Betsy smiled back tremulously. “I guess you’re right.”
Sloan brushed the bangs back from Betsy’s forehead, never more aware that Betsy was going to live with her aunt and uncle—strangers who might tell her equally terrifying stories.
She hugged Betsy hard, then forced herself to lay the child back in her bed. “You should try to go back to sleep. Any day now your Uncle Louis will be coming to get you, and you want to be well rested when he arrives.”
“I like Uncle Louis,” Betsy volunteered. “He lets me ride on Ben.”
“I trust Ben is a horse,” Sloan said, dropping a smacking kiss on Betsy’s nose.
“Oh no, Ben is a mule. He pulls Uncle Louis’s plow.”
“Riding Ben sounds like fun.” She tucked the quilt snugly around Betsy. “Do you think you can sleep now, sweetheart?”
Another bolt of lightning flashed, followed brief seconds later by a deafening rumble of thunder.
Sloan felt Betsy trembling, but the little girl gave her a brave smile.
“That’s my girl. Remember, you’re safe as can be, snug in your bed.”
She kissed Betsy once more on the forehead before she rose to leave the room. She had reached the door when Betsy called, “Sloan?”
Sloan stopped and turned back to her. “Yes, Betsy?”
“Could you tuck Cisco in real snug, too? Just in case.”
Sloan stood stunned for a moment before she followed the little girl’s bidding. She set the lantern back down on the bedside table and sat down beside her son.
Bay had been right in her letter. How much like Cruz he looked! She ran her fingertips across his baby cheek, then leaned over and kissed him on the brow. So soft. So sweet. Her child and not her child.
His hands were thrown above his head in abandon, and one leg lay crooked outside the covers. She made no effort to rearrange him, simply tucked the covers in at shoulders, waist, and hips, knowing she was being watched from across the room.
“I want to love you, sweetheart,” she whispered to her sleeping son. “I do want to love you. But I’m so afraid. I know it’s as foolish for me to fear that you’ll be taken away from me as it is for Betsy to fear the lightning. But oh, my son, how real the fear feels!”
She kissed her son again, picked up the lantern, and crossed to the door. Without looking back she said, “Good night, Betsy. Sleep tight.”
Sloan desperately wanted to be held by Cruz. She hurried to the
sala
and almost wept when she found it empty. She went back to their room, but the bed was still empty. Where was he? Had he been called out into the storm by one of his vaqueros?
What she had told Betsy hadn’t been a lie—the little girl was safe inside the house. But outside in the storm, there was great danger. As flat as the surrounding terrain was, a man on horseback provided a tantalizing target for lightning.
Sloan had already dressed herself in pants, shirt, and boots to go in search of Cruz when she admitted the folly of such a gesture. It would be far better if she went back to bed and tried to sleep. However, she wasn’t the least bit tired, and she knew she would never be able to sleep so long as the storm was lashing the adobe house with its fury.
She was having a glass of brandy in the
sala
when she heard voices at the front door. She rose from her chair before the fireplace, a smile widening on her face because she knew it had to be Cruz, home safe at last. She had only taken two steps toward the front door, however, when she heard another voice—a voice she recognized all too well.
“I expect you to do your part, Hawk.”
“I always have, have I not?” Cruz answered.
“Well, good-bye then. Damn and blast this storm!”
“Never come here again, Englishman.”
Sloan sagged back against the adobe wall as she heard the front door close and the sound of Cruz’s boots on the tile floor as he walked toward the
sala
.
For an instant she thought of hiding. But what purpose would that serve? She already knew more than she wanted to know. Hiding wouldn’t change the facts.
Cruz Guerrero was as much of a liar and a traitor to Texas as his brother had been.
S
LOAN STARTED TO RUN WITHOUT HAVING ANY
clear idea where she was going. She shoved Cruz to move him out of her way, but he backed up quickly to keep himself between her and the front door.
“Sloan, stop! Where are you going?”
“I heard you with the Englishman, Cruz. Or should I call you
Hawk
?”
