Francisca Morena stomped back toward her daily imprisonment, rubbing at her arm. It continued to tingle, although Felipe hadn’t held her that tightly.
He’d been so furious over nothing.
He never touched her.
Not ever.
At least, not outside of her dreams.
The linen of her shirt scrubbed at her skin as she tried to push that tingle away. She was a perverse girl, to have these… feelings for a man who hated her. Or rather, her body was perverse. Her waking mind certainly wanted nothing to do with them.
She’d been seventeen when her body had first noticed another man’s body. And then her body had noticed Felipe’s body—and wouldn’t stop, no matter how mean he was to her.
She worked as hard as any man on this ranch, was as skilled as any cowboy she knew—but Felipe had never once given her a kind word about her abilities. The other hands, her father—hell, even Juan—all admitted that she was as accomplished as they.
Had it been any other man who’d had to run from an irate cow, Felipe would have been laughing right along. But since it was her, he shook her and yelled in her face. In front of everyone, too.
Stupid man. Stupid, mean man.
She dug her toes into the dirt, kicking it up with each step. That childish pleasure took only the slightest edge from her anger.
What made it worse was that he was only ever mean to her. If only she could ignore Felipe’s meanness—or at least give up her campaign to win his approval. But that was a skill she’d never been able to cultivate, no matter how she tried.
She released her hold on her arm, but the tingling went on. Horrid, horrid Felipe. She would feel the imprint of that all day long.
Think of him all day long.
When he’d first come to the rancho to live, fifteen, orphaned, and alone, she’d felt sorry for him. She’d only been eight herself and couldn’t imagine a more terrible thing, to lose his entire family like that.
Through the years, she’d worked hard to learn the skills of a rancher, to earn her place with the men, thinking she might win his approval as well. But Felipe had only grown more sullen, more surly, as she grew more skilled.
Unfortunately, his sour attitude didn’t sour her on all of him. She noticed his lips as he pursed them in thought, and little tremors would dance across her skin. She noticed the strong lines of his neck, taut with muscle and tendon and…
She clutched at the spot on her arm and gave herself a shake. Enough of him. The rest of the day would be bad enough without Felipe dogging her thoughts. Stuck in the house, playing the dutiful, responsible lady… She sighed and kicked at a pebble on the path, sending it careening into the brush, never to be seen again.
Trixie popped her head out of the brush, buckwheat blooms clinging to her long ears, her tail snapping back and forth with joy. She barked once, a bark of greeting. Franny’s father appeared then, coming up the path that led to the barn, no doubt also on his way to the Big House.
“Papa,” she called with a wave, already feeling better. He’d be glad to hear of her quick escape from the cow. He wouldn’t grab too tightly on her arm and yell in her face, like some other people.
“Francisca,” he said in greeting, a smile flashing from beneath his mustache.
She stopped to wait for him, tucking her arm along his when he caught up with her. They would talk of rancho business and her horses—all her favorite things.
“How is my girl today?” he asked. “I saw you helping doctor cattle today. You’re getting quite fast at it.”
She preened at that, the way her beautiful elder sister Catarina might if someone complimented her eyes or some such. No man complimented Franny’s appearance—only her skills. She preferred it that way. Skill was something that could be cultivated. Beauty was only given.
“Thank you. And how are you today?” She peered at his hair. “I think I see another strand of silver there.”
Her father patted at his hair with his other hand. “If there is, you put it there.”
She laughed. “Not me. I’m the good child. I’m staying with my parents for always and caring for them.” And when her parents were gone and Juan owned the rancho… well, her brother would allow her to stay in her home.
Wouldn’t he?
No need to worry now. Her father was hale and hearty, even if he had more silver in his hair and moved more slowly than before. But as long as he refrained from the heavy work, there was no reason he wouldn’t see a ripe old age. Felipe took care of most everything on the ranch. Her father should enjoy the fruits of his labors these days, not fret over the details of running the rancho.
She opened her mouth to tell him so, but he spoke before she could.
