by Ruth Wind
She crossed her arms defensively. "What do you want, Elias?" She looked at him, and he saw fire in those eyes now, a long-buried and very powerful anger. "A pound of flesh? To see me whipped in the town square? What?"
Revenge. The word came from a thousand dark fantasies of seeing her father burn in hell, and later, Sarah with him. He wanted to make them suffer, as he had suffered.
"What did she look like, Sarah?"
If he'd hoped to shake her, he had succeeded. A rapid flickering of brutal emotions crossed her face – vivid pain and rage and sorrow. "I don't remember," she breathed, and bolted, opening the door and running out into the rain without a backward glance.
Watching her run away, Eli cursed and slammed his hands against the wheel. She would not run again. He would not let her.
This time Elias would have his revenge. All these years he'd waited for his chance, and at last fate had smiled. What better revenge on the man who had humiliated Elias Santiago than to make his daughter love him again?
* * *
Chapter 2
«^»
The rain had slowed by the time he pulled up in front of Sarah's parents' house. Mabel Greenwood sat on the porch swing in a blue cotton housedress printed with yellow flowers. He half expected her to bolt when she saw his truck, but her face just took on a pinched expression and she stayed where she was as he got out and headed up the walk.
He had never set foot on this property. He had been forbidden. It gave him a juvenile pleasure to do it now, to stride up that walk a proud and successful man who had proved them all wrong. He halted at the foot of the porch steps. Without preamble, he said, "I need to know where Sarah is staying."
"Don't, Eli," she said. "Don't open this wound."
"You can't open what never closed," he said, and was surprised at the vehemence of his words. "That wound has rotted and festered for a decade."
She made a disparaging sound. "You always did have a flair for the dramatic. You and her dad both, putting her in the middle with your big words and melodramas."
He said nothing, only looked at her steadily. "Leave her alone, Eli. She's tired. She's lost. She doesn't need you barging in on her now. Neither one of you cared a whit for what Sarah felt about that war you were both so fond of."
A faint heat rose in his face, for there was some small truth in her words. They had sometimes found fierce pleasure in that war, Eli and Sarah's father, in the way of men locked in mortal battle. It shamed him now.
"I don't want to start again," he said. "I just want to put it all to rest."
Her mouth tightened. "No, you don't. You want her to suffer even more. To drag it all back out, where it's just gonna make her hurt all over again." Her eyes narrowed. "Don't you think she's paid plenty?"
"We have all paid. Sarah, me. Even you and your husband."
"Not enough for you, though, is that it?"
He hoped the betraying flush did not show. They could never pay enough. "We all lost the child we should have had."
"I don't trust you, Elias," she continued, ignoring his words.
"I'll find out where she is one way or the other."
Mabel's eyes burned into him. "I never liked you," she said. "You were too fierce for my little girl. She nearly burned to death on that heat. You were too much for her and I didn't trust you to be there for her in the long run." She folded her hands and lifted her chin. In the gesture, Eli saw Sarah. "Truth is, I still don't much like you, but you might be the only one who can break through those walls. She's in the Gray cottages, by the Blumenschein museum. Third one from the top."
Eli raised his chin. "I never liked you, either, Mrs. Greenwood. You didn't believe enough in your daughter. You didn't stand up for her. But you love her, and I always knew that."
Mabel Greenwood stood, hands in the pockets of her cotton housedress. "Don't come back here again, Elias."
He shook his head. "No."
* * *
Sarah was soaked by the time she made it to the cabin. She turned on hot water in the shower and steamed the chill from her bones. It was a shock to remember how cold the rain always was in the West.
When she was warm, she slipped into a pair of jeans and a comfortable old cotton sweater she'd purchased in Ireland on one of her first trips abroad. Carrying a cup of coffee for warmth and comfort, she wandered outside to sit on the bench below the vigas and latillas of the porch roof.
Twilight and rain had made the exuberant little garden a magic world, and after a moment Sarah went back in for a camera. It was an old favorite, a sturdy Minolta that fit her hand the same way the sweater fit her body – familiar and comfortable. Heedless of the water and mud, she waded into the middle of the flowers, careful not to injure any of them, and knelt close to look through the lens at the heart of a pink flower, studded with diamond drops of rain.
Instantly, tension eased from her shoulders. Through the lens of a camera the world narrowed to one thing – a thing made of color and light and shadow, contained in one frame. Quiet. Still. Manageable. As a young girl, she'd especially loved shooting flowers and nature, and hands. Small things. Tiny things.
And after the tumultuous past few hours, looking through her camera to a world of pink petals and gray rain was more soothing than any drug. Through the lens she focused upon a single raindrop with its upside-down view of the sky and porch, surrounded with the narrowly ridged petal. Click, whir. Click, whir. The world narrowed to these simple sounds and simple frames that created walls against the turmoil in her.
Buoyed, she moved along the fence to capture a blur of blue mountains behind the pink and white flowers; focused on the weathered wood of the gate; caught the ghostly shape of disembodied petals floating white upon a copper-colored puddle.
