Sacrifice of Passion (Deadly Legends)

by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

  Damn shrinks. “You have to face the past,” she mimicked the last one in her head. “It’s the only way to move forward with your life.”

  Yeah, well, she was still waiting. She’d been here for almost two weeks, and so far facing her demons hadn’t fixed anything. In fact, her condition had gotten worse. She was still sleepwalking, and the nightmares were haunting her again.

  Doc Clinton walked past her, deep in conversation with one of her parents’ neighbors, James McDuff. “That death’s not normal,” he said.

  “But other animals have been killed the same way. Started a couple of weeks ago. My goat’s not the first,” McDuff responded, his voice thick with his native Scottish accent. She gave him a quick smile, then noticed Doc Clinton’s frown.

  “I believe you, but it’s still not natural. No animal feeds by exsanguination,” Doc Clinton said. His smile lines crinkled, as if he were trying to lighten the mood. “Except the chupacabra, of course.”

  McDuff’s eyes rolled. “Not you, too. I don’t believe in legends and old wives’ tales, Doc.”

  “Neither do I. So there’s gotta be another reason your goat died.”

  Animals being drained of their blood? Delaney shivered, stifling the very idea as she took the chart Doc Clinton handed her and turned back to filing the stack that had piled up from the day before. And she’d thought the clinic she’d worked at in Austin had been busy. Still, her timing had been perfect. The former vet tech here had up and eloped, leaving an opening. Delaney had come back to San Julio to get her life back on track. A job was a step in the right direction. Even if nothing else seemed to be cooperating.

  “But what if she needs me?” she heard a boy ask from behind her. “I should stay home from school.”

  “No can do, son,” a man said, his voice low.

  The timbre… The cadence. There was something about it…

  The phone rang and the receptionist, Dolly, a big-haired Texas blonde, answered it, and then spoke to Doc Clinton. “It’s Jasper Locke. Says he’s worried about his mare.” She covered the headset mic with her hand and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Because of all the dead animals turning up.”

  Delaney held her breath. She knew Jasper. Had grown up with him, and according to her mother, the man had developed into an experienced rancher, taking over his parents’ spread when they’d died. If Jasper was concerned about his mare, it was with good reason.

  The veins in the vet’s neck pulsed as he took the phone from Dolly. “What’s going on, Jasper?” He was silent for a few minutes, listening intently.

  “She’s in the barn. She’ll be okay,” Doc Clinton finally said. “Is she nesting?” He listened again, then nodded his head. “Hang tight. You know the signs. When she becomes unsettled, we’ll get someone over there to help.”

  The doctor hung up, and then said to Delaney, “Mare’s due to foal right quick. Can you get the supplies together? We need to be at the ready.”

  Delaney nodded, then reached for the next patient’s file and read the name. Sheila Vargas. Her breath caught and she felt light-headed. Sheila Vargas. Could it be? Had Vic married Sheila?

  The last time she’d seen Sheila, it had been like a dagger in her heart. Sheila’s arms had been wrapped around Vic, and—

  No. Delaney blocked the memory from barging full force into her head. Getting her life together didn’t mean reliving every painful moment from her disastrous relationship with Vic Vargas.

  She steeled her will and called into the waiting room, “Sheila Vargas.”

  “Here!” A boy’s voice piped up from a corner bench. The boy charged forward, cradling a tiny black potbellied pig in his arms. “I’m Zach.” He looked down at the pig. “This is Sheila.”

  Surprised, Delaney kept her focus on the boy, determined not to look at the man he’d come in with. His father. Vic Vargas. She felt her stomach expand with each slow breath. The boy was the spitting image of Vic, from his warm olive skin to his smoky blue eyes. He had to be about ten. She stubbornly refused to do the math.

  She remembered to smile, to breathe, and reached her hand out to stroke the pig’s back. “She’s the runt, isn’t she?”

  The boy shrugged. “I guess, but she’s perfect.”

  “You here with your mother?” she asked, not sure she could face Vic and Sheila at the same time.

  The boy’s expression turned stony and he shook his head.

