Rico (The Rock Creek Six Book 3)

by Lori Handeland

  Rico signaled for a third whiskey, as much for the enjoyment of seeing his father frown, as the necessity for another in order to endure any conversation between them.

  When they were alone at last, Rico sipped his drink and waited for his father to begin. He did not have to wait long.

  “Now that I have found you, you will come home.”

  “No.”

  His father merely smiled, which made Rico take another sip of his drink. He had just started to feel pleasantly unconcerned, but that smile sobered him in an instant. Rico would not like what came next.

  “You will take your place as my son. You will manage the ranch. You will marry as I choose, and you will sire an heir.”

  “That will be difficult, since I love Lily and I’ll be taking her and the children home to Rock Creek so we can get married.”

  “What children?”

  “Carrie and Johnny.”

  “An unkempt urchin and an idiot piano player? They aren’t your blood, thank God; therefore, they aren’t yours. And you won’t be marrying that whore.”

  Rico set down his whiskey. “Call them that again and I’ll conveniently forget you’re my father.”

  “No son of mine will marry a saloon singer, especially one accused of murder. I plan to go into politics, Rico, and you will not ruin it for me.”

  “Because I’m not going to be anywhere near you.”

  They were nearly nose-to-nose. Suddenly, his father sat back. “If a conviction can be bought, an acquittal can be bought just as easily.”

  Here was the deal. Rico never would have guessed his father wanted him to return to San Antonio so badly.

  “You’ve always despised me. Why do you want me home?”

  “You aren’t the son I hoped for, but you’re my son. My only son. How would it look to Texas if I let you run with outlaws and marry a slut?”

  Rico palmed his knife and flipped it forward to stick into the table directly in front of his father. “You will not speak of her again.”

  “I won’t if you won’t.” He lifted his gaze from the knife to Rico. “She will live if you agree to my terms, and then you will never speak her name again.”

  “What’s to prevent me from breaking her out of that joke of a jail and disappearing.”

  “I’m not a fool.” His father nodded toward the door. Rico turned to see a very rough looking character lurking at the entrance to the dining room. “You agree, she lives. You do not, she dies. It’s as simple as that. One word from me, and my friend goes to the judge. She’ll be swinging from the nearest tree before you leave this room.”

  Rico’s stomach roiled on whiskey and little else. He wished he’d kept a clear head. He’d never imagined something like this.

  His beautiful dream of love, home, and a family was fading fast. To save Lily, he would have to give up that dream. He had said he would give his life for her, and here he’d thought that meant he would only have to die. Returning to his father’s house, living his father’s life, beneath his father’s thumb, might be worse than dying.

  But it would be for Lily.

  “Do you agree?” his father pressed.

  Maybe he could agree, then have the others take her home and tell her what had happened. Then he would escape and return to Rock Creek. His father would not be able to hurt them there. Though he would try.

  Rico would never walk free or feel safe again and neither would anyone who loved him. He’d be putting not only Lily and the children at risk but his friends, their families, and the town he’d come to think of as home.

  Maybe he’d once been useless, irresponsible, selfish, but he could change all that. All he had to do was say...

  “Yes.”

  Chapter 21

  Lily spent a night dreaming of a husband, home, and family. She could hardly wait for the new day to dawn.

  The second she saw Rico she would tell him she loved him. She trusted him; he would save her from this mess. He wasn’t like all those other men; he wasn’t like any other man she’d ever met. Because he was her man. If she trusted him with her life, she could trust him with her love, too.

  A subdued Russell led her into court. Rico was nowhere to be found, and neither were Carrie and Johnny. But the sight of the five men lounging with deceptive casualness along the back wall made her tense with expectation. Perhaps they would rescue her at gunpoint. She’d be ready for anything that might occur.

  What she wasn’t ready for was the judge, who banged his hand on the table, announced, “Case dismissed,” then disappeared in the commotion that followed.

  Mrs. Ward gaped then shouted, “I paid you good money, Sherman! Get back here!” She disappeared, too. The woman seemed to be forever chasing her bought-and-paid-for judge.

  Suddenly, Reese was there, leading Lily outside, where horses and Johnny awaited.

  “Where are Rico and Carrie?” she asked.

  “Let’s get out of here while we still can,” Jed said.

  While Lily thought it odd Rico wasn’t here to greet her, she figured that if he expected trouble, he would have taken Carrie to wait outside of town. So she took Jed’s advice and followed them out of New Orleans before anyone changed their mind.

  But when they were out of town, on a road north, and there was still no sign of Rico, Lily stopped her horse. Everyone else stopped, too.

  “Where is he?” The look on Reese’s face made her sway in the saddle. “He’s dead.”

  Johnny, who had not left her side since she’d emerged from the saloon, steadied her.

  “He’s not dead,” Reese said. “He’s just gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Back home to San Antone. He took Carrie with him.”

  “B-but he asked me to marry him.” She looked at each of the men in turn. When none of them would meet her eyes, she understood she’d been duped as badly as her mother had ever been. The despair that washed over Lily made her glad Johnny still hovered nearby.

