“So the hell am I,” he muttered. “That doesn’t make me forget how to speak English and worry that I’m being watched.”
“It was just a mistake, all a mistake. Now can we go?”
“I’m going to have some answers, I warn you.” Muttering, he started the Jeep and rammed the gearshift forward.
Tess watched the rain while the night blurred outside her window.
A few minutes later, T.J. said, “You’re going to have to talk sometime.”
She sighed, watching rain hiss at the windshield.
“Don’t you want to know where you’re going?”
“You already told me. It’s a place you called Rancho Encantador.”
“That’s the one.”
“Does it have a hot tub?” Right now that’s what Tess wanted more than anything—something warm and soothing. Something so completely modern that she could not possibly forget where she was or when she was.
“Hand-assembled with saltillo tile. A waterfall runs through a little rock garden, right under the stars.”
“It sounds like heaven.” She sighed, hugging her body with her arms, fighting a wave of exhaustion. “I really appreciate your dropping me off on your way home.”
T.J. fought back a grin. “No trouble at all, Ma’am.”
There were many things that Tess had expected to see on the drive out of Almost. Ramshackle cabins with uneven roofs and no electricity. Grimy adobe homes slanting crazily against the hillside. But all she saw were saguaro cactuses that loomed up out of the darkness and cottonwood trees whispering in the wind.
Tess frowned. She didn’t consider herself a snob. There was a great deal to admire about T. J. McCall and this town of his. He was a man of bravery and honesty, but they were from entirely different worlds. The gulf between them was beyond crossing.
“How long before we reach the resort?”
“No more than five minutes.” T.J. pointed north to the foothills, where lightning raked the caps of rugged peaks.
She frowned. “It looks very isolated up there.”
“The owner likes the isolation,” T.J. said. “Now put on your seat belt. The drive can be a little rough.”
Five minutes later, Tess decided bumpy wasn’t the word for it. She’d been tossed up, down, and sideways as they hammered over a washboard dirt road until her bones screamed for mercy. Now she could see little in the darkness beyond scattered boulders.
She clutched at the window frame, trying to keep from pitching up and down. “Are we nearly there?”
“It’s just beyond those mesquite trees.”
As they rounded a bend, her breath fled.
The main building rose in curving lines and walls of windows. Lights bobbed from stenciled tin lanterns framing an oak door set into sinuous adobe walls.
“I don’t understand.” Tess pressed closer to the window. “There aren’t any cars. No one else appears to be around.”
T.J. pulled to a halt, got out of the Jeep, and swept open her door. He caught her arm as she stumbled, her vision focused on the undulating walls covered by lush crimson bougainvillea.
“Welcome to Rancho Encantador.”
Thunder rumbled, closer than before. In the wavering flash of light, Tess made out the beamed roof and a row of mesquite trees that ran along the rounded adobe fence.
A house, she thought. An amazing house of adobe and wood with a whole wall of windows.
Not a resort at all.
“I’d offer you the hot tub, but with that lightning it wouldn’t be safe. Instead, I’ll show you to your room, so you can rest.”
“You lied.”
T.J. took her suitcase from the backseat. “Yeah, I did. Now, are you coming in or not? I’m soaked enough already.”
“But—”
He was already gone, sprinting toward the open doors, where a woman in a bright red apron stood waiting, her hands on her hips.
Rain hissed across Tess’s cheeks as she took another stumbling step, peering at the vision of light and wood and adobe before her. T.J. was waiting at the carved door, which was painted sky-blue.
“Tess O’Mara, meet Maria Lopez. Maria runs my house and everything inside it, me included. Don’t be late for meals or criticize her cooking and you’ll do just fine here.”
“But—”
T.J. moved to the side and held open the heavy door. “Welcome to my ranch, Duchess.”
Tess followed, aware of the housekeeper’s narrowed gaze. She had every reason to be suspicious, given Tess’s bedraggled appearance.
Tess brushed the beautifully carved antique door, then stared at the man beside her. “This is all yours?”
His housekeeper answered first, her shoulders stiff. “Of course it is. Señor McCall works hard to see that every beam and tile is perfect.” She sniffed at the sight of T.J.’s shirt dangling over Tess’s shoulders. “Now you both will go inside. A fire is made and you will have dinner, which I have been keeping for you.”
Tess moved past, still in a daze. “It’s all yours?”
“All four thousand square feet of it. A mite big, but I figure I’ll grow into it.” He led the way through a courtyard filled with blooming plants. Tess heard the sound of water running over large stones.
“I didn’t expect anything like this.”
At the front of the house, he pushed open a massive wooden door with a high lintel. She could feel that great care and attention had been lavished on the house—something she’d never expected of the rangy sheriff.
As T.J. flipped on the light, her breath caught. Pale adobe floors flowed through a room inset with stucco niches and bleached wood beams. Tess could imagine light flowing through the tall windows onto the row of pottery set on a shelf before the curving fireplace. Brightly striped rugs of red and green were the only other items in the room.
“Do you have something against furniture?”
T.J. shut the door with his boot. “I haven’t had a lot of time for decorating. The walls were finished only last month. The beeswax took longer to rub in than we thought, but it definitely gives a nice, authentic shine.”
