She laughed, both surprised and delighted. The cave was large enough to walk around in. And it was clean. She glanced to the corners. Not even any cobwebs.
“Kino and Joaquín did a good job cleaning the place,” he acknowledged. He stowed their gear in one corner. “Santos agreed to add the time they spent out here to their tally sheet for repayment of the silver.”
“I feel guilty about that,” she mused. “It was all my fault.”
He glanced up with a grin. “Santos will go easy on them, so don’t you start regretting anything.”
“I don’t regret it. It was the only way for us to get together.”
He chuckled. “The only sure way. All those days and nights with you…I knew if I didn’t win the girl, I would sure as shootin’ lose my soul trying.”
By the time he finished, he had laid out a wedding feast of cold roast beef, tamales, and empanadas, some filled with meat, others with a sweet raisin sauce, along with a joggled bottle of champagne to toast their new life and a feather comforter for their marriage bed.
She clapped her hands to her lips, letting the thrill and excitement build to excruciating levels within her.
“What have I missed?” he asked, surveying his handiwork.
“It won’t be the same, you know,” she whispered.
He frowned.
“I mean, if you don’t make your own weapons and kill our food.”
Taking her hands gently in his, he transferred them from her lips to his, clasping them against his skin, staring deeply into her eyes. “By the time this journey is finished, you won’t want to hear the word squirrel again.”
She moved her hands to either side of his face, pulling him slowly toward her until their lips touched.
“I love my surprise,” she whispered.
His lips met hers, caressing them with delicate, delicious, increasingly demanding strokes.
Fumbling then, he reached for the buttons on her riding jacket. His mouth closed over hers, delving into her sweetness. He found himself swimming in her passion.
She tried to help him remove her clothing, but he resisted. “I’ve never done this before, angel. You were always one step ahead of me, remember?”
But he let her help with his own garments, and at length they stood amid a pile of clothing. The late afternoon sun streaked great shafts of light into the mouth of the cave, highlighting their bodies.
He held her neck between his palms, kissing her lips, then her cheeks, traveling to her neck, where her pulse beat for him…for him alone.
He drew her back, perusing her sun-drenched body. “You are so beautiful. Your body looks like spun gold.”
She studied his body, partitioned into segments of dark and light. “And you look like the Artist may have let His creativity run unchecked.” She traced the lines around his neck where his shirt collar ended, found the line on his arm where his sleeve had stopped, then fingered the white streak running across his forehead that marked the band of his Stetson.
“Hmm, He did sorta run amok with me.”
She kissed his neck, running her tongue along the collar line. “He knew what I liked best,” she whispered when a quiver ran the length of his body.
His palms clasped her buttocks, and her own body trembled. He drew her close, holding her tightly.
His chest rumbled against her breasts. “Angel, angel, what you do to me.” He stroked her thighs, pressing her close against him, and she felt his passion grow with each stroke—and hers along with it.
Suddenly, he lifted her off the floor and in two steps deposited her on top of the pallet, following her, entering her, thrusting deep…holding steady.
“Ah, angel, it has been too long.”
Blood pounded at her neck and at points all over her body. Pounded and pumped, as Carson moved in an aggravatingly slow rhythm until suddenly the sun shafts burst into great balls of fire, blinding her, burning her, searing fire and life through her body.
She clung to his now-wet shoulders, waiting for the lightning to stop flashing through her brain, relishing the magnificence she had known but not known, expected but not expected.
“You surprised me again,” she mumbled against his wet neck.
He chuckled. “Surprised myself. Next time we’ll take it slow.”
And they did, loving again as soon as he recovered. Afterwards, she snuggled against him, holding him tightly against herself. “Do you think we made our first baby?”
He sobered. “With the trip ahead of us, I hope not.”
“You wouldn’t be sorry, though, would you?”
His chin nuzzled the top of her head. “No. Not for one minute.”
“Do you think that’s the reason we feel this desperate need to—” she snuggled closer to him, “to do this?”
