Cruz had to admit that taking Sloan Stewart as his wife was proving to be more of a challenge than he had expected.
He had not ever thought he would marry again after watching his very young wife Valeria die during childbirth. His parents had arranged the match, and he had not objected because Valeria was comely and compliant and he had wanted a home and children of his own.
Before long he had discovered his pretty wife was obedient because she had no thoughts of her own. He had ceased to feel any fond emotion for her long before she had died shrieking with the agony of birthing their still-born son.
At her death, guilt smote him that he had made her short life less happy than it could have been. He had sworn he would never marry again until he found a woman who could engage both his heart and mind.
That had not proved a simple feat. Indeed, he had turned away many offers of marriage to the daughters of neighboring
rancheros
over the past ten years.
Then, in the course of one brief conversation with Sloan Stewart, he had found what he had been seeking. She possessed a mind and a will that challenged his own. He had looked deep into her large, liquid-brown eyes and discovered an inner fire that burned far more brightly than in any other woman he had ever known. At last, he had found the woman he would spend the rest of his life loving.
It had been a shattering experience to discover that the woman he wanted to make his wife had already given her heart—and her body—to his brother. God help him, he had envied Tonio.
And when he had seen Sloan’s pain upon learning of Tonio’s betrayal, he had hated his brother for the cruel theft of her innocence.
Over the years, he had come to understand that the spirit he so admired in Sloan also kept her at arm’s distance. He did not understand her need for independence or her desire to play the man’s part or her rejection of his offer of a husband’s protection.
But he had convinced himself that once he and Sloan were living together as husband and wife, once she was carrying his child, those issues would resolve themselves. Soon, that belief would be put to the test.
Dawn came on slow, tired feet, dragging the huge Texas sun behind it. Cruz felt the weight of the day as he left the hotel and walked toward the dusty central square. This would be a day of endings . . . and a day of beginnings.
Two men were flogged in the plaza before Alejandro’s turn came to meet the hangman. Two Texas Rangers escorted the bandido to the raised platform and secured the black bag in place over his head with the hangman’s noose. The bright Texas sun glinted off Alejandro’s silver-and-turquoise bracelet as his hands were tied behind his back.
The bandido’s bold threats of escape had come to naught, Cruz thought. This morning he would die.
Cruz scarcely noticed when Luke came to stand beside him. He heard the murmured incantations of the priest at the gallows and, a moment later, the abrupt crack of the trapdoor as it dropped open, leaving Alejandro kicking his legs frantically against the pull of the noose.
Cruz felt the bile rising in his throat. The bandido took a long time to die. The smell of urine pinched Cruz’s nostrils, and the thought of Alejandro’s grizzled face beneath the mask, his tongue purple and swollen, his eyes white-rimmed with fear, nearly made him gag. At last the bandido stopped fighting, and the smell of death rose up to suffocate Cruz.
“Let us leave this place,” he said to Luke.
Cruz headed for the stable where he had left his powerful
bayo
stallion. The palomino whickered when he saw Cruz and sidestepped impatiently. Cruz quickly bridled him and led him from the stall.
Luke reached out to run his hand along the palomino’s flank. “He’s a beauty.”
“Yes, he is.” Cruz grabbed a striped wool blanket and slung it on the palomino’s back, then added a black leather saddle that was beautifully inlaid with silver and edged with tiny silver trinkets that jingled when he rode.
“You seem in a godawful hurry,” Luke noted.
“I am.” Cruz led the
bayo
out of the stable and mounted him in a single agile move. Once mounted, he fit the high-cantled saddle as though he had been born in it. He pulled his flat-brimmed black hat down low to shade his eyes, then met Luke’s solemn, hazel-eyed stare. “
Hasta luego, mi amigo
.”
“Hey! Where you headed?” Luke shouted as Cruz spurred the
bayo
into a distance-eating lope.
Cruz called back over his shoulder, “I am going to collect on a bargain.”
“I
HAVE COME FOR MY WIFE.
”
Rip Stewart leaned back in his rocker on the front porch of Three Oaks until the floorboards creaked. His flinty gray eyes never left the tall, proud Spaniard who stood spread-legged, fists on hips, confronting him. Cruz Guerrero wasn’t a man to be crossed. “And who might that be?” Rip inquired.
