Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Because I wanted to show you how good it can be when there’s no drug to cloud your mind. Because I wanted to be the one to make you feel that way, just me, no drug.”

  Angela pulled the blanket tighter around her. She glanced up at him, then away, the heat in her face nearly suffocating her. “But why didn’t you…I mean…you didn’t…”

  “Why didn’t I take my pleasure too? Is that what you mean?”

  “I-I guess so,” she whispered.

  He chuckled and squeezed her shoulder gently. “A man’s body doesn’t always cooperate with his mind, especially after a night like the one we just spent. You’re too sore for that kind of loving anyway.”

  Beneath the curtain of her long hair, Angela felt herself blushing fiercely.

  “Here,” Matt said, handing her clothes to her. “Get dressed and we’ll head back. I, for one, am starving. You must be, too.”

  When she reached to accept her clothes, the blanket slipped. She felt his gaze burn into her bare shoulder, sending tingling waves of awareness clear to her toes. She didn’t move.

  “Hurry up and get dressed, woman,” he said with a smile in his voice. “I’m hungry.”

  He expected her to dress in front of him? While his gaze burned her like a flaming torch? Of course he expected it. After last night, and just a few minutes ago in the pond, what secrets could she possibly have left? But a lifetime of modesty held her motionless. “Would you…turn your back, please?” she managed.

  “Would I what?” Was that surprise or anger in his voice? “After last night, and then just now, you want me to turn my back while you get dressed?”

  She finally looked at him then, but kept her gaze trained on the only thing he wore, the bearclaw necklace, not daring to look at his face or the tall, naked, beautiful length of him. Through eyes brimming with tears, she could see the wet, spiky clumps of her own lashes. “Please?”

  The curse died in his throat when Matt saw her woeful expression. “All right,” he said with a reluctant nod. Damn. He’d hoped she’d be over her embarrassment by now, but then, he shouldn’t expect her to go from virgin to wanton in less than twenty-four hours.

  Soon, he told himself. No woman as passionate as Angela could remain shy for long.

  “How is it a girl your age never learned to swim?” he asked, his back to her as he tied on his breech cloth and slipped into his moccasins.

  “There aren’t any swimming holes in downtown Memphis.”

  “Memphis?” It was the first piece of personal information she’d given him. “You’re sure a long way from home.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she said with a sad little smile.

  Later, on their way back to camp, Matt tried again to ease her mind. “Is there anything I can do to make things easier for you? I meant what I said last night. There won’t be any annulment now, so you don’t have to feel like I’d…use you, then just…walk away.”

  Angela stepped ahead of him on the narrow footpath and let her hair fall forward to cover her face. Each step she took was painful, yet she knew she had to walk the soreness out of her body. But what of the soreness in her heart? Every word Matt spoke only served to remind her again of her shameful actions of the night before, and then again today. The more he tried to get her to talk, the more she wanted to scream at him to leave her alone.

  “Damn it, Angela, talk to me.”

  “What am I supposed to say?” she cried, flinging her hair back over her shoulder to finally look at him. “Am I supposed to say it’s all right? Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine? I didn’t have any plans for the rest of my life anyway? I really don’t mind being the butt of some cruel joke between you and your so-called friend?” That I don’t catch fire when you look at me, when you touch me? Her eyes stung with the threat of tears. “I just want to forget it ever happened.”

  Matt shook his head slowly. “I can’t do that.” He reached to touch her cheek, but she jerked away. “Neither of us planned on any of this, Angela, but it doesn’t matter now. The fact is, you’re my wife. It happened, it’s done, and all the pretending in the world won’t undo it.”

  Angela stopped and sat down on a low rock, her muscles burning in protest in places where she didn’t even know she had muscles. “You go on without me,” she said. “I’d like to sit here awhile.”

  Matt looked at her a long moment, then nodded. “All right, but don’t leave the trail. Camp is just around that next bend, so you don’t have to worry about getting lost. But this isn’t Memphis. There are wild animals in these woods, so don’t stay too long, and don’t leave the trail,” he repeated.

