by Bethany-Kris
He did his best to ignore that Valeria was sitting on the edge, overlooking the water, when he approached. She glanced back at him, dark eyes filled with a line of water that had his chest clenching.
Something was wrong.
But what?
“Chris!”
“Hey, bambina,” he said to Maria, slowing the horse to a stop before jumping down to the ground. The animals were well-trained and didn’t wander off as he learned, so he dropped the horse’s reins and didn’t give it a second thought. Maria peered up at him from her spot in a patch of wildflowers where her kitten napped in her lap. “Out for a ride?”
The girl shrugged. “Mamá wanted to.”
Chris nodded. “Stay away from the edge of the cliffs, okay?”
“I will.” Then, Maria held up a white wildflower, offering it to him with a brilliant smile. “Here, a gift.”
How could he refuse that?
Chris took the flower from the girl, twirling the fragile stem between his fingers as he looked it over before putting it in the breast pocket of his jacket for safekeeping. “It’s beautiful—like you, hmm? Thank you.”
Maria’s cheeks pinked, but when she looked back at her mother who stared out across the cliffs and not paying them attention, her happiness faded. “Mamá is sad.”
He was quick to bend down, reaching out to soothe the girl because he wondered how many people thought to stop and do that for her. She was still a child—small, and young. He bet she faced adult issues far more than she should.
Next to her mother, Maria was one of the few people on the ranch that Chris found himself drawn to, and she was just a child. Her smile lit up a room, and the way she cared about things—from her mother to the kitten in her lap—was as sweet as could be.
This job had turned out to be far more than what he expected, but Chris would not complain about it. How could he when he met these two wonderful souls because of it? He no longer wondered why Valeria’s friend was so willing to approach an organization like The League to get her home where she belonged.
He wanted them home, too.
Chris wondered if home might be with him.
“Let’s see if I can make your ma happy, okay?” he told the girl.
Maria grinned. “Okay.”
He gave her a quick pat on the top of her black curls before standing. Valeria said nothing as Chris came to sit next to her on the edge of the cliffs. He swallowed back the discomfort the position caused and kept his gaze on her instead of the water down below. She spoke before he did, giving him the exact reason for her sadness.
It was not what he expected.
“You’re leaving,” she whispered.
Yeah.
He didn’t bother to ask how she knew that. It didn’t matter.
“The business side of things have run their course here,” he explained, although it wouldn’t help her feelings on the matter. “I can’t stay just because I want to. Jorge has wanted me gone since I arrived.”
“Right.”
“Val.”
She refused to look at him.
Chris tried not to let that hurt.
“Val.
“What?” she asked.
“Hey,” he murmured, reaching for her.
The second his palm came in contact with her cheek, Valeria blinked, and the tears she had been holding back tracked lines down from the corners of her eyes. He could handle a lot of things from this woman, but crying did not seem to be one. When the tears started, all he wanted to do was make them stop.
Now.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” he said, his arm snaking around her waist to pull her into his lap. He wiped the tears from her face, and met her gaze. Although, when that didn’t work to make her stop crying, he did the next best thing. Kissed her. His lips touched to hers, he tasted the salt from her tears, and the rest of the world faded away. Still, he breathed against her mouth, “Please, don’t cry. It’s not over, I promise.”
Somewhere behind him, he heard Maria’s little gasp.
Then, her giggle.
Kids.
Valeria pushed away from him, but not very far. She couldn’t get away when he was holding her locked in his arms. “Maria might tell—”
“She won’t.”
That, he was most sure of.
All little Maria wanted was for her mother to be happy. She was tired of seeing her mother sad and hurting. That’s all Valeria ever was here.
Chris used the pad of his thumb to wipe away the last bit of wetness from under Valeria’s eye. “Hey, look at me.”
Valeria did, but he wasn’t sure he liked what he found staring back. “I was never going to be free. I never will be. Hope was a lie.”
“What?”
“I can’t even protect my daughter because she is the sacrifice he’s willing to use to punish me. And now you’re leaving. What am I going to do?”
Those tears had started again.
Her voice climbed higher.
Chris kissed her quiet. Her fingers tightened into the collar of his jacket as their lips moved in a familiar rhythm. Soft, and sweet. A heat spreading between the two of them he had never known existed before this woman.
Against her lips, he said, “I didn’t want to leave until I had a clear way out for you—that won’t happen with the way he has this place run, but I know that now. Which means as soon as I am out of here, I will gather a team, and they’ll come in to get you out. Do you understand?”
“That’s not poss—”
“It is, and that’s what will happen. I don’t want you to stay here a second longer than you need to, but this is my only way to make it work.”
Unless something else came up.
As of now, nothing had.
Chris grabbed Valeria’s chin and tipped her head back so she was staring at him again. “Don’t you want a chance?”
“W-what?”
