Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “You do that,” Pace said, noting the cattle tracks beyond the fence, “and I’ll check those hills beyond and see if I can scare up the getaways.”

  With a nod of agreement, Enrique rode back for a new fence post. Pace secured the barbed wire to the ground so his horse wouldn’t get cut up going through it.

  He located three steers chowing down on the tall grass in the foothills. Three steers who let him know right off that they didn’t want to go home. Getting them back across the fence onto their own grass was hard, hot, dusty work.

  It had been a long time since Pace had worked cattle. He had missed it. Maybe one of these days he would start a small herd of his own on that rundown excuse for a ranch on the border that he’d won with a lousy pair of deuces.

  The cattle would be a sideline though, he thought, letting his mind drift to his old dream. What Pace did best was break and train horses. He was good at it, even if he did say so himself. Damn good. He’d love to get his hands on those half Arab, half mustang beauties his brother-in-law, Blake, was breeding down at Tres Colinas.

  They’d talked about it a few times over the years, he and Blake. About Pace working with Blake’s horses. But Tres Colinas was a bare half day’s ride south of the Triple C, and Pace hadn’t been ready or willing to settle down that close to Matt. With the exception of his occasional brief trips home, he’d never been willing to expose his parents and the rest of the family on an ongoing basis to the animosity that sizzled in the air whenever he and Matt got within a day of each other.

  But Pace had known for some time that his attitude about Matt had been wrong. He just hadn’t been able to figure out how to fix things between them.

  By the time he had the last steer back onto Triple C land, Enrique still wasn’t back, so Pace propped the fence post up the best he could, then waited.

  A short time later a wagon came into view. Matt was driving it. No one was with him.

  “Well, hell,” Pace muttered. Matt looked like a man who had something to say. Pace waited until his stepbrother pulled the wagon to a stop and climbed down. “Got something on your mind, Matthew?”

  Matt’s eyes narrowed. With gloved fists propped on his hips, he snarled. “That chip on your shoulder just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

  The comment was typical of most confrontations between Matt and Pace. Pace’s typical response was to challenge Matt to do something about it. You’re welcome to knock it off, if you think you’re big enough. This time, however, the angry words would not come. “Ah, to hell with it.” He circled the wagon and hauled out the shovel. “I came out here to fix a fence, not to fight with you.”

  “There’s a first,” Matt grumbled. “You not wanting to pick a fight with me.”

  “Yeah, well get used to it.” Pace rammed the shovel into the ground at the base of the broken fence post. “I’m tired of fighting with you.”

  Surprised, wary, Matt slowly lowered his hands to his sides. “Since when?”

  Pace bit back another sarcastic comment. What the hell. Matt wouldn’t believe him, but there wouldn’t be a better time to say what needed to be said. With one foot on the shovel, Pace braced his hands on the end of the handle and, unable to meet Matt’s penetrating stare, looked off toward the hills. “Since I realized the real reason I thought I hated you.”

  Matt felt everything inside him go still. “Thought you hated me? You’ve hated me for nearly fifteen years and we both know it.”

  Still facing away, Pace shook his head. “I was jealous.”

  “Of me?” Matt demanded, incredulous. “In God’s name, Pace, for what?”

  The call of a quail floated on the hot air, then repeated twice before settling into silence. Finally Pace spoke.

  “I’d never been alone. Not really alone. Even before I was born, Serena was there. We shared the same womb, and afterward, the same nursery, same cradleboard, the same milk from the same breast. We ate each other’s food, played with each other’s toys, shared each other’s thoughts. We didn’t even have to speak to have a conversation. You remember what it was like for us, always together, just a little bit different from everyone else because of our mixed blood.

  “Even when we grew older and our interests became different, she was always there in my mind. I could always reach her, and she me, whenever there was a thought to share.

  “I knew from the time we were eight years old that she loved you as something more than a brother.”

  Matt’s heart thundered inside his chest. He knew everything Pace was saying, understood it well. But Pace had never spoken this way to him, had never revealed himself this way.

