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  Branded

  Vivian Vaughan

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1997 by Jane Vaughan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition June 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-848-4

  Also by Vivian Vaughan

  A Wish to Build a Dream On

  Storms Never Last

  Sweetheart of the Rodeo

  No Place for a Lady

  Reluctant Enemies

  The Texas Star Trilogy

  Texas Gamble

  Texas Dawn

  Texas Gold

  Silver Creek Stories

  Heart’s Desire

  Texas Twilight

  Runaway Passion

  Sweet Texas Nights

  Jarrett Family Sagas

  Sweet Autumn Surrender

  Silver Surrender

  Sunrise Surrender

  Secret Surrender

  Tremaynes of Apache Wells Series

  Chance of a Lifetime

  Catch a Wild Heart

  Prologue

  Yuma Territorial Prison

  Arizona, 1895

  It was a hell of a dream. Enhanced by five years behind bars, it had taken on mythic proportions. But behind bars or free, making love to Jacy Kimble was an illusion. At least, for Trevor Fallon.

  Recognizing the end of the dream, Trevor curled his knees to his chest on the hard narrow bunk and struggled to hold onto the last vestiges of sleep, to the fading sparkle of the fantasy, to the gossamer strands of Jacy’s long blond hair.

  Her voice had never been so soft, nor her body so tempting. With long slender legs wrapped around him, she snugged into the curl of his body. She fit. They fit. Lordy, did they ever. Like one hand clasping another. Naturally, no need for adjustments; comfortably, as if from long practice.

  In truth, Trevor had never made love to Jacy in his life, never seen her nude, never felt her breasts burrow into his chest or her legs embrace him.

  I love you, Trevor.

  In his dream Jacy’s sultry voice whispered the words with just enough sincerity to arouse a response—alarm. Panic swelled inside him. It threatened to shatter the vision.

  Love? Reality hummed through the fragmenting dream like bees through a field of clover. Jacy Kimble love him? Reality—Jacy had never loved anybody but herself in her life. Reality—nobody loved Trevor and he didn’t intend for them to start.

  I want you, Trevor, whispered the same sultry voice.

  Want? That was more like it. The aphrodisiac effect of the dream drugged him into semiconsciousness once more.

  But reality danced around the dream like a hot summer breeze dances through dandelion blossoms. Jacy Kimble want him? A no-account, drifting nobody? Her father’s hired cowhand? Sure, she wanted him—to tease, tempt, and to desert.

  “I want you, too, Jace,” he mumbled into the magic, playing the game, skilled now with five years’ practice at keeping the fantasy alive. The ache was real. Even his tumescent flesh was convinced. Which was all well and good. For until the hangman’s noose replaced the image of Jacy’s tempting body, all he had was this dream.

  And by God he didn’t intend to give it up so easily.

  While he nipped kisses to her face and mentally blocked the gray dawn of awareness that threatened to end the affair too soon, her long fingers smoothed worry lines on his forehead and her tapered oval nails, capable of inflicting pain or inciting passion, traced the ragged scar that was now five years old.

  Such a lovely scar, she purred.

  In truth, Jacy Kimble had never seen this scar, not since the wound healed. Never up close. This close.

  I know how you got it, she whispered, stunning him.

  Why didn’t you say so in court? he wanted to ask, but to do so would end the dream. “You do, huh?”

  Defending me, her voice purred.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” he whispered.

  She shook his shoulder, gently. I believe you, Trevor.

  “Why didn’t you say it?”

  I know you’re innocent.

  “Damnit, Jace. Why didn’t you say it?”

  She shook him harder. I believe…

  And harder.

  “Why didn’t you say it?” he shouted.

  “Fallon!” The rasping voice of the prison guard tore through the remaining traces of the dream like a horse cutting cobwebs on a foggy morning. “Get up from there, Fallon. Come with me. And keep the noise down.”

