“I’m going alone,” Elliot said.
His family had crowded into Bubba’s room to take turns looking through My First Telescope to the tell-tale light of a distant fire. Bubba said there was a cave out there that he’d discovered on one of his many excursions with his dad, and that he called it the secret castle because that was what it looked like to him. Garrett remembered the place once Bubba reminded him. And Elliot remembered that Esmeralda had mentioned a cave, too, a place where she used to go as a girl, to dream of some fellow she’d been sweet on. Yet another man in the long line of them who’d man-aged to let her down, or hurt her in some way. He remembered that, too. Had sensed it at the time.
He didn’t plan on doing the same.
“Elliot, come on. The more of us that go with you—”
“The more of you that go with me, the more likely Esmeralda will be to take off again. You guys haven’t been exactly hospitable toward her, you know.”
“Well, how the hell could we have possibly known she was for real?’’ Jessi argued.
“Because I told you she was.”
Jessi’s head lowered, and she looked guilty.
“Elliot’s right,” Chelsea said. “Besides, he could probably use some time alone with her to explain why he decided to issue her the world’s clumsiest and most poorly thought-out marriage proposal.”
“More decree than proposal,” Sara said.
Elliot took a minute to glare at Chelsea, then he shook a finger at Sara. “Don’t you forget that you’re single, too, and sooner or later I’ll have the chance to get even with you for that remark.”
She grinned. “I’m holding out for Prince Charming,” she said. “So I imagine you’re gonna have a long wait.”
“Go on, Elliot,” Jessi said. “Go get Esmeralda. When she comes back we’ll all apologize and maybe we can…I don’t know…start over with her. If she’ll let us.”
Elliot nodded and hurried out of the room. His clothes were still damp. He didn’t rightly care. He slung his wet slicker on, clapped his damp Stetson on his head and ran out the door. Boots slapping mud, rain pounding him all the way, he raced through the darkness to the stable and saddled up a fresh horse, and then he was out of there. He kept telling himself to take it slow. That Esmeralda was—according to Bubba, at least—in a warm, dry spot, sheltered from the storm. Probably safe.
Probably. Probably wasn’t good enough. He’d at least taken time to snag a flashlight on the way out of the house, and he flicked it on as he rode toward the distant cave. He worried all the way about what he would find when he finally got there.
Esmeralda lay in the soft, fragrant leaves. The cave was toasty-warm, and that made her sleepy. She was hungry, too, but she supposed that would have to wait until morning. Then she would see about finding some food. For now….
She closed her eyes and told herself not to think about Elliot.
But she thought about him anyway. She imagined him finding her here, striding through the cave’s small opening, rain-damp and tired. He would say, “I’ve been so worried about you. Are you all right?” And she would lower her eyes and nod and say she was fine. And then he would come the rest of the way inside and sit with her near the fire, in her leaf bed, and he would tell her he was sorry about the way his family acted. He would say it didn’t matter what they thought, that he loved her and wanted to marry her all the same.
Esmeralda shivered a little as she lay there, eyes half-closed, imagining his dark eyes and the emotion in them as he told her that. She thought that would be the time when she would have to tell him the truth. That she’d been planning to trick him, that she’d only wanted to sleep with him so she could get pregnant, make him marry her, and then lay claim to at least part of the land. But she would hurry on to tell him the rest. That she’d changed her mind. That she couldn’t go through with it.
In her mind, Elliot was angry at first. But in a few minutes his face softened, and he forgave her. He said what she’d planned didn’t matter. He said he loved her anyway…..
She opened her eyes wider, then rolled them at her own foolishness. “Si, that’s exactly the way it will happen!” she snapped at herself in the darkness. The fire snapped, too, as if in agreement. “Not only does he not love me—he does not even know me. And if he cared even one tiny little bit, he would not have stopped searching for me so soon.”
Not that she wanted him searching for her at all. Because she didn’t, and she didn’t know why she was letting her mind conjure all these silly scenarios, anyway. They all ended the same. With him sweeping her into his arms and kissing her. It was nothing but a craving. Nothing but lust. She was in a cave with a storm raging outside, while he was safe in his bed in his big fat house, surrounded by his big, cruel family. That should tell her all she needed to know about Elliot Brand.
