Tejo looked at Diego with probing black eyes. “You’re just a two-bit cook. What would you do?”
Diego didn’t take offense. He did, however, go on full alert. Tejo wasn’t buying his “I’m just a cook” routine. Apparently gut instinct ran strong in the Delgado family. “Depends on the situation. It just seems Leroy could have found another way to contact Blue if warning her was his real motive.”
“You have a theory, then?”
Diego shrugged. This was the sort of conversation he needed to have with Blue. Where the hell was she? “Drugs, money, trouble with the law. There are a dozen reasons someone with no funds would flee cross-country. But with technology what it is, I just don’t buy the warning thing.” He checked the switches on the griddle and stove, his demeanor making it clear the subject was only of marginal interest to him.
Turning back, he brushed his hands on his thighs. “Guess that does it here. Tell Blue there’s plenty of salsa in the fridge and I set up some quesadillas that just need to hit the griddle for a few minutes. There’s also some—”
Tejo laughed and held up his hand, his worries at least temporarily on the back burner. “Whoa, whoa. Blue’s idea of doing lunch is an all-you-can-eat taco bar.” His expression changed to one of tender amusement, but his tone was a bit wistful. “Cooking is not a skill she ever managed to pick up. Alethea, that’s my wife, she used to do all but tie Blue to a stool to get her to learn to cook.” He laughed again. “Not that child. She was an outdoor creature. Still is.” His expression sobered as he glanced at the clock.
Diego felt the man’s concern, as it echoed his own. Tejo’s instincts were to be trusted, something Diego wouldn’t forget. But John was watching Blue, and now was not the time to let Tejo get too worried.
“Blue spent a lot of time with you growing up, then?”
Tejo turned back to him. “Yes, her parents were killed at a young age. She’s been part of our lives for a long time.” He shook his head. “You know, she wanted to be a cop, took after her dad that way.” His deep sigh spoke of pain and loss. “You should have seen her with my brother, Seve. Ah, but they were a pair. They had so little time together and yet you have never seen two human beings closer than my niece and her father. I’m not sure who idolized the other more. But the thought of her following Seve into law enforcement …” He looked away, then back again. “Alethea and I talked her out of it. We were selfish. We’d had too much death and sadness. She was all we had. We wanted her safe.” He snorted. “Safe. She tries to do what she thinks is expected and ends up with that no-good—” He broke off, muttering under his breath. “After that she came out here, bought the cantina. I come in from Taos to help her out.” He looked around. “I guess she is safe now.” He shook his head. “But happy? I don’t know. I guess you always think you should have done better.”
“She’s lucky to have you. Her childhood wasn’t an easy one.”
Tejo’s shoulders squared a bit, his Spanish heritage clear in the broad lines. Pride filled out the rest. “Yes, she is. You remind her of that when you see her next. Since I plan to take a strip off of her if she isn’t back in here shortly.”
Diego knew his harsh words were simply a cover for his increasing concern.
Just then the wall phone by the door jangled. Tejo scooped it up. “Blue’s.” He listened for a second, then swore loudly and fluently in Spanish. “That was a damn foolish thing to do,” he shouted into the phone, one hand gesturing as he spoke. “I’ve told you before not to take that death machine out there. If Alethea hears about—” He stopped abruptly.
Diego could hear Blue’s heated voice through the phone from several feet away. On full alert, he still found himself fighting a smile. She might not have inherited her aunt’s love for cooking, but she had inherited the Delgado temper.
“Carrying a cellular phone isn’t good enough. You should be—” Tejo broke off again, listening for a few seconds. “Okay, sí, yes.” He fell silent again, nodding occasionally.
“I’ll be there shortly.” He sighed, then sternly added, “Don’t go anywhere. Stay put.”
Diego heard her laughter as Tejo slammed the phone back on the receiver. “Problem, amigo?”
“Blue ran that machine of hers out into the desert and got a flat tire. That girl, I tell her again and again and it’s like talking to a brick wall. I swear she—”
Diego cut him off, his concern tripling instantly. John wouldn’t lose her. His tracking skills were legendary. But what in the hell was she doing traipsing all over the desert?
“Can I help you out? I can go get her. I’m done here.”
Tejo’s expression brightened. “Actually, that would be a good solution. Unless you are as good a bartender as you are a cook.”
“Sorry. Beer and the occasional whiskey straight pretty much exhausts my knowledge.”
“Fine, then, you go get her. Thank you.” He turned and grabbed an order pad from the counter. “This is where she is.” He started scribbling on the pad when the phone rang again. “So help me, Saint Joseph, if she’s been bitten by a rattlesnake or something I’m going to kill her myself,” he grumbled as he snatched the phone up. “Blue’s.”
Diego watched his eyebrows lift in surprise.
“Hold on, he’s right here.” He extended the receiver to Diego. “For you.”
Diego took it, dread creeping down his spine. Only two people had this number. Only one would ever contact him on it.
“Hope you don’t mind that I gave out this number.”
Tejo shook his head. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with your work.”
Diego nodded. “Hello?”
John’s voice came across the line. “Problem, amigo.”
“What?”
“Our mutual friend. I lost her.”
