“Sawyer!”
He looked up and saw her walk out of the woods, a big basket of clothes in her arms. Sunbeams kissed her night-black hair, making those tresses look as though they were sprinkled with diamond chips. And though she was still a good distance away from him, Sawyer couldn’t miss the sparkle of her smile. So much time had passed since he’d last seen it that he’d forgotten how beautiful that grin of hers really was.
“Tia is sure you are strong enough to be outside?” she asked as she approached.
The question in his mind was if she was strong enough to carry the large basket of clothes. It was obviously heavy; her gait, her straining arms, and the slight grimace of exertion on her face attested to that.
Disregarding Tia’s orders to stay on the rock, he rose and limped out to meet Zafiro. His thigh throbbed, but he willed the discomfort away with grim determination. When he reached Zafiro he couldn’t miss the dark rings under her eyes. “Give me that basket.” He reached for the woven container of clothes.
“No.” She pulled it out of his grasp. “You do not look strong enough to—”
“I’m a man, for God’s sake! I can carry a stupid basket of clothes easier than you—”
“But I am not recovering from Mariposa’s—”
“Give it to me.” Swiftly, he tried to yank the basket out of her arms again, but she refused to relinquish her burden. With all the tugging back and forth the basket toppled out of Zafiro’s hands, spilling the freshly washed clothing straight into the dirt.
Zafiro stared down at the damp, soiled laundry. “Look what you have done. It took me all morning to wash, and I was just about to hang these clothes on the line. I told you to let me carry the basket, but you are just like a donkey! You will not give in!”
He realized she was trying to say that he was as stubborn as a mule, but now was definitely not the time to correct her.
If fury had another name it would be Zafiro Maria Quintana.
He reached up to pull at his bandanna before he remembered he wasn’t wearing it. Instead, he massaged the back of his neck. “I’m sor—”
“Your apology will not get these clothes clean.”
“Look, I said I was sorry. You look tired, and I was only trying to help—”
“Carrying a basket of clothes is not the kind of help I need from you, Sawyer Donovan.”
Remembering all the broken things he’d noticed earlier—the barn, the fence, the cabin porch and step, the woodshed door, the chicken coop—he became instantly wary. “Zafiro, are you going to ask me to fix every cracked, missing, falling-down, poorly built, eaten-down, hanging-off thing around here?”
He sounded incredulous, she mused. As if the very idea of making a few repairs was the most outrageous thing he’d ever thought of. “You helped the nuns,” she pointed out.
“But I didn’t rebuild the entire convent, which is what the work here at La Escondida would require. Besides, I was only there a few days and was going to leave—”
“Oh? And where were you going to go?”
He opened his mouth to form a snappy retort, but couldn’t think of what to say. “That has nothing to do with anything. The point is that—”
“I was not going to ask you to make any repairs, Sawyer, even though making them would be a nice thing for you to do for the people who have looked after you all these weeks. We have twisted ourselves backward for you—”
“If you didn’t own a guard cat I wouldn’t have needed any of you to bend over backward for me.”
She noticed that he was standing with most of his weight on his good leg and realized that his thigh injury was still aching. “Go sit down before you fall down.”
He watched her get to her knees and begin putting the dirty clothes back into the basket. “If you weren’t going to ask me to make any repairs, what kind of help do you want from me?”
“I will tell you when you are well enough to give it to me.”
“When I’m well enough I’m leaving, Zafiro.”
She finished stuffing the clothes back into the basket and stood. “That is what you think.”
“Zafiro, I can’t stay here—”
“The nuns said you were just wandering when you arrived at the convent. You might have thought you were wandering, but you were not. You were brought here. God sent you here to help me.”
Oh, so she’d decided to take the religious route, had she? he mused.
“I have prayed for the answer to my problems for a very long time, Sawyer. God answered my prayers with you.”
“Yeah? Well, God forgot to tell me anything about it. Listen, Zafiro, I—”
“God forgets nothing, Sawyer. His mind is like a snare made of iron.”
