Dark Warrior: To Tame a Wild Hawk (Dark Cloth) (9 page)

When she’d left, Jake turned to Hawk. “So where’d you find her?”

Hawk ignored the question. He’d never really explained the
Grandmothers
to Jake. Some, but not all. Besides, there was a better topic. “She wants me to help save her ranch from a man named McCandle.”

Jake’s eyes narrowed to mere slits at this. “Are you going to?”

Hawk nodded. “Yep. ‘Cause he’s our man.”

Jake’s gunmetal eyes went killer cold. “In that case, I want in.”

“I thought you might say that.” Hawk moved carefully to the door. “Mandy, we’ll be requiring something a little stronger than coffee,” he said down the hall.

“Now you’re talk’n.” Jake smiled.

And Hawk knew—Jake rarely smiled.

Chapter Nine

D
eep mist enshrouded him, making it hard to see her. Frantic, Hawk reached for her again—and again, he missed. He sensed him, his enemy. He lay close now. Hawk had to reach her before it was too late. Mandy rose from the mist. Hawk wanted to shout his relief—until he realized how it was she rose. Powerful talons wrapped their way around her waist. One slowly curled around her neck. The tip of one talon bit into her. Hawk sprang forward, but it was too late. A talon sank deep into her side.

Hawk sat up in a sweat. A nightmare. That’s all it was—a damn nightmare. He sat all the way up, welcoming the searing pain that ripped through his side. He had not been able to save one beautiful, young woman who lived on a plantation. He had not been able to save the boy. He sensed the same danger with Mandy. The dream warned him. He had not reached her in time. He wanted to strike out at something. He had not reached her in time!

Hawk heard her voice, but did not answer at first. He could still feel the dream when he looked up.

She was standing there with sexy, sleep-lidded eyes, having been awakened from a deep sleep. Her dark hair tumbled loosely about her in a cloud. The filmy white nightgown she wore added much to the imagination. Right now, Hawk’s was working overtime. He pried his tongue off the roof of his mouth. Silently he cursed himself for continually losing his tight rein of control around this bewitching woman.

He realized Mandy’s sleep-drugged mind wasn’t allowing her the usual protections she would have exercised if she’d been fully awake. He should shake her out of it, wake her fully and send her out, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He saw only the gleam in her beautiful eyes as he held out his hand.

Her body moved forward as though in a trance. In the low flicker of the lantern light, she placed her small hand in the larger one he now held out, palm up.

Slowly, he drew her down beside him and laid her on her back, looming up over her as he rested on his good side. With slow, tantalizing patience, he lowered his lips to hers. He had waited all his life for this one defining moment. With ringing clarity, he knew he’d come home.

His mind waged war with his heart, which had been for so long encased in glacial retreat. He was walking on dangerously thin ice, but his heart wasn’t listening. He only knew that this woman and her enchanting beauty intrigued him—invited him to walk where he’d never dared walk, never even knew he wanted to walk, before now.

She made him long for things he’d never dared to believe could be his, until the moment he’d laid eyes on her. His hands moved over her soft curves, the filmy material of her gown hiding nothing. He found her softness to be his exquisite torture. But Mandy was a lady, and the
Dzi'tsiistäs believed a maiden should always be cherished. He wouldn’t cheapen her, or what they shared, for one night in paradise, especially not in a hospital bed.

With a low groan he pulled away, leaving them both bereft.

At first, she tried to pull him back to her, but he pinned her hands. “Mandy, get up!”

Mandy shook her head. Gradually the fog lifted, and she saw his golden eyes piercing her as if he were the hawk itself, holding her prey. With dawning realization she sat up, horrified. She closed her eyes. It was obvious what Hawk thought.

“Don’t.” He shook her gently. “Don’t ever be ashamed of how we feel when we come together.” He hooked a finger under her chin, forcing her to look at him. “I haven’t had too many good things come into my life, Mandy. For once, it’s going to be right. Not with me shot up. And not where we are.” He pushed the hair back from her face. “I don’t
ever
want to see you have regrets.”