He drew her back and stared, grinning, into her smiling face. Her lips were parted. They quivered a bit, reminding him again of a Comanche bow that had just released an arrow. He knew exactly where that arrow had landed.
“Do you?” she prompted.
“Do I what?” he questioned, lost in the magical nonsense of this woman, his wife. His wife.
“Do you think we feel this desperate yearning to make love because we need to make babies?”
He laughed at that. “Partly, I suppose.” He kissed her soundly. “Mostly I think it’s because—” he kissed her again, a loud, smacking kiss, “because it’s so damned much fun.”
Later they sat side by side on a log and ate their wedding meal, Aurelia wrapped loosely in a sheet, Carson wearing only his breeches.
“So you prefer squirrel to Mazón beef,” he teased.
“I prefer you,” she answered.
They drank the champagne, all that didn’t bubble out when he removed the cork.
“What a honeymoon,” she laughed. “Champagne in a cave.”
“It won’t be all hardship,” he promised. “In San Antone, we will stay a night at the Menger Hotel. You did bring your yellow dress…the one from our wedding?”
“Sí,” she told him. “I stuffed it in a satchel, with Mamá insisting all the while that I would never need such a gown in Texas.”
He chuckled, thinking of his family, wondering how she would take to them. “Never can tell what we’ll find in Texas.”
A wide grin bowed her lips. “And here?”
He kissed her. “Here we know exactly what we will find,” he whispered. “Love. Enough love to see us through everything ahead, enough love to last a lifetime.”
Author’s Note
Real de Catorce and Guanajuato are two of my favorite places in Mexico. My husband and I first visited them in 1970 with two couples who fall under the classifications of both family and friends, Bobby Mae and Don Huss and Robert Henry and Marían Kidd. Real de Catorce is a virtual ghost town today, although a few people still live there. The remains of the once-opulent city are so vivid as to have remained clear and intriguing in my memory all these years. Guanajuato is a picture-book town, straight out of a fairy tale. Travelers, both the real and the armchair kind, as I often am, can find information on both places in travel books such as Insight Guides.
My major research source for Real de Catorce is a book I purchased on the 1970 trip, El Real de Catorce by Octaviano Cabrera Ipiña. A special thanks to friends, Raul and Blanca Macias, who, at great expense of time and effort, translated this book for me, in the process discovering that one of Raul’s ancestors worked the silver mines in Catorce.
This is the second story in my “Jarrett Family Sagas.” The first, Sweet Autumn Surrender, told the story of Kale and Ellie Jarrett, mentioned here. The next book will feature a younger sister to Carson and Kale, Delta Jarrett, in a story of passion, love, and intrigue that takes us from a Mississippi River showboat to the decks of a pirate ship and back again, from St. Louis, Missouri to the swampy bayous of Louisiana. Once again, I will explore places and cultures the reader may enjoy visiting later, either in person or through additional reading.
More from Vivian Vaughan
Branded
El Paso, Texas. 1895. Five years ago, life as Jacy Kimble knew it ended with a scandal that sent her brother Hunter and his best friend Trevor Fallon to Yuma Prison for murder. The scandal cost her family their Arizona Ranch, ruined her father’s political career and took his sanity, leaving the Kimble family in shambles. Once the belle of Arizona society, Jacy Kimble was haughty and flirtatious—her favorite target: Trevor Fallon. Her father called him a hired hand.
Now Trevor has shown up at her door, escaped from prison, or as he tries to make her believe: he was freed in the middle of the night with one order—clear her brother’s name and keep him from hanging.
For five years she has hated Trevor. How can she believe him now? Yet, how can she not help him try to prove her brother’s innocence? It’s a hard choice for Jacy: believe the man who ruined her life, or throw away any hope for her family’s future. Complicating everything, Trevor is the same handsome, no-account cowhand who once romanced her. And Jacy had loved him. Now she feels that powerful attraction returning. How can she spend time with him? How can she not?
