“Your friend is uh—rather irresponsible, is he not?” the quiet American murmured behind them. Ginny, in spite of her rage, was glad to note that his thin face looked disapproving. “Do they mean trouble?”
Diego had his hands full, holding firmly onto Ginny’s arm and trying to soothe her injured feelings at the same time.
He mumbled something that she couldn’t catch, his quick wits seeming to desert him for a moment.
“Oh—I’d like to see him defend himself from them!” Ginny muttered triumphantly. “They look villainous enough to take on an army alone!”
Her triumph was short-lived, lasting only long enough for the oldest of the men to bellow threateningly, “Concepción!”
Sullenly, his daughter disengaged herself from Steve’s arms, and Ginny could not prevent herself from putting a hand up before her mouth to stifle a cry as the men moved forward menacingly. What was the matter with Steve? Didn’t he have any senses left, or had that girl befuddled them completely? Why wasn’t he making an attempt to save himself?
No, instead he was smiling as he extended his arms.
“Sanchez, my old friend! I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“So I could see!” the man growled dangerously. And then suddenly his face broke out in a wide smile as he laughed uproariously.
“You young rascal! Still up to your old tricks, eh? Come here and greet an old friend properly—I’ll disown you if you’ve adopted too many Americano ways!”
Disbelievingly, Ginny watched the two men exchange abrazos—and then the others had crowded round, Concepción’s guitar-playing brothers grinning from ear to ear as they in turn embraced Steve in bear hugs. Only the man who had been dancing with Concepción hung back rather sullenly, and then he too forced a smile and came forward.
As if he’d only just remembered her presence, Steve reached out suddenly, pulling Ginny into the group.
“I’m forgetting my manners. This is Ginny, my wife.”
How easily he said it, still smiling—just as if they’d been married for years and the marriage was already boring. And only a few minutes ago he had kissed the gypsy girl back with every evidence of enthusiasm, just as if he’d still been single; as if they, she and he, had not been married within the last hour! Well, even if that was his intention he would not succeed in humiliating her, as he’d find out!
A smile curving her lips, Ginny accepted their somewhat boisterous congratulations. Sanchez kissed her heartily on both cheeks, his mustachios tickling her. She had not missed the widening of Concepción’s eyes, the look of shock on the girl’s face that was almost immediately wiped away by a wide, slightly mocking smile.
“So wicked one, it’s happened to you too, has it? I would not have expected it—but you’re lucky, she is beautiful.” For an instant the girl’s cheek, warm, and slightly damp from the exertion of her dancing was pressed against Ginny’s. “Don’t mind the kiss,” Concepción whispered, “we have known each other since we were children, Esteban and I.” Her apparent composure was marred only by a wicked glint in her eyes as she shot a glance at Steve.
There were questions on every side. When had they been married? How long? But surely the invitations had said a week from now? When Steve admitted laughingly that they had actually been married this very evening, Sanchez gave a great shout.
“So—then we have a wedding celebration, before you rejoin your fine friends inside, sí?”
Diego Sandoval gave a shrug and announced that he would see to it that there were drinks sent out here. He looked ardently at the lovely Concepción and begged her to save a dance for him. Laughing, she agreed. She seemed completely in command of herself now, only giving a smile and a slight shrug when Tomas, the man who had been dancing with her, kissed Ginny full on the lips by way of congratulation.
Ginny herself was at first taken by surprise, and then determined to let Steve see that she too could play at any game he could. The man kissed her fiercely and somehow despairingly—for the short moment that he held her in his arms she could feel the heat of his body and its slight trembling which he tried to hide by the unexpected fervor of his kiss. So we are both taking our revenge, Ginny thought. She hated Steve all over again—hated his easy assurance, the way he was smiling at Concepción, bending his head to whisper something to her even while his wife was being kissed by another man only a few feet away!
“You bastard!” Concepción was saying, her voice low, her eyes spitting fury. “Why did you do it? You’re not the marrying kind, any more than I am. What’s the matter with you?”
