was still gone, thank God. She backed the pickup next to the bunkhouse, where it wasn’t visible from the house, and knocked on the door.
Bud, the new hand she’d spoken to earlier, answered the knock. Apparently the men had been asleep.
“I need a favor,” she whispered. “I’ve got C.C. in the truck. Will you toss him on his bunk for me, before my dad sees him?”
Bud’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve got the boss in there? What’s wrong with him?”
She swallowed. “Tequila.”
“Whew,” Bud whistled. “Never thought of him as a drinking man.”
“He isn’t, usually,” she said, reluctant to go into anything more. “This was an unfortunate thing. Can you do it? He’s heavy.”
“Sure I can, Miss Mathews.” He followed her out in his stocking feet, leaving the bunkhouse door open. “I’ll try not to wake the other men. They’re all dead tired, anyway. I doubt they’d hear it thunder.”
“Heavens, I hope not,” she said miserably. “If my dad sees him like this, his life’s over.”
“Your dad don’t like alcohol, I guess,” Bud remarked.
“You said it.”
She opened the pickup door. C.C. was leaning against it, sound asleep and snoring. Bud caught him halfway to the ground and threw him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. C.C. didn’t even break stride; he kept right on snoring.
“Thanks a lot, Bud,” Pepi grinned.
“My pleasure, Miss. Good night.”
She climbed into the pickup, parked it at the back of the house, and rushed upstairs to bed. Her father would be none the wiser, thank God.
She undressed to get into her gown, and a piece of paper fell to the floor. She unfolded it, and found her name and that of Connal Cade Tremayne on it along with some Spanish words and an official-looking signature. It didn’t take much guesswork to realize that it was a marriage license. She sat down, gazing at it. Well, it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, thank God. But she wasn’t about to throw it away. In days to come, she could dream about what it could have meant if it had been the real thing. If C.C. had married her, wanted her, loved her. She sighed.
She put the license in her drawer and she lay down on the bed. Poor man, perhaps his ghosts would let him rest for a while now. She wondered how much of tonight he was going to remember, and hoped he wouldn’t be too furious at her for going to get him or for leaving his dilapidated old Ford in Juárez. But with any luck, the old car would be fine, and he could get somebody to go with him to get it when he sobered up. Anyway, he ought to be grateful that she went after him, she assured herself. With winter coming on, it might be hard to get a new job. She didn’t want to lose him. Even worshiping him from afar was better than never seeing him again. Or was it?
* * *
The next morning, she woke up with a start as a hard knock sounded on her door.
“What is it?” she asked on a yawn.
“You know damned good and well what it is!”
That was C.C. She sat up just as he threw open the door and walked in. Her gown was transparent and low-cut, and he got a quick but thorough look at her almost bare breasts before she could jerk the sheet up to her throat.
“C.C.!” she burst out. “What in heaven’s name are you doing!”
“Where is it?” he demanded, his eyes coldly furious.
She blinked. “You’ll have to excuse me, I don’t read minds.”
“Don’t be cute,” he returned. He was looking at her as if he hated her. “I remember everything. I’m not making that kind of mistake with you, Pepi Mathews. I may have to put up with being mothered by you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll stay married to you when I’m cold sober. The marriage license, where is it?”
It was a golden opportunity. To save his pride. To save her flimsy relationship with him. To spare herself the embarrassment of why she’d let him force her into the ceremony. Steady, girl, she told herself. The marriage wasn’t legal in this country, she was reasonably sure of that, so there would be no harm done if she convinced him it had never happened.
“What marriage license?” she asked with a perfectly straight face and carefully surprised eyes.
Her response threw him. He hesitated, just for an instant. “I was in Mexico. In Juárez, in a bar. You came to get me… We got married.”
Her eyes widened like saucers. “We did what?”
He was scowling by now. He fumbled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “I was sure,” he said slowly. “We went to this little chapel and the ceremony was all in Spanish… There was a paper of some kind.”
“The only paper was the twenty-dollar bill you gave the bartender,” she mused. “And if it hadn’t been for Bud whats-his-name helping me get you to bed last night, you wouldn’t still be working here. You know how Dad feels about booze. You were really tying one on.”
He stared at the cigarette, then at her, intently. “I couldn’t have imagined all that,” he said finally.
“You imagined a lot of things last night,” she laughed, making a joke out of it. “For one, that you were a Texas ranger on the trail of some desperado. Then you were a snake hunter, and you wanted to go out into the desert and hunt rattlers. Oh, I got you home in the nick of time,” she added, lying through her teeth with a very convincing grin.
He relaxed a little. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have been a handful.”
“You were. But, no harm done,” she told him. “Yet,” she added, indicating the sheet under her chin. “If my father finds you up here, things could get sticky pretty fast.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he replied, frowning as if the insinuation disturbed him. “You’re only a little tomboy, not a vamp.”
Just what he’d said last night, in fact, along with a few other references that had set off her temper. But she couldn’t let on.
“All the same, if you and Dad want breakfast, you’d better leave. And your car is still in Juárez, by the way.”
“Amazing that it made it that far,” he murmured dryly. “Okay. I’m sorry I gave you a hard time. Do I still get breakfast?”
She relaxed, too, grateful that she didn’t have to lie anymore. “Yes.”
He spared her one last scowling glance. “Pepi, you’ve got to stop mothering me.”
“This was the last time,” she promised, and meant it.
His broad shoulders rose and fell halfheartedly. “Sure.” He paused at the open door with his back to her. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.
“You’d have done it for me,” she said simply.
He