Cruz’s face turned ashen. “Wait. I can explain.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can,” she said with open sarcasm. She paled as a thought came to her. “Am I supposed to die for having seen the Englishman?”
“No. Christ, no! Let me explain—”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,
Hawk
.” She tried to brush past him again, but his hands came up to frame either side of her face. He forced her to look up into his eyes.
She didn’t believe what she saw. He couldn’t be hurting. He couldn’t be in pain. She was the one who had just had her heart torn out.
“I love you. I have always loved you,” he said. “This other business has nothing to do with us.”
Her eyes flashed with disdain. “I’m sure Tonio would have told me the same thing—if he had lived long enough to explain himself.”
“Dear God. Please, Sloan, listen to me.”
She jerked herself from his grasp and backed away from him. “I see I’m
Sloan
now. What happened to your precious
Cebellina
? I guess pretty love words aren’t necessary any more to keep the blinders on my eyes. Don’t follow me,
Hawk
. I never want to see your face again!”
While he stood watching her in stunned disbelief, she fled past him out the front door. His
bayo
was still tethered to the rail out front and she grabbed the reins, leaped into the saddle, and kicked him into a gallop.
An instant later Cruz came out of his stupor and realized that not only was Sloan leaving him, she was doing so in the worst spring storm they’d had in years. Lightning flashed, reminding him of the danger.
He raced outside in time to see her gallop through the fortress gates. He ran to the stable, taking time only to slip a bridle on the fastest horse he had, a half-broken buckskin stallion, before he slipped onto its bare back and headed after Sloan.
He yanked the buckskin to an abrupt halt outside the fortress walls. Lightning flashed again and he saw hoofprints in the mud, already filling with rainwater. He heaved a sigh of relief when he realized she wasn’t headed in the direction of Three Oaks. It looked as though she had decided to go to Golden Valley, where her sister Bay lived.
He grasped a handful of black mane and tightened his legs on the buckskin’s ocher sides before spurring the half-wild stallion. The animal responded by rearing in protest, neighing its refusal to be dominated by either man or nature, before it bolted away from the fortress into the black abyss created by the storm.
Sloan hadn’t planned a particular destination when she had fled the hacienda. She was merely running and had given the stallion his head. It was only when the
bayo
began to tire that she realized she was headed toward the huge live oak where she and Cruz had first kissed. If there was a more dangerous place to be during a thunderstorm, Sloan didn’t know where it was. Yet she was so overwhelmed by Cruz’s betrayal she truly didn’t care right now whether she lived or died.
It was only now that he had betrayed her that she realized she loved Cruz Guerrero with a depth of soul and spirit she had never imagined possible when his brother had broken her heart. Though that wound had somehow healed, she was certain this one never would.
When she reached the ancient live oak, she was awed by its majesty in the face of the elements. Its gnarled branches took on grotesque proportions in the flashes of white light, refusing to bow to the wind’s demand, while its leaves rustled a furious defiance. She pulled the exhausted
bayo
to a halt beneath the glorious oak and sat there, shoulders back, chin high, recklessly waiting for lightning to strike.
There was something exhilarating about flaunting the fates, daring them to end her life. She raised her face to the drops of rain that fell like tears from the giant tree and let them mingle with her own. Suddenly, her face contorted and her jaws opened wide for the inhuman howl of pain that wrenched its way out of her mouth.
Cruz heard the ululating wail of human agony carried on the wind and spurred the stallion to even greater speed. A moment later, a flash of lightning revealed Sloan’s silhouette on horseback beneath the towering oak. Cruz wanted to howl himself. How dare she take such a chance with her life! She belonged to him!
He knew she must have seen him in the same bolt of lightning, yet she remained beneath the natural lightning rod she had chosen for her resting place.
Cruz cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Cebellina! Get away from the tree!” But the wind captured his warning and carried it away.
She did not move.
And so he had no choice except to join her in her death-defying venture.
When he reached her, he yanked the buckskin to a sitting stop and shouted over the wind, “You are gambling with your life. Come away from here, and we will talk.”
