by Janet Dailey
“And spoil your fun?” He laughed silently.
“I’m sure he alreadys knows that I think he’s a ruthless, contemptible bastard,” Sheila retorted evenly.
“Careful,” Laredo warned.
“Why?” she countered. “He doesn’t understand a word I say. I can call him anything I like.”
“But that particular word doesn’t sound so very different from the one in his own language.” The smile that curved his mouth had lost much of its amusement.
“Really . . . ?” Sheila widened her eyes in false amazement and innocence. She turned her gaze to Ráfaga, veiling the dislike glittering in her eyes with a demure sweep of her lashes. “I didn’t mean to call him a bastard, then. I’m sure it would be more accurate to refer to him as a son-of-a-bitch.”
It became an amusing game to insult him while concealing it behind a facade of polite comments. There was never a flicker of interest in his inscrutable features, and Laredo didn’t volunteer a translation.
Chapter 10
The newness soon wore off the game. By the third night, Sheila’s sweetly coated insults no longer brought her a sense of elation. Instead, they left a bitter aftertaste because of their impotence. It had been a childish display of rebellion, Sheila realized, understood only by Laredo.
It hadn’t changed anything. She was still a prisoner, never left unguarded for a minute. Elena was still insanely jealous of her. Her revolt had only been a verbal one, since she was helping in the kitchen and doing odd things around the small house. The alternative was idle hours, and Sheila had had all she could stand of those.
Outside her window, drizzle alternated with a sheeting downpour, trapping Sheila inside the house. Yellow tongues of lightning scorched the mountain peaks, licking across the sky, electric and blinding. Ominous dark clouds blackened the sky, adding to the dreary gloom of the stark interior of her bedroom.
In the midst of a cloudburst, Sheila heard the clumping hooves of a horse plodding over the water-soaked earth, approaching the adobe building. The sound stopped outside and someone pounded on the door. She couldn’t help wondering who would be venturing out in this weather.
Her curiosity was heightened when she heard Ráfaga give an order to the guard on duty. The man abandoned the shelter of the porch roof to slosh through the rain toward the distant collection of adobe buildings.
For several minutes there was only the low murmur of voices in the main room, where Ráfaga and the rider were. Sheila lifted aside the curtain to stare at the sheeting rain. No one was guarding the door. Everyone was inside, sheltered from the storm.
Only a fool would be wandering about in weather like this, Sheila thought—a fool or someone wanting to escape under the cover of the rain. Quickly she levered herself onto the windowsill and swung her legs around to slide to the ground.
Her feet splashed in a puddle of water and her hand sought the solid wall of the house to regain her balance in the slippery footing. Lightning split open the sky as Sheila hurried toward the concealing trees behind the house.
Before she could reach them, she was drenched to the skin. The driving rain plastered her hair to her head, and water ran into her eyes to blur her vision. Each breath she drew was laden with moisture.
The thick branches of the trees abated some of the rain’s force, the stinging spray no longer pelting her cheeks. Sheila paused once, blinking through the water clinging to her lashes, to glance back at the house.
Two men were hurrying toward it, heads bent against the driving rain. For a paralyzed instant, she thought they might have seen her and ducked behind a rain-darkened tree trunk. But neither looked in her direction as they dashed for the shelter of the porch. The taller figure, in a yellow slicker, Sheila recognized as Laredo. The other man had to be the guard, evidently sent by Ráfaga to fetch Laredo.
At any moment someone could discover she was gone. Sheila began running, keeping to the concealing cover of the trees. Out of sight of the house, she felt more secure and slackened her pace.
Lightning crackled, searing the air, followed immediately by a resounding clap of thunder. The ground beneath her feet seemed to tremble from the sound. Sheila was tempted to leave the shelter of the trees and take the shorter route across the meadow to the canyon pass. A whole new torrent was released and she changed her mind.
Bending her head against the slanting sheets of rain, she hurried onward. The sound of her squishing footsteps was muffled by the steady downfall of rain beating through the leaves of the trees.
