He had been a fool to think she would stay with him. Damn her! Why did he have to keep thinking about how she looked, how her eyes flashed when she was angry, how they glowed when she was aroused, how they softened when she smiled? How she felt, beneath him, sheathing him, how she responded to his passion in a way that no other woman had, and never would … how when they were together, there was something so fulfilled, it was beyond the actual physical act of copulation, giving her a part of himself, and becoming a part of her.…
His body moved of its own volition. It wasn’t until he stepped out of the shack and onto the dusty street that he realized he was barefoot and wearing only his pants—not even his gun.
Candice sat alone on a bench at the stage depot, right across the street. His gaze moved over her. She was dressed for travel in a blue serge jacket and skirt, a matching bonnet in blue straw. The outfit revealed rather than hid her lush curves, and he felt the stirring of forbidden desire. Her hair was out of sight, except for golden wisps that escaped the bonnet and drifted around her face. She was dark—golden-tanned from all the time she had spent in the sun without protection, much darker than when he had first found her on the desert, dying. For a brief instant he was brought back to that time, when it had all started.
She sat stiff and straight and did not look like Candice. Where was Kincaid?
Jack was halfway across the street, mindless of passersby, when she saw him. Their gazes locked.
He stopped by her side, smiling mockingly. “Well, well,” he drawled. “If it isn’tMrs. Kincaid. Going on a trip,Mrs. Kincaid?”
“Jack!” She was staring at him, her face paling, her eyes huge dark pools, and something in their depths, something he hadn’t expected to see, struck him, pulled at him. Why was she sad? Surely his eves were deceiving him. He shook off the compassion—he didn’t care.
“Where is Kincaid?” he taunted, pulling her to her feet.
She didn’t shrink away from him, even though he knew his grip had to be hurting her. Instead she stared into his eyes, searchingly. He tightened his hold until she grimaced.
“Aren’t you going to beg me to leave you alone?” He sneered. “Aren’t you afraid of being seen with me in public? What’s wrong, Mrs. Kincaid, has the cat got your tongue?”
He yanked her. Still, she didn’t protest, didn’t cry out. “Well? Are you happy now, Mrs. Kincaid, with your white husband?” His face was very close to hers. Why did she just stand there and take his abuse? “Can you even tell the difference in the dark?” He threw her off.
She stumbled against the post, then straightened. Her eyes never left him. “Jack, you don’t understand …”
“Oh, I understand, Candice, I understand perfectly the bigoted little bitch that you are,” he said disgustedly, grabbing her shoulders again.
She whimpered.
“Get your hands off my wife!” Kincaid rasped, striding down the street toward them.
Jack dropped his hand and stepped aside instinctively to move away from Candice, so she wouldn’t be hurt in the gunfire that followed. His hands were already tensed at his sides when he realized he had no gun. Not even his knife.
Which was unfortunate, because he itched to kill the man who was Candice’s white husband.
“No, Virgil,” Candice cried with panic, rushing to him, grabbing his arm. “He’s drunk. We were just talking. Please.”
“Is this the one?” Kincaid demanded, livid. “Is he the one?”
“No!” Candice lied, clinging to him. “No, I swear it, no!”
“Step aside, Candice.”
“No!” Candice shouted.
“Get away,” Jack said to her, fighting to clear his head. He wasn’t frightened, but he knew he was in trouble. He was hung over and drunk, and Kincaid could kill him with such an advantage. He fought to sharpen all his senses, concentrating with an effort fed by adrenaline.
“Virgil, he’s drunk and unarmed.” Candice clung to him. “Virgil, please.”
Jack watched as Kincaid glanced at her. She was pressing against him, her breasts crushed against his side, one of her hands on his chest, her lips parted, her look partly seductive, partly pleading. She lowered her voice and was speaking rapidly. Jack strained to hear her words. He knew he would have been able to discern them if he weren’t so numb from alcohol. And then Kincaid relaxed, placing his arm around her, and with a last warning look, he pulled Candice away.
Not once did she even look back.
CHAPTER FORTY
Traveling by stage was endless. The first day Candice sat numbly in the crowded coach of the Butterfield Overland Mail, which ran a semiweekly service from Tipton, Missouri, to San Francisco, by way of Él Paso, Tucson, Fort Yuma, and Los Angeles. The stage covered only fifteen or twenty miles a day in this kind of country. At times the trail wound across rocky, flat, mesquite- and sage-studded valleys, rimmed in the distance by brown, jagged mountains. At other times the trail became difficult if not treacherous, winding up in soft, dry arroyos as they made their way through rocky mountain passes where juniper and pinyon cast great shadows and the air grew slightly cooler.
At the worst of times, all the passengers had to get out, the women walking as the men pushed the stage when its wheels sank into sand or got caught on rocks or in ruts. For Candice, walking was a vast relief. The wagon bounced incessantly, until her back was stiff and her neck paralyzed, and it was not and malodorous in the coach from the clustering of unclean bodies. The conversation was idle and monotonous, yet no one slept throughout the long day—no one dared. The fear of the passengers bordered on the psychotic. It was contagious.
Apaches.
