The group of Apaches was dispersing. Candice thought she understood what was happening. Jack was trading the black for her. She had no idea why he had sent the tall Apache as his emissary.
But he was trading his horse for her.
Her heart filled with desperate hope.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Despite the fact that he was exhausted, Jack had a restless night. He was afraid that Hayilkah would change his mind and return the black and take Candice Carter to bed as his wife. He dozed and dreamed of Candice. She was in his arms, and he was making fierce, agonizing love to her. Then she moved him away, laughing. Tim McGraw appeared, smiling insolently, and proceeded to impale her right before his very eyes. In his dream, he wanted to kill McGraw. Now he had lus clothes on, while they rutted naked. But he couldn’t make his hands move to draw his guns no matter how hard he tried. All he could do was stand there and watch, his body paralyzed.
He even had a brief nightmare about Datiye. He had caught a glimpse of her that afternoon, reminding him of what had happened between them. In the dream, she was giving birth to a child. His child. Candice was there, acting as midwife. He awoke in a sweat, very disturbed. Everyone knew dreams were omens.
At dawn Shozkay found him sitting on his bedroll staring out at the mountains with a harsh forbidding expression on his face.
“Ready for divorce already, brother?” Shozkay teased dryly.
Jack jumped to his feet, his heart pounding. “They have not returned the black?” If the black had not been returned, it meant the proposal had been accepted.
“Come, Shozkay said, smiling. “She is a maiden—you realize that?”
Jack stared in surprise. Kincaid and Candice had never consummated their marriage? And then he felt a swift, hot elation that no man had possessed her.
“You did not know?”
“She is a widow,” Jack said.
“How is that?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, there is no doubt that she is still a maiden; she was examined carefully, or so Hayilkah says.”
Jack grew grim thinking about someone examining Candice to find that out. He clamped down hard on his jaw as anger coursed through him.
Shozkay led him through the camp to his gohwah, and behind it there was a buckskin dress, moccasins, and an antelope hide—a kind of dowry. “Well?”
Jack stared, then relaxed and even smiled.
“Are you going to go get your bride?” Shozkay grinned as if he found the whole affair vastly amusing.
My bride, he thought.My bride. Now what am I going to do? And instantly an inner voice said—She belongs to you, and you can do what you will. And it was the truth. “I don’t want her to know about this,” Jack told him.
“I will speak no truths.” Shozkay laughed.
“This isn’t funny,” Jack said.
“I will not even speak to her.” Shozkay grinned. “Love, eh?”
Jack gave him a dark look and strode away.
He passed Hayilkah, mounted on a chestnut horse, about to go hunting with a group of men. Hayilkah smiled. Jack smiled too. Had Hayilkah tried to approach the black, much less mount him? The black was an unfriendly horse that rarely allowed anyone but him on his back. Jack thought that Hayilkah had probably tried, and failed, thus his current choice of a mount. Hayilkah was probably intending to break the black another time. Jack wondered if he would be able to do so, and doubted it. He felt a sense of loss, but it was lost among his other careening emotions and the heavy thudding of his heart.
He ducked into thegohwah. Candice was awake, still naked, although wrapped in a blanket. Her face brightened with evident joy at seeing him. He looked at her and was swept with a heady flush of pleasure. This woman is mine. “Let’s go.”
She started in surprise, rising, holding the blanket. “What’s happened?” she asked anxiously.
His gaze was level. “I’ve traded for you.”
“Are we going to leave?”
