by Ann Major
“Oh, Rafe, I dreamed about the bats again.”
“I know. You’ve got a helluva bat fixation, Slim,” he murmured dryly, petting her hair in that way she found so soothing.
“A phobia.”
“I should never have left you there alone. But you looked so tired, and you were sleeping so soundly. We thought we saw a light. Then Juanito found the bats and remembered the way out of the mine.”
Every night for a week, Cathy had had the same dream. Every night, Rafe had come to her and comforted her in this kind, almost brotherly way.
But every night, he had left her alone again when she quieted and returned to his own bed.
She did not want him as a brother.
She didn’t want him to go, not tonight—not ever again. So when his arms came around her, pressing her lightly against his body, she sobbed longer than she needed to, just so he would be forced to hold her longer.
Only when she felt his lips in her hair did she lift her hands and circle his neck.
“Oh, Rafe,” she murmured shudderingly into his throat. “I feel so much better when you’re here.”
For a magic second, she thought he wanted to be with her as much as she wanted him. But when she kissed his bristly cheek, he drew back, his handsome face harsh and flushed, as if her lips had stung him.
In his bleak blue gaze she saw everything that had happened, as well as everything that stood between them. How they had miraculously crawled out of that tiny opening three miles on the other side of the mountain. How they had hitched a ride into Mexico City in the heavily laden bed of a garbage truck. How Manuel had come to them when Rafe had called him and smuggled all four of them, even Juanito, across the Rio Grande in a plane that belonged to a rather unsavory “friend” who would fly anybody or anything into the United States for the right amount of cash. How the nervous, fast-talking pilot had landed on a desert road near Big Bend in West Texas, put them out in the darkness without a dime and flown back to Mexico fast—before the border patrol could catch him. How a week ago Rafe had brought her and the children to his small ranch here in the hill country. How she had called her mother from his ranch and told her what Armi had done. How her mother had told her that Pita and most of the villagers had survived the earthquake.
Not that her mother had supported Cathy’s choices. “How could you do this to me?” Chris had asked once she knew she and Sadie were safe. “After all the work I went to for your wedding? After all the trouble really important people went to fly to Mexico for you?”
“Not for me, Mother. For you.”
“Only a silly little fool would jilt a French count and run off with someone as awful as that—that bodyguard.”
“Rafe’s not awful. And he’s Sadie’s real father.”
“He has a tattoo. And an earring.”
“Not anymore. And Rafe has a name, Mother.”
“You’ve ruined us—socially, financially. You’ve made us the laughingstock—”
“Armi was forcing me to marry Maurice. Armi would have had Rafe killed if we hadn’t run.”
“I don’t believe that! I know Armi was desperate to save the family…and your honor. In Mexico, a woman’s reputation is all she has. If she loses it, the family loses its honor, and she can never be forgiven. She is ruined forever. Armi is Mexican and those are his beliefs.”
“This is not Mexico. I don’t believe blackmail is honorable, either. He may be your husband, but I’m your daughter. Try to be happy for me, Mother.”
“Happy? When newspapers all over the world are running dreadful stories about my daughter eloping with that awful street thug?”
“Rafe.”
“I will hate that name till I die! All he has ever been after is your money.”
“Goodbye, Mother. Maybe someday you’ll understand that I’m not like you and that I don’t want the same things you—”
But her mother had already hung up on her.
Rafe had shown Cathy the printed version of the story he’d fed the press—to protect Cathy and the children by telling a true account of the facts, Rafe had said. He had told a journalist in San Antonio about being hired to guard Cathy six and a half years ago, about Armi’s men beating him up because he’d fallen in love with her, about having false charges brought against him in an attempt to bankrupt his fledgling security company, and more recently, about Armi setting Guillen on him in Mexico when he’d gone there to meet his daughter. Then Rafe had shown Cathy a few of the more serious stories in the financial papers that dealt with Armi’s financial woes.
The Dumonts were calling in several immense loans they’d made to Armi. Basically Armi had been selling her to the highest bidder by approving her marriage to Maurice.
Rafe had told Cathy he thought it unlikely Armi would come after them now, since Armi was in Paris scrambling to convince other international bankers to believe in him, and also because too many people knew the truth.
So much had happened, so fast. Cathy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. At least the four of them were safe. At least Rafe had hired an attorney and initiated the paperwork to keep Juanito in the United States permanently.
Maybe it was too much to expect Rafe’s forgiveness now, but she wanted his forgiveness so much. Warily, she opened her eyes again and looked at Rafe, who was still sitting beside her on the bed.
She hated how wary and rigid he was around her. He’d been that way all week—except the nights when she dreamed about bats and her screams woke him. Then he came to her and comforted her. Only then did she sense that some part of him yearned for a sweeter relationship, too.
She wished that she could convince him to forgive her. So, even though he’d already rejected her once tonight, she reached for him again, following that pulsing instinct that made her want him more than life itself.
Leaning forward, she kissed him on the lips.
“Cathy—” His body tensed from some violence storming within him. She felt the rasping brush of his fingers in her hair. Just for a moment, his mouth clung to hers, as if he found her as delicious as she found him.
