The Heart of a Stranger Read online

  Where Texas society reigns supreme—

  and appearances are everything.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Lourdes Quinterez had her share of trouble. Managing a run-down stud farm, juggling mountains of debt and raising twin four-year-olds left Lourdes little time for a love affair with a mystery man—even one with sinful brown eyes, a sexy crooked grin and a body to die for!

  Juan Guapo awakened to a world of hurt and no memories. He didn’t even know his name—his real name. All he had were vague feelings about a past that made him feel uneasy. Now he owed everything to the sultry, blond-haired angel of mercy who made his heart beat in double time each time their eyes met.

  Nina and Paige Quinterez had never known a father’s love, and yearned for a daddy to call their own. It didn’t take long for the sprites to decide that their mysterious houseguest would make an excellent addition to their family.

  Dear Reader,

  When it comes to passion, Silhouette Desire has exactly what you need. This month’s offerings include Cindy Gerard’s The Librarian’s Passionate Knight, the next installment of DYNASTIES: THE BARONES. A naive librarian gets swept off her feet by a dashing Barone sibling—who could ask for anything more? But more we do have, with another story about attractive and wealthy men, from Anne Marie Winston. Billionaire Bachelors: Gray is a deeply compelling story about a man who gets a second chance at life—and maybe the love of a lifetime.

  Sheri WhiteFeather is back this month with the final story in our LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB trilogy. The Heart of a Stranger will leave you breathless when a man with a sordid past gets a chance for ultimate redemption. Launching a new series this month is Kathie DeNosky with Lonetree Ranchers: Brant. When a handsome rancher helps a damsel in distress, all his defenses come crashing down and the fun begins.

  Silhouette Desire is pleased to welcome two brand-new authors. Nalini Singh’s Desert Warrior is an intense, emotional read with an alpha hero to die for. And Anna DePalo’s Having the Tycoon’s Baby, part of our ongoing series THE BABY BANK, is a sexy romp about one woman’s need for a child and the sexy man who grants her wish—but at a surprising price.

  There’s plenty of passion rising up here in Silhouette Desire this month. So dive right in and enjoy.

  Melissa Jeglinski

  Senior Editor

  Silhouette Desire

  The Heart of a Stranger

  SHERI WHITEFEATHER

  Books by Sheri WhiteFeather

  Silhouette Desire

  Warrior’s Baby #1248

  Skyler Hawk: Lone Brave #1272

  Jesse Hawk: Brave Father #1278

  Cheyenne Dad #1300

  Night Wind’s Woman #1332

  Tycoon Warrior #1364

  Cherokee #1376

  Comanche Vow #1388

  Cherokee Marriage Dare #1478

  Sleeping with Her Rival #1496

  Cherokee Baby #1509

  Cherokee Dad #1523

  The Heart of a Stranger #1527

  SHERI WHITEFEATHER

  lives in Southern California and enjoys ethnic dining, attending powwows and visiting art galleries and vintage clothing stores near the beach. Since her one true passion is writing, she is thrilled to be a part of the Silhouette Desire line. When she isn’t writing, she often reads until the wee hours of the morning.

  Sheri’s husband, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, inspires many of her stories. They have a son, a daughter and a trio of cats—domestic and wild. She loves to hear from her readers. You may write to her at: P.O. Box 17146, Anaheim, California 92817. Visit her Web site at www.SheriWhiteFeather.com.

  When Silhouette invited me to participate in this series, I was thrilled. Of course I had no idea an Italian mobster would be my hero. I was expecting, well…an American Indian. But being of Italian/American descent, I became quickly attached to my new hero. I’d never paid much attention to the long-since-dead mobsters barely mentioned in my family, but as I researched this project, I couldn’t help but ask my mom all sorts of questions about them. Simply put, this story blends fact, fiction and some creative liberties.

