Hardly aware of her own actions, Zafiro took a step forward, closer to the bed, branding in her mind her first sight of true male splendor.
His whole body was tanned, his skin lighter than hers, of course, but dark for a white man. She wondered if he spent a great deal of time in the sun without clothing. Bathing, perhaps, or maybe just basking.
The thought stirred her emotions further; she felt moisture trickle down between her breasts.
She’d never seen so much muscle. His shoulders, chest, stomach, legs… Not even Maclovio—mighty as he’d been years ago—had been as strong as Sawyer.
Filled with awe, she continued to examine him, her gaze drawn to the area beneath his hips, between his thighs, where his…
She thought of all the many things Azucar had told her about the sexual intimacy between a man and a woman. Thought about what a man did to a woman when he bedded her. Thought about—
“Zafiro!”
Startled nearly out of her skin, Zafiro turned and wet several white cloths with the water she’d boiled earlier. Tamping down her heated emotions and silently chastising herself for wasting time admiring a man who might be dying before her very eyes, she forced herself to tend to the cut on the right side of Sawyer’s torso. When the wound was clean of all dirt Tia began to stitch it closed. Zafiro then moved to bathe the laceration on Sawyer’s chest and another on his shoulder.
After that there was only one injury left to clean. As she examined it she realized it would take much longer to heal than the injuries on his torso. The nasty claw slash ripped Sawyer’s inner thigh, starting only a few inches above his knee and ending dangerously close to his genitals. To thoroughly nurse the cut she would have to touch him. Handle him there.
Dios mío.
“Tia,” she murmured. “The wound—it is very near to his…his man parts.”
“Man parts? Francisco is only a child.”
Sawyer was definitely not a child, Zafiro mused, still gazing down at his masculinity. She glanced at his face again. He was asleep and would never know that she’d touched him. Of course, maybe he’d like for her to touch him. Azucar said men liked to be touched.
Not that she cared a bit about doing something he liked. He could be dangerous, after all, and she certainly wasn’t going to try to please a man who posed a possible threat to her and her men.
“Zafiro,” Tia said, holding her needle poised above the wound she was stitching. “Clean his leg.”
Starting above his knee Zafiro began to wash away the blood and grime, the tips of her fingers soon grazing him in the most intimate manner she’d ever touched a man. And then he groaned.
She raised her gaze to his face and saw a slight frown creasing his forehead. Had he felt her touch him?
She drew her hand away from him. “He feels, Tia.”
Deftly, Tia slipped a last stitch into the wound she’d just finished sewing, then tied the thread into a tight knot. “He is asleep.”
“It does not matter. He felt where I touched him.”
Tia glanced at his face, but saw no evidence that he felt anything at all. “You imagine things, niña, because you are tired. He is so asleep that he would not know if Mariposa attacked him again. Go to your room and sleep for a bit.”
“I am not tired.” In truth Zafiro was weary down to her toes, but she was always careful not to show her exhaustion. Her charges did what they could to help her, and she would not have them feeling guilty that they could not do more. “I am young and strong, and I—”
“Strong, young people become tired too. All morning you worked in the garden, Zafiro, and then you hauled water from the stream. After that I watched you try to build a new house for the chickens. You could not build it, so you went to the convent and ran from my son, who was probably only trying to catch you to ask where I was. Sleep now, and I will awaken you when I am too sleepy to stay here any longer. Someone must always be with my little Francisco because he will soon have fever. When that happens we will have to take turns keeping his body cool with water.”
“We will bathe him?” The thought of touching Sawyer again was not at all unpleasant.
“Only you and I can bathe him, Zafiro. Maclovio, drunk as he always is, would drown him. Lorenzo would fall asleep before finishing. Pedro would only pray over him, and Azucar would rape him. You do not mind to help me with him, do you, chiquita?”
Zafiro dropped her cloth back into the basin of water. “Someone must help you, Tia,” she answered, and feigned a deep sigh. “If I must bathe him, I will bathe him.” With that Zafiro started for the door, but turned to look at Sawyer one last time.
