Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (16 page)

Maria had been nervous about attending the American party but now seemed to relax with Mercy’s encouragement. Stopping at the top of the stairs to admire a sculpture of a boy with his dog, his daughter belatedly noticed him trailing behind them.

“Papa!” She jammed her fists down on her hips in adolescent outrage. “This was to be my personal tour.”

“I’m sorry. I thought since the Señora invited other guests—”

“Of course it’s all right,” Mercy said with a smile.

“Actually,” Sebastian said, “joining your tour is an excuse.”

Mercy looked wary. “For what?”

“To express my gratitude for making Maria feel so welcome in your home.”

“I'd have thought you would consider this no more than traditional Mexican hospitality.”

“
Si,
but you are from the cold north.”

She flashed him a smile. “That doesn’t mean I’m cold too.”

He wished he knew if she was innocently flirting with him, or playing him.

Maria had moved on ahead of them and was peering into the next room down the hallway. Given a nod from Mercy, she ducked inside to investigate. Sebastian caught up with his hostess and followed Maria into the room.

He watched his daughter walk around, touching everything with gentle fingertips, as if to make sure it was real. A chipped perfume atomizer. Small silver bowls in which nested bracelets and rings. A Tiffany-style lamp beside an expansive bed, piled high with lace- and tapestry-swathed pillows.

Maria returned to the dressing table. “I wish I had pretty bottles like this.”

At least a few of the colorful containers looked new to him, not the antique treasures he’d imagined Mercy collecting on seeing the rest of the room. “You’re too young to wear perfume,” Sebastian stated.

Maria scowled at him but spoke to Mercy as if he had suddenly vanished from the room. “My father doesn’t realize I’m grown now. A woman.”

Sebastian burst out laughing. “You are a child!”

Mercy held her breath and observed the pair. The man couldn’t have chosen a more effective way to offend. Couldn’t he see how hard she was trying to act the part of a grown woman?

Maria glared at him, her cheeks going bright red. “Is that why you leave me so often? I am a child and of no interest to you. Off you go into the hills with your men, day and night, and—”

“Enough!” Sebastian snapped.

Mercy stood very still, observing the two, her heart tripping over beats. Sebastian’s ice-blue eyes telegraphed a warning at his daughter, but he said nothing more.

All Mercy could come up with to relieve the tension of the moment was a generic line: “I’m sure your father has your best interests at heart.”

“My father has his
own
best interests at heart. My father is very rich, you see.” Maria tossed her head, setting the beads in her hair rattling. “He has made a great deal of money from our beef cattle, the best in all of the Americas. Better even than Argentine beef.” She spun around to face him. “Other men are jealous of your success. Isn’t that what you told me, Papa? That’s why I can’t have friends.” Her dark eyes challenged him.

Sebastian stood very still, his body rigid. “There are all kinds of people in the world. One must be cautious.”

“
Oh, me encanta
!” the girl suddenly cried. But she was no longer facing her father. Something else in the room had caught her eye.

I love it?
Mercy translated in her head, turning to see what had made Maria so quickly forget her argument with her father.

Maria stood in front of a seascape Mercy had painted just before she’d married Peter.

“This is beautiful. Whose is it? Is it an oil painting?” the girl bubbled. “It’s much too vivid for a water color.”

“Actually many modern watercolorists create deep hues with their brush. But this is a study I did using pastels, solid pigments.”

“
You
made
this
?” Maria whispered, eyes wide. “Papa, look!”

“I see.” Sebastian seemed to accept that his daughter’s difficult mood had passed as a cloud passes over the sun, with no effort from him. He came up to stand at her side.

The polite thing for him to say was how lovely, or impressive, or realistic the painting was. Anything. Sebastian said nothing. He just stared at it, his face like stone.

Criticism Mercy could take. Silence was unnerving and, she thought, rude.

She ignored his insult of omission and turned to Maria. “I studied art when I was your age, and later in college.”

“I take art lessons too.” Maria appeared oblivious to the tension between the two adults. “But I’ve never tried pastels. My teacher, he says they are a waste of time.”

Mercy choked on a laugh. “He does, does he?”

Still not a word from her father. Not even to smooth over the tutor’s insult.

“
Si
. Oils are permanent, he says. They last hundreds of years. I’ve seen many in the
Palacio de Bellas Artes
. Also when Papa took me to Madrid. But that was a long time ago.” She wrinkled her nose at him.

“Pastels are more fragile,” Mercy admitted. “But they can last a long time too, if handled correctly. Degas, Van Gogh, even Picasso used pastels—and their work has survived quite well. Some of your contemporary Mexican painters too.”

“I didn't know that.” Maria turned her attention back to the painting. “It looks so real. I can almost smell the salty air. The ocean is wonderful, but it is hours away. I hardly ever get to see it.”

Sebastian let out thunderous laugh, making both women jump. “I take you to the beach every year!” he objected.

“Once a year is not enough.” Maria shot Mercy a pained look. “He won’t even let me buy a bikini. I have to wear an old lady’s bathing suit.”

Mercy patted her arm. “Fathers are like that.”

Maria smiled at her, and Mercy sensed they’d formed a woman-to-woman bond over the bikini issue.

“I have a wonderful idea,” Maria said suddenly. “You must come to Rancho Hidalgo and paint there. We have only photographs of the hacienda, the valley basin, and the mountains. You must come and stay long enough to paint them all.” Bouncing on her toes she clapped her hands in delight, looking far younger than the near-woman she was.

Sebastian blinked at his daughter, his head already moving side to side.
No.
“I’m sure Señora Davis is too busy to leave the city.”

