Bed of Roses Read online

  Table of Contents

  A Bed of Roses by Rebecca Paisley

  Praise for A Bed of Roses and Rebecca Paisley

  Amber House Books by Rebecca Paisley

  Copyright Info A Bed of Roses

  A Bed of Roses

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Amber House Books by Rebecca Paisley

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  A Bed of Roses by Rebecca Paisley

  Can an outlaw princess steal the heart of a reluctant hero?

  Sawyer Donovan wasn’t looking for trouble. Fleeing from his shadowed past, he seeks refuge with a group of nuns only to end up attacked by a cougar and dragged back to the lair of a bandit princess caring for a gang of elderly outlaws.

  When Zafiro Quintana sends her pet cougar to investigate the threat of danger, the last thing she expects him to return with is a magnificent, muscular, young man with no memory of how he’d come to be naked and helpless under Zafiro’s tender touch.

  Zafiro quickly decides her gorgeous prisoner is the ideal candidate to help whip her grandfather’s gang back into shape. Charmed against his will by the raven-haired beauty and her daffy gang, Sawyer’s thoughts turn from escape to a plan to make Zafiro his captive—the captive of a searing desire she can no longer deny.

  Praise for A Bed of Roses and Rebecca Paisley

  “Rebecca Paisley makes your heart sing with joy! Her talent shines brighter than any diamond. Historical romance at its best!”—Romantic Times

  “Charm, imagination and laughter! All you need is Rebecca Paisley!”—Lisa Kleypas, New York Times bestselling author

  “Boldly goes where few writers go and she does it brilliantly!”—Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author

  “Rebecca Paisley is the Queen of unique and charming love stories!” Jill Barnett, New York Times bestselling author

  “Rebecca Paisley dazzles the heart!” Teresa Medeiros, New York Times bestselling author

  “One of the most talented writers in the genre, Ms. Paisley is an absolute delight to read! Once you’ve read your first Paisley, we can guarantee it won’t be your last!”—Historical Romance Writers

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  Bed of Roses

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  Coming Soon

  Moonlight and Magic (May 2015)

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  Copyright Info A Bed of Roses

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Copyright by Rebecca Paisley. All Rights Reserved.

  First e-publication 2015

  Cover design by Control Freak Productions

  Cover Photo Copyright Period Images

  Cover Background Copyright Oxana Zuboff, Stephanie Frey and Neirfy (Used via license Shutterstock.com)

  Published by Amber House Books, LLC

  http://www.amberhousebooks.com

  For more information, contact [email protected]

  A Bed

  of

  Roses

  by

  Rebecca Paisley

  Amber House Books

  Chapter One

  “You cannot turn three eccentric old men back into the skilled gunmen they used to be, Zafiro.” Sister Carmelita dropped the sack of flour she’d brought to Zafiro from the convent and took a seat on a weathered barrel. Folding her arms over her stomach, she slipped her hands into the sleeves of her coarse brown habit and shook her head. “Such a thing is like trying to turn raisins back into grapes.”

  “There is no other way, Sister.” The words were hard for Zafiro to speak. Her heart pounded frantically, her mouth was dry, and breathing seemed all but impossible.

  She hadn’t felt the horrible dread in years. But the fear was upon her now, a deep, paralyzing apprehension that never failed to alert her to danger. “Something is going to happen, I tell you. Something very bad. I do not know when it will happen, but I have had the feeling for over a week and it grows stronger.”

  “But perhaps it is not Luis, niña,” Sister Carmelita cooed, reaching out to smooth Zafiro’s long black hair. “Perhaps—”

  “H-he pr-promised he would find me, Sister.”

  “Oh, Zafiro,” the nun murmured, shaken by Zafiro’s fear-induced stutter.

  “He swore. Luis did. Swore that he would find me no matter how long it took. And he is a man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.”

  Sister Carmelita didn’t answer. She could only dwell on the sheer horror of Luis’s crimes, most of which she and the nuns learned about through tales brought to them by the weary travelers who stopped at the convent for shelter and what little food the sister house could provide. Luis and his gang had killed scores of people, some of them innocent children.

  “Sister?” Zafiro pressed. “You know that I am right, don’t you?”

  Silent prayers for Zafiro’s safety threading through her mind, Sister Carmelita looked up at the beautiful young woman. “I am sorry that I could not bring more food to you, Zafiro,” she hedged. “Things are very difficult for everyone. Usually the villagers have many things to share, but this year has been hard.”

  Hard, Zafiro thought. Impossible was a more suitable word. “Yes, I know, Sister. But you know we thank you very much for what you and the nuns do for us.”

  “Yes, and—”

  “But we were talking about Luis, Sister.”

