Susan Johnson Page 14

  Her uncertainty dissipated, for there was no mistaking Hazard’s look. She let the blanket drop into the water. “Promise me,” Blaze murmured, her hand idly stroking the tense muscles of Hazard’s chest, the silky feel of his wet skin acute to her heightened senses, velvety as quicksilver, “promise to love me … again … and again.” He had only to touch her and she wanted him, wanted to experience all the enchantment of their loving, wanted to play in her newly discovered garden of delights, to frolic and lure with her newfound powers.

  “I promise,” Hazard exhaled softly, sweeping Blaze up into his arms again and moving to the shore. “Kiss me,” he huskily said, his lashes close and spiky wet, “now.”

  With a wild shyness that suited her fledgling feelings, Blaze’s arms circled his strong neck, her face lifted and she reached to touch his mouth.

  Memory and need guided Hazard to the mossy softness beneath the alder bushes. Moments later as they lay together under the leafy green branches, their bodies damp and twined, their mouths warm and bruised, Blaze whispered, “Do you think I’m terrible?” The pink tip of her tongue teasingly licked at his mouth, the coquette playing at dalliance—bewitching and bewitched, feckless as an indulged child.

  “Umm,” he murmured, nibbling at her mouth in turn.

  Her languorous eyes widened artlessly, the enchantress not yet surefooted in the game of love.

  “Terribly eager,” Hazard whispered, lightly brushing one wide-eyed brow with his lips. “It’s unladylike,” he mockingly reproved, a teasing smile curving his fine mouth. “Terribly unreserved,” he softly continued, gently kissing her other silky brow. “And terribly, terribly”—the voice rich with anticipated pleasure caressed her cheek with its warmth as his body moved over hers—“desirable.”

  She smiled, a rare and beautiful smile as compelling as the candor in her eyes. “Love me,” she ordered, her voice balmy with invitation. “Now.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am,” Hazard murmured, easing away to shed his leggings.

  When he moved he saw it—his sacred bundle—suspended from the tree near the shore. The small medicine amulet was the incarnation of his vision with all the sacred objects revealed to him in his dreams, invested with supernatural powers, giving him his power and blessings. The tied bundle was a protective talisman and the Spirit of his Life Force: a cougar skin wrapped around hallowed bits of earthly fragments. And those bits of stone and feathers and bone were what kept him safe, what he prayed to, what guided him, reminded him, even now, of his duty … searingly. Each hand-picked component was pregnant with meaning and reminded him, like surging tides of the past.

  He came to his feet slowly, self-denial a stark affliction in this paradise of the senses. Putting a small distance between them, he stood still, hard pressed by desire. He didn’t trust himself to touch her again. Finally, when her eyes opened in bewilderment, he said, “Forgive me. Would you go back to the cabin now?”

  A cold drenching shower would have been less shocking to Blaze, with her body vividly awake, her longing no less urgent than Hazard’s.

  She lay in her mossy bower, as naturally as a wood nymph, but the brilliant blue eyes were sharp and clear, the antithesis of the lyrical vision. And her pose was as greenly erotic as the wild flora on which she lay. “Don’t do this,” she said in her usual straightforward way. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her eyes held his but he was silent. “Why?” she asked.

  Discarding several answers, he finally said, “Someone has to be sensible.”

  “Why?” she repeated, innocent and simple.

  He didn’t have an answer she’d understand. Or even if she could understand all he felt about duty, the importance of his mission for his people, it wasn’t the whole truth. And he wasn’t about to explain to her that he found her so disturbingly desirable that he could contemplate endless weeks in bed with her. He didn’t want her to know that. Or how he was infatuated with her like a giddy adolescent. How his need to touch her, the extravagant sensitivity he felt in her presence was like a magic spell. He had a job to do now and no time for infatuations. Maybe when this was all over, when his clan was safely provided for, he’d take a vacation back East. The place wouldn’t matter to either of them. He was certain of her response, as certain as he’d been from the first steamy afternoon he’d looked up to see her standing above him. There was a startling affinity between them, and with his vaster experience, he recognized it as unique.

