“Brady, do not make jokes!” She said something in rapid, angry Spanish.
The only word Jessica understood was “Sancho.” She looked anxiously at the men in the yard methodically loading saddlebags, filling canteens, checking guns. They seemed intent but not overly worried. In fact several, like these two nitwits, were actually laughing. She didn’t know what to think.
“Look at me,” Brady said.
She realized the others had left and she and Brady were alone on the porch. He was no longer smiling and the seriousness of his expression put her on guard. When he put his hands on her shoulders, she didn’t shrug them off. She waited, staring up at him, so close she could see silver whiskers in with the black stubble on his chin, smell coffee on his breath, feel the hot heavy weight of his palms through the thin fabric of her dress. It created within her a sense of urgency she didn’t understand.
“There’s a fire in one of the canyons,” he said. “If it rains, we should have it out pretty quick. Otherwise it might take a day or two.”
Jessica gazed past him to the dark clouds hanging above the jagged tips of the mountains. If they were in a canyon and it rained, there could be one of those flash floods she’d heard about. They could all be drowned.
“A couple of men will be guarding the house while we’re gone,” he said, drawing her attention again. “You’ll be safe here, so I don’t want you worrying.”
“Is it Sancho?”
“Maybe. Keep an eye on Elena for me. She’ll be scared and worried.”
And I won’t be?
She nodded but didn’t speak, afraid her voice might betray her panic. What if the fire was a ploy to lure them out into the open away from the house? What if Sancho came here while they were gone?
“Pay attention. This is important.”
Her gaze flew back to his.
“Take a deep breath.”
She did. But before she could exhale, he bent down and pressed his lips to hers.
Just like that. No warning. While her mouth was still open.
Jessica was so shocked, she froze. Mesmerized. Shaken. Enthralled.
Her first real kiss.
It wasn’t his best, Brady thought, feeling awkward and clumsy as a green kid. Yet it awakened within him a fire that sent heat rushing through his body. So he kissed her again. And because she just stood there and let him, he did it again. And suddenly he was so lost in the wonder of her, he couldn’t think at all, and might have kept at it all day, if he hadn’t felt her hands on his chest. He reared back.
They stared at each other.
He felt like he’d been running uphill. She wasn’t breathing at all. Yet in the midst of his confusion, Brady realized an important thing—the hands on his chest weren’t pushing him away.
Confidence restored, he gave her his biggest grin. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She gaped up at him, lips swollen, eyes so wide he could see white all around the amber-brown irises. Taking her silence as a good sign, Brady gave her another kiss for luck then bounded down the porch steps to vault into the saddle of the horse waiting in the yard. With a quick wave, he galloped after the other men riding through the gate.
By the time Jessica’s befuddled brain reminded her to wave back, he had already disappeared behind the hill. She pressed fingertips to her mouth, not sure whether to laugh or cry. Her lips tingled. Her stomach felt tight as a drum. Her heart was in chaos. And all she could think was that his mustache wasn’t nearly as prickly as she had imagined it would be.
Bad?
It was wonderful.
TO PACO, IT SOUNDED MORE LIKE WATER THAN FIRE. LIKE the roar of a river at snowmelt or a waterfall or a hard, driving rain. A tree crowned in the canyon below, sending a spike of flames a hundred feet into the air. The heat of it forced him back from the edge of the bluff as twisting black clouds boiled out of the canyon. The sun turned brown in the orange sky.
Sancho was right. It was a beautiful fire.
“Here they come!”
Paco looked back to see Rawlins on the ridge behind him, a dark silhouette against the rolling sky. “¿
Cuántos?
”
“Fifteen or twenty. Moving fast.”
“Wait until they come into the canyon. Tell the others.”
Rawlins nodded and worked his way along the narrow trail that rimmed the box canyon. Paco walked to where Sancho hunkered on the ledge, staring down into the inferno. He rocked back and forth, laughing and muttering to himself.
Happy as a pig in shit
, Paco thought in disgust.
“
Vamos,
Sancho. It is time.”
Sancho stopped rocking and looked around. His eyes gleamed wet and red, irritated by the smoke. When he smiled, his mouth looked like an open wound in his sooty face.
