The Heart of a Stranger Read online

  “How does it feel?” she asked.

  “To take a little time off? Good. How does it feel to you?”

  “Wonderful.” She reached for her tea. “But I was talking about you coming into town.”

  “It’s still not familiar.” A light breeze ruffled his shirt. “But I like Mission Creek. At least what I’ve seen of it so far.”

  She agreed. The park was beautiful. The grounds green and well tended, the walkways paved with scrubs. “There’s a country club in the area. It’s very exclusive.”

  “Really?” He squinted in the sun. “Have you ever been there?”

  “No. But I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be the country club type.”

  He adjusted his hat, an old Stetson that had belonged to her grandfather. “Do I seem like the country club type?”

  “I don’t know.” At the moment, he looked like a rancher who’d taken a day off with his family.

  His family?

  Lourdes’s heart bumped her chest. When had she given Juan her family?

  When she’d fallen in love. When she’d prayed their futures were meant to be.

  “Do you think you’re the country club type?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Who knows?” He glanced down at his frayed jeans, his callused hands. “Probably not. Then again, I must have had a car worth stealing. Why else would I have gotten robbed?”

  She met his gaze. “Your bruises are almost gone.” The marks that had brought him to her, the beating that had left him half-conscious and confused. “You look good.”

  “Thanks. I was messed up pretty bad, wasn’t I? Speaking of which.” He smiled, his lips tilting to one side. “Why’d you call me John Handsome? Of all the names you could have chosen for me, why’d you come up with that one?”

  She widened her eyes. “That’s not what I called you.”

  “Juan Guapo. Same thing.”

  “It is not.”

  His smile cut into a grin. “Yes, it is.”

  Unsure of how to defend the name she’d given him, she smoothed her braid, then recalled how he’d undone it yesterday when she’d lowered her head to his lap. “Guapo is a perfectly legitimate last name.”

  “Maybe. But it still means handsome.”

  She rolled her eyes, but he was still grinning. Still acting silly and boyish.

  He was happy, she realized.

  And so was she.

  “This is working, isn’t it, Juan?”

  He nodded and moved closer. “I feel like I belong. For once in my life, I belong.”

  To me, she thought. He belonged to her. Somehow, the stranger in her barn had become her lover.

  She brushed his hand, and for a short while, they sat quietly, watching Cáco and the kids.

  My family, Lourdes thought. His family.

  “John Handsome,” she said.

  “Yeah.” He looked at her, and they both laughed.

  When their laughter faded, the sounds and sights from the park intensified—big, shady trees, picnic benches, squeals from the playground, birds singing afternoon songs.

  “Tell me more about Cáco and Amy,” Juan said as he watched the old woman with her granddaughter. “Who are Amy’s parents?”

  “Cáco’s oldest son and his wife.”

  “They live in California, right?”

  “Yes. They moved to Los Angeles when Amy was a toddler, and she’s been visiting her grandma ever since.”

  “L.A., huh? No wonder she’s into vampires.”

  Lourdes smiled. Amy was a nutty kid at times. A normal teenager, she supposed.

  He sipped his drink. “When did Cáco’s husband die?”

  “A long time ago. Before she started working at the ranch. She’s lost a lot of people she loved. Her other son, the younger one, died in the first Gulf War.”

  Juan sat for a moment, just staring, a blank look on his face. Then he turned toward her, his dark eyes coming alive with a strange sort of recognition.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I was there.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Gulf. During Desert Storm.”

  Lourdes nearly spilled her tea. Her cowboy had been a soldier? “You were in the military?”

  “Yes. The marines. The proud, the few…” His voice trailed. “I volunteered for a classified mission. Me and my buddies. But something went wrong.”

  “What do you mean?” She watched bits and pieces of his memory unfold, saw a complicated past mirrored in his eyes.

  “I’m not sure, but we were captured behind enemy lines.”

  She reached out to touch his cheek. “You were a POW?”

  “Yes.” He covered her hand with his. “But it’s hazy. I can’t grasp the details. Can’t see anyone’s faces. It’s like a dream.”

  Yet from the tone of his voice, she knew it was real. Juan Guapo had been a marine. A man who’d volunteered for a dangerous mission.

  A man who’d spent only God knew how much time as a prisoner of war.

  “I think we were taken underground somewhere. It was dark, and the enemy was unforgiving. Brutal at times.” Details started to filter in, started to make themselves a little clearer, a little sharper in his voice. “But we tried to stay focused, the way we were trained to do.”

  “You really are a hero.” The kind of lover a woman could respect. A former soldier with integrity and honor.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “A hero.” More than a fairy tale.

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes.” And she was falling deeper in love with each passing moment. “Can I stay with you, Juan? Can I sleep over tonight?”

  He leaned toward her. “You can stay with me every night, Lourdes.”

  Every night for the rest of their lives, she hoped. Every night with the hero of her heart.

  Juan couldn’t sleep. Lourdes lay beside him, sleek and warm against his body, but his head pounded with confusion.

  Memories slammed in and out of his brain, like jagged pieces of a puzzle.