  The click of cowboy boots against the clean linoleum matched her ratcheting heartbeat. Denim pant legs appeared in her peripheral vision. And then a voice came from next to her. “He’s here with me.”

  It was a voice she recognized as if she’d heard it every day for the past twelve years. A barrage of memories flooded her. The way he smelled. The timbre of his voice as he whispered in her ear. How he touched her and listened to her dreams and…

  Delaney closed her eyes and willed her heartache away. None of it had meant anything. Not to him, anyway. “Three forty-five a.m.,” he’d said the night they’d planned to elope. “I’ll be there.”

  Right.

  He hadn’t shown up at the Chain Tree that night. Hadn’t been there when she’d arrived, and hadn’t been there when she’d left two hours later. And then when she’d gone to find him at his house the next morning, hurt, broken, aching, and in desperate need of his love and comfort, she’d seen him tangled in an embrace with Sheila Ramsey.

  She hadn’t seen the bastard since.

  She opened her eyes and turned, tamping down the anxiety bubbling in her gut. She blinked, pushing away the awful vision. Vic’s gaze bore into her, but there wasn’t a shadow of recognition or pleasure in his expression.

  “Shall we go into an exam room?” Her voice sounded hollow and cold, but all the emotions she’d bottled up since that last night with Vic threatened to burst from her core.

  The boy nodded. Focus on him, Delaney told herself. What was his name? Oh, yes. Zach.

  She’d just pretend that Vic wasn’t here. Pretend like she didn’t feel eighteen again, with every nerve ending alight with desire. Like her body wasn’t responding to his cowboy mystique, his powerful body, his penetrating eyes.

  “How old is your pig?” she asked, distracting herself from Vic’s presence.

  “She’s eleven weeks old. Like me, only I’m eleven years old,” the boy said.

  Her stomach curled in on itself. No need for math. Vic must have gotten Sheila pregnant right after Delaney had left for Austin. Didn’t take him long, she thought bitterly.

  Pretend Vic isn’t here, she reminded herself.

  “This way,” she said, and she walked in front of them, feeling his gaze burn into her back. She stepped aside as they entered Exam Room Two, inadvertently breathing in as Vic passed. His clean, rain-fresh scent enveloped her senses, making her reel again.

  He folded his arms over his chest. “Our appointment’s with Doc Clinton.”

  The coldness in his voice made her anger flare. If he’d shown up that night—she shuddered at the memory of what had happened—things would have been different. He wouldn’t be cold toward her and she wouldn’t be angry. They’d be together, and it would be their child with them instead of his with Sheila Ramsey.

  “The doctor’s with another patient,” she said through clenched teeth, “but he’ll be in shortly.”

  “Good.” He planted his feet. Rocked back on his heels. “We’ll just wait for him.”

  She met his gaze evenly, fury simmering. “You could be waiting a long time. Sometimes people don’t show up, even with an appointment.”

  He didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch or look away from her. “And sometimes they run away.”

  She battled the inferno blazing behind her eyes. She had run away. From Vic. From San Julio. From that horrible night, a night worse than he could possibly imagine
. But she was not about to let him see the pain she was still running from. “Doc Clinton always does what he says he’s going to do,” she said.

  “Yeah.” His jaw pulsed. “And I’m sure he’s excellent at communicating, too.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “That’s a two-way street. You can’t communicate with someone who isn’t where they’re supposed to be.”

  His eyes stayed glued to her. “Or when they bolt without so much as a ‘nice knowing you’ or ‘see you around’.”

  Zach’s head swung with each retort, as if he were watching a tennis match.

  Delaney figured she should stop now before she said something she’d regret, but plowed on instead. “Of course, when a person shows they’re not loyal by seeing another…” she glanced at Zach, the pig squirming in his arms, “another vet—”

  “I never saw another vet.”

