Desert Dreams (28 page)

Rafe's
body slumped, and all the life
seemed to drain from him as he lowered his head and closed his eyes.

The very fiber of his life seemed to be unraveling. He
reeled slightly, disoriented, confused. El
Alacran
was dead—too quickly dead—and he, Rafael, was still alive. He looked at the gun
in his hand, the gun that had killed El
Alacran
. It
hadn't happened as he'd planned it at all.

"Goddamn you, Annie," he said. Fury rose in
his throat, choking him. "Why couldn't you stay out of it?"

"I...
I did it for you," she
murmured behind him, but he barely heard the words through the fog of rage that
slowly enveloped him.

He jerked away from the hand that touched his elbow.
"If you wanted to do something for me, you should have stayed at the ranch
like I told you!"

"Rafael!" Jose cut in, but a look from Rafe
quieted his protest. "There is a wagon outside. I'll hitch two horses to
it. The gold, senorita, where is it?"

Anne kept her gaze on Rafe as she replied.
"Behind the altar. There are some loose boards: a secret compartment, I
think."

Jose moved away toward the front of the church.

"If we hadn't come, you'd be dead," Anne
said, drawing his gaze back to her tear-streaked face.

"Did it ever occur to you that I wanted to
die?"

"Yes, it occurred to me," she murmured. "But
I couldn't let—"

"You had no right to interfere! This had nothing
to do with you! You made me kill him too quickly. I had plans for El
Alacran
, and you ruined them!"

Something inside him broke. Rafe struck out viciously,
kicking the corpse in the side.

"Filthy bastard!" He kicked the corpse again
and again.

"Rafe, stop! He's dead!"

He glared at her.

Anne took a deep, steadying breath and wiped at the
tears that slipped silently from the corners of her eyes. "You killed him.
It was what you wanted."

He holstered his pistol and walked toward the door
without looking at her.

"Where are you going?" she asked, her voice
trembling.

"Madre de Dios!"
Jose's voice boomed in the
sanctuary. "Just as you said! More gold than a man can count!"

Rafe stopped but didn't look at Anne. She could see
the tightened jaw muscle and the clenched hand at his side. "You got your
gold."

He halted just outside the door at sight of Carlos
Delgado. He was the only one of El
Alacran's
men
still alive, and he was standing near the bottom of the stoop with a revolver
in his hand.

"I don't want to kill you, boy," Rafe said
softly.

Carlos dropped the gun and took a step back. "The
killing stops here today."

Rafe nodded and strode past the boy. Anne ran to the
door and watched as he swung up into the saddle and galloped away.

Epilogue

Rafe watched the
sun set behind the brick and
stucco mission on the dusty road to Las Cruces, wondering how he'd come to be
here and why he couldn't just turn and ride away.

He hadn't meant to come here. For the past six months, he'd
drifted aimlessly in Mexico, but there was nothing there but memories, all of
them painful. The setting sun had drawn him until he'd found himself at the
place where the Rio Grande turned north into New Mexico and he'd known where he
had to go.

Uncertainty gnawed at his gut. He had no idea what he would
find here, how he would be received. The last time he'd been ordered never to
return.

He nudged his horse into a slow walk, postponing the moment
of confrontation. What would he say? How could he begin to explain? Would he
get the chance?

As he rode his horse through the open gates, a dog
barked close by, announcing the arrival of a stranger. Dismounting before the
priest's quarters, he looped the reins over the hitching post and stared at the
hard, silent door. Part of him wanted to turn and ride away, but whatever had
brought him here would give him no peace until he faced up to his past.

He stood at the door, afraid to knock, afraid not to.
His gaze moved to the church across the way. He'd attended mass in that church
as a boy, and he'd been married there.

He scowled. The past was better left buried, he well
knew. He'd been a fool to come. He turned away and was taking a step toward his
horse when the door opened.

"Did you want something, my son?"

The voice of the man behind him made him shiver. He
closed his eyes against memory and pain and turned slowly to face his brother.

"Hello, Michael," he said.

Michael Holden hadn't changed at all in the past five
years. Tall and slim like their mother, Michael's features bore the
unmistakable mark of their Latin blood: pitch-dark hair, deep brown eyes, dark
skin that appeared even darker in contrast to the white collar around his neck.

"Or should I call you Father Michael?"

Michael frowned, then his face relaxed in recognition.
"Rafael," he whispered.

