Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “Maybe.” He removed his spurs, then jammed a heel into the bootjack. “Doesn’t seem to matter what either one of us wanted now, does it?”

  LaRisa eyed him like she might a rattler ready to strike. “What do you mean by that?”

  Spence pulled off his second boot and set the pair beside the jack. Then he started toward her, one deliberate step at a time, even knowing he should run the other way. “We don’t seem to have any legal grounds left for an annulment, do we?”

  At the look in his eyes, LaRisa backed away. “You don’t mean that. Surely you don’t think that just because we…we…”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. What other grounds would we have? Neither of us lied. We gave our real names. You weren’t underage. Neither of us was already married. We’re not related by blood. We had a witness. It was a legal ceremony and was duly recorded.” He stepped closer. “What’s left?”

  She backed up another step and ran into the bed. “Dammit, Spence, just because we…we mated…I never said I’d changed my mind about anything else. Neither did you, for that matter.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that if you’d realized it meant no annulment, you would have told me to stop?”

  Oooh, how she longed to wipe that smirk off his face. “If you think—”

  “We can’t exactly take it back, you know. I can’t make you a virgin again. I wouldn’t if I could. We’re damn good together, you and me. Admit it.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she demanded, her cheeks flushed.

  “Doing what?” he asked smoothly.

  “Trying to make me believe you want me.”

  “Because I do want you. I think I’ve made that clear enough lately.”

  “Oh, you want me just fine in the dark of night. But in the daylight, you look like you’d just as soon snap my head off as talk to me.”

  He moved closer, so close his legs brushed against her skirt and his heat engulfed her. “It’s daylight now. And while I can think of better things to do than talk, snapping your head off is not one of them.” He snatched a pin from her hair.

  “Stop that.” She swatted at his hand.

  He snatched another pin, then another. “Yeah,” he said as he plucked more pins. “Last night I wanted you in the dark of night. Right now I want you in the light of day.”

  His words, the look in his eyes, his blatant aggression, sent heat and moisture pooling deep and low inside her. Heaven help her. “Don’t do this, Spence.”

  “Don’t make love to my wife?”

  “I don’t want—” Her words ended in a sharp gasp as he brushed a knuckle across the tip of her breast. Her nipple instantly beaded in response. Her pulse leaped out of control.

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “This—” He cupped her breast in his hand. “—tells me you want me.”

  As she felt her breast swell to fill his palm, she glared at him defiantly. “Maybe I don’t want to want you.”

  He flicked the buttons of her blouse open and reached for bare flesh. “I don’t think I want to want you either. There doesn’t seem to be a hell of a lot either one of us can do about it, does there?”

  As his lips neared hers, she expected anger from him, a demand that she surrender. Blatant possession. Instead, his lips met hers softly, gently. So tenderly, LaRisa felt her eyes sting. She was lost to the wonder of it. “No,” she whispered, reaching her arms around his neck. “There doesn’t.”

  Spence felt her melt against him, and the tension inside him eased. This time…this time he would love her slowly. He would take his time and savor every sensation, drawing each new peak to its limit one step at a time. He would show her that he could be gentle.

  LaRisa was enthralled with the lazy way Spence lowered her to the bed, the agonizing amount of time he spent just taking off her clothes. Her blood flowed thick and heavy, like warm honey. His blue eyes darkened and held her mesmerized. When she would have ripped and torn to have their flesh touch, he soothed her and eased her and drew it all out until she was practically sobbing with wanting him.

  Then he joined their bodies, and she knew a completeness she felt at no other time than when he was inside her. They danced together, a slow waltz toward heaven, one beautiful beat at a time. And when they crested, the earth trembled. Then they drifted back down and slept in each others arms.

  LaRisa woke sometime later to find Spence’s head resting heavily between her breasts. A lump of pure emotion swelled painfully in her throat. Again, the word love whispered through her mind. Again, panic welled in its wake. Again, she pushed the frightening word away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Joanna asked.

  LaRisa grabbed the corner of the clean bottom sheet Joanna tossed her and tucked it tightly beneath the mattress on Will’s bed. “Talk about what?”

  “About whatever’s going on with you and Spence.”

  “Nothing’s going on with us.” LaRisa smoothed out her side of the top sheet and waited for Joanna to do the same.

  “That’s my point. When you left for Mexico, you didn’t plan to come back. Then you come back, the two of you sleep in the same room—no cot, this time, I might add—not that it’s any of my business. But between the two of you, you haven’t said more than ten words to anyone since you got home yesterday.”

  Together the two women tucked in the foot of the top sheet and moved to shake the pillows down into clean pillowcases.

  “I guess we’ve just both got a lot on our minds.”

  Joanna snapped the blanket out and let it settle over the sheet. “Like what to do about your annulment?”

  LaRisa flinched involuntarily. “I guess.”

  They finished with Will’s bed and moved to change the linens on Russ’s.

  “What are you going to do?” Joanna asked.

  “I…don’t know.” That was as honest as she could be. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t stay married to Spence. Around him, everything was too…intense, too volatile. She was too volatile.

  “Well, of course you can stay here. You know that.”

