He smoothed his mustache and considered everything he’d need. Cowhands, horses, dogs, feed. Cattle. Lumber, nails, and other hardware to fix the fences and whatever else was falling down in the barns and the house. A long list, but one that pleased him to make. Thank God for the sizable nest egg in the bank vault in the valley. He’d need every penny and then some.
“Well?” Felipe’s inquiry broke into his silent inventory.
No matter. He’d have time to finish it later.
“This…”
This is home.
“It’ll do,” Jace said instead. The sensations this place evoked in him were too new to share with even Felipe. “I’ll need cattle, ranch hands, you name it. Could you help with some of that? Best people to buy from, honest workers that’ll put in a full day’s work, those sorts of things?”
Felipe smiled. “Certainly. Come winter, people will selling off stock. You won’t find prime cattle then, but you’ll get a good price. I’ll keep my ears open for you.”
“I’m obliged,” he said. “You’ve already done a fair amount for me, and here I keep asking you to do more.”
Felipe waved this aside. “What are friends for?”
Such ease in Felipe as he said this, as he gave out his friendship. Jace wondered if he’d ever be so easy, or if he’d always hold on to the solitude in his nature. His grandfather would say that a man could only rely on himself, but if it weren’t for Felipe, Jace didn’t know where he’d be. Perhaps Felipe had the right of it.
Felipe’s expression went solemn, concerned. “I have to say, as your friend”—he pinched his mouth up—“you ought to watch yourself around Catarina. When you look at her… well, you look like you’re sweet on her.”
“I am not sweet on her,” he snapped. Damn it, this was how rumors started. “I’m going to need a wife, but it certainly isn’t going to be her. I don’t need the trouble.”
His friend might mean well, but Jace couldn’t have the barest hint of his feelings for her becoming common knowledge.
This can’t happen again.
Their secret would be in no danger from any lapses on his part.
Felipe’s face sagged in relief before a teasing glint entered his eyes. “She would make a fine ranch wife.”
“If I want a wife who knows ranching, I could just marry Franny.” Felipe wanted to tease? See how he enjoyed being paid in kind.
Felipe shuddered. “That’s not funny. That’s terrifying.”
“My wife doesn’t need to know cattle; I’m the one who needs to know that. She only needs to know how to cook and keep a house.”
“Catarina’s a damn good cook. All right, all right,” he laughed when Jace sent him a look that promised murder. “You don’t want to marry her. You don’t even want to think about marrying her.”
“If you keep making jokes about me marrying Catarina, I’ll make sure Franny follows you from now on. Everywhere.”
“Point taken—you didn’t need to fight dirty.” Felipe shuddered again and searched about them as if she might have been summoned by their conversation. When she didn’t appear, he relaxed. “I suppose you need me to look for a wife for you, too,” he said. “There’s a barn dance this Saturday next at the Whitmans’. How about I start there?”
“A barn dance? I like the sound of that.” A few turns around the floor with some of the local girls ought to turn Miss Catarina Moreno right out of his thoughts.
He’d find a nice, biddable girl to take to wife, who would keep his life as easygoing as the creek running through here.
And not one who held his hand in the twilight and wanted the same thing he did…
More.
Chapter Seven
Cabrillo is a fine place to find a wife, Jace thought giddily as he spun Miss Agnes Crivelli through his fifth dance of the night.
Or was it his sixth?
His fourth swig of whiskey seemed to have muddled his math, not that one could have too many dances with a flock of beauties. He couldn’t tell if the warmth coming off him was from the pack of bodies in the barn or from the liquor. But the secret bottle in the shadow of the barn, helpfully put far away from sharp female eyes, was too tempting to resist. Most of the men in attendance had the same idea: take a girl around the floor a few times, sneak out for more liquor and male camaraderie, and head back in to twirl around a few new girls.
It was a relief to hear plain English once more, to converse easily with someone other than Felipe or Franny. He’d been handed the bottle right off and greeted like an old friend.
As he’d taken his first swig, Niels Larsen—who’d kindly provided the whiskey—had warned, “Don’t let the Women’s Temperance League catch you with that!” The men gathered around guffawed, as the whiskey set his gullet afire in that old, familiar way. He’d tried to pass the bottle to Felipe, but he was waved off with a laugh.
“Ines is fanatical; she’ll smell that on my breath.”
Thank God he had no woman to tweak him about the liquor on his breath.
Emboldened by the whiskey, Jace had headed back into the Whitmans’ barn, where he was thoroughly entertained by the young ladies, with their flitting and fluttering around him.
The lamplight had transformed the barn from a dusty livestock palace into a festive whirl of dancing limbs, the sweet scent of straw and the ladies’ perfumes heavy in the air. The buzz of laughter and conversation floated through the tunes James Harper and his sons were providing from a corner.
Every so often a man would come introduce himself and ask Jace about his plans and if he were staying. It was so different from his reception on the Rancho Moreno, he had again the sensation of passing from one world to another by crossing the Rancho’s gate.
