The glitter of one woman’s dagger made her think better of the idea. The blade was thrust in the woman’s sash, and Chimera knew the woman would not hesitate to use it. Still, jealousy demanded some sort of tribute.
Pegasus. Chimera smiled innocently and reined the camel close to where the women stood. Pegasus promptly extended his neck and tried to bite both women. They squealed and jumped back, yelling something in Spanish at Chimera. Whatever it was, she suspected it wasn’t nice.
Sterling frowned at their epithets, but he knew Chimera had prompted them. “Chimera—”
“Thank you Tor any aid you might wish to give me at this moment, Sterling, but I can handle this myself.” She halted Pegasus and gave the two women what she hoped was a look of benevolence. “I don’t speak Spanish, ladies, but I assume you’re apologizing for flirting with my escort. I accept your heartfelt apologies and bear you no grudge.”
“We no apologize to you, puta,” one of the women snapped.
“No?” Chimera asked, feigning surprise. “Well, you should. Apologizing means you regret doing wrong. And remorse can be a desirable thing. In the words of Thoreau, ‘To regret deeply is to live afresh.’ Have you no wish to say you’re sorry and thus make a fresh start with your wayward lives?”
“Esta loca,” the woman with the knife told her friend.
“Si, esta loca,” the other woman agreed. “Vamanos.”
Chimera watched them walk away, swishing their ample bottoms, and smiled. They’d called her crazy, but she didn’t care. If being demented would keep other women away from Sterling, she’d gladly be the lunatic he often accused her of being.
“May we be on our way now, Chimera?” he asked harshly. “Or would you like to make the entire town repent their...uh, wayward lives? I’m sure every bandit, murderer, and whore here would see the error of their ways if only you could stuff a little Aristotle and Socrates down their throats.”
She heard the sarcasm in his voice and knew he was still very angry at her. “Well, those two harlots were—”
“Yes, harlots are exactly what they are. And though it’s none of your damn business, I’ve never had a taste for women like—”
“Well, they had a taste for you! Why, they practically salivated over you! Just like dogs slobbering over a piece of meat!”
“Last I remember, I was an oyster. Now I’m a piece of meat. I seem to be coming up in the world,” he taunted her.
She bristled but said nothing.
“If you hadn’t tagged along with me, I’d have been able to sleep anywhere at all in this godforsaken town,” he complained, and urged Gus forward. “But since you—”
“I can sleep anywhere, same as you,” she argued. “I can sleep in the darn streets if I have to. I can sleep—”
“Shut up, Chimera, and let me think. I’ve got to get some money to pay for decent lodging.”
“Senor!” a Mexican woman called to him.
He stopped Gus and looked at her. She was surrounded by six children he assumed were hers. The lot of them were dirty, their clothing little more than rags. Even the dog they had with them was old and scarred. “Si, senora?” he answered.
She smiled and lifted her heavy burden from her back. Swiftly, she spread a dozen elaborately embroidered shawls upon a hitching rail. “Senor, estoy vendiendo estos rebozos. Estan bonitos, no? Por favor, senor, compra uno para la senorita.”
“What’s she saying?” Chimera asked.
“She’s selling her shawls, and she wants me to buy one for you,” Sterling translated. “But even if I wanted to buy you one, which I don’t, I have no money. As it is, I’m going to have to try and sell my saddle for money for our room tonight.”
“Sterling, you don’t have to sell your saddle. I have money.” She opened her bag of clothing, withdrew the sack of money, and handed it to him.
He looked inside it, his eyes widening. “Where—”
“Antonio.”
He clenched his jaw. “The two of you worked out every kink in the scheme, didn’t you?”
“Senor?” the woman said, and held up a brilliantly colored shawl.
He dipped his hand into the bag and gave her ten times as much as the shawl was worth. She tried to give most of it back, but he shook his head and tossed the shawl to Chimera.
The woman reached up to touch his hand, tears glittering in her eyes. “Gracias, senor. Gracias.” She hugged her little children and showed them all the money Sterling had given her.
