Three Wishes (27 page)

“Yes,” I whispered. “But I cannot tell you, Javier. I simply cannot. I’d understand if you need me to go.”

“No, that can’t be the answer,” he said huskily. “All I know is that you are unlike any woman I have ever met, Zara Ruiz.” He shook his head slightly, as if in wonder. “And I hate it that my mother made you cry. What was it? What tore such a terrible rift between you? Did she guess your secret?”

I wanted to tell him then. Just let it all spill out. But it was one thing to share my secret and another to expose his mother’s too.

I cast about for what I
could
say. “Your mother…believes I shouldn’t try to return to my own home. It’s as if…it matters not to her. She thinks I should only be content to be here, with y-your family.”

His handsome eyes lit up with surprise and a flash of bitterness. “It was not her place, Zara, to say such things. Of course you must wish to regain your memory. It must drive you nearly mad to not remember.” He paused. “But would it be so awful, truly? To remain here with…us?”

I sighed and looked down to the sand then back into his eyes. “We argued about that, Javier. It’s not the right…
time
for me to be here. With you.”

His hands dropped away from me, and he stepped back as if he’d been struck. He swallowed hard. “I see.”

Part of me silently screamed
no
, aware that I’d hurt him. But part of me was relieved. When he was touching me, looking so caring and concerned for me…that was a sort of pull I didn’t need right now, when I was thinking about how to get home. I’d gotten caught up—so caught up in this time, with these people, that I’d started to forget that I didn’t belong here at all.

He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at me with big puppy-dog eyes, making him look all kinds of sexy. I hurriedly glanced to the waves again.

“So that is what made her angry?” he asked. “Angry enough to leave you and take both guards with her? Because you refused her? Refused…us?”

“No. I asked her to leave,” I muttered. “I wanted to be alone.”

He huffed a laugh. “Except for your wolf-dog.”

I smiled and glanced sidelong at him. “Yes, except for Centinela,” I said. “
She
was welcome.”

He shook his head, silently chiding me for going so far as to name her. “And then I intruded.”

“Yes,” I said softly, crossing my arms, wanting to forget that moment he touched my face so tenderly.

I could feel him staring at me. “But that still doesn’t explain your tears.”

“I was angry,” I said with a shrug. “Sometimes I cry when I’m angry.”
Like when I want to kill someone.

“That is an odd reaction,” he mused.

“Is it?” I asked. I’d cried when I was angry for as long as I could remember, which invariably made me angrier, because I didn’t want to cry. It had been especially bad in elementary school. The bullies always thought they had the upper hand. It was part of why I’d agreed to learn self-defense, I mused, wanting to know how to take someone down if they were attacking me. Now I was confident that I could face anyone in a dark alley and not dissolve into tears. But when someone wasn’t physically attacking me, if I was just emotionally angry…I dissolved into tears, nine times out of ten.

I almost itched for a physical fight now, and my knife. My Krav Maga instructor had taught me how to use my pocket knife well—how to disarm someone threatening me with one. I wished I’d taken it that night I’d gone to the beach. A bit more of home, my past, to remember it by. A bit more protection in a land, a time, in which I felt crazy-vulnerable.

“I will try not to make you angry,” Javier said beside me, bringing me back to the present. “I don’t like to see a woman cry.” He sighed. “Did I make you want to cry the other day when I said I’d keep your golden lamp?”

“Yes.”

“You cried?”

“A little. But mostly I plotted how to break into your safe.”

He laughed at that. “Did you try?” He turned to face me, a look of wonder etched into his expression again.

“I haven’t had the chance yet. But I will.”

His smile broadened. “I suppose that next you’ll remember that you’re a bank robber and have never met a safe you couldn’t crack.”

“Why, yes,” I said. “That is indeed my next surprise for you.”

He reached up to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear. “You’re not really a bank robber, are you? That isn’t your secret?”

I smiled. Was that a hint of true fear in his eyes? “No,” I said. “That’s not on my list of talents, as much as I wish it were.” I reached out to take his big hand in both of mine. “Please, Javier. Will you please give me my lamp back?”

“Why? Why do you need it? Unless you are leaving…” Concern tightened the muscles at his cheek and jawline.

“I’m not leaving. Not yet. It just would make me feel better, having it in my room. Please?”

“Just as soon as you tell me your secret,” he said, tipping up my chin and looking over my face as if he meant to sketch it later. “That’s when I shall give you back your golden lamp.”

I swallowed hard, feeling angry tears prick behind my eyes. “Javier…”

“Zara,” he returned, leaning closer, “those are my terms. Are you ready?”

He leaned closer still, searching my eyes.
Ready for another kiss?
I thought madly.
Or for me to tell him?

“I can’t, Javier, I just can’t.” I said, wrenching aside and striding angrily away to grab the little hat. Why did he have to press me on it? Why did he have to make me feel all that I was feeling for him, confusing the issue?

I might’ve been sent here for some weird reason, but I wasn’t a foolish, googly-eyed, romantic chica, ready to accept some crazy fairy tale that it was for love. I was smarter than Doña Elena on this front. Wiser.

I was a self-made woman. Making my way through a somewhat challenging life. Fairy tales didn’t come around for girls like me. They came to girls who grew up in Beverly Hills or Palos Verdes. Girls who got a shiny new BMW on their sixteenth birthday, girls who had handsome boys hanging around them all the time, not just when they
flew through time.

I trudged up to my gelding, lifted my hand, and smiled again as he turned to me for a good scratch of his long nose before I grabbed hold of the reins. But then, as I studied the stirrup, I bit my lip. I’d never mounted a horse in a corset without help; I could barely breathe, let alone move well enough to attempt it.

“May I assist you?” Javier asked, leading his mare up to me.