Misses Agnes Crivelli and Lily Whitman had made it a special point to show him a good time, introducing him to all their friends and chattering at him about everything and nothing every moment he was free. He’d already danced with both of them twice. They were pretty girls who seemed friendly enough, if a little flighty. If they were fillies, they’d be prone to spooking. Not quite what he wanted in a wife, but they’d do nicely for a Saturday barn dance. They were friends of Franny’s, running over to her and giggling like drunken geese after each dance.
He’d tried his damnedest not to see her, but his eyes—under the influence of the whiskey, no doubt—kept creeping over to where Catarina sat surrounded by a court of about five admirers.
Her dress was as green as the sage perfuming these mountains, while her hair and eyes were as black as a cloudy night. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever seen anything lovelier. But that was probably the whiskey talking.
A sly, teasing smile here, a playful tap of the arm there, and her little circle was entirely enthralled. All very artfully done, with a manner just familiar enough to be enticing, but not crossing the line into fast. He couldn’t hear their conversation over the general cacophony, but every so often the sound of hearty masculine amusement, threaded with her silvery laughter, would reach his ears.
He tried his best to ignore it, but the liquor wouldn’t let him.
Once, he caught her giving that slow, sidelong glance to one of the men. Her head tipped down and her eyes flashed up and over, veiled by the screen of her lashes. Such was the power of that glance, that though it wasn’t meant for him, he felt a smile coming to his lips against his will. Even as he fell prey to that calculated look, he recognized it for what it was. A mask.
A beautiful, seductive mask, but a mask nonetheless. She’d been teasing those boys all night, but her eyes were hard as river stones, her smile tight at the edges. There was no ease in her.
Of course, he couldn’t say that she’d been easy with him by the creek that night. It was more that she’d been true.
But tonight her glances and laughs were more false than Lily Whitman’s curls. Every practiced gesture was like burlap against his skin, heavy and irritating.
He shook his head to clear it. Her falseness was her own co
ncern. He needed to stop slavering over her—a few more slugs of whiskey ought to do the trick. He’d get his head on straight and stop thinking about Miss Catarina Moreno. Resolved, he turned to walk out the barn doors, pushing though the press of the crowd, the whole scene warmly glowing. Or was that the whiskey?
Felipe swirled by, gracefully twirling a delighted Miss Ines Obregon.
He needed to find a girl like Ines. One who’d be willing to wait a few years while he got his ranch up and running.
Once again, that damned Catarina caught his eye. Her court had dispersed, and she was deep in conversation with a young woman heavy with a baby, the same one she’d been with that first time he’d seen her, at the mercantile.
There was nothing false in her expression now. Her eyes and smile were stripped of all artifice, the honesty of her happiness lighting up her face in a way that could never be practiced.
God, but he wanted that smile for himself.
A strange feeling hit him—one both familiar and foreign at the same time. He tried to claw his way free of it, to pull his gaze from her, to stop wanting her smile.
When he found he couldn’t, he was rattled to the soles of his feet, his hair standing on end. He’d fallen into something here with this woman and he couldn’t see a way out of it.
No matter how badly he wanted to, he couldn’t blame the whiskey.
So, like a coward, he turned for the door and fled. Fled from the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, fled from the emotions he didn’t want to feel…
Fled to the safety of that whiskey bottle behind the tool shed.
He hadn’t looked at her once.
That pigheaded, arrogant…
Catarina took a slow breath to still her thoughts. A man ought not to offer a lady his handkerchief and hold her hand in the dark and then ignore her at a dance. Even if the lady had told him to do so.
Jace had the gall to be here, at a dance she should have been the queen of, squiring every eligible lady—except her. His sable hair, hidden under his hat before, had been brushed until it gleamed in the lamplight, while his blue eyes sparkled at his partners as he enthusiastically spun them around the dance floor, his bright smile flashing under the dark mustache.
A man had no right to look that good. Especially when he was ignoring her.
But enough of him. Back to work.
She put on her practiced smile, wide enough to say interested and not infatuated. She certainly wasn’t infatuated with any of the men clustered around her.
“And so I told Billy, I said to him…” One of her swain’s voices buzzed in her ear as she tried to concentrate on Jace gliding across the dance floor.
“Mmm,” she murmured to Charles, which thankfully was all the encouragement he needed.
Jane Crivelli swung by on her husband Angelo’s arm, giving Catarina a sharp glance as she did. Catarina returned it.
Your husband once gave me the most fervent kiss.
He’d also promised to speak with her father, but as always nothing had come of it. And while Angelo might have given her a kiss behind the Careys’ toolshed, he’d given Jane a ring, a home, and two boys.
Her fist curled in her lap, dragging on the skirt of her sage green dress, the color of which charmingly set off her complexion.
While readying herself this evening, she’d told the starry-eyed girl in the mirror quite firmly that Jace was not likely to be at the dance. And if he was—well, her admonishment by the creek to stay clear applied to herself as well.
She’d then proceeded to attend to her hair and dress more carefully than she had in years.
Being ignored by a man she couldn’t keep her gaze from was a novel sensation. She couldn’t say she liked it much.
The dancers parted for a moment and she caught Teresa Whitman staring right at her, whispering behind her hand to Kirsten Larsen. Kirsten’s pale gaze was locked on Jace.
