Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “The hell you won’t. You stay in my patient room or you stay at the ranch. Your choice.”

  Bitter choice, Pace thought as Spence ducked through the door and left. At home he would have not only Joanna, but Rena and his mother, too, hovering over him, fussing around him, making him feel useless and unmanned.

  Dammit, he wanted to stay right where he was. But he’d seen the look in Spence’s eyes. The kid was serious.

  And he wasn’t a kid anymore. Spence had grown up. He was a man, and from all accounts, one of the finest doctors in the territory. Even that, Pace feared, wasn’t going to solve his problem.

  He flexed his hands—just about the only movement left to him—and relished the pain as the healing cuts and scrapes stretched and split. This was the first time he and Jo had been alone together since he’d sent her out of that damned canyon. How many days had it been, four? Five?

  “I didn’t do you any favor after all, insisting we get married,” he told her.

  “Don’t say that!”

  Pace didn’t miss the fact that she stayed near the door. It was only a few feet away, but it might as well have been a mile. “We can fix it easy enough.”

  “Fix it?” She swallowed hard. Her face was so pale, she looked like she might pass out any minute. “What do you mean, fix it?”

  “It was an Apache wedding. An Apache divorce is even easier.”

  “Div—Pace! You don’t mean that.”

  “All you have to do is throw me and my belongings out.”

  “Pace!”

  “Since I can’t walk and I’m too big for you to carry, that won’t work for us, so you’ll have to be the one to move out. Take your belongings and go, and the marriage is over.”

  Pace’s cold, emotionless words echoed over and over in Joanna’s mind. The trembling of sick fear that had begun in her stomach when she’d walked in and heard him and Spence talking spread outward. But now it wasn’t fear that shook her, it was anger.

  “Just like that?” she demanded. “It was all right for us to be married when you thought you were dying, when you thought you wouldn’t have to stick around and actually be my husband, help raise our child? Now that you’re not going to die, you don’t want any part of us? Is that what this is about? Because I warn you, Pace Colton, if that’s what’s going through your mind, you’re damn well going to have to come right out and say it.”

  “That’s not it. You know that’s not it.”

  “I don’t know any such thing,” she cried. “I don’t even know you. Not this side of you. I never knew you to go back on your word. I never knew you to be a quitter and a coward.”

  “Coward? Hell yes, I’m a coward. When I think of you having to spend your life tied to a cripple, when I think of the pity and disgust I’ll see in your face every day for the rest of my life, the resentment you won’t be able to hide, it scares the living hell out of me.”

  All of Joanna’s anger drained out of her and she rushed to kneel at Pace’s side. “How could you even think such things? Pace, I love you. I could never resent you, don’t you know that?”

  “No, I don’t know it, and neither do you. You should have seen the look on your face when Spence admitted I was paralyzed.”

  “He admitted no such thing,” she said desperately. “He said he didn’t know. And if there was anything in my face that upset you, I’m sorry. I only care about your legs because I know what it would mean to you to never walk again. But it was you I fell in love with, not your legs. If you can’t walk, then we’ll get you one of those wheeled chairs. We’ll find a way for you to be able to ride. We’ll work it out, Pace.”

  His face, while she spoke, became harder, the lines harsher around his eyes, the line of his lips more grim. He refused to look at her.

  “Pace…”

  “No.”

  She waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “What do you mean, no?”

  “It won’t work, Jo. We can’t stay married. I can’t do that to you.”

  Joanna swallowed the bile rising in her throat. “You said you loved me.”

  “And I meant it,” he said, turning fierce eyes on her. “I love you too damn much to let you throw the rest of your life away.”

  Fear brought her anger to the surface again. “It’s my life. If I want to throw it away, as you put it, that’s my decision.”

  “Not this time, it’s not. I’ll compromise. We’ll stay married until the baby’s born. Then you’ll divorce me.”

  She clenched her fists to hide their trembling. “Divorce you on what grounds?”

  “Desertion.”