“A chance to do whatever you want—to live, or to love? To be whoever you want to be, and not who someone else demands from you?”
Fire rushed her stare. “Of course, I do.”
“Then, don’t give up. You can’t.” Chris sighed, glancing over his shoulder to scan the land in case someone was coming. Although, they would have heard the horses approaching. “Did anyone see you leave?”
“Carla—the nanny—knew I was going, but she didn’t see us leave the stables.”
“No one else? Jorge?”
Valeria shook her head.
Chris nodded. “Okay, go back before he sends someone out after you and her. Don’t make him angry—keep the peace, however you can.”
“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep letting him use me and hurt me.”
He didn’t have the right words for that.
Nothing to make it better.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Valeria’s shoulders lifted and sank with her heavy breaths. “I just ... I want that chance, Chris.”
“You’ll get it,” he promised. “I’ll make sure.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
“Yeah.”
The unspoken words hung between them—but you have to.
Valeria climbed out of his lap with help, and then Chris stood too after brushing off his clothes. Silently, his hand found hers, their fingers wove together, and he squeezed before letting go.
“Jorge said you would leave mid-week.”
“Probably tomorrow.”
He got a flight.
Valeria made a heartbroken noise.
“Shh,” Chris hushed, tugging her close to his side to press a kiss to the top of her head, and hide her away from the rest of the world while he was able. “It will be fine.”
“It won’t.”
“Let me show you.”
Then, another thought popped into his mind.
“The stables,” he said, “at midnight. That’s when the second shift change happens for the guards—every twelve hours. They meet at the gate for an hour be
fore heading back to their posts. If you’re there, that’s where I’ll be tonight. Okay?”
She nodded.
Chris gestured at the horse she brought along. “Go ahead. Get back before he sends someone out for you.”
Maria glanced up from the kitten in her lap. “You have Butter.”
He smiled at the girl and passed a glance at the horse he brought along. Butter, that was. “Butter is a great horse.”
“My favorite.”
Oh?
“You can take him back for me,” Chris said, knowing it would be a five-mile walk back to the ranch, “as long as you promise to keep this a secret.”
Maria stood up from the ground, packing her kitten away in the rucksack hanging across her small body. “Deal.”
He helped Valeria to get the horses ready for the ride back, but before she left him behind at the cliffs, he grabbed her wrist. Her gaze met his, and he tugged to make her lean down. One more kiss between them, and he held her gaze.
“I always keep my promises, Val.”
That fire was back in her stare.
He liked it better, now.
“You better,” she said.
He would.
Chris watched the girls and the horses fade in the distance. Pulling that flower Maria had given him from his breast pocket, he fished out his wallet, too. He flipped the wallet open to a spot in the back, and laid the flower on the leather before closing it up, pressing firmly to keep it in place. Once he had the chance, he would take it out and press it safely between the pages of a book he kept on his desk at home.
Someday, he wanted to show Maria that he kept it, and her mother, too. Because this day? It felt like it changed everything.
• • •
The sky had blackened by the time Chris walked those five miles back to the ranch. Not that he minded—walking hurt nobody, and he used the time to clear his head. The weather had stayed decent during his stay in Mexico, so he wouldn’t say anything bad about that, either.
He wasn’t at all surprised to find the ranch quiet when he returned. The one guard walking the pathways between the houses gave him a nod as he passed, but the man didn’t even realize Chris wasn’t out for one of his normal strolls. That had become normal to them, and so they didn’t even question it, now.
A blessing, really.
Chris intended on heading to the house he was using on the ranch, having a quick shower, and then making his way to Jorge’s home to sign off on the deal for his father, even if was still a ruse. A throat clearing to his left stopped his walk up short.
Sitting on the porch of the small bungalow she and her brother used, Abril Lòpez raised an eyebrow when Chris’s gaze landed on her.
“Good walk?” she asked.
Chris nodded, careful with his words because he wasn’t sure what to make of this woman. She went along with her brothers, and their plans more often than she didn’t. After watching her for a while, he found that she followed the rules, even if she seemed to enjoy pushing the boundaries around her.
A complex.
Nothing like Valeria.
She had been easy to figure out.
Abril ... not so much.
“It was nice,” he said.
Abril leaned forward on the steps, a sly smile curving her lips as a glint twinkled in her russet gaze. “I thought you took out a horse earlier? I was in the stables, remember? Butter.”
Shit.
Chris forgot about that.
A mistake he couldn’t afford.
“You didn’t see me come back?”
He hoped to distract the woman with a lie, but perhaps he should have known better than to even try. There was something about Abril that was not the same as her brothers although what it was, he wasn’t sure. She was quiet, always sticking to the shadows, but never inserting herself into conversations.
However, Chris understood it was the silent ones someone had to watch more than the others. They were the people who saw things, but never said a word. They heard conversations and filed them away in their minds for a later date.
