by Cox, Deborah
Michael didn't reply. In his eyes, Rafe saw pain and a deep sadness. The lines on his face seemed to deepen as he stepped toward Rafe and threw his arms around him. Hesitantly, Rafe returned the gesture, his arms going around his brother in an awkward embrace.
"I can't believe it's you!" Michael exclaimed. "I can't believe you've come back!"
"Neither can I."
The two men pulled apart, staring at each other for several moments before Michael seemed to remember himself. "Come inside, Rafael. Come inside. We have a lot of catching up to do. Has it been five years since...?"
"Since you ordered me off the mission." Rafe stopped at the door and Michael turned to face him with a ragged sigh.
"I was a little crazy. Please forgive me. I've had a lot of time to think things over. Will you come in?"
###
Michael sat in a chair beside a large window in the parlor, his white collar on the small table beside him. He stared at the piano against the opposite wall with a faraway glint in his eyes. "She used to come to here for the music. You knew that. We both loved music. Did you ever hear her play?"
His heart a knot of emotion lodged at the base of his throat, Rafe stared into the glass of amber liquid in his hand before taking a sip. "No, I... I guess I never had time."
"She had a natural gift." Michael shifted his weight nervously, then turned to look at Rafe. "I loved her, you know. Not... not like a man loves a woman—although if I hadn't already chosen the priesthood, and if she hadn't been your wife—I loved her as a sister. It hurt... it hurt when she died."
Rafe walked to the piano and touched a low key. "You blamed me. I blamed myself."
"I was crazy with grief. She was traveling home from a visit to me. I guess I needed someone to blame besides myself."
"I guess we were both a little crazy. I said some things—"
"I blamed you because I didn't understand," Michael interrupted.
"I'm not so sure. You were right about one thing: I was too damned busy. I should have—you made her happy in a way I never could. I was too obsessed with chasing—"
"She loved you, Rafael."
"I know. She loved you too."
Silence stretched between them, silence accentuated by the soft ticking of a clock. Rafe turned his glass up and drained it, wondering what to say. He crossed the room and stood behind Michael, gazing out the window, though the glass only reflected his own image.
"Did she suffer?" Michael asked haltingly. "I mean, those men: I know what they were capable of."
Without volition, Rafe dropped a hand to his brother's shoulder. "No, mi hermano, she did not suffer." He walked to the sideboard and placed his glass beside the sparkling bottle of liquor. "It's getting late."
"You can stay in the guest room upstairs. It's not luxurious, but it should be comfortable."
"Thank you." Rafe made his way toward the staircase and was halfway up when his brother's voice halted him.
"Rafael," he called quietly, "I heard you'd become a bounty hunter."
Rafe faced him and waited.
"It shows in your eyes," Michael continued. "Death... and guilt, I think. God has forgiven you. It is time you forgave yourself."
Rafe nodded. "Good night, Michael," he said, ascending the stairs, leaving his brother to gaze after him.
###
Anne helped her housekeeper, Rosa, extinguish the candles downstairs before taking a lantern and slowly mounting the stairs to her room. She paused in the doorway, still unable to believe the luxury around her. She'd purchased the finest furnishings from the East and had them shipped overland to Ubiquitous. And why not? She could afford it.
She had made quite a splash in placid little Ubiquitous a year and a half ago when she had shown up out of nowhere to pay off the mortgage on her aunt's house and buy the town bank into the bargain. A smile of satisfaction curved her lips as she thought of Mr. Thaddeus P. Sampson and the expression on his face when he'd learned he would be working for a woman, the woman he hadn't had time for just weeks earlier.
She was the topic of most of the gossip in the small town, and she cared not at all. Everyone wondered and speculated as to how she had come to have so much money. She'd professed to be from Natchez, widow of a fallen Confederate soldier and planter who had packed her trunks with gold and jewels and headed to Texas to take refuge with her only living relative, Marguerite Tremaine, only to find she had died.
If they only knew the truth!
She and Jose had loaded a million dollars in gold into a wagon left behind by the comancheros. Disguised as a peasant couple, they had filled the wagon with produce to hide the gold, managing to hook up with a caravan returning from the border with supplies for San Antonio. It had taken two months, but they'd managed to make it back to Ubiquitous after a harrowing, exhausting journey.
