California Royale (21 page)

“Indulge my masculine pride.” He kicked a fast-food wrapper aside with his foot. “How the hell did you find this place?”

They reached the landing of the second level. Distracted, Duke didn’t realize that she hadn’t answered. Shea pushed in front of him and pulled open the fire door that led to a hallway. He glanced at her face and saw that she was very pale except for small clouds of pink that colored her cheeks. She looked sick.

“Palomino …” he began anxiously, but she was already walking down the hallway.

Cursing, Duke strode after her. The apartment doors were painted a revolting shade of green. The hall carpet looked as if a herd of elephants had been quartered on it. She stopped near the end of the hall and gazed fixedly at the corroded metal number on one of the doors. She reached for the doorknob tentatively, as if she were afraid it might shock her.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Duke said. He blocked her way with his arm and covered her hand on the doorknob. “Step back.”

“It’s just an empty apartment,” she protested, a strained expression on her face.

“Except for rats and Lord knows what else.”

She sighed, defeated. “I love you, Alejandro, even if you are a bully.”

“Good.”

She moved back several feet and watched him shove the door open. She saw torn floor covering, piles of boxes and rags, and a filthy mattress. A bare, dirty window framed the Los Angeles skyline in the distance.

“A real Taj Mahal,” Duke noted grimly. He stepped into the apartment, put his hands on his hips, and gazed around. She walked in after him, her steps slow, her hands clasped in front of her.

“It used to be a good deal better than this.”

He turned around, took a long look at the sorrowful expression on her face, and everything about her strange attitude clicked into place. “Dammit, Shea,” he murmured
tightly. “This is where you grew up. You look like you’ve just stepped inside a tomb.”

She nodded wearily. “It is a tomb. There are a lot of memories buried in it.”

They were both silent for a moment. Duke felt a little stunned. Finally he said grimly, “
Querida
, you should have told me that this was the building you wanted to buy.” He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head in disgust. “One more secret, one more thing you don’t want to tell.”

“I didn’t know until a few days ago that it was for sale. When Mother and I lived here, it was owned by the city housing authority. I found out that the city sold it a few years ago. And now it’s up for sale again.”

Duke grimaced in self-reproach. “Forgive me for sounding like such a bastard.” He went over and slipped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him as they walked through the small apartment. “This was mine,” she told him when they stopped in a tiny, windowless room. Shea put a hand on a peeling strip of wallpaper and pulled it away to reveal the older wallpaper underneath. “I put that paper up myself. I must have been about twelve. I did a terrible job, but I thought it was beautiful.”

Duke looked at the cheap, faded print and felt a poignant sorrow rise in his chest. “Roses,” he said gruffly.

“Senora Savaiano helped me pick it out.”

“She was the elderly woman who looked after you?”

“Yes.”

They walked into another room, only slightly larger. It had a window, and several of the panes were broken. “Mother’s room,” Shea noted in a brusque tone.

Duke kissed her forehead, rested his cheek there, and shut his eyes. She was trembling, and he stroked her arm.

“She could have been beautiful,” Shea murmured hoarsely. “And I loved her.” She twisted abruptly and hid her face against his neck. Her voice was full of torment. “Let’s sit down.”

“Not here,
querida
.”

“Here. It’s the only place I can force myself to talk.”

She pulled away from him, went back to the main room, and lowered herself gracefully to the floor, heedless of what the dirt would do to her outfit. She hugged her knees to her chest and stared at a point on the far wall. Duke followed and stood over her, watching desperate emotions flicker over her face.

This was the moment he’d demanded, but he felt no victory. “This isn’t what I wanted,” he said gently. “You don’t have to surround yourself with pain.”

“Yes, I do,” she corrected. “I know that I have to stop shutting you out of my past.” She paused, struggling hard to sound calm. “I love you so much, and I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

“Sssh.” He sat down behind her and began rubbing her shoulders. “It isn’t me you’re hurting, it’s us.”

She nodded, and her head drooped. Slowly, pulling the agony out of her mind like briars, she began to tell him how life had been. Minutes flowed away, carrying one excruciating story after another. Shea was dimly aware each time Duke’s hands stopped moving on her shoulders, then gripped fiercely, then stroked in sympathy. She heard him make soft, harsh noises deep in his throat.