Sterling’s compassion for the destitute woman and her children made Chimera’s own eyes sting. “You’re a wonderful man,” she told him softly.
“She is a nice lady,” he snarled, and urged Gus forward.
The boardinghouse was run by the town madam, and the idea of Chimera sleeping in a house of whores revolted Sterling. But he’d searched the town thoroughly, and the only other room available for lodging was the back room of one of the saloons. He finally decided prostitutes were less dangerous to Chimera than a bunch of lustful drunks. He quickly found a livery stable and saw to it that Gus and Pegasus would fare the night well. Before leaving, he promised to reward the owner well if the man would see to the animals’ safety. The man readily agreed.
His shaky belief that the brothel would afford a small measure of safety disappeared when he and Chimera entered the brothel. As he took the register from the old, painted whore who called herself Madame Selena, a tall, well-armed man swaggered toward Chimera. Sterling spun and stepped in front of her.
“Nice piece you got there, Mex,” the man drawled. “And I ain’t talkin’ about the Colt you got your hand on neither.”
Sterling was well aware of the crowd of men gathering, though he never took his eyes off the gunslinger.
“Mind sharin’ her?” the man asked. “She’s better’n anything else I’ve seen since I got to town.”
Chimera gasped. “ Sterling—”
“Quiet, Chimera,” he snapped, and prayed she wouldn’t try any of her moronic magic. The situation was entirely too dangerous for that. “Generosity isn’t one of my virtues,” he said quietly to the man, his hand tightening around the butt of his gun.
The man stared back at Sterling, and Sterling saw the battle between desire and fear revealed in his eyes. For a moment the man hesitated, and then his lust overcame fear. He tore his gun from his holster.
Sterling was faster. The man staggered backward, clutching the gaping bullet hole in his shoulder. Sterling kept a firm grip on his revolver, slowly moving the barrel toward all the men staring at him. “I don’t share,” he warned them again. His eyes still trained on the crowd, he said, “Get the key, Chimera.”
She took the key Madame Selena slid across the desk and looked at it. “Room twenty-four,” she informed him.
Sterling took her hand and backed up toward the stairs. “Go on,” he told her, and followed, his eyes and Colt still directed on the men below.
When they reached the second floor, Sterling wasted no time finding room twenty-four. Once they were inside, he slammed the door and bolted it firmly. Before even turning around, be reloaded his gun and checked both Colts thoroughly. Satisfied, he turned from the door to survey the surroundings. Even before he inspected any of the furniture, he was aware of the odor. The room smelled of sweat, grime, and urine. It smelled of sex. The sight of Chimera amidst such filth infuriated him.
“Thank you for not sharing me with that man,” she told him softly.
Her gratitude somehow increased his wrath. “Don’t be so quick to thank me, Chimera. I might change my mind and invite the whole lobby of cutthroats up here.”
She ignored his attempt to hurt her feelings and looked around the room. “It’s not really all that bad. The curtains are a pretty blue, the basin has water in it, we’ll get used to the smell, and the mattress looks very soft.”
Sterling tossed his hat onto a small, broken table. “You’re not sleeping in that disease-infested excuse for a bed. We’d sleep on the floor.”
She looked down and frowned. “But Sterling, the floor is filthy!”
“Dirt washes off. Whatever diseases are lying in wait in that bed don’t. Dammit! Why did I let you come here! You’d be safe with the Apaches!”
She laughed at the irony of his statement. The Apaches, to most people, meant danger and certain death. And yet she had been safe among Cochise and his people, much safer than she was now.
Her soft laughter was infectious, but he pushed down the pleasant feelings, summoned anger again, and stalked to the window. “At least we can get rid of the stink.”
A brisk breeze swept into the room. Dust-laden though it was, Chimera preferred it to the nauseating odors it was effectively dissipating. She joined Sterling, pulled the dirty curtain aside, and peered down at the street below. A few stragglers moved lethargically in the dusty road, and a behatted man was propped against the porch posts across the street. An errant breeze swept her hair out the window.
