Chapter Fourteen #2
“Tia Teresa has never been with a man.” He tilted her chin with his hand and she could feel it shaking.
“Since the moment I left here, I have thought of nothing but making love to you. I remembered every touch, every kiss. I burned to touch you that way again.” He brushed her mouth with his lips.
“I should have told you how much you pleased me. What I said to you that night … it was only that I was angry … and it wasn’t the truth.
I was confused, uncertain about my feelings.
I didn’t make love to you that night because I needed a woman. The truth was, I needed you.”
Tears stung her eyes. She blinked but they rolled down her cheeks. “Ramon…” Her arms slid around his neck and she clung to him.
“Forgive me, querida. I have had little experience with innocence such as yours. Por Dios, how can a man be such a fool?” He kissed her then, a bold, hot, ravaging kiss that sent a shower of heat through her body.
This time Carly didn’t fight it. She wanted to please him.
She loved him.
She kissed him back, mated her tongue with his, and heard him groan. She didn’t stop kissing him until he pulled away and lifted her into his arms.
“Ramon?” She clung to his powerful neck as he strode back toward the house.
“Si, querida?”
“What … what about the hole?”
“What hole?”
“You know, the one embroidered in the sheets.”
Ramon stopped on the path, a rumble of laughter erupting from his wide chest. “My tia has a good heart, but she knows little of men. I do not think there is a Spanish man born who has ever made use of the hole sewn into the sheets.”
Carly started laughing, too. She felt giddy with relief and once more was burning with hope.
He hadn’t gone to Miranda; he had come back to her.
She wanted to tell him she loved him, but if she did, he might remember that she had forced the marriage.
He might believe she had meant to trap him all along, and she didn’t want to face any more of his anger.
She only wanted him to make love to her.
Their laughter died away as they approached the house. Ramon nudged open the heavy oak door with the toe of his boot, strode in, and settled her on the bed.
“Whatever happens between us is no cause for shame,” he said, cupping her face in his hands. “Promise me you will remember.”
“I’ll remember.”
He reached for her nightgown, pulled it over her head. “There is no need for this. We will sleep together as God made us.” She flushed, but the thought of his smooth dark skin, his hard male body wrapped around her each night, sounded so wonderful, a wave of pleasure rolled through her.
She watched him undress, enjoying the ripple of muscle beneath his skin. He came to her naked and Carly welcomed him with open arms—and with all the love she felt for him that she could no longer deny.
He kissed her fiercely, then gentled the kiss, teasing her senses into tingling awareness.
He took her passionately, filling her and making her cry out his name.
Then he took her gently, wooing her with soft Spanish words and tender caresses.
This time when they finished making love, she knew that she had pleased him.
Perhaps in time, he would even come to love her.
They slept for a while, then he took her again, and once more just before dawn. Her lips were slightly bruised from his kisses, her body gently battered and wonderfully sated. She felt content as she never had before.
Then she thought of the obstacles that still lay between them: his hatred of her uncle, his vow to regain Rancho del Robles, the danger he faced as the outlaw El Dragón. Perhaps most important, she recalled the fact she wasn’t the woman he had wanted to marry.
Even nestled snugly in his arms, Carly found it difficult to sleep.
* * *
“I can’t believe she’s actually gone and married him. She doesn’t even know him.” Vincent Bannister sat across from Fletcher Austin at the Stockman’s Club in San Francisco.
Fletcher had come to the city for the annual fall meeting with his attorney, Mitchell Webster, and his friend and financial advisor, William Bannister, to discuss the distribution of profits at the end of the fall matanza, the slaughtering of cattle for hides and tallow, as well as the sale of several thousand head driven north to the gold fields.
The meeting had gone as planned. Webster had left, but William had accompanied him to the posh Stockman’s Club, and young Bannister had joined them. From the moment of his arrival the younger man had talked of nothing but Caralee.
“How could she do it?” he continued, speaking more to himself than to Fletcher. “I thought she cared for me at least a little.”
“Yes, well, obviously we pushed her too hard.” A waiter arrived, carrying crystal tumblers filled with fine Irish whiskey and branch water. The man set them down on the polished rosewood table in front of them, then quietly slipped away.
