Boot steps thudded along the floor; chairs scraped.
“There you three are,” Jessica said. “I was beginning to wonder…”
Serena forced down a bite of fresh bread.
“Good heavens,” Jessie whispered. “What the devil—”
“Watch your language,” Matt warned. His voice sounded funny. Muffled.
Curious, Serena looked up. The first thing she saw was his hand resting beside his plate. She winced at the sight of the skinned, swollen knuckles.
“Daddy,” Joanna cried, “what happened to your face?”
Serena raised her gaze higher. “Oh my God.”
Matt’s face was covered with bruises and scratches, his upper lip was puffy, and his left eye was swollen shut. Serena felt her stomach roll over.
His right eye glared at her. The message written there was plain. Shut up, Rena. Don’t say a word.
Fighting tears and outrage at the beating he had taken, Serena ignored his glare.
It had to be Pace. Pace was responsible for Matt’s condition. She knew it. Oh, God, what is happening to this family? She shot a look to her twin. “How dare—”
She swallowed the rest of her words. If anything, Pace looked worse than Matt. She pressed her fingers to her lips to hold back a cry.
Where had her father been during this fight? Why hadn’t he stopped it?
She turned to demand an answer, but choked on the words. He sported a cut lip and a swollen cheek.
Serena jumped from her chair. “Damn you,” she cried. “Damn all of you!”
She covered her mouth with her hands, aghast at both her words and her tears. It was over. Her sure and certain plan to smooth things between Matt and the others wasn’t going to work. All her pain and Matt’s for the past weeks had been for nothing.
For she knew now, she had to leave. She could not stay here and be the cause of any more fighting.
“Damn you all,” she whispered as she fled the room.
Matt closed his eyes—or rather, one eye, as the other felt permanently closed thanks to Pace’s left jab. He fought the urge to swear.
“Daddy?” Joanna said tentatively.
He opened his eye and gave her a crooked smile—all he was capable of until the swelling went down in his lip. “It’s all right, sweetie.” He slid his chair back. “I need to talk to Aunt Rena. I’ll be right back.”
Travis slapped both hands flat against the table. Silver and china rattled. “No!” He glared at Matt. “You sit in that chair and leave that girl alone. You’ve done enough damage.”
Matt nearly choked on the words he refused to utter. He would not cause a scene at supper. Dani might not be there, but she would never forgive him, just the same.
But it galled him something fierce to have his father come down on him like he was still a kid. Goddamn, it galled him.
It took Matt a full three days to calm down enough to talk to his father. During those three days he had done a lot of hard thinking. And he’d decided, finally, to put an end to everyone’s problems. He waited until he was alone with his dad and Pace before telling them his plans.
“I’ll be leaving as soon as you get back from delivering the cattle to San Carlos. Joanna and me.”
“Leaving?” Travis lowered the latest edition of The Daily out of Tucson. “Why? Where are you going?”
Matt shrugged, hoping he didn’t look as tense as he felt. “Thought I’d look up some of my New Orleans cousins.”
“New Orleans? You haven’t been there in twenty years.” Travis tossed his paper aside. “What’s this all about?”
Matt eyed his father steadily. They both knew exactly what this was about. But Matt tried to keep things polite. “I want Joanna to know about that side of her family.”
“How long’ll you be gone?” Pace asked, looking and sounding so damned pleased about Matt’s leaving, Matt felt like stuffing him in a hole.
“Awhile,” was all he said.
“I’ve never heard you mention wanting to contact your mother’s people before,” Travis said. “I find it hard to believe you’ve developed a sudden interest in them at this late date.”
“Don’t be dense, Dad,” Pace said. “Let him go. The sooner, the farther away from Serena, the better.”
Matt got mad. “That’s it, Pace. Don’t let’s tiptoe around the issue. Let’s bring the whole friggin’ mess out in the open and discuss it. Again. And again and again.”
“Just glad to see you’re finally getting the message,” Pace taunted.
“I’ll give you a message, you little asshole. If it was just me, I’d say to hell with it and I’d clean your clock. Say anything you want to me, I don’t care. But it’s not just me. Have you got any idea how your sister feels about all this?”
“Serena knows you’re leaving?” Travis asked.
“No, damn it, and I don’t want her to. Not yet. And just for the record, I’m not leaving because of the way the two of you treat me. I’m leaving because the way you treat me is killing Rena. Don’t you know what it does to her to see the three of us at each other’s throats every day? Jesus, you’re thick-headed, the two of you.”
From down the hall, Serena heard deep angry voices booming through the closed study door. As she neared, the voices grew clear and sharp. Her stomach clenched. They were arguing again, Daddy, Matt and Pace. Arguing about her.
“My leaving is the only thing now that will take that look out of her eyes,” Matt claimed.
Leaving? Matt’s leaving? Serena stifled a cry. No! He can’t leave.
“What look is that?” Pace taunted from inside the study.
“The look she never had until the two of you started treating her like a brainless idiot who doesn’t know her own mind, and me like a molester of little girls.”
“So you’re going to pack Joanna off and take her to New Orleans,” Travis said. “Have you told Dani?”