Mandy’s eyes filled with tears. In this beautiful man, with his bad reputation, hid a heart wanting to love. Beneath those cold eyes hid a lonely man, needing love in return. She was falling for the man the territories knew as White Indian. She was falling in love with a man who led a double life as a man who had the heart of a warrior, yet sought vengeance in the white man’s world, in the spirit of the west, as a fast gun.

She moved off the bed and backed away from him. But it was too late.

For every woman, there is that one man who could get her to go anywhere he wanted her to go, do anything he wanted her to do—reach into her soul and turn her whole world on its ear—challenge everything she thought she believed.

If she believed that man didn’t exist, she hadn’t met him yet. She might try to deny the truth of it. But if she met him, that one man, she was lucky if he stood behind her. Not so lucky if he came to crush her. And a woman might only learn the truth of it—when he walked out of her life.

Hawk was that man. He was her destiny. And he alone could raise her up.

Or break her.

***

Mandy placed the coffee on the old, silver tray, smiling as she listened to the man snarling in the next room. He really didn’t adapt well to being trapped in a bed until he was healed. It had been over a week since Hawk had been shot. There was no doubt in her mind; there would be no more keeping him down.

It was time to go to the ranch.

Maybe once there she could talk him into letting himself rest a while. She smiled at the thought.

She doubted it.

She placed his breakfast on the tray and shut down the cook stove, hanging the checkered hot pads back on their hook. Taking him home seemed so final, so intimate. Mandy swallowed, hard. Dear Goddess, please don’t let her be making a mistake. Yet how could anything that felt so right be wrong? Besides, the
Grandmothers
had spoken of Hawk as her destiny. And they were right, for how could she beat her papa’s killers without him? She had tried. For several months, now, she had been stealing their cattle, like they had stolen from the neighboring ranches around them. She had tried robbing their payroll stage, mysteriously giving the money back to the ranchers where it belonged.

Nothing had even remotely put a dent in McCandle.

There were still her nightly escapades. She shook her head. It had been weeks, and she still had not achieved what she’d set out to do. Soon, she vowed. Soon—maybe things would turn her way.

Goddess, please don’t let anything happen to Hawk. She nearly dropped the tray at the thought, and carefully set it back on the table. What if Hawk got killed because she’d involved him? She couldn’t bear it. She swallowed hard at the thought. It felt as though her lungs had caved in. Maybe she should have found a way to deal with McCandle on her own. The more she thought on this, the more she realized how selfish it was for her to have ever involved him in the first place. She would never be able to bear it if anything happened to him because of her. Why had it never occurred to her that she could lose him?

The way she’d lost her papa.

“Papa,” she whispered.

Her throat caught. She couldn’t lose Hawk to McCandle, too. She picked up the tray, her thoughts locked on a new mission.

***

Hawk scowled menacingly at her when she entered his room with the tray a moment later, but his glare altered at the sight of her own sour expression. He grabbed at his gun-belt hanging on the bed post. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Mandy set the tray by the bed and wiped her damp palms on the apron. “Hawk, I’ve been thinking . . . .”

Hawk grumbled and let his Colt drop back into its holster. “More like worrying. Why do women always worry?”

Mandy ignored his sarcasm. She knew it was hard for a man like Hawk to stay down. When men like Hawk were held down for too long, they usually wound up acting like an ugly, old grizzly bear coming out of hibernation—mean and grouchy.

She fought for her breath, and the courage to continue. She knew Hawk was going to fight her on this. “Hawk, I don’t think I should enlist your help after all.”

Hawk’s unusual, gold-green eyes narrowed on her, making her want to fidget.

“Don’t look at me like that.” She moved to the dresser to thwart his gaze.

“I think you’re trying to sabotage us because of your fears,” he stated, so quietly she nearly didn’t hear him.

“Hawk!”