“Your daughter Sloan.”
Rip threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. “You want to back up and try that again?”
“You did not mistake me. I have come to take Sloan to Rancho Dolorosa as my wife.”
Rip’s auburn hair, tinged now with silver, fell in careless hanks over his brow as he shook his head in disbelief. “There’s been some mistake here, son. Sloan didn’t say anything to me this morning about going anywhere with you—not as your wife or otherwise.
“I’ll admit I made plans with your father before he died to have you marry my youngest girl Cricket. But my eldest daughter Sloan was never part of the bargain. Besides, Juan Carlos called off the deal himself when Cricket ran off and married that Texas Ranger Jarrett Creed. What’s this all about?”
“Sloan has agreed to come live at Rancho Dolorosa.”
“Like hell she has! Sloan’s hip-deep in cotton right now, and that’s where she’s going to stay. She’s already taken off on one wild goose chase this week without a word of explanation, and that’s enough. Come back when the cotton’s been baled and sent down the Brazos to Galveston, and maybe she’ll have time to see you.”
Cruz’s dominating stance remained as unyielding as granite. “She will come home with me today.”
“You care to tell me what makes you so all-fired sure of that?”
“Perhaps it would be best to explain when Sloan is here to answer your questions.”
“Perhaps it would be best to explain right now,” Rip said, all humor gone from his voice.
Cruz met Rip’s stern gaze with icy blue eyes that revealed nothing.
Rip cursed the stroke that had made it awkward for him to rise from his chair with any kind of grace. He wanted to give this young pup his comeuppance. But the stroke had happened, and while Rip could stand with the aid of his oak cane, he chose instead to rely on his imposing physical presence and his sober stare to force the younger man to yield.
The two men faced one another in unspoken challenge, neither backing down.
“Where is she?” Cruz demanded.
For a moment it appeared Rip wouldn’t answer. Finally, he said, “Where you might expect my overseer to be. She’s out in the cotton fields, making sure the snatching gets done in good time. She’ll be back along about sundown.” Rip squinted into the lowering ball of golden fire along the horizon. “It may be a while yet.”
“I will wait.”
Rip shook his head again. The man had spleen, all right. He had to admit his curiosity was aroused. Why was Cruz Guerrero making such an outrageous claim? When Sloan arrived, the fur was sure to fly. He looked forward to the coming confrontation between this bullheaded man and his strong-willed daughter. “If you’re determined to wait, you might as well find yourself a seat.”
Cruz looked from the weathered wooden swing that hung on ropes from the porch ceiling, to the rocker that sat next to Rip’s. Then he settled himself on the highest of the three porch steps, his long legs stretched out before him. He braced his back against the round pillar that supported the upper-gallery porch.
His gaze narrowed as he sought out Sloan on horseback in the distant cotton fields. If she was out there, she was too far away to be seen with the naked eye. Cruz took a thin cheroot from a pocket in his jacket and lit it, then leaned back to wait.
The only sounds were the creaking of Rip’s rocker, the buzz of flies, and the faint harmony of Negro voices that drifted to them on the warm September breeze.
Rip wasn’t uncomfortable with the silence, but he had been isolated from his friends during the months he had spent recuperating from his stroke and yearned for the give and take of conversation.
“How was your trip to Spain this past summer?” he asked, smoothly sidestepping the issue of Sloan.
Cruz pulled his rapt attention from the fields and turned to the older man. “I accomplished what I set out to do. I have copies of the royal Spanish decree granting land in Texas to the Guerrero family. Rancho Dolorosa’s claim cannot be challenged now if Texas is annexed by the United States.”
“It’ll be annexed, all right. Don’t you ever doubt it. We’ve got men in Washington right now convincing legislators it’s the right thing to do.”
“They have not been very successful so far.”
“The American Senate will be voting again soon, and they won’t make the same mistake they did in June. Next time they’ll ask Texas to become a state of the Union. They have too much to gain and nothing to lose if they do.”
