Shock made LaRisa’s tongue cling to the roof of her mouth. What was he talking about? It had to be a lie, or a mistake. Spence…Spence would not kill a woman and child. But she would not ask Broken Hand what he meant. She might ask Spence later, but she wouldn’t dignify Broken Hand’s ramblings by commenting. “If you will be so kind as to let me pass, I would like to return to camp.”
He stepped closer to her. “How polite you’ve become. Does this mean you have learned the proper behavior for a maiden? Not that you could possibly still be a maiden if you’ve been with him all this time,” he added with a sneer.
“You have a dirty mind, Broken Hand. Step aside and let me pass.”
His gaze turned hot and raked her from head to toe. “My mind is no more dirty than the next man’s when he looks at a woman as ripe as you. You’ve already got young Niño panting after you like a stag in rut.”
LaRisa stiffened. Niño’s looks had not been rude, but they had been overly warm and intense for her comfort. It did not ease her mind that Broken Hand had noticed.
“Nothing to say? Maybe you’re eager to give the young buck a try. He’s not for you, LaRisa Chee,” he said, coming closer. “Neither is that pale-faced doctor. You need a man. A real man. One who will teach you a woman’s true place—on her back—and make you like it.”
“You are disgusting. I wouldn’t have you if my life depended on it.”
He stepped closer, so close now that she could smell the bear grease in his hair. His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and his hands clenched. “That could be arranged.”
“You don’t scare me, you sniveling coward.”
“You make a mistake taunting me. How would you like something bad to happen to young Niño, or perhaps his mother?”
LaRisa sucked in her breath. “Even you would not sink so low. Is this how you get a woman to warm your blankets? By threats? Get out of my sight, you toad.” She stepped forward to brush past him.
He grabbed her arm. “There aren’t many women here, and I will not be without a woman. The white killer brought you here, and he owes me a woman. I will take you, and you will like it.”
“You will take nothing,” she hissed. “I am not the white man’s prisoner any longer, and I am certainly not yours. You do not own me any more than they do. No one takes from me that which I do not choose to give.”
“LaRisa?”
At the sound of Spence’s voice from down the path toward camp, Broken Hand stiffened.
LaRisa wrenched her arm from his bruising grip and dashed up the trail toward the safety of Spence’s voice.
The thought brought her up short. Anger flared. Why should she have to run to one man to protect her from another? Why should she allow Broken Hand to make her angry, and yes, she admitted, to make her fear his threats? He was going to destroy her new life before it had even begun, damn him.
At a brisk walk, she rounded a clump of cedar and there Spence was, striding toward her. She schooled her features as best she could. Whatever passed between her and Broken Hand was up to her to deal with.
“There you are. Nod-ah-Sti was afraid you got lost.”
“I’m coming.”
Yes, Spence thought. She was coming, a little too out-of-breath for the pace she was walking. And she’d waited a second too late to school the anger from her face, for he’d seen it. “What’s wrong?”
She gave a toss of her head and strolled past him. “Nothing.”
Spence braced his hands at his waist and watched her march past him. A moment later another form came down the path from the direction LaRisa had come. The smirk on Broken Hand’s face stirred Spence’s hackles. Something had happened.
Dammit, why did this bastard have to be at Pa-Gotzin-Kay?
Spence stood blocking the path until Broken Hand reached him. “Keep away from her,” Spence warned with a low growl.
Broken Hand smiled slowly. “Of course I will. It is good of you to bring me a replacement for the wife you cost me. This one is far better than the old one. I thank you.” He laughed, then veered off the path and into the trees.
With a muscle ticcing in his jaw, Spence clenched his fists and turned to catch up with LaRisa. He grabbed her arm and drew her to a halt.
LaRisa glared at his hand on her arm. She was getting tired of men yanking her around.
“I thought you had more sense than that. Stay away from him.”
“I was not with him. Let go of me.”
“Not until you tell he what happened.”
“What happened, white man, is exactly what’s happening right now. A man I did not wish to speak with grabbed my arm.”
“Dammit, LaRisa.” He took her other arm and held her by both. “You’ve been here one day and already had a run-in with him?”
“Why are you still here?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t you be halfway home to Arizona by now?”
Spence swore he could feel his blood pressure rising by the second. “You want me to leave? You’ve decided to stay, even with Broken Hand here?”
“Broken Hand doesn’t scare me. I still have the knife Pace gave me. I can take care of myself.”
“Is that right?” Spence pulled both her arms behind her and held them there. The action pressed her flush against his chest. “What good is your knife if you can’t free your hands?”
LaRisa squirmed against him, trying to break his hold. “Let go of me!”
“Is that what you’ll say to him? Do you think he’ll listen?”
She stilled. “If I can’t get my hands free, neither can he.”
“Can’t he? What if he does this?” He grasped both her wrists in one hand. He waved the other in the air. “Now he has a free hand.”
“How nice for him,” she bit out.
“Oh, yeah, it is nice. Because now he can do this.” He slid his hand up her rib cage and cupped her breast.
At his touch, weakness shivered down her limbs. Her blood warmed and rushed through her veins. She forced herself to try to break free of his hold, but to no avail. “Stop it, Spence.”
