by Day Leclaire
The instant his clothes hit the floor, he joined her on the bed. The kerosene lamp filled the room with shadows, but now that he knew what to look for, he found the network of scars with ease. Before this night ended, he’d kiss the full length of each and every one. They were a testament to his history with Shayne, to what they’d gone through to finally come together again. They were a silvery road map that had led to this moment in time.
“Chaz...” Her voice slipped through the dusk, filling him with longing.
How he wished he could love her as she deserved. That the deadness inside him would burgeon with new life. That the heart he’d just discovered was capable of more than shoving ice-cold blood through his veins. “I’m here, sweet. And you’re safe. Nothing will hurt you, I promise.”
Except him, the knowledge taunted.
Shayne’s gaze followed the gentle fingers of light that traced across the impressive width of her husband’s shoulders, chasing the shadows deep into the crevices of his work-hardened muscles. She couldn’t see all of him. Darkness ate into their circle of privacy, concealing him from the waist down. But the lamp-light fell full on his face, turning his eyes to an impossible shade of blue. It also highlighted the sharply angled cheekbones and the sun-weathered creases that told of a man who’d ridden a long, hard road.
He returned her look in full, taking his time about it. Then he clasped her wrists in one hand and lifted them over her head, anchoring them there while he studied her even more closely. Without a word, he dipped toward her, finding the jagged line that ran from wrist to the tender inner curve of her upper arm. She shuddered at the first touch of his mouth, shivering helplessly beneath each rasping lap of his tongue. Inch by torturous inch, he followed the scar until he reached the end. Only it wasn’t the end.
He rolled her onto her side, her hands still shackled above her, allowing the light to fall on all of the other scars, ones only her doctors had ever seen. And then he kissed them one by one, a thousand kisses of tenderness. “How old are they?” he demanded.
“Old.”
“How old? Five years?”
“Yes.”
“Six?”
“Yes!”
“Or is it eight years?” He released her wrists and cupped her face, forcing her to meet the sorrow burning in his eyes. “How about eight years and one month. Could that be how old they are? You were on your way to the Montagues’ Anniversary Ball, weren’t you? To try and find me and start our life again.”
Tears threatened, tears of regret and longing, tears of sorrow for one careless jerk of the wheel on a rain-slick mountain road. “Yes,” she cried. “I’m sorry, Chaz. So sorry. I did try to get to you. I did.”
He stopped her words with a kiss of such passionate poignancy that the tears flowed unchecked. “It’s in the past,” he said with unmistakable finality.
He found the scars with his mouth again, but instead of filling her with a shivery pleasure, they roused an unbearable tension. His hand accidentally brushed her breast. Or was it accidental? His callused fingers grazed the softness of her lower belly where there were no scars. Her muscles rippled tight. A fluttering started there, centered deep in the most feminine core of her. With each careless touch, it intensified, causing a throbbing between her legs and driving the crowns of her breasts into tight, painful peaks.
“Please,” she gasped, unable to stand another minute.
“I plan to please you, sweetheart. I plan to please you every which way I can plus any others that come to mind in the next few hours.”
He cupped her breasts, giving them his full attention. Her breath quickened, just as her body quickened, drawing taut with need. He lay heavily over her, slipping his hands beneath her thighs and parting them. He found the center of liquid warmth, dipped into it, intensified it, gorged on it, reveled in it. And when they were both mindless with desire, he filled her, riding with her to an ecstasy that made them inescapably one. One mind. One heart. One soul.
Joined in a perfect, shattering union.
It wasn’t until much, much later, until the darkest hours of the night when nightmares roam and uncertainty cavorts, that he awoke and knew the truth. She planned to leave him and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
“You’ve done what?”
Shayne sat up and dragged the covers around her, glaring at Chaz. “I knew you’d overreact when you found out. That’s why I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“You listen up, wife, and you listen up good. It will be a cold day in hell before I allow that old bat to live under my roof. Do you have any idea the months of torture she’s put me through?”
“She’s only trying to protect Sarita.”
He thrust a pillow behind his shoulders and glared at his turncoat wife. “Bull. She’s trying to drive me insane.”
“Sarita needs her. Besides, it’s too late to tell her no. I’ve already said yes.”
“Find a way.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” she demanded in exasperation.
“Lie to her. Be honest with her. Explain that we don’t have a room for her. Frankly, I don’t give a damn. But you make sure Her Worship and that cane of hers are on the next outbound transport to Mexico.”
“There’s only one small problem with your plan.”
His jaw made a prominent appearance again. “And what’s that?”
“I can’t tell her we don’t have room because...” She gulped. “Because she’s already seen it.”
“What do you mean, she’s already seen it? Seen what?”
“I mean I...” Her voice dropped to a barely audible level. “I fixed up one of the bedrooms for her and let her see it.”
“You did what?”
She refused to take all the blame for this. “If you’d bothered to take a look at the improvements I’ve been making, you’d have seen it, too. I didn’t hide anything I was doing.”
He erupted from the bed. “Are you trying to tell me you planned this from the beginning?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything. I am telling you.”
