Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  He mounted up, then looked back at her. He didn’t want to worry her, but leaving her in ignorance of the possibility of trouble would be stupid. “If you hear a single shot, it will be me taking care of the horse. If you hear more than one shot, hide.”

  Jessie watched him ride away and swallowed the urge to call him back. …more than one shot… What if the Swede was still out there somewhere, waiting, watching? She didn’t want to be left alone, didn’t want Blake riding out alone into a possible ambush.

  Calm down and stop being a ninny. If her mother or Serena were here, neither of them would be cowering in fear the way Jessie was.

  But then, neither one of them would have been on that train in the first place. They would have found a way to keep Pace safe at home, out of General Miles’s clutches. But Jessie wasn’t Serena, and she wasn’t her mother. She knew how to use a gun, but had never had to defend herself with one. She wasn’t used to danger, to being out in the middle of nowhere alone with a kidnapper running loose.

  No, Jessie was a homebody, used to taking care of the house, the meals, other people’s comfort. Not their very lives, and certainly not her own.

  A gunshot cracked the stillness. Jessie flinched. With hands that shook, she grabbed the pistol. She listened and waited, praying she wouldn’t hear a second shot. Praying the one she had heard was what it was supposed to be.

  Chapter Five

  Blake pulled to a halt as soon as he was out of sight of the camp and let the shakes come. He didn’t dare close his eyes, or he’d see again the man’s gun aimed straight at Jessie. He’d hear again her cry as she’d hurled through the air when her horse went down. He would experience once more that nearly numbing fear that he’d been too late.

  God, but it had been close. Too damn close.

  He told himself he cared only because she was a woman, and therefore helpless against armed men. He would have felt this gut-wrenching fear for anyone. Then, too, if she hadn’t attacked the outlaw on the train and saved Blake’s life, she would still be on the train, on her way to try and free her half-breed lover. Blake owed her for saving his life.

  Gratitude. That’s all he felt.

  The hell it is.

  She meant something to him, this Jessica Colton, and he might as well admit it. Just what that something was, he didn’t know. It was happening too fast. Hell, he’d known her barely twenty-four hours. How could she get to him so fast, when no other woman had ever gotten to him at all? Not the way Jessie Colton had.

  He wanted her. Apache lover or no, Blake wanted her. Fiercely. She stirred an ache deep inside him, a yearning—for her body, yes, but for more. For so much more, he shied away from even thinking about it.

  Blake straightened in the saddle and ignored the persistent pounding in his head. What the hell was the matter with him? He had no business wanting her. Didn’t want to want her. No decent white man sniffed after Apache leavings, and she belonged to the half-breed.

  Every vicious curse he could think of echoed in his aching head as he made his way down the dry creek bed to the horse with the broken leg. Sickness churned in his gut. He hated this. The poor horse only did what was asked of him by his rider. Tired as the animal had been, he had tried to carry Jessie to freedom. For his effort, the gelding had a broken foreleg and a bullet deep in his chest. He lay up on his side, as though he’d been trying to rise. Breath wheezed and whistled in and out of a pierced lung.

  Eyes wide with confusion and pain, the gelding looked to Blake as if for help. Blake approached slowly on foot, speaking low and soft to calm the animal. As gently as possible, he stripped the horse of all gear.

  Then, with a final stroke of apology along the shaggy mustang’s neck, Blake slipped his revolver from his holster and did what had to be done.

  Blake followed the Swede’s trail to the edge of a long bluff a few miles from the camp where he’d left Jessie. From his vantage point he spotted a tiny cloud of dust. The Swede was heading north.

  As much as Blake wanted to go after the bastard, he knew he couldn’t. Jessie was his first concern. He had to get her back to civilization where she could be looked after. The Swede would have to wait.

  Blake turned his tired mount back up the trail. He had one last chore before he could return to camp.