His eyes mere slits, Sawyer watched her, unable to decide which glowed more brightly—her eyes or her incredible sapphire.
He saw her gaze touch each and every part of him, flowing over his body like warm liquid. And he did, indeed, feel touched. By her gaze and by the sensuous thoughts he knew she was thinking.
Sensuous thoughts about him.
A slight smile curved his lips before he slipped into unconsciousness once again.
He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but the dimness of the room and the cool air that blew in from the window convinced Sawyer that nighttime had fallen. Someone had drawn a white, soap-scented sheet over his bare body. His head ached, and he felt hot. Too hot, and yet he shivered.
Realizing he had fever, he wondered if he would die. Would it make a difference if he did? Was there anyone who would mourn his death?
He didn’t know. Couldn’t remember.
He closed his eyes, slept again, and dreamed. A hazy image of a big house with frilly white curtains hanging at each sparkling window drifted through his thoughts. Flowers bloomed everywhere. A man and a woman stood on the porch, and children of various ages played in the grassy yard.
It should have been a soothing scene, but it wasn’t. Horror strangled him like two iron fists.
He heard himself shout, then forced himself to wake up. His heart thrashing like something about to die, he opened his eyes.
A tiny woman peered down at him. Bright sunlight illuminated her wrinkles and stark white hair, making him realize that it was daytime again. She wore a red gown that hung off her frame like a piece of cloth draped over a stick, and when she smiled he didn’t see a single tooth in her mouth.
She was definitely not the beautiful girl he’d chased from the convent. The dark-haired vixen who had helped doctor his wounds.
“I am here, my anxious stallion,” the old woman said. “Here to satisfy all your needs.”
Before he could understand what the woman meant, he felt her bony hand caress the top of his thigh. The sheet still covered his body, but her caresses agitated him nonetheless.
What the hell was she doing?
He tried to move away from her hand, but the pain of his injuries was too raw. Indeed, he felt as though someone had inserted strips of fire into various places on his body, most especially his thigh. “Stop,” he whispered.
“Stop?” she repeated. “But we have not even begun!”
She bent down to him, her mouth pursed, and he realized she was about to kiss him.
God Almighty, the hag was trying to seduce him!
“Azucar!” another woman shouted.
Totally bewildered, Sawyer saw another woman waddle into the room. “Out,” he heard her say, and then the old, toothless woman hobbled away, muttering what he was sure was a string of profanities.
The plump woman commenced to bathe his face, neck, shoulders, and chest with cool water. The water felt so good on his hot skin that had he possessed the strength, he would have squeezed the woman’s gentle hand in gratitude.
“Drink, my son, my precious little boy.”
He drank thirstily when she held a cup to his parched lips, all the while wondering why she called him a little boy.
“Enough now, sweet Francisco,” she cooed down to him. “Now, see what I have brought you.”
Though his vision was blurry, Sawye
r saw her place by his side a slingshot, a puppet, a red ball, and a small wooden box. She opened the box and held it up.
“I have saved these things for you, Francisco, because I knew I would find you again.” One by one she withdrew each of the box’s contents: a few shiny rocks, a tiny pinecone, a rusty pocketknife; a harmonica, some fish hooks, and a piece of yellowed paper with a childishly drawn picture of a horse on it.
Before Sawyer could begin to comprehend the significance of the articles she showed to him, he felt consciousness slipping away once more. The next time he awakened, the room was dark again.
Another night had fallen.
“So Mary stepped out of the mouth of the whale,” he heard a man say. “The journey in the whale’s belly had been a difficult one for her, especially since she was great with child.”
Slowly, Sawyer’s vision cleared. The first thing he saw was a ginger-colored chicken sitting on his chest, a hen who appeared to be trying to lay an egg.
Chickens didn’t talk. Someone else had spoken about Mary’s journey in the whale’s belly.
Sawyer looked up. A man came into his view. His long white hair, beard, and several keys hung over his sunken chest, and a piece of rope belted his white robe.
He looked like a heavenly being. An angel, or maybe a saint.
Dear God, Sawyer swore silently. Had he died and gone to heaven?
