Bed of Roses (40 page)

Luis shrugged. “I have killed many fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. What you say means nothing to me.”

Sawyer’s fingers tightened around the triggers of his guns. “The horse you ride belonged to my father. It was I who followed you from Synner, Texas, and found you outside that Mexican village.”

At that information Luis recoiled, taking a few steps backward and pulling Zafiro along with him. He tried to wet his lips, but his tongue felt like something parched. “Night…Night Master,” he murmured.

“So I’ve been called on occasion,” Sawyer replied.

“I…I thought I killed you.”

“It would seem you aren’t as good a shot as you believe you are,” Sawyer continued to taunt the man. “Surely you didn’t think I’d let you kill me, Luis. I had to stay alive so I could find and punish you for what you did to my family. And while I’m at it, I’m going to avenge Jaime Quintana’s death as well. You’ve killed too many loved ones to be allowed to live.”

The Night Master spoke with deadly confidence, Luis thought, his anxiety intensifying. Realizing he had to escape before dread poisoned him with cowardice, he edged Zafiro toward the bedroom door, taking great care to keep a wide distance from the gunman whose skills he knew far exceeded his own.

Nodding his head to the side, he gestured for Tia, Azucar, Pedro, and Lorenzo to move farther into the bedroom. When the four people obeyed, he dragged Zafiro into the corridor, leaving his adversary inside the room. His back against the hall wall, he stopped.

And stared at Night Master.

Sawyer stared straight back.

“Sawyer.”

At the unmitigated terror he heard in Zafiro’s voice, Sawyer knew an inexorable desire to swiftly put an end to her fear. He raised the barrels of his Colts slightly, aiming for Luis’s forehead, the only truly vulnerable part of the man’s body that was not shielded by Zafiro’s shaking frame.

He pulled both triggers at once.

But Luis had already doubled over at the waist, nearly bending Zafiro in half. The two bullets smashed into the wall, causing several small paintings to fall from their hooks and crash to the floor.

Walking backward, and with his gun pointed toward the bedroom from where he knew the Night Master would soon emerge, Luis pulled Zafiro toward the staircase.

Sawyer did, indeed, come tearing out into the hall.

But so did Pedro, Lorenzo, Tia, and Azucar. The four terrified people ran straight into him, their combined weights knocking Sawyer to the floor. By the time he managed to pull himself out from beneath the heap of wiggling, wrinkled bodies, Luis and Zafiro had disappeared from sight.

He flew down the hall and the staircase, leaping over the unconscious man who still lay in front of the steps. As he raced out of the cabin he saw Luis drag Zafiro across the yard toward Apple Lover, who stood grazing at the edge of the woods with Jengibre pecking at the ground beside him.

Sawyer ached to shoot and kill the man who had caused such misery to so many people, but he dared not even make the attempt. Zafiro struggled in Luis’s arms, her torso, arms, and legs twisting wildly.

Sawyer would not take the risk of hitting her instead of the scum incarnate who had her.

“Kill him!” Pedro shouted as he, Lorenzo, Tia, and Azucar poured out of the cabin. “Sawyer, he has almost reached his horse! You must kill—”

“Stay back!” Sawyer shouted at them. “Just stay back!” His every step whispering his fury, he stormed after Luis, praying for one solitary chance to kill him.

Jengibre answered his prayer. The ornery hen took extreme exception to the man who almost stepped on her. Squawking and flapping her wings, she halfway jumped, halfway flew off the ground and delivered a vicious peck to Luis’s cheek.

Shock and the sting on his face caused Luis to lose his concentration. With the hand that had held the knife to Zafiro’s throat, he swung out at the chicken, who continued to fly at his face, chest, arms, whatever part of him she could reach.

Zafiro took full advantage of Jengibre’s surprise attack, throwing herself out of his hold and lunging toward the ground.

Gunfire sounded through the mountains like a thousand cracking whips.

And Zafiro got her wish.

Luis collapsed to the ground, Sawyer’s bullets lodged within the ice of his frigid heart.

