The Last Chance Ranch

by Wind, Ruth

  She shrugged. “We’ll go tomorrow. And I’ll get you some canning jars.”

  Moving with deep stiffness, Desmary removed her apron and limped toward her rooms. “Call me if you need anything.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Tanya said, giving Zach a wink. When they were alone, she lifted a bushel basket of chilies and carried them to the big stainless steel sink. “You bring them over here, Zach, and I’ll wash.”

  “Okay.”

  “What are you doing home this morning?” He carefully put the basket at her feet and straightened. “Got suspended yesterday.”

  “Uh-oh.” Giving him an exaggerated frown over her shoulder, Tanya turned on the water in the sink and upturned a basket of chilies. “What happened?”

  “That jerk Jimmy Trujillo called me names again.”

  “And you got suspended?”

  A frown drew his sandy-colored brows into a V. “No. I hit him and broke one of his teeth.”

  “Didn’t that hurt your hand?”

  Zach leaned forward. “Look,” he said, pointing to a gash on his knuckles. “That’s what happened.”

  Very seriously, Tanya took the proffered hand and peered at the cut. It was healing nicely, but she hung on to his hand while she patted her apron pocket. “I think you need a bandage.”

  “Naw,” Zach protested, but he didn’t pull away.

  Tanya located a Band-Aid—she kept them there for the small cutting knife wounds that inexperienced cooks naturally acquired—and covered the gash on Zach’s knuckles. Still she didn’t let go, examining his fingers and palm. “Your hands are getting chapped. You need to keep lotion on them.”

  “Okay.” He leaned on the counter to watch her wash the chilies. “Whatcha gonna do with those?”

  “Roast and peel them,” she said.

  “Can I help?”

  “For a little while.” Tanya looked at the clock. “You mustn’t forget your class.”

  “I won’t,” he promised.

  Tanya smiled at him, feeling a warm stir touch her heart. “I know.”

  * * *

  Ramón found himself rushing through his chores, anxious to get everything done in time to give himself a little break this afternoon with Tanya. For several days, he’d been searching for an excuse to be with her for a few hours—just to see how she was adjusting.

  Yeah, right.

  He sucked in a breath. Truth was, this morning she’d been almost more gorgeous than a woman had a right to be, her hair swinging, her color high with her exercise, her legs hard beneath the sweats, her breasts moving under the—

  No, he’d leave that thought alone.

  Pounding a nail into the broken bit of fence he was mending, Ramón cursed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t had his share of women, although he did have to be discreet. In order to provide a good example, he didn’t stay out all night or bring women out here to sleep with him.

  Not that a man had to stay out all night to have his needs met. But the truth was, Ramón didn’t like to have sex casually. It always seemed to him sex was too intimate and revealing for anything except the deepest of relationships. Last spring, he’d broken off a long-term relationship with a teacher in Manzanares when she had finally admitted she didn’t think she could stand to live at the ranch with all those boys and still pursue her own career in teaching as well as raise kids of her own. He’d understood, and had not been particularly brokenhearted. Their relationship had been close and well matched, but had there ever really been a fire?

  Slam, slam, slam. He pounded nails into the fence, scaring a pair of quails from a nearby scrub oak. They flittered into the morning with noises of surprise and alarm.

  Ten days Tanya had been here. Only ten days, and already Ramón had started spinning naughty fantasies about her naked body. Which would have been all right except for a couple of small details.

  The most difficult aspect of the whole thing was that she was Tonio’s mother—and Tonio didn’t know that. When and if he found out, if they felt right about revealing that to him, things might go well or they might not. If Tonio felt betrayed—and the possibility definitely existed—then Ramón’s first obligation was to Tonio. It had to be.

  He took a nail from the bag around his waist and positioned it. Tonio had been told his mother’s story…and professed an understanding of it, but Ramón knew the understanding was purely intellectual. Emotionally, the boy still felt his mother hadn’t wanted him. Only time and maturity could change that.