  “When Angela died,” Pace went on, “I knew what was in Rena’s heart. I felt her struggle every day to deny her feelings for you. Even when she went to Tombstone to drag you home, she was still inside me, I could still feel her, hear her, but it was different. She started shutting me out.

  “Can you imagine what that’s like? Part of your own mind and heart turning away from you? The closer the two of you became, the less time Serena had for me, the less room in her heart. Then the two of you married, and there was nothing. I could not reach her with my mind from that day on.

  “All my life, her voice was inside me. Until you. I was left with silence. With nothing. She was the other half of my soul, and suddenly she wasn’t there anymore. I couldn’t blame her, she was following her heart. But I had to blame someone.”

  “I know,” Matt said quietly with a surprising, embarrassing ache in his throat.”

  Pace faced him then. “You know?”

  “I think maybe I’ve always known.”

  “Then you’re a smarter man than I am,” Pace admitted wryly. “All I knew was anger. For years. But lately…”

  “How lately?” Matt asked suspiciously.

  One corner of Pace’s mouth crooked up. “Rest easy, shik’is, Joanna had nothing to do with it. I’ve known for years that you were the best thing that ever happened to Serena.”

  “For years?”

  Pace shrugged. “I just never knew how to tear down that wall I’d built between us. I never have figured that out. But I was saddling up to come home and give it a try when I got Rena’s telegram at Fort Sill.”

  “So you decided that I wasn’t an evil seducer of innocent little girls, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So that made Joanna fair game.”

  Pace stiffened. “I told you, Joanna had nothing to do with it. Leave her out of this.”

  “The hell I will.”

  “So now I’m the evil seducer of innocent little girls? You’re as wrong about that as I was about you,” Pace told him.

  Matt struggled to rein in the anger that rose every time he thought of Pace and Joanna. “Are you going to hurt her again?”

  Pace ground his teeth and turned back to his shovel. “Probably. I seem to be damn good at it.”

  “You hurt her again, so help me God, I’ll finish what Juerta started.”

  “Don’t look to me for an argument.” Pace jammed the shovel back into the ground. “I’d be the last person to blame you.”

  Matt strode over and jerked on the fence post while Pace pried at its base below the ground. “What are you going to do?” Matt asked. “Are you going to leave her again?”

  Pace leaned his weight onto the shovel handle, but the stubborn post refused to budge. He eased up, repositioned the blade, and dug deeper. “You say that like you think I should stay.”

  The muscles in Matt’s shoulders and arms bulged with effort as he tried to loosen the post. “She wants you to stay.”

  “You realize, don’t you,” Pace said, straining, again using the shovel as a lever, “that with me married to Jo, that makes you my father-in-law. Daddy.”

  “Shit,” Matt muttered not quite under his breath as the fence post sprang free from the ground.

  “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  When Joanna woke for the second time that day, she w
as alone. Pace and the baby were gone. For a moment, her heart raced with panic before she realized the baby was probably asleep in the nursery across the hall. Pace…

  Was he still here, or had he left her again?

  With a frantic need to know, she struggled to rise. To her dismay, she found that she was as weak as a kitten. It took all her strength just to sit up. When she tried to scoot to the edge of the bed, the soreness between her legs surprised a cry from her.

  While she sat there catching her breath, wondering if she was going to be able to get up at all, the door opened and Daniella carried the baby to her side.

  Joanna leaned back against the pillows and took him eagerly in her arms. Holding him felt so natural, as if her arms had been made for that purpose. When he stuck a tiny fist in his mouth, she smiled.

  “He told me he was hungry,” Daniella said with a laugh.

  Joanna ignored the sound of bootsteps coming down the hall and placed the baby to her breast. She wasn’t the least self-conscious about nursing him in front of others, and secretly she hoped the footsteps were Pace’s.

  The footsteps were Pace’s. He stopped and leaned in the doorway.

