Sacrifice of Passion (Deadly Legends) (4 page)

Chapter Four

El Charro. The bar Vic owned with his brother and silent partner, Ray, was his home away from home. Only tonight he felt like he was outside himself, watching the action at the bar but not part of it. Mary Jane Majors, El Charro’s fulltime bartender, washed and put up tumblers. The small band played in the corner of the dining room past the half wall. Alan Maldano, always a permanent fixture once his work at the West’s ranch was done for the day, sat hunched over his draft beer. The place buzzed with a growing energy.

But all Vic wanted was to be back home with his son.

He checked the clock above the cutout door to the kitchen. Barely eight o’clock. The minute hand had hardly moved since the last time he’d checked. Time was creeping, the long night looming ahead of him.

The bar darkened and thunder clapped. He glanced out the plate glass windows that still shook from the boom. The vast sky outside had turned gray, the clouds dense and low and stewing. Maybe the storm was finally going to break. He felt unsettled. A gnawing in the pit of his stomach.

Screw this. He pulled out his cell phone and called Ray. “Everything okay?”

“Eva and Zach are playing Battleship. He’s quiet, as usual. But he’s fine.”

Relief washed over him. This fatherhood thing was a constant challenge. He still hadn’t figured out how to manage the perpetual worry about someone else’s wellbeing.

“Storm’s threatening. Lightning—”

“Don’t worry, Vic. I won’t send him outside with a hanger or an antenna.”

He laughed at himself. Ray had practically raised Eva on his own, and now she was seventeen and thriving. His brother knew how to take care of a kid a hell of a lot better than he did. “Yeah, great. Thanks again for staying with him.”

There was muttering on the other end of the line. Ray came back. “He wants to talk to you.”

Vic felt his eyes widen. That was a first. “Put him on.”

“Hi,” Zach said a second later.

“Hey, buddy. How you doing?”

“Fine.”

Monosyllabic, as usual. “Great. What’s up?”

“Sheila.”

Vic felt his blood pressure spike. He still hadn’t gotten over the fact that Zach had named the potbelly after his mother. Sheila had to be cringing, even six feet under. “What about her, son?” God, it felt weird saying that word. But in a good way.

“It’s going to rain.”

“She’s fine,” Vic said, reading between the lines. “She’s in the barn, safe and sound.” Delaney asking Zach if the pig slept inside came to him. “Hey, buddy, how’d you like to have Sheila sleep in your room with you?”

There was a sharp intake of breath, then Zach blurted, “Really?”

Vic grinned. This was a real conversation, and he heard the smile in his son’s voice. “Really. We can set up a little area all for her.”

After a few more minutes of planning, the kid seemed less agitated and was ready to hang up.
Sleep with the angels.
The one-line sentiment came to Vic. His mother used to say it to him and Ray every night before bed. Then she’d lean over and give them each a kiss and a hug. He’d say it back and she’d smile.

In a formal tone, Zach said goodnight, then severed the connection. Not the response Vic had been hoping for.

“Sleep with the angels,” he said into the air. “Son.”

He felt lighter, as if he’d had a breakthrough with Zach, however small. He’d take it. Baby steps.

Mary Jane stood an arm’s length away. “Being a daddy’s tough business. He’s coming around, eh?”

“Starting to.”

Mary Jane, in all her sun-worshipping, wrinkled-skin glory, sidled off to serve a customer.

The sky darkened even more and Vic grew restless. He stocked the beer, changed out one of the kegs, wiped the bar, poured drinks.

“You okay?” Alan gave him a funny look. Vic and Alan had never been friends, but everyone in town came to El Charro. Not a lot of choice.

“Fine.” But the brewing storm still had him uneasy.

The door banged open and Jasper came in, making a beeline for the bar. He greeted Vic while poking one finger under the rim of his cowboy hat, inching it back on his head. “Now that Delaney West’s back in town, you see her yet?” he asked as he bellied up.

Vic lifted his chin in greeting, took out a glass, and pulled a draft. “Yep. Had a conversation with her just yesterday.”

Alan studied him from two stools down, his brows pinched together. “You two talking, then? I thought you hated her.”

The ranch hand had always had a thing for Delaney and it chapped Vic’s hide that the guy was still jealous over the past.