  Nothing was clear, not completely. Yet the ill-shaped pieces continued to surface, trying to fit into a past that made no sense.

  The things he’d begun to remember were odd. Creepy.

  Ghostly.

  What if he wasn’t the hero Lourdes made him out to be?

  He scooted away from her, sat up and rubbed his temples.

  Desperate for help, to stop the pain, he slid his feet to the floor, then sat on the edge of mattress for a moment, wishing Juan Guapo were real. That his true identity didn’t exist.

  “Juan?” Her voice came out of the dark.

  His breath rushed out. Why was this happening now? With the woman he loved snuggled warm and sweet in his bed? “I’m just getting a glass of water.” He squinted at the outline of the furnishings blocking his way. His vision blurred, as foggy as his brain. “But I think I better turn on the light.”

  He snapped on the lamp, keeping the three-way bulb on low.

  Lourdes shifted her weight and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  He turned to face her. She looked like an angel, with the sheet falling to her waist. Her hair tangled over her shoulders and down her arms like sleep-tousled vines. Her breasts were bare, her nipples ripe and pink. Just hours before, he’d made love to her, and she’d cried out his name when she’d come, when she’d thrashed wildly beneath him.

  “I have a headache,” he said.

  “I’ll get you some aspirin.” She pressed her mouth to the side of his neck, kissing the pulse that beat there. “Just tell me where it is.”

  He sat like a zombie, wishing he could hold her, that making love to her again would take the confusion away. “In the bathroom medicine cabinet.”

  She climbed out of bed, and he watched her pad across the floor, as graceful as a gazelle, as naked as a wood nymph.

  When she returned, he still sat in the same spot. Standing before him, she handed him a gla
ss of water and two extra-strength aspirin. He swallowed the bitter-tasting pills, set the glass on a nearby end table and leaned forward to put his cheek against her stomach.

  She slid her hands through his hair, comforting him. He could smell her glorious skin, the powdery scent she wore. Tracing a finger over her abdomen, he sketched the pale lines, the telltale marks from carrying twins. If he lowered his head, he could kiss between her legs.

  “It’s more than a headache, isn’t it?”

  He looked up. “Yes.”

  “Tell me.” She encouraged him to get back into bed, to climb under the covers, where she settled beside him.

  “I’m remembering things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  He frowned. His head still hurt. “The day I returned from the war. It was a big deal when we got home.” Wherever the hell home was. “There was a parade.”

  She gazed at him with her exotic-shaped eyes. “A hero’s welcome.”

  “Yes.” But the word hero didn’t sit well. Nor did being praised in a parade. “I was glad to be back, glad the ordeal was over. Our commander had mounted the rescue.” Whoever that daring man had been. Juan couldn’t see the people involved. He just knew they existed. “Later, the media dubbed us the Fabulous Five. My marine buddies and me. We’d destroyed a biological weapons plant during the war. That was the mission we volunteered for.”

  “That’s a good thing, Juan.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why are you so disturbed? Is it your memories of being held captive?”

  “No.” The Fabulous Five had spent months being mistreated by the enemy, but they’d held their own. They’d survived. Then come home to a hero’s welcome. “My sister drowned that day.”

  “What day?”

  “The day of the parade.”

  “Oh, Juan.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s more.” More jagged puzzle pieces, more pain. He drew a breath, and then exhaled roughly, clearing his lungs. “My sister wasn’t found right away. But eventually a body surfaced. I saw it at the morgue.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  “I don’t think it was her, Lourdes. I don’t think the body was hers. Yet I cried over her. I mourned her.”

  She tugged the blanket closer, as if his admission had given her a chill. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You must be confused. Your mind is playing tricks on you.”

  Was his mind taunting him? Teasing him with sick information? He couldn’t be sure. “Why does it feel like the body wasn’t hers? Why do I have doubts?”

  “I can’t say. But there’s DNA evidence these days, Juan. And dental records. Scientific facts that would’ve proved that woman was your sister.”

  He spiked a hand through his hair. “I know.”

  “It must have been her. The woman you mourned must have been her.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. I keep seeing different images of her. She doesn’t look the same. She keeps changing. Not only her hair color, but her features.”

  “Your memories aren’t clear. They’re jumbled.”

  “Yes.” Horribly jumbled.

  “Do you want to go to the authorities?” she asked. “Are you ready to let them help you uncover your identity? To help you figure this out?”

  Was he? he wondered.

  “No,” he said. He wanted more time. More time for his memories to clarify themselves, more time with Lourdes before their entire world changed. Before he tackled the man he used to be.

  “I just want to hold you,” he said.

  She moved into his arms. “We’ll hold each other.”

  He nuzzled her neck, and she slid her hands down his back, caressing him. Her touch was smooth and tender, and he grew hard and hungry.

  He kissed her—with heat, with purpose, and she made a soft, kittenish sound.

  He needed her. So damn much.

  Lowering his head, he licked one of her nipples, then took it in his mouth, suckling gently.

  She held him there, watching him.

  “Love me,” she said.

  I do, he thought. He loved her beyond reason.

