Someone Like You (Night Riders) (31 page)

“Yes, but you would do it so much better.”

He wasn’t sure, but it looked as if he was going to have a chance to find out.

“I haven’t found a single piece of evidence to tie Laveau to the attempt to kill you,” Broc said to Rafe, disgust evident in his expression and his voice. “He doesn’t seem to care about anything but being seen with Dolores on his arm. He’s forgotten we’re here to bring him to justice.”

“He hasn’t forgotten,” Rafe said. “He just knows there’s not much we can do without getting into trouble ourselves.”

“How are we supposed to catch him? It looks like we’re wasting our time.” Broc suddenly grinned. “The only fun I’ve had is seeing Dolores’s expression when she catches sight of my face.”

Rafe had come into Cíbola on business. He and Broc were having lunch in a little restaurant away from the center of town. It was quiet and offered some privacy. It was Rafe’s intention to talk Broc into returning to the ranch. The attack on Miguel had convinced him Broc was wasting his time following Laveau.

“Have you heard anything else that might have some bearing on the attacks?” Rafe asked.

“Not really. There’s one man named Anderson who hates your father, but nobody pays him any attention. He’s drunk half the time.”

That could explain the ineffectiveness of the attacks, but not their randomness. Besides, his father was dead, and Rafe didn’t know anybody named Anderson. “This isn’t the work of some dissatisfied worker. It’s got to be somebody who thinks he has something to gain.”

“Something really big to risk murder. Something like your whole ranch.”

“Which is impossible. Even if they get rid of me, everything goes to Luis.”

“What if they get rid of Luis?”

“Without a will, everything would go to the state.”

“So they’re not trying to get rid of Luis, only you.”

“Don’t forget Miguel, Maria, and you.”

“No one is likely to be killed by falling from a horse or having a gazebo collapse on them. Being in the ring with three bulls is different. Besides, the shooter probably mistook me for you. Why would anybody have a reason to shoot me? I’ve never been in California before.”

Rafe didn’t know, but an idea was beginning to form in the back of his mind. It was like watching a group of seemingly random facts orbiting around a central core he couldn’t see.

“I don’t know who’s doing this or why, but there has to be a reason. In the meantime, I want you to come back to the ranch. I’m tired of Luis asking when you’ll return. He misses your stories.”

Broc laughed. “You mean my tall tales, don’t you?”

“He misses
you
. I’m such a dull, sober stick I need your foolishness as a counterweight.”

“I never expected to hear you say you needed anybody, especially not someone like me.”

“Well, it is something of an embarrassment, but I can’t deny you’re more entertaining than I am.”

They finished their lunch and left the restaurant. “Are you enjoying running things again?” Broc asked.

“Yes,” Rafe admitted.

“Will you stay?”

“I’m trying to talk Maria into taking over, but she thinks I ought to stay.”

“Do you agree with her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You used to love this place,” Broc reminded him. “Maybe you can love it again.”

Maybe, but there were too many painful memories attached to Rancho los Alamitos. It was easier to go back to Texas than to tackle so many ghosts.

Rafe didn’t want to admit it, but he was happier than he’d thought he ever could be again. During the last two weeks he’d spent most of his days in the saddle reacquainting himself with every part of the ranch, with all the crops and projects that were under way, with all the people who made the whole operation run smoothly. He loved being in the saddle at dawn. He loved watching the gradual maturing of a field of corn or the birth of a new crop of calves. He enjoyed his relationship with the people who lived and worked on the ranch. It was a feeling that they were joined together to create something really special and make all their lives better.

He had enjoyed working for Cade, but here he was the leader. Everyone looked to him to make the decisions that would determine their futures. He’d said he didn’t want that responsibility, that he wanted to forget his job the minute he got out of the saddle, but he was discovering that wasn’t true. He enjoyed discussing ideas with the workers. He got real pleasure from seeing their happiness when he accepted one of their ideas. He enjoyed long evenings talking with Miguel about the current problems, about plans for the future.
The more he learned, the more he wanted to know. The more he knew, the more ideas he had. He looked forward to each day.