No. In heaven one felt no torment, and his injuries still hurt so badly that even breathing was difficult.
And he didn’t think there were any chickens in heaven either.
“Mary’s husband, Pontius Pilate, also stepped out of the whale’s mouth,” the man went on, “and together they looked for a place where Mary could give birth. But there were no more rooms in Rome, and so Mary delivered the child inside Adam’s ark, where pairs of animals gathered around and watched.”
Bewilderment and fresh waves of pain caused Sawyer to close his eyes. He struggled to stay awake, to understand all the oddities that occurred every time he came out of unconsciousness.
He lost the battle, but didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep again until bright sunlight stabbed through his eyelids. Daytime. Nighttime. Daytime…
He’d lost count of how many days and nights he’d been drifting in and out of consciousness. Slowly, he lifted his hand and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his vision.
“Good. You are awake.”
The sudden sound of another man’s voice startled Sawyer into twisting in the bed. Instantly, his action jolted his body with pain so bad that he clenched his teeth. “Dammit!” he swore softly.
“You curse,” Maclovio commented. “You must be getting well. Who are you?”
The question, Sawyer mused, was who were all these strange old people he saw every time he opened his eyes?
And where was the young beauty with the black hair and vivid blue eyes?
“I have been waiting to talk to you,” Maclovio said. “Zafiro, she does not know I am here, and Tia has gone to boil more water.”
The man’s liquor-laced breath was almost bad enough to knock Sawyer out again. Looking up, he saw a big, broad-shouldered man with salt-and-pepper hair, whose drunken slur and heavily accented English made him all but impossible to understand.
Lethargy crept through his body. God, he was so tired. Lucid thought seemed an impossible thing to achieve. “Did you hear me?” Maclovio queried. “Can you talk?”
“In a whale,” Sawyer whispered, his weary mind fairly bursting with a tangle of thoughts. “Mary.”
“Mary? I am called Maclovio. There is also Lorenzo. And Pedro. Our leader, Ciro, is gone now, and so is Jaime. Luis still lives, the damn son of a bitch.”
Try as he did, Sawyer could not connect the man’s rambling to anything that made sense. “The mountain lion.”
Maclovio pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. The chair creaked beneath his weight. “Mariposa, she is outside, maybe in the big tree by the barn, or maybe asleep on the rocks. Did you know I never met a horse I could not gentle—except Coraje. Only Ciro could ride that devil. I trained all the horses we rode. I could ride standing up, and people would pay to see my tricks. It is true that you cannot remember who you are?”
Sawyer stared at the man. Jumbled Bible stories, he thought. A fat woman who believed him to be her son—a little boy called Francisco. A hundred-year-old seductress in a scarlet satin gown, a chicken laying eggs on his chest, and now an elderly drunk who had once ridden while standing up.
Sawyer decided he’d been hallucinating for days. The chicken and the bizarre collection of people were but figments of his imagination, brought to life by his raging fever and the pain of his wounds.
Or perhaps he suffered damage to his brain. Maybe during the cougar’s attack he’d fallen and hit his head so hard that his mind was impaired!
Dear God. Brain damaged, in a strange house, at the hands of a bunch of imaginary lunatics, and with a vicious mountain lion on the loose.
“Yes,” Maclovio continued, “I trained all the horses, and even taught Ciro’s stallion to come when he heard a whistle. We were well-known in two lands, Sawyer Donovan. That is why you should think twice before trying to steal from us. Before trying to hurt any of us. Well-known and feared, that was us, the Quintana Gang. Many lawmen and bounty hunters tried to catch us, but no one ever came close. And if you do not believe what I say, I will smash your face and—”
“Maclovio!” Zafiro’s voice sliced through the quiet room as she stepped in from the corridor, a basin of fresh water in her hands. “What are you doing here?”
Maclovio bolted from his chair. “I… He… Tia… Watching over him, Zafiro. And trying to…trying to find out who he is. Yes, I am watching over and interrogating him. You are here now. I will go. But if he dares to threaten you, call me and I will smash his face.” As quickly as his intoxicated state would allow, Maclovio weaved out of the room.
