With a sheepish smile, he lifted the latch and opened the window wide. Since his marriage to Indigo, he had grown accustomed to sleeping in the cool night air. Besides, what could it hurt to leave the window open?
Just in case. . . .
With tears in her eyes, Indigo watched Jake standing there at the open window, gazing out into the night. She knew what was going through his mind. She turned her head on the pillow and listened to the wind’s song, filled with joy because Jake had finally come a step beyond the explainable and could share the beauty of it with her.
He turned toward her, his eyes glistening like silver in the moonlight. Indigo met his gaze and let all that was within her flow out to him. A slow smile curved his mouth as he moved toward her. She knew he heard the message, even though she hadn’t spoken it, just as she heard the one he sent to her.
Whether or not Lobo’s spirit truly lingered here in this place was a question that no longer seemed important. The wolf lingered in her heart, and it was enough to know that. What truly counted was that Jake had somehow come to embrace those things about her that she had always been afraid to share. The Indian side of her that set her apart in a hostile world. She lifted her arms to him, content in a way she had never dreamed she could be.
As Jake moved from the window, his body cut through the moonlight and his shadow fell across the bed. For a moment, Indigo was swallowed by blackness. When he took another step, the light fell across her again, and she reappeared.
Indigo . . . a whimsical girl made of moonbeams who heard songs in the wind, a girl not quite part of this world, yet absolutely necessary to make it complete. He joined her on the bed and drew her into his arms, cherishing the moment, thanking her many gods for this second chance. He knew it was crazy, insane, totally irrational, but if he lived to be a thousand, he’d always believe she had been snatched from the clutches of death and brought back to him by a loyal silver-and-black wolf whose howls would drift always in the night wind, an intrinsic part of the mountains and the moonlight.
Indigo. . . . She was indeed a most precious gift.
Signet is pleased to reissue another long-out-of-print historical romance by Catherine Anderson
Comanche magic
Available Spring 2011 from Signet. Turn the page for a brief excerpt. . . .
JULY HEAT HUNG OVER THE YARD LIKE A blanket. A cluster of bees hummed nearby, feeding on drips of whey that seeped through the butter muslin hanging from the fence.
Chase Wolf repositioned his shoulder against the pine tree and closed his eyes to absorb the smells. He smiled at the images they brought to mind of his boyhood and other July days when he had run wild along the creek that bordered his parents’ property.
This summer he didn’t reckon he’d be doing much running. The smile on his mouth thinned to a grim line. He considered rolling himself a smoke, then decided against it for fear it might make him cough. Coughing, like all other activities that called for muscle movement, was a luxury he couldn’t afford, not with three cracked ribs. This would teach him not to let any moss grow under his feet the next time two logs tried to make a sandwich out of him.
He heard the sound of feminine giggles coming from down along the creek. He listened for a second and identified one of the giggles as belonging to his sister, Indigo. Twenty-four to his twenty-five, she had a husband and two children now. He grinned. Leave it to her to beat the heat by playing in the creek. The other wives in town, including his ma, were at home doing household tasks, a fair number baking bread if the smells on the morning air were an indication.
Chase pushed to his feet, drawn toward the creek by the sounds of laughter. With one hand pressed over his side, he moved slowly through the sun-dappled woods. Taking care where he placed his booted feet, he finally reached the river rock that bordered Shallows Creek.
Heading toward the voices, Chase rounded a bend in the stream. Expecting to see his tawny- haired sister, he was surprised to see a petite blonde instead. If she was from Wolf’s Landing, Chase had never met her. She was as pretty as a picture, not the kind a man with eyes was likely to forget. He leaned a shoulder against an oak, happy to stay hidden so he could enjoy the view.
Stripped down to her camisole and bloomers, the young woman was cavorting in the water with Chase’s four-year-old nephew, Hunter. The drenched muslin of her undergarments was nearly transparent with wetness and clung to her body like the skin on an onion. The rosy nipples of her small breasts were taut with cold and thrust against the cloth in impertinent little peaks.
Content to stay right where he was, Chase lowered himself carefully to the ground and draped his arms over his bent knees. On a hot day like today, it’d be downright unchivalrous to show himself and spoil her swim. He was nothing if not thoughtful.
Apparently she was in competition with his nephew to catch salamanders, commonly known in these parts as water dogs.
