Three Wishes (13 page)

But I had to admit, when Javier de la Ventura looked at me like
that
…
holy hot tamale
…I had a hard time looking away.

CHAPTER 8

Doña Elena looked on with some satisfaction as we rode up to the villa, just as the others entered through the doors. Her dark eyes shifted back and forth between Javier and me, as if her diabolical plan for us to fall madly in love was already coming together.
Listen, lady, I just showed up for lunch, and then I’ll be back to planning my way outta here
…

But when Javier dismounted and turned to help me down, I was struck by how he took his time, from the moment he placed his long, strong fingers at my waist, lifted me up and away from the horse, and then gently, slowly lifted me to the ground. It was not at all the polite, straight-to-it manner that Captain John had used to help me yesterday. No, this was a long, slow, sultry sort of move that made my heart do a weird flip. He was staring down at me, still holding my hips. I dared not look up into his face. “Gracias, Don Ventura,” I said, thinking,
Okay, you can let go now
…

“Javier,” he said to me, his voice low and gravelly, still holding me. “Please, Zara. Call me Javier. You did already today and I found I…liked it.”

Got it. Javier. Javvy. Whatever. Just ¡Libérame! Your
mom
is standing
right there
, watching all of this go down!

“Gracias, Javier,” I said quickly and turned, tearing away from his hands…those hot, wide, sprawling, possessive hands. He paused and then followed after me, as if embarrassed to be caught in that odd sort of reverie.

“Doña Elena,” I greeted the grand lady as I passed. I could
feel
the glee radiating from her, as if she had orchestrated our chance meeting and the whole ride back.

I entered the villa and blinked in the sudden relative darkness. But I welcomed the cool shadows and gratefully turned toward a servant holding a copper bowl, standing beside another with a clean towel, and swiftly washed and dried my face and hands. At the end of the hall the Ventura sisters awaited me, and each took an arm as we walked to the dining room, both speaking at once.

“Was he awful?”

“He gets in such a state…”

“I’m sorry you got caught up in it. He hasn’t been the same since—”

“Since Papá and Dante died, he’s been like that. At one moment jovial, at another in a tempest.”

“He was fine,” I interjected. “He is well. We spoke, and he seemed to calm down. I think, I think he just needed a moment to pull himself together.”

Both girls turned to face me. “Pull himself together,” Francesca repeated quizzically.

I got it then. That was a totally modern phrase. “
¿Comprenden?
” I rushed on, as if they should understand the phrase. “Pull himself together,” I repeated, more forcefully this time. “As a seamstress might do with portions of fabric. Or a maid making a bed.”

Estrella paused and then nodded, as if it made sense to her. “Pull himself together,” she murmured to herself. And as they turned to lead me back into the dining hall, I wondered if I’d introduced a phrase into the language of the people a good hundred or so years before it was meant to be there.

We sat down around the table, women first, and then the men.

But Javier never joined us.

In fact, I didn’t see him the rest of the day. His friends did their best to fill in the awkward gap; Patricio regaled me with stories of his life as an agent dealing with more than two hundred ships that sailed past these shores, especially the neat, square-rigged
Ayacucho
with an Englishman for a captain and crew from the Sandwich Islands. According to Patricio, they could read the winds in seconds and never dropped more than a single anchor in port, and with all sails aloft, the
Ayacucho
was as agile as a Polynesian catamaran. He seemed more than a little impressed with them and went on to speak of how they narrowly avoided coming aground near Point Conception during a fierce southeaster. I soon learned that such storms apparently chased all ships at sea from November to April.

Through it all, Doña Elena ate and drank and smiled more than I’d ever seen her smile, looking down the table at me like a doting aunt, even with her son conspicuously absent. It unnerved me, but Javier’s empty seat unnerved me more.
What’s up with that?
I thought. After the meal, we retired for a siesta, and I pretty much ran to my room, closing the door behind me with relief.

But then the hair prickled on the back of my neck. I wasn’t alone.

I turned.

But it was only him—Javier, leaning against the far wall. He was staring at me, his arms crossed, his wide-brimmed hat tossed on the foot of my bed.

“Ja-Javier,” I said, my heart pounding. “What are you doing in here?”

“What are you doing here at all?” was all he said in return. He didn’t make any moves on me. Just stood there, staring, as if trying to make sense of me. “Who are you, Zara? You are…different. Unlike any woman I’ve ever met before.”

I stared at him, my mouth growing dry.
I’m Zara Ruiz. Granddaughter of a poor restaurant owner. Daughter to a prison inmate and runaway mother. Almost–high school graduate. Almost–college attender. Sudden time-traveler.

None of that, of course, came out of my mouth.

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me the truth.”

“If-if I told you,” I stuttered, “you wouldn’t believe me.”