FOUR
Blue peeled off her chambray shirt and twisted the white V-neck T-shirt she wore underneath into a knot above the waistband of her jeans. Lord but it was hot as hell.
Where was Tejo anyway? She sighed and raked her hair off her forehead. She’d hated calling him, having lost count of the number of times he’d lectured her on her impulsive desert jaunts on her Harley. Now, with a flat tire and a healthy serving of Tejo’s crow stuck in her throat, she still didn’t have her head on straight.
Two hours at the sheriff’s office had done little to help. In fact, it had been those two hours that had sent her screaming off into the desert in a cloud of dust. She hated being confused. After her divorce she’d purposely reduced the number of complications in her life to the impersonal and banal to avoid that very thing. Now she had death threats to think about.
Was Leroy telling the truth? And if he was, was the only new face in town her potential attacker?
She really didn’t want to think about that last one. A good cook was simply too hard to come by, she told herself. But her insouciance felt much more like bravado.
He was a cook with an empty knife sheath.
A cook she’d known two days who had already infiltrated far too much of her mind.
Diego Santerra a killer?
A killer who made good salsa?
The roaring of an engine jerked her mercifully off her mental merry-go-round.
She shadowed her eyes with her hand and watched the dust plume rising along the desert floor behind Tejo’s truck.
Except it wasn’t Tejo’s truck.
It was a Jeep. A dark green Jeep. Diego’s Jeep.
Blue hated the dread that crawled down her spine as she watched him approach.
She looked around her. For what, an escape route? She’d always sneered at the heroines in movies who stood wringing their hands, awaiting their fate. Until she’d become one of them.
She turned to her saddle-bags and rooted around, trying to find anything she could use as a weapon. “Wonderful,” she said in disgust, holding up an elastic cord. “I’ll just bungee him to death.”
The truck came closer. She grabbed her keys and held them tightly
in her fist, one pointed end protruding between her knuckles. It wasn’t much, but it was about all she had.
Her gaze fell on her cellular phone. Duh. She should have called Gerraro immediately.
Heat rose off the ground, casting the Jeep in wavy shimmers as it cut across the baked land, less than five hundred yards away.
Too late now.
Besides which, he’d never have gotten to her in time.
Blue shivered even as the sheen on her skin turned to beads of sweat. But at least they’d know who’d taken her.
Unlike Leroy.
Diego pulled the Jeep up next to her bike and swung out the open side. Blue braced her legs shoulder width apart and centered her weight, trying to be prepared for any move he might make.
What really shook her was how she reacted, or how her body reacted, to the mere sight of him. She swore his legs went on forever. They were long, lean, with jeans that fit him perfectly. His dusty boots only added unneeded length. His white T stretched tightly over his shoulders and chest.
The sun was at his back, and she squinted up into his face, struck again by the unexpected sexy contrast of his dark hair and dark eyebrows and lashes with those impossibly pale blue eyes. Emotionless, yet mesmerizing.
Dangerously so.
He lifted his hand and she instantly dropped into a ready crouch.
“You okay?” His brow furrowed a bit as he held out a large bottle of springwater. “I know it’s not a cold beer, but …”
A killer who offered water to his intended victim? Blue supposed there were far stranger occurrences out there. Still, her cheeks heated as she stood and accepted the water. He watched her silently as she uncapped the plastic bottle.
Some latent survival instinct kicked in as she pressed the edge to her lips. She pretended to drink but held her lips closed, then held out the bottle. “You want some?”
His eyes sparked with amusement. He hadn’t missed her ploy at all.
Was he just toying with her before taking her out?
Taking her out? Oh Blue, you really do need to get in out of the heat.
Finally he shook his head. “No, help yourself.”
Had she heard a challenge in his voice? She shrugged. “That’s okay, I’ve had enough.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“Did you come all the way out here to give me a lift or harass me?”
“A little of both, it would appear. But I intended only to give you a ride.”
“What about my bike?”
“We’ll take the tire off and have it repaired or you can get a new one. I’ll bring you back out later to put it on.”
Blue’s wariness persisted despite his casual tone and cool logic. “That’s not necessary. I can just drive Tejo’s truck out. I’ll put in a call to a mechanic friend of mine who has a trailer. I can tow my bike. Besides, I need your services more as a cook than a grease monkey.”
“You’ll never get a trailer out here.” She simply crossed her arms and stared at him. He lifted a shoulder in half a shrug. “Suit yourself.” He squatted beside her bike, then looked back up at her.
She drew in a short, shallow breath. When the sun hit his face he looked wild and beautiful. His eyes were almost eerily seductive. Her skin prickled again, the sensation not at all unpleasant.
Sunstroke. She was suffering from sunstroke.
“You know how to take this thing off?” he asked.
“In fact, I do. You don’t?” She really didn’t want to smile.
He shrugged. “I’m—”
“I know, I know, just a cook.” With everything else going on, she really didn’t want to be charmed by him. “You don’t need to bother anyway,” she said. “I’ll get the trailer.”
“You don’t intend to come back out here tonight, do you?” It was the first time she’d heard even a hint of emotion in his voice.
