The Fires of Paradise

by Brenda Joyce

  Carmen came in, shooting her snide looks, carrying the dishes from the table. Lucy ate, ignoring the other woman, listening to Shoz telling his son it was time for bed.

  “Papa, it’s early!” Roberto protested.

  “I’m going to bed, too,” Shoz said. “If you want me to tuck you in …” It was a bribe and Roberto readily agreed.

  Tears misted her eyes. Lucy kept her gaze down, not about to let Carmen see anything. With the little boy, his tone was warm, teasing, and gentle. She imagined him tucking Roberto into bed, and it brought an unbearable ache. She couldn’t eat anymore. She heard Shoz saying good night, a door closing—then another one closing.

  So he was going to sleep early, too. Lucy didn’t want to think beyond that. She didn’t dare.

  Carmen threw an apron at her. “You did no work,” she said, hands on her hips. “You clean everything. I’m going to bed.” She smiled, tauntingly.

  Lucy drew herself upright. “I am not going to clean this kitchen!”

  “Shoz said you are to help me. Did you help me today? No! So clean up here!”

  Lucy didn’t move. Her heart was thumping. “Where I come from,” she said distinctly, “we have fifty servants to cook and clean. Fifty! I have never cooked in my life, I have never cleaned in my life. And I never will! That,” she added, “is for your class of people.”

  Carmen’s black eyes widened. “Stupid bitch!” she cried. Before Lucy could move, she had grabbed Lucy’s thick braid and was wrenching it roughly. Lucy gasped from pain and tried to free herself. She stopped all her efforts, however, when she saw the knife Carmen held an inch from her scalp.

  No one in her life had ever abused her physically before. It was a shock.

  “I will cut it off,” Carmen hissed. “You won’t be so pretty then, will you? So do as I say!”

  Lucy didn’t respond, genuinely frightened. Carmen was volatile in a way Shoz was not. Lucy was afraid the woman would cut off all her beautiful hair. And then do worse. Carmen released her. Lucy was trembling.

  “Now I am going to bed,” Carmen announced, emphasizing the last word with a smug look. She smiled and walked off.

  Lucy sat at the dirty table and pushed her plate away, trying to recover. Her hands shook. Such abuse was too much to bear! That woman had been a scant instant from severing her braid from her head! That woman, his wife! She was a monster! But what could she do?

  Lucy heard a door closing. A rush of memories assailed her, all of them of her and Shoz, his hands and mouth devouring her. She imagined what was going on that very minute behind his bedroom door. She saw him touching Carmen, kissing her, holding her naked buttocks while he thrust himself into her. Lucy screwed her eyes shut. She couldn’t handle imagining such a thing, not now!

  But her imagination was uncontrollable; all she could seem to think about was the two of them together. Abruptly Lucy lunged to her feet and ran from the kitchen. She had to escape this house, she had to escape them! She rushed onto the front porch, stumbled down the steps, and did not pause in her wild run until she had reached one of the trees by the creek. She leaned against it, panting. Her face was wet, from her own tears.

  Was it only a few hours ago that he had held her, kissed her? But that had been because she had slapped him. Still, he had kissed her and he had wanted her; there had been no doubt of that. With his own wife in the very same house. It was shocking, but she was no longer shocked; it was disgusting, but she wasn’t disgusted. She just couldn’t bear it. She had to face it. She was hurt and angry, as if she were the wife betrayed!

  If only she could escape more than this house. If only a real escape were possible.

  It wasn’t. Lucy would never even attempt it. Even if she could escape this damn valley, she would never find her way out of the Sierra Madres and to civilization, never. She was going to have to remain here, a semiprisoner, his hostage, until he set her free. She realized that despite his lies and his betrayal, she still believed that he would keep his word and release her as soon as it was safe to do so.

  Lucy wiped her eyes, realizing it was only a matter of time. And time was something she could survive. She was young and she was strong, and if she could just get her wild emotions under control, she would cope and do it well. She must remind herself frequently of the actual facts: She was Lucy Bragg, he was an outlaw. She did not want him, they did not suit each other, they would never suit each other. Carmen suited him. Perfectly.

  He stared out the window into the night. He was gripping the sill, but he couldn’t see much, because he had chosen the bedroom facing west—the one facing the major entrance to the valley. Oh, he could see the darker outline of the ragged rim of the valley, and if it were daylight, he would have a view to its very end. But he couldn’t see her.

  He had heard Lucy leave the house, and he knew by listening acutely that she had rounded the other side to go toward the creek. He pictured her running, Carmen’s gypsy skirts billowing around her, revealing lots of long, sexy leg.

  “Caro?” Carmen slithered from the bed and came up behind him, pressing her naked breasts against his bare back. He still wore his jeans, and with her hand, she gripped him through the denim. He was full and turgid, but not because of her. He was aroused because he wanted Lucy.

  “You miss me,” she said, satisfied. She kissed his shoulder, then bit it. He flinched.

  She rubbed the length of him expertly. “Come to bed.”

  He was insane—either that or obsessed. He turned abruptly, removing her hands. “Later.” He shoved past her, and barefoot, headed for the bedroom door.

