The Ranchers: Destiny Bay Romances Boxed Set vol. 1 (Destiny Bay Romances - The Ranchers)

by Helen Conrad

  She was fuming by now, almost sure that he meant to do nothing to harm her, but still harboring the tiniest doubt.

  “I’m sorry I ever came to your stream,” she hissed at him. “If you’ll just turn your head, I’ll get out of it and off your land.”

  “Turn my head?” His gaze dropped deliberately and she squirmed, knowing he could see much too much through the crystal-clear water. “But then I wouldn’t get another look at your lovely body.”

  She’d been hoping he wouldn’t bring up just how much of her he’d already seen. If he hadn’t said anything, she might have been able to pretend she’d forgotten herself. She hoped her glare was as ferocious as she felt.

  “That is precisely the idea,” she informed him. “It’s only fair.”

  “No.” He shook his head slowly. “I won’t agree to that.”

  He tilted his head back as though to get a better look at her, narrowing his eyes against the filtered sunlight. The drops of water caught among his thick black lashes looked like diamonds. His broad shoulders rose from the surface of the water looking strong and tanned, evidence that he’d already been getting a lot of sun this summer.

  She wished she could keep her mind off just how attractive he was. She wasn’t afraid of him--not exactly. Not afraid that he would do anything to her against her will. But she was disturbed by him, by this situation. He was a Santiago. She was supposed to hate him. It was family tradition. Instead, here she was, wishing . . . Oh no, she couldn’t admit that, even to herself. Her pulse was racing, beating a crazy rhythm in her throat. She had to make a retreat as quickly as possible.

  “Be fair,” she repeated stubbornly and he smiled.

  “Fair,” he whispered softly, musing over the word. Suddenly, he dropped her wrists and took her face between his hands, studying her as though she were something new to him. She found herself staring up into his eyes, wondering what she would do if he were to lower his wide, finely etched mouth to kiss her.

  Instead, he spoke and she felt a traitorous flutter of disappointment.

  “What’s your name, water sprite? And where did you ride in from?”

  She hesitated, wondering if he would recognize her by her given name. But there was no spark of recognition in his eyes. He’d obviously not connected her with his own history. And she doubted very much he would remember the one time they’d met before.

  “Shawnee,” she told him at last.

  “Shawnee.” He rolled the name across his tongue and smiled, still holding her. “It fits you.” He glanced up on the bank to where her horse stood quietly waiting, his ears pricked forward as though listening for her return. “I don’t remember seeing you, or your horse, around here before. Are you just passing through, or are you here to stay?”

  How could she go into all the circumstances of her life standing here, naked, talking to this man? “I’ve told you my name,” she said as firmly as she was able, “and that’s enough.”

  He grinned, threading his strong fingers into her wet hair. “I’m David Santiago, water sprite. My family owns this land you’re swimming on. And I’m not going to ravish you, tempting as that may be.” He drew back, letting her go. “I’m setting you free. My only condition is that you finish the swim I interrupted. And I’ll do the same.”

  With a casual salute, he dived away from her, and she watched him go, his body brown and shimmering under the water, while relief wrestled with some unnamed emotion for control of her mind. Her first impulse was to scramble up the bank and run for Miki, but she realized that would lead to a Lady Godiva act even more embarrassing than the Venus Rising from the Sea part she’d just played. And, sad to say, she didn’t quite have the hair for it.

  Besides, she whispered to herself, a Carrington wouldn’t run from a Santiago. So she moved about in the cold water, pretending to be having the swim of her life, and all the while, every nerve in her body was carefully tuned towards the man who splashed it the other side of the pool, aware of everything he did without ever actually looking fully at him.

  What would her grandfather think of this, she wondered suddenly, biting her lip. He’d trained her against the Santiagos. She was pretty certain he would consider it consorting with the enemy. And in the war between the two families, that wouldn’t be condoned.

  She sighed, shoulders sagging. Not back a full day, and already thrust right into the midst of it again. She’d forgotten how strong the emotion could be, how much of her life had been consumed with bitterness towards the people who had stolen the Carrington land.

  These last few years, living and working in Marin County, three hundred miles to the north, she’d had other things to occupy her mind. That was one of the reasons she’d moved north in the first place, to get away from all this. But now, since the small plane accident that had taken her parents just a few years before, Granpa Jim was all she had left, besides her sister Lisa, married to a local dairy farmer.

  It had been a telephone call from Lisa that had brought her back from her self-imposed exile in Marin County where she’d been working as a library assistant for the last few years. She thought about that conversation now as she moved through the cool water. It was almost as though she’d been waiting for an excuse to come home. She’d certainly jumped at the chance when it was offered.

  “How is he?” she’d asked, as she always did. “How’s Granpa?”

  Lisa had let out a long sigh. “As well as can be expected, I suppose. He doesn’t really care much any more. Well, he is in his eighties. I guess he should be allowed to let go. But he’s getting to the point where he’s going to need full-time help. And . . . well, I do think his mind is starting to slip.”

  Shawnee’s hands had felt icy cold. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s more than the usual drivel about Rancho Verde and how the Santiagos stole his land. He’s started seeing things.”