She heard the squeak of the unoiled gate, but a fragment of light slivered between a break in the mountains and the clouds, falling like a single finger over the edge of the porch, and she wanted to capture every inch of it.
"Just a minute," she said distractedly, sure it was Mrs. Gray, coming to check on her.
A moment before she reached the bottom of the shaft, the camera halted.
"Damn," she said, and scrambled in her pocket for a second roll of film, prying the lid off the canister with her teeth before she remembered this camera was not automated, and she wouldn't have time to rewind the film by hand and reload before the light changed. With a shrug, she clipped the lid on the film with her thumb, and tossed her hair out of her face. She turned.
And swore again, this time more forcefully. Eli stood just inside the gate, wearing a jean jacket over a simple chambray shirt, a pair of jeans and working boots with heels made for riding horses. His hair had been dampened by the rain, and the waves had turned to loose curls that fell on his collar. He'd hated those curls, which had a decided tendency to turn to ringlets, making him look like a fallen angel.
Her angel, she thought now with a piercing sense of loss. He did not move, only stood there, so tall and lean and beautiful, with a fierce expression on his face.
His face. The lines were too bold to be called merely handsome – the slash of strong, angled cheekbone, the hawkish nose and hard chin. Those were bones that made painters ache to run for their brushes.
But for a woman, the appeal was in other things. Above the cheekbones were eyes as seductive and dark as the mysterious desert night, fringed with lashes that gave him a startling beauty. In contrast to the harsh angles of chin and nose was a generous mouth with firm, full-cut lips. A mouth, Sarah remembered with a startled sense of heat, that could give amazing pleasure.
Defensively she raised her chin. "Now what?" Automatically she began to rewind the film.
"I came to apologize, Sarah." His tongue purred the slightest bit over the r in her name, and the sound struck her in some deep place.
"Fine." She lifted a shoulder and made to turn away.
"Wait."
She took a breath, steeling herself, and faced him.
"I was
cruel, back there in the car. Seeing you again so suddenly is…" He frowned. "It's harder than I would have thought. I would like to see us put things to rest."
"As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing to put to rest," she said wearily. Numbness engulfed her, and with a part of her mind she realized the numbness was a defense. She could face her father, but she could not dredge up her past with this man without facing things she simply could not bear.
He stepped forward, his mouth hard. "Nothing? Was it so easy for you to just walk away?"
A thick pressure built somewhere in her middle. "Is that what I did? Walk away?"
"No, now I think maybe it was more like running. Just like you ran from my truck. Have you run all these years?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Who do you think you are to judge me after all this time? Do you think your opinion matters to me?"
"It matters." The velvet brown eyes turned liquid with heat. The heat of fury and – Sarah realized with a shock – the heat of desire. Desire that swept over her body in deliberately provocative gazes, touching her all over; desire that kindled an unwilling answer in her flesh.
In that single instant she remembered the passion that had once burned between them, a physical hunger so deep that Sarah had sometimes felt mad with it. She remembered it not with her mind, but with parts of her body, as if the memories were written on her very cells.
Hormones, she told herself dismissively. What teenager alive had not felt that kind of desire?
She stared at him, and he at her for long seconds.
At last he said, "So there is a little fire left in you. I thought maybe they kicked it all out of you." With an arrogant lift of his chin, he added, "You can't run forever, Sarita – and you will have to face me before we are finished."
That voice, so rich, so close, so quiet, wrapped her as intimately as any kiss, and Sarah felt a warning prickle raise gooseflesh over her body. Backing up instinctively, she said, "Leave me alone."
He stepped forward, and she willed herself to stand her ground. He didn't stop until he was so close she could smell his flesh, and it was a piercingly redolent scent – desert wind and sun in his hair, spice and soap on his skin, hints of starch in his shirt. Smelling it again after so long was more powerful than even his proximity.
But she gritted her teeth and vowed he would not see how he rattled her. She forced herself to keep her arms down, instead of crossing them over her chest defensively, and to show him he did not intimidate her, she raised her chin and met his eyes.
As if he'd been waiting for that, he said quietly, "We are not finished, Sarah."
For one long moment they were frozen like that, Sarah staring up at him, her fists clenched, Eli standing too close, his nostrils flaring with anger or arousal or both. Sarah found her eyes on his mouth. It was too close; she took in the bowed line along the top lip, and the square line of his chin. In the cool of the courtyard, with dusk falling gray around them, Sarah was far too aware of the heat of his chest, only millimeters from her body, and it was too easy to remember how that naked flesh had felt against her bared breasts.
"Go away, Elias," she said.
"You ran then. You're running still." With an exclamation of disgust, he backed away, then turned and simply left her.
Blindly, Sarah ran into the house and locked the door, as if against a monster. Then, weary from travel and the intense day, she buried herself in the covers of her bed, a pillow held firmly over her head, and went to sleep.
It was the most effective retreat of all.
