Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Copyright

This was a man who trusted no one. A man alone, his spirit raw with unhealed wounds.

Had he known many women? Surely he had. Latigo’s rugged features and dark, feral grace would be enough to draw the gaze of any female he passed. But love? Rose mentally shook her head. Loving a man like Latigo would be like loving the wind.

His knuckles brushed her leg as he reached for the wrappings again. The unexpected touch sparked a ripple of awareness through Rose’s body. She turned to find him looking up at her, his eyes intent but guarded.

“Who are you?” she whispered again, quivering as his gaze pierced her defenses like a stone-tipped arrow.

“To you—no one and nothing,” he murmured. “A passing ghost with the first light of sunrise.”

“So when will you go?” Rose heard herself asking…

Dear Reader,

This month we’ve covered all the bases. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll find romance. We are thrilled to bring you Apache Fire by longtime historical and contemporary romance author Elizabeth Lane. As with all of her books, this Western sizzles with emotion and romantic tension. It’s the story of a beautiful young widow with a newborn son, who finds love and hope in the arms of the Native American army scout she’s hiding on her. ranch.

In Lost Acres Bride by rising talent Lynna Banning, a rugged, by-the-book cattleman must contend with the female spitfire who inherits a piece of his land—and gets a piece of his heart! And Tori Phillips returns with another of her CAVENDISH CHRONICLES, Three Dog Knight, about a shy earl and an illegitimate noblewoman who forge a marriage of convenience based on trust, and later love, despite the machinations of an evil sister-in-law.

Rounding out this month is Blackthorne, Ruth Langan’s first medieval novel in nearly four years! Packed with intrigue and emotion, this is the tale of a haunted widower, the lord of Blackthorne, whose child’s governess teaches him how to love again.

Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historicals® novel.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell, Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Apache Fire
Elizabeth Lane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ELIZABETH LANE

has traveled extensively in Latin America, Europe and China, and enjoys bringing these exotic locales to life on the printed page, but she also finds her home state of Utah and other areas of the American West to be fascinating sources for historical romance. Elizabeth loves such diverse activities as hiking and playing the piano, not to mention her latest hobby—belly dancing.

For Alec

September 23, 1997

Chapter One

Arizona Territory

April 7, 1876

Latigo’s vision was a red blaze of pain. He sagged over the neck of his spent mustang, teeth clenched as he battled to stay conscious. He had been riding most of the night, every lurch of the horse like a lance thrust into his bleeding shoulder. The Colby Ranch couldn’t be much farther unless, in this cursed stupor, he had somehow become lost.

The ghost face of the waning moon hung low in the western sky. Startled by hoofbeats, a miniature owl exploded out of its burrow and flapped screeching into the darkness.

Latigo cursed, fighting pain as he struggled to calm his spooked mount. He had lived all his life in the desert, and he was as much at home here as the sharp-nosed coyotes that ranged along the lonely arroyos. But tonight he was no coyote. He was wounded prey, and in the danger of darkness even the wind’s familiar voice was an alien moan.

With excruciating effort, he focused his eyes on the notched peak that was his beacon point. He could feel his life oozing through the makeshift bandage that covered the bullet wound in his shoulder. In the seven hours since the ambush, he had lost a dizzying amount of blood. If John Colby refused him shelter…

But how could Colby refuse, when his very honor was at stake? Ten years ago, during the bloody Apache wars, Latigo had saved Colby’s life, and the rancher—more out of pride, to be sure, than gratitude—had vowed to repay him one day. Now it was time to call in the old debt.

Under any other circumstances, Latigo would just as soon have let the matter go. He was a man who asked little of others, especially where whites were concerned. But now he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live.

As he clung to the horse, he fueled his strength with his own anger at what had happened. Hours earlier, on the San Carlos Reservation, he had been guiding two U.S. government agents on an inspection tour. As their mounts passed through a narrow ravine, a hail of rifle fire had erupted from the rocks above and behind them. The two federal men had died at once, but the bullet meant for Latigo’s heart had struck a handbreadth too high and to the left. Reeling with shock, he had managed to spur his horse and gain some distance before the four attackers had time to mount up and come after him. He had barely glimpsed their faces, but he had seen enough to know they were not Apaches.

Twisting painfully in the saddle, he peered into the darkness behind him. He had not sighted his pursuers since yesterday afternoon when he’d holed up in a rocky crevice to wait for nightfall. Surely he had lost them. Whites weren’t worth spit as trackers, and they’d had no scout along. Surely he could afford to roll into the brush and rest for the space of a few precious breaths.

But he could not even think of stopping. The ebbing strength in every part of his body told him that if he were to lie down he would never get up again.

A snort from the mustang jolted Latigo to sudden alertness. He felt the horse shudder beneath him and caught the eager prick of its ears. Instinctively his hand groped for the empty holster where his U.S. Army issue Colt would have been, had he not dropped it when the bullet slammed into his body. He was weaponless except for the braided rawhide whip that lay coiled like a rattlesnake along the flank skirt of his saddle. Latigo’s prowess with the whip had earned him the Spanish name by which he’d been known for half of his thirty-three years. But little good that would do him now, when he could scarcely raise his arm without a stab of nauseating pain.

Latigo’s thoughts scattered as his ears picked up a distant shrillness on the wind. Horses. A dozen perhaps, maybe more, about a mile ahead. They sounded close together, as they might be in a corral.

The Colby Ranch.

Had he found it, or was he riding into a trap?

The half-wild mustang bugled eagerly, trotting hard in its urgency to be with its own kind. Latigo was too weak to stop the animal. He clenched his teeth as the pain jolted through him. Hold on, he ordered his shock-numbed arms. Just hold…on…

Fire…smoke from the blazing wagon blinding her eyes, searing her throat…her mother’s scream, and the cold twang of arrows striking flesh…her gentle father pitching facedown next to the mules, his fingers clawing lines in the powdery red dust…savage Apache faces streaked like bloodied hatchets with vermilion war paint, eyes glittering, as they moved in for the kill…no!…please, God, no!

Rose Colby awoke in a frenzy of silent screams.

Her fingers clutched the patchwork quilt as she battled her way back to reality. Her heartbeats echoed like gunfire against the wall of her ribs.

It’s all right. Beneath the long muslin nightgown, her body was drenched in sweat. It’s all right. You were only dreaming.

She lay rigid while the nightmare faded, quivering in the warm darkness of the bed she had shared with John Colby for more than a third of her twenty-six years. Yes, it was all right, she reassured herself. The Apaches had long since been beaten by the army and herded onto reservations. The adobe walls of the big house were as thick as a fortress, every window barred with wrought-iron grillwork. John’s Colt .45 Peacemaker lay loaded on the nightstand. The vaqueros had taught her how to use it, and she could hit a playing card dead center at fifty paces.

You’re safe, Rose. Perfectly safe.

But Rose knew she would never feel safe from the terrors that lurked in her own mind. No walls, however strong, could shut out the nightmare visions that had haunted her for nine long years.

Brushing back her tawny mane of hair, she sat up, slid her bare feet to the floor and pattered across the cool Mexican tiles. The hand-carved mahogany cradle sat against the near wall, sheltered by the inward slope of the roof. Bathed by moonlight, her two-month-old son lay deep in slumber, his eyelids closed, his upflung fists curled like tiny pink chrysanthemum buds. His breath whispered sweetly in the darkness.

