Because You're Mine

by Nan Ryan

  Her lips fell open and she sighed softly in her sleep when her slender back and soft, rounded bottom came in contact with his chest and belly. Burt laughed softly. She was adorable as she wiggled and twisted, getting as close to him as possible.

  She expelled a long, deep sigh of satisfaction when he put his arms around her, gently drew her closer, and curved his body around hers in spoonlike fashion. Lifting his legs and bending his knees to press them warmly under hers, he placed a spread hand on her flat stomach, cradled her close against him, and let her sleep a few more minutes.

  As the big bedroom grew steadily lighter and warmer, Burt knew he could put it off no longer. It was time to get up. He had to go into the village. Much as he hated to leave Sabella, he had to … to … He’d take her with him! He’d take the gig up the coast to Capistrano instead of riding Sam, so she could go with him. Just the two of them. She could shop and visit her young girlfriends, Cynthia Douglas and Janie Desmond.

  “Sabella,” he said softly, raising a hand to sweep her heavy blond hair off her face. “Honey, wake up.”

  “Mmmmm,” she murmured and squirmed against him.

  “Baby, it’s after seven. Time to get up.”

  Her eyes remaining closed, Sabella slowly turned in his embrace.

  “I don’t think so.” She snuggled close, her warm, soft breasts pressed against his chest

  Burt chuckled. “What does that mean? You don’t think so.”

  Softly spoken words muffled against his throat. “I don’t think I’ll get up this morning.”

  “I’m going into town today, remember. Be gone all day. How would you like to come along with me?”

  Flatly: “I’m not going.”

  The smile left Burt’s face. He pulled back a little, so he could look at her. Her dark eyes opened and met his gaze.

  “Honey, are you sick? You’ve stayed in bed late all this week and I’m getting worried.”

  Sabella smiled mysteriously at him. “I feel wonderful.” She slid her hand up his chest, over his throat to his face. She touched the cleft in his chin with her fingertip and said, “Don’t look so worried. I am fine. Honest I am.”

  “Then why don’t you want to come with me?”

  “Things to do here,” she said, running her foot up his calf. “And one of those things is getting another hour of sleep.”

  “You sure you’re feeling well?” Burt wasn’t convinced.

  “I’m sure. Very sure.” Again, that enigmatic smile.

  “Okay, then,” he said finally, puzzled. “Be a lazy bones, but I have to get up.”

  He kissed her quickly, rolled away, swung his long legs over the mattress’s edge, and stood up. He turned back and looked down at her. She was attempting to snag the lowered bedcovers with her toes, too sleepy and lazy to sit up and reach for them. Enchanted, Burt leaned over and brushed a kiss to her pale bare belly. Then he carefully drew the covers up over her.

  “Sleep well, sweetheart. And do me a big favor.”

  Her eyes closing again, Sabella mumbled, “Mmmmm … what?”

  “Since you like staying in bed so well, how about being here when I get home this evening? Right where you are just as you are. Naked in bed. Think you can manage that?”

  “Try me,” she murmured, rolled over and was at once asleep.

  When Sabella again awakened, the November sun was high in the sky and the bedroom was flooded with bright light. With a burst of energy and cautious hope, she sat up and threw off the covers. Anxiously, she carefully examined herself, checking the insides of her bare thighs, searching for any signs of the damning evidence which would so sorely disappoint her.

  Seeing nothing, she got up, snatched the bedcovers completely off and examined the bed with the same careful scrutiny she had given her body. The sleep-tumbled gray silk sheets were spotless.

  Sabella clapped her hands with glee and spun around in a circle. She was almost sure now. Almost positive. Another couple of days and she would be absolutely certain that she was carrying Burt’s child.

  Sabella excitedly skipped into the dressing room. She stood before the full-length mirror and studied her naked body. She placed her hands on her flat stomach and pressed gently, awed suddenly by the miracle of conception.

  The hours she had lain in Burt’s arms, the heated love they had made, had started a new life inside her. The thought was overwhelming. She, Sabella Rios Burnett, was going to have a baby. By this time next year she would be a mother. She would have a son.

  Burt’s son.