  Trevor didn’t have to rub his eyes to clear his brain. Fear did it for him. Cold, clammy fear. The time had come! For five years occasional rumors of his pending execution had spread through the prison grapevine but had never come to fruition. This time there had been no rumor. Without forewarning, reality was all the more a shock.

  “Quiet as a kitten, now,” Yancy, the gargantuan guard, reiterated. “Come along.”

  Quiet? Anger spread through Trevor’s fear. In five long years on death row no one had made this nighttime trek from fanciful dream to hangman’s scaffold without a show of defiance. When Yancy, the warden’s own henchman, gripped the back of Trevor’s prison shirt and attempted to shove him through the cell door, Trevor had had enough.

  He jerked away. He kicked. He opened his mouth to curse. Yancy stuffed a foul-tasting cloth in it. Before Trevor could jerk it out, the much larger guard twisted his arms behind him.

  “Go sweetly, like a babe,” Yancy growled in his ear.

  What the hell? Trevor strove to rekindle the flame from his dream. Jacy Kimble would be a much better image to take to the gallows.

  But the break with tradition worried his mind, likely a subconscious effort to keep his imminent death from doing it. Why so secretive? Prison activities were as regimented as sunrise/sunset. So, why…?

  Hunter. Convicted together, Trevor and Hunter Kimble, Jacy’s brother, had resided in Yuma Prison for five years without so much as a distant glimpse of each other. Through the grapevine Trevor knew that Hunter was still alive, awaiting execution like himself. Did the authorities not want Hunter to know of Trevor’s execution? What purpose would that serve? They couldn’t keep it quiet forever. Come sunup cell fifteen in block number ten would be empty. Word would spread.

  While he worried with the situation, Yancy guided him through the first of the locked doors. By this time Trevor’s fear was so great he thought he might strangle on it. Like yeast, it filled the cavities of his body with a pressure that crushed his lungs and weakened his legs. The blackness surrounding them didn’t help. His last sight of this earth would be no sight at all, only a heavy, enveloping blackness.

  Maybe not. Maybe there would be stars in the gallows yard. Maybe he would see them before the black hood was placed over his head.

  Bars clanged, reverberating through Trevor’s tensed body. The heavy prison door gave way to Yancy’s strength. The hinges squawked. Trevor glanced up quickly, before the hood could be placed over his head. Stars. He soaked them up, basked in their light, searched for their patterns.

  His first sight of stars in five years. Why hadn’t he appreciated them when he had the chance? Easy answer. He had been too busy appreciating the woman with whom he last viewed the midnight sky
. Jacy Kimble.

  Trevor glanced around. What the hell? Although he would have thought it couldn’t be possible, a new terror attacked him. This wasn’t the prison yard. Where was the scaffold?

  When Yancy jerked the cloth from Trevor’s mouth, sweet fresh air bathed his face. He tossed his head back, inhaled deep gulps of the cool desert perfume. Suddenly he tensed.

  Nothing was right. Something was wrong—other than his imminent death. He glanced around again.

  “Where are we?” His heart lashed against his ribs like the metal tip of a guard’s whip. In a stupor, he turned to the prison walls behind him, then ahead to the trees and sand and distant horizon. All was so quiet he could hear the river.

  They were outside. Outside the damned walls.

  “What’s going on?” he managed through a throat that was drier than when the judge sentenced him to die by hanging.

  “You know what you gotta do, boy.” Without warning, Yancy shoved him to the sand. “If they don’t get you first.”

  Illuminated by a half-moon directly overhead, the desert sand glistened like gold, gold studded with aberrant shapes of creosote and sage and saguaro. Each one could have been an armed prison guard, for all Trevor’s raging senses knew.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded again.

  “Go to it, boy. You’re the only chance he’s got on this earth.”

  “Chance? Who? What…” Dumbstruck, he watched Yancy step back through the door. The hinges squawked like they controlled the gates of hell.

