Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family) (16 page)

His hand felt warm against the back of her green dress. “Those Durangos same family as these Durangos?”

“Distant cousins, I think.” She waited for him to ask about Romeros, decided he didn’t know. “So anyway, when I’m introduced to this plump old gent and hear the name Durango, I figure he’s got to have money, too.”

Bandit laughed. “Good old Mona! Always playing the odds. I was on the run and stumbled into this deal.”

“Maybe we’re both in luck.” She brightened suddenly. It occurred to her that eventually Bandit would control the Falcon fortune and Old Durango couldn’t live forever. She and Bandit might then have each other and both fortunes. But there was still Amethyst . . . and Mona’s lover. . . .

“Well, Mona,” Bandit said, “I wish you luck. You’ll need it to pass yourself off as a high-class French lady. But everyone ought to be given a chance to start over, straighten out his life.”

She wondered suddenly if he were talking about her. . . or himself? “I need a new start, Bandit. I’m runnin’ out of time, you know that. All a whore’s got are her looks and when those are gone, well, you know.”

She shouldn’t have said that. The life and liquor had aged Lidah long before the heartbroken Czech-Indian girl had taken her own life.

He squeezed her hand. “You’ll never be a whore to me, Mona. I’ll always think of you as a lady. We go back a long time and I won’t forget it.”

She nodded without speaking. The broken-hearted boy had taken refuge in Mona’s experienced arms the night of his mother’s death. She hoped he never found out that she had inadvertently caused that death by telling Lida . . .

The music stopped. Bandit bowed low and said loudly. “Ah, Mademoiselle Monique, such a pleasure to dance with you. Señor Durango is indeed a lucky hombre.”

She gave his hand one last, promising squeeze but he didn’t respond as he escorted her back to the small group. The color of the small raven-haired beauty’s eyes had turned deep violet with suppressed anger. Mona wondered if Bandit had slept with the girl yet? She wondered if the girl knew her father’s
fiancée
had slept with Bandit? From the look on her delicate face, Amethyst suspected something. But what could she do about it? As long as Mona and Bandit were careful, that little snip had no proof.

Old Gomez yawned. “It’s been a wonderful party, my friends,” he said to the Falcons, “but it’s late and I’m very tired.”

Señor Falcon smiled and slapped his old friend on the back. “We’ll have many more parties like this, Gomez. And in the future, Falcon-Durango grandchildren to play with.”

Mona’s smile stayed frozen on her face. She had suddenly pictured Bandit in Amethyst’s arms, kissing her with abandon, driving hard into her body to give her his child, while over at the adjoining ranch, she herself would be tossing and turning restlessly as the pudgy Gomez snored. Bandit. So near, and yet he might as well be a thousand miles away for all the good it would do her.

She must not think of that now. In her most cultured, practiced accent, she said, “Señora Falcon, it has been a lovely party. After our wedding, Gomez and I will give a party and I hope you will all come.”

She accentuated the all, looking at Bandit who pretended not to have heard.

Señora Falcon said, “So glad you enjoyed it.”

Mona extended her hand to old Don Enrique and he kissed it, but she sensed as she had in the past that the Falcons didn’t really like her, thought Gomez an old fool. Everyone had expected him to marry his daughter’s longtime governess. She felt guilty about Miss Callie. That was twice that Mona’s knowledge—

“I’ll get your wrap, my dear.” Gomez smiled fondly, and his three chins jiggled.

Around them, people were saying their good-byes. As Señor Falcon had their carriage brought around, Mona gave Bandit a flirtatious glance, then saw the little brunette staring at her and realized the girl had seen the look. If she intended to resume that old love affair, Mona decided, she’d have to be more careful in the future. For a lot of reasons.