“I think it’s time for Juan to take more responsibility. To assume his place as the son of the rancho.” His tone was musing, the one he used when he wanted her to help him puzzle something out.
Juan. Who would someday own everything on the rancho. The heir, the prince. Franny had spent most of her life never wishing she was anything other than what she was. The rancho might never hold her name on the deed, but she had a place here.
But when she looked at Juan, every so often, the tiniest voice within her, the softest whisper of all, might say, If only I’d been a boy.
“Who will run the stockyard, then?” It wasn’t the sole consideration, but it was the first that came to her mind.
“Sal Whitman wants his youngest to take it over.”
Her father didn’t say, but Franny knew why that was—Hank Whitman was sweet on one of the Larsen girls and the two families didn’t get along. She didn’t think such a solution would solve the problem, but no one asked her opinion on romantic matters. Likely because she had no experience with them.
Her arm tingled. She ignored it.
“Well, I suppose Juan should take on more duties here,” she allowed. Had she been a son, she’d never have run off to the valley. She’d be here, overseeing her land. She wouldn’t leave it to a foreman alone. As for the foreman… “What about Felipe?”
He was surly and mean and tried to keep her from doing as she liked—and she didn’t want him to leave. Perhaps because he hadn’t yet admitted that she was capable, skilled. That she could be trusted to do the things she did.
Not because her limbs tingled and her breath stilled whenever she caught him looking at her.
“Ah, Felipe.” More weary sigh than actual words. “I thought someday he’d wish to return home to rebuild his parents’ rancho. But he never has.”
“Felipe needs to be pushed sometimes,” she said. Felipe presented an open, helpful face to the world, but beneath that was a will of steel. She’d run full into that will of his more times than she could count.
Her father nodded. “Perhaps he thinks he needs to remain here, in order to repay us for taking him in.”
Perhaps. It did sound like something Felipe would do. But she couldn’t shake the notion that he stayed partly in order to avoid his own rancho, rather than solely because of his obligation to her father.
“If Juan is running the rancho, you can tell Felipe that any obligation has been met. That should ease his mind about leaving.” As for avoiding his family’s land, Felipe couldn’t do that forever. She wouldn’t, if she had the chance at a ranch of her own. “Hank in charge of the stockyards,” she ticked off, “Juan running our rancho, Diego as his foreman, and Felipe running his own place.”
And where will I be in all that? Where I am now, where I always want to remain?
But that would be a question for Juan, once the dust settled. For all that they bickered and teased, Juan treated her well enough. Like an annoying young sister most of the time, but a useful annoying sister.
“You should think about moving Diego into the overseer’s cottage then,” she said. Diego was on the younger side, yes, but he was good at managing people. Perhaps not as good as Felipe was, but Diego hadn’t all of Felipe’s experience. “He wants to marry Lupe, and that will give them a home.”
Felipe would be leaving the overseer’s cottage to go to his own home. Perhaps he would even find a wife to take with him.
She did not like that idea. It twisted and curled in her gut like an angry snake. But she kept her step light and her head high. Staying here on the rancho meant that she’d never be any man’s wife. Especially not a man who thought her nothing more than a pest.
She’d accepted that.
“I knew that talking with you would clarify the matter for me,” her father said. The approval in his voice quieted the snake inside her. “What would I do without you?”
She hugged his arm tighter. Thank you God for sending me such a father. “Have fewer gray strands?” she teased.
“Ha. It’s your brother and sisters that have given me dyspepsia. I’ve never had to worry about you.”
“And you never will,” she promised, glad to give that assurance. Anything she’d wanted to do, her father had let her, without telling her that young ladies didn’t do such things. She’d spend the rest of her life living up to that trust he’d placed in her.
When they reached the front porch, she reluctantly released his arm. She didn’t want to go into that house. But she had no choice. She’d had her morning free, and it was time to pay the price. With housework.
“I’ll see you at dinner?” she asked her father wistfully, wanting a moment more with him.
“Of course. Now go be a good girl for your mother.”
With that, her last bit of freedom for the day slipped through her fingers.
