“Six months back.”
“Six months?”
“Yep.” He nodded toward the valley. “Those cattle out there are the ones Morley Damn-his-hide refused to let me move to Texas.”
“I don’t understand what happened to Morley,” she sighed. “He was a wonderful brother, kind, considerate. Now look at him. He’s become a mean old man. What happened?”
Halting beside a fire-blackened fountain in what must have been an enormous patio, Tyler turned her to face him. He clasped his hands lightly behind her head, gazed into her eyes. “I don’t know, love. But I have a hunch it’s tied up with what’s eatin’ at you.”
“Me?” She pursed her lips, allowing his endearment to caress her senses a moment before she rejected it. “Nothing’s eating at me, as you say.”
“No? Then why is my love so hard for you to accept? Why can’t you give me yours?”
Her heart thudded against her ribs. Again he had asked for the impossible, the truth. Turning away, she stepped through an archway, entered another littered room, this one with a partial roof and two good walls.
Tyler caught her by the shoulder and pulled her around. His warm brown eyes implored her to respond. “Why, Maddie? What happened to you? What happened to Morley? I’d bet this ranch they’re connected.”
The truth hammered in her head. “You don’t have this ranch to bet,” she retorted. “Even if you did, you would lose.” She steeled herself against the warring emotions that mushroomed inside her—fear, hatred, loneliness, and most threatening of all, the overwhelming love she felt for this man. “Stay out of it, Tyler. It’s none of your business.”
She could tell in an instant that she had wounded him. He recovered by a method she knew well, one she often used herself. He launched a counterattack.
“Now there’s another case of the pot callin’ the kettle black—you tellin’ someone else to mind his own business. You, the most meddlin’ woman I’ve ever known.”
“If I’m so disagreeable, then leave me alone. Stop…stop…”
“Stop what, Maddie?”
“Everything,” she cried. “Everything! Beginning with…with your miserable kisses and ending with calling me that…that horrible word.”
He left her standing there. Right there, in the middle of his burned-out house, in the center of this beautiful valley, inside a foreign country. He stormed through the rubble, stepped into his saddle, and rode off, leaving her standing there. Alone. And empty.
And miserable.
Damn him! He was good at that. He was good at so many things. Too many things.
But he returned at dusk, like he promised. She hadn’t been afraid in his absence, not really, only a little nervous. Throughout the day, between excursions to explore the sprawling structure Tyler called home, she watched him work cattle alongside Sánchez and Raúl and three other vaqueros. They drove them in bunches off toward the north.
The house had been a mansion; the ruins were that large. Although the roof was caved in and several of the major walls lay crumbled on expansive tile floors, the grandeur of the place was evident. Courtyards and fountains and overgrown shrubbery bespoke opulence. In contrast to the blackened beams, brilliant blossoms of scarlet and magenta clung to smut-streaked adobe walls, as plants she had no name for struggled to survive without the care they so badly needed.
She identified with them, with the straggling plants, for she felt that with a little tenderness and attention, she, too, could thrive in this magical world.
It was a thought at once disquieting and inviting. How tempting to think that here in a far distant land she might slip into different skin and become a new person.
A person who could give joy and receive it; give love and receive it. That here in this magical world, cruelty and fear could not find her.
With the sun gone, a chill set in, and Madolyn took a serape from her saddlebags and slipped it over her head. In the gathering darkness, she wandered alone through the numerous rooms, trying to decide what each might have been. It was difficult, for no furniture remained.
Who had built it, this mansion? For no apparent reason she sensed it must have been built long before Tyler left Georgia. Goldie said his wife had died. He called her Susan.
Had Susan died here? Had they lived together in this fantasy land? The idea of it left her sad, and even more lonely.
By the time Tyler returned, she was filled with questions, so many questions they cloaked her other concerns. Indeed, her other concerns seemed to have been left at the border, or at the very farthest, at the edge of this magnificent valley.
A world unto itself, this valley. A world where anything was possible, for a little while. And therein lay the danger. She must remain vigilant. She must not allow herself to lose sight of the predicament she could find herself in by becoming too enamored with this fantasy land and with the man who brought her here.
She felt his presence before he spoke. As at the other times, it started deep inside, an awareness that traveled outward, prickling her skin. She tried to shake off the concern this caused, but the best she could do was to convince herself to store it away, to worry about it later. When his hands touched her shoulders, the prickles turned to desire.
“We’ll have to see about gettin’ you some more clothes. I mistook you for a peon.”
Beneath his palms, her shoulders felt like live coals. She savored the intensity of it. “A what?”
“A worker.”
“I am a worker. If you had left food, I could have had a hot supper waiting.”
Laughing, he dropped his hands and looked around. “Here?”
“Of course. I counted at least ten fireplaces. I could have cooked in any one of them.”
“You’ve cooked over an open fire?”
“No. But I could. I can do anything I set my mind to.”
Without warning he turned serious. Drawing her around, he pulled her close, mumbling, “I know, love. That’s what I’m bankin’ on.”
Before she could question his meaning, he kissed her. Once. Then he took her hand and led her out of the rabble-strewn courtyard.
