The Accidental Bridegroom

by Ann Major

  Sheltered by his tall lean frame, Cathy clung to him as the walls and ceiling heaved around them. The ancient timbers above their heads groaned uneasily, sagging lower. The air outside rocked with some deafening explosion.

  Rafe sank to his knees, sheltering her as he watched the avalanche through the mine entrance. Through the awful choking dust, the boulders piled up, one by one, sealing them inside the mine like mummies in a tomb.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath as more timbers groaned over their heads. The beam above them broke in two, and falling debris slammed into his left shoulder before he could jump back. As Rafe pulled her farther into the mine, several more feet of ceiling near the entrance caved in.

  He felt something warm trickle down his shoulder and realized it was his blood. He couldn’t feel his left arm. His legs were so rubbery with terror he could hardly stand. With a sensation of utter horror, he watched the final rock tumble into place to close off their exit to the outside.

  The last of their light went out.

  The mountain was quiet.

  An awful, unbearable silence coiled around them that was even more suffocating than the dust. It was cold and eternal, like the deathly unbearable silence of a grave.

  Rafe felt the sweat dripping from the ends of his hair. His entire body was soaked through. His fear was a palpable thing—he could taste it; he could smell it.

  Cathy’s arms gripped him so tightly, their bodies were as if glued together.

  Terror had driven away his hate of her.

  But they were buried alive.

  They had not escaped.

  They had come into this hellish place to die together.

  Slowly. Terribly.

  Just as Guillen had promised him.

  And the children were missing.

  Ten

  Shuddering convulsively in the horrible dust that clotted her throat and lungs, Cathy opened her eyes. Thick clammy darkness lapped around her, sucking her deeper and deeper like a dangerous undertow. The mine was musty, airless, foul smelling. And black. Blacker than hell itself.

  She was sinking, drowning—claustrophobic. It was as if the black walls and ceiling of that narrow tunnel were pressing in upon her like a coffin. The minutes ticked by in that silent tomb, and if it hadn’t been for Rafe’s strong arms, holding her close against his warm body, she would have gone mad.

  For a long moment, she just clung, her arms locked around his broad shoulders as she pressed her trembling body into the long, hard length of him. And the more she shook, the tighter he held her.

  “Rafe,” she whispered, choking back a weak sob. “I-I’m so scared.”

  She was surprised by the warm brush of his lips across her forehead. Surprised when his mouth lingered gently there for the space of a heartbeat. Surprised when his hands stroked her hair for a long moment. “So am I, Skinny,” he murmured, his voice strangely soft, almost tender.

  “Sadie—” A fit of coughing from the dust made Cathy double over. “Where do you think she—”

  From behind her a match rasped against flint. A rosy glow blossomed instantly from around the corner. “I’m right here, Mommy,” chirped Sadie. “I was waitin’ for the rocks to stop.”

  Sadie bobbed toward them on her tiptoes, her pale pixie face golden above the single candle she held cupped in her hands. Her witch’s costume was torn in places and filthy. Her ragged hem dragged behind her like a train.

  Sadie’s blue gaze widened as she reached up and touched the handcuffs. “I’m glad you didn’t lose Daddy again.”

  “I’m glad, too,” Cathy whispered, looking up as if in slow motion into Rafe’s turbulent eyes.

  She felt his breath catch. Then his embrace relaxed slightly as if he remembered how she’d betrayed him. Still, his arms stayed around her loosely as Sadie came up and hugged them.

  At the trusting love in Sadie’s shining eyes as she reached up and touched his cheek, Rafe’s hard face softened again. When he spoke to his child, his deep voice was tender.

  Watching and listening to him, Cathy realized with a pang of profound remorse that he already loved Sadie. Like a father.

  Numbness crept through Cathy. Suddenly, she knew what a terrible thing she had done to keep father and daughter apart. If Rafe forgave everything else, Cathy knew she couldn’t blame him for hating her for that.

  “Do you still have the key, Gordita?” Cathy asked quietly.