  Special thanks to Joan Marlow Golan for offering me this book and assigning Mavis Allen as the editor. To Ann Major, a major star and dear lady, for encouraging me to write faster and strive for new goals. And finally—to Kathie DeNosky, a rising star and treasured friend, for burning the midnight oil. Getting our plot-obsessed minds together was a workaholic’s delight. I can’t wait to create heroes and villains with you again.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  One

  Life was complicated. That much twenty-eight-year-old Lourdes Quinterez could attest to.

  Her only ranch hand had returned to Mexico to attend to a family emergency today. By all indications he would not be coming back.

  His understandable defection was the least of her worries, she supposed. Painted Spirit, the once-thriving horse farm she’d inherited from her grandfather, suffered from financial neglect. Back taxes had culminated into bank loans, and honoring those loans had drained the ranch’s resources dry, making other debts nearly impossible to pay.

  As the dry Texas wind scorched her cheeks and whipped her unbound hair away from her face, Lourdes entered the barn and headed to the granary to take inventory, telling herself to keep her wits. Her family—a surrogate grandmother, a visiting teenager and her sweet four-year-old twins—depended on her to make ends meet.

  If only those ends weren’t so frazzled. If only the farm hadn’t gotten so run-down. If only—

  Suddenly a shadow, a dark intrusion behind a pallet of grain, snared her attention. Was it a predator?

  She froze, hugging the clipboard she carried to her chest. Lourdes didn’t scare easily, but the distorted figure, or what she could see of him near the ground, appeared human.

  She preferred the animal variety.

  A man in her barn meant trouble. Was he a drifter? A drunk sleeping off a hangover? Someone prone to violence?

  She glanced around for something to use as a weapon, and spotted an old, rusted hay hook stored with several dilapidated boxes of junk in the corner.

  Thank goodness long days and exhausted nights had left her too busy to haul away the collected debris.

  She inched forward and latched on to the hay hook, setting down her clipboard in the process.

  The human shadow didn’t move. But she did. Slowly, cautiously, silently cursing the shuffle of her timeworn boots.

  She peered around the view-obstructing pallet and caught her breath.

  The intruder, a broad-shouldered man slumped against the wall, was in no condition to fend off an attack, not even by an adrenaline-pumped female wielding metal prongs.

  He was already bruised and bleeding.

  She moved closer. He’d been beaten, pummeled, she presumed, by hard-hitting fists. His rumpled clothes, a denim shirt and a pair of jeans, bore signs of a struggle. Had his face taken the brunt of the beating? Or had he sustained other injuries, as well?

  She knelt at his side, and for a moment their gazes locked.

  Then she realized he fought to stay conscious, battling for the strength to hang on.

  Lourdes abandoned the hay hook and pressed her hand to his forehead. His skin was hot and damp.

  Without thinking, she smoothed the front of his thick, dark hair away from his face, the way a mother would soothe
a fevered child’s brow.

  He squinted. One of his eyes nearly swelled shut. Streaks of dirt and dried blood camouflaged his face, smearing below his nose and across his cheeks, where he’d apparently wiped the mixture with a telltale sleeve.

  How long had he been in the barn? All night? Or had he taken refuge early this morning?

  She had to get him inside, into a safe, warm bed. Cáco would know what to do. Her surrogate grandmother was a healer, practiced in the art of ancient medicine.

  Suddenly a sensible voice in her head cautioned: Don’t bring a stranger into your home. Don’t invite trouble. Pawn him off on an ambulance instead.

  And offend Cáco? Some of the Indians in the area lived and breathed by the Comanche woman’s healings.

  But she doubted this man was Indian. He looked—

  What? Latino? Greek? Italian? A combination thereof?

  Did it matter? Cáco would insist on taking him under her wing nonetheless.

  Lourdes went to the granary door and called out to Amy, Cáco’s biological granddaughter, a city girl who stayed at the ranch during her school breaks.

  Amy appeared almost instantly. After Lourdes led her to the stranger, the teenager practically swallowed the wad of gum in her mouth.

