“As soon as she gets a place to live. She’s staying at the hotel now.”
“I can go there. That’s where we ate lunch the day that man came over with Mama.”
Laveau’s presence in the hotel was the main reason Maria didn’t want Luis to meet his mother there.
“Is there something else you’d like to do when you’re in town?” Rafe asked Luis.
“Can we go to the festival?” Luis’s eyes grew bright with excitement. “Mama says all the young men race, ride bucking horses, and perform tricks for the ladies. Did you do that when you were a boy?”
“I was too busy working on the ranch.”
Luis’s face fell. “It’s okay. You don’t have to know how to do tricks.”
A smile slowly spread across Rafe’s face. “I didn’t say I didn’t know how to do tricks. I just said I was too busy working.”
Luis’s interest perked up. “Can you grab a hat off the ground while riding a horse?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you throw a lasso?”
“Definitely.”
“Can you ride without a saddle?”
“We’re cowboys,” Broc said. “They’d chase us out of Texas if we couldn’t do all that stuff.”
Luis was practically bouncing in his seat. “Mama says ladies go crazy for the men who win. I heard Juan tell Rosana that some of the young girls even gave up their honor.”
Maria was sure she turned scarlet. She wanted to hit Broc for laughing. She had a feeling Rafe wanted to laugh as well, but his expression didn’t reveal it.
“I expect Juan means they smile and throw their handkerchiefs at the young men.”
“The young men dress up in fancy clothes,” Maria said, trying to support Rafe’s explanation. “When I was a young girl, I thought some of them looked very handsome.”
“Did you throw your handkerchief at any of them?”
“At one or two,” she confessed. “Festival is very exciting for a young girl.”
“Can we go?” Luis asked Rafe.
“I don’t see why not.”
“Will you win something?”
“I don’t plan to enter.”
For a moment, Luis looked disappointed, but then an idea must have occurred to him. “Would you enter if Maria promised to throw her handkerchief at you?”
Maria felt herself blush; heat flooded her cheeks. She didn’t dare look at Rafe, but looking at Broc wasn’t any better. His eyes danced with amusement.
Rafe turned to Maria. “Would you like me to enter the contests?”
“That’s not for me to say,” she stammered. “I don’t know what you can do.”
“That’s not what I asked. Would you like for me to enter the contests?”
“It would make Luis happy.”
Rafe favored her with a lazy smile. “I don’t know when I’ve have so much trouble making my meaning clear. Would you like me to enter the contests?”
How could she answer that question without betraying her feelings for a man who would soon ride out of her life forever? Well, since he was going to ride out of her life, it didn’t matter what he thought about what she said. She would like to see him win some event.
“Yes, I would like for you to enter a contest.”
Rafe turned to Luis. “I think that might be sufficient reason to change my mind.”
Rafe was looking just as amused as Broc. She wanted to smack both of them, but she stayed glued to her chair. When Luis turned to her, a question in his eyes, she wished she’d gotten up and gone to do something. Even the laundry.
“Will you throw your handkerchief at Rafe if he wins?”
“I would be happy to do that, but you must not be disappointed if Rafe doesn’t win anything. He’s not as young as he used to be.”
She heard Broc whistle under his breath. She thought she could hear Rafe’s sharp intake of breath.
“Are you old?” Luis asked Rafe.
Broc’s crack of laughter earned him a dirty look. “I may be old in spirit, but I’m still young enough in body to take on your young men. What events do you think I ought to enter?”
Luis beamed. “Everything!”
“His body’s not that young,” Broc suggested. “Nobody’s is,” he added when Rafe shot him a nasty look.
“Suppose Broc and I enter everything between the two of us.”
“Wait a minute,” Broc protested. “I doubt I know half the things you people get up to out here.”
“You said Texas cowboys could do anything,” Luis reminded him.
“So he did,” Rafe said, grinning in a way that made Maria’s stomach flutter.
Broc groaned. “Wait until I tell Cade what you had me doing. It’ll be the last time he sends you to take care of business.”
