Secrets (6 page)

“Why?”

“George and I grew up together. George was an orphan. He was raised at the mission at San Miguel. As kids we ran wild together and became friends. But let's face it. George was always aware of the differences between us, that I was the heir to Miramar while he was an orphan working in our winery. Back in those days, my father was like the old Spanish dons of centuries ago. He was the king of this entire county and everyone knew it. The law answered to him. Whole towns answered to him. You couldn't breathe without his okaying it. See what I mean?”

Regina nodded, fascinated.

“But George was smart, I gotta hand it to him. He took off at sixteen and soon opened a store in San Luis Obispo. He made himself a fortune, not as a merchant but by speculating in real estate way before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. He saw the railroad
coming in the early '80s. We stayed in touch. An' one day we agreed on an alliance between our two families. George was getting for his grandson—your son—what he'd always wanted for himself: to be boss of Miramar. To be the king.”

Regina understood it all then. She could sympathize with the man who had grown up as an orphan and consequently was determined to secure for his family the land and position, the power and the roots, that Miramar would bring. And to secure that, he would do it through her, his daughter. Of course, she was only an acceptable bride to someone like James because she was a wealthy heiress. She didn't have to ask to know that had George remained penniless, friend or not, Rick would not have affianced his son to her. But Regina accepted that as the way of the world. And in accepting it, she realized that she was a somewhat worldly young woman, another clue to her character. And she was sorry for the father she couldn't remember, because his dreams had died with James.

“George and I were like brothers,” Rick said. “He's dead and James is dead, but you can count on me, Elizabeth. You can count on me to be a father to you.”

Regina was moved. How could she not be? She was no longer marrying his son, no longer marrying into the family, and Rick did not have to extend himself the way that he was doing. “Thank you.”

Slade had stopped back-kicking the bureau, but now he thumped it once, hard, reminding everyone that he was there. “My father, Mr. Kindness himself.”

Rick lunged to his feet. “You got something you want to say?”

Slade slid abruptly to his feet. “No. But don't you? Don't you have something to add?”

Regina regarded the two men in shock and fright, wondering if they might actually come to blows. Both of them were suffused with anger, while she didn't understand the hidden meaning in Slade's question.

“You leave her alone,” Rick said.

“Oh, so now you want me to leave her alone!”

Rick controlled himself. When he turned to Regina, he managed to smile. “Your daddy would turn over in his grave if I didn't take care of you.”

Regina looked at Rick, who was now smiling warmly at her, and she looked at Slade, who wasn't smiling at all. What on earth was going on? And did she have any choice?

“Thank you,” she said, making the only decision possible. “I'll take you up on your offer of hospitality, for a while anyway.” She could not speak calmly. She was shaking inside and afraid to look at Slade and witness his reaction to her decision. It had somehow become important to her that he approve, not just of her decision, but of her.

And she didn't think that he did. His next words confirmed her fears.

“I guess that settles it,” Slade said darkly. “Let me guess. You're gonna head out now, right, Dad? And you want me to escort our guest to Miramar once she's ready.”

Rick scowled. “Do you think you might extend yourself to do that?”

Slade didn't answer. Without even looking at Regina, he strode from the room, but not before Regina saw how angry he was.

Rick and Regina were left alone. Regina was stunned. And she was dismayed. Why was Slade so angry? Why would her visiting his home upset him so? She had thought him to be her friend. She looked up at his father. “What have I done?”

Rick came around the table and patted her shoulder. “It's not you. Trust me on that. You're pretty and sweet and a man'd have to be blind not to see that. It's me. We don't get along. We never have. When I want something, he's got to fight me. He's always been that way. He's always been a hardheaded rebel. Just like his mother.”

Regina stared up at the older man. She heard the regret in his tone. And she heard more. She heard the love—the love he'd hidden so well in front of his son.