Whoever she was, she looked like an angel. A shaft of sunlight ignited her golden hair, turning it to a halo around the crown of her head. She had petal-white skin, as flawless as ivory in contrast to his Indian darkness.
His gaze dropped to her waist and lower as she slogged through the shallows and pounced to catch a water dog. With little-boy enthusiasm, Hunter dived to reach their quarry before she did and sent up a spray. She shrieked and staggered, laughing as she rubbed the water from her eyes.
“Dibs!” Hunter cried.
“My foot! I saw it first!”
Hunter shot triumphantly to his feet, his small brown hands curled into tight fists around his slippery catch. “I’m up to—” He broke off and frowned. “How many do I got?”
“Three,” she said with an impish giggle.
“No, sir! You’re cheatin’!”
“Pay attention to your ma during lessons so you learn to count, and I won’t be able to cheat.”
Holding the water dog threateningly aloft, Hunter lunged at her. With another shriek, she sloshed through the water to get away from him, her laughter chiming like crystal. “Don’t you dare, you little rascal! You stick that thing in my drawers, and I’ll drown you!”
“Hunter Chase Rand!” Indigo called from somewhere out of Chase’s sight. “You drop that water dog down her bloomers, and I’ll tell your pa. You mind your manners.”
Unintimidated, Hunter made a grab. The blonde clutched the waist of her underwear and fled a bit farther to get safely beyond his reach. She had a perfect little ass with plump cheeks that jiggled just enough to kindle a man’s imagination and make him wonder how soft she’d feel pressed against him.
Too late, Chase began to wonder if sitting here was such a champion idea. It had been a spell since he’d had a woman, and suddenly his jeans felt about a half-size too small at the inseam.
With the short attention span typical of a four-year-old, Hunter spotted another water dog and went chasing upstream after it. The angel with the turned-up nose went unnaturally still. Chase dragged his gaze upward from her breasts and found himself staring into the biggest, most startled-looking green eyes he’d ever seen.
She gasped and cupped her hands over her breasts. The next instant, she knelt in the water to hide her nether regions. Chase stared, unable to think of anything to say.
He settled for, “It sure is a hot one, isn’t it?”
She jerked at the sound of his voice, and her small face flushed.
“Chase Kelly? Is that you?”
Indigo stepped out from behind a stand of brush, her sleeping daughter, Amelia Rose, cradled in her arms. Her big blue eyes flashed with silver fire.
“Chase Kelly Wolf, for shame! What’re you doing, hiding up there? Spying on us? Didn’t Ma ever teach you any manners?”
“I was bored,” he admitted. “When I heard y’all down here, I didn’t figure you’d mind if I joined you.”
“Which we wouldn’t. If you had joined us.” Indigo came striding up the bank, her graceful legs flexing under her bloomers. She handed Chase his sleeping niece. “M
ake yourself useful while I find Franny’s clothes.” As she scampered back down the bank, she cried, “For shame, for shame. I beg his pardon, Franny. To say he’s an ape-brain would be a compliment.”
An ape-brain? Leave it to a sister to keep a man humble. It had been a while since anyone had dared to call Chase names.
“Hi, Uncle Chase!” Hunter came slogging from the water, his skinny little body glistening like wet bronze in the sunshine. “You wanna catch water dogs?”
Chase looked over the child’s bobbing head to see Franny, the green-eyed angel, trying to wade from the creek without showing off any of her charms. “I’m too stoved up with these ribs for water dog chasing, Hunter. Maybe another time.”
Keeping his gaze politely averted from the women, Chase watched Hunter return to the creek. Within seconds, the boy recovered from his disappointment and dove for another water dog. When Chase chanced another look in the women’s direction, Franny stood on the bank wearing a white choker-collared, long-sleeved blouse and a blue flared skirt, both of which clung to her wet body.
“Franny, I’d like you to meet my brother, Chase Kelly Wolf,” Indigo said sharply. “As I’m sure you recall, I told you the other day that he was home recuperating from a logging accident.”
“Pleased to meet you, Franny.” He thought “Fanny” would suit her better. “I apologize for interrupting your swim.”
Her face flooded with color again. “That’s quite all right,” she said in so low a voice he had difficulty catching the words. She swatted at her skirt and avoided his gaze. “Well, Indigo, I think I’ll be getting along.”