  “Come in,” Joanna invited awkwardly.

  With his hat in his hand, he looked down at himself. “I’m too dirty.”

  Matt joined him in the doorway. “If you’d listened to me about that second fence post, you wouldn’t have ended up face down in the dirt. Hi, Pumpkin. I heard you finally got tired of sleeping. How’s the little fellow doing?”

  “He’s fine,” she offered with a tentative smile. Pace and her father had been working together? Tension tightened her shoulders. She always got nervous when those two were near each other.

  “If you hadn’t left the first post laying around for me to trip on,” Pace muttered, “I wouldn’t have ended up face down in the dirt. I think you enjoyed that.”

  “Of course I did.”

  Joanna glanced at her grandmother and saw her looking warily at the two men, as if she, too, excepted fireworks to erupt.

  Matt grunted at Pace, then ignored him and spoke to Joanna. “So, does my grandson—whew, that’s going to take some getting used to. Grandson, by God. Does he have a name yet?” He looked from Joanna to Pace.

  Startled, Pace looked to Joanna.

  It was obvious to her that he hadn’t thought about a name for the baby. That hurt Joanna deeply. He hadn’t planned on coming back, she knew that. He hadn’t planned on being part of their son’s life. Did something as important as their child’s name mean so little to him?

  “What do you think, Firefly?”

  Damn tears, she thought fiercely. All it took was hearing him call her Firefly, and her vision blurred, her heart rolled over, and she knew instinctively that whatever name they chose was important to him, but he was leaving the decision up to her.

  Pace’s words from that day in the canyon, when he had sent her to freedom and stayed behind, seemed to echo in her head. He is my only chance to live.

  Pace had known he probably wouldn’t live, but he’d been wrong. He had survived and come back to her. Then he had left her. He was back again, but she wasn’t fool enough to believe she could hold him.

  She had finally come to believe that all of his talk of what was best for her was only Pace fooling himself. Pace Colton was never meant to be tamed. He was a wild, burning flame, a prairie fire racing the wind, never to be controlled.

  He probably had not admitted it to himself, but somewhere inside he had recognized that she was the rain that could destroy him. She could not ask him to stay.

  If Pace left her again—when he left her, she corrected—this child would be all she had of the man she loved. Her only chance to hang on to a portion of all she and Pace had shared. Holding Pace’s gaze steadily, she said, “His name is Chance.”

  Pace felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He knew she was remembering his words to her that day in the canyon. She could have no idea that they were even more true today than then. This child was his only chance to leave something worthwhile behind. The only child he would ever sire.

  Grimly, he gave a single nod of approval. “Nzhú,” he said quietly. “It is good. Chance it is.”

  After sleeping for two days Joanna was wide awake that night long after the rest of the house was dark and quiet. Pace had not come to bed. He’d been asleep beside her when she had awakened that afternoon, but Serena had mentioned just before dinner that he’d been sleeping in the chair next to Joanna’s bed.

  Wondering where he was tonight, she rolled onto her side and saw a thin stream of light under her door. She knew Gran would have made certain the hall lamps were out before going to bed. Was someone in the nursery across the hall?

  Joanna had felt stronger since she’d eaten dinner. Ignoring the pain between her legs, she got out of bed and slipped her robe on over her nightgown. Her legs trembled, but seemed steady enough. When she opened her bedroom door, the hall was indeed dark, as she knew it would be. The light was coming from underneath the nursery door.

  Quietly, she pushed the door open, stepped inside, then closed it behind her. Pace stood over the crib, his back to the door, looking down at their son. She knew he’d heard her come in, yet he did not turn to face her, nor did he say anything.

  “You’re leaving again.”

  Pace slid his eyes closed and gripped the side of the crib until his knuckles turned white. Her words, the aching certainty in her voice, pierced him like a dull knife. When finally he turned and faced her he saw those same emotions, pain and certainty, in her eyes.

  Her breath hitched once, then she lowered her eyes and swallowed. “I understand.”

