Chapter 15
“It’s him, I tell you,” Deborah said with a nervous flick of one hand that gained her Judith’s frowning attention. “Hawk. Here. At the Double D. Dear God, what am I going to do?”
“Well . . .” Judith sounded uncertain, swinging a bare foot back and forth as she perched on the edge of their wide bed in a second story guest room. A brisk breeze blew in the open window, tossing the curtains and her hair. “Are you certain it was him?”
“Am I certain?” Deborah stopped her pacing to turn to her cousin. “I knew him very well. It’s Hawk. His hair is a little shorter, and he’s wearing real clothes and looks just like every other disreputable gunslinger I’ve seen, but it’s him. It’s Hawk.”
“What is he calling himself?”
“Zack Banning. Dexter introduced me.” A burble of nervous laughter welled up, and she put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Judith—I just stood there looking at him, and when I said Hawk! and he said so cool and remote—‘No ma’am. Zack. Zack Banning,’ I thought I would faint.”
“What did Dexter have to say? And how did you two get on a first-name basis so quickly?”
“He insisted, and it seemed the lesser of two evils. I hate being publicly embarrassed. He also said Banning was the best gun he had, and that no one could make trouble when he was around. Then he laughed, as if it was funny.”
“This is totally beyond the realm of imagination. It seems strange that Hawk would be here unless he knew it was you.”
“Yes. So I thought. But he seemed surprised when Dexter introduced me as Señora Velazquez. Maybe it is just a coincidence, though it doesn’t seem likely.”
“Does Diamond know that Hawk—does he know who he is?”
“No. I’m sure he doesn’t. He kept referring to him as a ‘damn good gunny,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean.” Deborah shivered. “I could hardly speak when Hawk—Zack—said it was nice to meet me and just kind of walked away. This must be what he meant when he talked about his other life in the white man’s world. He’s a gunfighter, Judith.”
“Do you want to go back home in the morning?” Judith lay back on the bed. “If you feel uncomfortable staying here with Hawk so close by, we can make some sort of excuse.”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Judith laughed. “You sound so certain. All right. I think maybe we should talk about this again in the morning.”
“Yes. After a good night’s rest, maybe I’ll find out this was all an unpleasant dream.”
“Don’t count on that.”
Deborah made a face. “Thanks. If you’re trying to comfort me, it’s not working.”
“Sorry.” Judith slipped from the bed to the floor and bent to retrieve her shoes and stockings. “I danced so much my feet have blisters,” she said with a happy sigh. As she straightened, there came a knock on the closed door, and they exchanged quick glances.
“Let me get it,” Judith said firmly. “And if it’s . . . a person we don’t want to see, I’ll send him away.” Tía Dolores stood in the doorway, her plump face creased in a worried frown. “You must come with me, Judith. Don Francisco wishes to speak to you.” “To me?” Judith hesitated. “Why? It’s late, and I was about to go to sleep.”
“He has had an offer of marriage for you.” Judith’s jaw sagged, and the glance she shot her cousin was astonished.
“My God, these Westerners work fast! Who?” Tía Dolores gave a nervous flap of her hands. “This is so irregular, so impulsive. These Texans, they have no sense of propriety at all, but the man is very insistent, and Don Francisco said you would tell him yourself he must wait.” She rolled her eyes. “Our host seems to find it quite amusing, but I am so outraged!”
Deborah laughed. “Well, Judith, you seem to have made a very good impression on someone.”
“Probably that gouty old gentleman with no hair and bad breath,” Judith muttered as she pulled on her stockings and shoes. “Just my luck.”
“If I’m asleep when you get back, wake me,” Deborah said, laughing at the face her cousin made. “I’m dying to hear all the details.”
“Grim as they may be, I assure you that you will.” As she gave a final pat to her hair, Judith followed Tía Dolores out the door, waggling her fingers at Deborah. “Lock the door behind me.” Deborah hesitated, then crossed to the door and locked it. The key clicked loudly. She leaned back against the door for a moment, then began undressing. The events of the evening had left her tense and restless, and she jerked impatiently at the hooks on her gown. She heard a rip and gave a sigh.
