Fire Brand by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

his hand loosening his tie and unbuttoning his jacket. His head went back with a hard sigh.
    â€œI’ve got to get up in the morning and fly to Canada. Damn it, I hate these trips out of the country,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m getting too old to enjoy them anymore.”
    â€œYou aren’t old,” she protested.
    â€œThirty-six next birthday.” His head turned and his black eyes sought hers in the glaring light from the streetlamps overhead. “Twelve years older than you, cupcake.”
    She laughed at the description. “I’m not a cupcake.”
    â€œThat’s better. You’ve been gloomy all night.”
    â€œThe man they shot was just a boy,” she replied. She leaned back, too, her eyes quiet as they looked through the windshield at the city lights and deserted street. “He had a big family and grew up in the kind of god-awful poverty you read about and wish somebody could do something about. He killed a man and died for twenty stupid dollars, Bowie.”
    He stretched, drawing the fabric of his white shirt taut across the firm muscles of his broad chest and flat stomach. “People have died for less. It was his turn.”
    â€œThat’s unfeeling,” she accused.
    â€œIs it?” One big arm slid behind her bucket seat and he studied her thoughtfully. “He tried to hold up a store. That was stupid. There are poor people all over the world who live honest lives and made the best of what they have. A man with a gun isn’t going to accomplish a damned thing except his own destruction. That’s basic.”
    â€œIt’s still terrible,” she said.
    â€œWhy don’t you find something else to do with your life?” he asked. “You’re too soft to be a reporter.”
    â€œWhat would you suggest I do?” she asked.
    â€œYou could come home to Casa Río and help me fight the combine that’s trying to move in next door to us,” he suggested.
    â€œWhat combine?”
    â€œSome agricultural outfit called Biological Agri-market—Bio-Ag, for short. They’re trying to buy up land in the valley to support a superfarm—the farm of the future, they call it. But I’m afraid that what they’re actually after is a quick profit and some devastating ecological impact.”
    â€œThey can’t damage the environment,” she assured him. “First, they have to file an environmental impact statement; then, they have to go through the planning and development commission...”
    â€œHold it a minute,” he said. “Lassiter doesn’t have a planning commission, and our particular valley isn’t zoned.”
    She searched his eyes. “Still, won’t the development have to go through regular channels?”
    â€œIf they can get the land,” he agreed. He smiled coolly. “Hell will freeze over before they get any of mine.”
    â€œThen you don’t have a problem.”
    â€œThat’s debatable.” He lit a cigarette, cracking a window to let out the smoke. “Some of the town fathers in Lassiter are being courted by the developers. They’re promising jobs and a lavish local economy, and they’re greasing palms right and left.” He smiled at her. “I had a threatening phone call yesterday. The word is that I’m holding up progress single-handedly by refusing to sell land to the development. It seems that Casa Río has the best soil for their purposes.”
    â€œLassiter could use more jobs, Bowie,” she began slowly. “I know how you feel about the land...”
    â€œDo you?” His voice was like cold steel. “Apaches used to hunt on our range. My great-great-grandfather made one of the first treaties with the Chiricahua Apaches, and there’s a petroglyph that marks the spot where they agreed on it. Cochise camped at one of the river crossings with his people. There was a small fort, and part of the