Chapter Thirty-Four
Candice opened her eyes and realized she had drifted asleep.
Jack had gone to get them dinner and had left her at their gohwah to make a fire.
She had fallen asleep, daydreaming about him like an infatuated adolescent.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and thought about food.
At that precise juncture, two rabbits sailed through the air and landed with a thud at her feet, causing her to jump up and cry out in alarm.
Jack grinned, striding toward her.
“You scared the life right out of me,” Candice said, but she was smiling because his delight in having frightened her was so boyish. He was showing her a different side of himself, one she was delighted to see.
“That’s because you have the hearing of an old, deaf woman,” Jack said. “What—no fire? What have you been doing all this time, woman? Here.”
Candice wanted to jump back as the knife came flying through the air at her, but she didn’t move. It landed an inch away from her big toe, right between the two rabbits, the blade buried in the ground, hilt quivering. She looked up slowly, murderously.
“I’ve gone too far,” he said meekly.
“Too far.”
He approached and knelt swiftly at her side. “I’m sorry, inlgashi.”
How could she stay angry, with him nuzzling her neck? “You could have killed me!”
He laughed. “Maybe cut off your foot, but killed you? I don’t think so.”
She hit him in the arm.
He caught her wrist and deftly pulled her between his thighs. “Someone wants more trouble,” he purred.
“I want big trouble,” she said, and then went absolutely crimson.
His eyes widened, and then he laughed, hugging her fiercely. “Later, ish’tia’nay,” he promised.
“I didn’t mean—” she began, still blushing.
“Oh, yes, you did.”
She was in his arms and she looped her hands around his neck. He was smiling, so relaxed and lighthearted and so impossibly handsome. “What are you looking at?” he asked gruffly.
“You.” She was embarrassed, and got to her feet, pulling out of his grasp.
She reached for the game and the knife. He came to her instantly, taking the knife from her hand. “You make the fire, I’ll clean the game.”
“But cleaning game is women’s work,” Candice said coyly.
“If you object too hard, I will let you do it.”
Candice made the fire. “What happened to your parents, Jack?”
He started. “What’s this about?”
“I’m curious. I don’t know anything about you.”
He grinned. “Now, that’s a lie if ever I heard one.”
“I was not referring to your baser appetites.”
“Baser appetites?” He chuckled. “You mean the fact that I like to make love to you?”
“You have a one-track mind, Jack.”
He smiled.
“Your parents?”
Jack spitted the split hare. “My mother died a short while ago. My father, who was a brave warrior, died eight years ago of natural causes.”
Candice watched him turning the spit, “I don’t understand. If your parents were still alive, how could Cochise give you away as a gift?”
He sat back on his haunches, Apache-style. “I was telling you about the only parents I ever knew—my adoptive ones.”
“Oh.” She thought about that. “What about your real ones?”
He didn’t look at her now, and he was no longer quite so relaxed.
“My father was a miner, a white man. I never knew my mother, but she was a squaw. We worked in the streams, panning. He was killed when Cochise and some warriors came to the house. I was about six, maybe seven. Cochise captured me and took me back with him, and later gave me to Nalee and Machu.”
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Don’t be. My father was a hard, cruel man and I was better off with the Apaches.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He looked up. “I most certainly do.”
She was silent for a moment, absorbing what he’d said and, more important, how he’d said it. “When were you married to Datiye?”
“I divorced her about three years ago.” He pulled the hare from the fire and tested it.
Candice was appalled. “You divorced her.”
“It’s not unusual.”
“How long were you and Datiye married?”
Without looking up, he said, “Three winters.”
She gasped aloud. Three whole years! She had been his wife for three years!
Jack regarded her thoughtfully, then handed her a section of hare.
“How did your first wife die?”
Jack put down the piece of meat he had just picked up. When he looked at her, every muscle in his face was tight. “In childbirth.”
She knew he had loved his dead wife. And she imagined the woman—a dark, ethereal vision. Jealousy ran thickly in her veins, and even though she knew it was wrong, she couldn’t help it.
“Do you still live with this tribe? Are you here all the time?”
His tone was clipped. “No.”
“But—”
Jack stood, tense and angry. “I left my people three years ago.”
She knew she should leave it alone. “Why did you leave them?”
He faced her. “Do you think that sharing my bed entitles you to ask all these questions?”
She felt like she’d been slapped, and she gasped, turning abruptly.
Jack threw his dinner clown and marched away, into the woods.
Candice watched him go and wanted to weep.
She had only wanted to learn more about him.
It seemed that she knew nothing at all. She hadn’t meant to pry.
But there had been no call for him to attack her that way—not after all the intimacy they’d shared.
And now the intimacy lay shattered in the night around them.