Mexican Fire

by Martha Hix

  The warm breezes took a sudden chill. And Reece cursed himself for leaving his knife in the house.

  “Hold up there, hombre,” he said in Spanish, patting the air, “you’ve either mixed me up with someone else, or you’ve mistaken me for a man with a few coins on his person.”

  “You have nothing I want. Except your life.” A harsh chuckle emitted from the big Mexican. “I know who you are. And I am going to kill you.”

  Reece had never been a coward, but he wasn’t stupid when it came to arguing with a deranged man and the business end of a firing piece. “All right, I’ve done something to offend you. No reason why we can’t talk it over before blood goes to flowing.”

  The Mexican took a step closer, hunched his shoulders and shook the pistol. “You know what you’ve done, you Tejano mongrel. You will pay for the woman. Si, you will!”

  Christ, Reece thought, you don’t reckon this ugly lout is husband to one of the ladies I’ve entertained here lately?

  This was a less than auspicious moment to be ruminating the like, what with the pistolero standing so close Reece could smell horse and hay and the heat of anger.

  He made a few quick assessments. The Mexican was big. That ought to mean slow. Of course he had anger on his side, but what the hell? Reece went into action. He ducked, swinging to the right and bringing his knee up against the assailant’s trigger arm.

  “Awgh!” the bigger man cried as the weapon fell to the sand. He pitched forward, his sombrero flying into the cresting water and nearly knocking his quarry off his feet. Righting himself, Reece thrust his forearm against the meaty shoulder, and pushed. The Mexican careened, then landed on his side in a whoosh of expelled air and spewed sand. He grabbed for the pistol.

  His chest heaving, Reece stomped his heel down on the brown hand.

  “Awgh!”

  It was then that hoof beats and a feminine shout grabbed Reece’s attention. He half turned, looking down the beach. A woman, her hair flying behind her, rode bareback on a tall horse. Rode straight for him and the prone Mexican.

  “ ’Rasmo, no!”

  Alejandra! What the hell was she–

  Something hard struck the crook of Reece’s knee. Caught off-guard, he folded. The beach came up to meet him. He tasted the wet, salty grit. Spitting, he shoved an elbow into the soft sand, and tried to gain a superior position. A fist as big as a cantaloupe slammed into his jaw.

  The long tongue of living fire blazed through his face and head, jeopardizing Reece’s consciousness. He shook his head, blood flying from his cut mouth.

  Pistol in his grip, the Mexican stood over him. “I will finish what I started now.”

  “Don’t, ’Rasmo! I beg of you—don’t!”

  “Get back, Alejandra,” Reece demanded.

  Sprawled once more on the beach fronting Casa Montgomery, Reece was in no position to wonder why Alejandra was coming to his defense. But the thought did burst in his mind as she dove between him and the gunman.

  In an explosion of lights and acrid fumes, the gun fired.

  Chapter Nine

  The surf roared as loud as the pounding in her head. Dazed, she lay on the beach, cradled in a nook strong and protective. And her arm felt as if a thousand nails had beeen driven into its flesh.

  What had happened? And was that Erasmo, horror in his wide face, rushing toward her? Was this Reece, starlight in his golden hair, who held her? In hope of clearing her senses, she moaned and moved.

  “Shhh, my darling,” Reece whispered while wrapping a piece of material around her wound. “Lie still.”

  “What have I done!”

  Reece’s head jerked up. “You shot her, you bastard. What the hell do you think you did?”

  Tossing his pistol into the lapping waves of the Gulf of Mexico, Erasmo wailed, “Please, oh please, forgive me, amiga.”

  For which transgression? she tried but couldn’t ask.

  Alejandra’s mare approached. Wiggling her ears, Moscada lowered her nose to her fallen mistress.

  “Away with you, beast,” ordered Reece, pushing at the horse’s muzzle. Then, gently, he amended, “Go away, beauty.”

  Moscada retreated two steps.

  Erasmo fell to his knees and took Alejandra’s cold hand. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Honestly I didn’t. It was”—he pointed at Reece—“it was he I sought to fell!”

