Chapter Ten
When he awoke the sun was high, and he knew he had slept through all of yesterday and half of today.
He also knew, as he tensed his muscles expectantly, that he was well on his way to recovery.
He was sore, he ached, but from the feel of it everything was scabbing up.
He was famished. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, ignoring the twinge of pain, looked around, and froze.
His horse and the girl were gone.
His heartbeat quickened, and his disappointment was too acute to ignore. Then he shrugged it off—she hadn’t killed him—in fact, she had stayed until he was well enough to make it on his own.
He heard the horse approaching when it was still out of sight, and he slowly rose to his feet. He looked around, then spied the saddlebags and his gunbelt and knife belt. He retrieved a Colt, moved into the shadows of some boulders, and waited.
Candice Carter trotted into the clearing, two dead squirrels hanging from the pommel of his black.
He stepped out and her gaze shot to him. They stared at each other.
“You’re up,” she said.
She hadn’t left. She was still there. He couldn’t believe it. He looked away so she wouldn’t see any of the turbulent emotions in his eyes, then moved back to the blanket and slowly sat.
“You shouldn’t have gotten up,” she said, sliding off the black.
“I’m a lot better,” he said, not looking at her.
“You should be, you slept for about thirty hours. You had a fever, but not for long. You were very lucky.”
His gaze pinned her. “Why didn’t you leave?”
She shifted. “It wouldn’t have been right. To leave a hurt man.”
“Even a half-breed Apache?” There was a mocking quality to his tone.
She flushed and couldn’t meet his gaze, “I owed you,” she said, turning away.
He watched her skin and clean the game with determination, her face set, and an aching grew in him.
It wasn’t physical. Yesterday she had cared for his body with the tenderness of a wife.
Now she was cooking his food, the most domestic of acts a woman could perform.
It was as if she were his woman, doing these things to take care of him.
Yet it was just a shimmering desert illusion. He looked away.
When Candice had the squirrel roasting on a spit, she rose to her feet and looked at him.
He met her gaze, then found himself looking at her full breasts, unrestrained by a chemise, bare beneath the cotton shirt.
He felt a familiar tightening in his groin, but it was hard to look away.
When he raised his eyes back to hers he saw her standing there with a frozen, startled look. Poised for flight, but mesmerized.
He ducked his head. “Could you look at my back? Everything else is healing quickly.”
“Yes, of course.”
Candice hesitated, wringing her hands briefly.
It was one thing to have tended him while he was desperate with pain and half conscious, another to have tended him while he lay sleeping and slightly feverish.
Now he looked like a healthy man, except for the slight sheen of perspiration on his brow.
She thought of how she had wiped his brow many times last night with the same tenderness she would give to a hurt animal.
She had forgotten, really, who and what he was.
The question of leaving him had crossed her mind only once, initially, when he had come into the clearing staggering on his feet and covered with blood.
It had been an instinctive reaction, the urge to flee while she could.
But something had held her back—a natural compassion.
It hadn’t mattered that he was part Apache and her enemy.
She had never touched an Indian before. That thought hadn’t occurred to her since yesterday. After cleansing his wounds, the only times she had touched him was to bathe his face, as his fever had stayed low. The man had the constitution of an ox.
She was afraid to go near him now, much less touch him.
She knew she should have left a few hours ago, when he seemed better and she’d had the chance.
Candice approached slowly, apprehensively, and she saw the look of contempt flash through his eyes.
He shifted his back to her and she looked at the broad, hard flesh, crossed in three places with scabbing claw marks that were healing without the least sign of infection.
Again, his health amazed her. “Everything is fine,” she said.
He shifted back and looked at her. “If you get too close, I might bite.”
She reddened, and grew angry too. “That’s not fair.”
“No? Then stop looking at me as if I’m some kind of half-human animal.”
She stiffened. “I haven’t …”
“I’m a man,” he said. Then, crudely: “Surely you remember that?”
She went even redder, thinking about how a few nights before he had stood in the smoke with his penis rigid like a stallion’s. She turned her back abruptly, trembling. She very deliberately walked to check on their dinner, trying to get those images out of her mind. It wasn’t easy.
They ate in a tense silence, not looking at each other.
He fell asleep soon after the meal, while it was still light out.
She sat and studied him openly. His lips, almost full and certainly not thin, were parted slightly.
Her gaze riveted there. His mouth, his face, so hard in waking, was relaxed and vulnerable in sleep.
There was a growth of stubby beard, but it couldn’t detract” from his evenly sculpted features.
He was part Indian, but he was a good-looking man.
Candice blushed at the thought and resolved never to think it again.
She didn’t understand him. He was Apache, wasn’t he?
Yet he hadn’t acted like one. He hadn’t hurt her, abused her, forced himself on her.
Or worse. In fact, other than the few times he had lost his temper, he had even been decent.
And when he had been injured, in terrible pain, he had been so stoic …
She abruptly tore her gaze away from him and stood. He was well on his way to health. They weren’t far from the High C. Now was the time to leave. She had owed him her life, she had paid in full. Of course, she would be stealing his horse.
She wondered if she could be hanged for stealing a half-breed’s horse.
The guilt could have been consuming, but she was determined, and she started tacking up the black quickly and quietly.
She found herself wishing that there was another way.
The stallion was no longer nervous around her; in fact, he turned to nuzzle her, pushing against her side and blowing softly.
She patted him and yanked the cinch tight.
She thought about how Savage had stared at her breasts with bright silver eyes.
She looked over her shoulder at him as he lay sleeping. He moved slightly, and she froze, her heart slamming, and for a moment she thought he was awake. But he settled again.
She swung into the saddle and rode off into the approaching night.