  The other problem was much larger and had to do with Tanya herself. When Ramón met her, she’d been eighteen and pregnant. She and Victor had been together for more than three years even then—since a fourteen-year-old Tanya had moved to Albuquerque. At nineteen, she’d divorced him. At barely twenty-two, after more than two solid years of being stalked unceasingly, Tanya had killed him.

  And went to prison.

  Eleven years later, the girl was a woman, but a woman who’d never had a chance to experience the full freedom of adulthood. Living on her own, making her own choices, being in charge of everything. He wanted her to have that if she wanted it. He didn’t want to take advantage of her trust in him, or her gratitude to him for caring for Antonio all these years. What he wanted was impossible—an unencumbered Tanya and an unfettered Ramón to meet when he was twenty-three and she was twenty. He wanted to go back in time, to rescue her from her nightmare before it ruined her life.

  Impossible.

  He stopped pounding and looked at the bright blue New Mexico sky above the dun and red and sage of the land. Was he chasing some dream of the past? Was he acting out of guilt? Were his feelings even genuine?

  He didn’t know. Until he did, he’d do his best to keep his physical attraction to himself. There was no reason in the world they couldn’t just be friends for now. It was the best choice.

  A boy on horseback approached. “Mr. Quezada, they need you in the kitchen.”

  “Did they say why?”

  The boy grinned. “They’ve got chilies to the ceiling. Ms. Bishop says she can’t go to town today, but maybe you could come help with the chilies.”

  Ramón was aware of a sharp, pricking sense of disappointment in his chest. But he nodded. “Thanks, Porfie.”

  * * *

  With Ramón’s help, Tanya got lunch on the table and cleaned up without incident. Afterward, they started roasting chilies.

  Tanya peeked into the oven, careful to keep her face back from the wave of heat that rolled out. The chilies swelled and made tiny noises as steam escaped from within, the green tubes rising and falling as air escaped. The skin was beginning to toast, but this batch wasn’t quite done.

  From behind her, almost directly at her shoulder, Ramón said, “They look like they’re breathing, don’t they?”

  She looked at the chilies again. Rising and falling, like little green lungs. “I never noticed that before. You’re right.”

  “They scream, too—listen.”

  A soft high sound of escaping air slowly filtered from the chilies. Tanya straightened with an exaggerated wince of horror. “Yuck!”

  He stood rather close, close enough for her arm to brush his as she stood up, but he didn’t move away. “I used to run away and hide in my room when my abuelita roasted chilies. I think someone should write a story about the chili monster for kids in the Southwest.”

  Tanya smiled up at him, drawing warm pleasure from the sense of his body so close to hers. On his chin, there was a tiny nick from his morning shave. She wanted to touch it. “Maybe you should write one,” she said lightly.

  A starry twinkle lit his irises. “Maybe I should.” With mock seriousness, he drew his brows together. “I’ll call him Diablo Chili, and give him a big shaggy mustache. He’ll be one of those monsters that drag themselves up the stairs at night, panting.”

  “I’m never going to eat chilies again!” Tanya protested.

  He laughed. “Sure you will. Smell that!”

  Aware that she hadn’t
moved, Tanya bowed her head and shifted away, reaching automatically for the next batch of chilies and spreading them over a foil-covered cookie sheet.

  “So how bad is Desmary?” Ramón asked, moving to lean one hip against the sink.

  “I think she’s just tired. She’s resting.” As if she didn’t mind, as if it were nothing at all, Tanya glanced at him. “I hope you don’t mind—but we have to postpone our trip to town under the circumstances.”

  “I understand. I’ll help you finish today and we can go to town tomorrow.”

  Tanya couldn’t help but smile at the irony. She’d seized the idea of staying here today in hopes he’d go on to town without her and she’d be spared the constant vigilance she had to maintain against his magnetic aura.

  Instead, she would be trapped with him in the kitchen all day. “I can manage,” she said. “Really.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I know, but—”

  His grin, white and swift, flashed on his face again. “Ah—my extreme handsomeness is making you nervous again, hmm?”

