Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (28 page)

      
She took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “I promise, James. I'll do anything you ask.”

      
He escorted her to the door and then down the deserted hall. When they reached the stairs, he stopped, feeling a brief surge of lightheadedness. Damned wound! He held onto the banister and reached for Tomasina's hand to give her a chaste kiss goodbye. He must placate her to gain her cooperation in this wretched intrigue. Although he hated the idea of using a woman, especially one whose family had been so close to his own, he knew what he must do. His other feelings toward her would have to be sorted out later. Right now, he was confused and simply wanted to settle with Markham.

      
As he raised her fingers to his lips, Tomasina again surprised him and came quickly into his arms, backing him up against the banister for a thorough kiss on the lips. Without appearing ungallant, there was little to do but return her kiss. Strange, ever since Jake died, he had tried with infrequent success to get her into his embrace. Now that he had finally succeeded, he couldn't help but compare his lack of response to Sina with the galvanizing feelings Charlee's touch gave him.

      
What Slade did not see was Charlee standing at the foot of the stairs watching the embracing pair. Hellfire at his most baleful could not have conjured up a more lethal look than his mistress did. After using her so tenderly last night, he once more cast her away, to fall beneath that murdering bitch's spell!

      
“Careful, I'm not sure the banister can take all that strain,” she called with acid sweetness.

      
Slade, who was indeed leaning back against the rail with Tomasina pressed intimately against his bare chest, jerked forward as if burned, dislodging her. The quick movement strained his already aching side; and he swore beneath his breath, wincing in pain as he attempted to straighten up.

      
Archly, Tomasina smiled down on the girl below, then gave Slade another light salute on the lips and began to descend the stairs. “Really, Diego, you must speak to Mrs. Kensington about the forwardness of her kitchen help. It ill becomes those of such low station.” That last sally was delivered directly in front of Charlee, whom she passed with one smug curl of her lips. “
Hasta luego, querido,
” she called over her shoulder.

      
Charlee stood there smoldering, fighting the urge to lunge after the hateful aristocrat and significantly rearrange her glossy hair, not to mention her face. Inside, Charlee McAllister, Missouri hill girl, just wanted to slip quietly from Slade's sight and sob her misery into Hellfire's warm, reassuring pelt. But she was stubborn and proud as well. Hadn't Deborah taught her to act like a lady? With spine stiff and head erect, she turned her back on Slade and walked toward the kitchen.

      
Furious with Sina's snobbish arrogance and her deliberate staging of that embrace, Jim swore beneath his breath. He considered going after Charlee and attempting to explain to her, but decided against it. He was dizzy, and his wound ached abominably. Moreover, he didn't want to endanger Charlee by telling her too much about his role as Houston's agent. He would lie down and rest while he considered how to handle her when she brought his lunch.

      
When Lee rather sheepishly entered the room with his luncheon tray, Slade knew Charlee was seriously angry.

      
“Charlee told me you'd be needing your strength, so you'd better eat,” Lee said, with the faintest hint of a smirk playing around his lips.

      
Slade resisted the impulse to groan aloud. “I suppose she's let that rotten little temper loose on every hapless piece of crockery in the kitchen,” he said sourly.

      
“Temper? Charlee?” Lee's face was alight with unholy innocence. “You're a poor one to talk of temper,
mano
, and I think you know it.” In spite of Slade's darkening countenance, the youth went on, “And she didn't break one dish. As a matter of fact, she prepared this especially for you. She said something about your wanting solid food despite Dr. Weidermann's orders,” he added innocently, depositing the tray in front of Slade and whipping off the napkin.

      
Slade looked down on a steaming bowl of Charlee's slow-simmered chili con carne. A stack of crisp, toasted tortillas and a small granite pot of coffee completed the feast. The thick reddish-brown dusting on the tortillas might have given him a warning, but perhaps a man sees only what he wants to see.

      
His face split into a grin as he grabbed the large spoon beside the plate. “Well, I guess she can't be in such a snit if she made my favorite, chili.”

