Til Death Do Us Part

by Beverly Barton

  “Joanna!” Kate Whitehorn called out as she walked down the front steps. “And J.T.” She stared at her cousin, her smile fading from brightness to softness, a look of curiosity in her eyes. “I’m sure you do not remember me. We met very briefly at Aunt Mary’s funeral. I was just a girl then.”

  J.T. held out his hand to Kate, noticing the strong family resemblance between her and Elena. The two could be sisters. “I appreciate everything you’ve done to help us. Elena said she explained the situation to you and your husband.”

  “Yes. Ed is at work, but you will meet him during your stay here.” Kate shook hands with J.T., then rearranged the child on her hip and petted the top of her little girl’s head. “You’ve met Eddie. He’s our oldest. And this young lady hanging on to me is Summer. She’s very shy and quiet, much like her father. And this—” Kate hugged her youngest to her side “—is Joey.”

  J.T. could not resist touching the plump bronze cherub in his cousin’s arms. He cupped the child’s face between his thumb and forefinger. A thicket of black hair covered Joey’s round little head and his big dark eyes sparkled as he looked up at J.T. and laughed.

  J.T. had never had a family—not until he had brought Elena to the ranch. But in many ways, he and Elena still were not truly family, and he knew the strain between them was his fault. He had been raised a loner, taught to neither need nor expect anything from anyone, to be totally self-sufficient. Needing others was a sign of weakness.

  But as he grew older, J.T. realized that keeping others at a distance doomed a man to loneliness. As Elena was family, so were these people. This woman and her children were his cousins, from his mother’s clan, people who had offered a sanctuary to Joanna and him.

  “You will come inside and have lunch with us?” Kate asked.

  “Thank you,” J.T. said. “But I’d like to go on over to my mother’s house and get settled in. Is there a corral there where we can put our horses?” He nodded at the horse trailer hitched to the Jeep.

  Kate shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, there isn’t. But we have a small corral. We once had several horses, but now only one. You are welcome to keep your animals there. Eddie can show you.”

  “Thanks.” J.T. glanced at Eddie, who grinned from ear to ear. “Oh, yeah, I was expecting someone from the tribal police to meet us here. Has anyone stopped by?”

  “Yes, Joseph is here. He came early to visit with the children and me,” Kate said. “That’s his truck.” She pointed to the dusty red pickup beside the house.

  J.T. looked at the truck, noticing the feathers attached to the rearview mirror, and remembered Elena telling him something about feathers being attached to Navajo vehicles to ward off evil spirits. Undoubtedly this Navajo policeman still practiced old customs. “You said his name is Joseph?”

  “Yes, my brother, Joseph. Didn’t Joanna and Elena tell you that he is a tribal policeman? He is off duty right now. When he discovered Joanna was in trouble, he asked to help, to be your police contact here on the reservation.”

  “Joseph Ornelas?” J.T. asked. “No one told me anything about him being a tribal policeman.”

  “Did I hear someone mention my name?”

  Joanna turned at the sound of the man’s voice. J.T. watched her smile at Joseph Ornelas as he walked out on the porch. Slipping off a huge white apron, Joseph draped it over the porch railing and took several giant steps toward Joanna. He grasped her by the shoulders.

  “It is good to see you again, Joanna.” Joseph slid his hands down her arms and took her hands into his. “It’s good that you’ve come to us. We’ll do all that we can to keep you safe.”

  Clearing his throat, J.T. stepped forward and placed his hand on Joanna’s shoulder. He glared at Joseph Ornelas, a tribal policeman, his relative, a Navajo and the great-grandson of Benjamin Greymountain. His cousin was several inches shorter than him, but the man’s big, muscular body compensated for his lack of height.

  The two men looked at each other, then J.T. glanced down at Joseph’s and Joanna’s clasped hands, and at that exact moment Joseph stared up at J.T.’s hand resting possessively on Joanna’s shoulder. Joanna pulled her hand from Joseph’s and laid her open palm over J.T.’s hand resting on her shoulder.

  Joseph looked directly into Joanna’s eyes, nodded his head and smiled. “You must stay for lunch. We’ve prepared a delicious mutton stew. Come. Stay.”

