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It was a simple no-frills kind of name, but it suited her. And it went better with his name than with Rafael’s, which was a loco thought he tried to quash.
She stopped halfway between the barn and the house. She turned around. “Where is the wagon?”
“Rafael has it.”
She turned around and looked at him, her brows beetled together.
Daniel lurched into an explanation. “He took supplies up to the men. And if he plans on slaughtering one of the animals, he’ll need it to haul the meat back.”
She stared at him, and he bit his tongue rather than make up more excuses for why Rafael took the wagon. She couldn’t know it wasn’t normal. And too much explaining would sound fishy.
“Are you ready to mount up?”
She nodded and continued toward him. He just drank in her approach. He should have pretended to adjust a saddle or something.
“What?” she asked as she grew near and his appraisal was obvious.
“Are you always so curious?” He boosted her into the saddle.
“Well, nothing has been as I expected it to be.” Her hand braced on his shoulder, and fire singed his veins. Santa Maria, he had it bad. He needed Rafael to get well enough to assume his courting role.
She leaned forward and stroked her mount’s neck. And even watching her stroke the dumb beast sent a blast of heat through him. He was telling Rafe tonight that he couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t keep standing in for his brother, when in the end she would be Rafe’s wife.
* * *
“Try this one.” Daniel handed her a freshly plucked grape.
Anna bit into it, and spikes shot from her mouth along her jaw, pulling the corners of her mouth back. “Too tart,” she answered.
He handed her another. The juices burst in her mouth sweet as sin. “Much better.”
He burst one open with his thumb, wiggling apart the plump flesh.
Was he planning on taking the entire day picking single grapes? She cast a glance toward the steadily rising sun. “What are you doing?”
“When most of the seeds turn brown, they’re ready,” said Daniel.
“I thought you said you needed to water the vines.”
“Wanted to check them before I had to walk in mud.” He cast a glance at her. “Told you it would be this afternoon before we can try to find the herd.”
Anna sighed. Without his help she’d never find Rafael, so she’d have to wait. She’d be better off if she could remember to be grateful, but patience had never been her strong suit.
They walked along the rows of vines and Daniel picked a handful of grapes from different clusters and checked them for ripeness. “If you want, you could go sit in the shade of the orange trees while I work.”
She glanced over to where he’d spread a blanket on the ground in the shade. She was too impatient to sit waiting on Daniel, but she couldn’t get on the horse and just ride off looking for Rafael. As Daniel had pointed out, the land was vast. Before they’d been gone fifteen minutes the low roll of hills and wooded areas had blocked the house from sight. Getting lost would be frightfully easy. Besides, she had no idea which way to go as they hadn’t seen the cattle from the crest of any of the hills they’d passed over on the way to the vineyard and orchard. “That’s all right. I’d like to talk.”
“Okay.” He said it easily, as if he weren’t trying to hide anything. But then he’d been easy with her checking all the rooms. Probably because he’d known she wouldn’t find anything. “What do you think of California so far?”
Did it matter what she thought of California? The more important question was what did Rafael think of her? She raised her head and looked across the river toward the mountains. “What I’ve seen is beautiful.”
“It’s all beautiful.” Daniel folded back his sleeves, exposing strong forearms. “Even Death Valley is beautiful in its own way.”
“The name doesn’t sound pretty.” She jerked her head up away from her fascination with his hands with their long tapered fingers and the sinewy strength of his forearms with their coating of fine, dark hairs. Even with the mountains, rolling hills and lush river to look at, she’d rather look at him. How was she going to manage marriage to his brother when Daniel was around?
She’d just have to, she told herself sternly. Just like she’d marched to the mill each morning. Marrying Rafael was what she’d come to do, and she was going to follow through. Even as they rode and Daniel pointed out distant landmarks and the boundary markers at the southern edge of the ranch, her stomach had churned with the knowledge that Rafael was the man who owned it.
Daniel continued his explanation. “Well, a group of forty-niners were foolish enough to try and cut through the valley instead of going the long way around.” He strode toward the fence and a tarpaulin that was tied to it. “Only half of them made it out alive. Nothing can live there long. It’s too hot and dry.”
She trudged along beside him as he pulled on leather gloves, then uncovered a hoe and a shovel. He took the hoe and hacked at the weeds sprouting around the grapevines.
“What do you do with all these grapes?”
“Mostly sell them. Keep some and make wine.”
“You said you might plant other things next season.”
“Thinking about melons and lettuce.”
As long as he was interested in planting other things. “Have you considered growing potatoes?”
“I’d like to. A lot of easterners crave them. I heard tell of a man in San Francisco who paid a hundred dollars for a potato, but I don’t know the first thing about growing them.” Daniel turned the dark loamy soil. “No one around here does.”
“I do. I could help.” She cast around and saw a low ridge running along the ground. “We used to make little mounds like that and plant the potatoes in them.” That was what they’d done back in Ireland.
Daniel gave her a half smile. “The mole line? That ground raised up in the fifty-seven earthquake. That was a bad one. The ground shook for a full minute. The house had a lot of damage.”
A frisson of unease ran down her spine. Not only was everything not as it seemed here but the very ground could move under their feet. “I’ve never felt an earthquake.”
“You will. But most of them are nothing.”
“If you say so.” She swallowed hard and rubbed her arm while staring at the ground that apparently might decide to toss her about at any second.
“I do. I’ve lived through too many little ones to count, but only the one really bad one.” His tone was gentle, almost as if he knew earthquakes scared her and he was trying to soothe her. “The bad ones don’t happen all that often, maybe once every fifty to a hundred years. So we’ve got nothing to worry about.”
She nodded, although she wasn’t entirely reassured.
Daniel leaned on his hoe, his head tilted to the side. His lips slightly curled. “We don’t get snow, tornadoes or hurricanes. Nature must have some means of reminding people she’s still in charge.”
“I suppose,” said Anna.
“So if you want to educate me on how to grow them—” he resumed hacking at the ground “—I’ll see about sending back east for potato seeds.”
She smiled. He really didn’t know anything about potatoes. “You don’t use seeds. You just plant the potatoes themselves. You can even start them growing roots, then cut out each eye and plant the chunks. They are the easiest things in the world to grow, as long as you don’t have too much water. Then they can get blight.”
He’d stopped and was watching her, a grin on his face.
“You knew potatoes don’t grow from seeds.”
He shrugged. “Just wanted to see if you knew what you were talking about.”
She should be annoyed, but she wasn’t. It was more like a private joke they were sharing. She smiled back. “I know I should not, but I do. And I would be eternally grateful to have potatoes as long as we can keep some for eating.”
“Of course. We’d keep as many as you want.” He moved to the ditches and pulled up wooden gates to make the river water divert through the trench in the row he’d just hoed. At first the trickle of water went no more than ten feet. The dry earth greedily soaked it up. But as the dirt darkened from saturation, the water flowed farther and farther.
“I lost some of my vines and the irrigation windmills with the flooding last winter, but I can’t get too far from the river. It is too dry for them.”
Now that he was relaxed, she should start prodding. She bit her lip and tried to form the right question about Rafael, but nothing came to mind. She bent and pulled a couple of weeds from the soil.
“I didn’t bring you out here to work.” He leaned on the hoe.
“Won’t it go faster if I help?” She straightened and brushed her bare hands. She should have worn her gloves. “Then we can go find Rafael.”