With that, she nodded in Chase’s direction, still not looking at him. Then she jerked on a bonnet with wide ruching that concealed her face. Even shadowed by the bonnet ruching, those eyes of hers packed a wallop. Chase gave her a lazy smile. “No need to hurry off, Franny.”
The tip of her turned-up nose pulsed scarlet. “I really must.”
Her eyes met his, and for an instant, Chase felt as if he had once again been sandwiched between two logs. Talk about pretty—this young woman gave a whole new definition to the word.
Not wishing to startle her, he tempered his voice and said, “I hope you’ll come again, Franny. Maybe next time you’ll stop by the house afterward and have some of Ma’s lemonade. It’s the best in Wolf’s Landing.”
For a moment, she froze there and stared at him, for all the world as if she couldn’t credit her ears. Then her face flushed crimson again. Without a word, she swept on by and disappeared into the trees, never looking back.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Indigo said in a quavery voice. “How could you, Chase? I didn’t think you had it in you to be so mean.”
Chase’s bemused smile disappeared and he turned to regard his sister, who stood near the water, hands on her hips, her tawny head tipped angrily to one side.
“It was mean to invite her for lemonade?”
“You know very well she’d never impose on Ma. Not to say Ma wouldn’t welcome her, and our father, too. But Franny’s too sweet to put them on the spot that way. You know how all the holier-than-thou people in this town are. Tongues’d buzz for a week if a woman of Franny’s occupation was to call on anybody.”
Chase digested that. “Did I miss something? The way you talk, you’d think she was the local whore.”
Indigo’s eyes went wide. “Surely you can think of a politer word than that, and it isn’t funny, you acting as if you don’t know. I swear, working with those rough-talking loggers has ruined you for respectable company.”
A vision of Franny’s sweet face swept through Chase’s head. With those gigantic, innocent eyes of hers, she couldn’t be a—No, it was impossible.
“Indigo, are you trying to tell me Franny’s a whore?”
She made a frustrated sound. “Don’t call her that, I said. What she is is my best friend, and I won’t have you saying mean things about her. If you’ve got to call her something, call her an unfortunate.”
Chase stared at his sister. She was dead serious. He shot a glance up the bank at the spot where Franny, the angel, had disappeared. Then he looked back at his sister, still unable to believe what he was hearing.
Franny, the blushing, green-eyed angel, was a prostitute?
And don’t miss Catherine Anderson’s new historical romance
Early Dawn
a Coulter Family novel, available now from Signet.
Prologue
June 1887
MATTHEW COULTER AWAKENED TO A SOFT hissing sound, the faint smell of kerosene, and the dim glow of lantern light. A nearly blinding pain knifed from his left eyebrow into his temple, and as he struggled to focus, he was filled with a terrible sense of dread. When, his eyes had adjusted, he realized that he was abed in his childhood sleeping nook, a rectangular space with rough plank walls that was barely large enough to hold a cot, battered dresser, and small wardrobe. Strange. He’d been married five years ago and hadn’t stayed overnight at his folks’ place since. But there was no mistake. The familiar scent of his mother’s Irish stew drifted in from the kitchen to tease his nostrils, the air redolent with pan-browned lamb chops simmered to perfection, and the unmistakable fragrance of thyme, a spice his wife, Olivia, seldom used.
Matthew yearned to slip back into the darkness of sleep that had so recently enveloped him, but that niggling sense of dread grew stronger as he came more awake. Something was wrong, horribly wrong, but his head hurt so badly that he couldn’t remember what.
“Ma?” he croaked, and pushed up onto one elbow with a low groan because a sharp stitch in his side nearly took his breath away.
The room spun around him, the shadows that lurked beyond the sphere of light seeming to dance and sway. He wrapped a hand over the mattress edge to keep from pitching off onto the floor. What in Sam Hill? It felt as if every bone in his body had been broken, and the pain in his temple throbbed with each beat of his heart.
“Ma!”
A blurry female figure dressed in blue appeared in the archway. “Matthew! Thank God!” The lilt of her faint Irish brogue was as familiar to Matthew as his own voice. “We were starting to think you might never wake up.”
