Sacrifice of Passion (Deadly Legends) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Vic leaned against the door frame, watching his eleven-year-old son wrestle in the early morning sun with Mojo, Vic’s black Lab, unwilling to remind the kid it was time to head to the bus stop for school. Playing with the dog was the only time the kid ever looked close to happy.

“He likes to be scratched behind his ears,” Vic said. Zach stopped altogether, and Vic cursed at himself under his breath.

Damn. If Vic had known fatherhood was about to descend upon him, he might not have used every last drop of money he’d had, borrowing what he didn’t have from his brother, Ray, so he could own this land and the old ranch-style house that stood sentry to the Texas woods behind it. His mustang gelding, El Rei, and his newer quarter horse mare, Bluebell, had decent stalls, but he wasn’t spending the time he needed to with them or with his other livestock—Texas Longhorn and Merino sheep. All he’d ever known had changed a few short months ago, and like the Earth catastrophically shifting on its axis, everything, including the ranch, had taken a back seat. To his son.

His
son
. He still couldn’t believe it. The boy’s mother had kept his son a secret from him and everyone else in San Julio all these years. He’d only learned about the boy after she died in a car accident. Zach. They were a family, which was what he’d always wanted. The only thing missing was a woman in their lives. In a small town like San Julio, finding anyone to share his life with had proven near impossible.

Delaney’s name slid through his mind, but he let it pass. She’d ripped out his heart with her bare hands. She certainly wasn’t the woman for him.

“Hey,” he heard from behind him.

Vic turned away from Zach, grateful for the distraction. His friend and neighbor, Jasper, was walking toward them, cradling something tiny in his thick arms.

Vic hefted his chin in greeting. “What do you got there?”

Jasper stroked the little pig’s back as he looked at the small fenced yard. “It’s for your boy. Potbelly. This one’s the runt. She won’t grow too big. Thought it might help.” He sat down next to Vic. “Things any better?”

Far from it. Vic frowned. No matter what he did to try to make things better, Zach didn’t respond. After two and a half months living together, they were still strangers.

“Zach,” Vic called. “Come on over here.”

Zach stood and walked toward them, his big gray-blue eyes widening when he saw the black baby pig. “Cool.”

Jasper handed the potbelly over to Zach. “Here you go.” He turned to Vic, lowering his voice so Zach wouldn’t hear. “Keep an eye on her. That…whatever it is…seems to have a taste for them. Lost another one last night.”

Zach took the piglet gingerly, cradling it in his arms like a baby. “For me?”

When Jasper nodded, the smile that erupted on Zach’s face strangled Vic’s heart. What the hell was he doing wrong? His son could hardly carry on a conversation with him, but a neighbor’s gift had gotten him to grin the way a boy his age should be smiling all day long. It pissed him off that he hadn’t been the one to give his son a piglet. Hell, the idea to get the kid a pet had never even crossed his mind.

Dammit, he had no clue how to be a father.

But Jasper knew how, and the pig had made the boy grin. A welcome sight after all the sullen looks. Vic sighed inwardly. He’d have to try harder. He’d start by keeping the pig safe from this predator, whatever it was.

And if it was the last thing he did, Vic would learn how to be a good father to his kid.

…

Delaney was exhausted. Bone-achingly tired and in desperate need of sleep. She never should have come back to San Julio. Never should have come back to the place where her life had fallen apart. To the place she’d lost…everything.

The bell pinged as the door to the San Julio Vet Clinic opened. Another customer. The place was swamped for a Friday. Nearly eight, and the waiting room was bursting at the seams. She stifled a yawn, forcing her eyes to stay open. Between the early hours at the clinic and the horrible nightmares, she was a sleepless wreck.

Damn shrinks. “You have to face the past,” she mimicked the last one in her head. “It’s the only way to move forward with your life.”

Yeah, well, she was still waiting. She’d been here for almost two weeks, and so far facing her demons hadn’t fixed anything. In fact, her condition had gotten worse. She was still sleepwalking, and the nightmares were haunting her again.

Doc Clinton walked past her, deep in conversation with one of her parents’ neighbors, James McDuff. “That death’s not normal,” he said.

