Why did everything always seem worse at night?
Bone weary, Mia pulled the chain of the lamp beside her bed, and the tiny bedroom at Black Oaks melted into darkness. She sank down onto the bed and closed her eyes.
Negra hopped up onto the bed, purring. Mia felt so tired and so depressed over losing Shanghai, she hadn’t wanted to face her mother or Sy’rai or deal with Vanilla. Thus, she was grateful for the quiet and the darkness that surrounded the secluded house.
Relaxing as she stroked Negra, her mind drifted to her wedding and then to her brief honeymoon night. She’d been right to fear happiness.
Shanghai. Oh, Shanghai.
She ached for his body to be next to hers. Was it only last night that they’d lain in this very same bed together, talking and drinking champagne after making love, and she’d believed her dreams would come true?
Slowly her eyes closed. Still purring, Negra curled up beside her. Before she knew it, she was falling, slipping into sleep like a black ghost. For hours she tossed back and forth, dreaming of golden champagne sparkling in flutes that clinked together, of a white silk dress sliding against her bare skin, of a bull rider’s rough hands caressing the smoothness of her satiny flesh. Of Shanghai’s lips lingering and caressing her everywhere.
Then abruptly her dreams darkened, and she was running for her life with Shanghai through a shadowy tunnel with small furry rodents squealing and nipping at her feet. She awakened in utter blackness and sat up shaking, one hand fisting her sheets, the other covering her mouth to prevent her screams.
“It’s only a dream,” she said aloud to reassure herself. But her echoing voice sounded so hollow in the empty house, she grew more nervous.
A board creaked and then another. She tensed.
Tavio?
Staring wildly at the shadowy shapes the furniture made against the white walls, she covered her lips. Then in the next moment she heard the front doorknob jiggle. She sat bolt upright, and Negra hopped onto the floor and raced under the bed.
Where was her cell phone?
Remembering that it hadn’t been in her purse earlier, she wondered where she could have put it.
Then a key turned in the lock, and she told herself to relax.
Shanghai! He’d come back!
The thought that he was outside and that he might be regretting their misunderstanding as much as she was brought a rush of hot tears to eyes. Filled with hope, she blinked back her tears and scooted to the edge of the bed.
The door opened, and she ran to greet him.
“Shanghai—”
“It’s only me,” Delia said in Spanish, her tone low and concerned as she shut the door quietly.
Delia’s shadow was huge and dark as it leapt against the living room wall.
“What is it, Delia? Are you all right. You seem…tense.”
“Never better.”
The tightness in Delia’s odd, rusty voice triggered a warning. Some sixth sense made the hair along the back of Mia’s neck stand up.
“What time is it?” Mia asked, feeling bewildered and off balance.
“I—I don’t know. Late.” Delia’s black eyes glowed in the dark.
“What are you doing here? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Delia pulled something from her pocket and whirled on her. Tavio’s golden barrel glinted in the darkness.
“Where did you get that?”
“I steal it.”
“But—”
“Enrique, Chito’s brother. He fly me here so I can kill you. Tavio, he don’t want me to kill you. He come here and he tell me to go home.”
“Tavio?”
“You make him weak.”
“What? I thought you were my friend. I taught you to read.”
The gun shook as if Delia were conflicted. “You nice American women,” she sobbed. “You think you understand everything, but you don’t. You change Tavio. He big man before you come. He protect us. You come and ruin everything.”
“Chito beat you.”
“He protect me, too!”
“I don’t believe this! He beat you!”
“But he protect me. When the other men want me, he don’t share me like he did his other women. He fight them. In his way he was loyal to me. He got shot when you escape from prison, and he die later in my arms. Because of you.”
“You’re learning to read. You’re smart. If you keep learning, someday you can get a good job.”
“You think you’re my friend because you taught me to read. You don’t know nothing. Estela, Tavio’s wife, was my friend. I grew up in the house next door to hers. She was like my sister. Now Tavio is dead. What will happen to her? You don’t know nothin’ about my life!”
Her hand that held the gun was shaking more violently than ever but she raised it higher.
Mia—
Shanghai’s voice in the room, all around her!
He loves me.
The certainty filled Mia with the will to live.
Feeling Shanghai calling to her with love in his heart, Mia sprang to the left at the exact moment Delia pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the wall behind her, shattering the Sheetrock.
“Hold on! I’m comin’, darlin’!” Shanghai yelled as he stomped up the porch stairs.
The front door crashed open.
As fast as a rattler, Delia spun on her heel to shoot him.
“No!” Mia screamed, lunging at her, grabbing her by the ankle, pulling at her, dragging her to the floor. “You won’t kill him! I won’t be abandoned again. I won’t be!”
Trying to wrench free of her hand, Delia stared down the length of the gun barrel at Mia. Her eyes glittered in the dark like a cat’s as she fired.
Even as pain stung her shoulder and made her yelp, Mia’s hand tightened on Delia’s ankle. Then she whipped her to the floor. The gun went skittering out of their reach. Delia turned into a wild woman. Using her long nails as weapons, she began clawing at Mia viciously, on the arms and her throat, struggling to reach her eyes.
As suddenly as she’d attacked her, Delia was gone. Her body was dropped onto the floor, hard, a few feet behind Mia. Then Delia began bawling.
“Bastardo!” In between pleading to be released, Delia cursed viciously. “Let me go! You’re breaking my arms!”
