The Darkest Heart (16 page)

“How do you know this woman, brother?”

“It is a long story.”

“I have all day.” Shozkay grinned.

Jack wasn’t smiling. “I wish to see her.”

“You will have to ask Hayilkah. He is asleep somewhere. Too much
tulapai
last night, he added. They walked back to the camp, and Shozkay put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I wish I had known,” he said softly.

Jack’s body was rigid. They found Hayilkah passed out beside a few other warriors. Jack bent and spoke his name, shaking him. After a couple of minutes, Hayilkah opened one eye, saying “Go away, woman.”

“It is my brother,” Shozkay said, squatting by him. “He wishes to see your slave.”

Hayilkah opened the other eye and tried to focus. “Yes, go,” he mumbled, then fell asleep instantly.

Jack went to Hayilkah’s’s
gohwah
, where Shozkay left him. Taking a deep breath, he opened the flap. He saw her sprawled on the bed of hides, on her stomach, naked beneath the top covering. It was an old Apache trick to keep captives naked so they wouldn’t run away, but a terrible feeling swept him, and he was inside, kneeling beside her, his hand in her tangled, knotted hair. “Candice! Candice?
Shijii
, it’s me. Wake up.”

He stroked her back, and she moved. He put his arm beneath her, pulling her almost into his lap, cradling her. She moaned, then her eyes shot open, and she cried, “No!” her fingers turning into claws, going for his eyes. Jack grabbed her wrists.

She yelped in pain and he released them, horrified when he saw that her wrists were scabbed and bloody and oozing pus. “It’s all right now,” he whispered, his hold tightening.

“Jack.” She gasped, clinging to him.

He held her tighter, turning his face into her hair. He stroked her hair and rocked her as if she were a child. She clung to him harder. “Jack, take me away from here, please.”

“I will get you out of here,” he promised, his hands sliding up and down her back. He was too aware of the woman in his arms. He did not tell her just how he was planning to free her.

“I was hoping … praying,” she said into his shirt.

“What?”

“Praying you would come.” She looked up, her eyes glistening with tears.

Of course I would come
. “Are you all right?”
Did they hurt you?

She shook her head, her nose red. A tear fell. “I’m so afraid.”

“I know.”

She stared into his eyes and suddenly became aware of their position—that she was in his arms, naked except for the blanket, that his hard chest was pressing against her soft bosom
and it was all wrong. But it didn’t feel wrong. It didn’t feel wrong at all.

He read her thoughts and rose, putting some distance between them.

“No, don’t go,” Candice begged, holding on to one buckskin-clad knee.

Jack’s jaw tightened. “I have to go.”

“Please,” she protested, anguished.

He took a breath, a loud sound in the small space of the
gohwah
. She belonged to Hayilkah, so he had no choice but to leave—as hard as it was.

“Don’t go,” Candice said, as he walked, stooped, to the entrance of the
gohwah
. “Jack! Don’t leave me here! Please!”

Jack tensed and ducked out. He heard her soft, muffled sobs behind him—and they echoed in his mind all day.

He was here.

And, strangely, knowing that he was here reassured her and dimmed the hysteria that had been growing.

She could barely believe it. The coincidence was too great—that he would appear here after she was taken prisoner. Or, maybe—and she shuddered with the thought—he had been a part of the war party but had not returned with the band, had scouted ahead or lingered behind. She remembered with utter clarity how he had killed the three cowboys who had staked out the Apache boy. How he had said that vengeance was the Apache way. She hugged herself.

It would do not to forget who and what he was.

But … before, when he had found her on the desert, he hadn’t hurt her. And she was even ashamed now for what her thoughts had been. Not that she exactly trusted him—but neither did she mistrust him. After being treated so brutally and carelessly by Hayilkah, as if she were some piece of meat, the contrast with how Jack had treated her was stunning. He hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t made her ride for days and days without food and water, hadn’t shoved her around, hadn’t even touched her—not like Hayilkah.

She couldn’t suppress a shiver of fear. He had said he would help her. She prayed it would be soon. She was afraid of Hayilkah, afraid he would come to her again, tonight, and this time rape her. Panic started an insidious creeping.