My first instinct was to say no, to find a way on my own. But I knew that would be idiotic. I might be trying until sundown and have to walk all the way home. And he would never leave me alone. He’d stand back and watch me flounder in the fallout of my own stubborn pride.

“Yes,” I said primly. “Thank you.”

He bent to offer me his interlaced hands. I lifted my skirts slightly, set one boot in his hands, and reached for the saddle horn with the other.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” I said.

“Up you go,” he said, lifting me neatly into place.

I busied myself with arranging my skirts, trying to ignore his warm hand as he settled my boot in a stirrup and then looked up at me. “Good?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said, taking the reins from him.

His mouth twitched, as if he held back a smile, wanting to keep toying with me. As we set off for home, I wondered just how long I’d be able to hold out against Javier and his longing looks and angsty questions.

I have to get that lamp and get the heck out of here,
I thought.
I just have to.

Because day by day, I was falling deeper and deeper, like the tide pools buried by the sands of time.

CHAPTER 20

The next day at the ranch was pretty tense. I managed to avoid Doña Elena and Javier most of the day after breakfast, and I convinced Maria to bring me my lunch, claiming illness.

Because I
was
sick in a way. Sick at heart, sick with grief, sick with worry. That was how I justified it anyway.

When I didn’t show up for supper, Francesca came to check on me, carrying a tray of tea and
churros
, looking perfectly put together, as usual. Like a mini-Elena. “May I join you for a moment? Or are you convalescing?” she asked.

No, no,
I thought, staring out my window.
I’m flat-out spent on the “convalescing” front. I just don’t want to go out there to face Doña Elena. Or your brother.
“Come in,” I said.

She set the tray on my table and glanced at me. “Well, I must say that you look well,” she said. “Your color is high. Or is that a fever? Should you not be in bed?”

“No, I don’t think I have a fever,” I said. “Please, sit, Francesca. Stay with me for a while.”

“Are you certain?” she asked, her delicate, dark brows arcing together. “I will not tax you?”

“I’m certain,” I said, gesturing toward the chair.

She took a seat by the table and poured me a cup of tea. “I take it you are not ill?”

“No. I just needed…to be alone.”

“Ah,” she said, wise eyes scanning mine. “Is it my older brother or my mother who has caused this? Or Jacinto, begging you for that game of backgammon? Or Estie, wanting to braid your hair?”

I matched her gentle smile. “No, none of them. Or, well…maybe all of them.”

Francesca’s smile faded, though, as she set down her cup. “Zara, I needed to ask you about something. I heard Mamá and Javier arguing…”

Noise downstairs made us look up, then to each other. The front door opened and closed. Then we heard Javier say, “What a surprise, to see you here,” his tone tight, displeased.

Frani rose. “Do you mind?” she asked, gesturing toward the door, clearly more interested in the newcomers than me now.

I followed her out into the hall but held back, peeking over the edge of the railing toward the front door below as Frani paused partway down the stairs.

“Miss Ventura!” cried a low voice in an English accent. I saw the sweep of a hat and a dark head bob in a bow. “How is it possible that you are even prettier than when we met at the rodeo?”

Frani giggled and hurried down the rest of the stairs. I moved left, trying to see a bit better…

There
, I thought, peeking around a column. The man had two others behind him. Doña Elena stood a few paces away, clearly unhappy. Javier, not much better. Only the children looked delighted at the prospect of visitors.

“Madame Ventura,” the man said grandly, taking her reluctant hand in his and kissing it. “It has been far too long.” He went on to kiss Frani’s hand like a proper gentleman and then shook Jacinto’s hand in grave, ceremonious fashion, which moved him more clearly into my line of vision. Mateo and Estie were next. “Ah, you are all here,” he said. “But what of the mysterious guest I’ve heard so much about? She is the talk of the entire Alta California coast! I was so disappointed not to meet her at the rodeo.”

Now I knew him. The one Frani had flirted with at the rodeo—the man twice her age. The reason why her eyes were so bright, a blush at her cheeks.

“Señorita Ruiz has taken ill today, Captain Craig,” Javier said, now sounding oddly stressed. “Perhaps you can make her acquaintance at a later date.”

Just then Captain Craig glanced up, and his hazel eyes met mine before I could duck away. “Perhaps,” he said, with a secretive glint to his smile.

Javier started to follow his gaze upward, but I moved safely out of sight. I felt childish and silly, but I deeply desired to know what all the fuss was about. Why Doña Elena didn’t like this guy. Why Frani did. Why Javier seemed to be hanging back, not the normal gracious host he’d been with every other captain who came to visit.

I needed the distraction. To think of anything but me, the Venturas, and my time-slip conundrum.

I took a deep breath and let it out. I couldn’t hide away for days at a time, could I? No matter how uncomfortable I might be in Doña Elena’s company, wasn’t it sensible to make the most of every hour I had here until it was time for me to head home?

As the group moved into the library, I went to my room, combed out my hair, swept it up into some sort of messy bun—I didn’t bother to look—pinned it, and then headed down the stairs.

I found Doña Elena and Javier arguing in hushed tones in the foyer outside the library. “We do not entertain those of his ilk, Javier,” she whispered. “Send him on his way. If Lieutenant de Leon heard that we’d entertained him, here on Mexican soil…”

“I cannot simply toss him out the door, Mamá,” Javier returned, so quietly I barely heard him. “And he was on ‘Mexican soil,’ at the rodeo, right under Leon’s nose. There is no law against that.”

“That is far different than having a
Unionist
here, in our very home!”

Javier took a long, deep breath and pinched his nose. “We need to conduct business with him and others like him. It is unwise to turn him away.”

“Unwise? Or have you welcomed him because you want to hear more of his treasonous—” She broke off when she finally saw me, and she gave me a tentative smile. “Why, Zara, my dear. You are feeling better, I see.”