  And that still scared him.

  But fear had no place between them, not now, not when they were naked, when their bodies hummed for slow, sweet sex.

  He rubbed himself all over her, showing her how aroused he was, making her eyes glow.

  “More.” She stroked between his legs. “More.”

  He gave her everything. He sheathed himself with a condom and slipped into her, penetrating her as deeply as possible.

  Then he made love to her, with his body, his heart and his mind.

  She gave him what he gave her, and when it ended, they lay in each other’s arms.

  Solid and real.

  He glanced at the clock. He knew she would leave before daylight. But tonight she’d brought her toothbrush, a change of clothes, things that made their time at the bunkhouse seem less rushed.

  “Shower with me,” he said, not ready to let her go.

  She smiled, and they headed to the bathroom, where they stood in the tiny stall and let water rain over their sated bodies.

  “It’s going to work, Juan. It has to.”

  “Yes.” It was going to work. No matter what, they would find a way to stay together.

  Or so he prayed.

  Nine

  Lourdes sighed. She, Cáco, Amy and the twins gathered around while Juan checked out Cáco’s SUV. The slightly battered Chevy had overheated. The older woman had barely gotten home from the market without breaking down.

  Lourdes brushed her hair out of her eyes and assessed Juan.

  He looked good, she thought. Natural under the hood of a car. Just as he looked natural mending fences and working with horses.

  She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of work he’d done after his tour of duty in the marines ended, what he’d done for a living before he’d come to the ranch. His hands had already been strong and callused when he’d arrived, but that didn’t mean he was a laborer.

  She knew he enjoyed woodwork, a hobby that would roughen up a man’s hands.

  “It’s a water hose,” he said.

  Lourdes breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s simple enough.”

  “True. But some of these other hoses are about ready to go, too.” He jiggled one to show her how cracked and worn it was.

  Cáco stepped forward, and Juan turned to the old woman. “I’ll replace them for you, but I’ll need Lourdes to give me a ride to an auto parts store.”

  “That’s no problem.” Cáco spoke up, volunteering Lourdes’s services.

  Not that Lourdes minded. She would accept any excuse to spend time with Juan. He adjusted his hat, and her heart went girlish and soft. Who was he? she wondered. What name was on his driver’s license? The ID that had been stolen from him?

  “It’s good to have a man around,” Cáco said. She glanced at Lourdes. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.” She knew her surrogate grandmother approved of Juan, that the opinionated old woman didn’t mind that he and Lourdes were lovers. But she was still cautious about sneaking into the house on those glorious morning-afters, still cautious about keeping their affair from her children.

  She knew the twins wanted Juan as their daddy, but until Juan’s past was settled, she didn’t want to encourage their young minds in that direction.

  Or her mind, even if she secretly wished that his commitment to her included a marriage vow.

  But as it was, their future still hinged on who he was and where he was from.

  What if his career took him out of the country? If relocating to her ranch presented unforeseen complications? If he worked for the government? Or had a private contract with the military supplying some sort of highly trained service?

  The more time she spent with Juan, the less he seemed like an average, nine-to-five guy.


  Maybe it was the hero in him, the dangerous, risk-taker side, the ex-marine. The man who’d volunteered for a top-secret mission. Who’d been a prisoner of war. Who worried about his sister’s mysterious death.

  Or maybe all of this stemmed from her fear of losing him. Her hope that he was just a simple man with a simple past, someone who could walk away from his old life without looking back.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Ready?” She batted her wind-tousled hair. She’d worn it long and loose today because she knew Juan liked it that way. “For what?”

  “To go into town.”

  “Oh. Yes. I just need to get my bag.”

  “Can me and Paige go too, Mama?” Nina asked.

  Lourdes glanced at her older twin, who looked up with hopeful eyes. For the past few days, her girls had been following Juan around like puppies, dogging almost every step he took. Paige still had a crush on him, and Nina loved to chatter in his ear.

  “If Juan doesn’t mind.”

  “Of course I don’t mind.” He shot Nina and Paige a handsome grin. “I could use the help.”

  From two four-year-old girls? In an auto parts store? Lourdes headed to the house for her purse. No wonder her daughters adored him. He possessed the requirements of a true family man—strength and patience. Juan was real daddy-in-waiting material.

  By the time they arrived in town, Nina had told Juan the plot of every cartoon she and her sister had watched that morning.

  She even prattled in the parking lot, jabbering as he took her hand. Paige remained quiet, but she held his other hand and glanced back at Lourdes, checking to see if her mom was keeping up.

  I am, Lourdes thought. Keeping up with how happy Juan made her children.

  The auto parts store was huge, stocked with aisles and aisles of man stuff.

  “I need to go back there.” Juan pointed in the direction of the parts counter, where a short line already formed.

  “Us, too,” Nina announced, as she and Paige skipped along by Juan’s side.

  Deciding she was the fifth wheel, Lourdes chose to wander the store. “I’ll meet up with you in a bit,” she told the tight-knit trio.

  “Take your time, Mama,” Nina said, eager to hog Juan for herself and Paige.