As she sipped and worried, and realized her hand was shaking, she heard her name being called softly from her left. She put the water glass down and turned to Zant. He looked at her and then cut his gaze to Don Rafael. Jacey followed his cue. The don was conferring in low tones with a large-girthed woman. His gestures indicated something to do with the meal.
Praying this old lady didn’t end up in a crying heap in the next moment or so, Jacey turned back to Zant. His expression instantly softened, and a gentle smile reached from his mouth to his steadily warming dark eyes. He gave her a slow wink. And the moment was over. His expression reverted to that of the cool, solemn nobleman who hid his thoughts and feelings.
He might be cool and calm, but Jacey came darned near to bursting into tears, so deep was her relief. He was just pretending. She took a deep, openmouthed breath, and looked down at her lap. When had she fisted her hands there?
“Are you feeling better, Señorita Lawless?”
Equal to his challenge now, knowing Zant was on her side, Jacey raised her head and met the old man’s concerned expression. “Yes. Never better.”
Don Rafael inclined his head. “Wonderful. Then perhaps you are ready for the next course, since the soup was not to your liking?”
Jacey looked down at her soup bowl. It was untouched. She’d forgotten to eat. She caught and held the don’s gaze. “I’m ready.” And she meant that.
* * *
Jacey declared the villa’s moonlit courtyard to be pretty enough. She’d never seen such a tangle of green vines and big flowers, none of which she could name. They smelled nice, though. With her slippered foot she toed the glazed-tile walkway under her. Stepping gingerly over the slippery tiles, she tugged aside a drooping vine that hung from the latticed roof. The covering ran the circumference of the courtyard and sheltered four wrought-iron benches.
Standing in front of a bench, Jacey put her hands to her waist and decided that what she liked best was the centrally situated fountain. Ornamented with the same blue tiles as the walkway, the good-sized fountain’s water splashed gently over its three tiers. Competing with the water’s music was the warm breeze, the hoot of an owl, the meow of a passing cat. But Jacey stared longingly at the fountain. Because at its edge stood Zant.
Seating herself, her hands in her lap and still dressed in her red silk dress, Jacey stared at Zant’s back. He had one foot up on the tiled rim of the fountain and leaned forward with his crossed arms resting on his knee. He stared into the night, his head raised to look above the high adobe walls to the mountains beyond. From outside those walls, Jacey could hear the soft whinny of a horse, the quiet words of some passing conversation, the spur-jingling steps of one of many posted guards.
But that was outside the walls. Inside all was peaceful calm. Well, she admitted, except for inside herself. She stared at Zant’s backside and shook her head. The man’s erect posture stretched his coat and pants tight over the muscled expanse of his finely formed body. She was lost. It was that simple. Caught like this, in repose, he exuded a leashed power, and something else she couldn’t give words to. But he’d changed somehow.…
She didn’t have the words to name it. But he’d changed somehow in just the several hours they’d been here. When she’d caught him off guard at supper, when he didn’t know he was being watched, she’d seen the worry lines, the tenseness. Somewhat like his pose now. As if he were deep in thought, and not even aware of his surroundings.
But it was even more than that. She struggled to settle it in her mind. He looked like … like he’d just accepted some heavy burden he didn’t want. Like the troubles of the world were settling themselves on his shoulders. She looked at those broad shoulders. Were they strong enough to carry the burden?
Just then, Zant turned and found her in the dark alcove. “I’m sorry you had to witness that scene at supper, Jacey.”
“Me, too. But not half as sorry as that boy, I’d bet.”
Zant grunted. “Poor kid.”
“Does that sort of thing happen a lot here, Zant?”
He nodded. “Yeah, and not just to the servants.”
Jacey frowned. Did he mean himself? Had he been treated that same way when he was a boy? Not daring to ask, she changed the subject. “You didn’t eat much.”
Zant’s unexpected grin gleamed in the moon’s light. “Maybe I didn’t like the soup, either.”