  Realizing Zafiro was not going to forget the subject, Sister Carmelita gave a resigned nod. “Many years have passed since he swore to find you.” She tried to comfort Zafiro. “You were only a child then, and he has not found you in all that time, not even with the help of his men. It is possible that he has forgotten or given up—”

  “Forgotten how many times I sensed danger before it arrived to harm us?” Zafiro shook her head. “Sister, you do not know how many times I knew when to tell Grandfather to move us before trouble found us. I still do not understand this instinct that I have that tells me when danger is approaching, but it has never been wrong. Now Luis has his own gang. With the help of the devil himself he and his men have managed to escape every attempt to catch the
m. But their luck cannot last forever, and that is why Luis will not stop looking for me. With my gift, with the strange sense that I have for seeing a dangerous situation before it…”

  She broke off, frustrated by her inability to make herself clear to the nun. “Listen to me, Sister. Luis has not given up trying to find me. Tomorrow, next week, next month… I do not know when he will come, but somehow, some way, Luis will find where I hide because he and his gang need me.”

  Brushing her hair out of her eyes, Zafiro walked a few feet away from the nun and gazed at the thick pine and oak forest that surrounded La Escondida, the hideaway home her grandfather, Ciro, had built to safeguard his gang of aging outlaws. To conceal them from the law, for they all were still wanted for their crimes of the past.

  But La Escondida also sheltered her. From Luis. Her cousin was an evil that haunted her dreams at night and her thoughts during the day.

  Zafiro bowed her head and caressed the large sapphire that hung between her breasts. If only her beloved grandfather were still here. He’d know what to do. But Ciro had died two years ago. Jaime, her father, was gone too, struck down by Luis’s bullets when Zafiro had been but a little girl.

  Now she was left alone with the remaining members of the Quintana Gang, with the two elderly women, Tia and Azucar, and with Ciro’s final whispered instructions: “They have no one but you now, chiquita. You will be strong. Strong and bold as the Sierras themselves.”

  His words clinging to her thoughts, Zafiro raised her head and looked up. Beyond the woods rose the majestic Sierra Madres, and the sight of the beautiful mountains eased her agitation.

  How she loved the Sierras. Their towering snowcapped peaks. The steep slopes of their edges, and the multitude of cool, clean streams that flowed through the deep canyons and rocky valleys.

  The hard, unyielding Sierras had endured through centuries. As Ciro had instructed her, she would be like these mountains. Nothing would wear down her resolve.

  She turned toward Sister Carmelita again. “To teach old men skills they have forgotten, Sister,” she began, “it will not be easy. But I am not a soft nut.”

  “A soft nut,” Sister Carmelita repeated. “That is another of the American expressions you like so much?”

  “Yes.” A soft nut, Zafiro thought. That didn’t sound right. “A nut that cannot be smashed? I am a hard nut? How does it go, Sister?”

  The sister shrugged.

  So did Zafiro. “It does not matter. What I mean is that no one will crack me. Especially now, when we are in such danger.”

  Sister Carmelita didn’t miss the fire of determination that flared into Zafiro’s startling blue eyes. She was a stubborn one, Zafiro Maria Quintana.

  But tenacity would not transform three bumbling grandsires into proficient, able-bodied men. “You forget one important thing, Zafiro. To teach, one must know how to do what one teaches. You know nothing about guns and shooting. Ciro did not allow you to handle the weapons. Perhaps that was a mistake, but what matters now is that you cannot teach your men something you have never done.”

  Zafiro realized the nun had a valid point, but refused to admit defeat before she’d even begun. “What I meant to say is…is that I will help them remember their skills. I will not stop or rest until I have succeeded. You know the saying: I will burn oil at midnight until they are the men they used to be.”

  “Look at them, Zafiro,” Sister Carmelita demanded, popping up from her seat on the barrel. “There. By the fence Maclovio is staggering along.”

  Zafiro turned and saw Maclovio. Her eyes narrowed with exasperation. “Another bottle. I just took one away from him this morning, and now he has another!”

  Weaving alongside the broken fence, Maclovio raised his bottle toward Zafiro, smiled, and then drank deeply. At age sixty-eight he was the youngest of the Quintana Gang, and there had been a time in his life when his proficiency with horses had been unmatched. Indeed, he’d put on numerous exhibitions through the years, performing his astonishing equestrian tricks in front of crowds. The shows brought in hefty sums of money, none of which Maclovio had ever kept.

  All of which he’d given away to orphanages, missions, or other worthy charities.

  Now Maclovio was a drunk. Most of the time he was a fun-loving, good-natured drunk, but sometimes liquor made him mean. Testimony to that were the holes he’d kicked in the sides of the barn, all the broken fences, and the hanging door he’d tried to pull off the woodshed. Zafiro had nearly torn the mountains apart searching for the contraption he’d fashioned to make his liquor, but she’d never found it.

