Apache Fire. Elizabeth Lane
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down over his hips with his free hand. He was truly in pain, Rose realized, noticing the ashen ring around his lips as he sank back onto the floor. But she could not let herself feel pity for him. This man was a wild, wounded animal who could be every bit as dangerous as he looked.
“I’m waiting.” She willed herself to keep her gaze impassive, to keep the pistol pointed squarely at his chest.
He lifted his head, his slitted eyes chilling in their contempt. “It seems you have a choice, Mrs. Colby.” He spat out each word as if it were snake venom. “Either you can allow me to stand up and let gravity take its course, or you can trust me enough to get down here and give me a hand.”
Rose hesitated, every instinct screaming flight as the intimacy of the small room closed around her. “Get up, then,” she said. “But no tricks, not if you want to live.”
“You wouldn’t shoot me,” he said. “Hell, you couldn’t shoot anybody—a woman like you, soft, pampered—”
“Don’t bet your life on it!” Rose snapped in sudden fury. “You don’t know me! You don’t know anything about me!”
“And you don’t know much about me, either, lady.” He grimaced, clenching his teeth with the effort of hefting himself to his feet. “If you did, you’d put that big horse pistol away and—damn!” He staggered to his feet, one hand clutching the bedpost for support, the other holding up his unbuttoned pants.
“The trousers,” she said. “Get them off and get into bed before you end up on the floor again.”
“I’d advise you to turn your back. I may not dress as decorously as most men you know, and I wouldn’t want to offend your womanly—”
“Turn my back?” Rose’s sweat-slicked grip tightened on the pistol. She swallowed the dryness in her throat. “I’d just as soon turn my back on a snake!” she said. “Go ahead, I’ve seen a man before—and a better man than you, I’ll wager!”
The whites of his eyes flashed dangerously. Then without another word, he turned his back on her and let his trousers drop to the floor.
Rose stood thunderstruck, unable to avert her eyes from the full sight of him. She had tolerated her husband’s aging physique and grown used to it over the years. She had even come to accept his appearance as an example of the way any man would look without his clothes.
Until now.
Latigo’s naked body was as sleek as a cougar’s, tapering from powerful shoulders to a lean, sinewy waist. His long legs were crowned by high, taut buttocks, and his muscles flowed in feline curves, coiled strength beneath skin that captured the light like molten copper.
Rose’s hand slackened around the pistol. He was magnificent. Even with the ugly, bloodstained bandage marring his shoulder, Latigo, mixed-blood Apache and possible murderer, was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
“If you’re waiting for me to turn around—”
The edge in his voice shocked Rose back to reality. Her breath jerked. Her fingers seized on the pistol just in time to save it from clattering to the floor.
“Get into that bed.” The words emerged as a shaky whisper. “Go on, you arrogant, disrespectful, presumptuous—”
A small but piercing wail from beyond the kitchen ended her tirade. Her baby was awake and crying, and his needs pulled at her instincts with a power no mother could resist.
Latigo’s broad shoulders had tensed at the cry, but he did not turn his head. Rose kept her eyes on him as she backed warily toward the door. “Get into bed and rest,” she ordered. “I’ll be back later with something for you to eat, unless I decide you deserve to starve.”
A rough chuckle—or was it a growl?—rumbled in his throat but that was all. He was still standing next to the bed, his splendid back held rigid in an unspoken statement of disdain as Rose closed the door, slipped the bolt and fled on trembling legs to the sanctuary of her little son.
Latigo heard the bolt click into place. Then, giving in to waves of dizziness, he crumpled into the bed.
Crisp and fragrant, the clean sheets enfolded him like a shroud, their fineness one more reminder that he didn’t belong in such a place. He’d have been better off taking his chances in the desert At least he might have died in peace there, leaving his bones to be bleached by the sun and nosed by passing coyotes. Instead, here he was, caged and cosseted like a house cat, lying behind a bolted door, in a pretty white woman’s house.
Rose. That was the name that panting bull had called her. Rose Colby. She looked like a rose, all right, even smelled like one as she leaned over him, fragrance spilling from between her lovely, milk-swollen breasts. For all his weakened condition, it had been as much as he could do to keep from pulling her down on top of him and burying his face in that warm, satiny cleft.
Damn the woman!
Latigo’s vision swam as he lay on his back and gazed up at the small, barred window. He hated being closed in, where he couldn’t see the sky or feel the wind! He had to get out of here. And once he did, he vowed, he would die rather than let the whites lock him up in their jail.
Half in panic now, he raised his head and struggled to move his legs. They lay like inert slabs, defying all his efforts to rouse them. John Colby’s widow was right, he realized, sinking back onto the pillow in black resignation. He was too weak to go anywhere.
For now, he would bide his time, Latigo resolved. He would submit meekly to Rose Colby’s ministrations. He would allow her to feed him, to nurse his wound and to ravish his senses with her unsettling womanly presence.
But he would not lower his guard for so much as a heartbeat. Any slip—an open door, an unguarded moment—could be his key to freedom, and he would be ready to seize it. Get the gun, steal a horse and head straight for the Mexican border—that’s what he would do at first opportunity.
And heaven help Mrs. John Colby if she tried to stop him.
Latigo woke to a spill of amber light through the barred window of the tiny room. Sunset. He muttered a bewildered curse. Had he slept for a day? A week? His blurred mind had lost all sense of time which, for him, could make the difference between life and death.
A mélange of mouth-watering smells drifted through the crack beneath the door. Chicken soup, richly laced with garlic and onions. Freshly baked bread. Hot coffee. Latigo’s empty belly growled in ravenous response to the delicious aromas. If the violet-eyed Widow Colby had chosen to torture her prisoner, she could not have devised a more exquisite punishment, unless she were to—
His thoughts scattered as the bolt clicked open on the other side of the door. In a flash he was fully awake, every muscle tense and quivering.
As he struggled to raise his body, the door swung open. Latigo’s breath stopped as he saw Rose Colby standing on the threshold, the light making a halo of the sun-colored hair that she wore in a loose bun.
She hesitated, then stepped into the room. Only then did he notice that she was carrying a tray with a bowl, a spoon and thick, buttered slices of bread on a china plate. Latigo’s vacant stomach emitted another loud rumble, causing her left eyebrow to twitch in wary amusement.
“I, uh, see you’re hungry.” She was wearing a calico apron over a faded chambray gown that narrowed enticingly at her slender waist. She looked young and tender and vulnerable.
“How long have I been asleep?” Latigo eased his painracked body upward as she put the tray down on the nightstand and bent close to adjust the pillow behind him, washing his senses with the subtle aroma of lavender soap. He imagined reaching up and tugging the pins from her hair, letting it fall around his face