  For the man who shot at Jessie, burying was too good. Especially since Blake didn’t have a shovel. He dragged the body off the trail and away from the dry creek bed to a shallow depression beneath a small overhang that looked ready to break off. Before climbing up to kick or knock down what rocks and dirt he could to cover the body, he studied the face of the man he’d killed.

  He remembered the big Swede as the one who’d yanked open the curtain of his bunk. This bastard, the one who shot the horse out from under Jessie, was another matter. Blake hadn’t seen him on the train. At least, he didn’t think this was the same man who’d shot him. Something about the man tugged at the edges of his memory, but Blake wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen him before or not.

  He went through the man’s pockets and found nothing more than a half-empty bag of Union Leader tobacco, a pack of cigarette papers, a tin match case, and twelve dollars in coins. Nothing to identify who the outlaw was or where he came from.

  Maybe the saddlebags from the dead horse would yield more information, but going through them would have to wait. Blake was so damn tired and his head hurt so much that his vision was starting to blur again. Damn the pain in his head, anyway.

  By the time he hauled the extra gear back up the trail, the sun was almost to the horizon. Sound asleep, Jessie lay curled up on the blanket, one hand wrapped around the butt of the pistol he’d left her. As he swung down from the saddle, she sprang up and awake in an instant, eyes wide and startled.

  Seeing it was him, she relaxed. “I wasn’t supposed to fall asleep. Is everything…”

  “Taken care of.”

  She closed her eyes and laid the gun down beside her. “Should we start back?”

  Blake shook his head. She was a game little thing. She was so damn tired she could barely hold her head up, yet if he thought they should head out, she was willing. No whining or demanding, just common sense. He couldn’t help but admire her for that. “We’ll stay here. It’ll be dark soon. I don’t want to camp out in the open, or take the chance of running into the Swede in the darkness.”

  Her slender shoulders slumped with relief.

  Blake had been right—as willing as she might be, she’d been pushed too hard for one day.

  While he took care of the horse and hobbled him, making sure the animal could get to the trickle that passed for a stream in this part of the country, Blake kept one eye on Jessie.

  That at least two other men had seen her dressed in nothing more than her night dress, had seen the thrust of her dark-tipped breasts, the narrow waist made to fit a man’s hands, the flair of a hip, the shadow between her legs, all visible through the thin fabric, made Blake livid. The emotion didn’t even surprise him. Every time he looked at her, she seemed to generate strong feelings in him.

  She shifted, and he saw what he hadn’t noticed before, and it made his hands shake. Raw, bloody splotches, the same as on her wrists, ringed her ankles. “The bastards got off too damn easy,” he muttered.

  The saddlebags from the dead horse yielded a skillet, a small bag each of flour and coffee, and a man’s faded blue shirt. Whatever loot the bastards had carried off the train must have been on the other horse or with one or more of the other bandits.

  Blake took the two blankets from the extra bedroll and folded each into a thick pad. Along the stream he picked out the smoothest spot. It was backed by a knee-high rock. With the blankets as pads, it should make a halfway comfortable seat.

  Jessie watched, wondering what Blake was doing. When he came and lifted her in his arms, she scraped up the energy and asked.

  “I’m taking care of you,” he answered.

  She smiled to herself. As the one in the habit of taking care
of everyone else’s needs, she wasn’t used to being taken care of. That Blake so matter-of-factly assumed she not only needed his care but would willingly accept it gave her the odd feeling of being cherished. It was nonsense, of course. He didn’t cherish her. He was merely a man used to taking charge of every situation at hand. Maybe a man used to women who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take care of themselves.

  Still, she couldn’t help but relax and enjoy the feeling of being coddled. What harm could come of it?

  He sat her on one blanket and placed the other one between her back and the rock. Then his hands touched her bare feet. She jerked. Not because he hurt her, but because no man had ever touched her so intimately before.

  “Easy. I just want to have a look.”

  He placed one hand behind her calf and lifted her leg so he could study her ankle and the bottom of her foot. His hands were strong yet gentle, his touch both rough and tender. A warm tingling shot up her leg.

