The Barefoot Bride (55 page)

Chimera took a few steps closer to him, her sable hair rustling against her scarlet skirt as she moved. "Mexican-Irish. That makes you... Mexish."

"Or Irixican."

She grinned at that. "Your English is good, but now that I think of it, you do have a slight accent. I take it you grew up in Mexico. Do you speak Spanish?"

He nodded. "
Soy de el estado de Sonora,"
he said and let his gaze linger on the gentle swell of ivory skin that peeped from the confines of her orange blouse. "I'm from the Mexican state of Sonora, but the school I attended is so close to the border that I had both Mexican and American teachers.
Hay algo mas que quieres saber?
Is there something more you would like to know?"

She'd heard Spanish before, but the sound of his voice made Spanish seem more like music than language. "Will you teach me Spanish?" She sat in the chair across from him and kicked off her boots.

Her skirt was lifted almost to her knees, exposing her smooth, slender calves to his slow perusal. "I'm on my way to Tucson and won't be here long enough to teach you Spanish."
I will, however, have time to teach you other things, he added to himself.

She watched his melted silver gaze flow down the length of her calves and quivered before she yanked down her skirt.

"Cold?" he asked, knowing full well she wasn't.

She ignored the question. "What's in Tucson?" she asked uneasily, this new information contrary to her plans for him.

He, too, ignored the question. "Do you have a father or big brother around here?" It didn't hurt to make sure, he decided. He was in no shape to make another quick getaway like the one he'd had to make that morning.

It did not escape her attention that he hadn't told her why he was going to Tucson. Well, she would bring up the subject again as soon as he learned he wouldn't be going there any time in the near future. Maybe then she'd learn his Tucson secret. "If I had any menfolk around here, I wouldn't have had to conjure you up."

She poured two cups of water, then crossed to the hearth to fill two bowls with stew. "I don't have any family at all. I don't even have a last name. I was raised by an old Greek gypsy woman who left her band to settle down and practice witchcraft. I called her Aunt Xenia. Gypsies aren't witches, but Aunt Xenia became interested in sorcery when she came across a book of incantations while traveling with her band. She could read, you know."

Sterling lifted his cup of water. "Here's to reading. May all gypsy-witches know how."

She frowned at his sarcasm but let it pass. "Xenia told me she was born and raised in the east and went to school there before she joined up with the gypsies that were passing through. She was Greek, they were Greek, and going with them seemed like a good way to learn more of her Greek heritage."

Sterling nodded. He understood exactly what Xenia must have felt when she joined her wandering countrymen, the joy of belonging and being accepted. As an orphan he'd been denied that special knowledge and had always wondered about it. Heritage. His mission in Tucson erupted into his thoughts once more.

Chimera saw the faraway look in his silver eyes and wondered what profound thoughts he was thinking. She began to suspect that beneath his sarcastic exterior there was sensitivity. The thought, for some reason, pleased her. "Anyway," she continued, "the gypsies couldn't understand Xenia's obsession with sorcery. So, after a while she left them and settled here. There weren't any hard feelings, though. Not that Aunt Xenia would have cared if there were. She always said, 'As many men, so many minds; every one his own way.' Terence wrote that, and how true it is. We must all do what suits us best."

Sterling lifted his cup again. "To Terence and Xenia. May they have found each other in the spirit world."

Chimera sighed and carried the meal to the table. "Aunt Xenia bought this land with—well, sometimes the gypsies were forced to steal, and Aunt Xenia saved all her plunder. She bought this plot with some of it. Not long afterward, she got me. She swore I used to be a flower and that she turned me into a baby because she was lonely."

She had a habit of jumping from subject to subject, and Sterling was hard-pressed to sort through the information she gave so quickly. "She saved her plunder," he repeated. "A flower baby?" He watched her lick a drop of stew from her parted lips. Her mouth glistened like a pink flower moistened with fresh rain. The longer he stared at it, the more convinced he became she really had been a blossom at one time.

