Apache Fire

“I’m waiting, Rose.”

“You’ll go if I kiss you?”

“I’m a man of my word, sweetheart.”

Rose forced herself to stop thinking as she strode back across the room. She had meant to give Bayard a light peck, but his arms closed around her like the jaws of a trap. His full, wet lips captured hers with a force that pressed her spine into an arch, jamming his belt buckle hard against her belly.

“Rose…” He was panting like a stallion. Frightened now, she began to struggle, but he was a large, powerful man, and her twisting movements only served to heighten his ardor. “Rose…dash it, girl, if you only knew how long I’ve wanted you.” He kissed her again, his hands groping downward toward her buttocks. Rose could sense Latigo’s mocking black eyes watching everything from the kitchen doorway. She knew he could not help her.

For an instant she went rigid in Bayard’s arms. Then, as his hot palms slid lower, she gathered all her strength into one desperate, wrenching shove.

“No!” she gasped, twisting away from him and spinning free. “I’m not ready for this.”

“You were married to an old man, Rose.” He reached for her again, his face flushed, his lips damp and red. “It’s time you found out what having a younger fellow is like.”

“No!” Dizzy with rage and fear, she clutched the back of a chair, keeping it between them. “You have no right to touch me! You’ve insulted me, dishonored my husband’s memory. I want you gone!”

He took a step backward, startled by her vehemence. “Now, Rose, honey, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Get out, Bayard.” Her voice was flat and cold, her body drained of its emotional energy. “I’m sorry if I misled you, but I have no desire to marry you or anyone else. This ranch was John’s, and it belongs to John’s son. I intend to raise the boy here—by myself.”

His eyes bulged with the outrage of a man accustomed to getting his own way. “You’ll change your mind. I can make you change your mind. You’ll see.”

Rose tightened her lips, her silent glare saying more than any words she might have uttered. His voice faded, then rallied once more.

“You’ll find I don’t give up that easily,” he declared, retreating toward the entry hall. “Mark my words, Rose. One day you’ll come to me on your knees. You’ll kiss my boots, and you’ll beg me to marry you!”

When she did not answer, he turned and strode out the front door, closing it behind him with a bang.

Rose stood poker-spined, listening to the snort of his horse as he mounted and rode away. Only when the galloping hoofbeats had faded into silence did she slump, trembling, onto the chair.

“That was quite a performance, Mrs. Colby.”

Latigo had opened the kitchen door. He was on his feet, leaning unsteadily against the frame. His face was as gray as river mud. His right hand clutched the long, sharp kitchen knife she had used to slice the bread.

Rose glared at him, too unstrung to be frightened. “You can put that thing down,” she snapped. “Bayard is gone, and you’ve certainly nothing to fear from me!”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” He remained stubbornly where he was, his eyes glazed and feverish.

“Bayard told me you killed those two government men,” she said.

“So I heard.” His lips thinned as a shudder of pain passed through his body. “Now you’ve heard two versions of the same story. Which one have you decided to believe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why didn’t you turn me over to your hot-handed friend? He was packing a gun. It would’ve been easy enough to let him take me.” His pupils glittered like shards of black flint. Rose quivered as she forced herself to meet his gaze.

“I had to be sure,” she said. “If Bayard had taken you back to that posse, you would never have lived to reach Tucson, and I would never know if I’d done the right thing.”

“You…did right.” His speech had begun to slur. His hand dropped to his side, as if the blade had taken on the weight of a sledgehammer. “But under the circumstances, I’d say that you’re either very brave or very… very…foolish.”

The knife slid down his leg and clattered to the tiles. For the second time that morning, his body went limp, his knees buckled and, as Rose sprang from her chair, he slumped to the floor.

Sinking to her knees beside him, she eased him onto his back. A glance at his shoulder revealed blood seeping through the fabric of the old cotton shirt she’d found to put on him. The fall had most likely opened the wound, and he was already so weak from loss of blood that she feared for his life.

Feared?

Rose fumbled for his pulse, her eyes fixed on his proud Apache features—the sharp, high cheekbones, the bitter, oddly sensual mouth. This man was still her enemy, she reminded herself. If he died, she would be rid of him. She and the baby would be safe.