Maria didn’t know what Broc was talking about, but his comment brought a very different look to Rafe’s face.
“I haven’t forgotten. I just haven’t seen an opportunity to do anything about it.”
“You haven’t given it much time.”
“Not yet, but I will.”
Luis appeared as confused by this conversation as Maria felt. She’d always wondered why Broc had come with Rafe. Maria didn’t know what the reason might be, but seeing the look that passed between the two men convinced her it was very serious.
“How soon can we go?” Luis asked.
Rafe turned to Maria, a question in his expression.
“Festival starts in ten days.”
Broc swallowed the last of his wine and got up. “I’d better start practicing. I can’t let the state of Texas down.”
“May I watch?” Luis asked.
“You’d better. You’re the reason I’m risking my neck.”
“I’ll ask Maria to throw her handkerchief at you, too.”
Broc gave a shout of laughter. “Maybe you’d better not ask Maria to throw her handkerchief at me. I want to get back to Texas alive.”
“Why doesn’t he want Maria to throw her handkerchief at him?” Luis asked Rafe.
“Broc is a flirt. He wants all the women to throw their handkerchiefs at him.”
“What would he do with so many handkerchiefs?”
Now it was Rafe’s turn to laugh. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
Maria had never been more impressed with Rafe than when he made Dolores’s actions look like those of a mother who loved her son and wanted to be with him. Now he had agreed to take part in the festival to please Luis. She knew the events weren’t easy. Some of them were dangerous. From the time he had arrived, he’d been doing things for other people. How could Dolores not have married him instead of Warren? She would have.
That thought caused her to blush furiously. When Rafe looked at her, a question in his eyes, she felt unable to remain there with her guilty thoughts practically plastered over her face. She rose. “I need to see about dinner.”
She was going to have to watch herself more carefully. If she had gone so far as to admit in her mind that she wanted to marry Rafe, there was no telling what she might do in a moment of indiscretion.
“See,” Luis said, drawing Rafe’s attention to the gaily dressed young men who rode past them on their way to Cíbola. “Everybody dresses up for festival.”
They had spent a whole evening two nights ago discussing what Broc and Rafe would wear at festival. They had ransacked every closet in the house for appropriate clothing. Rafe wanted to wear his own clothes, but Luis had insisted that they had to look as handsome as the other young men. Rafe ended up wearing a red shirt with a scarlet serape over his shoulders. Blue pants with gold embroidery from the knees to the cuffs made a striking contrast to his black saddle with its heavy silver ornamentation. A black felt hat with a red band and black feather completed his ensemble.
Determined to be equally colorful, Broc had unearthed a pair of green pants in Rafe’s closet and a bright yellow shirt. Maria thought it made him look like some kind of tropical bird, but she had to admit he looked
extremely handsome.
As they approached town, the traffic increased. Men of all ages rode past in vividly colored clothes on horses covered with bright saddlecloths and saddles and bridles studded with silver. Women rode in carriages, some open and some closed, but nearly all of the occupants stared at the passing cavalcade and waved to friends and family.
In town, they saw dozens of booths set up to sell everything from food to clothes to equipment of all kinds. Chickens in cages and sheep and cows tied to trees and posts added their voices to the cacophony. People leaned out of windows, lounged in doorways, backed up against walls to watch the parade of riders. It was festival time, and everybody wanted to see and do as much as they could.
“When do the competitions start?” Luis asked.
“Not until tomorrow,” Broc told him. “I have one more day in which to enjoy my body without bruises and broken bones.”
Luis laughed, giddy from the excitement that filled him. “Rafe said you can ride anything with hair.”
“He’s the one riding. I have to wrestle a cow to the ground.”
“Do you wrestle cows in Texas?”
“All the time—bulls, too. They don’t know enough to lie down so we can chop off—” Maria nearly broke up at Broc’s effort to avoid saying they castrated the young bulls. “We have to slap a red-hot branding iron on their flanks. You’d think they’d be more reasonable, wouldn’t you?”