She watched it cascade down the side of the building. “Remember that fairy tale about Rapunzel?” she asked. “Rapunzel was in that high tower, and every time the prince who loved her wanted to go up, he called, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.’ Rapunzel would let her hair drop to the ground, and the prince would use it to climb up the tower. I wonder what they did in the tower after he was up there with her, Sterling?”
“I don’t really give a damn.” He watched two men fighting in the street below.
She smiled sweetly at him. “There was a witch in the story too. But she wasn’t a good witch like I am. She was the wicked kind. She was the one who put Rapunzel up in the tower in the first place. Anyway, when she figured out what the prince was doing, she waited with Rapunzel up in the tower one day. Sure enough, the prince came and started to pull himself up by Rapunzel’s hair. The witch let him get real high, and then she cut Rapunzel’s hair off. The prince fell, and the fall left him blind. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard, Sterling?”
The story had begun to sound familiar to him. He remembered Father Tom telling it to him once. The memory almost made him smile, but he clenched his jaw. Dammit, how was it possible for her to make him remember happy things when he was supposed to be so damn mad at her? “Shut up, Chimera.”
“But that’s not the end,” Chimera continued merrily. “Rapunzel got away from the witch, and set off to find her blind prince. When she found him, she kissed his eyes. Her kisses restored his sight. The moral of the story, I think, is that love always wins in the end. That, or never tempt a witch who holds a pair of scissors in her hands.”
He angrily pushed his laughter back down. Damn her for getting to him the way she did! He stormed to where his saddlebag lay and yanked out various food items. “Come away from the window, Chimera. I don’t want anyone to see you up here.”
Chimera took one more breath of cool air, and left the window to help Sterling put together their meager supper of mescal cakes, dried venison, and water.
The man in the street below watched her disappear. “It’s her, Bud!” he whispered to the mouse in his pocket. “It’s the witch! Ain’t nobody else in the world with hair like that!”
He patted the small rodent and raced down the street. As he ran, a gust of wind blew his hat off, exposing the white streak of hair on his head to the curious people he passed.
He soon came to a shack on the outskirts of town and flung open the bullet-riddled door. Racing inside, he almost tripped upon a pile of moldy straw on the dirt floor before stopping abruptly in front of the man lying on a thin mat in the corner. “She’s here!” he shouted. “I saw her with my own eyes! She’s at Madame Selena’s house! I couldn’t believe it at first, but when I saw her hair—It’s like I told Bud, there ain’t nobody in the world with hair like she’s got, and it was flowin’ out the window, makin’ her look like she was fixin’ to get on her broom and fly! I tell you it was the witch!” Gasping, he stared down at the man on the floor and wondered what was going on behind the man’s heavily bandaged head.
Through the eyeholes cut out in his bandages, the man stared up at Willard in astonishment. She was here. He’d thought the Apaches had surely gotten her too. He’d believed her dead and had raged that with her death had also died the possibility of ever finding her treasure.
But she was alive. The secret location of her gypsy fortune hadn’t died. With it, he would rebuild his ranch and make it more magnificent than it had been before.
Though his badly burned face hurt terribly, Everett Sprague smiled.
Chapter Twenty
As Chimera swallowed the last of her bit of supper, her stomach growled loudly. “In Russia they say, ‘The belly is ungrateful—it always forgets we just gave it something.’”
Sterling tried to fight down his concern, but he still felt terrible that there was no more food he could give to her. “I’ll try and get you a decent breakfast in the morning.” His worry over her still angered him, but he’d given up trying to understand and subdue it. He laid out the bedroll.
Chimera undressed and walked to the pallet. “But there are other hungers food doesn’t satisfy.” She lay down and slowly uncurled her limbs.
Sterling’s breath quickened at both her hint and the sight of her bare, white body stretched out upon the black blanket. Flames of desire licked at him, but he didn’t approach her. He simply stared at her.
