Chapter 44
“So tell me…” Shep said. “Am I handcuffed so I won’t escape, or do ya have more depraved reasons in mind?”
Carlotta turned toward him, plump lips pursed, amber eyes as slanted as a wildcat’s. He’d known her less than twenty-four hours, but he was pretty damn sure she was going to bear his children.
“I do not know what this depraved it mean,” she said and sauntered toward him. She moved with the hypnotic rhythm of a python, every curve undulating.
“Wicked,” he said.
She lifted her brows. “You think I have the wicked plans for you?”
He shrugged. The movement made him ache all the way to his ass, which made him think sex was going to hurt like hell. God, he couldn’t wait to find out. “Ya know I’m naked under this sheet, right?”
She could smile with nothing but her eyes. It was a sight to behold. “I have been meant to ask you regarding that.”
“Really?”
“No,” she said and slipping into the chair beside his bed, settled a bowl onto her lap. She was wearing a candy-apple red dress that clung as if ironed on. He had never been more jealous of a bowl in his entire life. “Now, you must be the good boy and eat your colada de avena.”
“What if I told ya I don’t like...” He glanced into the bowl. The contents looked disturbing reminiscent of vomit. “Whatever the hell that is?”
“I say you will be muy hungry by the morning.”
“What if I say I’ll eat it if ya feed it to me?”
“Muy muy hungry by morning.”
“Ya wouldn’t let me starve, would ya?”
She canted her head a little, making her hair cascade beside her cheeks like a dark waterfall. Her narrowed eyes made her look increasingly feline. “Señor worries that you might be a dealer of the drugs.”
“The doctor,” he said, ignoring the slander. “What is he to you?”
“What is it you mean?” she asked and stirred the awful looking gruel.
“Are ya lovers?”
She glanced up sharply, surprise in her eyes. “This is none of your business.”
He raised his brows, gut twisting. “That sounds like a yes.”
“It looks to be that you will eat your colada de avena alone,” she said and rose to her feet, but he managed to grab her arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “we won’t talk about it if ya don’t wanna.”
She stared at him, debating. “Very good,” she said finally and sat back down.
“But ya know he’s—” Shep began. She stiffened. He stopped himself from saying more, though gray memories stirred like angry bats in his mind. She was watching him, brow slightly furrowed. “…an old man, right?”
She shifted to stand again, but he chuckled and tightened his grip.
“I’m done now. Really,” he said and forced thoughts of Doc from his mind. “Tell me about yourself.”
She shrugged and spooned up a bit of porridge. It was as gray as concrete and looked just about as palatable. “What can I tell? I am born here in Solano and this is where I have live the whole of my life.”
“Why not Paris?”
She quirked a brow at him.
“Or New York. I hear Victoria Secret is lookin’ for models.”
She stared at him. “Tell me, do these words of yours work on the women of America?”
“Not on any as beautiful as you.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t quite hide her smile. “And what of you, Roy Cherokee? She made the ‘r’ rumble charmingly when she said his name. Well, his alias anyway. It was the sexiest thing he had ever heard. “You are a cowboy, sí?”
“There’s no boy in me, chica,” he said and took the first spoonful offered by her delicate fingers. “I’m all man.”
She snorted and swung her hair behind her back. For reasons he would never be able to name, the motion made his mouth go dry.
“Truly,” she said. “You seem to be…” She shrugged. “Not so stupid.” The short sleeves of her dress were gathered and clung to the caps of her warm-caramel shoulders. “And not terrible ugly to look upon. Why is it you take to the drugs?”
“Why would you take to the doc?”
She pursed her lips but didn’t try to rise this time. “He was the friend of my papi.”
“Your dad’s buddy?” He thought about that while taking another spoonful. “That just makes it creepier,” he said. She turned away but he was already apologizing. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Tell me about your dad.”
She drew a deep breath. “My father, he was the farmer. A good one, but it is not easy to make the living on this soil. And when my mother became ill…” She shrugged. Sadness shone in every expressive feature.
Shep thought for a second, drew in a careful breath and spoke. “The old man loaned your father money.”
She raised her gaze to his. “You do not understand.”
He leaned his head back against the pillows behind him. “Ya could explain it.”
“It was much more than the dollars.”
He stared at her, dubious, and she went on.
“Papi was not the same after Mami’s death. And Sofia, she needed the father.”
“Sofia…” He shook his head once, ambushed by the bubble of uneasiness stirring in his gut. “Your daughter?”
She glanced at him from the corner of her entrancing eyes. “My sister.”
The uneasiness slipped away. “So Doc helped ya out.”
“He gave me the job in a café. He became the uncle we did not have.”
But the old man wanted to be more. That much was as clear as vodka. What would she say if he told her about the man whose eye had been pierced by the sapling? The man the good doctor could so easily ignore as he screamed in agony? And what of Curro, dying in this very room?
“So ya think you owe ‘im,” Shep said.
“I do owe him, but he is too honorable to ask for the payment.”
Shepherd kept his opinions to himself, though it was a difficult thing. “Then you’re free to leave whenever ya want.”
“Of course,” she said and shrugged. The scalloped bodice of her dress flirted with her breasts.
“Then why don’t you?”
“Who it is to say I wish to?”
“Your eyes,” he said and grinned a little. “They’re tellin’ me all sorts of secrets.”
“Oh?” She gave him a sassy glance from beneath forest full lashes. “What is it that they say?”
“That they want me.”
She rolled those beautiful eyes.
He sobered unwillingly. “And that ya could do great things.”
She stared at him in silence for a second, and then she laughed. “Like bear a conceited American’s bebés?”
“Maybe.” He grinned and kept his tone level, but the idea did unsettling things to his equilibrium. “Or ya could be…” He narrowed his eyes at her, guessing. “A doctor in your own right. Or a teacher. Or a world-famous diplomat.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, but in a moment, she snorted.
He smiled. “I’m close aren’t I?”
“You are…” She shook her head. “How is it they say…” She was as cute as a puppy when she scowled. “You are the loco one.”
“Well…” he said and did his best to look pathetic. Which really wasn’t that hard since he was wounded, and handcuffed to a bed, and naked. Although, really, he’d rarely found nakedness to be a disadvantage. “I have had a head injury.”
Bending at the waist, she brushed the hair from his forehead. Her touch was as light as a summer breeze, bringing back soft memories of lazy sunlit days beside old Mill Creek. He let his shoulders relax against the mounded pillows and spoke softly. “I’d do anything ya suggested.”
She tensed a little and raised her brows, but he took the high road.
“If ya were a diplomat,” he explained.
She exhaled softly through her nose and offered him more gruel which he took without glancing at it.
“If I am not mistaken, diplomats…they need more than ten years of the school,” she said.
“Ya could get your GED online then take classes at Oklahoma State.”
For a moment, her dreams were almost visible in her eyes, but finally she laughed. “And what would I do with Sofia while I am become this world famous something?”
“What are ya doin’ with her now?”
“Now she is attends the Aspaen Gimnasio Iragua for girls.”
“So she’s gettin' the education ya didn’t.”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Someday, perhaps, Sofia will become the attorney and I can be her assist. Until then, I am lucky to have such a job as I do.”
He watched her. An attorney. Was that Sofia’s dream or hers?
“So you’re content to serve coffee for a few pesos a day.”
“Sí.”
“Martyrs,” he said, “usually end badly.”
“Not like the runners of the drugs then,” she said and rising, left, taking the sunlight with her.