Indigo Blue (33 page)

“Hey, little guy,” he soothed. “Don’t be afraid.”

The pup braced his feet and leaned back, straining the denim of Jake’s pants. Glowing golden eyes sparked in the dimness.

“I knew your papa.” As Jake spoke, he slowly inched a hand downward. “I’m a friend.”

When Jake’s fingers were within jumping distance, the pup abandoned the britches and went for blood.

“Son of a bitch!”

Jake tried to jerk his hand back. The cub locked its jaws. Pain shot from Jake’s thumb to his wrist. With his free hand, he grabbed the pup’s jaws, dug in with his fingers, and forced his razor-sharp little teeth to give. The instant Jake’s thumb was freed, he caught the cub by his ruff and held him at eye level.

“You ornery little bastard.”

“That ain’t sayin’ it by half,” Christian said.

Jake knew when he had been had, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “Do you have a spare gunnysack?”

Christian rolled his chew. “For two bits, I do.”

Jake swore and dug in his change pocket. Christian caught the dollar and pocketed it. “Don’t got change.”

“Just get me the damned gunnysack,” Jake said.

AN HOUR LATER, JAKE ENTERED THE HOUSE, holding the gunnysack at arm’s length. He found Indigo lying across the bed, her gaze fixed on the wall. He could scarcely wait to see the expression on her face when she saw what he had brought her.

“Indigo?”

She started and sat up. “Jake? What’re you doing home?” Her gaze shifted to the wiggling sack. “What is that?”

“A little something I got for you,” he replied. “Move back. Instead of you biting into this surprise, it may bite into you.”

She bounded off the bed and watched in bewilderment as Jake upended the sack. The pup rolled out, found his feet, and whirled to snarl at them. It was like looking at a miniature of Lobo. Jake grinned and turned to see the expression on Indigo’s face, expecting rapturous pleasure and hoping for a little adoration as well. For him, not the puppy. Instead, she acted as if someone had struck her. After a horribly long moment, tears filled her eyes, and she averted her face.

“Get him away from me!”

Jake stared at her. “What?”

She turned her back to the puppy. “You heard me.”

“Indigo.” Jake gave a soft laugh. “Honey, you don’t mean that. Lobo’s puppy? I thought you’d be pleased.”

She dragged in a ragged breath. “How could you?” she cried. “How could you bring him here?” She cupped a hand over her eyes. “Do you think I loved Lobo so little that I could let a puppy replace him? Never, not as long as I live.”

“Honey, just look at him.”

“Please don’t ask that.” She heaved a ragged sob. “Take him away! Please, Jake? Take him away . . .”

Reclaiming the gunnysack, Jake grabbed the puppy by its ruff. Anger flooded through him as he strode from the bedroom. He came to a stop in the sitting room and stared at the snapping, snarling ball of fur in his hand. Three hundred dollars, and she didn’t want it? Well, Jake sure as hell didn’t. He had no idea what to do with the nasty little cur. He was tempted to stomp him into a grease puddle and wring Indigo’s neck.

Golden eyes agleam with vicious intent, the cub grew tired of flailing and finally hung still in Jake’s grasp. Jake sighed and stuffed him in the gunnysack. Maybe Loretta would take him. Jake doubted it, though. Only Indigo would be able to tame a pup like this. No one else in his right mind would even want to try.

The thought made Jake recall his first night in Wolf’s Landing and Loretta’s concern that no one would adopt a wolf cub. He glanced over his shoulder toward the bedroom, and a grin settled on his mouth. In a voice that he intended to carry, he said, “You poor misbegotten little fellow. I gave it my best try. That’s all I can do.” Jake cocked an ear. He heard nothing but silence. Indigo was listening, all right. “Maybe if you didn’t look so much like your papa, somebody else would take you. As it is, all I’ve done is prolong the inevitable.”

With that, Jake left the house. He strove to keep a suitably grim expression on his face when he spied Indigo peering out at him from behind the bedroom curtain. With what he hoped was a look of steely determination, Jake walked down the street toward the Wolfs’. He was a little surprised when Indigo hadn’t caught up with him by the time he reached the porch. Determined to carry this act through to the end, he stomped up the steps.

