A Lady of the West (34 page)

Luis left his post by the gate, carefully walking off and showing her that he didn't intend to corner her. He paused in front of Rubio's stall, and the big stallion's ears went back as he watched the man. Luis was too smart to lean on the gate within reach of the stallion's teeth and hooves, but he couldn't help admiring the animal. “You magnificent bastard,” he crooned in liquid Spanish, “you're not good for anything but the mares, eh? You're too mean to ride, but what a life you have! Nothing to do but eating, sleeping, and romancing the ladies.”

Celia crept out of the empty stall and stood watching him, still half-poised for flight. Luis gave her a flashing smile. “I have never before seen a horse as beautiful as this one.”

She nodded and at last her own smile broke out.
Luis caught his breath, struck dumb. She looked like an angel.

“He's wonderful,” she breathed. “I bring him things to eat, and now he lets me pat him on the neck.”

He was alarmed that she would get so close to the animal, but he didn't scold her. Any hint of anger would send her flying.

“My name is Celia,” she offered.

He already knew that, but he nodded as if she had given him a gift.

“I have a mare, Gypsy. Jake helped me choose her. She's really smart, but when ya'll were chasing us, Victoria made me swap horses with her because her horse is faster than mine and she wanted Emma and me to get away.”

“Yes, a very brave lady, your sister.”

“I'm glad that she married Jake. I like him, but he really should have told us his real name.”

“He had his reasons,
chica.”

“I know.” She sighed, and the bright light faded out of her face. “The Major was a horrible man. He killed their mother and father, did you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Before I knew Jake was really Jake Sarratt, I used to pray that the Sarratts would come back and kill the Major. I know it's a sin,” she whispered, “but I hated him.”

“It's not a sin to hate evil.”

“I hope not. I have to go,” she said, suddenly taking fright again. With a swish of skirts she ran away. Luis watched her disappear out the front of the barn, her slender figure briefly silhouetted against the bright opening before she was gone from view. She was sweet and fey, and he wanted her.

The days after Victoria's wedding passed slowly. They had lived on edge for so long that the abrupt calm made them all feel as if the bright summer days
dawdled along. Time didn't tick, it oozed. They were all relieved.

Celia began to giggle again, and the musical sound made them all smile. She dogged Jake's boot heels whenever he left the house, and although she was still shy with Ben, someone began playing practical jokes on him. Victoria strongly suspected Celia, because her sister had always had a penchant for that type of thing, but Ben
knew
it was Celia. He had seen her sneaking out of his room once, but he continued to pretend ignorance. She got such joy of it that he often exaggerated his mishaps, just to watch her try to act innocent while she was struggling with laughter.

But with Emma, Ben was held at a distance by a careful silence. She pretended he didn't exist, and he allowed her to do so. It wasn't easy, since they lived in the same house, but Emma's self-possession was such that it was possible. He wasn't sure how, but she could speak to him and still treat him as if he weren't there. It made him angry but he accepted it, because he knew the reason for it.

The days were busy. Despite their expectations of the worst, there hadn't been any trouble with the men who had been out with the herds. Some left with quick looks over their shoulders, some stayed. Jake and his men worked long, hard hours getting an accurate count of the herd and altering the brands on cattle and horses alike. Jake and Ben were often out of the house from dawn until long after dark. They would return tired and caked with grime, smelling of horses and sweat. To make it easier for them to wash they rigged up a contraption behind the bunkhouse: a small enclosure with two buckets of water balanced overhead and a rope tied to each bucket. Most of the men got in the habit of stripping, tipping some of the water over their heads, then soaping up and using the remainder of the water to rinse. Whoever used the water had to refill the buckets. At the end of each long
hot day, there was always a line waiting to use the contraption, though a lot of the men still used the river if they were inclined to bathe. For some of them, that wasn't very often.

For Victoria, the slow summer days were filled with a deep sense of unreality. During the day she did what wives had always done; she mended, she made certain the meals were on time, and took care of the myriad and endless details of making a home. That was the way she had always expected her life to go, and the routine was as familiar to her as her own face.

At night, however, things changed. When Jake came up the stairs each night and entered her bedroom—their bedroom now—and closed the door behind him, nothing was as she had ever imagined her life to be. She spent the hours in a sensual daze, locked in his arms. She lost her privacy to dress or undress alone and had to accustom herself to his tall body in her bed. He touched her however and whenever he liked, and he liked it often. There wasn't an inch of her skin left unexplored. She drowned in the sensuality of the nights, her mind overwhelmed by the demands of the flesh, both his and her own. Sometimes when she awoke in the bright morning sunlight she was appalled at the carnal excesses of the night before and would swear that she would never let herself behave so mindlessly again. But her intentions never lasted past his first kiss, the first touch of his hard body against hers.

The more influence he exerted over her at night, the harder she tried to shore up her defenses during the day. If he had ever said those simple words, I
love you,
she would have abandoned herself totally to him, but the words he whispered to her were of lust. So every morning she tried desperately to isolate her heart from him, to wall up part of herself where he couldn't find her. It was pure self-defense, the need to keep a kernel of her being whole and untouched, a foundation
on which she could rely if the rest of her life fell apart.

“A kitten!”

Celia's face was bright with joy as she scooped the tiny animal out of Luis's lean brown hands. She cuddled the ball of fluff to her cheek and the kitten gave a squeaky meow. “Oh, Luis, where did you find it?”

“In the tack room. Its mother must have died.”