  From anyone else, Tanya might have resented his pseudo arrogant teasing, but it was impossible to mind it from Ramón. For one thing, he really was devastatingly handsome. For another, she liked the idea of him defusing the tension between them like that. With a mocking smile, she said, “You’ve caught me again.”

  “I’d try to be as ugly as the chili man, but you know it’s hard to hide a face like this.”

  Tanya laughed. “It must tough. I feel for you.”

  He flung up his hands in mock despair. “You have no idea!” From a basket hanging near the stove, he took four onions, two in each large hand, and put them on the counter. “I go to the store and the poor girls at the registers can’t even get the numbers right. Little girls giggle behind their hands.”

  Following his lead, Tanya opened the freezer and took out two trays of cold, roasted chilies. She put them on the table next to a glass bowl. She flashed him a smile. “The trials and tribulations of being the most handsome man in the land.”

  He inclined his head and gave her a wink. Raising his chin toward the trays of chilies, he asked, “What are you doing? Are you freezing them with the skins on?”

  “No. If you chill them for a while, the skins come off more easily—and you don’t get blisters. I had blisters so bad once that I couldn’t do anything for two days.”

  “Me, too.” He began to peel the onions deftly.

  Tanya settled at the table to start skinning chilies. Under her breath, she hummed “Amazing Grace,” which had been planted in her mind by Desmary’s comment. Ramón didn’t seem to mind it. He peeled and chopped onions, and peeked into the oven several times to shake a tray of chilies. It was very companionable.

  When he finished chopping onions, he left them in a neat pile on the counter and sat down with Tanya. “So, how is it going, anyway? Are you settling in okay?”

  She smiled. “Sure. I’ve never had a bedroom like that in my life. It’s like living in a fancy hotel.”

  “I always liked that room,” he said. “It seemed like it would fit you. Of course, I had no idea how much you’d changed.”

  “It still suits me, though.”

  “Maybe.” He lifted a shoulder. “After seeing you, I might have left it a little simpler.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” Tanya said. “I really missed pretty things like that.”

  “Yeah, you were a real girly girl back in the old days. You even had a bow in your hair.”

  “Not fair—I was a bridesmaid. Bridesmaids always have to wear ridiculous dresses and silly bows and dyed pink shoes.” She rolled her eyes. “Ick.”

  Adroitly he skimmed a skin from the body of a chili and put the limp and naked flesh into the bowl with the others. One black brow lifted. “I seem to remember the dress was just fine.”

  “It was purple lace!” Tanya remembered her dismay over the dress, and that morning, had fretted about the fit. Her breasts and tummy had been swollen with pregnancy. They’d cut the dress a little wide to start with, knowing she was pregnant, but it was still tight when she put it on.

  “All I remember is the way it fit you.”

  “That was all Victor saw, too. He wasn’t going to let me be in the wedding at all.”

  “I’m sorry, Tanya, if you don’t want to remember some of these things—”

  “Don’t apologize.” To her amazement, Tanya had to physically halt herself from putting her hand on his arm. She had not voluntarily touched anyone in a long, long time. For a split second, she looked at the place where her finger had nearly lit—a smooth dark expanse of elegant skin, almost hairless and threaded with a sexy river of vein.

  “I sometimes forget,” he said, “that the day was so bad in the end.”

  Tanya nodded. “Me, too,” she said, smiling. “Isn’t that weird? That was probably the worst beating he ever gave me, but what I remember is talking with you for so long.”

  He said nothing, but his fathomless, milk-chocolate eyes were fixed on her face, waiting.

  “You talked about Peru,” she said, plucking another chili from the bowl.

  “Did I?” he said, smiling. “I was planning my trip at that time.”

  Tanya felt the doors of memory creak open. Ramón then had been very thin—he’d probably not quite finished his growing, after all, and he was a lean man now. His glasses had made his eyes owlish and obscured the lines of his face that she could see now—the high cheekbones and clean jaw.

