He had enjoyed working for Cade, but here he was the leader. Everyone looked to him to make the decisions that would determine their futures. He’d said he didn’t want that responsibility, that he wanted to forget his job the minute he got out of the saddle, but he was discovering that wasn’t true. He enjoyed discussing ideas with the workers. He got real pleasure from seeing their happiness when he accepted one of their ideas. He enjoyed long evenings talking with Miguel about the current problems, about plans for the future. The more he learned, the more he wanted to know. The more he knew, the more ideas he had. He looked forward to each day.
Luis was responsible for part of that. He wouldn’t allow Luis to neglect his school work, but the boy rode with him every day. His curiosity was boundless and his enthusiasm infectious. He was as interested in the people as he was in the crops. He was beginning to develop friendships with boys his own age and be a spoiled visitor at their homes. The only worrisome element was his unceasing begging for a bigger pony, for a real horse.
But the most important part of Rafe’s happiness was his relationship with Maria. He didn’t want to admit it, but he might be falling in love. He couldn’t understand how he had ever felt he was so hopelessly in love with Dolores. What he felt for Maria was stronger and different. There was nothing desperate about it, yet his feelings were so powerful that they were changing him in ways nothing in the last ten years had done.
Dolores didn’t irritate him so much any longer. The stories that reached him from Cíbola caused him to shrug rather than fall into a rage. He could ignore her attempts to disparage his character or to convince people he was an unfit custodian for Luis. Most important, thinking of her betrayal no longer had the power to invade his dreams and keep him awake. Maria was slowly turning Dolores into a fading memory.
His attitude toward his father was also changing. Listening to Miguel and Maria had painted a picture of a man who had paid dearly for his mistake. Rafe would never know whether pride had kept his father from trying to find him or whether it was fear Rafe would refuse to return. It had taken Rafe a long time to realize it, but the love they had shared was strong enough to have overcome the bitterness of their separation. For the first time, he was able to remember the good times, to balance them against the betrayal. Much to his surprise the good times came out on top.
But Maria herself had brought about the greatest change because she had enabled him to feel love again. And to accept it. He had stripped Dolores’s room of its furniture and turned it into an office where he consulted with Miguel during the day and with Maria after Luis had gone to bed. He preferred it to the rooms downstairs because it offered privacy, which allowed him to hug and kiss Maria without fear of anyone walking in on them. This had become his favorite room and this his favorite part of the day.
It was impossible not to compare his reaction to the two sisters. Dolores’s beauty had so overwhelmed him, he couldn’t see anything else. He worshipped the sight of her. His youth and innocence had endowed her with virtues that lived only in his mind. In retrospect he realized he had fallen in love with a creature of his imagination.
Not so with Maria. Her innate goodness had attracted him from the beginning. Even her blind allegiance to Dolores took on positive attributes in his mind. She didn’t always agree with him, but she always believed in him.
Then there was the fact that she liked being hugged and kissed as much as he liked hugging and kissing her. There were times when Rafe felt their backlog of emotion might overwhelm them, obliterate all vestiges of common sense. There had been times when he hoped it would.
He was released from the tyranny of his thoughts when Maria entered the office. He kissed her before she could utter a word.
Maria’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “I don’t think Miguel would consider that a proper prelude to a business discussion.”
“He would if he were thirty years younger and had found someone like you.”
Rafe slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. He enjoyed few things as much as the way she seemed to melt into his embrace. He loved the way she came willingly, with no reluctance or pretense, no need to be persuaded. She never asked for more than he was willing to give, never tried to keep him at arm’s length. She allowed him to set the parameters of their relationship. He’d never imagined a woman could be like this. Maria slipped her arms around his neck and looked up at him.
“I don’t think Miguel would agree to meet a woman behind closed doors. He’s much too proper for that.”
“Thank goodness my father was an Anglo who didn’t saddle me with the Spanish tradition of extreme formality. Think of how much we’d miss.”
Rafe worried about how much he’d missed because of his bitterness over Dolores. If he had lived like a normal man, he wouldn’t have come to Maria as a man who’d never been with a woman. He wasn’t sure he knew how to take their relationship beyond the kissing and holding stage without doing something that would hurt or upset her. Having no carnal experience with women, he didn’t know how important that would be to a relationship between a man and a woman. He grew up being told a woman tolerated a man’s attentions for the sake of her husband’s needs and for children.
Every male knew the basics of how to handle a relationship with a woman, but Rafe wasn’t so stupid that he thought it was all about physical gratification. A woman needed to feel wanted, needed, appreciated, not that she was being used simply as the object of a man’s desire. He had listened to enough youthful confessions from young soldiers missing their wives or the girls they were courting to know there were more ways to get it wrong than there were to get it right.
“I didn’t feel I’d missed anything really important until I met you,” Maria told him. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known.”