Why was it that every time she got him naked, he left the bed angry? She cupped her chin in her hand. She must be doing something terribly wrong. Maybe if they didn’t use a bed next time... His chest distracted her, rising and falling in a way she found entirely too provocative. No doubt it was deliberate.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You remodeled one of my bedrooms specifically for Doña Isabella?”
“Yes.”
“So she’d...” He closed his eyes. “I can hardly bring myself to say this. So she’d stay?”
“Yes and yes.”
“Why?”
Finally. A question she could answer. “Because Sarita needs her.”
“Sarita will have us.”
“It’s not the same, Chaz. Believe me, I know.” Before he could follow up her statement with any unwanted questions, she continued. “Doña Isabella is someone your daughter’s known since birth and the only family left on her mother’s side. At least, the only family who’ll accept her. Isabella hasn’t said anything, but I suspect the reason she didn’t want to take Sarita back to Mexico with her was because of the reception your daughter would have received from the rest of Madalena’s family.”
Dammit! He hated when Shayne was right. “I hadn’t thought of that,” Chaz admitted, adding stubbornly, “but that shouldn’t keep Isabella from going.”
“Have you any idea what it’s like to be three years old and torn from the only family you’ve ever known?”
There was an odd quality to her voice, something that captured his attention as nothing else would have. “Of course not.” He deliberately paused a beat. “Do you?”
She moistened her lips, her nervousness a dead giveaway. “Yes.” She rushed into speech. “Granted, Sarita will be with people who love her. But it’s not the same as being with the woman who’s raised her from birth.”
“This has something to do with your
aunt, doesn’t it? The one Rafe rescued you from.”
Shayne nodded, her delicate features lined with dread. “I never talk about that time. Not even with my brother. But for Sarita...” She closed her eyes. “I will for Sarita’s sake.”
Aw, hell. “No, honey—”
“Rafe and I have different mothers. Did you know that?”
“You don’t have to say another word,” he tried again.
But she didn’t listen. Her focus had turned inward. Even her body seemed gathered in on itself, balled tight to offer up as little surface space as possible. A horrifying thought occurred to him. It was almost as though she’d curled herself into as small a target as possible. Is that how she’d learned to protect herself as a child?
“Our father and my mother were killed in a boating accident when I was three. Rafe was just sixteen. Despite being so young, he tried to keep us together. He worked the coffee fields, ran the household, cared for me. He did everything possible to keep his family intact.”
“I had no idea,” he said gently. He sat down next to her and drew her close, massaging the rigidness from taut muscles and offering what little comfort she’d allow.
“He lost it all, Chaz. Our home. Our money. By the end, he was desperate. He couldn’t even put food on our plates.”
“What did he do?”
“Right before Christmas, he used his last penny to call my mother’s sister, Jackie, and ask if she’d take me in. Jackie had never approved of my parents’ marriage, but she did her duty. She flew to Costa Rica and took me back to Florida with her.”
“What about Rafe?”
Shayne’s mouth twisted. “She left him behind. He wasn’t her responsibility. As far as she was concerned, he was some filthy peasant child from Costa Rica, related only through an accident of marriage. For years, she wouldn’t even say his name. Just that...that disgusting description.”
Chaz found it difficult to reconcile the man he knew with the boy Rafe must have been. “She abandoned him?”
“I wish she’d left me, too, even if it meant living on the streets,” Shayne whispered. “It would have been kinder.”
Chaz stilled. “What the hell did she do to you?”
If he hadn’t been holding her, he wouldn’t have felt the tiny tremor that rippled through her body. “Nothing overt. Nothing that child welfare could use to remove me from the home. But I paid the price for what she regarded as my mother’s sins. The first thing she did when we arrived in Florida was to burn all my possessions, including the doll Rafe had given me for a Christmas present.” She attempted a smile, the tremulous pull of her lips so vulnerable and so sad, it was painful to witness. “You asked me why having a tree was so important.... I never had one the entire time I lived with her. I was the original Cinderella. Isn’t that a riot? And Jackie relished the role of wicked stepmother.”
Stark stories followed, ones he knew with soul-crippling certainty she’d never revealed to another person, not even Rafe. Stories that had him clutching her convulsively, helpless to protect the child she’d been. “What about your brother?” he asked, when her throat grew hoarse and the words ran dry. “He found you, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he found me.”
But it hadn’t been in time. Not nearly in time, Chaz realized. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
Ten years. Forever to a helpless child. And almost as long as it had taken Chaz to find her. “So Jackie just turned you over?”
“Oh, no.” Shayne looked at him then, her eyes huge, wounded smudges in her tightly drawn face. “She sold me to him.”
A roar of fury welled up inside, one even more tortured than before. His throat worked as he forced it down, forced himself to offer succor for a wound that couldn’t be healed. He held her in his arms and rocked her, murmuring meaningless words of comfort.
“You don’t understand, Chaz. I didn’t tell you this for my sake.”
“Shh. Everything will be all right.”