Jacey grinned back at him, forgiving him for her forced bath earlier. In the ensuing quiet between them, she sobered and brought up her concerns. “I’m not so sure we should be toying with your grandfather, Zant. He reminds me of a snake. Not his looks, but his behavior.” When he didn’t move or say anything, she added, “You mind me saying so?”
Zant shrugged. “Why should I?”
“Well, he is your grandfather.”
A chuckling snort preceded his words. “Through no fault of my own.”
“I guess not.” Jacey stood up, ruslting the silken material of her dress. She smoothed her hand down the skirt as she went to stand next to him. “What will happen next?”
Zant looked down at her briefly, impersonally, before refocusing on the near mountains. “I can’t say exactly. But he appears to believe me when I say I’m here to stay and ready to knuckle under and be the lord and heir.”
There it was. What was different about him. “Good. That was your plan. But, Zant”—Jacey paused, spoke more softly—“you really are, aren’t you? Going to stay, I mean.”
He made a self-deprecating noise and then nodded. “Yeah. And no one’s more surprised about that than me.” His look of passionate intensity, when he turned to her, startled Jacey. “You saw what happened in there. I’ve been standing here thinking … and I can’t let it go on any longer. This is my home, Jacey. I can’t just walk away while it’s being torn apart. It’s all I have. And the majority of the men here are good. I owe them.”
For some reason, his words saddened Jacey, made her feel she’d just lost him. But had she ever really had him? “I guess you do.”
He nodded. “I do. I learned some things after we got here that don’t sit right with me. It looks like I’m going to have to buck the old man—sooner than I thought. And harder than I want.” He was silent for a moment before adding, “I just hope I’m still standing when the dust settles.”
Jacey hugged her arms around her waist, suddenly chilled. Whether by the cooling air or by his words, she couldn’t say. Maybe both. A second shiver wriggled over her.
A movement to her left signaled Zant peeling off his jacket. He draped its warm heaviness across her shoulders. His hand then smoothed around her back to rest on her shoulder.
Jacey closed her eyes with her next exhalation. All she wanted to do was lay her head on his shoulder. Fighting her weakness for him, she forced her mind to stick to the subject. “Zant, what is going on here? Earlier, I saw you talking to a group of your men outside these walls. What were you talking about?”
For a moment there was only silence. Then Zant removed his arm from around her. He focused on the fountain’s water. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”
Jacey stared at the surrounding black humps that in the daytime were mountains. “Not when the only thing I have to do in my locked room is look out the window.” After a moment, she quietly added, “If I can see you, so can someone else.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
Getting anything out of this man was like trying to pull cactus stickers out of a donkey’s behind. Jacey firmed her lips. “You haven’t answered me.”
He looked over at her. She turned her face up to him. He was smiling. His white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “I’m gathering my forces.”
“For what?”
“For the right moment.”
“This ‘right moment’ doesn’t have anything to do with me, does it?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Now he was really beginning to irritate her. “Well, when this ‘right moment’ of yours com
es along, will you try to remember that I’m locked upstairs in that room and please not leave me there to starve to death?”
His black-eyed gaze warmed as he made a slow sweep of her face. “I could never forget you, Jacey.”
Suddenly shy, she looked down. “Zant, what’s going to happen to me? I’m not saying I want you to, but I’m beginning to see why you’d want to kill that old man. There’s something missing in him.”
“Like a heart?” Zant tugged her chin up until she met his gaze. “Only I have the key to your room. No one else. You’re safe. My room is just around the corner from yours. And Paco will be right outside your door, day and night.”
Jacey stared up into his handsome face. Moonlight and darkness chiseled his features into slanting angles. “Don’t think I’m scared for myself, Chapelo. I just want to be prepared when the trouble comes.”
Zant chuckled. “The trouble is here. It rode into Cielo Azul on a black gelding.” With no warning, he then dipped his head down to kiss her lips.