Serena’s lips quivered and her eyes stung. New Orleans?
“No,” Matt answered Travis. “If she’s not back by the time you get home from San Carlos, I’ll ride down to Sanchez’s and tell her. After that, I’m gone.”
He sounded tired, Serena thought with an ache. Bone tired.
“Maybe then Rena can have some peace,” Matt added.
Nearly blinded by tears, Serena turned and stumbled back down the hall. Matt was leaving. He’d barely been home at all, and he was leaving. Because of her.
Oh God, why did I ever let him know how I felt?
Matt slammed out of the study, furious with himself, with his dad and Pace. It seemed no matter how good his intentions, he couldn’t have a decent conversation with either of them, much less both of them at once. Damn them and their stubbornness.
He wandered out to the courtyard, hoping the fresh air would clear his head and calm him. Maybe then he would find the inspiration he needed to explain to Joanna why he was taking her away. Maybe he’d find the courage to tell Serena.
Inside her bedroom, Serena leaned against the door and pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. The whole world had gone crazy. She had, for certain. Matt, too, and Pace and Daddy. Everyone. Crazy. And it had to stop. She couldn’t let Matt be driven from home.
Squaring her jaw and her shoulders, Serena pulled away from the door, opened it, and marched down the hall. By the time she got to the open door of the study where the men were, her footsteps, along with her courage, were faltering. Yet she couldn’t stop.
With a deep breath, she stepped into the room. It was with both relief and disappointment that she realized Pace and their father were alone. Her father sat at the desk staring blankly at the folded newspaper there, a troubled crease on his brow. Pace sprawled on the sofa, his face deliberately blank. His Apache look. Unreadable.
“Where’s Matt?” she asked.
Pace’s eyes narrowed. Travis flinched and looked away. Neither man answered.
“He’s leaving. I…overheard.”
“You shouldn’t listen in a
t keyholes,” Pace said harshly.
“That’ll be enough,” Travis told him.
Serena glared at both of them. “Daddy, I don’t need you to defend me against Pace. When are you going to stop acting like I’m a brainless idiot—”
“You sure got that right,” Pace taunted.
“Pace,” Travis barked.
“Stop telling people how to talk to me,” Serena cried. “Stop telling people how to act around me, how to treat me, Daddy. I’m a woman, not a helpless child. I can defend myself.”
Travis’s expression closed, but not before she saw the hurt flash through his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said shortly. Then he heaved a sigh. “No matter how old you get, you’ll still be my child, Rena.”
“What about Matt?” she asked him. “He’s more your child than I am, yet you’re treating him like some kind of monster. Are you going to let him leave just because you can’t think of me as a grown woman who knows her own mind? You’re driving him away from his home,” she cried. “And for no good reason. Whatever there might have been between Matt and me ended weeks ago. If you weren’t so busy blaming him for something he didn’t do, and jumping to your own conclusions, you might have noticed for yourself.”
Travis rubbed his face with both hands in a gesture of weariness. Then he let his hands drop to lay on the newspaper on his desk. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Rena. No, I don’t want Matt to leave. He’s my firstborn son. But I can’t sit still and watch him hurt you like this.”
“Him hurt me?” she cried. “Matt has never hurt me. He wouldn’t. I don’t think he could. It’s you. You and Pace, and the way you treat him. That’s what hurts me. Even he told you that just a few minutes ago, and he was right.”
Travis closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t think what to do anymore.”
“Talk to him, Daddy,” she pleaded softly. “Don’t let him leave.”
She watched the painful struggle on his face as he wrestled with the opposing needs of protecting her and not driving Matt away.
Finally he took a deep breath and rose. “I’ll…talk to him.”
As he left the room, she breathed a prayer of thanks and a sigh of relief.
“You should have left well enough alone.”
The coldness in Pace’s voice shocked her. He’d never spoken to her like that. Not ever. She turned slowly toward him. “Pace?”
“Let him go, Rena. Get him out of your life and stop this craziness.”
“Oh.” She raised a brow. “So you admit perhaps I actually have something to do with this, that I’m not some innocent bystander being ravaged by some ravening beast?”
Pace rolled his eyes in disgust.
“Look at me,” she asked quietly. When he complied, she said, “Why have you been acting this way?”
He straightened from his slouch and leaned toward her. “Because what’s been going on between the two of you is wrong. Dead wrong. Brother and sister, for crying out loud.”
“Don’t start with that. That’s a convenient excuse for you to throw out, but you know as well as anyone it’s not valid.”
“It is valid, damn you. The two of you have been raised as brother and sister in this house. Among The People, that bond is sacred, blood or no blood.”
“Is that what all your objections are about? You’re worried what The People will say?”
“And you should be, too,” he cried. “You’re just as much Chidikáágu’ as I am.”
“And you’re just as white as I am,” she answered.
“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I don’t think I am. I could never ignore such a serious taboo as you seem willing to.”
Serena narrowed her gaze and advanced on him. “You use your Apache blood as a convenience, to do nor not do whatever suits you.”
“You know better than that.”