  Sabella suddenly felt weak and dizzy. All at once the weight of this shocking new knowledge of which she alone was aware, was almost too much to comprehend. To believe.

  She left the dressing room without dressing. It was ridiculous, she knew, but for some senseless reason she wanted to stay naked. It all seemed more real if she didn’t put on her clothes. She felt more like a woman, more like a mother-to-be, if she was totally nude.

  Congratulating herself on attaining the all-important goal, Sabella decided she’d spend the entire morning naked. Stay in the privacy of her bedroom and secretly enjoy being nude, natural, and newly pregnant.

  She laughed at her foolishness, hugged herself, and danced dizzily around the sun-filled room, humming a lullaby. Finally she breathlessly dropped down into the deep cushions of an old, worn leather chair with a matching ottoman. She swung her long slender legs up onto the ottoman and crossed her bare ankles. She pressed her head against the chair’s back and giggled foolishly.

  Naked, swinging her feet off the edge of the ottoman and twisting a lock of tangled blond hair around her finger, Sabella sat in the comfortable brown leather chair, laughing giddily for several long minutes before all at once it dawned on her where she was sitting.

  Again.

  In the past few weeks she had caught herself—more than once when she was alone—instinctively choosing this chair.

  The Happy chair.

  The smile left Sabella’s face. Her heart pounded against her ribs. She drew her legs up and curled herself into a tight defensive ball. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and she wasn’t sure what they meant.

  Sabella began to weep. She sat there in the Happy chair and wept, suddenly bitterly unhappy. She faced, for the first time, the reason for her misery.

  She had fallen in love with Burt Burnett.

  Crying—heartbroken—Sabella jumped, startled, when she heard a knock on the bedroom door, followed immediately by Carmelita calling out, “Sabella, let me in. Open the door, por favor!”

  Sniffling and rubbing her puffy, red-rimmed eyes, Sabella managed, “Ju-just … a … minute.”

  She rose from the Happy chair and looked frantically about. She saw no sign of the robe she’d worn last night. But a black silk one belonging to Burt was tossed carelessly over the velvet-padded bench at the foot of their bed.

  She drew it on as she crossed to the door, tying the long streamers in a knot at her waist. When she reached the door, she attempted to draw a deep breath, couldn’t, gulped for air, and opened the door a crack.

  “Madre de Dios!” the worried Carmelita exclaimed upon seeing her swollen eyes. “You are sick, sí?”

  Sabella’s reply was a shake of the head and a fresh burst of tears. Carmelita hurried anxiously inside to take the unhappy young woman in her comforting arms. Thoughtlessly, she left the door ajar behind her.

  “La tristeza,” Carmelita exclaimed. “The sadness! Why the sadness? What it is, nena?”

  “Oh, Carmelita,” Sabella sobbed, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “No! But that is what you wish for, sí?”

  “Yes, But I … I … oh, what have I done?”

  “Shhh, shhh,” soothed the stocky Mexican woman. “We wash your face, then we talk.”

  They did talk, the two old friends, speaking freely, knowing their privacy was total. No one else was upstairs except the two of them. So they talked. Sabella told Carmelita that she was almost certain she was pregnant. But
she wasn’t happy. Far from it. For weeks an unexpected affection for her husband had been steadily growing, plaguing her. She had begun to wonder: Could Burt be innocent? Surely it was possible. Maybe he really wasn’t aware that his father had stolen Lindo Vista. And if that were so, then it was very wrong to punish him.

  Neither woman heard Annie Galager coming down the long silent corridor. Her arms filled with freshly washed linens, Lindo Vista’s head laundress was unaware anyone was still upstairs at this late hour of the morning. Her footfalls making no sound on the corridor’s deep carpet. Annie was heading for the big upstairs linen closet when she heard voices.

  She paused, turned her head, and listened. She recognized Sabella’s voice. Curious, she moved a few steps closer to the door at the end of the hall. A door that was evidently wide open. When Annie heard Burt’s name, she began to pay very close attention. And when she heard the shocking things his bride was saying about him, about herself, about their marriage, Annie sneaked silently down the hall to the linen closet. She crept inside the big storage closet, pulled the door almost shut, and continued to listen.

