Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material Read Online Free PDF Page A

but she wouldn’t mind me telling you. Her sister’s kids was in trouble, never mind what kind. Rio sorted it out.”
    Hope thought quickly, remembering what she knew about Mason’s dead wife. Hazel’s sister had married a half-Indian drifter. The man had vanished after a few years, leaving four children behind. Part-Indian children. It shouldn’t have mattered—but there were still a lot of places where it did.
    And Rio had “taken apart” three men who hated Indians.
    “I see,” Hope murmured. Then, quietly, “I hope those men learned a lesson.”
    “Doubt it. Can’t teach a snake to ice-skate. But you can set your watch by this,” he added with grim satisfaction. “Them three don’t beat up on kids no more.”
    Hope decided that she knew all she needed to about the man called Rio: Mason respected him. Whether or not Rio could find water, at least he wasn’t a vulture hoping to pick at the bones of her dreams.
    “Thanks.” She stood up suddenly and kissed his gray-stubbled cheek.
    “You gonna do it?” he asked.
    “Yes.” She started for the phone, then stopped in dismay. “I don’t know how to get hold of him.”
    “Don’t worry.” Mason smiled. “You turn around, he’ll be there.”
    “But how will he know I want to hire him?”
    “Same way the wind knows to blow.”
    Hope made an impatient sound.
    Mason looked up, green eyes calm and certain. “He’s Rio. He’ll know.”

Three

    H OPE PUT HER hands on her hips and made an exasperated sound. “ ‘He’s Rio. He’ll know,’ ” she repeated mockingly. “Big help, Mason.”
    Mason just looked at her with wise green eyes.
    “If you had pigtails,” she muttered, “I’d pull them right off your stubborn head. I don’t have time to wait for Rio to mysteriously know I want to hire him. I need water and I need it now!”
    “You always were a headlong sort of gal,” Mason agreed, smiling to himself. “I might be able to find Rio, for a price.”
    “What price?” Then she groaned, thinking of the list of chores that had to be done, chores that they both disliked doing.
    “Ice cubes for a week,” he said.
    “Done.” She smiled wickedly. “You’re slipping, Mason. I always do the ice cubes.”
    “Yeah, but now I won’t feel bad about it.”
    She laughed and shook her head, making light burn darkly through her loose curls. “How will you find Rio?”
    “Easy. He’s breaking horses for Turner.”
    “Oh.”
    Hope bit back a curse. She really didn’t want to call the Turner ranch. Since she had come back to the Valley of the Sun to live, John Turner had pursued her relentlessly. The more often she refused him, the more determined he was to have her.
    Grimly she nerved herself up for the call she had to make. Though she had outgrown her terror of him, she still despised him for his casual brutality. Just being polite to him was an effort that left her jaw aching. She hid her feelings because she knew that they would only make him more insistent. His arrogance had to be experienced to be believed.
    “Has that son of— Has he been bothering you again?” Mason asked, his voice rough.
    She shrugged. “Ever since his aunt’s bank gave me a second mortgage on the Valley of the Sun, John seems to think he owns me.”
    “I may be near seventy, but so help me God, I’ll pistol-whip that son of a bitch if he ever touches you again.”
    Hope put her hand on Mason’s arm, both restraining and reassuring him. Even while her father was still alive, Mason had protected her as though she was his own daughter. In many ways he was an old-fashioned western man. He believed that if a woman said no, she meant it, and that was the end of the matter.
    It was a belief John Turner didn’t share. Like a spoiled child, he was obsessed by whatever he couldn’t have. His father had prevented him from taking Hope eight years ago, but Big Jase Turner had died last winter, leaving no one to put a leash on his only son.
    With a reflex that came