A Bravo's Honour

“Talk.” Her soft mouth curved. It wasn’t a smile. “Right.”

“How do you know this isn’t something important?”

She frowned. “Important?”

“That’s right. We’ve both been thinking how we’ll regret getting anything started, how between your family and mine there’s never been anything but trouble. But what if we’ve got it wrong?”

“Wrong…”

“Yeah. What if the regret will come from not even trying, from not even giving each other a chance? What about that?”

Her mouth had softened. And so had those night-dark eyes. “I…I’ve wondered that. I have. Especially since Saturday night.”

“One date. We’ll see how it goes, find out if it’s all wrong, or if maybe this is something we shouldn’t pass up, no matter the risk, no matter the possible consequences.”

She tipped her head to the side, kind of studying him. “You think we’re going to learn all that in one date?”

He answered honestly. “Maybe not. But it’s a step.”

A long moment passed. Finally, she took a card and a pen from her purse. She wrote on the back of the card and then held it out to him. “Park around the corner. I’m a big coward. I don’t want to hurt my mother or my father. For now at least, I just don’t want them to know about this.”

He took it. And he read what she’d written. “I’ll be there,” he said.

Chapter Three

It was well after dark when Luke got to Mercy’s South Side neighborhood that Friday night. He’d taken one of the pickups from the ranch. It was a dull green and dirty, the wheels, side panels and front grill spattered with mud, the kind of vehicle no one would look at twice.

Mercy didn’t want anyone to know about the two of them. And he was willing to go along with that—at least for now. He parked two blocks from the address she’d given him, and walked the rest of the way, past small houses with dry patches of lawn in front and chain-link fences. Even after nine at night, the August heat was punishing. He heard the steady drone of window air conditioners. Here and there people sat on their front porches, laughing and talking. The occasional car rumbled by, giant speakers blaring out rap music or Tejano.

He kept his gaze front and his feet moving, feeling slightly ridiculous, thirty-one years old and sneaking around like a misbehaving teenager. But then he smiled to himself. Like a teenager in more ways than one. He glanced down at the bouquet of red roses he had picked from the garden himself. All tied up in knots, hormones on overdrive, on his way to see a certain special—and forbidden—girl.

When he turned onto her street, he slowed his steps and checked addresses. In the glow of a porch light he made out a number—203. Her house was number 212. It would be across the street.

He found it easily in the light of the streetlamp, a neat little cottage, blue with white trim. Geraniums grew along the fence and a rose trellis masked the concrete front porch. No garage. That pickup she drove waited in the narrow driveway between her house and the next one over.

Luke stood beneath the spreading shadow of an oak on the cracked sidewalk across the street, clutching his handful of roses, and staring at that little blue house, telling himself he could still change his mind. He was a simple man, really. He liked steak and baked potatoes. He said what he meant. His word was his bond. He believed in his parents’ longtime successful marriage and his family in general and loyalty and love, though you would be unlikely to catch him running his mouth off about that stuff.

He wondered what he was doing there, why he had insisted that she give the two of them a chance. He considered turning and going back the way he’d come.

But his desire—both to have her and to know her—was simply too powerful. He was a practical man in the grip of something he couldn’t control, something he doubted he would ever understand.

It was no good trying to convince himself to walk away. Desire held him there, stronger than all his compelling arguments to the contrary.

Luke emerged from under the shadowing branches of the tree and crossed the street. He went through the gate and up the three steps to her door.

He raised his fist to knock. But before he made a sound, the door swung open and her hand came out. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him inside, shoving the door shut again the second he crossed the threshold.

Since she was so close, he slipped an arm around her and brought her closer. He looked down into her upturned face, drinking in the sight and scent and feel of her. She had her hair down, blue-black and shining, and she wore a loose-fitting blouse that had slid off one shoulder.

“You’re beautiful.” He whispered the words, reverently.

Her strong chin quivered. “I’ve been…so anxious. Longing for you to be here, wishing you wouldn’t come, praying that you would. Going back and forth like a seesaw.”

“I know the feeling.” He pulled her nearer, wrapping both arms around her, heedless of the roses, which he held against her slim back. She didn’t resist him, not this time, only curved against him, warm and soft, all woman. A perfect fit.

She reached up, touched his face, her eyes full of wonder. “Oh, Luke. My heart is beating so hard…”

“Mine too. So hard…”

He kissed her. He had to. Hungrily, he speared his tongue inside, yanking her up hard and firm against him, pressing his hips against her, letting her know exactly how she affected him. His blood pounded in his ears, so loud the sound filled up the world.

