Now that he’d basked in her forgiving smile, he would do anything to keep her from knowing he had killed the little sister he adored.
Chapter 14
Rico led Lily to a tiny cove between a stand of large rocks. Though they were secluded within, the sun shone upon them with joyous fury.
Simple pleasures seduced faster than gold and diamonds. For a single night in her bed, Lily had been offered both. Such suggestions had always left her cold.
But an hour in the sun, sitting between Rico’s legs, her back against his chest as they watched the river wander past, tempted her to offer him a thousand nights and more.
Rico was quiet, too quiet for him, as he chewed on some secret he thought he should tell her. His long, clever fingers had loosened her hair, and he worked at the tangles until the strands flowed freely over his thighs and chest.
“I could care less what you’ve done.”
His hand jerked, pulling her hair. She kept her gaze on the water, hoping he would relax and tell her what he was hiding, even as she prayed he would not.
“It is easy not to care when you do not know.”
“Your friends don’t care. Why should I? What you do now is what matters, Rico.”
“Is that so? You were thinking something like this, perhaps?” He drew her head to the side and kissed her neck.
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“Is it working?” His tongue ran along the hollow beneath her jaw.
“Mmm—hmm.”
“You taste of summer and sunshine. I want to taste you all over.”
With her eyes closed against the bright daylight, she smiled.
“When you smile like that,” he whispered, “I want to teach you everything that I know.”
“I thought you already did.”
“Not by half, Lilita.” His fingers plucked at the tight collar of her gown. “From now on you will buy dresses that have buttons in the front.”
“Why?”
His hand brushed her cheek, and for some reason, perhaps the heat of the day, her eyes burned.
“Then, while we lazed by the river, I would release one button after another. As I kissed you here.” He pressed his mouth to the corner of her eye. Why did that make her shiver? “I would slip my hand inside your dress and fondle your breasts until the peaks were as hard as I am.” He pressed himself into the small of her back. Why did that make her shudder?
His tongue traced her ear; his breath blew past her cheek. The contrast made her nipples tighten and thrust against her chemise. As if he knew, his hand drifted over her bodice; his palm slid back and forth against her, barely touching her at all, yet she thought she might go mad from it.
“Turn around.” His voice had gone hoarse.
Her eyes popped open. “Now?”
“You said it only mattered to you what I did right here and now. I am happy to oblige, but it must be right here and now.” He pressed against her again. “I will not make it back to the saloon this way.”
She turned in his embrace, sliding along his arousal. His indrawn breath was one of pain. She reached out to touch him, and he grabbed her wrist.
“I do not think that would be a good idea.” His face strained, she longed to wipe the lines away with her thumb. “Fast this time, si?”
She glanced at the hills. “But—”
“No one comes to the river on a Sunday afternoon. Even if they did, we are secluded here, and I promise to be quick. You want me to teach you all I know. Let me teach you how to make love in the sun.”
How he tempted her with just the words—let, love, sun, teach. “Help me out of this dress.”
He shook his head. “Today’s lesson—remove as little clothing as possible, leaving what you have to hide every secret.” He spread her skirts about them both, then released his trousers and filled her in a single thrust.
He promised fast, and he delivered. What she hadn’t realized was that fast could also mean thorough. Until she’d met him, Lily had not realized a lot of things.
How sex could be thrilling and tender, both serious and funny. How you could care more about someone else than yourself. How the shadows that haunted another’s eyes could make you forget shadows of your own. How a woman who had never wanted to feel suddenly couldn’t stop.
Rico cradled Lily against his chest. Another treat she’d never get enough of—the holding and the cuddling afterward.
The sun warmed her hair, heating the black dress until sweat dewed her face. Though Lily wanted to stay right where she was for a long, long while, she could not. “We should get back.”
“Mmm,” he murmured.
Knowing that she had as devastating an effect on him as he had on her made Lily feel both stronger and weaker. She should fight against anything that made her weak, but she just didn’t have the strength to resist him any longer. Rico was going to hurt her. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. But until then she was going to live.
Lily began to stand, but Rico held on. His gaze met hers, so serious she blinked. “We haven’t talked about consequences.”
For a moment, she thought he knew about R.W., and her heart palpitated. He drifted his fingertips along her chin. “I’d marry you, Lilita. If you needed me.”
The realization that he meant a child made her jump to her feet. Most men would find her secret, her shortcoming, her curse, a great gift. She didn’t think Rico would. Just the way he looked at Carrie... He wanted children of his own, and that was something she would never be able to give him.
“What is the matter?” He straightened his clothes as he stood.
She could tell him the truth and risk having him look at her like a pariah or remember that he wasn’t going to stay with her forever, so her secrets were none of his business. Just as his were none of hers.
“Nothing’s the matter.” She forced a smile and took his hand.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Thank you? That’s all you have to say?”
“Don’t worry about it, Rico.”
“How can I not? I cannot keep my hands from you. You are like a sickness I cannot heal.”
Well, that was flattering. For a man with a gilded tongue, he needed to choose his words better.