“Where are we going?”
“Back into the hills where the Rurales won’t be as likely to find us.”
Disappointment speared through her, sudden and unexpected. “I thought we could stay here.”
He glanced around. “You like the place, huh?”
“I love it.”
His gaze captured hers. For the longest time he held her mesmerized by the sheerest thread of intense desire—his or her own? “That’s a start,” he whispered. Then with a sigh, he added, “María told Sánchez the Rurales have been watchin’ this place.”
“María?”
“Sánchez’s…uh, his…”
Madolyn laughed. “I don’t know why you’re hemming and hawing. I live in the House of Negotiable Love. Nothing can shock me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We’ll see.”
She followed him to the horses, mounted, and rode with him through the haze of dusk. They headed across the valley, traveling north in the direction where she had watched the cattle disappear earlier. The softness of evening combined with the ethereal beauty of this place and the mesmerizing warmth of his presence to form a cocoon, in which she felt whole, complete in a way she had never known.
“You moved all the cattle?”
“Yep.”
They rode in companionable silence.
“So you like the place?” he asked at length.
“It’s magnificent. Yet so awfully sad.”
“Sad?”
“That you’ve lost it. That the house was destroyed. That…” Hesitating to ask personal questions, she forged ahead, aided by the cover of darkness and the closeness she felt with him. “Is your wife buried here?”
“Susan? No, she died long before Morley and I arrived here. She’s buried back in Georgia.”
“Oh.”
“Why’d you think that?”
�
�The house is so grand.”
He laughed. “Too grand for a couple of ornery ol’ cow-pokes like Morley an’ me?”
She laughed in return. “Since you put it that way.”
“Well, I agree. It was historic, one of the first of the grand haciendas built durin’ Mexico’s colonial heyday.”
“I wish I could have seen it before.”
“So do I, Maddie.” He spoke into the wind and when the words blew back to her, they sounded more like a wish and a statement and she knew she wished the same.
And she knew she shouldn’t.
They entered a narrow, winding canyon. The moon had come out now and lighted their way, if dimly. Tyler led the way up the steep trail. She followed him, gripping the reins and grateful for her serape with the evening chill setting in. She thought of the snow-capped peaks and shivered. But it was a good feeling, the best she could recall, if the strangest. Indeed, she felt as though they had left the real world behind. Already a weight seemed lifted from her shoulders. She felt light-headed and lighthearted and wished it were just because of the altitude.
Tyler didn’t stop again until they had climbed well above the valley floor. Then, of a sudden, he drew rein on a rocky ledge.
“What is it?” she asked, thinking of Rurales.
“I want to show you somethin’.” He helped her dismount. With an arm draped over her shoulders, he drew her back the way they had just come. Together they stood on the edge of the hill and looked down into the valley.
All was black now, like velvet. The little stream glimmered in the moonlight even brighter than at dawn.
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she whispered. “Not in all my life.”
He remained silent, but the way his hand squeezed her shoulder, she knew he felt the same. The poignancy of sharing this special moment, this special place, with this special man was almost too much to bear. She blinked back tears, admonishing herself to get control. To keep control.
“How long will it take the Rurales to miss the cattle?”
“Not long enough.” He pressed her to his side. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Even if they find the cattle, they won’t find us.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t care about us. They’re after the cattle.”
“I see.” But she didn’t, not really. Even if they weren’t staying with the cattle tonight, they would eventually have to connect with them to drive them back to Texas. But Tyler’s mind wasn’t on cattle, nor even on Rurales, she discovered.
“Maddie.” His solemn tone alarmed her. Had he saved the bad news until they were safely out of the valley?
“What is it?”
“You tell me,” he answered. His voice was low, desperate. “I have to know. It’s been eatin’ at me all day, and longer, for a long time now.” Both arms went around her. He cradled her close, as though to protect her from some demon that might pounce on them out of the darkness. And she knew he would. Right or wrong, she trusted him.
“What happened to make you so afraid?”
Tensed, she stared into the black night, seeking some safe haven, but all she saw was blackness. Blackness. Like her life had always been.
Like her life would always be without Tyler.
“I need to know,” he said. “I deserve to know.”
“I know.” He was right. But how could she say the words? “Not now. Not here. I can’t talk about it standing here on this rocky ledge.”
He turned her by the shoulders. Moonlight glinted from the moisture in his eyes. “I need to know now. At the end of this canyon we’ll come to an old adobe stable, where we’ll stay the next few days, while I dip cattle.”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“No. There’ll be people there. I can’t wait any longer.”
And he couldn’t. It had come upon him suddenly, and without half thinking he reined in his horse and confronted her. He had to know. Now.
Earlier in the day when he rode away from her, it had been from necessity; he’d had to get out of there. Fast. Coming home had been hard enough. Oh, he had seen the house since the Rurales set fire to it, but each time was like pouring salt into a fresh wound.
His home. No woman had shared this home with him. Except for an occasional serving girl, no woman had shared his bed. That wasn’t the meaning of this valley. It had nothing to do with the physical world, hardly even with the cattle he and Morley raised here. This valley had been his place of refuge from memories that had haunted and plagued him.