“Sheila.”
Nearly deafened by the downpour, she wasn’t certain she had actually heard someone call her name. She stopped, a hand shielding her eyes. A horse snorted on her left.
Sheila’s heart pounded in alarm as she pivoted toward the sound. Laredo was calmly walking his horse through the trees, the brim of his hat pulled low on his forehead. Water ran from the pointed crease in front like an eavespout.
Her hearing was suddenly acute, catching other sounds. Sheila’s gaze darted to the thinning trees on Laredo’s left. Three other riders were spread out in a search line. One of the riders was Ráfaga. Sheila knew it even before his forbidding features could be seen beneath the shadow of his hat brim.
The horses stopped, forming a half-circle around her. Running was futile, so Sheila stood her ground. Tipping her head to a proud angle, she refused to let them see how bitterly her failure to escape tasted. Rain streamed over her face.
“What are you doing out here?” Laredo knew the answer to his question. It was in the cool mockery of his blue gaze.
Sheila gave him the answer such a question deserved. “I wanted to go for a walk, so I did. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it was raining so hard.”
“Isn’t that odd?” Laredo shifted in his saddle, leaning slightly forward over the horn. “When I saw you running from the house into the trees, my first thought was that you were trying to escape.”
He had seen her and rushed to alert Ráfaga. “That was silly of you,” she commented tightly.
“It just goes to show you how easy it is to get the wrong impression about something like that.” He smiled mockingly.
“Yes, it is,” Sheila agreed, seething with anger but fighting to keep it in check.
Lightning crashed, a blinding fork of electric flame. Laredo glanced around as if suddenly becoming conscious of the deluge pouring down from the sky.
“Either way”—he nudged his horse to Sheila’s side—“I guess it’s lucky I happened to see you. You might have caught pneumonia if you had walked too far.” A yellow-slickered arm reached out to help her into the saddle. “We would have been here sooner, but it took a little time to saddle the horses. We weren’t sure how far we might have to go before we caught up with you. Unlike you, none of us was looking forward to a long walk in the rain.”
His needling jibe drew a flashing look of resentment from Sheila. He had kicked a foot free of the stirrup nearest her. She stepped into it and let Laredo pull her aboard.
Sheila was soaked to the bone and shivering when Laredo set her down in front of the adobe house. She hurried inside, not waiting to be ordered or led. Laredo, Ráfaga, and the third rider quickly followed, and the guard could be heard leading the horses away.
“You’d better change into some dry clothes right away,” Laredo advised.
Sheila was halfway to the hall. She stopped, turning, her teeth chattering uncontrollably as she hugged her arms around her. “In case you’ve forgotten, my wardrobe is very limited. It consists of what I’m wearing and a shirt. I washed that this morning. I don’t have any dry clothes to put on.”
Most of her sarcasm was negated by the chill that shook her voice.
Turning on her heel, she again started for her bedroom, stiff and angry and sorry for herself. She heard Laredo say something to Ráfaga in his fluent Spanish and receive a reply.
As she entered her room, there were footsteps in the hall, the familiar ones she heard every night. Tensing, Shei
la turned to face Ráfaga when he entered her room.
The heavy poncho that had protected him from the rain was gone. His shirt, opened at the throat, was dry, although it damply clung to his leanly muscled chest and shoulders. His trousers were darkly wet from the knees to his boots. The look in his eyes was as harsh as a frigid winter night.
Water dripped from Sheila’s saturated clothes, forming a small puddle on the floor. More dripped from the matted wetness of her hair, running in glistening trails down her face and neck. The sodden material of her blouse almost lewdly molded every curve of her breasts, including the nipples, hardened by the chilling wetness. His raking gaze missed nothing.
“What do you want?” Sheila realized her nervous challenge was as puny as the belligerent hissing of a half-drowned kitten.
He clipped out an answer and gestured in a dismissing fashion at her clothes. The implication was obvious that he wanted her to take them off.
Sheila bridled. “Just because I’m forced to bathe in front of you doesn’t mean I’m going to undress whenever you want so you can watch!”
