Apache-Colton Series

by Janis Reams Hudson

  At least he had stayed. Thank God he had stayed.

  When Joanna woke the next morning, the sky was lighter than when she usually woke. She had overslept. It was odd that Chance hadn’t awakened her by demanding to be fed, since he, too, was normally an early riser. She always left her door and his open so she would be able to hear him, yet he had not awakened her this morning. Alarm propelled her out of bed. Was something wrong with Chance?

  She flew out of her room and across the hall to his, only to find his crib empty. For an instant, her mind froze in horror. He was only three months old! Where could he be? Not with Rosa—she didn’t come to the house this early. The routine the two women had established didn’t have Rosa showing up at what she called the Big House until mid morning. Where—

  Then Joanna remembered that Pace was there, and her heart started beating again. She found them downstairs in the kitchen. Pace, shirtless and barefoot, stood in the open back door sipping coffee and looking out, with Chance tucked securely in the crook of one arm.

  “There you are,” Joanna said. “Chance, shame on you. I told you not to come downstairs and wake your father.”

  Pace chuckled and turned around. One look at her, and he felt like he’d been kicked in the chest. Her unbound hair hung in waves down her back to her waist, with one thick strand enticingly draped beside her right breast. Her bare feet peeked out from the hem of a white nightgown that covered her from neck to knuckles, chin to toes, but was too damn sheer for Pace’s peace of mind. Her nipples and the dark vee at the juncture of her thighs beckoned him through the cloth. She was fifteen feet away, yet his mouth dried out and his heart raced.

  She cocked her head. A line formed between her eyebrows. “Pace?”

  He cleared his throat and looked down at Chance. “Don’t scold him, Mama. I didn’t mind when he came downstairs and demanded a cup of coffee. We thought you could use a little extra sleep.” Against his will, his eyes found her face again. “You look tired, Jo. You’ve been working too hard.”

  “It’s not the work,” she said with wry humor, “it’s your son. He sometimes gets hungry in the middle of the night, and he’s not shy about letting me know.”

  “Speaking of which…” Pace glanced down with a chuckle as the baby started nuzzling his chest. “Sorry, fella, you won’t like anything you find there.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Joanna crossed the room and lifted Chance from Pace’s arms, all the while letting her eyes roam Pace’s chest. To him, it felt as though she was touching him. “I liked what I found there.”

  Pace ignored the rising heat in his veins and gave her a cool look. “Don’t bother trying to seduce me, Jo. It won’t get either one of us anywhere.”

  Joanna blinked. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she protested. “I only meant I like your chest because it’s not all hairy like Daddy’s or Grandad’s, or every other man I’ve ever seen. I think it’s interesting that you inherited a white man’s beard, but an Indian’s hairless chest.”

  What the hell was a man supposed to make of a comment like that, Pace wondered. He didn’t know whether to feel like the object of a woman’s lustful fantasies, or a specimen in a zoo.

  “Could I?” Joanna asked quietly.

  “Could you what?”

  “Seduce you.”

  Pace didn’t answer her; he couldn’t. She could seduce him without even knowing it, without trying. All she had to do was cross his mind and he was ready to go to his knees and beg her favors. Favors he couldn’t return. Needs he couldn’t satisfy. Peace he could neither offer, nor find. Solace that was beyond his ability to give or take.

  He turned his back and stared out across the land, past the barn, corrals, and other structures, far out to beyond his vision. He’d been a fool to come here. An even bigger fool to stay.

  Behind him, he heard the brush of bare feet against the plank floor. “I’ll be down to cook breakfast as soon as I’ve fed Chance.”

  Work on the Triple C was light on Sundays, so Matt and Serena decided to ride down to Tres Colinas and bring Will and Russ home. They figured Blake had had about all the “help” he could handle from a twelve- and fourteen-year-old.