Maddie said it reminded her of another world, and it had been that for him. A new world. A world in which to escape. A world in which to heal. This valley had transcended his physical needs.
Until today. Today when he stood beside Maddie, looking at the remains of the burned-out hull of his home, he knew his old wounds were healed. It was as if he had been washed clean in the icy spring that flowed through the land.
Standing there beside her, it had come to him. The truth. That this woman, this meddling, toe-tapping sister of his arch-enemy was the woman he had to spend the rest of his life with. He couldn’t let her slip away. Or run away.
Standing there in the valley with Maddie, he felt like a new man with a new life to spend with the first and only woman he would ever truly love.
He wanted to tell her. He ached to tell her. To convince her of the truth, that she felt the same way. That they had been touched by some magical and unseen hand, selected out of all the men and all the women in the world, just for each other.
But he couldn’t tell her any of that. Not until he knew what kind of problem she faced; what kind of problem they faced.
He cradled her head against his chest. “Please don’t close me out. Not any longer. I want to help you, Maddie. I want to rescue you from whatever is causin’ you such pain.”
She felt his heart throb steady and true, against her. Rescue her? He spoke as though he were a knight of old and she a damsel facing a dragon. But he was asking for the truth, and the truth was not a fairy story. The truth was reality. Reality, harsh and cruel.
Rescue her. Could he? Had she been right earlier? Was anything possible in this land of magic? Was he her knight in shining armor ready and willing to dispatch her demons? The world’s demons, Miss Abigail would say.
She felt safe in his arms. No question about that. Safe and secure…and loved. But that wasn’t all. If it were, she could control the situation.
He felt the same way she did. She had known as much, even before he said it. His feelings for her showed in a myriad of tiny details—the gentle touch of his hands, the softness when he spoke her name, the lighthearted way he laughed and encouraged her to laugh. She saw it in his warm brown eyes, felt it in the erratic beat of his heart against hers, experienced it in the passion he was so quick to express and so helpless to conceal. She knew it by the way he called her “love,” so tenderly, so naturally, making her feel special, and, yes, loved.
She knew, but she couldn’t let him say it again, not ever again. So she fought him with words, carefully chosen words, knowing in advance she could cool his passion with platitudes that no longer rang true, even to her own ears.
“Miss Abigail says when a man sets out to rescue a woman, she had better watch where she steps, else she’s likely to find herself caught in a trap.”
Sixteen
“Damnation, Maddie! Would you stop hidin’ behind the chastity belt of that old biddy!”
“I’ll thank you not to swear when you speak of Miss Abigail.”
“And I’ll thank you to get off your damned high horse.” Turning abruptly, he stalked away without a backward glance.
Stunned by his harshness, she refrained from trying to get the last word. She had made him angry this time, really angry. And she regretted it. Not standing up for Miss Abigail’s good name. She would never regret that. But the magic of this day had suddenly vanished, as if it had been no more than a soap bubble. She had burst the ephemeral fantasy.
Leaving her alone. And lonely. For the first time today this land seemed foreign instead of magical. Which is what it had been all along. All the joy and beauty drained out of her, leaving her cold and empty. Like she would always be.
Her trepidation grew when Tyler remounted without waiting to assist her. But she struggled into her saddle, knowing he wouldn’t leave her; that knowledge was little comfort.
He waited, but barely, heading up the canyon before she had good control of her horse. He rode ahead, like before, straight and tall in the saddle, and she followed, imagining him stiff with anger. The silence became heavy, foreboding. She should not have angered him. She, who knew all too well what to expect from an angry man.
Darkness enclosed them, surrounding them with its blackness the way the waters of the Rio Grande had closed around her horse when it gave up its legs and started to swim. The only light came from above—from stars that glittered along a narrow strip of black sky—all that was visible from the bottom of the canyon. Like a river of stars, she thought. They followed that river in silence.
The next time he stopped, it was before an enormous adobe building, similar to the burned-out hull of his home, except this one wasn’t burned-out. It looked deserted.
Madolyn drew her horse to a halt beside Tyler’s, then sat in stunned silence until she realized he was waiting for her to dismount on her own. He had lost patience with her before, but never to this extent. Fear began to inch its icy fingers up her spine. She tried to make the best of things. He would come around. He couldn’t stay angry forever.
He won’t stay angry forever. The words chilled her, even thinking them. For they were not her words. They had come from her subconscious. They came to her now in her mother’s voice.
“Don’t mind Papa,” her mother would say through swollen lips. “He’ll come around. He won’t stay angry forever.”
Desperately, she shook off the past, girded herself to face the present. To survive the present—until she was back on familiar soil.
“What is this?” she asked in as cheerful a tone as she could muster. “It doesn’t look like a stable.”
He met her questions with a sullen shrug. They entered the building through a massive archway and walked together, but separately, down a wide dimly lit aisle. To either side she saw dim outlines of stalls. When he stopped, she stopped. He opened a half-door and motioned for her to lead her horse inside.
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