by Nan Ryan
“Annie wasn’t there? I never noticed.”
“I did.”
“There,” said Burt, the dress undone. He lowered it halfway down her arms, bent his head, and kissed her bare left shoulder. “Well, Annie’s always got her butt on her shoulder about something, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Annie doesn’t like me, Burt.”
“Honey, you’re imagining things. I told you, she—”
“No, I’m not.” She freed an arm from the dress sleeve. “That woman does not like me.”
Burt ran the tip of his forefinger down her bared arm to her elbow. “Okay, I know what it is. Annie used to work for the de Temples. Five years ago she came to Lindo Vista.” He chuckled then and said, “I always figured Gena sent Annie over to keep an eye on me. No doubt Annie made regular reports to Gena.”
“That explains it,” Sabella said, nodding.
Burt turned Sabella to face him. “We’ll get rid of her.”
“No, that isn’t necessary. What exactly are her duties?”
“Annie’s in charge of the laundry detail.”
“That’s all she does?”
“That’s it. She’s rarely in the house. Spends most all her time down at the laundry.”
“Then I won’t be seeing much of her.” Sabella smiled and laid a hand on the soft gray silk of her husband’s shirtfront. “Let her stay.”
“You sure?”
“Sure.”
Sabella surprised everyone, including her husband, on their very first morning back home. The October sun had not yet risen on that early Monday when Burt awakened and slipped silently out of bed. Naked he stood beside the bed, stretching and yawning in the dim dawn light. He flinched, startled, when Sabella softly said his name.
He turned to see her raised up in bed, weight supported on her elbows. Her tangled blond hair fell around her sleepy face and her dark eyes were half shuttered by heavily lashed, lowered lids.
“Sweetheart,” he said, coming back to the bed, sitting down on the edge to face her. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” Urging her back onto the pillow, he drew the covers over her bare shoulders. “It’s very early. Go back to sleep.”
“Where are you going?”
He smiled at her, brushing the hair from her eyes. “To work, baby. I haven’t turned a hand for a month. High time I help out around here, don’t you think?”
“Take me with you.”
Burt blinked. “You’re teasing me.”
“Don’t make me stay at the house all day. I want to ride with you. Say I can.”
Burt touched her cheek. “You don’t need my permission, Sabella. This is your home; you can do anything you please.”
She threw back the covers and sat up. “I know. But would it upset you if I were to—”
“Ride with me? Honey, I’d be tickled pink.”
When Burt came down to breakfast a half hour later, Sabella was with him. She rode away from headquarters with Burt and Cappy as the sun climbed over the eastern mountains. A dozen of Lindo Vista’s regular hands also rode out that morning. Forming groups of four, each contingent headed for a separate location.
Autumn was just around the corner. Time to start checking on and making counts of the herds that had been scattered in the high mountain pastures all summer. A meeting would take place at week’s end. Burt, Cappy, and the regulars would decide how many seasonal riders they needed to herd the cattle down to the corrals for branding. This year, for the first time in twenty-five years, vaqueros would be hired along with the cowboys.
Burt had never had anything against the Mexicans and was the first to admit that they were the best horsemen alive.
That sunny October day was the first, but it would not be the last time Sabella rode the vast ranges of Lindo Vista at her husband’s side. Burt was pleased that this sweet, beautiful woman he married seized every opportunity to ride with him across the valley meadows and up into the craggy mountains and out to the hot, bordering deserts. She was interested in every minute detail of the big ranch and the people who worked it.
It was a dream come true for Burt.
He had spent years engaged to a woman who had never been on a horse, cared nothing about the land he loved so much. He realized more fully with every passing day what a terrible mistake it would have been to have married Gena de Temple. Not only had he never really been in love with her, they’d had very little in common.
How incredibly fortunate he was that Sabella Rios had come into his life. The dazzling beauty who filled his days with joy, his nights with ecstasy, was not content to be just the mistress of his house, the woman in his bed, the mother of his children. She was his friend, his partner, his equal in every way. He loved it. He would teach her everything there was to know about Lindo Vista. He would keep nothing from her, ever. He would show her and advise her and inform her so well that if anything ever happened to him, she would be prepared and capable of running the vast empire as well as he ever had.