“But other animals have been killed the same way. Started a couple of weeks ago. My goat’s not the first,” McDuff responded, his voice thick with his native Scottish accent. She gave him a quick smile, then noticed Doc Clinton’s frown.

“I believe you, but it’s still not natural. No animal feeds by exsanguination,” Doc Clinton said. His smile lines crinkled, as if he were trying to lighten the mood. “Except the chupacabra, of course.”

McDuff’s eyes rolled. “Not you, too. I don’t believe in legends and old wives’ tales, Doc.”

“Neither do I. So there’s gotta be another reason your goat died.”

Animals being drained of their blood? Delaney shivered, stifling the very idea as she took the chart Doc Clinton handed her and turned back to filing the stack that had piled up from the day before. And she’d thought the clinic she’d worked at in Austin had been busy. Still, her timing had been perfect. The former vet tech here had up and eloped, leaving an opening. Delaney had come back to San Julio to get her life back on track. A job was a step in the right direction. Even if nothing else seemed to be cooperating.

“But what if she needs me?” she heard a boy ask from behind her. “I should stay home from school.”

“No can do, son,” a man said, his voice low.

The timbre… The cadence. There was something about it…

The phone rang and the receptionist, Dolly, a big-haired Texas blonde, answered it, and then spoke to Doc Clinton. “It’s Jasper Locke. Says he’s worried about his mare.” She covered the headset mic with her hand and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Because of all the dead animals turning up.”

Delaney held her breath. She knew Jasper. Had grown up with him, and according to her mother, the man had developed into an experienced rancher, taking over his parents’ spread when they’d died. If Jasper was concerned about his mare, it was with good reason.

The veins in the vet’s neck pulsed as he took the phone from Dolly. “What’s going on, Jasper?” He was silent for a few minutes, listening intently.

“She’s in the barn. She’ll be okay,” Doc Clinton finally said. “Is she nesting?” He listened again, then nodded his head. “Hang tight. You know the signs. When she becomes unsettled, we’ll get someone over there to help.”

The doctor hung up, and then said to Delaney, “Mare’s due to foal right quick. Can you get the supplies together? We need to be at the ready.”

Delaney nodded, then reached for the next patient’s file and read the name.
Sheila Vargas
. Her breath caught and she felt light-headed. Sheila Vargas. Could it be? Had Vic married Sheila?

The last time she’d seen Sheila, it had been like a dagger in her heart. Sheila’s arms had been wrapped around Vic, and—

No. Delaney blocked the memory from barging full force into her head. Getting her life together didn’t mean reliving every painful moment from her disastrous relationship with Vic Vargas.

She steeled her will and called into the waiting room, “Sheila Vargas.”

“Here!” A boy’s voice piped up from a corner bench. The boy charged forward, cradling a tiny black potbellied pig in his arms. “I’m Zach.” He looked down at the pig. “This is Sheila.”

Surprised, Delaney kept her focus on the boy, determined not to look at the man he’d come in with. His father. Vic Vargas. She felt her stomach expand with each slow breath. The boy was the spitting image of Vic, from his warm olive skin to his smoky blue eyes. He had to be about ten. She stubbornly refused to do the math.

She remembered to smile, to breathe, and reached her hand out to stroke the pig’s back. “She’s the runt, isn’t she?”

The boy shrugged. “I guess, but she’s perfect.”

“You here with your mother?” she asked, not sure she could face Vic
and
Sheila at the same time.

The boy’s expression turned stony and he shook his head.

The click of cowboy boots against the clean linoleum matched her ratcheting heartbeat. Denim pant legs appeared in her peripheral vision. And then a voice came from next to her. “He’s here with me.”

It was a voice she recognized as if she’d heard it every day for the past twelve years. A barrage of memories flooded her. The way he smelled. The timbre of his voice as he whispered in her ear. How he touched her and listened to her dreams and…

Delaney closed her eyes and willed her heartache away. None of it had meant anything. Not to him, anyway. “Three forty-five a.m.,” he’d said the night they’d planned to elope. “I’ll be there.”

Right.

