“But—”

“I will stay here,” he said, nodding to indicate the loft. “With you. Until morning.”

I gaped at him.

“Here?” I echoed. “Here… in the barn?”

“With you,” Jesse said.

“With me?”

“Yes,” he said.

It took me until that moment to realize what he was doing. Here I was, traveling back 150 years to protect him—well, now that’s what I was doing, anyway—and he was trying to protect me.

That was just so pure Jesse that I almost started to cry. Really.

But only almost.

Because his next question distracted me. “I have to ask, though…. Why?” His dark-eyed gaze raked my face.

“Why what?” I murmured, hypnotized as ever by his gaze on mine.

“Why did you do this—come all this way—to warn me about Diego?”

Because I love you.

Four simple words. Four simple words that there was no way I could say. Not to this Jesse, who was virtually a stranger to me. He already thought I was nuts. I didn’t want to make things even worse.

“Because it isn’t right, what happened to you. That’s all.”

That’s what I started to say, anyway, when a man’s voice called, “Señor de Silva?”

And let’s just say that it wasn’t Mr. O’Neil.

Chapter

seventeen

I felt the blood in my veins run cold.

I knew that voice. Knew it only too well. The man who owned it had tried to kill me once.

“It’s him,” I whispered. Unnecessarily, of course, since Jesse obviously knew perfectly well who it was.

Jesse stood up and moved from the shadows that had cloaked his face. He wore an expression, I was relieved to see, of intense distrust. He was starting to believe me now.

“Who’s there?” he called, lifting the lantern and turning a knob that brought what had been a tiny flame to a more powerful one.

The man below said something in Spanish that I didn’t understand. Except for the last two words. And they were easy enough for even me to decipher.

Felix Diego.

This is it, I thought. There was no going back now.

Jesse said something in Spanish to Diego, who replied in tones that, though I could not understand the words he spoke, sounded too silky-smooth to be trustworthy. He appeared to be inviting Jesse to do something.

And Jesse, for his part, was clearly declining.

“Well?” I whispered anxiously when the conversation ended and I heard Diego finally leave.

Jesse held up a hand, though, clearly not as convinced as I was that the man was well and truly gone.

Then, as the evening turned irrevocably to night and I could no longer see beyond the golden rays shooting out from the lamp Jesse held, he said, “It was Felix Diego. He said his master—Maria’s father—had sent him to see that I had everything I needed to be comfortable and to escort me on the remainder of my journey tomorrow.”

“Has Maria’s father ever done that when you’ve come to visit before?” I asked.

“No” was Jesse’s terse reply to that question.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that I was fine,” Jesse said. He was answering my questions, but it was clear from the expression on his face that his mind was a thousand miles away. He was putting the extraordinary tales I’d been telling him together with what had just happened, and not liking what he was coming up with.

“I told him I’d be here all night,” he went on. “Because my horse was sick. He said my horse looked fine to him and suggested I join him outside for a bottle—”

I sucked in my breath. “You didn’t say yes, did you?”

“Of course not.” For the first time, Jesse seemed really to see me as he looked at me. “I think you’re right. I think he does mean to kill me.”

I didn’t reply with a hearty Told you so, because what would have been the point? Besides, Jesse looked upset enough. Not upset really—stunned. And something else, too. Something I couldn’t put my finger on….

At least, not until a second later, when I heard footsteps scrape for a second time on the ladder to the loft. Thinking it was Diego returning, I started toward the ladder, ready to fling the guy’s soul back to kingdom come….

But Jesse stepped in front of me, throwing out an arm to stop me from coming any closer.

And I realized what that “something” was that I’d seen in his eye.

But it turned out the person climbing toward us wasn’t Felix Diego after all.

“Oh, great,” Paul said, when he finally pulled himself up to the top of the ladder and saw us. “Oh, this is just great. What’s he doing here?” Paul was glaring at Jesse, who glared right back.

“He just found me, Paul,” I said. I didn’t mention the part where I’d sort of made him find me.

Paul just glared at Jesse some more. If he noticed how different Jesse looked alive than he did dead, he didn’t exactly mention it.

Jesse, for his part, simply nodded to Paul and asked me, “Is this him? The man who tied you up?”

I should have said no, of course. I should have seen what was coming.

But I didn’t think. I just went, “Yeah, that’s him.”

It wasn’t until I saw Jesse’s hands clench into fists that I realized what I’d done. “No, wait!” I started to cry.

But it was too late. Jesse had launched himself at Paul like a linebacker, tackling him to the floor of the hayloft, and causing an enormous crash that sent the horses below whinnying and thumping around in their stalls.

“Stop it!” I cried, darting forward and trying separate them.

But it was like trying to pull apart a couple of mountains. Paul, at least, wasn’t as into the fight as Jesse was, since I could hear him crying, “Get him off me! Suze, get him off—”

On the word off, Jesse let go of his own accord and backed away, breathing hard. His shirt had gotten unbuttoned a little in the melee, and I caught a glimpse of his strong hard abs. It was impossible, even given the gravity of the situation, not to appreciate the sight.

“What the—” Paul scrambled up from the hay, brushing bits of it off him. “God, Suze. What did you tell him about me? Doesn’t he know I’m the good guy here? You’re the one who was going to let him get—”