Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Then there was the bitterness that further distorted his features. Bitterness directed at his own son. Jessie could hardly credit it.

  Yet it was Blake’s cousin, Wade Sinclair, who caught and held her attention. As tall as Blake, with broader shoulders and a thicker neck, he had a menacing look about him. He wore his thick black hair straight and long to his shoulders. It hung close to his face and covered his ears and the sides of his neck. His stance was cocky, his hard lips held in a sneer. But there was something about his eyes…something there that sent a chill down Jessie’s spine.

  Good God. This was Blake’s family? These two horrid men? No wonder he’d been so surprised by hers.

  She offered the two men neither word nor smile.

  Lucien Renard shifted and executed a mocking bow before her. “My condolences, young lady.” Disdain tainted his laughter. “You sure picked a loser with this one.”

  Blake stiffened. He raised his head and glared over his shoulder. “I’d be careful about name-calling, if I were you.”

  “I’ll call you any damn name I please.”

  “Lucien?” Daniella stepped forward.

  “Stay out of it, Dani,” Blake said, still looking squarely at Lucien. “Let him have his say. The sooner he spits out his poison, the sooner he’ll be gone. Unless,” he said with a raised brow to his father, “you’ve come here for money for more whiskey. If that’s the case, you can forget it, old man. I’m not helping you drown yourself in rotgut.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you for the time of day, you useless whelp. You had him, didn’t you? You had that murdering red bastard dead in your sights and you let him live! Goddamn you! Is your mother’s life worth nothing?”

  “Don’t talk to me about my mother, old man. My mother is dead.”

  “And that bastard Geronimo killed her, you puling coward! Killed her right there where you’re standing! How dare you come here and desecrate the sight of her death! Why didn’t you kill him?”

  “Why didn’t you?” Blake demanded. “All my life I’ve listened to you spew hatred like puss from a wound. I lived it with you, breathed it with you. I hated every damn bit as strongly as you do. You saw to that. You may not have taught me anything else, but you taught me how to hate. But even you can’t make me murder an unarmed old man. You want him dead so goddamn bad, you kill him! You spend the rest of your life on the run, hiding from the law, the Army. I’m through being your instrument for revenge. I’ve found something worth living for, something I’m not willing to give up, not for you, not even to avenge my mother. Something far more precious than your foul hatred.”

  With a growl, Lucien raised his arm, intending to backhand Blake across the face.

  Jessie gasped.

  Blake reached out and caught Lucien by the wrist. Jaws clenched tight, he muttered, “You even think about it again and I’ll break your arm. Is this your drinking arm, old man? You want to be careful, risking your drinking arm like that.”

  Lucien growled again and made to lunge.

  “Lucien!” Daniella cried.

  Her high sharp tone snared the man’s attention.

  “Tell him, Lucien,” she demanded. “Tell him the truth.”

  “He knows the truth,” Lucien said with a snarl. “He knows Geronimo murdered my Sarah.”

  “The truth, Lucien. Your son deserves that much from you, doesn’t he?”

  “My son!” he spat.

  Blake felt his hackles rise. He’d never heard the word “son” from Lucien’s lips before. Now that he had…“What truth is she talking about, Father?”

  “Don’t call me that, you misbegotten son of the devil! Look at you! I can’t believe you’ve lived this long and not figured it out. Look at you, standing here with this half-breed scum—” He flung an arm toward Pace. “You blind bastard, you don’t even see the resemblance, do you?”

  “What,” Blake said through clenched teeth, “are you talking about?”

  Lucien merely glared at him, his dark eyes spitting more hatred than Blake had ever seen.

  “Tell him the truth, Lucien,” Daniella urged.

  “I can’t!” he screamed. “She made me swear on her deathbed I would never tell him!”

  “What else did she make you swear?” Daniella cried. “Did she make you swear to hate him? Did she make you swear to abandon him? Or did she make you swear to raise him with the love she would have given him had she lived?”