Mason, she called him—John Mason Colby, after her husband and her own father. She would raise her boy well, Rose vowed, aching with love. He would grow up to be a fine man, and he would carry on the names he bore with pride, honor and courage.

Pride…Honor…Courage…Duty. Moonlight gleamed softly on the words etched around the border of the silver medal that hung on the wall above the crib. The medal had been John’s, awarded to him by the territorial governor for valor during the Apache wars. John had treasured it. So would his son.

Rose’s throat hardened with emotion as she bent low to feather a caress across the downy silk of her baby’s hair— dark, as John’s hair must have been in his youth, although she had never known it to be other than gray. What a tragedy John had not lived to see this baby, the heir he had wanted—demanded—for so long. He would surely have forgiven her, then, for the long, barren years and the heartbreaking miscarriages. The two of them might have even known some happiness, drawn together at last by their love for this beautiful child.

Closing her eyes, Rose inhaled the sweet, milky, baby aura that cloaked the tiny body. Let him sleep, her practical side argued. But her motherly instincts cried out for her son’s warmth in her arms. She reached into the cradle only to freeze in midmotion, her heart convulsing in sudden alarm.

Outside, just below the window, the sound of a horse.

Rose darted to the nightstand and caught up the loaded Peacemaker. Maybe it was nothing—one of the vaqueros returning early from the mountains, where they’d moved the herds for spring grazing, or some visitor from Tucson, or—

But what was she thinking? The grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway chimed two in the morning. No one would be so foolhardy as to travel at this hour. No one, at least, with any good intent.

Gripping the heavy pistol, Rose crept along the wall and peered around the edge of the window. Except for the baby, she was alone in the house. The vaqueros were out with the herd. Esperanza, the cook, and her husband, Miguel, who tended to things around the place, had left that morning to visit their newborn grandchild in Fronteras. Rose herself had insisted they go—foolishly, she realized now. Whatever trouble lurked outside, she would have no choice but to deal with it alone.

An artery pulsed along the curve of her throat as she scanned the moonlit landscape, the barren front yard where John had never allowed so much as a paloverde or creosote bush to sprout because it might provide cover for marauding Apaches; the open-sided ramadas and the adobe bunkhouse; the corrals where those horses not taken on the cattle drive milled and stamped.

Yes, something was out there.

Rose pressed closer to the glass, the pistol leaden in her shaking hand. She had fired the big gun at tins and bottles, but never at any living target, let alone a human being. Her Quaker parents had raised her to detest violence. All the same she knew, with a ferocious maternal certainty, that if threatened, she would kill to protect her child.

At first she saw nothing. Then, directly below her, almost hidden by the overhanging shadow of the roof, the dark shape of a solitary horse emerged, its head drooping, its saddle empty.

A gasp of relief escaped Rose’s taut lips as she sagged against the wall. A riderless horse was a matter for concern, but it posed no immediate danger, unless—

Nerves screaming, she pressed toward the window again. The horse could be a ruse, she reminded herself, a trick to lure her outside. She would be a fool to drop her guard now, when an army of intruders could be waiting in the shadows.

Rose’s breath stopped as the horse shifted its stance to reveal, dragging from a stirrup by one entangled boot, the dark, limp form of a man.

She pressed close to the glass, forgetting to hide herself. Judging from what she could see, the rider appeared to be a stranger. He was tall. Rose could calculate that much from the length of his trapped leg and the lean sprawl of his body. His clothes were plain, dark and trail worn. But beyond that, she could not tell how badly he was hurt, or even whether he was still alive.

She gripped the gun in an agony of indecision. To go downstairs and open the door would jeopardize her own safety and, infinitely worse, that of her baby. But how could she leave a man—a good man, for all she knew, maybe with a wife and children waiting at home—to die on her very doorstep?

As Rose hesitated, torn to the point of anguish, she saw the man’s arm move, saw his hand stir and lift. His fingers strained, quivering toward the stirrup, only to fall back, clenched in pain and frustration.

A moan of pity broke in Rose’s throat Whatever the peril, no decent soul could turn away from this human being.

Laying the gun on the bed, she flung on her flannel wrapper and knotted the sash tightly around her waist. Then she picked up the weapon again, paused to thumb back the hammer and, with a last glance at Mason’s small, sleeping form, hurried down the dark hallway toward the stairs.

Her steps faltered as she neared the massive front door. For the space of a heartbeat she clung to the heavy crossbar, gathering her courage. The entry way was pitch-black, the house eerily silent. If only she’d thought to bring a lantern…

But the stranger was in pain and need, and there was no more time to be lost. The moon was shining outside, Rose noted as she shoved back the bar. She would be able to see well enough.

Her knuckles whitened on the pistol grip as the door creaked open. For a moment she held her breath, gulping back old terrors as she waited for a rush from the shadows. But this time, except for the solitary horse drooping next to the hitching rail, there was nothing.

“Steady, boy.” Rose approached the animal cautiously, fearful that it might bolt and drag its injured rider back into the scrub. “That’s it…easy…” She caught the reins that were dangling loose over its neck and looped them around the rail.

The rider had neither spoken nor moved. He lay as still as death in the moonlight, while Rose labored to free his worn boot from the stirrup.

The leathers, she swiftly discovered, had become twisted around his ankle as the horse dragged him along the ground. So stubbornly were they tangled around his high-topped boot that she could not tug it loose. Rose hesitated, then laid the pistol on the ground. The man was surely too far gone to pose any danger.

Panting with effort, she tugged and twisted, but the stranger’s boot was caught fast. To free him, she would need to slide the boot off his foot, worsening any possible bone fractures in the process.

Praying she wouldn’t hurt him too badly, Rose cradled his leg against the curve of her waist and began, slowly and carefully, to work away the boot, which was so old and worn that the leather had molded like a second skin to the lean, bony contours of his foot. She was so intent on her task that she forgot her peril until the stranger spoke.

“No tricks, lady.”

The hoarse whisper struck Rose like a bullet. She turned to find herself staring down the barrel of her own discarded gun. The stranger’s face lay in shadow, but there was no mistaking the raw desperation in his voice.

“You heard me, lady. I don’t want to hurt you, but try anything cute, and you won’t live to be sorry!”

Rose knew she should be frightened, and she was. But bubbling hotly over her fear was a tide of anger. Her trembling hands balled into fists as they dropped to her sides.

“You crazy fool!” she snapped. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? I could’ve left you out here to die, and maybe I should have!”

Her words echoed on the silent wind. For the space of a long breath the stranger did not respond. Then Rose heard the sound of sharp-edged laughter in the darkness. Laughter that ended in a grunt of pain.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“Hell, yes, I’m hurt,” he snarled. “Get me loose from this horse, and then you can do something about it.”

“That’s exactly what I was trying to do when you interrupted me,” Rose said coldly. “May I go ahead now?”

“Go on.” His hand held the pistol steady as she turned back to working the boot off his foot.

