“House is still two hours,” Vicky mumbled, and he couldn’t help chuckling at her sleepy determination.
“And you won’t get there at all if you fall off Tesoro.” He debated his next step. As much as he wanted to keep her with him as long as possible, they were too close to try to stay another night on hacienda land without arriving to the main house. They just had to keep going. “Come here.” He held out his arms, unsure if she would let him carry her, but not seeing any other option unless they stopped completely and waited for her to take a nap. It was a cool day, and there didn’t seem to be any structures around that she could have used for shelter.
“I no bebe,” she insisted, but something in her eyes made him wonder if she didn’t long to be in his arms as much as he longed to have her there. Surely that was just wishful thinking on his part.
“No, but you do need to rest. I will hold you, and you can sleep. I promise to keep you safe,” he pledged, wishing he could promise the same for a lifetime instead of just a few hours in the saddle. He cocked his head and sent a smile that had convinced Nana Ruth more than once to give him a snack before dinner.
Nodding, she handed Tesoro’s reins to him and then lifted her arms so he could catch her around her waist. Once the transfer was done, he settled her close to his heart, wishing she could stay there forever. After all, the muscled organ in his chest would continue to beat long after he left her at the hacienda. But his heart, the part that loved, she’d be keeping with her whether she knew it or not.
“Thank you, Chris.” She curled up even closer, her breath tickling the bottom of his chin.
He continued heading east when everything in him cried to head west. “Go ahead and rest, Vicky. You need to be bright and chipper when we get you home. Can you imagine how excited everyone is going to be when you arrive?”
“Hmm.” She nodded again. He transferred the reins to his left hand, which supported her back. Using his right hand, he caught a tendril of hair that caressed her cheek when it escaped her sombrero. He played with its silkiness for a moment before pushing it back up under the rim of her sombrero. Her skin was soft and smooth as he ran his thumb down her cheek. He held his breath even as he cupped his right hand on her shoulder and pulled her against his chest. Would his familiarity be offensive to her? As if sensing his concern, she smiled slightly against his collarbone and snuggled even closer.
Within minutes, her even breathing told him she had fallen asleep. He tried keeping half an eye on the trail, but Comet and Tesoro were content to follow Padre Pedro’s horse. Chris found himself paying more attention to the beauty in his arms. After all, in a few days, he’d be able to look his heart’s content at the fields when he left Vicky. Today he wanted to memorize the feel of her breath against his neck and her warmth in his arms. He tightened his arm around her, hoping that she was warm enough.
* * *
Close to an hour later, movement to the south caught his attention at the same time as Padre Pedro pointed in that direction. The field, unlike so many of the others they had passed, had a herd of cattle and men patrolling the edges. Even as he watched, one of the men on horseback, sporting a sombrero and a serape similar to Vicky’s, pointed to them. He started toward them, his rifle coming into view although he was still well out of range.
“Vicky, wake up. There are cowboys, vaqueros, coming.” He couldn’t reach his rifle without jostling her, and he would struggle to sight down much less shoot it with her in his arms, but he didn’t want to walk into a situation without being able to defend them. He didn’t want to have the cowboy start shooting and hit Vicky either. There was no telling what he might do if that happened.
“Vicky,” he tried again, and this time she shifted but didn’t wake. Instead she said something he didn’t quite catch.
Stealing a glance down at her beautiful face, he knew these were the last few minutes he’d ever have to be close to her. The thought nearly killed him right there on the spot.
“Te quiero, Chris.” She sighed and turned her face closer to his chest. “Te amo.”
What? What had she just said? Had she just said I love you? This was the moment when she would choose to utter those words? When he couldn’t do a single thing about it?
She was asleep. It didn’t mean anything. She was probably dreaming of someone else. Probably.
He wished she would open her eyes and repeat those words to him while fully awake. He might actually believe her if she did that. With the assurance that she loved him even in some small way, he’d do whatever her father deemed necessary to win her hand. “Vicky, you need to wake up. The cowboys have spotted us.”
Her eyes finally opened, and he watched as the smile on her lips bloomed when her eyes focused on him. “There are some men coming our way.” He nodded his head in the direction of the field. She shifted in his arms, sitting up a little taller and pulling away from his side. He ignored the ripping feeling in his chest as if she had somehow sewn his heart to her.
Shifting her once again in his arms, he pulled his rifle out of its sheath and slowed the horse down even more.
* * *
Vicky had been dreaming that Chris had come to her hacienda and swept her up into his arms as he sat atop Comet. He’d kissed her like she’d seen Rosita, one of Magda’s daughters, kiss her husband in the shadows of the barnyard. She didn’t want to wake up. She’d told him that she loved him. Obviously she was dreaming. But part of the dream was true. She did love him.
Then she’d heard Chris’s voice laced with concern. Something about a cowboy. Opening her eyes, she found it hadn’t all been a dream. Chris held her close to his chest as he rode Comet! But then reality stole her smile. Instead of leaving her father’s land, they were on the trail that led to the main house. And when he nodded in the direction of the field to the south, she saw José Luis cautiously approaching, rifle pointing to them as he called out in Spanish.
