Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “It was an accident,” he said, his voice lazy. “You did a good job with the sutures, by the way. Thank you.”

  The pain in Spence’s face kept him awake. He didn’t even have the luxury of tossing and turning, but had to lie unmoving on his back to keep the pain to a minimum. That was why he was awake to hear when LaRisa started crying. Only a sniffle or two a first, as though she were struggling to contain the tears. Then came quiet sobs that tore through his chest as though they were knives.

  Spence was no stranger to a woman’s tears. Plenty of female patients had cried from pain or fear, their mothers and sisters from worry or despair. The women in his family weren’t shy about cutting loose with a horrific stream now and then, either. They were passionate women, all of them. When they yelled or screamed, fought or loved, laughed or cried, his mother and sisters and niece held nothing back. And when they cried, sometimes they wanted comforting, sometimes they didn’t.

  He didn’t know which kind of crying LaRisa was doing. All he knew was that she’d buried her father, left her people behind for the unknown, and found herself married to a stranger who’d had very few kind words for her. And she was proud. So damn proud. She wouldn’t want him to know she was crying.

  He stared at the ceiling and tried to block out the sounds of her suffering. She quieted once, then started in again.

  To hell with it. He couldn’t just lie there and do nothing. She needed comforting. If she didn’t want it from him, that was too damn bad. He was the only one around. He climbed down and sat on the edge of her bunk.

  Before he even touched her he felt her trembling, slight at first, then hard, jerky.

  Her small, half-stifled sob cut straight to his chest. “Risa?” He put a hand on her arm and felt her trembling worsen. “Risa?”

  “Shitaa!” The cry slipped from her lips, and she couldn’t call it back. Oh God, oh God, oh God. A harsh sob broke loose. “My father is dead!”

  Spence couldn’t bear the pain in her cry. He could only imagine the depth of the torture that gripped her at losing her father, her only family in the world. His own family was big and rowdy and closer than ticks on a hound, and they loved each other fiercely. To lose them, any single one of them…His throat closed.

  Stretching out beside her, he reached for her and wrapped his arms around her. “Come here, honey,” he managed. “I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.” He doubted she could hear him over her crying, but the words helped him, even if they didn’t reach her. “I would have done anything to save him. Anything, I swear it.”

  She cried harder; he held her closer. It came on him slowly, the unwanted reminder that this was no child he held against him. She was a woman, warm and alive and pressed along his length like a soft shadow. And she felt good. A little too good. Unwilling came the reminder of the way his heart had pounded at the sight of her in her nightgown. Son of a bitch. What a hell of a time to remember.

  LaRisa woke the next morning cocooned in a warmth so comforting she was reluctant to open her eyes. She felt so…secure, so safe. The loss of her father was still fresh, but tempered somehow, as if the warmth surrounding her held new possibilities that eased her pain.

  Then she remembered, and the most absurd explanation for the warmth she felt came to mind. She opened her eyes to find that absurd or not, it was true. She had slept the night wrapped in the white man’s arms, her head on his shoulder, her arm across his bare chest, her legs entangled intimately with his.

  With her heart thundering, she slowly lifted her head, grateful to find him still asleep. Shameless, she thought, to stare at him when he was unaware, but that didn’t stop her.

  His chest was broad and deep and covered with gold curls. She wanted to run her fingers through those curls, feel those muscles beneath his light skin, but she dared not, lest he wake. In the dim morning light, the angles and planes of his face were softened, the stitches and bruising ugly against such a handsome face. His hair was tousled and falling down across his forehead, making him look younger, friendlier.

  His eyes…were open and staring back at her! Their vivid blue depths snared and held her.

  “Good morning.” His voice was husky with the remnants of sleep.

  LaRisa gathered the presence of mind to lower her gaze, but that left her staring at his chest. She looked away. “What are you doing here?”

  Spence ran a hand up and down her arm, more surprised than she was to find himself still in her bed. He’d never slept all night with a woman before. Never lingered. Never awakened with one in his arms. Had vowed to himself that he never would, for it invited a closeness he couldn’t afford. “I’m sorry. You were crying. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  He wanted her to look at him again as she just had, with something other than anger in her eyes. He wanted her to bring her mouth close to his and…

  Good God, man. “I’ll get out of your way.” He untangled himself from her and crawled out of bed. The wound in his cheek protested the shift from prone to upright. Spence ignored the pain and pulled on his pants before she could see the rather obvious effect that waking with her in his arms had on him. “When you’re ready, we’ll go find the dining car and have breakfast.”

  LaRisa blushed. There was something entirely too intimate about watching a man put on his pants. She grabbed her clothes and rushed into the adjoining lavatory, thankful no one from the next compartment was using it at the moment.

  Watching LaRisa dig into her sausage and eggs, Spence couldn’t help but smile.

  “What?” she asked between bites.

  “Nothing.” He shook his head. “I just enjoy the way you appreciate your food.”

  “It’s true. I could sure get used to eating like this.”