“You could have broken bones,” she said. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

“Won’t make much difference if you do.” His breath sucked in, then rasped painfully out of his lungs. “I’m looking for John Colby. Is this his place?”

“It is. But he’s…not here.” It would not be wise to tell the stranger John was dead, she reasoned, at least not until she knew who he was and what he wanted.

“Are you Colby’s daughter?” The man winced as she repositioned his leg to support it against her hip.

“No, I’m John Colby’s…wife.” Rose felt his heel loosen from inside the boot. Holding her breath, she began easing the leather from around the threadbare stocking. When she glanced around, she saw that his gun hand had fallen to the ground. He was watching her cautiously, his jaw clenched against the pain.

“So, when will your husband be back—uh—Mrs. Colby?”

“What is it you want with him?”

“I—blast it, woman—” He muttered a string of curses as his foot slipped free of the boot, allowing the leg to drop. His hand, however, kept its grip on the pistol.

“You can let go of my gun,” Rose said coldly. “I don’t intend to harm you.”

“I’ll think about that after I’ve seen John Colby.” His voice grated with determination. “When did you say your husband would be back?”

“I didn’t.” Swallowing her fear, she forced herself to crouch beside him. He had propped himself on one elbow, the pistol clutched in his free hand. A chill knifed through Rose, stabbing to the marrow of her bones.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered, her throat dry and tight. “What do you want with John?”

A muscle twitched below his sharp cheekbone. “Let’s just say I’ve shown up to collect on an old debt,” he muttered.

“You mean to kill him, don’t you?” The words burst out of Rose with an audacity she might not have possessed if her husband had been alive.

“No, I only need his help…his word.” The stranger coughed, doubling over in sudden agony. “Get me in the house,” he said. “Now!”

Rose’s eyes swiftly measured his length and bulk. He was at least six feet tall, with broad, heavy shoulders and a deep chest. Too big a man for her to drag up the steps, let alone lift. “Can you walk?” she asked cautiously.

“My legs are fine. Just damned sore.” He struggled to rise, then sank back in obvious pain. As his arm shifted, the moonlight revealed an ugly, dark blotch still oozing crimson down the left side of his shirt.

Drops of sweat glistened on his skin as he strained to get up. “Give me your hand.”

Rose knew she had to take control now, while she could. “Give me the gun first,” she said quietly.

His black eyes flashed with sudden wariness. “Who’s in the house?”

“Nobody who could do you any harm. Give me the gun.”

He hesitated, then shook his head groggily. “Can’t trust you,” he mumbled. “Can’t trust anybody till your husband gives his word. Let’s go inside, Mrs. Colby.”

Rose thought of her son, asleep in his cradle upstairs. Anxiety made her bold. “No,” she said.

“No?” He glared at her, as if questioning her sanity.

“Not until you give me the gun.”

“From here, lady, I’d say you were in no position to argue.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Rose retorted, masking her fear with ice. “You’re badly wounded, and I’m the only one who can help you. Shoot me, and you won’t last till morning.”

He blinked, as if trying to clear some unseen darkness from his vision. His gun hand quivered. “Your husband—”

“John died four months ago.” Rose thrust the truth hard into him like the point of a lance. She saw him slump, saw the resistance ebbing out of him. “Give me the pistol,” she said more gently. “Believe me, I’m all you’ve got.”

His eyelids drooped, then, with effort, jerked upward again. The stranger had lost a great deal of blood, Rose surmised. It was all he could do to stay conscious. He did not even resist as she reached out, grasped the Peacemaker by its long barrel, lifted it from his hand and carefully released the hammer.

“Come on,” she said, shoving the weapon into the knotted sash of her robe. “Let’s get you up those steps before you pass out.”

Crouching close, she managed to work her shoulder under his right arm. His body was rank with sweat and blood, his clothes saturated with wood smoke. The blending odors ignited memories of death and terror in Rose’s mind, but she forced them aside. This man was too weak to fear, she reassured herself, even though every instinct whispered that she was wrong.

“Help me,” she ordered, gathering her strength. “Now!”

A grunt of agony exploded through his teeth as they lurched upward together. Rose staggered under his weight, fighting for balance as he struggled to get his footing. His body was as hard as ironwood, all bone and sinew through his clothes.

“Can you make it up the steps?” She strained against him, her flesh hurting where his hand gripped her shoulder.

“I’ll make it.” He gained the first step, then the second, biting back curses. She could feel his trembling heat along her side; she could feel the labored pounding of his heart.

Something flashed through Rose’s memory—the image of a wounded coyote whelp she had once found in the brush, half-dead, its eyes still glinting with a desperate defiance. Hungering for something to nurture, Rose had begged John to let her take the wretched creature home and care for it, but he had drawn his pistol and shot it before her horrified eyes. “You’ve got no sense at all, woman,” he’d said. “A coyote’s a wild animal. First chance a varmint like that gets, it’ll turn on you for sure.”

A wild animal

The man at her side had that same hunted air about him, and no matter how he might be suffering or what he might tell her, Rose knew she could not afford to trust him.

They had gained the porch. The stranger was reeling like a drunkard. It was all Rose could do to keep him upright. All the same, she forced herself to stop short of the door.

“I’m not taking you under my roof until I know,” she declared, bracing her weight against his ribs. “Who are you? What did you want with my husband?”

“Latigo.” He spoke with excruciating effort. “I knew your husband from the Apache wars. He said if I ever needed help…”

The words trailed off as his knees buckled, then his body collapsed in Rose’s arms. She tried to hold him, but his weight was too much for her. His blood left a streak of crimson down the skirt of her dark blue wrapper as he slid to the porch, shuddered and lay still.

Panic shrilled alarms in Rose’s head as she groped for his pulse. Reason argued that she and the baby would be safer if he died, but when her fingertips, searching along his jugular, found a weak but steady flutter, she broke into a sweat of relief. He was alive, but his life was trickling away with every heartbeat. There was no time to lose.

Urgency, now, drove her to fling open the door and seize the stranger’s feet, one booted, one covered only in a half-disintegrated dark woolen sock. As she dragged him along the tiles toward the kitchen, Rose prayed silently that she would know what to do. She had nursed the cuts and sprains of the vaqueros and cared for John during those last terrible months when he lay barely aware of her, but she was no doctor.

He groaned as she turned his body to slide it across the threshold into the kitchen where she kept water and medical supplies. “I know it hurts,” she muttered, “but I have to get you in here where I can work on you.” Rose shoved back the table to clear more space, then maneuvered him into position. She would have to dress his wound on the floor. Unless he could get up by himself, there was no way for her to lift him onto anything higher.

Water. Yes, he would need all the fluids she could force down him. Rose darted to the counter and filled a pottery cup from the tall pewter pitcher. Moonlight etched ghostly windowpane squares across the tile as she crossed the kitchen and dropped to her knees beside him.

The stranger—Latigo—moaned as she lifted his head and cradled it in her lap. His face was in shadow, so obscuring his features that she had to grope for his mouth. His skin was as smooth as new leather beneath her fingertips. An unexpected tenderness surged through her as she tipped the cup and pressed it to his cracked lips. “Drink,” she murmured. “Please—you’ve lost so much blood.”