When he lifted his head, she sagged against him, as though the kiss had made her legs too weak to hold her up.

He tried to control himself, tried to think of something other than how much he longed to take off all her clothes and lay her down on the couch across the room and make love to her all night long. “I wanted…I thought we would talk, you know? Learn about each other…”

She laughed low, and the sound seemed to vibrate along his every nerve. “How’s that working out for you?”

“It’s not.” With a low groan, he took her mouth again. He was like a starving man—starved for her. For the feel of her, the taste. For all of her…

That time, she was the one who broke the kiss. She put her hands on his shoulders and dug her fingers in, shaking him a little, making a hissing sound between her white teeth. And while she shook him, she looked up at him, lips soft and red, eyes so very serious.

He met her gaze, frowning, not sure what her expression meant, what she might be thinking.

Her hand slid down his arm and she caught his free hand. “Come on. To my kitchen. We’ll put my table between us. It will be easier to act like civilized people that way.”

Obedient as a well-behaved child, he followed her through the arch at the far side of the living room. Her kitchen was small, with a brightly tiled counter, a two-seater table, and a pair of bentwood chairs painted yellow. She pushed him down into one of the chairs.

It seemed about time to offer the roses. “I picked these for you. The color made me think of you. Red. Like your lips when I kiss you.”

She put the pads of her fingers against her mouth, lightly. He wanted to be those fingers, touching that mouth. He had to will himself not to surge up out of that chair, grab her in his arms and kiss her again.

And again…

She took the flowers from his outstretched hand. “Thank you.” She brought them close and breathed in the scent of them. “Mmm. Not like the ones you get at the store with all the fine, dewy rose smell bred right out of them.” She turned for the cupboard and brought down a yellow ceramic pitcher painted with daisies. As she filled it with water at the sink, a scraggly three-legged dog limped in from the other room.

The dog stumped right over to him and wagged its raggedy tail. “Hey.” He let the mutt sniff his hand and then scratched him behind the ears. The dog dropped to his haunches and stared up at him adoringly.

Mercy turned from the sink. She unwrapped the roses from the newspaper cone he’d carried them in and arranged them in the pitcher. Then she brought the arrangement to the table and set it in the center.

“His name’s Orlando.” She gave the dog a fond glance. “Someone dropped him off at the clinic a year ago. He’d been in a car accident. They amputated his crushed leg, patched him up and, since no one would take him, they let him live there. Until I came along and couldn’t resist those sweet, hungry eyes. I adopted him. Or maybe he adopted me…”

“I’ve got a dog. Lollie. She’s a sweetheart.” Feeling suddenly awkward and inexplicably tongue-tied, he petted the dog some more as she went to the fridge and got out two beers. She opened them and returned to the table, where she took the empty chair.

Holding his gaze, she slid one of the bottles across to his side. “I told Elena that you kissed me. That I…couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“When did you tell her that?”

“Before we saw you and Caleb at Armadillo Rose.” She ran her finger down the side of the sweating bottle, wiping a path in the condensation as she went. “It was her idea, going to Corrine’s bar Saturday night. I said how that was silly, that you and I had agreed it was not going to happen between us, and there was almost no chance you would show up there, anyway. So then she asked me what I was afraid of. And I went, just to prove I wasn’t scared—and also because, deep in my secret heart, I was hoping you might be there.” Her dark lashes swept down. When she looked at him again, she added, softly, “And you were.”

He loved her eyes, that slight, sexy slant they had, their velvety blackness. “I wouldn’t have been there that night, except for Caleb. He decided we needed to get out. He drove. I just settled back and went where he wanted to go.”

She slid her beer across the table until it clinked against his, then she pulled it back. “Would you call that fate?”

He watched her smooth throat as she drank. “I’m glad that you were there.”

She set the bottle down again. “Elena thinks the bad things between our families are in the past, that we all need to move beyond what happened so long ago, that it’s got nothing to do with us, with our generation.”

He’d guessed as much from the way Elena behaved the other night, greeting him with a smile, dancing with Caleb. “But you feel differently.”

As she considered what he’d said, the dog, Orlando, rose wearily to his three feet and limped away into the living room.

Finally, she spoke. “The other night in the stable, I did feel differently. All I could think then was that going out with you would only be a betrayal of everyone I love. But after listening to my sister lecture me about how the animosity between our families is all in the past…” She touched the pitcher with his roses in it, then brushed her finger across the velvety petals of one of the blooms. “Maybe I’ve been making a big thing out of nothing. Maybe it really is all over and done. My dad used to speak of your family with anger. With disgust. He really hated your grandfather. And your dad, too. But in the past few years, he hardly mentions you Bravos. He and my mom are happy, doing well.”