He squinted at me, straightened, and took a step away from the wall. I lifted my hands. “Stay where you are.”

His squint deepened as he took another step. “I will not harm you, Zara. But those words…they are truth. You think that I wouldn’t believe you. Why is that?”

“Because I…it’s…impossible.”

He took another step forward. “So you remember something.”

“I remember,” I said, still with my hands up. “But I am afraid.”

His gaze hardened. “Because you fear how I might respond if I knew of it?”

“I’m afraid how everyone would respond,” I muttered. “Stop,” I said, raising my hands as he continued to advance.

“Tell me, Zara. Trust me. As I trusted you this day with something most intimate.” He took another step forward, until my fingers brushed up against his chest, halting him. “As I trust you now, when I am more than aware of how you are able to…defend yourself.” He stared down at me, all earnest need in his eyes. Practically begging me to be vulnerable with him here, now.

“I-I can’t,” I said. “Not yet,” I added impulsively, when I saw the pain run across his face. But he didn’t move away from me.

“Is it because of the beach? What you saw? Those men, chasing me? Is this why you don’t trust me?”

No, you idiot,
I thought in frustration.
It’s because you might take me to the local priest and have him dunk me in the river until I confess I’m a witch. Because even in my time, big guy, no one time-travels. No one.

It was fantasy. The basis of movies. Books.

Not real life.

And surely I was going to snap out of it and return to my awful, normal, sad, transitory life any sec. And all of this would disappear. The rancho. Doña Elena. The girls. The boys. The workers and their mountains of hides. The massive herds of cattle morphing back into massive herds of suburban houses, like Cinderella’s guards back into mice.

“There is a reason I gamble with men like those of the
Guadiana
,” Javier said, a muscle twitching along his jaw. “But you,” he said, reaching up to brush a curl away from my eye, a bit hesitant, “need to give me a chance to explain.”

I stared up at him. “Javier,” I whispered, half in complaint, half in warning, “truly you needn’t explain yourself at all. I am but a guest in your household. Gone as soon as I’m…well.”

He dropped his hand abruptly. “Of course,” he said, nodding curtly. “What could possibly hold you here?”

I stared back into his eyes amid their fringes of black lashes and recognized the magnetic pull between us anew, wondering for a sec just what could possibly make me leave, with this,
this
in the mix. I sniffed and forced myself to take a step back. “I am most grateful for your hospitality. But now? Now I think I need to rest.” I rubbed my forehead, feeling an ache in full-throb mode there.

He studied me and then reached for his hat and rolled it in his hands, an uncharacteristically nervous move. “Of course. Rest well, Zara.”

“You as well, Javier,” I said gently. I reached for the door and watched him exit. He turned in the hallway, looking back at me, and
Ay de mí,
I had to admit that I might never see another model-quality dude check me out like that again. The afternoon shadows seemed to catch every perfect curve and angle of his face, and I wished I could snap a pic of him with my phone to remember him and this crazy moment. It was like a dream.

But it wasn’t a dream. This was some sort of alternate-reality life. And I had to stop this before it got completely out of hand, keeping me from returning to my real life.
My real life,
I repeated silently in my head, willing myself to remember.

So I shut the door firmly between us and, on shaking legs, made my way to the bed. I pulled down the covers and climbed in, fully dressed. I didn’t care. I was wiped. The day had taken everything in me and it wasn’t even over yet. But I hadn’t gotten any closer to my golden lamp. “Tonight,” I muttered to myself, letting my eyelids fall.
Tonight I’ll find my way into that safe
…

CHAPTER 9

That night at supper Javier seemed to pointedly ignore me and focus on Patricio, Rafael, and two sea captains who had just arrived in Bonita Harbor. From what I could gather, this was much of the focus at the ranch—entertaining guests, who were either trading with the Venturas or trying to do so, brokering deals when they went back to the harbor. The household had prepared all day for the big meal, and platters upon platters of food were set before us. Javier poured the first glasses of wine—presumably imported, since I’d seen that the vines were yet young and there’d been no casks of wine on our tour—and the house servants made certain the glasses remained full.

He grew agitated every time his guests turned his attention back to me, over and over, in their hunger for any sort of female company they could get. And since young Francesca and I were the closest to eligible that they might find—with Adalia clearly in her mourning black—the two kept finding pauses in the conversation to return their focus on me, the It Girl of the moment. It had come out that I’d lost my memory and was “convalescing” here until it returned. And as more wine was swallowed, the men apparently decided that it was all a ruse, a way for me to finagle my way into the estate and close to Javier.

“I wish I’d have such luck,” Captain Donnovan said in his light Irish accent, looking down the table at me and lifting his glass. “Were I to fish such a maiden as you from the sea, I’d make certain you had the best care for as long as I could manage to make you stay.”