She didn’t answer, and he repeated the question angrily.
“I’m … Candice Carter,” she managed.
Recognition flared. “One of the High C Carters?” At her nod, he said, “What are you doing out here alone, on foot?”
Kincaid’s death flashed before her mind and she went white. “I—I eloped.” When there was no response, she went on, hearing the anxiety in her own breath. “My husband, Virgil Kincaid, was killed. A—a robbery. In Arizona City.” She had been looking at the blanket, blood pounding in her ears with the telling of such an astronomical lie. What if there was a bounty out for her capture? What if he turned her over to the authorities? Then her family would find out the truth—that she had killed Kincaid when he had tried to rape her—and she would be ruined forever. They would be unbearably shamed. She darted a glance up at her captor. He was unmoved. Tears came to her eyes. Tears of hopelessness, frustration, and self-pity … because of Kincaid, and because of this man standing half clad before her.
“That doesn’t explain what you were doing out in the desert, dying.” The statement was flat and emphatic.
More tears glimmered. “I was stunned. It was right after the wedding,” she whispered. “I—I came back—to our room—and there he was—on the floor.” She started to cry. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t intend it as a strategy to stop the questions that only lies could answer, but it worked as such—for he made an exasperated sound and walked away. When she looked up, blinking, he was lying on the ground, on his back, staring at the stars. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. Still staring. She was stunned when he closed his eyes and appeared to fall asleep immediately.
She sat very still.
He wasn’t going to harm her, at least not now. She breathed a fast prayer of thanks.
What was he going to do with her? She knew of other stories too. Stories of white women who disappeared forever when their menfolk were killed by Indians. One, a woman with unusually lovely light-blue eyes, had been taken captive when her husband and another family were slaughtered by Comanches near El Paso. She had been badly beaten, her hair chopped off, and passed around to all the men. When she turned up ten years later at a trading post, she was barely distinguishable as white. Her skin was tanned to a nut brown, and she was clad in buckskins and calico—a cradleboard and infant on her back, and four half-breed children following close behind. She was a pathetic echo of the woman she had once been, perhaps insane. A sister and her husband took her in, but she was never the same.
Candice would kill herself before letting this Apache take her back to his camp.
The moon was a perfect, pale-champagne crescent. There was no breeze, and the night was perfectly still except for the yelping of a distant coyote. Her captor was sleeping motionlessly. Candice knew she had no choice. She would wait a little longer to make sure he was sound asleep. Meanwhile, her gaze scanned the ground next to her for a rock big enough to kill him with.
She found it, her hand closing over it. It had a jagged edge, enough to do the trick. She felt ill. Killing in cold blood, even if the man was an Apache … she didn’t know if she could do it. He’s a half-breed, an inner voice said. Partly white. Candice thought of the scalped boy, of the captive woman. She picked up the stone.
Not even a branch rustled. The desert’s silence was complete. No owls, no scurrying opossums. Candice clutched the blanket more tightly with one hand, the stone in the other. She began crawling toward him.
CHAPTER FIVE
She moved with all the grace of a cow
A drunken cow.
She could be a mile away and he would still hear her, and if what she was doing wasn’t so serious—if she didn’t have that deadly stone in her hand—he would be laughing. Instead, he didn’t move. His breathing was relaxed and even. His lashes lay thick and dark on his skin.
She was a foot away from his right shoulder, and she paused. Her breathing was loud and shallow. She was afraid. As she should be, he thought grimly. She inched closer, now on her hands and knees. He moved with the speed of a striking snake.
One moment she was poised on all fours, the next she was on her back, landing with a thud, and he was on top of her, pinning her body with his, her wrists ensnared in one of his large, strong hands, their faces inches apart. The stone fell out of her grasp and rolled away.
He stared into her eyes, the color of the desert night, so dark a blue they were almost black, and saw her fear. Even as that registered, he became aware of the feel of her beneath him. So soft. She had managed, miraculously—and he wasn’t surprised—to keep the blanket in place. But it was thin and he knew she was naked beneath it—knew every lush curve of her body. His knees were between hers, his groin nestled in hers. Desire uncurled, his body stiffened.
“Doesn’t it bother you,” he snarled, “that you were about to murder a man who saved your life?”
Her mouth opened, lips trembling, but only a whimper escaped. He cursed, his hold on her wrists tightening, causing another frightened sound. Maybe he was angry at himself too. His manhood was thick, throbbing, the ache heavy and persistent. Too bad Apaches didn’t rape. She expected it, he knew—had expected it since she’d awakened, and it was almost in him to fulfill her expectations. Of course he couldn’t rape her—it went against every value he had been raised to believe in. “Well?”
“I—I wasn’t.”
“No?” He cupped her face with his free hand, catching some of her glorious hair. “A liar, are you?”
“Please, I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” He wanted to kiss her. Instead he raised himself to all fours. “Did you really think you could sneak up on me and kill me?”
She began to cry.
He stood abruptly, wrenching away. Then he twisted back to her. “Do I have to tie you up?”
She sat, clutching the blanket to her breasts. “No, please, don’t.”
“I sleep with one eye open, one ear listening. It’s the Apache way. Lie down, go back to sleep. And don’t try anything so foolish again.”
