Читать книгу Marry A Man Who Will Dance - Ann Major, Ann Major - Страница 14

Its wings spread wide, a hawk circled low over Roque. Talons curling, the bird hurled itself at the highest branch of a tall live oak, stilling the roar of the cicadas’ night chorus. In that brief silence, the dark field felt warm. Then the humid wind licked his skin, bringing with it the sweet, familiar smells of grass and salt and sea, and the cicadas began to sing again.

Not that Roque noticed any of those things on a conscious level. The hot little daggers of pain that spiked up his arm were so fierce they dulled his awareness of all else. He couldn’t move his arm or feel his fingers.

The hollow beneath his right eye felt stretched and itchy. His temple throbbed. Half of him was numb; the other half burned. He wanted to twist and writhe and howl like a wolf at the bright sliver of moon hanging straight over him. But the ragged whisper he uttered cost him so dearly, he bit his lips.

“Roque? Did you say something?”

Had he? He tried to speak again.

He heard her gasp, felt her fingertips on his mouth. Then pain blurred everything into nightmare again. He was in the wire mesh round pen. Caleb was begging him to teach him to ride, and since their father was gone for the day he’d said yes. But suddenly his father, who’d looked shorter and squattier than usual in baggy jeans and custom-made boots and yet unreasonably terrifying, was stomping toward him, yelling and swearing nonsense that he was trying to kill Caleb again.

Pausing to grab a chain off the nail outside the tack room, he’d pushed Pablo and two cowboys out of his way.

“Nobody had better interfere with me—y’all hear!” When the cowboys lowered their heads, Benny raised the chain. “You trying to kill Sunny on that damn horse, you stupid Mexican son of a bitch!”

Mexican. The way his father said it, had made Roque writhe.

“I begged him to teach me, Daddy,” Caleb said.

“Every summer he comes, you want to race bulls or something else crazy!”

“No, Daddy—”

He slammed the chain down on Roque’s back.

Roque screamed. Caleb jumped as if he’d been hit. The next blow cut Roque’s thighs and sent him sprawling facedown into wood shavings. He hit the ground so hard he swallowed dust laced with horse dung.

As he spit and choked, Caleb hurled himself at his father’s knees.

“You idiot!” Benny yelled at Roque. “You won’t stop until you kill my good son—you, who never should have been born!”

Again the chain zinged, this time gouging out a hunk of flesh. Roque rolled into a ball, grabbed his knees.

“Say you won’t disobey….”

“You’re not my father!”

“Say you’re sorry!”

“Go to hell.”

“He wouldn’t hurt me, Daddy!” Caleb shouted. “He’s not stupid. He was teaching me horse and…and to ride.”

When Benny raised the chain again, Caleb let go of his father’s leg and threw himself on top of Roque. “He’s sorry, Daddy.”

Caleb’s thin body was hot, and he was crying as he circled Roque’s neck with his arms. “If you hurt him, I’ll…. I-I’ll run away to Mexico! I’ll be a Mexican, too!”

“Get off me, kid!” Roque whispered. “I don’t want you to hate him…or love me.”

“But I do…love you.”

Her soft voice cut through Roque’s anguish and pain. Her gentle fingers trailed his throat, soothed. He strangled a curse.

Dios. Pain stabbed him again.

“I’ll even give you Buttercup!” the girl said.

Chinga!

She was holding something and praying to St. Jude. Roque wasn’t religious. Still, he’d been brought up Catholic.

He hung on every syllable of the girl’s prayer and went still when she fastened her St. Jude medal around his neck. When her voice died, her hand skimmed along his throat and jawline. She lifted her medal and kissed it.

So, it had been her last night. Her. He’d wanted to hold this girl close and dance near the fire, to dance. Suddenly he wanted to feel those lips on his skin.

“So, you’re just scared there won’t be anybody to teach you horse if I die. I—I could teach you to kiss too,” he whispered.

She dropped the medal and jumped back.

Híjole!

He stole a peek. Big glasses. Smudged clothes. She wasn’t much to look at—at least, not yet. Better to keep his eyes closed. But she sure as hell had a pretty voice, especially when she prayed. Those low, husky tones shouldn’t belong to a bratty little girl with wires in her mouth. That voice went with a real woman.