Chapter Nineteen

W
hile a very contrite Maclovio
collected the bodies of the four slain men and dragged them one by one out of La Escondida, Sawyer saw to the member of the gang whose head had met with Tia’s iron skillet. After gagging the man he wrapped a long length of rope around the man’s torso, pinning his arms to his sides. Unable to stand the sight of the bastard inside Zafiro’s home, he then dragged him outside and tossed him on the ground.

From the porch, Zafiro, Tia, Azucar, Lorenzo, and Pedro watched.

“He still lives,” Zafiro said. Her fingers wrapped around her sapphire, she stared at the man who littered her yard. He began to moan and move as he slowly came out of unconsciousness.

“I’m going to hand him in to the authorities,” Sawyer answered, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “He’ll be hanged for his crimes, Zafiro.”

“Yes. He will be hanged, but first he will tell on my men. It will be his last crime on earth, but he will commit it out of revenge before he hangs. And then they will come here. The lawmen will find La Escondida and arrest Maclovio, Lorenzo, and Pedro.”

Slowly, Sawyer looked up from the groaning man on the ground and met Zafiro’s gaze. “What do you want me to do?” he asked softly.

Zafiro narrowed her eyes and tried to suppress the revulsion her reply brought to her. “I want you to kill him.”

Sawyer had never shot at a defenseless man before, much less killed one. It was one thing to fire at a man who was shooting back.

It was entirely different to shoot a gagged, bound, and barely conscious one.

But he didn’t argue. Indeed, there was nothing he could think of that he wouldn’t do to put a final end to Zafiro’s years of terror.

Closing his mind to the cold-blooded murder he was about to commit, he slid his Colt from his gun belt, cocked it, and aimed the gleaming weapon at the man’s head.

“No!” Zafiro flew off the porch and into the yard toward Sawyer, pushing him with all her might when she reached him.

“Zafiro, what the hell—”

“I cannot,” she squeaked miserably. “Afraid as I am that this man will tell on my men, I cannot let you kill him like this! He is tied up and gagged, lying on the ground without a single way to defend himself. I… It is wrong. It is wrong to murder him this way, Sawyer.”

At that moment, as her words sang through his thoughts, Sawyer realized he loved her. No heart in the world beat the way Zafiro’s did, with such compassion, such mercy, such extraordinary goodness.

She was an angel. And he knew it to be so just as surely as if God had just whispered it into his ear.

His gun still dangling in his hand, he started to reach for her, wanting her in his arms so badly that he had to subdue the urge to grab and crush her to him.

But the man on the ground stopped him.

Squinting his eyes against the vicious pain in his head, the man rocked himself into a sitting position, then staggered to his feet. Glancing at Night Master’s Colt, he knew he was going to die.

But he wasn’t going to meet his Maker before trying to escape. Impossible though he knew getting away would be, he turned and began to run.

At the edge of the woods Mariposa met him. The great cat sniffed the air, recognizing his scent as a strange one. With one graceful leap she brought the man down, then sank her teeth into his throat.

He never even had the chance to scream before he died.

I
n her own bed, Zafiro
lay beside Sawyer. The hour was late, and there was no chance Tia would catch them together. All five of the elderly people were so exhausted from a day filled with fear, horror, and overwhelming relief that they’d sought their rooms and gone to sleep as soon as the first hint of dusk had pinkened the sky.

This night with Sawyer would be her last. No longer was there a reason for him to stay. He’d succeeded in accomplishing every last thing she’d asked him to do.

But she wasn’t going to let her sadness ruin these final hours with him. There would be time enough to grieve when he was gone.

A lifetime.

“Sawyer.”

He moved above her, lowering his body down upon hers and holding her sapphire gaze steady as he stared into her eyes.

She felt his masculinity slide between her legs. It was hot. She wanted it to set her afire.

He entered her slightly, then withdrew completely, teasing her into wanting more…all he could give her.

She responded to his actions with a kiss so full of passion and sweetness that he almost admitted that he’d fallen in love with her.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he told her with his body what he could not tell her with words.

He loved her more tenderly than he ever had before, lifting her slowly and wonderfully toward the highest rapture two lovers can find.