Her trembling fingers found the pulse point along the side of his neck. He was alive, but his flesh was clammy, his heart racing like the wheels of a runaway train.

Who was this man? What, if anything, did she owe him? Rose struggled to slow her pinwheeling thoughts and examine what she had heard.

It was possible that he had saved her husband’s company from an Apache massacre, she conceded. But what about the two government agents? The story about the white assassins was so preposterous it might as well have been a joke. Even his bullet wound could be explained in any number of ways. For all she knew, the dark-eyed devil was the world’s most convincing liar, and the price of trusting him could be her life and her child’s.

Was she harboring an innocent victim or a cold-blooded murderer?

Whatever Latigo was, Rose knew she could not turn her back and let him die.

He moaned incoherently as she jerked his shirt open to get at his bandaged wound. Stop the bleeding, that was her most urgent task. Then she would need to get him to bed and get him warm. Leaving him on the floor had been a mistake. The cold tiles, she realized, had chilled away his strength. But then, she had not been thinking clearly. She had been so afraid of the man, so unnerved by his fierce Apache features that even her thoughts had frozen.

Strange, she mused, how her fear had diminished now that she knew him.

Knew him?

The man had menaced her with a gun, Rose reminded herself as she ripped off the ruffled hem of her nightgown and wadded it against the seeping wound. He had arrogantly claimed that she was in his debt and told her stories that defied belief. No, she did not know this mysterious stranger at all, and she would be a fool to trust him.

But he would live, she vowed. He would live to tell her his whole story.

Off the kitchen was a small, unoccupied servant’s room with a bed. Rose stopped the bleeding as best she could. Then she picked up Latigo’s stockinged feet and slid his body carefully across the tiles. The isolated room had only one tiny window, high and securely barred. Its heavy door could be locked from the outside. When she was not tending to his needs, she could shut him in and feel safe.

But she would get the pistol and keep it close at hand whenever the door was open, she resolved. She could not afford to let Latigo get the best of her again.

She raced back to John’s office. There she took a moment to check on her sleeping son and retrieve the Peacemaker, which she thrust into the sash of her robe as she hurried back to the kitchen.

Panting with effort, she dragged Latigo’s body into the tiny room and turned down the bed. A beam of morning sunlight trickled through the window to fall across his inert legs. It was only then that Rose noticed his dust-caked cavalry trousers. Something fluttered in her stomach as she assessed his condition. Yes, she swiftly concluded, for the sake of hygiene and comfort, his dirty clothes would have to come off.

First she gingerly peeled away his remaining boot, then his threadbare stockings, resolving to burn them at first opportunity. Then, gritting her teeth, she bent over him to undo his belt buckle and the fastenings of his trousers. The uncivilized wretch had been bare skinned beneath his shirt. The lower part of him would likely be the same, Rose reasoned, steeling herself as she worked the stubborn buttons through their holes. But what could it possibly matter? After all, she was no longer a blushing schoolgirl. She had been a wife, a mother, a helpless man’s nurse.

“Do you do this to all your prisoners?”

His rough whisper jolted her like a swig of white lightning. Rose gasped as her startled glance met his eyes. Her hand flashed for the pistol. In an instant she had jerked the weapon out of her sash and was aiming it at his chest.

He grinned groggily. “You…won’t need the gun, Mrs. Colby,” he mumbled. “I’m not a man to object if a pretty woman wants to take down my britches.”

“I’m just trying to get you to bed!” Rose snapped, her cheeks flaming as his grin broadened. “But now that you’re awake, you might as well do the job yourself.” She edged backward, brandishing the pistol. “Go on. Get those filthy trousers off. Then climb between the sheets and stay there. If nothing else, I’ll see that you live to hang!”

“I’m touched by your concern.” His expression had hardened again. His right hand fumbled awkwardly—too awkwardly—with the first of four remaining buttons. A spasm of pain rippled across his face as he tried to reach downward with the arm on his wounded side. “Unfortunately,” he muttered through clenched teeth, “I happen to be left-handed.”