  “No, Firefly, I don’t think you do.”

  “Yes.” The sad little smile she gave broke what was left of his heart. “I understand that you can’t be tied down. I know you have to feel free to pick up and go wherever the wind blows. That’s how you’ve always lived your life. I know I don’t have whatever it is you need to make you happy.”

  “You don’t have…?” Good God, he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t let her think his leaving was due to some lack within her. God help him, he couldn’t do that to her.

  “Joanna, you made me happier in one afternoon in the desert than I ever dreamed possible. I didn’t know a man could feel the things you made me feel.”

  “Things you don’t want to feel again?”

  “Things I would give my right arm and both my legs to feel again! You and this baby are the only reasons I’m even alive. I would have died in that canyon if you hadn’t come back for me. I would have died in the stronghold—no, dammit, I did die. You brought me back. I gave up hope of ever walking again, but you bullied me until I walked anyway. It’s not you. You have to believe that, Jo. You are my life.”

  She looked at him like a lost, forlorn child, but she was a woman. A woman whose man was leaving her, and she didn’t understand. “Then why?” she cried.

  “Because I’m impotent!”

  Joanna stared in shock. Impotent? Pace, impotent? She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to make sense of what he’d just said. When she opened them an instant later, Pace was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She had lost Pace for good this time. Joanna felt it in her bones.

  “I don’t understand,” Daniella said for the dozenth time in the weeks since Pace had disappeared. “I thought things were better. He adored the baby, he made a peace of sorts with Matt, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off you,” she said to Joanna. “I don’t understand why he would leave. Surely he’ll be back soon.”

  “No, Gran,” Joanna said softly. She looked down at the child in her arms and knew that this was the only part of Pace she would ever have. Pace would never be able to face her after telling her the truth. Joanna hadn’t lived on a ranch, surrounded by hard working, hard fighting men, without learning something about the way a man’s mind worked. She knew that as far as Pace was concerned, if what he had between his
legs didn’t function, he wasn’t a man.

  She couldn’t pretend to understand why men thought that way, but she knew they did. A year ago last spring one of Spence’s patients had hanged himself when he recovered from being gored by a bull and realized that, at least in his own eyes, his manhood had been destroyed.

  An icy shivered raked her. Please God, don’t let Pace do anything so foolish.

  Didn’t he know that she wouldn’t love him less simply because parts of him no longer worked the way they used to?

  No, she thought with resignation. He didn’t know. He would never know, because he would never give her the chance to convince him. He’d been gone more than a month.

  “He won’t be back,” she murmured. “Not this time. He has his reasons.”

  “What reasons?” Matt demanded. “Damn his hide. Divorce him, Jo. Divorce his ass and find yourself a man who’ll treat you like you deserve.”

  Joanna placed Chance in his crib, then ushered everyone out of the nursery and closed the door. In the hall, she stood on tiptoe and kissed her father’s cheek. “I know you say it because you love me, but I won’t divorce him, Daddy. And I won’t hear another bad word spoken about him. He did what he had to do. It’s between Pace and me.”

  Matt ground his teeth in anger. “Are you telling me to butt out?”

  Joanna forced a smile. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I’m glad we agree. Good night, Daddy. Good night, everybody.”

  She made it into her room and closed the door before her eyes filled with tears. Angrily, she dashed the tears away. She was tired of moping about the house, tired of being on the verge of crying all day, every day.

  But she dreaded going to bed. The dreams were plaguing her again, dreams of Pace, of his hands touching her bare flesh, his lips following. Dreams of what it had been like to be loved by him, so hot and fierce, yet so gentle. Sometimes the ache inside her was so bad she had to bury her face in her pillow to muffle her groan of desire. Would she never stop wanting him?

  She wondered if he ever felt the way she did. If he remembered what it had been like between the two of them. If he did, then knowing he could never do anything about it must be sheer agony. It was for her, yet all she lacked was him. What he lacked must be so much worse.