“Yes. That is what I think.”
“Then you think wrong. My making a swing for you had nothing to do with my helping your men with their shooting and riding.”
“But—”
“I gave them jobs to do, just like you asked me to.”
“Tying strings around bundles of kindling is not—”
“It is so a job.”
“But you are making them stay in the house to do it! They need exercise, Sawyer. They have to be strong, and tying strings around sticks is not going to build up their muscles! So you can just put that in your tobacco and chew it!”
“Or I could put that in my pipe and smoke it.”
“Smoke, chew…I do not care what you do with it!”
He flicked a piece of bark off his arm. “I can’t work with your men hanging around. Just last night you were irritated that I’d only finished a few boards, and now you’re—”
“You should not have made me the swing. Such a nice thing made me believe—”
“Look, the only reason I made the swing is…” He broke off for a moment, unsure of what to tell her. He had to be careful because he sure as hell didn’t want her thinking that he’d made the swing for any sort of romantic reason. “I made it because you might need it if you ever get a sweetheart.”
The instant the words left his mind and lips he knew they’d been the wrong thing to say. Her crestfallen expression told him that. “I don’t mean if.” He tried to clarify. “I mean when. When you get a sweetheart you’ll need a swing to swing in. It’s what sweethearts do, Zafiro. Everyone knows that. You even said you’d seen sweethearts swinging in that little town you—”
“I am never going to have a sweetheart, Sawyer, and you know it.”
He did know it, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “Sure you’ll have a sweetheart. You’ll—”
“You kissed me.”
He glared at her. So she’d been awake when he’d kissed her last night, had she?
Damn her.
He drew himself up to his full height. “It was a goodnight kiss. A plain and simple, everyday, run of the mill, nothing to write home about good-night kiss.”
“You don’t say good night to Tia or Azucar by kissing them on their lips.”
Was there no end to her snappy rejoinders? “It was a damn peck.”
“I liked it.”
He wanted to know how much she’d liked it, but swore the earth would open and eat him up before he’d ask. “I’m glad you liked it, but I’m beginning to regret I ever did it in the first place. For God’s sake, Zafiro, would you just forget it? It was just a stupid kiss. Hell, it was hardly even a real kiss!”
“No? What is a real kiss like?”
It took him a moment to answer. Not because he didn’t know how to reply, but because his attention was centered on her mouth, her lips.
Pink petals. Sugar. And lemons.
God, how he would enjoy showing her exactly what a real kiss entailed.
“Sawyer?”
“I don’t want to talk about kissing anymore. Kissing and fence building… They just don’t seem to go together.” He picked up his bag of tools and walked deeper into the woods, where he’d left several felled trees.
Zafiro trailed along behind him, her sapphire swinging upon her chest. “Sawyer, why would you kiss me and make me a swing if you didn’t like me?”
“What? I never said I didn’t like you.”
“So you do like me?”
He arrived at the spot where the trees had fallen and dropped his tools onto the leafy ground. “I liked you five minutes ago.” He found his saw and began lopping off a branch from one of the trees.
“Well, if you like me then why won’t you help my men with their fighting skills?”
“Why do you think that one of the women in your little paintings might be your mother?” He didn’t even try to make a smoother change of the subject.
“I do not want to talk about the paintings—”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t want to talk about your men, so we’re even.”
She wondered how she could turn the conversation back around to her men. Her eyebrow arched high, she pulled a single leaf off the felled tree and twisted its short, slender stem between her fingers. “My father, he had many lovers. Sometimes he had their portraits done in miniature. Of course, I do not know if he had all his women painted, so there is a chance that my mother’s likeness is not one of the miniatures I have.”
Seeing that she had his attention, she smoothed the leaf across her cheek and continued. “My mother, she left me with my father and the gang when I was barely a month old. It was night, my grandfather said, and he and his men were sleeping around the fire in their camp. A baby’s cries awakened them. They found me in a basket nearby. The note attached to the basket informed my father that I was his daughter. Except for the color of my eyes, I looked very much like my father, so he and the gang accepted and named me. The men, they took very good care of me while I was growing up, and they could still take care of me if you would only work with them and teach them—”
“Oh, for God’s sake. I’ve had enough. Enough, do you hear me? You say one more word about my working with your men, and I’ll—”
“If you would only listen to the reasons why I need you to help them, you would—”
“Protection. You already told me that the day you first mentioned this harebrained idea of yours. But what the hell do you need protecting from? Besides, you’ve got a guard cougar, don’t you? And if Mariposa’s not sufficient, you can always press Jengibre into service too.”
For a moment Zafiro struggled with the deep fear that the thought of Luis always gave her. The man was coming, and she had to make Sawyer understand! “Sawyer—”
“No one can find La Escondida anyway, Zafiro. If I hadn’t seen how you got in here that day, I’d never have even noticed the concealed entrance. Hell, the Fountain of Youth would be easier to find than this lair of loony lawbreakers.”
She frowned, unable to understand what he was talking about. “The Fountain of Youth?”