“They’re no less unreasonable than the horses that try to buck us off every morning even though we rode them the day before,” Rafe added.
Rafe and Broc continued to regale Luis with tales of Texas, each trying to top the other with the absurdity of their work, until Luis was laughing so hard he had tears running down his cheeks. Maria had never seen him so happy. It made her heart ache to think how miserable he’d be when the men went back to Texas. Though it would break her heart, she was beginning to think it would be best if Rafe took Luis when he left.
“There’s the hotel,” Luis pointed out.
Rafe had promised him they would stay in the hotel where Dolores had a room. Luis was nervous about seeing his mother, but when he insisted Juan pack a suit that his mother had picked out for him, Maria knew he missed her.
“Can I have my own room?”
“Rafe has already told you there aren’t enough rooms during festival,” Broc said, showing a rare sign of impatience.
Rafe brought the buggy to a stop in front of the hotel and went inside to claim their rooms. Broc vaulted out of the vehicle, grabbed Luis, and set him down on the boardwalk. When he walked back to Maria, he flashed a wicked grin. “I’d offer to carry you, but I don’t think you’d let me.”
“You’re right. Now stop acting like you’re Luis’s age and let’s go into the hotel.”
“I liked being Luis’s age. I haven’t had this much fun since then.” He held out his hand to Maria but was jostled aside by Rafe.
“You can’t let Maria get muddy.”
There wasn’t any mud in the streets, but Rafe picked Maria up before anyone had a chance to point that out, carried her over to the boardwalk, and set her down on her feet. He had a way of disconcerting her when her defenses were down.
The awkward moment was overshadowed by a cry from somewhere nearby. Startled, Maria turned to see Dolores coming toward them at a trot, calling the name of her son in a dramatic fashion guaranteed to make people believe she was nearly overcome with emotion at being able to see Luis again. She nearly smothered him in a motherly embrace.
“Let’s go inside. I don’t like being a spectacle for the public’s entertainment.” Rafe’s voice was calm and controlled, but Maria could see the anger in his eyes. When Dolores ignored him, he pushed the two of them through the hotel doors and over to a relatively private corner of the lobby. Once there, he told Dolores, “Now that we’re out of public view, you can stop acting.”
“How can you accuse me of acting when I haven’t seen my son for over a week?” Dolores demanded. “You can’t begin to know how many hours I’ve spent wondering if he was warm and fed, if he was safe and happy.” She subjected the wiggling child to another smothering embrace.
“You might as well save your breath, my sweet. Rafe is incapable of believing any person can care that much about another.”
Maria turned to see Laveau standing at the edge of their small group, impeccably dressed, and looking slightly sinister even though he was smiling.
“A mother is not just any person. You can’t know the agony I suffered because I couldn’t see my child.”
Luis had been trying to wiggle out of Dolores’s embrace, but he stopped at those words. “You could have come to see me at the ranch.”
Maria hadn’t expected Luis to be so blunt. From the blank look on her face, Dolores hadn’t expected it, either. “I wanted to, my darling, but I couldn’t bear to go back to a place that used to be my home, knowing I could never live there again.”
“You don’t have to come inside. We can go riding. Rafe says I’m good enough to go out on my own.”
Fixing Rafe with a horrified glance, Dolores clutched Luis to her. “I never thought you would encourage this child to ride out alone.” The sob that caught in her throat was a masterpiece of insincerity. “I can’t believe you could be so cruel, so greedy, that you’d put his life in danger so you could have the entire ranch for yourself. You must come live with me,” she said to Luis. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“Why don’t you and Broc go up to our rooms,” Rafe said to Maria, his expression unchanged. “I’ll bring Luis up when he’s through visiting with his mother.”
Dolores was losing her grip on the struggling child. “I’ve hardly seen him.”
“If you want to spend more time with Luis, you can join us for a picnic,” Maria said.
“I’ll go to your picnic,” Dolores said with an air of one making a great sacrifice, “but I want him for the rest of the day. I’ll bring him back after dinner.”