  All the hatred in Lucien’s poisoned soul poured out of his eyes, directed at Daniella. “Damn you! Damn you to hell, you bitch! You don’t know—you couldn’t know!”

  “You’re right,” she cried. “I don’t know. Except one thing. When you left this ranch all those years ago, Sarah was alive. She didn’t die here. And I know one other thing. I know that unless he took to the streets of Santa Fe—which isn’t very damn likely—Geronimo did not kill your wife.”

  Blake reeled with shock. “What is she saying, old man? Tell me!”

  Lucien turned his hate-filled gaze on Blake. “All right, goddamnit, I’ll tell you. Geronimo didn’t murder your mother. You did!”

  Beside Blake, Jessie gasped and covered her mouth with a hand. Her face paled.

  Blake held himself erect by sheer will, when what he wanted to do was double over with screaming rage.

  “But Geronimo might as well have killed her,” Lucien raved. “He raped her! He raped my Sarah. Nine months later she died giving birth to his bastard. You killed your mother, goddamn you!”

  Blake’s breath came in sharp hot gasps. His heart pounded. His vision wavered. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He tried again. “Are…you saying…”

  “I’m saying you’re no son of mine—you never were, you stinking redskin bastard.” He lunged again, his fist in the air.

  This time, Blake was too stunned to react. Jessie wasn’t. With a cry of rage, she threw herself at Lucien. His fist struck her on the shoulder, whirling her around and into Blake with another cry, this one of pain.

  Blake stumbled back, catching Jessie in his arms and trying to keep them both from falling. Rage like he’d never known before engulfed him. He was torn between holding Jessie and strangling Lucien Renard with his bare hands.

  From the looks of things, he might have to wait in line for the latter. Travis Colton had a hold on Lucien’s fist, squeezing it in his own until Lucien cried out.

  “Get him out of my sight,” Blake demanded, his voice shaking with fury. “Get him out of my sight before I kill him.”

  Lucien tore his fist from Travis’s grip and stomped to his horse. He gave Blake a last narrow-eyed, look, spat on the ground, then mounted and rode out.

  When Blake finally became aware of the shaking, he at first thought it was Jessie. But when she stood away from and him met his gaze with her heart in her eyes, he realized he was the one doing the shaking.

  She reached a hand, slender and white, toward his face. Blake grasped it and stared at the difference between his skin and hers. Hers so pale and creamy. His so dark and bronze.

  Spanish on your mother’s side, Cajun on your father’s. No wonder you’re so dark. Phillip’s words rang mockingly in Blake’s ears. Spanish and Cajun, hell. He was a goddamn half-breed Apache!

  “Blake?”

  He blinked and brought Jessie into focus. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “Are you?”

  Was he all right? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore. Not even who—or what—he was.

  Wade followed Lucien until they reached the small dusty town of Tubac just after sunset. In a rundown cantina off the main street, Wade leaned a forearm on the table and spoke for the first time since they’d left Blake at the ranch.

  “So, my esteemed cousin ain’t so esteemed after all.”

  Lucien didn’t answer. He was too busy guzzling shot after shot of tequila straight up.

  “You’re not going to stand still for him keeping Tres Colinas now that the truth is out, are you?”
/>
  “It’s not my ranch,” Lucien muttered. “Never was.”

  “What are you talking about, you old sot?”

  “Sarah’s. Came to her through her Spanish father.”

  “It should be mine,” Wade said heatedly. “She was my aunt, her father was my grandfather, too. And I’m not some by-blow half-breed bastard, by God.”

  Lucien lowered his shot glass and gave Wade an amused look. “Not a bastard? Of course you are. You always have been. Oh, not by birth, mind you,” he said with a drunken wave of his hand. “No, not you, Wade. You’ve worked hard for the name bastard. Earned it fairly, I’d say.”

  “To hell with you, old man. You’re nothin’ but a dirty drunk. The ranch is mine, I say. I’m the one who’s looked after it while he’s been off playing soldier all these years. It’s mine, I tell you.”

