her as she was him?

With slow, deliberate movements, he replaced his pistol in its holster. “Make up your mind. Are you going to take my word or shoot me?”

After a moment of frozen silence, during which time she actu-ally tried to squeeze the trigger, she realized she couldn’t kill him. Not with his gray-eyed gaze fixed on her face. He had courage, she admitted grudgingly. But how could she avoid his challenge with-out surrendering? Nervously, she wiped her damp palm on the vel-vet bag.

Suddenly, he reached out and snatched the reticule off her lap. With a short laugh, he leaned back, stuffing it inside his shirt.

Horror washed through her. “What are you doing? Give me that!”

“Not many women can kill a man in cold blood—not face to face. But I can’t swear you won’t shoot me as I’m leaving.” He shook his head. “No, I’ll give it back to you in Santa Fe.”

All her bank notes were in that velvet bag! She didn’t even think. With fingers curled like claws, she lunged for the reticule.

As she fell on him, he grabbed her shoulders and, instead of fending her off, dragged her closer. Speechless with shock, she braced her hands against his chest.

He jerked her up in a steel-like grip until his lips almost touched hers. Narrowed eyes held her mesmerized. “Nuevo Méjico is as lawless a place as you’ll find this side of Hades. It’s time you learned that, Green Eyes.”

To her dismay, her legs had completely tangled with his, and as she struggled to free herself, she found herself straddling one of his muscular thighs. In fact, his hard body made contact with every crucial part of hers.

She sucked in air to scream, but he lowered his mouth to hers, blocking the sound. The intimacy of the invasion stunned her. He cupped the back of her head with one hand and slid the other around her waist, holding her immobile. Under the onslaught of his lips and tongue, every muscle in her body stiffened. The rapid pattering of her heart in her chest added to her sensation of help-lessness—she felt like a small mouse in the clutches of a predator.

A sudden rapping jarred the carriage door.

Her predator flinched, then shoved her away and grabbed for his pistol. She flopped onto the seat across from him, her dignity shattered. He seized the door handle, preventing entry.

“Miz Honor?” The door latch rattled from the outside. “I’s ready to leave when you is.”

Honor recognized the voice of her driver, but couldn’t un-scramble her thoughts enough to answer him.

The dark stranger grinned at her, his teeth a flash of white in a sun-weathered face. “Did you like that as much as I did, Miss Honor McCrae? No? Well, it’s nothing to what can happen to you if you don’t heed my warning.” His smile faded, leaving a hard look in his eye. “Remember this: If you go to the McCrae Ranch, you could end up dead.”