Santos shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll give you a chance…” His words drifted off in thought. “In the morning before we leave, I’ll be sure you get a chance to talk to him in private.” His hand tightened about her arm. His eyes bore into hers. “Do it, Relie. And go easy on him. He’s my very best friend.”
Lying abed now waiting for the sun to rise, for Tita to ring the first bell for breakfast, she recalled Santos’s astonishing words. At first she had rejected them as the fantasy of an overprotective brother.
But thinking about it—which she had done off and on the entire night—she decided he was right. He was right, for in the end it was Carson’s words that sang in her head, Carson’s words about making love to her, his determination that they would be together again.
Is that what he meant when he talked about getting back to their business? That he was falling in love with her?
That he wanted to marry her?
Jumping from bed, she strode to the window and stared out at the corral, envisioning him as she had seen him the day before, riding that bay horse every bit as good as any charro she had ever seen.
She tried to picture him in Guanajuato. At the lavish new theater, wearing a black silk suit and top hat. At the governor’s ball, twirling her around a room sparkling with chandeliers and ladies’ jewels.
But the images would not come. Instead she saw him before the altar at Saint Francis Cathedral. Standing before the altar with her beside him, wearing her yellow lace dress.
At Pia and Santos’s wedding.
Yes, she must tell him. She must not come between her brother and his best friend. Certainly not with the wedding so close at hand.
She found him standing beside the corral, and she pictured him in Guanajuato, riding the bay in the charriada.
“So you think I need work on my turns?”
“Have you ever been to Guanajuato?”
He shook his head.
“Would you like to come?”
“Are you going?”
She tilted her chin, thinking. She would face a giant hurdle convincing Papá to allow her to make the trip, even if she promised to return to Catorce after the feria. Perhaps if she promised to do penance of some sort when she returned…
“Yes,” she replied.
“Then I’ll be there, angel.”
She looked up at him, her heart pounding with what she had to tell him. His appellation sang in her ears. “Carson, I…”
She never got to finish, because he lowered his lips, touching hers, igniting her with a fiery urgency that left her breathless. She threw her arms around his neck, drawing him near, eagerly returning his kiss.
As though she were starving for his touch, for his lips. His arms encircled her, bringing her closer to his body. Her body…craving his…starving for his body.
Finally, she tried again. Drawing her lips from his, she gazed into his eyes. His loving eyes. “Carson, I…”
“I missed you, angel. It feels like we’ve been apart a year already.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “I know.”
Once again their lips met, desperately seeking relief from the yearning that gnawed inside them.
Again she pulled away before she wanted to. She had promised Santos, after all. But how to begin?
Staring into Carson’s eyes, Aurelia felt weak, vulnerable, lost. Yet a wonderful feeling, full of excitement and anxiety and something soft and sensual, also simmered inside her.
“I must talk to you,” she hurried to say.
He cocked an eyebrow, his wry grin tipping the corners of his nude lips. She reached to stroke his upper lip, recalling how she had wanted to do so the evening before.
How Santos’s presence had stopped her.
Santos.
“I must tell you something.” She turned in his arms, staring into the corral. He turned beside her, one arm around her shoulders, one locked over the top of the corral. She felt his gaze on the side of her face.
“I’m listening.”
“Remember I told you I was trying to escape Catorce?”
“Hmm.”
“Well, I was going somewhere.”
She felt his arm stiffen against her shoulders.
“I was going to Guanajuato.”
“To the feria?”
“No.”
“Somehow I didn’t think it would be that simple.”
She turned to look at him. His warm brown eyes were soft, sad. “Oh, Carson, I’ve wanted it for so very long.”
He smiled. “I suppose I should be grateful it’s an it you want and not a him.”
She paused, considering his statement, finally understanding it. She spoke before she fully realized what she was saying. “You are the him. I want you to come, too. I thought about it all night. With us together, it would be wonderful. We would have a wonderful life.”
“Doing what?”
She frowned.
He kissed her lips. “Besides the obvious, of course.”
“We can find something.”
He studied her, his expression changing from lustful to serious to playful. “Is this a proposal, ma’am?”
After the longest time, she grinned self-consciously. “I…well, Santos said—”
“That brother of yours is becoming a nuisance.”
“I know, but he…I mean, you’re his friend, and he doesn’t want me to come between you. I don’t want to, either. He said you…that you loved…”
Stricken by the shameless turn of the conversation, Aurelia diverted her attention to the corral, but Carson tipped her chin, bringing her face back to his.
“He told you I’m falling in love with you, is that it?”
She nodded.
“Well, he’s right.” Bending, he kissed her tenderly. “I think it’s love. Since I’ve never experienced it before, I could be wrong.” He kissed her again.
“You intoxicate me, angel. Your playfulness and enthusiasm, even your scheming—”
“You think I’m a child. Like Santos!”
He held her face, staring into her eyes, speaking softly but distinctly. “I know you are a woman.”
Before she had a chance to complete the conversation, the second bell for breakfast rang. Carson kissed her again, soundly. He held her close, running his hands up her back, molding her curves to his.