At first he did not respond. The water filled his mouth until Rose feared she would drown him. It trickled out of one corner to run down her sleeve as she tilted his head to keep him from choking. Please, she begged silently. Please.

He sputtered weakly. Then she felt the ripple of his throat as he began to swallow. “Yes,” she whispered, tipping the cup higher to give him the last drops. “Yes, that’s it, drink it all.”

She withdrew the cup, then hesitated, wondering whether she should get him more water. No, she swiftly concluded, too much at one time might make him sick, and she could wait no longer to stop the bleeding.

“Latigo, can you hear me?”

He made no sound.

“Latigo!” Sick with dread, she seized his shoulder and shook it. Relief swept through her as he moaned incoherently.

“I’ve got to clean out your wound. It’s going to hurt Do you want some whiskey?”

Again he did not answer, and Rose realized she was wasting precious time. Leaving him where he lay, she scrambled to her feet and strode to the cupboard, where she rummaged for matches to light the lamp that Esperanza kept on the counter. By its flaring yellow light she filled a basin with water, then retrieved her medical kit, some clean rags and a bottle of John’s rye whiskey from the pantry. These she placed on the shadowed floor next to Latigo’s unconscious body. Then she rushed back to fetch the lamp from the counter.

Light danced eerily off the open-beamed ceiling as she picked up the lamp. It glistened on hanging copper pots and flickered on strings of garlic and dark red chilies as she hurried across the kitchen. The tiles were smooth and cold beneath her bare feet.

Latigo had not moved. He lay where she had left him, the agonized hiss of his breathing his only sign of life. Light pooled around his lanky frame as Rose bent down to set the lamp on the floor. It flooded his face, casting his features into stark relief—the tawny skin, the straight nose and sharp, high cheekbones, the long, square jaw, the broad forehead, crowned by hair as black as the wing of a raven.

Rose’s flesh had gone cold. Panic surged through her body, propelled by memories so vivid and terrible that she could not fight them back. The smoke. The blood. The savage, painted faces.

She closed her eyes, battling instincts that threatened to send her bolting out of the kitchen. The man was helpless, she reminded herself. He would die without her aid. Maybe he would die anyway, but she had no moral choice except to try to help him.

Rose willed her eyes to open, willed herself to look down at him as she reached for the basin and a clean cloth. She would perform her Christian duty, she resolved. But no charity on her part could wipe out the horror of the past.

And nothing could alter the fact that this dark stranger, this man who called himself Latigo, wore the face of an Apache.

Chapter Two

He was running free, his boyish legs bounding along the rocky crest of a sage-swept ridge. The dawn wind whispered in his long, black hair. The soles of his moccasins skimmed the path as he mounted higher and higher, pursuing some precious golden thing that glimmered just beyond sight and reach. “Seek, boy,” the aging di-yin had told him. “Climb high. Only then will you find the path to who you are and where you must stand.”

Latigo awoke to thin gray light as the dream faded. His body jerked to sudden awareness. His eyelids fluttered open. Then, with a caution born of dangerous years, they swiftly closed to narrow slits, allowing him to size up his situation before moving.

His shoulder burned like hellfire, but the tightness of new wrappings told him his wound had been dressed. However badly or well remained to be seen. Someone had put a clean shirt on him that scratched his neck and smelled of laundry soap. That was something a woman would do, he reasoned foggily.

A woman.

Yes, his memory was beginning to clear. Latigo’s ears recalled the husky timbre of a white woman’s voice, telling him to lie still, but her face was nothing but a disembodied cloud. Someone had dragged or carried him indoors because he was lying on a hard floor, covered by a fleecy wool blanket that smelled of cedar, as did the pillow that supported his head. But where was he? What had happened last night? Think, man.

Latigo’s tongue was a dry pebble, his throat so brittle with thirst that he could not bring himself to swallow. His hands stirred, then froze as he realized his wrists and ankles were bound with some sort of coarse, soft twine.

The discovery sent a shock jolting through his system. Latigo’s pulse jumped, snapping his senses to sudden clarity. He remembered the ambush, the long, punishing ride through the desert and the sight of the ranch gate. He remembered slipping into blackness, then waking up on the ground, scraped and battered, with one boot twisted in the stirrup. He remembered a woman with a pale, frightened face and moonswept hair. He remembered her eyes, violet blurs, their color startling even by moonlight.

And he remembered that John Colby was dead.

Latigo fought the urge to struggle against the ties that wrapped his wrists and ankles. Whoever had taken him prisoner was likely close by, maybe watching him right now. To preserve the element of surprise, which was his only weapon, he would have to remain perfectly still.

His pupils shifted warily beneath half-closed eyelids as he strained to see in the wan morning light. Off to his right, he could make out the legs and underside of a massive wooden table, and beyond that the tiled base of a cast-iron stove. The kitchen appeared large enough to contain an entire Apache rancheria, but then, that should come as no surprise, Latigo reminded himself. The size of white men’s dwellings tended to far outstrip their needs, and John Colby owned, or had owned, the biggest spread of land south of the Gila.

Latigo’s furtive gaze scanned the room, lingering on the solid, lime-washed walls, the padlocked plank door and the high, iron-grilled windows. The place was built like a stockade, he groused, feeling more and more like a caged animal. Even if he could get untied, escaping from such a fortress would not be easy.

By now his body had fully awakened to its discomfort. His skull throbbed like the dull beat of a tom-tom. Every breath lanced agony through his wounded shoulder. His back and legs ached from lying on the cold floor, and hunger clawed at his stomach—good signs, he reminded himself. Pain and hunger meant his body was alive and fighting.

Shoving his useless physical complaints aside, Latigo continued his furtive exploration of the kitchen. He glimpsed an open door, leading, he surmised, to another room in the house. To the right of the doorway— Latigo’s breath stopped.

On a bench beside the door, bathed in a shaft of morning sunlight, a young white woman sat nursing a baby.

Thunderstruck, he studied her through the screen of his lashes. Propriety, drilled into him by years in the white man’s world, warned Latigo that he had no business casting eyes on such a woman. But his gaze was drawn to her.

The top of her robe had fallen to one side, baring the slope of her shoulder and the ripe, satiny curve of her breast, concealed only where the baby’s round head lay dark against her creamy skin. Tiny sucking sounds drifted to Latigo’s ears, triggering an unexpected tightness around his heart, an unspoken hunger for the warmth and tenderness he had lost as a child and never known as a man.

Not that the sight was new to him. Chiricahua mothers nursed their children openly in the rancherias. But something about this woman, her tenderness, her vulnerability, struck a quivering chord of response. She reminded Latigo of a painting he had seen once in an old Spanish church, a careworn Madonna cradling her heavenly infant, her expression so poignant and knowing that it haunted him to this day.

In happier times John Colby’s widow would have been a radiant beauty, he mused, his eyes tracing one sunlit curl where it tumbled like a swirl of honey over her bare shoulder. But the desert was not kind to pretty, young white women. Hot sun and parched air burned the life out of them in a few short years. Hard work and childbearing usually finished the job by the time they were thirty. This one had already begun to fade. Still, there was something about her, a soft resilience like the luster of tumbled river stone.

But he had more urgent things to do than gape at a woman, Latigo told himself harshly. Right now, his most pressing concern was getting untied and finding a way out of this place.

