Carpathian 15 - Dark Secret

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    known they were his."
    Paul grinned at her unrepentantly. "That's why I didn't tell you."
    Colby turned the full power of her emerald gaze on her brother. "That's not something you should be admitting to me. Rafael De La Cruz is worse than his brother and I never thought that was possible." She touched the nape of her neck where the warmth of his touch seemed to linger.
    "I wish they'd all leave," Ginny stated clearly. She looked at Colby with frightened eyes. "Can they really take me away from you, to another country? I don't want to go with them." She sounded young and forlorn.
    Colby immediately circled Ginny's shoulders with her arm. "Why would you ask such a thing, Ginny?"
    She glanced at Paul with a slight frown. "Did you hear that somewhere?"
    "It wasn't me," Paul defended, "it was Clinton Daniels. We saw him at the grocery store and he told Ginny the Chevez family was going to take the two of us toBraziland you couldn't stop them. He said you'd never win custody in a court of law and the De La Cruz family had political pull and too much money to fight. With the De La Cruz family backing the Chevez family you didn't have a prayer of keeping us."
    Colby counted silently to ten, listening to her heart pound out a strange, irregular beat. For a moment she could scarcely breathe, scarcely think. If she lost her brother and sister she would have nothing. No one.
    Pequena? The word was a soft inquiry in her mind. A gentle soothing caress of reassurance. She heard it clearly, as if Rafael De La Cruz was standing beside her, his mouth against her ear. Worse, she felt his fingers trail down her face, touching her skin, touching the inside of her until she felt her body react in a purely sensual way.
    Colby was shocked and frightened by the way his voice seemed familiar and right. Intimate. By the way her body tightened and heated in response. She managed to smile her reassurance at Ginny even while she tried to build the wall in her mind to keep Rafael out. "Clinton Daniels always seems to find the time to gossip about everyone, doesn't he? I think that man needs a full-time job to keep him occupied." She hugged Ginny to her. "You are a legal citizen of this country, honey. The courts aren't just going to turn you over to someone you don't even know. It will never come to that. Daniels was just trying to get a rise out of you. These people will go back toBraziland everything will be back to normal." They had to go back toBraziland Rafael had to go back with them. Soon. Immediately.
    "Yeah," Paul added, digging at his sister's ribs, "the normal thing, hard work, more hard work, working from early morning until late at night. Getting up in the middle of the night and working more."
    "Don't we all wish you did that," Colby teased. "Seriously, you two, forget this problem with the De La Cruz brothers. They don't like me any more than I like them. Those men are positively archaic. I can see them as some kind of dungeon masters in the fourteenth century, where women were owned by their fathers and husbands."
    "Really?" Ginny looked dreamy for a minute. "I picture them as kings in a castle, great lords or something like that. They're good-looking."
    Colby wrinkled her nose. "Do you think? I hadn't noticed." She managed to keep a straight face for all of three seconds before she dissolved into gales of laughter along with her younger sister while Paul

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    looked on in complete exasperated disgust.

    2

    Ginny knocked on Colby's bedroom door a few minutes after she heard the shower shut off. Colby had put in so much time with the cattle and out in the garden and the hay field that Ginny was afraid she might have forgotten the appointment with Joclyn Everett.
    Colby was towel-drying her long hair and smiled at Ginny as she peeked through the door. "Got everything set up for barrel racing?"
    Eagerly Ginny bounded into the small bedroom, seating herself on the bed. "Did you send in my entry fee for the Redbluff Rodeo?" she asked hopefully.
    "I told you when you were twelve you could travel a bit. The local rodeo's enough until then."
    "There's an eleven-year-old girl barrel racing already," Ginny protested. "She's making enough money for her college education." Shrewdly she pulled out a magazine and read quickly from the article, determined to prove her point.
    "Shelve it, chickadee, I'm tired and in a hurry. As it