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Entertained?
The brothers exchanged a look. She looked at Daniel again, and he glared back at her.
Was that all it was to him? Bile rose in her mouth, and she shoved back from the table and raced outside to the front porch.
A few minutes later she heard the door. Her heart leaped into her throat.
She turned, and it was Rafael. For a second she was numb. Her hopes plummeted like rain from the sky. Torrents of rain, but the sun shone and it was only inside her. She’d ruined everything with Daniel. He’d meant what he’d said when he left her room last night.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more disappointed look on a woman’s face,” said Rafael.
“I’m sorry. I can’t marry you.”
“You wound me, sweetheart,” he said on a low note and stepped closer. “Wouldn’t you like to get to know me before deciding that?”
Her throat grew too thick inside to talk. She shook her head.
He paused a minute, then gave her a wistful look. “Not even if my brother won’t?”
She had no idea what she’d do, but she couldn’t stay here if Daniel didn’t love her and wouldn’t marry her. She hadn’t come three thousand miles to become a mistress. She’d have to go into service, if not in Stockton then in San Francisco. Ironic, she’d come all this way to escape being a maid like her mother and sisters, and she would become one anyway. She shook her head again, and moisture welled in her eyes. She tried to blink it back, but one fat tear rolled down her face.
He stepped closer. The air didn’t charge the way it did when Daniel stepped close. “Hey.”
She swiped at her cheek.
“So you went and fell in love with my brother,” Rafael said.
She nodded.
“I’m not used to losing to him. Don’t know that I like it.” He rubbed her shoulder. “Sure you don’t want to marry me?”
“Mr. Werner, I can’t.”
He put his hand on her other shoulder. “You know, I didn’t really expect you to come to me pure.”
Her face burned, and her body vibrated with shock. Daniel must have wasted no time in boasting to his brother. “Do you know what...?” She couldn’t finish the question.
He gave her an easy smile. “Figured there must be a reason a pretty girl like you with a rich father couldn’t get a decent fellow back in Connecticut.”
“Oh, no!” Her lies, and he’d assumed she wasn’t an innocent. Right now she was too hurt to be angry, but she was going to have to read him the riot act later... Except there wouldn’t be a later. “I have to go. I’ll get work.”
“You’re trembling.” He pulled her into a hug. “It’s all right, sweetheart.”
It wasn’t all right. It would never be all right.
Sobs she’d kept down for hours bubbled like a pot of water in a rolling boil. Rafael’s arms slid around her shoulders, and he eased her against him. She bounced her fist on his chest and he grunted.
He moved her hands up to his shoulders and then rocked her, murmuring soothing words and promises for his brother that she knew Daniel had no intention of keeping.
Chapter Twenty
So many of the men around here are going off to fight. They look so smart in their blue uniforms, but just the other day we received news of a neighbor who fell in battle.
Daniel stood at the window, watching his brother charm Anna. A sick burn in his gut ate at his insides. In no time at all, Rafael had Anna in an embrace. He looked over Anna’s head to the window as if to say, What the hell?
No female had ever preferred him over his brother. Not his mother, not Juanita, not the former maid’s daughter and certainly not Anna. He’d known he’d lose her the minute Rafe talked to her, really talked to her.
He had seen enough. He wheeled on his heel and went through the house and out the back. He didn’t stop walking until he was in his vineyard. Hell, he had grapes to pick.
Except he found himself flinging clusters of grapes into the crates, which was no way to treat the fruit.
He dropped to the ground and put his head in his hands. Hell, his brother always won, so he didn’t even fight. He’d learned to joke and laugh at the irony. And there was no bigger irony than he should own the ranch, but his illegitimate half brother was going to end up with the girl he loved, with the ranch, with everything. He didn’t feel like laughing.
The idea of Rafael having her burned like acid.
He grabbed at the nearest grapevine and ripped the thing from the soil. He could wrangle the cattle, too. Hell, he did it all the time. He could rope and brand and geld as well as his brother; he just preferred the fruit. He wanted both for the ranch, cattle and produce.
And could he really be mad at Anna for trying to better her lot through marriage? It wasn’t as if she could go pan for gold or go digging for oil. That was man’s work. A woman’s only option to improve her station was to marry. So should he blame her?
She had looked stricken at the breakfast table. And she hadn’t been looking at his brother as if she wanted to be with him. Nor did she seem adverse to hard work. In fact, she seemed impatient with the lack of it.
No, he could decide what would happen with the ranch, and if he had to claim it to get her, he would. Rafael would just have to deal with it.
He picked himself up, dusted himself off and headed back to the house. He’d tell Rafael to go to hell and claim Anna as his bride.
The buggy in front of the house let him know the lawyer had arrived. His boots hit the porch, and the front door swung open. A hope that for once someone was waiting on him, that Anna was waiting for him grew in his acid-eaten heart.
Madre stomped out. Her face was red, and she shook a finger at him. “Where have you been?”
“This is the first time you’ve ever been waiting for me to come home, Ma.” Disappointment pulled him down.
She lapsed into Spanish and vitriol exploded out of her mouth. How could he have ruined his brother’s life, how could he have stolen his brother’s bride, how could he have let her shoot him and how could he be so ungrateful?
“Stop it. Stop talking!”
“Do not speak to me this way, Daniel Werner.”
“Or what, Ma?” He walked past her into the empty main room. “You’ll lie to me some more about my father? You will not speak to me like this any longer, or you will not have a home with me.”
She sputtered, and he ignored her. He would have to deal with her and all the lies she’d perpetuated for years, but he’d address that later. Right now, he just wanted to straighten things out with Anna. “I’m going to marry Miss O’Malley, and you’re not going to stop me. Rafael isn’t going to stop me. Where is she?”
Madre grabbed his arm and started pleading. “You have to let Rafael marry her so she cannot testify against him.”
“No, Ma. She doesn’t know anyway.” Unless something had changed. “Where is Rafael?”
“He take the lawyer to the office.”
Daniel shook loose of his mother and walked into the courtyard. Anna wasn’t making her usual rounds of the perimeter. Was she with Rafael?
He stopped at her door and knocked.
“Yes.”
Her voice seemed thin. But he didn’t wait for permission to push open the door.
She was kneeling in front of her trunk, placing her brush and comb in the tray. She cast a glance over her shoulder, then quickly averted her face.
So much for a warm welcome. He wiped his damp palms on his trousers and launched into what he’d come to say. “You’re not marrying my brother.” His chest tightened as he waited for her response. “I won’t let you.”
“No. I’m not.”
He let out the breath he was holding. “Good answer.”
He moved closer to her.
Her room was as neat as a pin, unlike the wild place it had been last night. Her bed was made. The picture of her and her two friends was no longer on the bedside table. None of her clothes hung from the hooks, and her hat was on top of her valise, which was on the floor beside the trunk.
“The lawyer said he would drive me into town after he and your brother conclude their business.” Her voice wavered, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Your brother agreed to loan me some money until I find work.”
She was leaving? Yes, of course she was. He hadn’t let her think she had any choice. “Anna.”
“Mr. Werner, I find this difficult enough.”
“Won’t you look at me?” he asked gently, but his heart was beating madly. If she left, he’d never convince her to come back. Once she was in Stockton, she’d realize there were dozens of men who’d marry her in a heartbeat. What chance would he have then?
She shook her head.
“You’re not leaving.” She couldn’t discount what happened last night—before he’d lost his mind.