He hadn’t shown up at the Chain Tree that night. Hadn’t been there when she’d arrived, and hadn’t been there when she’d left two hours later. And then when she’d gone to find him at his house the next morning, hurt, broken, aching, and in desperate need of his love and comfort, she’d seen him tangled in an embrace with Sheila Ramsey.

She hadn’t seen the bastard since.

She opened her eyes and turned, tamping down the anxiety bubbling in her gut. She blinked, pushing away the awful vision. Vic’s gaze bore into her, but there wasn’t a shadow of recognition or pleasure in his expression.

“Shall we go into an exam room?” Her voice sounded hollow and cold, but all the emotions she’d bottled up since that last night with Vic threatened to burst from her core.

The boy nodded. Focus on him, Delaney told herself. What was his name? Oh, yes. Zach.

She’d just pretend that Vic wasn’t here. Pretend like she didn’t feel eighteen again, with every nerve ending alight with desire. Like her body wasn’t responding to his cowboy mystique, his powerful body, his penetrating eyes.

“How old is your pig?” she asked, distracting herself from Vic’s presence.

“She’s eleven weeks old. Like me, only I’m eleven
years
old,” the boy said.

Her stomach curled in on itself. No need for math. Vic must have gotten Sheila pregnant right after Delaney had left for Austin. Didn’t take him long, she thought bitterly.

Pretend Vic isn’t here, she reminded herself.

“This way,” she said, and she walked in front of them, feeling his gaze burn into her back. She stepped aside as they entered Exam Room Two, inadvertently breathing in as Vic passed. His clean, rain-fresh scent enveloped her senses, making her reel again.

He folded his arms over his chest. “Our appointment’s with Doc Clinton.”

The coldness in his voice made her anger flare. If he’d shown up that night—she shuddered at the memory of what
had
happened—things would have been different. He wouldn’t be cold toward her and she wouldn’t be angry. They’d be together, and it would be their child with them instead of his with Sheila Ramsey.

“The doctor’s with another patient,” she said through clenched teeth, “but he’ll be in shortly.”

“Good.” He planted his feet. Rocked back on his heels. “We’ll just wait for him.”

She met his gaze evenly, fury simmering. “You could be waiting a long time. Sometimes people don’t show up, even with an appointment.”

He didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch or look away from her. “And sometimes they run away.”

She battled the inferno blazing behind her eyes. She had run away. From Vic. From San Julio. From that horrible night, a night worse than he could possibly imagine. But she was not about to let him see the pain she was still running from. “Doc Clinton always does what he says he’s going to do,” she said.

“Yeah.” His jaw pulsed. “And I’m sure he’s excellent at communicating, too.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “That’s a two-way street. You can’t communicate with someone who isn’t where they’re supposed to be.”

His eyes stayed glued to her. “Or when they bolt without so much as a ‘nice knowing you’ or ‘see you around’.”

Zach’s head swung with each retort, as if he were watching a tennis match.

Delaney figured she should stop now before she said something she’d regret, but plowed on instead. “Of course, when a person shows they’re not loyal by seeing another…” she glanced at Zach, the pig squirming in his arms, “another
vet
—”

“I never saw another vet.”

Anger pricked at her, the heat of it spreading like a rash up her neck. Vic brought out the worst in her, sending her back to adolescence and veiled blame. She couldn’t do this. Didn’t want to reopen old wounds that were proving to be as raw as the night they’d been inflicted. Certainly not in front of the kid. “Whatever you—”

The pig squealed, twisting in Zach’s arms. He struggled to hold on to her, but lost his grip. The black bundle dropped with a squeal onto the exam table. Sheila’s legs splayed and she struggled to stand. Delaney blinked away the burning behind her eyes. She lunged, catching the piglet as it careened off the table. “Got you!”

Zach gasped. “You saved her! She would have broken all her legs. She could have died!” He scratched under Sheila’s chin. “But you’re okay, Sheila,” he cooed. “The nice lady saved you.”

“She would have been fine,” Vic said, laying a hand on Zach’s shoulder.

Delaney stroked Sheila’s back. “Your dad’s right.” She handed Sheila to Zach, then lifted her gaze to Vic again, steeling her expression, pain driving her to make a final dig. “No matter what people do to her, she’ll be just fine.”