“No, it won’t.” She eased back and captured his face within the softness of her palms. “I know you can’t love me anymore. That doesn’t mean you can’t love Sarita. She’s an innocent child. Don’t let her go through what I did. She needs Isabella just as I needed Rafe. But she needs you even more. Please, Chaz. Do this one thing for me and I won’t ask you for anything else.”
“Don’t, Shayne.”
“I’m begging you. I promise I won’t cause you any more trouble.”
He couldn’t bear it. “Sarita doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
Shayne expelled her breath in a relieved sigh and Chaz closed his eyes, fighting an almost incapacitating fear. “I promise I won’t cause you any more trouble,” she’d claimed. She might as well have said, “I’ve created your home for you, here are the instructions for taking care of it.”
It was a farewell, if he’d ever heard one.
He needed to swear, to vent his frustrations with a truly nasty word. He fought to come up with one, even a mild one, just something to blister the air, just a single oath to ease the confusing tumble of emotions that muddled his brain. But nothing came to him. Nothing but a single jittery warning, ringing with all the clarity of silvery bells on a winter’s breeze.
She was going to leave him.
CHAPTER TEN
CHAZ paused outside the door to the parlor, startled to find his foreman sitting with Doña Isabella. Now there was a sight he’d never expected to see. Neither of them noticed him, so he shoved his Stetson to the back of his head and blatantly eavesdropped.
“Now, Izzy,” Penny said. “I don’t want you to be upset when I put my cards down.”
“I won’t be the least upset.”
“It’s jes’ that I’ve noticed you don’t take well to losing.”
“Carry on with the game, Señor Penworthy. I believe I called?”
“So you did. But, Izzy, I warned you about calling me Penworthy. If word got out that was my legally binding name, I’d be a laughingstock.”
“As you wish, Señor Penny.”
“That’s better.” He spread out his cards. “Read ’em and weep, precious. Full house, aces and kings.”
“Very impressive.” She stayed his hand as he reached for the pot of matchsticks with the gold-tipped handle of her cane. “But not so fast.”
“You can’t have my full house beat. You drew four cards!”
“Ah, but they were four excellent cards.” She plunked down a fistful of queens and actually grinned. “My pot, I believe.”
Chaz shook his head in disbelief. He never thought he’d live to see the day when those two would get chummy. It gave him an odd feeling. As odd as when he’d walked into the kitchen earlier. His daughter had been perched on Mojo’s lap slapping balls of cookie dough onto a metal tray. She’d waved at him, her fingers studded with bits of chocolate chips, chattering at great length in a mixture of Spanish and English while Mojo sat there, not understanding a word, a big, sloppy grin on his ugly mug.
It was the same sappy expression he’d worn ever since the two had first met, the day Sarita had darted into the kitchen before anyone could stop her. Mojo had been at his worktable, frozen in place, a potato peeler poking out of his massive paw. Sarita had skidded to a halt at his side. But instead of running shrieking from the room or reacting with fear, she’d studied him with open curiosity. Then she’d climbed onto his lap, and there she’d stayed. From that moment on, they’d been the best of friends.
So why did Chaz feel so out of sorts? He should be delighted. He’d assembled all the various pieces necessary for the life he’d always wanted and Shayne had put those pieces in order. The end result was a home more perfect than he could have ever imagined.
So what the hell was bothering him?
He wandered into his office and stood by the window overlooking the front of the house. He knew what it was. Shayne and that damn Christmas tree. Shayne and the hideous childhood she’d barely survived. Shayne and her unendin
g search for love. He suspected what hurt her the most about their relationship was that he’d let her down, first by failing to find her in the years that had passed since their marriage nine years ago. And second, and most importantly, because he didn’t love her the way she so desperately needed.
She was going to leave him.
Now that she’d created a home for him, she’d go, and there was only one thing he could think of to stop her. He could prove that he’d done his best to find her. And he could let her know that once upon a time, he had loved her.
His next decision took no thought at all. Rifling through his desk drawer, he searched for the business card he’d tossed in there close to a month ago, a card he’d never thought he’d have occasion to use. Finding it, he punched in the series of numbers printed in the corner. The phone only rang once.
“Beaumont.”
“You said to call if I ever needed help.”
“McIntyre? Is that you?”
“Got it in one, big brother. I’ve decided to take you up on that offer.” Chaz released his breath along with his pride. “I need your help.”
Chaz found San Francisco cold and gray, the misty rain bringing a chill far more cutting than the fiercest winter his mountain home in Colorado could offer up. He stood outside the museum, silently cursing Rafe for forcing this out-of-the-way meeting. Couldn’t he have just have sent the packet? Why all the games?
“McIntyre. Glad to see you could make it.”
Chaz turned and greeted his brother-in-law with a handshake. “I don’t recall you leaving me any choice.”
“I didn’t. There were things I wanted to say that I’d rather Shayne not overhear.”
“So you dragged me all the way to San Francisco? That sister of yours must have incredible hearing.”
A cool smile touched Beaumont’s mouth. “There might have been one other reason I chose this place. Come. As long as we’re here, we might as well take a look around.”