Bed of Roses (8 page)

“Yes, I’ve heard rabbits laugh before,” Sawyer answered in all seriousness. “And you’re right. It’s an irritating sound.”

She gave him a good, hard frown to show him what she thought of his sarcasm. “It is not a funny thing, Sawyer,” she chided him. “We are six people here, and we have animals too. If not for the nuns we would be hungry and so would our animals. The area farmers and villagers, they give food and supplies to the sisters in return for the sisters’ prayers. And the nuns, they share with us what little provisions they have. Sometimes they bring meat. Sometimes sugar, flour, fruit, or salt. They even bring hay and grains for our animals when they can get it. But though the good sisters are very generous, the food and supplies they bring to us never last long enough. And the sisters, they do not have much themselves. No one does.” She retrieved the tray of food and set it on the table beside his bed. “Your fish.”

His stomach growled and his mouth watered, but as he glanced at the bowl of hot stew, he couldn’t help wondering if she’d laced it with a bit of strychnine. “You take the first bite.”

“I have already eaten.”

“I’m not asking you to eat the whole bowl, only a bite.”

“Why?”

“Uh… Well, I want you to make sure it’s not too hot. My injuries hurt bad enough. I don’t want to burn my mouth, too.”

Zafiro smiled, sudden comprehension dawning upon her. “You think I have put poison in this food.”

Her smile captured his full attention. She had full, sensuous lips, a captivating dimple in her left cheek, and her grin was so bright that it illuminated her striking blue eyes.

God, she was even more beautiful when she was happy.

“I asked if you think I’ve poisoned your food,” Zafiro repeated.

“Are you kidding? Why would I think you’d try to poison me? You offered only to shoot, stab, hang, suffocate, or drown me. Poisoning was not among my choices, so I have no reason to believe that you—”

“I have changed my mind. Mariposa likes you, so I am not going to kill you.”

He saw not a speck of dishonesty in her eyes, but remained wary. “Oh, and I’m just supposed to take your word for it.”

Zafiro’s first impulse was to tell him in no uncertain terms that if she said she wasn’t going to kill him, then she wasn’t going to kill him. She reconsidered, however, when she took a moment to put herself in his place. “I will prove to you that I mean what I say, but this is the last time I will do so. From now on you will believe me when I tell you something.”

He watched her bend over the bowl of stew and slip a heaping spoonful of the fish stew into her mouth. All right, so the fish wasn’t going to kill him. “What about the bread?”

Zafiro swallowed the stew, then ate a bit of the bread. She also munched into the apple and drank some of the milk. “There,” she said, wiping her milk mustache off with the back of her hand. “Now sit up and eat.”

Sawyer tried to sit up, but found the task impossible. Not only did Mariposa remain stretched out over half his body, but he was tiring again and his wounds were aching fiercely. Dammit, he hated feeling so helpless, so weak.

“You must eat, Sawyer Donovan.”

“Why do you always have to call me by my full name?” he asked irritably.

“It is your name, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to use both—”

“Why are you so angry?”

“I’m not angry.”

“You are.”

“All right, I’m angry.”

“Why?”

“I’m hungry, dammit!”

“Then sit up and eat.”

“I can’t! For God’s sake, woman, I’ve been torn up by a mountain lion, who’s now draped over me like a damn afghan!” Carefully, he moved his body out from beneath Mariposa, whereupon Jengibre promptly got up and pecked at his arm as a punishment for disturbing her.

Sawyer rubbed the stinging chicken bite. “I don’t feel good.” He stared at the ceiling. “I’m hurting all over.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t eat.” He closed his eyes. “Can’t eat because I’ve been torn up by a mountain lion. I’m hurting too much to sit up, and there’s a man-eating chicken in my bed.”

“Men are such babies.”

He opened his right eye. “Well, pardon the hell out of me. How stupid of me to complain. I’ve only been slashed to ribbons—”

“But you have been sewn up, and you will live.”

“Only because the mountain lion who tore me up in the first place decided to like me. If it wasn’t for Mariposa I’d be dead right now because you’d have killed me!”

“But I did not kill you.” Before he could object, Zafiro began to feed him, pushing a spoonful of stew into his mouth. He’d barely had the chance to swallow it when she fed him another spoonful, another, and another.

