Sun God (2 page)

She touched his shoulder. “Go on. How do I look? Tell me.”

“Very beautiful,” he said, not looking at her, and Amy could have sworn his handsome olive face was suffused with high color.

Tingling with a wonderful excitement that had little to do with being home, Amy smiled and managed a sweet, sincere thank you. Luiz spoke softly to the matched bays and the carriage rolled away, its wheels churning up fine dust to hang suspended in the still, dry air.

Amy, clasping her hands in her lap, stole covert glances at the classic male profile beneath the dark sombrero. As she studied the heavily lashed eyes, the high slanting cheekbones, the full, perfectly shaped lips, she found herself wondering jealously if there was already a woman in Tonatiuh’s life. Or perhaps women.

“There’s a homecoming fiesta for you tonight,” Luiz said, turning to catch her frowning. “What is wrong?” he asked.

Amy shook her head. “Nothing. Not a thing. You will be at my party, won’t you?”

“If you want me there,” Luiz said, and then he smiled at her. A flashing, sensual smile that managed to communicate fully the message that he knew very well she wanted him to be there. And that he wanted to be there just as badly.

“I want you,” Amy said, purposely pausing, then adding, with an appealing coy smile of her own, “at my party.”

And she thrilled at the flash of dark fire that leapt into his ebony eyes.

His blue eyes aglow, his blond head lowered, a man sat behind a large pine desk in the upstairs library of Orilla’s thick-walled, salmon-hued adobe hacienda. Before him, a worn brown leather journal was open, and stacks of cash were scattered around on the desk’s smooth surface. The man’s forefinger was skimming down long columns of black figures filling the leather journal’s white pages. The neat rows of sums brought a pleased smile to the blond man’s wide lips.

Across the spacious room, lounging lazily on a long rawhide couch, was another blond man, slightly younger and larger. A half-full tumbler of Kentucky bourbon in his hand, booted feet stretched out before him, he too was smiling.

The Sullivan brothers, Baron behind the desk, Lucas on the couch, were taking full advantage of their sister’s homecoming. Amy’s long-awaited return had caused quite a stir at Orilla. The flurry of activity suited the brothers fine. With so many distinguished guests arriving at the ranch, everyone in residence was pressed into service. From the youngest Mexican boys who saw to the carriage and horses to the old retired black house cook whose barbecue was famous across Texas, everyone at Orilla was busy.

Walter, the elder Sullivan, and Don Ramon Quintano, joint owners of Orilla, had graciously hosted an early-afternoon riding party of visiting dignitaries, an illustrious group that included the governor of Texas and the governor of the state of Chihuahua. The all-male contingent was—at this very hour—inspecting the huge Orilla spread with its large herds of cattle and horses.

Walter Sullivan had strongly suggested that his grown sons go along; Baron had declined for them both. Prior commitments, he had told his father without apology. Some other time, Dad.

Baron had hardly waited until the last mounted rider passed beneath Orilla’s tall white ranch gates before he turned, grinned at his younger brother, and said, “How about it, Lucas? Ready to go up and have a look at the stingy old bastard’s bankbooks?”

“What are we waiting for?” said Lucas, picking up a glass and a stoppered decanter of whiskey.

As the visiting gentlemen guests galloped across the desert rangelands, and their ladies rested in cool, dim Orilla guest rooms, and the servants cleaned and cooked and decorated for the evening’s party, Baron sat behind his father’s desk and counted the stacks of cash and pored over the accounting books he had removed from the wall safe behind the life-sized portrait of his long-dead mother.

“Jesus, Lucas, we’re gonna be a couple of rich sons a bitches one of these days.” Baron’s blue eyes twinkled with joy as he opened bankbooks and saw huge accounts in El Paso del Norte, San Antonio, Pecos, and in the village’s little bank, the Ranchers Bank of Sundown, Texas.

Nodding, Lucas took a long pull of whiskey. “How much, Baron? How much we gonna be worth?”

“Millions,” said his brother. “If Don Ramon is still alive when Dad dies, we’ll offer him some cash, buy him out.”

Lucas swallowed another drink of whiskey. “I don’t know. That little Spaniard is one smart fellow. I’m not so sure. … ”

“Well, I am,” Baron cut him off. “When the time comes, I’ll make it very clear to the
don
that he and that pretty-boy Indian son of his are no longer welcome on Orilla. By the time I’m through explaining it, he’ll be more than willing to take Luiz and some cash and disappear.”