Jacey’s knees buckled at the sharp, stinging contact of his mouth with hers. She grabbed for his shirt, holding on as he gripped her arms and held her immobile. His tongue begged entry. Jacey granted it. Her breathing changed with the ritual, rhythmic plundering of her mouth. Low in her belly, the coiling began. She was liquid in his arms. She was surrendering.
Zant broke the kiss. He pulled back. Jacey opened her eyes, whispering, “What’s wrong?”
“We can’t do this.”
Before she could stop the words, they were out. “You started it.”
Zant chuckled. “I know. I just meant we can’t do this here. In the open. Too many eyes, as you reminded me. And you’re supposed to be my prisoner, remember?”
Jacey looked down to study her gown’s hem. “I remember.” She was his prisoner in ways he’d never know.
After a moment’s quiet, Zant’s breath left him in a slow hiss. He gripped her arm and turned her away from the moonlit fountain. “Come on. We’d better go inside.”
Once they were out of the moonlight and hidden from curious eyes by a tangle of vines dripping from the latticed portico above them, Jacey stopped and looked up at Zant. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
His grip tightened on her arm. “You won’t be.”
* * *
As Zant waited for the household to settle in for the night before he could go to Jacey, he paced his room and kicked his own mental butt. What the hell had he been thinking to bring her here? She was just one tiny little woman. Smart as a whip. Heart of a wildcat. That was her. But what made him think he could keep her safe?
She was as liable as anyone here to start a ruckus and get herself killed. Keeping her locked in that room was no solution, he knew. Nor did he figure she’d stay put for long. Hell, he wouldn’t put it past her to tie all her bedsheets together and climb down them, just to prove to him that she could. And then what?
One hand to his waist, he swiped his other through his hair. He should have known how bad things would be here. But, damn, he’d been in prison for five years, had come home for only a week, and then had left. Again. How could he know? Well, he just should’ve. Because bringing her here was one big mistake. Her nearness, his feelings for her, his responsibility for her life, all made him hesitate, made him weigh every step, every decision. Such caution could see him and her and about half the men here dead.
It’d be one hell of a sight easier to take control from Don Rafael if he just didn’t give a hoot about Jacey Lawless. But he did. She was a fire burning away at the middle of his soul. Just to look at her was to want her. He could’ve taken her right there by the fountain in that damned red silk dress—
See there? She’d already distracted him. He should be concentrating on stopping Don Rafael’s plan to raid surrounding villas and begin a bloody battle amongst the dons in northern Mexico. Zant reflected that he had only days to win over men who hadn’t seen him in five years, men who’d seen him behave in every manner except a responsible one, men who had no reason to trust him. Here war was, nipping at their heels, both inside the walls and out. And he’d brought Jacey into the middle of it.
And that was another thing. When and how was he supposed to help her find answers to the questions that’d brought her here in the first place? Just trying to probe into the Lawless murders and the theft of her keepsake could bring everything to a head before he was certain of how much, if any, support he had. Damn!
He stopped his pacing and found himself facing the door to his room. His gaze cut to the key to her room, where it lay innocently on the stand beside his bed. Jacey. Zant took three long-legged strides, picked up the key, and opened the door. Maybe if he put out one raging fire, he could concentrate on the others.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I can take it from here, Conchita. No. Stop it.” What was that Spanish word Zant used? When it came to her, Jacey shouted it at the short, round woman. “¡Basta!”
It worked. Conchita, looking offended, slung the white bed gown over her shoulder, put her hands to her ample waist, and then proceeded to cuss Jacey out … as near as she could tell. Because all she understood was “no” and the red-faced woman’s headshaking and her pointing at the knife strapped around Jacey’s thigh.
Standing there naked, the red silk dress and all its underpinnings pooled beside her on the floor, Jacey squinted and grimaced, trying to catch any of the older woman’s rapid-fire chatter. She couldn’t. If it was the last thing she did, it would be learning enough Spanish to get this little demon to leave her be.