  If this pain was what her mother had experienced every time someone who’d said they loved her, someone she thought she loved and trusted, had betrayed her, Lily could see why a noose was better than feeling this way over and over again.

  “He sent a note,” Reese continued. “Told me you’d be freed and that we should take you and Johnny home.”

  “That was it?” Fool that she was, Lily still hoped for a personal message.

  Just like Mama always hoped each and every man would come back.

  “Tell her,” the sheriff said.

  Lily didn’t like the sound of that.

  “He’s going to take over the Salvatore holdings. Something about an heir to the family name. I never figured Rico gave a damn about anyone but himself. This isn’t like him at all.”

  But it was like him. He was a man, and men always left when a better offer came along.

  Rico had said he didn’t care that she couldn’t have children. Obviously that had been as much of a lie as his love.

  Or maybe he’d loved her as much as he was able. But when offered an easier life and the possibility of a pristine wife and perfect little babies, barren Lily and her checkered past just hadn’t been enough to keep that love from dying.

  And that wasn’t love. She’d at least learned that much.

  “Maybe none of us knew him as well as we thought,” she said, and prodded her horse in the direction of Rock Creek.

  * * *

  “I friggin’ hate it here!” Carrie wailed.

  They were sitting on the front porch. They had been in San Antonio two weeks. It felt like two hundred years.

  Rico wanted to wail himself, but the deal was done. By now, Lily hated him forever. She thought every vow he’d made to her a lie. Though he’d broken them for her, what difference did that make? There was no point in pouting over what might have been. But try telling Carrie that.

  “Do not swear, chica. It makes my father angry.”

  “That’s why I do it. I like to watch his face turn purple.”
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  Rico had become the right-hand man his father always wanted him to be. He learned about stinking, pigheaded cattle. He commanded lewd, crude cowboys. He endured each day, despising every waking moment. Still nothing was ever right enough for his father. Through adult eyes Rico saw that maybe he wasn’t as worthless as he’d been led to believe. Perhaps no one was good enough for Adriano Salvatore.

  The only thing that kept Rico going day after day was Carrie. He had refused to leave her behind, and that concession had cost him a last moment with Lily and any good-byes with his friends.

  His father had preyed on his need for the child to get Rico to leave that very night. Adriano had thought Rico might tell the others what was going on, and they would be obliged to use their guns to gain his freedom. To protect them all, Rico had left New Orleans without a whimper. He’d said he wanted to take charge of his own life. He was doing a helluva job so far.

  Perhaps it was for the best that Lily hated him. Maybe then she could find another man to make her happy. The thought of any man loving her, living with her, knowing her strength, touching her hair, sharing her life, made his stomach flame. Or perhaps that was just the burn of hatred for his new, or rather his old, life.

  “While I can understand how much fun it is to watch my father turn purple,” Rico said, “I would appreciate it if you didn’t curse.”

  “But, Rico, sometimes only a curse word will do.”

  “So use the French curses Lily taught you.”

  Carrie’s lower lip wobbled. Rico thought of a few choice curses of his own. He should know better than to mention Lily’s name. Carrie had decided she loved Lily as passionately as she’d once hated her.

  “Those words remind me of her. They make me wanna cry. I miss Lily. I miss Johnny and Gizzard.” She fixed him with a tear-filled, yet defiant glare, and stomped her foot. “I friggin’ hate it here!”

  “Go to your room, Carrie.”

  “I hate it there, too.”

  “Do it anyway. I’ll come up in a little while, and we’ll talk about this some more.”

  “Why can’t we go home?”

  “This is our home now.”

  “Is not! Home is where there are people you love no matter what and people who love you the same. No one here loves me like that except you, and I can’t love these people, Rico. I try, but I just can’t.”

  “I know, chica, I know.” He opened his arms, and she hugged him. Her scratchy new dress scraped his chin. He kissed her on top of her freshly washed and tightly braided hair. Since they’d come here, Carrie had been scrubbed, dressed, and feminized to within an inch of her life. She hated it nearly as much as he did. “Go on, now.”

  That Carrie went without further argument revealed how deep the sadness dwelt in her, as deep as it dwelt in Rico himself. The thought of being here forever made forever just too damn long. Funny how forever with Lily had looked too short by far.

  Gaining Lily’s trust had made Rico whole. Breaking that trust had broken him.

  “I hate to see you like this.”

  Rico glanced up as Anna took the chair Carrie had vacated. Though he ached every single minute in the place where Lily had lived, spending time with the sister he’d thought lost for so long gave Rico one more reason to get up every morning.

  Anna was a gentle soul, a calming presence. Rico had no idea how she’d managed to grow up that way despite their father, but she had. Perhaps her brush with death had shown her there was little worth getting upset about in life.

  “How do you know this isn’t the way I always am?” he asked.

  “I might have been small, but I remember you.” She took his hand. “I adored you with all the love a little sister could have for her big brother.”

  “Then I let you die.”

  “I’m not dead, Rico. You need to quit punishing yourself for something that never even happened.”

  “I was irresponsible, and you paid the price.”

  “What price? I lived here same as always. Of course, without you it wasn’t really the same. But you paid for a sin you never committed.”

