by Nan Ryan
Angie rose and snatched them from him. Silent tears slid down her cheeks as she slipped the shimmering nightgown over her head. Pecos stood watching, his arms crossed over his chest. She pulled her robe around her shaking shoulders and stormed past him, out of his room. A hand to her mouth to stifle her sobs, she ran down the corridor to the stairway.
Back inside her room she flung herself across her bed and cried heartbrokenly. She wept until there were no longer any tears. Dragging her tired body to the bathroom, she stripped and stepped into the tub. She smelled of Pecos, and she was just as anxious as he to wash away the traces of their love-making.
She scrubbed as vigorously as she had on the first occasion when Pecos had slipped into her room and made love to her, as determinedly as she had done on her wedding night to Barrett McClain. On both those occasions, a tiny part of her heart had hardened and so it had tonight. Quietly she bathed and coldly planned to spend as much money as she possibly could. Barrett McClain’s fortune was vast; she was a very, very rich woman. It would be impossible to spend it all in several hedonistic lifetimes.
All she could do was give it a valiant effort.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE FIERCE GLOW of the desert sunset streamed in through the gun ports, suffusing the library with an eerie orange light. Angie, bent over the complicated account books spread out on the heavy desk, hardly realized that the crisp October day was drawing to its close. Hunched over the journals filled with records vital to the operation of Del Sol, Angie was so totally engrossed in her task, she jumped, startled, when Miss Emily called her name.
“Angie.” The small, sedate woman stood in the doorway, a’weak, nervous smile on her face. “May I speak to you for a moment or am I interrupting?”
“Aunt Emily, of course, come in. Please sit down.” Angie smiled, lifting her slender shoulders in circular motions, attempting to flex away the tension from her knotted back muscles. She shut her eyes tightly for an instant and rubbed them.
“Oh, dear, you … you’re too weary to talk now.”
Angie’s eyes opened. “No, I’m fine. Let’s visit,” she said, smiling pleasantly and leaning back against the tall padded chair.
Emily took a seat across from her. She meticulously brushed imaginary lint from her spotless dark skirt. “Angie, I … I …” She cleared her throat, met Angie’s kind eyes and continued. “I know that Del Sol now belongs to you and …” Her eyes went to her lap and her voice grew tremulous. “While I can’t pretend I’m happy about it, I don’t hold it against you, either. I blame Barrett, not you, for his decision to leave you everything. I know you too well to believe that you … ah, cajoled him into it.”
“Aunt Emily, I never—”
“Please, dear.” Emily’s eyes lifted again. “Let me finish. I came here this evening to ask if you wish me to leave.” A tiny little gasp of air issued from her trembling lips, and her eyes held a waiting, fearful look.
Angie couldn’t believe her ears. “Aunt Emily, why would you ask such a foolish question?”
Chin quivering, Emily York murmured softly, “Is it a foolish question? I’m … I’m Pecos’s aunt; I love him so dearly and I know that you … that is, I’ve seen the way the two of you—” She paused, took a needed breath, and blurted, “I know you dislike each other and now of course since Pecos was left out of the will …” She shook her head sadly.
Angie studied the woman’s pale worried face, and rising, came around the desk. She crouched on her heels by Emily’s chair, her long skirts mushrooming around her. Smiling affectionately, she put her hand on Emily’s. “Aunt Emily, dear Emily, the chasm between Pecos and me has nothing whatever to do with you. I know you love Pecos, and I know you can’t help but resent me for taking his inheritance. You must understand that for reasons I’ll not discuss, I don’t care if Pecos McClain is penniless.” Angie watched the tears forming in the gentle woman’s eyes. “Oh, Emily,” she murmured, lifting Emily’s small hand up to her face, pressing it to her cheek, “don’t cry. Pecos won’t starve. He’s resourceful, he’ll be all right. As for you, this is your home for as long as you want to remain here, and I hope it will be forever. I need you, I love you and I want to be your friend.”