“I thought you stood against annexation—that you favored Texas remaining an independent Republic,” Cruz said.
Rip harrumphed, uneasy with being caught in any change of opinion, especially one as monumental as this. “I’m entitled to have a change of heart.”
“That must mean you think Texas has something to gain from statehood.”
“We get federal troops to control those murdering Comanches,” Rip spat, “and the protection of the United States against those Mexican bastards who keep testing our southern border!”
Rip felt renewed fury at the memory of how his middle daughter Bay had been stolen by marauding Comanches. She had spent three long years living in a
Quohadi
village as a Comanche war chief’s prize possession before she had been rescued by Long Quiet, the half-breed Comanche who had become her husband.
He fairly sputtered when he recalled the tragedy that had struck when Antonio Guerrero had involved Sloan in a plot with the Mexicans to invade Texas. Six months after Antonio’s death, Sloan had borne Antonio’s bastard son and, to Rip’s everlasting fury, had given the child to the Guerrero family to raise.
Rip stared at the Spaniard who had come to lay claim to Sloan. Cruz Guerrero already had his grandson Cisco. He wasn’t about to hand over his eldest daughter without a second thought. He took some comfort in the fact that Sloan wouldn’t welcome the Spaniard’s advances. She had loved his brother—before she had learned to hate him. Rip was certain she would never agree to marry Cruz.
Rip rubbed his square chin thoughtfully. Not that he wouldn’t have been glad to have the Guerrero wealth and bloodlines in the family.
Cruz was descended from royal Castilian stock, and the Guerreros had prospered in the New World. Rancho Dolorosa, southeast of Three Oaks along the Brazos River, was the largest cattle ranch in Texas.
When Juan Carlos Guerrero had passed away three summers ago, Cruz had inherited the vast estate that included thousands of hectares of land and the Spanish longhorn cattle that populated it. Cruz might have made a good son-in-law—if his brother hadn’t broken Sloan’s heart.
In the uncomfortable silence, both men were acutely aware of one another, of the unspoken tragedy that lay between them, and of the tribulations yet to come. The strain increased as the sun slipped beyond the gently rolling landscape, revealing the silhouette of a rider loping toward them.
Cruz stood and ground out his cheroot in the grass at the foot of the steps. Tension thrummed through him as he waited to confront the woman he was ready, at last, to make his wife.
When Sloan recognized the tall figure standing in the shade of the moss-covered oaks that shrouded the white frame plantation house, her heart rose to her throat. She had known Cruz would come, but she had hoped it would not be so soon. She had not yet made up her mind what she was going to say to keep him at bay.
She was grateful for the help he had given her at a time when she hadn’t known where else to turn. But she didn’t want to repay him by becoming his wife—even if it was what she had promised him at the time.
She walked her horse the rest of the distance to the two-story house, taking the extra time to search for an answer she could give to Cruz’s demand. It might not have been so bad if she felt nothing for the man. But, however much it chagrined her to admit it, she was attracted to Cruz. If she went to live with him at Dolorosa, she was deathly afraid her attraction might grow into something more.
She refused to take the chance of falling in love again. Love had made her foolish. Love had made her lose control of her life.
Moreover, she had learned enough about Cruz Guerrero to know he would expect his wife to follow his lead. Sloan was not, had never been, a follower.
Yet she knew from her experience with Tonio that a woman in love might do anything. A woman in love was vulnerable. A woman in love went a little crazy.
Sloan had no intention of repeating the experience. She would never give another man the chance to control her through love.
Sloan’s eyes never left Cruz’s face as she dismounted and walked the remaining few steps it took to reach him.
“Cruz, I—”
Before she had a chance to speak further, he reached out and drew her into the possessive circle of his embrace. He smelled of soap and sweet tobacco, of horses and leather. She stiffened as her cheek grazed his soft ruffled shirt.
“Well, well, well.”
Sloan whipped her head around at the sound of her father’s mocking voice, seeing him for the first time in the shadow of the porch. When she tried to back away from Cruz, his powerful arms would not release her.
She put her hands flat against his chest to keep him from drawing her any closer. His heart pounded beneath her fingers, causing her own pulse to race.