He forced his gaze lower. That was when he noticed the heavy pistol lying on the bench beside her, its barrel glinting in a finger of sunlight. He went cold inside as the truth sank home.

This woman was both his rescuer and his jailer. She had cleaned and dressed his wound, then bound him hand and foot and kept guard with a pistol to make sure he didn’t escape.

Latigo cursed his own rotten judgment. He had made his first mistake in seeking refuge here, gambling his safety on the word and reputation of a white man he had not seen in years. And he had made his second mistake in trusting Colby’s fragile-looking young widow.

She had saved his life. But what good would that do him if she’d sent for the law—or worse, if she were associated with the bastards who had murdered the two government agents? Either way, he would be a dead man.

Latigo’s gaze lingered for an instant on the woman’s wistful Madonna face. Maybe she hadn’t betrayed him after all, his instincts whispered. Who knows what he might have said or done in the midst of his pain and exhaustion. Maybe he had frightened her, and she had tied him up to protect herself.

Maybe, but that was a chance he could not afford to take. Somehow he would have to win her confidence and persuade her to untie him—that, or untie himself. Once he got loose, it would be easy enough to get his hands on the gun and make a fast getaway.

Knowing there was little time to lose, he closed his eyes, moved his head slightly, and feigned a semiconscious moan.

Rose had been drowsing, lulled by her own weariness and the soothing tug of the tiny mouth on her nipple. At the low sound from the man on the floor, her eyes shot open. She jerked bolt upright, her frayed nerves screaming.

The Apache, Latigo, was stirring beneath the blanket. His long legs strained at the thick wool yarn her shaking hands had wrapped around his ankles. His eyelids opened, then swiftly closed.

Only then did Rose realize her breast was exposed. Hot faced, she flung a corner of the baby’s blanket over her bare shoulder.

The stranger’s eyes opened again. This time his feral gaze swept her defiantly from head to foot. Feeling as vulnerable as a nesting dove, Rose gulped back her fear and forced herself to speak calmly.

“I’ve sent a man into Tucson for the sheriff,” she lied. “Until he gets here, I suggest you keep still unless, of course, you want to open up that bullet hole and risk bleeding to death. I won’t bind it for you a second time.”

His obsidian eyes glinted like a captive hawk’s. “Did anybody see to my horse?” he asked, as if his own condition were of no importance.

“Your horse is in the corral with the others. There’s plenty of hay and water there.” That much, at least, was true. She had unsaddled the poor, spent animal herself and turned it in with her spare cow ponies. She remembered fingering the long, coiled whip as she carried the saddle to a dark corner of the barn. She remembered the worn boot, still tangled in the stirrup leathers.

“You were lucky.” Rose spoke boldly, even though the mere act of touching an Apache had all but drained her of courage. His bleeding body, so close, so real, had rekindled her nightmare in all its horror. Even now, it was the most she could do to meet his fierce black eyes without cringing. “From the looks of your shoulder, the bullet passed through without hitting anything vital,” she said. “But you’ve lost a dangerous amount of blood. That’s why you must keep absolutely still.”

“Is that why you’ve trussed me up like a bald-faced calf at branding time?” His sharp-edged words challenged her in English that was as fluent as her own. This Latigo, whoever he might be, was clearly no ordinary reservation Apache.

“I don’t intend to hurt you,” he said, his gaze flickering toward the pistol on the bench. “Just cut me loose, give me some food and water and a fresh horse, and I’ll be on my way. That’s the least you owe me.”

“Owe you?” Rose clutched her son beneath the blanket, remembering, now, what he had said about collecting on an old debt. “Your business was with my husband, not with me,” she declared coldly. “I’d never set eyes on you before last night. What could I possibly owe you?”

His black eyes narrowed. “The last ten years of your husband’s life.”

His words struck her with the impact of a slap. Rose stared at the man, rifling her memories for some spark of recognition and finding none.

“John never mentioned his life being saved by anyone, let alone an Apache,” she retorted, flinging the words with a bravado she did not feel.

He flashed her a contemptuous look. “For whatever it’s worth to you, Mrs. Colby, only half of me has the honor of being Apache. My mother was a Chiricahua, my father a Spanish Basque. But I’m telling the truth about your husband. I saved his life ten years ago when I led his company out of an ambush in the Dragoon Mountains.”

“The Dragoons?” Rose’s sleep-fogged mind searched what she knew of the past. When Cochise’s bloody uprising had flared in the mid 1860s, John Colby had helped organize a volunteer militia out of Tucson. As its captain, he had bravely led more than a score of forays against the Apaches. On one excursion along the Gila, he’d come across a seventeen-year-old girl wandering the desert in a state of shock, her family murdered and their wagon burned. A widower nearing fifty, he had taken the dazed young Rose Thomas home to his ranch and, a few weeks later, made her his bride. Within days of their marriage, he was riding patrol again.

All this Rose remembered. But she had no recollection of John’s discussing the Dragoon Mountains. Apart from ranch matters, he had communicated little with her when he was home. He had never told her where he’d been or described the things he’d done. And he had surely never mentioned a man named Latigo.

The stranger waited, his eyes flinty with distrust. It would be dangerous to lie to such a man, Rose calculated, but then, hadn’t she lied to him already?

“Did you ride with John’s militia?” She asked, knowing a yes would trap him in his own deception. John Colby and his fellow volunteers had hated Indians and would never have tolerated Apache blood in their ranks.

Latigo’s thin mouth tightened in response to her question. “I was scouting for the army,” he said, gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder. “We didn’t much care for the local militia boys. The trigger-happy fools tended to stir up more trouble than they prevented—”

“Why, that’s not so!” Rose interrupted, flaring with sudden outrage. “My husband’s militia protected settlers all over this part of the territory! They were heroes!”

The look he gave her was so scathing that it shocked her into silence. “More than once we had to rescue them from disasters of their own making,” he continued in the same flat tone, as if she had not spoken. “That’s how I met your husband.”

He shifted sideways on the floor, straining upward as if he were struggling to sit.

“Lie still,” Rose spoke in a sharp whisper. “I told you, you’ll start the bleeding again.”

His eyes burned their desperation into hers, silently urging her to cut him loose and let him go. But her own fears shrilled the warning that she could not trust this man. Last night he had pointed John’s gun at her and threatened to shoot her with it. She had no choice except to keep him bound and helpless.

Beneath the blanket, the baby’s warm little body stirred, then settled into slumber. Rose felt the stranger’s wild, dark presence like an aura in the room. The skin at the back of her neck tingled as his gaze flickered over her, lingering on her face, probing the depths of her courage.

“What have you done?” she demanded in a low, tight voice. “Who are you running from?”

Hesitation flickered across his face. Then his expression hardened, and Rose realized that his distrust was as strong as her own. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, wincing as he spoke. “But I give you my word, I’m not a criminal.”

“How can I be sure of that?”

“I’m not a liar, either.” His eyes locked Rose’s in a proud gaze that defied her to doubt him. Against her will, her thoughts flew back to last night. She remembered cradling his head between her knees to keep him still as she cleaned his wound. She remembered the smoky fragrance of his hair and the feel of his flesh beneath her fingers, cool and hard, like living bronze. On touching him for the first time, a freshet of disturbing heat had surged through her body. Rose felt it again now as his gaze gripped hers.