So she trudged up the steps to do just that.
Franny set her thimble—or rather one of Catarina’s old thimbles—on her thumb and picked up her needle. She wrapped her fingers around the darning ball and set about closing the hole in her stocking. Mending, mending, mending—would people in this house ever cease tearing their clothes?
After her talk with her father, she’d gone upstairs to change into her dress—or rather one of Isabel’s old dresses—removing the trappings of the life she wanted to put on the uniform of one she didn’t. She’d cooked and served dinner under her mother’s watchful gaze, her mouth shut tight the entire time. Her mother had no interest in Franny’s opinions on the housework, and Franny had no interest in giving them. Once dinner was eaten, she cleared up and prepared for supper, still under her mother’s silent observation.
When Agnes and Lily appeared for an afternoon visit and her mother disappeared for her afternoon rest, Franny’s voice could finally be unstopped.
The three of them were sewing in the parlor, as was usual for their weekly visits. Agnes and Lily were chattering together about their children—always their favorite topic of conversation.
“And then Lewis put the entire thing in his mouth and swallowed it before I could stop him!” Lily was saying.
Agnes made a noise that conveyed both sympathy for Lily and disapproval of little Lewis.
Franny wasn’t certain what to say about that.
It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy seeing Lily and Agnes—since she’d known them all her life, their presence was familiar, comfortable. The three of them spoke the same shorthand, knew all the same stories. But as the years went on and her friends grew more and more married and added more and more children, the circles of their lives intersected less than they had.
Franny had nothing to say about children, and while she could speak to housekeeping, thanks to her mother’s insistence that she help with it, she didn’t want to.
It wasn’t always talk of children and recipes that could stretch to feed six—they chatted about people they knew, what was happening in town, the weather and whatnot. But when they did speak of their children, Franny got a strange tightness in her throat. A kind of strangling, as if she were being pressed beneath a mountain of pebbles.
She couldn’t imagine being tied down like that—to children or a husband or a house. Bad enough that her mother tied her down in the afternoons. If she didn’t have her mornings free to be outside, working as she did—
“Franny, are you all right? You made a strange sound,” Lily said. She’d been the little mother of their group from the very beginning. Franny and Agnes charged on ahead to new mischief while Lily followed behind, ready to ensure the mischief never turned dangerous.
“Of course.” Franny’s fingers tightened on the darning ball as she slid the needle into the stocking. What an enormous hole. It was going to take forever to stitch. “My mind was wandering.”
“I wish I had time to let my mind wander,” Agnes said, a hint of sand rubbing beneath her words. “Sometimes I think you had the right of it, Franny, staying at home and never marrying.”
Of course Franny had the right of it, at least for herself. The same sand in Agnes’s tone gritted in Franny’s voice whenever she had to speak of chores and housework and being stuck inside. It might wear her voice away completely if she didn’t have the ranch work to escape to.
“Oh yes, sometimes I think of how things might have been different if I’d stayed at home,” Lily agreed.
But there was the slightest note of pity in her tone. Lily would never have chosen such a thing. Having been the little mother since her youth, being a true mother was all she’d ever dreamed of.
And what was Franny meant to say to that? I’d have chosen what you have if I could. A husband. Children. My own home.
The life of a wife wasn’t for Franny. To say that she wished for that life would be a lie—plain and true was how she preferred to speak, even if it did get her into trouble at times.
“I’m happy where I am.” Franny kept her tone mild, so as not to cast judgment on her friends’ very different kind of life. “You love your little ones too much to ever give them up.”
It was the right note to strike. Both Agnes and Lily put on wryly fond smiles. They sewed in silence for a time, though Franny was sorely tempted to swear a bit when the darning ball kept slipping about.
She’d rather be repairing fences than these dratted stockings. Or perhaps that bridle in the barn waiting to be repaired. But the stockings had to be fixed too.
“It must be nice having Juan home for these few weeks,” Lily said. “How is he?”