T
hey left Templeton behind. A few miles from the small town was a dirt crossroads where they turned west, passing a crude white sign which read
MIRAMAR
in hand-painted black lettering. The three other signs directed traffic north to Paso Robles 5 miles, east to Fresno 112 miles, or south back to Templeton 2 miles. Once they turned, the railroad tracks, which ran north and south, soon disappeared from view. An endless sea of golden hills surrounded them. Dark pine-clad mountains hovered behind them. Hawks took wing above them, gliding high into the vividly blue sky. Regina would have been awed with the scenery had she not been stricken with tension.

For Slade sat beside her on the front seat of an old-fashioned buggy pulled by two spirited bay mares. Her half a dozen trunks were piled in the backseat behind them. He had not said one word to her since he had arrived at her hotel room to load her luggage. Nor had he given her more than a cursory glance or two. He could not have made his displeasure with her more obvious.

The sign directing them toward Miramar had not indicated how far away it was. Yet even if it were only
minutes from them, she could not endure this kind of silence. “Your father is too generous,” she said softly in an attempt to make conversation.

Slade said nothing.

“I am very grateful to him.” She could not believe he would refuse to talk with her at all.

“I'm sure you are.”

His tone was civil, if unenthusiastic, and she breathed with relief. “He didn't have to offer me his hospitality,” she offered.

“That's right. Rick doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do.” This time he looked at her hard.

“You almost sound as if you're warning me.”

“Maybe I am.”

“He's your father.”

“Don't I know it.”

Regina opened her mouth to tell him that Rick loved him, then she shut it. She would be trespassing. That was a subject that was much too personal for her to broach.

“I know you're angry,” she said very softly. “I'm sorry.”

He looked at her again. There
was
anger in his eyes, but not the uncontrolled blaze she'd seen in the hotel room that morning just before he'd strode out.

“I'm sorry,” she repeated, dismayed. “Angering you is the last thing I would want to do, not after the way you saved me.”

His grip tightened on the reins. “Stop talking like that. I didn't
save
you. I found you and brought you to town, that's all. If I hadn't found you, someone else would have.”

“Would they? Or would I have woken up, wandered until I dropped, maybe even died?”

His glance skewered her. “I'm not asking for your gratitude.”

“But you already have it.”

Slade stared straight ahead, out over the horses' heads at the faded blue horizon. “Damn it,” he said very softly.

Dismayed, Regina said impulsively, “Turn around. Take me back to Templeton. It's all right. I'll stay at the hotel until I feel better and then I'll go to San Luis Obispo. I'm sure Susan would not turn me away in my condition. I will not impose on you any further.”

He grimaced, swiveling to look at her. “Do I seem like such a heel?”

“No! Not at all! I just don't understand why you're so angry with me.”

He swallowed. His gaze slipped to her mouth before moving back to her eyes. “This isn't your fault. I'm not angry with you.”

“You're not?”

“No.”

Regina was relieved, more than relieved; she was terribly glad. But his dark, brooding expression instantly chased away her smile. “If you're not angry with me, then it must be your father you're so angry with.”

“That's right.” From his tone, she knew she was crossing into territory where he had put up inviolate boundaries. Yet she could not stop. For she kept remembering the last time she had seen Rick, she kept hearing the regret in his voice, and the love, and something else she hadn't identified at the time but which she could label now in hindsight—the resignation.

Regina could not restrain herself. “Because of what he said?”

Slade looked at her.

“Because he insulted you?”

“It would take a lot more than a lousy insult from Rick to get my goat,” he said sharply. “Stop pushing.”

“Then it
is
me. You're mad at him, but it's because of me!”

“I was angry with Rick long before I ever met you, and I'll be angry with him long after you're gone.

His words dumbfounded her. Her heart wept over his relationship with his father, a relationship she wanted to heal, one she wanted to interfere in—which she absolutely must not do. And the assumption that she would be gone, while the conflict remained, dismayed her.
She didn't dare question herself too closely and ask herself why.