Rafe didn't move. He stood watching his brother's
face, so like his own yet so different. He tried to gauge his brother's
reaction while his own blood pounded with both hope and dread.

Father Michael Holden expelled a breath. "It is
you."

Rafe ran a hand across two weeks' growth of beard,
realizing how
unkempt he must appear. Michael had always been so clean and fastidious.

"You look well," Rafe said, because he couldn't
think of anything else.

When last he had seen Michael, his brother was a novice. Rafe
had heard he’d taken vows and become the priest at the mission. And even though
he had never doubted it, he had not been able to picture Michael in austere
black, a white collar around his neck. At least he wasn't wearing robes at this
hour.

Michael didn't reply. In his eyes, Rafe saw pain and a deep
sadness. The lines on his face seemed to deepen as he stepped toward Rafe and
threw his arms around him. Hesitantly, Rafe returned the gesture, his arms
going around his brother in an awkward embrace.

"I can't believe it's you!" Michael exclaimed.
"I can't believe you've come back!"

"Neither can
I
."

The two men pulled apart, staring at each other for several
moments before Michael seemed to remember himself. "Come inside, Rafael.
Come inside. We have a lot of catching up to do. Has it been five years
since...?"

"Since you ordered me off the mission." Rafe
stopped at the door and Michael turned to face him with a ragged sigh.

"I was a little crazy. Please forgive me. I've had a lot
of time to think things over. Will you come in?"

###

Michael sat in a chair beside a large window in the parlor,
his white collar on the small table beside him. He stared at the piano against
the opposite wall with a faraway glint in his eyes. "She used to come to
here
for the music. You knew that. We both loved music.
Did you ever hear her play?"

His heart a knot of emotion lodged at the base of his
throat, Rafe stared into the glass of amber liquid in his hand before taking a
sip. "No,
I...
I guess I never had time."

"She had a natural gift." Michael shifted
his weight nervously, then turned to look at Rafe. "I loved her, you know.
Not... not like a man loves a woman—although if I hadn't already chosen the
priesthood, and if she hadn't been your wife—I loved her as a sister. It
hurt...
it hurt when she died."

Rafe walked to the piano and touched a low key.
"You blamed me. I blamed myself."

"I was crazy with grief. She was traveling home
from a visit to me. I guess I needed someone to blame besides myself."

"I guess we were both a little crazy. I said some
things—"

"I blamed you because I didn't understand,"
Michael interrupted.

"I'm not so sure. You were right about one thing:
I was too damned busy. I should have—you made her happy in a way I never could.
I was too obsessed with chasing—"

"She loved you, Rafael."

"I know. She loved you too."

Silence stretched between them, silence accentuated by
the soft ticking of a clock. Rafe turned his glass up and drained it, wondering
what to say. He crossed the room and stood behind Michael, gazing out the
window, though the glass only reflected his own image.

"Did she suffer?" Michael asked haltingly.
"I mean, those men: I know what they were capable of."

Without volition, Rafe dropped a hand to his brother's
shoulder. "No,
mi
hermano
,
she did not suffer." He
walked to the sideboard and placed his glass beside the sparkling bottle of
liquor. "It's getting late."

"You can stay in the guest room upstairs. It's
not luxurious, but it should be comfortable."

"Thank you." Rafe made his way toward the
staircase and was halfway up when his brother's voice halted him.

"Rafael," he called quietly, "I heard
you'd become a bounty hunter."

Rafe faced him and waited.

"It shows in your eyes," Michael continued.
"Death... and guilt, I think. God has forgiven you. It is time you forgave
yourself."

Rafe nodded. "Good night, Michael," he said,
ascending the stairs, leaving his brother to gaze after him.

###

Anne helped her housekeeper, Rosa, extinguish the
candles downstairs before taking a lantern and slowly mounting the stairs to
her room. She paused in the doorway, still unable to believe the luxury around
her. She'd purchased the finest furnishings from the East and had them shipped
overland to Ubiquitous. And why not? She could afford it.

She had made quite a splash in placid little
Ubiquitous a year and a half ago when she had shown up out of nowhere to pay
off the mortgage on her aunt's house and buy the town bank into the bargain. A
smile of satisfaction curved her lips as she thought of Mr. Thaddeus P. Sampson
and the expression on his face when he'd learned he would be working for a woman,
the woman he hadn't had time for just weeks earlier.

