by Nan Ryan
Sabella had never been to a big city, so she was wide-eyed, craning her neck and turning her head this way and that as the carriage rolled down the wide, paved streets between towering buildings. The sidewalks were crowded with mobs of people, all hurrying as if anxious to reach their destinations.
At the fabled Palace Hotel, the carriage came to a stop beneath a high, glass-domed roof enclosing a courtyard. A distinguished doorman in full livery, and looking like a military general, stepped forward to greet them. Graciously, he ushered them into the hotel’s grand lobby while a swarm of uniformed bellmen descended on the carriage to see to the luggage.
Sabella clung to Burt’s arm as they were guided through the crowded lobby and shown upstairs to an opulent, sixth-floor corner suite. Burt smiled tolerantly as a curious Sabella dashed from room to room, shrieking like a delighted child at the ever-changing, always breathtaking views of the city and the bay from every tall, high window.
In the suite’s main salon, she flung open the tall French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. And drew in her breath at the spectacular view of the bay with the westering sun glinting on it. She grasped the balcony’s decorative railing with both hands, threw back her head, and inhaled deeply of the cool, sea-scented air. In the distance, far from their rooftop suite, came the faint peal of a cable car bell.
Burt quietly stepped up behind her. He put his hands on either side of hers atop the railing, enclosing her inside his arms. She leaned back against him and for a long moment neither spoke.
Then Burt said in a low, masculine voice, “The city, the hotel, the suite, they all belong to you. Anything you want is yours. Any place you want to go, you’re there. Anything you want to do, you will.”
Sabella silently bristled at his words. Such supreme arrogance. At the moment her brain wasn’t clouded from sipping too much wine, nor were her wits scattered from his heated kisses. She hadn’t been herself on the journey north. He had kept her half tipsy and half aroused the entire trip.
She was thinking clearly now and her hatred burned as hot as the passion he’d awakened in her. She felt like shouting that there was only one thing she wanted from him.
His son and heir to Lindo Vista!
Her back pressed against the hardness of his broad chest, she laid her head on his shoulder and said, “You’re awfully sure of yourself. Does the Burnett wealth and power reach even to San Francisco?”
“Try me,” said Burt. “I challenge you. Do your dead-level best to think of something that will be impossible for me to give you.”
“Mmmmm. A party invitation to the biggest mansion on Nob Hill.”
“That’s too easy, baby doll,” Burt told her, his hands leaving the balcony railing, wrapping around her narrow waist. His lips against her golden hair, he said, “Try again.”
“Give me some time to think about it?”
“As long as you need,” he told her. “Just let me know when you’ve come up with something.”
“I will,” she said, her dark eyes narrowed, intent on thinking of something that even the vainly superior Burt Burnett could not manage to get.
Soon Sabella began to believe that her husband was indeed capable of fulfilling her every desire. If she but mentioned something, it became hers right there on the spot. Within days of their arrival in San Francisco she owned dozens of new dresses, and a quartet of elegant gowns for the opera, several pieces of exquisite jewelry, a long white ermine coat, scads of lacy French lingerie, and gloves and shoes and bonnets aplenty. Even a pair of navy suede British-style jodhpurs with a matching navy silk blouse, tall gleaming black boots, and braided quirt to complete the ensemble.
At the theater or the opera they were invariably seated in the most choice of private boxes. At the restaurants they commanded the best of tables. Sabella couldn’t seem to trip her husband up; she couldn’t ask for something he couldn’t give her.
Still she tried.
“Know what I want to do tonight,” she said one evening late as she lingered in her tub.
Burt stood across the spacious bathroom with his back to her, shaving. A towel around his neck, the lower half of his face lathered, he glanced at her in the mirror.
“Haven’t a clue,” he said, scraping the sharp straight-edged razor down his lean cheek in one quick, fluid motion. “Whatever it is, tell me and you’ll do it.”
“I want,” she said, lifting a long leg up out of the suds, pointing it toward the ceiling, “to dine at the Cliffhouse.”