  Blaze looked up at him this time, their positions reversed from the first encounter near Hangman’s Tree a little over a month ago, and saw a man still as death, rigid in his withdrawal. There was no mistaking the tension. She felt it too, the burning need between them, like a smoldering fuse. But she didn’t want to withdraw, didn’t want to be sensible. Unconstrained by the motives that curbed Hazard, she openly acknowledged their attraction and wanted only to explore the hurtling beauty their identities provoked. Naive she might be in matters of sex, but she recognized desire in men’s eyes—had known it since she’d left childhood braids behind. “Are you going to answer me?” she persisted, half rising on one elbow in a shamelessly provocative pose.

  “No,” Hazard responded, his voice brusque, the supple curve of her waist, hip, and thigh doing disastrous things to his control.

  “I want you. I thought you wanted me. I don’t understand what else matters.”

  It was a forthright proposition, and under any other circumstances, his answer would have been different. “Unfortunately,” he said with regret, “almost everything else in the world matters.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “Or go away?” he suggested softly.

  “That would be nice.”

  “It would be nicer if you’d get up and go back to the cabin.”

  She lazily surveyed his arresting hard male beauty. “Why don’t you come back here?” She left an artful pause, then her small hand smoothed the soft moss hear her hip.

  “There’s a dozen or so reasons why … none,” he said with a dry look of despair, “I could probably make you understand.”

  “Try me.”

  He laughed, the play on words enticing. “Well, to begin with—I work. Very hard.”

  “It didn’t seem to bother you before.” She was like a young child determined to have her own way.

  “Discounting that,” he went on, amusement rich in his voice, “we’re adversaries.”

  “Oh, really?” she inquired, all coy disbelief.

  “You change your mind in a hurry when you want something, don’t you?” Hazard murmured, recalling the threats hurled at him yesterday—hell, minutes before, on the way down to the pool.

  “It never pays to be rigid. Expediency,” she purred, “is my watchword.”

  He felt the pulsing resume in his groin. “I think,” he abruptly said, “we should continue this discussion when you have some clothes on.”

  She could sense his physical power and sharp need. “Does it bother you to look at me nude?” Her flirtatious tone couldn’t have been improved on by Delilah herself.

  “It bothers me that your father and his friends want to take my claim. After that bother, the rest pale by comparison.”

  “I don’t want your claim.”

  “And I don’t want your fine pussy,” Hazard determinedly stated. “Don’t look so shocked,” he said, walking over and pulling her up. “Surely you know that’s what we’ve been talking about.”

  The flirtatiousness was replaced by a quick flare of anger Hazard found infinitely safer to face. “You’re rude,” Blaze declared resentfully, pulling her hand from his grasp.

  “And you’re too hot a piece for me, Miss Braddock.” For the first time Hazard’s soft voice bit. “You might as well learn now that everyone isn’t prepared to be enchanted by your”—he paused the exact fraction of a second for rudeness—“charms. So let’s keep our distance. I’m interested in a platonic relationship,” he continued, his glance temperate once again. �
�Cabin-mates, brother and sister, friends,” he asserted. “Something that won’t cause any trouble to either one of us.”

  “Platonic,” Blaze said, as if she were examining a very mediocre piece of goods.

  “Platonic,” he repeated moderately. “It’s my watchword.” He kept his eyes safely trained on her left brow, logic, at the moment, struggling mightily to withstand his body’s urgent demands.

  A hot flash of pique illuminated the huge blue eyes at the parody, and then she said crisply, “Very well.” Turning abruptly, she walked away.

  Hazard watched her—the beautiful swaying walk, the slender, curvaceous body, the head held high—and damned himself for having scruples. Would there come a time when he could explain his vision to her, indulge their desire?

  Spurned and now face to face with a challenge for the first time in her life, Blaze smiled contemplatively. She knew her father would rescue her, of that she was certain. In the meantime, Jon Hazard Black and his scruples, his fierce power and curious sensitivity, were about to be besieged by an assailant intent on winning.

  Hazard didn’t eat breakfast when he returned from the pool some minutes later. He only made himself two sandwiches and left for the mine. He didn’t speak to Blaze, intent on keeping his distance, intent on avoiding any further discussion on the disconcerting, embroiling subject of making love.