  Yes, LaRisa thought, but not if she decided to leave Spence.

  If? She meant when. When she decided to leave him.

  The man she now shared a room with wasn’t the same man who had come to Carlisle to take her to her father. He wasn’t the same man who decided to honor a dying man’s request by bringing her to Arizona. He wasn’t even the same man who had agreed to take her to Mexico.

  When had he changed? Why?

  He’d been different the day he’d forced her to leave Mexico with him. Different still, later that night, when they made love for the first time. Was that it? He’d said yesterday that he didn’t want to want her. Did he resent her because of his own feelings?

  Yesterday afternoon in their bedroom…she still tingled at the memory of how gentle he’d been. Then last night, he had loved her again, frantically, as if she were his heart’s desire and they had been apart for months.

  But she wasn’t his heart’s desire, and he wasn’t hers. Her heart’s desire was freedom.

  “Mac, this is a surprise.” Spence stepped back from the front door and ushered the doctor inside. “What brings you out this way?”

  Doctor Mac ambled into the entry hall and shook Spence’s hand. “Had to go out to the Vargas place and set little Sylvia’s leg. Heard you were back. Thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

  “Word travels fast.” Spence eyed his old mentor warily. That was no casual stop-by-and-say-hello look Mac wore. “We just got home yesterday.”

  One bushy gray brow shot up. “We?”

  Spence stilled. The word we had rolled off his tongue as naturally as if he’d been pairing himself and LaRisa together for years. As if they had always been, would always be together. As if they were a team. A couple. Husband and wife. And it felt right. It scared the hell out of him. “LaRisa and I,” he told Mac.

  Sure, he’d told LaRisa yesterday that they had n
o grounds for an annulment. But even then, he hadn’t realized exactly what that meant. They truly were husband and wife. The part that made is throat tighten was, he realized that he wanted them to be.

  “So, you’re still married?” Mac asked.

  Still stunned over his own revelation, still wary over what Mac wanted, Spence nodded. Of course, he thought, if LaRisa had her way, they wouldn’t be. “Come on in and have a seat. I’ll go tell the others you’re here.”

  “Don’t bother the others,” Mac said. “As much as I’m dying to meet this wife of yours, there’s something I’d like to talk with you about first.”

  Spence pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Just thought you’d stop in and say hello, huh?”

  “I said hello, didn’t I?”

  “More or less.” Spence went to the liquor cabinet, lifted the decanter of bourbon and gestured with it toward Mac.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Mac dropped his dusty frame onto the sofa.

  Spence poured them each and drink and took the chair next to Mac. “What’s on your mind?”

  “My oldest granddaughter’s wedding.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My oldest granddaughter is getting married in Denver in a few weeks. I’d like to go. Maybe stay and visit with my daughter for a while. Haven’t taken time off work in three years or more. Thought now’d be a good time.”

  Suspicion crawled up Spence’s spine. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Well, now, what do you think? I need somebody to fill in for me. Hector Gonzales can’t handle it all. Besides, you know how folks are. Some of my patients would rather croak than let a Mexican touch them, no matter how good he is.”

  Fill in for him? Spence suppressed a shiver mixed with equal parts of denial, trepidation, and eagerness. The eagerness stunned him. When he’d left Alabama, he’d never intended to practice medicine again. He’d had no desire to. No enthusiasm, no confidence left inside him. But now…Was this feeling of possibilities that stirred inside him LaRisa’s doing? Did he dare pursue it?

  “Mac, I…”

  “Think about it, son.” Mac leaned his bony elbows on his knobby knees. “This might be what you need to help you decide if you really want to give it all up. You’ve never had a regular practice. You went to the Apaches, instead. This type of medicine is different. We don’t see much serious disease these days. Not like you did in Alabama. Sometimes we get somebody who’s moved out here from the East to help their tuberculosis. Now and then somebody comes down with malaria. I won’t kid you about that. But mostly it’s delivering babies, digging out bullets, setting bones, or patching up fools who drink too much and fall of their horses or get into fights. Certainly nothing you can’t handle.”

  “Mac, I appreciate your faith in me, but I don’t know.”

  Mac sat back and relaxed. “Well, you didn’t give me an outright no. That’s something. Why don’t you think about it? If I’m going, I need to leave next week.”

  “If you’re going?”

  Mac shrugged. “Got three babies due over the next month. I can’t just leave, now, can I? And there’s little Marthy up there in Denver—did I tell you they named her after my dear, departed Marthy?—there she is up there wantin’ her old granddad to come to her wedding, and here I am…”

  Spence rolled his eyes. “I get the idea, Mac.”

  “You’ll do it, then?”

  Spence didn’t know. He didn’t know if he wanted to, if he should. Right now there was doubt in him. Doubt that his decision when he’d left Alabama had been the right one. If he filled in for Mac, he would have his answer. He would know one way or the other—was he still a doctor, or wasn’t he?

  On a heavy swallow, he admitted to himself that maybe, just maybe, he was afraid to find out.

  Then again, he didn’t want to let the old man down, even if Mac was applying emotional blackmail. It was only temporary. A few weeks. And Spence certainly owed him. If it hadn’t been for Mac, Spence’s admittance into medical school could have taken years longer.