And of course, she knew that she was somehow involved in his roiling emotions even if he hadn't said so. She sensed it; she felt it.

She had been staring at him and he was finally compelled to turn his head toward her again. Their gazes leaped together, held, then darted apart. His profile was hard and handsome, almost too perfect, but he was clenching his jaw. He said through gritted teeth, “What in hell do you want from me?”

Regina did not hesitate. “Friendship.”

He jerked toward her, his expression amazed. She was motionless, unable to believe that she had been so direct. The incredulity on his face told her that he was disbelieving, too. Her palms began to perspire. She did not need her memory to know that ladies did not offer friendship to strange men, unless it was a certain kind of friendship, an illicit one, and that had not been her meaning at all.

“Friendship isn't possible between us.”

Regina looked carefully at her gloved hands, folded in her lap, just as he carefully stared out over the horses' heads. She should let this entire topic drop and they would both pretend it had never even been raised. Instead, she heard herself say, “Why not?”

Abruptly he halted the mares, this time pulling down the brake and winding the reins around it. He sat very still, but Regina felt the incredible wave of energy rushing through him, coiling up in him. She mistook it for anger, and she regretted her brashness completely.

He looked at her. Whatever secrets he had were no longer hidden in dark shadows—if she could only decipher them. His eyes were bright and intense. His needs were raw and powerful, they were needs she did not understand, and she was both attracted to and frightened by him in that single moment.

“Unless you mean a certain kind of friendship—and even that would be impossible.”

Regina could not speak. His regard was mesmerizing. His words might have shocked her had she not been consumed by the heat of his gaze. She was a woman and he was a very handsome man, and the attraction she barely understood was growing stronger with every heartbeat. She found it increasingly difficult to breathe and she was wondering, just wondering, what would happen if she dared to lean slightly forward.

“Don't.” He said the one word, but it held a volume of meanings, all warnings.

Warnings she chose to ignore. Unable to tear her gaze from him, she swayed forward. It was not even an inch. But it was enough.

“
Elizabeth
.”

She waited. Time was suspended. She knew he was going to kiss her. The desire was there in his eyes. She yearned uncontrollably for the touch of his lips. He dipped his head. She didn't move, and finally, finally, it came—the merest brushing of his mouth upon hers. Almost immediately he jerked away from her.

Her heart thundered in her ears. She gazed at him, wide-eyed. He was staring at her too, his expression aghast. Abruptly he unwound the reins, lifted the brake, and urged the mares on, all in one smooth, well-practiced movement. The team leaped forward instantly.

Unsettled was too gentle a word to describe how Regina felt. She could still feel his lips on hers; her entire body was clamoring for more, for so much more. She could not take her eyes off him. Dear Lord, he was so handsome—more than handsome. She clenched her hands in her lap.

“That was a mistake,” he said harshly without looking at her.

“What?”

He refused to look at her. “One damn big mistake.”

She straightened her spine. A wash of hot color crept up her cheeks as she realized that he was regretting the kiss, while she was cherishing it. Her pink flush deepened when she was struck with how brazen she had been in enticing him. “Oh, dear,” she whispered.

“It's too late for ‘oh, dear.'”

“Oh, dear,” she said again, trying to imagine what he must think of her.

“But of course, it's just what Rick wants.”

She looked at him.

“Don't look at me with those big brown eyes!”

“You mean my coming here to Miramar, don't you?” Or did he mean the intimacy they had just shared?

“I mean everything. I'm no damn saint. And I never wished I was—until now.”

“You are a good person,” she said fervently. “A very good person.”

He whipped around, staring at her. When he recovered, his voice was hoarse. “Lady, you have one hell of an imagination—either that, or you're too good to be true. Don't make me out to be something I'm not.”

“I'm not.”

“I won't sit here and argue about my character with you.”