The hard lines of his mouth thinned forbiddingly. Lithe strides carried him to her before Sheila’s numbed body could react. His lean fingers started tugging at the knot of her blouse, where tiny rivers of water joined to run down the valley between her breasts. She knocked his hands away.
“I’ll do it!” she muttered through clenched teeth.
With an aloof nod, Ráfaga walked to the dresser and removed the towel from its peg near the washbasin. Walking back, he waited until Sheila’s slacks had joined her blouse on the floor. She was painfully conscious of her nakedness as she reached for the towel he held, but his disinterested gaze didn’t look beyond the whiteness of her moist face.
While her shaking hands began drying her skin, he walked to the bed and pulled off the blanket. The towel had barely absorbed the excess moisture when he began wrapping the blanket around her middle, drawing it tightly across her breasts. He tossed the trailing width over her left shoulder in a makeshift sari.
His gaze lifted to her hair, reminding her of its dripping wetness. Slightly dazed by his ingenuity, Sheila raised the towel to the saturated strands. Snugly tucked, the blanket didn’t slip at all when she moved. She felt warmly wrapped, as if in a rough cocoon.
Sheila began briskly rubbing the towel over her hair as Ráfaga left the room. There were footsteps again in the hall. This time they weren’t Ráfaga’s. Sheila didn’t lower the towel from her head as Laredo appeared in the doorway.
“Hasn’t the guard come back from putting the horses away? I suppose Ráfaga is afraid I’ll slip out the window again if I’m left alone for a minute,” she declared tightly.
“He wants you to come into the other room,” was the level answer.
“Where he can keep an eye on me.” Her sarcasm was poisonously dry.
“No, where you can get warm. There’s a fire in the fireplace,” Laredo explained patiently.
“It’s unbelievable how thoughtful he is,” Sheila flashed. “I’m sure it’s an order and that I have no real choice in the matter.”
“None,” he agreed.
A hissing sigh slipped through her white teeth. “I expected as much. Let me get my comb.”
“Sheila?” The half-question, half-command in his voice caused Sheila to pause beside the dresser.
“What is it now?” she murmured with disguised irritation.
“Don’t try it again,” Laredo said.
“Try what?” Sheila asked, being deliberately obtuse.
“Running away—as if you didn’t know,” he elaborated.
“Oh? And why shouldn’t I?” She picked up her comb, asking the question with seeming idleness.
“Because you were lucky today.”
“Lucky?” A cold laugh came from her throat. “How was I lucky?”
“You didn’t make it out of the canyon. It wouldn’t have been very pleasant if you had,” he said soberly.
“Why?” she challenged. “Because I might have gotten lost in the storm? Or maybe I would have been eaten by wild animals? Forgive me if I find your pretended concern for my welfare just a little bit sickening.”
Laredo ignored her jeering questions. “Nobody leaves the canyon without Ráfaga’s permission, Sheila—nobody,” he emphasized.
“That sounds like a threat.” She tilted her head to a defiant angle.
“Call it a threat, a warning, whatever you like,” he replied evenly. “It’s a rule for the safety of all of us in the camp. This place wouldn’t be a secret if everybody was coming and going at will. Someone outside could discover its existence. So, nobody leaves here without Ráfaga’s permission—and, most of all, you.”
Her hand tightened around the comb, its teeth biting into her fingers. She understood the logic behind Laredo’s explanation, but as far as she was concerned, she wasn’t obliged to obey the rules.
“He rules with an iron hand, doesn’t he?”
“If he didn’t the canyon would have been discovered before this.”
“More’s the pity that it hasn’t been.” Sheila breathed thinly. “None of you would be here, and neither would I.”
“I know the circumstances aren’t the same for you,” he said. “But understand that it’s different for the rest of us. We prize our freedom as highly as you do. Here, we’re safe and free. Ráfaga does everything he can to keep it that way.”
“I’m sure he does,” she snapped.
Laredo sighed, “You won’t understand.”