Burt Burnett was a happy man.
And since he was, his old Happy chair in their upstairs suite got a real workout. Burt lolled often in the worn leather chair, content, enjoying life as never before. Often he sat in his Happy chair alone. More often he didn’t. He coaxed Sabella into sharing the Happy chair. He held her on his lap while he sprawled there, being happy.
Burt never, while seated in the Happy chair, discussed business or the ranch or spoke of anything of a serious nature. Anytime he sank down into the comfortable leather cushions of the Happy chair, it meant playtime. Pleasure, peace, or a combination of both ensued.
Together in that big Happy chair, Burt and Sabella shared late suppers and midnight snacks. They read there. They sang songs there. They laughed and tickled each other there. They took naps there. They undressed there.
They made love there.
The big comfortable Happy chair proved to be such a perfect place for it, they made love there almost as often as they made love in their big soft bed. Either place, chair or bed, Sabella occasionally forgot—in her ecstasy—the reason she had married Burt.
Sometimes when they were lying close in the darkness, so close she could feel each beat of his heart, she experienced painful twinges of guilt and regret. This man loved her. So much more than she’d ever dreamed anyone would love her.
She was almost sorry that she had to hurt him.
Thirty-One
AUTUMN IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.
In that golden land of perpetual sunshine the fall weather was as near perfect as could be found anywhere on earth. Mornings were wonderfully clear and bright. The afternoons, warm, still, and hazy. And the nights? Sharp, cool, chilled by gentle ocean breezes. Ideal for sleeping.
Or for making love.
Life on Lindo Vista that autumn matched the perfection of the exemplary weather. The splendid season brought a whirl of exciting activity. Nobody’s days were idle. Everyone on the big coastal spread kept busy. Including Sabella.
Often she rose with the cool, gray dawn to ride the range at her husband’s side. After their initial surprise, the rancho’s tough, seasoned cowboys thought nothing of seeing Burt’s blond bride out on the distant stretches, riding and working as if she were a man.
On the first such occasion, Sabella caught the gritty cowhands exchanging covert glances. They were, she knew, more than a little skeptical. They soon changed their tune. Early doubts were quickly dispelled as she went out of her way to prove herself.
Grudgingly at first, then with open admiration and respect, the cowboys came around. She had shown that she was no foolish, spoiled female out on a lark. They wouldn’t be hampered by a weak woman suffering from vapors the first time dust blew into her eyes or a prickly pear’s stickers snagged her trouser legs.
Quickly they learned that the slim blond female astride the big chestnut stallion was resilient, capable, and as expert a horseman as any of them—even better than most. Furthermore, she asked no quarter and gave none. She pulled her ow
n weight, but didn’t throw her weight around. Never once did she remind anyone, either by word or deed, that she was the boss’s wife.
She didn’t complain when the heat caused her white shirt to stick to her slender back just as their sweat-soaked shirts stuck to theirs. She never hesitated to drink from a canteen when she was thirsty, never griped about eating from a tin plate at noontime. Nor did she whimper and moan at the end of a long hard day when she was so tired she could hardly stay in the saddle.
Above all, Sabella proved to the hands that she was a good sport.
She showed up at the stables one morning in the navy suede jodhpurs and knee-high boots she’d bought in San Francisco. Cappy Ricks was the first to burst out laughing. He wasn’t the last. The hardened, leathery-faced cowboys teased her unmercifully about being out in her “bloomers.” Sabella took it all in stride and laughed harder than anyone.
On the days she didn’t ride with Burt, she occupied herself by eagerly examining the many rooms of the big white hacienda, or by taking long walks around the sprawling estate. Lindo Vista was, she decided, the most beautiful place on the entire earth. An exotic coastal paradise with grape arbors and groves of lemon and orange trees beyond the terraced, manicured yard. Orchards of olive and guava trees stretched into the distance on the south side of the house.
