Matador, Mi Amor

by William Maltese

  He smelled of fresh lime and pine trees.

  She felt heady and suspected she possibly had drunk too much wine and too much cognac. She reminded herself that she couldn’t allow herself to get carried away by the nearness and the attractiveness of this handsome man. Yet, it was difficult for her to keep her rational thoughts separated from her fantasies, especially when he took her in his arms and pulled her even closer to him.

  She felt the muscles of his chest and stomach. She felt the way his strong arms encased her within them. She saw his eyes with their large pupils that seemed hypnotically to draw her deeper and deeper into them.

  She tasted the flavor of him when he pressed his mouth against hers and forced her lips open with insistent pressure. He tasted of mint and cognac: a flavor that lingered long after he had released her mouth, released her body, and stepped away.

  “You see the complications that would arise were I to move back in here?” he told her in a husky whisper before he turned and left the room.

  Alyssa reached for the tabletop in order to steady herself. She was sure she had to be dreaming. It had to be merely a combination of the wine and cognac, the candlelight and her make-believe. It was simply impossible that Adriano Montego had actually held her close and actually kissed her.

  Yet, the taste of mint and cognac continued to linger on her tongue, and the smell of lime and pine trees lingered in the air; no mental gymnastics, insisting those were nonexistent, could make them go away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Alyssa sat at the vanity table giving her makeup its finishing touches. That completed, she carefully eyed her reflection, looking for anything in her face that might announce the difference. She felt there was a difference, whether she could see it or not. Putting a definition to that difference, however, was easier said than done.

  Love? Was that this mysterious something? She had thought that thought before, during the last forty-eight hours, and she had rejected it as out of hand. Although she did, likewise, at this moment of inner reflection, find it was hard to deny. Certainly, the suspicion remained.

  Perhaps, it would have been easier had she ever been in love before. Then, she would have had a basis for comparison. But she’d never loved. Not really. Anyway, not in quite the same way she kept coming back to thinking she might be in love now. Oh, she loved her mother, and she loved the memory of her father (although there was really no genuine memories of Donald Dunlap).

  What about Ty? Surely, she wouldn’t have become engaged to a man she hadn’t loved. On the other hand, she had sensed from the beginning of that relationship that there had been something missing in it. Else why had she broken off the engagement and fled all the way to Spain to think things over?

  She could admit that it hadn’t been love she felt for Ty; yet, it was difficult to admit there was even the possibility she was feeling love for Adriano Montego. Adriano was still a stranger, even if he had been in the house for almost a week. How was it possible for her to be in love with a man who had entered her life so recently and under such unusual circumstances?

  “You are imagining things, Alyssa,” she told herself, running a finger along her right cheekbone to disturb a bit of makeup that had been perfect as it stood. “Love at first sight isn’t something that really happens, no matter how many times you read about it, no matter how many times it’s portrayed as reality in the movies. Certainly, it isn’t conjured by a few kisses.”

  “And, there had been a few. Not just the one stolen after their supper together a few nights back, either. Last night in the garden smelling of flowers, he had kissed her again…and again…and again. What’s more, she had wanted him to kiss her, had wanted him to continue.

  She ran the fingers of her right hand through her mane of blonde hair and shivered slightly at the remembrance of just how it had been to have Adriano’s lips working against her own. Adriano’s tongue.…

  She scooted back the bench and came to her feet, telling herself she had to get hold, or she was going to make a fool of herself.

  She was affected by the fairy-tale quality of the whole incident: Alyssa Dunlap in Spain; a wounded man on her doorstep; a couple of candle-light dinners; a walk in the garden; a few kisses. It all added up to an interlude, albeit pleasant, but an interlude, nevertheless. The idea that Adriano felt any more toward her than he would have for any other woman under similar circumstances was doubtful, no matter what he might have insinuated otherwise.

