Nowhere, he answered silently. “I’m not going to die until I get some lobster.”
Zafiro glared at him, her patience so sorely tried that she no longer remembered to feel sorry over having to kill him. “Do you know what I am going to do? I am going to shoot, stab, drown, hang, and suffocate you all at the same time!”
“Fine, but I want my lobster first.”
“Fish! That is the closest I can come to lobster! You will eat it, and then you will die!” With that, Zafiro turned on her heel and marched out.
Sawyer waited until the sound of her boot heels faded, then pulled off his covers and slowly, painfully, sat up and placed his feet on the floor. Looking around the room, he wondered where his clothes were.
He’d have to escape naked. His legs shook as he began to stand, and it took every bit of strength he had to fight off waves of dizziness.
Familiar sounds hit his ears just as he took his first step away from the bed. A growl and a snarl. His body completely rigid, he strained to hear the noises again.
A mountain lion slunk into the room. Stopping a few yards from the bed, she crouched, her gold eyes narrowing, her hindquarters moving from side to side as she prepared to spring forward.
Sawyer felt every drop of blood drain from his face. Words whispered through his mind.
You will be a dead man in only minutes…
The girl with the long black hair had apparently decided to allow the cougar to finish him off.
He had no time to think. To shout. To prepare himself for his gruesome death.
He fell back into the bed.
And the great cat flew toward him.
Carrying a tray that held a steaming bowl of fish stew, a freshly baked loaf of bread, a big red apple, and a glass of milk, Zafiro walked down the hall toward Sawyer’s room. During the time it had taken her to catch the fish and prepare the meal, her temper had cooled.
Now, as she smelled the aroma of the fish stew, she wished she’d been able to accommodate Sawyer and give him his lobster. After all, who could blame him for wanting the taste of his favorite food in his mouth while he took his dying breath?
His dying breath.
“God,” she prayed, “please give me the strength to commit this horrible sin.”
A sigh escaped her when she realized the content of her prayer. Asking the Lord for the courage to execute a murder was probably a sin all by itself.
Arriving at Sawyer’s door, she entered the room…and almost dropped the tray of food.
There lay Sawyer, on the bed, right where she’d left him. Only he wasn’t alone. Indeed, he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his company: Mariposa.
The sleek cougar lay stretched out beside him, her eyes closed in contentment, her long tail leisurely beating the mattress as Sawyer scratched her ears.
“Nice kitty,” Sawyer said, smoothing his hand down from her ears and across her back. “Nice little kitty.”
In response Mariposa leaned her head back onto his shoulder and licked his chin with her long, rough tongue.
Watching, Zafiro realized she’d never known the cat to take to a stranger so quickly. The cougar was even wary around the nuns, all of whom she’d known for three years.
Bewildered by her pet’s abnormal behavior, she set the tray on top of a small bureau and crossed to the bed. “What did you do to her?”
Sawyer noted the disbelief in her gorgeous blue eyes. “I didn’t do anything to her. She came in right after you left. I thought you’d sent her in to kill me, but all she did was jump on the bed with me. When I realized she wasn’t going to have me for lunch, I held out my hand, she licked it, laid down, went to sleep, and that was that. I went to sleep too, and she woke me up only a few minutes ago by rubbing her head on my arm.”
Zafiro wanted to believe he was lying, but the truth—in the form of a very content cougar—lay stretched out right before her very eyes. Mariposa liked Sawyer. And maybe, in her own mountain lion way, she was trying to apologize for attacking him.
Animals possessed an instinct that told them who was friend and who was foe. Mariposa, apparently, had belatedly decided Sawyer was a friend.
Zafiro folded her arms in front of her waist and deliberated. Who was she to contradict the instincts of a wild animal? Yes, her own instincts had been warning her of a coming danger, but wasn’t it possible that Sawyer was not that danger?
Mariposa obviously thought so. The cat was purring and had now maneuvered her body over Sawyer’s stomach.