  A huge ball of ice fell to the pit of her stomach. “You would leave me? You would leave your son?”

  A spasm of pain crossed Pace’s face, but he hid it quickly behind a cold mask. “If that’s what it takes to set you free.”

  Joanna squeezed her eyes shut. If she agreed to divorce him after the baby was born, it would buy her time. She would have nine months to convince him. Anything could happen in nine months. Pace could be walking by then.

  “And if I don’t agree?” she asked around the lump of fear in her throat.

  “Then I’ll divorce you here and now.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Pace didn’t know which was worse about the trip home, the humiliation, or the pain. Either way, it was an experience he hoped to never repeat. They had formed a travois out of poles and blanket and tied it to the saddle on a docile old mare to get him down the treacherous mountain trail.

  At the foot of the mountain they’d made camp and waited for his parents, who had ridden down early and gone to Douglas just across the border to get a wagon. At Spence’s direction they had rigged a hammock in the wagon bed to keep Pace from being bounced around on the rough trail home.

  Even with the hammock, his pain was considerable. As long as he was on his back, he was constantly reminded of Juerta’s whip. Yet he couldn’t lay on his dislocated shoulder, nor on the one with the bullet hole in it. So he endured.

  Spence offered him some laudanum, but Pace refused it. He’d seen a man once who’d gotten hooked on the stuff, and Pace had vowed never to let it pass his lips.

  No matter how bad he hurt, though, Pace would have given a king’s ransom to feel any amount of pain in his legs. He felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  It was evident that the rest of the family knew about his paralysis by the way everyone avoided his gaze. Their voices were loud with forced cheerfulness. He ground his teeth and ignored them.

  Joanna was the worst. She wouldn’t speak at all. Not to him or anyone else. But she watched him. She rarely took her eyes off him. And when they camped that night it was she who climbed into the wagon bed to feed him.

  If he could have sat up, he would have pulled his arm from the sling and fed himself, to hell with the pain he knew the movement would cost him. But he couldn’t sit up in a damn hammock, and seriously doubted he would even try. Spence was holding out hope that Pace’s paralysis was due to swelling around his spinal cord at the base of his spine. Once the swelling went down, Spence thought there was every chance Pace would get the feeling back in his legs. Meanwhile, he didn’t want Pace moving around, wanted his spine as immobile as possible.

  Pace thought his brother was full of shit, but Spence was the doctor, and Pace wasn’t going to ignore what might be his only hope. He wasn’t going to move around.

  “There’s no need to glare at me,” Joanna said tightly.

  “I don’t like having to be fed like a helpless infant.”

  Joanna would have shot back that it wasn’t her fault, but it was her fault. Everything that had happened to Pace at Juerta’s hands was her fault. If Pace hadn’t come to rescue her from the predicament she’d managed to get herself in, he wouldn’t now be lying there helpless, afraid, belligerent. Paralyzed.

  The word hissed through her mind like wildfire through dry prairie grass. It made her stomach roll.

  “Rena,” she said as Serena passed t
he wagon on her way to refill her coffee cup from the pot at the fire. “Could you help Pace? I…have something I need to do.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Joanna scrambled from the bed of the wagon and dashed for the bushes at the edge of the clearing where they’d stopped for the night. Let them think she needed to answer the call of nature. She had to get herself under control. Her guilt would not help Pace, and knowing him, he would only deny that she was responsible for his condition. But they both knew the truth. Everyone knew the truth. Pace was crippled, maybe for life, and he had nearly died. Because of her.

  Standing next to Daniella, Matt saw the look on Joanna’s face as she fled the camp. With a low growl, he started after her.

  Daniella stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Let her go, Matt. I’m sure she could use a few minutes to herself.”

  “I don’t know what the hell’s going on between those two, but so help me, if he doesn’t stop putting that look in her eyes I’ll make what Juerta did to him look like a church picnic.”

  His stepmother’s hand tightened on his forearm. “You’ll do no such thing,” she hissed. “They have enough problems without you interfering.”

