long in the church.
She heard a deep, melodic voice calling to a priest, and deep laughter following as the men conversed. Sunny couldn’t hear what they were talking about. Her mind was drifting into the past, into happier days, happier times, when the holidays had meant shopping for a special Christmas tree and cooking cakes and pies and turkey in the little house outside the city where her family had lived before her father’s death.
She said a silent prayer as she stood at the altar, her brown eyes sad and quiet.
Footsteps sounded just behind her, echoing in the cavernous depths of the church. She knew the sound of footwear. Those were boots. She smiled to herself. A cowboy, probably, stopping to light a candle for someone...
“A strange place to find you, rubia,” came a familiar laughing voice. It was oddly soft, almost affectionate.
She turned and looked up, her breath catching. It was the man in the shepherd’s coat, the gorgeous man who’d taken her onto the dance floor at the Christmas party.
“Oh,” she stammered, flushing. “Hello.”
He studied her for a moment before he replied. “Hello.” He glanced at the candles. “I come here every Christmas season to light them, for my people,” he said quietly. “You, too?”
She turned her attention back to the candles, nodding. “Yes. My mother and father. And my little brother,” she said softly.
He scowled. “All of them?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “My whole family.” She forced a smile. “My father went here all his life. My mother was Methodist. They were both stubborn, so I went to services at both places when I was little. I learned the Mass in Spanish, because that’s how la Santa Misa is said here.”
“My father brought me here when I was a boy, too,” he replied. He didn’t add that he’d once brought his own son, Antonio, who was eleven. But now, the boy didn’t want any part of religion. He wasn’t keen on his father, either. Since the death of Ruiz’s wife, three years ago, the relationship between him and his son was difficult, to say the least.
“It wasn’t because you’re, well, because you’re Latin,” she stammered. “The dance, I mean. I...I...”
He looked down at her with an oddly affectionate expression. “I know. It was because you didn’t think such a gorgeous man would want to dance with somebody like you, is what you told one of the nurses,” he said outrageously.
Her face went scarlet. She turned, her only thought to escape, but he was in front of her, towering over her.
“No, don’t run away,” he said softly. “I’m not embarrassed, so why should you be?”
She looked up, her eyes wide and turbulent.
“And there’s nothing wrong with you,” he added in a deep, tender tone.
She bit her lip. “The room was full of pretty women...”
“They all look alike to me,” he said, suddenly serious. “Young men look at what’s on the outside. I look deeper.”
She could smell the cologne he wore. It was as attractive as he was. She kept her eyes down, nervous and uncertain.
“You work at a children’s hospital,” he said, by way of explanation.
“Yes. The night shift, on the pediatric ward.”
“That’s why I haven’t seen you before,” he mused. “I spend most of my time at the hospital in the emergency room, either there or at the general hospital next door.” His face hardened. “We see a lot of children injured by gangs and parents.”
That brought her eyes up, wide and questioning on his handsome face. “Gangs?” she blurted out.
He pursed his sensual lips and pulled back the shepherd’s coat over his broad chest to reveal a silver star.
“Oh,” she stammered. “You’re a Texas Ranger!”
“For six years,” he said, smiling. “Didn’t you notice the gun, when we danced?” he teased, nodding toward the .45 automatic in a holster on his wide, hand-tooled belt.
“Well, no,” she said. She was lost in his black eyes. They shimmered like onyx in the light of the candles.
“Who are you?” he asked gently.
“I’m Suna,” she said. “Suna Wesley. But I’m called Sunny.”
He smiled slowly. “Sunny. It suits you.”
She laughed self-consciously. “You’re Ruiz,” she said, recalling what one of the physicians had called him.
He nodded. “John Ruiz,” he said.
She studied his face, seeing the lines and hardness of it. It was a face that smiled through adversity. It had character as much as male beauty. “Your job must be hard sometimes.”
“Like yours,” he agreed. “You lost a patient on your ward yesterday.”
She fought tears. She managed to nod.
“I have a cousin who works in the hospital,” he said, not adding that his son spent a lot of afternoons after school in the cafeteria until his cousin-by-marriage got off work and could drive him down to Ruiz’s ranch in Jacobsville. The cousin, Rosa, lived in a boarding house in nearby Comanche Wells. She, like John, commuted to San Antonio to work. “She said that the whole nursing staff was in mourning. It’s sad to lose a child.”
She twisted her purse in her hands. “We’re supposed to stand apart from emotion on the job,” she said.
“Yeah. Me, too. But you get involved, when people are grieving. I’ve got a widow right now who’s hoping for an arrest in her case. Some wild-eyed fool shot her husband outside a convenience store for ten dollars and change. She’s got two little boys.” His face was grim. “I’ll find the man who did it,” he added quietly, his black eyes flashing. “And he’ll go up for a long time.”
“I hope you catch him.”
“Didn’t you hear?” he asked, his mood lightening. “We always get our man.”
She frowned. “I thought that was the Canadian Mounties.”
He shrugged. “We’re all on the same side of the law,” he said, his black eyes twinkling. “So we can borrow catchphrases from them.”
She laughed softly. “I guess so.”
There was a loud buzz. He grimaced and pulled his cell phone out of a leather holder on his belt. He noted the caller and answered it. “Ruiz,” he said, suddenly all business. “Yeah. When? Right now? Give me five minutes.” He paused and laughed. “I’ll make sure I hit all the lights green. No more tickets. Honest. Sure.” He hung up. “A new case. I gotta go. See you, rubia.”
She smiled shyly. Her heart felt lighter than air. “See you.”
He
