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the SCARLET THREAD

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

She hadn't had a headache like this since prom night during her senior year of high school. Alex had come to pick her up in his father's beat-up Chevy three minutes before her father turned in to the driveway. It was the first time in her life her father had come home early from work. She might have known it would be on that night. She could still remember the look on her father's face when he saw Alex—a drop-dead handsome, long-haired Hispanic boy dressed in a rented tuxedo—standing on the wide porch of her family's Mathesen Street Victorian. As if that wasn't bad enough, Alex was reaching forward to pin an orchid to the front of her fancy prom dress. When Sierra heard the slam of her father's car door, she almost fainted in fear.

The headache had started then and was only compounded by the inquiring look on Alex's face. "What's the matter?" he asked. What could she say? She had told her father about Alex; she just hadn't told him everything.

Words were exchanged, but, fortunately, her mother was there to intercede and calm her father down.

In the end, Alex escorted her to his borrowed car and helped her in while her father stood on the front steps glaring at him. Alex didn't so much as look at her as he put the Chevy in gear and pulled away from the curb. They were halfway to Santa Rosa before he said anything.

"You didn't tell him who was taking you to the prom, did you?"

"Yes, I did."

"Yeah, right. You just left out a few important details, didn't you, chiquita?" He had never called her that before, and it boded ill tidings for the night ahead. He didn't say anything more on the drive to the expensive restaurant in Santa Rosa. She ordered something cheap, which made him even madder.

"You think I can't afford to buy you anything more than a dinner salad?"

Her face aflame, she ordered the same prime rib dinner he did, but he didn't look any happier.

Things got worse as the evening wore on. By ten, Alex wasn't speaking at all, not to her, not to anyone. She ended up losing the nice dinner he bought her in the bathroom of the Villa de Chanticlair.

She'd been crazy in love with Alejandro Luís Madrid. Crazy being the operative word. Her father had warned her. She should have listened.

Sierra's eyes smarted with tears now as she drove along the Old Redwood Highway, which linked Windsor with Healdsburg. For all of its turmoil, she preferred clinging to the now-romantic past rather than facing the uncertain, terrifying present and future.

Prom night had been such a disaster. When most of her friends were going to all-night parties in Santa Rosa, Alex took her home well before midnight. The front lights were turned on—and not discreetly. Her father had probably changed the 60-watt bulb to a 250 while she was gone. Even the inside lights were on that night.

There was plenty of light for her to see how angry Alex was. But his expression revealed something deeper than just anger. She could feel the hurt that lay hidden behind the cold, remote expression on his face. She thought he'd just walk away then. Unfortunately, he didn't intend to do so before he had his say.

"I knew it was a mistake to ever ask you out."

The words struck like a shotgun blast to her heart. He wasn't finished. "I'm not some character in a Shakespearean tragedy, Sierra. I'm not Romeo to your Juliet. And I didn't ask you out because I wanted to play around!" He turned away with that and almost reached the steps before she could speak past the tears choking her.

"I love you, Alex."

He turned around then and looked at her. "What'd you say?" His eyes were dark and hot, still filled with anger at her—with good cause. She hadn't considered what her silence would cost him. All she had thought about was avoiding a confrontation with her father.

Alex stood waiting.

"I—I said I love you."

"Say it in Spanish," he told her in the same tone he had used when tutoring her.

She swallowed, wondering if he only meant to humiliate her more before he walked out of her life. "Te amo, Alejandro Luís Madrid. Corazón y alma." She started to cry then, hard wracking sobs. He caught hold of her and poured out his feelings in Spanish. Though she didn't fully understand the words, she saw in his eyes and felt in his touch that he loved her.

Infrequently over the years, he had fallen back into his first language during times of powerful emotions. He had spoken Spanish when he made love to her on their wedding night and again when she told him she was pregnant. He had wept and spoken Spanish in the wee hours of the morning when Clanton had pushed his way into the world and again when Carolyn was born. And he had spoken Spanish in tears on the night her father died.

But that night on the porch, they both forgot about the lights. In fact, they both forgot everything until the front door was jerked open and her father ordered him gone.

She was forbidden to see Alex. At the time, it didn't matter to her father that Alex was ranked number four in a class of two hundred students. What mattered was that Luís Madrid, Alex's father, was "one of those beaners" who worked as a laborer in the Sonoma County vineyards. Her father didn't care that Alex was working a forty-hour week at a local gas station to save money to put himself through college.

"I wish him luck," he said, and it was clear that luck was the last thing he wished Alex.

She reasoned, cajoled, whined, and begged. She appealed to her mother, who promptly refused to take her side. In desperation, she threatened to run away or commit suicide. She had gotten their attention with that.

"You so much as talk to that beaner on the phone and I'll call the police!" her father had yelled. "You're fifteen. He's eighteen. I could have him arrested!"

"You do and I'll tell the police you're abusing me!"

Her father called her aunt in Merced and made arrangements for her to spend a few weeks there "cooling off."

Alex was waiting when she returned, but he proved less malleable than her male parent. He had a few succinct Spanish words to say about her idea of meeting him in secret. Alex was a fighter who preferred facing wrath head-on. She had never expected that he would deal with the situation on his own. He just showed up at the house one day five minutes after her father had come home from work. She learned later from a neighbor that Alex had been waiting down the street for more than an hour. Her mother, sympathetic to their plight, invited Alex into the foyer before her father could get to the porch and order him off the property.

Clutching the steering wheel of her Honda Accord now, Sierra remembered how she had felt that day, seeing Alex standing in the front hallway between her mother and father. She had been so sure her father would kill him or at least beat him to within an inch of his life.

"What's he doing here?" She could still hear the anger in her father's voice as he dumped his briefcase on the floor. Sierra had been convinced he was only freeing his hands so he could get them around Alex's neck.

Alex stepped around her mother and faced him. "I came to ask...