Dios. She was just a kid. Younger than Caleb.

Her fingers came back, cautiously gliding along his skin as she prayed again, her comforting words and warm breath falling against his earlobe.

Uno. Dos. Tres… He never made it to ten. The pressure against his fly was too extreme.

Pervert. She was a kid. Fourteen. Not even pretty.

When her gaze drifted down his body, he broke into a sweat. Then he slitted his good eye wider. Even though he was partially color blind, his vision at night was extraordinary. Like a cat, he could see shapes and figures that were invisible to anyone with normal eyesight.

Like now. Every freckle on her pert, slightly upturned nose stood out. Her tears glistened like diamonds. More than a hundred yards away, he saw Buttercup grooming herself.

A sliver of moon in a vast black sky peppered with stars enveloped them. Cicadas were buzzing louder than ever. In the moonlight her ugly glasses glimmered on her thin, unsmiling face. If only she’d been pretty like her friend with the big boobs.

It was hard to imagine her ever growing a figure or ever being beautiful. But she’d spied on him last night and today she’d stood up to him. She’d flown with him. He’d had fun with her before he’d fallen and hit his head. With her he didn’t feel homesick.

Nobody here, except for Caleb, ever made him feel as if he belonged.

But she did. Maybe she was a Keller, but she was an innocent, shy and sweet. As sweet as Mamacita when he’d had the mumps.

Chinga!

She was sweeter than Ana and Carmela, his sisters, when they were in good moods and hovered over him.

I can’t like you, girl! You’re the high and mighty Keller princess!

“Don’t die.” She squeezed his hand.

“I’m just a Mexican,” he growled. “You couldn’t care less whether I live or die.”

She ripped her silky fingers that had his groin in an uproar from his throat.

“Be…be careful,” she said in that supersweet voice. “I think your arm…. It’s all funny and twisted.”

“It’s broken. What’s it to you?”

She shoved her ugly wire-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Nothing. I’m only waiting for your father to come back. He’s sending an ambulance.”

“So, how come you didn’t take your horse and run when you could, little girl?”

“’Cause… ’cause my knee got hurt.”

“Aren’t you scared of being out here all alone in the dark? You ran last night….”

She hesitated and then shook her head. “I didn’t want to run. I wanted to dance.”

“You’re all alone with me,” he whispered, “in the dark. I could make you kiss me.”

She was slower to answer. “I’d stomp on your broken arm if you did.”

He laughed. Then he puckered his mouth and leaned toward her. “Last chance to get your kissing lesson from the best kisser in Mexico.”

“No…” Holding her knee, she scooted a few inches away from him.

He lay beside her, silent, wondering what to say to make her come back, but he couldn’t think of anything. All too soon he heard his daddy’s pickup roaring along the caliche road even before he saw his lights. Finally it stopped. The headlights went out.

Flashlights bobbed. Dogs yapped. Benny Blackstone shouted above their frenzied barks. Then an ambulance screamed on a distant ranch road.

“Over here,” Ritz called.

His father waved his flashlight.

Suddenly everything dimmed—their voices, her plain, skinny face—even the barking dogs racing toward him.

“I don’t feel too good,” he whispered right before he began to shake. “Kiss me.” When she still hesitated, he said. “If I die, you’ll never get to—”

She put her arms around him and kissed his cheek really fast. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I came to this pond hating life here, hating—I…I…” He stopped himself before he blurted something really stupid. On a different track, he said, “I don’t want you scared of me. And…and…. Hey, there’s a key to the gate in my left pocket. Get it. Take your old horse.”

“Where is she?”

“Over there.” He pointed. “I don’t want her. I never did. I was just teasing you because I wanted to meet your sexy friend.”

“Jet?” Her voice quavered.

“You’re okay…for a skinny kid.”

“But you wish I was Jet?”

“I’ll decide later…when you’re older. You might be pretty. Not that it would matter. You’re a Keller, so you’ll have to hate me.”

“So, you think I…I might be pretty someday?”