“There,” she said, dropping the spoon back into the empty bowl. “Now you are not hungry anymore. Are you still angry?”

Dribbles of fish stew all over his chin, he glared at her. “I’m wearing my meal.”

She ignored his complaint, certain that Mariposa would ease it.

Sure enough, the cougar quickly and neatly cleaned Sawyer’s chin of every trace of the fish stew.

“I am glad that I did not kill you, Sawyer Donovan.”

“That makes two of us.”

Zafiro cut the apple and popped a sliver into Sawyer’s mouth. “How does it feel not to know who you are?”

He didn’t want to discuss his memory loss. It was frustrating enough just to think about it. “How long have I been here?”

“It will soon be eight days. What is it like to have no memories?”

She wasn’t going to give up. And he wasn’t going to answer.

“Why do you not want to touch your trunk?” Zafiro asked. “The nuns said you did not like to be very near it.”

Sawyer squeezed a handful of sheets. The trunk. Truth was, he didn’t know why he didn’t want to look at it, touch it, much less open it.

All he knew for sure was that every time he saw it he felt almost blinded by a crushing sort of pain. A horror he didn’t know how to overcome.

And yet he could not make himself get rid of the trunk. Whatever was inside seemed vitally important for him to keep.

He would not, however, look at it. Not now.

Someday. Maybe.

Maybe.

“Sawyer? What is it like not to have memories?” Zafiro continued to press.

“I have memories. I just can’t remember them.”

“Why?”

His irritation rose like steam from a kettle. “How the hell should I know? That’s what this forgetting stuff is all about!”

For a few moments Zafiro chewed on her bottom lip, wondering whether or not to voice the thoughts in her mind. “Sawyer…” She reached up to fondle her sapphire, moving the large jewel between her fingers and finally clasping it in her palm. “While you were with fever you spoke…spoke about a big house with white curtains. You said there was blood in the house. Do you think…I…well, maybe the house is a memory you have forgotten and now it is trying to come back to you.”

He didn’t answer.

But she saw his body stiffen, and from his eyes spilled an agony that pulled at every compassionate part of her. “I am sorry,” she whispered.

“For mentioning a house I know nothing about?”

He’d growled the question at her, and she knew then that if indeed he remembered as much as a fragment about the house with the white curtains, he wasn’t going to discuss it. The urge to pursue further the subject of the bloody house was almost irresistible, but she instinctively realized that for Sawyer to speak about it, to try to remember, would cause him pain a thousand times worse than that of his physical injuries.

Perhaps in time, as the weeks passed, she would mention the house again. “You have strong legs.”

He frowned, wondering what his legs had to do with the white-curtained house.

That house. He’d seen the house in his mind before, while he was awake. Now, apparently, he’d been talking about it in his sleep.

But where was the house? Had he lived in it? And why all the blood? God, so much blood.

Whose blood?

He couldn’t think about it anymore. Though the thought of the house was much like a wisp of smoke that vanished almost as soon as it came to be, the mere notion of it filled him with pain he couldn’t stand or comprehend.

“Sawyer?”

He took a deep breath and struggled to assume an ordinary expression. “I have strong legs. So what?”

“Maybe you are a ballet dancer,” Zafiro explained, relieved by his normal tone of voice. “I saw a ballet once many years ago. The dancers, they had legs like yours, full of muscle. When you are well enough, you will dance for us and we will tell you if you are any good.”

He still didn’t want to talk about his memory loss, but he for damn sure didn’t want her believing he was some silly ballet dancer. “I am not a ballet—”

“How do you know?”

“I know because…because I just know!”

His shout got him another chicken bite on the arm. “Ow!” he yelled, glaring at Jengibre. “I can’t believe I’m in bed with a mountain lion and a damn chicken, and it’s the
chicken
who’s trying to eat me! Get her off me!”

Zafiro gently placed Jengibre on the floor.

And Sawyer handed her the egg the hen had laid in the sheets.

She slipped the egg into the pocket in her skirt. “You do not know for sure that you are not a ballet dancer, Sawyer. When you dance for us, then we will know.” Zafiro pulled up a chair, sat down, and crossed her legs. “For now, though, all we know is your name and that you have ballet dancer legs.”