 

The weathered planks of the chicken coop felt rough beneath Indigo’s palms as she pressed close to the wall and peeked around the corner of the squat building at her parents’ back porch. Where was Jake? Had he left by the other door? Oh, God. He meant to shoot that puppy. Scarcely a minute passed that she didn’t think of Lobo, and now she would have to look at his son a hundred times a day. In a fit of pique, she kicked at the dirt.

The creak of door hinges sounded from across the yard and brought her head up. She watched as Jake emerged from her parents’ house, a rifle in one hand, the gunnysack in the other.

After taking a fortifying breath, Indigo stepped away from the henhouse. “Jake?”

He spun at the sound of her voice and cast around the yard. A slow smile touched his mouth when he finally spotted her, and he relaxed his stance, one hip slung outward, a long denim-clad leg bent at the knee. With the wind whipping his black hair and his dark eyes twinkling, he looked virile and handsome, totally at odds with her image of a heartless puppy killer.

Indigo tried not to look at the wiggling burlap. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

His jaw tensed. “Why don’t you go inside and have a nice cup of hot cocoa with your ma?” he suggested in a kindly tone. “I’ll be back in a few minutes and walk you home.”

Indigo’s pulse quickened. An urge came over her to pound his chest with her fists. How could he do this to her? “I can’t let you shoot Lobo’s baby, Jake,” she informed him shakily.

He pursed his lips and slowly exhaled. “Honey, sometimes life is tough. I’m sorry for putting you through this. Lay it off on idiocy. I just didn’t think how it would make you feel.”

The gunnysack twisted and swayed against his thigh. Indigo’s gaze was caught by the movement. “I—I can’t let you shoot him. I’ll give him a home.”

His eyebrows drew together. “I know you mean well, but you wouldn’t be doing him any favor. Pups need a lot of love. It wouldn’t be right to raise him in an environment where he was always measured against his father and found lacking.”

“I’ll love him,” she insisted in a shrill voice.

Jake heaved a weary sigh. “What you said over at the house, about disloyalty to Lobo. You were right. It’d be fickle of you to get another wolf so soon. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“But he’s not just any wolf! He’s Lobo’s son.”

“True.” He cast a worried glance at the bulging burlap. “That’s why I went and got him. He’s the image of his papa, and I thought—well, sometimes a replacement can ease a person’s grief. But that was before I saw the hurt he brought you.”

Indigo shifted her gaze from the gunnysack back to Jake. He seemed bent on carrying through, and the thought made panic well within her. How she felt didn’t matter. The puppy’s life was at stake. “I’ll get over the hurting,” she cried. “Please don’t shoot him, Jake.”

He raised both eyebrows. “Honey, do you think I want to? Give me an alternative and I’ll jump at it. Can you think of anyone who might want him?”

Indigo searched her mind. “Chase would take him, but he’s miles away.” She licked her lips and lifted her hands. “And, of course, my father, but he’s in no condition to care for a puppy. M-maybe I could just take him temporarily.”

Jake shook his head. “He’d bond with you, and it’d break his little heart when you gave him away. No, honey, my way’s best, quick and clean. You go on into the house and have that cocoa. I’ll be right back.”

With that, Jake turned and strode away toward the woods. Indigo stood there watching him, entrapped in a whirlpool of emotion. She didn’t even want to look at that puppy.

She broke into a run. “Jake, wait!”

He spun to look at her. Indigo raced to reach him. Not allowing herself to think, she grabbed the gunnysack. He tightened his grip and resisted the tug of her hand.

“Indigo, go in the house like I told you.”

She wrenched the sack from his grip and hugged it to her chest, horribly aware of the struggling bundle of furry warmth within the burlap. “I’m not going into the house! This is Lobo’s baby, Jake! He’d never forgive me.”

Looking down at his wife, two thoughts struck Jake simultaneously; he had succeeded in making her want the pup, and for the first time since their marriage, she was defying him. God, but she was beautiful when that fierce Comanche pride snapped her spine taut. She stood with her chin lifted high, her blue eyes blazing with purpose, her narrow shoulders braced.

It hit Jake with the force of a rock between the eyes that
this
was the girl he had believed he was marrying, not the quiet, subservient mouse she had become after making her vows. In a flash of clarity, he saw her sitting beside him on the bed, braiding and unbraiding her hair upon command. Every man’s dream come true? Maybe. But it wasn’t his. He wanted this Indigo, a girl who was one part angel and one part wild temptress, a curious blend of sweetness and flame. What had begun as an attempt to make her yearn for the puppy took on other proportions. Jake gazed down into her vivid blue eyes and ached a little for both of them, for himself because he felt cheated, for her because her beliefs and her experiences with white men were forcing her into a mold that would slowly suffocate her.