“God has a mind like a steel trap.” For a moment Sawyer pondered what he’d said. God had a mind like a steel trap?
He’d never heard himself say anything so strange. “I’m going crazy,” he muttered, raking his fingers through his hair. “This place and all of you loonies are driving me stark raving mad.”
“You—”
“There’s Tia with her kisses, her spankings, and her blasted bottle of castor oil. I’m hoarse from screaming at Lorenzo, Pedro told me yesterday that the Angel Gabriel fed a multitude of hungry people with two tortillas and a pork rib, and Maclovio has threatened to smash my face so many times that I almost wish he’d go ahead and do it to get it over with! Oh, and let’s not forget Azucar, who comes into my room night after night to take off her clothes and grope at my groin! What a desirable bit of female flesh she is!
“And what about that feathered fiend, Jengibre? She’s laid enough eggs in my bed to feed the entire country, most of which I’ve accidentally rolled onto and smashed! And look at my arms!” He pushed up his sleeves and showed her the numerous chicken-peck marks scattered up and down his arms. “Then there’s you, Zafiro. You, telling me to please drown myself in a bucket of water. Telling me I’m some sissy ballet dancer. Jumbling every expression known to man. And now you think I’m staying here to help you because you say I’m heaven-sent?”
“You have punched the nail head.”
“I have not hit the nail on the head, because I am not staying here!”
Calmly, Zafiro hoisted the clothes basket off the ground. “Since you are obviously well enough to scream at me, you are well enough to follow me back to the stream. While I wash these clothes again, I will explain to you the reasons why I need your help. I am sure that once you understand why I need you, you will stay. Now, come.”
She headed toward the woods again, leaving Sawyer the choice as to whether to follow her or go sit on Pedro’s rock.
If he followed her he’d be obeying her orders. “Now, come,” he mocked her, inflecting just the right touch of haughtiness in his voice. What did she think he was? Some dog whose purpose in life was to do her bidding whenever she whistled or snapped her fingers?
He’d rather sit on the rock. Turning, he started toward the cabin, but stopped when he saw Pedro.
“Come join me,” Pedro called, sitting on the rock with his net spread over his legs. “Come, and I will tell you the story of how King Solomon parted the Red Sea by tossing forbidden fruit across the waves.”
“Caves?” Lorenzo asked as he tottered off the porch and into the yard. “Yes, we used to hide much of our stolen booty in caves. Come here, Sawyer, and I will tell you about the adventures of the Quintana Gang. Did you know I broke Ciro, Jaime, Pedro, and Maclovio out of jail once? It was up somewhere in the Oklahoma Territory, I think, and they would have hanged the next morning if I hadn’t saved them. I—”
“Care for a little snort?” Maclovio shouted as he lurched out from behind a thick garden of roses. He raised his bottle to his lips, but tripped over his own feet and dropped the flask. “My…my whiskey,” he seethed, staring down at the bottle. “You made me drop my whiskey, Sawyer, and now I will smash your face!” His eyes narrowed in anger, he balled his fists and started toward Sawyer.
S
ick to death of Maclovio’s threat, Sawyer prepared himself for a fight, standing straight and tall, until he felt two hard little things press into the backs of his thighs. He spun around and saw Azucar. Rotating her shoulders seductively, she smiled up at him.
“Lover,” she whispered, now pushing her hipbones into the fronts of his thighs. “Come into the barn, and I will show you exactly why a man needs a woman.” Quickly, she slipped her scarlet gown off her shoulders, and Sawyer saw that her breasts hung down her chest like two long socks with a few stones in the toes.
He headed for the forest as fast as his sore leg would allow him. Finding the worn path he figured Zafiro had taken, he followed the winding trail through the woods and soon heard the splashing and bubbling sounds of a stream.
“I knew you would come, Sawyer Donovan.”
Breathing heavily from his flight through the forest, Sawyer massaged his aching leg, looked around, and saw Zafiro kneeling in front of the rushing creek, rewashing the soiled clothing.