“If I do, it’ll be your fault! Quit fightin’ me!”
Hazily Mia opened her eyes. Gripping her bloody shoulder, she scrambled to her knees. Delia was on the floor, kicking and trying to roll over. Shanghai was kneeling on top her, straddling her, holding her hands behind her back in a death grip.
“You okay?” he muttered.
“I think so.”
“Get out to my truck! I’ve got some rope in the back seat!”
Mia staggered to her feet, blood dripping down her arm. When she returned with the rope, he tied Delia’s hands and then her feet.
During his deft maneuvers, Delia cursed him roundly.
“Damn you, girl, but you’ve got a foul mouth! Those aren’t words fit for ladies. I’m going to get me a couple of dish towels.”
“If you knew what she’d been through, you’d understand,” Mia said.
He turned to Mia. “Don’t be a sap. She would’ve killed you. Watch her, okay?” Then he strode to the kitchen and she heard him whipping towels off the racks.
When he returned and knelt over Delia, he gagged her. After that, Delia’s spitting and cursing began to sound more like muted grunts. He stood up, his expression tender with concern for Mia. Slowly, hesitating to believe he really wanted her, she went into his arms.
Holding her tightly, he led her to a light switch and flipped it on. For a long moment he inspected her shoulder, moving her arm, holding the wound up to the light. Then he placed a dish towel on the wound.
“You got lucky. It’s just a nick. Maybe you’ll need a stitch or two. Or maybe one of those fancy bandages that works like a stitch will do.”
“You came back,” Mia whispered, still not quite believing he had.
“If?” Relieved to be alive and in his arms, she rested her cheek against his strong chest. “You didn’t leave me this time.”
“I was a damn fool to think I could live without you ten seconds much less a lifetime. No matter what you did. And you didn’t do anything wrong. It was me…crazy jealous all the time…I don’t have an excuse really. If you told me to get lost now, I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I’m not giving you any excuse.”
“I don’t want to mistreat you like I was mistreated as a kid, and that’s what I was doin’ when I drove off. Not listening, not trying, just walking out. Then it struck me—hell, darlin’, what kind of crazy guy thinks a classy gal like you would sink even lower than a Knight and want a certified lunatic bastard like Morales?
“And there’s something else…something that doesn’t make any sense at all. The whole time I was driving, I felt your pain. It’s like you’re a part of me or something…like you were calling to me.”
“I was.”
He stared at her in wonder. “The farther I got from you, I could feel you crying out to me to come back.”
“Because I was. I was terrified.”
“I felt the same thing after you left me in Vegas,” he whispered.
“I think I was…calling out to you then, too. For years and years, I willed you to come back. I—I can’t believe you heard me.”
“I was too stubborn to really listen and believe what I was hearin’. But you were always there like a ghost haunting me.”
“I’ve always wanted you. You know that.”
“Someday I hope I’ll be the man you deserve.”
“You already are. You always have been. It’s you who must learn to believe that.”
“I left you and you nearly got killed.”
“But you came back.”
“I thought I needed to be rich and famous to deserve you.”
“What do those things matter when you’re at home with the person you love? In bed with him or her? Or playing with your children? Or simply sharing a meal together? Other things matter in the quiet times, don’t they?”
“I think I was scared of loving you. My mother left me, you know? Deep down I was afraid you’d leave, too.”
“So you had to leave first?”
“Maybe.”
Shanghai wrapped her more tightly against his body. “I don’t want to be like her, either. I don’t want to do what she did to me to anybody else. She made me love her and then she walked out on me when I needed her the most. I don’t want to do that to you—ever.”
Gently Shanghai kissed her, and she felt her fears of abandonment and loneliness start to dissolve.
He wasn’t leaving. He was staying. He loved her. He really loved her. Just like she’d always dreamed he would. His arms around her were real and solid, just as his warm mouth was real.
When his lips finally left hers, she stared at him for a long moment. Then Delia began butting her head into the wooden floor and spoiled the mood.
“If she keeps doing that, she’s going to hurt herself,” Mia said. “Hadn’t we better do something about her? Call somebody maybe?”
“I’ll have to carry her out to the truck. Then we’ll drive her up to the big house. The ranch phone lines are all busy, and nobody’s cell phones will answer, either. I know because I tried to call the ranch and Cole and you the whole time I was driving back.”
“My cell phone disappeared hours ago.”
“I’d bet a bundle Delia took it. I told you we should have turned her in to the authorities.”
“I was so naïve to think anyone in Tavio’s compound was my friend.”
Negra strolled into the living room and meowed.
“Except for you, precious,” Mia said.
“That Cessna Skyhawk Cole’s so crazy about was a real Trojan horse.”
“Except for Negra.”
“That cat is utterly useless.”
“No, she isn’t. She loves me. Cats don’t lie. But a lot of things between human beings aren’t what they seem,” she said.
“I love you, more than that damn cat does. I know that’s real at least.”
“At last,” she murmured, not in the least worried that he could be jealous of her cat.
His mouth slanted across hers again. His kiss was long and deep, and she felt it all the way to her bones.
Watching them, Negra went over and sniffed a golden object that lay forgotten on the floor. Shaking her head, she lay down and rolled over on her back beside the gun. She stretched languidly and began to purr.
As her people continued to kiss, her purr turned into a roar as if she sensed that all was finally right in her world.