“You’re not going to get rid of me now, Mandy. Our circles are intertwined. Do you understand? I’ll decide if, and when, I go.”

Mandy didn’t like the way he’d put that. “You’re the most infuriating man I’ve ever met,” she pouted.

Hawk grinned at her, his anger gone. “And you’re beautiful when you’re mad, Mandy. Your eyes get all snappy and glowing.”

“Of all the . . .” Mandy grabbed a pillow off the hope chest and heaved it at him.

Hawk caught it easily, laughing and then wincing from the pain it caused.

Mandy was spellbound. For a moment she stood, mesmerized by the transformation in Hawk’s face when he laughed. She wished she could make him laugh more often.

“You really are reprehensible,” she told him, but the anger was gone from her, too.

***

Hawk scowled once more, his fun gone now that his little spitfire was no longer crackling. Mandy was his fire—all heat. “I’m a heathen, remember. Not a gentleman.”

“The Lakota treat their women well, Hawk. So that doesn’t hold water with me.”

Hawk’s eyes hardened. Mandy saw herself like a rabbit, poised to take flight—the Hawk moving in with dangerous, deadly talons. Now what had she done? One minute he was boyish laughter—the next impassive menace. There was much she didn’t understand about this man.

Like almost everything.

What had happened to make him so cold at times? “Tell me about the Lakota. How did you come to be with them, Mandy?”

Mandy tried to look away. Her eyes wouldn’t obey. She stayed there, locked with his glowing ones as if she was his by his command. And only when he was ready would he release her.

Mandy shook her head and whispered, “It was a long time ago.”

“Not good enough, Mandy. How old were you when you were taken?”

Mandy ignored the question. “It will have to be, Hawk. It’s all I’ve got to offer.”

“Woman, sometimes I want to—what do the white men say—paddle your back-side.”

Mandy lifted her chin. “You do . . .” her voice trailed off when she realized what she was saying. Hawk swung up out of his bed, and Mandy jumped. “I’m sorry.” Not sounding the least bit repentant. “I don’t take kindly to your threatening to paddle me.”

Hawk kept coming. At the last second, Mandy decided to run for it, but his hand snaked out, and it was too late. The rabbit was snared in her own trap.

“Let go of me!”

Hawk arched one damnable eyebrow.

“Okay,” she conceded, “so you would dare. But if you do, as the Goddess is my witness, I will not forget it. And I will get even!”

Relax.” Hawk pulled her close. “I’m not going to harm that pretty little backside of yours.” He stopped and suddenly yanked her forward. “But if you ever endanger yourself . . .” He let his meaning sink in.

Mandy let out a breath, somewhat mollified. “Then, why did you say it?”

Hawk shrugged. “To see those eyes of yours spark.”

“Oh you—arrogant pig of a man.”

Hawk yanked her to his chest. “Take that back, Mandy!” Hawk bit out, his face mere inches from hers.

Mandy’s face was mutinous. Some things she
had
picked up from the white-man’s world,
very well.
A woman running a ranch was one of them. The other was letting her temper have free rein at the most inopportune times. And at those times, it got her in a whole lot of trouble.

This was one of them.

Hawk turned and headed for the bed, with Mandy in tow.

Mandy tried to pull back. “What are you doing?”

“You’re in the habit of losing your temper and saying whatever comes to your mind when you do so. I’m going to teach you some manners.”

She dug in her heels now, in full panic. “How?” She’d been counting on Hawk to act like a warrior—not a gunman.

“Maybe I’ll show you a better use for all that fire,” he threatened.

“Hawk, the Lakota never spanked their children either!” she shrieked, mistaking his meaning.
This wasn’t the warrior she had in mind.

Who was she kidding? She hadn’t been doing much thinking at all.

Hawk only sat on the bed, pulling her down over his lap. He ran his hands slowly up her back. She felt the heat from the fire already licking its way through her body, ready to consume everything in its path. Desperately, she looked around for an escape. The things Hawk did to her with one smoldering look—and with his hands . . . .