  COLONEL Braddock watched the Indian guide start a small fire, his own thoughts elsewhere: Was Blaze hurt, mistreated? Would the savage side of this Hazard man abuse his daughter? Under stress who knew how the man would react. Billy Braddock was also worried about Yancy. Unpredictable and short-tempered, Yancy was the last man he cared to leave behind in Confederate Gulch unattended, but Millicent had requested his support, so he’d consented. Yancy had come to him two years ago, well recommended by Alphonse DeSmet, so he’d hired him as a manager for his plant. He’d turned out to be first rate at organization; in fact, he’d handled the logistics of this entire trip superbly. But Yancy had a temper with underlings and like many of his southern counterparts was adamantly prejudiced against anyone with skin darker than his. It hadn’t mattered before—the prejudice—because Yancy answered to him and he didn’t tolerate discrimination. But Yancy might go off on his own after this Hazard and do something that could jeopardize Blaze. There was no way of knowing whether Blaze was with the Indian in the mine during the day or booby-trapped somehow in case of an attack, and heaven only knows what Hazard might do to her if they went up with guns. All the diabolical tortures attributed to the Indians raced through his mind. The Colonel shivered unconsciously. Whatever it took, he thought, to appease the fellow, he would do. Blaze was all he had in the world.

  The smell of coffee reached his nostrils and his distracted thoughts returned to the fire, his guide, the sight of coffee bubbling in a tiny pot hung over the flames. “Maybe it’s my fault,” he said, half aloud, his mind obsessed with the gravity of Blaze’s captivity.

  Hearing the murmured words, the Bannack guide looked up, his expression inquiring.

  Colonel Braddock sighed, looked around like someone not quite sure where he was, and added, “I let her go. I shouldn’t have. And now …” He sighed again, a deepening melancholy gripping him.

  Whether the Colonel was explaining or talking to himself was uncertain, but Spotted Horse answered quietly, “Hostages. Do many in the old days. Keep peace. Won’t hurt.” He gave the coffee a stir with a peeled branch.

  “Are you sure?” The Colonel’s eyes were alive for the first time since their journey began. “Are you sure?” he agitatedly repeated.

  Spotted Horse looked up. “Crow don’t scalp,” he declared. “Don’t kill whites. Crow like Bannack,” he continued more slowly. “Know white men like grass on the prairie.”

  Billy Braddock sat up straighter, felt suddenly invigorated. “How far did you say to Ash River? How long before we find Hazard’s clan?”

  “Maybe when sun sets again. River not far.” He was pouring sugar into the pot from a leather pouch.

  Blaze’s father relaxed his rigid posture. It reassured, the fact that this guide seemed so certain of Hazard’s motives. If hostages were used to keep peace, then Hazard would be willing to negotiate. But niggling doubts insinuated themselves again: How long would it take to reach the clan, return to the mine? In the meantime, how would Blaze respond to her captor? If he hadn’t raised her like the son he never had, his mind would be easier. But he knew Blaze and knew how she reacted to constraint. He’d spoiled her, he realized, far too much, and it frightened him to contemplate what might occur if Blaze resisted Hazard Black’s orders. Apparently Hazard wasn’t a man to be crossed.

  “Drink,” the guide said, handing the Colonel a steaming cup of coffee. “Coffee help,” he gravely asserted. “No tired.”

  The coffee was powerfully sweet, the way his guide liked it. But Spotted Horse was right. After drinking the coffee, he wasn’t so tired, and when they remounted a short time later, the Colonel felt ready to ride over any mountain ahead.

  Chapter 11

  Reconciling herself to hours of solitude, Blaze had settled into the armchair with a month-old newspaper from Virginia City when the door opened, Looking up, she saw a young boy standing in the rush of sunshine streaming in the opening. His shock of pale hair was disheveled, his eyes were grey and serious, and his sturdy arms were holding two string-tied parcels. “I brought some milk and meat,” he gravely explained. “Ferguson butchered a steer yesterday.”