Tears overflowed from Emily’s eyes, streaming down her pale cheeks. Her voice breaking with emotion, she managed, “I do want to stay, it’s the only home I’ve ever known, but …”
“But what?” Angie urged.
Emily closed her teary eyes and pleaded, “Angie, will you allow Pecos to visit me here at Del Sol?”
Angie pulled a hankie from her skirt pocket and gave it to Miss Emily. Blinking, Emily dabbed at her eyes while Angie set her mind at ease. “Aunt Emily, your nephew may come to see you here anytime. Anytime at all. I’m not totally heartless.”
Miss Emily, calming a little, tried to smile. “Thank you, dear. I was just so afraid … I thought … Darling, I wish you and Pecos could …” Her voice trailed off.
Angie rose and Miss Emily rose beside her. Angie had no intention of telling this gentle little woman what had taken place the night of the funeral and that she loathed Emily’s beloved nephew. “Perhaps Pecos and I are too much alike to get along. Let’s change the subject. I’ve a pleasant surprise for you. Have you ever been to San Antonio?” Angie grinned and put her arm around Miss Emily’s slim shoulders.
“Why, no, darling, San Antonio is so far away.”
“Four hundred miles,” Angie said, nodding knowingly.
“You’re not thinking of traveling that far alone!” Miss Emily was horrified.
“No, not alone. You’re going with me.”
“But why, Angie?”
“Solely for the purpose of pleasure. I shall make all the arrangements. We will leave in a week, so begin packing.”
Angie watched delightedly as the flustered, relieved little woman lifted her skirts and hurried from the library, her tears gone and a glow of color returning to her pale cheeks.
ANGIE STOOD ALONE at the railing of the observation car at sunset. The autumn air held a chill as the long, blistering summer of ’86 had finally given way to the crisp days of fall. The relentless heat had parched the land unmercifully, but it was heat of another kind that had burned the sad, young woman facing the dazzling colors on the western horizon. The blazing passion she’d felt for the sultry Pecos had shattered Angie’s heart until she felt it was as lifeless as the dry shifting sands moving restlessly in the late-evening breeze. The baked, thirsty land would survive; a drenching thunderstorm over the desert would eventually bring total healing to the ravaged earth.
Angie felt tears stinging her eyes. For her there would be no cleansing rain, only the deadly deterioration of her dreams and a dreadful, encompassing wilting of her body and spirit.
Angie blinked. She must stop this fruitless indulgence in gloom. True, in the six months she’d been at Del Sol, her life had changed so drastically she felt she hardly knew herself. But then, how good had her life been back in New Orleans with her papa? Her life had never been good, so why look back? She would look only ahead. She reminded herself that she was young, healthy and very, very wealthy. There was no one to tell her what she would or would not do. There never would be again. She was standing on a train speeding her to the exciting city of San Antonio, where she would buy dozens of outrageously expensive gowns, frequent the finest restaurants, go to the opera, attend gay parties and start to live the idle, pampered life of the very rich. She’d had little happiness in her life and she would now make up for precious lost time.
As a protected prisoner in her father’s modest New Orleans home, she had often daydreamed about pretty dresses and dances and rides in the park. Now she would have it all, and she’d enjoy herself so much she would soon forget that beneath the carefully packaged blond innocence she’d present to her new and glamorous world was a degraded and used woman, far older and wiser than her years.
Angie smiled, a cold, rueful smile. No one would know. Not now or ever.
Oh, she had every intention of flirting and dancing and enjoying the company of charming, handsome young gentlemen. She might favor the most appealing of her suitors with a few meaningless moonlight kisses, but it would never go further. She would never surrender to unbridled passion again, not if she lived to be a very old woman. Certain the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of the McClains had left her with no heart at all, she was almost comfortable with this new Angie, and although she would never again experience the supreme rapture she’d found in Pecos’s dark arms, neither would she be subjected to the pain and degradation that followed such torrid ecstasy.