  Memories swamped him. Memories of the two years he’d spent as Mac’s shadow, following him around like an eager pup. So much of what Spence knew about medicine, about relating to people, he’d learned from Mac. From Mac he’d caught the fever and excitement of being able to help others. Of making a difference in his own corner of the world.

  Maybe taking care of Mac’s patients for a few weeks was exactly what Spence needed to get back the old enthusiasm. Or maybe he would learn during that time that he was truly finished as a doctor. That his heart was no longer in it.

  The thought was sobering. But the trepidation was slowly edged out by the surprisingly strong sense of…excitement. This would be his chance to see if having his own practice in a town would be any different from one in a prison camp.

  But could he be any more effective here than he’d been in Alabama?

  At least he wouldn’t have to worry about his malaria while Mac was gone. The next relapse wouldn’t hit for months.

  He smiled wryly to himself. If he filled in for Mac and liked it, and decided to open up his own practice, LaRisa would gloat for a month of Sundays.

  LaRisa. God, what was he going to do about LaRisa?

  The only thing he knew was, he wasn’t ready to let her go.

  He shook his head. “I’ll have to think about it, Mac. I’d like to help you out, but I’m not sure if I’m the right man for the job.”

  “Hell, son, right now you’re the only man available. There just isn’t anybody else. And I can’t leave these people with only one doctor. One isn’t enough for a population this large, and you know it. Oh, for a few days it would be okay, so don’t be thinking your malaria would be a problem. Hell, between Hector and me, we have our share of spells when we have to cover for each other. Happens all the time. But I’ll be gone several weeks. For that, we need help.”

  Later that afternoon, LaRisa gathered dust rags, beeswax, and lemon oil and headed for the study, which was usually empty this time of day. Today, it wasn’t.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I can come back later.”

  Spence turned from the window toward the doorway, where she stood. “No, that’s all right. Actually, I’d like to talk with you if you have a few minutes.”

  LaRisa took a slow breath and let it out. This was her chance to say something that needed saying. She placed her armload of cleaning items on the small table next to the sofa. “All right, but I’d like to say something first. I want to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For what happened the other day when we left Bisbee. I said some things…I was being unfair, and I’m sorry. I acted like a…”

  His lips quirked. “A shrew?”

  “You’re being generous,” she said with chagrin. “The word I had in mind was bitch.”

  Spence chuckled and shook his head. “Okay, a bitch. I won’t argue with you on that. But,” he said, turning serious, “I don’t think you should apologize. I think maybe the things you said were things I needed to hear.”

  LaRisa’s breath caught. “You do?”

  He nodded and wandered across the room. “I do.” He closed the door. “The timing was right, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mac was here this morning.”

  “The doctor from town?”

  Spence nodded. “He needs to leave for a few weeks. He’s asked me to fill in for him. It’s just temporary,” he added hastily. “Just until he gets back from Denver.”

  LaRisa’s heart gave a hard thud, then raced at twice its normal speed. If he could get back his medicine…“And?”

  His negligent shrug was at odds with the tension in his voice. “And…I’m going to do it.”

  Everything in her stilled. “Do you mean it? Are you sure?”

  Spence gave a firm nod. “I’m sure.”

  Emotion clogged her throat. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She flew across the room and
hugged him tight.

  Her reaction surprised Spence. He’d expected some flippant remark or maybe even a cold shoulder turned his way, but what he saw in her eyes and felt in her arms was genuine, deep emotion. He held her against him and the rightness of it shook him.

  She buried her face against his chest. “Oh, Spence, I’m so proud of you. I know it couldn’t have been easy, but you made the right decision, you’ll see. I just know it.”

  Spence tilted her face up and frowned. “What’s this? Tears?” He wiped them away with his thumbs.

  Her smile nearly took his breath away. “Happy tears.” She gave an embarrassed sniff and moved out of his arms. “When do you start?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I need to go into town and talk to him.”

  LaRisa’s happiness turned bittersweet with the realization that Spence would be moving to town. She’d said she wanted to be free of him. It looked like her chance was coming. “I suppose if everything works out, you might think about opening your own practice in Tucson?”

  “Who knows? Maybe. Come sit down.” He motioned toward the sofa. “There’s something else we need to talk about.”

  “This sounds ominous,” she said in a feeble attempt at humor.

  “It’s serious enough, I suppose.”

  They sat at opposite ends of the sofa. Spence leaned his elbows on his knees and pressed his palms together. After a long moment, he turned his head toward her. “When I move into town, you’re coming with me.”

  “I…what are you talking about?” she asked slowly.

  Spence held her gaze. “I’m talking about what we talked about yesterday. We’re staying married. I don’t see any other choice. It makes sense, if you think about it. It would certainly solve the problem of where and how you’ll live. You’ll live with me, as my wife.”

  LaRisa stared at him, her mind gone blank. “Your wife?” Her foolish heart gave a sudden leap of joy, but she strove to keep the emotion from her voice. “For real?”

  “I would want our marriage to be real, yes. I guess it’s already pretty damn real, isn’t it?”

  “But…but you’ve always said you didn’t want a wife.”