Rio Grande Wedding Part 23

But the image burned in him nonetheless. That dark hand against her white face. That peasant hand. He hated to even hear him talk that slurring Mexican accent.

And maybe, maybe, he could have gotten used to it eventually if he didn't feel in his gut that Molly was acting out of some n.o.ble instinct. Taking on this guy's problems because she was too nice and too trusting. He'd use her and throw her away, and Molly would have that lost, wounded look she'd only recently begun to lose. He couldn't stand to see her heart broken again.

Hypocrite!

The word burned across his forehead, and with a cry, Josh buried his face in his hands, trying to rub the brand away. He was so confused. Was he a racist at heart? Was that why he resented the aliens so much? Or was his anger reasonable? he was struggling, so hard, to make ends meet, and they were taking money out of his pocket. Wasn't that a normal reaction?

He rubbed his forehead harder. There were no answers. Not right now. Maybe he needed to examine his heart to discover if he really was harboring some racist feelings. G.o.d knew his head, at least, wanted to believe it wasn't true, but if it was, he had to find out, so he didn't pa.s.s it on to his kids or end up killing somebody out of anger.

He didn't know how to do it, but he'd think about it later.

The real issue was Molly marrying some stranger in some misguided rescue mission. That was what he had to stop,come h.e.l.l or high water.

The rest could wait.

Molly and Alejandro spent the next morning with Josefina, who was weak and listless in a way that made Molly worry. The doctor simply said the child was exhausted and need more rest, so they left her to sleep, and set out to tackle the slightly awkward details of arranging the marriage.

After three stops, however, it was plain there was not a judge in the country who would

agree to perform the ceremony, thanks to Josh's influence. Frustrated, Molly insisted they go ahead with the blood tests anyway, and while they were driving back, she had a brainstorm. "The details don't matter to you, do they?" she asked, pulling off the side of the road.

"No."

"I have an idea." She turned the car around and headed back to a dirt break off the two-lane highway. She grinned. "I'll bet you've never seen anything like what we're about to see."

A brace of trees marked the entrance, and they turned into what the locals, with no fondness, called "that hippie commune." In actuality, it was a loosely structured community of people with alternative values who'd banded together decades ago to grow organic food in a co-op. Sunshine Farms now boasted a bottom line well in the black, and with the addition of free-range meats, were on the way to making a serious fortune.

Some of those free-range chickens squawked and fluttered as she and Alejandro stepped out of the car, and he grinned, looking around himself. "Now, this is what I like."

A collection of houses in various styles dotted the hills, and animals in pens lowed or cackled or called. Beyond, for nearly as far as the eye could see, were fields, emptied now with the onset of winter, but obviously just harvested. A turquoise school bus, parked for twenty years, was painted with the exuberant, stylized sun logo of the farms. It served as theoffice, and a woman with a pageboy haircut and dressed in jeans stepped down from it. "Hi! What can I do for you today, Molly? Eggs? Cheese? We haven't seen much of you lately."

"I know." She shook her head apologetically. "I break down when I'm in a hurry and buy all the junky supermarket stuff."

"Tsk,tsk ," the woman said with a sunny smile. Her skin, clear and wrinkle-free in spite of her age, which was at least fifty by Molly's count, was a testament to her own products. She turned her smile to Alejandro. "You must be the fiance we're hearing so much about.I'mKatjeMicklenburg ."

With a courtly gesture, Alejandro bowed slightly over her hand. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."

Molly said, "It's Jonah I've come to see, actually. We'd like to get married, and my brother is furious, so he's set all the judges against me."

"Ah." She inclined her head. "Now that's a fun kind of visit! Come on up to the house."

As they walked, Alejandro gestured. "Do you mind if I ask questions about your farm?"

"Oh, no! Please, ask away."

"Good."

Molly knew next to nothing about farming or ranching, but the questions he asked all seemed to be intelligent, about various methods of irrigation in the desert, about crops and rainfall, about clay and other soil concerns. ThenKatje asked him where he came from, and when he told her, she was off in Spanish, and Alejandro replied cheerfully in the same language. Back and forth, so fast Molly could barely follow a word of it.

It made her feel curiously jealous, or maybe only as if she were the outsider here.

But jealousy indicated possessiveness, and Molly needed to be careful about imagining Alejandro belonged to her in any way. A fake marriage for the sake of a green card had nothing in common with the real thing.

As if he sensed her mood, Alejandro looped a casual arm around her shoulders, drawing her into the conversation. "Molly is learning to speak my language," he said. "But she cannot follow so fast, I am certain."