Luis was responsible for part of that. He wouldn’t allow Luis to neglect his school work, but the boy rode with him every day. His curiosity was boundless and his enthusiasm infectious. He was as interested in the people as he was in the crops. He was beginning to develop friendships with boys his own age and be a spoiled visitor at their homes. The only worrisome element was his unceasing begging for a bigger pony, for a real horse.

But the most important part of Rafe’s happiness was his relationship with Maria. He didn’t want to admit it, but he might be falling in love. He couldn’t understand how he had ever felt he was so hopelessly in love with Dolores. What he felt for Maria was stronger and different. There was nothing desperate about it, yet his feelings were so powerful that they were changing him in ways nothing in the last ten years had done.

Dolores didn’t irritate him so much any longer. The stories that reached him from Cíbola caused him to shrug rather than fall into a rage. He could ignore her attempts to disparage his character or to convince people he was an unfit custodian for Luis. Most important, thinking of her betrayal no longer had the power to invade his dreams and keep him awake. Maria was slowly turning Dolores into a fading memory.

His attitude toward his father was also changing. Listening to Miguel and Maria had painted a picture of a man who had paid dearly for his mistake. Rafe would never know whether pride had kept his father from trying to find him or whether it was fear Rafe would refuse to return. It had taken Rafe a long time to realize it, but the love they had shared was strong enough to have overcome the bitterness of their separation. For the first time, he was able to remember the good times, to balance them against the betrayal. Much to his surprise the good times came out on top.

But Maria herself had brought about the greatest change because she had enabled him to feel love again. And to accept it. He had stripped Dolores’s room of its furniture and turned it into an office where he consulted with Miguel during the day and with Maria after Luis had gone to bed. He preferred it to the rooms downstairs because it offered privacy, which allowed him to hug and kiss Maria without fear of anyone walking in on them. This had become his favorite room and this his favorite part of the day.

It was impossible not to compare his reaction to the two sisters. Dolores’s beauty had so overwhelmed him, he couldn’t see anything else. He worshipped the sight of her. His youth and innocence had endowed her with virtues that lived only in his mind. In retrospect he realized he had fallen in love with a creature of his imagination.

Not so with Maria. Her innate goodness had attracted him from the beginning. Even her blind allegiance to Dolores took on positive attributes in his mind. She didn’t always agree with him, but she always believed in him.

Then there was the fact that she liked being hugged and kissed as much as he liked hugging and kissing her. There were times when Rafe felt their backlog of emotion might overwhelm them, obliterate all vestiges of common sense. There had been times when he hoped it would.

He was released from the tyranny of his thoughts when Maria entered the office. He kissed her before she could utter a word.

Maria’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “I don’t think Miguel would consider that a proper prelude to a business discussion.”

“He would if he were thirty years younger and had found someone like you.”

Rafe slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. He enjoyed few things as much as the way she seemed to melt into his embrace. He loved the way she came willingly, with no reluctance or pretense, no need to be persuaded. She never
asked for more than he was willing to give, never tried to keep him at arm’s length. She allowed him to set the parameters of their relationship. He’d never imagined a woman could be like this. Maria slipped her arms around his neck and looked up at him.

“I don’t think Miguel would agree to meet a woman behind closed doors. He’s much too proper for that.”

“Thank goodness my father was an Anglo who didn’t saddle me with the Spanish tradition of extreme formality. Think of how much we’d miss.”

Rafe worried about how much
he’d
missed because of his bitterness over Dolores. If he had lived like a normal man, he wouldn’t have come to Maria as a man who’d never been with a woman. He wasn’t sure he knew how to take their relationship beyond the kissing and holding stage without doing something that would hurt or upset her. Having no carnal experience with women, he didn’t know how important that would be to a relationship between a man and a woman. He grew up being told a woman tolerated a man’s attentions for the sake of her husband’s needs and for children.