  Angela held her breath until Matt disappeared around the bend and out of sight. She just couldn’t believe all this was happening to her. Had the entire world gone crazy? She was supposed to be in Tucson by now, with her mother and father, at their new store. Instead, her parents were both dead, the money from selling the Memphis store was a pile of ashes, along with everything else she owned; she was held captive by Apaches, and now she found herself married to a total stranger. A white man who called himself Bear Killer.

  And he could turn her inside out with just a touch.

  She took a deep breath and stood up slowly, then began to pace back and forth trying to figure a way out of this mess. There really wasn’t much she could do as long as they stayed with the Apaches. She hadn’t the slightest idea where she was. If she tried to run away, she knew she’d become hopelessly lost. She had to stay with Matt until he took her away from here. Then maybe her chances for escape would be better.

  The thought of leaving him, of never seeing his smile or hearing his voice, never feeling his hands and lips on her body again, left her cold and empty. And where would she go? How would she live? Would she ever be able to forget him?

  Behind her, a twig snapped. She was surprised to find herself in the woods, several yards away from the path. Matt’s warning came back, and she slowly turned her head to peer behind her. A sharp, sudden pain exploded in her head. She felt herself fall. The last thing she saw was the ground, tilted at an odd angle, rushing up to meet her.

  Then everything went black.

  Chapter Twelve

  It took Matt over an hour to find Chee. It seemed everywhere he went, Chee had just left. He finally found him tending the horses.

  “Is it coincidence that I’ve ‘just missed’ you for the last hour? Or have you been hiding from me?”

  “Why should I hide from you?” Chee asked innocently.

  “Maybe you don’t want to hear what I have to say about your little stunt last night.”

  Chee smirked as he released the hoof he’d been inspecting and straightened to face Matt. “And what do you have to say?”

  “Just this.” In the blink of an eye, Matt swung at his friend and dropped him with a solid right to the chin, then turned his back and walked away in grim satisfaction.

  He stopped for a while at the boys’ playing field, where Pace and some friends were running races. A dozen or so men stood on the sidelines placing bets with each other. Gambling was a favorite pastime for these people, many of whom would bet everything they owned on the outcome of a single race or game.

  And white people thought Apaches weren’t civilized!

  The sun was sinking low when Matt finally returned to the wickiup, but Angela wasn’t there. He checked next door with Huera, but she hadn’t seen the girl. Neither Serena, Nod-ah-Sti, nor either of Cochise’s wives had seen Angela since last night. He went back to the wickiup, but again found it empty. Could she still be sitting on that rock in the woods?

  When he neared the edge of camp Alope hailed him, but he ignored her.

  As Matt followed the trail to where he’d left Angela, a sense of unease crept over him. She’d been embarrassed and upset. He shouldn’t have left her alone. He reached the rock, but she wasn’t there. A cold feeling settled in the pit of his stomach.

  A low snarl came from the woods to his left. He whirled to find a ńdúí,
a mountain lion, crouched, ready to spring from its perch on a high rock. Matt scanned the ground beneath the cat, and his heart jumped to his throat. Barely visible at the edge of a thick clump of shrubs was a small patch of blue gingham, directly beneath the cat’s perch.

  Matt automatically reached for his pistol. It wasn’t there. He never wore it in camp. The only weapon he had was his knife, and he wasn’t as good as he’d like to be at throwing it.

  The cat shifted its feet and twitched its tail, ears flat against its tawny skull. Any second it would spring. Without taking his eyes off the cat, Matt squatted, ran his hands along the path at his feet and came up with three fist-sized rocks. With a shout, he hurled them one after the other at the mountain lion. The cat yowled in rage and turned toward the man, but reversed himself and bounded into the woods when the third rock struck him in the ribs with a hollow sounding thud.