As for Jose, he'd loaded his saddlebags with as much gold as he could carry and taken off for parts unknown almost as soon as they'd reached Ubiquitous. She hadn't seen him since.
Politicians and ranchers had paid court to her, but she had remained aloof, and she had that to thank for the rest of the gossip that circulated about her. The widow Cameron, known throughout the area for her charity and her coldness toward suitors.
She had tried to care, to be flattered by their attention, to forget. She'd even considered marrying the mayor when he proposed to her last year, but her heart was hollow. There was nothing left inside her that didn't belong to another man, a man she would probably never see again.
Blood money. Blood money allowed her to live this life of luxury and ease. So much had been sacrificed for this money that she hadn't been able to enjoy the bounty without some form of penance. It had been Confederate gold, after all, so what better way to assuage her conscience than to provide for widows and orphans created by the war? Besides, she derived a real pleasure and fulfillment each time she saw the strained, bitter face of a child turn into a smile as a result of her generosity. For the first time in her life, she was doing something worthwhile.
She removed her gown, placed it carefully across a stuffed chair, then sat before the vanity and lifted the ivory-handled brush to her hair. She couldn't use it without thinking about Rafe and wondering, with a twist of her heart, where he was, if he had found whatever he'd been seeking, if he ever thought of her.
He'd sent the brush to her after he'd left. He'd purchased it in San Juan Bautista. She remembered admiring it in the general store, just before Rafe was captured by the outlaws who had nearly killed him.
How she'd longed to run that brush through her tangled hair, how she'd longed for a piece of lavender soap. Now she could have all the soap and all the hairbrushes money could buy.
But she would gladly trade everything she had if Rafe Montalvo would walk through that door right now.
There were too many things in her life that reminded her of him, far too many. Not a day went by that she didn't think of him. Not a night went by that she didn't long for him. Even after more than a year of waiting and watching the road, she still couldn't let him go.
Her gaze swept the vials and bottles on her dresser, the silver dish that held the jewelry she'd collected since that terrible day. Some of it she'd purchased herself. The rest had been gifts from admirers anxious to discover the mystery of the cold, aloof widow.
Her heart skipped a beat.
There among her other jewelry was her locket, the locket her father had given her so long ago, the locket she had put around Rafe's neck that day in the Concepción church.
She hadn’t seen it since.
With her heart in her throat, she whirled around, her gaze sweeping the room, searching for a hiding place. She ran out into the hall, glancing anxiously up and down the long corridor, but no one was there.
She flew to the end of the hall and down the stairs, her feet hardly touching the steps, and went from room to room: the dining room, the kitchen, the parlor, the music room. No one.
She stood in the foyer, clutchi
ng the locket to her heart, her breath coming in gasps. Damn him! He'd been here! He'd come into her house, left the locket, and gone without a word.
"Damn you, Rafe Montalvo!" she said aloud as she turned and yanked the front door open, running out into the night.
"Damn you!" she cried, tears trailing down her cheeks.
By the time she reached the top of the stairs again, she had her emotions under control to a degree, although her heart felt heavier than it had since that day so long ago when he'd ridden out of her life. But maybe now she knew he had come back and hadn't even spoken a word to her... maybe now she could put the past behind her and get on with her life.
She stopped at the door next to her own room, hesitating as she struggled for calm, and turned the knob carefully, trying not to make a sound. The room was dark, but she could clearly make out the figure of a man. Her heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second. Then she recognized him and the blood began to pound through her veins.
"Rafe," she whispered shakily.
He didn't turn to look at her. He was too intent on gazing at the baby in the cradle. She heard a faint whimper. The baby was awake.
Slowly, soundlessly, she crossed the room to stand behind him. She ached to touch him as tears clogged her throat, but she didn't dare, not yet.
"She won't break," Anne assured him.
"She's... she's beautiful," Rafe murmured, his voice husky with emotion.
"Pick her up."
He backed away slightly. "No."
She smiled and stepped around him. Slipping her hands beneath the familiar little body, she lifted the baby from the cradle.
"It's just Papa," she said.
The baby gurgled and made incoherent sounds, the sweetest sounds he had ever heard.
He looked at Anne in wide-eyed wonder, and she realized he hadn't known until she called him Papa that the baby was his.
"You mean, she's...?"
"I've waited for you, Rafe," she said as she rocked the child gently in her arms. "There's been no one else."