“For a long time I was so angry and bitter, I didn’t want to risk caring about anyone. Every time I listened to a man talk about his troubles with his wife or his young woman, I congratulated myself on being smart enough to cut myself off from feeling. If my father hadn’t died, I might never have known things could be different for me.”
He kissed Maria. It wasn’t the same as kissing Dolores. His feelings for Dolores were hot and desperate and impatient. He couldn’t think of anything else, didn’t want to think of anything else. His world gradually closed out the universe until it focused so tightly on one person he felt there was no one else in the universe. He bounced between excessive highs and lows until he felt he was about to self-destruct.
When he learned of Dolores’s betrayal, he did.
His feelings for Maria were warm and comforting with no swings, just a steady glow that was gradually changing his pain and bitterness into a withering memory that no longer had the power to leach all the joy from his life. The nourishing warmth of Luis’s happiness and Maria’s goodness were slowly banishing the dark shadows that had hung over him for years. Whenever they threatened to reassert their hold, all he had to do was look at Maria, touch her hand, receive the gift of her smile. Whenever something caused him to remember his father’s dishonorable conduct, he reminded himself that having Luis for a brother went a long way toward balancing out that betrayal.
Maria pulled back from his kiss, eyed him with a questioning smile. “You seem more intense today. If you hold me any tighter, I’ll end up with bruised ribs.”
“Sorry.” Rafe loosened his hold. “There are times when I feel that by holding on to you I can see life more clearly.”
Maria seemed surprised. “How? I’ve made mistakes of my own.”
Rafe brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Trying to see the best in your sister wasn’t a mistake because you didn’t let it harm Luis or my father.”
“I wasn’t talking about just that.”
Rafe kissed her on the end of her nose. “Rosana, Juan, and Miguel have nothing but praise for you. Luis loves you dearly, and you conquered Broc the first night.”
Maria laid her head on his shoulder. �
�You weren’t so ready to be conquered.” She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “And I don’t presume that I’ve conquered you yet.”
“You conquered my fear of opening myself to the possibility of love.”
“I think Luis is responsible for that more than I am.”
“What I feel for Luis isn’t the same as what I feel for you.”
Maria lowered her gaze. “I don’t know your feelings for me because we don’t talk about them. I don’t even know what your feelings for Luis are. Sometimes I think you see him as a toy to play with as long as you are here. You like to do things for him—buy him a pony and give him freedoms beyond what I’ve allowed him, but it’s hard to believe you love him as a brother when you intend to go back to Texas and never see him again.”
“Luis’s future is here. I would be doing him a great disservice if I took him to Texas with me.”
“Why don’t you ask him what he wants? He might not care for this ranch any more than you do.”
Rafe let his hold slip from around Maria to take her hands in his. “It’s not that I don’t care for this ranch, but it’s not my home any longer. Why would I want the responsibility for anything as large as this ranch?”
“Because it was a home you used to love. Because there are many people who depend on this ranch, and no one can do a better job of making it successful than you.”
Releasing her right hand, Rafe used his free hand to bring her gaze back to him. “I’m not doing this only because it’s what I want. I’m doing it because I think it’s right.”
“Maybe for you, but what if it’s not right for anyone else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Luis will be heartbroken when you leave. No matter what explanation you or I offer, he’ll think you left because you like being with your friends in Texas more than being with him.”
“Is that how you feel?”
Maria broke away and walked a few steps before turning to face Rafe. “I don’t know what you think or feel about me. We spend hours together, but I don’t know if you’re interested in more than friendship or whether I’m just a woman to fill in for someone back in Texas.”
“There’s no one back in Texas.”
“So what does that make me? I feel like the pony you bought for Luis, like you’re using me to relearn how to be in a relationship before moving on to someone who will really matter.”
Rafe wasn’t any good at expressing his feelings—he didn’t even know what they were half of the time—but he suddenly realized one thing: He was in love with Maria. He probably had been in love with her for days, maybe even weeks. Broc had seen it. Why hadn’t he? How could he have planned on going back to Texas without knowing he wanted to take her with him, without knowing he couldn’t leave her behind? How could he have made such a monumental mess of things? He crossed the distance between them, took Maria’s hands in his grasp again.
“I’ve never thought of you as a substitute for anyone. You’re the most remarkable woman I’ve ever known. There’s no limit to your kindness, your willingness to give of your time. You never think of yourself, only of others, even when they’re unworthy and ungrateful. You have boundless energy and never back down from a challenge. You have so much tolerance and patience, you make me feel like I have no right to any of your time or affection. You’ve bent over backwards to put up with me and my bad moods. You never complain about the changes I’ve made even when they’ve made your work harder.”
Maria’s laugh was nervous and shaky. “Are you sure you haven’t mistaken me for someone else? Not even Luis thinks that much of me.”