“I have him now, Paco.”
“¡ESTÚPIDOS!”
ELENA SNAPPED OPEN A PEAPOD WITH SUCH vigor peas shot across the porch floor to bounce past Melanie and Iantha as they sat on the top step, pulling stems from beet greens. “Did you see? They want to go.
Idiotas.
”
Jessica tried to attend to what Elena was saying. She was still so astonished that Brady had kissed her she could scarcely gather her thoughts. Why would he do such a thing? And why had she allowed it? It was grossly familiar and entirely beyond the bounds of proper behavior.
It was also the first time she had ever been kissed on the lips by a man.
She didn’t count that sordid little episode with the groom’s son—Griffith or Gunter or Gerald, whatever. Not particularly memorable. A mere peck and rather wet, but to an eleven-year-old, heady stuff, indeed.
Admittedly over the years there had been other attempts by avid young men anxious to call Bickersham Hall home, but she had been too busy tending Mama and Annie, trying to keep kith and kin together, to become involved in such foolishness. Or in kissing. Until now.
And now . . . well.
The irony of it didn’t escape her. Pregnant six months and never truly kissed. Until now, she had never thought it would happen. And since her attack she hadn’t wanted it to.
But now . . . well.
How pathetic she was to be so undone by a mere kiss.
“They do not care that we wait and worry,” Elena said, cutting into her thoughts.
Jessica reached over to pat her worried friend’s arm. “They will be fine.”
Elena was too distraught to be comforted. “Always he laughs. As if he cannot be hurt or killed. He does not see the danger.
¡Estúpido!
”
“I am sure he’ll be careful. Brady isn’t foolish.” Only outrageous. Unpredictable. Confounding. It was insanity. A scary, shivery, breathless sort of insanity that almost made her giggle.
Giggle.
Clearly, she had lost her mind.
“Brady,
sí
.” Elena looked up, her eyes distant and unfocused. “But the other?” She shook her head again. “He makes jokes. He does not know.”
The other?
Jessica studied Elena, wondering if she meant Jack. Had she been correct in surmising there were feelings between the two?
“Well, I’m glad Hank stayed behind.” Melanie idly fanned herself with a limp beet frond. “I feel much safer with him around. He’s so strong.” She winced as distant thunder rumbled over the mountains. “Let’s hope it’s just a fire and not that bloodthirsty madman running around loose.”
Jessica frowned at Melanie’s insensitivity. Apparently she’d forgotten the bloodthirsty madman was Elena’s brother.
“It is Sancho,” Elena said with conviction. “I know this. I feel it here.” She pressed a palm against her crippled hip. “It aches when he is close.”
“Is he the reason you’re lame?” Melanie asked, curiosity overtaking good manners. She must have caught Jessica’s glare because she quickly added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
Elena made a dismissive gesture. “It was long ago. And,
sí
, it was Sancho.”
“What happened?”
“It is a long story.” Elena set the bowl of peas on the floor beside her chair and laced her hands tightly together in her lap. “But to understand Sancho, I must first tell you of the feud and how it began.”
Across the valley, thunderheads rolled over the mountains, mumbling angrily as they snagged on jagged peaks. A sudden gust spiraled across the yard, peppering them with grit and sending chickens in squawking disarray. The air was cool and thick with the scent of roses.
Jessica thought of flash floods and didn’t know whether to wish for rain or not.
Elena took a deep breath and let it out, her posture stiff, as if bracing herself. “My father was like a king,” she began, her voice soft and distant, as if that might insulate her from the pain behind the words. “And RosaRoja his kingdom. He answered to no one. After Mexico lost the war with the United States in 1848, all the old land grants had to be registered with the new government in Santa Fe. My father would not do that. He was Spanish, not Mexican,
comprendes
? It was not his war. So RosaRoja was opened for resettlement.
“Jacob Wilkins bought it. He was a generous man. Because we had nowhere else to go, he allowed us to live in one of the line cabins. Sancho had only ten years when we lost the rancho, but even then he was cruel and full of anger. The loss of his home made him worse . . .
un diablo.