  And didn’t they? A scream stuck in Trevor’s throat. What was going on? He watched the door settle back into its frame. Yancy was gone.

  Trevor was alone. His heart lodged in his throat. For a time he stared at the closed door, unable to grasp what had happened. Somehow, strange as it seemed, he had gotten locked outside the prison. He should run.

  Run, before Yancy got the door open again. Spurred by animalistic terror, Trevor spun around, scanned the desert, picked out a likely creosote bush, and dived for it.

  He expected bullets to riddle his back with each step. None did. Skidding in the sand, he huddled behind the rough branches, and stared back at the prison.

  It loomed like a prehistoric vulture in the night sky. It might have been another world. With a jolt, Trevor realized that it was. It was his world.

  For five long years he had lived, unwillingly, to be sure, in that building. His security was there.

  And his death.

  Now they had set him free. For what? For sport? To chase him through the desert like a rabbit? Even so, it was a chance, wasn’t it? Inside those walls he had no chance.

  Yancy’s words screeched like a bird of prey through Trevor’s senses. You know what you gotta do, boy.

  Trevor knew what he had to do. Stay alive.

  In the middle of the night, in the middle of the desert, with no weapons, no food, no money…nothing but the prison clothes on his back. Stay alive.

  It equaled the task given Prometheus, complete with chains and fire.

  Uneasily, he began to move south along the river’s edge. Toward Mexico. How far was Mexico? Twenty miles? Thirty? Somewhere in between. He could make that. Follow the river. Skirt the towns. He could make it.

  One step after another. That’s all it would take. But at any one of those steps they could be waiting. Those who turned him loose. Whoever they were. Again, his mind toyed with motives, but he stopped. For now it didn’t matter why, it only mattered how.

  How he could escape. How fast he could run. How far.

  So he began, stumbling in the darkness, driven by a terror greater than anything he had experienced in his life. He recalled hearing someone claim that fear of the unknown was the greatest fear of all.

  Now he knew it to be true. Not only true, but a great truth. Fear of the unknown.

  The unknown: Who set him free? Why? What lay ahead? Beyond the next bush? Beyond the next footstep?

  But his will to escape was strong. To run. To escape. To get to Mexico. To Mexico. To live.

  If they don’t get you first, Yancy had said.

  The night air was cool, but the desert sand retained much of the heat. It warmed the blood that ran like an angry, icy stream through his tensed veins.

  One step. Two. Mexico. For much of the five years he spent in Yuma, escaping to Mexico had been his favored dream. Escaping to Mexico. He had done it a thousand times in his sleep. Until he realized that’s all it would ever be, a dream. Making love to Jacy Kimble was only a dream, too, but Jacy was much better fodder for senseless, mindless dreams-that-never-come-true.

  Now one of those dreams had come true, and it very nearly resembled a nightmare. But nightmare or not, Trevor was free. For the moment. Cold blood chilled his body. He must get away, farther away, far away.

  The first time he turned back to look, he had traveled no more than twenty yards. It seemed like twenty miles.

  If they don’t get you first. Trevor picked up his pace. Would he know when he crossed the border? How would he know? He would keep going until he was certain, he vowed. He would walk all the way to Mexico City if he had to.

  You know what you gotta do, boy. If they don’t get you first.

  Trevor knew what he had to do. Stay alive. Stay alive. It became the mantra that drove him.

  Running loosened his lungs and calmed his mind. After another hundred yards or so, he turned again, certain he would see droves of guards running his way.

  But all was still. The prison had diminished in size. He was that far away. Farther than he had ever dreamed he would be. Farther than…

  Then he remembered Hunter. Had they released Hunter, too? Was Hunter out here now, racing for freedom? Was Hunter…? Yancy’s words came again, this time gripping Trevor’s rapidly beating heart like in a tight fist.

  You’re the only chance he’s got.

  The only chance? Whose only chance? Chance for what? Had that black-hearted guard meant Hunter? The best friend Trevor ever had? Hunter’s only chance? What the devil could that mean?

