Her heart twisted, seemed to cleave in two. Was there nothing that would make him believe her? Carly watched as he rolled to his feet, all lean grace and supple strength, and began to pull on his clothes.
“You are my weakness, Cara,” he said. “Nothing I do makes me forget you. Not even the memory of you lying with my cousin.”
She stiffened, anger flashing through her, helping to override the pain. How easily he accused her, how ready he was to believe the worst. “You think you’re different, but you’re not. You’re exactly like my uncle. Your hatred is the same, your predjudice.… It blinds you as surely as it does the Anglos you despise.”
His shoulders went rigid. He forcibly relaxed them and continued to pull on his clothes.
“You think you can come here and take what you want,” she continued, “that you can use me and throw me away. Well, you’re wrong, Ramon. My pride is as great as yours… and so is my honor. If you walk away from me now, if you continue to believe as you do, I’ll never let you near me again.”
For a moment, he stood stock still. When he turned to face her, anger hardened his features once more. “You are my wife. As long as that is so, you belong to me. I will take you whenever I wish it. I will use you as my cousin would have done.”
Carly swallowed past the hot tears clogging her throat. “You’re a ruthless, brutal man, Ramon. Time and again I have seen it, but each time you make me forget.” She watched him walk toward his horse, slide a boot into the stirrup and swing gracefully up onto the stallion’s back.
“I very much enjoyed the afternoon,” he said. “Perhaps I will come for you, take you to Llano Mirada. Now that Miranda is gone, I have need of a whore.”
The angry tears surfaced, began a scalding path down her cheeks. “Step one foot on my uncle’s land and if he doesn’t kill you, I swear to you I will!”
His mouth twisted up. “Perhaps it would not matter. Perhaps I am already dead.” His face seemed carved in granite, his eyes a dull lackluster brown that held none of their earlier fire. For the first time Carly realized he was hurting as badly as she.
“And perhaps one day you’ll see the truth,” she said softly. “Unfortunately by then it will be too late.”
Ramon said nothing more, just stared at her for long, tension-filled moments. Then he settled his flat-crowned, black felt hat down over his forehead, spun his horse, and thundered away.
The minute he was gone, Carly dissolved into tears. If she thought the pool might soothe her, she had been sorely mistaken. The pain was back, knifing through her insides, calling her ten kinds of a fool. She wished she could ride away and never look back, that she could forget the heartache of loving Ramon and the hurt she suffered whenever he was near.
Instead she climbed up on her horse and started back toward the house, grateful her uncle was gone, that the tears on her cheeks would go unnoticed, that the pain in her heart was a pain she would suffer alone.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Ramon didn’t return to Llano Mirada. He would have liked to—there his thoughts did not stray so often to Caralee. But they had just completed a raid and he must remain at home in order to allay suspicion. He rode the stallion hard all the way back to Las Almas, craving the demands that mastering the powerful animal exerted on his strength, and the cleansing of the sun and the wind.
He didn’t want to think of Carly and the powerful yearning he had suffered the moment he had seen her by the pond. He didn’t want to recall the way he’d been drawn to her almost against his will. Just seeing her there, in the place where they had made such beautiful love, made his blood heat up, seethe like molten lava beneath his skin. The need to touch her, drive himself inside her, had been nearly overwhelming.
He had done it to punish her, he told himself. And simply because he wanted her. He was her husband, no matter how many men she might lie with. She belonged to him and he could do with her as he wished. He told himself he had needed a woman. She was there and taking her would please him. He gave himself a dozen different excuses but none of them was the truth. He had gone to her because he had no other choice.
She had said she loved him. Again and again she had told him that. He hated her for it. For making him still want her. For making him still love her.
Ramon leaned forward over the saddle and topped the ridge at a gallop, the stallion raising dust as its sleek, golden bodystretched to the task, white mane and tail flying out behind. Finally he pulled back on the reins, slowing the animal to a high-stepping walk. Rey was lathered and beginning to tire, and so was he. Thinking of the past did no good. Whatever he felt for Caralee was over and done. He had other problems to consider. His mother had been feeling poorly and he was worried about her.
And he was worried about the boy.
He could still remember the terrible look on Two Hawks’s face when the young boy had approached him about Caralee.
“Don Ramon?”
He was out in the barn, currying Rey del Sol, who stood placidly in his stall while little Bajito slept in the straw at his feet. “Si, muchacho,what is it?”
“Mariano says the senora will not return.”
Ramon’s long fingers curled tighter over the brush that stilled halfway down Rey’s muscular neck. “Si,that is so.”
“Why, senor? I thought she liked it here. She told me she was happy.”
He dragged the brush over the stallion’s powerful shoulder. “Sometimes such things just happen.”
“But she is your wife. Among my people, a wife must stay with her husband. Is it not the same with your people?”
Ramon ignored the knot balling hard in his stomach. “Si,but… there are times when things do not work as we plan.”