“I couldn’t pay you of course,” Tina added. “But you have a roof over your head and food on the table. And if folks come in—”
“Just what kind of hostess do you want me to be?” Esme asked slowly. “You seemed to think it was important that I wasn’t dating or involved with anyone.”
Tía waved a hand. “Just be my niece,” she scoffed. “I’m the real hostess. You’d just smile, look pretty, and sing a couple songs. Just for a night or two. Customers come in, you get ’em moving around, dancing a little—they drink more, have fun—that’s really good for the bottom line.”
Stealing her aunt’s gesture, Esme shrugged. “Okay. Tell me the time and where to sign up.”
“Eight’s kind of early, but it’s about right for what I need,” Tina said, then beamed at Esme. “Eight’ll let word get out before . . . ”
“Before what?”
Tía’s smile broadened. “Truth is just where you need to be this weekend, girl. You’ll help me for an hour or two now and then, and I’ll help you.”
“Help me?” Esme prodded, interested. “By giving me an unpaid job singing in a club to cowboy wannabes?” She tossed the words out lightly, though, careful to make sure her aunt wouldn’t be offended.
“Oh, yes. Help you.” Tía’s wicked grin reappeared, and her eyes sparked dark fire. “There’s a job opening in town and it’s got real specific requirements. Unreal money for a temporary position—set you up for a long time. But to apply, you have to be single. Uninvolved.”
“Wow.” Esme fell silent for a minute, thinking, then shook off the surprise. “But those are pretty weird qualifications, aren’t they? Besides, I have a job—or at least, I have a career. I planned on looking for counseling positions . . . ”
“Hmph.” Tina snorted dismissively. “You can open your own clinic with what you’d make in six or seven weeks.”
“I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t sound interesting,” Esme admitted, and her aunt chuckled, and then gave her a wink.
“The money’s not the best part, either.”
“Really? What’s the best part, then?” Esme asked.
“You’d be working for the devil, but most women in Truth wouldn’t mind that a bit. El diablo tiene las suyas—he has his own charms, and his own followers.”
“I thought we were talking about a job offer. Now you’re suggesting I take up devil worship?” Esme challenged, her words tinged with sarcasm. “Who is this irresistible devil you want me to work for?”
“Rafael Benton,” Tina answered. “Of course.”
• • •
Esmeralda stood in a corner of the small stage, half-hidden by a huge television and a small jumble of mismatched stools and chairs, and tried to catch her breath. The crush of people, the catcalls and applause when she sang, her aunt’s broad smile and encouragement sent her spirits rocketing. If being helpful to Tina Cervantes was this much fun, she could do it forever.
Although, clearly, her relatively quiet life of late wasn’t keeping her fit enough for line dancing to Alan Jackson’s “Good Time,” belting out a little Reba, and helping the waitresses deliver a few rounds of beers at one particularly chaotic point when she was “on break.”
“You know everyone’s looking for you, right?” Tía asked in her ear, startling her.
“I’m just breathing,” Esme assured her, shooting her a teasing glance. “I do get to breathe, don’t I?”
“Can you do it while you sing?” her aunt retorted. “Knew you’d be something else if you’d sing a couple songs for me! I’ve got an eye for talent, you know. Just look at Cody . . . ”
Hearing the singer’s name tempered Esme’s exhilaration. Almost involuntarily, her eyes glanced at the picture across from where she stood. Again she felt the slight irritation she’d felt when she drove into Truth and found the town claiming Cody as its own. Her aunt seemed to imply that she herself had figured into Cody’s success, but she’d always heard the woman was a product of Nashville.
She shook aside the irritation. “I’m hardly Cody Benton, but I’m having a lot of fun. Besides, men can’t paw me if I’m up here singing.”
“One drunk and you’re complaining. Really!” Tía looked at her watch and shook her head. “You have time for one more before you call it a night, girl. Just one!”
“But if you don’t close until two . . . ”
“Just one more,” Tía repeated, looking around the room almost apprehensively.