  He scanned the horizon then glanced back to the distant walls. You know what you gotta do, boy.

  Get to Mexico. Before they got him first. Whoever the hell they were.

  But Hunter was his friend. Son of a bitch.

  What’s a friend? Trevor had no friends. He hadn’t had before Hunter. He would never have one again, either. Not if he got himself caught.

  You’re the only chance he’s got.

  Him? Trevor? Hunter’s only chance? That didn’t make two cents worth of sense. The only chance for what?

  Unwittingly Trevor’s feet began to slow. Hunter had never needed him, his brain argued. Hunter had everything. Or had had, until his path crossed Trevor’s.

  What the hell? Hunter could take care of himself. Every man for himself now.

  Then he thought of Jacy. His feet stumbled over a rock. He glanced up at the stars, bright and luminous, closer than he had ever expected to see them again on this earth. The same stars he had last viewed with Jacy Kimble.

  Trevor hardened his heart. Hell, he had run out on his own mother. He could run out on Miss Fancy Pants Jacy Kimble.

  One

  El Paso, Texas

  Two weeks later

  By midmorning Jacy Kimble was certain that everything that could go wrong in one day, had. Exhausted from lack of sleep and the oppressive summer heat, she was edgy, angry, and short of patience. But when in the last five years hadn’t she been edgy, angry, and short of patience?

  Wearily, she glanced around the single adobe room that served as living area for seven people. With two attached rooms for sleeping, the old stage station was a far cry from the comfort and luxury the Kimbles had taken for granted before they were run out of Arizona in disgrace.

  Before their lives fell apart. Before her brother Hunter was convicted of murder and sent to Yuma Prison to die.

  Before her father, Drummond, on the verge of being elected governor of Arizona Territory, lost
his ranch and livelihood and social standing, and the once politically influential Kimbles were forced to forsake everything they knew and loved.

  Now Drummond was on the brink of losing something else—his mind, which left this menagerie of relatives—father, sister-in-law, two nephews, one niece—in Jacy’s charge. Unprepared for the myriad responsibilities she faced daily, she had become a shrew. She knew she had. And she hated it.

  Today was the final straw. Drummond hadn’t returned from yesterday’s drinking binge in El Paso and someone must go after him.

  As if that weren’t enough, Tía Bella, Jacy’s sister-in-law’s aunt with whom the homeless family had come to live, had run off with several letters that must go out on the noon mail wagon.

  And who was here to help? Marielena, Jacy’s sister-in-law on whom she should have been able to rely, had gone on her daily pilgrimage to Our Lady of Mount Carmel at Ysleta Mission.

  When Jacy confronted her earlier, Mari had listened meekly. Slight of build with delicate features and luminous black eyes, Mari was now gaunt, her lovely face drawn in at the cheeks. The black mantilla covering her taut black bun added to her aura of austerity. The once sparkling, lively Mari had lost all spark. Her only concern was to save Hunter from hanging. Her method, prayer.

  On this morning Mari firmly refused to forego Mass to search for either Drummond or her own aunt, Tía Bella, who was entirely too doddering to serve as postmistress of the little settlement of Concordia—which added another responsibility to Jacy’s growing heap.

  “Todd can look for his grandfather before school,” Mari explained, speaking of her and Hunter’s eldest. At the impressionable age of thirteen, Todd had no business being sent to the seedier sections of El Paso. Or so his Aunt Jacy believed.

  “I can’t miss Mass,” Mari continued, pleading. “With the news we received yesterday, Jacy…”

  The news. Trevor Fallon escaped from Yuma Prison.

  Jacy turned away from her stricken sister-in-law. Her concern was the same as Mari’s—to save Hunter from hanging—even if her method was more worldly and, to her mind, more practical. That, however, did not make Jacy less vulnerable. How long could she continue to carry this family on her shoulders? She yearned to throw off the yoke, to run away. To go home.