  Sadie dug through a bulging pocket that was filled with candles. Then she rummaged through the other, finally bringing out a tightly balled fist. “Here.”

  Rafe took the key from his child. Since he had only his left hand free, unlocking the handcuffs was such an awkward process, Cathy tried to help him. But when her fingers touched his long lean fingers, he recoiled, pushing her hand away.

  “I’ll do it,” he said, his voice as dry as sandpaper.

  But he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried.

  When he dropped the key and cursed under his breath, Sadie grabbed it eagerly and handed it to him.

  But he jammed it in the lock.

  Sweating now, he bent closer over their joined hands. When his damp black hair brushed Cathy’s cheek, she gasped. He drew back, dropping the key again.

  This time it landed on her thigh. He was about to reach for it. But his big hand froze above her leg.

  At just that moment, Sadie dropped her candle, and the mine was plunged into blackness.

  Panicking in the thick velvet darkness, Cathy moved too quickly and fell, toppling headlong onto Rafe’s lap, her handcuffed hand wedged between the hard warmth of his legs, her mouth tantalizingly near the corner of his lips. Her other hand fluttered uncertainly against his throat.

  Rafe groaned, as if in pain. “Damn it, Cathy.”

  Beneath her fingertips she felt his pulse beating wildly in his neck. She gulped in air when his hand moved up and cupped her breast. She could feel the burning imprint of every finger through her blouse. Something elemental hovered in the air, charging it with unwanted desire.

  Her breath was bursting when he growled, “Get off me.

  “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall.”

  Her sweet apology just made him more tense. When her handcuffed hand braced itself against his thigh so she could lever herself to get up, he swore angrily beneath his breath.

  Then in the next moment, the handcuff jerked as his hands clumsily dragged her back, aligning her slim hips on top of his own thighs. Her hand groped over his thick shoulders and lean-muscled back.

  His body felt hot, so hard and hot. Their breaths rasped together. He groaned in defeat, pulling her even closer. Then his angry mouth crushed hers in a bold kiss that held both bittersweet fury and desperate longing, as if he would die of the desire he felt for her.

  Mouth to mouth. Hers opened, and his tongue dipped inside, tasted her, consumed her. Her breasts were pressed flat into his chest. He began kissing her everywhere, his lips on her throat, in her hair. They were both shuddering violently when a match briskly raked across the sole of a shoe. Panting hard, Rafe savagely pushed her away before Sadie could relight her candle and discover them.

  Cathy was aware of his stillness, and she couldn’t look at him in the golden circle of revealing light until he buried his face in his hand.

  Her own heart seemed to thunder as she murmured and awkward apology. “I—I’m sorry I fell on you.”

  “So am I,” came his terse reply.

  When he looked up miserably, a pulse beating wildly in his neck, he said nothing more. She began to dig in the dirt for the key. “Why won’t you at least let me help you this time?”

  He nodded. “Suit yourself. I’d agree to anything—to be free of you.”

  She felt his eyes burning into her as she slowly inserted the key and turned it in the lock.

  His handcuff snapped loose. The instant he was free, he jerked his hand from hers, leaving his cuff dangling heavily as he backed away. Cathy took hers off, too, and, standing
up, handed Rafe his handcuffs.

  Silently, his mouth compressed, he took them, pocketing them grimly.

  His suppressed fury was like a thorn in her heart.

  “How many candles do you have?” Rafe asked more gently of his daughter, deliberately ignoring Cathy.

  “Lots and lots of them. And Juanito has more than I do.”

  “Juanito! Where is he?” Cathy whispered tightly, a new fear taking hold of her.

  “Looking for the way out.”

  “The way out—” Cathy’s voice rose even though it was too soon to hope. Even though she knew the entrance was sealed and that they were buried alive.

  “Juanito knows this mine real good. Ever since his mother died, he’s stayed in here when he doesn’t have any place else to go. He has food and some water, too,” Sadie said. “Sugar skulls and tortillas and lots of cakes. I brought him some stuff the other day when I snuck up here to play with…to see if my skull really would shine in the dark.”