She ran her fingers along his nape, winding the springy thickness of his hair over a fingertip. The scent of his skin was so earthy and clean. An all-enveloping weakness went through her limbs.
Dizzy, she swayed closer into his hard arms, her pulse thudding. But when she opened her soft lips to welcome his tongue, he drew back stiffly. She watched his face grow dark and remote.
“Cathy, don’t do this,” he said hoarsely, warningly.
“Please…just let me…” Her fingers curled into his shoulders. She kissed his warm throat in a frenzy of passion.
“No!” he muttered fiercely, shoving her away.
“What do you want from me?” she murmured on a strangled half sob. “You keep me here—in your house. You come to me at night when I am afraid…”
“I want to take this one day at a time.”
The coldness in his voice flooded her with a hopeless, bottomless despair.
“All week you’ve been so distant. I—I feel like I am in hell.”
“So do I,” Rafe said, a faintly ragged edge to his breathing. “But you’re the one who put us there.”
“I’ve told you and told you that I didn’t—”
He got up, his features dark with suppressed emotion. “I keep remembering rifle butts smashing into my jaw. Then I found you in the kitchen in Maurice’s arms. You were wearing his ring. You still have it.”
“No. I mailed it back to his family in France.”
He refused to look at her.
“Rafe—”
“I’m sick of your lies. No way can you explain away what you did.”
Cathy swallowed convulsively. “I just want you to love me-”
“That’s not so easy.”
“I can’t bear that you only want Sadie and are so kind to Juanito, that you would give anything to eliminate me from your life.”
“Is that what you think?” He gave her
a derisive look. “Like I said—it’s not that easy.”
In the lamplight his dark face was so rawly virile and handsome, she ached with vulnerability and desire. She wondered if he had any idea how much he aroused her, how much she loved him. How could she ever make him believe she would never do anything to hurt him?
“I’m sorry. Dear God, I’m sorry,” she murmured in a stricken voice. “How many times do I have to say it before you’ll believe me?”
“Damn it. I don’t know. You’re not the only one who’s miserable.”
Her stomach tightened as he got up and strode silently away from her out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. She covered her face and sobbed quietly, listening to his thudding footsteps resounding like hollow heartbeats, growing fainter and more muffled as he strode down the hall to his own room.
He banged his own door, too. Even after that, she heard him as boards creaked from his constant pacing.
She remembered how patiently he had pretended to listen that first time when she’d tried to explain that she was innocent. And then how coldly he’d informed her that he hadn’t believed a single word.
He still didn’t.
She knew that the only reason he even allowed her to stay with him on the ranch was because he wanted Sadie.
Dear God. What could she possibly say or do to make him change his mind and love her again?
Twelve
Rafe got up the next morning before first light and began to dress. From his window he could make out the tall brooding shapes of the cypress trees that fringed the green waters of the creek. Beyond, he saw the low, cedar-covered hills.
The air smelled cool and fresh. A whippoorwill sang. A morning dove cooed.
Usually getting home from some dangerous adventure made him happy. But he felt tired to the bone. Not that today was any different. Every morning since he’d brought Sadie and Cathy and Juanito here, he awoke more exhausted than the day before.
Going to bed without Cathy beside him when he knew he could have her put him in hell. All night he’d lain awake, thinking of her warm body in that thin white nightgown, thinking of how she’d kissed him so wetly on the mouth, remembering how she’d tasted, how she’d trembled. Thinking of how hot her skin felt and how lonely and frightened and needy she seemed. As always, she’d seemed fragile and feminine and utterly lovely.
And he didn’t just want her in his bed. He craved her friendship, her love. She was doing a number on him—big time. She knew all his buttons—she’d known them that first night when she’d climbed over that white wall in River Oaks, and she was still punching them. Every minute of every day.
How had he ever thought he could bring her here, keep her here, sleep in the room next to hers, and not want her? How had he ever thought he could eat at the same table, do things with her and the kids as if they were a normal couple, and stay aloof from her?
He picked up a cowboy shirt from the floor. It was the one he’d worn yesterday. It was wrinkled and maybe dirty, too, but what the hell. He put it on, anyway.
This whole family routine was driving him mad—because he knew that if he could only believe she really loved him, their life together would be heaven. But maybe he’d lived in hell too long to believe so easily in heaven. Maybe it was too damn late for heaven. Maybe he should just take her and what they had and be satisfied.
She would sleep with him. She would stay with him for a while.
Not good enough.
He wanted the whole damned fairy tale. He wanted love and complete trust between them. And no more lies.
Or nothing at all.
He had already told Mike he was going to give up the more dangerous missions and let the younger guys do them, that he would do administrative stuff the way Mike did now. Maybe Rafe had lost his death wish. Maybe when he’d offered to give up those missions, some part of him had believed he’d have Cathy forever.
He kept waiting for his anger to leave him, for forgiveness to soften him or for something else to change.
But every time he remembered Armi and Guillen’s thugs, every time he remembered she’d put Maurice’s ring back on and let the wimp take her in his arms, Rafe felt abandoned all over again, and angrier and more hopeless than ever.