She became aware of the fact that several Apaches had gathered not far from the
gohwah
—she could hear them talking excitedly, although she couldn’t understand a word they said. But she was feeling a little braver because Jack was in the camp, so she crept quickly to the entrance of the gohwah and raised the hide flap.

There was quite a commotion going on twenty feet away. The tall, handsome Apache who had explained her circumstances to her last night, in English, was there, holding Jack’s black stallion, which was bridled but bareback. The stallion was prancing in agitation, corded muscles rippling and gleaming, and he champed at his bit, frothing. He lashed
out with a lethal hind leg, and someone cried out and jumped away. The Apache and the stallion were surrounded, but cautiously, by perhaps twenty other. Apaches, both male and female. One of them was Hayilkah.

In fact, the tall Apache was speaking to an older couple standing next to her captor, and he was grinning and listening avidly to every word. The old, fat woman resembled Hayilkah. His mother? Hayilkah laughed. The tall Apache led the black through the group, which parted immediately before his path. He took the black to a tree, where he tied him. The stallion didn’t look like he was going to stay put for very long.

The group of Apaches was dispersing. Candice thought she understood what was happening. Jack was trading the black for her. She had no idea why he had sent the tall Apache as his emissary.

But he was trading his horse for her.

Her heart filled with desperate hope.

Despite the fact that he was exhausted, Jack had a restless night. He was afraid that Hayilkah would change his mind and return the black and take Candice Carter to bed as his wife. He dozed and dreamed of Candice. She was in his arms, and he was making fierce, agonizing love to her. Then she moved him away, laughing. Tim McGraw appeared, smiling insolently, and proceeded to impale her right before his very eyes. In his dream, he wanted to kill McGraw. Now he had lus clothes on, while they rutted naked. But he couldn’t make his hands move to draw his guns no matter how hard he tried. All he could do was stand there and watch, his body paralyzed.

He even had a brief nightmare about Datiye. He had caught a glimpse of her that afternoon, reminding him of what had happened between them. In the dream, she was giving birth to a child. His child. Candice was there, acting as midwife. He awoke in a sweat, very disturbed. Everyone knew dreams were omens.

At dawn Shozkay found him sitting on his bedroll staring out at the mountains with a harsh forbidding expression on his face.

“Ready for divorce already, brother?” Shozkay teased dryly.

Jack jumped to his feet, his heart pounding. “They have not returned the black?” If the black had not been returned, it meant the proposal had been accepted.

“Come, Shozkay said, smiling. “She is a maiden—you realize that?”

Jack stared in surprise. Kincaid and Candice had never consummated their marriage? And then he felt a swift, hot elation that no man had possessed her.

“You did not know?”

“She is a widow,” Jack said.

“How is that?”

“I do not know.”

“Well, there is no doubt that she is still a maiden; she was examined carefully, or so Hayilkah says.”

Jack grew grim thinking about someone examining Candice to find that out. He clamped down hard on his jaw as anger coursed through him.

Shozkay led him through the camp to his go
hwah
, and behind it there was a buckskin dress, moccasins, and an antelope hide—a kind of dowry. “Well?”

Jack stared, then relaxed and even smiled.

“Are you going to go get your bride?” Shozkay grinned as if he found the whole affair vastly amusing.

My bride, he thought.
My bride
. Now what am I going to do? And instantly an inner voice said—She belongs to you, and you can do what you will. And it was the truth. “I don’t want her to know about this,” Jack told him.

“I will speak no truths.” Shozkay laughed.

“This isn’t funny,” Jack said.

“I will not even speak to her.” Shozkay grinned. “Love, eh?”

Jack gave him a dark look and strode away.

He passed Hayilkah, mounted on a chestnut horse, about to go hunting with a group of men. Hayilkah smiled. Jack smiled too. Had Hayilkah tried to approach the black, much less mount him? The black was an unfriendly horse that rarely allowed anyone but him on his back. Jack thought that Hayilkah had probably tried, and failed, thus his current choice of a mount. Hayilkah was probably intending to break the black another time. Jack wondered if he would be able to do so, and doubted it. He felt a sense of loss, but it was lost among his other careening emotions and the heavy thudding of his heart.