  “Shut up, you melodramatic ass, and go for a doctor.”

  “I will not leave her to the likes of you. You,” Erasmo said, adding emphasis, “go for help.”

  “Get going, hombre.”

  “Take your hands from her.”

  Through her pain, Alejandra observed the two men glare at each other. Neither would back down from his stand, she sensed. Right now she didn’t know what she wanted or who should aide her, but she had unfinished matters with both.

  The situation between Erasmo and Mercedes was a topic for another day, she decided.

  But this traitor holding her—he needed to be dealt with. Right now. If . . . if she could find the strength.

  She requested hoarsely, “ ’Rasmo, fetch Joaquin. Please do it. You know where he lives.”

  Uncertainty in his moonlit expression, Erasmo moved not a muscle.

  “Please.”

  This time Erasmo relented. He turned and limped down the shoreline, toward the small silhouette of his mount.

  Now she would deal with Reece Montgomery. Now!

  But her body betrayed her, betrayed her just as he had. Alejandra surrendered to her physical agony, or was it mere exhaustion? Leaning her cheek against his hard, hair-dusted chest, she clutched at her torn flesh. A tear formed.

  It was kissed away by lips tender and caressing.

  “We have something between us.” He extracted the knife secured now at her waistband. “Your calling card,” he said, lifting a brow.

  Alejandra ached to spar. Weak from her wound, she could not act on her determination. Or did her reasoning have something to do with the warm shelter he provided?

  As much as she wanted to hate the man without honor, she couldn’t.

  And then Reece moved her off the cradle of his lap. She felt a strange emptiness. The feeling fleeted, for he lifted her into his arms and, Moscada trailing behind at his heel, he carried Alejandra to the beckoning lights of Casa Montgomery.

  Pausing short of the patio, Reece turned his head to the mare. “Stay, beauty. I’ll see to your mistress.”

  “That’s debatable,” Alejandra mumbled, somewhat recovered and all too clearly remembering her anger.

  Through the French doors of his bedchamber he carried her. A hurricane lamp lit Reece’s sleeping room. The sea-tinged breezes billowed the gossamer mosquito netting of the soft bed where, parting the sheers, Reece placed her.

  He straightened; the net framed his naked torso. “Just lie still, querida. I’ll gather some things to wash you with.”

  Her head resting on a down-filled pillow, she stretched a leg on what had been a pristine silk sheet. “No,” she protested, remembering all her anger at Reece, “just leave me alone.”

  “As you wish.”

  He turned on his heel and vanished into another part of the house. Even though she was pained as well as angry, Alejandra felt abandoned. It would have been gallant of him at least to protest, wouldn’t it?

  Consider the source.

  She burrowed her face into the soft pillow. Weary and wounded, she fell to sleep.

  He cursed the midnight. He wanted to shake her senseless. He ached to break every bone in her body. She knew how to hurt him without striking a physical blow. And she was gone, had been for hours.

  Joaquin Navarro knew not her destination. Perhaps it was to Papa the Arrogant Frenchman, doubtfully to the succor of her witch of a mother. Perhaps she had fled to her long-suffering sister—the widow of Campos de Palmas—who needed to be laid as surely as Mercedes needed to be flogged.

  Joaquin Navarro, standing in the great room of Hacienda del Noche, took a
fifth swill of mescal. The fiery cactus liquor burned his gullet, but he was unmindful of that woe. His beautiful, vicious wife was the agony tearing through him.

  His line of sight traveled across the onyx floor, up the onyx staircase to the second floor of the home Toussaint money had provided. Where, this afternoon, Mercedes had made light of his manhood.

  How dare she say it was his fault, her inability to conceive a child?

  Impotence had never been a problem, at least not until today. Damn her! She could just go to hell for all he cared.

  Making a fist, he slammed it into the portrait that hung on the rock wall. “¡Dios!” He yelled in pain as bones splintered—metacarpals, he knew in an instant—yet no blood gushed. The grand portrait of Mercedes Toussaint Navarro went undamaged. He couldn’t even spill his blood on the bitch.

  Joaquin was a man in hell. Emotionally and physically.

