Rainbows and Rapture by Rebecca Paisley

Author:Rebecca Paisley [Paisley, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical romance, western romance, rebecca paisley
Publisher: Amber House Books, LLC
Published: 2014-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Unconsciously, Russia lifted her hand to her own cheek, touching it as though she, too, had a scar there. “I’m…Santiago, I’m so sorry.”

Her compassion irritated him again. “Sorry?” he snapped. “About what? I’ve barely begun.”

She reminded herself that he wasn’t about to accept anything remotely related to sympathy. “All right, I won’t be sorry. But what do y’want me to do? Laugh in your face?”

Santiago raised a brow, silently applauding the way she stood up to him. He didn’t, however, answer her question. Instead, he returned to the issue. “That night, two friends came to me with the news they’d seen Graciela in the brothel located on the outskirts of Misericordia. I went to see for myself. And…there she was, in bed with her lover.”

He paused, glaring at the blade in his hands and trying to gather control of his emotions. “I left the room and waited outside behind a broken stone wall that surrounded the old gray house. When the man came out, I attacked him with this knife. He yanked it away from me and— He cut my face. I ran. That was sixteen years ago, and I’ve never been back to Misericordia.”

Russia waited in vain for him to explain further, knowing there was a great deal he was still withholding from her. She also suspected that the whole of his story went well beyond that night in Misericordia. As he’d said, that night had been but the beginning.

With a will she didn’t realize she had, she succeeded in affecting indifference. She longed to embrace him, but knew in her heart that showing him compassion would get her nowhere…yet. “I believe that’s the most terrible-ist tale I ever hearded in my whole life. Y’jist cain’t know how much it made me hate you, Santiago. And as fer me bein’ afraid o’ you… I’m so scared that if I was chewin’ tobaccer? Well, I’d have swallered it by now.”

Small pebbles crunched beneath his bootheels as Santiago strode slowly toward a thick mass of thorny brush. “There’s more,” he murmured, pain tightening his chest. “After that night, I became a… I’m a killer, Russia. A merciless assassin.”

Liar, she accused him inwardly. He was no more a savage killer than she was.

“For money, I’ll hunt, maim, and murder,” he added. His body rigid with apprehension, he waited for her response. When none came, he wondered if he was getting through to her, if she understood the depths to which he’d sunk in his life. “In the space of sixteen years, I’ve killed over three hundred men.”

In a desperate attempt to hide her incredulity, she began swatting the air in front of her face. “Damn bugs,” she cursed at the nonexistent insects. More than three hundred men! she exclaimed silently.

Santiago reached out and plucked a stem of briars, pairing off the thorns with his knife. Only when the slender branch was smooth did he speak again. “That’s about twenty men a year. The count rises… God, it rises so fast. It doesn’t take me long to find my—my victims.

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