His raised eyebrow infuriated her, as he had known it would.
“Chica, bitchiness doesn’t suit you. And don’t pretend you’re jealous, you married first, remember?”
“Pah!” Concepción stamped her foot, skirts flying. She was the type who didn’t care who saw her, or what she did. “You know as well as I do that I married that pig to make you mad—I got rid of him a long time ago—now I do just as I please. But you—”
“Don’t swear at me again. Such bad language, coming from such a lovely mouth—why is it that women always resort to swearing when they don’t have anything reasonable or logical to say? As for my wife…” Steve frowned almost imperceptibly when he saw that Ginny was being kissed by another man, a perfect stranger who had obviously seized the opportunity to kiss a pretty woman. So she was determined to get her own back, it seemed. With what abandon she threw herself into the kiss, her eyes closed, head back…he had the sudden and quite inexplicable urge to tear her away from the man and slap her face, hard.
“Are you jealous already, reasonable one?” Concepción’s biting tone did nothing to relieve his flare of temper. But Steve managed to smile at her amusedly.
“As I was saying, about my wife,” he continued smoothly, “it’s a marriage of convenience for us both. My grandfather’s idea, really, but it’s going to have certain advantages—the main one being that I can’t be trapped into marriage again!”
“Go and dance with her!” Concepción said abruptly, starting to move away from him. “After that is over, you can ask me to dance, and we’ll talk—I’d rather sink my claws into your flesh, you dog, but maybe I’ll save that for another time!”
The music had started up again, and just as Jaime Perez, his face glowering, walked down the steps from the house, Steve grabbed Ginny’s hands and pulled her into the circle that had been cleared for dancing.
The music was wild and pulsing, and after a while, as other couples joined them, she found that she did not have too much difficulty in following the steps. Perhaps her anger helped her throw herself into the primitive rhythm, the abandonment of the body to the music. Perhaps it was the wine that was being passed around, even to the dancers. In any case, Ginny found it easier to lose herself in the dancing than to talk.
“You should have been a gypsy yourself,” Steve murmured to her when the dance brought them together. She smiled at him a trifle dreamily, but there was a wicked, almost dangerous look in her narrowed green eyes. He reflected rather grimly that this promised to turn out to be quite an evening.
“I’ll show him—yes, I’ll show him!” Ginny kept thinking. Her body seemed to move by itself, her feet kept time to the wild, fast beat of the music, the deeply thrumming guitars. She had not eaten, and the wine they kept passing to her had gone to her head, she knew it and she didn’t care. She danced with a glass of wine in her hand, drained it and flung it over her shoulder, like the others were doing. “I’ll show him that I can do anything he does—I can turn men’s heads as easily as that woman can. She’s nothing more than an obvious flirt, of course, but men seem to lap that kind of thing up. I’m his wife now—no one feels anything more than pity for a betrayed woman, but a man who’s deceived by his wife is laughed at—we’ll see how he likes that!”
There were more and more people out here dancing now—perhaps the sensuous throbbing of the guitars, the cries and the clapping of dancers and bystanders alike drew
more guests away from the more sedate melodies of the waltz. Ginny’s feet had found the rhythm of the corrido and wouldn’t lose it. She saw Concepción’s look of surprise as she danced past.
Ginny was dancing with Tomas. She had watched Concepción without the girl being aware of it, and now she moved her arms too, curling them upward, over her head, her body swaying teasingly, green eyes half-closed.
“Dios mio! You dance like an angel!” Tomas muttered. His eyes had grown hotter, and darker, they moved slowly over her body and she laughed softly.
“I don’t dance as well as Concepción, of course,” she murmured.
“You were born to dance—are you sure you don’t have gypsy blood? Caramba, why is it you are married already?”
He had forgotten that she was a lady, one of the guests, while he was merely one of the entertainers. With her full, sensually smiling lips and the artlessly sexual movements of her body she had made him forget everything but the fact that she was a woman and he was a man. She was not like Concepción, whose tongue cut like a knife, taking a man’s manhood away from him, playing with him….