“Well enough.” Having him around to tease was fun, but there wasn’t much in his visit to interest her friends. Juan loved his dogs, he liked to hunt—there wasn’t much more to him than that. He’d have to change quick enough when her father put him in charge of the ranch, though.
“And how is Felipe?” Lily went on. “I feel as if I haven’t seen him in ages.”
It couldn’t have been more than a week at most—Franny knew Felipe had been to the Whitman place just last Saturday—but in a town as small as Cabrillo, that counted as an age.
Franny slid a glance at Lily, trying to take the measure of her expression.
Did her friend ever suspect Franny’s reaction whenever she heard his name? Did she see the start Franny suppressed, the shiver of awareness Franny tried to ignore? Likely not.
What girl would feel so about a man who treated her as Felipe did?
Not a smart one.
She pursed her lips and resisted the urge to rub at her arm. “Felipe is the same as ever.” She made it clear their contentious relationship was the same as ever.
Lily met Agnes’s gaze in a sly sort of way, but neither said anything more. Which of course they wouldn’t—they were her friends. They might know each other’s every story, but some things weren’t spoken of. Such as Agnes’s feelings for the boy who’d never offered her marriage, or Lily’s pregnancies that had never borne fruit. But even if they weren’t mentioned, friends remembered such things and sympathized.
The clock struck two, forcing Lily and Agnes to rise and gather up their things. They left with a flurry of embraces and kisses and promises to meet again next week at Lily’s house.
As she shut the door behind them, Franny released a sigh. Time to finish supper and set the table before her mother rose from her afternoon rest. And darn her stockings and start on Juan’s socks. He’d need those before he left again for the valley. Oh, and those pants that he’d torn a hole in the seat of. When she’d taken over the mending, Franny had understood why Catarina had always been sniping at Juan about the state of his clothes. He was careless with them, make no mistake.
His socks, his pants, dinner… And there was something else… Something she couldn’t quite remember.
She tapped her fingers against the door frame, trying to tap free the memory. But nothing came to her.
Ah well, likely nothing important.
The kitchen was the prison she spent most of her afternoons in. Hot with the oven firing, no window to look out of and daydream over, and endless piles of food to chop, bread to knead, and pots to wash. Franny had learned cooking well enough to please her mother—or at least to silence most of her criticism—but she hated it.
She began chopping the chiles for supper, her nose burning with the scent. But she didn’t dare rub at it, since the chile juice on her fingers would only make the burning worse. And her fingertips would carry the scent the rest of the day, making her gag every time they got near her nose.
If only Catarina hadn’t gone off and gotten married. Or Isabel either. Then Franny wouldn’t have to do any of this.
A knock at the back door had her wiping her hands on her apron, her nose still twitching.
Felipe waited on the other side.
Her heart jerked at the sight of him, hat in hand, sun catching at the thick dark mass of his hair. And his long fingers, cradling his hat so gently…
His touch on her this morning hadn’t been as gentle as that.
With his dark hair, dark eyes, and neatly trimmed mustache, his features were nothing more than perfectly pleasant. The dreamy, sad quality of his eyes was the only remarkable feature. And yet, sometimes she could not look away from his face.
He held up a shirt. “I found this in one of the pastures.”
So he wasn’t here to apologize, then. Not that she should have nursed that hope—he never apologized. At least not to her.
She took the shirt from him. One of her father’s shirts, which had blown off the line a few days ago. Now dirty and torn. Wonderful.
She crumpled it into her fist. “Thank you. I lost another one with it. You didn’t happen to see it, did you?” She kept her tone distant, formal.
He shook his head. “I’ll keep an eye out for it.” Just as stilted as her words to him.
“You didn’t have to knock,” she said, sharpish with her annoyance over the shirts and his behavior this morning and this stiffness between them. “You could have come in.” She didn’t like seeing him standing at the back door like some kind of supplicant. It irritated her.
Of course, everything she did irritated him.
“My boots are muddy,” he said tightly.
“That never stops Juan or Papa,” she pointed out.
“Yes, and you have to clean it up.” He sounded angry at her about it. Which made no sense.