  Shawnee remembered feeling a strange calm coming over her, as though she’d known a struggle was coming to an end. Her way was becoming clear. “What kind of things?”

  “Some of them are pretty weird and nebulous. The other day he insisted there was someone in the house trying to get him to sign some papers.”

  She found herself nodding. “How do you know it wasn’t true?”

  “Come on, Shawnee. What would anyone be trying to get him to sign? It’s all crazy.”

  She’d shrugged that away. “Is it?”

  “You know it is. He really does need more looking after. I run over at least once a day, but Brad needs me here and he gets peeved if I spend too much time over there.”

  “Of course. You’ve got a dairy to run. How are the cows?”

  Lisa’s voice rose with her annoyance like the mercury on a thermometer. “The cows are fine. The cows are great.” Her quick breath echoed along the phone line. “Really, Shawnee, I don’t know why you persist in imagining me to be some sort of modern-day milkmaid. There’s a lot more to the dairy business than milking the cows. We do have machines for that, you know. There are more important things for me to do. There are contacts to be made, images to project. It’s not all as earthy and basic as you imagine. You ought to come down and see for yourself.”

  Yes, Shawnee agreed silently. I ought to do that. It had been five years since she’d left the sleepy Destiny Bay back country valley and moved north. Maybe it was time to go home.

  “Does he ever ask for me?”

  “Who?”

  “Granpa Jim.”

  There was a pause. “Yes. Yes, he does.”

  “What does he say?”

  Lisa sighed, and Shawnee heard affectionate resignation in the sound. “You know how he is. He hasn’t seen you much lately, so he thinks you’re still about seventeen. He’s sure you’re the only one who ever understood about Rancho Verde and he thinks you’ll still want to hang around and listen to all his old stories like you did when you were a kid. He misses you. He thinks you’re the only one who cares.”

  “Maybe he’s right,” Shaw
nee whispered, knowing that was hardly fair to her sister who had done all the outright caring for five long years, but knowing Lisa had never shared her grandfather’s memories the way she did herself.

  “What?”

  “I’m coming down.”

  “Oh. For a visit?”

  “To stay.” Her mind was made up. She should have done it long ago. When she’d begun working with Miki, she’d begun to dream of what they could accomplish together. Miki was ready, but Shawnee had been putting off making the commitment. Now there was no room left for excuses. It was time to put it to the test.

  “To stay? But…”

  “I’ll stay with Granpa Jim. It’s time I came, don’t you think?”

  And here she was, back home, and with her had come the horse that she hoped would help Granpa Jim win a moral victory over the Santiagos, something to return the glow to his face, something to cherish before he died.

  But first she had to find a way to pull herself out of this thoroughly embarrassing situation. She’d been in the water long enough. In fact, her fingers were turning into skinny little prunes. It was high time to make a getaway. If she could only think of a clever way to do it!

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHY MAIDENS AND CABALLEROS

  David lay back and let the water rush past him. Funny. That sounded like the story of his life. Lately he felt as though time was a river and he couldn’t seem to launch a boat in it.

  Maybe things would have felt different if he hadn’t gone away to university in the East. Maybe he would have been satisfied with life here in this backwater part of the state if he hadn’t gone away for so long. Maybe he would have been satisfied with nothing changing, with life on a slow boat to nowhere. Maybe.

  But he had gone back East and he’d found out a lot about himself—that he was damn good at a lot of things. His friends were all on their way to important, exciting careers in engineering or computer science. And here he was, back at the ranch.

  This was what he’d been born for. That was what his father had always said. But he’d never expected his father would die so soon and leave all the responsibility on his shoulders. He was restless. He couldn’t deny it. He had a vague feeling that something had to give. Glancing over at the beautiful girl who had jumped so providentially into his life, he wondered briefly if she could be the catalyst for something new. Might be. Time would tell.

  David hadn’t said a word to Shawnee for at least ten minutes, so when he spoke, she turned towards him, surprised to see that he’d pulled himself up out of the water and was sunning on a huge boulder on the far side of the stream.

  Quickly, she turned her gaze away from his shiny flesh.

  “How did you find this place?” he was asking curiously. “I didn’t think anyone else knew it was here.”

  She hesitated, the truth on the tip of her tongue. But no. She didn’t want to tell him who she really was. And she didn’t want to lie. So she evaded the issue.

  “You didn’t really think you could keep a place like this a secret, did you?” Her voice had a low, husky quality and she didn’t know why that was, but it seemed right for the setting, so she didn’t try to change it. “I’ll bet this has been a secret hideaway for lots of people, since the days of the earliest settlers.”

  Now why had she put it that way? He’d think she meant it was a place for lovers to meet, and that wasn’t the point she wanted to make at all.

  “You’re probably right.”

  She didn’t look fully at him, but she could tell he’d shifted his position. His voice took on a dreamy quality that might have surprised her if she’d been paying more attention.

  “Who knows? Maybe we’re re-enacting history here.”

  “Oh?” She was edging her way towards the shore, wondering with half a mind how she could make a run for it with the least public display of skin, trying to keep track of what he was saying with the other half. “In what way?”