Tess stopped dead. In the center of the room, light scattered in sparks from a cut tin chandelier over muted peach walls. She blinked, assuming she’d misunderstood him. “Excuse me?”
“It takes a while to build a house like this. Once it’s done, a man wants to grow into it before he starts cluttering it up with things.”
“You built this house by yourself?”
“Every beam and latilla,” Maria said proudly. “Señor McCall is very good with his hands. He builds all kind of things.”
T.J. rocked back on his heels. “Actually, I had a lot of help. I expect everyone in Almost left a mark somewhere.” He ran a hand lovingly over a massive wood column. “Grady helped me peel most of the beams for the vigas in the ceiling. Mae helped me choose the layout of the windows, and Tom Martinez helped score the adobe floor. We tried to do as much as possible the old way. After all, if you’re going to build a house, you may as well do it the right way.”
Tess shook her head and tried to accept his casual explanation. This amazing house could have belonged to an industrialist or a real-estate executive.
It was certainly not what she’d expected of a laid-back, small-town sheriff.
She frowned, trying to work her mind around the reality of it. There was definitely more to the man than she had imagined. She suspected there was also more to this odd town, whose eccentric residents seemed to conceal unusual talents.
“It’s beautiful. Beyond beautiful.”
He grinned, shoving back his hat. “Some of the stucco needs to be repainted, and there’s one mural left to add in the courtyard. But I’m in no rush.”
Tess eyed the clean, fluid lines of the room and caught back a yawn.
Maria opened a door across the hall. “It is good that the lights have come back on. Now you will both come and sit,” she called. “The meal is prepared.”
“But I�
�m not—”
“You will eat,” the woman said firmly.
Tess looked at T.J., who shrugged as if this were an argument he’d given up trying to win.
“Why don’t you change while I check on things in town? I want to be sure that lightning didn’t set any fires.”
“You will please hurry,” Maria said calmly. “Señora O’Mara, you will like to sit down now.”
“Actually, it’s señorita,” Tess said, summoning her very limited knowledge of Spanish.
“Hmmmph.” The woman led the way into a room bordered by floor-to-ceiling windows. Bright woven textiles crowned a table of golden bleached pine. Tess sat down as Maria poured water and brought soup. “You will eat. The sheriff may be long at his calls.” She clucked her tongue.
There was goat cheese with sun-dried tomatoes. Then Maria brought in squash soup with chiles and roasted corn, followed by a fragrant pork stew with fresh corn tortillas. Tess felt her appetite grow in a rush as T.J. returned.
“There are problems?” Maria asked.
“Nothing beyond the usual. The fire department lost their backup generator for a while, but not too long. There doesn’t seem to be any damage to the courthouse.”
“It is good. Now you will eat.”
Half an hour later, Tess sat back, stuffed. Maria had served dish after dish, each better than the last. Finally, the stately woman smoothed her red apron and nodded. “Enough. Too much and you do not sleep—or your dreams will be evil. It is time you both went to rest.” She saw Tess hide a yawn. “Go now, before you both fall asleep over my food.”
He pushed from the table. “I’ll show you to your room.”
The bedroom was all curves leading to two sets of windows. Dried lavender hung over the doorway and a collection of antique colored glass ran along the adobe niche above the bed. T.J. put Tess’s bags in the corner. “I’m just down the hall. Call if you need anything.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” Tess took a step back, suddenly aware of his tall body only a foot away from hers. She turned down the bed, avoiding his eyes.
“You’ll have to talk about what happened outside the jail sometime. We both know it was more than disorientation from the storm.”
Tess looked away from his intense gaze. “Nothing happened, I already told you. I was just confused, but now I’m fine. Stop pushing, McCall.”
“Oh, I’ll push, Duchess. I’ll keep pushing until I have answers. If you’re feeling so wonderful, why are your hands shaking right now?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But when Tess looked down, she saw that her fingers were locked around the colorful blanket.
And her hands were shaking.
His brow rose. “You can lie to me, but you can’t lie to yourself.” Then he turned and vanished down the hall without another word, his boots echoing over the tile.
Sleep pushed at her mind as she settled beneath the cool sheets. Twig shutters covered the broad windows and a kiva fireplace held embers of fragrant mesquite to keep out the night’s chill. A row of stucco shelves filled one wall, every inch crammed tight with books. Tomorrow, Tess thought sleepily, she would think about what had happened. There had to be some sane, logical explanation.
But now the fragrant mesquite and the gurgle of water from the courtyard conspired to make her eyes droop.
She studied the huge mural on the far wall with pictographs representing hundreds of horses and fighting warriors. The figures seeming to twist and dance in the flickering glow of the embers, and Tess couldn’t pull her gaze away.
She remembered Damien Passard’s predictions. Hot skies. Red cliffs. A man who waited for her.
She might have heard an animal call in the distance.
She might have heard T.J.’s boots scrape softly outside her door.
And then she was swept down into a restless sleep.
A sharp burst of sound pulled Tess awake hours later. Moonlight drew patterns on the floor as she sat up tensely.