  Anger pricked at her, the heat of it spreading like a rash up her neck. Vic brought out the worst in her, sending her back to adolescence and veiled blame. She couldn’t do this. Didn’t want to reopen old wounds that were proving to be as raw as the night they’d been inflicted. Certainly not in front of the kid. “Whatever you—”

  The pig squealed, twisting in Zach’s arms. He struggled to hold on to her, but lost his grip. The black bundle dropped with a squeal onto the exam table. Sheila’s legs splayed and she struggled to stand. Delaney blinked away the burning behind her eyes. She lunged, catching the piglet as it careened off the table. “Got you!”

  Zach gasped. “You saved her! She would have broken all her legs. She could have died!” He scratched under Sheila’s chin. “But you’re okay, Sheila,” he cooed. “The nice lady saved you.”

  “She would have been fine,” Vic said, laying a hand on Zach’s shoulder.

  Delaney stroked Sheila’s back. “Your dad’s right.” She handed Sheila to Zach, then lifted her gaze to Vic again, steeling her expression, pain driving her to make a final dig. “No matter what people do to her, she’ll be just fine.”

  Faced with Vic’s seething glare and Zach’s building confusion, she sucked in a deep breath. Time to get control over herself. No sense in bringing the kid into her painful past. Focus on the patient, she told herself. She flipped the topic back to the piglet. “Sheila looks like she’ll be well cared for. Will she sleep in your room?”

  “No. Dad says she’ll have to sleep outside,” Zach said, shooting a quick glance at Vic.

  Vic’s fist clenched, but his expression remained impassive. Cold as ice.

  Delaney focused on settling her heartbeat. Whatever issues father and son had were none of her business. She picked up the file she’d dropped and opened it up. “What’s Sheila in for, Zach?”

  “Zach got her this morning,” Vic said, his voice still gruff. “Doc Clinton said he’d squeeze in a quick exam before the kid goes to school—set the boy’s mind at ease.”

  She looked him in the eyes again. He’d grown into a ruggedly handsome man, and despite her anger, her gut twisted as she batted down her physical response. She turned to Zach and smiled. The boy really was a little Vic. He’d grow up to be a lady-killer, just like his dad. But hopefully he wouldn’t betray the woman he supposedly loved.

  Delaney took the chart and opened the door. “Doc Clinton will be right in.”

  Zach cleared his throat. “Maybe you could come visit her—”

  “Zach.” Vic’s voice was tight. “She works here. She doesn’t make house calls.”

  “Oh.” The boy’s face fell. He sank onto one of the plastic chairs across from the stainless steel table and looked at his feet.

  Her heart went out to him. He seemed like such a nice kid. “You can come back anytime,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, too. San Julio’s a small town.”

  Zach brightened. “Great!”

  She smiled at him, but the smile grew strained when she met Vic’s gaze again. His eyes seemed to smolder, but his jaw was still tight. “Yeah, great,” she said, and then slipped outside, closing the door firmly behind her.

  She covered her eyes with a hand and tried to rationalize the sudden sting of tears behind them. She was just tired. It didn’t matter that Vic had a son. It didn’t even matter that hatred tinged his gaze as he’d looked at her. She’d gotten over him years ago.

  She’d had to. The night he’d betrayed her and left her to the mercy of a monster had been the last time she’d allowed herself to get emotionally close to any man.

  She’d never be hurt like that again.

  Especially by Vic Vargas.

  Chapter Three

  So the old woman had been right.

  Vic stared at the closed door of the exam room, the walls he’d put up twelve years ago crumbling around him. Seeing Delaney West again after so many years felt like old wounds being torn open, spilling his own blood out, leaving him nothing more than an empty shell, just like the bloodless goat they’d found yesterday.

  His past had come back to haunt him.

  Delaney looked as delectable as she had when she was eighteen. Her voice reverberated in his head, sending his thoughts spiraling back twelve years. She’d been irresistible to him then, and he’d had to use every ounce of strength he possessed to stop from taking her virginity before they got married, even when she’d offered that last evening they’d been together. He’d respected her. Loved her. Had wanted to make her happy—so much that he’d decided to ask her parents for her hand instead of running off with her in the middle of the night like a pair of criminals. He’d wanted to make love to her so badly he’d ached inside, but more than that was his desire to give her a wedding she’d remember. To give her a perfect memory.