  Matt started to protest, but Daniella cut him off. “I know she’s your daughter. He’s my son. And neither you nor I have the right to interfere. Joanna’s a grown woman. If she wants your help she’ll ask for it.”

  Matt snorted. “That’ll be the day.”

  “You’re probably right,” Daniella told him. “If she’s half the woman I think she is, she’ll deal with him in her own way.”

  Serena tore off another piece of biscuit and offered it to Pace. “In case no one has said it, thank you for what you did for Jo.”

  Pace’s eyes widened. “You’re joking, right?”

  Serena frowned. “Of course I’m not joking.”

  “You’re thanking me? Hell, Matt’s sharpening his knife, just waiting until the rest of you are looking the other way so he can geld me.”

  Serena pursed her lips and poked the piece of biscuit into his mouth none too gently. “I wasn’t thanking you for getting her pregnant.” She paused and took a deep breath while he chewed. “I was thanking you for going after her, for rescuing her.” In a softer voice that threatened to tremble, she added, “For offering your life to save hers.”

  Pace closed his eyes and swallowed. “I didn’t do it for thanks.”

  And I didn’t do a very damn good job of it, he thought to himself. If only he hadn’t gotten them trapped in that damned canyon! If he hadn’t decided to take her to the mountains in the first place, damn his hide. He should have taken her straight home.

  He opened his eyes and met Serena’s gaze, but said nothing.

  Serena didn’t need him to say anything; she didn’t need to read his thoughts. She knew her brother well. He was blaming himself for getting caught by Juerta. He thought he had failed Joanna. There were other things he should be thinking about. A slight smile curved the corners of her mouth. “You two weren’t together even a week. She must have gotten to you pretty fast.”

  Something flickered in Pace’s eyes, but whatever it was, it was quickly gone. “You could say that.”

  “She’s blaming herself, you know.”

  “For what?”

  “For what happened to you. For the shape you’re in, the pain you’re in. For your almost dying.”

  “She’s got no business blaming herself,” he growled.

  Serena felt the tension drain out of her shoulders. Pace did not blame Joanna. She hadn’t thought he did. But although she knew Pace well, it had been many years since they had spoken to each other without words. On this matter, she had needed the reassurance that she was right. “You might try telling her you don’t blame her.”

  “She should know I don’t.”

  “How, if you don’t tell her?”

  “We don’t…” He closed his eyes again before continuing. “We don’t always need words.”

  Serena felt a tingling at the base of her spine. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think I mean? That’s how I knew…she was the one. She can hear me when I don’t speak, and I can hear her the same way.”

  Serena sucked in her breath. “You don’t mean it. You speak without words? The way…the way you and I…used to?”

  Pace looked at her with a wry smile. “Not exactly. I heard you in my mind. Jo, I hear in my heart.”

  “Oh, Pace,” Serena breathed. She was stunned. At first, maybe even a little jealous. Pace was her twin. They had shared the same womb before birth, the same cradleboard, the same thoughts and feelings as they had grown up.

  But she quickly brushed the jealousy aside. She better than anyone, particularly better than Pace, understood that his animosity toward Matt over the years stemmed from his feeling that Matt had interfered with the closeness the twins had always shared. Pace had been right—Matt had come between them. But it hadn’t been Matt’s fault that Pace and Serena could no longer read each other’s thoughts. Serena had come to understand that the severing of her close bond with Pace had been because her heart had found a new focus in Matt. She had no longer needed Pace the way she had before.

  Serena had known that severing had hurt Pace. It had hurt her, too. But until now, she had not fully understood. Yet this was different. As much as they loved each other and as well as they knew each other, Serena and Matt could not speak to each other without words. Not the way Pace meant he and Joanna could. Serena knew her petty jealousy and hurt feelings were out of place compared to the significance of what Joanna meant to Pace.

  No wonder Pace and Jo had fallen head over heels for each other. Joanna might not have been aware of the significance, but Pace would have understood instantly that Joanna was his fate, his destiny. There could be no other woman for Pace. “No wonder,” she repeated aloud.