No Place for a Lady
When Madolyn Sinclair, Secretary of the Boston Woman Suffrage Society, steps off the train in Buckhorn, Texas, she doesn’t know there is a right and wrong side of the tracks. Madolyn has come to this god-forsaken land with three purposes: to find her runaway brother Morley, secure her inheritance, and return to Boston to organize a Center for Women’s Rights. What she had not expected to find in this windswept land—or anywhere—was love: Madolyn Sinclair has dedicated herself to teaching submissive women from all walks of life that they don’t need men.
Then she meets Tyler Grant, her brother’s erstwhile business partner, who offers to take her to Morley’s ranch. She reluctantly accepts, and Tyler takes her on a wagon ride she will never forget. But Tyler has an ulterior motive, and he’s caught a tantalizing woman in his web of deceit.
Reluctant Enemies
New Mexico Territory, 1879. Will Radnor has never stopped looking for Charles Martin Kane, the man who murdered his father back in Philadelphia. Following the first good lead he’s had in years, Will accepts a position with a law firm in Santa Fé. In Chimayo, a golden-haired cowgirl, ‘dressed like Billy the Kid and smelling of horse sweat’ climbs into the stagecoach and changes his life forever. Then he learns her name.
Priscilla McCain has realized her dream to become the best danged cowgirl in New Mexico Territory, following in the boot steps of her beloved father, Charlie McCain. In Chimayo she climbs into the stage and trips over the flimsy black boots of a greenhorn lawyer. He is tall, though, and handsome. Silk shirts and perfume spring to mind. Then she realizes what he is—a greenhorn.
Soon, however, even wild horses can’t keep them apart. Will passes every ‘greenhorn’ test Priscilla poses and proves himself a quick learner. Before she knows it, Priscilla has donned that silk shirt, lacy chemise, and spritzes on her mother’s perfume.
As Will’s love for Priscilla grows, he knows that the time will come when she must choose between him and her father, and either choice will be disastrous for all of them. He has never seen a family as close. But can he forego bringing Charles Martin Kane to justice, even for the woman he loves?
A Wish to Build a Dream On
Reese Catlin is determined to get his herd from Texas to Kansas ahead of the rush. An excellent chuck wagon cook is essential to the cattle drive, and after tasting the delectable lemon pies at the café in town, he knows he’s found the perfect man for the job in 'Andy' Dushane.
Only as it turns out, Andie Dushane is actually a woman, and he knows the rest of the cowboys won’t stand for it. But after she proves her culinary skills can’t be matched—or resisted—she joins the camp on the trail to Kansas.
Before long, Andie’s delicious cuisine wins over the stomachs of the cowboys, but it’s the warmth of her passionate embrace that wins over the heart of Reese.
Storms Never Last
Eager to flea Indianola, Texas and the violent blood feud between her own family and the neighboring Suttons, Lindsey Mae Burnett makes the desperate decision to work as a shady lady to fund her escape.
March Sutton is in Indianola with one mission—murder. In an effort to relax, he pays Miss Fancy's House of Fanciful Delights a visit where he is paired with the beautiful, innocent Lindsey.
As a fierce storm descends upon the city, both March and Lindsey find themselves in danger of being swept away by not only the harsh winds, but by each other as well. Will their love survive the dangers of the vicious storm and the looming threat of Jeb Taylor, only to be destroyed when Lindsey learns that March is one of the very Suttons she’s running from?
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Caterina Raminerz, daughter of a ranch cook, wanted nothing more than to marry her oldest friend Monte Ballou. But the morning after he proposes, he disappears, along with Caterina’s hope for a future with true love.
Six years later, Monte has returned, determined to ride a dangerous stallion in the Fourth of July Rodeo. Still deeply in love with her childhood sweetheart, Caterina vows to do whatever necessary to stop Monte from riding the ferocious horse—and maybe save his life.
But even as buried feelings and forgotten promises find their way back to the surface, Monte is promised to someone else. Will Monte and Caterina find their way back to each other before their love is extinguished forever?
Tremaynes of Apache Wells
Chance of a Lifetime
Fort Davis, Department of Texas, 1868. Sabrina Bolton lives with an omnipresent feeling of guilt: her twin sister’s death when the girls were five left their mother in a perpetual state of melancholy. Now, fourteen years later, everything Sabrina does brings the admonishment “Proper young ladies don’t...”