“Is that all?” Burt shrugged bare shoulders.
“Just the two of us,” she announced slyly, certain she had him. Surely even a Burnett didn’t possess the clout to engage a famous restaurant at the very last minute for his own exclusive use. “No one else must be allowed in the restaurant.”
An hour later they were alone in the elegant eatery, tended by a squadron of polite, smiling waiters. Crisp green salads on chilled china plates were set before them, along with glasses of frozen champagne punch. Hot French bread and sweet creamery butter came next. Then the tender fillet of beef, baked potato, and French green peas that Sabella had chosen from the menu. Vintage moselle accompanied the meal.
Dessert was rich plum pudding with brandy sauce.
Burt pushed his pudding away untouched, lighted a long thin cigar, and leaned back in his chair to observe his gorgeous bride speculatively taste, then eagerly devour the rich custard. Studying her through a cloud of blue cigar smoke, he was again struck by how innocent she was, and not just in sex. She was unsophisticated, naive, unworldly.
And utterly enchanting.
“So, sweetheart,” he said when she finally sighed and placed her spoon in the empty pudding dish. “What next?”
“You’re too good at this game,” she admitted, frowning. “I didn’t really believe you could manage this.”
Burt laughed and reached across the table to take her hand. “Sounds like you’re half disappointed that I was successful.”
Sabella forced herself to smile. “Not at all. Now, let me see. I would like to visit the lowest, liveliest dive on the Barbary Coast.” Her smile widened triumphantly. She had him now. He wouldn’t dare take her down to that dangerous, sinful playground.
“That would be me Golden Carousel,” said Burt.
“Fine. Take me to the Golden Carousel immediately.”
She lifted her chin defiantly and crossed her arms over her chest. And then blinked in surprise when Burt tossed his napkin on the table, pushed back his chair, and rose.
Within the hour they were walking through the black leather doors of the loud, noisy Pacific Street saloon known as the Golden Carousel.
When the honeymooners left the Bay city after a three week stay, Sabella had been unsuccessful in her quest to ask for something Burt couldn’t get her. She had seen all the sights, been to all the places, done everything there was to do. Every far-fetched request she made had been granted. Every foolish desire fulfilled. Every hedonistic wish satisfied.
Far from being pleased, she was both angered and frightened. It infuriated her that the intangible magic wand Burt Burnett waved to get his way had been stolen long ago by his scheming thief of a father.
It scared her that Burt so effortlessly wielded such power. His total command and the depth of his love for her were but an indication of what a formidable foe he would be. She wondered fearfully what he might do to her if he learned her real reason for marrying him. She trembled at the prospect of stealing his only son from him.
As the California Starlight began its journey southward on a sunny Sunday morning, Sabella glanced warily at her husband. Engrossed in reading the San Francisco Chronicle, it was one of those extremely rare moments when Burt was paying her no attention.
Sabella thoughtfully studied him while he was unaware of her appraisal. A wayward lock of jet-black hair tumbled forward over his high forehead, giving him a careless, boyish look. His hooded gray eyes with their incredibly long dark lashes could change color as well
as expression. She’d seen them turn from pale silver to smokey gray to dark charcoal as his moods shifted. Those beautiful eyes could be playful, penetrating, or passionate.
His nose was straight and perfectly formed, as if carefully sculpted from smooth stone. The prominence of his high slanting cheekbones hinted at distant Indian ancestors. His mouth was sensuously full lipped but firmly masculine.
He was a strikingly handsome man, made even handsomer by his easy, devil-may-care, bad boy/good boy charm.
A funny little quiver shot through Sabella from just looking at him. She hadn’t planned on feeling like this about Burt Burnett. Not that she loved him; she certainly did not, but there was no denying her fierce, almost helpless attraction to him.
Her face grew suddenly hot at the vivid recollection of the intimate things she had allowed this handsome man to do to her. And had done to him as well.
She was confused and disappointed in herself. She had known, Of course, years before coming to San Juan Capistrano, that her plan would require the distasteful sacrifice of making love with a stranger, a man she despised.
