Luke Bravo shot to a sitting position from a sound sleep. He raked his fingers back through his hair and squinted at the bedside clock—2:10 a.m.

And someone was pounding on his sitting-room door. "Luke! Wake up!" Luke thought he recognized the voice: Paco, one of the stable hands. He sounded seriously freaked.

Stark naked, Luke jumped from the bed. Grabbing his hat off the back of a chair as he flew by, he raced through the sitting area. Lollie, the spotted hound he'd raised from a pup, had beaten him to the door. She paced in front of it, whining and sniffing the crack between the door and the floor.

"Back, girl. Sit," he commanded. With a final worried whine, the dog moved out of the way. Luke yanked the door wide. "Paco. What the hell?"

About then, the housekeeper, Zita, came flying around the corner from the servants' rooms, muttering in Spanish, clutching the sides of a flimsy red robe. She let out a shocked little squeak when she got a load of Luke standing there in the altogether.

He put his hat over his privates. "It's all right, Zita." He aimed a narrow-eyed glare at Paco. "Is there a fire?"

Paco slapped a hand over his mouth to quell a snort of laughter at the housekeeper's embarrassment, and mutely shook his head.

"No fire?" Luke asked again, just to be sure. When the stable hand's head went back and forth a second time, Luke told Zita gently, "I'm on this. Don't worry. Go on back to bed."

Face noticeably flaming, even in the dim light provided by the hallway wall sconces, Zita whirled and ran back the way she had come. A choking laugh escaped the stable hand.

Luke leveled a scowl on him. "If not a fire, then what?"

Paco's grin vanished. His s