Adobe Palace

by Joyce Brandon

  “I do so!”

  “You won’t go to Mexico City with me.” Angie had accepted an assignment to do a picture book of Mexico City. Ever since she’d signed the contract, she’d been trying to talk him into going with her. The trip was set for November through January, and she didn’t want to be separated from him at Christmas.

  “That’s for three months, for Christ’s sake.”

  “See?” she said, as if that proved her point.

  “That’s hardly the same thing,” he said, protesting. “I have a business to run, too, you know.”

  “If what Sam wanted took six months, you’d do it.”

  “I would not.”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “I can’t believe we’re arguing about something as insignificant as my writing a letter to my sister.”

  “If she really were your sister, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Lance sighed. Angie still looked like the beautiful young woman he had married. She had the same vital, healthy flush to her smooth cheeks, the same precise pattern of apricot-colored freckles across the bridge of her pretty nose. But her eyes, though still beautiful and dark and flashing with inner fire on occasion, were haunted now.

  The third year they were married, she had gotten pregnant. She had been sick from the day she conceived until she miscarried three months later. She’d almost died during the miscarriage, and the doctor had not known why. She no longer admitted any desire for a child and discouraged him from talking about it. However, he believed in spite of her silence and withdrawal that she still wanted a baby, but he was no longer willing to let her carry one for fear of losing her.

  The doctor had told Angie that he didn’t think she could conceive again. The infection from the resulting miscarriage had done permanent damage. Angie had never been able to hide things from him. Her eyes were so clear and expressive he could see all the way to her soul. The day the doctor told her, he had seen such grief and loss that he’d been devastated as well. Even now, remembering the look in her eyes, his guts twisted with pain.

  “Well, how am I going to get you into a good mood so I don’t have to eat dinner with a grouch?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

  Angie scowled. Lance’s tone was humorous and mocking, calculated to remind her that he loved her and just wanted her to be happy. But it just made her feel like a bitch. He was patient and thoughtful—a far better husband than she deserved. And he had matured into an even handsomer man than the one she’d married. More solid, more confident. He exuded masculine authority. It was no wonder Samantha had never gotten over him.

  “I don’t know,” Angie admitted reluctantly.

  “Maybe I could kiss you. That used to work.”

  The attractive raspiness of his voice softened her, quickened her pulse. She drew in a long breath and forced a smile. “I guess we could try,” she said, standing and slipping into his arms.

  Lance pulled her close and breathed in the warmth and softness he loved. “So what naughty things have you been doing today that made you want to pick on me?”

  “Me?” Angie asked, shaking her head and smiling in spite of herself. Lance had a way of getting her out of her bad moods. Now he lowered his mouth to hers and nibbled her lips.

  “You’re the one who’s always just a heartbeat away from going over the line,” she said accusingly.

  “You’ve got me confused with someone else,” he whispered, capturing her lips. He kissed her and felt her slowly relaxing in his arms. Kissing her, all their differences dissolved. She was still the saucy, unmanageable female who had captured his heart seven years ago.

  He could have kissed her for hours, but she ended the kiss, sighed, and smiled up at him. “Welcome home,” she whispered.

  The impulse to tell her how much he loved her was strong in him, but words like that came hard lately. “I don’t know where I got this terrible weakness for skinny girls with bad tempers,” he said huskily. Angie reached up and kissed him again, this time with more passion. It was the sort of kiss that led to the bedroom, not the dining room. He felt no drawing back, no withholding. Hope leapt alive in him again.

  This time he ended the kiss. It was that or pick her up and carry her upstairs, and Yoshio would not appreciate that after all the work he had probably put into cooking dinner.

  Angie sighed, completely relaxed and compliant in his arms now. “I don’t know where I got this terrible weakness for wandering men, either,” she said, the expression in her dark eyes serious as she leaned back in his arms.

  “Does anyone else know you lie like this?” he growled, with just the right note of mock authority.

  “No, and it’s a good thing for you,” she said teasingly.

  “So what did you torture poor Yoshio into cooking for us tonight?” he asked, taking her hand and leading her toward the dining room.

  Angie laughed and swung his hand between them. “All you ever think about is your stomach. If I ate half as much as you, I’d have to roll to the table.”

  “See these calluses,” he said, raising his deeply tanned right hand. It was strong and square. “I work hard—”

  “Ha! Men always think they work hard.”

  They ate in companionable silence. Yoshio cleared the table and brought custard and coffee. “Great dinner,” Lance said, leaning back.

  “Thank you, sir. I thought it up myself.”

  During dessert, Lance told Angie about something funny that had happened at the mine. When he felt certain she was in a good mood, he broached the subject that had been on his mind most of the day.

  “Oh,” he said, as if he’d just remembered, “I brought you a letter from Sarah.” Sarah Logan, Angie’s best friend and sister-in-law, was married to Angie’s brother, Laramee. Lance and Laramee were partners in the silver mine Lance ran. Laramee put his considerable energies into running the Boxer Brand Cattle Ranch, and Sarah into raising their two children. The ranch was so named because it boxed in a good part of the Santa Cruz River. If anyone had water, Logan had water.