He killed cattle and set fires and did other more terrible things. No one was safe.”
In her mind, Jessica saw a frightened little girl with bloody legs, and suddenly she didn’t want to hear more. Reaching out, she took Elena’s hand in her own. “You don’t have to do this.”
Elena shook her head. “
Sí.
I must. It is important that you understand. For Brady.”
Jessica didn’t know what that meant, or how to respond, so she said nothing as she stared out at the empty road. Before it crossed under a high arched metal gate, it curved gently to the left around the base of a small hill. A footpath wound up to the top, where a single drooping tree shaded a small fenced graveyard of overgrown weeds and tilted tombstones.
I’ve buried most of my family and a lot of good men.
Elena’s voice grew strained. “For two years, Sancho brutalized everyone, even his own family. No one was safe. Then something happened that sent him beyond reason. Our mother, Maria, fell in love with Jacob Wilkins.”
“Oh, my,” Melanie breathed. “What did your father do?”
“He had many more years than my mother. I think he did not love her, so much as he prized her, as he did his horses. He did not like anything or anyone slipping beyond his control. She became his prisoner in our tiny cabin. We both did. It was a difficult time.”
Elena turned to Jessica, her gaze earnest. “Jacob was an honorable man. He tried to be a good husband and father. But his wife . . . she had already lost two babies at birth, and that summer she carried another.” Elena sighed and shook her head. “The strength was gone from her. This place, this life . . . it was too much. ¿
Entiendes
?” Tears filled her eyes. “Then Sam died.”
“Sam?” Melanie cut in.
“The youngest brother.” Elena’s voice broke. She swiped tears from her cheeks and took a deep, shaky breath before continuing. “One day he rode out to find Brady. Instead, he found Sancho and Paco. They beat him. Then Sancho dragged him behind his horse. The ground was rocky and full of cactus. And it was very, very hot.”
Jessica closed her eyes, tried to block the images forming in her mind.
“It was Brady who found him. I do not know what happened on the desert that day. Brady will not speak of it even to his brothers. But it changed him. Now he holds his brothers close, not in love, but in fear that he will fail them, too.”
Jessica’s eyes snapped open.
Fail them?
“How was any of this Brady’s fault? It was his own father who started this feud and Sancho who killed his brother. Whom did he fail?”
Elena shrugged. “Perhaps himself. I know he blames his father for starting the feud, but for some reason I do not understand, he blames himself for Sam.”
And he still does, Jessica thought, remembering that haunted look on his face at the stage stop.
I won’t bury another brother.
“Later that summer, Jacob’s wife bore the daughter she had prayed for. But it was too late. Her spirit had died with Sam. Jacob tried to help them, but the babe was small and her mother weak. He buried them beside Sam. Two months later he began to meet with my mother.”
“Did Brady know?” Jessica asked. A man as honorable as Brady would disapprove of that.
Elena nodded. “It made him very angry. But for Sancho, it was the last insult. First his home, then his mother . . . it was too much. It became a summer of blood.”
On the hilltop, the wind whipped the drooping branches into a frenzy and sent weeds slapping furiously against tilted tombstones.
“One day, I heard Sancho and Paco making plans,” Elena continued. “They would kill all the brothers, from the youngest to the oldest, then set fire to the Rancho. And after they had taken everything from him but his life, they would burn Jacob alive.”
“My word,” Melanie said. “And Sam was the first.”
“Which meant Jack was next,” Jessica added.
Elena nodded, her lips pressed in a tight, grim line.
“What did you do?”
“There was little I could do. I rode to the Rancho to warn them, but Sancho caught me.” In a flat voice, Elena told how her brother pulled her from her horse and kicked her again and again until she fainted from the pain.
“As with Sam, he left me in the desert to die.
Un vaquero
—a cowboy—found me and took me to Jacob. When he saw what Sancho had done, he went to bring my mother to safety as well.
“I am not sure what happened that night. When Brady went after his father, he found my parents dead and Jacob unconscious outside the burning cabin. He had had a seizure of some sort, and because he never spoke or walked again, he could never tell us what happened.