A Mating of Hawks Read Online Free

melodramas.”
    â€œDo you take scorpion juice in your coffee?” she retorted, giving him an edge of derisive smile, though inside she was smarting.
    â€œDon’t fight, kiddies,” said Geronimo, getting out to open the gate. “Here comes the lady of the manor.”

II
    Vashti had the slim, disciplined, rather hard body of a woman successfully fighting weight and years. Skin pulled snugly over her cheekbones and a slight upward tilt of carefully tweezed eyebrows suggested a skillful face lift. Her eyes were such a dark green that only sunlight kept them from looking black and her silver-blonde hair was pulled sleekly back in a French knot secured with jade pins. She wore slim black trousers and a black silk blouse that molded a high, youthful bosom.
    â€œTracy, love!” Taking her shoulders, Vashti bestowed a light, brushed kiss on her cheek. “You’re looking marvelous, but a bit frazzled. Come see Patrick and then you must freshen up.” She ran her hand over Shea’s arm. “So good of you to fetch Tracy. Bring her things in, won’t you, and stay for lunch? We’ve held it for you.”
    â€œThanks, but we’ll just say hi to Dad and get along.”
    He distanced himself from his stepmother so obviously that color mounted to her face, though she at once recovered, taking Tracy’s arm and drawing her through an atrium where an antique Mexican fountain splashed among cool greenery, into an immense living room that seemed even larger because the furnishings were few and massive. A fireplace molded in a flow of adobe curved from the ceiling to the opposite side of the wall in sculptured gradations. Tracy thought it resembled a cave but she sensuously enjoyed the smell of burning juniper.
    Vashti indicated stairs on the other side of the room, polished tile, spiraling upward. “Can Patrick get up and down?” Tracy asked, ascending.
    â€œOf course not, dear! He’s paralyzed.”
    â€œYes, but before—”
    Vashti shrugged. “I had the house designed so that he wouldn’t have to leave the second floor. It’s simpler, and much more convenient.”
    For whom? Tracy wanted to ask, but swallowed her criticisms. Vashti was going out of her way to be pleasant. Sniping between family members wouldn’t ease Patrick’s troubles.
    Hesitating at the top of the stairs, she followed Vashti’s lead into a huge room that gave a breathtaking view of the Santa Ritas. Apart from that irony, Tracy saw nothing else but ran with a soft cry toward the great poster bed.
    â€œPatrick!”
    She embraced him as best she could, kissing his weathered cheek, trying not to cry. He lay like a felled oak, covered with a sheet up to where a plaid western shirt was unbuttoned down the throat. Many times she had gone to sleep against that broad chest, comforted and quieted by the steady pound of his heart.
    Straightening, she looked down at him, relieved that apart from the sightless blue eyes, he didn’t seem much changed. Then he tried to smile. One side of his mouth moved but the other lay slack and the eyelid drooped. That half of his face was like a dead man’s. Yet there was something curiously young and vulnerable about it, too, an erasing of tensions and expressions shaped by the years.
    â€œTracy.” The word was slightly muffled. With his good hand, he stroked her face. “You’re feelin ’ mighty pretty!”
    He gave a muted chuckle and she remembered from her last visit that joking and profanity were his ways to deal with blindness. But how would he handle this?
    His face changed at the sound of steps on the stairs. “That you, boy?” he demanded as Shea and Geronimo came in.
    â€œHow you doing, Dad?” Shea bent over his father. Tracy felt an oddly jealous twinge at the unmasked tenderness in his gaze.
    â€œHell, you can see if I can’t!” snapped Patrick. “You know dang well how