“What work? I have cleared the weeds. It is far too late in the year to grow vegetables. And it is much too hot for you to be spending an appreciable amount of time out there.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“What do you think to accomplish by making yourself faint from the heat?”
She wouldn’t flatter herself that he actually cared. This time she did turn around, but she took a bite from the piece of toast she held before replying, “I’m not the fainting type, Aldair. I’ll be fine.”
His mouth twisted. “Suit yourself. Just don’t expect to have me carry you up the stairs when you do make yourself weak from exhaustion.”
“No worries there,” she said in falsely sweet tones. “I would never expect you to do something so chivalrous.”
His eyes glittered, and he opened his mouth to make some kind of a retort. But then he shook his head, as if he realized he could say nothing to change her mind. He reached for his coffee and drained it, and in the next instant he disappeared, a faint pop sounding in his wake, as if the air had rushed in to fill the space he’d just vacated.
Typical. Of course he wouldn’t stick around to continue the argument. At the same time, Jillian knew she couldn’t feel terribly relieved by his absence. He might not be in the house, but he would be around somewhere. Watching. Making sure she didn’t try to leave. Or rather, she could try, but she wouldn’t get very far.
To be truthful, she really didn’t want to work in the yard. She’d mentioned the project because she knew it would annoy Aldair. But now that she’d made such a fuss about the whole thing, she knew she’d have to put in a couple of hours, just to save face. If there was even a couple of hours’ worth of work to do out there. He’d been pretty effective in using his djinn abilities to clear the area, to get rid of the weeds while leaving the prettiest of the wildflowers intact.
But maybe she could clear out the remains of the vegetable garden. As far as she could tell, Aldair had left that alone, probably because you couldn’t see much of it from the house.
First, though, to finish her coffee and toast, and then wash off her plate and mug and put them back in the cupboard. With Aldair gone, she had to take care of the clean-up the old-fashioned way, but she didn’t mind too much. There was something vaguely comforting about the ritual, of making sure the kitchen was spotless before she stepped outside.
Or maybe she’d only been stalling because she really wasn’t looking forward to the next few hours.
Patches ran outside as soon as she opened the back door. Once again, the day was almost brutally clear, the sky pure blue. She couldn’t see a single cloud. It was likely some clouds had begun to build up around the Sangre de Cristo range to the northeast, but buried in this valley, she wouldn’t be able to see any of them until they began to drift in this direction.
As the dog roamed around the perimeter of the garden, sniffing away happily, she went to the shed and took stock of the equipment it contained. Several shovels, a spade, trowels, and a weed whacker, although no lawnmower. Well, she doubted there had been a lawn here to mow even back before the home’s owner died and the place had gone to seed.
Jillian also saw a contraption apparently designed for using a propane flame to burn out particularly pesky weeds. While she thought such a thing might be useful, she also didn’t want to take the risk of starting a fire she couldn’t put out…especially now that she couldn’t rely on Aldair to help her.
No, that probably wasn’t particularly fair. He’d been acting like a world-class jerk, but even he wouldn’t be stupid enough to let her burn down the house, especially since it was probably the nicest dwelling in the entire Madrid area.
She picked up the lighter of the two shovels and headed out to where the remnants of the vegetable garden were located. It did seem as if the squash had probably hung on the first year, but now all that remained were some dried-up leaves and desiccated runners that looked more like a bunch of dead snakes instead of the remains of a vine.
Even though it wasn’t quite past nine in the morning, according to the clocks in the house, the sun already felt like a physical weight on the back of her neck as she began to turn the dry earth under. Sweat trickled down her forehead, and she wished she’d thought to look for some kind of hat in the house. Surely the woman who’d lived here before had used something to protect her head while she worked in the garden.
If she had, then such a hat was probably stowed in the closet in Aldair’s bedroom, and no way would Jillian risk going in there. She’d just have to grit her teeth and bear it.
She wasn’t wearing a watch, so she had no real idea of time passing, only the subtle movement of the sun overhead. Patches soon got bored with nosing around the garden and went to lie down in the infinitely more comfortable shade of the porch. At one point, Jillian thought that perhaps she should stop, but she’d settled into a rhythm. Besides, she was concentrating so hard that she’d almost forgotten about Aldair, had let everything slip from her mind except the ground immediately before her and the rapidly growing pile of discarded weeds and dead plants.
The landscape wavered in front of her, and she stopped, leaning heavily on the shovel. Loose strands of hair had plastered themselves to her sweaty forehead. She still didn’t have any idea what time it was, but from the way the muscles in her arms and shoulders were screaming, maybe she was due for a break.
When she began to walk back toward the house, she was dismayed by how her knees wobbled. Surely she was in better shape than this? But while she kept herself fit by walking pretty much everywhere she went in Los Alamos, it was so much cooler there than it was here. So much of her work had been done while sitting down, not breaking her back outside.
She stumbled and nearly fell as she began to make her way up the porch steps. In the next instant, even though she hadn’t seen where he’d come from, Aldair was beside her, a steadying arm around her waist.