  She hated that he drank, for although the years were certainly catching up with him, he remained big and strong for his age. There were many heavy chores around La Escondida that he could perform. Drunk as he always was, however, his size and strength did Zafiro no good at all.

  “He is not looking where he is going,” Sister Carmelita said. “The tree—”

  “Maclovio, the tree!” Zafiro shouted. “The tree!”

  Maclovio walked straight into the thick trunk of the oak. His head fell back over his shoulders; his bottle slipped from his hand. A moment later he crashed to the ground, flat on his back, rendered completely unconscious.

  Zafiro sighed. “It is just as well, Sister. If the tree had not knocked him out, the liquor would have.”

  Sister Carmelita nodded. “He spends more than half his time in a senseless state. And Pedro spends the same amount of time on his net. Look at him there, niña.”

  Zafiro glanced at Pedro, who sat on his large rock with his knotted rope net spread out in front of him. A string of keys dangling around his scrawny neck, he was busy adding and tying more rope to the net.

  Another sigh escaped Zafiro as she continued to watch him work on the net. He claimed he had lost the other one. The first one that had hauled in hundreds of fish.

  The one Jesus had told him to throw over the side of the boat.

  Pedro believed he was Saint Peter the Apostle. The keys he wore were the keys to heaven. His rock was the same that Jesus had sworn to build His church upon. And if ever Pedro heard a cock crow three times, he dissolved into tears that only hours of prayer could stem.

  Sweet Pedro loved to preach. To tell Bible stories. A pity he always got the sacred tales so mixed up.

  He was seventy-seven now, the oldest of the Quintana Gang. Once upon a time his expertise with weapons had been the stuff of legends. But the hands that had once handled guns with such precision now tied and knotted rope into a net that was already almost too heavy to lift.

  “And then there is Lorenzo,” Sister Carmelita said, pointing to the third member of the Quintana Gang as he exited the cabin and walked across the well-swept yard.

  “Yes, and then there is Lorenzo,” Zafiro echoed, smiling as he sauntered toward her with a ginger-colored chicken in his thin arms.

  Lorenzo was seventy-three. In his prime, a lock or safe didn’t exist that he couldn’t open. Claiming he could hear soundless clicks within catches, bolts, and other sorts of metal fasteners, he could unlock whatever device the gang needed open.

  But tiny sounds within locks were not all his sharp ears heard.

  The years fell away, and Zafiro remembered all the times she’d bared her soul to Lorenzo while she was growing up. After her father’s death. Sometimes she’d sat by the campfire with him while the rest of the gang slept. She’d taken long strolls and gone fishing with him. During those times he hadn’t only heard her speak to him with his ears, he’d listened with his heart.

  He couldn’t listen anymore. Couldn’t be her confidant ever again.

  Because Lorenzo was deaf.

  He slept almost constantly now, drifting into slumber quickly and without caring where he happened to be at the time. And when he awakened it was as though he hadn’t slept at all. Indeed, he immediately continued whatever conversation he’d been having before falling asleep.

  “You took your nap, Lorenzo?” Zafiro shouted at him when
he neared her.

  “Lap?” He returned her tender smile with a toothless one of his own. “Yes, you used to sit on my lap, Zafiro, but you are too big to sit there now.”

  “Nap!” Zafiro shouted again, her lips almost touching his hairy ear. “I asked if you had taken your—”

  She stopped trying to talk to him. What was the use? Lorenzo never heard anything correctly, no matter how loudly one shouted.

  “I have been napping,” Lorenzo said. Wiping the remains of sleep from his eyes, he slowly sat down on the ground and leaned against the barrel. “Jengibre was bothering Tia, so I brought her outside with me.” Gently, he caressed the hen called Jengibre. “Tia is making tortillas, and Azucar is mending a rip in one of her dresses.”

  Tia and Azucar, Zafiro thought, her gaze rising to the window of the room the two women shared in the cabin. Precious Tia had done all the cooking and doctoring for the gang while they’d still been in the outlaw business, and declining in years though she was, her culinary and medical skills hadn’t diminished. She was seventy-one now, but, provided she had enough food and other supplies, she continued to keep everyone at La Escondida well-fed and healthy.

  “I do not know what I would do without you, Tia,” Zafiro whispered. “If only…if only…

  If only Tia could accept the fact that her son was dead, she finished silently, compassion for the woman sweeping through her. Tia had lost her little Francisco to cholera several years before she’d joined the Quintana Gang, but nothing or no one could convince the grieving woman that he was gone.

  Indeed, she “saw” Francisco in every man she met.

  With the exceptions of Maclovio, Lorenzo, and Pedro, no man was safe from her unfulfilled desire to mother.