Nan Ryan (35 page)

“Not necessary,
amigo,
” said Don Amondo, turning to smile at the princess. “The gelding is my present to
Señorita
Eva.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak Virgil said, “The
Señorita
can ride the gelding when she visits the rancho.”

“Virgil’s right,” the princess said, thanking the don for his generous offer. “When I return to Tierra del Encanto, I will ride the gelding.” She smiled wistfully then, knowing that she would never again visit this high desert
rancho
and all the warm friendly Rivases.

Amidst laughter and handshakes and hugs, Virgil and the princess concluded their good-byes. The princess had already mounted the bay gelding when Virgil crouched down on his heels to give little Ramon one last squeeze. Then Virgil came to his feet and affectionately cupped Ramon’s dark head, as the little boy wrapped tenacious arms around his leg.

“You must let me go now, Ramon,” Virgil said softly. “But I promise I’ll come back to see you real soon.”

The little boy reluctantly released him, big tears now swimming in his large dark eyes. Doña Soledad diplomatically stepped forward, laid a gentle hand on her son’s narrow shoulder, and Ramon turned gratefully into the comfort of his mother’s billowing skirts.

The Rivas family stood in the sunshine waving and watching the pair ride away, down the long graveled drive.

37

The mounted pair reached the end
of the long drive, passed beneath the tall ranch gates of Tierra del Encanto, and turned south down Ranch Road. In silence they rode, soon leaving the road to skirt the jagged slopes of the towering Organ Mountains as the morning sun climbed higher.

The princess, glancing at the taciturn Virgil, recalled with a rush of pleasure how she’d felt watching this big strong Texan behave in such a tender, fatherly manner with little Ramon Rivas. With the boy in his arms, Virgil Black had revealed an irresistibly appealing, incredibly gentle side to his nature. With the beautiful little child, Virgil had been completely open and giving. Totally unguarded.

He had never been that way with her. Even when he made love to her—as wonderful as it was—she was achingly aware that he was withholding something of himself. That he was more than happy to put his lean, bare body in her hands. But not his heart.

Again the princess experienced that unfamiliar squeezing in her chest as a wave of protective tenderness washed over her. Foolish as it was, she felt a strong yearning to take care of Virgil instead of having him take care of her. To please him, not herself. To stop constantly being the spoiled brat. To start behaving more like the kind, caring Doña Soledad behaved with her husband and children.

The startling realization struck Princess Marlena that here in America, she had gotten a glimpse of how others lived their lives. Those who were not royals, but simply decent, hard-working people. Like the dedicated nuns at Cloudcroft. And the Rivas family. And Virgil Black.

She gave Virgil another sidelong glance and bit her lip. He looked troubled, not happy. She wished she could ease the lines of tension from his hand-some face. She wished she could make him laugh the way he had laughed with the Rivases. She wished she could look into his beautiful blue eyes and see the care and affection that had flashed there when he’d lifted young Ramon Rivas up into his arms.

Three full hours into their southward journey, the sun had almost reached its zenith. It beat down with a vengeance from a cloudless sky, and the air was dry, still, and blazing hot.

Virgil knew how badly the princess needed to rest, but he hated to stop. He was afraid of what would happen. Afraid he couldn’t keep his hands off her if she lay down beside him. Which would have been all right, if the physical pleasure they shared involved only his body, the way it always had in the past. But it wasn’t that way with her. For some reason he couldn’t make love to her and then, the minute it was over, forget about it.

Or forget about her.

And that rankled him.

He wasn’t used to caring about the women he bedded. To him, from his first encounter when he was a green fifteen, the woman an experienced twenty-six, women had been interchangeable. All alike. The only difference being that some had been blond, some brunette, and an occasional red-head.

But this particular redhead riding alongside him had awakened a new emotion in him, and he didn’t like it one bit. He had only to look at her to want her, yet he was sickened by the nagging thought of all the men who’d had her before him. Why should he care? And why, he wondered miserably, did he feel strangely protective of her? Why did his heart hurt when she smiled at him so sweetly?

Virgil closed his burning eyes. He was tired. He was not thinking straight. That’s all it was.

It never occurred to him that for the first time in his life he might be falling in love.

Such a possibility had occurred to the princess. She knew, as they rode side by side in silence, that right or wrong, foolish or wise, they were falling in love. She was falling in love with him, and her heart told her, he was falling in love with her.

He didn’t know it yet. And she had no idea how it would end. She only knew that she loved this big dark, handsome Texan so much she was even beginning to love this hot, barren, starkly beautiful land he called home. She loved him, and she was going to do everything in her power to make him realize that he loved her as well.

As that truth dawned so clearly while they rode along beneath that hot Texas sun, the princess again turned and gazed fondly at Virgil. He was dozing in the saddle. Bless his heart. He was, she knew, exhausted from making love to her through the long, unforgettable night. Feeling instantly maternal toward him, the princess softly said his name.

“Virgil.”

He started, jerked up on the reins, and looked around, instantly alert.

She smiled at him and said, “Shouldn’t we stop soon and rest for a while. I’m hot and tired and you must be too.”

Reluctantly, he nodded. “There’s a secluded cave back in the foothills about a half mile from here where we can nap during the hottest part of the day.”

“A nap’s just what we both need,” she said. And, at the time, she meant it.