  Although Amy was the descendant of a long line of medicine women, the girl blanched. “Who is he?” she asked, with wide-eyed horror.

  “I don’t know. But we have to take him to Cáco.” Before he passes out, Lourdes thought.

  Gauging the man’s bulk, Amy made a worried face. “Can he walk?”

  “I hope so. At least as far as the truck.” Lourdes knelt beside the stranger again. He probably weighed two hundred pounds. Carrying him was out of the question.

  “Can you walk?” she asked him, echoing Amy’s concern. When he didn’t respond, she added, “If we help?”

  He blinked, then nodded, his gaze not quite focused.

  Getting him on his feet proved the most difficult, but once he was up, Lourdes and Amy refused to let go. They kept their arms around his waist, encouraging him to lean on them for support. Sandwiched between them, he stood at least six-three, hulking like a bruised and battered giant.

  Lourdes prayed he didn’t give up and fall to the ground, taking her and Amy with him. Already the teenager’s narrow shoulders sagged from his weight. Lourdes wasn’t faring much better. His unsteady steps put her off balance, making her weave like a tanked-up cowboy on a saloon-slumming night.

  They helped him into the truck, and he landed on the bench seat and slumped against Lourdes as she climbed in beside him.

  From this proximity, the stranger’s sweat-dampened skin mingled with the faint, metallic smell of blood, creating a dark and dangerous pheromone.

  Everything about him seemed dark and dangerous—his olive skin, those midnight-colored eyes, the blackish-brown hair Lourdes had smoothed across his brow.

  She gave Amy the keys to the pickup, and the fifteen-year-old accepted them eagerly, making use of her driver learner’s permit.

  The young girl clutched the steering wheel, lead-footing the Ford across the terrain, popping her gum with each jarring bump. Lourdes didn’t ask her to slow down. A half-conscious man seemed like a good excuse to speed.

  The desertlike air blasted through the open window, fanning Lourdes’s face with heat. She wondered if the feverish man could feel it, too.

  Amy stopped at the house, killed the engine and tore off, racing through the back door for her grandmother.

  “We should wait here,” Lourdes said to the stranger, knowing the anxious teenager hadn’t given them a choice.

  She certainly couldn’t haul him up the scattered-stone walkway herself.

  Cáco, a robust woman with a gray-streaked bun, finally appeared. Her cotton dress flurried around her, billowing in the breeze.

  Lourdes had never been so happy to see Cáco.

  “Amy is looking after your daughters,” the older lady said as she opened the truck, informing her that all of the youngsters, including the gum-smacking teenager, had been gently shooed away.

  Lourdes nodded and stepped aside, giving Cáco access to the injured man.

  First the Comanche woman gazed steadily into his eyes, and then she ran deft fingers through his hair, cupping the back of his head. As she found a tender spot, he flinched.

  “Someone must have hit you with a blunt object. That’s why you’re so dizzy,” she told him. “Do you think you can stay on your feet until we get you inside?”

  He nodded, and even though the effort cost him, he remained upright. But the moment, the very instant Lourdes and Cáco guided him to an empty bed, he pitched forward, losing the consciousness he’d been fighting all along.

  The stranger wasn’t out for long. He came to with Cáco checking his vital signs. Testing his basic brain functions, she evaluated the size of his pupils and their reaction to light. He didn’t appear to pass the memory tests. He answered her questions with jumbled words.

  “Watch him,” she told Lourdes. “Call me if he loses consciousness again. I’m going to boil a root mixture.”

  “All right.” Lourdes kept a bedside vigil.

  The stranger rolled over, moaned and grabbed a pillow. Too tall for the double bed, his booted feet draped over the edge.

  His partially untucked shirt bore a torn sleeve and two missing buttons at the hem, Lourdes noticed, and his Wranglers were stained, as well. They rode a bit too low on his hips. Someone had nearly beaten the life out of him, and his clothes had gotten tugged and tattered in the scuffle.

