“I’ll say. That was just plain rude. Didn’t it occur to you I might have something to say to my sister?” Dressed in a mint-green bra and matching panties, she pushed her sleep-tangled hair out of her eyes.
He sat up and leaned against the headboard. “It did occur to me, which is why we need to talk. I don’t want Maggie and Rafael to know anything more than they knew before they left town.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to include them, and that’s it. Don’t argue with me.”
His dark eyes and brows emphasized his recalcitrant mood, but she immediately rebelled against his sharp order. “Do the words squirrel-headed twit mean anything to you?”
He folded his arms over his bare chest. “Not in this case. I’ll tell them everything after Victoria has been found and I know the whole story.”
“I’d rather give them installments.” She rolled off her bed, picked up his crutches and handed them to him. “If that’s the way you’re going to be, I’d rather leave for the beach now.”
“Refugio is preparing dinner, and I won’t disappoint him by leaving early.”
“Apparently you don’t mind disappointing me.” She pulled on her jeans, which smelled too much like a horse, and the knit top she’d worn earlier in the day and shoved her feet into her sandals. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Wait.”
She rested her hand on the doorknob, although it was unlikely he’d come to his senses so quickly. She gave him the benefit of the doubt. “Yes?”
“You forgot to brush your hair.”
He looked completely serious. “I don’t give a damn about my hair, and you’re lucky I’m a lady or I’d whack you with a crutch.” She went on out the door and ran downstairs. She stopped by the kitchen for sugar cubes and went out to the corral. Refugio had given her a strange stare, but if her coif weren’t perfect, it was a small problem.
They’d ridden the bay again that morning, and he beat the other horses to the rail. She gave him the first cube. “Whenever a man stops saying ‘We’ and switches to ‘I’, you know you’re in trouble. Oh, I’ve been in trouble all along,” she muttered under her breath.
She felt Jesus approaching before she caught sight of him from the corner of her eye. “Good afternoon. I’m just talking to the horses. I don’t want to ride again.”
He shrugged and walked back toward the stable, and she doubted he’d understood a word she’d said. At least he’d gone away. She doled out the sugar cubes, brushed her hands on her jeans and walked around the stable to the garden to search for strawberries. She bent down to pick a few.
Santos resembled his father so closely she could easily imagine a young Miguel and Rosa dashing through the rows of corn. She could almost hear their laughter, but her thoughts swiftly darkened. If Rosa haunted the ranch, and this was where she’d been happy and in love, she’d never want to see Santos with one of Linda Gunderson’s daughters. She ate the strawberries she’d picked rather than toss them aside, but she felt sick.
She’d actually thought Maggie should be the one to help Santos write a book about his father but now realized how poor a plan it was. Maggie was much too close to the tragedy following Santos’s birth, and while he didn’t seem to blame her, writing the book would surely strain their newfound relationship.
Santos found her sitting on the ground by the garden. He handed her the hairbrush. “You look like you put a finger in a light socket, which I realize doesn’t trouble you, but think of the rest of us.”
She would have thrown the hairbrush had she not needed it later. She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at him, her disappointment in him plain in her frown. “I may not have been in the bullring, but I saw you get hurt. I could have died in the elevator fire or been struck by the bullet that hit the balcony wall. But it’s all your story. Is that how you see it?”
“I’d sit with you, but I wouldn’t be able to get back up. Will you please stand?”
The ground had grown hard, but that was the only reason she stood. She brushed the seat of her jeans. “As I see it, I’ve saved your life twice. You owe me big-time.”
He leaned on his crutches. “Am I supposed to be your slave forever?”
“That would be nice.” It was impossible to stay angry with him, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. “Then we could plan things together, and you couldn’t stray off by yourself.”
“I can barely walk, so I’m unlikely to stray. Let’s go sit on the porch.”
Libby followed him, and when she took her usual wicker chair, she moved it away from his. “I’m serious, Santos. Either we’re a team or we’re not, even if it’s only until August, when I leave.”
“Aren’t you worried Maggie would tell your folks what we’ve been through, and you’d have to fly home Monday?”
He’d just given her a glimmer of insight into his real worry, but she schooled her expression rather than gloat. “No, because I’d swear her to silence. She’s keeping her own secret. Our parents don’t know your grandmother tried to kill her.”
He stared at her. “You’d blackmail your own sister?”
She dipped her head and began brushing her hair from her nape. “No, of course not. It would be a bargain for our mutual benefit.”