  And then she’d left town before he could explain why he hadn’t met her that night. She’d walked out on them all. Her parents. Her friends. Her pregnant mare. Him.

  He’d been a raving lunatic for weeks. Had practically stalked her parents until they’d told him that she’d left San Julio because of him. Because Delaney had told them he’d been pressuring her to have sex.

  “That’s a lie,” he’d ground out, but Louise West had slammed the door in his face. He’d been lucky Red hadn’t pulled out his shotgun.

  He’d drunk himself into a stupor and then picked up the pieces of his betrayed heart and moved on. Screw Delaney West, he’d told himself.

  And he had, ever since.

  But God dammit, now Delaney was back. And just ten minutes with her had all but destroyed those walls that had kept her memory locked in the recesses of his mind for years. He knew he had to find a way to purge her from his system. Or he was afraid the walls in his mind wouldn’t be the only thing she’d destroy.

  If he wasn’t careful, she might do the same to the walls around his heart.

  …

  Delaney stared at her supper, vaguely aware of her mother’s voice. She didn’t look up until a hand gently grasped her chin and turned her head.

  “Bless my soul,” her mother said, a frown tugging at her lips. “What’s got you in such a trance?”

  Before she could stop herself, Delaney hugged her close, startling a laugh from her. Her mother stroked her hair when Delaney still refused to let go. “What is it, Del?”

  Delaney pulled back. So many times she’d wanted to tell her mother about that awful night twelve years ago, but fear held the secret inside of her. She’d never even told her best friend, Carmen. Only her shrinks had been privy to the horrible truth. “I ran into Vic today.”

  Her mother frowned and she pulled away. “Oh?”

  “And his son.”

  “Ah…”

  Delaney swallowed her emotions. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Why hadn’t Carmen, or her dad, or anyone for that matter? They’d all kept the vital piece of information from her. If she’d had all the information, she wo
uld have made a different decision. Wouldn’t have come back to San Julio, even now.

  Her mother met her gaze evenly. “He didn’t do right by you.”

  “But a son?”

  “You left him, baby. Ran away to Austin. Said he was pressuring you to…to…” She flung her hands up. “Surely you haven’t forgotten that.”

  No, Delaney hadn’t forgotten. The lie still weighed heavily on her soul. From the moment she’d stepped out of Vic’s truck the evening they were going to elope, blowing him a kiss, the dominos had fallen in ways she never could have imagined.

  “You still should have told me. They came into the clinic! I didn’t…I couldn’t…” She stopped. Calmed down. “I wasn’t prepared.”

  “There’s not much to tell. It’s Sheila Ramsey’s boy.” Her mother turned back to the pecan pie dough she was rolling out. “Or so I’ve heard. They never married.”

  Delaney felt nauseated. “What, did the whole town keep it a secret from me?”

  “It’s not like you’ve been around here much,” her mother snapped. “You came for one visit a year, if we were lucky.” She snatched up a kitchen towel and swiped her floury hands, then slung the cloth over her shoulder. “But the truth is, the boy just showed up here a couple of months ago. Right after Vic went from being the foreman of the old Dougal place to being the owner.”

  Delaney started. “What?” She swung her gaze to the window. The old Dougal ranch was the neighboring property. Vic had a son he’d just taken in and he was living right next door? How was she ever going to avoid him?

  “No one seems to know where the boy was before that, and Vic isn’t saying.” Her mother tsked. “From what I’ve heard, he hasn’t been much of a father to that child.”

  Delaney’s head reeled. The Vic she’d known would never have chosen not to be a part of his son’s life. Then again, she clearly hadn’t known him as well as she thought she had. The fact that he even had a son was proof enough of that. “Why does he have the boy now?”

  “No idea.” Louise pulled the dishtowel from over her shoulder and snapped it in the air. “All I know is that Vic Vargas is an unmarried father. Good thing you left. It might have been you with a child born out of wedlock if he’d had his way.”