Once again the sound came, the scrambling of feet followed by unearthly howling. The shrill noises grew, a series of barks and howls that rose and broke in an eerie cacophony that made goose bumps rise on her arms.
She tugged a blanket around her shoulders and moved to the outer windows, but was unable to see anything. Shivering, she walked out to the living room and stopped.
T.J. was curled on a blanket in the middle of the floor, asleep before a fire that had burned down to embers in the huge kiva fireplace. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His jeans were unbuttoned and riding low on his hips.
Tess felt heat fill her face at the sight of him. She had a sudden thought that this might be some sort of bizarre dream until the unearthly howling began again.
“T.J., wake up.”
He shot up with a curse, reaching for his pillow in the same swift movement. Tess blinked as she saw moonlight glint on the dull barrel of a gun.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s something outside. Some kind of animal. Can’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
Once again the wild cacophony filled the air. “That. What in heaven’s name is it?”
T.J. ran a hand through his hair, then pushed to his feet. “Relax, Duchess.” He strode to the window and pushed back the twig shutters. More discordant notes filled the room. “It’s just coyotes. They tend to get social up here on moonlit nights.”
“Coyotes?” Tess repeated. “But they sound so unearthly.”
T.J. stood looking out. The rain had stopped and the moon was high, its cold silver light tracing his hard features. “I guess the coyotes would say the same thing about the Three Tenors.”
Tess tried not to watch the planes of muscle shift where his jeans rode low on his hips. With even less success, she tried to keep her gaze off the chiseled planes of his face, caught in a restless pattern of shadow and light by the fire.
She shivered.
Not because of the unearthly howling or the chill of the night. Here in this place she felt like a stranger to herself and all she had been. Instead of Tess O’Mara, she was a woman she barely knew, someone who stood on the brink of immeasurable discoveries. A voice whispered that the man before her would be part of those discoveries.
She remembered again what Richard’s psychic friend had said about hot skies and burning red stone.
Not this place. Not this man, Tess told herself.
“I can’t sleep, not with all that noise.”
“Then come sit before the fire.”
“I don’t think—”
“Hell, I won’t bite you.” His face was unreadable. “In case that’s what you’re worried about.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Tess sat down on the pillow he’d tugged from the window seat. It, too, was handmade in bright tapestry squares. Tess wondered whose work it was.
She realized the blanket had fallen from her shoulders. Muttering, she yanked it higher and caught the scent of wood smoke and desert wind.
And there was something else, a male scent compounded of sweat and soap.
His scent, she realized with a shiver. There was something intensely earthy about being wrapped in his blanket and enfolded in the primal beauty of this amazing house he had created tile by tile and brick by adobe brick.
Tess closed her eyes. She wasn’t going to think about T. J. McCall. She didn’t need any more disturbing visions that left her yearning for things she couldn’t name and wondering how his mouth would feel brushing hers, here in the moonlight.
“You must be chilled.” Tess felt his light touch as he wrapped another blanket around her. She had been right about that smell. It was his—all wood smoke, desert wind, and man.
The coyotes’ voices seemed to soften, to become more song than howl. She’d heard that before, too.…
Impossible. It had to be the heatstroke she’d suffered. She’d heard it could fool the mind into playing tricks on itself. She should shift away from him, put some distance between
them but the bare brush of his shoulder against her seemed to ground her, to keep her from slipping away into visions of what couldn’t possibly be.
“Talk to me,” T.J. said softly. “Tell me what happened.” He was studying her, seeing … what? “It’s still happening, isn’t it?”
She shrugged. “I’m tired, T.J. I’m still wobbly from the long drive and the heat.” A deep sigh escaped her. “And this place is magic—the mountains and the sky and the desert … I can see why so many artists and writers come to the Southwest. It invites the imagination to run wild.”
T.J. didn’t move, didn’t stop looking at her. “Imagination,” he said thoughtfully. “So where did yours run to? What did it see?”
She forced a smile and lifted her hand, gesturing toward the windows. “The mountains, the sky, the desert … and ideas to help Mae.”
He frowned and opened his mouth, then shut it again as if he wanted to challenge her answer and changed his mind. “Mae? How did she get into this conversation?”
“I spent some time with her this afternoon,” Tess said quickly, relieved that she’d thought to bring Mae into a conversation that left her distinctly uncomfortable. She didn’t want to bring him into it, to tell him that he’d been there in those odd moments spent in another time. She didn’t want this man to be the one Damien Passard has spoken of. She didn’t want to acknowledge aloud the strange bond she felt with him, growing with every minute they spent together.
“You spent some time with Mae …” he prompted.
She took a deep breath to banish the thoughts that lurked so close to the surface, focusing on the realities of the here and now of her life. “She wants to package and market some local foods and asked me for help.” Tess took hold of the excitement she’d felt that afternoon as ideas had spilled from her mind. That kind of sudden inspiration was rare and always triggered restless energy in her. “Specialty foods are my newest area, and I’ve got some great ideas, starting with an Internet promotion and a four-alarm Web site with hot recipes using Mae’s products.”
2000 Kisses Page 12