  To be fair, the boys new their way around horses, ranches, and all the chores entailed with both, and they were good workers. But they were still boys who needed supervision, and boys who occasionally forgot to act like young gentlemen. Neither Matt nor Serena wanted them to wear out their welcome with Jessie and Blake.

  They reached Tres Colinas just before noon. Blake greeted them near the corral. “Glad to see you. I got some news yesterday I think you might be interested in.”

  “What kind of news?” Matt asked as he gave Serena a hand down from her horse.

  “Word is, Pace is at Los Alamos with Jo.”

  “Thank God,” Serena whispered.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Matt said.

  Blake looked surprised. “You are?”

  Matt shrugged. “He’s Jo’s husband. He belongs with her.”

  Blake let out a low whistle. “Never thought I’d see the day when you’d say that. Have you two patched up your differences, then?”

  Slowly Matt nodded. “I think we have.”

  “Well, hot damn!” Then Blake frowned. “Does that mean you’re not looking for an excuse to pay them a visit?”

  “What kind of excuse?” Matt asked, not at all averse to the idea of checking on his daughter and Pace. Who knew if Pace would stay this time.

  “Pace and I have been talking for years about him training some of my horses. I figure on sending several head his way and see if he won’t consider taking them on.”

  Matt’s lips quirked. “You tryin’ to get him to settle down?”

  “Who, me?” Blake’s look was one of mock innocence.

  Matt and Serena laughed. “String up those horses,” Matt said. “How ‘bout it, Rena? You up for a ride?”

  “Only if we take the boys.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think Pace needs a dose of family, and you know once he’s around Will and Russ he turns to clay.”

  Matt swung an arm around her shoulders. “That’s why I married you, you know. For your devious, crafty mind.”

  “And I thought you were just after my share of the ranch.”

  In the couple of weeks Pace had been at Los Alamos, he had refused to let Joanna lift a finger outside the house. He insisted on doing everything himself. Without her urging, he even cleaned an old, rusted plow, hitched it to one of the wagon horses, and turned the soil in the abandoned garden at the edge of the cottonwoods. It was late in the year, but this far south many things could still be grown. If he couldn’t be a husband to her in the bedroom, the least he could do, he figured, was to take the burden of running the ranch off her shoulders.

  Fifty yards this side of the garden the previous owner had left a four-foot-tall stack of long logs piled between the trees. The whole pile needed to be moved back by the barn and corrals. He and Enrique would tackle that job once they caught up on other projects.

  Joanna had seemed pleased about the garden, but then, she practically gushed over everything he did, so he couldn’t be sure. She praised him so much, in fact, that it made him uneasy. She was much too agreeable, too. Not once since he’d agreed to stay had her voice sharpened or her eyes flashed. She stayed out of his way, fed him the best food he’d ever eaten, and agreed with everything he said.

  She was not the Joanna Colton he knew. She was a beautiful, polite…stranger.

  “I can’t thank you enough for plowing the garden,” she told him again as they sat down to supper that night.

  “You already thanked me,” he said tersely.

  “I know. I just wanted to thank you again.”

  “Don’t.”

  “What do you…what’s wrong, Pace.”

  “I don’t want you to thank me, dammit. I don’t want you to act so damn grateful every time I hammer in a nail or slap on a coat of paint. I don�
�t want you to agree with everything I say. I don’t want you to stand back and let me make all the decisions, especially when I know you don’t agree with half of them. I don’t want you to be so all fired nice all the time!”

  Joanna hung her head and fought back the urge to cry that never seemed to leave her since Pace’s arrival. Part of the urge to cry was from sheer relief. Being so “all fired nice all the time” was a constant struggle for her, but she’d done it in hopes Pace would see that she wouldn’t try to make his life miserable if he stayed.

  “I guess I was trying too hard,” she admitted.

  “Trying to what? Drive me to drink?”

  “Trying to convince you to stay and give our marriage a chance.”

  “We don’t have a marriage. When a man can’t make love to his wife, you can never have a marriage.”