“You’re the boss,” Esme conceded.
A couple passing by noticed her. “Hey, you’re great,” the woman shouted, and her partner nodded. “And pants-dropping gorgeous,” he added, laughing when the woman elbowed him and pretended to drag him away.
Esme watched them go, feeling successful. And sexy. How long had she been ignored and avoided in Rose Creek when she let herself feel like this?
“Hey, Tom,” she said as the bartender fiddled with the karaoke machine. “You got Carrie Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova”?”
Tom’s eyebrow with its decorative skull ring shot up and he grinned slowly. “Oh, yeah,” he told her.
Moments later, Esme stood in front of a cheering crowd, belting out the song about a bad boy/cowboy—weren’t those the same? She moved as much as she could without losing track of the music. She felt the song course through her like fever, heat her like a lover’s touch—but hers wasn’t a blue-eyed cowboy, she realized. Darkly intense eyes, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, whispering threatening words like caresses . . . she could almost see him on the stage, moving toward her as the music built to its climax.
“Esme! Stop!¡Para!”
She could hear her aunt’s frantic whisper. But she could see the crowd listening, feeling the song—she didn’t want to stop.
So she didn’t, pouring out the last of the music and acknowledging the tumultuous cheers and shouts from the crowd with more satisfaction than embarrassment. She was amazed by the response, although, she reminded herself, her aunt had explained her charm early on. What had she said back at the house when she asked for help? New meat. Better not get too full of herself just yet.
“Esmeralda Salinas, get off the stage,” her aunt hissed, looking around as if worried by something. Or someone.
She waved a final time and headed for the side steps. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, aware that her aunt seemed genuinely upset.
“You idiot!” she spat. “When I say something here at the club, I expect you to do it. I told you to stop! And of all the songs you had to be singing—”
Esmeralda straightened and glared at her aunt. “Don’t you ever, ever insult me again, Aunt Tina,” she whispered. “Because I’m nobody’s idiot.”
Tina’s face flushed with anger, but her tone was level when she answered. “If you lost what you might have gotten, querida—let’s see what you call yourself! You should not have been up on that stage singing that song when Rafael Benton walked in.” She reached out and snared Esme’s wrist, the metallic nails carelessly pressing into her skin. “He hates karaoke. He especially hates that song—and there you were.”
And with those parting words, she stalked away, engulfed immediately by the crowd of people that seemed to materialize around her.
• • •
Rafael sat in his usual chair, nursing a beer and wishing he were somewhere else. This place was poison and had been since Cody died in an upstairs room. Poison or drug; he was addicted to the sadness, apparently. A young woman walked past, showing off her jean-sheathed rear, putting a little extra wiggle in and turning her head enough to wink at him. Nice, but no.
He sighed heavily and downed the remainder of the beer in a gulp. No point in hanging around here, listening to music that just kept punching him in the gut. Although . . . his eyes scanned the crowd, finding her immediately. He’d come in as she finished a pulsing rendition of a Carrie Underwood song Cody used to sing for Harper and he’d more or less eyeballed her ever since. Even though he didn’t want to. Too
bad she was Tina Cervantes’s niece. He wouldn’t have minded throwing his hat in the ring with the other yelling, stomping jerks in the room. He could compete for her, and he would win.
He allowed himself the luxury of a smile. Confidence had come easily to him in the past. Even as an unwanted kid shuffled from strangers to shelters to street corners, he’d believed he’d win. He liked to think his confidence—or brashness, depending on who was describing him—was the quality that the Bentons couldn’t resist in a ten-year-old street kid. The quality that compelled the wealthy couple to adopt him and love him as fiercely and unconditionally as any mother and father ever could love their children.
He drew in a breath and stood up. The game warden, Prince Jackson, still in his tan uniform with its wildlife insignia on the sleeve, walked by and paused to shake his hand. He’d learned right from the start that there were good guys and bad guys in Truth, and PJ, his preferred handle, was one of the good guys. Too bad the game warden was just arriving; he was leaving. He’d have enjoyed drinking a beer with the man and chatting about his job protecting the native wildlife—anything but the loss of his sister.