She had bought a cheap camera in San Antonio, and she was always taking pictures, and mostly she took pictures of him. It bothered him when he came into the living room and he found her studying those photographs as if she loved looking at them.
Every day she looked more beautiful than the day before. It was as if she went out of her way to make herself sexually attractive to him just to tempt him. They were on a ranch, but the dresses she wore were as filmy as nightgowns. Every time she moved, the soft fabric clung and swung and shivered against her knees and hips and breasts. When she stood with the light behind her, the voluptuous shape of her body was outlined. He suspected that she dressed like that on purpose, just to torture him. Her perfume got inside him and tantalized him, reminding him again of how soft and delicious she would be to taste. Every time they were in a room or a car together, she seemed to find some new opportunity to brush some part of her soft delectable body against his.
Yesterday morning, she had ridden bareback in skintight jeans with the children, and when she’d acted as if she was scared to dismount, he’d gone over to help her. She’d turned her body so that she slid the length of his, so that her breasts brushed his hands, his chest.
He had felt her quiver and had flushed at the wave of desire that went through him. She had laughed and said teasingly, clinging to him, fluffing her golden hair airily with one hand, “What are you waiting for? What are you so scared of? You were scared that first night, too.”
“With good reason,” he’d yelled. Then he’d stormed off in his new truck to Mike and Vadda’s.
But Cathy had won that battle, because Rafe had been so wild for her, he’d had to stay away for a whole day and night till he calmed down. But the hotter he felt for her, the colder his heart was. It was as if he was protecting himself because he didn’t want to be hurt when she walked out on him again. Sooner or later, everybody had always left him.
Cathy had already walked out twice before. Both times, she’d turned him over to Armi and his goons. Both times, Rafe had nearly died, not from the physical stuff but from the emotional pain.
But knowing what she was and what she’d do the first chance she got didn’t make things easier. Every time he looked at her, he still wanted her. Even when he reminded himself of what she’d done, he still hungered for her. That’s why he lay awake most nights, in a cold sweat with his heart pounding, almost hating her because he loved her so much.
She’d explained that she was innocent till he was sick of hearing it.
He hadn’t bothered to tell her that in his business, people always lied. Even the good guys. Maybe that’s why he’d become too cynical, too conditioned to believe her glib explanations that glossed over the bitter truths.
He wanted to believe her. Hell, he would have given anything to believe her.
Which was a big part of the reason that he couldn’t.
*
Cathy knew that things were getting worse and not better, that the harder she tried to please Rafe, the more deliberately he avoided her.
As the weeks dragged by, Rafe’s coldness toward her grew so frosty she felt truly desperate. At first, he had willingly spent time with her in the company of the children. Like the day they’d gone to San Antonio and bought a new truck and then visited the zoo.
The children had been hooligans in the car lot, dashing in and out of the rows of trucks, climbing in and out of a couple of truck beds until Rafe had gotten them under control.
Rafe had been so gentle and patient with them, and yet firm, too. At the zoo, he had held Sadie high on his shoulders for an hour so she could stare hypnotically through the bars at a chosen soul mate—a lively gibbon monkey. He’d even laughed when her ice cream pop had dripped on his head, and Cathy had
mopped red syrup from his forehead. Finally, Rafe had set Sadie down, and she and Juanito had shown off their monkey calls, hooting until they were hoarse and exhausted and Sadie had to be carried back to the truck, where she’d slept all the way back to the ranch.
Sadie, who adored Rafe and wanted to please him, minded his softest word. Juanito was gaining weight, acting more affectionate and less independent, as if he felt maybe he was starting to belong to someone. That hunted, edgy look was leaving his big, velvet black eyes. And yet he was wary still, not quite trusting in this new country that smelled of cedar and was made of limestone. Not trusting in his new clothes and new haircut that made him stare at himself with shy pride every time he passed a mirror. Not trusting in all the new rules and new schedules. Not trusting his new fragile happiness any more than Cathy did.
Rafe had enrolled the children in the nearest consolidated elementary school, and they rode a school bus every morning. Rafe helped Sadie with her reading when she came home, while Cathy fixed supper. Rafe spent an hour every afternoon teaching Juanito English, and all through the evenings, Rafe translated everything, encouraging Juanito to repeat words dozens of times.
If Rafe intended to keep Juanito here permanently, why couldn’t he want her, too?
So what if he’d once been her bodyguard and her mother believed all he’d ever been interested in was her money?
He wasn’t just a bodyguard now. He had a business and a ranch. He was doing okay. His house wasn’t fancy, and he shared her simple tastes. Other things in life seemed to be far more important to him than money. Like his daughter. Dear God, how she regretted not telling him years ago about Sadie.
Every day the newspapers were filled with news about the collapse of the Calderon empire. From the sound of it, Armi owed way more than he had. He had been indicted for fraud, and the once-wealthy Calderons were the last thing from rich now.
So, it wasn’t the Calderon money that made Rafe keep her with him now.
Guillen’s men had beaten Rafe so badly there were still marks on his face and body. When he’d found her in Maurice’s arms, he had believed the worst.