On the way home, the four of them rode quietly. Gomez and Mrs. Wentworth dozed off and snored, Amethyst seemed preoccupied, and Mona stared out at the sparse landscape. What was she going to do now that an old love had reentered her life? Mrs. Wentworth belched and Mona sighed. It really was hard to pass off her former madame as a proper chaperone, but Sadie was getting a little long in the tooth, too, and needed a secure position for her old age. Mona could only be thankful that Mrs. Wentworth had never been in Texas so she didn’t know Bandit. At the moment, the secret of their old friendship was safe between the two of them, although she figured Amethyst suspected it.

Gomez came awake and said something.

“What?” Mona glanced up, startled. He really was a fat old fool, although she was fond of him as one was of a pet dog. It was his daughter who worried her. That little Amethyst was too smart for her own good. “What, my dear?” Mona forced herself to smile. “I was lost in thought.”

“I said the idea of a double wedding appeals to me. What do you think, my darling?”

The thought made her miserable. Marrying him while his daughter married the man Mona wanted. It was a cruel justice for her sins, maybe. She looked over at Amethyst’s hostile face. Obviously the girl didn’t think much of the idea either.

“We’ll talk about it,” Mona answered vaguely.

When they reached the sprawling. Durango hacienda, Mona went to her room. Reluctantly, she put on her finest negligee, loosed her hair and brushed it. He would be coming later when the house was quiet and dark. She endured him by way of compromise.

To survive in the grandiose style she liked, Mona had learned to compromise many years ago. Otherwise, she still might be working in her father’s tiny drugstore. Long hours and poverty didn’t appeal to her. That time she had delivered medicine to a New Orleans bordello, she’d decided it could provide an easy life and good money for a pretty girl who didn’t have qualms about how she earned it.

The big house was dark finally, everyone and everything in it deep in slumber. Except Mona. She blew out her lamp, opened the French doors leading onto her balcony, and stood there feeling the slight May breeze on her face. It smelled of mesquite and cactus blooms. With regret, she stared off in the direction of Falcon’s Lair, waiting. He would be coming soon. She thought of pale blue eyes and blond hair, imagined his big, square hands on the small of her back pulling her to him, his hot but gentle mouth on her sensitive nipples.

Sighing, Mona closed her eyes and remembered how it had been to be held tightly against that broad chest. Bandit. Oh, Bandit! Why did you have to show up to complicate things when I had the rest of my life all planned out?

She leaned against the opened French door, listening; waiting. The breeze blew her sheer nightdress against her long legs. She remembered how his hard, muscular body had felt between her thighs so many times past as she’d locked around his hips, pulling him down into her depths.

She felt her body moisten as it, too, remembered the matings. Tears trickled down her face and the breeze cooled them, even as it blew her long red locks about her face. Often Bandit had tangled his fingers in her hair, pulled her to him to kiss her. Mona ran her tongue across her lips without thinking, remembering his gentle, probing tongue, the taste and heat of him.

She laughed bitterly. Once an old priest had told her that maybe people created their own hell and heaven, depending on what they deserved. What she’d gotten herself into was hell, all right, but there was no turning back now. She’d have money—plenty of money—and a secure place for herself and Sadie Wentworth for the rest of their lives. But while fat old Gomez struggled to make his manhood rigid enough to penetrate her, the man Mona loved would be slamming like a hammer into Amethyst’s womb. It was gonna be hell, all right.

Mona looked out across the shadowy landscape, the night with its distant stars. Soon, he would arrive to mount her in a frenzied, joyless mating as he had before. She sighed with regret. Some compromises were more painful than others, but always they were necessary to live the good life. She leaned against the open door of the balcony, listened to a coyote howling in the silent darkness. It sounded as sad as she felt. Soon her lover would arrive.

Romeros paced his cramped bunkhouse room in the moonlight, waiting for the sprawling Falcon ranch to settle down after all the excitement of the night’s party.

Dammit! This whole thing was getting a lot more complicated and risky than he’d expected, and that was a fact. Romeros paused in chewing his match stem, looked around at all the old bull-fighting posters on his walls. If he’d had a chance to become a great matador, he wouldn’t be here now at the Falcon’s Lair, holding a position not much better than a servant’s.