  From the corner of his eye, he spied a half-Indian woman approaching. “Go away!” he bellowed.

  She flipped her long, blue-black hair over a shoulder, and parked a hand at her wide waist. Her stomach, big as a balloon, wrought a wicked smile from Joaquin, despite his collective pain. Here was the evidence of his manliness.

  “Josie, get me a chair.”

  She scooted a heavy wooden one close to him. He smelled her particular and arousing scent, cinnamon and wood smoke and unwashed woman. For all his breeding and refinement, Joaquin Navarro, physician from Soria, was enthralled with the earthy.

  Her dark eyes snapping, Josie said, “Just look at your hand—the one that should hold your scalpel! You have done yourself in.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Huh! You are a fool for letting your haughty wife hurt you so deeply that you would jeopardize your calling.”

  “Watch your insolent tongue.”

  Never in her twenty years had anyone stifled Josie Montana with words. “Ah, Chico,” she said, using her petname for Joaquin, “you should leave that blond-haired puta.” Standing next to her lover, she thrust her stomach against his cheek. “This is where you belong. With me. And with your son.”

  Maybe he did belong with Josie. Now there was a woman. Fiery Josie. Who screamed in ecstacy when he took her. Who reveled in his virility. Who would birth his child any day now.

  He started to touch the rounded belly, but the effort in lifting his broken hand brought renewed agony.

  “Get away,” he repeated, flinching from Josie’s nearness.

  Yet he didn’t mean those words, not really. He wanted Josie; he wanted Mercedes. He wanted peace of mind. He didn’t know what he wanted, but to covet the peasant went beyond the realm of society. And society meant everything to Joaquin. “There’s no future for me with such a peasant as you.”

  Her brown face turned white, yet she elevated her chin. “You should have thought about that before you filled me with your seed.”

  He walked to the wall, resting his forehead against the cool stone. Life wasn’t fair! His child should be growing in Mercedes’s body. It wasn’t right, his bloodline being tainted with that of his housemaid’s. Why, his child would be brown and broad-faced—and forever an embarrassment to him.

  But it would show his wife that he could become a father. Ha! In her way of twisting facts to her own delusions, Mercedes would never believe the story. The only revenge with Mercedes was to get a babe on her.

  “Chico,” Josie said, tearing his thoughts away from his wife, “let me doctor your hand.”

  “You doctor me? Ha! I am the doctor, and I won’t have your filthy hands touching my wound.”

  “You didn’t mind my—filthy hands touching you when—”

  He veered around. Leaning against the wall, he ordered, “Shut up, you peasant puta. Be gone with you. I want you packed and away from del Noche before dawn!”

  “Chico, you are wavering again,” she taunted. “You think you want me and our child, you think you want the señora. For a man with so much privilege, why can’t you be happy?”

  He lurched toward her. “Don’t point out my flaws. Just be gone with you.”

  “And the child?” she queried and took a step backward.

  “Drown your vile spawn, for all I care.” He didn’t really mean that, but . . . “Better yet, offer his beating heart to one of your pagan gods!”

  There was hurt in Josie’s black eyes, but he cared nada. All he wanted was for his hand to mend. And for Mercedes to return, where he could get a proper Navarro from her.

  Josie turned and walked to the chair that Joaquin had abandoned. Her palm flattened on the wide wooden arm. Raising her chin, she asked, “And the good señora? How will she feel when I present your son to her?”

  “Don’t threaten me.” He staggered over to the woman who could ruin him, if he gave a damn. Or if Mercedes gave a care. He extended his good hand and pushed against the offending mound of gut. “You never knew your place, but it’s time you found it. Away from here!”

  Josie stumbled backward, clutching her stomach. Fury as thunderous as storm clouds in the rain forest darkened her black eyes. Words had never hurt her, but violence against her child was another thing. A stream of curse words spilled out of her mouth as she rushed forward.

  With his good hand Joaquin grabbed a candlestick and waved it at her. “Stay back, you no-good puta!”

  She didn’t. He swung the brass weapon at her. He heard the rush of expelled air as the candlestick struck her diaphragm. The gravity of his deed struck him with the force of dynamite.