Serena hung her head, feeling sick to her stomach. He was right. She did know better. Pace had always taken the ways of The People more to heart than she had.
She lifted her head and pleaded with her eyes. “I’m sorry. What I said was unfair. But Pace, no two people on earth have been closer than you and me. We shared the same womb together, rode side by side in the same cradleboard—”
“Ts’ał,” he cried. “It’s not a cradleboard, it’s a . Can you not even use the Apache word for it?”
He was hurting, Serena realized with dawning wonder. All this anger radiating from him was from pain. “What is it, Pace? What’s wrong?”
His expression closed off instantly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Something’s eating you alive, I can tell. God, I can feel it. But what? What, Pace? We’ve always known each other’s heart and mind. Always, even before we were born.”
“Until lately,” he said with a snarl.
Serena jerked as if he’d slapped her. Dear God. Could he be jealous? Did he feel Matt coming between them and breaking their bond? Did he resent her for growing away from him?
His pain was deep and sharp. The sudden opening he gave her into himself left her gasping for breath. He felt her loss as though a part of himself were being hacked away.
The glimpse he’d given her closed as swiftly as it had opened, but not before she felt the resentment. She squeezed her eyes shut, because this time the pain was hers. He resented her because she hadn’t felt lost from him, the way he felt lost from her. And he resented her for the loss of his brother, for he knew as well as she that his relationship with Matt would never be the same.
The sickness in her stomach rolled.
No more words were necessary between them. He knew what she’d seen and felt inside him. For that, too, he resented her. She swallowed and tried to clear her vision. “No matter what happens, shilahúkéne,” she said, honoring his feelings by using the Chiricahua word for brother, “I love you. I will always love you.”
With an ache the size of a huge fist in her chest, she fled the room, and the pain in his eyes. She stumbled down the hall and out into the courtyard, desperate for a breath of healing night air.
Dear God, how could she have ever been so selfish? How much more pain could she cause the people she loved? How many more ways could she hurt them?
Matt drank in the sight of her. The moon highlighted the white streak in her hair and made her yellow dress glow against the green bougainvillea leaves and their profusion of purple bracts beside her. The picture she made standing with her head bowed, shoulders slumped, made him ache inside.
He must have made a sound, or maybe she merely sensed his presence, for she straightened and jerked her head toward him. He heard her sharp intake of breath.
He knew exactly how she felt. Aside from sitting across from each other at the table, they hadn’t been this close since the day he asked her to marry him. The day she refused.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone was here.” He stood and turned away toward the back gate, sure he couldn’t stand to brush near her to enter the house. He couldn’t get that close and not touch her. Not in the moonlight. Not with the fragrance of honeysuckle wafting from the trellis beside him. Not when she looked at him with pain in her eyes. “I’ll go.”
“No,” she said softly, her voice shaking. “Don’t go.”
He paused. “I think I should.”
“Matt.”
The rustle of petticoats and the slight scrape of slippers on flagstone made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“I…I overheard you in the study.”
Damn. Matt squeezed his eyes shut. How many more ways was he going to hurt her?
“You don’t really want to go to New Orleans, do you?”
He slowly turned and faced her. “Dad was just here trying to talk me out of it. It doesn’t matter. I can’t stay here and watch you tear yourself apart. I can’t, Rena, I won’t.”
“Don’t do it,” she pleaded. “Don’t leave because of me. Please, Matt.”
He meant to keep the wor
ds locked in his heart, but…“Come with me.”
Ah, damn. She looked on the verge of tears. If she cried, he wouldn’t be able to stand it.
“Come with you and do what?” she asked with a quiver in her voice. “Give up our home? Hide from the family the rest of our lives?”
He fought the pain of futility and tried again to convince her. “Come with me and marry me.”
Moonlight caught the lone tear slipping down her cheek. “You’re asking me to choose between you and them?”
On top of his earlier conversation with his father and Pace, Serena’s accusation was too much. He clenched his fists to keep from shaking her. “You already chose, didn’t you? Sorry, for a minute there I forgot. You chose them.”
“Matt, I—”
“You did, Rena. You chose them. Now you tell me I shouldn’t leave? What do you want from me? I can’t go back to being your big brother, damn it. And I can’t face you every day and see that whipped-puppy look in your eyes. Either you love me or you don’t. Marry me. We can go or stay, I don’t care. But if you don’t love me enough to marry me, don’t expect me to stay.”
“Don’t love you enough?” she cried. “How can you say that? You know I love you.”
“I thought you did, but damn it, when a woman loves a man and he asks her to marry him, she usually says yes. This is it for me, Rena. If you don’t want me, Joanna and I will leave as soon as Dad gets back from San Carlos next week. Either marry me or let me go. It’s up to you. I can’t take any more.”
She reached out for him.
Matt stepped back quickly. If she touched him, he’d be lost. He would have her in his arms, his lips on hers so fast and fierce she wouldn’t know what hit her.
Maybe that’s what he should do anyway. Beat down her resistant. Woo her. Seduce her. It’s what he’d been accused of for weeks, wasn’t it? Why not—
“No,” he said. “Not unless you mean it.”
“Don’t do this, Matt.”
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