  Before Cathy thought to remind Sadie the mine had always been strictly forbidden, Juanito’s glossy black head peeped at her from around the corner.

  “I found my marks,” he said, his white smile big and bright in his thin face. “I know the way out.”

  But did he? Wasn’t it more likely that the earthquake that had struck the village had destroyed the mine?

  *

  Descending, ever deeper.

  The children’s candles ahead of Rafe cast an eerie mustard-colored light that lit the crevices of the roughly hacked black walls. Occasionally, Juanito would call back to them, “Cuidado,” careful, as he warned them to avoid some mine shaft that plunged a thousand feet into nothingness or some sharp rusting piece of abandoned mining equipment from the previous century.

  Rafe had lost all sense of reality as he followed them ever deeper through those narrow winding tunnels, ducking his ebony head and hunching his wide shoulders because of the low ceilings, tramping through ankle-deep puddles of scum-filled water.

  His boots were soaked through, his feet wet and raw and numb from the cold. And he still couldn’t feel his left arm.

  The deeper they went, the narrower the walls became. Once, when everyone else had managed to squeeze through a tight hole, he got stuck, and after thirty minutes of struggling, he told them to go on without him.

  But Cathy had refused to leave him. She had coaxed him, begged him to keep trying to get through. And in that final moment when he’d felt lost and trapped and she’d pleaded so desperately, he had almost allowed himself to believe he was wrong about her. Then Maurice’s ring had flashed in that sickly yellow candlelight, reminding Rafe of the bitter reality about her character, and he had lunged at her so angrily, he’d managed to get free in spite of the pain shooting through his left shoulder.

  When he’d collapsed heavily onto the uneven floor, she had knelt in the muck and thrown her arms around him. He’d broken out in a cold sweat as he considered what might have happened to him if he hadn’t forced himself loose. In his bruised and weakened state, the comforting warmth of her hands and her tender smile had almost softened him. Until he’d remembered her treachery. Until he’d remembered being awakened by a rifle butt slamming into his jaw. Until he’d remembered finding her in Maurice’s arms. At that last memory, Rafe pushed her roughly away and staggered to his feet.

  Somehow, they’d kept walking. Suddenly, they were going up, into a huge room with soaring ceilings.

  Juanito gave a forlorn cry.

  An avalanche had sealed the tunnel with his mark on it. A dozen tunnels went off in all directions.

  Rafe felt like a rat in a maze. Which path should they pick?

  Juanito chose the tunnel nearest the one he’d marked, hoping that the two linked up. But as they trudged ever farther, they found more signs of cave-ins. And no more of Juanito’s marks.

  Finally, Cathy was too exhausted to go on. So Rafe decided it was time they ate some of Juanito’s hoarded tortillas while they rested. When they had finished eating, Rafe lay down and stretched out some distance away from Cathy and the children. To his surprise, the children left her—maybe because he was a novelty to them—and climbed into his arms, laying their heads on his chest.

  And Rafe, who wanted to be hard toward Cathy, took pity on the way she looked so desolate, with her chin tucked almost into her collar, with her hands wrapped around her knees. Her golden head slumped lower. Damning himself for his weakness, he took the candle and the children and scooted closer to her.

  The minute Cathy sensed his intention, she looked up, her eyes big and wet in urgent supplication. Her pale, haunted expression hypnotized him as she reached toward him, too, crawling cautiously closer, until he had no choice but to fold her into his arms as he had the children.

  She sighed in shuddering relief when he cradled her close, burying her face tiredly into his shoulder. The children resettled themselves on top of both of them. Juanito yawned and closed his eyes sleepily, his thin brown hand stretching trustingly across Rafe’s chest. Rafe smiled and ruffled the boy’s thick black hair, remembering last night when Juanito had thought him a ghost and thrown his chicles in the air and run.

  Soon everyone except Rafe had closed their eyes. And although Rafe didn’t sleep until long after they did, he felt some tightness leaving him, some lightness filling him. It was as if he were no longer alone. As if the three in his arms were already his family.