So that particular story was still making the rounds, then. Perhaps it might even reach her own ears and she could hear the embellishments put on it—the whistles and hoots of whatever scandalous things she was supposed to have done.
“…and when Billy said that parrot-mouthed nag was only ten years old, I just about died laughing!” For a moment, blessed silence reigned before she realized Charles was staring expectantly at her, awaiting a response.
She forced out a silvery laugh and tapped him once on the forearm, the scent of his too-heavily-applied pomade making her nose twitch. “You knew better, I imagine,” she said with a quick glance at him from under her lashes. Satisfied, he returned to his ridiculous story.
It really was too easy, sometimes.
She went back to watching Jace, her smile staying in place without thought, thanks to years of practice. He was leading Agnes through his seventh dance of the night.
Not that she’d been keeping count.
“Miss Moreno, I don’t think you’ve heard a word I said.” The petulance in Charles’s voice said clearly he thought nothing should be more important to her than stroking his sense of self-importance. Normally, stroking the male sense of amour propre was one of her favorite pastimes, but tonight there was only irritation and annoyance, the same as when a swarm of flies wouldn’t leave one alone. Wave one away and another set itself on you.
She snapped out her fan. It wouldn’t do to appear too flushed.
Mr. Merrill was having a good time, was he? She’d show him that she was having a wonderful one.
“Of course I was listening.” She turned to him, gratified to see his eyes widen as she did. “It was so clever of you to see through Billy’s ruse. He should have known a man with an intellect as large as yours could never be cozened.”
The silly grin on his face told her she’d hit her mark. As always. But the pleasure that usually followed such a look sent her way didn’t come. Such a lack made pretending that she was enjoying herself difficult. Not that she would cease trying and cede victory to Mr. Merrill.
When Laura appeared, the crowd parting before her easily due to the blessing she carried, Catarina breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, she could cease all this exhausting merrymaking.
“I’m sure you gentlemen will excuse Laura and me.” Her smile was indulgent—and dismissive. “Our womanly gossip won’t be of any interest to you.”
The men moved off, no doubt to find the secret whiskey bottle outside.
“I see he’s here,” Laura said by way of greeting, settling herself slowly into a chair.
Even if Jace hadn’t been new to town, he’d still stand out. Those intense blue eyes, his lazy, heartbreaking smile, all that lean muscle—a girl would have to blind to miss him. And he’d still find a way to win her attention.
“Good evening to you, too,” Catarina answered, trying to stall for a bit. She needed a moment to decide how to approach the problem of Mr. Merrill with Laura. Assuming she wanted to approach it all. “Where’s Marcus?”
Laura waved disinterestedly toward the barn doors. “He’s with all those men over by the tool shed. He said he was going to talk about some ideas he had for digging deeper wells, but I think there’s whiskey.”
“I hope the League doesn’t find out. Remember what happened the last time?” She shuddered at the memory. And then shuddered again, remembering what had happened to her that evening.
“How did Isabel find an ax so fast?” Laura asked.
“I’m not sure. She seems to have a native talent for it.”
A scuffling from one of the corners had them both turning in time to catch Lucas Crivelli giving Billy Carey a hard shove.
“Oh Lord,” Catarina groaned. “Those two haven’t returned, have they?”
“Marcus’s mother wrote to me that they’d been thrown off the Thompsons’ farm along with a man they’d met there.” Laura’s lip curled. “It was only a matter of time before they came back.”
The side of her breast throbbed, as it always did whenever she saw Billy Carey. Months ago—the same night Isabel had perfor
med her ax trick—he’d cornered her at a dance, demanding what he claimed she’d given every other man in town. When she’d refused, he’d pinched her on the breast hard enough to make her cry. She’d managed to escape him by assailing his shin with her boot. Later, seeing the bruise he’d left behind, she’d wished she’d set Juan on him when she’d had the chance.
When he and his brother—and partner in crime—Thomas had been sent to the valley in the hopes it would straighten them out, she’d breathed a sigh of relief. The whole town had, since everyone knew the two of them were simply skunks in men’s clothing.
“I thought we were rid of them,” Catarina said.
“Unfortunately not. I overheard Mrs. Carey telling Rose that they returned with the man who’d been thrown off with them. So now the town has three troublemakers instead of two.”
Too bad Juan had already left—a word from her and he’d ensure the Careys never came near her again. Foolish of her not to do so when Billy had grabbed her.
Billy threw a punch, which Luke dodged, and then Joaquin was there, hauling the both of them outside.
“He is handsome,” Laura commented, no longer watching the brewing fisticuffs.
Catarina sighed, knowing exactly who Laura was referring to, and braced herself for the inevitable. “I suppose so.” She didn’t sound as uncaring as she’d hoped.
Laura slid her a glance. “And he’s been working on the rancho all these weeks?”
“I hardly ever see him,” Catarina assured her. Except for when he caught that bull, and down by the creek, and then in the orchard…
“Hmm.” Laura watched with narrowed eyes as he made his way to the door. “Who’s he danced with so far?”
“Margaret, Agnes, Lily, and Mary.” All unmarried. All younger than herself.
“He’s here looking for a wife, then,” Laura said.
Summer Chaparral Page 10