      
He hadn't realized how the morning's exertions had fired his appetite until he smelled the spicy fragrance of the chili. It was divine! Dipping deeply into the thick, reddish stew, he grabbed a crisp tortilla with the other hand and stuffed it all in his mouth. Intent on assuaging his hunger, he shoved a second heaping spoonful in before the first had hit bottom.

      
The burning began in the pit of his stomach and moved like a sirocco-fanned brush fire up his throat, racing across his tongue, then exploding out of his mouth to sear his lips in a billowing surge of agony. He was being incinerated alive! Frantically, he searched the tray for water. There was none. Ignoring the cup, he grabbed the granite coffee pot, yanked off the lid, and downed several gulps of the scalding, inky brew. It was thick as river silt and boiling hot. Now his hands were almost as burned as his innards. Rather than dousing the fire, the java fanned it. Tears and sweat trailed down his face as he slammed the pot and its evil contents back on the tray with a string of exceedingly filthy, guttural curses.

      
His voice was so hoarse, Lee could scarcely understand the words, but they related to a slip of a girl and her parents' aberrant sex practices. Careful to conceal the laughter that threatened to erupt, the vaquero turned and reached behind him for the water pitcher and glass on the table.

      
Lee had watched Charlee dish up the food and had noticed a sizable pile of seeds and cores from green chilies on the kitchen table. How was he to know she hadn't put the hot chilies into the large cook pot simmering on the stove, but rather into this one small bowl? Of course, he had seen her liberally sprinkle the tortillas with cayenne, but then Jim had at least that much coming. Watching his friend gulp the water while clutching the glass with both burned hands, Lee was certain that he never wanted to be on the wrong side of Charlee McAllister.

      
“For a
Tejano
raised on chili,
mano
, you sure act as if you never had anything hotter than a strip of salt pork,” he said ingenuously when he could see Jim was finally catching his scorched breath. The tears had abated, but he was still sweating profusely.

      
With another foul oath, Slade flung the napkin over the lethal mess. “Take this back to the kitchen and tell her to poison wolves with it—or better yet, have her cat bury it. It'll melt the claws off that son of a bitch!”

      
Slade spent the afternoon resting and building up his strength to confront Charlee at dinner. At least she couldn't very well poison all twenty boarders at the table just to spite him! Asa brought him some clean clothes that afternoon, and Jim bathed and shaved again with his own razor. Seething as he dressed, he donned a crisp homespun shirt that he left open at the throat and a snugly fitted pair of butter-soft buckskin breeches. Last, he pulled on a gleaming pair of Cordovan boots. He was dressing for battle.

      
Slade conveniently encountered Deborah in the hall and told her he would be eating downstairs tonight. She bustled off with a smile to set another place at the table.

      
During dinner, Charlee looked daggers at Slade, setting each bowl and platter on the table with jarring force. At one point, she narrowly missed depositing a large pitcher of scalding brown gravy in his lap. When she “accidentally” dropped a sharp carving knife, point down, between his legs, he retrieved it and set it carefully on the table. Then, he reached behind her surreptitiously and grabbed a buttock, pinching it painfully. Smiling as blandly as if he were discussing the weather, he whispered a succinct and rather vulgar threat in Spanish, which he knew she understood quite well thanks to Lee's unorthodox tutoring.

      
When he released her, she hurried to the kitchen like a stampeded jackrabbit and did not come anywhere near him for the rest of the meal.

      
Jim went to the kitchen after dinner, looking for Charlee. Sadie was cleaning plates. She laconically informed him that Charlee was out back somewhere.

      
He stepped out and looked around. No Charlee. Just then the cat sprinted between Slade's legs, nearly knocking him off the porch steps. Hellfire had already shown that he had a better nose than anyone when it came to finding his mistress. Slade followed the cat, who led him to the ice cellar behind the shed.

      
He lifted the heavy door and climbed down the stairs into the cold, dim interior, cut deeply into the earth. When he got near the bottom, a low moan broke the silence. When his eyes adjusted to the dim light of a single candle, he was greeted by an arresting sight.