He looked out the window toward the big house and frowned. Up there that Texan slept in a large, elegant room and enjoyed all the privileges of the high born and wealthy. Soon the impostor would even get to bed the elegant and beautiful Amethyst Durango. That wasn’t fair, either. Romeros had watched the dark beauty grow up, always hungering for her but knowing she was beyond the reach of a lowly ranch foreman.

Romeros ran his hand through his silver-streaked hair in agitation. It had been evident to him, though possibly to no one else at tonight’s party, that Bandit and Amethyst Durango had met before. Romeros had seen the slight widening of her eyes, the sharp intake of her breath. And Mona. That cheap whore seemed to recognize Bandit, too.

Damn that Texan! He must know every woman in the world. Was this going to wreck Romeros’s scheme? He’d been so sure many years ago when he showed up here that he could replace the dead brother in the grieving Don Enrique’s affections and in his will. Then the new baby boy had wrecked that hope.

Romeros had been delighted to run across Mona in New Orleans, and had worked out a plan to introduce her to the widowed Gomez Durango. Romeros figured on getting control of the Durango ranch through her.

Then Bandit had come along, looking a little like the missing heir and promising something even better. The saddle tramp would end up controlling the Falcon fortune, and Romeros would control the saddle tramp. The foreman paused and considered. He had an increasingly uneasy feeling that the big Texan would be hard to dominate and subdue.

He paced again, thinking about the two women. It appeared they both knew about Bandit, too, and that was two too many. Women couldn’t keep secrets. Now that was a fact.

He stopped pacing, stared at the faded posters without really seeing them. He didn’t think Mona would talk, she had something to hide herself. But there was no way he could keep that little brunette’s mouth shut. He didn’t have anything on her.

Still, if she knew and was going to tell, why hadn’t she done it tonight at the party? Romeros chewed his match, and considered. When he sat down on the edge of his bed, his hand automatically went to the knife in his boot. If he slipped over and cut her throat as she lay sleeping, she couldn’t give the plot away. He wasn’t above killing people who got in the way of his ambitions. He’d done it before. He took the match from his mouth, stared at it. He didn’t want to cut that little beauty’s throat, he wanted to sleep with Amethyst.

Women. They were good for only one thing. Romeros’s lip curled in bitter derision as he tossed the match away. His mother had been an example of that, a stupid Yaqui beauty who had caught the eye of the cruel Don Vicente Romeros whose vast holdings sprawled across California. Don Vicente kept what could be considered a harem of beautiful women at the great ranch that he seldom visited. The Yaqui girl had been one of them . . . until she was no longer young, no longer beautiful.

He frowned in the darkness, remembering his father. The great don came seldom to the
ranch
, preferring his comfortable mansion in town, but his young son adored him, waited hopefully for each visit, followed him about adoringly. Since the don smoked cigars, the half-breed boy took to carrying matches so that he might step forward, light
el patrón’s
cigar and thereby get his notice, his attention. To always have a match ready, Romeros had acquired the habit of always having one stuck in the corner of his mouth.

His Yaqui mother gradually took to drink, was put to scrubbing pans in the kitchen while younger, prettier women replaced her in
el
patrón’s
bed. Finally the Yaqui girl drank herself into a stupor one night, fell head first into a horse trough, and drowned unnoticed and unmourned.

Young Romeros did not miss her. She had always blamed him for the loss of her looks, the thickening of her waist, and ultimately the loss of the don’s affections.

The boy grew strong and tall. He heard people around the ranch whisper of how much he looked like his tall, gaunt father. He was fiercely proud and hopeful as he toiled like a peon as a cowhand. After all, wouldn’t he own all this somehow as the bastard son? Surely the old man would acknowledge him, make him his heir?