The sound of her name floated to her, faint and distant, brought to her by a sudden gust. The flames shot upward, and sparks flew. Frowning, Esmeralda whispered, “What was that?” and sat up slowly.
She strained her ears…and in a moment, she heard it again. Closer this time. But still faint, and muffled by the rain. Creeping fast on all fours, she rounded the fire and knelt in the cave’s opening. There the wind buffeted her face, and raindrops pinged like bullets. “Elliot?” she asked the wind.
His shout came again, and she saw it. A light, dull against the rain and the night. As she stared at the distant spot, the image illuminated by that small light grew sharper amid the storm; a man on a horse. He was bent in the saddle, curving his back in defense against the elements as he rode onward.
He had come after her! Oh, Dios, suppose he truly did love her?
Her heart lurched a little. So many questions. Was she carrying his child? Would he forgive her for that, and for what she had planned? Could he? Did she…did she love the man? Was it possible to love a man she’d known for such a short time? Oh, but it felt as if she had known him forever.
But what about his family? They hated her! They would never accept her. And her father had insisted that….
Oh, but what did it matter? She was getting too far ahead of herself. She didn’t even know for sure it was him.
He called to her again. Elliot’s voice, no mistaking that. Turning, Esmeralda drew a flaming limb from her small fire, and then stepped out of the cave and waved it slowly back and forth over her head. “Here!” she called. “I am here, Elliot!”
The small light aimed toward her. The horse began to move faster. Thunder ripped through the sky, and lightning cut a jagged path. Blinding, it was, and striking so hard she felt the ground beneath her feet vibrate and sizzle, and she heard the sound of the strike like a gunshot—deafening, frightening and sharp.
The horse reared, and she thought Elliot tumbled from its back, but she couldn’t be sure. She took two steps forward. “Elliot?” He was still a hundred yards from her, up on the hillside. Lightning flashed again a bare instant after the first strike, and she saw clearly. Two things were illuminated in the night to her questing eyes and pounding heart: the riderless horse, galloping back the way it had come…and the huge, ancient tree, leaning slowly toward the ground where the horse had been. Then leaning more. Groaning and leaning even more.
Esmeralda lunged forward, her torch still in her hand. “Elliot!” Where was he? It was dark again. She couldn’t see him. But the tree gave one last groan, and then cracked loudly and toppled. It crashed to the ground, splitting and creaking as it broke. The sound it made was deafening. A groaning, creaking, snapping, and then a dull roar as it hit.
And something else. Something that could have been a man’s cry.
She ran, heedless now of the rain drenching her, or of her bare feet slipping and slapping in the cold mud. She just ran. That tiny light was her guide, though it lay still on the ground. She followed it, let it guide her, and called Elliot’s name over and over again.
Then she saw him. He lay on his back in the mud, hair plastered to his face…and it looked as though a tree with a girth the size of his horse’s lay right across his body. From the waist down she couldn’t even see him for the trunk and the limbs and leaves.
“Elliot!” she cried. She dropped to her knees in the mud, looking around frantically and jamming her makeshift torch between two nearby limbs to free her hands. She pressed her palms to his wet face, bent closer. “Elliot, Elliot, wake up! Wake up!” Her lips pressed rainwater kisses to his face, quick, desperate kisses that were like prayers. “Elliot, please!”
He was crushed. He must be crushed. She must see for herself, try to help him. Thunder laughed at her, a deep, vicious gust of ridicule. Lightning slashed arrows at her, as if threatening to strike her down as well, should she remain too long within its reach. Wind howled its menace like a hungry wolf.
Gently she lowered Elliot’s head and took her hands away. They were bloody. Frowning, she scrambled for the fallen light, the one he had brought, and she shone its beam on his head. There was a rock just beneath him. She moved him off it and knew he’d hit his skull hard on that stupid rock when he’d fallen.
And the tree…
Turning, she aimed the light at the place where it crossed his body. Then she blinked and crawled closer. “Gracias, Madre de Dios, gracias!” she cried. For there was space. The trunk was not lying on his body. She could put her entire hand between Elliot and the bark. The tree’s huge limbs were keeping it up off him, though how long they could hold, she did not know.