* * *
Elias managed to avoid everyone when he drove into the ranch. His mother's house was brightly lit, and he saw people inside – two of his sisters, a brother, one of the grandchildren, Teresa, who was likely the focus of the obvious family meeting going on. He drove on by and up the mountain, past his grandmother's ancient but beautifully preserved Territorial adobe, past the fields and the plants. Finally the road branched into the dark forest, and he followed it up the hill to a clearing set in a meadow above the rest of the ranch, with views of the entire valley, clear to the mountains to the west.
The house itself was not elaborate. Aside from his truck, he indulged in few luxuries, preferring to redirect the bulk of his profits back into the business or into long-term, solid investments. It was an economic philosophy that had worked for him: Santiago Farms and Teas had netted a profit in the high six figures last year.
But he had wanted a home he could call his own, and had contracted to have this one built, a simple adobe, made with authentic, handmade adobe bricks. Town ordinances required all new buildings to at least look like adobe, and because the real thing was very expensive, cinder blocks were often used in place of it, but nothing insulated against the hot suns and cold winter winds like the real thing. Worth every penny, in Eli's opinion.
The rest of the house was simply made, with wooden floors and exposed vigas in the living room. His only other major expenditure had been on the kitchen, which boasted every modern, gourmet gadget ever made. His mother teased him about it, saying it was just like a man to need electric gadgets to find a kitchen appealing, and he suspected there was some truth to it. Sometimes he liked cooking, especially exotic dishes with fresh vegetables and uncommon spices.
Tonight his needs were much simpler. He tossed his keys on the breakfast bar separating the living room and kitchen, took a plain American beer from the fridge and carried it out to the porch.
Standing there, looking out to the view of sparkling lights spread over the land, cold clarity moved into his mind, unblunted by memory or emotion. Sarah had come home, as he had known she would, eventually. So many years too late.
A rain-coated breeze blew over him, easing his tension. He let go of a breath and told himself it would be better to pretend he had not seen Sarah tonight. He'd built a life, as she had, and the sorrows were buried a long time in the past. No point to ripping open these wounds now.
But like a man who couldn't keep his tongue from a sore tooth, unbidden images of the last time he'd seen her rose up in his mind: the flashing lights of the police cars, red as blood against the night. The careless hands of the officers on him. Sarah's face, white and terrified, in the car.
A pained smile twisted his mouth. They'd thought they were being so mature by coming home to face the music. They had run away to Albuquerque to get married, because Sarah had found out she was pregnant. It had been a move of great panic for both of them – not panic over the baby, but panic because they loved each other and wanted to be together and didn't know how to accomplish that. They had also known their families would make it nearly impossible to marry with permission. So they'd run away to elope.
But there, at the courthouse, with the blood work done and their hands clasped, Elias had thought of his mother and brothers, and Sarah had thought of her mother, and they could not go in. Together they had decided to go home and face their families, publicly declare their intentions – not out of a need for permission, which both knew they would not receive, but out of respect.
They congratulated each other all the way home. All the way up to the city limits, where a bevy of police had been waiting. They handcuffed Elias and took him to jail, charged him with statutory rape and alienation of affections. Garth Greenwood would have tried him for kidnapping, too, but someone talked sense into him, evidently.
While Eli waited – without bail – for his trial, he had hoped that Sarah, against all odds, would find a way to see him. Or at least get a message to him. He wrote to her, sending the letters to her friends and her parents, praying that somehow, fate would intervene on the side of their love, and one or two or three of the letters would go through. He tried to imagine her getting to the mailbox first one day, tried to keep a vision of her reading his letters foremost in his mind.
But a week passed, then another and another and another, with no word from Sarah. Day by lonely day his heart turned to stone. His family, furious over the trumped-up charges, would not
speak Sarah's name, not even to tell him that she'd been sent away.
By the time he was released, the charges thrown out when he went before the judge eight weeks after his arrest, Eli was well armored against the news that Sarah was gone, the baby with her. By then he had honed himself into an instrument of revenge, cloaked in hatred, and he poured himself into his goal. Somehow, some way, he would have his revenge on Garth Greenwood for stealing his woman, his child and his freedom.
Many things had changed over the years, but that single blue flame of vengeance burned as clean and hot as it ever had. At last the day had come.
For Sarah was not immune to him, and he had no doubt he could coax her back into his arms. A strange pain went through him at the thought – how sweet it would be when Garth learned of it!
Idly, he lifted his beer and drank, wondering if he was that cold-hearted, if his need for revenge was greater than loyalty to a memory. After all, Sarah, too, had suffered. She had likely believed Elias had deserted her, as he had believed her desertion, when in fact they had both been betrayed by fate.
In that light, his hunger for vengeance seemed almost evil. Sarah might be hurt again.
But as he considered that thought, his conscience stayed still. Dead.
Instead, a vision stirred. Sarah in the garden of cosmos, her jeans wet to the knees from the rain on the plants, her soft blond hair falling around her shoulders like a cape, her slim body animated and unselfconscious as she bent and clicked and shot her photos. He had not felt dead then.
Perhaps, a small voice warned, it was not revenge he wished for at all. Perhaps it was not his pride that was so wounded, but his heart, and it wasn't his pride that had never healed, but that broken heart. Maybe more than revenge, he needed a sense of what his sister the psychologist would name "closure."