“That would be impossible. There is no one else like you. I can’t believe I was so fortunate to find you.”
Maria swallowed twice. “I need to know what you’re going to do about all these wonderful qualities.”
Rafe decided he’d have to spend a lot of time studying how Cade related to his wife when he got back to Texas. It was hard to believe Maria had no idea he was in love with her. “Don’t you understand? I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That I want to marry you. I want you to go back to Texas with me.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Maria was just as inexperienced in matters of the heart as Rafe, but that didn’t mean she was inexperienced enough to believe hugs and kisses were the same thing as a proposal of marriage.
“No, I didn’t know you wanted to marry me,” she managed to respond at last. “Nor did I know you wanted to take me back to Texas.”
Rafe looked surprised. “What do you think I’ve been doing these last few weeks?”
Surely he must realize that if he wanted a woman to know he wished to marry her, it was necessary to say the actual words.
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing, but I’ve been allowing myself to enjoy the attentions of a man I found attractive and admirable. You may say that’s not appropriate for a respectable woman, but I’m not a young girl who needs protection or someone to think for her.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just meant, how could you think that I would act this way toward you, then simply walk away?”
She stamped her foot. “Because you never said anything! Not even a child would believe a few hugs and kisses constitute a pledge of lifetime devotion.”
Rafe’s faced clouded over. “I guess I’m a child, because I thought they did.”
She found it hard to believe a thirty-year-old man could believe such a thing. It was incredible unless…a surprising thought occurred to her. “Have you kissed anyone but me since Dolores?”
“I was never interested in any woman before Dolores. After her, I didn’t want anything to do with women at all.”
“I can’t believe women weren’t attracted to you.”
“Some were, but I didn’t return their interest.”
“You’re a hard man to understand. You don’t talk about your feelings. Broc may understand you well enough to know what you’re thinking, but you have to put things into words for me.”
Rafe pulled her against him. “Then listen very carefully. I want to marry you and take you back to Texas.” His smile revealed both humor and desire. “Is that clear enough?”
She nodded. “I think I can understand that.”
She found it difficult to believe he actually wanted what she wanted. She felt stunned, unable to assimilate the change in their relationship. She had occasionally allowed herself to think of being married to Rafe, but she’d never once considered moving to Texas.
“Do I get an answer?”
Rafe was looking a little anxious. It was just like a man to drop something like that out of the blue and expect an immediate answer.
“I haven’t had time to think about it.”
Her answer apparently surprised him. “Does that mean you don’t want to marry me?”
“It means I haven’t had time to think about it.”
He looked perplexed. “I thought a woman would know something like that.”
She could hear the frustration in his voice, but she was so stunned by his proposal, she didn’t know what to say. It would mean uprooting Luis and leaving Dolores. What about the ranch? Would they travel back and forth, would he hire someone to run it, or would he sell it? Her head was swirling so, she needed to sit down. “How can I give you an answer to that question without time to think it through? There are hundreds of things to be considered.”
He didn’t release her hands, but she could feel him beginning to withdraw from her. “It seems I’m not very good at this. Maybe I’m a fool, but I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you. I have for weeks.”
Now he looked really confused. “But if you love me, why won’t you marry me?”
“I haven’t said I won’t marry you, just that I haven’t had time to think about the hundreds of things we need to consider.”
He looked relieved. “I don’t need time. Knowing you love me is enough.”
“Have you considered all the changes that will occur in your life? In my life? And what are we going to do with Luis?”
“Take him with us.”
“What about the ranch?”
“I’ll let the lawyer manage it.”
“But what about—”
Rafe stopped her protest with a kiss that was so sweet, so filled with gentle passion, she forgot all her questions. Right now all she wanted to do was luxuriate in the knowledge that he loved her and wanted to marry her. She could loosen the restraints she’d put on her heart. She could set her imagination free, let hope soar, give wing to her happiness. Rafe loved her. He wanted to marry her. He wanted to take her to Texas so they would never be separated.
Buoyed by the feeling of happiness that enveloped her, by the sense of well-being that permeated every part of her body, by the physical need to be as close to him as possible, Maria allowed herself to kiss him back the way she’d been wanting to kiss him since the first time he’d kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her body against his, and covered his mouth with needy eagerness.
In her inexperience, she’d underestimated the strength of the feelings, desires, dreams, hopes—all the things she’d buried inside because she thought she’d never need them. Everything came exploding to the surface. It seemed the force behind them was in direct proportion to the years she’d waited. The impact was making her a different person.
This new Maria wasn’t afraid to acknowledge what she wanted, wasn’t reluctant to demand that she get it. She didn’t wait for Rafe to deepen their kiss, ratchet up its intensity, or decide its length. Nor did she wait for him to pull her firmly against him so she could feel the hardness of his muscles, the breadth of his chest, the strength in his arms.
Someone Like You (Night Riders) Page 25