The pleasing scent of the sea was constant, and on more than one warm autumn afternoon, Sabella burst out of the mansion’s back door, crossed the flagstone patio, dashed through the large, flower-bordered yard, and eagerly descended the eighty-eight steps to the beach below.
Changing into a bathing dress and hauling one of the folding beach chairs out of the bathhouse onto the sand, she’d lie in the sun and watch the sea stretching endlessly blue and beckoning to the west. She’d read and doze and daydream. And sometimes she’d catch herself smiling foolishly and sighing softly with the sudden recollection of the passionate love words Burt had whispered last night in the darkness. The hot kisses. The intimate caresses.
Stop it! she’d furiously warn herself, leaping up from the beach chair to race across the sand and plunge into the sea. Diving into an oncoming wave, she lectured herself. Do not allow yourself to weaken! You cannot care for this man! Never, ever!
But, oh, dear God, it was hard not to care.
In those golden sun-warmed days of that glorious California autumn, Sabella and Cappy Ricks became the closest of friends. In an unspoken agreement between Burt and Cappy, Cappy was appointed Sabella’s chief protector. He stepped quite naturally into the role of bodyguard to the energetic young mistress of Lindo Vista.
If Sabella decided to go for a ride when Burt was not at home, Cappy Ricks rode with her. Sabella didn’t mind. She was fond of Cappy. She grew fonder still of the rugged, gray-haired ranch foreman when one day he confided that his life would have been a lonely, empty one if not for the Burnetts.
The two of them had ridden all the way up to the Dreamy Draw dam on a warm, sunny afternoon. There they dismounted and Cappy ground tethered the horses. Sabella wandered down a few steps nearer to the man-made concrete barrier holding back the rushing waters of Coronado Creek.
She dropped down onto the soft green grass and stretched out on her back, folding her hands beneath her head.
“Let’s take a nap, Cappy,” she said, sighing, stretching, and squinting up at him.
Cappy smiled indulgently and dropped down to sit cross-legged beside her. “You sleep if you’re tired, sugar. I’ll relax and enjoy a smoke.”
While he built and smoked a less-than-perfectly shaped cigarette, Cappy talked, at Sabella’s gentle urging.
“I’ve been at Lindo Vista for the past thirty years,” he said, the cigarette dangling from his lips. “It’s home to me, the only one I’ve ever really had. When I was a young man, I … ”
He began to talk freely, to open up. Sabella listened attentively as Cappy told her things she’d never known. About himself. And about the Burnetts. He had, he revealed, been pretty much just a worthless, rum-soaked loner until Raleigh Burnett had dragged him out of a San Diego saloon one gray rainy day in 1850 and brought him down to Lindo Vista.
“You see,” Cappy said wistfully, “back then I didn’t care if I lived or died. One way or the other, it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t think I would ever care again.”
In a low, whiskey-and-cigarette-roughened voice, Cappy Ricks told Sabella that when he was a young man he worked for the Bixby family at the old Rancho Alamitos outside Los Angeles.
“Some cousins from Philadelphia visited the Bixbys in the summer of ’35. One was a pretty seventeen-year-old girl with dark hair. Miss Geneva Ruth Darling.” His blue eyes twinkled when he said her name. “She was that all right … a real darling. I was twenty-one and not half bad looking if I do say so myself. ’Course her family was horrified. They didn’t want their little Geneva fooling around with a common cowhand, much less marrying one.” He chuckled and took a long drag on his cigarette.
Smiling, fascinated, Sabella raised up onto an elbow. “But Geneva defied her family and married you?”
Nodding, Cappy said, “She didn’t go back to Philadelphia. I wouldn’t let her. She married me and a couple of years later we had a baby girl.”
“Cappy Ricks! You have a daughter?”
“Had. Had a daughter.” A cloud passed over his eyes. “In ’45 when the baby—Beth we called her, her name was Elizabeth May—was eight years old, Geneva took her to Santa Fe. I couldn’t go with them; I tried to talk Geneva out of going. But her only sister had moved to Santa Fe the year before and Geneva wanted to see her.” He flicked the ashes from his cigarette. “I knew it wasn’t safe. The ’Paches had been acting up all that summer and … and … ” he exhaled loudly. “A renegade band attacked the stage just the other side of Strawberry Crater in northern Arizona.”