      
Charlee stood with her back to him, bent over one of the large blocks of straw-covered ice, her petite derriere delightfully exposed beneath her hiked-up skirts and lowered pantalets. She was applying a generous chunk of ice to a reddish mark on her buttock.

      
“I imagine if I place my hand over that print, it'll be a perfect fit.” He leaned against the thick earthen wall with nonchalant ease and waggled a finger at the gasping girl. “It's not nice to dump gravy on a man's only clean buckskins, even worse to drop a sharp knife on the precise anatomical position you were aiming for, my sweet.”

      
Throwing down the ice, she whirled around and furiously straightened her clothes. “I'm only sorry I missed,” she hissed.

      
He looked at the bristling girl, dwarfed by the giant ice blocks surrounding her. “Careful, with all that steam, you might melt the ice and drown yourself.”

      
“If I could take you with me, it'd be worth it. You miserable son of a bitch, I'll scarce be able to sit for a week!”

      
“That's too bad, because you're riding to Bluebonnet first thing in the morning,” he said levelly, daring her to defy him. All thoughts of reasonable explanation had fled his mind during his near brushes with scalding and castration at dinner. She would do as she was told with no more nonsense!

      
A dangerously coy look flashed across her face and she smiled, fluttering her lashes as if she were a halfwit. “Lookee heah, ‘Don Diego,’ us Missoorah hill gals, we knows ourah place—it's right heah in Miz Debra's kitchen, jest like yore ladylove done tole me this mornin'.”

      
“If this noon's cooking was any sample, I seriously doubt it,” he snapped. “Will you forget about Sina and be sensible, dammit!” His voice vibrated in the cavernous depths of the cellar.

      
“Forget that murdering bitch!” She was shrieking now, her tone matching his in stridence. “You'll just have to forgive me for being a wee bit upset! It's not every day I get kidnapped by a Comanchero and almost sold into white slavery!”

      
Remembering what she had been through, he struggled with his temper. “Charlee, I know you won't believe me, but there's a chance Sina wasn't involved in your abduction. I don't know yet, but I do know for certain Ashley Markham was. He's the one I mean to stop, any way I can.”

      
“But you'll still protect your precious Sina ‘any way you can,’ too—even if she's a spy and a traitor,” she accused.

      
He stood with one foot poised on the stairs, too angry to trust himself any nearer to her. “I am through arguing. Whether or not you enjoy my company, you are going to Bluebonnet with me first thing in the morning.” He turned and began to ascend the steep steps, trying in vain to ignore his aching side and the shrieking girl behind him.

      
“Compared to you,
Mister
Slade, Iron Hand is beginning to sound pretty damn good!”

* * * *

      
The next morning Charlee woke alone in her own bed. Insisting he felt much better, Slade had moved in with Lee and Mr. McCurdy, leaving her to sleep in peace. Some peace, she bitterly admitted to herself. All night, she had tossed and turned, tortured by dreams of Jim and Tomasina in torrid embraces, then of herself and Slade and their breathtaking passion of the previous night. Sweating and trembling, she had awakened over and over.

      
Then toward daybreak, she woke one final time after reliving their lovemaking, recalling Slade's question to her the night of the dance at the Pearsons'. My God, I could be pregnant! I've gone and done it again, and that lowlife philanderer is still planning to marry his fancy ladylove. What will I do? Her mind whirled in turmoil. He had insisted she return to Bluebonnet—to keep her as a mistress? Of course, he would meet his responsibilities to any bastards she might drop as a consequence. She lay with her fists clenched in the sheets, tears overflowing and running down her temples, into her hair.

      
Aloud she whispered to the empty room, “I won't do it! I won't live that way and be shamed like that. If”—she paused and gulped at the enormity of the idea—“if I am pregnant, I'll take my nest egg and go to New Orleans. I could always pretend to be a widow, start my own restaurant or boardinghouse... Hell, I'll do it anyway!”