  Annie Galager, hiding there in the closet, learned the whole shocking story. Everything. Including the fact there was a journal. A journal belonging to Carmelita’s deceased husband, Victor Rivera, which documented that Raleigh Burnett swindled Teresa Carrillo Rios out of her rightful inheritance, Lindo Vista. The Rivera journal meticulously tracked Attorney Raleigh Burnett’s crafty theft of Lindo Vista from its rightful owner. The damning journal was now in the possession of Sabella Rios, the daughter of the cheated Teresa Carrillo Rios.

  Blinking in disbelief and delight, Annie Galager smiled in the dimness of the linen closet. Sabella and Carmelita recounted the whole story. They talked of learning all they could about the Burnett family; of clipping and keeping newspaper articles for the past decade. Of coldly planning, from the time Sabella was just fifteen years old, to come to San Juan Capistrano, the two of them, Carmelita and herself, to reside there for six months. And in that six months, Sabella would make Burt Burnett fall in love with her, marry her.

  Then, she would have her revenge on the Burnetts.

  She would have Burt’s son—the future heir to Lindo Vista—and take the child away from him.

  But now, apparently, Sabella had changed her mind.

  “Carmelita, Burt is the kindest, most caring man I’ve ever known,” Annie heard Sabella say. “It’s almost impossible to imagine him stealing anything.” Sabella sighed wearily, her slender shoulders lifting and lowering beneath the slick silk of Burt’s too-large black robe.

  Nodding, Carmelita agreed, “Señor Burnett is good man in many ways.”

  “He is and even if … even if Burt was in on the swindle, I wish we had never come here. I wish I had never sought retribution. I didn’t plan on something like this happening, never dreamed that I would … would … I can’t help myself, I’m in love with Burt.” She closed her tear-reddened eyes and sadly shook her head. “Dear God, how could this be? I love the man I should hate above all others.” Her eyes opened and she admitted, “I never knew life could be so sweet. The weeks … the months I’ve spent with Burt have the happiest of my whole life.”

  Carmelita sympathized, smiled, and wisely advised, “Then forget about seeking revenge. You have the land now. It is yours. Yours and your husband’s. He loves you very much and now you are going to have his child. Let go of the past.”

  Sabella’s scratchy eyes, narrowed with hopelessness, began to widen slightly. Her mind raced as she seriously considered what Carmelita proposed. How simple it would be. How wonderful to put aside all the bitterness and hatred and spend the rest of her life on Lindo Vista with the man she loved.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed excitedly. “That’s exactly what I’ll do. Burt doesn’t know who I am, why I came here. He’ll never have to know. I love him, I’ll be a good wife to him. I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for what I’ve done. Oh, it’s the answer, Carmelita, I know it. He does love me and I love him. We can be happy together. He need never know the truth!”

  Smiling, Carmelita nodded agreeably and walked out into the silent hall. Sabella waited a minute, then anxiously followed. Pausing in her newfound hope and excitement, she frowned worriedly, and called after Carmelita, “He won’t find out, will he?”

  Carmelita noticed the door of the linen closet was open a crack. She shut it, leaned back against it, and crossed her fingers when she said, “No, child, he will never know.”

  Thirty-Three

  “DID YOU GET IT? Did you buy the dynamite?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Gena whirled about and glared angrily at Cisco. “I send you down to Baja to buy dynamite. You spend three days and come back empty-handed?” Hands on her hips, chin jutting, she stepped closer to the tall, spare Mexican. “What did you do while you were down there? Squander my money on some cheap whore?”

  “No, querida.” Cisco grinned evilly, shaking his head. “I only enjoy expensive putas.” He grabbed her arm, roughly pulled her to him. “Rich beautiful whores like you, mi amor.”

  “You filthy bastard!” she hissed loudly. “You can’t speak to me like that! I am Gena de Temple, Senator Nelson de Temple’s daughter while you—” she made a sour face “—you are nothing. A lowly vaquero. A hired hand to be bossed about. I can fire you anytime I choose.”

  “Then do it,” Cisco said, the evil grin never leaving his dark, gaunt face. “What are you waiting for? Fire me.”