  Lucien snorted and poured another shot. “Talk is cheap, boy.”

  Wade leaned across the table toward his uncle. “I’ll do more than talk, you son of a bitch. Blake’s grandfather was my grandfather, too. I get rid of Blake, the ranch is mine. You got a problem with that, old man?”

  Not really listening any longer, Lucien downed the shot and poured another. “Buy me another bottle before you leave, will ya?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?” Daniella asked Jessie.

  It was nearly dawn, and Blake hadn’t returned. When Lucien had ridden off with Blake’s cousin in tow, Blake, his face a blank mask, had turned away from Jessie, from all of them, and walked off toward the hills.

  “At least until Blake comes back?” Daniella added.

  “Thank you, Mama, but no. This has been such a shock to him.” A shock. What a mild description for the blow Lucien Renard had dealt Blake. Damn that man! Jessie had never hated, truly hated, anyone in her life. But she hated Lucien Renard. “If he ever shows up here again, I’ll shoot him down like a rabid coyote,” she said fiercely.

  Daniella’s lips twisted. “I take it you’re not talking about Blake.”

  “No. I’m talking about that…that man. That no good lying…”

  “Jessie.” Daniella put her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Lucien wasn’t lying, sweetheart. Geronimo did rape Sarah Renard.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” Jessie threw back. “I’m talking about Blake’s whole life! It was a lie, all of it. From Blake being raised thinking Renard was his father—a father who wanted nothing to do with him—to Renard urging Blake his whole life to hate Geronimo, to kill the very man who’d sired him. And he almost did it, Mama. Blake almost killed Geronimo that last night in San Antonio. He could have. He wanted to.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No, and thank God. I can’t imagine what it would do to him, knowing he’d killed his own father. This…this is going to be hard enough for him to swallow. He’s been taught his whole life to hate Apaches. Now…”

  “Now he’s been told he is one.”

  Jessie bit her bottom lip to keep from crying. She ached for Blake. How he must be hurting right now, out there wandering the hills, alone, his entire life turned upside down with a few heated words.

  She shook her head. “I think…I think maybe it won’t be so hard on Blake if he doesn’t have to face all of you when he comes back.”

  Daniella kissed Jessie’s cheek. “I think you’re right. And I think you’ve grown into a very compassionate, intelligent woman. I’m proud of you, Jessie. You love him very much, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mama. I love him more than anything.”

  Daniella kissed her cheek again. “You take care of yourself. That baby’s due in just over three weeks. I’ll be back in less than two, just in case he decides to come early.”

  Jessie offered a wavering smile. “Thank you.”

  As the sun crept over the hills, the family loaded up and headed out. Once out of sight of the ranch house, Travis, then Matt reigned in.

  “We’re not just going to leave her there alone, are we?” Matt demanded. “What if he doesn’t come back?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Daniella scolded. “Of course he’ll be back. But no, we’re not just going to leave her alone.” She eyed Pace, who answered with a grim nod. “You’ll stay out of sight, and you’ll leave as soon as Blake returns.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  It was nearly noon when Blake wandered down out of the hills and crossed the nearly used up pasture to reach the house. He’d walked for hours, all night, not knowing where he was headed, not caring. Trying his best not to think.

  It hadn’t worked, not worth a damn.

  …she died giving birth to his bastard. You killed your mother, goddamn you!

  The words rang over and over in Blake’s ears, echoing like a burst of gunfire in a rock canyon.

  A lie. His whole goddamn life had been a lie. Every word his fa—Every word Lucien had every spoken to him had been a lie.

  You killed that murdering red bastard yet, boy?

  God, how Lucien must have laughed to himself every time he asked that question. What greater revenge than to have Geronimo’s bastard kill his own sire. Execute him. Murder him.

  And he’d almost done it. Blake knew he had come within a hair of plunging that knife between Geronimo’s ribs. Would have, but something…something in the Apache’s eyes, something deep inside Blake himself, had stopped him.

  Had some part of him, even then, known the truth?