She had to get him out from underneath.
“Elliot? Elliot, I have to move you. You understand?”
Nothing. No response.
Esmeralda moved around behind him, sliding her hands underneath his arms, trying to be very careful of his head. Bending her knees, she pulled with all her strength.
Elliot slid just a bit, and then her feet slipped in the mud and she landed hard on her backside. The thunder roared, amused by her pathetic efforts. “To hell with you,” she shouted in defiance. Gripping Elliot, she tried again, and again, and again, moving his body inch by painstaking inch, until finally he was clear of the tree. It must have hit him hard on the way down. His left foot lay oddly, the toe of his boot pointing straight to the left.
He was soaked, covered in mud. So was she at that point. She had to get him back to his home, to his family. He needed a doctor, a warm bed. But how could she move him? She could not carry him! “Esmeralda…?”
She swung her head around, eyes wide. “Elliot! Oh, you are awake, gracias Dios, you—”
“Call…my horse…back.”
She frowned. “Call…your horse? But how?”
He was struggling to stay conscious, struggling to form words. She could see that. “Whistle…” he finally managed.
“Whistle. Si, si, I will whistle.” She licked her lips, put her fingers to them and tried to whistle in the way she’d seen Elliot do. It took three tries to make a sound loud enough for the horse to hear—maybe. If it hadn’t run too far.
She was rewarded, though, only moments later, by the sound of hoofbeats and finally a soft nicker, as the poor, wet horse stood on the other side of the huge tree, looking over it at his former rider.
“You’ll have to…lead him…around,” Elliot managed.
“I know. I will only be a moment.” Scrambling to her feet, Esmeralda made her way over the fallen tree to the other side, scraping her elbows and knees on the rough bark as she went, scratching her face on tiny branches, too. She gripped the horse’s bridle and quickly led the animal all the way to the end of the tree’s massive reach, around the other side and back to Elliot. There she looped the reins over a limb, just be safe, and quickly knelt beside Elliot again.
“Can you get up?” she asked him.
“I…I don’t know.”
“I will help you.” She bent to him, sliding her hands beneath his body, palms to his back, and eased him up into a sitting position.
Elliot closed his eyes and seemed to sway from side to side as he lowered his head into his hands. Rain pounded down like a waterfall on their heads.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “Come, you must stand. Just get on the horse. That’s all you have to do, just get on. I will do the rest. Come, Elliot, you can do this!”
He nodded, lifting his head, his arms. He grabbed hold of a limb. She moved behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist. “Ready?” she asked, and when he nodded, she lifted for all she was worth, as Elliot used the limb to pull himself upright. “Bueno, bueno.” She let go of him, and he clung to the tree. Coming around in front of him, she said, “I will bring the horse closer.”
He nodded, but the moment he put weight on the crooked foot, he cried out and very nearly went down again. Instead, he wound up with his arms grasping her body like a padlock, hugging her hard about the shoulders as his entire body trembled. “Dammit to hell!” he rasped, looking down at his leg and turned-out foot. “It’s broken.”
“I was afraid it might be. Hold on, my love, I will take care of you, I promise you that.”
He snapped his gaze to hers, even as she hurried to pry his arms away from her and guided them to the tree for support. “What did you say?” he asked her.
“I said I will take care of you. This is all my fault. You should not have come after me, Elliot.” She left him there and hurried the three steps to the horse, then led it closer. “Lean on me,” she told Elliot. He did, and somehow she managed to help him, pushing, pulling and tugging, to get into the saddle. But he didn’t sit upright. He leaned forward over the animal’s mane, his hands gripping the wet, slick pommel.
“Come, pony. We go slow, eh? Be careful with him.” She climbed onto the horse behind Elliot, one arm around his waist to keep him from sliding off, the other guiding the horse. They began the slow, plodding course back toward the ranch.
It grew wetter and colder every single step of the way. And every step, she was more worried for Elliot. For though she shook him now and then, and spoke to him constantly, he never replied. She didn’t think he opened his eyes again, either.
