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?”