"The flower story was only Aunt Xenia's nice way of answering my questions concerning my mother and father," Chimera explained. "When I got older, she admitted she'd found me on the doorstep one morning. Strange how life is a circle, isn't it? I mean, that's how I came by Snig, Snag, and Snug too. Someone left them on the porch. Archibald named them, the names stuck, and they really do suit the boys.

"And Archibald," she said, glancing at the boy's sleeping form, "has no one either. I got him a few months before the triplets arrived. Found him lying in my garden one spring morning nine years ago. He was only six, his leg was broken in two places, and he was half-starved. I don't know where he's from or how he managed to find his way here. He can't remember either. All he knew was his first name and his age. Anyway, I didn't know what else to do but take him in. Word must have gotten around that I'd adopted a crippled boy, and I imagine that's why Snig, Snag, and Snug were left here. I guess folks think I'm running a home for unwanted children."

Unwanted children. Sterling felt a sudden wave of compassion for the four young boys asleep in the room. "And are you running one?"

"What would
you
have done had you found them?"

The infant in the bedroom was proof of what he would have done, he mused.

"I was seventeen when I found Archibald," Chimera continued. "Aunt Xenia had died the year before. She passed away in her sleep before she had time to teach me all her magic. She became a
true
sorceress, Sterling, but she'd only just begun to explain all the mysteries of her powers to me when she died."

Aunt Xenia, Sterling mused. The Greek woman sounded like a real character, and since she'd raised Chimera, that explained Chimera's unusual nature. But though she was unusual in
some
ways, he would soon have the proof she was no different than any other woman. She would learn tonight that she wasn't the only one in the world who practiced magic.

"Xenia had drawn up a will and left everything to me." Chimera sighed again. "My inheritance was this cabin, this small plot of land, her books by the great writers, and volumes on witchcraft and mythology."

At the deeply pensive look in her whiskey eyes, Sterling added, "And an unyielding belief in all things supernatural."

She nodded and looked down into her bowl, his intense gaze making her uncomfortably warm. "You were right. I shouldn't have stoked the fire." When she realized she was blushing, she blushed more.

Sterling smiled knowingly and leaned back in his chair, the wooden legs groaning. "This place is out in the middle of nowhere, and one of Cochise's strongholds isn't far from here. Haven't the Apaches bothered you?"

She looked back up at him and was unable to tear her eyes away from his. She tried to remember the things her Aunt Xenia had taught her about trances. For she was surely being put into a trance by Sterling's voice, eyes... aura. She forced herself to concentrate. "The land itself provides most everything we need," she blurted, and rose abruptly to clear the table. "We go to what settlements still exist for what we can't grow, make, or hunt. But there isn't much civilization around anymore since the Apache fury began. It's just as well, though. Folks call us misfits, and we aren't very welcome anywhere. And as for perils... my magic has protected us from danger so far."

They'd never faced real danger if her magic was their only means of defense, Sterling mused with a slow-spreading smile that disappeared when he saw her frowning at him. "Sorry," he muttered.

"I thought you'd be different than the people who taunt me," she said softly, and crossed to the window. "Please be different, Sterling."

Moonlight swirled a halo around her. It made her look like some dark angel, he thought. "Different," he whispered. How odd. He was seeking to prove she
wasn't
different, that she, like all the other women he'd known, would yield to him. He studied her brandy eyes more intently and saw a mystery in them. A secret was in her low, husky voice too. There was an almost mystical essence about her. "What are you hiding from me, Chimera?"

The look in his eyes seemed to reach out and touch her. For one brief moment, she considered trying to escape its soft, silver caress. But it held her fast for the longest time, and she felt it touching her everywhere. She blinked and then forced herself to look at his hair. It fell in ebony waves to his shoulders. It made him look dangerous. Sinister. A tide of something very similar to pleasure crashed through her at the thought of how strong, how virile he was.

He rose and ambled toward her, stopping when his arm brushed hers. "Well?"

She moved away from him, but he reached out for her. His hand met her shoulder, his fingers rested upon her back. She watched mesmerized as those fingers then slid through a lock of her hair. "I'm not
hiding
anything," she said. "I—I just haven't
told
you everything."

