Frontier Woman by Joan Johnston

over the lump in her throat. “Has he asked you to marry him?”
    Sloan looked uncertain. “I’m sure he will. He hasn’t said anything yet, but that’s only because his family isn’t going to be any happier about our being together than Rip will be. I’m afraid they have their own prejudices against Anglos to overcome. And then, they may have heard stories about us. . . .”
    Cricket knew the kinds of stories that had circulated about “Rip’s girls.” It would take an open-minded person to look behind those stories to the truth. Sure “Rip’s girls” were different, but anybody who looked twice would see they were special. Cricket knew that whatever Sloan strived to be, she could be. And there was no doubt in her mind that Sloan could meet or exceed any standards Señor Guerrero set for his younger son’s wife.
    “Are you going to see Tonio at the Guerrero’s fandango ?” she asked Sloan.
    “I don’t know. We have to be very careful not to be seen together until we can figure out a way to get Rip and Juan Carlos’s approval. If Tonio sends word where we can meet privately, I’ll go to him.”
    Cricket shook her head in disbelief at Sloan’s plans for a clandestine meeting with the man she loved and who supposedly loved her. If he loved her so much, why were they sneaking around behind both fathers’ backs?
    “Will you introduce me to Tonio?”
    Sloan’s face was a picture of indecision. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Cricket.”
    “Why not?”
    “He . . . we . . . I promised I wouldn’t say anything to anyone about our relationship. If I introduce you to him he’ll know I’ve broken that promise.”
    “But I’m your sister. You always tell me everything.”
    Sloan shook her head. “Not everything, Cricket. I haven’t always told you everything.”
    “What? What haven’t you told me?”
    Sloans lips thinned to a firm line of intransigence.
    “Never mind,” Cricket snapped. “Keep your secrets. I don’t care.” Cricket threw the covers off and grabbed her rumpled buckskin trousers from the floor, yanking them on.
    Cricket was shaking, seething with hurt. It wasn’t only Sloan’s deception. Everything seemed so mixed-up lately. First Rip suggesting he’d find her a husband, when she thought he understood why she was never getting married. Then the Ranger showing up, treating her like a woman, arousing her curiosity about kissing and touching and leaving it unsatisfied. Finally, Sloan confessing she was in love, and that she’d kept that—and other as yet undisclosed secrets—from Cricket.
    Cricket yanked her shirt down over her head as she stepped through the bedroom door.
    “Where are you going, Cricket?”
    Cricket turned back to Sloan. “That’s none of your business. I don’t have to tell you everything, either.”
    Sloan flinched. “What do you want me to tell Rip?”
    “I don’t care what you tell him. Make something up. You must have been doing that for a while, anyway.”
    “Cricket—”
    Sloan stared at the empty doorway for a moment before she rubbed her callused palm across her sweat-bedaubed forehead. It was all getting so complicated. She would have to talk with Tonio at the fandango . She couldn’t go on lying to her family. It wasn’t what she would have chosen to do in the first place, but Tonio had convinced her of the necessity for it. She loved him so much she would have done anything he asked—lied, stolen, cheated. She smiled bitterly. She, who would have taken a beating from Rip before bending to his will, had been ready to do anything Tonio asked in the name of love. But exactly how far was she willing to go?
    Sloan slumped back on Cricket’s bed and crossed her arms over her eyes. God help her. She just didn’t know.
    Miles away that same question was being pondered, because it appeared from all the available evidence that Sloan Stewart was helping Antonio Guerrero plot the overthrow of the Republic of Texas.
    “I don’t know,