She danced in the very center of the crowd, and her hair and eyes would have made her stand out by themselves, if the attention of every man in the crowd, dancers and watchers alike, had not been drawn irresistibly by something else. Her body, the gleaming whiteness of her shoulders as they moved sinuously, her unconscious but complete abandonment to the dance; and above all the look on her face—eyes half closed, lips smiling, it was the face of a woman being possessed by a man—dreaming, languorous, at one moment, and then teasing, daring. There was not a man here who didn’t want her—who didn’t crave her body, naked and writhing, beneath his.
“You didn’t marry a lady!” Concepción snapped. She was dancing with Steve, but even she had not been able to keep her eyes off Ginny. “She—why she’s as much of a bitch as I am!” Her voice held a note of grudging admiration. “Are you going to put up with the way she’s behaving?”
Sanchez himself had shouldered Tomas aside and was whirling Ginny around, making her skirts fly. They were both laughing.
“Even my own father—the old goat, look at him! You ought to stop it, drag her away. What are all your fine friends going to think?”
“That I married quite a woman. And you’re right, chica, she is as much of a bitch as you are—I don’t think she’s forgiven us for that kiss.”
“So she’s trying to make you jealous? What a switch!” Concepción laughed angrily.
“Oh—Ginny’s full of tricks,” he responded a trifle dryly. “Most of them nasty. At the moment, we are in a state of war.”
“Then you must fight back, no?”
“Perhaps! But I’ve the feeling that right now I’m outnumbered.” His glance went meaningly to the glowering Jaime Perez who stood watching. Just behind him, the Señora Ortega and Dona Armijo had just emerged from the house and their faces were scandalized.
Following Steve’s glance, Concepción’s eyes widened.
“I think I understand. There is more trouble with your abielo, eh? Well—if you need an ally, there is always me to turn to—” She moved close to him, fingers snapping, face teasing. “Perhaps you will need consolation, sometime, if your redheaded tigress of a wife is too much for you to handle!”
“Bitch!” he commented softly, but his eyes were amused, and the word sounded like a caress. They were really much alike, he and Concepción—they understood each other.
Concepción smiled.
“You had better rescue her soon, I think,” she said softly. “She’s dancing with Tomas again, and he is a very passionate man, I know! I think she is only playing a game, playing at being like me, but she can’t handle a man—for if she could, hombre, you would not be looking at me in that way!”
Señora Armijo was clasping her hands tightly together to stop herself from wringing them. Her voice was a soft moan.
“Oh—if I had not seen this with my own eyes I would not have—what on earth has gotten into Genia? Such a quiet young woman, so much of a lady—and look, look at the way she is dancing! With those common vaqueros—and the way they are looking at her—”
Dona Maria’s face was red with annoyance, but she had crossed her hands over her plump bosom in a dignified manner, her eyes snapping.
“There’s no use wringing your hands and whining now. We cannot very well march down there and drag her away! And besides,” she added unexpectedly, “I think she is only trying to make Esteban jealous. I’ve noticed, if you haven’t, the way he’s been dancing with that Comanchero wench—isn’t that the same one he used to run away to visit when he was still a boy?”
The thin duenna remained distracted.
“He’s gone over to her now—if only he’d bring her away, it’s really too bad of him to allow this to happen! And I tremble when I think of what Don Francisco will say…”
The poor woman almost fainted dead away when she heard Don Francisco’s voice behind her. Even his sister jumped, and then exclaimed with annoyance.
“It seems that no one around here bothers to tell Don Francisco anything! I have to rely on my faithful Jaime—and I am, at this moment, extremely annoyed with him as well!”
“Really, Francisco, you might give people some warning of your approach! And you have been in a bad mood all evening—Señora Armijo and I had merely hoped to spare you further annoyance…”
“I see!” Don Francisco’s voice was dry. “How considerate of you, my dear Maria.” He added, almost to himself, his tone hardening, “That young pup! He’s incorrigible! He’s done everything in his power to anger me this evening, by showing his defiance. First he disappears, right under the foolish noses of my most trusted vaqueros, and then he has the impudence to show himself again—here, of all places!”