Alan spun his glass until the damp napkin underneath it tore.

Thunder clapped outside. Vic folded his arms across his chest and stared out the window, waiting for more lightning to strike. It was getting closer. Through the window, movement caught his eye. He started. Esperanza appeared like an apparition, standing stone still, her papery skin illuminated by the outdoor lights. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. The curandera’s white eyes glowed intensely. And stared right at him.

Jasper and Alan swung their heads to follow his gaze. “Whoa,” Alan exclaimed. Jasper jerked back on his stool.

“Is she looking at you?” Jasper whispered.

Vic stared. “Hell, no. She’s blind as a bat.” He tore his gaze away from the curandera.

Alan spun around, jumped off his stool, and headed for the door. He stopped short just outside. “Crazy old witch! Where’d she go?”

Vic looked back at the window. And blinked. Esperanza was gone. “Damn,” he muttered. Braido had taken her away from the ranch so quickly the morning they’d found the goat, he hadn’t had a chance to talk to her more about what she’d said about the chupacabra and Delaney. He wondered what she was doing out so late. He occasionally saw the curandera hobbling around, but never after the sun went down. She claimed the evil ones came out after dark.

The uneasiness in the pit of his stomach mounted. Not that he believed in such things.

Jasper frowned. “How do you think she’ll get home?”

“Probably on her broomstick.” Alan slid back onto his stool and downed his beer, pushing his glass across the bar for a refill. “She really can’t see anything?”

“Just light and dark,” Vic said.

“How do you know that?” Jasper asked.

Damn. He should have kept his mouth shut. His mother had been to see her, but he didn’t let folks know about that. People in town were used to seeing Esperanza, but the religious community in San Julio had long ago condemned her as a heretic, and ill will toward her had spread over the years. Only the poor migrant community and the old world believers went to see her anymore. Chris and Jasper would never understand. They’d been taken in by their uncle after their parents had died. Landon Locke had been strict and raised them to be God-fearing.

A cowboy on the dance floor whooped, and a barrage of applause followed. Enough of a distraction that Vic didn’t have to answer Jasper. He shook off Esperanza’s vacant, haunting gaze and turned his attention back to the bar. An electrified buzz was in the air, the hollering louder than usual, as if the unsettled sky and brewing storm had spread its agitation inside.

The door at the other end of the bar opened and a woman breezed in, a strong wind with her. A cowboy hat sat low on her head. The talk in the bar changed as she made her way past the band and into Vic’s territory. This woman was beyond sexy in a dress that hit just at the knees, brown cowboy boots, cream colored hat, and a suede jacket. Nothing like a gorgeous stranger to get the attention of a herd of cowboys. Great.

She glided up to the bar and sat at a stool. He’d started to cross over to take her drink order, then stopped dead in his tracks when she took off her hat and let her hair spill down her shoulders.

Gorgeous, yes. Stranger, no.

That old ache of unfulfilled desire and frustration he’d experienced just over twenty-four hours ago struck him like a hot poker between the eyes. “Shit.” The word snapped out of his mouth.

Jasper turned toward him. “What?”

“It’s her.”

“Who?” Alan followed their gazes.

Vic leaned his hip against the bar. Why the hell was he seeing Delaney West everywhere he went? Was this some kind of cruel joke? Wasn’t it enough that his son was enamored with her? Did she have to torture him with her presence all over San Julio? Jesus, not even El Charro was safe. “God must have it in for me,” he muttered.

Jasper tapped his fingers against the bar. “Not supposed to take the Lord’s name in vain,” he chastised.

“You’re a big help, man,” Vic said, shaking his head.

“Get over her,” Alan snarled. “She’s over you.”

Vic’s hands fisted and he slowly turned to Alan. He barely restrained himself from grabbing the jerk by the shirt and hauling his ass out of the bar. Enough was enough. No matter how many years the guy had pined over Delaney, she’d never be his. That much Vic would bet his life on.

“Oh, we’re over each other,” he said. But then a memory of the first time he’d really been attracted to her flooded over him. It must have been fourteen or fifteen years ago—at the community swimming pool. Early summer. She’d been wearing a two-piece swim suit, modest, yet the sexiest thing he’d ever seen on a woman.

