giving way to the track they were now on, which had led them up and over hills and down through boulder-clogged gulleys, negotiating switchbacks that meandered through fields of yet more boulders adrift in seas of wildflowers: lupine and poppy, owl’s clover and little yellow daisylike flowers J.J. didn’t know the names of.
He thought now-grudgingly-as he gazed across the hillside at the deep dark evergreen trees standing guard over Spanish tile rooftops, that at least old Sam Malone had chosen a pretty nice spot in which to retire from the world. It beat the hell out of a Las Vegas hotel.
“It’s beautiful,” Rachel said finally, as if she’d come to some sort of decision.
Because he didn’t want to admit she’d closely echoed his own thoughts, J.J. said sourly, “Wouldn’t want to have to evacuate this place in a hurry for a forest fire.”
“Evidently a cup-half-empty person,” she remarked without censure.
He shifted the truck into drive. “Just call it the way I see it.”
“Maybe you should try looking at things another way.”
He glanced over at her and found her looking back at him, and in the mirrors of her dark eyes saw twin images of himself he didn’t much care for. The locked gaze lasted longer than it should have, and when he finally broke it he felt edgy and frustrated and was thinking again about complications.
“Maybe,” he said, and drove on.
A short distance farther on, the road curved sharply to the left then dipped into a deep gully choked with willows and bumped across a graveled streambed now hubcap-deep in spring snowmelt runoff. It would be dry in another month, he imagined. In a summertime thunderstorm, a flashflood down the channel would be capable of washing a truck like his, or any vehicle unlucky or stupid enough to get caught trying to cross it, clear down to the river.
And that was just fact, he told himself, and had nothing to do with his cup being half-full or half-empty.
Not far beyond the creek, the road ended at a T intersection. Directly ahead, beyond a whitewashed rail fence, a grassy meadow stretched away to the foot of a mountainside covered with the same granite boulders and mixed vegetation they’d just navigated their way through. More fat black cattle and a few horses grazed in the lush spring grass or dozed in the dappled shade of new-leafed cottonwood trees. To the right, a dirt road followed the fence to the far end of the meadow and a cluster of buildings shaded by more of the huge old cottonwoods. J.J. could make out what appeared to be a farmhouse and an assortment of barns, stables and miscellaneous equipment, typical of a working ranch.
“We go that way,” Rachel said, pointing to the left. Her voice sounded as breathy as the navigation system’s, only not so much sexy as scared.
Moonshine, up on her haunches now and staring out the windshield, whined softly and licked her chops, as if she understood they were nearing their destination.
J.J. glanced at Rachel, and because what he really wanted to do was reach over and take her hand to let her know she wasn’t going to have to face whatever lay ahead of them down that road alone, he muttered instead to the dog, “Almost there, Moon…”
He made the turn onto a somewhat better-maintained road that ran along the edge of the meadow toward the sentinel poplars and evergreens they’d seen from a distance on their way up the canyon. The house with the Spanish tile roof was plainly visible now, a sprawling white hacienda built on a little knoll overlooking the valley below. Even to J.J. it looked pretty impressive.
Hearing a hitch in Rachel’s breathing, he slowed, stopped and looked over at her. “You okay?” He said it without much sympathy, afraid he might show too much.
She nodded, then said faintly, “It’s not…what I expected.”
“What
What had she expected? Rachel wondered. None of this seemed real-no more real than the old movies she and Grandmother had watched together-and so different from the life she’d been living for the past two years.
She now realized that from the moment the letter arrived, from a grandfather she’d never known, she must have been in a state of some sort of shock. Then Izzy had come, bringing with her a real hope of escape, and after that events had unfolded so quickly, recalling them now was like trying to take in a montage played at too fast a speed: The desert, the baby and J.J. The hospital, Carlos’s thugs, nearly being killed, thinking her baby had been taken…and J.J. again. Now…this.
“I’m having a hard time getting my mind around it.” She paused to listen to a replay of the massive understatement, then looked over at him as she amended it. “The fact that I have family, I mean.”
“Family? I thought you were assuming your grandfather is dead.”
“Don’t you think so? Why else would his heirs be called to claim their ‘inheritance’?”
“Ah-yes. The letter did say ‘heirs,’ plural.”
Rachel nodded. “Grand
“I know what it means to the one responsible for keeping you safe,” J.J. said darkly. “It’s just that many more people to worry about.”
As if on cue, from the backseat came an infant’s snuffly getting-ready-to fuss noises. Instantly, Rachel turned toward the sound, and at the same time felt a strange tingling sensation in her breasts. She gave a little gasp of surprise and glanced at J.J., her cheeks warming with embarrassment as if he could somehow
“What?” he said.
She shook her head and muttered, “Nothing.”
But she was thinking that trying to get her head around the idea of having a family, maybe some cousins, was nothing compared to getting it around the reality of having a child.
She wondered if it was because she’d spent most of the pregnancy a virtual prisoner in Carlos Delacorte’s house instead of going to visit the obstetrician, watching her baby via the ultrasound monitor, watching him grow from a bean-sized lump with a heartbeat to a recognizable human, looking at pictures of the stages of pregnancy in posters on the doctor’s wall. Maybe because for the past few months she’d been grieving for Nicholas instead of visiting with girlfriends who’d already been through it all, shopping with her baby’s father for a crib and all the cute baby things, having her friends “surprise” her with a baby shower.
Intellectually, of course, because of her medical training she’d been able to mark the mileposts of pregnancy and monitor her own health and that of her growing baby, doing the best she could in her situation. And as her date of delivery had come closer she’d become more and more frightened and her instincts had focused mainly on finding a way to survive, for both herself and her baby. But emotionally…
She lifted her eyes to J.J.’s and said it again. “It just doesn’t seem real.”
“Sounds real enough to me,” he said dryly, as the unhappy sounds from the backseat grew more earnest, and Moonshine whined nervously. He slapped at the gearshift and the truck started to move again, winding its way between towering evergreens and newly leafed poplars, and well-kept beds filled with rosebushes already pruned and ruddy with fragile new growth. “Let’s hope they’re ready for us.”
From a window high in the bell tower above the hacienda’s tiny chapel, keen blue eyes followed the white pickup truck’s progress as it slipped in and out of view behind copses of trees and sunny beds of roses. Avidly, they watched as the truck drew to a stop next to the curving flagstone steps. The door on the driver’s side opened and a tall man got out, crossed to the passenger side and opened the door.
The watcher’s head dipped in approval.
He leaned forward, gripping the window ledge with both hands as the woman emerged, stepping carefully, gingerly, the man helping her. While the man turned to open the back door, the woman stood looking around her, then lifted her eyes to the bell tower. For a moment it seemed as if she was looking directly into the watcher’s eyes, but he didn’t draw back; he knew the tower’s thick adobe walls and the angle of the sun would make him invisible to her. He gave a cackle of laughter.
“Well, Elizabeth, should a’ known your granddaughter would be the first. Have to say, though-she sure don’t look like her daddy, does she? Our Sean…” He gave a sigh. “I know…I know, I got no right to call him mine, after I gave him up-and you, too. But…we both know what a damn fool I was, and that’s water under the bridge.”