Scrambling to sit up, she told Chris who it was heading their way and then called out to her self-appointed big brother, “Put that gun down, José Luis.”
“Vicky? Is it really you?” He lowered his gun and kicked his mount into a full gallop even as Chris kept Comet at a steady gate, his arms tightening around her slightly.
“Sí. Tell the men to put their guns away!” She saw the others in the field sighting down on them. José Luis turned in the saddle to signal the men but didn’t slow as he flew over the last couple of hundred yards.
“Vicky. We thought you were dead!” he shouted even as he came alongside and reached out to take her from Chris. For a second she lifted herself as if to be transferred, but Chris’s arms locked her closer to him.
“Come here, Vicky. Who is this Americano and what has he done to you?” José Luis’s midnight-black eyes sized Chris up, and she saw him calculating how to get her out of the stranger’s arms without hurting her.
“He saved my life and brought me home once I had healed enough to travel.”
“I thought you had gone with your father until he came back and you weren’t with him. We looked for you. We even found your rifle next to a puma. Your necklace was there, too. Then we found your canteen farther downstream. We had given up hope of ever seeing you again! We even went to the Americano’s cabin, but no one was there. We searched all over the rancho, the barn, everything. We were there only ten days ago.”
“Well, I’m alive.” She grinned at her childhood friend and then glanced up to find Chris’s face as serious and stoic as a statue. Switching to English, she introduced the men. “Chris Samuels, this is José Luis Galván. He work for mi papá and teach me fish, hunt and play like boy. His pants.” She grinned as she pulled her skirt up high enough to show the cuff of her white peasant pants that had weathered the trip but were stained and threadbare due to her adventures over the years.
Chris tucked her even closer. “It’s nice to mee
t you.” José Luis nodded his greeting, his eyes pinning Chris, and some communication went on between the two men. Comet sidestepped as the tension started to build.
Padre Pedro chose that moment to greet José Luis just as some of the other vaqueros arrived. Each and every one wanted to know if the “Americano” had mistreated her. To a man, she knew they would defend her honor if she so much as indicated that he’d been rude. He seemed to sense the protective nature of their questions because he sat up straighter but didn’t release her.
“We need get Vicky to hacienda,” Chris called out in his broken Spanish as the men continued to gather around. The second time he said it, the men backed off and nodded.
“What happened to Tesoro? Why is the American carrying you?” José Luis now sat to her right and Padre Pedro to her left.
“When we stopped for the night last night she had terrible cramps, the poor child,” Padre Pedro answered for her, sending her a kind look even as he continued. “Now, had she told us she had pain earlier, I’m sure Señor Samuels would have insisted we stop and she could have avoided all that since he’s been coddling her from the beginning of our trip, but it’s beside the point,” he reproved gently.
“So why isn’t she riding today?” José Luis didn’t look convinced.
“She did for most of the morning, but about an hour ago she almost fell off because she was so sleepy. He insisted on carrying her so she could arrive home directly and well rested.”
“Well, I can carry her now,” José Luis stated, once again reaching out to take her in his arms. He’d carried her more than once as children. But as much as she trusted José Luis, she wanted only Chris to hold her. The day after tomorrow she might find herself forced to marry Joaquín and never be held or cherished again, so she’d stay in Chris’s arms until she absolutely needed to get down. At least one more hour to memorize the feeling of this man she’d come to love caring for her, holding her close.
“No,” she and Chris answered at the same time. He looked down at her with emotions she’d never seen in his gaze before. His dimple and smile made an appearance for two beats of her heart, and then he turned his attention back to José Luis. “He can carry me home. You have cattle to tend to.”
“Your papá would skin me alive if I didn’t look after you first. I’m seeing you to the house like I should have done that awful day.” His last statement caused her to feel a touch guilty. Knowing him, he would have personally felt responsible for her disappearance. For the first time, she considered how her decisions might have affected the people on the hacienda who truly cared for her.
José Luis called to the men and then sent them out to round up the animals. Apparently they were bringing in all the herds closer to the hacienda so the men could attend the service the priest would celebrate. Just as she had guessed, since there was no way to communicate to Padre Pablo, they had waited until he was expected to come to have a funeral on her behalf. José Luis sent one of the younger vaqueros off ahead, presumably to warn the stables and the house of their arrival. They’d be having a birthday party instead of a funeral.
“Vicky, is he your intended?” The words sounded strange on Chris’s lips as he struggled to get his tongue around them. He’d asked her to teach him many words earlier in their ride that morning. Some that made sense, like how to greet her father and mother, and others that he’d probably never need to worry about, but she’d taught him all the same.
“No! He’s my father’s foreman. He good friend with Juan Manuel, then Juan Manuel die. He been my good friend, like big brother.” She smiled and watched the other vaqueros start to round up the herd. “José Luis loves Maritza, not me.”
“So you do not love him? And he does not love you?” Chris asked again. Turning in his arms, she studied his face. His eyes carefully watched José Luis and the other men, then he turned his gaze to hers and seemed to probe into her very heart. “You do not amo José Luis?”