Every instinct told her the man was dangerous. But she had to be sure. If he had saved her husband’s life, she had no right to turn her back on him, not until she had some idea of what was in his heart.

“Tell me what happened,” she said. “I can’t promise to believe you, but I think I’m entitled to hear your story.”

Morning sunlight warmed the quiet air, melting the shadows in the corners of the kitchen. Latigo hesitated, then his eyes narrowed with the effort of collecting his thoughts. He was weak from pain and blood loss, she knew, but Rose resolved not to spare him until she had heard everything.

“Untie me,” he said. “I won’t harm you.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not yet.”

His eyes flashed, as if he had sensed a weakening in her resolve. Rose’s arms tightened around her son. “Go on,” she said, lifting her chin. “You said you were a scout. Did your trouble have something to do with the army?”

“The army?” His bitter chuckle ended in a grunt of pain. “Believe me, there were no soldiers in sight Just two government inspectors, all the way from Washington. I’d been assigned to guide them on a tour of the San Carlos.” His eyes narrowed to slits, as if he were trying to shut out something he didn’t want to see again. “They’re dead—shot from ambush, both of them. The bullet that went through my shoulder was supposed to have killed me, too.”

“Apaches?” The word sprang without thought to Rose’s lips.

His glare cut her off like the flash of a blade. “Not Apaches. Not unless Apaches are sporting store-bought Stetsons, Springfield rifles and fifty-dollar saddles these days. They were as white as you are, Mrs. Colby, and I saw them murder two federal agents. That’s why they can’t afford to let me live.”

Rose stared at his sharp Apache features, struggling against the nightmare that lurked in the shadows of her mind. She smelled the smoke, heard the screams…

“That sounds like a wild tale if I ever heard one!” she heard her own voice saying. “What if I choose not to believe you?”

Latigo’s eyes hardened. “That’s your choice.”

“But it doesn’t make sense! One might expect it of Apaches, but why would white men do such a thing?”

The question caught in her throat as the clatter of galloping hoofbeats and the snort of a horse echoed across the front yard. Rose’s head swung toward the window as the long night’s strain crashed in on her. She was so tired, so scared, and now, at last, somebody was here.

“Turn around, Mrs. Colby—slow and easy, now. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Rose’s heart plummeted as she realized what had happened. All the while Latigo was talking, his hands had been busy beneath the blanket, stretching and loosening the yarn that held his wrists. She had glanced away for the barest instant, but he had struck with a rattler’s quickness to seize the pistol from beside her on the bench. Now the weapon was in his right hand, its muzzle thrusting up at her. Instinctively she shifted her body to shield her son.

“Who’s that outside?” he demanded in a low voice. “You said you sent for the sheriff.”

“No.” Rose blurted out the truth. “I had no one to send. I lied to you because I was afraid.”

“Then who’s outside?” He was struggling to sit up, his jaw clenched against the pain.

“I don’t know. But if you’re telling the truth about the murders, why are you holding a gun on me now? Why didn’t you go to the sheriff and report those men?”

Latigo’s free hand yanked the yarn from around his ankles. He gripped the edge of the table and hauled his way to his knees, then to his feet. The heavy Colt quivered unsteadily in his hand.

“What makes you think the sheriff would believe me?” His black eyes glittered with irony. “After all, you didn’t.”

Rose could only stare at him as a sharp rap sounded on the front door. The hour was far too early for a social call. Maybe it was one of the vaqueros. Maybe something had gone wrong in the mountains.

The rap on the door became an insistent pounding. Latigo’s eyes met Rose’s in terse confirmation that the visitor was not about to give up and go away.

“Go on,” he ordered. “Put your baby down. Then, whoever’s out there, get rid of him.”

Heart pounding, Rose fumbled swiftly beneath the blanket to tug her robe over her breast. With the gun following her every move, she crossed the kitchen to the flannel-lined basket that served as her son’s downstairs cradle. Half-asleep, Mason whimpered as Rose eased him away from her body and, with trembling hands, lowered him to the soft padding and tucked the blanket around him. He sucked one tiny rosebud fist, his helplessness tearing at her heart.

With imploring eyes, she turned on the tall stranger. “Don’t make me leave him here.”

Latigo’s expression hardened. Then he paused, torn by a conflict that Rose could read in his bloodless face. He was wounded and desperate. Keeping the baby in the kitchen would insure her cooperation and his own safety. Surely he realized that. Still, he hesitated, a muscle in his cheek twitching subtly as the pounding on the door grew louder and more urgent.

“Please,” Rose whispered, “let me take him. He’s all I have.”

Latigo’s sinewy body tensed, then his shoulders slackened as he exhaled. “I don’t hide behind children,” he growled. “Take him. But no tricks, Mrs. Colby. I’ve got the gun, and I’ll be watching every move you—”

His words ended in a groan as his knees buckled and he crashed unconscious to the floor.

Rose crouched beside him and pried his long, brown fingers from around the pistol grip. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow but regular. Even in repose, there was a hawklike ferocity about the man, but surprisingly, she was no longer afraid of him.

“I don’t hide behind children.”

The words echoed in Rose’s mind as she gazed down at the dark face, with its straight, black brows and cleanchiseled features. An Apache’s face, to be sure, but what thoughts and motives lay behind it?

If Latigo had truly saved her husband, she owed the man a great debt—

“Rose! Blast it, Rose, are you in there?” The shout from outside was muffled by the walls of the house, but Rose had no trouble recognizing the voice. Scrambling to her feet, she seized the baby’s basket under one arm and fled from the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

She hurried across the dining room, and moved toward the small anteroom that had served as her husband’s office. There she placed the basket in the hollow beneath John’s massive walnut desk. If more trouble broke out, she wanted her son safely out of harm’s way.

“Rose!” The pounding from outside would have cracked a less substantial door. Rose hesitated again, then slipped the pistol into a desk drawer and hurried out of the room.

In the front hallway she paused to wrap her robe tightly about her body and knot the sash. Taking a deep breath, she slid back the heavy bolt, lifted the latch and opened the door.

“Rose! Thank heaven!”

The man on the threshold was tall and barrel-chested, with ruddy, handsome features and ginger hair that curled over the collar of his starched, white shirt. A longtime friend of John Colby’s, though twenty years his junior, Bayard Hudson had been a regular visitor to the ranch— even more regular, Rose had come to realize, since John’s death.

“Bayard?” She feigned a sleepy yawn, her gaze darting to his gun belt. “What on earth are you doing here? You must have ridden most of the night to arrive at this hour.”

“Are you all right?” His windburned eyes were laced with red. “I saw blood outside, a trail of it across the porch. And your robe, Rose, there’s blood on that, too!”

“Blood?” A picture flashed into Rose’s mind—Latigo, helpless on the kitchen floor. Bayard had no more love for Apaches than John had. He would likely shoot first and ask questions later.

