Texas Bride. Carol Finch
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She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
To her surprise, he tugged her in front of him and rested his chin on the crown of her head while he stared through time and space. “It was a different way of life,” he murmured. “A peaceful coexistence with nature. Never taking from Earth Mother without giving something back. The problem was we stood in the way of white expansion. Our people paid the sacrifice so that you, and others like you, could lay claim to this land.”
“Jonah, I’m sorry,” she whispered as she rubbed her shoulder consolingly against his chest. “Fifteen years ago I was just a child in East Texas who thought her parents were being terribly unfair by uprooting her and dragging her away from the only home she’d known. I can’t even begin to imagine the violence, resentment and confusion you endured.”
“What happened to your mother?” he asked after a moment.
“She died giving birth to Chrissy. And your mother? How did she come to be with the Comanche?”
“A captive from childhood. She taught me to speak English, but she had no wish to return to her abusive father. She became Comanche, lived as a Comanche and died from complications of the bullet wound she sustained when our clan was captured and taken to the reservation.”
For the life of him Jonah couldn’t fathom why he was confiding in Maddie. Even his commander didn’t know the details of his life before he’d joined the Rangers. Jonah had kept his own counsel for half a lifetime.
And this certainly was not the time to become sentimental and talkative, he chided himself. He and Maddie were merely strangers who had crossed paths temporarily. By this time tomorrow she’d go her way and he would go his. That would be the end of it.
Clinging to that sensible thought, Jonah released her—and wondered what in the hell he’d been thinking by holding her possessively to him in the first place. That kind of physical contact was tempting and dangerous. It was as if he had needed her warmth and her gentle touch while he faced the onslaught of memories triggered by stopping at this old Comanche campsite.
She pivoted toward him, then flicked a glance at the rolled pallet on the stone ledge. He could practically see her mind churning with curiosity when her gaze returned to him.
“If you have only one bedroll, and I slept on it, then where did you sleep last night?”
He’d wondered when she would ask that question. He’d expected it earlier, but he supposed getting shot at had dominated her thoughts.
“I slept beside you, under the same quilt,” he said, expecting her to start ranting about propriety. But she surprised him by staring inquisitively at him.
“I was so exhausted last night that you could easily have taken advantage of the situation.” Those amber eyes drilled into him. “Why didn’t you?”
“Good question. Maybe because I was plumb worn-out, too.”
“Or maybe because you don’t like me and you don’t find me desirable.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
That was not it, but he’d be damned if he’d let her know she was getting under his skin and that getting naked with her was a fantasy that was occupying too much of his thought processes.
Jonah scooped up his rifle. “You can enjoy a leisurely bath while I hunt down supper.”
“No rattlesnake steak. Tried it once. Didn’t like it.”
“You’d be surprised what you can eat when left with no choice, princess,” he assured her, more gruffly than he intended. “Believe me, I’ve had worse.”
Jonah descended the trail and vowed he was going to be his old self again when he returned. Sharing his thoughts and emotions made him feel uncomfortable and exposed. He related better to Maddie when he relied on taunts and sarcasm. If he kept this up she might come to mean too much in the short span of a few days. He planned to leave her without regret, because he had regrets aplenty already and revisiting the outer boundaries of the Comanchería was getting him stirred up.
She was getting him stirred up, too.
It was amazing how quickly he had reached the point where just staring at those clingy clothes that accentuated her curvaceous figure made him want her—badly.
He just needed a woman. Any woman would do, he tried to convince himself. He could relieve that problem at the bustling town that had sprung up beside Fort Griffin. The Flat, as the raucous community was called, was known for its saloons, dance halls and harlots. Simple sexual pleasure was what he craved.
Maddie Garret was to be cautiously avoided because she came with all sorts of complications. Hell, he couldn’t even guarantee that she wasn’t feeding him some fantastic lie.
Oh, certainly, he wanted to believe her, wanted to think that he wasn’t that bad a judge of character. But he’d heard too many nightmarish tales of men who were enticed and betrayed by a beautiful woman. Maddie, with her hypnotic golden eyes, sun-kissed hair and honeyed lips could lead him into disaster like a sea siren luring a doomed ship into the eye of a hurricane.
“Well damn,” Jonah muttered as he stalked off to hunt. He was getting allegorical and philosophical all of a sudden, wasn’t he? If this wasn’t an indication that a tempting woman could tie a man up in knots and leave him waxing poetic, he didn’t know what was.
Right there and then, Jonah promised himself that he would be back on solid mental footing by the time he returned to the campsite. He was not going to let Maddie Garret get to him worse than she already had.
As soon as he dumped her off at Fort Griffin he was as good as gone. And you could write that down in stone because he was not going to change his mind. Fort Griffin was the end of the line for him.
Chapter Four
M addie sensed the change in Jonah the instant he returned to camp, carrying three quail that he’d cleaned for cooking, and an armload of firewood. His gaze skipped past her and he smirked when he noticed her recently washed clothes, and his, draped over bushes and outcroppings of rock. Maddie was pretty certain that Jonah felt uncomfortable about sharing a part of himself with her earlier, and had decided that wasn’t going to happen again.
“You didn’t have to do my laundry,” he said curtly.
“No, and you didn’t have to fetch my supper.” She walked over to retrieve the quail. “One good turn deserves another. Maybe next time I’ll fetch supper and you can do the laundry.”
He scoffed at that, as she figured he would. “You can hunt your own game?”
She nodded. “I am not entirely helpless.” She took pride in telling him that.
Jonah stacked the firewood, then grabbed a matchbox from his saddlebag to ignite the campfire. Then he slid his pistol from the holster and handed it to her. “Prove it,” he challenged.
Lips twitching, Maddie focused on a scraggly weed that protruded from a crack in the rock and fired away. She glanced sideways to note Jonah’s stunned reaction after she hit the weed dead center.
His narrowed gaze swung to her. “Where did you learn to do that?”
Maddie blew on the smoking barrel of the gun, then returned it to Jonah butt first. “Our ranch foreman, Carlos Perez, taught me. At my insistence. After my father disappeared and rustling escalated, I decided I needed to be able to defend myself.” Her smile faded. “I should have encouraged Chrissy to take lessons, as well. Perhaps she could have escaped capture if she had been armed.”
Jonah handed the pistol back to her. “Take this with you while you lead the horses to the river to drink. I’ll bathe while dinner is cooking.”
Maddie grinned impishly into his expressionless face. “What’s wrong, Danhill? Afraid I’ll sneak peeks at you?”
He