He ducked into the
gohwah
. Candice was awake, still naked, although wrapped in a blanket. Her face brightened with evident joy at seeing him. He looked at her and was swept with a heady flush of pleasure. This woman is mine. “Let’s go.”

She started in surprise, rising, holding the blanket. “What’s happened?” she asked anxiously.

His gaze was level. “I’ve traded for you.”

“Are we going to leave?”

“Soon,” he told her. He took her elbow. “Come on. I think the first thing you need is a bath.”

She turned fully toward him, one of her hands going to
his bare chest in a natural, importuning gesture. But the moment their flesh made contact, she froze, and he went very still. They both stared at her small, pale hand resting on his hard, dark abdomen. She started to remove it.

He took it in his. “Jesu,” he said. Her nails were torn and had been bleeding. Dirt was embedded beneath them. Her knuckles were chapped and raw, her skin dry and leathery. There were scabbing cuts on her palm, and her wrists still looked infected. His touch was very gentle. Their eyes met.

He thought he saw trust, and his heart tightened painfully. “We’ll get you cleaned up.” His voice was too husky.

“Jack.” It was a croak, and she wet her lips, her pink tongue instantly drawing his full attention. He focused on her mouth—the lips cracked and split but so very beautiful. The urge to kiss her was overwhelming. To kiss her and take her and make her his. Why not? She
was
his.

“Did you trade your stallion for me?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

A slight smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Her own face mirrored it. It was Jack who finally looked away from her glistening dark-blue eyes.

The hunting party was riding out, a group of fierce-looking braves, rifles in hand, bows slung over hard shoulders. Half a dozen squaws were striding out of camp carrying baskets—obviously some kind of gathering expedition—while the rest of the women were cooking over fires and deep ovens, watching the children. The braves who had remained were sharpening implements, mending harnesses, making weapons.

They walked away from the camp to an area of the creek secluded by thick stands of oak and pinyon. Jack was carrying her dowry—the dress and moccasins. He laid them carefully on some grass, glancing at her. “I’ll just walk back a bit.”

She clutched the blanket closer but didn’t avert her gaze. They stared at each other before Jack turned away, reluctantly, his blood racing thickly. He wanted her, he wanted her now, and he had never wanted any woman the way he wanted her.

He paused beside a large, thick tree, leaning his bare shoulder against it. He could hear her dropping the blanket,
and he instantly envisioned her long-legged, lithe, full-breasted body, imagined her turning and walking to the creek. He couldn’t help it. He shifted, his manhood rigid and aching now, and glanced over his shoulder. She was wading into the stream, shivering, her long, tangled hair flowing to her waist, stopping just short enough to give him a perfect and tantalizing view of her lush, rounded buttocks and long legs. He groaned beneath his breath but could not for the life of him look away. She bent over and he inhaled, a sharp sound at what she was exposing, and she straightened instantly, whirling, arms across her breasts, her navy eyes wide. Their gazes met.

It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to turn and walk back to the camp.

Standing naked in the sunlight, Candice watched him heading toward the camp. She was very much aware of her nudity and the tightness in her chest. Then, instantly, she dropped into the water and began to scrub herself furiously, darting quick glances around for any unwelcome Apache intruders. How could he have left her there alone? What if a brave appeared while she was naked and defenseless? And why did she keep thinking about the way he had looked at her? She was no longer so naive as to not recognize a look of lust and desire—the expression had been written all over his face when he had kissed her in the barn. Just as it had been now. Candice was agitated.

She dressed quickly in the items he had left. The dress and moccasins were butter-soft, and felt wickedly delightful against her naked skin. She didn’t hear Jack returning. She just suddenly knew he was there, and she looked up, getting another glimpse of hot gray eyes. It occurred to-her that he knew she was wearing nothing beneath the dress, and she blushed, but she couldn’t look away.

“Come here,” he said softly.

Candice stared, unable to swallow, unable even to breathe. After a beat he came to her, and for one wild moment she thought he was going to kiss her as he stared at her parted lips. Instead, he picked up one of her hands, and then before she could adjust to the quick disappointment, he was gently applying salve to the rope burns and abrasions. She felt heat rising to her face for her wayward thoughts.