She was the topic of most of the gossip in the small
town, and she cared not at all. Everyone wondered and speculated as to how she
had come to have so much money. She'd professed to be from Natchez, widow of a
fallen Confederate soldier and planter who had packed her trunks with gold and
jewels and headed to Texas to take refuge with her only living relative,
Marguerite Tremaine, only to find she had died.

If they only knew the truth!

She and Jose had loaded a million dollars in gold into
a wagon left behind by the
comancheros
.
Disguised as a peasant couple, they had filled the wagon with produce to hide
the gold, managing to hook up with a caravan returning from the border with
supplies for San Antonio. It had taken two months, but they'd managed to make
it back to Ubiquitous after a harrowing, exhausting journey.

As for Jose, he'd loaded his saddlebags with as much
gold as he could carry and taken off for parts unknown almost as soon as they'd
reached Ubiquitous. She hadn't seen him since.

Politicians and ranchers had paid court to her, but
she had remained aloof, and she had that to thank for the rest of the gossip
that circulated about her. The widow Cameron, known throughout the area for her
charity and her coldness toward suitors.

She had tried to care, to be flattered by their
attention, to forget. She'd even considered marrying the mayor when he proposed
to her last year, but her heart was hollow. There was nothing left inside her
that didn't belong to another man, a man she would probably never see again.

Blood money. Blood money allowed her to live this life
of luxury and ease. So much had been sacrificed for this money that she hadn't
been able to enjoy the bounty without some form of penance. It had been
Confederate gold, after all, so what better way to assuage her conscience than
to provide for widows and orphans created by the war? Besides, she derived a
real pleasure and fulfillment each time she saw the strained, bitter face of a
child turn into a smile as a result of her generosity. For the first time in
her life, she was doing something worthwhile.

She removed her gown, placed it carefully across a
stuffed chair, then sat before the vanity and lifted the ivory-handled brush to
her hair. She couldn't use it without thinking about Rafe and wondering, with a
twist of her heart, where he was, if he had found whatever he'd been seeking,
if he ever thought of her.

He'd sent the brush to her after he'd left. He'd
purchased it in San Juan Bautista. She remembered admiring it in the general
store, just before Rafe was captured by the outlaws who had nearly killed him.

How she'd longed to run that brush through her tangled
hair, how she'd longed for a piece of lavender soap. Now she could have all the
soap and all the hairbrushes money could buy.

But she would gladly trade everything she had if Rafe
Montalvo would walk through that door right now.

There were too many things in her life that reminded
her of him, far too many. Not a day went by that she didn't think of him. Not a
night went by that she didn't long for him. Even after more than a year of
waiting and watching the road, she still couldn't let him go.

Her gaze swept the vials and bottles on her dresser,
the silver dish that held the jewelry she'd collected since that terrible day.
Some of it she'd purchased herself. The rest had been gifts from admirers
anxious to discover the mystery of the cold, aloof widow.

Her heart skipped a beat.

There among her other jewelry was her locket, the
locket her father had given her so long ago,
the
locket she had put around
Rafe's
neck that day in the
Concepción church.

She hadn’t seen it since.

With her heart in her throat, she whirled around, her
gaze sweeping the room, searching for a hiding place. She ran out into the
hall, glancing anxiously up and down the long corridor, but no one was there.

She flew to the end of the hall and down the stairs,
her feet hardly touching the steps, and went from room to room: the dining
room, the kitchen, the parlor, the music room. No one.

She stood in the foyer, clutching the locket to her
heart, her breath coming in gasps. Damn him! He'd been here! He'd come into her
house, left the locket, and gone without a word.

"Damn you, Rafe Montalvo!" she said aloud as
she turned and yanked the front door open, running out into the night.

"Damn you!" she cried, tears trailing down
her cheeks.

By the time she reached the top of the stairs again,
she had her emotions under control to a degree, although her heart felt heavier
than it had since that day so long ago when he'd ridden out of her life. But
maybe now she knew he had come back and hadn't even spoken a word to her...
maybe now she could put the past behind her and get on with her life.

She stopped at the door next to her own room,
hesitating as she struggled for calm, and turned the knob carefully, trying not
to make a sound. The room was dark, but she could clearly make out the figure
of a man. Her heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second. Then she recognized
him and the blood began to pound through her veins.