Matthew lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes as his mother sat beside him and placed a cool, soothing hand on his right cheek. The gesture reminded him of the early days of his childhood, when she’d checked him for fever or fussed over him when he was sick. He let himself enjoy the sensation for a moment before prying his eyes open again to fix his gaze on her face. Even at fifty-six, Hattie Coulter was a lovely woman, with black hair and eyes the deep blue of a summer sky. The years had lined her skin, but on her the traces of age were like the tiny cracks on the surface of an old oil painting, only adding to its beauty.
“Where’s Livvy?” Matthew asked hoarsely.
She withdrew her hand from his cheek and brought it to rest on her lap in a tight fist. Matthew knew then that something really was amiss. The thought that it might involve his wife filled him with panic.
“Ma?” he pressed. “Where’s Olivia?”
Hattie pushed to her feet. “I’ll be back in a moment, dear heart. I need to tell your father that you’re awake.”
Matthew watched her hurry from the room. Something dark hovered at the back of his mind—something so ominous and unthinkable that he didn’t want to acknowledge it. He flung his forearm over his eyes to shield them from the light and immediately regretted it when pain exploded in his left temple. Gingerly he explored with numb fingertips to discover that his head was wrapped in gauze. An injury of some sort? He couldn’t recall having an accident, but after working with horses most of his life, he knew he might not remember if he’d been kicked in the head.
Matthew had almost convinced himself of a horse’s kick when he heard the heavy tattoo of his father’s boots on the kitchen floor. An instant later, Matthew Coulter Senior filled the doorway, his weather-bronzed face creased with worry, his blue eyes shadowed with sadness. He
slowly approached the bed, his wife hovering behind him.
In that no-nonsense way of his, he wasted no time hemming and hawing. In a brogue much more pronounced than his wife’s, he said, “Your ma says you don’t remember what happened, son, that you been askin’ where Olivia is.” He cleared his throat. “You need to brace yourself, boy, ’cause I can’t think of no easy way to say this, and I ain’t good with words at the best of times. Your Livvy was kilt by a gang of ruffians. Happened nigh onto three weeks ago now.”
“What?” Matthew couldn’t wrap his mind around the words bouncing inside his head. He pictured Olivia’s precious face, her soft brown eyes and gentle smile. Dead? She was so young. That couldn’t be. His father had to have it wrong. “No,” Matthew grated out. “No!”
His father shook his head and sank heavily onto the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry, son. It pains me more’n you can know to be the one to tell you such a thing. We loved her, too, your ma and me. She was like a daughter to us.”
Though the discomfort was excruciating, Matthew shook his head in denial. “No.”
Even as he whispered the word, Matthew knew by the dark sorrow in his father’s eyes that it was true; Olivia was dead. The ensuing silence drove that home to him. His ma didn’t interrupt to say that his pa had it wrong, nor did she offer Matthew any assurance that everything would come right in the end.
“How?” Matthew forced himself to ask. “Ru- ruffians? We don’t have . . . It’s safe hereabouts.”
“The sheriff says it was the Sebastian Gang.” Matthew Senior cleared his throat. “You’ve heard tell of ’em. We read about ’em in the Crystal Falls Courier a few months back. A couple of days after the attack on you and Livvy, they struck again over near Medford. Shot a boy dead for tryin’ to stop them from stealin’ some horses. Them Sebastians are wanted damned near everywhere west of the divide. A posse out of Sacramento was hot on their heels, and the gang took a detour through here, tryin’ to shake ’em off.” The elder man’s voice had gone almost as hoarse as Matthew’s. “You and Livvy—well, near as we could tell, you was on the way home from a picnic by the crick. The gang must’ve come out of the trees, all of a sudden like, and surrounded your wagon. You wasn’t armed, and there wasn’t much you could do. Livvy . . . she was—” He broke off as if the words had stuck in his throat. Then he passed a gnarled, work- roughened hand over his craggy face. “Well, we can only pray she went quick and didn’t suffer overmuch. Doc believes you was already unconscious by the wagon when it happened. Pistol-whipped, kicked after you went down, and then shot in the chest and left for dead. Doc did all he could, but you was in sorry shape with busted-up ribs, a hole near your heart, and an injury to your head he couldn’t fix. If not for your ma’s prayers and nursin’, we might’ve lost you, too.”
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