But Mercy saw her chance. “It is a delightful thought though. I’ve never seen a real working ranch.”

“Oh, Papa, let her come visit. Please,
please
!”

Mercy watched for Sebastian’s reaction. If he had anything to hide, surely he would find a way to extricate himself and his property from Maria’s enthusiastic invitation.

Unless the two have conspired to arrange this visit.
Was that possible? She might be walking into a trap—all the while being led to believe that she was the one weaving a web around Hidalgo.

“If Señora Davis is able to come to the ranch, we of course will be honored to entertain her.” Sebastian’s smile looked genuine. “Señor Davis as well, of course.”

“We’d be delighted,” Mercy responded.

19

With the grand tour of the Davis home complete, Sebastian followed his daughter and their hostess back down the stairs and into the crowded living room. He was more than a little disturbed by what he'd just seen.

Mercy Davis was full of surprises. She was an artist of not inconsequential talent, which he admired. And she'd quickly endeared herself to his daughter. He wasn't sure how he felt about
that
. Did she have an ulterior motive?

Then there was the physical effect the woman had on him.
Dios mio!

Her slim, athletic body contrasted with delicate porcelain features. And her eyes. Lord, he could get lost in those exquisite eyes of hers. Her lips were just as dangerous. Every time she ran her tongue over them, he'd been transfixed. He felt drawn to stand close enough to feel the heat of her body. Yet he'd forced himself to stay at a safe distance. Beyond reach. His own and hers.

Now, he paused in a corner of the party room to catch his breath. His body had reacted as if he’d force marched up a mountain, to where the air was thinner. Now, returning to a lower altitude, he needed to adjust to the rush of oxygen. To recover from her spell. He stood very still, observing other guests as they chatted, laughed, and sampled hors d'oeuvres from a long table beneath the windows. The decor, obviously inspired by the art of his country, moved him. He was suddenly sure Mercy had designed the room herself; the artist in her would have found the task an appealing challenge.

Mercy was leading his daughter to a smaller food table near the fireplace. He started to cross the crowded room to join them when, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed movement—too rapid to make sense in the midst of a pleasant social gathering.

Sebastian spun to face a lunging figure. A stranger to him. Literally air-borne, the man released a warrior’s cry. Something metallic shimmered in his attacker’s hand.

“Watch out!” someone shouted.

Instinctively sidestepping to avoid the slash of a blade, Sebastian became aware—as if watching a slow-motion film clip through his peripheral vision—of Mercy’s reaction. She grabbed Maria by the shoulders and shoved her down onto the floor behind a heavy leather couch. Seizing a nearby champagne bottle by its neck, the consul’s wife planted her feet and claimed defensive ground.

From that second on, time fast-forwarded. All hell broke loose.

Startled shrieks drowned out gay party chatter.

“He has a knife!”

“
Terrorista
!”

“Somebody stop him!”

People darted for cover. Pushing each other out of the way, they dashed for doorways, knocking over a table with its pyramid of crystal stemware. Glass shattered with a deafening crash.

The dark-skinned, knife-wielding man rushed at Sebastian a second time, murder in his eyes. He thrust his blade again and again toward Sebastian’s stomach, chest, face—any opening he could find.

Sebastian tucked back his hips, arms stretched wide, dodging jabs. “Carlos!” he shouted, while watching for an opportunity to grab the man’s wrist. “Carlos, where are you?”

“You killed my brother!” the stranger growled in Spanish. “You will die, Hidalgo, you pig.”

His blade sizzled through the air. It caught Sebastian’s jacket sleeve, the flesh beneath it. Sebastian looked down to see blood dripping from his arm. He refocused, timed his counterattack.

On the man’s next jab, Sebastian pivoted, catching the knife arm between two hands. He threw his weight forward, slamming the pinned wrist down hard against the edge of a massive glass-topped coffee table. He heard the sound of bone snapping like a willow twig. The knife flew out of splayed fingers, scuttling across the tile floor. Screaming in pain, the man crumpled to the floor.

Delayed by the outward flood of panicked guests, Carlos and Fredo finally burst into the room, guns drawn. Fredo struck the man, hard, on the side of his head with the butt of his gun. Carlos hauled him to his feet and dragged the dazed and bleeding man out of the room.

The crisis was over in less than five minutes, but adrenalin still surged through Sebastian’s system. Eyes wide and hot with rage, he looked around at the destruction then found Mercy, standing right where he'd last seen her, in front of the couch. Between his daughter and danger. Their eyes met.

Fierce determination shone in her face, as if she wasn’t yet convinced the threat had passed. Her chest heaving, jaw locked, champagne bottle still gripped in white-knuckled fingers like a cudgel she was fully prepared to use, she stood guard over his Maria.
This Amazon of a woman,
he thought
. This amazing woman.

He felt viscerally, deeply moved.

She had intentionally put herself between his only child and a killer. The man might have turned on others in the room in his crazed lust for revenge, having dispensed with his primary target. She must have instinctively known this.

Maria leaped from behind the couch, ran and threw her arms around his neck. “Papa!”

“It’s over,
Niña
.”  Enfolding her in his arms, he looked over his daughter’s head at Mercy. “My sincere apologies, Señora Davis, for the disruption. And my gratitude.”

“Do you know that man?” she gasped, dropping the bottle onto the nearest couch cushion.

“No. My men will turn the rogue over to the police. They will get to the bottom of his accusations.” He looked Mercy over. Slivers of flying crystal had pricked her face and arms. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. But you—” She pointed to his shredded sleeve, weeping blood.

The old movie line came to him. He just had to use it. “It’s nothing. A mere flesh wound.” Sebastian smiled.