She was handing him her pain and humiliation and fear without any guarantee that he could bear it. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked raggedly.

“No.” Suddenly his arms came around her from behind. “We’re all right. Go on.”

He rocked her while she talked, his body a warm, strong support. She cried; she unwound her arms from
around her knees and shook clenched fists at everything that had happened to her in these squalid little rooms.

Two hours passed before she ran out of words and buried her face in her hands. Silence descended, punctuated by the distant sounds of children playing outside. Her nerves were raw as she waited for Duke to say something.

“It’s over,” he murmured, his voice low and soothing against her ear. “From now on, we can deal with it.”

She nodded blankly. He was so calm—or was he merely assuming a careful facade to reassure her? Shea twisted to look at him. His face showed the exhaustion of his emotional turmoil. He kissed her tenderly, then got to his feet and helped her up, too.

Shea was terrified by his silence. Her throat raw, her heart pounding, she held his hand fiercely when they went downstairs, as if she were afraid that the bad aura of the place would hurt him somehow. She didn’t have the courage to ask how he really felt about her now.

They left through a back exit and walked around the building. Dirty, half-dressed children stopped playing and stared at them with wide eyes. The tenants’ laundry hung from clothes lines held by rickety supports.

“I’m going to put in a laundry room with washers and dryers,” she noted.

“Hmmm. Good.”

More fear poured into her veins as she analyzed his mood. Was it quiet acceptance, or shock? They walked farther. Suddenly Shea grabbed his arm and pointed toward the brown-tinged box shrubs at the base of the building. She uttered a strangled sound, ran to the shrubs, knelt on the dusty ground beside them, and pulled their bottom branches aside.

“Look, Alejandro. Oh,
look
,” she said in a voice full of
bittersweet happiness. She pointed to a fist-size stump with a few sharp little leaves growing from the top.

Shea tilted her head back and studied him with a mixture of hope and despair. Had she found a beginning, or an end? Tears streamed down her face. “There’s one left. One rose bush.”

Duke reached out slowly and stroked tendrils of soft blond hair back from her forehead. “You see,” he whispered hoarsely, “the beauty survives.”

For several seconds, Shea looked at him in awe. Life stopped to let her savor the moment when fear fell away. He knew everything about her, and she was at his mercy. This was the threshold between darkness and light.

And she was leaving the darkness behind.

Quivering, she stood as gracefully as she could, her eyes never leaving his. Communicating was simple, she thought, when trust became this strong. It was difficult to compose herself, but Duke’s eyes held nothing but patience. She had to speak the words properly, without her voice breaking.

“I love you more than you can ever imagine. Will you marry me?” she asked.

He tried to answer but couldn’t manage it easily, so he simply held out both hands and nodded. She went into his arms and he lifted her off the ground when he kissed her. “Yes, and forever,” he murmured afterward.

The sky over Mendocino was brilliantly blue on the day of their marriage, a cloudless winter day when sunshine etched the world in lines of crystal clarity. The small white church sat at the edge of town, facing the ocean. It had been built over a hundred years earlier of native redwood, in a beautifully simple style. A single steeple rose against the blue canopy of sky.

Shea peeked furtively out of the tiny room off the church vestibule. “Jennie! Help! The crown of this veil is so tall that I need a crane to put it on!” Jennie, who was adjusting O’Malley’s black bow tie, turned to gaze at her with amusement. Shea gave O’Malley a hurried wave. “How’s my man doing?”

“He’s out in the parking lot teaching Jason how to palm coins. He says he’s calm, but he’s dropped his quarter five times already. I’ll go check on him.”

After O’Malley left, Jennie swept into the changing room and shut the door. “Sit down, boss, and let me have a whack at that strange gear.” She smiled. “You look like the heroine of an old Zorro movie. Fantastic.”

Shea brushed a fingertip across the bodice of her dress. “I hope that my Zorro thinks so.”