“More mending,” she groaned.
When she had the dress off, she draped it over a chair and looked for the rip. It was small and would be easily repaired. Her petticoats brushed against her legs in a soft rustle of cotton. She untied the tapes around her waist and hung the undergarments from a hook on the wall.
Clad in her chemise, pantalets and hose, she padded in her bare feet to the dressing table and began removing the pins from her hair. It cascaded around her shoulders as she took them out, and she carefully untied the satin ribbons that had been wound among the curls and combs.
Her thoughts were as jumbled as the box of hairpins, tangled and impossible to sort. Hawk. Zack. Here. After six long, agonizing months with no word of him—if he was dead or alive or captured by Colonel Mackenzie in his deadly sweep across the Texas plains into New Mexico—he turned up here right under her nose. And no one seemed to have equated the dangerous gunslinger with the half-breed renegade Comanche, Hawk. It was crazy. It was daring. It was suicidal.
“God!” she burst out, clenching her fists and staring at her reflection in the smoky glass of the mirror. “What can he be thinking!”
“Probably about how fickle women are,” came a deep, lazy voice from her right, and she whirled with a gasp to see Hawk—Zack—standing by the open window.
The first flush of joy was quickly replaced by uneasiness. He didn’t come toward her, but stood with one thumb hooked in his gunbelt, a lean leg bent at the knee, his stance wary and somehow dangerous. His other hand was braced above his head on the window frame, and the curtains blew out with the breeze, riffling his dark hair.
He looked so familiar, yet at the same time, so different. The difference was in more than the clothes he wore, the snug pants, red shirt, and leather vest. No, this was a difference he wore more easily. It fit him, fit him much more comfortably than the breechcloth and leggings had done. For the first time, she felt as if she were seeing the true man. Even his speech was less stilted.
But it was his eyes that had changed, the wary expression in them altering to something else, something cold and assessing—and unforgiving.
Deborah felt suddenly exposed and shivered. She crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice came out in a strangled croak. “Get out of here!”
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” His dark brow shot up at a slant.
“Somehow, I thought you might be. Guess I was wrong.”
“Hawk—if anyone finds you in here, you’ll be shot!” He straightened slowly, arms falling to his sides. “You locked the door.
And besides, your new sweetheart wouldn’t risk your reputation that way.
He’d drag me out back to shoot me, so no one would know.”
She reached blindly for something to pull over her, acutely aware of her lack of clothing. But when she grabbed a thin muslin wrapper, he moved swiftly as a striking snake. That was something that hadn’t changed. He still moved with the lightning-quick reflexes of a Comanche brave, smooth and graceful and predatory. Too bad she’d forgotten how quickly he could move until his hand shot out to grasp her wrist and hold it.
“I’ve seen you without your clothes,” he said tersely. “Or have you managed to forget that, too?”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten.” Her cheeks burned. “But I see no sense in—” “In teasing me? Good point.” He released her wrist with a shove, his eyes glittering and cold.
Deborah backed away, a li
ttle afraid. He was Hawk, but he wasn’t Hawk.
Now he looked angry and unfamiliar. Her chin lifted. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that he made her nervous.
“What do you want?”
Dark blue eyes raked over her, and she felt naked. His gaze was hot and insulting, and she felt her flush warm her throat and chest. He laughed, a short, harsh sound.
“Diamond says he’s going to marry you. Funny, but I never dreamed Señora Velazquez was the same person as Deborah Hamilton.” He shrugged.
“Guess you didn’t think it was important to tell me the truth.” Her temper flared. “And why should I? I was a captive, remember? A slave. And when you asked my name I had been wed and widowed in a very short time. I owed you nothing. You were so intent on raping me, that I find it difficult to believe you cared about my true name!” He glared at her. “Did I rape you?”
“Not then.”
“Damn you,” he snarled, grabbing her when she took a step back and away from him. “You wanted me as much as I wanted you. Don’t deny it.”