“No, he promised my brother—” She paused, because he had used the word she’d dreamed. Surely he didn’t know how much she’d come to love him if he could even ask about her loving José Luis. “When my brother sick, José Luis promise to take care of me.”
“So he promised to take care of you like your older brother would have if he had lived?”
“Yes. We go hunt, fish and ride horses. I love José Luis like love my brother.” Something flashed in his eyes, but he continued to quiz her as if it were very important he understand her relationship with José Luis.
“But you’d rather marry Joaquín?”
“Rather?”
“Want to?” Chris looked down at her, and she noticed that he seemed different somehow. There was a question in his eyes, a question that she couldn’t quite read.
“No!” How could he even think that? “I no want marry Joaquín. I want stay on hacienda and no marry.” Unless it were Chris offering. Then she would marry him in an instant and follow him to the ends of the earth, or at least back to his wonderful, peaceful rancho in the woods.
“You don’t want to marry? You don’t want a man to love you. Say te amo? Have children?” He’d used the word twice. Had he read her mind? She never believed she could be happily married until she met Chris.
“If man good and love me, yes. I want marry. But I no want marry Don Joaquín. They say he kill other wife when no baby, and I no want him to...” She stopped. Even to say the words out loud made her nauseated. To be touched by such a man after knowing someone like Chris existed and would have treated her so differently!
What great sin had she committed that God would punish her in such a way? At least before she had been lost in the woods, she had been ignorant of the way a man could hold her and make her feel safe. But to go from Chris’s care to the misuse of Joaquín... Maybe she could run away before the wedding. It was the only way. Even as she began to plot her escape, the lines of worry and sadness that she had never seen before on José Luis’s face reminded her others would be affected by any action she took.
But then if they had believed she was dead, maybe Don Joaquín had turned his interest somewhere else. Even as hope grew in her heart that maybe she had been spared, she prayed for God to protect any other poor woman whom Joaquín happened to fancy. The questions nagging her about what she might find when she reached the house would be answered within an hour. In the meantime, she vowed to enjoy the time she had left in Chris’s arms.
Chapter Seventeen
As they rounded a curve, the Hacienda Ruiz’s main building came into view. Chris had seen it before, but it still impressed him. Maybe even intimidated him. The large, cobblestone plaza with a fountain in the main yard gave plenty of space for visitors to hobble horses, park buggies or wander by the gardens in the warmer months before actually reaching the entryway. A large black steel gate, built into the whitewashed adobe outer wall, stood open most of the time and led to an inner courtyard that had a lush garden most of the year leading to the large veranda of the home, two wide steps of flat river stones, the long covered porch and then the massive wooden doors.
Chris had seen similar architecture in many of the Spanish ports they had docked in during the long journey around South America, which brought back memories of drawings of castles in Europe. Every time Chris visited the palatial Hacienda Ruiz, he’d always been impressed with the neat appearance and the grandeur of the landscape. He’d always felt like he was encountering nobility when he came to this palatial home—and it was where Vicky had grown up. Why did Vicky seem so down-to-earth when she really was the princess of this vast estate?
“They come,” she whispered into his shoulder, and he found his gaze drawn back to her. Even with her jet-black hair pulling out of its pinnings, hanging in tendrils close to her cheeks, framing her dark brown eyes ringed with fatigue, and her nose smudged with travel dirt, he found her breathtakingly beautiful. In that moment
, in front of her people, he had to fight the urge to kiss her. He was in dangerous territory here in more ways than one.
He raised his gaze to the three men charging toward them, their horses eating the distance between them. He recognized the cowboy whom José Luis had sent out ahead of them. The other two men, both bulkier and older, rode with the ease of years in the saddle.
“Papá and Berto,” she whispered. Within minutes the two men rode up and slowed but didn’t dismount. He recognized them once she said their names.
The younger of the two, Vicky’s father, was in his forties at least. He had a lighter complexion and a longer, thin nose and chin. His sombrero hid most of his hair, but he sat at least four or five inches taller in the saddle than the older man.
“Vik-ee-ta!” Berto called out, emotion choking his voice. He spoke in rapid Spanish as he made no attempt to hide the tears sliding down his sun-weathered face. He reached out and caressed Vicky’s face with his work-worn hands.
Berto was in charge of the horses and barns on the hacienda. His words were too fast for Chris to pick up much, but he heard Vik-ee-ta and princesa a few times over. How that man must love her to respond so. And yet, who could resist loving Vicky? Chris certainly had tried and failed. It made sense that the family she grew up in would be devastated by her loss, and he could only imagine their relief at having her back with them.
All the while Don Ruiz, Vicky’s father, spoke in low tones with José Luis. Once José Luis apparently had his instructions, he came alongside Comet and said something to Vicky in a hushed tone, catching Chris with a look that said he’d better treat her like a princess or else. Chris held his eye contact without flinching.
Don Ruiz reached out as if to receive Vicky, but she shook her head, clinging to Chris and explaining something about her middle as she pointed to the area of her still-healing ribs, and settled back against Chris. Her father narrowed his eyes at him. There’d be some explaining to do when they arrived at the hacienda, if they let him get that far. But then again, he had a few questions of his own.
Rescuing the Runaway Bride Page 14