“I have burned for you since the first day. I thought touching you, taking you, would make me burn less. Instead, I only burn more.”
“You didn’t take anything.” Lily yanked her hand from his. “I gave.”
“Give. Take. What is the difference?”
“Only a man wouldn’t know.”
“Why do you dislike men so much?”
“I wasn’t disliking you until a minute ago.”
“Why are we arguing? All I wanted to do was assure you that I wouldn’t leave you if you needed me.”
“And I said don’t worry. I might not know much about the pleasure of this act we seem so fascinated with, but I do know how to prevent unpleasant problems. I know all about the bad side.”
“No comprendo.” He appeared genuinely puzzled. Well, at least he didn’t know everything.
“I’m glad you don’t understand. I’m glad you’ve never had to see what I’ve seen or do what I’ve done. Sometimes sex is about power and payment, lust and greed.”
“You always call it sex, never love.”
“Sex isn’t love, Rico. Maybe sometimes it’s more than sex, but don’t confuse physical pleasure with everlasting love. There is no such thing.”
“A mother’s love is not everlasting?”
“Not in my experience.”
“You are a hard woman.”
“I’ve had to be. My mother killed herself over a man, and it wasn’t my father. He ran off long before I was born.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Had she told him that? She couldn’t remember, so she ignored the question and continued with her story. “My mother didn’t care that I was alone; she only cared that some fool didn�
��t love her. She left me with nothing but this face, this body, my voice. Have you ever been so hungry you’d eat anything? So cold you wished you could die? For a meal and a room, I gave my innocence at fifteen. I’ve been giving it ever since.”
“That was not giving.”
“Exactly. So excusez-moi if I see little love in this act you set such store by.”
“But what is between us is not like that.”
“It isn’t love, either.”
“How do you know?”
She knew better than to believe in love, so why did her heart sputter with hope at his question? “How could you love someone like me? I’ve had men just to survive.”
“I’ve killed men to survive. Why does that make me better than you?”
Rico drew her into his arms. She was so exhausted from the sun and the revelations that she let him. He stroked her back and kissed her hair the way she was starting to depend on.
“Do you know what I was doing when I was fourteen?” he asked.
“I can imagine.”
“Well, there was that. But for me this act I set such store by has always been one of joy. I am sorry it has not been that way for you. But I plan to change your opinion, if I haven’t already.”
“You can keep trying.”
He chuckled and kissed her again. “When I was fourteen, I went to war.”
“Fourteen?” She pulled back. “That’s criminal.”
“I was not the only one that young. I was big for my age. Tall. I had no fear of anyone or anything. At first.”
A shadow began in his eyes and spread over his face. For a moment, he looked as old as the river that gurgled and flowed behind them. Lily had seen that look in the face of every man who had survived wearing the gray.
“Later, I learned that having no fear was perhaps the most fearsome thing of all.”
She kissed him on the jaw. The shadows retreated from his face, though they still lingered in his eyes. Her heart did a slow roll toward her stomach.
“Pobrecita. Forget your past and I will forget mine. We will have what we have. Sex. Love. Lust. Need. The word does not matter. Let me make you happy.”
She tilted her head, surprised to discover the truth. “You make me happier than I can ever remember being.”
Joy drove the last shadow from his eyes. “Then my hopes are fulfilled. We’d better get back.”
She caught his hand. “Until tonight?”
He raised her wrist to his lips. “Your room or mine.”
“Surprise me.”
“Lilita, it is what I live for.”
* * *
“Rico!” Carrie, with Gizzard perched on her shoulder, waved to him from the porch of Three Queens.
Lily and Carrie didn’t fool him. They seemed to be playing some sort of game. Rico did not plan to get in the middle of that, though he thought the pet lizard was a bit much.
He wasn’t squeamish. Any man who had lived through the war, who had seen and done what he had, would not become weak-kneed about much. But the sight of his little girl wearing that huge green lizard on her shoulder gave Rico a sick feeling in his belly. One he would have to learn to live with, because the expression on Carrie’s face whenever she looked at that thing revealed her love for it. Gizzard, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have many variations to his expression at all. Still, the lizard remained on her shoulder without a twitch. Maybe that was lizard love.
“The girls are packing to leave,” Carrie called.
Lily was already on her way up the steps and through the swinging doors.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Carrie’s automatic denial reminded Rico of... himself. “I didn’t say you did.”
She frowned, obviously unaccustomed to adults believing her innocent just because she said so. Rico had the same problem. “They came downstairs with their bags and folded up their sewing stuff. Yvonne talked to them. They don’t seem mad or anything.”
He took her hand, avoiding the gaze of the lizard, and the three of them went inside.
Lily hugged first Kate, then Laurel. “You don’t have to go.”
“We know,” Kate said. The two girls exchanged excited glances. “But if we’re working here, we’d rather not live here, too. New life, new place.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Lily said.
“We’ll work every night,” Laurel continued. “But we’ve gotten so many dress orders we don’t have room upstairs to make them. And we can’t keep using the tables down here now that you’re open for business again. We rented a storefront on Main Street. It’ll be our dress shop and our home.”
