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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY WILLIAM MALTESE
Anal Cousins: Case Studies in Variant Sexual Practices
Back of the Boat Gourmet Cooking (with Bonnie Clark)
Blood-Red Resolution: An Adventure Novel
Catalytic Quotes (Some Heard Through a Time Warp)
Dinner with Cecile and William: A Cookbook (with Cecile Charles)
Draqualian Silk: A Collector’s & Bibliographical Guide to the Books of William Maltese, 1969-2010
Emerald-Silk Intrigue: A Romance
Even Gourmands Have to Diet (with Bonnie Clark)
The Fag Is Not for Burning: A Mystery Novel
From This Beloved Hour: A Romance
Fyrea’s Cauldron: A Romance Novel
Gerun, the Heretic: A Science Fiction Novel
The Gluten-Free Way: My Way (with Adrienne Z. Milligan)
The Gomorrha Conjurations: An Adventure Novel
The “Happy” Hustler
Heart on Fire: A Romance
In Search of the Perfect Pinot G! (with A. B. Gayle)
Incident at Aberlene: An Espionage Novel (Spies & Lies #1)
Incident at Brimzinsky: An Espionage Novel (Spies & Lies #2)
Jungle Quest Intrigue: A Romance
Love’s Emerald Flame: A Romance
Love’s Golden Spell: A Romance
Matador, Mi Amor: A Novel of Romance
Moon-Stone Intrigue: A Romance
Moonstone Murders: The Movie Script
Schism on Antheer-D: Science Fiction (Gods & Frauds #1)
Schism on Bnth: A Science Fiction Novel (Gods & Frauds #2)
Slaves
A Slip to Die for: A Stud Draqual Mystery
Summer Sweat: An Erotic Anthology
SS & M: Being Excerpts from the Nazi Death-Head Files
Total Meltdown: An Adventure Novel (with Raymond Gaynor)
When Summer Comes
William Maltese’s Wine Taster Diary: Spokane & Pullman, WA
Young Cruisers
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2012 by William Maltese
Cover graphic by Cecile Charles
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For Christine Havens,
Who has joined me on many a
Sunday afternoon for wine and bullfights
CHAPTER ONE
This was Extremadura, east out of Trujillo, southwest from Madrid and hugging the border with Portugal. Rocky. Its very low hills were burned (often by temperatures over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit) by the Iberian sun to various shades of ochre and tan dotted, here and there, with olive groves.
“It’s a man’s land,” Karen Dunlap had told her daughter. “What Lalo was thinking when he left it to you completely escapes me.”
Alyssa’s mother hadn’t found her daughter’s sudden inheritance anything more than a tidy piece of real estate to be quickly dispensed with on the marketplace.
“You go for days on end, out there, without seeing even a bird. Of course, there are the bulls; but, you never really get to see them, either. They’re sequestered off in the countryside, miles away from any man, woman, or child, who might approach them on two legs and spoil them for the bullring.”
Karen had been at the Montego Hacienda for only one month, twenty years ago: the one and only month she’d been Señora Karen Montego, wife of Spain’s chief matador de toros Lalo Montego. It was a month and a marriage she didn’t care to recall, even now. One about which she still very seldom spoke.
“He had to have been crazy,” Karen had decided, “up to the very end. Why else leave the ranch to you when he has a son by that Cartaga Woman.”
The Cartaga Woman was Talia (nee Valéndez) Montego; although, Karen never gave her a Christian name. As far as Karen was concerned, Talia was, and always would be, simply the Cartaga Woman: Lalo Montego’s first and third wife. Talia had preceded, and, then, succeeded Karen in Lalo’s bedroom. The logical explanation was that Lalo had married Karen on the rebound and had had second thoughts when he was given the opportunity to get Talia back. After all, Talia had given Lalo a son, Adriano; and, in the end, she was the only one of Lalo’s six wives (seven marriages) who did. His mistake in marrying Karen became evident when, still on their honeymoon, he had engaged in a sexual relationship with a married lady on an adjoining ranchero. It was that affair which had sent Karen so quickly to divorce court.
Alyssa wasn’t Lalo Montego’s daughter. Her father was Donald Dunlap, Boston socialite, married to Karen for less than two years when he was shot dead in the crossfire of police and three bank robbers. Immediately thereafter, Karen had pretty much abandoned her daughter to a series of nannies, tutors, and private schools, to become an instant member of the international jet set and “café society”, picking up three more husbands in the bargain, one of whom had been Lalo Montego.
Then, after her last divorce (this time from a Swiss banker), Karen had decided to settle down; although, she had long since passed the point of ever really seeming like a “mother” to her daughter, neither having seen much of each other over the years.
Alyssa had met only two of her mother’s four husbands, counting her father. And, Lalo Montego hadn’t been one of them. That Alyssa had been made primary beneficiary of Lalo Montego’s Spanish estate, quite a sizable holding, left her more than a little bewildered.
“Turn it over to all over to lawyers,” Karen had counseled. “Let them sort it out with Adriano’s lawyers, because Adriano won’t stand by and see you get his birthright without a fight.”
But when the lawyers suggested the property be liquidated, Alyssa decided, quite on impulse, that she wanted to see it first.
“It’s no place for a woman,” Karen had persisted. “Take it from someone who has been there, done that, got the T-shirt, burned it, and tossed the ashes. You’ll feel completely cut off from civilization.”
If
