Sloan avoided the questioning look Rip gave her and said to Cruz, “I can’t come with you. I… I… need more time.”
His voice was equally quiet, but adamant. “My part of the bargain is met. Now you must meet yours.”
Sloan sought desperately for some other excuse to deny his demand and blurted, “What about the young woman I heard you brought home from Spain with you?”
Cruz frowned. “Señorita Hidalgo?”
“That’s the name I’ve heard.”
“She is not your concern.”
“Is Sloan your wife or not?” Rip demanded.
“She is.”
“I’m not.” Exactly.
Rip turned on Sloan, his patience gone. “What the hell is going on? And I want a damn straight answer!”
Sloan’s lips flattened against making an explanation. “I’ve said all I have to say on the matter. I’ve got more work to do before it gets dark, so if you’ll both excuse me-”
Cruz’s sudden fierce grip on Sloan’s arms cut her off. “I will not excuse you. I will not allow you to ignore me or to pretend nothing exists between us. We have an agreement. Alejandro is dead. The time has come for you to finish the bargain.”
Sloan shivered, feeling something halfway between fear and anticipation at the words that were both a threat and a promise.
“Let go of my daughter.”
Sloan froze when she realized Rip held a Navy Colt Patterson aimed at Cruz. She knew Cruz had seen the gun, but he tightened his hold rather than freeing her.
“I will have you for my wife, Cebellina,” he said, his voice a harsh breath that fanned her ear. “Do not doubt it.”
He released her and stepped back to meet Rip’s dangerous stare with one of his own. “I expect Sloan to come to me within the week. If she does not, I will be back with my vaqueros to get her.”
Cruz turned and threw himself onto his palomino stallion. He raked its belly with his spurs and the beast bounded away as though the hounds of hell were chasing him.
Sloan’s body trembled with agitation as the dust settled. She was completely unaware of Rip until she heard him slump back into the rocker. She watched her father warily, wondering what he would say now that Cruz was no longer a buffer between them. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“What kind of claim does he have on you, Sloan? What have you gotten yourself into this time?”
“I don’t need you to judge me,” she snapped. “I only did what I thought I had to do to get Cruz to take the baby.”
“You should have kept the boy.”
“It was Tonio’s child!”
“It was your child-my grandchild.”
“It was a child born of deceit. I would have hated Cisco, though he was faultless. Don’t you understand? I couldn’t keep him. I was too angry-”
“Peace!” Rip interrupted. “Peace, I say.”
Sloan bit her tongue and slowly sank into the rocker next to Rip’s. She leaned her head back against the varnished wood and began to rock gently back and forth. The steady creaking sound made by the two rockers soothed the tension between them as the deepening twilight claimed the land.
“Do you plan to go to Dolorosa?” Rip asked.
“I can’t be his wife.”
“He’ll be back.”
“I know. Don’t worry. I can handle Cruz.”
As darkness fell, Stephen, the slave who had managed Rip’s household since Amelia’s death, when Cricket was still a child, lit the lanterns inside the house. The bright yellow light spilled through the front windows, enabling Sloan and Rip to see each other’s faces.
“It’s too bad things worked out the way they did. I know you miss seeing your boy-”
Sloan felt her stomach begin to churn at the further mention of her son. “Please. I don’t-”
“Don’t interrupt me, girl. And don’t contradict me!”
Sloan wrapped her arms tightly around herself, but she remained silent.
“I know your sister Bay finally got you and Cisco together this past year at her husband’s ranch. I know that about the time you started letting yourself care for your son, he got hurt and nearly died. I also know that as soon as he got well again, you stopped seeing him. I’m sure you had your reasons for that.”
Sloan’s glance skittered off Rip as she recalled holding her three-year-old son for the first time since she’d handed her day-old baby to Cruz. Cisco’s skin had been incredibly soft against her cheek. She had loved the feel of his chubby legs wrapped around her waist and his arms clinging to her neck as he murmured a mixture of English and Spanish childwords at her neck. She had suddenly felt the full brunt of what she had done.
It had been too easy to love her son. When he had been attacked by a renegade Comanche and nearly killed, she had been thoroughly shaken to realize how devastated she would have been by such a loss.
It had been frightening to realize that even the tender love of a mother for her son was fraught with danger. It was better, she had decided, not to love at all. It seemed the only way to avoid the pain that seemed irrevocably to come along with loving.
“You can’t keep ignoring the fact you’ve got a child,” Rip continued. “When you’re as old as I am, you realize you don’t get a second chance in this life. If I had a son out there somewhere, you can believe he’d know I cared about him.”
But he didn’t have a son, Sloan mused, which was why she and her sisters had taken the place of sons in her father’s dreams. How different things would have been if he’d had even one son instead of three daughters.
Sloan rarely let herself think what her life might have been like if she had not been her father’s heir. Would she have been so ready to reject love if she had not been so sure she would always have the demands of Three Oaks to fill up the lonely hours?
Sloan realized she ought to seek out Cruz and speak with him, to settle this matter once and for all. His cause was hopeless. She would never allow herself to love him. And she could never be the willing and obedient wife she was sure he expected her to become.
He would do much better to marry the young woman he had brought home with him from Spain, the one who had a long Spanish name regal enough to be joined with his. She had heard the señorita was unbelievably beautiful… and most certainly a virgin.
She turned her head to tell Rip what she had decided and realized he had fallen asleep. His body was no longer equal to the demands he put on it. The stroke had taken his strength and left him only his will.
In sleep he looked a gentle man, yet she knew he wasn’t. He was as hard and uncompromising as the land he had fought to tame. And he had raised her in his image.
Her future was tied to Three Oaks. She loved the land, and it gave her joy to see its burgeoning harvest. Somehow she would convince Cruz Guerrero she had nothing left to give to a man.