  Spence frowned. He’d assumed that other than her bread-and-water ordeal, she’d been fed well at the school. Why he should have thought so was beyond him, because he knew for a fact that the rest of the tribe at Mount Vernon had been on half rations for years until a few months ago. The full rations they were now getting were nothing to brag about.

  He shook his head. “You surely aren’t the first person to choose good food over hunger, freedom over captivity.”

  LaRisa paused with a bite of egg halfway to her mouth and slowly lowered her fork to the plate. “Is that what you think? That I agreed to come with you to make my life easier?”

  “You came with me because I didn’t give you a choice.”

  “I had a choice, white man. If I had decided to stay with The People, you could not have stopped me.”

  “That’s what you think.” Spence raised a hand to stop her protest. “Never mind. Suppose you tell me why you did agree, then.”

  “Because I promised my father.”

  “With all due respect, he’ll never know the difference, LaRisa.”

  “But I will. If I cannot even keep a promise to my dying father, what good am I? You think I came with you to make things easier, but how do I know anything is going to be easier? Where am I going to live? How am I going to support myself when you leave and go back to Alabama?”

  This time it was Spence who carefully lowered his fork. “I’m not going back.”

  “What do you mean? Except for your bag, you left all your medical supplies there. You’re their doctor. What are they supposed to do without you?”

  “Matt is shipping my things home. The People will do fine without me.”

  “They’ll die without you,” she cried.

  He looked away, the muscle in his jaw flexing. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but they were dying with me. Hell, most of them wouldn’t let a white doctor near them anyway, at least not until it was too late to do any good. The Army doctor can do anything I can do.”

  LaRisa stared at him, shocked. After a long moment, she lowered her gaze and took a sip of coffee. “Where will you set up your practice? Tucson?”

  “I won’t be setting up practice. Removing these sutures from my own face will be my last official act as a doctor
.”

  “You don’t mean that!”

  “Your food’s getting cold.”

  LaRisa gaped. “I think you do mean it.”

  “I’m going home. Dad’s seventy-two years old. He can’t run the ranch alone anymore. With Matt and Pace gone all the time, somebody has to help him.”

  LaRisa’s eyes widened. “The ranch? You’re a surgeon.”

  “Was,” he said matter-of-factly as he glanced away. “I was a surgeon. I haven’t held a scalpel in my hand more than a dozen times in the past several years.”

  “Well, isn’t that just like a white man. You spend all that time and money going to medical school, you gain skill and knowledge that can save people’s lives, then you refuse to use it! Instead, you’re going to herd cows. I think I’ve just lost my appetite.” LaRisa threw down her napkin and stormed out of the dining car.

  Spence leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He supposed he’d just had a mere taste of what he would face at home when the rest of the family found out about his decision. Matt knew and said he understood, but Matt didn’t know the whole truth. How could Spence claim to help others when he couldn’t even help himself?

  After finishing his third cup of coffee, Spence made his way to the smoking car and lingered. He dreaded returning to the compartment. LaRisa was going to nag him about his decision to leave medicine, he knew. But if he didn’t return soon, she’d probably nag him about his rudeness in leaving her alone all day. With a heavy sigh, he made his way back to their car.

  She was sitting next to the window where the light was best, mending the hem of a skirt. She glanced up briefly then returned to her sewing. “I was about to decide you weren’t coming back.”

  “I thought about it, but I decided I didn’t want to spend four solid days in the smoking car.”

  “It’s a crime, you know.”

  “Spending time in the smoking car?”

  “Giving up medicine.”

  “Don’t start with me. I’m not going to discuss it.”

  “Won’t you even tell me why?”

  “I have my reasons. If you can’t think of anything else to talk about, then keep quiet, will you?”

  “All right, we’ll talk about something else.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For now.”

  “Hell.”

  “Tell me about Matt and Pace.”

  Her choice of topics surprised him. “What about them?”

  She took two tiny stitches before speaking. “They’re brothers,” she said, “yet they won’t look at each other. I know it’s none of my business, but they don’t seem to get along. I can’t imagine having a brother, or sister for that matter, and not getting along with them.”

  Spence took the seat opposite her and stretched out his legs. “It’s no secret Pace and Matt have their differences. Pace has never forgiven Matt for Serena. Do you remember Serena?”

  LaRisa smiled. “Oh, yes. I’ll never forget her. That time when I was about five and we left the reservation for Mexico—after Cibecue Creek—I remember her riding into one of our secret strongholds in Mexico, bold as you please, bringing a herd of cattle meant for San Carlos. We ate good that night, and many nights afterwards, thanks to her. They spoke about her around campfires all that summer. I always thought when I grew up I wanted to be like her, somebody who helped people, somebody others looked up to and admired. Serena Colton has been my idol ever since that summer.”

  Spence chuckled. “That was a hell of a summer, all right. A few days after she brought those damn cattle, she and Matt were married. Pace has never forgiven him for it.”

  “I…I don’t understand. She’s Pace’s twin. Matt…married his own sister?”

  “Now you sound like Pace.”

  “But…”

  “Serena and Pace’s mother—our mother—is married to Matt’s father. He’s my father, too, but not the twins’. Serena is my half sister, Matt’s stepsister. Now she’s his wife.”