“Oh—” She laughed nervously. “One of the vaqueros, he—uh—slipped and cut himself on his own knife last night. A silly accident. I patched him up and sent him back to the herd.” She was chattering, talking too fast. “It was nothing serious, but I couldn’t go back to sleep. I—I’m afraid I’m not very presentable this morning.”

“Nonsense, you always look beautiful.” His gaze wandered up and down her body, lingering where the neck of her robe had loosened to reveal a hint of shadow between her breasts. “But can’t you get someone else to doctor those Mexicans of yours? I can’t say I fancy the idea of you touching those swarthy little heathens.” His thick hand settled onto her shoulder, its weight too warm, too heavy. “You ought to send them packing and hire yourself a bunch of real American cowboys. That’s what I’d do if I was running this spread.”

“My vaqueros are good workers.” Rose squirmed away from his clasp and edged out of reach. “They know horses and cattle, and they send their pay home to their families instead of throwing it away on liquor and women in town.” She swung back to face him, arms folded across her chest. “And now, Bayard, suppose you tell me what you’re doing here. You didn’t ride thirty miles just to tell me how to manage the ranch.”

“I could use some breakfast,” he said. “We can talk while I eat.”

“Esperanza isn’t up yet,” she lied, praying her inhospitality would annoy him to the point of leaving. But Bayard Hudson only snorted his disgust.

“Well, go and wake the lazy old hen! You’re too easy on the hired help, Rose. You need a man around the place to see that things are properly run.”

“I’m raising a man for that very purpose. But until John’s son is old enough to take over, I’m the one in charge.” Rose arranged her features into a smiling mask. “Go and sit down in the dining room, Bayard. I’ll heat up some beans and fresh coffee and bring them in to you.”

“Bacon and eggs would be nice, too, while you’re at it. But you needn’t go so fancy for me, Rose. I’ll eat in the kitchen, and we can visit while you cook. I like watching a woman work.”

“No!” Rose scrambled for a way out. “The baby—he’s asleep, and you might wake him. Go on, sit down, this won’t take a minute.”

“Fine. I like my eggs sunny-side up.”

“Yes. I know.” Her knees went liquid as Bayard ambled into the dining room and slid one of the high-backed leather chairs away from the table. Only after he’d settled his broad frame onto its seat could she force herself to turn and walk back toward the kitchen. Heart pounding, she opened the door wide enough to slip through, then closed it carefully behind her.

Latigo had awakened. He was sitting up on the floor, his back propped against the whitewashed wall next to the door frame. His face was haggard with pain.

“What’s going on out there?” His mouth moved with effort.

“It’s an old friend of John’s, and he’s expecting breakfast.” Rose gathered some kindling sticks from the wood box and thrust them into the stove. As she blew her breath on last night’s embers they began to glow.

“He doesn’t know I’m here?”

Rose shook her head.

“Where’s the gun?”

“You actually think I’d tell you?”

A ghost of a smile flickered across his lips as he settled back against the wall, watching her cat-fashion through the half-closed slits between his eyelids as she filled the enameled coffeepot and set it over the fire. The beans Esperanza had cooked two days ago were in the pantry, cool in their thick earthenware jar, but the bacon, if she wanted it, would have to be brought from the smoke cellar, the eggs gathered from the backyard henhouse. She cared precious little about pleasing Bayard Hudson, but if she could turn such errands to her advantage…

No, Rose concluded swiftly, the peril was too great. If Bayard were to get restless and wander into the kitchen at the wrong moment, anything could happen. She had to be here to keep him out.

Rose ladled some beans into a shallow iron skillet and hurried back to place it on the stove. Latigo’s gaze followed her every move: His feverish black eyes seemed to burn through her flesh.

“Maybe you’d better hide in there.” She jerked her head toward the open pantry door.

He shook his head, and Rose realized that even now he didn’t trust her. The pantry, with its thick, windowless walls and heavy door, could too easily become a prison.

“You could unlock that kitchen door and let me out,” he said.

“You’re too weak to run. You’d pass out in the yard.” Rose scooped the half-warmed beans onto a plate, added two slices of brown bread and poured some coffee into a porcelain cup. Her shaking hand splattered the hot liquid onto the counter. Reflexively she reached for a dishcloth, then, realizing she was only wasting time, flung it down, piled the breakfast things onto a tray and, with a last frantic glance at Latigo, rushed out of the kitchen.

Bayard was teetering backward on the rear legs of his chair, his fingers drumming impatiently on the tabletop. Rose bit back a surge of nervous irritation. Bayard Hudson was a good man, she reminded herself. Any sensible female would throw herself into his arms and beg him to protect her from the brooding stranger in the kitchen.

Sensible?

A grim smile tugged at Rose’s lips. No one, least of all John, had ever given her credit for having much sense. Before his accident, she had been a trophy, with little more expected of her than to adorn his home and produce the heirs he’d so stridently demanded. All that had changed, however, in the past six months. She ran the ranch now, and she would deal with the man named Latigo on her own terms.

Bayard scowled as she arranged the simple breakfast on the cloth before him, but he did not complain. His warm gaze followed her as she pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table and settled uneasily into it.

“You’re not going to join me?”

“I’m more tired than hungry. Forgive me, Bayard.” Rose brushed a lock of hair out of her face, her heart sinking as she noticed the spark her gesture ignited in his hazel eyes. “Your visit can’t be a social call at this hour,” she said, feigning an air of cheerfulness. “What are you up to?”

“Posse business.” He scooped a hunk of bread into the beans, took a hungry mouthful and washed it down with a swig of coffee. “We rode out of Tucson last night and made it as far as the hot springs. While the rest of the boys bedded down for a few hours, I decided to ride over this way and make sure you were all right.”

“As you see, I’m fine. You could’ve saved yourself the trouble.” Rose laughed uneasily, her hands clenched into fists below the tabletop. “Posse business, you say?”

“Uh-huh. Half-breed army scout named Latigo murdered two government agents on the San Carlos Reservation. The wire from Fort Grant said the bastard was headed south, maybe this way. When I got here this morning and saw that trail of blood across your porch, the idea that it could be yours—”

Rose watched him gulp his coffee. She felt light-headed, as if a noose had been jerked around her throat, shutting off the blood supply to her brain.

Was the wire from Fort Grant a mistake, or had Latigo lied to her? Was she protecting an innocent man or harboring a killer?

“I don’t like the idea of your being alone out here,” Bayard was saying. “Those Mexicans of yours, hell, they’ve got no more loyalty than jackrabbits. They’ll turn tail and leave you at the first sign of trouble. You need someone strong, someone who cares about you. You need a man.”

“What?” Rose had been staring down at the weave of the linen tablecloth. Preoccupied with her own thoughts, she had only half heard him. She glanced up to discover that he had stopped eating and was gazing at her with an intensity that raised goose prickles beneath her robe.

“Bayard—”

“It’s time,” he insisted. “John was my friend. He would want me to take care of you and the baby.” He paused long enough to take in her stunned expression. “Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “I’ve been in love with you for years, Rose. Now that you’re free, and you’ve had a few months’ time for mourning, I’m asking you to be my wife.”

Chapter Three

Rose stared at the man across the table, hoping she had misunderstood him but knowing she had not. His boldly stated words left her no room for evasion.