But once they reached the cool isolated cavern carved out of the mountainside, they didn’t take a nap. They took each other. And they didn’t mate wordlessly. For a few glorious moments of bliss they forgot who they were, where they were, and why they were together. Caught up in the rapture, they fervently murmured endearments to each other as though they were actually sweethearts as well as lovers.

After total ecstacy was attained, they lay peacefully in each other’s arms, sighing, sleepy, content for the moment. Pressed against Virgil’s lean, dark body, the princess looked curiously around the spacious cave.

It was a large shadowy room almost perfectly square. Benches of rock, placed there by nature, were arranged in neat, symmetrical groupings. At the far end of the room, a large square pillar of rock, rising from the smooth stone floor, looked like a bed. Specks of slanted light, sifting through tiny crevices on each side of the room, might have been well-placed wall sconces.

She hadn’t noticed any of this before, but now she said in a whisper, “This cave is so … perfect. It should have a name.”

“It does,” Virgil said softly, exhaling heavily.

“Really? What is it called?”

Almost asleep, his eyes closing, he murmured, barely audible, “The Bridal Chamber.”

They slept the hot afternoon away.

Virgil awakened first. He looked at the beautiful naked woman asleep in his arms. A tightness forming in his throat, he took a long minute to carefully memorize everything about her, from the contour of her well-shaped eyebrows to the tiny mole on the inside of her left thigh.

Then he kissed her awake and asked her how she’d like to have a nice, invigorating bath.

“You’re teasing me,” she said, yawning sleepily.

He brushed a quick kiss to her bare belly and said, “Put your pants on, baby. Within the hour you will be relaxing in a cool bath.”

They dressed hurriedly and left the Bridal Chamber. Still skirting the mountains, they passed beneath Baldy Peak, then immediately turned and climbed back up the slopes. Just as he had promised, within an hour they had reached Dripping Springs, a labyrinth of refreshingly cool pools created by a spring at the base of the Organ Mountains.

“Such a beautiful place,” said the princess, unbuttoning her blouse.

“I thought you’d like it.”

“I love it,” she said, adding to herself,
And I love you.

As the sun set they sat naked in a cool, crystal clear pool that offered sweeping vistas of the wide Mesilla Valley spread out below. The princess, resting comfortably in Virgil’s encircling arms, watched in awe as the wild, beautiful, cactus-laden land changed colors with the dying of the day.

“It is so quiet, so peaceful here. It’s as if we are the only two people on earth.”

“I know,” Virgil replied. “These mountains used to be called
La Sierra de la Soledad.
Mountains of Solitude.”

“How fitting. I could stay here forever.”

He sighed. “I was about to say it’s time to go.”

“Oh, not yet,” she protested, turning about in his arms to face him. “First could we … have you ever … is it possible to make love without us getting out of the water?”

Virgil grinned devilishly. “Come here, baby.”

The princess learned it
was
possible. And wildly enjoyable.

Later, when an abundance of brilliant stars winked in the black night sky above, the sated pair were still lolling lazily in the pool. Their heads thrown back, eyes on the heavens, Virgil pointed out the various constellations and told her that when he was a boy, he learned to navigate by the guiding stars.

“By the time I was eight, nine years old, I roamed these deserts and mountains and never once got lost.”

Dying to learn more about this man she loved, the princess hoped this was her chance. She said, “You must have been a very smart little boy.”

“I won’t argue that.”

“But I’ll bet your mother worried when you went off alone.” Virgil’s response was a mirthless chuckle. The princess frowned and asked, “Well, didn’t she?”

“Sure,” he said with the slightest touch of bitterness to his tone, “worried herself sick.”

Puzzled, curious, the princess said, “Does your mother—?”

“Enough about mothers,” he cut her off, and rising to his feet, pulled her up. His hands at her waist, he lifted her out of the pool. She stood dripping wet on the rocky lip above him. Agilely Virgil sprang up to stand before her.

Pointing, he said, “See that full moon rising? It will light the desert until early in the morning. Let’s ride on into El Paso tonight. How does that sound?”

“Sounds fine, on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“First we make love in the moonlight.”

Virgil reached out, captured her chin, and kissed her gleaming wet lips. Then he knelt on one knee before her, wrapped his arms around her hips, and laid his wet head against her breasts. His breath warm on her chilled flesh, he said teasingly, as if exasperated, “Woman, woman, what am I going to do with you?”

The princess put a hand into his soaked black hair, urged his head back, leaned over, and kissed him soundly. Then she sank down on her knees to face him and, boldly wrapping her hand around his rapidly rising erection, said seductively, “I’ll show you what you can do with me.”

38

It
was nearing nine o’clock
, and the full white moon was bright as day when they reached the sprawling outskirts of El Paso. On a natural rise just north of the city, Virgil abruptly drew rein, pulled up on Noche. The princess nudged her gelding alongside him. Virgil drew a labored breath, turned, and looked directly at her. She smiled and gazed at him as if he’d hung the moon.

He knew then that he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take her to jail. He was no longer positive who she really was, but it made no difference. Princess or prostitute, he could not take her to jail.

A vein pulsing on his high forehead, Ranger Captain Virgil Black, for the first time in his fifteen years with the well-trained law-enforcing frontier battalion, made the decision to disobey orders. An action that, he knew well, could end his career.