  Pace saw the look of awe on his twin sister’s face. Damn, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. It wasn’t like him to spill his guts, not even with Serena. But as long as he was spilling, she needed to know the rest of it.

  “Did the old man tell you that I saw my vision?”

  Serena paused with another piece of biscuit halfway to his mouth. “What do you mean?”

  When he told her, Serena didn’t know what to say. This was even more significant than he and Joanna being able to communicate without words. “But Pace,” she said earnestly, “if all this is true, then why are the two of you barely speaking to each other?”

  “You don’t understand, Rena.”

  “Then tell me. Make me understand.”

  Pace huffed out a breath and lowered his gaze. If Serena didn’t know him so well, she might have thought the gesture was one of shyness, but Pace Colton didn’t have a shy bone in his body.

  “Everything I’ve told you,” he said, “relates to me. To what she is to me. Yes, I believe she is my destiny. But Rena, that doesn’t mean I’m hers. For God’s sake!” He raised his gaze to hers. Torment filled his eyes. “She’s your stepdaughter. You’ve raised her practically from the cradle. You can’t seriously want her to throw her life away on a man with no legs. What the hell kind of man is that for a woman like her?”

  Slowly Serena’s eyes widened as understanding filled her. “Good God Almighty. No wonder she’s not speaking to you! It’s not your legs that are paralyzed—it’s your brain. You’ve turned into a blathering idiot!”

  The rest of the trip did not go any better for Pace. One by one, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, sometimes with compassion, like from his mother, or antagonism, which Matt had no trouble showing, the family let him know that while they all applauded is rescue of Joanna and hated what had happened to him, their message was loud and clear. They thought he was being an asshole.

  Hell, he didn’t need them to tell him that. In fact, they were being too mild, in his opinion. He was being a first class bastard. Every time he saw the pain and bewilderment in Joanna’s eyes, his opinion of himself was reinforced. But
he didn’t know any other way to get her to stay away from him, and for her sake, she had to let go.

  “Spence, are you sure he shouldn’t stay here?” Daniella asked when they finally reached the Triple C. “You won’t have time to look after him, and LaRisa shouldn’t be doing any work this close to the baby’s coming.”

  “I’m sure, Mother,” Spence answered. “We’ll manage.”

  “Does anybody care what I think?” Pace hated to be talked about as if he weren’t right there with them.

  “But Spence,” Daniella started.

  Joanna interrupted. “I’m going to town with them.”

  “The hell you are,” Pace exclaimed.

  “Jo, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Spence said. “You’ve been pushing yourself too hard. You need to take care of yourself and the baby.”

  “You’re not coming to Tucson,” Pace bit out.

  “You’ll be there,” Joanna told Spence with a half smile. “I doubt you’ll let me over do.”

  “Dammit, I said you’re not coming.”

  Joanna frowned and looked down at her torn, filthy clothes. “I’ll have to clean up, and pack a few things. I’ll be in first thing in the morning.”

  “I don’t know,” Spence said.

  “LaRisa’s going to need help when the baby comes.”

  Damn her, Pace thought. She knew just how to get to Spence.

  “All right,” Spence told her. “But I’m warning you, if you try to do too much, or if I see you wearing yourself out, I’m sending you home.”

  “She is not coming to Tucson. I don’t need a nursemaid.”

  “Fair enough,” Joanna said. “Tell LaRisa I’ll see her tomorrow.”

  Pace ground his teeth all the way from the ranch to Tucson.

  The next morning Matt placed Joanna’s carpetbag in the floor between the front and rear seats of the buggy, then turned to her. “Are you sure you want to do this, Pumpkin?”

  A new ache blossomed in Joanna’s chest, to grow alongside all the other aches she carried these days. Her father had not called her Pumpkin since she’d gotten her first corset. “I know the idea doesn’t please you, but he’s my husband, Daddy.”