  Angie smiled and took the letter. “Well, it’s about time. I haven’t seen her in days!” She unfolded the letter and read.

  Dear Angie,

  The worst possible news. Mary Beth died in childbirth this morning.

  “Oh, no,” Angie whispered, flashing Lance a look of horror. Then she glanced back at the letter.

  I wasn’t there, but Doc stopped by on his way home. He was worn out. He brought the baby here for me to take care of. The other children are old enough to fend for themselves for a few days. I’ve written to the baby’s grandparents in Prescott. Doc posted the letter for me, or he was supposed to. But he mentioned that the kids had told him their grandparents were too old and poorly to take on a baby. Hopefully they will answer.

  I wondered if you might want to consider adopting this baby. It is very sweet, and a boy. It looks a lot like Mary Beth, which would be an asset for a male. At the very least, you might want to come out and see it. I hope I’m not meddling.

  Love, Sarah

  Angie let the letter slip from her fingers. She suddenly felt suffocated. Just the thought of adopting a baby awakened the ever-present hunger in her that had started practically the day she’d married Lance and hadn’t let up once.

  Part of her desperately wanted a baby. And part of her just as desperately didn’t want anything to do with a baby. Just the thought of having one increased the feeling of suffocation. And then there was Lance, whom she loved more than life itself. She was so aware of his desire for a child that her heart ached every time she thought about him. He, too, had become a constant reminder of her inability to have children. She felt bombarded from within and without.

  It seemed to her that once a body could no longer have children, it should at least have the good sense to stop yearning for them. But that hadn’t happened in her case. The older she got, and she was twenty-nine now, the more conflicted and confused she became.

  Tears of frust
ration formed a hard knot in her throat. She turned away from her husband and tried to hold back the tears, but they flooded her mouth and eyes. All attempts to control herself failed, and she curled forward in deep pain, gritting her teeth to keep the howls and sobs from escaping.

  “Hey, hey,” Lance crooned, moving around the table to kneel beside her chair and take her into his arms.

  Angie tried to turn away from him, but he pulled her into his arms and held her. She felt even more suffocated and jerked away from him. “I’m sorry,” she said, at the hurt look on his face. “I don’t know why I’m taking this so hard.”

  Lance didn’t, either. Any death was an occasion for sadness, but this seemed to go deeper than that. Angie didn’t really know Mary Beth, except as a neighbor Sarah talked about occasionally. The woman had lived seven miles away and only got into town occasionally. Angie’s interchanges with her were limited to the weather and other small talk.

  “I’m sorry,” Angie repeated, wiping her eyes with trembling hands and trying to get control of herself. “At least the poor little thing’s in good hands,” she said shakily.

  “I thought maybe,” Lance said, shrugging, “that you’d want to go over there and see if there’s anything you can do to help Sarah. She’s already got her hands full, with two children of her own and another on the way.”

  His expression, the care he took trying not to upset her, the deep hurt she knew he tried so hard to hide from her, evoked the full force of despair she had tried so long to ignore. With a shaking hand, Angie swiped at her eyes with her napkin.

  “Don’t you realize I have better things to do with my time than take care of a baby who’ll probably just…” Her voice trailed off. A look of horror crossed her face; she threw down her napkin and ran from the room.

  Lance scowled after her slender form. Well, so much for hoping she’d see the baby and get attached to it. She wasn’t even willing to go out there. He knew he should give up, but he followed Angie up the stairs and stopped at their closed bedroom door. Through the solid oak he could hear her soft, heartbroken crying.

  He waited until the sobs subsided, then tapped lightly on the door, opened it, and walked in. She was huddled on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest. Even though the room felt warm to him, she had pulled the covers over her.

  He sat down on the bed beside her and stroked her back. When they were first married, Angie had talked and acted like she wanted a baby. That first year she had cooed over babies and looked at baby furniture in the catalog. After the miscarriage she had stopped talking about babies. Now apparently she had moved on to not even permitting the subject to be discussed in the house. But he still couldn’t believe she didn’t want a baby as much as he did, that somewhere beneath that beautiful, hardening shell of hers, the hunger lived on.

  “You know,” he said softly, cautiously, “Yoshio could hire a nanny to take care of that baby. You wouldn’t have to do anything you didn’t want to do.”

  Angie rolled over and sat up, flinging the covers aside. “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “No!” she yelled, springing to her feet. “If you want a baby so bad, go to Samantha. She can give you one!”

  “I want us to have a baby,” Lance said carefully. “But I don’t want you to give birth to it. You’re too precious—”

  “I don’t want a baby in this house!” Angie shouted, trembling visibly.

  “You don’t mean that. Why don’t you just go over to Sarah’s and take a look at it?” he persisted.

  “Ohhhh!” Angie sat up and looked at him with horror and outrage, as if he had suggested something so awful there could be no recovery from it.

  “Why don’t you just go over there,” she shouted, “and get it and take it to Samantha!”

  Lance put up a hand. “Leave Sam out of this.”

  “Look who’s talking!”

  Angie picked up her pillow and slammed it to the floor. Pain, despair, and frustration swirled through her so forcefully that she lost all reason. She looked around for something else to throw or kick or destroy. Finding nothing she yelled at her husband instead, “Get out!”

