“Not something I’d easily forget.” She shrugged. “I can see you and your sister love each other, and that you’re terrified to lose one another. I understand that feeling. I’ve buried too many loved ones to count at this point.”
“Why have you never left this land?” he asked gently.
“And go where? The Fuenteses built Del Oro from the ground up. This place is all we know. Being rancheros is in our blood. And if we aren’t here to stop the sedientos who plague Boca de la Muerte, who will?”
“So you are trying to protect your family too. Like me.”
“Yes. In that single sense, you and I are the same.” She met his gaze, and his body nearly melted onto the floor. She pulled away first and stood. “What do we need to do to end them?”
His mouth went dry at the wordwe.He scooted up a bit more, forgetting the blanket concealing his bare chest. Her eyes darted to his torso then to the floor. Lalo wondered if he should have squeezed his abdomen a bit tighter, just so she could seethe defined muscles there like the boys in school did during ball games.
He shook his head. What was he thinking?
Lalo cleared his throat and asked, “What do you know of Alma Rosario?”
CHAPTER 14
Carolina
She frowned. What did thisstranger from the south know of Alma?
“Why?” she asked, her tone more accusing than she meant it to be. “How do you even know that name?”
“Alma Rosario is the reason I am here,” he said.
Carolina’s brow furrowed deeper. “Are you related to her?”
She prayed to every god that weren’t so. Because whether she cared to admit it or not, she was attracted to Lalo Montéz. Not emotionally, of course. He was still a sediento. But physically? She couldn’t deny the fact that he was beautiful. Even the way he tried to flex his muscles nonchalantly was endearing. She lived in a world with barrel-chested brutes, and it was rather refreshing to meet someone so…unassuming.
“I am not related to any Rosarios that I know of,” he said.
“That’s a relief.”
His brows shot up. “How come?”
“Um.” She shook her head. “No reason.”Except for the fact that I am torn between pining for you and wanting to kill you.She winced at her own thoughts. Who used the wordpininganyway? Nena’s secret-romance manuscripts she insisted Carolina proofread must have been rubbing off on her.
“Anyway, you were asking what I knew of Alma. She was alive three or four generations back. One day, not long after her husband passed, she went missing. The people of el pueblo searched high and low for her but could never find her. After a month, they assumed she had taken her life.”
“You know quite a bit about her.”
“I do,” Carolina said. “She was my great-great-great-grandmother.” Hence, her satisfaction that they were not some long-lost distant cousins.
“She was a Fuentes?” he asked.
“Yes. Rosario was her maiden name. She was Alma Rosario Fuentes.”
“I tried to find such facts in my research before, but there had been no census or marriage certificates conducted during that time. Or, at least, duplicates of the records had not made their way to the cities.”
She watched as his eyes grew distant. Carolina could tell his mind was whirling inside.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Promise to have an open mind?”
“You are alive, no? That should prove my mind is open enough.”
“Point well taken.” He cleared his throat. “Alma’s husband had recently perished,” he said. “Then she went missing in thewoods. Eventually, her body was found, but it had been drained of blood.”