“You let me know when I should look for new waitresses. I’m sure your business will become so successful, you won’t be able to work here anymore.”
“Until we get ahead, we’ll have to.” Kate threw her arms around Lily once more. “It’s all because you gave us a chance. We’ll never forget it.”
Lily looked stunned. Before she could say anything, Kate and Laurel gathered their things and fled.
“They’re right,” Rico said. “They’d never have tried anything different if it wasn’t for you.”
“And Eden and Mary.”
“Eden and Mary have been suggesting things to them, politely, of course, since they came to town. The girls never listened.”
“Why not?”
“Would you listen to advice from them on how you should change your life?”
Lily snorted.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Nothing against Eden and Mary. They’re wonderful. And I really don’t know what their lives were like before they came here, but I highly doubt they resembled mine.”
“It was Mary’s idea to hire the six of us. She went to Dallas all by herself and hunted down Reese.”
“She did?”
“She’s got guts. Some people didn’t take kindly to her managing things for them. But, as she said, someone had to. Eden traveled all the way to Rock Creek from Georgia without telling Jed she was coming. She picked up Millie and Teddy along the way. Saved Sullivan from some rowdies a few towns over. She’s got guts to spare as well.”
“That’s more than I expected,” Lily said. “But still not a past like mine.”
“I thought we were forgetting the past.”
“Do you really think we can?”
“For a moment, here and there.”
“I’m sure I know the moments you mean.”
“I thought you would.”
“Would you two quit cooin’ and moonin’ at each other?” Carrie snapped. Gizzard didn’t look too happy, either.
“Is there something you needed, chica?”
“What in hell do you feed a lizard?”
Lily choked. Rico shot her a glare. “Oh, yes, this is very funny. I must now be a lizard’s uncle.”
“You’ll be the best one ever, Rico.” Carrie tugged at his hand. “I bet Mr. Reese knows what to feed Gizzard. Don’t ya think, huh?”
“Most definitely.” He patted her hand. “Wait on the porch. I’ll be right there.”
“Quit kissin’ on Lily. Didn’t your mama ever tell you women have bugs?”
“My mama died when I was very young.”
Her face fell. “I’m sorry.”
“So was I. Now wait on the porch like a good girl.”
Carrie did as he asked, feet dragging, lizard tail limp down her back. Gizzard seemed to take her feelings for his own.
“I’m sorry, too.” Lily placed her hand on his arm. “You never mentioned your parents.”
And he didn’t plan to now. “I’d better take Carrie and that thing over to Reese’s. I would hate to discover lizards get mean with hunger.”
“I doubt there’s much mean in Gizzard.”
“You’re probably right. Do you want to rent out the girls’ rooms? I could tell Eden to send any extra travelers this way and put up a sign at the stage office.”
&nbs
p; “I don’t want any strangers here,” she said. “Not with the children.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Rico rubbed his temples. He needed to start thinking like a father, and he wasn’t certain that he could.
“It’ll just be me and you, Johnny and Carrie. With Yvonne downstairs.”
“One big, happy family.”
“I never had a family.”
Rico had a family, but he couldn’t recall their ever being happy.
* * *
Sunday was a good day. No school, which sat fine with Carrie, and since the saloon was quiet, Rico spent all afternoon with her.
After Mr. Reese told them to catch bugs for Gizzard, they went down to the river and did just that, splashing around, laughing. Life was almost as it used to be before Lily showed up.
Back at Three Queens, Johnny let Carrie sit on his piano bench while he made music. When she got tired, he let her lean her head against his arm. Johnny was nearly as wonderful as Rico, even if he did gaze at Lily with a stupid smile, just like every other man.
Carrie awoke in her bed Monday morning with a fuzzy memory of Rico carrying her upstairs as Johnny played “Free at Last.” A sad song, but she liked it because now that she was away from Granddad, she was free, too. Johnny played that song a lot, almost as if he liked it for the same reasons. But why would Johnny suddenly feel free?
Carrie liked falling asleep to piano music. She never dreamed bad things then. Even better was when Rico tucked her in, kissed her head, and wished her good night, almost like a daddy. Maybe. She couldn’t remember her daddy at all.
Before school, Carrie dawdled. She always did. Her granddad would have said, “Git to school, daughter of a whore,” then kicked her in the butt out the door. Rico urged her along, helping her all he could until she was ready to go.
In the end, when the school bell rang signaling the children to come inside, Carrie stood halfway between Three Queens and the schoolyard. Rico watched from the porch, holding Gizzard the way he hated, like a sack of flour slung over one arm. Carrie gave Rico a long, lonely look, but he pointed at the school.
“Go on now, chica. You promised.”
Because she had, Carrie continued, though she dragged her feet and hung her head as if headed for her doom. Part of the agreement that allowed her to stay with Rico was that she went to school every day and did not disappear anymore. Carrie really didn’t like school. She didn’t like anything that kept her away from Rico, and now Gizzard as well.
Rico (The Rock Creek Six Book 3) Page 15