And not only had Mariposa decided to like Sawyer, but Sawyer had chosen to pardon the cougar for attacking him. Wasn’t a man who could forgive an attempt on his life a man who could be trusted?
Yes.
So if the peril she anticipated was not Sawyer Donovan…
It had to be Luis.
Zafiro closed her eyes and pressed her shaking fingers against her temples, trying in vain to subdue the horrible premonition of danger. But it built steadily inside her, warning her in no uncertain manner that evil was soon going to find her.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Sawyer’s voice broke through her grim preoccupation. Opening her eyes, she looked at him blankly. “What?”
“I asked you if this cougar is your pet,” Sawyer repeated, rubbing his fingers up and down the cat’s soft belly. “And the chicken too.” He pointed to the ginger-colored hen who nested between the vee of his legs. “She’s laid another egg, I think.”
Nodding, Zafiro took a deep breath, and then another and another. Slowly, her feelings of fear faded and she was once again able to concentrate on Sawyer. “The chicken, she is Jengibre. Her name means ‘ginger,’ because that is what color she is. She will not lay her eggs in the coop with the other chickens. I think she believes she is a person, so I allow her to go where she pleases, and she has never run away. Mariposa, she is my pet too. She was an orphaned cub when I found her three years ago. Her name means ‘butterfly’ because she is very gentle, like a butterfly.”
Sawyer thought of his extensive injuries, wounds that were going to take quite some time to heal fully. If Mariposa’s attack had been gentle he hated to think what she could do when in a violent mood. “She’s your guard cat?”
Nodding, Zafiro reached out and tenderly pinched Mariposa’s nose. “And sometimes she brings fresh meat to us. We become tired of eggs and fish, so we are always glad when she shares her catch with us. I cannot kill Pancha or Blanca, Rosa—”
“Who?”
“Pancha is my cow and we need her milk. Blanca and Rosa, they are some of my other chickens. We also have Rayo, our burro. He is in the barn with Pancha.”
Sawyer listened to her tone of voice and studied her actions. She seemed calm, relaxed, as if she were truly enjoying the conversation.
He decided to keep her talking before she remembered she was supposed to kill him. Then, if and when she recalled her murder plans, he’d… Well, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but for now he’d just keep her talking. “Why don’t you eat your chickens?”
“When there were many, we did. But now I have only eight. One cooked chicken will make only one meal. But a live chicken will continue to provide eggs.”
“How do you keep Mariposa out of the chicken coop?”
Zafiro shook her head, remembering the day Pedro shot the chicken house apart. She’d tried to rebuild the fowl house, but the flimsy thing she’d made wasn’t going to hold the chickens for long. “When I first found Mariposa I poured vinegar all over the hens and then let her smell them. She did not like the smell at all, and she has never gone near them since.”
Sawyer silently congratulated her on her ingenuity. “So you get meat when Mariposa brings some. Why can’t you hunt for yourselves?”
Zafiro sighed. “I do not have a gun that will work. The one I was going to shoot you with is not mine. I have tried to fashion traps to catch the rabbits who eat my garden, but they take one look at my traps and laugh. It is very irritating.”
“Yes, I’ve heard rabbits laugh before,” Sawyer answered in all seriousness. “And you’re right. It’s an irritating sound.”
She gave him a good, hard frown to show him what she thought of his sarcasm. “It is not a funny thing, Sawyer,” she chided him. “We are six people here, and we have animals too. If not for the nuns we would be hungry and so would our animals. The area farmers and villagers, they give food and supplies to the sisters in return for the sisters’ prayers. And the nuns, they share with us what little provisions they have. Sometimes they bring meat. Sometimes sugar, flour, fruit, or salt. They even bring hay and grains for our animals when they can get it. But though the good sisters are very generous, the food and supplies they bring to us never last long enough. And the sisters, they do not have much themselves. No one does.” She retrieved the tray of food and set it on the table beside his bed. “Your fish.”