  Ha! His failure to kill Geronimo had nothing to do with the truth. It had to do with Blake’s own cowardice. He hadn’t been able to do it because he knew the act would cost him Jessie, would cost him if not his very life, then his freedom, his honor in the eyes of other men.

  The truth, hell. He’d walked away from Geronimo that night for purely selfish reasons.

  And now to find out the son of a bitch was his sire—God!

  This wasn’t what Blake wanted for Jessie. He didn’t want her tied for the rest of her life to a half-breed Apache bastard, didn’t want her giving birth to another one.

  What was she thinking now? Would this be the rock that started the avalanche? How could she not turn away from him, knowing what she knew now? How could she want to live with a man who had no idea who he was, what he was?

  God, what a fine joke. Blake remembered his own perverse feelings when he’d thought Jessie had lowered herself to loving a half-breed. He’d thought she was too good for that. That a half-breed’s touch could only dirty that fine, porcelain skin.

  He’d been right.

  Sure, she had welcomed him eagerly the past two nights. She’d managed to overcome her reluctance in bed. But even before Lucien had shown up yesterday, there had still been a shadow in Jessie’s eyes. She still hadn’t been able to tell him she loved him, not even in the heat of their shared passion.

  What was he going to do? What the hell was he going to do? He couldn’t ask Jessie to stay married to him. Couldn’t, wouldn’t. She had married an Army captain, not a half-breed bastard. Yet a half-breed bastard was what she’d ended up with.

  A hundred yards away, the door to the house opened, and she stepped out. The breeze whipped the hem of her yellow gingham dress around her ankles and molded the fabric across her stomach, where she rested one hand. With the other hand, she held her unbound hair from her face.

  God, but she was a sight. So damn beautiful. His chest hurt just looking at her. She deserved so much better…

  In the cover of a small clump of mesquite and cedars just below the crest of a hill, Pace slowly rose from his crouched position. He watched his sister’s first hesitant steps. Then she hurried, faster and faster toward the man who stood alone and waited.

  Would Blake welcome her? Or was he so bitter over learning the truth of his birth that he would turn Jessie away?

  Blake knew he should turn away from her, should keep his dirty, half-breed hands to himself. But she was running toward him, one hand braced against the mound of his child. And she was crying. For him.

 
Ah, God, but he had to hold her, at least one more time. And then, God help him, he had to let her go.

  She stopped ten feet away, chest heaving, her big gray eyes full of hurt and expectation and longing. For him.

  “Jessie…” His voice broke. He opened his arms and took a step toward her, and she flew to him, engulfing him in her arms, her tears, and the sweet scent of roses from her bath soap. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain.

  “Blake, oh, Blake, I’ve been so worried about you.”

  “I’m sorry.” He pushed her away and led her toward the house, unable to meet her gaze. “I didn’t mean to worry you.” He looked around, noticing the quiet. “Where is everyone?”

  “Gone. They went home this morning.”

  He halted in the dust. “They left you here alone?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly. Look.” She pointed toward the hill to the north, where the shadow of a lone rider crested, then disappeared down the other side. “Pace. He probably thinks I don’t know he’s been there all morning, waiting for you to come back. Are you…are you all right?”

  Blake didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

  He followed her into the house. The house that only last week had been a pit, but that now felt like a home. He let his gaze roam over all the things Jessie had done here, and each item, each change she’d wrought made the lump in his throat grow bigger. It was all he could do to keep from sinking to his knees. He’d wanted this, wanted her and their child and their life together so damn bad…

  “Blake?”

  “Gather up what you’ll need for now, and I’ll take you home. I’ll…see that you get the rest of your things back later.”

  His voice, so flat and lifeless, scared her worse than anything in her life ever had. He wouldn’t even look at her. She wrapped her arms around herself. “What are you talking about?”

  “Under the circumstances, an annulment ought to be easy enough.”

  Shocked, Jessie let her arms fall to her sides. “What annulment? Look at me! What annulment?”