“Leaving so soon?” Tía purred beside him.
He knew that voice, the false honey dripping out of words meant to deceive. “Yes,” he answered curtly, trying to step away from her, but she moved in front of him and shook her head at him.
“You’ve spent four years trying to step around me, Rafa. Why don’t you get it? You and I don’t have to like each other to use each other. To profit from each other.”
“The way you used Cody? The way you profited from her? Look, I don’t need this. I don’t need you—”
“What if I told you I have the perfect candidate for you?” She batted heavily shadowed eyes at him and reached out a hand to stop him from escaping. Her nails glinted silver in the lights. He frowned. More like expensive talons than nails.
“Tell me tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She lifted a shoulder indifferently. “You were the one who said there wasn’t much time. And tomorrow might be too late, because the candidate has other job offers.”
He stared at her, considering. He wished he hadn’t included her, but he knew that she had contacts outside Truth, tarnished as many of them were. He couldn’t stomach any of the hangers-on he’d known in Cody’s last troubled days. Surely she wouldn’t dare suggest any of them.
“You know someone who meets all my qualifications? A serious prospect?”
“A perfect prospect.” Tía winked. “Ready to lose a small fortune?”
“You make this sound like you’re pimping someone,” he gritted. “You shouldn’t be so eager for a payoff, Tía. I’d be a lot more inclined to listen to Lillie Mae or to Brockton.”
Tía snorted and turned away.
“Who?” he asked, knowing that he had few choices and time really was running out. If he were going to be happily married—or at least legally married—before his parents returned, he had to find an acceptable wife. Chris and Alice would see right through him if he married in front of them.
Tía faced him again, triumphant. “My niece,” she said. “Esmeralda.”
Chapter Five
After the third time she hurled aside an outfit and looked for something else, Esmeralda had to admit to herself that she was nervous. Which infuriated her, because nothing unnerved her. She hadn’t felt so jittery and apprehensive since . . . since her mother found out about her first serious boyfriend, Toby. She pressed her eyes closed momentarily. Old news, Toby, and the pain no longer bit, but in a way, their doomed relationship had become the foundation of the life she’d lived ever since.
Defiantly, she went to the closet and jerked out a celery-colored sheath with a plunging neckline and shimmied into it. An hour until she had to present herself at this place called Witches Haven on Death Curve, and damned if she’d be late—or nervous. She’d met Rafael Benton and if he’d uttered a threat, real or imagined, she didn’t see how it could have been directed at her.
In spite of her aunt’s insistence that the opportunity of a lifetime was just ahead, she also didn’t see how she could work for a man she’d much rather have a fling with and forget. He’d unnerved her, those dark eyes boring into hers in the mirror at Tía’s. He’d loomed so large, his presence so close, that she’d thought at first he would slide his hands over her shoulders and pull her back against him. Not the behavior she’d expect, but there’d been a daredevil air about him, a hardness and recklessness that . . .
“Esmeralda Salinas, you’re full of it!” she hissed at herself, looking into the mirror, glad that Rafael didn’t lurk there to feed her lunatic fantasies. The man got under her skin and made her want him, but there was nothing other-worldly about that. And she’d be very unlikely to wind up with whatever job he was trying to fill, so . . . screw everything.
She put on her favorite earrings and dawdled over a necklace. She fingered her prettiest, a delicate gold chain holding an ornate cross with emeralds. A present from her mother on her fifteenth birthday, she seldom wore it, because she knew her life wasn’t what her mother had intended when she gave the necklace. Sometimes she thought of the chain as a curse, meant to embarrass and shame her whenever she stepped over the thin line her mother tried to draw in the sands of moral behavior.