His stomach growled and his mouth watered, but as he glanced at the bowl of hot stew, he couldn’t help wondering if she’d laced it with a bit of strychnine. “You take the first bite.”
“I have already eaten.”
“I’m not asking you to eat the whole bowl, only a bite.”
“Why?”
“Uh… Well, I want you to make sure it’s not too hot. My injuries hurt bad enough. I don’t want to burn my mouth, too.”
Zafiro smiled, sudden comprehension dawning upon her. “You think I have put poison in this food.”
Her smile captured his full attention. She had full, sensuous lips, a captivating dimple in her left cheek, and her grin was so bright that it illuminated her striking blue eyes.
God, she was even more beautiful when she was happy.
“I asked if you think I’ve poisoned your food,” Zafiro repeated.
“Are you kidding? Why would I think you’d try to poison me? You offered only to shoot, stab, hang, suffocate, or drown me. Poisoning was not among my choices, so I have no reason to believe that you—”
“I have changed my mind. Mariposa likes you, so I am not going to kill you.”
He saw not a speck of dishonesty in her eyes, but remained wary. “Oh, and I’m just supposed to take your word for it.”
Zafiro’s first impulse was to tell him in no uncertain terms that if she said she wasn’t going to kill him, then she wasn’t going to kill him. She reconsidered, however, when she took a moment to put herself in his place. “I will prove to you that I mean what I say, but this is the last time I will do so. From now on you will believe me when I tell you something.”
He watched her bend over the bowl of stew and slip a heaping spoonful of the fish stew into her mouth. All right, so the fish wasn’t going to kill him. “What about the bread?”
Zafiro swallowed the stew, then ate a bit of the bread. She also munched into the apple and drank some of the milk. “There,” she said, wiping her milk mustache off with the back of her hand. “Now sit up and eat.”
Sawyer tried to sit up, but found the task impossible. Not only did Mariposa remain stretched out over half his body, but he was tiring again and his wounds were aching fiercely. Dammit, he hated feeling so helpless, so weak.
“You must eat, Sawyer Donovan.”
“Why do you always have to call me by my full name?” he asked irritably.
“It is your name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but you don’t have to use both—”
“Why are you so angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
“You are.”
“All right, I’m angry.”
“Why?”
“I’m hungry, dammit!”
“Then sit up and eat.”
“I can’t! For God’s sake, woman, I’ve been torn up by a mountain lion, who’s now draped over me like a damn afghan!” Carefully, he moved his body out from beneath Mariposa, whereupon Jengibre promptly got up and pecked at his arm as a punishment for disturbing her.
Sawyer rubbed the stinging chicken bite. “I don’t feel good.” He stared at the ceiling. “I’m hurting all over.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t eat.” He closed his eyes. “Can’t eat because I’ve been torn up by a mountain lion. I’m hurting too much to sit up, and there’s a man-eating chicken in my bed.”
“Men are such babies.”
He opened his right eye. “Well, pardon the hell out of me. How stupid of me to complain. I’ve only been slashed to ribbons—”
“But you have been sewn up, and you will live.”
“Only because the mountain lion who tore me up in the first place decided to like me. If it wasn’t for Mariposa I’d be dead right now because you’d have killed me!”
“But I did not kill you.” Before he could object, Zafiro began to feed him, pushing a spoonful of stew into his mouth. He’d barely had the chance to swallow it when she fed him another spoonful, another, and another.
“There,” she said, dropping the spoon back into the empty bowl. “Now you are not hungry anymore. Are you still angry?”
Dribbles of fish stew all over his chin, he glared at her. “I’m wearing my meal.”
She ignored his complaint, certain that Mariposa would ease it.
Sure enough, the cougar quickly and neatly cleaned Sawyer’s chin of every trace of the fish stew.
“I am glad that I did not kill you, Sawyer Donovan.”
“That makes two of us.”
Zafiro cut the apple and popped a sliver into Sawyer’s mouth. “How does it feel not to know who you are?”