Every male knew the basics of how to handle a relationship with a woman, but Rafe wasn’t so stupid that he thought it was all about physical gratification. A woman needed to feel wanted, needed, appreciated, not that she was being used simply as the object of a man’s desire. He had listened to enough youthful confessions from young soldiers missing their wives or the girls they were courting to know there were more ways to get it wrong than there were to get it right.

“I didn’t feel I’d missed anything really important until I met you,” Maria told him. “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known.”

“For a long time I was so angry and bitter, I didn’t want to risk caring about anyone. Every time I listened to a man talk about his troubles with his wife or his young woman, I congratulated myself on being smart enough to cut myself off
from feeling. If my father hadn’t died, I might never have known things could be different for me.”

He kissed Maria. It wasn’t the same as kissing Dolores. His feelings for Dolores were hot and desperate and impatient. He couldn’t think of anything else, didn’t
want
to think of anything else. His world gradually closed out the universe until it focused so tightly on one person he felt there was no one else in the universe. He bounced between excessive highs and lows until he felt he was about to self-destruct.

When he learned of Dolores’s betrayal, he did.

His feelings for Maria were warm and comforting with no swings, just a steady glow that was gradually changing his pain and bitterness into a withering memory that no longer had the power to leach all the joy from his life. The nourishing warmth of Luis’s happiness and Maria’s goodness were slowly banishing the dark shadows that had hung over him for years. Whenever they threatened to reassert their hold, all he had to do was look at Maria, touch her hand, receive the gift of her smile. Whenever something caused him to remember his father’s dishonorable conduct, he reminded himself that having Luis for a brother went a long way toward balancing out that betrayal.

Maria pulled back from his kiss, eyed him with a questioning smile. “You seem more intense today. If you hold me any tighter, I’ll end up with bruised ribs.”

“Sorry.” Rafe loosened his hold. “There are times when I feel that by holding on to you I can see life more clearly.”

Maria seemed surprised. “How? I’ve made mistakes of my own.”

Rafe brushed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Trying to see the best in your sister wasn’t a mistake because you didn’t let it harm Luis or my father.”

“I wasn’t talking about just that.”

Rafe kissed her on the end of her nose. “Rosana, Juan, and Miguel have nothing but praise for you. Luis loves you dearly, and you conquered Broc the first night.”

Maria laid her head on his shoulder. “You weren’t so ready to be conquered.” She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “And I don’t presume that I’ve conquered you yet.”

“You conquered my fear of opening myself to the possibility of love.”

“I think Luis is responsible for that more than I am.”

“What I feel for Luis isn’t the same as what I feel for you.”

Maria lowered her gaze. “I don’t know your feelings for me because we don’t talk about them. I don’t even know what your feelings for Luis are. Sometimes I think you see him as a toy to play with as long as you are here. You like to do things for him—buy him a pony and give him freedoms beyond what I’ve allowed him, but it’s hard to believe you love him as a brother when you intend to go back to Texas and never see him again.”

“Luis’s future is here. I would be doing him a great disservice if I took him to Texas with me.”

“Why don’t you ask him what
he
wants? He might not care for this ranch any more than you do.”

Rafe let his hold slip from around Maria to take her hands in his. “It’s not that I don’t care for this ranch, but it’s not my home any longer. Why would I want the responsibility for anything as large as this ranch?”

“Because it was a home you used to love. Because there are many people who depend on this ranch, and no one can do a better job of making it successful than you.”

Releasing her right hand, Rafe used his free hand to bring her gaze back to him. “I’m not doing this only because it’s what I want. I’m doing it because I think it’s right.”

“Maybe for you, but what if it’s not right for anyone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Luis will be heartbroken when you leave. No matter what explanation you or I offer, he’ll think you left because you like being with your friends in Texas more than being with him.”

“Is that how you feel?”

Maria broke away and walked a few steps before turning to face Rafe. “I don’t know what you think or feel about me. We spend hours together, but I don’t know if you’re interested in more than friendship or whether I’m just a woman to fill in for someone back in Texas.”