It was a full hour before the house finally came into sight. Esmeralda was shivering so hard by then that she could barely hold the reins. Her knuckles throbbed, and the rest of her hands had gone numb. She felt as if she were soaked in ice instead of rainwater. Her feet were like lead blocks of throbbing agony. She rode the horse right up to the front porch, stopping at the foot of the steps. Then, lifting her head in the pounding rain, she yelled for help as loudly as she could.
There was a commotion, the door flew open, and the next thing she knew, a half dozen Brands were tugging her from the horse, tugging Elliot from the horse. Someone ran inside shouting. “Call Doc,” while Garrett carried Elliot into the house, and Wes—she thought it was Wes, the dark one—scooped her up and carried her inside, as well.
When Esmeralda next opened her eyes, it was the dead of night. She was clean and dry, and her feet were blessedly warm. She lay in a bed, covers thick and piled atop her. Pillows, soft and cloud-like, were beneath her head. The room was dim, but a faint light glowed from the hallway. Beside her bed the meanest Brand, the one called Jessi, was slumped in a chair, sound asleep.
Elliot, Esmeralda thought. He’d been hurt. Where was Elliot?
Blinking the sleep from her eyes, remembering everything, she sat up and flung the covers back. She was dressed in the white fleece nightgown they’d given her. It was thick and warm and soft as down. White stockings—the kind they called “socks,” hugged her feet to keep them warm.
For a family who hated her to the core, who had seen through her schemes from the start, and who were determined to protect their brother and their home from her, they certainly had taken good care of her.
She didn’t deserve their kindness.
Getting to her feet, she winced inwardly when a rush of heat and prickly pain rushed through them. She had to go still for a long moment, sitting on the edge of the bed, clenching her teeth, fighting not to cry out at the sensation as blood flowed into those poor, abused appendages once again. They’d been warmed, but they came to life more with use. Eventually she managed to stand, and, as quiet a mouse, she tiptoed to the door, opened it slowly and crept out of the room. Bit by bit she made her way down the darkened hall to Elliot’s bedroom, and there she saw light coming from beneath the door and heard hushed voices.
“Doc said he’d sleep the night through,” Garrett whispered. “Come on to bed, hon. He’ll sure holler if he needs us. You know Elliot.”
“All right.” That was Chelsea. “Let’s leave the door open, though, so we’ll be sure to hear him if he wakes.”
Neither of them said the words Esmeralda desperately wanted to hear. That he would be all right. That his injuries were not serious ones, and that he would recover.
She flattened herself to the wall as they emerged from Elliot’s bedroom. She didn’t want to see them, couldn’t face them. Surely they would hate her now more than ever. She had caused all this. She had hurt their brother just as they had feared she would.
Oh, but she hadn’t meant to!
When Garrett and Chelsea had vanished into their own bedroom farther down the hall, Esmeralda dared to breathe again. She had to stiffen her spine and force herself to move on. She was so afraid of what she would find when she stepped into Elliot’s room.
Bracing herself, she did. They’d left the light on, dimmed, but on. Esmeralda stood for a long moment in the doorway, just staring at the only man besides her father ever to claim he loved her.
Elliot lay on his back in his bed. Some sort of rack had been positioned over the bed, with pulleys and cables, and this rack held his injured leg up, so it dangled above the mattress. From the knee down, Elliot’s calf was encased in a plaster cast that made it appear twice its size. Only his toes stuck out the end. The rest of him was all covered in warm blankets, just as she had been. His head cradled on pillows, a big white bandage taped to the back of his skull. Snuggly warm, he was. Except for his poor toes. How cold they must be, without a thing to warm them.
Creeping closer, Esmeralda put her hands on his toes. “Like ice,” she whispered. She held them there, between her hands for a long moment, letting her body heat warm them. Eventually she took her hands away and, bending down, peeled off one of her socks, and then carefully put it over his toes, to keep them warm.
Elliot stirred just a little. Esmeralda stilled, lowering her eyes to his face. His eyes remained closed, his body relaxed. She moved closer to him, pulling a chair up beside the bed to sit down. “Elliot? Can you hear me?”
“Mmm.”
She pressed a hand to his face, and found it warm. A bit too warm. He was feverish, no doubt. And no wonder. “Dios, I hope you’re going to be all right. You must be all right, do you hear me?”