  “It’s up to J.T.,” Joanna said. “But I’d love to stay.”

  Joseph held out his hand to J.T. “Enjoy a meal with your cousins and give us the opportunity to become better acquainted.”

  J.T. shook hands with Joseph, and both men were careful not to exert too much strength, keeping the exchange nonthreatening. “Kate—” J.T. glanced at her “—mentioned that she and I had met at my mother’s funeral. Were you there, too?”

  “Yes,” Joseph said. “I was only a teenager, just a few years older than Elena. I was attending the Navajo Community College in Tsaile when Aunt Mary died, but I came home for her funeral.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t remember either of you.” J.T. removed his Stetson, ran his fingers through his thick hair and replaced his hat. “I don’t remember much of anything about that day.” Except how out of place I felt. I was an outsider. Mary Greymountain Neboyia had been his mother, and yet she had been as much of a stranger to him as he had been to her. Until Elena had told him the truth, J.T. had thought his mother had willingly given him to old John Thomas. That was one of the many lies his grandfather had told him. But even now, the bitter little boy who had hated both his Navajo mother and his white grandfather lived in J.T.’s heart. Knowing the truth and accepting it on an emotional level were two entirely different things.

  “Let the women go inside and I will help you with your horses,” Joseph said. “Then we’ll eat and talk before you take Joanna to Aunt Mary’s house.”

  J.T. squeezed Joanna’s shoulder. “All right?” he asked her.

  She nodded, stepped away from J.T. and followed Kate up to the porch.

  “Joanna?” Joseph called out to her.

  “Yes?”

  “While you’re visiting here, I promise that I will make time to pose for you, but it will have to be on my next off day.”

  Joanna swallowed, forced a smile and refused to look at J.T. “Wonderful.”

  “I will take you out to Painted Canyon,” Joseph said. “The scenery there is beautiful and would make a good background for the picture.”

  “Anywhere Joanna goes, I go,” J.T. said.

  “Of course, I understand.” Joseph placed his big, broad hand on J.T.’s shoulder. “You are Joanna’s bodyguard and must be with her at all times.”

  “Come on, let’s set the table for our meal.” Kate hurried Joanna into the trailer.

  Putting Joey in his high chair, Kate picked up Summer, handed her a pot and spoon and set her down in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  “You are J. T. Blackwood’s woman, yes?” Kate asked.

  Staring wide-eyed at her friend, Joanna gasped. “What?”

  “I saw it and so did Joseph, that you are J. T. Blackwood’s woman. My brother is deliberately trying to make our cousin jealous because he is not pleased that you chose J.T. over him.”

  “Kate, I’m very fond of Joseph—”

  “But you love J.T., yes?”

  “I’ll talk to Joseph.”

  “And say what?” Kate asked. “That your heart belongs to another? That somehow, against your will, even against your better judgment, you have fallen in love with a man made of stone?”

  “You’ve been talking to Elena,” Joanna said.

  “She has told me what a hard man her brother is, how unhappy he is, but that now you have come into his life, she has hope.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope for J.T.,” Joanna admitted. “He’s never faced the truth about who he is, never come to terms with his feelings for his mother or his grandfather.”

  “Perhaps there is no love or
forgiveness in him.” Kate opened an upper cupboard door and removed a stack of soup bowls. “Although I hope my brother marries a Navajo girl, I would not have been terribly disappointed to have you for a sister-in-law. Joseph is a good man. He will make a good, loving husband and father. Can you say the same for J. T. Blackwood?”

  “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter.” Joanna took the bowls from Kate and set them around on the table. “I can’t change the fact that I love him.”

  “WE CAN WASH up out here.” Joseph led J.T. from the corral to an outside faucet beside the house, unbuttoned his shirt, turned on the water and threw several handfuls into his sweaty face. Rivulets of water ran down his leather-brown throat and hard, muscular chest.

  J.T. watched while this man—his cousin, another great-grandson of Benjamin Greymountain—cleaned himself. All elements of a civilized man seemed to vanish. J.T. followed suit, tossing his Stetson on a nearby rusty barrel and thrusting his hands beneath the running water. He wet his head and face, lifting the sweaty black patch that covered his blind eye.