HARD MUSCLES RIPPLED beneath the sweat-slick skin of Pecos’s long arms and back. His tired arms ached and his broad back felt as though it were breaking. Still he swung the pickax high over his dark head and brought it down again to strike at the solid, unyielding rock deep inside the Lost Madre mine.
He’d been back in Mexico for over a month and in that month he’d spent every long, hot fruitless day, seven days a week, deep inside the Lost Madre, working tirelessly, determined to find gold in this dark, dirty cavern. He was going to hit the mother lode if he had to stay underground for years, if he had to let all his men go because he could no longer pay them, if he couldn’t afford tools and had to dig in the darkness with a kitchen spoon. He was going to strike gold! And when he did … Ah, well, then he’d never turn his hand again for as long as he lived.
Pecos smiled. He swung the pickax again, his sore muscles pulling painfully. He told himself he’d always hated ranching anyhow. It was a hard, monotonous, thankless way to make a living. He’d had all he ever wanted of rounding up cattle, praying for rain, riding the range in subzero weather and worrying year in, year out about Mother Nature’s whims. Yes, sir, that was all behind him now and he couldn’t be happier.
Pecos lowered the pick and tiredly raised a brown arm up to wipe the sweat from his mouth and forehead. He looked at the young man working next to him.
“How about it, Jose? This is the life, isn’t it?”
Jose, his slender frame changed dramatically in the six months he’d been in the mine, stilled his pickax and turned to smile at Pecos. Jose’s bare torso was as drenched with perspiration as Pecos’s and his thick dark hair was plastered to his fine head. “Pecos—” the boy’s smile brightened “—it sure beats branding stubborn, bawling cattle, sí?” He knew how much Pecos missed Del Sol, but he pretended along with Pecos. “This is much better, much better.”
“Sí,” Pecos said with a nod. “Now, let’s get the hell topside before it’s as dark up there as it is down here.”
Jose’s white teeth flashed in his brown, youthful face. “Oh, good, good. I promised Rosalinda I’d visit her tonight.”
Pecos laid his ax against the rough, sloping wall and reached for his shirt. “You’re a lucky young man. Rosalinda is a sweet and very pretty young lady.”
“I know,” the youth agreed proudly. “Why not come to town with me, Pecos? We can see if we can find you a woman.” He lifted dark brows.
“Thanks, amigo, I’m tired. All I want is to wash this damn mine off my old, aching body.”
PECOS TURNED DOWN the many offers from his foreman to come to his house for a good, home-cooked meal. Calling good-night to the ten loyal men working for him, Pecos instead went alone to the small, tar-paper shack he called home. A mile up a gentle incline from the mine’s opening, the place was far from the luxury he was used to at Del Sol, but he hardly noticed the starkness of the two-room dwelling.
Pecos lit a lamp on the small table and heated water for a bath. He ate ravenously of stale bread, cold beef and the last piece of pie brought to him by the wife of one of the Mexican miners. His meal hurriedly wolfed down, Pecos bathed in an uncomfortably small wooden tub in the kitchen, his bent knees almost touching his chin. Padding tiredly to his double bed, he lay down and felt, one by one, his work-punished muscles and bones beginning the slow, pleasing process of relaxing and unknotting. He groaned aloud with the pleasure of it.
Shadows flickered on the gray walls from the single lamp. Night had fallen and the air was beginning to cool after the long, torturously hot, late October day. All was quiet, save the occasional call of a miner’s wife, shouting to her children to come in for their supper.
Pecos lay half-asleep, too tired to get up and blow out the lamp. Strange thoughts and images filled his exhausted brain. Would the remainder of the ten thousand dollars he had won stretch long enough to find gold in Lost Madre? When he finally hit the rich vein, would Aunt Emily come to live with him in his new mansion somewhere in Mexico? Back at Del Sol, would Reno remember to exercise Diablo and to forbid anyone to ride the big black beast?
Pecos’s heavy lashes closed; he entered a state of half sleep. Deeper he slipped into the vortex of unconsciousness and there in the floating, pleasing journey into nothingness, Angel awaited him. Her lips were moist and parted, emerald eyes warm and shining, golden hair cascading around her bare white shoulders.
