Marry A Man Who Will Dance by Ann Major

Author:Ann Major
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

Cupping Elena’s small black head against his chest with his hand, Roque had vanished into the trees. The prickly pear and sticker burrs in the mesquite were so thick, Ritz had to pick her way through the tall burned grasses.

“Roque! Wait!”

No answer.

“Where are you? I—I should never have trusted you with the baby!”

When she sprinted to catch up, a thorn stabbed her ankle.

“Ouch!”

“Roque!” she yelled, fuming as she knelt to pull out the thorn.

She stood up again and frowned at the sagging fence that skirted the edges of the path. The landscape had taken on a bleak, shaggy aspect. Barbed wire strands were either loose or nonexistent or trampled into the dirt. Two skinny gray cows stared at her from beneath a scraggly mesquite. Trash—clumps of plastic bags, dozens of beer cans, tampons and old mufflers—littered the ground.

She jumped when she heard footsteps crunching thick brush just ahead. Then Roque reappeared, the sleeping baby cradled against his broad chest. “You okay?”

“I couldn’t keep up.” She rubbed at her ankle. “Where are we going anyway?”

“Chainsaw Hernandez’s.”

“That…that awful ex-con with the tattoos and the stripper girlfriend?”

“He’s got a law degree.”

“And where did he get it? Prison?”

“He outsmarted my father out of five hundred prime acres, too.”

“Blackmail probably. Daddy says Hernandez doesn’t work and that he lives off women. He says he harbors illegals.”

“Chainsaw works…just not at a job. He’s a sculptor. Princesa, not many people get to live a fairy tale life like you do.”

“You can’t take Elena there.”

“He’s got a big heart. She’ll be safe…with her mother. Nobody but a fool messes with Chainsaw. This isn’t Blackstone land. You can come see her anytime you want.”

Elena began to squirm. “Come on. She’s hungry. She needs her mother,” he said.

Before she could argue, Roque resumed his long-legged gait, and Ritz had to run to keep up. As soon as they broke through the trees, and she saw Chainsaw’s squalid, spray-painted trailer with its surveillance camera mounted above the front door, she was more alarmed than ever.

Ritz sighed. If the trailer was depressing, its surroundings were worse. Old washing machines, dryers, and a stack of tires littered a bare, dirt yard. Two rusting cars had been laid to rest on concrete blocks beside a rotten fence.

“See, he’s a sculptor.” Roque pointed toward a ramshackle shed filled with animal carvings and chainsaws.

All Ritz saw was the Bengal tiger pacing back and forth in a chain-link cage beside the shed, eyeing her hungrily.

With a little cry, Ritz grabbed Roque just as the trailer door banged, and a beefy man with a permanent scowl stuck his wooly brown head outside. His huge potbelly had an intricate tiger tattoo on it.

In one fist, he gripped a foam cup. In the other, he held a cocked pistol pointed straight at her.

“Yo—Roque!”

“Don’t shoot!” she screamed. “That’s the second time a man’s pointed a gun at me today.”

Chainsaw leered at her contemptuously. “If you’d told me you was bringing a lady, I would have dressed up.”

Lowering his pistol, he wiggled his hips in such a way as to hitch up his low-slung, camouflage shorts.

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