As if it suddenly occurred to her what she had done, she got a stricken expression on her face, and her eyes darkened with confusion. Watching her, Jake held his breath, afraid she might give the puppy back to him.
Go ahead and stand up to me just this once,
he wanted to say.
The world won’t end.
But he didn’t dare rip at the fabric of her upbringing like that. If she was going to find solid footing in their marriage, he couldn’t shift the foundation. Eventually, maybe she would find a happy medium in which she could be herself, yet still fulfill what she believed to be her wifely role. That could only come with time.

Jake saw her arms relax around the puppy. Then she bent her head. He knew what she meant to do. Before she could, he said, “If keeping him is that important to you, Indigo, take him home.”

She slowly lifted her chin. Tears swam in her eyes. Jake searched for a flicker of the fire he had seen there an instant ago, some trace of the pride that had flamed so brilliantly. But there was no sign of either. Just a hollow nothingness, as if she had tamped down and put a lid on her subversive emotions.

He tried to imagine how it would feel to be enslaved and forced to swallow his pride a hundred times a day. For her, that was what marriage constituted. His wishes came first, always, no matter how strongly she felt about something. For an instant, she had simply reacted and forgotten that. Now, she was reassuming the meek demeanor she believed appropriate.

“Go on. Take him,” he repeated.

She hugged the puppy close and retreated a step, looking at him in bewilderment. Jake couldn’t help but wonder what she had expected. A thrashing? He tried to reassure her with a smile. Maybe she needed this experience so she could see he wasn’t an autocratic monster.

“Are you angry?” she asked softly.

The worried look in her eyes made Jake’s smile broaden. “Do I look angry?”

She didn’t appear to be reassured by that. “No.”

“Then I must not be.” He balanced the rifle over his shoulder and glanced at the gunnysack she held so protectively. “Is he old enough to eat meat?”

She gave a hesitant nod.

“Then you’d better check the smokehouse.”

She nodded again. Then she turned and fled as if the devil were nipping at her heels. Jake watched her go. When she disappeared from sight, he took a deep breath and exhaled, feeling as if he had just done battle with giants and lost.

 

Indigo had already started supper when Jake came in that evening. Her stomach knotted when she heard the front door open, and her nerves leaped at his every footfall as he walked across the sitting room to the kitchen doorway. A blur of denim and blue chambray, onset by burnished umber and ebony, he seemed to fill the opening.

She pretended not to see him and continued stirring the stew, putting off the moment when she would have to look into his eyes. Was he angry? That question had plagued her all day, and it was one for which only he could provide an answer.
Do I look angry?
She had learned long ago that white men could hide their darkest emotions and intentions behind a charming smile.

She felt the puppy tug on her moccasin. His playful growls couldn’t be ignored. She laid aside the spoon and forced herself to look up. Jake’s dark eyes twinkled into hers, and his firm lips slanted into a teasing grin.

“It looks like you’ve got more trouble than help with a companion like that on your heels,” he said lightly.

“He doesn’t seem to know when it’s time to play.”

Jake leaned out to watch the cub’s antics. “All the time is playtime, from the way it looks. You’ve done wonders with him. I can’t believe that’s the same little fellow who bit me.”

Indigo gave her foot a tug, trying to free it. The puppy took that as encouragement and gave her moccasin a shake. “He was afraid this morning. Now that we’ve had time to become acquainted, he doesn’t feel threatened.”

Jake arched a dark eyebrow, his expression indulgent. “You two had a long
talk
, I take it?” His gaze searched hers. “I’d like you to teach me how that’s done one of these times.”

Indigo had suspected he knew about her gift because of the curtained expression in his eyes when she tried to look into him, but she’d hoped she was wrong. Now he had confirmed it. A chill niggled its way up her spine. How did he feel about having a wife who communicated with creatures? And if he had nothing to hide, why did he shut her out? Now she knew he did it deliberately. At times like now, his eyes were warm and communicative. It was only when she attempted to see deeper that the walls went up.