Alejandro's arm felt comfortable around her shoulders. There was none of that awkward b.u.mping of hips that so often occurred when a man and woman tried to loop arms around each other. In the October afternoon, he smelled of the sun-warmed and dustyNew Mexicoair, a scent as clean as freshly folded laundry. Against her chest, she could feel the vibration of his voice coming out of his rib cage, low and rich, which somehow made her remember the kiss he'd given her in the car in front of her brother's house. A devastating kind of kiss, outrageously sensual. Kissing him, feeling his hand on her face, tasting his tongue in her mouth, she'd been both amazed and appalled at the sudden tightness of her nipples, at the fierce, loud pulse in her groin.

And that reaction was all the more disturbing because the kiss had been staged. No more real than a screen kiss.

No wonder actors fell in love on the set so often.

In love? The words echoed and Molly scowled. No, she wasn't falling in love. l.u.s.t maybe. Too long without a man would do that to aperson.

l.u.s.t she could survive.

Katjeled them up the steps to the cool adobe farmhouse, painted the traditional blue around the windows and doors to keep out evil spirits. Within, all resemblance to a traditional territorial house ended, and it was plain the farm had indeed begun to pay very, very well.Saltillotiles lined the floors, and rare Spanish colonial weavings alternated with even more rare antique Navajo blankets in gray and red. Alejandro whistled softly. "Onlyricos live this way in my country," he whispered.

"Same in this country,"Katje said wryly,then called, "Jonah!" A rumbling came from somewhere deep in the house. She sighed. "Make yourselves comfortable. I'll bring him back."

She hurried down the hall and out of sight, leaving the two of them alone in the living room. Or, Molly thought with a grin, more likely they called it the "salon." A lighted painting by an artist out ofTaosgraced the wall above the fireplace, and fresh flowers bloomed on the low tables. The aura of the room was old-styleCalifornia.

"This makes me think of Zorro," she commented. Alejandro did not answer, and she glanced over her shoulder. He stood by a pair of gla.s.s doors that led to an interior courtyard, and on his face was an unmistakable expression of sorrow. "Are you all right?" she asked.

He turned his head. "This is much like my father's house," he said. "The house I grew up in." He gestured to the courtyard and Molly joined him to look out there. A fountain surrounded by banks of vividly blooming geraniums, pink and red, formed the center of a bricked patio. Long wooden benches reclined in the recessed porch running around it on three sides.

"How beautiful," Molly commented. She stepped through the door to the patio, feeling a cool breeze strike her face.

Alejandro followed her out. "We had a gla.s.s table, where we ate breakfast. My mother loved that place. She sat there in the morning to write her letters to all her friends and sisters and cousins, all overMexico. Then in the evening, she put on an old dress and dug in the flowers, or sometimes just cut them to put in vases." He gave her a sad smile. "I like to think G.o.d let her have her patio back when she went to heaven, so she

could cut all the flowers she wished."

Molly realized that she had not really believed he was the son of a rich man until he told this story. It shamed her. Again. His bearing was that of a man with education and money behind him. His manners were old-world graceful. He let her go through doors first, like a gentleman, and had even paused by her chair until she sat down, now that he was able. "That's a lovely thought," she said. "I don't think I've imagined what sort of world my husband would like to live in for eternity."

"No?" he asked softly, and turned to look into her face, into her eyes.

Molly caught her breath as he snared her, caught it in wonder at the sheer beauty of those eyes of fire and of peace, set amid those angles that should not work but did.

She admired the narrow chin and it seemed as if all chins should be shaped thisway, that chins had been defined and perfected in this form.

Time ceased in that strange way of some moments, and even as she lived it, Molly knew she would remember it always. The silence of a late October afternoon broken only by the silvery sound of water in the fountain, and the cry of a blue jay overhead. Light made golden by the dust in the air was reflected and deepened by adobe walls, and made his flesh copper, and burnished the crown of his head, revealing the slightest hints of red in his hair.

And she would remember the way he looked at her, looked deep, as if he wanted to know everything that had ever been written on her soul, wanted to explore every hair on her body, wanted to inhale her. It was the purest expression of yearning she had ever seen on anyone's face.

"There you are!"

Katjeand Jonah stepped out onto the patio. Alejandro's head jerked up, as if hewere torn from a dream, and the moment shattered.

But Molly tucked it away in that special box of perfect moments, and felt as if she'd been given a gift.

Then she realized she ought to have prepared Alejandro for the appearance of Jonah. An eccentric, even by valley standards, he was an aging hippie and looked it with his long, gray-and-sand-colored hair, the round wire-framed gla.s.ses, the granny shirt made of flowered calico that tied at his neck. He even wore sandals. No one in the outside world would take him seriously, but in the valley, he commanded respect for one simple reason: every bit of success claimed by the farms was his doing. Behind that hippie