He didn’t want to discuss his memory loss. It was frustrating enough just to think about it. “How long have I been here?”
“It will soon be eight days. What is it like to have no memories?”
She wasn’t going to give up. And he wasn’t going to answer.
“Why do you not want to touch your trunk?” Zafiro asked. “The nuns said you did not like to be very near it.”
Sawyer squeezed a handful of sheets. The trunk. Truth was, he didn’t know why he didn’t want to look at it, touch it, much less open it.
All he knew for sure was that every time he saw it he felt almost blinded by a crushing sort of pain. A horror he didn’t know how to overcome.
And yet he could not make himself get rid of the trunk. Whatever was inside seemed vitally important for him to keep.
He would not, however, look at it. Not now.
Someday. Maybe.
Maybe.
“Sawyer? What is it like not to have memories?” Zafiro continued to press.
“I have memories. I just can’t remember them.”
“Why?”
His irritation rose like steam from a kettle. “How the hell should I know? That’s what this forgetting stuff is all about!”
For a few moments Zafiro chewed on her bottom lip, wondering whether or not to voice the thoughts in her mind. “Sawyer…” She reached up to fondle her sapphire, moving the large jewel between her fingers and finally clasping it in her palm. “While you were with fever you spoke…spoke about a big house with white curtains. You said there was blood in the house. Do you think…I…well, maybe the house is a memory you have forgotten and now it is trying to come back to you.”
He didn’t answer.
But she saw his body stiffen, and from his eyes spilled an agony that pulled at every compassionate part of her. “I am sorry,” she whispered.
“For mentioning a house I know nothing about?”
He’d growled the question at her, and she knew then that if indeed he remembered as much as a fragment about the house with the white curtains, he wasn’t going to discuss it. The urge to pursue further the subject of the bloody house was almost irresistible, but she instinctively realized that for Sawyer to speak about it, to try to remember, would cause him pain a thousand times worse than that of his physical injuries.
Perhaps in time, as the weeks passed, she would mention the house again. “You have strong legs.”
He frowned, wondering what his legs had to do with the white-curtained h
ouse.
That house. He’d seen the house in his mind before, while he was awake. Now, apparently, he’d been talking about it in his sleep.
But where was the house? Had he lived in it? And why all the blood? God, so much blood.
Whose blood?
He couldn’t think about it anymore. Though the thought of the house was much like a wisp of smoke that vanished almost as soon as it came to be, the mere notion of it filled him with pain he couldn’t stand or comprehend.
“Sawyer?”
He took a deep breath and struggled to assume an ordinary expression. “I have strong legs. So what?”
“Maybe you are a ballet dancer,” Zafiro explained, relieved by his normal tone of voice. “I saw a ballet once many years ago. The dancers, they had legs like yours, full of muscle. When you are well enough, you will dance for us and we will tell you if you are any good.”
He still didn’t want to talk about his memory loss, but he for damn sure didn’t want her believing he was some silly ballet dancer. “I am not a ballet—”
“How do you know?”
“I know because…because I just know!”
His shout got him another chicken bite on the arm. “Ow!” he yelled, glaring at Jengibre. “I can’t believe I’m in bed with a mountain lion and a damn chicken, and it’s the chicken who’s trying to eat me! Get her off me!”
Zafiro gently placed Jengibre on the floor.
And Sawyer handed her the egg the hen had laid in the sheets.
She slipped the egg into the pocket in her skirt. “You do not know for sure that you are not a ballet dancer, Sawyer. When you dance for us, then we will know.” Zafiro pulled up a chair, sat down, and crossed her legs. “For now, though, all we know is your name and that you have ballet dancer legs.”
Before he replied, Sawyer took a moment to appreciate the fact that she was barefoot and that her skirts fell in such a way as to afford him a tantalizing view of her shapely legs.
She had pretty feet. Dainty, and with tiny toes. Her ankles were slim, but her calves were well-rounded with sleek muscle.
Bed of Roses Page 6