Lucas grinned, then asked, “Think we’ll be able to get our hands on Amy’s share?”

Baron rose from the chair. He too was grinning. “I’ve already started working on that.”

“You have? How? She’s still just a kid. You can’t—”

“She’s a grown woman and it’s time she started thinking about marriage.” Baron gathered up the cash, the account journals, and the bankbooks and carried them to the wall safe. Over his shoulder he said, “And I’ve got the perfect husband in mind.”

Lucas chuckled loudly. He knew Baron was talking about their close friend, Tyler Parnell. Tyler liked a good time, same as they did, and the three of them had spent many a rip-roaring night together at the saloons and bordellos on both sides of the border.

“It’d sure be fun to have old Tyler for a brother-in-law. Only trouble is, he don’t have no money or land or nothing.”

“Exactly,” said Baron, giving the safe’s combination a spin with his forefinger, replacing his mother’s portrait, and turning to face his brother. “The prospect of a life of ease here on Orilla should make Tyler Parnell perfectly willing to take our sister for his blushing bride.”

“Well, I guess he might, but how are we gonna make Amy say yes to him?”

Baron shrugged. “Women seem to find Tyler attractive. I’ve invited him here tonight in hopes he and Amy will discover each other.”

Lucas chuckled. “Amy’ll have to be a derned sight prettier than when she left Texas or there ain’t gonna be no man discover her.”

“That’s true. But there’ll be plenty of men who’d like to get their hands on Orilla,” Baron reminded him.

“Lord, I hadn’t thought of that. Somebody might up and marry our homely little sister just to get part of our ranch.”

“Bull’s eye, brother.” Baron circled the desk and leaned back against its edge. “Tyler Parnell has to marry Amy. I can easily control him. Amy will naturally sign her land over to her new husband, and I step in and relieve him of it. Long as Tyler’s got enough money for a drink of whiskey and a pretty Mexican gal, he’ll be content.”

“Me and him both,” Lucas said, and laughed.

Baron simply smiled.

His hat pulled low, his blue eyes squinting against the glare of invasive sunlight, Walter Sullivan sat his favorite piebald gelding on an elevated spit of land. Gesturing with a sunburned hand, he proudly pointed out to his mounted guests the huge herd of longhorns grazing on the tobosa grass-covered flats below.

Walter Sullivan and his piebald gelding were as rugged as the rough land. Sullivan’s broad, craggy face with its permanent squint lines at the corners of the eyes, deeply furrowed brow, sun-darkened cheeks, and heavily cut chin resembled the stark desert topography. An aging, solid-hewn, tough, and moral man, Sullivan possessed a rustic grace, just like the untamed land.

The big piebald gelding Sullivan sat astride was cut from the same resilient cloth as his master. A deep-chested, fleet-footed animal, the gelding was brave, intelligent, and possessed amazing stamina. His eight-year-old body showed the marks of his harsh environment, just as his master’s. The SBARQ brand on his rump was not the only badge the gelding proudly wore. Half his right ear had been lost to a striking panther. A deep, long-healed wound on his withers was gratis a renegade Apache’s flaming arrow. His fetlocks were badly scarred from countless punctures of the tall, spined leaves of the lechuguilla, a cactus found only in the harsh Chihuahuan desert.

Man and horse were well suited to the region. Both loved it, both had been raised on it, both would die here.

And both took what life handed out with no complaint.

Orilla’s co-owner, the still-handsome, silver-haired Don Ramon Rafael Quintano, was just as resilient, just as uncomplaining as his Texas partner. A soft-spoken, slow-to-anger man, the
don
had worked alongside Sullivan under many punishing Texas suns, but at fifty he looked remarkably much as he had at age thirty when he was the dashing young grandee who had won the heart of an exotic sixteen-year-old Aztec princess. His fair Castilian face was unlined and smooth, his body slender and wiry, his manner one of calm assurance.

The
don
loved Orilla. There was, in fact, only one thing on earth he loved more. His only son, Luiz. He was extremely proud of the strong and beautiful young man who was intelligent and respectful and industrious. The
don
was ever grateful that when his days on earth were done, the legacy of Orilla would pass to his son.

Each time Don Ramon sat his blood bay stallion and quietly looked out over the far-reaching expanse of rangelands from beneath his big sombrero, his Spanish heart swelled with pride. Half of everything, as far as the eye could see and well beyond, belonged to him. And to his son. And his son’s son.