Luke thought of his own father. He wondered how Davis Bravo would react to him and Mercy getting together. The old feud aside, Davis had big ambitions. He wanted his sons to marry rich Texas debs, to bring connections and fat fortunes into the family. So far, it hadn’t worked out that way. Ash had married a storekeeper from California. And Gabe’s new wife was a poor Hill Country widow. How would Davis take it if his third son married a Cabrera?

Marriage…

Whoa. He was getting way ahead of himself. He had spent maybe an hour in Mercy’s company, total. They hardly knew each other. He needed to remember that.

She said, “You’re so quiet, all of a sudden. Is something wrong?”

He sipped from his beer—and sidestepped her question. “Saturday night on the way home, Caleb said he was going to ask Elena out.”

She gave a disbelieving laugh. “You’re kidding me.”

“No. I talked him out of it. Now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have. Not on account of the family feud, anyway.”

“But for some other reason?”

He shrugged. “Caleb is such a damn player. He’s almost as bad as Gabe was before he met his new wife, Mary. He might break poor little Elena’s heart.”

Mercy made a scoffing sound. “You don’t know my sister very well.”

He had to admit, “No, I don’t.” He studied her amazing face. “I have a lot of questions.”

“Like what?”

“Why did you become a vet?”

She pulled the pitcher of roses close, breathed in their scent, then pushed them back to the center of the table again. “The usual reasons, I guess. I love animals. And I’m good with them. They like me, they feel safe with me.”

Lucky animals. Luke didn’t feel safe around Mercy. Not safe at all. “Are you dating anyone?”

She looked at him so solemnly. “Now? No.”

He couldn’t help asking, “But you were, recently?” When she nodded, he pressed her further. “Did you love him?”

“Love…” A frown formed between her sleek black brows. “I thought so. For a while. We were together in veterinary school. Until about six months ago.”

“What went wrong?” Luke’s voice was gruffer than he had meant for it to be.

“I don’t know. How does that happen? It all seems right and then slowly you start to see it’s not going to work out, that it’s not a forever kind of thing, after all.”

“Did you bring him home, to your parents?”

“I did, once. They liked him.”

“Where is he now?”

“He went back to Kansas, where he was born and raised. His dad’s a vet, too, so he’ll be taking over the family practice.”

“You’re still in touch with him?”

She laughed that low, husky laugh of hers. “Luke Bravo, are you jealous?”

Damn straight. “No.”

She tipped her head to the side and her hair spilled over her shoulder, like a black waterfall. “No, I’m not in touch with him. It seemed better that way. Just to let it go.”

A certain tightness in his chest eased away. “Where did you live before you came to stay with the Cabreras?”

Another laugh escaped her. “Hold on a minute.”

He scowled. “What?”

“What about you? Any special girlfriends?”

“No. No one special.”

She smiled then, a slow smile. “Well. Okay, then.”

He asked again, “Where were you born?”

“California. Salinas. My dad was a farm worker. He died when I was five, stabbed to death in a bar fight. My mother tried her best to support us, working as a maid in a motel. She did okay for a few years. Then she got sick. My mom—Luz, I mean—was like a sister to her. They grew up in Corpus Christi together. Javier sent the money and we came to stay here.” She made a low, wondering sound. “Luz and Javier. Where would I be without them? They are my mother and father, every bit as much as my birth parents were. They love me and they raised me as a true daughter. They gave me a chance to go to college, to make a good life, to own my own house and pay my own way.” Tears shone in her eyes.

He hadn’t meant to make her cry. “Mercy.” He rose to his feet. “Don’t cry…”

She dashed the tears away. “Sometimes it’s good to cry, when there’s deep emotion.”

“Good to cry…”

“Yes.” She gazed up at him, the tears still there, glittering like diamonds in her eyes.

He reached down a hand. She laid hers in it. He pulled her upward and wrapped his arms around her. He stroked her silky hair, kissed the smooth skin at her temple. She rested her head on his shoulder with a soft sigh. For several long, sweet seconds, they stood there by the table, holding each other close.

But then she raised her head and captured his gaze. “I would like…not to say anything to anyone else. Not for a while. I’ll tell Elena to keep silent. And we could just see how it works out with us.”

His heart leapt. He wasn’t sure about taking this thing with them public, either. But he wanted to keep on seeing her. He wanted it bad—so bad he ached with it. And now she’d admitted she wanted it, too.

“All right,” he said. “For a while.”

