The Promise of Jenny Jones (39 page)

"Get down here and put your head on my shoulder. I'd be real pissed if you got yourself killed at this point in my proposal, and especially after all I went through to get here before the month was up."

She pressed her head on his chest, smiling foolishly, listening to the rock-steady beat of his heart. It belonged to her. His heart was her heart now. "Well, get on with it, then. Why do you think we have to get married?"

"Because I want to bed you down again and marriage answers the problem of you maybe getting pregnant. Because I need a woman in my bed and in my house. Because I love you, and you love me. And, finally, because Ma said if I didn't marry you, I didn't have the sense God gave an ant." He laughed. "She sent me up here after you and told me not to come back unless you said yes." Gently, he lifted her enough to gaze into her glistening eyes. "Say yes, Jenny. Promise you'll marry me. Promise you'll still be here, driving me crazy and loving me when we're little and old and surrounded by grandchildren. Promise that you'll let me love you until I take my last breath. Promise."

"Oh Ty. I promise. With all my heart, I promise!"

Oblivious to everything but each other, they lay together behind the stone wall, touching, kissing, both talking at once until a shadow fell across them. Blinking, surprised to notice the absence of gunfire, they came to their feet, exchanging embarrassed and self-conscious glances.

Don Antonio removed his hat and swept it across his body in a bow. "Welcome home, Señor Sanders."

Ty hesitated,then thrust out his hand, and Don Antonio Barrancas clasped it. The two men gazed into each other's eyes, silently reviewing past grudges, measuring what a different future might hold.

"I have a gift for you both." Not looking away from them, Don Antonio raised a hand, and one of his men led a horse forward. Luis Barrancas lay draped across the saddle. He had not died peacefully.

"This gift does not erase my family's shame. Nor will any apology ease the insult of doubting you, Señorita Jones." Pride stiffened his neck, and Jenny saw how difficult the moment was for him. "To my shame I rode here in response to a distraught child's pleas, but I did not believe her story or yours until I saw Luis with my own eyes." His cold gaze flicked toward the two cousins who had survived the gun battle. Don Antonio's men held them at gunpoint. "I will know the full extent of my family's treachery by nightfall."

"And Graciela?" Jenny asked, beginning to feel the pain throbbing in her shoulder. She leaned into Ty's arm, drawing on his support.

Don Antonio fixed his eyes on Luis's body. "Perhaps I have been mistaken about many things, Señorita ." He turned to look at Ty. "No Barrancas will ever again ride onto Sanders land in anger. If you agree, the hostilities between our families end here."

Ty hesitated,then nodded. "Agreed." The two men shook hands again.

"Give Graciela a chance, Señor ," Jenny said softly. "She wants to love you." She suspected Graciela's self-proclaimed charm had begun to dent his resistance. If he gave the child half a chance—and she saw now that he would—Graciela would have him wrapped around her little finger in no time flat.

"The child will dine tonight at the hacienda," he announced abruptly. "One of my men will return her to the ranch before darkness."

"Bueno, Señor," she whispered. Before he sipped his after-dinner coffee or lit his cigar, he would belong to Graciela. Lowering her head to hide a smile, she noticed the blood dripping down her arm and off her fingertips. "Well, damn." Glaring, she scowled into Ty's eyes. "I have to say, cowboy, as husband material, you aren't working out too well so far. You didn't send me a telegram like you should have, and it's going to be a long time before I stop being pissed about that, and now you're standing here talking while any fool can see that I'm bleeding to death right in front of your sorry eyes. I just might have to rethink hitching up with you."

Laughing, he lifted her in his arms and grinned down at her. "Too late. You promised to marry me, and I never saw a woman hang on a promise like you do. So, you're stuck with me, no-good that I am."

Smiling, she rested her head against his shoulder while he carried her to the horses. "Well, I guess I am. Course, you're stuck with me, too. And maybe I like that a lot."

Cradled in his arms, bleeding all over his chest, she decided this was the happiest day of her life.

* * *

Uneasy undercurrents flowed beneath the party his mother gave to celebrate Ty's homecoming and his engagement to the woman he had thought of every minute of every day during his long difficult recovery in the Mexican village and then his journey north.