“Francisco!” Dona Maria sounded alarmed, “surely you wouldn’t…”
“I don’t intend to cause a scandal, you need have no fears of that, my dear sister. But I have several matters to discuss with that grandson of mine, whenever he can tear himself away from these rather primitive festivities!” His voice was grim, and his look became even more dour when Señora Armijo gave a startled wail.
“I don’t know what’s happening to Genia! Look at her now, she’s unpinning her hair—and it took so much time to arrange this evening!”
She was, indeed, doing just that, under Steve’s angry eyes and to the accompaniment of delighted clapping from the onlookers. They were dancing face to face, and a mischievous, somehow taunting smile curved Ginny’s lips as she slowly removed the pins from her elaborately curled hair style, tossing them aside carelessly, one by one. She had the dreamy, concentrated look of a woman undressing for her lover—only the smile gave her away, and anger fought with amusement in Steve’s face.
“What in hell do you think you’re doing? You’re making an exhibition of yourself!” He spoke in an undertone, through clenched teeth.
“Why darling, you’re making noises like a jealous husband! But I’m doing it for you—I thought you preferred my hair down.”
Concepción, with Tomas now, had planted herself next to Ginny, and she gave a smothered burst of laughter which was quelled by a glare in her direction from hard blue eyes.
The last pin fell, and Ginny shook her head as her hair came loose—a rippling, shining cloud that fell to her waist; and there was not a man there who did not want to bury his face in it.
“It’s like a pale fire,” Tomas whispered, his voice awed, and under the cover of the shouted “olés” that followed, Concepción brought her bare foot down as hard as she could over his instep.
“Bastard—hijo de puta! You’re dancing with me, remember?”
Laughing, Ginny whirled around. “I feel like kicking my shoes off too—” she murmured.
“Not yet—you damned little hellcat! That’s enough damage you’ve done to the hearts and nerves of all the men here for now. I ought to beat hell out of you!”
Ginny po
uted deliberately, her eyes sparkling with spite. “Oh! Is that all you can think of? You disappoint me, Steve.”
The movements of the dance brought her close to him and she moved her body deliberately so that it almost brushed his. Her arms went upward in a slow and sinuous movement as she lifted the mass of her hair away from her neck, and then let it drop again.
“That does it!” His voice was threatening with anger. “If you want to seduce me, madam, I’d prefer you to choose a more private place for it. As it is, you’ve gone far enough.”
Before she could avoid it, he had grabbed her wrist, holding it so tightly and so painfully that she had to bite her lips to hold back a cry of protest.
Leaving her no choice in the matter Steve led her through the crowd of dancers, smiling occasionally to acknowledge comments and compliments thrown at them both. To her he said in a whisper, through his teeth, “You were putting on such a good act a few minutes ago—I wish you’d continue with it for the benefit of all our friends here.”
“I don’t—” she began hotly, but he cut her short.
“In this part of the world my love, wives are expected to be obedient, above all things. A quality in which you’re sadly lacking. In any case, it’s high time we mixed with the other guests here.”
By this time they were at the foot of the steps, and Ginny met Don Francisco’s rather quizzical look with a blush. She did not dare, as yet, look in the direction of her duenna, or Tia Maria, either, for that matter.
It was almost with relief that she heard Steve take charge, his voice smooth, veneered with a clever blend of amusement and apology.
“I’m afraid it was all my fault if we’ve worried you. I persuaded Ginny to slip away with me so that we could be alone in the moonlight for a few moments.” He gave a slight bow in the direction of his stupefied looking grandaunt. “Tia Maria, if you and the Señora Armijo would be so good as to escort Ginny upstairs so that she can pin up her hair again, I’ll join you in the patio later.”
Sweet Savage Love Page 41