Laughing at herself, she snatched up her favorite necklace, a clunky fashion piece with oversized amber and brown beads pieced together with leather. The colors went well enough with green, she supposed, and the gift from an ex-student she’d counseled always boosted her spirits.
She snatched up her purse and hurried downstairs.
Andy sat in a rocking chair on the porch, ear bud attaching him to his ever-present music, and shot her an indifferent glance as she passed.
“Off to the devil’s lair?” he asked as she reached the bottom step.
“The devil’s lair?”
“Oh, I know the townsfolk call it Witches Haven,” he said, nodding sagely. “The man who built it—twenty years ago or more, I guess—called it that.” He smiled and winked. “The parties, you know? But that dude that owns it now, he’s no witch. The devil, that one. Mad as hell about what happened to his baby sister. You might want to be careful, Esmeralda Salinas.” The words issued out in a strange tone that raised the hair on her arms.
“Why should I be careful, Andy?” Esme demanded, aware that Andy still would rather see her gone than here, although she didn’t know why he disliked her.
“I hear Benton wants your aunt gone—or dead,” the watchman said, still rocking the chair and swinging a foot. “I bet she’s glad I decided to come down here from Chicago with her. Good luck with the devil,” he added, and closed his eyes in dismissal.
• • •
Even in the broad daylight and looking for the place, Esmeralda could see how she’d missed it those times before. Death Curve started out as an innocuous bend, although there were speed warning signs with their contorted arrows. But the steepness and the “s” part of the curve took a driver by surprise, and strangers undoubtedly would keep their eyes glued to the turns. Up on her left, a hill loomed, a little higher than most in the immediate area.
Untrimmed cedar, so predominant in the Hill Country, stormed up the hill, quilting in dull green with patches of brown where weather or disease had claimed a tree. The growth was so dense that the hill itself seemed dark and unwelcoming.
The house on the hill—not at the front of the summit, but set back, with a dark rock fence shielding part of the view—was even darker. Unlike so many of the rock homes in the area, the house appeared built of very dark timber, treated perhaps to prevent decay, but providing a fort-like façade that made no effort to be inviting.
The drive itself began several hundred yards beyond what seemed to be the front of the property and Esme almost missed it, having to brake sharply and then wait as an annoyed biker scooted around her, scowling her way.
“Sorry,” she muttered, not any happier than he appare
ntly was about the poor design of this place.
The drive climbed the hill gradually, the view on both sides consisting only of cedar and underbrush, and then she broke out near the top, onto a gentle, terraced slope dotted with neatly tended rock gardens and ornamental plantings. Off to one side, an intricate path of rock led into a series of fish ponds and gardens, all created from the abundant Hill Country stone, and she could see benches scattered around among the pools, with water lilies blooming in the sun in the nearest ones.
The change in scenery couldn’t have been greater, and she slipped carefully out of the truck cab and walked a few steps closer to take it all in.
Bet it’s something else in the spring, she thought, imagining the bluebonnets covering all the cleared acreage and lining the edges of the walk.
In the sunlight, with flowers all around, the hulking structure lost its air of malevolence. By the time she approached the steps again, she was the same professional woman who had never been rejected after a job interview. She might not accept, but she knew she could make Rafael Benton offer her his job, whatever it was.
She put one foot on the bottom step and stopped short at the boom of thunder announcing her arrival. In synchronized majesty, two fawn Great Danes rose from their places in the sun and turned dark, curious gazes her way. Apparently these were not killer watch dogs; they stood like stones after sounding the initial warning. But they were big, and just marching up to the door seemed a little foolish.
Before she could muster her nerve and do just that, the door swung open and an attractive woman, a few years older than her, peered out. “Luc! Chief!” she scolded, and the two dogs wagged their tails and retreated a few steps.
The door opened, and the woman walked out, holding out a hand and offering a smile that bordered on annoyed.
“You must be Ms. Salinas,” she noted. “I’m Marie Thompson, and I run Witches Haven for Mr. Benton, who is waiting for you.”
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