Bent over the way she was, her bottom was a fetching sight to behold, especially since her skirt was damp and clinging to her in all the right places.
Places on his own body warmed and stiffened. His leg might still be weak, he mused, but the rest of his parts were in fine working order.
“See, Sawyer?” she said. “It is not so hard to do as I ask, is it? I told you to come, and here you are.”
His irritation with her returned full force. “I’m not here because you told me to come, Zafiro. I’m here because if I’d stayed in the yard I’d have been raped or smashed.”
She smiled. “It is pretty, my stream, isn’t it? I come here not only to wash and bathe, but also to think when I need to think. I find peace here, especially at night when the moon lights the water and the cool breeze sings a song through the tree branches.”
She leaned over the shirt she was washing, acting as though she was totally absorbed by her task, but in reality peering at Sawyer through the veil of hair that curtained the side of her face.
He’d lost a substantial amount of weight, and he appeared to be fatigued from his walk through the woods. But he was still the most powerfully built man she’d ever seen. The mere thought of all the power locked within his body sent a shiver of pleasure through her.
Giving a little sigh, she thought about all the many early mornings she’d sneaked into his room to watch him sleep. He’d never awakened during her visits, and she’d stood beside his bed staring at him just for the pure delight the sight of him gave her.
He was so handsome. So…so masculine. So—
“I see you looking at me through your hair, Zafiro,” he said smugly.
Yanked out of her reverie, Zafiro struggled to invent a lie that would convince the arrogant man that she was not looking at him. But before a suitable falsehood came to her, she spied a snake slither out of the woods and stop behind him.
She dropped the shirt into the water. “Cascabel.” Sawyer saw the shirt float down the creek. “What?”
“Casca-cascabel.”
It sounded to Sawyer as though she was calling him a dirty name in Spanish. “What the hell is a cascabel?” he asked, wondering just how profane her name-calling really was.
“Snake. Rattlesnake. They crawl all over these mountains, Sawyer, and one…one is right behind you.” He looked over his shoulder. There, only inches away from his heels, lay a five-foot rattler.
He turned back to Zafiro, saw her fear, and couldn’t resist playing with her just a bit. “If I had an ax I could chop off his head.”
“I will go get an ax. And I think I saw a stick of dynamite in the barn one time.”
He smiled. If she thought she needed dynamite for one little snake, he couldn’t imagine what form of weaponry she’d use when faced with true danger. Besides that, if her dynamite was as old as everything else at La Escondida, a damn forest fire wouldn’t light it. “You mean to tell me you don’t have a cannon stashed away somewhere around here?”
“Do not talk, Sawyer.” Slowly—so as not to agitate the dangerous reptile—Zafiro rose to her feet and turned toward the path that led to the cabin.
“He’s not going to hurt me,” Sawyer stated quietly. “In fact, if I ignore him he’ll go away.”
She gawked at him. “You are either the bravest man in the world or the stupidest.”
Slowly, Sawyer reached up and snapped off a long, sturdy twig from the tree branch that swayed above his head. “The snake’s not coiled up, Zafiro. He’s not rattling his tail either. In fact, if he were any more relaxed he’d be dead. He’s only sunning himself, and he’s not at all upset that I’m standing beside him. He’s the one who approached me, remember? Snakes don’t go around looking for people to bite, you know.”
She stared at him again, unable to believe what she was hearing. “My ears are telling lies.”
“You can’t believe your ears,” he translated. Without a sound Sawyer turned around and looked down at the snake. Then, with equally slow and silent movements, he stuck the twig beneath the middle of the snake’s body.
Wide-eyed and incredulous, Zafiro watched him flick the snake back into the woods as if the creature were naught but an earthworm. The resulting crackle of leaves told her that the snake’s landing had been a soft one.
“There,” Sawyer said, tossing the stick into the stream, “he vanished.”
The snake might have vanished, but Zafiro’s amazement did not. Never in her life had she seen a man confront danger with such aplomb. Not even her grandfather, the brave Ciro, had ever demonstrated such total control when faced with peril.