Romeros sighed, remembering the past as he stared up at the ceiling of the small bunkhouse room. Each time
el patrón
came to the southern California ranch, his son followed him about, lighting his cigars, quick to do his bidding. Now that the boy was half-grown, he had come to realize there were other bastard children on Romeros’s giant spread. Like a stud bull, the owner had mounted every nubile female on the spread. The vaqueros secretly cursed him, but no one had dared stand up to him when he’d demanded the favors of their sweethearts and daughters.

An old Yaqui uncle had tried to warn the boy over the years as he’d taught him the Indian skills with a dagger.
You will be a vaquero on this ranch forever
, the uncle had said as they’d practiced throwing knives. El patrón already has a family by his legal wife whom he married for her money. Do not think he will acknowledge you or make you his heir just because you are a mirror of him in his younger days.

But Romeros’s heart would not listen.
El
patrón
loved himself so much. How could he not love the bastard son who looked just like him?

So the boy waited hopefully for each visit, followed the old bull around, lit his cigars with the matches he kept always ready.
El
patrón
smiled agreeably and let the lad accompany him around the spread on his rare visits to the ranch.

Sí,
Romeros thought, he will acknowledge me, he will make me his heir. It isn’t right that his son, in whom the blood of Spanish nobility flows, should work as a common vaquero. The boy craved acceptance, wealth, and position. These should be his by right. But he was sixteen and in love with a pretty Mexican girl on the spread before he finally had the nerve to think about confronting his father.

El
patrón
had come to the ranch that day, and he was in a foul mood as the boy hurried to light his cigar.

Romeros took a deep breath. His hand trembled as he shook out the match. “
Señor
, Papa, I must speak with you.”

“
Papá,
is it? You have more nerve than brains to speak to me so familiarly.” The older man’s bushy brows knitted together across his beaked nose as he blew out smoke. “I don’t even remember which one of my women was your mother.”

“The Yaqui.” The boy drew himself up proudly. “But I am a Romeros clear to my bones. Everyone says it is so.”

El patrón
guffawed and leaned against the corral fence. “
Sí,
I will not deny it. You look just as I did at your age, and that’s a fact.” He winked boldly. “And are you also the devil with the ladies like your sire?”

Romeros colored. He had not taken the girl’s virginity yet. She would not let him, not without a marriage in the church. After all, he had no wealth, no position. “I—I hope to marry the cobbler’s daughter. The one who works as a cook in your kitchen.”

“Ah,
Sí
, that one. The one who colors her hair with henna I had forgotten how lovely she was until I saw her serving breakfast this morning. She’s grown up since last time I was here.”

“Sir,” Romeros began boldly, “it’s common gossip here at the ranch that I am your son.”

The old man sneered and gestured with his cigar. “Half the vaqueros here are my sons.”

The boy took the match from his mouth, and drew himself up proudly. “
El
patrón,
I had hoped you might acknowledge me, give me my proper place.”

“Is that a fact? Perhaps you are a great deal like me after all.” The crafty old Spaniard grinned and his bushy eyebrows met again across his beaked nose. “Maybe a great deal more like me than my legitimate heir.”

“Sir?”

The man’s eyes gleamed as if he relished causing pain. He took a puff of his cigar, and the pungent smoke floated on the still air. “Do you not realize, stupid bastard, that I have a family in town?”

Romeros had realized that, but he had never thought he would not finally be legitimized, appreciated, restored to his proper place in
el
patrón’s
life. “But am I not as much like you as your own reflection in the mirror? Surely, Señor Romeros, that must mean something to you!”

“I wonder if you are like me deep inside.” The man smoked and studied the boy with a cold stare. “I built my empire by sheer ruthlessness, by being willing and able to take what I wanted, to destroy anyone who got in my way.”

The boy put his foot up on the fence, put his hand on the
stiletto
in his boot. “I, too, could be ruthless, cruel, señor.”