  With a rag he wet in the stream, he dabbed at the rope burns around her ankle and muttered something under his breath.

  “What?” she asked.

  He gave her a long look. His jaw flexed, then he lowered his gaze to the task he’d set himself. “They got off too easy, the bastards. I should have killed them both, slowly.”

  For her. He wanted to kill her kidnappers because of a rope burn and a few cuts and bruises. Despite the topic under discussion, Jessie couldn’t help but smile.

  Blake saw and raised a brow. “You find that amusing?”

  She shook her head. “I find it the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me. It sounds exactly like something anyone in my family would say.”

  “You think my killing somebody slowly is nice? Funny, but I wouldn’t have guessed you were the bloodthirsty type.”

  Jessie laughed. “I’m not. Not really. Neither is Spence. We’re the misfits in the family.”

  “Spence?”

  “One of my brothers.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Three, and one sister.”

  Blake dabbed at a particularly raw spot on her ankle. To keep her mind off the pain, he took up the thread of the conversation. “So except for you and Spence, the rest of your family is bloodthirsty?”

  “Of course not,” she said easily. “But it’s almost like a motto in our family, that if a snake needs killing, you kill it.”

  Blake nodded his approval. “Sounds like good advice to me.”

  Jessie grinned. “I keep waiting for my mother to cross stitch it on a sampler and hang it over the fireplace.”

  Blake looked horrified at the thought. “She wouldn’t.”

  “You don’t know my mother.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re teasing, right?”

  She gave a rueful shake of her head. “Let’s just say that if any member of my family other than me had been at Bowie yesterday, Miles would never have gotten Pace on that train.”

  Pace. That was the half-breed’s name. Blake knew the Apaches called him Fire Seeker; Miles, with a sarcastic tone, had called him Fire Eater. That she could think of that half-breed bastard while Blake could think of nothing but her infuriated him. That she should care so deeply about the breed’s fate cut him to the bone. That she thought anyone could have stopped Miles from putting every Apache in sight on the train was just plain foolishness. “You don’t mean that. Nobody could have stopped Miles.”

  “I do mean it,” she said with self-disgust. “My father and brothers, it goes without saying. But even my mother and my sister would have found a way to stop Miles, even if they had to do it at gunpoint.”

  “Your mother? Now I know you don’t mean it.”

  “As I said, you don’t know my mother.”

  Blake shook his head, then turned his attention back to her foot. “You’re not going to feel like walking for a few days.”

  Jessie didn’t argue. She knew he was right.

  As he lowered her foot into the water, his fingers brushed her sole lightly. Jessie twitched.

  Blake looked up sharply, his brow etched with concern. “Did I hurt you?” He ran one fingertip along the pads of her toes.

  “No!” She jerked her foot away and mashed her lips together.

  “Let me look.”

  “Captain, it’s fine, really.”

  “My name,” he said as he took her foot again and held it up, “is Blake.” Again he ran a finger along her sole.

  She couldn’t help it. She laughed. Actually, she giggled. “Stop!”

  His grin came slow and wide as understanding brightened his dark eyes. “You’re ticklish.”

  Jessie tried to pull her foot free, but he held on. “I can’t help it,” she admitted reluctantly. He made as if to test her admission. “Please don’t. I…I get hysterical and make a fool out of myself. After the day I’ve had, I’d probably pass out from laughing too hard if you started tickling me.”

  Blake again noted the dark shadows beneath her eyes, the exhausted slump of her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’m totally trustworthy.” If there was chagrin in his voice, only he heard it.

  “I’m glad.” Her smile was wary.

  Blake lowered her foot into the deepest part of the stream before her—all of maybe three inches deep. Her soft sigh of relief made his blood race. With infinite care, he tended the other foot, and put it, too, into the water.

  She sighed again, her pleasure evident in the way she closed her eyes and smiled. The muscles in his stomach clenched. He had a sharp urge to hear her sigh from a different kind of pleasure, the kind only a certain man could give to a certain woman. The kind he wanted to give her.

