somewhere to where she could escape and re-think her decision to break up with Ty Gordman.
Everyone, her mother included, was sure Alyssa had slipped off the deep end the minute she not only refused Ty’s proposal for marriage but stopped seeing him altogether. Not only was he handsome, but his family connections made him one of the better catches among the always surprisingly few prime bachelors available.
Certainly, Alyssa “liked” Ty. But, liking and loving, at least as far as she was concerned, were not one and the same. She enjoyed his company, because he was polite, well-mannered, danced well, made pleasant conversation, and could make her laugh, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed him so much as to contemplate spending the rest of her life with him.
Alyssa was enough of a romantic to envision marriage as the beginning to an eventual “death do us part” ending. On the other side of the same coin, she was enough of a realist to see that, perhaps, such long-lasting marriages were not usually the rule. Where divorce had once been looked upon as an anathema by the rich, it was now a course of action even they embraced at the drop of a hat.
The driver, Flavio, said something, calling Alyssa from her reverie and back to the present. He was pointing.
Ramón Selene, seated in the seat beside Alyssa, immediately scooted forward for a better look at circling birds in a patch of cloudless blue sky off to one side.
Ramón was the foreman of the ranch Alyssa now owned. He’d met her at the airport in Madrid. They had been driving since morning, except for a short break for lunch.
Never very talkative with his new employer, perhaps logically made ill at ease by the presence of a young American woman who probably didn’t know a bull from a heifer, he had lapsed into complete silence long before the car passed through Toledo en route to Trujillo. He wasn’t silent now, though, even if his animated conversation was with the driver and not with Alyssa.
The birds, obviously the subject of conversation, continued their downward helix over something probably dead.
“…go for days without seeing even a bird,” Karen had said. But, surely, a few buzzards shouldn’t be cause for such excitement.
Alyssa strained to catch segments of the conversation. After all, she did speak the language, forced into it by obligatory foreign language lessons heaped upon her by a long line of tutors and teachers in private schools. But as she had discovered in France, on her first visit, there was usually a period of transition needed, wherein it was necessary to recognize the language spoken by the natives wasn’t the same sterile language taught in classrooms far removed from the countries in question. Flavio and Ramón were simply speaking too fast for her to translate.
The car came to a sudden stop. Ramón opened his door and got out.
Alyssa realized there were several horsemen approaching from one side. Once abreast of Ramón, who was standing beside the car, the horses stopped. Ramón talked several minutes with the riders before getting back into the car.
“Is something wrong?” Alyssa asked as he again joined her. The riders were reigning for a turn-back the way they’d come.
“Some difficulty,” Ramón admitted, obviously reluctant to continue with an explanation. He wished she weren’t around to ask questions. He would have undoubtedly been more at ease if—whatever the present problem—he were able to handle it himself, without having the new owner right there to look over his shoulder.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure you can handle it,” she said, deciding she really wasn’t up to pretending she could even begin to be in charge of the situation. She had come here to escape and think, not become involved in playing enthusiastically at ranching. “I’ve been informed that you continue to do an excellent job in overseeing the property.”
If she had assumed her ready delegation of authority would relieve her of the problem, she was sadly mistaken. As much as Ramón might have preferred relieving her of it, there was no way he would be able to keep any of this from her if she decided to stick around for any length of time.
“Another bull has been killed,” he said finally.
Flavio put the car into gear, and they again started moving.
“Another bull? Killed?” Her curiosity was aroused in spite of herself. “Some disease killed them, you mean?”
“No,” he admitted reluctantly. “Someone killed them. With a gun.”
“A gun? Some one? For heaven’s sake, how many did this someone kill?”
“We’ve found four.”
Outside, there wasn’t a cloud (only buzzards) in the sky. Shimmering bands of heat lifted from the plain. Dust rose with the heat, stirred by God only knew what, since there was hardly a breath of breeze to be had anywhere. Trees, whenever making their occasional appearance, were either the gnarled limbs and trunks of olive, or some other low, squat trees which Alyssa wasn’t able to identify. The latter had dull silver trunks and twisted branches that extended to all sides. She couldn’t help being reminded of pain-distorted souls stretching arms upward for relief from Hell’s blast-furnace heat.
Karen had been right when she described the landscape as “more suited to a man’s tastes”. It definitely lacked the slightest feminine touch—at least at this point in Alyssa’s observations of it.
“Who?” she asked. “I mean, any suspects? After all, who goes around shooting helpless animals?”
“Yes, who?” Ramón echoed, though he, unlike Alyssa, had his suspicions. “Whoever, we’ll find him. The ranch is large, but nowhere is it so big as to hide a person like that forever. That I promise you.”
Why did Alyssa shiver? How could she chill in heat so long having penetrated the car, despite the air-conditioner on at full blast? Was it something to do with the revelation that, somewhere, out there, was someone with a gun, who might decide humans were worthier targets than stupid, four-legged beasts?
Or, was she letting her imagination run rampant? Certainly, Ramón had never said anything to insinuate that whoever killed the bulls might soon be looking for two-legged victims. Possibly, it wasn’t all that big of a deal after all. Despite vast economic improvements, Spain still had a moneyed elite and an extensive population of poor; one of the latter possibly just found him or her brought to the point of killing for.…
“Food?” she suggested. It was more than apparent, by the look Ramón gave her, that he hadn’t been anywhere near following her mental conjecture. She hurried to clarify. “The bulls, I mean. Did someone, perhaps, kill them for food?”
“Oh,” he responded, finally getting the gist. “No.”
So, Alyssa left it at that, hoping he would be able to take care of it after all. Frankly, she couldn’t imagine what difference a bull or two made in the long run. She had seen the figures that indicated the presence of over a thousand of them on the Montego Hacienda.
Once again, the conversation jolted to a complete stop. Alyssa pushed herself back into the leather seat and dreamed of arriving at the ranch where she could, hopefully, surrender herself to the unadulterated luxury of a long bath.
At least a dozen more miles were eaten up by the speeding car, and Alyssa began to wonder if she was ever going to see a bathtub before nightfall. She still had no real concept of the size of the ranch she’d inherited