  She decided she had to look at all of this in the sophisticated perspective with which Adriano was obviously expecting her to view it. People born to money were always seeking new amusements with new people. If she had been left out of the whirl up until now, that merely meant she was the exception to the rule. The best thing she could do for herself was to realize that Adriano and she were embarked upon a harmless flirtation. To hold it up as anything more than that was liable to cause a series of unpleasant scenes and hurt feelings when it all began to grind to a halt. And it would eventually grind to a halt, wouldn’t it? Still, it would have been nice if it all.…

  She was thankful when the knock on the door kept her mind from flying off on another track of pure wishful thinking.

  “Yes?”

  Mara opened the door.

  “Señor Montego is waiting downstairs,” Mara said.

  “Tell him I’ll be down shortly.” Alyssa reached for a light sweater. Although the days remained uncomfortably hot, the evenings often still, somehow, managed a slight chill; she wasn’t really sure how long this soiree at Joaquín’s hacienda was going to last, but there was a good chance she would be returning to her own ranch well after nightfall.

  She left her bedroom, following the same path Mara had taken before her.

  Adriano was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, wearing the same kind of suit she always saw Spanish men wearing in movies: an Andalusian cowboy costume, complete with short jacket, flat-brimmed hat, and spurs. Mostly in black, he looked very handsome. Alyssa was on the verge of telling him so when he beat her to the punch with a compliment of his own.

  “You’re looking exceptionally beautiful, Señorita Dunlap.” He smiled. His white teeth and tan went well with the dark material of his clothing.

  “Keep up the flattery,” she said, feeling in exceptional spirits. Her good humor was, in part, due to his continued cheerful attitude. She had been a little uneasy about the proposed outing at the hacienda of Joaquín Hidalgo, because it revolved around the visit of the young matador, Fanuco de Galena, and Alyssa knew that Adriano wasn’t overly fond of the corrida. Yet, if he was uneasy about the day ahead of them, he wasn’t giving any visible indication.

  “It wasn’t flattery, by the way,” he said, leading her to the door and opening it.

  “Quit while you’re ahead,” she said with a laugh that couldn’t hide the fact she enjoyed the compliments, no matter what she said.

  They drove to the Hacienda Hidalgo in one of the sports cars that was stored in the garage.

  “We could have gone on horseback,” Adriano said, and grinned amusement. “But if you haven’t ridden for awhile, you might have arrived a little too sore to enjoy the festivities.”

  “Yes, I did notice that your last ride over the distance was a bit hazardous to your health,” she said, unable to keep from making a reference to his battered condition upon arrival at the barn. At the present, there was little indication of his beating except for the lingering line of scab on his lower lip.

  “I like a woman with a sense of humor.”

  “And, I like a man with one, too,” she said. “If I were you, though, I’m not too sure I would be so easy to forgive and forget, if.…”

  She had been on the point of saying, “…you were, indeed, as innocent as you proclaimed.” She didn’t say that, however, because she didn’t want to get into a discussion, especially with him, especially now, as to whether she actually still thought him guilty of killing her bulls. She still felt an inviolate owner-employee respons
ibility to her ranch hands whom had acted—although spontaneously—to protect her interests.

  She was afraid Adriano would immediately pick up on her dangling sentence, so she pointed off into the distance toward a group of trees with trunks gone bright orange to a height of nine or ten feet.

  “Cork trees,” Adriano informed, apparently willing to let the question of his guilt or innocence not, once again, become a subject of discussion. “The estate has several cork forests. The orange coloring merely means the bark was stripped only a few days ago. After awhile, the orange will go russet, then brown, and finally back to its original gray.”

  Alyssa only vaguely remembered that legal documents had listed cork as one of the products of her ranch. She had been extremely lax in researching just how a person ran a ranchero of this magnitude. She had procrastinated mainly because she hadn’t been all that certain she was going to retain ownership. The stripped bark, though, seemed to indicate that things had not ground to a complete stop while the captain was elsewhere than firmly positioned at the helm. She couldn’t help feeling a little guilty that she had arrived on the scene quite as ignorant as she was. But, then, it was only now beginning to dawn on her just how much Lalo Montego had turned over to her keeping.