  “Angie…I’m only trying—”

  “I know what you’re trying to do! Just get out!”

  Lance scowled at her. “You don’t mean that—”

  “Yes, I do!” she shouted, her face twisting with pain and rage. “I really, really do! It’s probably the first thing I’ve meant in years! Just go and get it over with! I’m sick of hearing about how much you want a baby. Go get yourself a baby! Now!”

  Lance looked like a man turned to stone. Enraged at her inability to move him, she ran to the armoire, flung the doors open, and began tossing gowns at the bed.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “You aren’t leaving, so I’m leaving!” she shouted, panting. “I’m going to San Francisco tomorrow.”

  “When did this come up?”

  “A week ago. I forgot to mention it.”

  “So you mention it now? In the middle of a fight?”

  Angie grabbed another gown and tossed it at the valise, throwing clothes about in a frenzy.

  “For how long?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, turning away from the pain and confusion in his eyes. Her own pain was too great.

  Lance walked over to her, turned her, and peered into her eyes. She flinched at his touch, and started to jerk away from him but stopped herself. Lance would put up with a great deal from her, and had, but even in her current state of pain and rage, she knew better than to push him too far. Apparently what he saw in her eyes told him this fight was different from the others. He let go of her rigid shoulders and stepped away from her.

  “Are you coming back?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.

  Lance was stunned. He had no idea what had gone so wrong. He looked at her for a long moment. Angry words seethed within, but he swallowed them and turned away.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  “Out,” he growled.

  “Tell Samantha you have my blessing,” she called after him.

  “I’m not going to Sam.”

  “You will.”

  The door slammed hard. Blinded and furious, Angie stuffed carefully ironed gowns into her overpacked valises as if they were rags. When she had packed everything she could find, she ordered Yoshio to have the carriage hitched up. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and folded forward, crying. She had lost him to Samantha, and it was her own fault.

  They had been climbing uphill for a long time. Sand and cactus had given way to low growing mesquite bushes, bur sage, and brittlebush. Samantha wiped perspiration off her face and leaned around Steve Sheridan’s broad shoulder to see how much farther they had to go. Only a few hundred yards away, on a level place on the side of the low scrub-covered mountain, Picket Post’s faded gray buildings gleamed like silver in the sunlight. It had a small business section arranged around a quad. Miners lived north of the town in rundown shacks and pale canvas tents. Business owners lived east of town in whitewashed houses. From a distance, the white of the canvas and houses looked like lace trim around the town.

  She had never been so happy to see anyplace in her life. Camp Picket Post was the only settlement of any size between Phoenix and Globe. Every Saturday, miners, cowboys, and farmers came from miles around. Today would be no exception.

  With its squat, weathered buildings arranged in a square, Picket Post reminded Samantha of the settlement near the Kincaid ranch in Texas. Lance had said most Texas towns had been built around squares to make them easier to protect from attacking Comanche. But even after the Comanche were no longer a problem, people kept building Texas towns that way. Maybe this camp had been started by a Texan. They were everywhere.

  “Are you from Texas, Mr. Sheridan?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She had never known a man who wasn’t sure where he was
from. She wanted to ask him about it, but a dog ran out and barked so loudly Sheridan wouldn’t have heard her anyway.

  Up close, Picket Post looked like it was only weeks away from being a ghost town. The buildings couldn’t be more than ten years old, but they already leaned slightly from the fairly constant northeastern winds whipping around the mountain.

  Inside the square, horses stood in the hot sun and switched their tails at flies buzzing around them. Sounds of fiddle music came from one of the saloons, tinny piano music from another. A group of men standing in front of the tobacco store laughed and talked. Two old men with white beards sat on the steps of the general store and whittled.

  The barber shop, where the town’s closest thing to a doctor resided, was at the easternmost edge of town, so they didn’t have far to go.

  Usually Seth Boswell, skilled at picking bullets out of wounds, walked out smiling his good-natured smile and helped Samantha down from her horse. Today he appeared not to see them.

  “This is the place,” Samantha said, glancing around at the town, which looked smaller, meaner, and more run down than she remembered it.

  Sheridan dismounted. He and Silas carried Lars toward the barber shop. Boswell stepped into the doorway, blocking it.

  Samantha frowned. “Something wrong?”

  “Gunshot wound?” Seth asked gruffly, looking at Sheridan.

  “Yes,” Sheridan said.

  Boswell lifted Lars’s shirt and frowned at the wound. “Should have taken him to the fort.”

  Sheridan looked irritated. Samantha felt a sinking in her chest. Seth Boswell had never shown any hesitancy about treating any type of wound. Usually, whether he was acting as barber to cut Nicholas’s hair or as doctor to check his health, he always smiled at her and gave Nicholas a gumdrop. Today he looked like he wished she hadn’t stopped here.

  “There’s a band of renegade Indians between here and the fort,” Sheridan said. “I thought it best to bring everyone here.”

  Boswell still blocked the doorway to his shop. People had stepped out onto the sidewalk to watch. Samantha felt his desire to turn them away.