His father laughed and threw away his cigar. “
Sí,
maybe you could at that. You may be more like me than either one of us realize.” He sighed regretfully. “But the fact is I have a legitimate heir by a stupid but high-born and rich wife in town.”

“Does that mean you will not acknowledge me after I have worked so very hard helping to build this ranch?”

“It means,
bastardo
, that when I die, you and all my other bastard children will work on as you do now for my legitimate heir.”

Romeros’s heart twisted within him as he watched
el
patrón
toss away his cigar, then stride back to the ranch house. It wasn’t fair. He had worked hard, and for nothing. He stood staring after his father, his emotions in turmoil. From love, his feelings twisted into the reverse, and he had never hated a man so much as he now hated
el
patrón.

The boy stood there a long time, shuddering because of his deep feelings. He had been rejected. No matter what he did, how hard he worked, how faithful to
el
patrón,
he had been, he was being sneered at, passed over.

He must break the news to the pretty girl.

Regretfully, he walked toward the house. He could imagine the laughter, the scorn on her face, on the faces of all those who had warned him.

He went to the kitchen. She was not there. Maybe she was helping a maid somewhere in the big hacienda. Romeros ascended the stairs, went from room to room in the sprawling house. It was when he opened the door of
el
patrón’s
room that he found her, naked beneath the humping body of old Romeros himself, who rode her from behind like the great bulls of his herds.

He would never forget the sight of her on her hands and knees in the big, white bed, her fine, naked breasts swinging like a heifer’s udders, the crucifix around her neck jangling on its chain.

The boy caught the doorknob to keep from falling in shock at his discovery. But his father only looked up, withdrew, slapped her familiarly across her naked hip, and grinned. “You look surprised, my son! I had forgotten this beauty was available as part of my ranch ownership until you reminded me of her.”

He stood up, his
cojones
hanging big as a bull’s, his erect manhood engorged with desire. He flipped it proudly and it thumped against his belly just as a bull’s does when it is ready for mating. “You may look like me,
bastardo
, but you don’t have the
cojones
I do or you would have already taken this
puta
.”

Wrapped in a sheet, the girl grinned at el patrón, sure of her place in the household now, not realizing, foolish thing, that next week or next month, she would be cast aside.

The boy was too heartsick to say anything. He only stared.

El patrón
sat up on the edge of the bed, his manhood still erect. His face showed his pleasure in humiliating his son. “Now that I’ve enjoyed her, don’t be hesitant to take her yourself. After all, it’s a fact that that’s all women are for, to give pleasure to men.”

Romeros shook his head slowly to clear it. The girl ran her fingers through her hennaed hair, her ripe breasts fully visible above the twisted sheet, the crucifix dangling between them. “You think I want you?” She sneered. “When I can have
el
patrón
himself?”

His father reached over to the night table for a cigar, propped himself up in bed with a pillow. Then he frowned and snapped his fingers. “A match, boy, light my cigar. I’ll smoke it, and then I’ll finish enjoying your señorita.”

Numbly, Romeros reached into his pocket, stumbled across the floor toward the bed.

The old man poured himself a glass of tequila from the bottle on the bedside table. Holding it and the cigar in one hand, he cupped the girl’s breast with the other, fingered her nipple.

The boy stood looking down at the grinning pair, the match trembling in his hand.

El
patrón
looked up at him. “Come on! Come on!” he said irritably. “You think you are much like me,
bastardo
? You are not! You are not cruel and ruthless enough to be like me!”

Romeros struck the match on the tiny silver match box. He stood there in growing fury, holding it in his hand, staring at the leering pair on the bed, all tangled in the sheets.

Oh, sí, Papa,
I can be every bit as cruel!
With his free hand, he struck the man across his arrogant face, spilling the tequila on the sheets.

Then he grabbed the bottle, splashing the liquor across the bed as the girl screamed and tried to untangle her naked body from the linens. Quickly he tossed the lighted match onto the tequila-soaked bed.