“No telling when that birddoggin’ brother of yours will leave us alone again,” he commented when they turned toward the house.
“I know. He said I could have this one chance to tell you.”
“To run me off, you mean?”
“No. He doesn’t think I’m ready for marriage, that’s all.”
With a hand to her arm, he stopped her. “I’m not sure I am, myself. Marriage is a mighty big step. Too big to take the first time the notion strikes.” His eyes caressed her face, warming her, calming her. His next words kindled a spontaneous though unexpected sort of hope inside her. “I’m not trying to rush you, angel. But he isn’t running me off, either.”
“You are friends, and—” she protested.
“Let us worry about that. What is happening between you and me is no one else’s business, not even your brother’s.” He planted one quick, deliciously wet peck on her lips. “We may have to play his game a while, though.”
Breakfast went well, mostly, Aurelia suspected, because Santos believed she and Carson had settled the matter of their relationship.
They hadn’t, and it nagged her the entire way to Catorce. That, and the visit from the Federales they received in the middle of breakfast that morning before they left the ranch.
The aplomb with which the two friends agreed to the Federales’ insistence on escorting them to Catorce at first concerned, then excited her. Watching them together, she marveled at how congenial these two men were, at how well they worked together.
Santos introduced Carson as his friend from Texas, a Ranger who had come to spend some time helping him end his days as a bachelor in style.
The Federales had laughed at that, and though at first warily, they accepted Carson as one of their own. They were glad Aurelia had made it home safely, and other than a few cursory questions and a couple of raised eyebrows, they had not questioned her story of getting separated from her friends on their evening stroll, being accosted by the escaped prisoner, then set free. It was fortunate, they agreed, that she had been able to find her way home with little trouble.
By the time they rode into Real de Catorce two days later, Carson was joking and cutting up with the Federales as if he hadn’t spent the previous several days avoiding the mere sight of them.
And true to his word, Carson played Santos’s game, treating her with the same camaraderie as he did her brother. Well, she conceded, almost.
Around the campfire at night, she would suddenly find him staring at her, his eyes alight with warm passion. A couple of times she saw Santos’s eyebrows shoot up, but his hackles did not rise. She supposed he thought she had ended the matter.
At night she slept on the ground between them. Close enough for protection and privacy from the Federales—who camped a discreet distance away on the other side of the fire—but not so close that there was any danger of chance contact.
During the daytime, she rode beside one or the other, occasionally between them, sharing their laughter and jokes as she had always done with Santos’s friends. A sense of belonging settled inside her and left her feeling warm and secure and happier than she could ever remember being.
Even when Santos teased her about her fondness for trail living. When she asked where he had gotten such a notion, he slapped Carson on the back and hee-hawed.
That was the only occasion on the entire trip when the two men showed the slightest bit of hostility toward each other. And then it was Carson who shrugged off Santos’s hand and turned abruptly away.
The night before they reached Catorce, Santos and Carson advised her of their plan.
“When we get home, you will have to stay indoors,” Santos told her. “We have decided not to let anyone know you turned up safe. We don’t want Nuncio Quiroz coming after you.”
Aurelia watched Carson’s jaw clench at that. “We will stick with the story your friends concocted,” he added. “For the time being, no one is to know who I am.”
“You mean who you were,” Aurelia laughed. “You are Santos’s friend, the Texas Ranger. You were a train robber.”
His gaze held hers, his wry grin teasing. “You were the robber of trains, ang…ah…Aurelia.”
Santos cleared his throat. “We won’t even tell Mamá and Papá the truth right now. It will be enough for them that we have brought you home unharmed. The difficulties at the mine are coming from someplace high in the company. Papá might accidentally trust the wrong person.”
When they advised the Federales of their plan to take Aurelia secretly into town, the soldiers were not convinced the sham was necessary.
Santos convinced them by saying they didn’t want her to come to any undue harm until the escapee was caught. Then he called on their sense of pride, saying, “If the Catorce police discover the hostage is no longer in danger, they might slacken their efforts to catch the prisoner. You know how lax locals sometimes tend to be.”
None of the three trusted the Federales to keep their mouths shut. But it was Carson who hit on the one thing that might do it. “The señorita’s reputation is at stake here, señores. If word leaks out that she spent time with that criminal…well, you understand.”
They nodded solemnly, giving Aurelia a tip of the hat, even though to all appearances she was one of the men. Dressed in breeches, shirt, and sombrero, she reluctantly slipped a heavy serape over her shoulders before they entered the tunnel.
It was Carson she worried about being recognized when they exited the tunnel and rode into the high-mountain city. Their horses’ hooves clattered along the twisting bricked streets, past the two-story Casa de Moneda, where she thought of Enrique Villasur for almost the first time since she’d tricked him into revealing the arrangements for moving the prisoner.
She watched Carson scan the streets from side to side with wide eyes. Even though he had seen Catorce through the eyes of a prisoner, today he viewed the opulent surroundings from a different perspective.
“So this is what you were trying to escape.”
“It may look grand,” she insisted, “but living here is like being in prison.”