  Matt practically flew the few yards to the spot of blue gingham and dropped to his knees beside Angela’s limp form. In the growing darkness he saw a frighteningly large pool of blood staining the ground beneath her. He pressed his ear to her chest and listened for a heartbeat, but his own heart was pounding so loud he almost missed it. When he did finally hear her heart, it was so faint it was barely there at all.

  Darkness spread rapidly. Matt searched, frantic to find where the blood was coming from. Then he saw it, and his own blood left his face at once, as though it would join hers there on the ground. The small, thin cut on the inside of her wrist from the wedding ceremony was now a deep, ugly gash that ran up her inner arm almost to her elbow.

  “My God,” he whispered. She must have been more horrified and upset over last night than he thought, to have taken such drastic measures to escape him and their marriage.

  With a jerk, he bolted into action, tearing off what remained of her petticoat and wrapping it tightly around her lower arm. He picked her up, but she didn’t stir. As fast as possible, he made his way out of the woods and back to their wickiup.

  Triple C Ranch

  Near Tucson, Arizona Territory

  Travis Colton located his wife’s shawl in the bedroom and returned to the salon. “Dani, I found your—”

  “Ssh!” Seven-year-old Spencer Colton put a finger to his lips to quiet his father. “She’s doing it again,” he whispered loudly.

  “Who’s doing—”

  “Ssh!” lisped Jessica, Spence’s three-year-old sister. It sounded like, “Thh.”

  “What’s—”

  “Ssh!” they warned in unison.

  Travis looked to Daniella for an explanation and the shawl slipped from his fingers. He’d seen this before, but it still frightened him every time it happened.

  “Is this how she did it when I got lost that time?” Jessica whispered to her brother.

  “Yeah. Now ssh!”

  Daniella sat in her chair, her hands poised in mid-air above the spinning wheel she used more for nostalgic reasons than out of necessity, and stared, unblinking, into the cold fireplace. Her eyes were glazed. She was totally unaware of what went on around her.

  Spence and Jessica stared at their mother in awe. Spence remembered last spring when Jessica had wandered away from the house and gotten lost for several hours. He’d been with his mother when she’d suddenly dropped the flowers she’d been carrying and stared off at nothing for several moments. It was like she was in a trance or something, and it had scared him half to death, he remembered. But when his mother had snapped out of it, she’d said she had seen Jessica in the creek with her foot caught beneath a rock.

  Less than half an hour later, Jessica had been found, cold and frightened half out of her wits, almost a mile from the house, just like Mama had seen her.

  And now Mama looked just like she had that day, and Spence knew she was “doing it” again, “seeing” something.

  Travis knelt before his wife and waited. That was all he could do. He should be used to this after ten years of marriage to her, but he wasn’t. It scared him when her face turned so pale and her skin so cold.

  Suddenly she blinked, and her eyes focused.

  “Dani, are you all right?”

  “What?” She stared at him stupidly for a moment, then shook herself.

  “What’d ya see, Mama?” Spence asked.

  “Is thumbody lost?” Jessica whispered.

  Daniella glanced at Travis, anxiety written on her face.

  “Mama’s fine now, you two, and I think it’s your bedtime,” Travis said.

  “No!” they both protested.

  “I beg your pardon,” Travis said in that tone he had that meant someone was about to catch it.

  Spence heard, and obeyed. He took his sister’s hand without a word and tugged her unwilling little body toward the door.

  “We’ll be there to tuck you in in a minute.”

  “It’s not fair,” Spence mumbled as he went out the door. “Every time sumpin’ excitin’ happens around here, us kids gotta go to bed. How’s a fella supposed to know what’s going on if he has to keep going to bed all the time?”

  Travis took Daniella’s cold hands in his warm ones. “What is it, love?”

  “Oh, Travis, it’s Matt.”

  Travis felt the blood leave his face. “Matt?” The last time she’d “seen” Matt was several years ago, when he’d been mauled by a bear. “What? What did you see?”