“We’ll…be together when we can. Just the two of us.” She stared up at him, her expression grave.

“Yes.”

Was it the coward’s way? Probably. But then again, time for just the two of them, what could that hurt? This was all so new. And they had no way to know where it would go from here. Right now, with her in his arms and the scent of her tempting him, it seemed impossible that what he felt would ever die. It seemed she belonged with him, forever. But it could end, just fade away, as it had with her and that guy from Kansas. It could turn out that there’d been no need, after all, to take the chance of stirring up trouble.

She took his shoulders, pushed him away a little. “Here I am in your arms again. Somehow, lately, I always end up here.”

He gathered her closer. “I don’t want to let you go.”

She rose up on tiptoe and offered those rose-red lips to him. “Kiss me again, Luke. Kiss me a hundred times.”

He took her mouth in a long kiss that stole his breath and sent the blood pulsing hot through his veins.

When he lifted his head, she whispered, “I have a confession.”

“Tell me.”

“When I was a girl, I saw you once, in a parade, riding a white horse.”

“I remember that parade. It was after Thanksgiving. The holiday parade…” It must have been before her mother died. He had spotted her, a skinny kid with huge black eyes, picked her out of the crowd because she seemed to be staring so hard at him. Later, he had asked around about her, found out she was staying with the Cabreras.

She said, “After that, I dreamed forbidden dreams of you. I dreamed of this. I dreamed that you would be my lover.” She laughed. “Well, I was only twelve. Maybe lover is the wrong word. My sweetheart, I guess. My boyfriend…”

Her loose cotton shirt had fallen down her shoulder again. He touched the glowing, silky skin that the shirt revealed, hardly daring to believe what her words seemed to mean. “What are you saying? What are you telling me?”

“I’m saying I…I want you, Luke. Maybe I have since that first time I saw you. I’m saying…ah, this is crazy, huh? I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s only that when you touch me, when you kiss me…it’s like my little-girl dreams all come alive for me. At last.”

It seemed only fair, only right, to make a confession of his own. “I remember you, too. Your black eyes that seemed to see right through me. Even when you were a skinny little kid, I noticed you. And then, about the time you turned sixteen…” He let the words trail off.

She slid her hands to his shoulders and gave them a shake. “What? Tell me. What?”

“I saw you once, with your girlfriends, at the rodeo.” His voice sounded rough to his ears. It was partly arousal. And partly a deeper emotion, one he wasn’t prepared to give a name. “You were laughing at something, your head thrown back, black hair shining in the lights. And then you saw me watching you. Your laughter stopped. Your face changed…”

She gave a slow nod. “I remember that night. I felt so strange when you looked at me. Scared. And yet also very powerful, very much a woman.”

“Mercy. You were sixteen.”

“But I didn’t feel sixteen. Not when you looked at me the way that you did.”

He ran a finger down the smooth flesh of her neck. “I knew I had to keep clear of you. I knew you were dangerous. And not only because I was twenty-one and you were underage. Not only because your last name is Cabrera.”

Her dark eyes sparked with challenge. “But here you are, Luke. In my house. With your arms around me…”

“Yeah, here I am. What the hell’s going on with us? Why is it I never want to leave?”

“I have no answers,” she whispered. “Only more questions.”

He bent his head, pressed his lips to the fragrant skin of her shoulder. She shuddered under that caress and he pulled her closer. He took her mouth again. She melted into him, as if her body knew his, had always known, as if there was some magical, absolute affinity between them, as man and woman, as if the attraction—the need—was bred in the bone.

When at last he lifted his head, he waited for her to open her eyes, for her long, sooty lashes to rise. She stared up at him, dazed, red lips wet from their kisses.

He knew he could have her, right then and there. He ached to have her, to peel off that loose cotton shirt and those tight jeans. To take away everything, all the barriers between them. To see her naked. To touch her all over.

To take her here, in the kitchen, on the table. Or up against the ancient yellow refrigerator. To lead her into her bedroom, lay her tenderly down on the pillows and bury himself deep in her softness. To kiss her all over, to bring her to climax once and then again. And again. Until she begged him to stop—and then pulled him close and demanded he do that some more.

More. Yes. For their first time, he wanted more than just tonight.

“Come away with me,” he whispered. “Give us some time, together.”

She ran a finger along the crew neck of the shirt he wore. He felt her touch like a brand. And she asked, “Isn’t that what this is now, tonight? Time, together?”

“I want more. All night. And the morning after. I don’t want to be interrupted by daylight. I don’t want to have to sneak off before dawn.”

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