  “We could try, Pace. Marriage is more than just what does or doesn’t happen in bed. Marriage is about sharing our lives with each other. It’s the good and the bad. Can’t we just try?”

  “You don’t try a marriage, dammit, you either have one or you don’t.”

  “And we’ve never had one, have we,” she stated rather than asked. “We had one day. One afternoon in a deserted barn in the Mexican desert that changed both of our lives. We weren’t even married then. We might have had a chance if Juerta hadn’t trapped us in that canyon—”

  “You mean if I hadn’t gotten us trapped there like some greenhorn kid who’d never been west of the Mississippi?” His voice was filled with self-disgust. “Before I let my guard down and headed for the mountains because it was something I wanted to do, even knowing I shouldn’t?”

  Joanna saw it then, the truth. Thinking over all of Pace’s past arguments and taking into consideration some of the insight Kali had given her, everything became so clear. Achingly clear. More clear to her, she knew, than it was to Pace.

  The wounds and injuries Juerta had dealt him were the excuse his mind gave him for why, in his mind’s opinion, he was no longer a real man. But the truth ran much deeper.

  Joanna understood for the first time that in his heart Pace felt that he had failed her by allowing Juerta to trap them. A man, at least Pace Colton’s definition of a man, should have been able to get her home safely while evading Juerta and his cutthroats. A man wouldn’t have allowed Pace and Joanna to get trapped in a box canyon. And once Joanna was free, a man, especially an Apache, would have died before letting Juerta torture him.

  “You still can’t forgive yourself for being human, can you? Pace Colton isn’t allowed to be human, is he? He never wants anything for himself. Never allows himself to feel. He’s always perfect. The best. The best rider, roper, tracker, horse trainer, the best, toughest, hardest, coldest man who ever walked. You know what I think?”

  With a flip of her head, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and glared at him. She’d worn it down at supper because she knew he liked it down.

  “I think you’re scared, Pace Colton. You wanted me that day in the desert, but I think even if we’d never seen Juerta again, you would have looked for an excuse to get out of marrying me. But there was the baby to consider, wasn’t there? Suddenly you were trapped. But you thought you’d never have to live up to your obligations, because you were convinced you were dying. You did your damnedest to die. But you lived.

  “Then you did your damnedest not to walk. But you walked. Then you were out of excuses, so, by golly, let’s come up with a new one. Not all my wounds are healed, you told yourself. You were forced to admit you were wrong about your legs, but this was a man’s business. She won’t be able to do anything about it, you said. So, by God, this won’t heal. She can’t cure this, so I won’t have to be her husband.”

  As she spoke, her voice quivered with mounting anger. “Don’t tell me that’s not what you’ve been thinking. If you don’t have to be my husband, then you won’t have to learn to live with another person. You won’t have to share yourself with anyone. You won’t have to care what happens to me or your son if you’re not here. You won’t have to open yourself up and take the risk of being hurt when someone you care about is hurt. You won’t have to worry over whether or not your wife is happy or your son is learning the things that will make him a man to be proud of. You won’t have to do a damn thing but keep your distance. You’re just plain scared to love us. That’s what I think, Pace Colton.”

  She couldn’t look at him any longer, at the rage, the pain, the humiliation in his eyes. God help her, why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? With a cry, she threw down her napkin and bolted from the room. Clutching her skirt high in both hands, she took the stairs two and a time and threw herself down on her bed as a torrent of tears gushed free.

  Pace stared at his empty plate for several minutes trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. They had sat down to another of Jo’s terrific meals, she’d been trying to be nice, and he’d ruined it.

  The plate blurred before him as her words echoed again and again through his mind. The hell of it was, she hadn’t said anything he could rightfully argue with. Except that nonsense about him not wanting to be married to her from the beginning.

  That was her insecurity talking, and it surprised him. He’d never known Jo to have an insecure thought in her head. Guess he had himself to thank for that, he thought with self-loathing. A strong woman could handle her husband walking out on her once, maybe twice. How many times had he done it? Then he’d told her last week that he’d done his best to screw a whore, yet he wouldn’t touch his own wife.