  Her eyes went wide. “Where are you going?”

  Shoz wasn’t a liar. “Outside.”

  “Why!”

  He could have lied, he could have said he was going to relieve himself. He didn’t, he opted for silence. Carmen’s scream made up for it. “You bastard! You’re going to her!”

  He didn’t answer.

  Shoz listened intently to the quiet of the house, to the stillness of the night. He went to Roberto’s room and very quietly pushed the door open. Roberto was afraid of the dark and slept with a small gas lamp burning. Despite these modern times, electricity and running water had not come to much of Mexico—much less Death Valley.

  The boy was sleeping peacefully, and Shoz backed out silently. He was disturbed as he left the house, and he admitted it. On the porch he paused, gripping the post rail, searching the darkness by the river with his eyes. There was not a sound to disturb the thick, hot stillness of the pitch-black valley. There was no movement; not even a leaf quivered. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten an eerie feeling of unreality, standing outside in the heavy quiet of a night like this. But tonight there was more than that. He felt lonely. It was an old feeling, one he was not comfortable with and did not like. Not at all.

  He made out her form after a second pass, because she was leaning against a tree, almost merged with it, giving it a grotesque shape. He hesitated.

  He had never been faithful to Carmen—just like she wasn’t faithful to him. They had been together for five years, and it would have lasted only five days—if it weren’t for Roberto.

  Thinking about Roberto made him clench up inside. There was no precise parallel, but Roberto reminded him of himself in a way. He made him think about how lucky he had been that his mother—Candice, the woman who had raised him—had loved him as if he were her own son, so much so, he’d never known the truth until told. Roberto had a real mother, but Carmen had none of Candice’s love to give to her son. Shoz identified with the boy strongly, even though there was really nothing similar in their circumstances. Shoz had had a doting father—who had raised him with a loving stepmother. Roberto had a selfish, self-absorbed mother, and legally he had no father at all.

  It had been almost five years now since he’d started up with Carmen, and more important, five years since he’d first mussed up a tiny toddler’s black head. He knew he was Roberto’s anchor, his rock, and something of his her
o. Shoz hoped fervently that the day would never come when Roberto would find out the truths about him and become bitterly disillusioned.

  On his part, he and Carmen had stayed together because of Roberto and convenience. Carmen and he had a very unusual, mutually self-serving relationship. In bed, they satisfied each other, outside of bed, he paid little attention to her. As long as Carmen was the queen of his bedroom, she did not care. Carmen knew nothing of his affairs, and didn’t suspect that he knew of hers. She didn’t know of his affairs because he was away from Death Valley often, and she always stayed behind. He had never taken any of the women in the valley, because none of them were very desirable, and Carmen pleased the hell out of him—and any man, he suspected—in bed. And he had never brought another woman here, either.

  But now Lucy was here.

  Which was why he was so disturbed.

  He hadn’t believed he had any decency left, but maybe he did. Why else would he be hesitating on the porch like a schoolboy? He owed Carmen very little, if anything. He used her, she used him. But she did live in his house, and they had spent five years together, even if they’d been apart as often as not. He didn’t care what she did, because he didn’t care about her, but if she did something under his nose, she would be testing his tolerance. Just as she would be enraged if he took Lucy now.

  It was unbelievable that he was even hesitating to go after her. He could not remember a time when he had wanted a woman and refrained from pursuit—and conquest.

  Maybe it was time to get rid of Carmen. It wasn’t a new thought, and the argument against it was old and well-worn: he would never abandon Roberto.

  This time he asked himself another question. What if he managed to get Carmen to leave, without taking Roberto? He had never considered this before. He considered it now. Carmen would screech and scream and holler, but if he wanted her gone, she would ultimately go. He knew his own will, his power. He imagined he could pay her off handsomely and she would willingly, even gladly, leave her son. But what kind of life would Roberto have without a mother, even one as selfish and self-centered as Carmen?

  Soon Lucy would be gone, too. He imagined coming “home” to this valley with only Roberto to greet him, and Linda. He imagined going to bed, night after night, alone. He supposed he could occasionally find release with one of the village women, if he was really in a bad way. At the moment the thought disgusted him. Eventually he might find another woman to take Carmen’s place in his life, but he doubted it. Their relationship was too unusual. Again he thought about returning just to Roberto, and to an empty bed. The feeling of loneliness that had gripped him earlier gripped him again.

  He didn’t want to come home to this house without a woman waiting for him. Carmen only provided an illusion of the family he needed, a shadow of what his parents had and what he’d once, foolishly, assumed he would have, but he desperately needed that illusion anyway.

  He stared out into the darkness. His groin had eased; now he should go back into the house, back to Carmen. Lucy wasn’t for him anyway. But he didn’t move.

  He stayed on the porch staring at her even though she was nothing but a blurred outline. He stayed thinking and remembering, until he was aching and hard again. He stayed until he had her scent, and was crazy because of it He stepped off the porch, shoving all his doubts aside.

  Lucy was an illusion of what he needed so desperately, too. And then it occurred to him that in another time and in another place, she wouldn’t be an illusion at all.