“I’m not leaving my bike out in the middle of nowhere all night.”
“What do you think will happen to it way the hell out here?”
“I’m not leaving it here.”
He held her gaze for another long moment, then stood and brushed his hands on his thighs. “Fine, then let’s go.”
For some reason his attitude rankled. Blue had been all prepared to argue with him, something, anything, whatever it took to get rid of all this tension she suddenly seemed to have wound up inside her. And he’d robbed her of that pleasure.
Ten minutes ago you thought he wanted to kill you. Now you’re complaining because he’s being too nice?
Killer or cook? Hell, she didn’t know what she thought at this point. She just wanted to get out of here.
She walked around and slid into the passenger seat. He was already in and belted.
They bounced over the desert for almost ten minutes before the silence became almost as intolerable as the dust swirling inside the Jeep.
“Where are the doors to this thing?”
“Don’t have any.”
She looked at him. “No doors?”
He didn’t glance at her. “Never needed any.”
Blue stifled a sigh. “Where is Tejo?”
“The grapevine is in action. Your cantina is the hot spot today, it seems.”
She swore under her breath. She may have reduced the clutter and responsibilities in her life to a bare minimum, but the ones she did have she took seriously. “He should have just left me out there to bake.”
“He did mention something about that as I left.”
“Very funny.”
She thought she caught the edge of a smile in the corner of her vision but refused to give in to the urge to look at him. Again.
“He should have asked you to stay and take on the lunch group.”
“I left him with plenty of salsa and quesadillas. They’ll survive. Besides I don’t think anyone will leave till you make an appearance.”
“Lovely.”
They rode in silence for several minutes. Then he said, “Do you come out here often?”
The personal question surprised her. The warmth his interest stirred disconcerted her. Blue stared out the windshield at the never-ending vista of golden-brown earth, dotted with the occasional sage and saguaro. The majestic buttes and mesas jutted suddenly upward, like some sort of violent life-forms erupting from beneath the sands, the earth no longer able to contain them. She identified with that feeling, that need to erupt, to break free.
She thought she’d done that when she’d divorced Anthony and relocated to Villa Roja. But had she?
No. The response was as instant as it was final. She’d just traded one guarded existence for another, safely contained once again just beneath the surface of an insulated, risk-free life.
And she had no idea how to burst through the surface.
Her heart tightened as she continued to scan the landscape before her, seeing her life there too. Endless. Dry. Dangerous only when you strayed from the established paths.
She wanted to stray. Oh yes, she did.
“Yeah, I come out here,” she said quietly. “All the time.”
“It can be beautiful, peaceful.” His voice was quiet, soothing. Nonintrusive.
Yet she was vitally aware of his presence next to her.
“It is for me.” She wanted to look at him. The very strength of the pull kept her from doing it. “But not for you,” she added.
The pause that followed wrapped around her like a physical touch. It both seduced and unnerved her. She wanted him to keep talking, wanted to sustain this link she felt to him. Yet she felt the inherent danger in doing so. And it had nothing to do with fear for her life.
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugged but still avoided looking at him. If they spoke and didn’t make any contact, even eye contact, then it was almost like talking in the dark. Another safety screen. Another illusion. She clung to it.
“You just seem on edge out here. Not uncomfortable, just …” She drifted off, feeling silly all of a sudden.
“I was raised out here.”
She did look at him then. He was staring out through the windshield, his profile hard and impenetrable. She knew he saw more than the dusty tracks in front of them. What was he seeing? Remembering?
“If you don’t like it, why not move away?”
“I have. Many times.”
She returned her attention to the desert. “Yet you keep coming back. Maybe you should think about what draws you here. Figure it out, give in to it. Maybe then the pull wouldn’t be so strong.”
“I know what pulls me here.”
The truck slowed and she felt him look at her. Her muscles tightened until they almost vibrated under the sensation. Her fingernails were digging into her palms before she even realized she’d made fists. She carefully relaxed them, and the rest of her body.
“At least this time I do.”
Adrenaline shot through her, almost making her jump.
Her. He had as much as told her he’d come here for her.
What do you want? she wanted to shout. Who in the hell are you?
“I needed to get away from everything for a while,” he went on, his attention back on driving, the truck resuming its normal spine-cracking speed. “This is the best place I’ve ever found to clear your head.”
Blue blinked a few times, keeping her attention firmly on the tracks they were following. Had she just read too much into his words? Imagined that entire exchange?
“That’s why I came out here today,” she said.
“Did the sheriff’s department find anything? Has Leroy turned up?”
She jerked slightly at the question. She shook her head. “No leads.” Oh brilliant! Just tell him everything. Sorely distracted, her answer had been reflexive. The jarring ride must have knocked her common sense loose.
She glanced sideways at her rescuer. She liked to think she was sharp, alert, but suspicion was not a normal emotion for Blue. Her gaze slid down to his waist, where she knew an empty knife sheath was tucked out of sight on his other hip.
In the next instant she felt the heat of his return scrutiny. Knowing she should just let her attention move easily and quietly elsewhere didn’t stop her from doing the last thing she should have.
Santerra's Sin: A Loveswept Classic Romance Page 5