“You are really and truly him,” she murmured.
“Him? Who him?”
“The man God has sent.”
“You’ve been around Saint Pedro too long.”
“I was sure before, but now I am more sure than ever. You will reteach the men their lost skills, Sawyer. After weeks of practicing with you, they will once again be the proficient men they used to—”
“Wait,” Sawyer said, holding up his hand to stop her flow of chatter. “Wait just a minute. Are you saying you want me to turn back time? Transform your men into the young, strong, and able outlaws they used to be? That’s what you need me for?”
She didn’t speak, but he saw her answer in her eyes, eyes that had become luminous with pleasure and relief. She did expect him to do the impossible!
The drunk Maclovio. The deaf and sleepy Lorenzo. And the holier-than-thou false apostle Pedro.
She really and truly believed the aged outlaws could skip back over the decades!
Sawyer smiled. And then, within a split second, he threw back his head and laughed out loud. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed, but the amusement he felt over her plans was so great that he could not stem it no matter how he tried.
“You think I am teasing,” Zafiro said. "That your leg is stretched.”
A while passed before his laughter faded sufficiently for him to speak. “That you’re pulling my leg?” He chuckled again. “Listen, I know you well enough now to know you’re dead serious, but if you think for one minute that I’m going to try and turn those three bumbling grandsires back into skilled gunmen… For that, you don’t need a man sent from God, Zafiro, you need God Himself.”
With a wave of her hand she brushed away his words as if they were nothing but bothersome insects. “You are making hills out of mountains of moles.”
“Making mountains out of molehills is exactly what it would be like to turn your gang back into able-bodied—”
“You will make us all ready. Not only the men, but Tia, Azucar, and myself, too. There is no reason I can think of why the women and I cannot learn to protect ourselves. Oh, Sawyer,” she whispered, holding out her hands in a gesture of extreme gratitude, “you will take care of us. Finally, at last long, someone is here to make sure that no harm comes to us.”
For many moments he merely gawked at her. No words would come to him, not a one.
>
He was too busy concentrating on what she’d told him.
Finally, at last long, someone is here to make sure that no harm comes to us.
From deep, deep within him rose a vehement aversion to the idea. He almost felt sickened by it. Indeed, his stomach pitched, his forehead beaded with sweat, and his pulse quickened.
“No. I can’t take care of anyone, do you understand? I can’t…can’t keep any of you from harm.” Battling to quell the horrible and incomprehensible emotions that festered inside him, Sawyer returned to the trail in the woods that led to the cabin.
Zafiro traipsed along right at his heels. “You would disobey God?” she demanded, speaking to his back. “He sent you to—”
“Look,” Sawyer said, spinning around and stopping so quickly that Zafiro ran straight into him. He grasped her shoulders and aimed his gaze straight down into hers. “I—”
“You are a heathen, Sawyer Donovan, that is what you are! To ignore heavenly orders—”
“Heavenly orders?” Sawyer rolled his eyes.
“You are a sinner of the worst sort!”
“And only last month you were going to commit coldblooded murder.”
For a moment, she felt taken aback, unable to dispute his reminder. “Well… Horses come in different colors.”
He had to think for a second. “That was a horse of a different color?”
“Si. That is what I said. I was going to kill you for good reason. I believed you were going to hurt us. But your refusal to help us is selfish and mean. You have been chosen by the highest power to—”
“Chosen? For God’s sake, all I did was chase you from the convent when I thought you’d stolen—”
“Meeting and chasing me was meant to be!”
“Really? And did God also mean for me to be half-killed by Mariposa?”
“I am sure that is the only way He could think of to get you inside La Escondida. And do not forget that He did not allow you to die.”
“Oh, of all the…” Sawyer rammed his fingers through his hair. “All right, fine. Okay. If I get a sign from heaven…some sort of holy proof that I’m your …your knight in shining armor, then I’ll stay and perform every chivalrous and valorous deed you ask of me.”
Bed of Roses Page 8