  Calling himself every foul name he could think of didn’t seem to help. He still felt sick to his stomach.

  The other part of what she’d said, though, about his fear, weighed down on him hard. She saw through him like he wasn’t even there. How did she do that? How could she know him so well, when he’d only just realized his own fears himself?

  Was she right? Was this newest failure of his, his inability to be her husband in the way that really mattered, was it in his head? Was it possible for his heart, mind, and body to want something so damn bad, and the only thing keeping him from it was some other hidden part of himself that he didn’t even know was there?

  Hell yes, he was scared. What man who was even halfway honest with himself wouldn’t be scared spitless at the thought of falling in love with a woman who had twice his heart and courage? The degree of his need for her, the overwhelming hunger that never went away, the yearning for just her smile, all those things terrified him, because he wanted them so badly.

  She was up there crying her eyes out, he knew. He couldn’t hear her, but he wasn’t the only one with pride. She had swallowed hers time and again and asked, begged him to stay. She wouldn’t want him to hear her crying now. She probably had her face buried in her pillow while he sat down here in front of an empty plate, his appetite gone, and felt sorry for himself.

  “Oh, yeah, Jo,” he muttered to himself. “I’m a perfect man, all right. A perfect bastard.”

  He couldn’t do this. He could not stay at Los Alamos and destroy them both piece by piece, a little more each day.

  At the thought of leaving her again, something in his chest that might have been his heart ripped open right down the middle. It felt like a knife blade slicing deep into his flesh.

  With weary resignation, he pushed himself from the table and climbed the stairs to her room.

  He’d been right, but it gave him no pleasure to know it. She was crying into her pillow. The room was dark, but there was enough light from the lamp she’d left burning in the hall for him to see her huddled there on her side with her back to the door, her arms wrapped tight around the pillow she held to her face. Her whole body shook with the force of her muffled sobs.

  Knowing he was the cause of her pain and having no idea how to help her, he crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The feather mattress sagged beneath his weight, and she slid against his knee. When she felt him at her back, she stiffened.

  �
��It’s only me,” he offered. He rubbed his hand up and down her arm. “Christ, Jo, I’m sorry.”

  “No.” Her voice sounded strangled. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I had no right to say those things to you.” She clasped his hand against her shoulder and held it as if afraid to let go. “I didn’t mean any of it. I’m sorry.”

  “Hush, Firefly, hush.” The need to hold and comfort her was an ache inside of him that he could no longer deny. He stretched out behind her on the bed and pulled her back to his chest, tucking his knees in behind hers. “We’ll figure something out. I don’t know what or how, but we’ll think of something.”

  Joanna turned in his embrace and wrapped her arms around him with surprising strength. “I love you so much, Pace. I just don’t want to lose you. I said those things because I was afraid, not because I think you are.”

  He held her tighter and finally did what he’d been aching to do for days—he threaded his fingers through her hair. It slid like heavy, living silk across his hands, sending a shudder of pure emotion through him. He cupped the back of her head in his palm. When she turned her face up to his, the voice inside his head telling him to get out, get out now, fell silent. He bent his head and sipped the tears from her cheeks.

  She fell still beneath his lips. Her tears stopped. His name was a soft breath of air from her lips. The longing he heard in her voice humbled him, shamed him, scared him. Thrilled him. He settled his mouth over hers and she welcomed him, responding eagerly and honestly to his unasked question.

  May I? I can’t do much else, but may I kiss you?

  Yes! came her answer inside his heart. Kiss me. Love me. Let me love you!

  “Jo,” he protested.

  “Shh.” She brushed her lips over his. “Shh. Just kiss me. Nothing more. That’s all I want. Just a kiss.”

  They both knew she lied. He could feel the tension in her neck, her shoulders, the arms she had wrapped around him, the thighs pressed against his. They both knew she wanted more than a kiss.