Breakfast came an hour later, eggs and ground beef seasoned in the Mexican style. Five people seated at a long dining table of some dark, expensive wood - only one unfamiliar, a thin woman of middling years, well-dressed and well-preserved, who Javier was quick to introduce as his wife. Antonio, the young boy briefly seen the previous night, sat beside her, tearing through his food and largely ignoring the small talk that fluttered lightly round the table. Alice opposite her father at the middle of the table, a trace smile curved upon her lips, self-conscious but unwilling to be quashed. A pleasant warmth inside of her this morning, a buoyant cheer - the past evening swam slow and delightful in her memory, and she carried still the spark of happiness finally rediscovered.
At least, so it was at the meal's beginning. She could not fail to notice, though, how James refused to meet her gaze across the table, how he sat grim and silent through Javier's effusive chatter, and her cheer was swiftly dampened to a quiet worry. Wondering what had gone wrong. She had felt from him such tenderness in the past night, such regard, such...love. A shiver down her spine, just to think the word, but it was true - an echo of fuzzily-remembered childhood bliss, of heaven in her father's arms. When a bushy smile or an affectionate tousle of her hair could make her feel so cherished, so complete. That was the feeling that had sent her out searching, that had ached in her soul almost longer than she could bear. To taste of it again had been a dizzy delight, like rich food to a man half-starved. If he had but treated her such when first she found him, she might well have forgiven him the misery and the pain and the lies. Forgotten it all, just to have her father back.
But here he was, acting again the sullen stranger, his eyes cold and flat and tired when she tried to catch them. As though all their inching towards accord were undone in a single night, and frustration flashed hot inside her heart, torn between anger at him for acting this way and a fainter apprehension of why it should be.
"Do you know, señorita," Javier's faintly melodic voice pulled her attention reluctantly back to the head of the table, where he stabbed thoughtfully at a chunk of egg. "It occurs to me that I might still be well-served if I were to have a permanent guard here, for myself and for the villa. One that I could trust, of course." A thin smile at that, humorless acknowledgement of what had gone before. "I do not imagine that you would be interested in a job?"
"I got one already, matter of fact." Whatever pride would normally have gone into that pronouncement was lost to her distraction, muttering brief and distant. "Drivin' cattle."
"Have you?" A breath of admiring laughter, as his brow lifted high. "Marvelous! I suppose I ought not to be surprised...you are a most unusual young woman." Beside him, his wife let show a disapproving little frown at his exuberance, a glance at Alice pointed and narrow with warning. "Still, that is seasonal work, demanding and unpleasant. There are better options...you would surely find it more leisured here. Despite the circumstances of our first meeting, I assure you that I am not often concerned for my safety - it is largely just for peace of mind that I should like to have you around." A trace of a smirk tugged at his expression, sparkled in his eye. "You would be well-paid for your services, of course."
Her answer came first as a dismissive shrug, tones flat and apathetic. "'sa generous offer, señor, but I don't rightly-"
"Ah!" He interrupted her with a sudden exclamation, refusing her response. "Please, you have no need to answer now. Give the matter some thought - I know you have things to do, your business with Señor Blake. If you should find the offer attractive..."
He continued like this, chattering on with smooth refinement, but Alice no longer heard him - her lips parting with a sudden, shocked chagrin as she was belatedly struck with the obvious. Her gaze darting back over to her father, staring darkly into his meal. Of course. Her 'business' - how could she wonder why he would be cold, distant, when she still held over him a threat of death? What tenderness did she expect, of a man for his executioner?
He had wronged her. The years reminded again, sharp and vicious, the hardness of the woman she'd had to be. Not just her; her mother, too, lying now in that cheap pine box beneath the earth. He'd disappeared without a word, without a sign, leaving them just to worry and to struggle through alone. He'd killed honest men himself, and never paid the price. He'd told her those damnable stories, tales she'd thought were true...he
deserved
his fate, no less than death, no better. Hers was just the hand of justice, reaching those the law had missed. For his crimes, for what he'd done...
But this vengeful voice was not so loud as it have been in days before. Dissent quavered in her soul, rebellion, as her heart whispered mercy. The child's plea, urgent and sincere. He was her father. Her pa, the man for whom she'd spent a seeming lifetime waiting, praying, searching...a silent, senseless hope inside that somehow when she found him everything would be back the way it was, that all the years would fall away like autumn leaves, and she would be again a little girl swept up in his arms. Madness...and more fool still, how much of her helpless anger and frustration were born from the dashing of that dream, blaming him for the permanence of time and action.
"Listen..." The word was a slow murmur on her lips as she tried to smile, tentative and wry. Self-conscious apology simmering in her features. He'd hurt her, true. Abandoned her, a wound so great her life had warped around it like a long and jagged scar. But by that same token, there was no one in the world as central, as important to her as he. No one else whose presence had ever made her feel the way his had the past night, ringing with the echo of childhood bliss - and crackling as well with the burn of nameless wants. The memory of his hand, warm upon her side...her gut twisted, thinking of it cold and still in death.
"Listen, James." Catching his attention, his gaze turning up reluctantly to hers. His jaw tight and unfriendly before her faintly rueful eyes. "Maybe we ain't got to do that...that business, after all." A moment's staring silence without a flicker of response, his expression still flat and dour. As though he didn't understand her through the euphemism forced by their audience. She tried again. "You know, maybe just stick around here a spell. Forget them things we talked about before." A whisper of longing crept into her tone, of wishes only half-conceived. "Maybe try to start over. Find a way to set things up like-"
"You a liar, Alice?"
The interruption came quick and cutting, his gravelly voice now barbed with bitter spite and scorn. And hardly room for anything but stunned surprise in her response, just the slightest extra tinge of injury beginning to appear. "What?"
"I asked if you was a liar." He growled back, the sound of it grinding like a whetstone at a blade. His mouth pulled to a venomous frown, glaring at her across the table. Their audience watching in shocked discomfort - even Antonio looked up, hearing the tone if not the meaning of his words. "Plain enough it ain't no skin off my nose if you are, of course. But you said pretty damn clear where we was headed, an' why - seein' how high and mighty you been about talkin' truth, I'm mighty curious to know if you practice what you preach."
"But that ain't..." She protested vaguely, a slight warble of agitation in her voice. Her tones of still surprise mingling now with the rawness of upset, hurt and frustrated. "It ain't lyin' just to ask, to offer if you want to...to do somethin' different. I thought we-"