  Blaze had dropped the paper in her lap when she first saw him and, smoothing the pages lightly with her fingers, asked, “Are you the boy who picked the berries?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he politely replied.

  “Come in,” Blaze invited, getting up. “Here, I’ll take the packages.” She carried them over to the counter by the dry sink. “Would you like something to eat?” she inquired, ignoring the measure of her culinary skills.

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” he courteously refused. Hazard had told him she couldn’t cook when he’d stopped at the mine to get his orders for the day. He began stacking the plates from last night’s supper.

  “You don’t have to do that.…” Blaze paused, uncertain how to address him.

  “Jimmy, ma’am, Jimmy Pernell,” he acknowledged, setting the salt and pepper neatly in the center of the table.

  “It isn’t necessary,” Blaze began again, watching the young boy’s swift, sure movements. He’d gathered all the used dishes on one end of the pine table.

  “He told me to, ma’am,” Jimmy answered, reaching for the dishpan hanging on a nail by the stove. “And he told me to help you with lunch too.”

  “Is he paying you?” Blaze was amazed at the assurance of his actions. He was stoking the stove now after testing the water in the reservoir.

  “Oh, sure, ma’am,” he replied, looking up from his task, “Hazard always pays real good. Mom washes and irons his shirts. He pays her five dollars apiece. And my sister Abby copies some of the new laws for him for a dime a word. And the baby can’t earn no money yet, but Hazard says anyone that cute deserves an allowance just for smiling and cheering him up. He gives Joey money each week and Ma buys extra food with it. You don’t have to worry none, ma’am. Hazard’s the best.”

  Now there, thought Blaze, with an inner smile, is a very fine version of hero worship—and a sizable outlay for Hazard each month.

  “What does he pay you, ma’am, for taking care of things?”

  “Er—we haven’t talked about it yet.”

  Glancing around at the unusual disarray, Jimmy kindly observed, “When you get the hang of things better, I’m sure he’ll pay you fine, just like he does everyone else. He’s fair as a prince, Ma says. That’s a fact. And cleaner than any man she’s ever knowed.”

  “I understand,” Blaze said to the boy busily rolling up the sleeves of his homemade shirt, “his tribe has some custom about bathing.”

  “Don’t know about that, ma’am, but Ma says God took
away the mold after he made Hazard. He’s one of a kind.”

  It sounded, Blaze decided with a twinge of resentment, as though Jimmy’s mother might have a touch of hero worship herself. “How old is your mother?” she asked as casually as possible.

  “Old,” Jimmy declared in the way of children viewing anyone over twelve. Looking up from his arrangement of dishpan and rinse pan, he added, “She’s probably got a couple years on you, ma’am. Do you want me to show you how to wash dishes? Hazard says you can’t do nothin’. I can show you.” The offer was sincerely made, without a trace of intolerance.

  “Thank you,” Blaze replied with a smile, “That would be very kind of you.”

  “No offense, ma’am,” he said, surveying the littered cabin, “but what can you do?”

  “I’m afraid my schooling overlooked … this sort of thing.”

  “Well, don’t worry none,” he reassured her again, “I’ll help you out.”

  “Thank you, Jimmy, I’d like that.” His childish frankness charmed her and she smiled at him again. “Now tell me, what do I do first?”

  “Put hot water from the stove reservoir halfway up both these pans here. I’ll get the cool water and then I’ll show you how to wash dishes.”

  He washed and she dried—with beautifully embroidered towels stitched by Jimmy’s mother and sister. For a rare moment, staring at the intricate flower designs, Blaze wished she’d learned how to embroider. She felt curiously out of place in the midst of what was obviously a warm group of friends.

  After the dishes were finished, Jimmy swept up all the remaining bits of broken crockery with admirable restraint. He’d seen his ma throw a plate against the wall once and then burst into tears soon after his pa died a year ago. And he knew when grownups broke this many dishes, something wasn’t right. So without a word, the piles were all picked up, put into an old box, and carried outside. “I think now,” he said, returning and giving an approving smile to Blaze’s effort at bedmaking, “we’d better start lunch cuz Hazard said he’d be in at twelve sharp.”