  “Elena told us that you lost the vision in that eye by taking a bullet meant for another,” Joseph said. “You’re a brave man.”

  “I was just doing my job.” J.T. unbuttoned his own shirt, allowing the water to cool his heated skin. “Being a policeman, I’m sure you understand.”

  “You’re very good at guarding people, in risking your own life to save others. You would die to protect Joanna, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I would, but that doesn’t surprise you, does it? I get the idea you’d be willing to do the same thing.”

  “Our Joanna is a very special woman.” Joseph wiped his wet face with his shirttail. “Our Joanna?”

  Joseph grinned. “We, Elena’s family here on the reservation, have adopted Joanna. She has a love for this land and for our people that endears her to us.”

  “She told me that you two have gone out together.” J.T. lifted his face to the sun, soaking in the drying warmth. “And she said there wasn’t anything serious between you.”

  “Her choice, not mine.” Bending over, Joseph shut off the water faucet, then rose and faced J.T. “Is there something serious between the two of you? Have you made a commitment to her? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

  J.T. stared at the other man who would have gladly become Joanna’s lover. If all she had wanted in a fantasy lover was a Navajo, why had she rejected Joseph Ornelas? He was young, handsome and intelligent, and seemed to be a good man.

  “I don’t think my relationship with Joanna is any of your business.” J.T. turned his back on Joseph, walked away and finished buttoning his shirt.

  Following him, Joseph laid his hand on J.T.’s shoulder. “Wait.”

  J.T. halted, but did not turn around.

  Joseph removed his hand from J.T.’s shoulder. “Since Joanna has no father or brother to question your intentions, then perhaps I do have a right.” When J.T. made no reply, Joseph grunted. “Joanna deserves marriage and children and a man who is unafraid to love. Can you give her what she wants and needs?”

  Every muscle in J.T.’s body tensed. “Joanna is my woman. That’s all you need to know…cousin.” J.T. walked across the yard, onto the porch and into the mobile home, not once looking back at Joseph.

  JOANNA KNEW SOMETHING had happened between J.T. and Joseph, despite Joseph’s efforts at pleasant conversation during lunch. J.T. had been silent and withdrawn, speaking only when spoken to, his replies always the one-syllable variety. And he hadn’t said a word to her on the ride from Kate and Ed Whitehorn’s place to Mary’s old house. Joanna hadn’t even tried to talk to him, uncertain and a little wary of what he might say if she prompted him to speak.

  He parked the Jeep at the back of the small, frame house. Peeling paint clung to the wooden surface. Several floorboards on the south side of the back porch had rotted. Joanna knew that this house had stood here, unoccupied since Mary’s death, because Elena could not bear to part with her mother’s home.

  J.T. got out, but made no attempt to assist Joanna. Ignoring him, she walked around to the back of the Jeep. When she opened the lift gate, J.T. grabbed her hand.

  “Leave the luggage. I’ll get it later.” He slipped the house key out of his jeans, then pulled Joanna away from the Jeep, almost dragging her as he headed toward the house.

  She balked, digging her heels into the ground. “What’s going on with you? What’s wrong?”

  “Not a damned thing you can’t fix, honey.” He growled the words in a deep, dark whisper.

  She glared at him, wondering just who this man was and if inside him still existed any small part of the J. T. Blackwood she loved. “I don’t understand what this is all about, but—”

  He jerked her into his arms, staring at her with such intensity that she sucked in her breath. With their gazes still locked, he lifted her up in his arms and carried her onto the small wooden stoop, unlocked the door and kicked it open. Despite having been recently cleaned, the house reeked with the mustiness of disuse and abandonment. The living room windows had no curtains, allowing the afternoon sunlight to flood the small area.

  With the front door wide-open and the whole room bathed in golden sunshine, J.T. lowered Joanna to her feet. Slowly. Allowing her to feel every inch of his big, hard body. She had never seen him this way—on the verge of passionate rage.

  “J.T.?”

  “Shh. Don’t talk. I need you, Jo. I need you now.” He covered her mouth with his, taking her with ravenous hunger, consuming her with his desire.