She didn’t want to expend the effort on trying to understand him. Such an attempt was certain to fail.
“Well, thank you for bringing me the shirt,” she said, intending to send him on his way. A memory slipped free of her forgetfulness. “Oh, and I have a bridle to fix and I’ll need your leather punch to do it. Can I borrow it tomorrow?”
His mouth flattened. “Tell me which bridle and I’ll fix it.”
“No, I want to do it myself.” Her voice climbed with frustration. Such a simple thing and he wouldn’t even allow her to do it.
“It’ll be easier if I do it.” As flat as his mouth.
Stubborn, hateful man.
“I want to do it myself.” Her lips and tongue drew those words with deliberation, each syllable distinct and willful.
He dropped his gaze, his fingers tightening on his hat, his lashes veiling those sad, dark eyes, and the parts of her that weren’t tight with temper went tight with longing.
Stubborn, hateful girl to yearn after a stubborn, hateful man.
“Fine.” The word was short as her temper. He set his hat back on his head and left without a word of farewell, his legs putting distance between them as fast as they could.
And still she noticed the broadness of his shoulders, the leanness of his hips, her body vibrating with more than simple irritation.
She slammed the door, to let him know she was angry and to relieve some of the frustration boiling in her.
“Francisca, why must you slam the door?”
Franny jumped as if her mother had shouted, rather than spoken it as softly as she did everything else.
Sometimes, she wondered how a lady such as Señora Maria Dolores Alvarado Jaramillo de Moreno could have produced a creature such as Franny.
With her sister Catarina, one could easily see the resemblance. They both shared the same sloe-eyed beauty, although the Señora’s was a little more time-worn, a little more dignified.
Her sister Isabel’s frigid reserve and towering air of command was an exact copy of their mother’s.
But Franny? She was more likely the offspring of some cuckoo mother who’d long ago forgotten the nest she’d snuck her little egg into.
Even now, dressed as she was in her second best, combed and washed, Franny was dusty and windblown next to her mother. Too loud, too fidgety, too wild, compared to the almost holy serenity of her mother.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to slam it quite so hard.” She really hadn’t—she’d wanted to slam it harder, so mad was she at Felipe.
“What’s that in your hand?”
Quietly asked, but Franny still didn’t want to answer. “Oh.” She tried to gather as much of it as she could into her fist. Which wasn’t much. How to explain the shirt to a lady who’d never let anything fly from her wash lines? “A shirt that fell from the line. Felipe found it and brought it to me.”
A miniscule flicker of her mother’s mouth betrayed her displeasure.
“I’m sorry,” Franny said hastily. “I won’t do it again.”
“Francisca, you must be more careful. A little more care in your work would save quite some bother.”
Franny didn’t bother to say that she did take care in her work—her ranch work.
“Yes, Mother.” As mealy-mouthed as if she were eight years old.
Her mother’s expression never eased. But why would it? Franny was nothing but a disappointment to her mother. Catarina took great pride in keeping house, and Isabel might as well be a line-for-line copy of their mother.
But Franny the disappointment was the daughter who’d never thought of marrying or leaving home. And for love of her father, not her mother.
“Did you change the linens in Juan’s room?” her mother asked.
Damn. That was what she’d forgotten to do. Likely because it wasn’t part of her usual round of chores.
When could she do it? There was still the supper to start, the darning to finish, the stains to scrub out of her father’s shirt… “I’ll do by the end of the day.”
Somehow she’d just have to find the time.
Her mother might be carved of marble, for all the emotion written across her features. Beautiful, terrible—cold.
“Finish with the supper,” the Señora ordered. “Then finish your other chores.”
She left without a sound, even the fabric of her skirts obedient to her commands.
Franny released a great whoosh of a breath, the tension she’d been holding with it escaping her frame, her fist still clenched tight around the shirt.
She allowed herself to slump for five long seconds and despair over the hours ahead of her, scrubbing, cooking, and being miserable. Five seconds of self-pity, and then she was done.
She straightened and went off to obey her mother’s commands.