Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online Page A

cattle. He could have slept, but didn’t. Instead he savored the peace of the moment, the cattle’s thirst being slaked, the woman resting only inches from his thigh, the tactile memory of her breasts brushing against his arm.
    With a silent curse he told himself what kind of fool he was even to look at Hope. She’s not a woman for bed today and good-bye tomorrow. So stop thinking about the way she looked outlined against the sky with her blouse shaping her the way I’d like to.
    Even if she came to me, asking for me, I’d only hurt her. Is that what I want? Do I want to give her a hand when she’s down and needs me and then drag her off to bed like she’s just one more Saturday night?
    Hell, I outgrew that kind of screwing before I was old enough to drink.
    Grimly Rio listened to his internal lecture. He approved each point with his intelligence and at the same time fought against them with every one of his fully alive senses. But despite his prowling masculine hunger, he made no move toward Hope.
    Not a word. Not a gesture. Not even a hungry look.
    Instinctively he knew beyond doubt or argument that she wouldn’t give herself casually to any man. He also knew just as deeply that he didn’t give himself at all to any woman, not really, not in any way that mattered. In the last thirty-three years he had learned many things about himself. One of them was that Brother-to-the-wind was more than his Indian name. It was his fate, and he had finally accepted it.
    He had spent his life searching for something that was more powerful, more enduring, more beautiful, more compelling, than the endless sweep of the western lands. He had found no place, no person, capable of holding him when his brother the wind called to him, whispering of secret springs and shaded canyons where men never walked.
    The other thing that Rio had learned about himself on the way to growing up was that while he was born white, raised white until he was twelve, and educated white after sixteen, white women didn’t want him. Not all of him. They didn’t want his silences or his uncanny insights into life and the land.
    Most of all, white women didn’t want to have a child that was less white than they were.
    He didn’t really blame them. After what he had been through, he could write a book about being not white, not being Indian, not being anything to anyone but a pain in the butt.
    Rio pulled his hat down over his eyes, shutting out the sight of Hope’s vulnerable body within reach of his hungry hands. He subdued his desire with the same steel discipline that had kept his raging temper under control when he was growing up and blonde kids had baited him, calling him breed and blankethead. He had fought his tormentors with icy ferocity, but he hadn’t killed any of them.
    And he could have, even then.
    When he was grown, most of the men who backed him into a corner depended on numbers or various weapons to make them strong. Rio had learned never to depend on anyone or anything but himself. It gave him an advantage in sheer ruthlessness that at first surprised and then overwhelmed his opponents.
    It also made him very much a man alone. He had accepted that, too. Brother-to-the-wind.
    Cattle milled and pushed, raising a dust that made the air a shimmering brass color. Water rushed out of Behemoth, thundering into the stock tank with a cool sound. The smells of cattle, water, and dust merged with those of sunlight, piñon, and sage.
    The mixture of odors was soothing to Hope, familiar, reassuring. She sighed and relaxed even more. Exhaustion washed over her in waves, making her dizzy. She realized that she was on the edge of falling asleep miles from home while a big stranger half-lay nearby, so close to her that she could sense each stirring of his body as he breathed.
    Yet she wasn’t worried. Since her eighteenth birthday she had learned quite a bit about people in general and men in particular. Rio didn’t give out the signals of a man who would