Rio Grande Wedding (14 page)

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Authors: Ruth Wind

BOOK: Rio Grande Wedding
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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 the office, 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 fiancé we're hearing so much about. I'm Katje Micklenburg.”
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. Then Katje 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 bumping 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 dusty New Mexico air, 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. Lust maybe. Too long without a man would do that to a person.
Lust she could survive.
Katje led 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. Saltillo tiles lined the floors, and rare Spanish colonial weavings alternated with even more rare antique Navajo blankets in gray and red. Alejandro whistled softly. “Only
ricos
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 of Taos graced the wall above the fireplace, and fresh flowers bloomed on the low tables. The aura of the room was old-style California.
“This makes me think of Zorro,” she commented.
Alejandro did not answer, and she glanced over her shoulder. He stood by a pair of glass 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 glass 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 over Mexico. 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 God 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 this way, 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!”
Katje and Jonah stepped out onto the patio. Alejandro's head jerked up, as if he were 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 glasses, 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-grandpa face was the mind of a marketing genius.
He hugged Molly enthusiastically and nearly did the same to Alejandro, but Molly saw the faint but pointed shift of body language as Alejandro straightened stiffly and held out his hand.
“So you're the one stirring up so much talk in town,” Jonah said, looking over his glasses. “The wild one who stole Molly's heart.”
Tongue in cheek, Alejandro said, “Yeah, that's me, the desperado.”
Molly grinned at him. Over Jonah's head, he winked.
“So you folks want to get married, eh? You know when?”
“As soon as possible,” Molly said.
“I'm open.” Jonah patted his belly, like a Santa Claus of the wedding ceremony. “How's now?”
“You will marry us?” Alejandro said, and Molly heard the surprise.
“Well, I certainly have the power.” Jonah winked. “I'm an ordained minister, son. Believe it or not. Divine Science, which my mother said was no real church at all, but I showed her.” He chuckled. “What do you say?”
A leap of anticipation and terror made Molly's hands start to tremble suddenly, and she looked at Alejandro with alarm. “What do you think?”
No doubt seeing her sudden worry, he moved close and gave her a slow, very sexy smile. “The sooner the better, no?” He took her hand, and as if he had eyes for no one in the world but Molly Sheffield, a very ordinary-looking nurse from the wilds of New Mexico, he kissed her hand. “Now is good,” he said to Jonah.
The old man grinned. “Man, I do so love to see folks in love. Let me grab my tools and I'll be right back. Katje, why don't you have Vivian make us up a snack to celebrate with after?”
Katje, too, was beaming. “That's a great idea. Do you mind?”
Molly smiled. “Not at all.”
 
Alejandro loved standing in the courtyard, with the sun on them, and the sharp scent of geraniums in the air. He liked the shy blush on Molly's face as Katje cut some late roses from a protected bush, red and yellow blossoms that smelled of oranges. He bent to smell them in her hand, and lifted his head with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.
Again he glimpsed her worry, and he understood it. This was a binding. Even if they did not do it for love, the words would be spoken and they would have to look into each other's eyes as they said them. It was a little frightening to imagine.
When Jonah returned, he wore vestments, purple and gold over a long white robe. His feet were still enclosed in rope sandals, like a monk.
To make these kind people believe in their love, Alejandro imagined that his parents were here, that he was confessing love and commitment to a woman who would stand by him, a woman he would not mind growing old with. Thinking of her land, he imagined it was a dowry, while his hands and knowledge and back were the gifts he brought to trade. To make the land live. He took her small white hand in his and closed his other hand over it, and listened carefully as Jonah said the sacred words, words that had been said in almost the same way in so many languages for so many centuries.
He could not say why he did it. But when Jonah prompted him to repeat the phrases of commitment, he said them first in English, then said them again in Spanish. In some odd way, it touched Molly. He saw her eyes take that quicksilver glow, and she gazed at him soberly.
Then—disaster.
“We brought no rings,” Alejandro said, aggrieved.
Without missing a beat, Jonah glanced at his wife, and Alejandro saw her nod. Jonah slipped a heavy silver and turquoise ring, set around with stones, from his index finger and gave it to Molly.
When Katje would have taken a ring from the many on her own fingers, Molly stopped her. She took the wedding ring from her right hand and put it in Jonah's palm. “Use this one.”
Stricken, Alejandro looked at her fiercely, trying to tell her with his eyes that such a sacrifice was not necessary. She only looked up at him, and gave him a sweet, sure smile.
He gripped her fingers tightly and took the ring from Jonah. He said the words, “With this ring, I thee wed.” He lifted the simple gold band to his lips and kissed it, looking into Molly's eyes, then slipped it on her finger.
A single silver tear spilled on her cheek, and when Jonah said, “You may kiss the bride,” Alejandro put his hands lightly on her slim shoulders, and pressed his mouth to that tiny creek of sorrow. He tasted salt and imagined that somehow the essence of her was contained in it, and entered him through his mouth.
Then he raised his head. “I am,” he said sincerely, “the luckiest man in the world.”
 
The housekeeper managed a lovely spread in less than twenty minutes, and carried it out to the patio, where the light grew deeper and more golden as afternoon reached for evening. Katje poured the wine into glasses, but Alejandro stopped her from pouring it into his. “No, thank you,” he said, smiling.

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