He decided to capitalize upon her lack of schooling. Talking about the Fountain of Youth might possibly take her mind off her old men. “Yeah, the Fountain of Youth. There was this guy, see, and his name was Ponce de Leon. He sailed all over the seas, looking for this Fountain—”
“Stop it, Sawyer.”
“—of Youth,” Sawyer continued smoothly. “And he… Stop it? Stop what? I’m only trying to tell you the story about the Fountain of—”
“No, you are trying to make me forget about my men. You must think that I have birds in my attic.”
He couldn’t suppress a small chuckle over her idiotic choice of words. “No, but I’ve often wondered if you have bats in your belfry. Look, Zafiro,” he said, laying aside his saw and reaching out to cup her warm cheek with his hand, “I really don’t think you have a thing to worry about. If anyone ever did happen to get inside La Escondida, they’d need no more than five minutes here before almost breaking their necks trying to get out.”
She stepped away from him and peered up into his eyes. “You hate us, don’t you? You really and truly hate us.”
“Yes. I saved Pedro from death at a burning bush because I hate you. I’m trying to fix your home because I hate you. I made you a swing because I hate you. I—”
“Anyone with half a heart would have saved Pedro from burning himself up. And you are fixing my home because you said yourself that the work will strengthen your weakened muscles. And you made me a swing because…because…”
“Because why?” He arched one eyebrow while waiting for her answer.
She didn’t give him one.
“Because I don’t hate you, Zafiro,” he answered for her. “There’s no reason in the world why I had to stay up almost all night making you that stupid swing. I made it because I thought it would make you happy, and it’s as simple as that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m hot and dirty, and I’m go
ing to take a dip in the stream.”
Untying the bandanna from around his neck as he walked, Sawyer headed toward the stream. By the time he reached the splashing, sun-sparkled water, he’d undone the top of his breeches and pulled them halfway down.
Moments later he dove into the lively creek. As the water enveloped and cooled his hot, bare skin, he exhaled and felt a burst of bubbles rush over his face as they rose to the surface. Opening his eyes beneath the water, he saw a cluster of aquatic plants oscillating in the current like little green people swaying in rhythm. In a flash of silver, a school of minnows shot past his face, and then he saw pebbles float down all around him.
More small stones pinged through the surface, making splashing sounds and drifting through the water all around the area where he swam.
Someone was throwing the pebbles at him.
He lifted his head out of the stream and looked toward the bank, where he saw Zafiro clutching a handful of tiny rocks.
She threw more at him, satisfied when a few popped off the top of his head. “If you think you can escape me by going for a swim, Sawyer Donovan, then something else is arriving.”
On his knees in the stream, he swiped water out of his eyes. “And you’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m going to listen to another word about your men’s long-lost abilities. Now, leave me alone.”
“No.”
“Fine. Stand there and watch then.”
She did, and smiled appreciatively when he dove back into the stream and she saw his sleek, bare body skimming through the water right beneath the surface. His hair flowed behind him, over his back. It had grown since he’d first come to La Escondida and now fell well past his shoulders.
He came up for air then. Water sparkled on his skin, a few droplets sliding off his face, down his throat, and pooling in the hollow beneath his Adam’s apple.
She looked at his eyes, his lion eyes, and saw that he was staring straight back at her with a bold and steady gaze that brought to life inside her that now-familiar feeling of need and yearning and warmth.
“Like what you see?” Sawyer asked, smug over the intense manner with which she examined him.
“I have seen you naked before, Sawyer. And yes, I liked what I saw then, and I like it now. That warm feeling of wanting something comes to me. I do not feel any satisfaction from the need you make me feel, but the feeling is not uncomfortable.”
He decided then that her candor was one of the things he liked best about her. That, and her eyes, her smile, her breasts, her legs…
Her unique and absolutely captivating combination of innocence and passion.
Except for her obnoxious insistence that he work with her men, there wasn’t much he didn’t like about Zafiro.
“Are you getting in?” he asked when she pulled off her boots and peeled off her stockings.
“No.” Hiking her skirt up to her thighs, she stretched her legs toward the water, wiggling her toes and ankles when the cool stream lapped over her feet and splashed over her calves. “I only want to put my feet in.”
Sawyer formed no reply. Indeed, speaking seemed an impossible thing, and it wasn’t only Zafiro’s legs that stole his voice.
The woman wore not a stitch of undergarments!
Her knees were slightly raised above the sand, her legs opened just a bit.
But far enough open to afford Sawyer a tantalizing, heart-stopping, pulse-pounding view of her darkly shadowed pearly-pink femininity.
Moisture drenched his face, but it wasn’t stream water.
It was sweat. The sheen of a desire so wild that if Sawyer had been standing, he’d have fallen into the water and drowned.
He moaned, a deep involuntary sound that rumbled from his chest like a roll of thunder from a distance.
“Sawyer?” Zafiro looked at him, alarmed when she saw an expression of pure agony on his handsome face. “What’s the matter? I heard you groan. Are you in pain?”
Of the worst kind, he answered silently.
“Sawyer? What is wrong?” she asked again. “Is something biting you?”
The second she asked the question, fear and panic almost strangled her. She’d seen water snakes in the stream on more than one occasion.