  Which was the most preposterous fantasy. Still, despite their desperate circumstances, the fantasy warmed him through.

  And finally he slept, too.

  *

  Cathy awoke alone. To the terror of knowing that Rafe had taken the children and left her. A single candle was guttering low on the cold damp floor.

  She yelled Rafe’s name, but the mine drowned her voice, muffled it. She sat up, and when she did, something rolled off her lap.

  Candles and a box of matches.

  She lit a match. Then a candle.

  She screamed again and again. And every time, the tunnels swallowed her voice.

  She was afraid to move for fear that maybe Rafe did intend to come back for her later.

  Fool. Why would he? You kept his child from him! He thinks you betrayed him to Armi and Guillen. Rafe hates you now.

  There was a sound in the distance.

  She stood up, hoping it was Rafe and the children.

  She screamed their names and ran toward them, but they did not answer. Suddenly, she found herself in another huge room with soaring ceilings, and the stench in the stale air had become overpowering.

  A draft of the clammy air brushed her cheek. Another gust of air blew her candle out.

  There was a faraway whirring noise that grew louder and louder.

  Something leaped at her from out of the dark. Cold wings fluttered against her face. Something clawed the top of her head. More wings flapped against her lips, her throat.

  Bats!

  They flapped madly around her in the blackness, tangling in her long hair.

  She was screaming and fighting, striking out at them helplessly. But there were too many.

  They were all over her, suffocating her.

  It was all too much. Rafe had left her to die.

  She wanted to die. Slowly, her strength ebbed as the beasts hummed around her, and she sagged against the wall and slid down it, sinking deeper and deeper into the awful sickening, eternal blackness of the mine.

  She had fainted.

  When she regained consciousness, strong hands around her waist were lifting her toward a golden light that shone high above her. Warmer air was blowing through a crack.

  She must have fainted.

  “No more bats,” she begged, striking at the empty air as if to ward them away. “Please, no more.”

  Then Rafe shook her and said gently, tenderly, “They’re gone. It’s over. We’ve found the way out.”

  Eleven

  The whirring flapped nearer in the suffocating darkness.

>   Rafe had left her in the cave to die—again.

  Cathy drew herself up in a fetal position and lay still and rigid, cowering away from the terrible humming sound.

  But they buzzed closer.

  She could feel their dry wings again, fluttering nearer and nearer until they were everywhere, stirring the foul-smelling air. Their savage little fangs bit into her flesh; they were sucking her blood like furry vampires.

  Dear God. She would go mad this time.

  She began to scream endlessly as the winged monsters swooped and dived, hitting her face and throat, tearing into her scalp.

  She screamed again and again until someone called her name from the other end of the darkened tunnel.

  “Cathy?” came a deep, familiar voice.

  She blinked and rubbed her eyes.

  Silhouetted in a gray rectangle of light was the tall lean-muscled build of a man.

  “Rafe?”

  He came into the bedroom and turned on the light.

  He was bare-shouldered and bronzed and beautiful in spite of the tangled scars across his flat stomach and muscular rib cage, and the yellowing bruise on his left shoulder. He looked sleepy as his hand combed through his thick ebony hair, but the unruly locks defied order and tumbled across his forehead, anyway.

  He was so male. So breathtakingly beautiful. She liked the way that black hairs grew thick at his chest, narrowing into a virile strip as they disappeared inside the waistband of his pajama bottoms.

  “Rafe.” The second time, she said his name in invitation.

  He sank onto the bed and bent warily toward her, smoothing golden silky tangles from her sweaty forehead.

  “Hey, you’re safe now.” His voice was kind, husky. It was the one he used with Sadie and almost never with her. “We’re home.”

  “Home,” Cathy repeated dreamily, liking the sound of that word.

  Home was his ranch in the Texas hill country, on the Blanco River northeast of San Antonio.

  “It’s over,” he whispered. “You’re safe.”

  A molten warmth stole through her. His resonant voice and gentle hands in her hair made her feel boneless, almost cherished.