“I see you have done exactly what I feared you would,” he said, his voice rough with anger. Or was that worry?
“I’m fine,” she said, and tried to pull away from him. But the arm encircling her waist clearly wasn’t going anywhere.
“Are you? For I just saw you nearly fall. That is not what I would call fine.”
More protests rose to her lips, but clearly Aldair didn’t intend to listen to them. Before she could even blink, he had whisked her in that unsettling djinn way from the porch to the blessed coolness of the living room, where he sat her down on the couch. A second later, a glass of ice water was being pressed into her hands.
She wasn’t so foolish as to decline the drink. Instead, she lifted the glass to her lips and took a long swallow, followed by another. The cool liquid spilled down her parched throat, going all the way down, sending relief to her overtaxed body.
“Thank you,” she said.
He didn’t smile. Those hard blue eyes were fixed on her face. “You are very pale. You could have made yourself ill.”
“Just too much sun. I’ll be fine in a bit.”
“So at least you admit that you are not fine now.”
Jillian didn’t want to admit anything, least of all that she had been stubborn and foolish. Never in her life had she experienced any kind of problem with being out in the sun, but then, strolling around the county fair in upper eighty-degree temperatures wasn’t quite the same thing as experiencing that same kind of heat while shoveling under a defunct vegetable garden.
“It might have been a bit much,” she said at last. “Next time I’ll wear a hat.”
“There will be no next time,” he said in that high-handed way of his. “For I will make sure there is nothing left for you to do here, if this is what you plan to do with your idle time.”
Oh, the nerve of him! So apparently it wasn’t enough for him to keep her trapped here — now he also was telling her what she could and couldn’t do to prevent herself from going insane from boredom?
If she spoke, she worried about what might
come out of her mouth. As infuriating as he was, Aldair commanded powers she still didn’t fully understand. Getting into a shouting match with him — if she could even find it in herself to engage in that sort of behavior — wasn’t just foolish. It might be downright dangerous.
So she kept her gaze studiously away from him as she swallowed some more water, right before she set the glass down on a coaster and stood.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To my room,” she said coldly. “I’m tired. Or are you also going to dictate when I can and can’t lie down?”
“No,” he said, and now she noticed a glint in his sapphire-colored eyes, as if he was amused by her reply. “I think it would be good for you to rest.”
And would you stop me if you didn’t? she thought then, but she didn’t reply. Instead, she turned away from him and headed up the stairs. Her knees were still shaky, and she had to hang on to the banister to basically haul herself along, but she was damned if she would ask him for any assistance. He’d done enough already.
As she went, she thought she could hear him chuckling softly. So her pitiful act of defiance had amused him. Her entire body stiffened, but she forced herself to keep going. The last thing she wanted was for him to see how much he’d gotten under her skin.
Bastard. And to think she’d actually let him kiss her.
Well, that certainly wasn’t going to happen again.
Chapter Thirteen
Dinner time came around, but Jillian didn’t emerge from her room. Aldair didn’t think it a good idea for her to go without food, even if she was being so infernally stubborn, and so he put together a tray of the grilled trout and rice and vegetables he’d conjured for their evening meal, and left it outside her door. Patches eyed the tray with a good deal of interest, but Aldair threatened him with being tied up on the porch all night if he should touch Jillian’s food, and the dog reluctantly backed away and left it alone.
Well, the bribe of another bone could also have had something to do with his good behavior.
Aldair ate his own meal and washed it down with some light white wine, a New Mexico blend called Shining River that he’d found in the wine rack in the kitchen. The combination was quite delicious, but he found he couldn’t enjoy it the way he had wanted to. Not with Jillian so obviously avoiding him.
Foolish woman. Perhaps he should have left her to faint on the porch. Perhaps that would have shown her that her stubbornness would only hurt her in the end. But he did not think he could have allowed himself to do that. He did not want her to be injured, or ill.
What he wanted…well, unfortunately, she did not seem terribly inclined to give him what he truly wanted.
After his lonely dinner, he retired to his room with a map he had found in one of the town’s shops. That was where he had gone while Jillian labored away in the garden — back to the touristy part of Madrid, to see if he could locate any more useful items. He was not so far away that he could still not sense her presence, although he knew she would not try to escape. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps as her captivity wore on, she would grow more desperate, and would risk his wrath in an attempt to get away.
Or perhaps she would come to realize that he had no intention of hurting her. Rather the opposite. Surely if enough time passed, she would soften toward him.
At the moment, however, that outcome did not seem terribly likely.
Scowling, he spread the map out on the bed and sipped at a glass of wine as he studied the markings on the heavy paper. Yes, as Jillian had said, Madrid was approximately thirty miles south of Santa Fe. It was a distance that should protect him, as long as none of the djinn in the former capitol decided to roam southward. But then, why would they? They had everything they needed in the town that had been given to them.