  “Father was right. If I’d faced up to what I’d done, I would have known it never happened. Being rash is what got me where I am today.”

  “You were a child. So was I. Forget it.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  Because he was watching her face so closely, he caught the tiny flicker in her eyes. “You’re lying.”

  Anna looked away. “I only remember because you left, and I knew you left because of me. I’ve never forgiven myself for that.”

  “If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. I was never meant to be a rancher.”

  “You were happy while you were away?”

  “I wouldn’t say I was happy in the war, but I felt useful. And riding with the other men, that was good. I belonged with them.”

  “Were you ever truly happy?”

  He thought of Lily. “For a little while.”

  “Then find that happiness again.”

  “I made a deal.”

  She leaned toward him, earnestness in every line of her face and body. “Do whatever you have to do. Lie, cheat, steal, hide, break your word.”

  “Being selfish and rash only gets people hurt.”

  “Going after love is all that makes life worth living.”

  “If I break this deal—”

  “Lily could die?”

  He blinked. “How did you know?”

  “I made a deal once, too. I’ve been sorry ever since.”

  She was only seventeen. What kind of deal had she made? “Anna—”

  “Never mind me. Break your deal, Rico. Do it now before it’s too late.”

  “I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I don’t want Lily living that way. I don’t want Carrie living that way, either.”

  “I live that way, too, but I’m looking over my shoulder, hoping to see just one more time the person I’ll love forever.” She peered into his eyes. “It isn’t any better my way, Rico. Believe me.”

  In her face he saw a sadness that echoed his own. “Even if I decided to go back, I’d never make it. Father would come after me with all the help he could buy.”

  “I’m sure I could find a way to delay him.” The prospect seemed to amuse her.

  “Come with me. You could find the one you love and live in Rock Creek.”

  Her amusement faded. “It’s too late for me. Don’t make the mistake I did. I know it sounds dishonorable, but a promise against love isn’t a promise worth keeping.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think too long, hermano. Life has a way of moving on without us.”

  Anna went inside, leaving Rico alone with his thoughts.

  Several hours later, as darkness settled over the land, he still hadn’t decided what to do. How could he drag Carrie halfway across the state, most likely on the run? He loved Lily, but he loved Carrie, too. Even though Carrie wanted to go home, was it fair or right to put her in danger to get her there? Carrie was a child under his protection, and he would not make the same mistake twice.

  Besides, Lily had never said she loved him. She wanted him, yes, but that wasn’t love. Did he dare risk her life only to discover she couldn’t care less if she ever saw him again?

  There was no right answer. Was there ever? Uncertain still, Rico climbed the stairs to Carrie’s room to say good night.

  The room was empty, her bed unmade. He might have believed her out and about against his orders if there hadn’t been a note on her pillow. Before he even read the childish handwriting, Rico knew the decision had been taken from his hands.

  I want Lily to be my mommy. If you want to be my daddy, meet me in Rock Creek. Even if you don’t, I’ll still love you no matter what.

  Rico stuffed her note into his pocket and barreled out of the room, only to bump into his father. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”


  “Carrie has run away.”

  “Let her go. She’s a foul-mouthed termagant.”

  “She’s my little girl.”

  His father’s eyes sharpened. “Is there something you haven’t told me about that child?”

  “She isn’t mine by blood; she’s mine by love.”

  “She’s not a Salvatore, and she never will be. I won’t have her getting any of my land or my money. Do you hear me?”

  “I always hear you, and sometimes I’m amazed at the idiocy that comes from your mouth.”

  “Let her go.”

  “She can’t have gotten far. I’ll be back before morning.”

  “You’d better be, or I’ll come looking for you.”

  Rico clattered down the stairs. Anna stood on the porch.

  “Carrie—” he began.

  “It’s fate, hermano. Follow the child.”

  Rico thought of his father’s words; he saw his life stretching before him, without Carrie, without Lily, without love, and everything became clear.

  He wanted to be Carrie’s daddy. He wanted to be Lily’s husband. He wanted a family that was about love and nothing else. He wanted to be with the men who had been his only true family up until now.

  He had done whatever he had to do to save Lily. But without her in his life, he wasn’t really living, and if the same was true for her, he had to find out.

  Sometimes you had to take care of yourself, so he’d tried to. He’d forgotten that sometimes you had to depend on your friends. He hoped they loved him no matter what, because he was going to need them when he rode into Rock Creek.

  “I love you, Anna.”

  “Of course you do.” She kissed him on the chin. “Now, hurry.”

  He rode away as he had once before, but this time Anna stood on the porch, waving goodbye, and instead of feeling as if his life had ended, he knew it had just begun.

  * * *

  Three Queens was doing better than Lily could ever have dreamed. Her notoriety increased their business. Then the atmosphere, alcohol, and entertainment kept the people coming back for more. Maybe soon she could begin the small theatrical productions she’d always dreamed of. At least more work would keep her mind occupied.

  She wasn’t waiting for Rico to return. She knew better than to hope for any such thing. If he’d meant to come back, he wouldn’t have taken Carrie with him. Sometimes she hated him more for that than anything else. That child had needed a mother, and Lily had nearly talked herself into taking the job.