  “Josie—”

  “I will kill you, you evil bastard!” she threatened at the crescendo of a tirade. She jerked the candlestick from his grip.

  “But I love—”

  She slammed the heavy brass club against the side of his head.

  —you and I’m sorry for—

  Stars flashed before his eyes. His stomach roiled. By reflex, his injured hand went to his broken skull. Joaquin lunged to the side and fell against the wooden chair. His neck hit the armrest.

  He felt the snap, then . . .

  Chapter Ten

  It was the sleep of the dead.

  So deep was Alejandra’s exhaustion she didn’t move a muscle when Reece cleaned and dressed her wound. Earlier he had removed her jacket, leaving her clad in chemise and skirt. He brushed sand, then washed away smears of blood from the sheets. Thank God the powder ball had barely grazed her skin.

  Casa Montgomery lacking so much as one gardenia bush, he tucked a red hibiscus behind her ear. Red really was her best color. The scarlet of blood hadn’t become her, though. Poor darling. He could have sliced ’Rasmo, whoever he was, to ribbons for hurting Alejandra.

  Again Reece touched her. It was both heaven and hell, his ministering. The feel of her sleek ivory skin was even softer than he could have imagined. And her hair. Oh, God! That waist-length ebony mass held the scent of gardenias and was spread across his pillow, just as he had fantasized about so many times. Perhaps a thousand of them.

  In his visions she had come to him, her lips parted, her hair flowing freely. Candlelight caught the blue in her black hair, the green in those bewitching hazel eyes. Her voice, heavy with need and anticipation, murmured the words he yearned to hear, “Love me, Reece. Love me . . . long and hard.”

  He could handle the long and hard. Right now his doeskin breeches were about to pop, his erection being so damned engorged. But Alejandra, poor thing, wasn’t up to such. Hers wasn’t a serious wound, of course. The injury would throb—probably not as hard as he was throbbing—but she would be in pain, once she awakened from her exhausted sleep.

  Which didn’t do much to mollify his . . . problem.

  Whoa boy. Down. He had to think of something else. Something totally unrelated. What were the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner?” Oh, say can you see . . . by the dawn’s early—Christ, look at those lashes! Reece cleared his throat. How many bushels of corn could you raise on three acres of land? He had no idea. How many beavers did it take to build a dam? O
ne gardenia ought to do it. Gardenia!

  Reece lunged off the bed and away from her flowery scent . . . away from the ties of her chemise that beckoned his untying fingers. Yet still possessed with the yearning to strip away her remaining clothes and run his hands along the womanly lines of her body, he reasoned with himself: this was no time for lovemaking.

  He needed to figure a way to atone for his mistake of earlier this evening.

  But mostly he wanted to hold her to him. Desire fought with conscience. His heart beating a tattoo against the wall of his chest, Reece decided it wouldn’t hurt to hold her . . . for just a moment or two. He eased onto the bed again, stretching his tall frame along her uninjured side. A hand that shook slightly moved to her throat to allow his forefinger to smooth her jawline. She looked so vulnerable, so defenseless.

  What drove such a woman to the Federalist cause? Well, that faction had the right idea, since they were more for the people than for themselves. Considering what he had heard about Alejandra’s devotion to her workers, Reece admired her courage.

  But didn’t she realize the dangers? He yearned to protect her from harm.

  Her breathing shallowed. She turned her head from side to side and moistened her lips. “Where . . . am I?”

  Reece rubbed his thumb behind her ear. “With me, my sweet.”

  Her eyes flew open. Fully cognizant, she bit out, “Get away. I don’t want you touching me.”

  He smiled. She wasn’t vulnerable or defenseless now. This was the old Alejandra. And he enjoyed the challenge of her. “I love it when you’re waspish.” He levered up on an elbow and grinned at his fiery Mexicana. “Besides, I thought we settled it the last time you were here. My touch isn’t repellent.”

  “That was before I knew what a snake-in-the-grass you are.”

  “We’re feeling better, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, we are. Where is my brother-in-law?”