“Don’t like the odds,
Hawk
? Maybe you had better leave, then. You see, my luck hasn’t been too good lately and—”
He grabbed the
bayo’s
reins to lead him away from the danger, but Sloan saw what Cruz was attempting to do and simply slid out of the saddle. Cruz had only gone a few steps before he realized what she had done.
Once the stallion no longer had a rider to control him, he attacked the half-wild buckskin Cruz was riding. Cruz’s mount half-reared and kicked at the
bayo
with its hind legs. The
bayo
danced skittishly away, pulling at the reins and forcing Cruz around so the two stallions faced one another.
In an instant the air was charged with expectancy, the storm forgotten as the two great beasts arched their necks, nostrils flaring, ears flattened against their heads as they tested one another in an instinctive effort to establish supremacy.
The
bayo
reared, stripping the reins from Cruz’s hand, and pawed the air, trumpeting a challenge that was quickly answered by the half-wild buckskin.
Sloan saw the danger to Cruz and, acting without thought to her own safety, rushed forward to try and catch her horse’s reins and bring him back under control. As she reached out a hand for the trailing leather, the
bayo
reared again and its hooves struck her on the hip, sending her tumbling to the ground.
The pain was excruciating. Sloan barely had time to acknowledge it, however, before she was blinded by a piercing white light. She felt her eyebrows being singed as she threw up her hand to cover her face. For an instant the hairs stood up all over her body. A deafening crack of thunder followed.
When the sound had at last shuddered to a stop after a series of rumbling echoes, Sloan’s face wrenched in an agonized expression of remorse and relief. By some miracle she had survived the bolt of lightning that had struck the magnificent oak.
Then she heard the sharp crack of splitting wood.
The live oak had been cleaved by the lightning, but the ancient tree had only been strong enough to withstand for a short time the pull of gravity that began to take its toll.
Sloan watched in horror as a fissure opened down the length of the tree and fully a quarter of the giant oak started its plunge downward to crush her. She tried to escape, but found it hard to move quickly with her injured hip.
She saw Cruz shaking his head to clear it. He was on the outer edge of the area where the branches would fall.
“Cruz! Look out!”
Cruz had been thrown from his horse by the repercussion from the lightning bolt. At the same moment he heard Sloan’s warning, he identified the awful sound of wood splintering and sensed, rather than saw, the heavy branches of the shattered oak on their downward arc.
It only took one frightening look to see Sloan wasn’t going to make it out on her own. It never occurred to him to save himself. He headed for his wife on the run.
He had mere seconds to reach Sloan, mere seconds to get them both to safety. He didn’t have time for grace. He simply snatched Sloan up in his arms like a rag doll, and ran.
He had nearly reached the limits of the tree’s vast umbrella when the outer limbs caught his shoulders and shoved him downward. He barely had time to drop Sloan into a narrow ravine and cover her body protectively with his own before the weight of the gnarled limbs crashed down on him.
Sloan woke to bright daylight but couldn’t figure out where she was. Her hip ached abominably, and something heavy was weighing her down, making it hard to breathe.
Then it all came back to her. The weight, of course, must be Cruz’s body.
“Cruz?” she whispered tentatively. “Are you awake? Are you all right?”
When she received no reply, she closed her eyes and prayed, reaching out searchingly with the hand she could move easily. Cruz’s hand lay beside her on the ground, but it was cold and limp. She felt for a pulse at his wrist but couldn’t find one.
She shuddered at the thought that he might be dead, and fought against panic. A small tremor sped through his body and she realized he must be alive.
“Cruz,” she murmured from a throat swollen closed by guilt. “Please don’t die. Please, for me, try to stay alive.”
Surely someone would have noticed this morning that they were gone from the hacienda. Cruz’s vaqueros would already be searching for them. But how would they know where to look? The storm would have washed out all signs of their journey. It could be hours before they were found—if they were found at all.
Sloan uttered several colorful curses before she managed to control her tongue. She had gotten herself and Cruz into this mess. It appeared she was also going to have to get them both out.