  LaRisa remembered pieces of the old stories about Woman of Magic, who married Travis Yellow Hair Colton. Matt was Travis’s son by a previous marriage. Yes, she thought. The twins were not of Travis Colton’s blood, therefore not of Matt’s, either.

  “It’s funny,” Spence said quietly. “Even when Matt no longer thought of Serena as his sister, I don’t think he ever stopped feeling the old ties with Pace. They’re still brothers as far as Matt is concerned. I keep hoping someday…Ah, hell. Matt thinks Pace is a hot-head, that he’ll never cool off enough to see things Matt’s way. Pace won’t even listen to Rena, but his anger isn’t directed at her or the kids.”

  “They have children?”

  “Three.” Spence smiled. “Joanna is a year older than you.”

  “That can’t be! Serena can’t be old enough to have a child my age.”

  “Serena’s her stepmother. We have a very confusing family.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Matt was married before. Angela…she was killed when Jo was just a little thing. Right around the time you lost your mother.”

  Spence was quiet for a long moment.

  “You said three children?” LaRisa prodded.

  “Yeah. Joanna has two half brothers—Matt and Serena’s sons. Russ is twelve and Will is ten. Those two are a real handful.”

  She could hear the pride in his voice, could see it in his eyes. “You love them very much, don’t you?”

  “Very much.”

  “Why don’t you have any children of your own? Why aren’t you married?”

  Spence’s expression closed. “We’ll put that subject right alongside my medical practice.”

  “Off limits?” LaRisa asked. “I suppose it’s none of my business anyway.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Just because I’m your wife…”

  Spence narrowed his eyes. “Do you want to be?”

  “Do I want to be what?”

  “My wife.”

  She accidentally jabbed the needle into her finger. “Don’t be silly. I was joking. Can’t you just see me with a real marriage to a white man? It would never work. I’d be arrested for murder in less than a week.”

  That night as the train rolled west, Spence once again stared at the ceiling above his bunk and wondered what the hell had prompted him to ask LaRisa if she wanted to really be his wife. Just remembering those words that had come out of his mouth turned his skin clammy. Damn. What would he have done if she’d said yes?

  Maybe that was why he’d asked—he knew she would laugh at the idea. Yeah. That was it. That must be it.

  With his mind at ease, he finally drifted off to sleep. The pain in his face woke him several times during the night. Each time he drifted off again, he wondered why his arms felt empty.

  When LaRisa came out of the lavatory the next morning, Spence, irritable due to his lousy sleep, was just folding his bunk back into the wall. He turned to tell her good morning, but scowled. “Don’t you have any other clothes in that bag of yours?”

  LaRisa stuck out her chin. “Of course I do.”

  “Good. Wear them sometime, will you? I’m getting damn sick and tired of seeing you in brown.”

  “Well!” She arched one black brow. “Let me get my bag, then, and I’ll change right now. We can’t have you displeased, can we?”

  Before he could ask what the hell she meant by that crack, she grabbed her bag, stepped back into the tiny lavatory, and slammed the door in his face.

  “A little touchy, are we?” he muttered to the door.

  Then again, it had been pretty damn presumptuous of him to complain about her clothes. Why should he care what she wore?

  He knocked on the door. “LaRisa, forget it. I’m sorry. You don’t have to change clo—”

  The door flew open. He had to do a quick shuffle backward to get out of her path as she barrelled out into the compartment with her bag before her like a cow-catcher on the front end of a locomotive.

  “Oh, good,”
he said, noticing all that brown. “It’s none of my business what you wear. I’m glad you didn’t change clothes.”

  LaRisa shoved her valise beneath the seat, then turned toward him with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. “For your information, I did change clothes.”

  He shook his head. “Then you must be the fastest woman alive, to have changed back again so quickly.”

  “I did not change back. I went in wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday. Those clothes are now in my bag. These are my other clothes.”

  “If you’re trying to confuse me, it won’t work. Those are the same clothes you had on a few minutes ago.”

  Muttering under her breath about rich, arrogant white men, she hauled out her valise, plopped it on the seat, and opened it. “I want you to look inside and remember what’s there the next time you demand that I change clothes.”

  Spence rolled his eyes. “This is ridiculous. Forget I said anything. It doesn’t matter to me what you wear.”

  “It obviously does or you wouldn’t have said anything.” She whipped a skirt and blouse from her valise and shook them out.

  Spence frowned. “They look just like…” He leaned over and peered into the valise. All that was left inside were a few worn articles of undergarments. “Do you mean to tell me these are all the clothes you own?” he cried.

  With jerky movements she refolded the skirt and blouse that were her only change of clothes—and that were identical to the ones she had on—and replaced them carefully in the valise. “Not everybody can be a rich white man like you, doctor.”

  “Don’t start with me.”

  “Seems to me it’s time somebody did. In answer to your question, yes, these are my only clothes, they have been my only clothes for three years, and yes, they look exactly alike. This is what all the girls at Carlisle wear. Surely you don’t think an ignorant savage is smart enough to be allowed to choose her own clothing, do you?”