“All right,” Regina agreed, shaken now to the core of her being. She had made him very angry. It was the kiss, or her prying, perhaps even both. But she pondered his dark and complicated nature, unable to help herself, and she found herself berating the man who had raised him. And the memory of his kiss still lingered.

 

The road they traveled on wound steadily west and steadily upward, surrounded by the summer-burned hills. The hills seemed to become bigger and bigger, the swatches of bent oaks sparser. Cattle flecked the countryside. Rounding the corner of one slope, they emerged suddenly onto a bare ridge.

Slade had not spoken to her since the kiss, but he urged the team to the cliff's edge and halted them at the overlook. Regina gasped. Although she was very much struck by the view he had offered her, she was also well aware that he was watching her closely.

The edge of the ridge, where the buggy stood, dropped precipitously to a valley below. Across that
valley, a sea of bronze saddleback mountains rose up to face them, huge and bare and stark. Cattle grazed the lower elevations. Etched against their rippling rim was the steel-blue Pacific.

Regina looked at Slade. “Miramar?”

He nodded, unable to contain the flash of pride in his eyes.

Regina had never been faced with such raw majesty. The land was forbidding in its immensity and starkness, yet it was spectacular, too.

Slade pointed north, in the opposite direction, across the other side of the narrow ridge. “The big valley's there. Where we have our groves and the vineyard. On the hill above is the house. You can't see it from here.”

The mountains were tamer on that side, resembling the hills he had described to her earlier. Oaks and pine softened the landscape. The ocean stretched out against that horizon, too, dusky-blue boldly juxtaposed against summer gold.

Regina breathed deeply. The air had a cleaner, sweeter smell, and it was distinctly cooler than it had been in Templeton. Slade lifted the reins. The road wound gently down through the hills now. Not many minutes passed before they entered the valley. And just before they actually arrived at the hacienda, Regina knew they were approaching the sea. She could taste the salty tang on the slight breeze that lifted the tendrils of hair on the back of her neck.

The ranch house was at the end of the valley where the ground slowly rose to meet the sky. Numerous barns, paddocks, and wood-sided buildings, all weathered gray, gave the rancho the appearance of a small, secluded village. Privately, Regina could imagine just how wonderful Miramar would look freshly whitewashed, but she would never say so.

They passed acres of orange groves. Slade had not been very communicative since they had kissed, but now he could not refrain from telling her about his home.

“My grandfather, Alejandro Delanza, chose to build his home here rather than at the other end of the valley.”

“I don't blame him,” Regina murmured. The Spanish-style hacienda was silhouetted boldly against the pastel-blue sky, framed on one side by pine-clad hills, and gave the distinct appearance of reigning above all the land, people, and other living creatures below it.

Slade gave her a long look. “There were no towns down-valley back then, just the mission at San Miguel.”

“Even so, your grandfather had an eye for grandeur.”

The road wound toward the house, which was where it ended. As they approached the outlying barns, passing blooded colts frollicking in one pasture, Slade said, “Once we had a hundred men in our employ, and Miramar supported not just them but their wives and children, too. In those days we were a traditional hacienda, meaning that we were self-sufficient. Everything we needed was raised, grown, or made right here.”

“That's very romantic.”

Slade gave her another thoughtful look. “But not productive, and by the time California reached statehood, not competitive. Now we have a dozen vaqueros in our employ, one tanner, one butcher, and Cookie. Not including some help up at the house,” he added.

It was a far cry from the old days, Regina thought. It was somehow sad. Slade might have guessed her thoughts. “I wouldn't turn back the clock even if I could,” he said.

He drove past the outbuildings and barns, taking them directly to the house. A man who bore no real resemblance to Slade, but who somehow reminded her of him, came through the courtyard toward them.

“Welcome to Miramar,” the smiling young man said. “I'm Edward.”

Regina smiled back at him. His open, direct friendliness was very welcome after the complicated, tangled state of her relationship with Slade. He helped her down from the carriage. “Now I know why James was in love with you,” he said.