He moved his head slightly, turning it toward her, and then tucking in his chin, almost as if in an effort to nod.
“Si, you must be all right. I could not bear it otherwise. You never should have come after me, Elliot Brand. You are a foolish man to risk so much for a woman like me.”
Her throat seemed to tighten. She cleared it forcibly. She had things to say to him, and she didn’t know when she would have the nerve to say them again. “Only a fool would believe he could love a woman such as I am. I am no good for you, Elliot. No good for you. Your family, they were right about me all along. You should have listened to them.”
She put a hand over his. He turned his and weakly closed it around hers. Yes, he was hearing her; he was aware of her here.
“I had a plan, you know,” she told him softly. “I planned to seduce you, Elliot. To take you inside me so that I could become pregnant with your child. I was going to trick you into marrying me and then divorce you and claim the right to take part of this ranch away from you.” She lowered her head, her eyes watering now. “But I could not go through with it. And that is why I had to leave. Now you know the kind of woman I am. Now you know the truth, Elliot. I used you. That’s all that was between us. A lie. My lie, and my scheme. My need to avenge your ancestors’ crimes upon you. And now I’ve realized you…you are nothing like them. You are a good man, Elliot Brand. A good man.”
The hand holding hers eased its tentative grip. Esmeralda leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Elliot’s cheek. But he weakly turned his head away. And she thought there was a dampness at the corner of his closed eye that hadn’t been there before. “I am so sorry I hurt you,” she whispered.
Then she turned to hurry away, back to her own room. She would stay until daylight. Just long enough to ask one of the others about Elliot’s condition. No longer. Then she would go away and never again torment the sweetest man she’d ever known.
Jessi woke to find Esmeralda gone, and she didn’t figure it would take a rocket scientist to figure out where to find her. Hell, there was something going on between Esmeralda and Elliot. If she wasn’t trying to scam him out of the ranch, then maybe it was just gratitude. Or something.
She didn’t want to think about the “or something” right now.
But when she got to Elliot’s door and heard Esmeralda’s tormented voice speaking softly from the other side, she got a whole earful of “or something.” And she leaned softly against the wall, listening, and feeling more and more ashamed of herself.
“Land sakes,” she whispered. “She’s in love with him. And I don’t even think she knows it!”
When Esmeralda said her goodbyes to Elliot, Jessi straightened up and hightailed it back to the bedroom that had once been her own. She got to the chair beside the bed, slouched down and slammed her eyes shut tight just before Esmeralda came creeping back into the room. Jessi tried hard to look as if she’d been sound asleep the whole time. Then finally, Esmeralda crawled back into the bed, pulled up the covers…and proceeded to cry herself to sleep.
Jeez-Louise, what a mess, Jessi thought fiercely. Ah, hell, it was tugging at her heart to hear the soft, sobbing sounds the woman poured out into her pillows. She was hurting…seriously hurting. Now that Jessi knew she’d been right all along about Esmeralda’s plans…she thought maybe she’d been dead-solid wrong about the woman herself. And much as she hated to admit when she was wrong, particularly since it was such a rare event, anyway, she had to admit she’d probably messed up big-time in this case.
Well, hell. At least it wasn’t entirely too late to fix things.
She hoped.
Sometime near dawn Elliot came awake to a splitting headache, a throbbing shin bone, and a bad, bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Then he thought back, remembering, piecing things together. And he remembered it.
All of it.
Culminating in Esmeralda’s bedside confession last night. She’d never really wanted him. Never truly cared for him at all. She’d only been using him. She’d slept with him as part of her plan to trick him, and then she’d changed her mind.
It hurt. It hurt more than the damned broken leg, and it hurt more than the knob on the back of his head. It felt as if it would be fatal, as a matter of fact. He’d loved the woman. He’d stuck up for her, defended her to his entire family, vowed to turn away from them all if they didn’t ease up on her….
And she’d been lying. Plotting. Using him.
Faking everything? That night together…my God, it couldn’t have been make-believe, could it?
Why the hell had he let himself fall for her? Why? God, he’d been such a fool. She’d told him as much last night, hadn’t she? That he was a freaking fool to have fallen for her little game.
Damn her.
Damn her.