Sabrina wants more. She wants to treat people at the post hospital; she wants to work at her father’s off-base mercantile with her friend, Rosa Ramírez; and she wants romance. Then her mother makes the ultimate choice—a suitor for Sabrina. Sabrina cannot summon one romantic feeing for Captain Lon Jasper. Indeed, he criticizes her behavior as much as her mother does.
Then the man called Tremayne rides onto the base and straight into Sabrina’s heart. Tremayne was reared by Apaches after his parents were murdered by unknown assailants, and he considers himself an outcast in both worlds. To him, all white-eyes women are witless. As if to prove the point, he almost runs down a fiery-haired woman who has wandered into the street and tripped on her skirts. He helps her stand, and from that moment they find no peace unless they are together. As their love grows, Tremayne knows he must leave Sabrina. Together she would be an outcast, too.
Catch a Wild Heart
Keturah “Ket” Tremayne belongs nowhere, to no one. Born of an Apache mother and “white-eyes” father, Ket is an outcast in both worlds. She has erected a wall around her heart, a wall of hatred for all whites, especially the soldiers at Fort Davis...and her stepmother, Sabrina.
Now Ket goes into the mountains to rescue her half-brother and his friend from Comancheros. Along with the boys, she rescues a greenhorn surveyor named Blake. His gibberish confounds her, but his compassion draws her near…and her sense of self-preservation pushes him away.
Meanwhile, Blake has his hands full surveying a rail line while avoiding renegade Apaches...except for the half-Apache girl who is the most astonishing, bewildering, and wonderful woman he has ever met. Even when it’s snowing outside his blood boils just thinking about her. Keturah Tremayne considers herself an outcast, wanted by no one, but Blake knows better, and if it takes the rest of his life, he will tear down the wall she has erected around her heart and set her free.
Jarrett Family Sagas
Sweet Autumn Surrender
Ellie Langstrom has built a quiet, simple life on a ranch in Summer Valley, married to the gentle, older Benjamin Jarrett, the love of her life. But that dream is shattered when she finds Benjamin’s bullet-riddled cor
pse on the back doorstep and watches her barn burn to the ground.
Ellie doesn’t know who is after her or why, so she telegraphs Benjamin’s far-flung brother Carson for help. Two months later, a Jarrett brother finally arrives—not Carson, Texas Ranger, but the blue-eyed gunfighter, Kale Jarrett. Ellie is terrified of guns and of the handsome gunslinger now living in her house. But she needs him…maybe in ways she doesn’t want to admit.
Silver Surrender
Aurelia Mazón lives with only one goal: to escape her high-mountain silver mining town for the big city. Though her father owns the mine, she wants more from life. After her father vows to send Aurelia and her mother to Guanajuato if the silver thefts at the mine continue, Aurelia sets a plan in motion to make her dreams come true.
But just when her plan begins to work, the unthinkable happens: a handsome stranger, a gringo, is arrested for the thefts. Aurelia has no choice but to break the gringo out and escape with him into the Sierra Madres, where she falls into his arms. There, she learns the gringo is Carson Jarrett, a Texas Ranger.
Chased through the Sierras by the Federales, Carson realizes that their budding, passionate romance cannot come to pass: the Mazón family will never allow Aurelia to marry a gringo. But Aurelia’s ingenuity and indomitable spirit will say otherwise.
Sunrise Surrender
Mississippi River, 1879. Delta Jarrett is desperate to end the recurring dreams that haunt her: disturbing, passionate dreams about her ancestor, pirate Anne Bonny, and Anne’s lover, Calico Jack. Their romance happened over a hundred years before, but now, in 1879, Delta is still enamored with their world. In an attempt to purge the dreams, Delta agrees to serve as a reporter for her brother-in-law Hollis’ newspaper, the St. Louis Sun. She would cover stories onboard a Louisiana showboat, the Mississippi Princess, at each port of call, and for the festivities later in New Orleans.
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 36