Her Zorro did. It was obvious in the way he flashed an ecstatic smile when she appeared at the back of the aisle. She couldn’t stop looking at him. He wore a black tuxedo with a red cummerbund and a brightly colored serape arranged over his right shoulder. The small church was lit only by candles and the afternoon light streaming through the western windows. The soft golden hues seemed to shimmer around him, as if someone had thrown gold dust into the air.

He presented a darkly exotic and very compelling picture, and she was breathless as she walked down the aisle alone, smiling at him the whole way. In her arms she carried a huge bouquet of mixed roses—every color and every type that had been available. Her dress was a miracle of meticulous reproduction, created from drawings of 19th-century Mexican styles. Delicate lace overlaid the slender sleeves and the tight bodice with its high, regal collar. The ivory satin skirt was so voluminous that it brushed the pews on both sides of the aisle. Shea’s veil trailed down her back from the tall
crown set with pearls amid swirling, embroidered patterns.

Alejandro’s dark eyes gleamed with pleasure when she stopped beside him. He took her hand in a warm, tight grip and seductively stroked her palm with the tip of his forefinger. His gaze was tender but also teasing. Despite the fact that the minister was about to begin and she shouldn’t have kissed Alejandro until
after
the ceremony, she brushed her lips across his cheek.
“Hombre,”
she whispered so that only he could hear.

Jason, more jaunty than ever because he’d just been adopted by Sally Rogers, was the ring bearer. At the appropriate moment in the proceedings he held his pillow out with one hand and gave them a thumbs-up with the other. Duke returned the gesture, and laughter rippled through the packed church.

At the end of the ceremony they shared what was most likely the longest wedding kiss in the history of Mendocino, and the guests broke into applause when they stopped. Duke wasn’t content to let her simply walk out of the church by his side; he swooped her up in a cloud of lace and satin, then carried her down the aisle and out the door.

The mariachi band waiting at the bottom of the church steps burst into a lively tune. “Surprise!” Duke said, and she laughed as she planted quick, loving kisses all over his face. He set her down, stepped back, and bowed formally. “Señora Araiza,” he said with great pride, then straightened and held out his arm. “Will you walk with me to the wedding reception?”

She curtsied. “Señor Araiza, I’d be most honored.” They’d planned a feast at the Mendocino Hotel, just a few blocks away on Main Street. Shea took his arm and looked up at him with adoration. “But there’s one thing I need to do first.”

People came out of the church and crowded around them. Shea pulled a perfect red rose from her bouquet, then searched the crowd until she found Amanda and the Greesons.

“Ah, I think I understand,” Duke murmured softly.

He let her go and watched as she walked to Amanda. They hugged, and Shea laid the rose in her hand. When she came back to Duke, her eyes glistened with tears and she was smiling.

“This is a very unusual way to end a wedding day, don’t you think?”

“
Querida
, did you want a quiet, ordinary wedding day?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I never expected to walk through the woods in jogging shoes and my wedding dress. I didn’t expect to spend tonight in a roofless, half-finished house.” Shea nuzzled his neck and curled a leg over his thighs. “But I
did
expect to make love with you. It was wonderful.”

Duke chuckled and stroked her bare back. They lay naked under a pile of blankets on the floor of what would one day be a large living room—their living room—in a log-and-stone house centered on land between the estate and the group home. Duke’s ranch would be their second home.

They gazed up through the bare rafters at a night sky filled with stars. “Think of all the years ahead of us,” he whispered. “How many nights we’ll watch the stars together.”

“And how many nights I’ll do this to you, sweetheart.” She let her hand wander down his stomach.

“I can’t concentrate on the stars if you do that.”

“The stars will always wait.”

“Hmmm. They’ll have to,
querida
.”

He pulled her across his body and held her tightly. Their slow, sweet merger added whispers of love to the night. They fell asleep afterward, and when they woke they watched the sun rise over forested hills.

“How about an early-morning mud bath?” Shea whispered against his ear.

He rose on one elbow and looked down at her with devotion and amusement. “I never thought I’d say this … but I’m going to enjoy taking mud baths with you for the rest of my life.”

“Sí
,
hombre,”
she murmured, her eyes gleaming. “I’ll make certain.”