The Barrancas men and the Sanders men stayed on opposite sides of the barbecue pit, eyeing each other with suspicion and mistrust. His mother and Don Antonio exchanged guarded pleasantries and treated each other with frigidly exaggerated courtesy. Only the presence of other guests prevented the discomfort between the two families from flaring openly.

But today marked a beginning. Time would bring other gatherings and eventually pleasant encounters would outweigh the memory of past hostilities. Graciela, who ran happily from one group to the other, would draw both families toward a shared future.

When the women stole Jenny away from his side, Ty walked to the pasture fence to join Robert and looked back at all he loved best. The land, the home where he had grown to manhood. And now the woman who would soon be his wife, standing in the twilight holding the hand of a child. This precious woman and child had opened his mind, had changed his attitudes and finally his life. His chest tightened when he looked at them, and he had to swallow hard.

"She's a fine woman," Robert said quietly. "You're a lucky man."

He nodded, pride squaring his shoulders. "I've never known another like her."

She looked beautiful tonight, flushed with happiness, her eyes shining when she waved to him. Her hair, below her ears now, captured the flaming light of sunset and reminded him of the feathery fire between her strong thighs. The dress she wore molded her magnificent breasts and flared over hips meant to bear a man's babies. Someone, probably Graciela, had pinned a bouquet to the sling that cradled her wounded arm close to her body. God a'mighty, but he loved her. He couldn't believe his good fortune that he'd found her and that she loved him.

By the end of the week she would be healed enough totravel, and he intended to take her toSan Francisco, away from his mother's watchful eyes and insistence on separate bedrooms until the wedding. He would make love to her until she was dizzy with laughter and desire and weak with satisfaction, then he would buy her a trousseau and an apricot-colored wedding gown.

"I should have gone with Marguarita toMexico," Robert said softly. He, too, watched Jenny. "I'll never forgive myself that I didn't. And the ranch—it should have been yours."

"I'm happy with my three hundred acres." He lit two cigars, handed one to his brother.

"I don't love the land like you do. I never did." Robert smoked in silence for a moment. "That's what I can't live with. I let her go to pleasePa, maybe because I didn't want you to have what I thought was rightfully mine." Disgust and self-loathing twisted his mouth. "I didn't even have the backbone to go fetch my own wife and daughter. I asked you to do it because I was ashamed to face Marguarita. And, God forgive me, a part of me is glad that I didn't have to. How does a man live with that?"

There was no answer he could give. Robert was his brother, and he loved him. But they had never understood each other, had never walked in the same set of boots.

"You have your daughter," he said finally. "Give her a chance, Robert. I've only been home three days, but I can see that you aren't letting Graciela be part of your life. She deserves better."

"Yes. She does," he said, his gaze fixed on Jenny and Graciela. "I've done a lot of thinking in the last few days. I've concluded that one of the things I can do to atone for the mistakes I've made is give my daughter a loving family and the happiness she deserves." He exhaled slowly, watching a curl of cigar smoke drift toward the pasture. "I'm leaving, Ty. I'm going toMexicoto say good-bye to my wife. Afterward, I think I'll go toSouth America. Maybe I'll end up inMexico City, who knows?" He shrugged. "All I can say for sure is that I'm never coming back here."

"And Graciela?" Ty asked sharply.

"It won't surprise you when I ask you once again to take on my responsibilities and make them your own."

For a moment Ty didn't speak. He could guess what was coming, and sadly, Robert was right. It didn't surprise him.

"The ranch should always have been yours. Now it will be. As for my daughter … you and Jenny can give her a real home. I can't. Every time I look at her, I see Marguarita and my failure as a husband, as a father, as a man. That's not fair to her, and it's not something I can live with. Will you do these last things for me? If Jenny agrees, will the two of you take the ranch and my daughter and make them your own?"

"You know the answer." He didn't have to discuss it with Jenny. He knew how she felt.

"You found something inMexicothat changed you," Robert said, studying Ty's face. "Maybe I'll find something there, too."