  He was leaning out over the water now, his chin in his hand. “Can’t you picture it?” he asked musingly. “The lovely Indian maiden---” He cocked an eyebrow at her, the devilish gleam in his eyes hardly shuttered at all, “—that’s you—swimming in the waterfall, her inky-black hair spread out around her. She’s stolen away from her tribe to find a moment’s privacy, to think, to dream.”

  “To get clean,” Shawnee countered drily. She couldn’t tell for sure if he was teasing her, or if he really enjoyed gazing back into the past, but she wasn’t going to let him catch her flat-footed. “And my hair’s not inky.”

  He frowned his disapproval for her mundane view of history.

  “She’s stolen time to dream,” he said firmly. “As she floats in the water, she hears the sound of hoof beats coming closer—closer.”

  “And she runs for her life,” Shawnee offered.

  David sighed with mock impatience. “She does nothing of the sort. She waits, alert, sensing somehow that this visitor is going to be someone who will change her life.”

  He was surprising her with this turn for the romantic. She would never have guessed he had stories like this floating around in his head. She found herself fighting hard to hold back her curiosity.

  “And the visitor?” she asked with attempted casualness.

  “The visitor is a tall, handsome caballero on a black stallion, newly arrived from Spain.”

  She couldn’t resist a chuckle at that. “Gee, I couldn’t guess who this handsome guy might be.”

  David threw her a mock glare. “It’s me, of course. Who else?” He narrowed his eyes, looking back in time. “He’s dressed in dark twill pants with silver buttons lining the seams. His white linen shirt is open at the neck, and a red sash is tied about his waist.”

  Shawnee smiled, remembering that she’d seen David dressed exactly that way in a Californio Days parade years before. He’d been riding a palomino, though. She’d thought at the time he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen, even if he was a Santiago.

  “And what happens when he arrives?” She was caught up in the story now, intrigued and moving towards the boulder he was reclining on rather than away, looking straight into David’s dark eyes, totally forgetting that the two of them were naked as the day they’d been born.

  “He reins in his horse, seeing the lovely girl in the water. For a long moment, they gaze at one another. The girl feels no fear. The caballero can hardly believe his eyes. Slowly, he slides down off the horse and walks towards the stream.”

  “And then?” Her voice sounded breathless, but she hardly noticed.

  “He’s been on a long voyage from Spain, and an even more tiring trip on horseback up from Mexico. It’s been a long, long time since he’s seen a woman, especially one as beautiful as the girl he sees before him. For a moment, he thinks she must be a mirage. He goes down on one knee to take up a handful of water and drink, his eyes never leaving her.”

  Somehow Shawnee had come close enough so that David could easily reach out and take a strand of her wet hair in his fingers, but she had no inclination to stop him, or to move away again.

  His voice was so low now, it was almost a whisper. “She moves toward him in the stream, as though drawn by an irresistible force. He can see her naked body through the clear water, her rounded breasts, her white thighs. He can hardly breathe. Suddenly he needs her more than he needs the water to slake his thirst.”

  David’s eyes were dark, but it was a misty darkness that pulled her in and let her wander like a lost thing in a fog. She felt as though she could stare into them forever and never, ever get bored.

  “Then what happened?” she whispered when he didn’t go on.

  But the mood had shifted. David was staring back at her, and suddenly she had the idea that something about what he saw disturbed him. When he finally spoke, his voice was almost harsh, a direct contrast to the ambience he’d created with his story.

  “He waded in and grabbed her, what do you think happened?”

  Her head snapped back and she
stepped away from him, as shocked as if he’d dashed her with cold water. “No!” she protested.

  “Of course he did.” David sat up, seemingly tired of the whole affair. “He threw her across the saddle and took her back to his camp with him.”

  “Like a deer he might have caught for dinner?”

  The new turn outraged her and she wouldn’t stand for it. “He did nothing of the kind.”

  David looked at her speculatively. “Oh no? Then what do you think happened?”

  She avoided his eyes. “He took off his clothes and joined her in the stream,” she said tentatively and immediately regretted it. That was much too close to what had actually happened here today.

  But David didn’t even seem to notice the connection. He hooted his opinion of her version. “He didn’t do that, I promise you. Men in those days never took their clothes off for anything. They wore the same thing for years at a time. He would have fought to the death before taking his clothes off in front of a woman, anyway.”

  She knew he was probably right, but she still couldn’t accept his ending to the romance. “All right. All right.” She thought fast. “Then he watched her for a few moments, hardly able to breathe, just like you said. And then . . . and then he ran for his horse and sped away, not daring to look back.”

  “What?” David’s face exhibited his disdain for her version.

  “Yes, that’s what he did.” She raised her chin with false bravado. “But he held the image of her beauty in his heart forever.”

  “Totally unbelievable.”

  “It is not. Men in those days had more respect for women. Things like rape were almost unheard of in the old West.”

  “Who said anything about rape?” Now she’d really offended him. “She’d made it obvious that she wanted him, too.”

  “And just how had she done that?” She would have laughed at how seriously he was taking this if she weren’t being just as silly herself.

  “By looking into his eyes,” he stated with complete certainty. “By moving toward him in the water.”