  27

  Lucy hadn’t heard a single sound in the godforsaken night, so when he touched her shoulder, she jumped with a cry.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Shoz said.

  It was one of the blackest nights Lucy had ever experienced, the sky heavy and dark, unlit by any stars, with the giant rock walls of the valley leaning in on them, somehow making the night even darker. Yet in the murky blackness it was impossible to decide where the sky ended and the cliffs began, and Lucy had finally gotten the fantastic impression that the two had merged and were hovering over her like a low, overburdened ceiling, threatening to cave in.

  Shoz was a relief because he was real and human, yet he was the last person she wanted to be with, too. She could barely make out his form, much less his expression. Only his teeth, glimmering brightly when he spoke, and the sheen of his eyes. She stepped back. He was like an apparition, adding to the unreality she had been experiencing. He was her own private demon come to taunt her. “What do you want?”

  “I want you, Lucy.”

  His voice was low and sexy, and her name on his lips in such a tone could have had a magnetic effect upon her. The pull was there, mesmerizing. But she was truly affronted, with his wife within calling distance, his little boy in a bedroom whose very window looked out upon them, a stone’s throw away. If he hadn’t had a wife, if they had been alone on this night in this place in this time, Lucy might not have resisted him at all. “What about her!”

  Shoz wanted to kick himself for not exercising restraint and attempting a more subtle, seductive approach. But he was never subtle around Lucy. Since they’d first met, she had brought out his worst side. Not that he had ever been a saint with other women, far from it. “Lucy,” he started, wanting to amend the breach he sensed was widening rapidly.

  She turned her head away, but not soon enough. His gaze was very acute, and he thought her eyes shone with tears. Because he had been unsuccessfully debating that very same question—what about Carmen?—for a good part of the evening, he did not have a ready response.

  “Leave me alone.”

  He couldn’t. If he could have, he would have. He stepped forward, crowding her, and although she backed up, he reached her and caught her arm. “You wanted me the other day, when you thought it was good-bye.”

  “I was a fool, and I did think it was good-bye!” She tried to twist away, but he wouldn’t let her.

  He had broached a topic that was very important to him, too important, one he normally would have never addressed. But on a night like this, inhibitions fled. “Why, Lucy? I had made up my mind to leave you alone, but you wanted me. You asked me. Why?”

  He had her other arm now, too, and he was so close, she could feel his heat. “Let me go!”

  “Tell me,” he whispered.

  She tried to wrench free, but with a bit less determination. He was too close, too male. Too exciting. She could feel the heat emanating from his body, and she could smell his scent, tobacco, sweat, leather—and man. Her body was starting to tremble, from despair and desire. “Please let me go.”

  “Not until you tell me why you encouraged me, Lucy.”

  Her temper erupted. “Because I’m just not a decent woman, am I? Because I wanted—” she hesitated, wanting to be crude, wanting to wound him “—sex. We’d already done it, hadn’t we? So what would one more time matter? I wanted to try it again, and I certainly couldn’t do it with someone from back home! Most importantly, I would never see you again, and no one had found out about the first time, and they wouldn’t find out about this. So I was safe. So I could do what I want, then say good-bye and never have to see you again.”

  He released her now and stepped away from her.

  He remained unmoving, and for an instant, Lucy regretted everything she had said. Then his lips curled, his teeth gleaming. “What if I tell you that this is also good-bye?”

  His tone was very dangerous, but only his words registered. She gasped, staring at him and trying to discern if this was a lie. “What?”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “That’s right. No one will ever know, Lucy. Your little secret will be safe with me.” He didn’t move toward her. He leaned against the tree, his pose relaxed, one knee bent and his foot braced against it. But his eyes never left her.

  “Where are you going? When are you coming back? What about me?”

  “Where I’m going is none of your business. I’ll be b
ack in ten days or so. After that, I’ll find the time and the place to let you go.”

  “I want out of this hellhole! I want you to take me with you! You promised you’d set me free after we got here!”

  “I’m not going to a garden party. I have every intention of keeping my promise to you when I get back.”

  “You bastard.”

  “Not very original.”

  She knew there was no use in arguing, that he would never change his mind. Silence tilled the moment between them, and Lucy folded her arms tightly against her breast.

  “Where’s my good-bye?” he drawled contemptuously.

  “Never again.”

  “Never? Never’s a long time, Miss Bragg.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Why?” His voice was mocking. “No one will know. Why, we can pass each other on the street in New York City someday and I won’t even tip my hat. Promise.”

  “You disgust me!”

  He shoved himself off the tree. His teeth flickered white again. “The feeling’s mutual, princess. Enjoy the night. I intend to.” And without a look back, he walked away.

  And Lucy didn’t have a single doubt where he was going, and to whom.

  Although he didn’t make a sound as he entered the house, his strides were hard and coiled tight. He exercised the utmost will not to slam the front door behind him as hard as he could.

  She was just like all the others.

  She was exactly like all the other ladies he’d fucked, the ones who would suck him off in the bedroom and look through him as if he were invisible should they pass on the street. And he despised her, even more than all the others, even more than Marianne.