He shook his head. “If this is a prison, I don’t think I’m ready to see Guanajuato.”
The Federales parted company with them at the jail. Aurelia ducked her head and Carson held his breath until they were a good block up the street.
Around them the mountains rose as a backdrop for a stage play. Santos took the lead, turning his mount this way then that, rising and twisting with the streets, ever higher and higher.
Vines trailed down whitewashed walls from wrought iron balconies. Potted plants graced the unobtrusive entrances to various villas. Water splashed gaily from fountains at almost every intersection. The festive scene enveloped Aurelia, not with a joyous sense of homecoming, but with a pall of doom. Here she was, right back where she had started from. She felt like a captive being returned to prison.
Drawing rein at the side of the Mazón mansion, Santos dismounted to open the wide double gates that led into the stable yard.
Once inside the bricked yard, she turned to find Carson sitting his mount under the arched portal, shaking his head in dismay. “Come on, we’re home,” she called.
With a sigh, he spurred his horse past Santos. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with accusation. “I may change my mind about believing you, partner.”
“How’s that?” Santos asked.
“This here’s mighty high cotton for an ol’ country boy from Texas.”
Before she had a chance to decipher his meaning, the gates swung closed behind them, and family members engulfed them from all sides.
Even Pia and Zita were there, since Santos had sent a vaquero ahead to alert the family to their arrival, with the specific request that Aurelia’s two closest friends be present, but no one else outside the immediate family.
In a rare show of affection, her father hugged her, giving her a brief inspection before turning his attention to Santos.
Her mother wrapped her in her arms. Her tears, the first Aurelia could ever recall seeing on that usually placid face, brought moisture to her own eyes, deluging her with a great wave of remorse. “I’m sorry, Mamá. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Her mother held her back, took both cheeks in her hands, kissed her, then looked her over from head to foot. “You are safe. I prayed to Santa Cecilia every day for your safe return.”
“We all did, Relie.”
Glancing toward the voice, Aurelia saw Enrique, his face a picture of stoic endurance.
“Enrique has been our strength,” her mother said. “Our tower of strength.”
Suddenly, the clatter and clamor surrounded Aurelia, resounding in her ears, deafening her. She smiled feebly, nodded her thanks, then looked around.
She found Carson’s eyes on her. The pandemonium subsided. He stood to the back of the stable yard beside her father and Santos. Pia hovered near.
“Carson,” she called, “come meet Mamá.”
His eyes left hers, settling on the man beside her.
“Let me make the introductions.” Santos dragged his friend by the arm. “Mamá, this is Carson Jarrett, my best man. Funny how he turned up early. He was a big help to me, searching for Relie and all.”
Aurelia’s eyes never left Carson, whose attention had turned on her mother. He waited until she offered her hand, then took it with well-mannered grace.
“Señora Mazón. I apologize for intruding at such a time.”
Pia hugged Aurelia from one side. “Isn’t it wonderful that he came early? Now I have one less thing to worry about.”
Zita hugged her from the other side. “We were so worried about you, Reli
e.” Her eyes didn’t look worried, though. Aurelia watched her friend’s gaze fasten on Carson.
“Isn’t it exciting?” Zita babbled. “The best man is already here. It puts me in the wedding spirit.”
Aurelia sighed. At least neither Pia nor Zita recognized Carson. Maybe that meant no one else would.
“I’m sorry you didn’t arrive earlier,” Enrique was saying at her shoulder. “We just finished lunch, and I must leave now before siesta begins.” Raising his hand in a hesitant manner, he touched her cheek with his knuckles, then quickly drew his hand away. “You are all right, aren’t you? That man didn’t…I mean, he didn’t harm you?”
She stared at him, aghast. With the greatest of difficulty, she restrained herself from turning to Carson to see if he had heard, to see if he was watching.
To reach for him. To hold to him.
Enrique’s question brought back their glorious days on the trail…her first days with Carson. How dare this outsider speak of them with such innuendos? How dare he speak of them at all?
After Enrique took his leave, she allowed Zita to draw her through the back entrance into the marble-floored hallway of the Mazón mansion. “Don’t be angry with Enrique, Relie. He has been worried about you. I mean, dreadfully worried. His bride-to-be abducted…”
Aurelia only half listened to her friend’s chatter. Ahead of them she watched Pia and Santos, saw their struggle to keep from touching each other, felt their urgency, their desire. Where was Carson?
Turning, she saw him lounging against the arched doorway, boots crossed at the ankles, staring after her.
His eyes were warm but somehow lifeless.
“Come on,” she called. “If we want lunch, we have to eat before the servants retire for siesta.”
He grinned. Not the wry, provocative grin she had come to expect, the one that fired her spirit, but a dismal, what-the-hell sort of shrug from a man she did not know.
Even Santos appeared uncomfortable, she noticed over lunch. The family sat around the table, watching the three of them eat, talking. Aurelia could tell Pia longed for Santos’s attention, some of it, anyhow, but he concentrated on explaining the events that had transpired since Aurelia’s kidnapping— the version they had agreed to earlier.
Silver Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Two Page 13