“I was curious,” she began, but he put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a rough shake that sent her hair flying over her face and into her eyes. “Curious? Is that what you’re calling it? It was more than curiosity.” His voice vibrated with an intensity that shook her to the core, and Deborah couldn’t form an answer for a moment. There was anger, yes, but something else, a raw emotion she couldn’t identify. She put a hand up as if to ward off a blow and saw his eyes change.
Swearing softly, he released her. “I shouldn’t have come up here,” he said after a moment, his voice flat and emotionless. “I can see that you’re able to land on your feet, just like a cat. I shouldn’t have wasted any time worrying about you.”
“Did you?” She rubbed at her wrist where his grip had bit into her tender flesh. “Did you worry about me, Hawk?” The look he gave her was unreadable. “Zack. Zack Banning. If you haven’t heard anything about me before, I’m sure you will. Remember—I told you what it was like for me in the white man’s world.” She was puzzled. “I already know you’re a gunslinger. You were hired to guard Dexter.”
“Dexter?” His mouth curled into a hateful smile. “How cozy. Yes, I was hired to guard him, and this ranch, and anything else he thinks needs guarding.”
“You kill for money.”
“If it’s called for,” he replied in a cool tone that sent shivers down her back. Deborah was quiet for a moment. “Why are you here?” The question hung in the air between them for a long, sizzling moment.
Then he looked away, thick lashes lowering over the intense blue of his eyes.
“I need the money.”
“Where have you been? You just disappeared. We heard rumors about the Comanche under White Eagle, but no one knows where they went . . .” Her voice trailed off at the hot glance he flung her.
“And I intend for it to stay that way. Do you think I’d tell anyone where they’re hiding? Not by a long shot. It was hard enough finding a secure place, and God only knows how long it will be safe with Mackenzie riding herd on the Comanche like a crazed cowhand.” She’d never heard this tone from him, the bitter irony in his voice. He looked at her, then turned away with a quick downward drift of his lashes and a careless shrug.
“Hawk—Zack—I do care what happens to them. And I care that you’ve obviously suffered for them.”
“Don’t.”
Her throat tightened with emotion. He looked furious and sad at the same time, his mouth set into a straight line and his thoughts hidden.
“If you’re so upset at being apart from them, why didn’t you stay with them?”
“Why?” He turned around in a quick move that made her jump.
“Because if I hadn’t left, Mrs. Velazquez, Mackenzie would have pursued them to the gates of hell, that’s why! I was the one identified by the soldiers and the Comancheros who came to camp and saw you there— I am the one those scouts saw the day you tried to escape. If I hadn’t left and let it be known I’d left, they’d have burned down the entire mountain range just to get at me. I couldn’t risk the others that way.” His mouth tightened. “Spirit Talker was right, it seems.”
“So you left them because of me.” He made an impatient gesture. “No, not entirely. I’d have probably left one day anyway. I didn’t fit in there either. I’m too white to be a Comanche, too Comanche to be a white. So I live by the gun.” His eyes were mocking, blue ice in a dark face as he leaned back against the dresser and raked her with a slow, insolent gaze.
“How’s Sunflower?” she asked when the silence grew too thick.
“Still alive, the last time I saw her.” Deborah didn’t dare ask any more questions. For some reason, he looked so—bleak. She put out a hand, and he looked at it, then his gaze shifted to her face. Slowly, he took her hand, pulling her to him.
Muttering something in Comanche, he buried his face in the curve of her neck and shoulder, his fingers tangling in her hair. His mouth moved across her bare skin in a fiery trail that made her shiver, up to her jaw, her cheek, then her parted lips.
He kissed her, gently at first, then deeply, his tongue sliding into her mouth and coaxing a moan from deep in her throat. Cradling her face in his palms, he moved his mouth over hers until she had to hold onto him to keep from falling to her knees. His hands curved over her shoulders, fingers sliding under the straps of her chemise and pulling them down.