He doubted Abril was different.
“No, I didn’t see you come back,” Abril said, resting her arms over her jean-covered knees, and tipping her head to the side. “But I saw Val leave with one horse, and her daughter, and then come back with two horses. Maria was riding Butter.”
Chris cleared his throat.
Abril smiled.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Christopher Guzzi, and I want you to tell me exactly what kind it is.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking—”
“Cut the shit. I’ve seen you dancing around her since you arrived. Last weekend? You got out of her room just in time because Jorge got home an hour later and passed out in the hallway before his men came up and put him in a spare bedroom.”
Fuck.
“The door closing,” Chris murmured.
Abril shrugged one bare shoulder where her flimsy blouse had fallen down. “I don’t trust new people, and I had every reason to wonder about you.”
“Why?”
“I’m aware of just enough about the cocaine trade in Canada to say your father has a good supplier, and he didn’t need to come here. Jorge and my father? They think I’m a pretty face to give to whoever the fuck they want, but that’s their mistake.”
He didn’t miss how she didn’t say her other brother. The one that stayed in this house with her.
Chris didn’t point it out.
“I like Val,” Abril said, “and I don’t like very many people, so that says a lot. And my niece? She didn’t ask to be here, either.”
“What do you want?” he asked outright.
Abril smirked. “Not much ... just a guarantee. Tell me what you want, and then we’ll see what I can do for you.”
“I’m not sure you can help me.”
“Don’t make the same mistakes they do. Those who underestimate me tend to get what they deserve. Do you want to fall into that category, too?”
Well, all right, then.
“Valeria, and her daughter.”
Abril’s expression didn’t change, and she gave nothing away when she replied, “What about them?”
“What do you think?”
“I think if you came here to remove them from my brother, then you will have an uphill battle to make it happen.”
Chris laughed darkly. “That’s not news.”
“What if I help with it?”
“How so?”
Abril glanced up at the stars overhead. “I love this place. It’s mine. Always has been, always will be, but they’ve changed it over the years. And now, they want to give me to someone who will take me away from it.”
“Your arranged marriage to the García man?”
“Mmm.”
Her hum was the only agreement to his question.
Chris didn’t mind.
“Do you have the capability to take the two out of here?” Abril asked.
“Within reason.”
“What reason?”
“Time to get it done.”
“I need the night to do what I have to,” Abril said, “and I’m sure it’ll then give you some time, as you say you need.”
“How?”
The woman smiled at him.
Coldly.
“How about you follow along, Christopher? Things always go better when someone just does what I tell them to.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet.”
Abril nodded. “By the morning, you’ll have everything you need to do what you have to.” The woman picked up the wine glass at her side and winked as she tipped it up for a drink. After, she let the stem dangle from the tips of her fingers as she asked, “Do you know in English my name means April?”
“I didn’t.”
“Have you heard the saying—about the showers, and the flowers?”
Chris’s brow furrowed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Do yo
u know it?”
“Sure. April showers bring May flowers.”
Abril grinned wickedly. “I think it’s about time for some rain.”
What did that mean?
He still wasn’t even sure he should trust this woman, but what choice did he have?
15.
“Mamá?”
Valeria looked up from the book she had been reading to her daughter to find Maria peering over at her from just under the edge of her comforter. “Yeah, niña?”
“Jorge was angry we took the horse today.”
Well, sort of.
Mostly, Jorge got pissed that Valeria took her daughter away from the nanny and did so without telling him. Which meant she had to listen to him rant and rage for a good hour after she arrived back at the ranch.
The good thing?
He didn’t realize what happened out on the cliffs. No one picked up on the fact Valeria had taken out one horse but came back with two. They didn’t seem to notice Chris wasn’t around, either. Then again, Jorge had a one-track mind, and since Valeria took his focus when she stepped out of line, that’s all he cared about.
He calmed down.
After a while.
“Don’t worry about Papá and what he says,” Valeria told her daughter, lowering her tone even as her gaze drifted to the open doorway of the bedroom. She could take care of Maria without someone looking over her shoulder in the evenings. Meaning, the nanny. Or Jorge. Even still, she had to leave the bedroom door open, and she didn’t trust that someone wouldn’t listen down the hall. “He was angry with me, not you, Maria.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” she assured, leaning over in the bed to kiss her sweet girl in the middle of her forehead. “You don’t have to worry about that stuff, okay? All you have to worry about is you and being happy.”
Maria glanced down at her comforter. “But I don’t like it here, Mamá. I am not happy.”
God, yeah.
Didn’t she know it?
Rolling over in the bed, Valeria tossed the book aside—she’d almost finished it, anyway—and slipped under the blankets with her daughter. Jorge would ready for bed soon, and expect her in their room, but she took five extra minutes with her child. She didn’t get enough time with Maria now.