  “I really know nothing of bulls, even less about harvesting cork,” she admitted, more to herself than to him.

  “Luckily, the people in your employ do know about bulls and cork,” he said. “You need merely search them out and express a genuine interest to learn, and they’ll be more than happy to teach you all they can.”

  “Even though I’m a woman?”

  “Yes, even though you’re a woman. They won’t be as biased against you as you might initially imagine. For one, you’re an American woman, not Spanish. Few Spaniards, at least those who have worked for my father, can any longer be considered backward enough to imagine an American señorita to be the same cloistered female as many of her Spanish counterparts. For two, my father put his stamp of approval on you when he left you the ranch.” If any bitterness existed, it didn’t come through in his voice. He had merely made an apparent simple statement of fact. “And the people on this ranch owe Lalo Montego a lot. So much, as a matter of fact, that they’re not about to question his choice of a successor. Any indication of a permanent owner in residence is going to be welcome. Nothing operates as efficiently as it should without its head—even a ranch like this one.”

  “Well, that’s encouraging,” she admitted, wondering if he were only trying to make her feel a bit more confident in a role in which she hadn’t yet become confident.

  “Besides, as you will soon see, many Spanish women are no longer the sheltered, meek, and mild ladies they have for so long been painted to be by the outside world. Money has, indeed, seemed to have liberated a good many of them. Ladonna Hidalgo, for instance, is a truly liberated woman. The rumor has long existed that she has just as much say in the operation of Hidalgo Hacienda as does her father.”

  “She’s one neighbor, then, who I shall be looking forward to meeting.”

  “I suppose Joaquín has told you that you’ve only two ranches close by. There’s his ranch, and then there’s the ranch of Victoro Isidro. Victoro, by the way probably won’t be at the fiesta. The last I heard, he was off buying a new seed bull. But, you’ll no doubt have plenty of time to meet him, later; although, at sixty-four he’s not apt to be the life of any party. In fact, Joaquín’s fiesta will give you an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with most of the aristocracy from Trujillo, Albuquerque, Mérida, and all of the surrounding areas. If Fanuco de Galena isn’t enough to bring everyone running, Joaquín is well known for his exceptional hospitality.”

  The cork trees had given way to barren landscape. The soil was rocky and red. Occasionally, a stream bed appeared, completely devoid of water.

  Finally, there was a spot, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, that Adriano pointed out as the end of the property left Alyssa by his father.

  “You are now officially on Hidalgo land,” he informed. “It won’t be long before we reach the hacienda.”

  It was only five minutes later that an olive forest appeared on the horizon and the car sped toward it. Among the olives was an occasional oak, gnarled trunk and limbs lording it over the smaller, more distorted trees.

  The road bisected the forest, and another roadway angled off toward the still hidden ranch house.

  Before long, the fiesta element became more than evident as the car sped by a growing number of brightly costumed locals headed in the same direction.

  “Joaquín will have turned over most of the immediate hacienda grounds to the villagers,” Adriano observed. “God knows, they can use every opportunity for a little fun and games.”

  Alyssa didn’t have to ask why. Her drive from Madrid had taken her though more than one little village. It was easy for her to recall miserable huts without doors except for strings of beads hung to keep out the flies. Not everyone in Spain lived in a hacienda comparable to the one Lalo Montego had bequeathed Alyssa.

  The Hidalgo Hacienda was another of those grand old buildings that looked as if it had been erected by some rich grandee—which it had. The building had the appearance of one which would remain standing while every adobe village within miles crumbled into dust. It was a massive structure, all white-washed walls and red brick, surrounded by a high wall that gave access to the main house and the area in which Adriano parked the car.

  There were other vehicles already parked, all watched over by several young men who had obviously been paid to make sure nothing happened to the property of the guests. Alyssa had never been all that good at identifying car models, but she knew a Rolls Royce when she saw one (there were three), Mercedes (there were five), and a Cadillac limo (there was one). All the cars were likely expensive, especially, probably, those she couldn’t recognize.