Chimera saw the indecision in his eyes. She knew he wanted her, but knew also that he was trying to resist his desire, trying to hate her with all the passion his body held. “Sterling, if you despise me so, why didn’t you give me to that man downstairs in the lobby?”
His eyes narrowed. A long moment passed before he answered. “Because I don’t share.”
She smiled. “But you can only share what’s yours to share. Are you saying I belong to you, Sterling?”
The flames inside him became a raging fire. “Yes,” he hissed. “Until I tire of the pleasure your body holds for me, you’re mine. And what’s mine, I enjoy to the fullest.” He snatched at his belt buckle.
“No,” she said huskily. “Undress slowly. Let me see each part of you, but do it bit...by...bit.”
Her request sent desire bolting through him. To undress in front of her, and in the leisurely way she described...he’d never been asked to do anything more sensual. He couldn’t find the strength to deny her, for he knew that what she wanted him to do would set her afire for him. And he wanted her hot tonight—hotter than she’d ever been before. His hands dropped away from his breeches.
The flame of one candle was their only light, but Chimera saw Sterling’s eyes go from light silver to a deep, smoldering steel-gray. Her breathing became irregular as anticipation overtook her. She waited in sheer wonder for him to begin.
He reached for the top button of his shirt. His fingers grasped it, and held it for an eternity. When he finally undid it, she saw the top of his smooth, brown chest. Her heart skipped a beat. She’d seen his chest many times, but to see it revealed to her so slowly,-with such deliberate purpose, aroused a passion that shook her to the core. “Sterling,” she whispered.
He smiled a slow smile and, inch by inch, he pulled the tail of his shirt from his breeches, then made the task of unbuttoning the rest of the buttons a long and labored chore.
She saw his knowing smile and blushed. Sweet heaven, the want in his eyes was making her feel like a virgin. His hot gaze held silent descriptions of what he would soon do to her. As soon as he was undressed. As soon as he was undressed. The thought sent her spinning.
She saw him smile again, languidly, softly. He opened his shirt the slightest bit.
She raised a trembling hand to her mouth. Never had she felt such anticipation. Such heat. He stood before her, still dressed, but with his shirt opened. She could see the muscles in his belly ripple down into his tight breeches and remembered where those same muscles led.
Not even the sight of his completely bare body had ever done this to her. It was as if he
were a gift, a sensual present given to her to be unwrapped slowly, and she could only guess at what was, as yet, unwrapped. She found she could not even swallow, so great was her excitement.
Lazily, he withdrew an arm from one sleeve. That side of his shirt slithered from his shoulder to his back, revealing one half of his chest.
Chimera felt dizzy. Her fingers dug into the blanket. She stared at his bare, broad shoulder, and the one dark nipple she could see. Muscle coiled beneath it. She realized the strength of this man, the sheer power locked in his perfect body.
The thought made her feel tiny, weak. She, the delicate flower, he the mighty thunderstorm that fed her. She thirsted for him, longed to feel his life-giving strength upon her. His power would bend her, but would not break her. What a heady feeling that was.
He slid his other arm out of the other sleeve. She watched the shirt drop to the floor, half of it upon his boot. His chest would now be completely bare. She was almost afraid to look back up at him, she felt so giddy with need.
She conquered her anxiety and raised her gaze. Her eyes widened at the flicker of candlelight dancing upon the smooth, hard expanse of his chest. The light caressed him, enhanced the rich color of his skin. The sight made her burn.
She looked away, needing time to calm her hammering heart, her ragged breathing. She looked around at the sparse room. It was tiny. The cracked wooden floor was dirty. The walls were stained and peeling, the dingy ceiling seemed too low. From nearby she heard a moan, and she realized someone was making love in a nearby room to the accompaniment of a creaking mattress.
Gunfire exploded from the street below. Men shouted. The night was dark. Tucson was shadowed with evil.
But in the midst of it all, his aura almost tangible, was Sterling. She looked back at him. She saw the muscles, like ropes, wound around his chest. She felt the danger, but knew security. Evil was all around her, but Sterling stood before her. Peril roared, but Sterling’s silence overcame it.
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