And while he held her in his arms, drank of her exquisite kisses, and filled her with himself, he realized that for the first time in his life he’d made love to a woman. For his coupling with Zafiro was not mere mating. Was not only a sexual union.

She was in love with him, and he with her.

In its truest form, this was lovemaking.

I love you,
he told her when she trembled beneath him.

I love you,
he told her again when his own release melded with hers.

I love you,
he told her once more when she snuggled beside him and began to kiss away the dampness on his face that their lovemaking had caused.

“I love you, Sawyer,” she whispered.

He watched her lick her glistening lips, lips made moist by the dampness on his face that she’d kissed away.

And only he knew that the droplets of moisture she tasted were his tears.

B
efore Zafiro even opened her
eyes the next morning, she knew Sawyer was gone. There’d been no need for another good-bye.

His tender lovemaking last night had been his farewell.

Her sorrow too deep for tears, her actions almost mechanical, she got out of bed, then turned to pull up the covers.

Her hands stilled before ever touching the sheet or the blanket.

Scattered all over the bed were roses. Their thorny stems clipped off, the red rosebuds filled her heart with memories of Sawyer.

How many, many times had Sawyer picked roses for her?

Too many times to count.

She gathered the fragrant blossoms from the bed and put them in a basket. Every night before she went to sleep she would look at them. Touch them. They would soon shrivel, blacken, and die.

But her love for Sawyer Donovan never would.

After making the bed, she dressed and left the room to awaken her companions and tell them the news of Sawyer’s departure. For their sake, and because every one of them wept, she continued to hold her own tears at bay.

Days passed, and still she didn’t cry. The days spilled into weeks, bringing the arrival of autumn, the first kiss of frost…

…and the discovery that she carried Sawyer’s child.

Sitting in the swing he’d made for her, she glanced at the paddock in front of the barn. Coraje looked back at her.

Sawyer had taken his father’s horse. Apple Lover. The wild stallion he’d tamed pawed at the cold earth.

She moved her gaze to the rose beds. Ice sparkled upon the velvety leaves, making the flowers seem coated with diamonds.

Roses. The very thought of the flowers Sawyer had picked and spread all over her bed the morning he left squeezed around her heart.

She laid her hand over her lower belly.

And her tears finally came.

B
ending over at the waist and
pulling weeds from the thriving vegetable garden, Zafiro swiped at her moist forehead with her sleeve. Although a mountain breeze picked up her hair and teased her skirts, the summer sunshine beat down on her.

She straightened, admiring the fine wall of pine logs Maclovio had built around the garden. Copying the same design Sawyer had used, the gentle giant had built another enclosure to replace the one he’d burned down so long ago.

Maclovio had also fenced in two large pastures. Pancha, Rayo, Mister, and the horses now had wide-open enclosures in which to run, graze, and play.

With the money Sawyer had left them Zafiro had the nuns purchase livestock. Tia, Azucar, Pedro, and Lorenzo enjoyed taking care of all the pigs, sheep, and new chickens, and the money the animals fetched in the villages was enough to keep La Escondida well-supplied with needed provisions.

All was well, Zafiro thought, as she gazed at the beautiful ranges of the Sierra Madres.

All except her broken heart. It would never be whole again.

Not without Sawyer.

With a dirty hand she brushed away her tears, then continued to yank out the weeds that grew between the vegetable plants.

A while later a strange feeling passed over her. When she first felt it she named it fear.

But it wasn’t fear, she realized. It was something else. A shiver, but not one of cold, not one of dread. It was more like a shimmer, she amended. A shimmer of expectation.

Bewildered by the unfamiliar sensation, she ignored the weeds she’d been about to pull and stood up straight.

Her aching heart took on a rhythm she hadn’t felt in months. Its lethargic beat quickened—like some dying thing that had been kissed back to vibrant life.

She reached for her sapphire, her fingers curling around the ball of cold, blue fire. A smile tilted her lips, but even as she felt its presence she couldn’t understand what caused it.

A feeling of anticipation caused her to lose her breath. She began to pant. Short little puffs of air that gradually made her giddy with a happiness she couldn’t comprehend.

She stood still in the garden and listened. Listened not to any sound she could hear with her ears.