  Like the Montego Hacienda, the Hidalgo Hacienda was an oasis of trees, flowers, and fountains. It made one quickly forget that for miles all around the desert was in primary control. Within the compound were dazzling colors as plant life ran riot. An abundance of water sprayed from submerged outlets and added a cool misting to the air to keep leaves and lawns free of dust.

  “Ah, Adriano!” Joaquín Hidalgo called in greeting. He was standing in the open doorway of the hacienda, greeting the steady line of entering people. “And.…” He reached for Alyssa’s hand and bowed over it. “…Señorita Dunlap. How nice of you to come.”

  “Looks as if you’ve brought in every person from miles around,” Adriano observed. Several other cars were in the process of parking, all of them filled with passengers.

  Beyond the open doorway was another opened double-door that accessed the inner courtyard. Amazingly, there was a cooling breeze blowing through the resulting causeway, bringing with it the smell of fragrant flowers from the central garden.

  “Come on, and we’ll find Ladonna,” Joaquín said. He was speaking mainly to Adriano, although his hand still held Alyssa’s fingers. “I think she’s with Fanuco who, by the way, is looking forward to seeing you again.” He turned his full attention on Alyssa. “And, he’s certainly looking forward to meeting my new neighbor.”

  “Don’t you think you should stay positioned at the door to play host?” Adriano suggested.

  “I’d miss all of the fun if I did that,” Joaquín reminded. “Besides, most everyone is already here. I’ll catch the stragglers somewhere during the course of the day or evening. I promise.”

  He led them through the room and out into the courtyard. Along the way, he stopped briefly to introduce Alyssa to several people Adriano already knew.

  “I’ll never keep all the names straight,” she whispered, after taking her leave, along with Adriano and Joaquín, from yet another group of people.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Joaquín assured. “You’ll meet the most important ones on more than one occasion over the next few days, and things will fall into place in no time. In the
meantime, Adriano and I will whisper you clues as to identities, so.…”

  He caught someone’s attention across the courtyard and lifted his right arm in signal, his fingers beckoning. “Ah, there they are!” he proclaimed, leading the way toward them.

  They hurried passed various people who looked as if they would have enjoyed introductions; Joaquín’s attention, though, had narrowed to include no one except the man and the woman heading toward him.

  The man was darkly attractive with black hair, square jaw line. He had an exceptional body beneath a well-tailored and obviously expensive suit.

  The woman had cascades of black hair; her black eyes were shielded by lush eyelashes that, at closer examination, weren’t enhanced by false additions or mascara. What kept her from being a real beauty were lips that were a bit too thin and made her mouth seem somehow too hard, adding a definite brittle edge to an otherwise complete package of attractiveness.

  “Adriano!” the man exclaimed, extending a hand to take Adriano’s hand, pulling the man to him in a seemingly friendly embrace. “God, it has been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  “You’ve become quite famous in the interim, Fanuco,” Adriano said, gently pushing Fanuco de Galena at arm’s-length and giving him a once-over. “Gotten a little more meat on your bones, too.”

  “Why don’t you two save your remember-whens until all-around introductions are out of the way?” the woman suggested, her eyes taking Alyssa in with a comprehensive glance. Then, not waiting for the men to perform the social amenities, she extended her hand and introduced herself. “I’m Ladonna Hidalgo, and you’re Alyssa Dunlap, yes? Alyssa, this is Fanuco de Galena, matador supreme. And, you’ve met my father. Anyway, he has certainly met you, coming back with reports simply glowing with superlatives.”

  Alyssa blushed, feeling ill at ease.

  “As usual, my father has been right in his assessment. You are, indeed, a very attractive young woman, if I do say so. With those looks and the large tract of land now in your possession, you will undoubtedly soon find yourself surrounded by a coterie of potential suitors. I do hope you’ll be able to distinguish the grain from the chaff. If not, check in with me, and I’ll be more than happy to give you pointers.”