"You must hate me."
A sob escaped her lips at the pain in his eyes. "Where have you been?"
"I... I didn't know what to do," he whispered.
He didn't look at her. His gaze seemed fixed on some distant object.
He seemed older and more vulnerable. He was as lean as ever, perhaps a little more so than before. His face was covered with a growth of beard, as it had been the first time she'd seen him. His eyes reflected a profound emptiness. It startled her because she had never been able to see into his soul so clearly, not even the night they'd made love under the stars.
She touched his face and he pressed his cheek into her palm, his tears warm and wet on her fingers.
"For a while, I just drifted. Then I went back to New Mexico," he said slowly, softly, in the voice Anne had feared never to hear again.
He's here. He's truly here. He's come back.
"I had to settle things with my brother," he went on, "and with the army. I went to Fort Stanton and pleaded my case. Because of the extenuating circumstances, they agreed to pardon me if I'd serve in the Union army and fight in the war for six months, which I did. I'm a free man now, in more ways than one."
"That's good, Rafe, that's good. Here, you put her to bed," she said, holding the sleeping baby toward him.
He took the infant with great care, gazing at her as if mesmerized as he carried her to the crib, and then placing her gently on the mattress.
"I could stand here and watch her all night long," he said.
"Her name is Marie, for my mother. I hope you don't mind."
"I wasn't here," he said, his voice breaking slightly as he turned to gaze into her eyes. "You went through it all alone."
A shadow of remembered pain crossed her face and was replaced by a smile, a new smile. Her face was the same, her hair, her soft skin. But her eyes were the eyes of a woman full grown, a woman who had survived hardship and travail and emerged stronger, resilient.
"You didn't get a chance to watch me get fat," she said.
Rafe went to her. He fell on his knees, wrapping his arms around her hips, burying his head against her flat stomach. "Oh, God, Annie, I need you. I've missed you. I tried to forget, to stay away."
"Why?" she asked, as she ran her hands through dark hair that curled around her fingers.
"I thought you'd be better off without me. I had to find out who I was, what I was."
"And?" she asked.
"Please tell me you have room in your life for me now."
Anne wrapped her arms around his head as the tears rolled down her face unchecked. "There will always be room in my life for you," she assured him. "Always."
THE END
Other books by Deborah Cox
From This Day Forward excerpt:
She couldn't move, couldn't tear her eyes away from his powerful, superb body. Her heart lurched, pounding forcefully against the wall of her chest as her mouth went dry and her face grew hot.
Water gushed from an overhead spigot in a steady stream that pummeled his body with bruising force. His every movement spoke of symmetry and strength. How could she have imagined he was less elegant than his cousin? Despite his larger frame and dwarfing height, he possessed all the predatory grace of a jaguar. His shoulders and arms were powerful enough to challenge an ox, and his broad, muscled back, made darker than his legs by constant exposure to the tropical sun, tapered into a narrow waist and sleek, narrower hips and buttocks.
She made no sound, but he seemed to sense her presence and turned to face her. A light feathering of golden hair covered his chest, growing darker and thicker as it plunged down his
Her gaze returned to his face and locked with his rigid, unreadable expression before he cursed under his breath and reached for a towel. His movement broke the spell that had possessed her, leaving her dazed and mortified. With a violent jerk on the reins, she turned and plunged into the jungle, not knowing where she was going but trusting the horse to find its way back to the stable.
Read From This Day Forward
Author Deborah Cox
A true daughter of the South, Deborah Cox was born in Montgomery, Alabama, grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and finally moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, the city of her heart, eleven years ago. No sooner had her dream of living in the Crescent City come true than it turned into a nightmare. Hurricane Katrina tore her life apart, as it did so many others, and sent her into exile for six long years. Finally she returned and her heart and soul were reunited.
Deborah has been writing stories since she was old enough to hold a pencil. Her love or reading and writing found their purpose in historical romance. She won her first literary award at the age of twelve and published her first novel in 1995. She now lives happily in New Orleans with two adorable Shih-Tzus (Harry and Sally) and a group of friends who call themselves TANDJAS. If you ply her with wine, she might tell you the story of how Harry got his name the night of Super Bowl 2010 (a month before he was born) or what TANDJAS stands for.
To receive notification of upcoming releases, email Deborah at: [email protected]