“Oh, Cappy, no … ” Sabella sat up fully, laid a hand on his forearm.
For a long moment he said nothing. Then: “I was always grateful that the savages didn’t scalp Beth.” A mist of tears glistened in his eyes. “She had the prettiest pale white hair I ever saw. Felt just like fine silk. I used to brush it for her at bedtime; then I’d brush her momma’s.”
“I’m so sorry,” Sabella said, her hand tightening on his arm.
Cappy patted her comforting hand. He shook his gray head. “I shouldn’t be burdening you, child. You’ve had more than your share of misery.” He blinked away his tears, smiled, and said, “Anyway, after I lost my girls, I didn’t care if molasses went up to a dollar a sop or if the old world stopped turning on its axis.”
He squeezed Sabella’s hand, released it. She moved it from his arm.
Wrapping her arms around her knees, she said, “I don’t blame you. Not one bit.”
“I started drinking to blot it all out. I guess I fell in the bottle pretty good. Lost my job at Rancho Alamitos and they kicked me off the place. I didn’t care. Didn’t give a damn. Drifted for several years, down to Mexico, then up to Texas, over to Louisiana. Eventually, back to Southern California.”
“And Raleigh Burnett found you.”
Cappy grinned and nodded. “Raleigh and Dana, his pretty red-haired wife, had a baby son. Now Burt was a year old and the cutest little rascal you ever did see. Walkin’ and talkin’ and into everything. Anyway, Raleigh said he didn’t know a lot about ranching and he was looking for a good foreman. Told me he’d heard about me back when I was helping run things at Rancho Alamitos.”
“So he hired you even though—”
“Told me he wanted me to be his foreman, but if he ever caught me drunk, he’d boot me right off the property. Since I didn’t have enough money that day to buy another drink, I took him up on his offer.” He laughed then.
Sabella laughed too. “And you’ve been there ever since.”
“Yep.” Cappy paused, his gray head swung around, and he looked straight into her eyes. “Raleigh Burnett saved my life. He was the best friend I ever had. And Burton … well, he’s
been a son to me.” Sabella said nothing. She remained completely composed, purposely keeping her expression placid. But she couldn’t keep from swallowing convulsively when Cappy added meaningfully, “Anybody hurts my boy answers to me.”
She forced herself to smile. She said, “Burt’s fortunate to have you, Cappy.”
Cappy smiled back at her. He said, “Burt’s even more fortunate to have you, sugar.”
Thirty-Two
“OKAY, OKAY … I’LL GET up … but I’m not going to school,” Sabella teased.
And she stayed in bed on this cool Friday morning in mid-November. Instead of rising early with Burt as was her custom, she had, in fact, lingered in bed all week. The first couple of mornings Burt supposed she was just unusually sleepy. He’d said nothing, just kissed her sleepy face, carefully covered her, and left her to slumber peacefully.
But after five days of this new drowsiness, he was beginning to worry. When he awakened this Friday morning, he slowly turned his head on the pillow and gazed lovingly at the beautiful woman sleeping beside him. His heartbeat quickened from just looking at her and he realized how much he missed having her rise with him each morning. He missed dressing with her. Having breakfast with her. Making plans for the day with her.
He wanted her to smile at him. To talk to him. To kiss him good morning.
He wanted to wake her up!
Burt grinned mischievously. He reached over and carefully curled his lean fingers around the top edge of the silky sheet and matching comforter. Then he swiftly yanked all the bed covers off Sabella, kicking them to the foot of the bed.
The chill of the early morning sea air touched Sabella’s naked flesh. Her eyes didn’t open, but she shivered involuntarily, squirmed and turned onto her side, facing away from him. She pulled her knees up and put her spread hands between them.
One dark eyebrow raised, Burt continued to watch her, wondering how long it would take before the cold penetrated her sleep and she awakened. His grin broadened when—still sleeping soundly—she began to gravitate toward him. Seeking his body heat, she was pulled like a magnet toward his warmth.
