He smiled, a mere baring of his teeth. “I believe,” he said harshly, “you have something that belongs to me.”
Candice opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
Mark whirled, eyes wide. “This breed was at the gate, demanding to come in. He says you stole his horse.”
Candice looked at Mark and then at Jack. His gaze was ice cold and filled with contempt. Yet his face seemed pale beneath the bronze of his tan. “I …” She faltered completely. Oh, why had he come!
“I want my horse,” Jack said softly, slowly, enunciating every word, his gaze pinning her.
“Do you know this man, Candice?” her father said.
“Yes.”
Mark took a step toward her, incredulous and furious all at once. “How in hell do you know him?”
“Is it his horse?” John-John demanded, as angry as Mark.
“Yes.” Candice looked back at Jack and flushed with the guilt that resurfaced with full intensity. She quickly faced her father and Luke, the only ones who might show her any sympathy. “Pop, I didn’t tell you the whole story.”
“I can see that,” her father said, but he was cut off by Mark, who was shouting.
“Did he touch you? Did he? Did this red-skinned bastard touch you?”
Candice stepped back, flushing. Thinking many, many thoughts—waking up naked, standing together nude in the smoke, cleansing his body. Mark met her gaze and his own went wider, and then he whirled, drawing his gun in the same motion. Candice cried out, “No, Mark, no, he didn’t, I swear it!”
Before she had even finished the sentence, Jack grabbed Mark’s arm, hard, and the gun went clattering to the ground. Luke quickly moved between the two men. He said to his younger brother, very softly, “Don’t be a hothead.”
“If he touched her, I’ll kill him!”
Jack laughed, the sound hard and short and mirthless. “I have no interest in her.”
It was, of course, a lie, and they both knew it. Candice went crimson, wishing, with all her heart, that he hadn’t come.
“What happened, Candice?” her father injected firmly.
Candice took a breath, glad to turn away from Jack. “I bought a horse in Arizona City, but she got bit by a rattlesnake. I walked until I couldn’t walk any longer. I had no water, no food. I finally passed out. It had been three, maybe four days. He found me.”
Mark made a noise, and even John-John gasped. Everyone, including the hired hands, looked at the half-naked man standing tautly in their midst. Jack smiled again, savagely.
Luke spoke. “You were alone with him, in the middle of the desert?”
Candice flushed again. “He saved my life.”
Again, all eyes went from her to Jack.
Candice hurried on into the tense silence. She could feel the male anger, the maelstrom of hostility, the urge for violence. “He saved my life. He didn’t touch me. He’s part white, he speaks like a white man. There was a mountain lion—he got hurt.” She faltered and found herself looking at him, saw the fury in his gaze, and this time she couldn’t look away. Her voice went to a whisper. “That’s when I stole the horse.”
Their gazes locked in another silence, this one endless. Then Candice thought she saw him sway, but the movement was so slight and he was standing so rigidly that she had to have imagined it. John-John said, “He has a helluva nerve, coming here.”
“I don’t believe her,” Mark accused. “She’s lying.”
“Mark!” her father said.
Candice held her breath. Mark turned his hot, angry eyes on her. “If he didn’t touch you, why are you so guilty looking—so red? He’s a damn red-skinned breed. You were unconscious when he found you. They don’t do any different from animals. You might not even know if—”
“Enough!” John Carter roared.
Luke said, “If he had touched her, little brother, horse or no horse, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to come here.”
