Hotter Than Hell(76)

Turk tapped on the window. She rolled it down and summoned a smile.



“Back so soon?” he asked. “Thought you might be spending the weekend in town.”



“I had a good time, but I think I may be coming down with something. If I have to be sick, I’d rather be sick in my own room.”



“Sorry to hear it, Miss Cat. I’ll put the truck away.” He opened the door for her and took her place in the driver’s seat. Cat looped the duffel over her shoulder and plodded toward the house. Pilar met her in the kitchen, the housekeeper’s hands and lower arms coated with flour. A ball of pie dough sat on a wooden board beside the sink.



“Catalina!” Pilar hastily washed her hands and dried them on a thick cotton towel. “How was the festival?”



“It was fine.” Cat dropped into a chair and stared at the pretty bouquet of wildflowers Pilar had set on the table. “I just…got a little lonely.”



“Ah?” Pilar rubbed at a patch of flour left on a fingernail. “Did you find no one to keep you company?”



The inevitable blush burned Cat’s cheeks. Pilar nodded gravely. “I saw the change in you the night Kelpie came back lame. I see it even more strongly now. Who is he?”



Cat found that she had no desire to pretend any longer. “I met him that night. He helped with Kelpie, and—” She broke off, unable to describe how she’d felt that first time. “He was…is…unlike any man I’ve ever known.”



“What is his name? Where does he live?”



All of Pilar’s questions were logical, but the answers would tell her nothing. “His name is Andrés,” she said. “I don’t think he has a home.”



“Yet he has won your heart.”



Pilar’s words, so simple and blunt, stopped the air in Cat’s lungs. She tried to stand and fell back again, her muscles gone weak and useless.



She’d known Andrés all of three days. It just wasn’t possible to fall in love so quickly. But she’d never believed in curses or men who could change into horses, either.



“He was not what you expect to find when you came to us,” Pilar said.



“No.”



“Your mind tells you to stay away, yet you cannot.” The older woman placed a plump hand on Cat’s shoulder. “Has he done you some wrong, this Andrés? A wrong you can’t forgive?”



How could Pilar possibly have guessed? Andrés had betrayed Itzel. He’d let her people die while he stood by, refusing to intervene. His punishment had been no less than he deserved.



But that isn’t why you turned on him. It isn’t what happened hundreds of years ago that matters, is it? It’s what he did to you, how he deceived and manipulated you….



“Perhaps you came to us for a reason,” Pilar said. “Not only to find love, but to free yourself from your own past.”



And to free Andrés as well.



Cat jumped to her feet. “I have to go out, Pilar. Don’t expect me back before dawn.”



The housekeeper nodded, smiled, and returned to her pie crust. Cat grabbed several bottles of water and a chunk of cheese from the refrigerator, fetched a blanket from her room and ran outside to look for Turk. When she didn’t find him, she saddled a mare and placed the blanket, food and a supply of oats in a pair of saddlebags she hung over the mare’s hindquarters.



Rosie was more than ready to cooperate with Cat’s eagerness to be gone. Cat rode north toward the Colorado border, certain that Andrés would head away from civilization. She paused at five to drink and eat and rest the mare, refusing to give up hope.



By eight the sun was beginning to set. Cat had no idea how far she’d gone; the countryside had hardly changed, and she’d encountered only cattle, horses, and a few pronghorn antelope. Her legs ached, and Rosie was beginning to droop.



Cat dismounted at the foot of a small hill, stretched, and left Rosie to graze while she finished off the last bottle of water. Her heart was a leaden weight in her chest. She couldn’t continue with only the supplies remaining in the saddlebags; when morning came she’d have to turn around. The chances that she’d find Andrés were growing smaller by the moment.



Wearily she spread the blanket on the brown grass and lay down. She had just closed her eyes when Rosie nickered softly. Half afraid to hope, Cat opened her eyes again.



The stallion stood at the top of the hill, the plume of his tail stirring in the evening breeze. Cat rose, adrenaline rushing through her body.



Come, she begged silently. Come to me.