Fletcher shook his head. “I should have known better. I should have known she would rebel … after all, she is her mother’s daughter.
” This last was said with an odd pang of pride.
Lucy Austin was a woman unlike any he had known, beautiful, talented, intelligent.
She had wasted herself on that no-account miner she had met in Philadelphia.
True, the family had been poor then, and Lucy hadn’t believed her older brother when he said one day he would be rich, wealthy enough to take care of them both.
Marrying Patrick McConnell had been a stupid thing to do, even if he was blue-eyed and handsome. Lucy had paid, of course, with a lifetime of drudgery. But in the dozens of letters he had received through the years, his sister had never complained.
In the overstuffed chair across from him, William spoke up, breaking into his thoughts.
The taller man uncrossed his long legs, which were encased in perfectly tailored brown wool slacks.
“It was definitely an odd turn of events,” he said.
“As you can see, my son has not yet recovered from the loss. It appears he held Caralee in extremely high regard.”
“I’m sorry, my boy. Part of the blame belongs to me. I don’t believe she would have acted as she did if we had given her a bit more time.”
Vincent leaned forward. “You think she did it just to spite you? That she might have cared for me after all?” He eased back in his chair, his hazel eyes lit with a glow of satisfaction.
“Yes, that must be it. As I said before, she hardly even knew the man. God only knows the misery she must be suffering. Unfortunate for both of us, I suspect.”
Vincent rattled on for the next few minutes about the sad state of affairs Carly had gotten herself into, but Fletcher’s mind had suddenly swung in another direction.
“Excuse me, Vincent. What was it you said before … something about her hardly even knowing him?”
“That’s right.”
Absently, he rubbed his chin. “Perhaps she knew him better than we believed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe Ramon de la Guerra is somehow connected with this outlaw, El Dragón. Maybe he and Caralee were together while she was being held in the mountains.”
“I cannot imagine there is any truth to that,” William argued. “The de la Guerra family is highly respected. Besides, Don Ramon was with us at del Robles the night the Spanish Dragon robbed the stage.”
“True, but maybe he was somehow involved. If that is the case, it’s possible de la Guerra may have ordered the abduction.
The bad blood between us runs deep. It would suit him well to usurp something of mine …
perhaps even my niece. If the bastard took her virtue, Carly would have felt obliged to marry him. ”
“If that is the case,” Vincent put in, “why would she have kept his secret after she escaped?” It was obvious the boy preferred the first scenario, but Fletcher had begun to believe he might have stumbled onto the truth.
“I don’t know.” He leaned back against the green brocade settee, a thick finger drumming against the side of his glass. “But as soon as I return to del Robles, I’m going to try very hard to find out.”
* * *
A week had passed since Ramon’s return. A week of passionate kisses and sultry nights, of making love and learning the secrets of her husband’s hard-muscled body.
Once they traveled to a place on del Robles land, a secluded spot where Ramon had come as a boy.
A narrow creek tumbled from a high ledge into a shallow pond surrounded by pine trees.
They made love in the soft green grass beside the pond.
Carly smiled as she thought of it again this morning, then she swung her legs to the side of the bed and came to her feet.
Ramon was already up and gone, off to work with the men to finish the fall matanza.
They had all been working hard, rounding up cattle, branding calves, sorting the strays from the herd, and separating those that were being slaughtered from ones being sold on the hoof.
Carly stretched and yawned, her back a little stiff from the hours she had spent working over the tallow pots, huge iron cauldrons used to heat the fat taken from the slaughtered steers.
It was melted into lard, some of it kept, some of it sold, and some of the tallow stored for later use in making soap and candles.
Even Ramon’s mother and Aunt Teresa pitched in, and obviously were pleased that Carly felt no hesitation in doing the same.
Dressed in a simple gray cotton skirt and white cotton blouse, she grabbed a shawl and left the house.
Outside, the rancho buzzed with activity, the vaqueros busy saddling their horses, the kitchen humming with the voices of men finishing the last of their morning meal.
Old Blue had been up for some time, shuffling about, clanging pots and pans, setting tin plates on the table.
Even on this small rancho, the cook was awake long before dawn, tending the fires, making coffee and thick pots of cocoa, frying tortillas and meat.