But it wasn’t distasteful. She almost wished that it were. It would be easier to remember, at all times, the only purpose of making love with him if it were not so enjoyable. Damn him, why did he have to be so darkly handsome, so potently masculine, so good at everything he did!
Burt abruptly tossed the newspaper aside, turned and scowled darkly at Sabella.
“God in Heaven!” he exclaimed loudly and slapped the heel of his hand against his forehead.
Alarm causing her pulse to leap, Sabella looked at him with wide, worried eyes. “What? What is it?”
“I haven’t kissed you in an hour!” he said, grinning wickedly now as he reached for her. “You’ll be charging me with neglect.”
Releasing a caught breath, Sabella wished miserably she could make herself tell him not to kiss her now. That she didn’t want to be kissed by him. She didn’t like being kissed by him. Only problem was, she loved being kissed by him.
Burt kissed her. Sabella kissed him back. One kiss led to another and another and the heated kisses soon led to the bed. Overwhelmed by the depth of Burt’s devotion and shocked, yet thrilled by his blazing ardor, Sabella knew he meant it when he murmured that he couldn’t get enough of her.
Lying beneath him in their bedroom-on-wheels at mid-morning, Sabella realized how wrong she had been in assuming that married couples made love only in the darkness of the night. Apparently, she had been misled.
It seemed a bit decadent and shameful to make love in the middle of the morning, but she and Burt were guilty of such behavior daily. One thing about it, surely as often as they made love, she would soon be carrying Burt’s child.
And then she would never let him touch her again!
Twenty-Eight
“NEVER! I WILL NEVER let you touch me again!”
“Yes, you will!”
“I most certainly will not!” Gena de Temple shrieked shrilly at the smiling, black-clad Cisco.
“Ah, querida,” murmured the scar-faced Latin, “you are being cruelly unfair, no? You ask the impossible.”
The two were sequestered in Gena’s upstairs peach-and-white salon that quiet September Sunday afternoon. Downstairs Senator de Temple labored in his office, having informed the staff he was not to be disturbed. Diligent in discharging his legislative duties, the preoccupied senator was blissfully unaware that his willful daughter was entertaining a visitor in her bedroom.
Senator Nelson de Temple was a stickler for propriety. He would have been outraged had he known that his pretty, patrician daughter would allow one of his hired vaqueros inside the mansion, much less inside her boudoir.
Gena de Temple wasn’t the least concerned with her father finding out. She knew him well. When the conscientious senator went into his office and closed the door, he was oblivious to anything going on outside those four walls. She could have hired a circus troop to perform in the upstairs corridor and her father would never have guessed.
However, her overly protective maid was, a different story altogether. While Gena had always been able to feed her trusting father the most bizarre tales and make him believe them, she could put little or nothing over on the ever-suspicious, keen-eyed Petra.
So Gena had sent Petra Gabriel into the village on an errand. An errand that would take most of the afternoon. Then as soon as the coast was clear, Gena had rushed downstairs and straight through the long corridor out to the back terrace. Encountering one of the house servant’s young sons at play, she grabbed the child.
“Jose, do you know Cisco?” she asked hopefully. The little boy nodded, grinning. “Do you know where Cisco lives?”
“Sí, señorita.” The seven-year-old shook his dark head and pointed in the direction of Cisco and Santo’s secluded adobe.
“Good.” Gena produced a shiny silver coin, held it up before the Child’s big dark eyes. “The money is yours if you’ll run down to Cisco’s adobe and tell him Gena must see him immediately.”
“When do I get the coin?” Jose asked shrewdly.
“Right now.” Gena handed it over, but when the child turned to go, she stopped him. Smiling sweetly down at the boy, she said, “Just one thing more, Jose.”
“Sí, señorita?”
“If you tell anybody about this, el pingo, I’ll pinch your head off!”
“Sí!”