“Ah, but it’s not Spence we’re talking about, is it? It’s Broken Hand. Are you going to like it when he touches you here?” He squeezed her breast gently, then slid his hand down, down, to cup the core of her heat through the layers of her skirt. “Or here?”
LaRisa bucked against his hand. No man had ever touched her there! She wanted to be outraged. She wanted to scream, to curse. All she could do was close her eyes and make a sound in her throat that sounded suspiciously close to a whimper of pleasure. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Spence opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. Hell if he knew why. Maybe because it was just so damned hard to keep his hands off her.
The admission burned in his brain. He released her instantly. “Go back to camp. I’ll follow in a few minutes. It wouldn’t do for anyone to know you’d been alone with either me or Broken Hand. Things like that just aren’t done here. Go on.”
She didn’t pause. She turned and fled.
LaRisa ran until she reached the edge of the woods. There she paused to catch her breath and calm her racing heart. Perhaps if she concentrated hard enough, her blood would cool and she could stop feeling again Spence’s hand on her breast…and lower.
The pleasure of it, the way his touch made her loins throb and ache with a peculiar emptiness…she could not allow herself to feel these things. Not for Spence, who would leave any day. Not for a man she would never see again.
Never.
The word echoed in her heart. It was true. Never in her life would she see Spencer Colton again when he left the stronghold. There was no reason for him to come back, and LaRisa would undoubtedly spend the rest of her days on this shelf of red earth that measured smaller than the prison camp at Alabama.
This was her freedom? In this place, among strangers, her heart was supposed to sing? The only time her heart had ever come close to singing was when Spence touched her.
Stop it. She
would be fine. She would love it here. No bluecoats. No white people ordering her around, looking down their noses at her dark skin.
No Spence.
She made herself face his loss squarely. But loss wasn’t the right word, for he had never been hers. She hadn’t wanted him to be. Still didn’t. Away from him, she could regain control of her emotions. She could…she could…
“LaRisa,” Nod-ah-Sti called. “There you are. Come. The celebration feast is about to begin.”
LaRisa swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Celebration feast? Is this a special occasion?”
“But of course! You have come to live with us.”
Spence kept his distance from LaRisa that evening. He didn’t trust himself to go near her after what he’d done that afternoon. What the hell was the matter with him? It seemed like every time he got around her he was touching or grabbing or kissing her. Sometimes all three.
Around her, he lost all sense. Around her, he wanted, like he didn’t remember ever wanting. Hell, admit it. She makes you hot.
As long as he was admitting things to himself, he admitted he wanted more. A damn sight more. He wanted all of her. Everything she had, everything she was. He wanted to warm himself in her fire. He wanted her laughter, her smiles, her teasing. He even wanted her pouts and tantrums. He wanted to be the man to turn all that anger inside her into a different kind of passion, the kind that would scorch a man to his soul and leave him begging for more.
But dammit, it was wrong. He was wrong…for her. Hell, there were times when he couldn’t even take care of himself. How could he promise to take care of her? She needed a man she could count on, a man with a whole mind, a whole body. His mind was filled with the deaths of so many of her people. His body carried a sickness that would have any woman he tied himself to tending him like he was a baby.
He didn’t want that for LaRisa. Didn’t want it for himself.
Besides, he thought, taking a sip of tiswin, there was no guarantee she wanted anything to do with him.
The tiswin was as foul-tasting as Serena had warned. “The most awful home-brew you’ll ever taste,” she’d told him. Thick and yeasty, it went down hard and packed a punch.
On the other side of the central campfire, LaRisa laughed at something Niño said.
Spence turned away and took a bigger swallow from the gourd. Dee-O-Det began the nightly story-telling, but Spence had trouble concentrating. After the old man finished recounting a tale of the first Apaches to ride horses when the Spaniards came, another old man began to speak. “I will tell how The People came to have fire for warmth and light. Did you know it was brought to us by The Trickster?”
The Trickster. The coyote. Spence had heard the tale a dozen times while growing up. It was one of Pace’s favorites.
He wandered toward the rear of the crowd, away from the warmth and light of the bonfire. No fire could reach the cold inside him, no light could brighten the darkness he carried in his soul.
Broken Hand was hanging around the fringes of the gathering, his narrowed gaze watching LaRisa where she sat with a group of young men and women. Spence didn’t care for the look in the man’s eyes.
When Broken Hand met Spence’s gaze, the man grinned—slowly, tauntingly. Spence didn’t like his grin, either. He turned back toward the storyteller.
“…and he ran and he ran, and his burning tail set fire to everything it touched. And that is how The People first had fire.”
A gnarled hand clamped down on Spence’s shoulder with surprising strength. “It is my turn to make sure no deer are bedded down in the garden for the night,” Dee-O-Det said to him. “Come, walk with an old man.”
Spence followed the shaman away from the firelight and voices and into the quiet darkness toward the garden a quarter-mile away.
“Are you cold?” Spence asked.