Before he replied, Sawyer took a moment to appreciate the fact that she was barefoot and that her skirts fell in such a way as to afford him a tantalizing view of her shapely legs.

She had pretty feet. Dainty, and with tiny toes. Her ankles were slim, but her calves were well-rounded with sleek muscle.

“Do you like my legs as much as my breasts?”

He raised his gaze to hers, intrigued again by her candor. “I do.”

His answer pleased her. “How many other breasts and legs have you seen?”

He grinned. “You know, we’re talking about a lot of intimate things here, and I don’t even know your name.”

“Zafiro Maria Quintana.”

He took a second to think about the way she’d pronounced her name:
Za-feer-oh.
“Zafiro. How do you spell it?”

She spelled it for him.

“Nice name. I like it.”

“It means ‘sapphire’ in Spanish.”

“You’re named after the jewel you wear. It’s the biggest sapphire I’ve ever seen. Nearly as big as your fist.”

“I am named for the color of my eyes.”

Sawyer stared at the large gemstone. “You know, if you sold that stone you’d get enough money to last a long time. Then you could buy the supplies you need. The villagers and the nuns might be hurting, but I’m sure the mercantiles around here are stocked with the things you need.”

Zafiro picked up the sapphire and rubbed it over her cheek. “I cannot.”

“Why?”

“My grandfather gave me this jewel when a grasshopper was as tall as my knee, and I have worn it ever since.”

“When you were knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“That is what I said. My sapphire, it was once the knob on a walking stick that belonged to a very rich man in Puebla. One day Grandfather saw the man beat a dog with the cane, so he stole the cane from the man. Grandfather, he was a wonderful thief.”

“So you keep the sapphire for sentimental reasons. Because your grandfather gave it to you.”

She’d never heard of anything so selfish in all her life. If she could have sold the jewel she’d have sold it years ago and used the money to care for her charges.

But she dared not. The sapphire, large and unique as it was, would surely rouse a lot of talk. Word of the magnificent jewel would travel quickly through the circle of thieves, and the news would eventually reach Luis, who would know exactly who owned the gem.

And then he’d track her down.

She couldn’t sell the gem. Not for all the money in the country. Even in the world.

“Zafiro?”

“Yes?”

Sawyer wondered what caused the intense look in her eyes, then decided she was remembering her grandfather. “You must have loved your grandfather a lot.”

“What? Oh. Yes, I did. I thought I would be with him forever. But, as time is supposed to do to all of us, Grandfather became old. So did the rest of the gang. It is a very sad thing to think about. Maclovio was the best horseman in the world, Sawyer. There were times when I thought he worked magic on the horses. He even taught Grandfather’s horse to come when he heard Grandfather whistle. And Pedro never missed his target with his gun. Not once. Lorenzo could open any lock invented. But…well, when the men became old…Pedro began to believe he was Saint Peter, Maclovio started drinking heavily, and Lorenzo lost his hearing. Tia became more determined than ever to find her little boy, Francisco, who had died even before Grandfather met her. And Azucar—”

“She’s the old woman who tries to ravish me every night.”

“Yes,” Zafiro said, smiling. “Time caught up with her body, but not her mind. She still thinks she is the young seductress she once was. Anyway, when age began to slow down the men, Grandfather brought us all here to these mountains and built La Escondida. We are very alone here. Only the convent and a few tiny villages are close by. Piedra Blanca is the nearest real town. That is where there is a big store. But Piedra Blanca, it is too far from La Escondida.”

“This place is hidden, isn’t it? I remember seeing you slip inside a concealed—”

“La Escondida means ‘The Hidden.’ My grandfather fashioned the hidden entrance to keep us from being found. The men, they helped, but it was Grandfather whose cookie was clever.”

“He was a smart cookie.”

“How can a cookie be smart?”

Sawyer shrugged. “It’s only a saying.”

“You Americans say strange things.”

“Maybe, but they sound even stranger when you say them.”

Zafiro chose to overlook his criticism, especially since he tempered it with a smile and continued to shower Mariposa with affection. “My men, Sawyer. The Quintana Gang. You still do not think you have ever heard of them?”

He brushed his fingers through his hair. “Maclovio said they were famous. I guess I might have heard of them.”