He could still smell the scent of bluebells, feel the humid air that wrapped itself around him like a blanket of warm moisture, hear the Los Lonely Boys song playing through the poolside speakers. He’d said hello, and when she returned the greeting, looking at him through her long eyelashes and then licking her lips and tilting her head, he’d fallen in love with her on the spot.

“Yo. Vic.”

He turned to Jasper. “What?”

“Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere. Never mind.”

But Jasper shook his head like he knew exactly what Vic had been thinking. “She’s your cross,
amigo
. I can see it in your eyes.”

Vic cocked one eyebrow. “Come again?”

“Your cross. You know, the load you carry with you. The one you want but can’t have.”

Should have had. She’d left him high and dry, broken-hearted and with a hard-on that he still remembered. But for some reason he still felt responsible for her. The curandera’s haunting words came back to him. How had she known Delaney was back, and what did she think Delaney’s reappearance in San Julio had to do with the dead, blood-drained animals?

Jasper continued solemnly. “We all have a cross to bear, dude.” He lifted his chin in the direction of Delaney, a light suddenly twinkling in his eyes. “Sometimes you get a second chance. Why resist?”

Because she’d rip his heart right out again if he wasn’t careful. And he was just as likely to try to rip her heart out. Payback. He’d glimpsed that side of himself earlier and he hadn’t liked it. He had to get her out of his system.

He rationalized. Hell, maybe Jasper was right. Although he knew his church-going friend was suggesting he try to date Delaney again, a different thought was forming. Maybe if he and Delaney had sex, he’d finally be able to purge from his mind the mystery of the unknown that had plagued him all these years. Once he’d had her, he could drive her memory away and get over her once and for all.

And while he was at it, maybe he could figure out why the curandera had linked Delaney to the chupacabra.

Delaney had shed her coat and laid it on the bar stool next to her. She still hadn’t spotted him yet, so he let his eyes roam over what he could see of her body. She was a perfect mixture of innocence and seduction in that dress. It was a body that could sustain a man through the cold night—and he sure as hell could use a little warmth in his cold house.

“You know, Jasper,” he said, making up his mind, “you’re right. I don’t want to resist her.” Vic headed down to the other end of the bar. “Well, well. Look what the storm blew in,” he said when he was facing her.

She startled, looking up at him.

He reined in his antagonism. If he wanted to get Delaney into his bed and out of his head, he’d have to forgive and forget. It was his only path to freedom. He worked to bury his bitterness and focus. “Long time no see.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You work here?”

“I own here. With Ray.”

She raised her eyebrows. “But I thought…your ranch—”

“Part-time bar owner, full-time rancher.”

“Don’t forget full-time daddy,” she said. Her eyes weren’t smiling.

“No, can’t forget that.” He leaned on the bar. Seemed charm might not work, after all. She was ready to condemn him for Zach. “Why don’t we just talk about this and get it over with?”

She splayed her fingers on the bar and stared at them for a beat before looking up at him through her eyelashes. She smiled and his heart melted a fraction. “Can I get a drink?”

Her voice sparked little memories in his brain. The ringlets of hair that were hidden at the nape of her neck. The tiny line that curved around the left side of her mouth when she gave the slightest smile. The sound of her laughter.

“Vic?” She didn’t blink, didn’t look away. “A drink?”

Maybe a drink would loosen her tongue, let her tell the truth, lead her to his bed, and get her the hell out of his mind. “Sure thing. What’ll it be?”

“Mmm.” Her voice was smoky, low, full of promise. “A shot of whiskey,” she said, leveling her gaze at him when he raised his eyebrows. He was pretty good at matching up women with their preferred drinks. He would have pegged her for a gin and tonic girl. Or maybe a Tom Collins. Anything but straight whiskey. Time had changed her. He poured a healthy shot of Bushmills and slid it across to her.

She sipped, then grimaced.

Ah. So she didn’t drink it regularly. He’d been more on the mark than he’d thought. But then she downed the drink, smiling faintly as she pushed the glass toward him for a refill.

After he poured, Delaney reached for the glass. Their fingers brushed, an electric charge shooting up his arm from the contact. The entire bar seemed to vanish for a split second.

“Your son looks just like you,” she said, breaking the trance.

Did he imagine wistfulness in her voice? “Poor kid,” he joked.

“He’s going to be trouble,” she added. “Just like his dad.”