Back inside, Gena glanced down the corridor at her father’s closed office door, then hurried back upstairs to wait. She was pacing anxiously when she heard Cisco’s soft knock on the tall double doors leading from her bedroom to the balcony.
She counted to ten, took a deep breath, and called, “It’s open.”
The spare, mustachioed Mexican, dressed in his signature black, immediately slipped inside. Blinking, his dark eyes dilating from coming out of the bright sunshine into the dim, shadowy salon, Cisco stared at the pale-skinned beauty standing across the room before the cold peach marble fireplace.
He grinned as he stared at her.
She projected the image of a sedate, proper young lady in her prim beige poplin afternoon dress. In the demure little dress with its high neck, girlish puffed sleeves, and long, full skirts, she was the epitome of propriety and feminine modesty. Her dark hair was pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head and her face was naked of powder, her mouth bare of lip rouge.
Miss Gena Lorraine de Temple was, as anyone who knew her was quick to point out, a regal, respectable lady in every sense of the word. Refined, cultured, educated, she was a charter member of the state’s ruling hierarchy, envied and admired for her lofty position among the upper crust. She was, it was said, a genteel woman of high birth and unparalleled social standing whose behavior was exemplary, morals impeccable.
Cisco knew better.
For all her chaste and retiring demeanor, he saw her for what she really was and it made him smile evilly, causing the scar on his cheek to pull and pucker.
If her boring, blue-blooded crowd were here now, they would get an eye-opening glimpse of the real Gena de Temple. Her chilly green gaze was focused directly on him, pulling him closer, commanding him to come to her. She looked mean and cruel and deadly, like a beautiful, bloodthirsty vampire ready to devour him.
Cisco loved it.
This haughty, aristocratic senator’s daughter might have everyone else fooled. Not him. He knew her kind. She might look ladylike and reserved, but she was as greedy, as treacherous, as common as he.
Cisco took off his black hat, tossed it on a table, ran a hand through his disheveled hair, and moved swiftly across the room.
“Don’t touch me,” Gena softly warned, raising her hands before her, palms open in a defensive gesture. “Sit down, please.”
Cisco shrugged, nodded, and dropped down onto the peach brocade sofa. Patting the cushion beside him, he said, “Sit by me, querida.”
“Not yet.” Gena shook her head. “I have something important to discus
s with you.”
“I am listening.”
Gena crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I could do to make Burt pay.”
Cisco rolled his eyes. “Let it go. You cannot get even with a Burnett. No one can. No one ever has.”
“I can and I will!” she snapped. Then she immediately softened, adding, “That is, with your help I can.”
“There is nothing you or I can do to—”
“Maybe there is,” Gena interrupted, her green eyes aglow. “What, I wonder, would happen if the dam on Coronado Creek were to suddenly disappear?”
Cisco thought about it for a moment. “The creek would immediately return to its natural path down Dreamy Draw to the Pacific. It would course across the de Temple strip, just as it did years ago before the creek was damned and the water diverted to … to … ” Cisco stopped speaking, frowned, shook his head. “Gena, surely you are not considering—”
“Ah, but I am.” She came to the peach sofa and sat down beside him. “Without the damn, Lindo Vista would have no water! The stock, the crops, everything on the Burnett rancho would die!”
“Dios!” Cisco muttered. “Only a woman would think of something so destructive!”
“Burt would be bankrupt within a year, maybe six months,” Gena gleefully continued as if Cisco hadn’t spoken. Her eyes alive with excitement, she declared, “He would lose everything he has. Including that avaricious Latin trollop, Sabella!”
Cisco roughly cupped Gena’s face in his hands. “Forget about it, querida! The dam at Dreamy Draw is solid. It will be there long after you and I are gone.”
Gena turned her face into his right palm and kissed it. She licked the long lifeline with the tip of her tongue, and murmured, “Not if we blow it up.”
“Pare! No tan aprisa,” Cisco warned. “Stop. Not so fast.” He took his hands from her face. “You can’t just go around blowing up dams because—”
“Why? Why can’t we?” she asked petulantly. “We get some dynamite and—”
