CHAPTER SIX

Quite suddenly, Alyssa realized her sheets were wet with her perspiration. She threw back whatever was covering her and came to a sitting position, feeling a little dizzy with the movement. She felt her forehead with her hand, wondering if she had a temperature. She was hot, all right, but that could have had several explanations.

She glanced at the clock on the bedside table and realized it had been less than an hour since Adriano had kissed her a final good night and gone to his own room. She wondered what it would be like to go to bed each night and have him beneath the covers with her, his warm, hard flesh pressed against her.

In a sudden shift of thought, she wondered if he had kissed her, loved her, said he loved her, not because of any real need inside of him for her as a person, but only because she had something he wanted—the ranch his father, for some inexplicable reason, had left to her instead of to him. Was the only reason he was involved with her because he could no longer have Ladonna Hidalgo? He had insisted there had never been any love relationship between Ladonna and him, and that he had cultivated that engagement and those wedding plans only because he had intuitively sensed his father was against them. Yet, did any of that hold water? Why would Lalo Montego have disapproved of something so obviously beneficial to all sides? Certainly, he couldn’t have looked upon the merging of his bloodline with that of an old friend as something distasteful. Certainly, he shouldn’t have objected to the joining by marriage of two of the largest estates in the region.

If Lalo and Joaquín had been feuding, why was Alyssa’s mother the only one who seemed to know anything about it? Surely, Fanuco would have had no reason to have kept that from Alyssa.

She was tremendously thirsty. She reached for the pitcher and glass beside her bed and was startled to find that she had already all but emptied the former during the course of less than an hour. She drank what water was left but found it not nearly enough.

She got out of bed, put on her slippers and her robe, and went downstairs.

In the kitchen, she found some milk, feeling very much like a child clandestinely raiding the refrigerator. She had never done such things, even when young, and, even now, felt guilty in doing so.

She took the milk into the den which was a fairly large room filled with overstuffed chairs and lots of books on lots of shelves. She sat down in one of the wing-back chairs and let her mind begin running back over much the same things which had kept her sleepless within her room at the top of the stairs.

Did Adriano love her? Did she love him? Was all of this just a dream? Why had Lalo Montego left the ranch to her? Why had…?

The phone rang beside her. Automatically, she reached for it and lifted its receiver from its hook.

“Yes,” she spoke into the mouthpiece, only then wondering who could possibly be calling at that time of the night on the landline.

“Alyssa?”

“Joaquín?” She thought she recognized the voice on the other end of the line.

“Is Adriano there, my dear? I keep getting his answering service on his cell phone.”

“He’s upstairs asleep. I’m downstairs only because I got thirsty.”

“Maybe you had better wake him, Alyssa,” Joaquín said. “I’m afraid this is rather important. It’s Fanuco, my dear. I’m afraid, after the two of you left here, this afternoon, he did something very foolish and got badly hurt in result.”

While she could imagine some damage done by the heifers, she couldn’t imagine anything so bad that.…

“He insisted we bring in one of the bulls, Alyssa. He bought and paid for it, and, then, had it turned loose in the ring. I’m afraid it all ended up very badly.”

“My God!” She felt ill to her stomach. She had known Adriano had been afraid Fanuco would do something crazy, but she had never dreamed it would have gone this far.

“Fanuco is asking for Adriano. Despite everything, the two are almost family.”

“I’ll wake him, at once, of course.”

“Just tell him to come here. The doctor says Fanuco can’t be moved.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Alyssa?”

“Yes?”

“Are you feeling all right, my dear?”

“Me? Yes. Why?”

“You just sound kind of funny. It’s probably the connection.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s that.”

She replaced the telephone. Having completely forgotten her milk, she left the glass on the table, her legs feeling as if they were made of lead.

She took the stairs slowly and headed down the hallway at the top. She stopped by Adriano’s door, leaning against it.

My God, she was tired!

She heard nothing whatsoever from behind the door. So, she knocked. Getting no response, she knocked again. Silence.

She wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the knob and twisted. The door came open a crack.

“Adriano?” She pushed the door a bit more and stuck her head inside. “Adriano?”

She could see his empty bed bathed in moonlight which entered the room through the window. She pushed the door completely open.

The bed hadn’t been slept in. Its bedspread had been turned down, but the sheets beneath weren’t even wrinkled. She thought Adriano might be in the adjoining bathroom, but its door was wide open, and its lights out.

She stepped back into the hallway and stood stock still and listened. There was nothing to hear except the sounds of the night—and her decidedly erratic breathing.

So, where was he?

She went back down to the den and called Joaquín.

“I really don’t know where Adriano is, Joaquín,” she confessed. “He’s not in his room.”

“He seems to have taken to strolling about at night,” Joaquín said. “I noticed it while he was staying here.”

Alyssa didn’t mention how Adriano’s nightly walks at the Hidalgo Hacienda were probably to practice bullfighting techniques on the sly. It was highly doubtful that was what Adriano was up to now.

“Just have him get over here as soon as he can, when he does get back, won’t you, Alyssa? I don’t like to be an alarmist, but the doctor does say there could be serious complications.”

When she hung up, she waited, listening for any sounds that might tell her that Adriano had returned.

She waited until she got cold. Then, she told herself she would be far wiser to go upstairs and wait in the comfort of her own bed. She got up, but her legs simply refused to support her. She sat down again.

What was happening to her?

Mara woke her in the morning, frankly appalled to find her mistress apparently had slept in a downstairs chair most of the night. Mara’s additional venting of displeasure, amid much tongue clucking and foretelling of pneumonia likely on its way, was interrupted by a knock on the front door.

“She’s asleep,” Alyssa heard Mara say to whomever was at the door.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wake her, then,” a man’s voice said. “This is important.”

“Ramón?” Alyssa asked, having made it far enough out of her chair to get a good view of her foreman in the doorway.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Señorita,” Ramón said apologetically, “but last night, there were three more bulls shot. And this was left pinned on one of the carcasses.”

He held out his right hand, and Alyssa took the envelope. She opened it, wondering why her fingers didn’t seem able to operate in quite the way her brain commanded them.

“‘Go back where you belong,’” she read aloud from the note which was written in a childish scrawl, “‘or, it won’t be only your bulls which end up dead.’”

Mara gave an audible gasp.

“Who could possibly be doing this?” Alyssa asked, admittedly upset. Actually, she felt physically ill to her stomach.

“Do what?” Adriano asked.

He’d come up on the porch and was standing in the doorway which had been left open when Ramón stepped into the house.

“You!” Alyssa accused. “You did this, didn’t you?”

“Did what?” Adriano asked.

“Out killing my bulls, again, were you?” she said, hearing her voice get hysterical in the process. “Afraid to kill them face to face in the bullring, are you? Afraid you’ll get gored like poor Fanuco, but not above going out and blowing them away with a rifle, are you?”

“What’s this all about?” Adriano asked.

Ramón eyed Adriano suspiciously. Mara looked merely concerned for Alyssa.

“Just get out of here!” Alyssa commanded. “Go back to the Hidalgo Hacienda and see what’s happened to that poor man you showed up in the bullring to salve your masculine ego.”

“Fanuco?”

“He really wanted to show you up,” she continued. Her voice was reaching an ever higher crescendo with each passing word. She wondered what she was saying. It didn’t really seem to be her talking at all. “After we left yesterday, he fought a real bull that laid open his guts. When Joaquín called to tell you, you were out killing three more of my bulls with a gun.”

“Fanuco gored?” Adriano asked, as if he really hadn’t yet made heads or tails of anything Alyssa was saying.

“He’s probably already dead!” she screamed.

Adriano did a quick about-face and headed for one of the cars parked outside.

“You coward!” Alyssa shouted after him. “You coward…coward…coward!”

Then, she collapsed into a heap on the floor, and would have probably badly banged her head if Ramón hadn’t moved so quickly to cushion her fall.