When the landau reached the tall white ranch gates of Orilla, Amy asked Luiz to pull up for just one moment.

The enchanted Indian gladly complied. He smiled indulgently when, as soon as the carriage had halted, Amy stood up, plucked off her straw bonnet, and threw her arms out in a wide encompassing gesture. She tipped her blond head back and looked up at the high beamed archway above.

Hanging suspended from the sturdy crossbar—and gleaming brilliantly in the sunshine—two-foot-tall, hammered silver letters spelled Orilla.

Amy, laughing happily, reached up as if to touch the letters. Her raised fingertips were a good eight to ten feet beneath them, even standing as she was in the landau.

“You are going to fall and get hurt, Amy,” said Luiz, and reached up to put a steadying hand to her waist.

Amy turned within his firm grasp, lowered her eyes, and smiled down at him. “No, I won’t. You won’t let me.” Slowly she eased back down to the carriage seat, her hands atop his, her expression one of complete trust. “You’d never allow me to get hurt.” She gazed into his fathomless black eyes. “Would you, Tonatiuh?”

“Never,” he said with fierce determination. His hands tightened possessively on her waist. The sudden, surprising strength in the lean, grasping fingers caused Amy to gasp with startled pleasure. And she experienced a heady sensation of unnamed delight when Luiz, still clinging forcefully to her waist, urged her closer, so close his face was mere inches from her own.

His taut features softened. He smiled and said softly, “Never, Amy.”

A
TOP A NATURAL RISE
, at the end of a long drive lined with Texas sabel palms sat Orilla’s sprawling hacienda, its leaded-glass windows winking like precious jewels in the afternoon sunlight. Completed in the summer of 1841, the imposing mansion with its eighteen-inch-thick salmon colored adobe walls, red-tiled roof, and polished brick floors was the finest dwelling for a hundred miles in any direction.

Built in the shape of a giant horseshoe, the house was designed to ensure the total privacy of two separate families. And so it was that in the hacienda’s main section, there was not one but two spacious sitting rooms, or
salas
, and two long dining halls.

Identical wings, stretching back toward the stables and outbuildings, boasted gigantic master suites as well as ten guest bedrooms each. The Sullivans occupied the west wing of the southern-facing hacienda, the Quintanos the east.

Every major room on the lower floor, including an enormous oak-floored ballroom, opened onto a beautiful courtyard where the natural plants of the high desert were lovingly nurtured by brown-skinned gardeners. Myriad cactuses bloomed profusely almost year round, brightening the days with their vivid splashes of purple and yellow and red. And sweetening the warm, romantic nights with their subtle, intoxicating bouquet. Settees of painted iron lace were scattered in among the yucca, esperanza, and tall century plants.

An even dozen servants cared for the house and gardens. Seventy-five cowboys and vaqueros worked the big spread, living year-round on the ranch. Huge whitewashed barns stabled a hundred horses and another four hundred grazed the various horse pastures of Orilla. Great herds of longhorns—thirty-two thousand at last tally—foraged the chino and tobosa grasses of the flats and the blue stem and side-oats gamma of the distant mountain slopes.

Approaching the enormous adobe structure rising from the barren, treeless land, Amy was struck anew by just how much she had missed Texas and Orilla. Silently vowing that she would never again leave, she took a moment to commit everything to memory, passionately certain that today was one of the most important days of her entire life.

She wanted to remember it all, every tiny detail. The heat of the sun on her face. The sight of the huge hacienda framed by the clear blue sky. The expression in Tonatiuh’s jet eyes when she stepped off the train. The strength of his hands on her waist.

What was the date? The fifth … no, no. The sixth … the sixth day of June. June the sixth, 1856.

Five-year-old Manuel Ortega, standing watch on the shaded front patio, spotted the landau coming up the drive. The excited son of Orilla’s head cook flew inside shouting, “
Madre
,
madre
, the
señorita
is here! She is here!”

Everyone dropped what he was doing to rush outdoors. Baron and Lucas Sullivan, lolling idly in the downstairs sitting room, looked at each other, rose, and unhurriedly made their way to the stone patio. The landau’s wheels crunched to a stop on the circular graveled drive. Luiz quickly jumped down, tossed the reins to a waiting stable boy, and raced around to lift Amy from the carriage.