  For the next few minutes, while he tended her wrists, he tortured himself with pictures of her sighing for the half-breed. Beneath his fingers, the muscles of her forearm tensed.

  “If you’re trying to take my skin off, don’t bother. The rope already did that.”

  Her comment made Blake realize he was rubbing hard against her wrist rather than dabbing gently at the raw abrasions. He jerked his hands away and clenched the rag in his fist. Damn, he had to stop thinking about her and the half-breed. He had to stop thinking about her, period. “Sorry.”

  With a promise to himself to ignore the softness of her skin, ignore what touching her did to his heartbeat, Blake rinsed the rag, found a clean corner, and reached for her face. “Hold still.” He cupped her chin in one hand and carefully cleaned her face.

  Jessie closed her eyes and relished the feel of the cool damp rag against her burning skin. Beneath her chin, where Blake’s hand held her, she burned even hotter. Yet despite whatever had brought back the hardness along his jaw and in his eyes, his touch was gentle. She wanted to tell him how good it felt, but feared breaking the spell of easy quiet that had enveloped them when he first touched her face.

  His hands slipped away much too soon for Jessie. She could have sat all night and let him stroke her face. She had to force her heavy eyelids open, so relaxed was she.

  He was staring at her, his dark eyes unreadable. Not expressionless. That wasn’t the problem. There was too much expression in them, too many conflicting emotions for her to be able to decipher what might be going through his mind.

  “Would you rather eat or sleep?” he asked.

  Of all the thoughts swirling in his eyes, she doubted that was one of them. Still, she gave him a smile. “Yes.”

  She expected an answering smile. What she got was a terse, “I’ll see what we’ve got to eat.”

  Blake came abruptly awake in the dead of night. With eyes slitted, he lay still, unwilling to move without knowing what had awakened him. A million stars and a big moon, almost full, bathed the clearing in streams of light. Rocks, bushes, and the stunted cottonwood tree cast long black shadows. The horse blew dust from its nostrils and shifted its weight on the gravelly ground. Crickets squeaked their shrill song. A few feet away Jessie shifted beneath her blanket. Nothing out of the ordinary. Yet something had jerked him awake.

&
nbsp; He reached beneath the edge of his blanket and closed his hand around the smooth, familiar butt of his Colt.

  Then it came again, the sound that he instinctively knew had awakened him. A deep, agonized moan. From Jessie. Her head rolled back and forth on the blanket, her face creased with pain.

  Blake dropped his gun and crawled from his bedroll. He knelt beside Jessie and felt heat, as though from a fire, before he even touched her. Good God, she was burning up.

  “Jessie?” He pressed a palm to her cheek and felt seared. “Jessie, can you hear me?”

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Blake?”

  “It’s me, honey.”

  Still more asleep than awake, she muttered, “I’m hot.”

  “I know. Are you sick? Do you hurt anywhere?”

  She rolled her head again. “Everywhere. Sunburn.”

  Blake swore beneath his breath. As thin as her gown was and as fair as her skin, the sun would have burned her to a crisp in a couple of hours, and she’d been exposed to the fiery rays from dawn until dusk.

  “Just lie still, honey. I’ll be right back.”

  He pulled on his boots, retrieved the rag he’d bathed her feet and wrists with earlier, and made his way down the slight slope to the stream. Moonlight made the going easy.

  After rinsing out the coffee pot that came courtesy of the owner of the horse Blake had borrowed, he filled the pot with fresh water and returned to Jessie with it and the rag. It was the best he had to offer for her burning skin.

  She had kicked off the blanket that had covered her. Her white gown glowed in the cool night. Her hair, streaming across the dark blanket beneath her, shone like silver in the moonlight. Silver and gold. Pale, sun streaked honey.

  Blake set the pot of water on the ground beside her blanket. The first touch of the wet rag against her face brought a soft sigh of relief from between her lips.