Zafiro shut the door, carried the water to the bed, and wet a clean cloth. As she smoothed the rag upon the side of Sawyer’s face, she glanced at the door and wondered what Maclovio had talked about while in the room. Azucar, Tia, and Pedro had also visited Sawyer, but none of them would have said anything of much importance.
It was Maclovio who worried her. While he was in one of his drunken states, his tongue was so loose that it was a wonder it even stayed in his mouth.
And Maclovio had looked awfully guilty when she’d caught him talking to Sawyer.
Deep in thought as she was, a while passed before she realized Sawyer had opened his eyes and was watching her. Another moment passed before she also realized that she had absently pushed the sheet down and was now sliding the wet cloth over his lower abdomen.
She pulled the sheet back over his chest, cast the cloth aside, and casually brushed her hand over her hair. “You are awake. I was washing…bathing you. You are hot with fever, and I am trying to cool you.”
He tried to hear what she said to him—the dark haired girl with the startling blue eyes—but her voice seemed to be coming from a hundred miles away. “My head. I think I fell and hit my head. Seeing…seeing things.”
Zafiro understood he was very sleepy. Maybe he hadn’t even felt her bathing his stomach. “Maclovio,” she said down to him. “The man who was just here. What did he say? What did he want?”
“Kiss,” Sawyer whispered.
“Maclovio wanted to kiss you?” Dios mío, Zafiro thought. Considering Maclovio’s drunken state and Sawyer’s long hair… Did Maclovio believe Sawyer was female?
“The old woman,” Sawyer said. “She tried…tried to kiss… Lay. Lay an egg on me.”
“An old woman tried to kiss and lay an egg on you?” Zafiro frowned. Perhaps Sawyer’s fever had made him delirious, she guessed, and people often spoke secrets when raving with fever. Maybe Sawyer would say something that would help her understand who he was. “Tell me more, Sawyer Donovan. Go ahead. Let the peas flow out.”
He blinked several times, but cou
ldn’t quite keep his eyes open. “Peas…”
“Yes. You are American. You know the expression. Let the peas flow out. Tell me everything.”
He couldn’t for the life of him understand why she was chattering about flowing peas. Dammit, if only he wasn’t so groggy!
“Sawyer, tell me your brain.”
Somehow, finally, he surmised that she was trying to tell him to speak his mind. “A slingshot,” he replied, voicing whatever thought came to him. “A boy called Francisco. Red. The toothless hag wore red. But it wasn’t…it wasn’t in an ark. He was born in a manger.”
Listening to his mumbling, Zafiro realized he had, indeed, met and listened to the ramblings of Tia, Azucar, and Pedro. “What else, Sawyer? Did anyone else say anything to you?”
His eyes still closed, Sawyer continued to relate whatever thoughts entered his mind. “Blood. She saved the fish hooks. So much blood in the house with the…with the white curtains.”
Dazed as he remained, Zafiro didn’t miss the torment in his voice. “Blood?” Was he recalling a terrible memory, something the nuns believed he wanted to forget? “Blood in the house? Was it your house?”
“He rode standing up. Jaime’s gone. Well-known and feared in two lands.”
Zafiro made no reply; cold dread sat in her belly like a lump of ice. “Who, Sawyer?” she finally whispered. “Who…who is well-known and feared in two lands?” God, please do not let him say what I think he is going to say!
Sawyer opened his eyes and saw her eyes staring down at him. Jewels, he thought. Blue as the heart of a flame, the color of those pretty eyes. “Gang,” he mumbled. “The Quintana Gang.”
Zafiro’s heart lurched as if someone had prodded it with a poker. A gamut of emotions twisted inside her.
Shock.
Fear.
Anger.
And finally resolution.
He knew. Sawyer knew who they all were, and now there was only one thing she could do.
Santa Maria.
She would have to kill him.
Chapter Three
“His fever is finally breaking, chiquita,” Tia announced. “When he awakens he is going to be able to talk to us. He will still be tired, but he will speak to us normally instead of ranting like he did when he had the fever.”
Bed of Roses Page 4