Still…. He had spent enough time with that contingent of djinn and their Chosen while they were in Taos to know that they did not have to adhere strictly to the town’s borders when it came to the territory they might call their own. They were given an area to settle in, one that could spill over into the surrounding lands. That was why his hated brother was still safe in the compound he had taken for his own, one several miles outside Santa Fe proper.
Even given those parameters, though, Aldair doubted the djinn in Santa Fe would venture as far away as Madrid. He should be quite safe here, for as long as he needed to stay.
That was the real question, however. How long could he really stay here? If he had had Jillian to distract him, then perhaps he could have endured in this hidden corner of the world for some time. But she certainly gave no sign of wanting to share his company any more than she absolutely had to.
That is how she feels at the moment, he told himself. It does not mean her feelings cannot change tomorrow, or a few days hence. We do have everything we need here.
Well, more or less. This might have been the finest house in Madrid, but that, he feared, was damning with faint praise. In the otherworld, he had lived in a house of marble, with courtyards where water from their fountains played and plants grew in an imitation of Earth’s beauty. He had built that house himself, over a span of many years, but it was foolish to go to such effort when this world offered so many empty homes that were ripe for the taking. While he probably could not have anything quite so fine here, he knew that Santa Fe possessed many elegant residences, and he thought Albuquerque probably did as well. But had any of his fellow djinn settled there? He had been away for so long that he knew he had missed a good deal.
Did he dare do any cautious reconnoitering? Perhaps. Not right away, though. He would do some more exploring in the countryside immediately around Madrid, just to see if Jillian would remain where she was. Once he was certain she would not bolt if he went off for an extended time, perhaps at that point he would feel comfortable enough venturing farther afield.
For really, what did she have to run to?
She ate the dinner he’d left for her, simply because she knew it was foolish to deprive herself of a meal out of pique. After she’d crept out to the bathroom and readied herself for bed, she’d fallen asleep almost immediately, and slumbered for almost ten hours. Clearly, her body was trying to tell her that she’d overdone it. Of course, all the assorted aches she experienced when she woke up the next morning would have been proof enough of that.
No point in trying to annoy Aldair with the same baggy clothes. Besides, they were dirty and needed to be washed. She put on a flowy skirt and a tank top, and let her hair fall free. All the same, she waited until she’d watched the djinn go out the front door, Patches tagging along, before she allowed herself to go downstairs.
Oh, the blessed relief of having him gone so she could pour herself some coffee and sit at the kitchen table to drink it without having him watch her the entire time. Jillian hadn’t realized what a weight his gaze could be, not until she was free to do as she wished.
All right, not entirely free. She wasn’t about to fool herself that he wasn’t still keeping an eye on her in some way. She’d heard how the djinn could sense when mortals were around, even if they weren’t directly in their line of sight. So changing into something more practical and heading for the hills really wasn’t in the cards.
Instead, she savored her coffee, made some toast, and then fried herself an egg. No, it wasn’t as good as the breakfasts Aldair had conjured, but she didn’t mind. The savor of being by herself more than made up for any lack of flavor.
Afterward, she cleaned up the kitchen before wandering out to the porch so she could sit on the bench there. The weather felt somewhat cooler today, with clouds already forming overhead. It seemed as if they might be in for another round of monsoon storms. She was fine with that. Anything to keep the heat at bay.
She wondered where Aldair had gone, then immediately wanted to chide herself for even caring. Wasn’t the important thing that he was somewhere else?
True, but she knew sooner or later they’d have to do something to get past the uneasy detente they were c
urrently sharing. They couldn’t go on like this indefinitely.
Yes, and I’m sure he’s just waiting for you to cave in so he can pick up where he left off the other night. I have no doubt that he believes you’re going to succumb to his charms sooner or later.
Fat chance. If she ever found it within her to move on with someone who wasn’t Jack, that someone sure as hell wouldn’t be Aldair al-Ankara. She’d want someone good and kind and understanding. Maybe she had been too quick to shoot down Brent Sanderson. Yes, he was more than ten years older than she, and his looks couldn’t be described as much more than “pleasant,” but he was a good man. She could have done a lot worse. Looks weren’t everything. After all, Aldair was drop-dead gorgeous, but he was also one arrogant bastard.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, he appeared then — not in the djinn way, appearing out of nowhere, but walking up the driveway, Patches at his side. His dark hair waved in the breeze, as did the loose, flowing garments he wore. The half-hearted sunlight still was able to glimmer over the exposed muscles of his chest and stomach.
All right, maybe she needed to revise her stance on that whole “looks aren’t everything” notion.
“You are feeling better this morning?” he asked, somewhat formally.
“Yes,” she replied. “It looks as if you and Patches are having a good morning, too.”
“We went for a long walk. This pleases him, I think. And I wanted to see more of the town’s outskirts.”
She wondered what he had been looking for. Not that she’d gone on many rambles in the area, but from what she’d seen, there just wasn’t much to be found. A few homesteads on the borders of the town, none of them as nice as the one where they were staying. At the northern end of town, an old ball field, one she thought she’d read had been built back in Madrid’s mining days, although it was still used for festivals and such. But still, not much that a djinn would find interesting.
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