He stared at her face as if it were very difficult to imagine her pretty. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, now won’t we?”

The fierce hope that shone in her eyes cut him somehow. He closed his eyes to shut her out.

To his surprise he felt her lips, soft and warm and yet fervent somehow hesitantly graze his.

He kept his eyes closed long after the kiss was over, savoring the taste of her innocence. All this from a girl who’d been scared to dance.

He had to forget her.

Somehow he knew he never would.

“Did that boy put his hands in your pants and feel you up?”

“Daddy!” Ritz squealed, her fingers closing around the key Roque had given her. “How could you think that?”

Irish was sitting behind her in the back seat.

Mortified, she covered her eyes. It was an old habit, something she’d done as a child when she’d felt shy and needed to shut out someone or something that was suddenly too much.

“I know his type,” her father said.

“Easy, Art,” Irish mumbled behind her.

Irish had come along to check her knee. He said it was a ruptured ACL, and he’d stabilized it with an old knee brace he’d brought along.

“But you don’t know him,” Ritz said.

Her father grunted.

“Have you ever spoken to him—even once?”

“He wants to kill his own brother. Last year they caught him half-naked in the back seat of Natasha’s car with his hands down her pants.”

“Jet said Natasha had her hands in his—”

“What would you—a fourteen-year-old girl—know about trash like that?”

Irish kicked the back of the seat and then said, “Sorry.”

Art slammed the fist holding his cigarette against the dash and shot sparks everywhere. Ritz had to brush at her clothing frantically.

“You planning to be his next slut, girl?”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Irish admonished.

“Well, are you?” Art thundered. “Did you know he’s been seen riding around with Chainsaw Hernandez, that no-good ex-con?”

You don’t know everything, Daddy!

The rebellious thought crystallized into one of those life-changing epiphanies. Her father was used to giving commands, used to being the last authority on every subject.

“Talk to me.” When she didn’t, her father fumed. “What’s gotten into you?”

Roque Moya, that’s what!

He’d made her braver somehow, and even though she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in before—she wasn’t as scared.

The truck hurled itself down the rutted ranch road like a stampeding bull. For once Ritz was glad her daddy was smoking. The acrid fumes gave her an excuse to cough and sputter and wave her hands. Her eyes teared. Her throat burned.

“You’re just fourteen. I guess that makes you prime for the pickin’ for a low-down Mexican cur like Moya.”

Ritz didn’t dare defend him out loud again, so she coughed and waved her hands.

Her father, who was usually so careful never to smoke around her, took another long drag. Irish opened his window.

Smoke spewed out of her father’s flaring nostrils and spiraled up from the cigarette’s tip. Another coughing spasm had Ritz leaning forward and clenching the dash. Through tears she made out the blur of red ambulance lights.

“Roque…”

“You’re to stay away from that boy—you hear me, girl?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Her voice sounded so weird and small and unreal.

“You should see yourself! Staring after those lights like a boy-crazy fool! He’s no damned good, I tell you! And if you mess around with him, he’ll bring you down to his level! You’re not to think about him—ever.”

Her father yanked the steering wheel to the left. When the truck rumbled over a cattle guard, she whirled around to see if the lights were still there, but Irish’s broad frame blocked her view. By the time she moved, the black night had swallowed the lights whole.

Ritz placed a hand over her heart. “What if he dies?”

Her daddy’s cigarette flamed brighter than an infected boil. “You should be worrying about your mother. She’s frantic about you. Ever since you threw the kitchen rugs on the porch without even shaking them and ran off, she’s been driving the roads and calling everybody.”

“Did Jet put you up to this?” Irish asked softly.

“No!”

Art squashed out his cigarette. Then he rolled down his window. He sighed heavily and pulled another cigarette out of his pocket.

“Boss—”

“Don’t nag, Irish!” But Art didn’t light it. They were nearly home, and Mother didn’t like him smoking because of his high blood pressure.

Ritz glanced his way. In the flying darkness, all she could make out was his white hair and his rigid black shape. She hoped his neck wasn’t that awful bright red—his fighting color, as Mother and Irish called it.