“It causes me great pain to disagree with you, my sweet.” Maria wondered why her sister couldn’t hear the insincerity in Laveau’s voice. “I can endure a child in some bucolic setting where he’s able to run about and work off some of that annoying surplus of energy, but I can’t endure a child at dinner. I regret to say that I must leave you on your own.”
Luis finally succeeded in wiggling out of Dolores’s embrace. He moved next to Rafe.
“It would be best if he eats dinner with us,” Rafe said to Dolores. “He needs to get to bed early so he’ll be rested for tomorrow.”
“Rafe and Broc need rest, too.” Luis turned to his mother. “They’re going to race horses and fight bulls.”
Laveau’s smile was so haughty, Maria wanted to scratch it off his face. “Can’t resist showing off, can you?” He looked from Luis to Maria, then back again. “I wonder whom you’re trying to impress.”
“You,” Rafe said to Laveau. “I didn’t want you to think I’ve forgotten any of my skills. Or anything else.”
That must have been an unexpected answer. It took Laveau a few moments to regain his habitual appearance of disdain.
“Dear Rafe, I’m hurt that you would think I could have forgotten your many skills. I hope you don’t think I’ve forgotten what I know, either.”
“You have a remarkable mind,” Rafe said. “Unfortunately it’s cluttered with things that can hurt people.”
“It’s not my fault people are so vulnerable.”
“No, but it is your fault that you take advantage of their vulnerability.”
Laveau shrugged eloquently. “That’s the nature of things.”
“Just your nature.”
Apparently Rafe had scored another hit because Laveau’s eyes grew hard. He turned to Dolores. “As appealing as the invitation is, I believe I must forgo an afternoon spent with nasty insects and small woodland creatures. I’ll reserve our usual table for ten o’clock.” He kissed Dolores’s hand. “My eyes will be famished until then.”
Maria couldn’t believe any man actually talked like that, or that such saccharine words uttered in a patently insincere manner could cause Dolores to glow with pleasure.
“We have to change our clothes before we go on our picnic,” Rafe said to Dolores. “Will half an hour be enough time for you?”
“Not nearly enough, but I’ll hurry for my darling boy’s sake.” She tried to pat Luis’s cheek, but he moved out of reach. Dolores stepped forward, gripped him by the shoulders, and gave him a kiss. “I’m so happy to see you,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
Maria knew Luis really did miss his mother. She didn’t believe his mother had missed him at all.
Broc leaned against the wall outside their hotel room. “After that big dinner I’m so full I think I could fall into bed and not get up for two days.”
“You’ve got to fight bulls tomorrow,” Luis reminded him.
“Not fight bulls,” Broc corrected. “I’m just wrestling cows to the ground.”
“Isn’t it the same?” Luis asked.
“Not at all,” Rafe said. “Cows just try to get away. Bulls try to kill you.”
“Oh.” Luis’s eyes grew large. “Why would anyone want to fight a bull that was trying to kill him?”
“A good question,” Broc said.
“Mama says bullfights are exciting.”
“A lot of people agree with your mother,” Rafe said.
Maria thought the afternoon had been one of the most nerve-racking of her life. She had been so angry at Dolores’s postures and lies, she had been on the verge of returning to the hotel on the excuse that she needed to lie down and rest.
In addition to clutching Luis in a too-tight embrace so often he finally wouldn’t go near her, she had done her best to thwart Rafe’s attempts to make the afternoon enjoyable. A long walk was too difficult in her shoes. Climbing low cliffs and walking across the shallow stream on protruding rocks was too dangerous. Exposure to the sun was undesirable because it would ruin her complexion. Any activity more strenuous than a slow walk was too tiring. Any person talking to Luis other than herself was limiting the little time she had with her son. Maria was tempted to tell Dolores to stop pretending and go back to the hotel. Broc did tell her. She acted as though she hadn’t heard him.
Someone Like You (Night Riders) Page 18