There was no time to go for Tia’s help. She had to save Sawyer herself.
She jumped to her feet and, wasting not a second to take off her clothes, she threw herself straight into the water, alternately swimming and walking on her knees to get to Sawyer. When she reached him she grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself next to him.
The feel of her soft breasts as they flattened against his chest sent Sawyer straight over the edge of restraint. Wrapping his arms around her tiny waist, he hauled her even closer and lowered his head toward her face, his lips toward hers—
“Do not fight me, Sawyer!” Zafiro cried, knowing in her soul that he was trying to save himself by hanging on to her. Desperately, she pushed at his chest, praying that he would cooperate with his own rescue. “I know what is wrong, but if you will just relax and let me pull you in—”
“Pull me in?” He smiled into her wide, blue-fire eyes. “Zafiro—”
“I am trying to save you!” Dios mío, the snakebite was making him crazy, she realized. He couldn’t even understand what she was trying to do for him!
Again she tried to squirm free of his hold on her, to no avail. Flailing her arms, she then began to try to beat him away from her so she could pull him out of the water.
He fended off her puny attempts to subdue him as easily as if she were a child. Catching both her wrists in one hand, he used his other arm to hold her against him, close, close enough to force her to feel what her beauty, her blatant, yet innocent sexuality had done to him.
She gasped in honor when she felt the hard, round length of the water snake against her belly. And the stiff creature had situated itself right between poor Sawyer’s thighs! Even now the scaly beast was injecting more and more of its poison into one of Sawyer’s legs!
She had to pull the reptile off before more of its venom flowed into Sawyer’s limb. With only a fleeting thought to her own safety, she pulled her hand from Sawyer’s grasp and plunged it into the water. Taking hold of the horrible serpent, she pulled with every shred of strength she possessed.
“Dear God!” Immense pain shooting through his loins and filling his lower belly with fire, Sawyer let go of Zafiro and fell back into the water. His eyes squeezed shut, his shallow breaths hissing between his clenched teeth, he covered his groin with his hands, prayed for death, then staggered to his feet and doubled over at the waist.
“Sawyer!” Zafiro waded toward him, taking his head in her arms when she reached him.
“I’m dying,” he moaned.
“Oh, Sawyer, I tried to get it off you! I pulled as hard as I could, but… Oh, Dios mío, the snake has killed you!”
Somehow, the word snake slithered past Sawyer’s pain and registered in his mind. He managed to rise from his doubled-over position, and when he was standing he looked down at Zafiro.
But she did not look up at him. Instead, she gazed downward, toward his groin, where a flesh-colored, stafflike thing was poking out from between his hands.
It was the most peculiar-looking “snake” she’d ever encountered. “Sawyer… I… What… That is not a snake… That is your…Santa Maria!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he thundered. She didn’t answer. She only stared.
And right before her very eyes the thick, flesh-colored “snake” shriveled in Sawyer’s hands.
“Sawyer, it is shrinking!”
“Well, what do you expect?” Sawyer roared. “You damn near pulled it off!”
Although she comprehended precisely what she’d done, she remained bewildered. “I…I did not know, Sawyer! Your man part—I have not seen it look like that, big and hard and tall. I have only seen it when it was the way it is now, soft and limp and short—”
“Never mind!” he yelled, not cari
ng at all for her less-than-flattering description of his masculinity. He sank back down into the water so she could only see his head and upper chest. “Why the hell did you try to yank it—”
“I told you! I thought it was a snake! I…I thought a water snake had gotten hold of your thigh and was biting—”
“A snake?”
She saw that he was looking at her as if she were the stupidest human being walking the earth. “You think that my three loaded oxen do not have enough bricks, don’t you?”
A full minute passed before he figured out what she was trying to say. “I think you’re dumb as an ox and that you’re three bricks short of a load.”
She bit her bottom lip. “You… You really do, don’t you?”
“What? No! I was only untangling the two expressions you—”
“You are mad at me.”
“Mad? What gave you that idea? You only tried to turn me into a woman! Why would that make me mad?”
“I am sorry.”
“All right.”
She could tell that he was still annoyed. “What else do you want me to do? Promise that if I had pulled it off, I would have gotten you a new one?”
Her ridiculous offer incensed him. That she could take so lightly…that she could stand there and make wisecracks about the fact that she’d almost gelded him…
Well, it was just too much for a man to bear. Turning from her, he dove into the water and swam downstream.
“I said I was sorry,” Zafiro murmured. She watched him until he disappeared around the winding curve in the creek, then waded out of the water and picked up her boots and stockings.
As she walked into the woods she thought about Sawyer’s man part again. Why had it grown so thick and big the way it had?
A sudden thought made her stop.
And then she began to run, hastening toward the house as quickly as her feet could carry her.
Only one person she knew of could and would answer the question concerning the strange change of Sawyer’s man part.
Azucar.
“Zafiro!” Azucar exclaimed, looking up from her hand mirror, in which she’d been admiring her reflection. “You scared me, coming into the house and slamming the door like that. What is the matter?”
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