  “He’s all right,” she assured him. “But I saw him in the woods. There was a girl with long blond hair, wearing a blue dress. She was lying on the ground in a pool of blood, and Matt was kneeling over her. Oh, Travis, he’s so upset!”

  “What do you mean, upset?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think she might die, and I think…Matt somehow feels responsible. We have to go to him, Travis; he needs us.”

  “Then we’ll go.” Travis brought her hands to his lips and kissed them. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  Matt knelt inside the wickiup beside his wife of one day and watched, every nerve tensed, as Huera cleaned and bandaged the deep cut on Angela’s arm.

  “Shimá, will she be all right? Why is she still unconscious?”

  “She’s lost a lot of blood, shiye', so she is very weak. And she must have fallen hard to have such a large knot on her head.”

  Matt gently fingered the lump the size of a hen’s egg on Angela’s scalp just above and behind her ear. She must have grown weak from loss of blood and struck her head on a tree or rock when she passed out.

  Huera left, then returned a short time later with a pot of broth. “Feed this to her as soon as she wakes. It will help her recover her strength quickly.”

  Matt sat beside Angela and held her hand, willing her to wake up. If she didn’t recover, he would never forgive himself. His rational mind knew he wasn’t to blame for the events leading to her attempted suicide, but in his heart he felt responsible. He should have realized how upset she was, should never have left her there in the woods, alone.

  It was hours later before her eyelids finally fluttered. She rolled her head and moaned, then blinked several times to clear her vision.

  “Matt?”

  “I’m right here.” He squeezed her left hand, then reached for the pot of broth.

  “My head hurts.” She strained to see him in the near darkness and blinked again. “What happened?”

  “Don’t try to talk. Here, eat some of this. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “A spoon?” She eyed the utensil carefully, as if to make sure that’s what it really was.

  “It’s probably the only one for miles around. I brought it from home,” Matt explained.

  He propped her head up with an extra blanket, then began spooning the warm broth into her mouth.

  She shuddered as it went down. “It’s awful!”

  Matt shifted his squatting position and leaned back to give her a breather between spoonfuls. He saw her lower her gaze and blush. Now what did she have to blush about?

  Her gaze dart
ed away from him, then back. He followed her line of sight as her blush deepened. His lips twitched involuntarily.

  When he’d shifted his weight, his new position left his breechcloth gaping open, giving her what he was sure was a clear view beneath. The smile he’d been fighting died.

  The last thing he wanted just then was for her to be reminded of last night or this morning. She’d been embarrassed enough lately to last a lifetime. He didn’t want to add to her distress. He shifted again; the gap closed.

  He made a big show of taking a sip of the broth and making a face. Then he grinned at her. “You’re right,” he said, grateful to see her relax slightly. “It’s awful. But I swear it works. You’ll be on your feet in no time.” He pushed another spoonful into her mouth.

  “What makes you so sure?” she asked, wrinkling her freckled, sunburned nose.

  “Because it’s what they fed me when I got these scars,” he said, surprising himself. He’d never spoken about that with anyone before.

  “How did you get them?” she asked, swallowing another mouthful of the bitter stuff.

  “From a very angry bear.”

  Angela jerked her gaze from the broth and studied the scar on his face. “A bear did that?”

  “Uh huh.” Right now he wasn’t worried about her reaction to his scars, as long as he could keep her mind off what she’d tried to do to herself this afternoon.

  “I’d say you’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Uh huh.” He kept spooning the broth into her between her words.

  “What happened to the bear?”

  He grinned slightly. It was probably the first time he’d ever thought about that long-ago day with anything close to humor. “You’re laying on him right now.”

  She glanced down at the bearskin beneath her, then at the yellowed claws around his neck. “Is that why they call you Bear Killer?”

  “Uh huh. Want to know what they call you?”

  “Me? What do they call me?”

  He pushed another spoonful of broth between her lips and gazed deeply into her eyes. “They call you Eyes Like Summer Leaves.”