With a groan, he cupped his palms over her bare breasts and raked his thumbs over her taut nipples. A shudder ran through her. Bending, he lent the heat of his mouth to her cool, pale breast. She cried out again, soft and wordless, and clutched at him with both hands. Her nails raked his back, sliding over his cotton shirt, and she could feel the flex of his strong muscles as he shifted to hold her.
When he lifted his head to stare at her, she saw the same glaze of desire that she knew must be in her own eyes. He was breathing raggedly, but she felt his withdrawal from her. He straightened slowly, and set her on her feet.
“Just curious, huh?”
Deborah blinked at him, then flushed. Her hands shook as she dragged her chemise back up to cover her breasts.
“Obviously, I lied,” she said in a voice that she barely recognized as her own. It sounded too calm, when she was raging inside with longing and confusion.
“At least you’re being honest about that.” He looked at her for a long moment, then said softly, “Your cousin’s coming. I can hear her. I better leave.”
The desolation was back, swift and cold and invasive. She couldn’t let him leave her behind again. Not again.
“Hawk—Zack—wait. I . . . I missed you. And I worried about you.”
“Did you?” He paused. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I see Diamond rubbing all over you while you smile at him. It wouldn’t look good if I was to pay you any attention where folks could see, anyway.” His mouth twisted. “If you don’t understand now, someone will be sure to tell you why soon enough.”
Before she could ask him anything, he was gone, stepping back out the open window. She heard his light steps on the porch roof, then a soft plop as if he had jumped to the ground.
Deborah sagged to a chair and heard Judith’s voice in the hallway. She must be insane. She should have screamed, and had him dragged out to be shot. Instead, she had all but given him permission to assault her. All but begged to go with him.
The expected knock rattled the door, and she got up to let Judith in.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Judith said. They were sitting in the shaded courtyard of the Velazquez hacienda. It was warm, and sunlight heated the patio tiles to a blinding glow.
“Just thinking.”
“About Zack Banning?” When Deborah looked up at her, Judith gave an impatient sound. “I don’t understand you. A man like Dexter Diamond is courting you, yet you won’t give him the time of day. He’s going to give up soon if you don’t give him some encouragement.”
; “Good. I was beginning to think he was completely stupid.”
“Deborah!”
“Well? And who said I was thinking about Zack Banning, or Hawk, or whatever name he goes by.”
“I should hope not. He’s dangerous, a real killer from what I heard.”
“And what did you hear?” Deborah put her mending down and met her cousin’s blue gaze calmly.
Judith flushed. “Well, for one thing, I heard that he’s the kind of gunman that attracts challenges. That’s how he met Dexter Diamond. He was in some sort of gunfight in El Paso a few months ago, and Mr. Diamond saw him. He was so quick and brutal that Diamond figured he’d be able to take care of anything that came up here.” She dragged in a deep breath. “And everyone knows he’s a ‘breed,’ and they’re supposed to be more ruthless than white men. People are scared of him, even if they do whisper about him and act as if he’s famous.”
“And where did you hear all this?” Deborah asked coolly.
“Hank Warfield.”
“Ah—the impetuous suitor who proposes marriage at first sight.” Deborah looked back down at the torn dress she was mending. Judith’s voice was defensive.
“Well, he was a little drunk that night. Anyway, that was a month ago, and he’s been a perfect gentleman since.”
“He’s managed to gossip a lot, too.” Exasperated, Judith snapped, “You just won’t listen to anything about that savage, will you! Even if it’s the truth. He has done something to you, and I knew it before we were ever rescued.”
“Maybe you’ll recall that the savage took us to a fort while you’re at it,” Deborah retorted. “No one had to come after us.”
“He had to free us! The Comancheros had seen us, and told the army, and then when that patrol saw us, they knew where we were. Oh, Deborah,” she begged, her eyes anxious, “I know that he . . . he forced you. Don’t feel you must protect him, for God only knows what reason.” Deborah covered her face with one hand. “I don’t know why I feel the way I do,” she said miserably. “Sometimes I think he’s everything people say, but if you talked to him, I mean really talked to him, I think you’d feel as I do.
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