  Cáco finally came back and placed a basin of water and a stack of washcloths on a functional nightstand. The guest room was small and tidy, with paneled walls, braided area rugs and a gold-veined mirror, depicting the era in which Lourdes had been born.

  She glanced at the bed and wondered how old the injured man was. Thirtysomething, she suspected.

  “Help me undress him,” Cáco said, as the stranger closed his eyes.

  Remove the bloodied shirt stretching across his ample chest and the jeans slung low on those lean hips? “Is that necessary?” Lourdes asked stupidly.

  Cáco gave her an exasperated look. “Of course it is. I need to examine him for other injuries, and he should be bathed. Cleansed of the fever.”

  She reached for his shirt, leaving Lourdes his boots and pants.

  “Did he say anything to you?” the older woman asked.

  “No.” She could do this, damn it. She knew how to work a cowboy boot off a person’s foot.

  “He has a concussion.” Cáco released his shirt buttons. “We’ll have to keep a close eye on him. Even a mild head injury can cause the brain to malfunction. For days, sometimes weeks.” She opened his shirt, then made a stunned sound.

  In the midst of peeling off his socks, Lourdes glanced up to see what had startled the old woman.

  Instantly, she knew. The silver cross around his neck looked hauntingly familiar.

  “Cáco?” She stared at her surrogate grandmother, but got no response.

  Unable to stop herself, Lourdes moved closer. It couldn’t be, could it?

  She reached for the necklace. It looked the same, identical to the one that had belonged to her father. The sentimental heirloom Lourdes’s now-deceased husband had pawned years before, with her other jewelry. More valuable pieces had been taken, but the silver cross had been an emotional loss.

  She turned the shining object over. And found the inscription.

  To keep you safe.

  It was her cross. Her family history. Her heart.

  Had this man purchased it from the pawnshop all those years ago? Lourdes had tried to recover the necklace after she’d discovered what her husband had done, but the sentimental heirloom had already been sold.

  “Where did he get this?” she asked aloud. And why had he showed up at her ranch? Beaten and bruised?

  He opened his eyes, and she flinched and dropped the necklace. It thumped against his chest. Agains
t his heart.

  Cáco didn’t say a word. She stood back as the man lifted his hand and stroked Lourdes’s cheek. The tips of his fingers grazed gently, making her warm and tingly.

  A lover’s touch. A stranger’s unexpected caress.

  A second later, his hand slid from her face and melted onto the bed, loose and fluid against a starched white sheet.

  From there, he remained still. He seemed dazed, confused. Lost in the recesses of his mind.

  I’m confused, too, Lourdes thought, glancing at the sterling silver cross once again.

  Cáco stepped forward and unbuttoned the cuffs on his shirt, working the garment from his arms, resuming her task.

  Lourdes took heed, knowing she was expected to do the same. But it wasn’t easy, not with him watching her through those glazed eyes.

  Feeling sensuously intrusive, she unbuckled his belt and unzipped his jeans, mindful to leave his boxers in place as she pulled the pants down his legs.

  Endless legs. Long, muscular and dusted with hair.

  While Cáco ran her clinical hands along his body, looking for cracked ribs and swollen kneecaps, Lourdes rummaged through his jeans, hoping to find his wallet—his ID, his name, his date of birth, an address, pictures of his family.

  She searched every pocket and uncovered absolutely nothing. No indication of who he was.

  “He must have been robbed,” she concluded out loud, glancing at his scraped knuckles.

  Had he fought back? Enraged his attackers by defending himself? Surely more than one man had accosted him.

  How many had he battled? Two? Three?

  “No bones are broken,” Cáco observed.

  The man blinked and turned his head to the sound of the old woman’s voice. In turn, she dipped a washcloth into the basin of root-boiled water and cleaned his face with the now-tepid liquid, reassuring him that he would be all right.