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Daniel stood stock-still, his head down, seemingly finding the floor powerfully interesting. She walked toward him, wanting to tell him it would be all right, even if it wouldn’t be.
As if he had to call himself back from a long way away, he lifted his gaze and narrowed it on the two shouting women. “Stop. What’s done is done.”
“So now the sheriff knows it is your cousins Rafael is following?” she asked him.
He said wearily. “The Martinezes are not my cousins.”
“But—” How could she have thought she’d seen a resemblance between the robbers and him—or was it just that there was a similarity between the men because of their Spanish descent? “Martinez wasn’t your mother’s maiden name?”
“Valquez.”
Mrs. Werner turned toward Daniel and raised her voice again. She shook a finger at him. His expression was flat except Anna thought anger flashed in his eyes.
He held up his hand. “Madre, was this ranch owned by José Martinez?”
She went still, and her face darkened. “Not this one. He own other ranch.”
The light drained out of Daniel’s eyes. “What other ranch?”
Anna didn’t understand the significance of the question, but she knew Daniel was deeply disappointed. She took a step toward him and reached to touch his hand.
Suddenly Mrs. Werner was glaring at her. “You have a rifle?” she asked in a chillingly low voice. “How you have a rifle?”
“The sheriff gave me the rifle the robber dropped.”
Mrs. Werner’s hands balled into fists, and she jutted her chin forward. “Why he do this? Why he give a rifle to a girl?”
“Because I shot the robber.”
Mrs. Werner came at her like a charging bull.
Anna’s heart slammed against her rib cage, and she brought up her fists. She wouldn’t back down. She’d done nothing wrong. It certainly wasn’t her fault if her future in-laws had criminals in their family.
Daniel stepped in front of his charging mother and caught her shoulders. She tried to bowl him over, and he pushed back, holding her in place. He asked in Spanish if she wanted Anna to know that she’d shot Rafael.
Mrs. Werner swung and shoved at him, cuffing him on the side of the head. “I kill her.” She descended into a mixture of Spanish and swear words. “This is all your fault.”
“Of course it is.” At least that much remained the same, but everything he’d believed for years was false. And he almost didn’t know which way was up. He felt sick to his stomach, and Madre wasn’t helping.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back. Her flaying elbow caught him in the ribs. He oofed, then tightened his hold.
“Damn puta!” shouted Mrs. Werner.
“Anna, go outside,” he said.
“I can take her,” Anna said fiercely.
“Anna!” He bit back the wry laugh that threatened to erupt at the idea of her and his mother who outweighed Anna by probably a hundred pounds, going at it. All his mother would have to do was sit on Anna.
He didn’t have time to make certain Anna followed his dictate as he wrestled his mother into a chair. She kicked and clawed. He was trying very hard not to hurt her, but she was like a crazed cornered animal.
“Stop it, Ma. Or I’ll tie you to the chair until you calm down.” He slid around to the back, where he held her down out of range of her heels and fists.
“She tried to kill my—”
Daniel slapped a hand over her mouth, cutting off her words. Madre screamed against his fingers.
Juanita sidled up beside him. “She go outside.”
He whispered in his mother’s ear, “She doesn’t have any idea she shot Rafael, Ma. As long as she doesn’t know, she can’t turn us in.”
“Do not let her know,” pleaded Juanita. “Keep Rafael safe.”
“Yes, you weren’t a lot of help telling the sheriff the robbers are related to us,” Daniel muttered.
“But Rafael say—”
“Rafael is stupid.” Daniel switched to Spanish, because he wouldn’t be surprised to find Anna with her ear pressed to the door. If his brother hadn’t been stupid enough to hold up the stage in the first place, then none of this would be a problem now and so he told them.
Juanita’s dark eyes filled with moisture. “I should not have say they look like Martinez.”
“It’s all right. I know you were trying to help. Now, why don’t you go fix some breakfast for Miss O’Malley? I don’t think she’s eaten.”
“I do eggs, no chiles,” she said and scrambled for the door.
“We’re just lucky she hasn’t recognized us. And if she figures it out from your tantrum, Madre, you can’t blame me.”
He’d seen the sketch. It looked like the eyes that stared back at him from his shaving mirror. But then Anna had veered away from what looked like him into other traits that didn’t. He didn’t know if she had deliberately altered the details or if she simply didn’t remember that moment when he’d stared into her eyes. A moment he didn’t think he could ever forget.
His world had started spinning out of control at that moment, and it only seemed to spin faster and faster.
“I’m trying to keep Rafe’s neck out of a noose, not put it in one, and you are making that damn hard.” Half prepared for more blame, he lifted his hand away from his mother’s mouth.
She whimpered and went limp.
When she didn’t shout or try to bolt, he loosened his grip around her and the chair. “Now I’m going to have to go learn what Miss O’Malley has figured out.”
His mother clasped his arm. “I will do anything to save Rafael. Tell me what to do.”
“Don’t do anything,” Daniel said, but he doubted she’d listen to him now when she never had before.
“But you will want him dead now that you know.”
“God, Ma. I don’t want him dead. He’s my brother. I don’t know what I’d do without him.” It felt as if an ox were sitting on him, and he couldn’t hold his shoulders back. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You should go to your room. I’ll tell Miss O’Malley you felt unwell.”
“I want to talk to my son.”
“You are talking to your son,” he shot back. He knew she meant she wanted to talk to her favored son, but his patience with her was gone.
Her lower lip quivered. “I want to talk to my Rafael.”
Of course she did, but not before he talked to him first and found out what Rafael knew and how long he’d known it.
Chapter Sixteen
My family has owned this ranch since last century, when it was granted by the Spanish Crown to my mother’s family. When my family first settled here, there were few people outside of the missionaries and natives, but I’m afraid the secret is out and everyone knows of the beauty of my state now.
The front door opened, and Daniel came out. Her pulse raced just looking at him.
He walked to the edge of the porch and said, “Juanita is fixing breakfast.”
“Will she spit in it?” Anna asked as she returned to the porch. She was amazed he was thinking about something so mundane and ordinary as her breakfast when so much had happened this morning. His consideration lit something warm and soft inside her.
The edge of his mouth curled up. “She’s a safer bet than my mother right now.”
His dark eyes searched hers with a question in them.
“I’m sorry.” Anna stopped in front of him.
“What do you have to be sorry for?” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he looked down at her.
“I shot your cousin.” That your mother is crazy. She took a deep breath. “And I’m sorry for whatever upset you.”
He could be upset because of his mother, but she thought it had started before that. “What was it the sheriff said that has you worried?”
The hint of amusement disappeared. His expression fell as he looked off into the distance toward the mountains. “Nothing important.”
“Didn’t seem unimportant,” she countered. Interesting that he hadn’t immediately leaped to voice concern over his cousins—or cousins he’d just disavowed—or his mother’s fit.
He looked so careworn, she wanted to hug him, but he folded his arms.
“Won’t you tell me?”
He returned his attention to her. “If you must know, my mother has been lying to me my entire life, but it’s not important and it doesn’t change things. Shouldn’t have been a surprise to me.”
But it had been a shock. She was certain his disappointment had been tied to the question he had asked about the ranch. She’d been trying to understand how everything fit together. “Who is this José Martinez?”