“Angel,” he murmured and slid into his dream to meet her.
ANGIE’S EYES CAME OPEN. Across the luxurious room, the smiling Delores was pulling back the heavy drapes. Bright fall sunlight streamed into the third-floor suite of the stately Conquistador Hotel. Angie groaned. “No, Delores, not yet,” she said, snatching a fat, fluffy pillow and covering her head.
Delores was undaunted. She continued pulling the drapes and flooding the big corner room with light, deaf to the young woman’s pleas. “Angie, it is the indecent hour of 11:00 a.m. and you know the dressmaker is due here by noon.” She approached the bed.
A sleepy, muffled voice came from underneath the pillow. “Then get me up at noon, please. I’m so tired.”
Her fleshy hands on her broad hips, Delores stood looking down at the lazy, self-indulgent young beauty. “Your breakfast tray is in the sitting room.” She pulled the pillow from Angie’s head. “You must eat and take a bath before the tailor arrives.”
Angie turned over and sat up, pushing her long, sleep-tangled hair from her eyes. “You have turned into a bully, Delores,” she accused flatly.
“Humph, someone needs to bully you, señora.” Delores didn’t like the change in her pretty young mistress. “What time did you get in last night?”
“Umm.” Angie lifted her bare, slender arms over her head, stretching lazily. “It was late, after 2:00 a.m., I believe.” She yawned.
“Miss Emily came back to the hotel by 10:00 p.m.,” Delores informed her.
“I know that, Delores. Aunt Emily and I went to a dinner party at the McConnells’. The affair ended rather early and she returned to the hotel at that time.”
Delores handed Angie a wrapper of soft, shimmery blue silk. “Why did you not return with her?”
Angie shrugged into the robe, lifting her hands beneath her hair to pull the long, tumbled locks free of the silk. “I met a very charming gentleman at the dinner party. He was my table companion, and after we said our good-nights to the host and hostess, he and I shared an after-dinner cognac at the Jubilee Club.” Angie waved her hand impatiently at Delores. “Bring my breakfast tray in here, and please, no more questions. I must hurry and get into my bath.”
Delores stood unmoving. Her big, expressive black eyes were locked on Angie. Bluntly, she admonished her. “Cognac. Clubs. Late hours. Strange men.” She pointed an accusing finger at Angie. “I do not like what is happening to you! Too swiftly you are changing, señora, and it makes me very sad. Where is the young, sweet little Angie who came to Del Sol with big, frightened green eyes and a pure heart, unspoiled and eager to please?”
Angie’s emerald eyes took on the darkness of the sea. “She no longer exists, and if anyone should know why, it’s you. Hear me, Delores, and listen well. The Angie you speak of was a trusting, naive fool. But no more. I intend to live life to the fullest, to taste all the delights it has to offer and to pursue pleasure with a great, untiring exuberance for the rest of my days. And I do not want, nor will I en
dure, any censure from you.”
Tears appeared in Delores’s big eyes. “Sí, Angie. This will be the last time I speak my mind.” She paused, swallowed and added softly, “But my precious little baby, this life does not make you happy. You will meet too many fortune hunters. Everyone will know you are a rich widow.” Delores’s face brightened a little. “Why not go back to Louisiana to your home? There people do not know, and some good young man will fall in love with you only because you are sweet and pretty.”
Angie folded her arms across her chest. She gave Delores a shuttered look and said coldly, “I’m well aware that I am being received by the moneyed segment of San Antonio’s society because they know I’m the young, wealthy widow of Barrett McClain.” She looked at Delores and said with knowing honesty, “They’d have nothing to do with me if my last name were still Webster.” She grinned, stretched lazily and piled her heavy blond hair atop her head. “Bring on the fortune hunters, I shall let them hope they’ve a chance, but I assure you, my dear, overly concerned Delores, that I intend to spend the rest of my days as the rich, unattainable widow of the late Barrett McClain.”