Chapter Ninety-Three
She heard the commotion downstairs.
And instantly recognized his voice. Jack.
She flew down the stairs, skirts in one hand, her feet barely touching the ground. She pulled up short at the sight of him, and for a moment just drank in his magnificent, bronzed presence.
He stiffened, turned his head away from her father and Luke, and their gazes met.
It was then that Candice became aware of Mark, crimson-faced, standing behind her father and Luke, one hand on his gun and looking lethally dangerous. “Let’s hang him up right now!” he shouted.
Jack faced the three men, his profile to her, and didn’t move a muscle. “I’ve come for my wife and daughter,” he said quietly.
“We know damn well who you’ve come for,” Mark shouted. “You’ve ruined my sister, and now I’m going to kill you!”
“Cool down,” Luke snapped warningly, as Candice flew to her husband to stand pressed to his side.
“Mark, stop it,” she said desperately. “Please stop this insane hating. I’m leaving with Jack, and I don’t want to lose you as my brother.”
“You should have killed yourself before submitting to him,” Mark spat. “Much less liking it and bearing his breed brat. To me, you are dead!”
Candice cried out.
Mark whirled and strode away, ignoring their father, who called after him.
A heavy silence fell. Tears at her brother’s ultimate rejection filled Candice’s eyes.
She became aware of Jack holding her hand.
Then he brushed a tear from her cheek with a callused thumb.
She looked into his eyes and felt her heart take wing and soar.
Luke broke the moment, stepping forward, hand extended. “Welcome to the High C,” he said. He wasn’t smiling, but his gaze was level and sincere.
Stunned, Jack stared at the offered hand, and then with a delayed reaction, he took it—awkwardly.
Candice looked at the two clasped hands and felt as if her heart would expand right out of her rib cage.
She gazed at Luke with tearing eyes and he smiled slightly at her, understanding her silent thanks.
Her father shoved his hands into his pockets and the gesture stood out as if a bell had sounded.
She saw the indecision on his face and wanted to weep.
She thought that he was trying, but knew he would never forgive her husband for ruining, in his eyes, his little girl.
There was a long silence, but her father didn’t speak.
Jack turned to her. “Let’s get Christina and go,” he said softly.
She heard, from outside, a familiar infant’s howling. Her eyes widened in surprise and delight. “Jack? Did you bring Shoshi?”
A faint smile crossed his face and lingered in his eyes as they swept over her features. “Yes.”
And then she felt the uncertainty, and with it sick fear. “Datiye?”
“No.”
Candice turned to her father and saw his steady, pain-filled gaze.
“Oh, Pop,” she said, and hugged him hard before flying up the stairs to get Christina and a few things.
She didn’t even wonder where they were going.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the man downstairs, the man she loved more than life itself.
When she came downstairs with a small bag and Christina in her arms Jack leapt forward, and she let him take the baby from her arms. He smiled at his daughter, love lighting up his features. Candice’s heart expanded to impossible dimensions.
“Candice,” her father said hoarsely.
She froze and met his gaze.
He came hesitantly to her, then embraced her in a bear hug. When he pulled back he smoothed tendrils of hair away from her face. It’s not safe for you to stay here,” he said, the silent words with him as clear as if he’d spoken them.
In that instant Candice forgave her father for being who and what he was. He was trying, and maybe One day he would accept Jack as her husband. “I know.”
“Write to me, to us,” he said.
“I will,” she said, as John-John burst in the door at a run.
“You’re leaving,” he cried, and swept her into his arms. She clung to him and started to cry.
She hugged Luke again, and Maria, who had appeared, weeping.
When they finally rode through the ranch gates, Candice on her palomino filly with Christina, Jack on the black with Shoshi, she was in a teary daze.
It wasn’t until he pulled her to the ground and into his arms that she realized the ranch was out of sight and that they had stopped.
His gray eyes were searing her face poignantly.
Joy brought forth more tears. “You’re all healed,” she said foolishly.
“My nose is still a little crooked,” he said, gazing at her steadily, his eyes silver, intent, too bright.
“You were too handsome before,” she said breathlessly as a liquid warmth stole over her.
“Did he hurt you?”
She knew he was referring to Bradley. She shook her head. “No.”
“Did you … did you have to sleep with him? After I left?”
She bit her lip. “He had a concussion. I told everyone you’d forced me to unlock you after you hit him. Because you locked me up, no one doubted it, not for a minute.”
“I’m sorry I had to leave you.” His eyes searched her face.
“It was better that way.”
A small smile touched his mouth. “They were probably too excited to listen to what you said.”
“I was so afraid.”
“I had to leave you.”
“I was afraid for you, not me … Jack.”
“It’s okay,” he said, pulling her closer against his long, hard frame. “It’s over, Candice, shijii, it’s over.”
She leaned against him and almost wept. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” she cried.
“You fool,” he said tenderly. “Did you really think you could run away from me?”
She looked up. Her eyes were wet, and she saw, startled, that his were moist too. “I didn’t mean anything in that letter, Jack, I never stopped loving you, not ever.”
“I realized that at Fort Buchanan.”
“But you doubted it before?”
“You left me.”
“I had to. Christina deserves better than what you wanted to give her.” She felt tears trickling out of her eyes and down her face.
He wiped them away with the pad of a callused finger. “Did you ask me what I planned to give her? Why didn’t you ask me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’re starting over, Candice, you, me, Christina, and Shoshi. We’ll go to California. What do—will you come with me?” His voice was husky. Pleading.
“You’re leaving Cochise?”
“If you had just waited, I would have told you after I came back from scouting. I never went scouting. I went to Fort Breckenridge.” He held her gaze.
“To end it. I killed the lieutenant who ordered the hangings. I avenged Shozkay.” He stared at her, waiting, heart pounding, for horror, disgust, withdrawal. It never came.
“Is it really finished?” she cried, clinging to him.
“Yes, I swear, it’s finished. It took me a while to realize, Candice, what’s really important, but you and our children are the most important things in my life.
Will you come? Let me take you away, make you happy?
” He heard the anxious, pleading note in his voice, but didn’t care.
He cupped her face and held it. “I will make you happy, that I promise.”
“If I said no,” she said with a smile, through her tears, “would you listen?”
“No.”
“I would come,” she said, “even if you wanted to go back to Cochise. I can’t live without you, Jack.”
He crushed her to him. “I love you, shijii. And this time we’ll make sure the preacher is real, I promise.”
“I love you, bilnadeshi shijii,” she murmured. “Husband of my heart.”
He began kissing her. “I love you,” he whispered.
His mouth moved over her hair, her ears, her face.
“I love you, Candice, desperately.” His lips played softly on hers, his hands stroked down her back.
“How could you have ever thought I’d let you go, shijii?
Never.” He caught her mouth with his. “If I had to follow you across the seven seas to China, I would.
There is no desert wide enough, no mountain high enough, no forest thick enough, to keep me away from you.
There’s nowhere you could go that could be far enough away to stop me from finding you—don’t you know that by now, shijii?”
Her response was to hold his face, twining his hair in her fingers as he kissed her again and again.