  “Fine!” she shouted, her chin lifting a half inch higher. “You’re fired! Get out of this house and off my—”

  His hands were rough and his mouth hot and eager as he hushed her. When finally he released her, Gena was weak in the knees and breathless. She swayed dizzily on her feet and clung helplessly to him.

  “Now, querida,” Cisco said, the nasty smile pulling the long slashing scar on his cheek, “tell me I am fired.”

  Her hands gripping his ropey upper arms, Gena’s forehead sagged against his chest. “Cisco,” she whined, scolding him, “you are mean and cruel. I despise you. You are a monster.”

  “A monster is what you need, querida,” he said coldly. Then he pushed her from him so forcefully, Gena lost her balance, stumbled, and fell to the floor. He looked down at her and said, “I will get the dynamite, but these things take time. Now, are you going to straighten up and behave yourself?” His fingers settled atop her head; he gathered a handful of dark hair and pulled painfully. “Or must I punish you for being a bad girl?”

  “No, please, Cisco, you’re hurting me.” She grabbed his bony wrist. “Stop. I’ll behave.”

  His hand loosened its grip on the dark lustrous locks, and began to stroke soothingly. “Then I reward you. Make love to you here in your father’s house. In your own bed.”

  Gena sighed, wrapped her arms around his black-trousered right leg, and nodding, said, “Yes. That sounds delightful. What time is it?”

  Cisco’s glance shifted to the clock on the peach marble mantel. “Is five minutes to five.”

  “We have an hour, no more. I expect Father and Don Miguel Amaro about six.” Gena released her hold on Cisco’s leg, sat back on her heels, and smiled coyly up at him. “Do what you will with me, but you must be gone before—”

  A loud intrusive knock caused them both to turn and looked at the locked door. Gena, laying her forefinger perpendicular to her lips signaling Cisco to be quiet, called out, “Yes? What is it?”

  “You have a visitor, Señorita Gena,” came the reply from a servant. “Annie Galager is downstairs. She says she must see you at once.”

  Gena sighed with irritation. “Tell her I’ll be right down.” To Cisco, she whispered, “I’ll be back in five minutes, no longer.” She rose before him, stepped very close, put a bold hand on his groin, and slid her fingers slowly between his legs, cupping him. “Don’t undress. Allow me the pleasure of unwrapping all the goodies when I get back.” She gave him a naughty little smile,
squeezed him gently, and left.

  Impatiently, Gena hurried downstairs and into the east drawing room where Annie Galager waited.

  “Annie, I hope this is important,” Gena said by way of greeting. “I’m a very busy woman and I—”

  “I’m sure you have time to hear what I’ve come here to tell you,” the Lindo Vista laundress interrupted, smiling like the cat who’d swallowed the canary.

  Her interest immediately piqued, Gena sat down beside the smiling woman.

  Excitement starting to build, Gena asked hopefully, “It’s about Sabella Rios … ?” She couldn’t bring herself to say Burnett. “You’ve discovered something that will—?”

  “Yes!” Shaking her head, Annie said, “Miss Gena, you are not going to believe what I overheard this morning!”

  Gena smiled with eager anticipation. “What? Tell me! Tell me everything!”

  Annie Galager took a deep breath. Speaking rapidly, excitedly, she told Gena that she had accidentally overhead Sabella Rios Burnett talking confidentially with Carmelita Rivera.

  The longer Annie spoke, the more she told, the wider Gena’s green eyes became. Her mouth rounded in an O, she listened, enraptured, feeling the blood zinging through her veins, her heart hammering in her breast.

  When at last Annie Galager finished speaking she beamed proudly, and waited for Gena’s praise.

  “Burt,” Gena murmured, “I must tell Burt. I must—”

  “I happen to know,” Annie said, “that Mr. Burnett is in Capistrano today. He had a board meeting at the bank this-morning.”

  “This morning? But it’s five o’clock!”

  “This afternoon,” Annie continued, “he was to meet—at the Mission Inn—with a gentleman from Los Angeles for a lengthy business session of some sort. A hydro … a hydrol … Well, anyway something to do with water.”

  “Then Burt is still in town?”

  “I’m almost sure he is. I overheard at breakfast him tell Cappy Ricks that he wouldn’t be home until around seven this evening so—”