“I understand.” Her eyes flashed her angry frustration. “I understand I’m a prisoner here . . . that I’m not allowed a moment of privacy . . . that you’re all a band of murderers and thieves and you don’t deserve to be free.”
His mouth tightened into a grim line. “Come on, let’s go in by the fire.”
For a moment, Sheila remained stubbornly where she was. With a faintly regal tilt of her head, she finally swept past Laredo into the hall.
Chapter 11
A fire crackled cheerfully in the fireplace, competing with the pelting raindrops on the roof. Ráfaga was seated at the table with the third man, the stranger whose arrival had precipitated Sheila’s escape attempt. Both glanced up as she entered the room and followed her with their eyes as she walked to the hearth.
She knelt in front of the fire, the slit of the blanket revealing a shapely calf and a hint of a bare thigh. The constricting wrap of the blanket forced Sheila to curl her legs to the side to sit on the warmed stone floor in front of the fire.
Laredo moved to the table, taking a chair nearest the fireplace. The silence that had greeted Sheila’s entrance was broken when he sat down. Sheila wondered why they kept their voices down. She couldn’t understand a word they said, anyway.
Briskly, she began rubbing the towel through her hair, scattering droplets of water. The ones hitting the hot stones inside the fireplace sizzled into nothingness.
When her hair was damp-dry, Sheila began running a comb through the sleek, honey-dark strands.
The stranger seemed to be imparting some kind of information to them. The responses from Laredo and Ráfaga seemed to be yes’s or no’s or questions.
She wondered at the subject. Undoubtedly, it was important for the man to arrive in the middle of a thunderstorm and for Ráfaga to dispatch the guard for Laredo upon the stranger’s arrival.
She turned from the fire to let its radiating heat finish drying the thick mane of hair in back. The comb continued its rhythmic separation of the strands, aiding the drying action. Her hair was molten gold against the backdrop of the flickering flames.
Some magnetic force compelled her to look at Ráfaga. His brooding gaze seemed to be staring past her and into the fire, mesmerized by the dancing flames. Then Sheila realized he was watching the play of the firelight on the creamy bareness of her right shoulder and her collarbone.
With disturbing intentness, his gaze slowly traveled up the slender curve of her neck.
The fathomless blackness of his eyes studied the gracefully feminine line of her cheeks and jaw, the classic straightness of her nose, before moving on to the luxurious length of her gold-tipped lashes. Retracing his route, his gaze made a detour, coming to a full stop at her lips.
The almost physical possession of his gaze sent her pulse pounding with a trip-hammer beat. Unexpectedly, his shuttered, yet compelling, eyes shifted their attention to capture her look. Sheila had the craziest, overwhelming sensation that some force was pressing her backward, laying her down beside the fire to be seduced, willingly.
Shaken by the vividness of the impression, Sheila heard him respond to a comment from Laredo, yet his concentration didn’t seem to waver from her. With effort, she broke away from his magnetic look, her breathing shallow and uneven.
Laredo rose from his chair and walked to the fire-place. Swiftly she averted her head to the flames, hoping that if he noticed her flushed skin, he would attribute it to the heat of the fire.
Squatting, he added another log and stirred the red-hot lumps of burning wood. Balanced on the balls of his feet, he slid her a sideways look, calm and questioning.
“Have you dried out yet?” he asked.
“Yes.” She nodded stiffly and stole a wary glance at the table. She suddenly had the feeling they were talking about her, perhaps all along. “Laredo?”
His hands were on his knees, ready to push himself up, but he waited, cocking his head to the side. “Yes?”
Her gaze flickered to the man at the table. “Who is he?”
“A friend,” he answered noncommittally.
Sheila looked again at the Mexican. “Is he one of your connections?”
“He’s a friend,” was all Laredo would admit.
Sheila turned to study him. “He’s here about me, isn’t he?”
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“It’s a feeling I have. Is he?”
“Sheila”—there was patience in his tone, calm and controlled—“you are asking questions that you know I can’t answer.”