  She trembled, unable to control her body’s compliance, realizing that there would be no gentleness in his lovemaking, no consideration for her. And yet she did not fear his possession, understanding, as if by instinct, that this time she must be the one to do the giving. Whatever was wrong with J.T., she and she alone could ease his suffering and make everything right for him.

  In his haste to uncover her body, he popped two buttons from her blouse as he ripped it open. Burying his face against her lace-covered breasts, he undid her bra and pulled it and her blouse down her arms.

  While he unsnapped and unzipped her jeans, she worked feverishly to do the same to his. Suddenly taking fire, her passion and need kindled by his, Joanna wanted nothing more than to be J.T.’s woman, to give him pleasure, to take him into her body and become one with him.

  The minute he jerked her jeans and panties off, he drew her up against him and leaned back into the wall, bracing his body. Her breasts crushed into his hard chest. She cried out. Her nipples hardened into tight, throbbing points.

  He cupped her buttocks, kneading her firm flesh, pressing her intimately, upward and against his arousal. She placed her arms around his neck. He kissed her, thrusting his tongue into the sweet warmth of her mouth.

  “I love you, J.T.” She lifted her lips from his and whispered against his throat. “Only you. Always you.”

  Freeing his sex from his briefs, he lifted Joanna, positioning her legs around his hips, and drove into her with jackhammer force. Clinging to his shoulders, she cried out with the sheer pleasure of their joining, feeling as she had never felt before in her life. This was part of heaven and part of hell. Pleasure and agony combined. Bliss and torment. The promise of fulfillment grew stronger and stronger, increasing the savage ache at the very center of her being. Holding her hips in his hands, J.T. shoved her back and forth, taking her…taking her…taking her! And all the while she gave to him—all that was hers to give.

  Passion to equal his raged inside her, threatening to consume her with its overwhelming power. She was a woman in all her glory. Ecstasy was hers to give or deny.

  The desire within J.T. overflowed, spilling into her, drowning him in the hottest, wildest, most complete fulfillment he had ever known. His release washed over her, bathing her in its fiery flood, igniting spasms of pleasure inside her so intense, she thought she would die from the sheer joy of them.

  Completely spent, sweat dripping fro
m their bodies, J.T. and Joanna clung to each other, their lips seeking and finding one final sweet contact as the last ripples echoed through their bodies.

  Lowering her to her feet, J.T. held her in his arms, caressing her naked back. “I’m sorry if—”

  She kissed him quickly, passionately, silencing him, then drew away from him and smiled. “Did I give you what you needed?”

  “You know you did, you little she-cat.” He rubbed his cheek against hers. “You don’t hate me, do you, honey, for taking you like that? I couldn’t bear it if—”

  “How could I hate you for needing me so desperately? Don’t you think I figured out what this was all about?”

  “Just what do you think this—” he rubbed himself against her “—was all about?”

  “It was all about staking a claim,” Joanna said. “I assume you let Joseph know that I was your private property—”

  “Now, honey, don’t go putting words in my mouth.”

  “As I was saying, you let Joseph know that I was your private property, but once that was done, you needed to make sure I knew just which man I belonged to.”

  “You make me sound like some jealous, outraged, rutting animal.”

  She cupped his cheek, caressing him with the tips of her fingers. “No, my love, you’re just a man who doesn’t want to share his woman.”

  Grabbing her by the shoulders, J.T. surveyed her from head to toe, taking in every delicious feminine inch of her lovely face and beautiful naked body. “Why me and not him? He’s Benjamin Greymountain’s great-grandson, too. And he’s the kind of man who could offer you everything you want. Marriage. Kids. ‘Forever after.’ The whole works.”

  “Maybe a part of me wishes it could have been Joseph,” she said, her voice a hushed whisper.

  J.T.’s big fingers bit into her soft, womanly flesh. “Why not him? Tell me. Make me understand.”

  “How can I make you understand when I’m not sure I do? All I know is that Joseph doesn’t make me feel the way you do. When he kissed me, it was nice, but that’s all.”

  “He kissed you?” J.T. growled the question.