But for now, and deciding she’d listened to about all she was going to, Jacey fisted her hands at her waist and leaned over toward the maid. “Cuss all you want, sister, but I can dress and undress myself. Now back off.”
Conchita didn’t. Moving as fast as she talked, the determined bundle of short woman, no higher than Jacey’s shoulder, forced the nightgown over Jacey’s head and all but tugged her arms through the long sleeves. Then she pulled it down to her charge’s ankles, straightened up, gave a triumphant nod of her head and eyed Jacey in an all-out dare. Then … she picked up the hairbrush.
Jacey eyed the brush … thought of all the pain Conchita’d put her through braiding her wet hair earlier … and turned to the locked door. “Paco!”
Instantly the door was unlocked. Jacey turned smugly back to Conchita. “Now we’ll see just who gets tossed out of here.”
“What’s going on?”
That voice did not belong to Paco. Jacey froze and stared at Conchita. The maid grinned evilly at her, looking around Jacey, and began counting off her complaints on her fingers. Jacey spun to face Zant, her movement swirling her gown out around her legs. But he ignored her, listening instead to the maid.
Jacey cut her gaze to the man-mountain behind him that was Paco. He stood framed in the doorway, his broad face impassive. No help from that quarter. She turned back to Conchita and listened uncomprehendingly to the charges against her. Zant nodded and kept saying, “Sí, sí. Ahh. No. Sí.”
Then he apparently said something to end Conchita’s heartfelt tirade because she snapped her lips shut and went wide-eyed. Then her whole demeanor changed, as did her tone of voice. She looked and sounded like she was apologizing. Or pleading. But Zant remained adamant, and held his hand out. The maid backed up, holding the brush close to her chest, and shaking her head no.
Jacey’d seen enough. Was he going to beat the poor old thing? She stepped between Zant and Conchita, turning to face Zant with her arm held out to shield the old woman. “Now hold on right there, mister. Don’t you be talking to her like that and threatening her. I can yell at her all I want—she’s my maid. But don’t you come in here and practically put her in tears just because—”
“Jacey.” He spat her name in the same tone of voice he’d used with that basta word.
Feeling Conchita tugging on her arm, as if she were trying to see around her, Jacey used her body to further block the Mexican lady from
her angry master, and fired back, “What?”
“I asked her for the brush. I told her I’d brush out your hair, and she could go on to bed. She’s not too happy with the thought of me being in here alone with you.”
“Oh.” Jacey blinked a couple times. Then, pointing behind herself to indicate the unusually quiet maid, “So she was defending me against you?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but only after she cursed you and your stubborn ways to three kinds of hell and back.”
Jacey grinned. “She said all that?”
Zant rubbed his hand over his mouth and chin. “She did. She thinks you need a good whipping and a lot of time in church to straighten you out.”
Jacey turned around to Conchita. “You said all that about me?”
Conchita smiled and nodded. “Sí, señorita.”
Jacey turned to Zant. “Does she know what she just agreed with?”
“No,” he assured her.
“Oh.” Jacey looked him up and down, taking in his own state of undress. Loose white shirt, black pants, and boots. That was all. She then turned to Conchita, holding her hand out. “Give me the brush, sister.”
Conchita’s black eyebrows met over her nose. She held the silver-backed brush with both hands. “No.”
Jacey turned back to Zant. “Your turn.”
“Dammit.” His expression mirroring his maid’s, Zant stalked over to her. Then, a long string of official-sounding Spanish from him earned him the brush, if grudgingly.
Conchita swept by Jacey and Zant with all the grace a short, round little maid with an apron on could muster. She even turned her nose up at Paco. Before leaving, she turned around and shook a finger at both of them, letting loose with her parting opinions. Her sermon ended with her crossing herself. Paco did likewise and then closed the door after them both.
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