Dee-O-Det hitched his new blanket around his shoulders and grinned. “No.” He stroked the nubby fabric. “Formidable enemies, the Navajo. They weave good blankets, too. But I will tell you a secret—it was more fun to fight them and steal their blankets than it is to have one given as a gift.”
Spence chuckled, as he was expected to do.
“You have brought a lovely young woman to us, Spen-cer.”
Spence had no response for that. She was lovely, she was young, and he had brought her.
“What I am wondering is, why have you brought her?”
The crickets were louder here, away from the camp. “I told you why. She needs a home, a place where she can live free and build a life.”
“You think she can do that here?”
“She thinks she can. It’s her decision, not mine.”
The old man stopped at the brush fence and looked out over the moonlit garden. “I notice you did not answer my question.”
“It’s not my question to answer.”
“You say the white man’s laws in Arizona will not let her live there?”
“That’s right. She can’t live alone. She would have to marry or live under someone’s protection.”
“In times past, the Col-tons did not worry about the white man’s laws when they wanted to help The People.” Dee-O-Det let out a long sigh. “Times, they do change.”
“It’s not like that,” Spence said defensively. “LaRisa could have stayed at the Triple C. She asked to come here.”
“I see. And you will leave her here when you go?”
Spence raised his face to the sky. A million stars looked back. “If it is what she wishes.”
“Even if it is not what she needs?”
In the moonlit shadows, it was impossible to read the shaman’s expression. “What do you think she needs?”
The old man shook his head. “It is not for me to say. I will say, though, that I see trouble ahead. For all of us.”
“Because of her?”
“Because she is strong. Because the one called Broken Hand cannot take his eyes from her, and neither can young Niño. And she will not have either of them.”
“Niño’s a good man.”
“Yes. And wise beyond his years. Wise enough to hold a fiery woman like LaRisa…? We would hate to lose him in a fight with a seasoned warrior. A fight over a woman.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want her here? That you want me to take her with me when I leave?”
“I am telling you nothing, Spen-cer. I am just an old man who likes to talk. Come. Let us return. There are no deer in the garden tonight.”
The story-telling was over, and people were saying good night, making their way toward their wickiups to turn in. LaRisa searched the darkness where Spence and Dee-O-Det had disappeared and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw them approaching.
She walked with Nod-ah-Sti and Niño toward their wickiup and went inside. Spence ducked through the doorway a few moments later.
Nod-ah-Sti studied his face closely. “Is there something wrong, Spen-cer?”
“No.” He smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “I must tell you how much I have enjoyed my stay with you. You’ve been kind to take me in these past two days.”
“You talk as though you are leaving.”
LaRisa stiffened.
Spence darted a glance at her, then looked back to Nod-ah-Sti. “Yes. Tomorrow. At first light.”
LaRisa fought the sense of panic that threatened. Fought it, yet felt it rise up in her throat. She turned away and climbed into her bedroll to keep from protesting his decision.
Spence ground his teeth. He’d expected a reaction of some kind, but not that she would simply turn her back and go to bed. To hell with her, then. If she didn’t care any more than that, he would leave tomorrow. At first light.
Chapter Fifteen
Spence tightened the cinch on his saddle and refused to search again through the crowd for LaRisa. She’d left the wickiup before he or the others woke. She couldn’t make it any plainer that she was through with him. He’d served his purpose in getting her away from Alabama and bringin
g her here. Now she could get on with her life.
He gave another tug on the cinch.
“Which animal do you wish for your packs?” Niño asked. He, too, kept looking around, and Spence knew he was looking for LaRisa.
“I don’t need a pack animal. The mules were meant for you and your people. The extra horses, too, except LaRisa’s. The mare belongs to her.”
A young girl rushed up to Niño’s side. “I cannot find her, Niño. She is not in camp.”
“Thank you, little one.”
Spence raised a brow.
“Do you want me to look more?” the girl asked, her big, black eyes practically worshiping the young chief.
“No, child. I will find her myself. Thank you.”
“Let it go, Niño,” Spence said.
“No. She must tell you good-bye. She must watch you leave.”
“There is no need.”
“There is every need. She is a woman a man could build a life with. I will not have your spirit haunt her and stand in my way. You will wait while I find her. She will look you in the eye and tell you good-bye. Then it will be finished between you.”
Spence unhooked the stirrup from the saddle horn and lowered it in place. He raised his gaze to meet Niño’s. “There is nothing to finish.”
“Do you lie to me, or to yourself, Spen-cer? Or do you not know how she follows you with her eyes? If she cannot tell you good-bye, she will not be able to tell me hello. You will wait. I will find her.”
Niño was practically asking Spence to hand her over to him. And dammit, he was going to do just that. Then the choice would be LaRisa’s. “No,” Spence said with a sigh. “I’ll find her.”
The young man before him gave him a solemn nod. “It is good.”
LaRisa had slipped out of the wickiup long before first light and made her way down the shadowy path to the pool. She needed time to herself, time to get control of her emotions. She had no idea how she would be able to stand before Spence and tell him good-bye.
It had sounded so simple when she’d asked him to bring her here. They would be free of each other. She would be free of the many troubling things he made her feel. Heat and longing, anger and frustration. She would have control of herself again.
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