“Will it be all right?” she asked anxiously. “Is it old enough to eat on its own?”

He shrugged. “There's only one way to find out.”

Together they trooped up to the house, where Celia begged Lola for a saucer of warm milk, which she placed on the sun-warmed flagstones of the courtyard. The kitten sniffed daintily before lowering its pink nose and beginning to lap.

Celia smiled. “It's old enough.”

“It seems so.” Luis watched her crouched there on the flagstones, her face intent on the kitten. She was so full of delight he wanted to snatch her to her feet and kiss her.

She looked up at him. “Where are you going to keep it? What have you named it?”

“I'm not keeping it anywhere. I brought it to you.”

“You mean it's mine?” she breathed.

“If you want it.”

“Of course I want it! I've never had a pet before.” She lightly rubbed the kitten behind the ears and it arched up to her hand, but didn't lift its head from the milk.

“Lola said you'd found a kitten,” Victoria said, stepping out into the courtyard. To Luis's surprise, she crouched down in a position identical to Celia's and stroked the kitten. “It's so pretty and soft.”

“Luis found it. He said I can have it.”

Victoria smiled. “What will you name it?”

“I don't know, I've never had a kitten before. What are some cat names?”

“Tiger?” Victoria suggested, then looked doubtfully at the kitten. She and Celia laughed together.

“What would you name it, Luis?” Celia asked.

He shrugged and sank down on his haunches to join the women. “I've never had a pet, either.”

Victoria smiled at the slim young man, wondering if he felt a kinship with the little animal since he was so catlike himself. She liked him, even though she could look at him and see danger clinging to his broad shoulders like a cloak. But Luis's smile was always warm and gentle; he was never coarse around Celia, and he seemed to have appointed himself sort of a bodyguard for the girl. Victoria was glad and hoped Celia might lose some of her fearfulness around men. In general the men around her now teased her and watched over her, but never threatened her or gave her sidelong glances.

“First, is it a male or a female?” Victoria asked practically.

Again Luis shrugged, which piqued Celia's interest. “How do you tell?”

“You pick it up and look,” Luis replied.

She did, holding the kitten on its back. The three of them solemnly studied its belly.

After a moment Celia said, “What are we looking at?”

“I don't know,” Victoria admitted, laughter brimming in her eyes.

“Luis?”

He put his hand over his mouth and pretended to be considering the matter, but at last he was forced to admit, “It looks like a furry belly.”

“That's what I thought, too,” Victoria said.

Celia began to giggle, then they were all laughing. At the sound of booted steps, they looked up. Celia lifted the kitten. “Luis has given me a kitten,” she explained
to Jake. “We want to name it, but we can't tell if it's a boy or a girl.”

Jake's face relaxed into a grin, and Victoria felt her heart turn over. He leaned down and took the kitten, his big, lean hand gentle as he held it up and looked. “It's a torn,” he said, and put it down in Celia's lap.

“How can you tell?”

He wasn't about to get into one of those discussions with her, so he tousled her hair and said, “Practice. There were always a lot of cats around when Ben and I were young.”

“Show me how to tell.”

Victoria was watching with glee, waiting to see how he got out of that. Luis had turned his head to hide his grin.

“You'd need a male and a female side by side, so I could show you the difference.”

“I suppose.” She sighed with disappointment. “At least now we know to name it a male name.”

“Call it Tom,” he suggested. “That's a name, and it's a tomcat, so it fits.”

“Tom.” After a minute's deliberation she nodded, and returned the kitten to its saucer of milk.

Jake held out his hand, and Victoria placed hers in it for him to draw her to her feet. He guided her inside with his hand on the small of her back.

When they were out of earshot, she asked, “Can we trust Luis with Celia?”

“As much as anyone. She's too beautiful to expect the young bucks not to notice her, but he won't force himself on her, if that's what you're asking.”

“It is, I suppose. It's just that she's so innocent. I don't want something awful to happen to her.”

His green eyes gleamed. “Awful?” he asked in a deep voice.

Victoria blinked at him, realizing abruptly that he was escorting her up the stairs. She blushed hotly. “What are you doing?” she demanded in a fierce whisper.

“Taking you to bed.”

“Jake, it's the middle of the day!”

“I know. What about it?”

“Everyone will know what we're doing.”

“Do you think they don't know what we're doing when we go to bed every night?”

“People go to sleep at night. It's obvious we wouldn't be sleeping if we went to bed now!”

The pressure of his hand was inexorable. “We're married. It's legal.” He was determined to break through her defenses, one way or another. He didn't know why, but she kept building barriers between them. When he came back to the ranch house every night, he always found an invisible wall between them, locking him out of her thoughts. Every night he would smash it down, but she would busily rebuild it during the day. He had come back to the house specifically to make love to her now, to see if he could destroy the barrier once and for all. He wanted all of her, every little bit of her, with the greediness of someone dying of thirst; he felt as if he'd been given a glass of water but told he could drink only half of it.

He locked them in the bedroom and stripped both her and himself. As he placed her on the bed, he saw the despair in her eyes. Despair filled his own heart. Why did she feel she had to resist him? Then she closed her eyes and twined her arms around his neck. For him, as well as for her, the why ceased to matter.

They came together in a rush of heated flesh, straining toward each other, already desperate with passion. The rest of the world was shut out during their lovemaking, but afterward, when she was trying to sort out her clothes, he saw the reserve in her eyes and knew he had failed.