"And how long, sorceress," he began, and smiled down into her eyes, "will you keep your secrets from me?"

"How long will you keep yours?"

He frowned. She wasn't supposed to have said that. She was supposed to have melted in his arms! What the hell was her problem anyway? And what the hell had happened to the ten minutes he'd estimated it would take him to achieve her surrender? He'd been here all evening, and the only thing he'd succeeded in achieving was a lot of aggravation.

He left her and strolled to examine the huge piles of books on the other side of the room. While looking them over, he decided he'd give her more time to submit to him. Yes, it was probably better not to rush these things anyway. His decision soothed him somewhat. "It's strange that volumes of such respected works would have found their way to these uncivilized parts. I picture them on gleaming bookshelves in the house of some rich scholar on the east coast. Did your Aunt Xenia take them with her when she joined the gypsies?"

Chimera smiled fondly at the memory of her beloved Xenia. "She took nothing when she left her parents' home. She said that once she was with the band, she begged, borrowed, or stole books from wherever she went. She didn't care who wrote them or what they were about. All books, any kind, fascinated her. She spent many years collecting them, and since she also spent a good part of her life traveling, the origins of her books are anyone's guess. And I've been able to add to her collection. About six months ago, the triplets found a deserted wagon. We never found its owner. He either lost his team and was forced to leave his wagon, or... well, maybe the Apaches got him. But the wagon was filled to the very brim with books. Perhaps the man was a professor whose fantasy was to open a school out here. Or maybe he'd come with plans to establish a bookstore. I'll never know, but whether he's dead or still alive, I continue to thank him for the treasures he left behind."

"Or maybe the mystical spirits placed the wagon out there," Sterling said in mock fright, and rolled his eyes around as if looking for ghosts. He saw her expression of annoyance and quickly said, "Aristotle, Plato." He picked up Plato's
Republic
and thumbed through it. "Do you really read these boring books?"

She resisted the temptation to go stand next to him. "Much of Plato's work reads like a story. It's not boring. None of my books are, if you possess a real desire to learn. The Greek dramatist Euripides wrote, 'Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.' I think of that line and apply it to my own life. No matter how mysterious were my beginnings I don't want to lose or misinterpret the past of my life that I know, nor do I wish for a dull future."

There was nothing dull about her, Sterling thought. She was a fascinating medley of storybook fantasy and age-old knowledge. And because of her unwavering faith in both her outlandish beliefs and the timeless wisdom she studied, she gave the impression of making perfect sense. Somehow she mixed myth with reality and made it seem as if the two went hand in hand.

He took a step toward her, chuckling when she took one backward. "Philosophy and witchcraft," he said. "What do the ancient philosophers and sorcerers have in common?" He turned to replace the book on the stack behind him.

She stared at his back, bare, rippled with muscle. His tan skin gleamed in the dim firelight; his hair shone also. Fascinated, she watched the glow of the fire flicker through those black, black shoulder-length waves. "Me," she finally answered.

When he turned to face her, he saw she was standing in the spill of moonlight again and found himself wondering what the philosophers had to say about passion. He started to ask Chimera, but stopped himself. Passion was definitely not the stuff of conversation. "You," he repeated. "And who, exactly, are you,
estrellita?"

"Estrellita,"
she whispered, her breath quickening at the soft sound of the word, the even softer sound of his deep voice.

"Little star," he translated huskily. "Your eyes... stars are in them."

"The firelight," she managed to say, still staring at the gleaming, dancing reflections of fireshine in his hair, "must be glowing in them."

"Will you answer me, Chimera? Who are you?"

"I... What? Who am I?" She wrinkled her nose in confusion. "That's an odd question. Who's Sterling?"

He inhaled sharply and frowned. No one had ever bothered asking him that question before, and he wasn't sure how to answer her. His confusion deepened his scowl.

Chimera noticed his consternation and wondered what caused it. Her earlier conviction of his sensitivity grew. Slowly, hesitantly, she crossed the room, and when she was before him, she reached for his hand. "I asked you to be different," she whispered, looking deeply into his silver eyes, "and you can say that you will."