  Her gaze flickered over his mouth—that impossibly sensual mouth. She still didn’t quite understand how she’d missed seeing how sexy his mouth was, even at an inexperienced eighteen. A dangerous ripple of longing moved through her body.

  Hastily, she jumped up to check on the chilies in the oven. “Did you ever go?”

  “To Peru? Yes.”

  Tanya took out the cooked peppers and set them on the counter. They sighed, as if exhausted, and she glanced up to see if Ramón noticed. She found his gaze on her body, lingering with appreciation on the curves of breasts and hips. It was a delicious sensation,, and with a cocky little smile, she put a hand on her hip. “I have the same trouble you do,” she said, flicking an imaginary crumb from her shirt. “Everywhere I go, men fall at my feet.”

  He met her gaze, and now there was only the smallest hint of a smile lurking at the edges of his mouth. The dark eyes in their fringe of black starry lashes were steady and secretive and inviting. As if to drive his point home, he let his gaze drop to her lips. “I would fall at your feet,” he said, “but I can think of better places to land.” The smile broke free.

  Tanya flicked him with a dish towel. “Behave,” she said and loaded another batch of chilies into the oven.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  But as she sat back down at the table, Tanya wondered if that was the kind of best she wanted. What was his other best? How could she bear to find out? How could she bear not to?

  Resolutely, she said, “Tell me about Peru.”

  Chapter Five

  Dear Antonio,

  You don’t realize what you’ll miss until you don’t have it anymore. I miss fall evenings, when the air smells like frost, and there are the sounds of wind in the leaves. And you pull your sweater close around you deliciously, even though it isn’t cold enough yet for a coat, and it’s only the anticipation that makes you shiver. I miss the way the stars look on such crisp apple nights, and the way home feels so cozy when you go back inside.

  I used to read to you on those crisp nights. I hope Ramón reads to you all the time. It’s so important. But I think he knows that.

  Be good, Antonito.

  Love, Mom

  They peeled and chopped chilies all afternoon, just Ramón and Tanya. As the hours passed, the day grew dark, and a storm threatened over the mountains. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, but it was distant and untroublesome. Soon the yellow school bus would come down the road and stop at the narrow path that the
boys’ feet had made through the fields, and a tumble of young blue-jeaned, flannel shirted bodies would pour out.

  It made her feel very cozy to think of it.

  “So,” Tanya said into a lull. “We started to talk about Peru, but all you said was that you got to go. Why did you want to go there?”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I can’t really remember anymore. I think there was a film in school or something and I liked the way the mountains looked.” He gave her a rueful look. “I didn’t like Anglos very much and I liked the thought of going to a place where I’d be a part of the majority.”

  Tanya looked at him. “And was it what you thought?”

  “No. It was more and it was less, but no place is ever really what you think it is.”

  “What was more?”

  “The land. It’s almost impossible to tell you how beautiful it is there. The mountains and the people and the customs—I loved it. I loved hearing Spanish being spoken all the time, too. Like a lot of children around here at that time, I spoke Spanish before I spoke English.”

  “And what was less?”

  He smiled, and she liked the way small sun lines crinkled around the edges of his eyes. They were living lines, evidence of his maturity and his time on the planet. “I was still an outsider.”

  Tanya nodded. “Odd man out. I know that feeling.” She paused, then found herself saying, “One of the things I liked about Victor was the way he made me belong to him. I wasn’t on the outside anymore. If he could have inhaled me, he would have. It sounds weird, in light of what happened later, but he really made me feel safe.”

  “It doesn’t sound weird.” His hand moved on the table, as if he would touch her, then stilled. “It’s like me and Peru. Same thing. We just needed different kinds of safety.”

  She gave him a sardonic little grin. “Some safety, huh?”

  He acknowledged her irony with a quick lift of his brows. Beyond the kitchen, they could hear the sound of boys coming in from school, the uncertain tenors and altos mixing with the more certain bass of the older boys. Laughter and jests punctured the air as the boys shuffled toward the dining room to read the chores list and pick up the snacks waiting on the sideboard—cinnamon rolls and raisins this afternoon.