Ty smoked in silence, watching Jenny across the yard, and remembering the weeks of healing in the Mexican village on the edge of the desert. By then he was a changed man, but he hadn't yet examined those changes. With time to think, he'd realized thatMexicohad birthed his father's prejudices but had buried his own. He owed his life to the good people in that desert village. Without their kindness and generosity, without their compassion for a stranger, he would be dead.Mexicohad given him his life.Mexicohad given him Jenny and Graciela.

"What will you tell Graciela?"

"That I'm going away for a long time. When you judge the moment is right, tell her that I'm dead. It's better that way."

"I care about you, Robert, but right now I'd like to punch you in the mouth."

His brother's smile was painful to see. "That's the difference between us, Ty. You're a fighter, and I'm not. If it helps any, I'll feel guilty about my daughter for the rest of my life."

"Then stay here and be a father to her."

"I can't." Robert lifted a chain from around his neck and dropped Graciela's gold-locket pin in Ty's hand. "Give her this after I've gone and tell her that I love her. Maybe someday she'll understand that I loved her enough to give her the best parents to raise her."

Ty slipped the locket into his pocket. "Is there anything I can say to change your mind?"

"No."

He nodded in final and reluctant acceptance. "I'd like you to stay until after the wedding. I want you to stand up with me. And Robert, write to Ma occasionally. Let us know that you…" Swallowing, he gripped his brother's shoulder. "You can always come home. You know that."

"I know," They looked into each other's eyes. "Think of me sometimes. The way it used to be when we were kids, before things got so damned messed up."

And then Jenny was walking toward them, the promise of heaven shining in her blue eyes, and he forgot everything except the miracle of knowing this splendid woman was his.

Meeting her halfway, he caught her in his arms, then led her around the side of the house into a pool of shadow beside the azaleas and pulled her against his body. "My God, you're a beautiful hunk of woman."

Pink bloomed in her cheeks and she laughed, winding her uninjured arm around his neck. "Cowboy, I hope you never believe this, but you're the only man in the whole world who thinks so."

"Have you looked in a mirror, darlin'?" He kissedher, a teasing nip at her earlobe that he hoped would drive her crazy with wanting him. "You've changed since I first laid eyes on your sorry self. Course the essentials are the same," he said with a grin, sliding a palm up her side to her breast. Her soft moan sent an aching hunger to stiffen his desire.

She pressed her chin against his and stared into his eyes. "Ty? Sometimes … I just … am I going to make a good wife?"

"There'll be some rocky periods, I imagine," he murmured, adjusting her hips against his. "But you've got promise, Jenny Jones. I expect you'll grow into a fine wife. You've already learned the most important part."

She laughed softly, deep in her throat, and closed her eyes as he covered her beautiful strong face with increasingly ardent kisses. Then she caught his hand and cupped it around her breast.

"Do you think anyone would miss us if we rode over to your house?"

She'd learned her lessons well. Now it was she who teased and tormented. "Everyone will miss us," he said, kissing her eyelids, the corner of her mouth. "This is our party."

They gazed into each other's eyes and laughed. Neither of them had ever cared a tinker's damn about what other people thought.

"I don't want to wait forSan Francisco, cowboy," she whispered huskily, pressing against him. "I've waited long enough for you to get your butt back here and into my bed."

"I'll race you to the stables," he said in a voice hoarse with his need for her. "Last one there has to take my boots off."

Holding hands and laughing, they ran toward the first stars appearing in the night sky, toward the stables, and toward the promise they had found in each other.

Later he would tell her that Robert was going away and had asked them to start their life together with a six-year-old daughter whom they both loved. He would hold her while she wept with happiness. Right now, all he could think about was being with her.

Jenny. Whispering her name had kept him alive in the desert. She would make the rest of his life worth living. Jenny.

EPILOGUE

After the wedding, the guests helped move the furniture out of the living room and parlor and pushed the chairs against the walls. Musicians tuned their instruments, sampled the punch,then the dancing began. A hundred smiling guests drifted between the dance floor and the refreshment tables or strolled about the torchlit yard.

Jenny stood beside the parlor archway, watching Graciela waltz in the arms of her handsome new husband, her face pink with happiness, her eyes shining as she gazed up into his adoring dark eyes. They moved to the music, but she doubted either of them heard a note. They saw and heard only each other.