“Well, Rose?” He was beaming at her as if she had already said yes. After all, what woman wouldn’t jump at the chance to marry Bayard Hudson? He was handsome, well-to-do, and one of the most respected men in Arizona.

So why had her skin suddenly gone clammy beneath her robe?

She sensed his impatience, sensed the tension in him as his body poised to spring out of the chair and sweep her into his embrace. Rose thought of the dark stranger in the kitchen. Lives could depend on her getting Bayard Hudson out of the house as swiftly as possible.

“You’ve been very kind to me, Bayard,” she. murmured, staring down at the tablecloth. “But it’s far too soon. John has barely been gone four months. Out of respect for him, if nothing else, I should wait.”

“The man who was your husband and my best friend died last summer when that horse bucked him out of the saddle onto his head.” Bayard spoke sharply, making no effort to hide his impatience. “It was his body you tended for those last months, but it wasn’t the man we knew and loved, Rose. It wasn’t John.”

“Your breakfast is getting cold,” she said.

“Forget breakfast!” The chair legs grated across the tiles as he slid away from the table and strode around it to stand behind her. Rose stiffened as his warm hands settled onto her shoulders. “Dash it, but you’re tense,” he murmured, his strong, blunt fingers working her knotted muscles. “What’s the matter? You aren’t afraid of me, are you?”

Rose shook her head in denial.

“Then what—?”

She forced a tired smile. “Forgive me, Bayard. You just didn’t pick a good time to propose, that’s all. I’ve had a long night, and I’m not thinking very well.”

His hands continued to knead her shoulders, their motion slowing to a sensual caress. “You’re a beautiful woman, Rose,” he murmured, “too beautiful to be alone, without a man. Just say yes.” He bent close to her ear, his lips skimming her tousled hair. “You’ll never be sorry, I promise.”

Rose shivered, imagining Latigo behind the kitchen door, his sharp Apache ears hearing every intimate word.

“Rose, darling…” Bayard’s voice had deepened to a breathy rasp. His mouth nibbled a damp trail down the side of her neck as his fingers nudged aside the collar of her robe to expose the naked slope of her shoulder. “Do you know how long I envied your husband? How long I’ve wanted to—”

“No!” Rose spun away from him, toppling her chair in a spurt of nervous panic. The crash resounded like a gunshot through the empty house, freezing her in midmotion.

Bayard righted the chair, his expression as bewildered as a slapped child’s. Silence lay leaden between them, broken only by the ponderous tick of the grandfather clock in the entry. Little by little Rose began to breathe again.

“You are afraid of me,” Bayard said. “Rose, I swear I would never hurt you.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t.” Wanting only to have him gone, she molded her features into a conciliatory smile. “You’ve caught me off guard, that’s all. I’m honored by your proposal, Bayard, but I truly need some time to think about it.”

“I’ve waited a lot of years for you, Rose, and I’m not a patient man. All the nights I’ve lain awake, imagining you in my bed, in my arms…” He made a move toward her, then hesitated, realizing, perhaps, that he had said too much. “So when do I get my answer?” he demanded. “In a day? A week?”

Rose’s gaze flashed toward the kitchen door. It was open a crack, and she realized Latigo was not only listening but watching. She groped for a reply, anything that would placate Bayard and send him on his way.

“I was thinking of longer,” she hedged, already knowing what her answer would be but desperate for him to leave.

“A month, then. But don’t expect me to take it in good grace. I’m anxious, girl. Anxious to make you mine.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to your posse?” She edged toward the front hallway, praying he would follow her.

Still, maddeningly, he lingered. “I don’t like leaving you here with that half-breed Apache murderer on the loose,” he said.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ll be fine!” Rose punctuated the words with a toss of her head. “A lone desperado would never take on a ranch this size.”

“Maybe not” He exhaled like an agitated bull. “But keep John’s big pistol handy—I know you can use it. If you see a stranger, don’t take any chances. Shoot to kill.”

“I hardly think that will be necessary.” Her eyes flickered toward the kitchen door.

“Is something wrong, Rose?”

Her heart convulsed for an instant. “No—no,” she answered much too quickly. “You caught me unprepared, that’s all. I prefer to look my best when people come calling, and I haven’t even combed my hair.” The laugh she attempted came out sounding like a nervous hiccup. “Off with you, now, I need to get dressed and start my day!”

Bayard stood his ground, his thumb absently rubbing the butt of his pistol. “Not until you kiss me goodbye,” he declared.

Rose struggled to ignore the sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Right now, she reminded herself, the only thing that mattered was getting the man out of here before he discovered Latigo and someone wound up dead.

“I’m waiting, Rose.”

“You’ll go if I kiss you?”

“I’m a man of my word, sweetheart.”

Rose forced herself to stop thinking as she strode back across the room. She had meant to give Bayard a light peck, but his arms closed around her like the jaws of a trap. His full, wet lips captured hers with a force that pressed her spine into an arch, jamming his belt buckle hard against her belly.

“Rose…” He was panting like a stallion. Frightened now, she began to struggle, but he was a large, powerful man, and her twisting movements only served to heighten his ardor. “Rose…dash it, girl, if you only knew how long I’ve wanted you.” He kissed her again, his hands groping downward toward her buttocks. Rose could sense Latigo’s mocking black eyes watching everything from the kitchen doorway. She knew he could not help her.

For an instant she went rigid in Bayard’s arms. Then, as his hot palms slid lower, she gathered all her strength into one desperate, wrenching shove.

“No!” she gasped, twisting away from him and spinning free. “I’m not ready for this.”

“You were married to an old man, Rose.” He reached for her again, his face flushed, his lips damp and red. “It’s time you found out what having a younger fellow is like.”

“No!” Dizzy with rage and fear, she clutched the back of a chair, keeping it between them. “You have no right to touch me! You’ve insulted me, dishonored my husband’s memory. I want you gone!”

He took a step backward, startled by her vehemence. “Now, Rose, honey, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Get out, Bayard.” Her voice was flat and cold, her body drained of its emotional energy. “I’m sorry if I misled you, but I have no desire to marry you or anyone else. This ranch was John’s, and it belongs to John’s son. I intend to raise the boy here—by myself.”

His eyes bulged with the outrage of a man accustomed to getting his own way. “You’ll change your mind. I can make you change your mind. You’ll see.”

Rose tightened her lips, her silent glare saying more than any words she might have uttered. His voice faded, then rallied once more.

“You’ll find I don’t give up that easily,” he declared, retreating toward the entry hall. “Mark my words, Rose. One day you’ll come to me on your knees. You’ll kiss my boots, and you’ll beg me to marry you!”

When she did not answer, he turned and strode out the front door, closing it behind him with a bang.

Rose stood poker-spined, listening to the snort of his horse as he mounted and rode away. Only when the galloping hoofbeats had faded into silence did she slump, trembling, onto the chair.

“That was quite a performance, Mrs. Colby.”

Latigo had opened the kitchen door. He was on his feet, leaning unsteadily against the frame. His face was as gray as river mud. His right hand clutched the long, sharp kitchen knife she had used to slice the bread.

Rose glared at him, too unstrung to be frightened. “You can put that thing down,” she snapped. “Bayard is gone, and you’ve certainly nothing to fear from me!”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” He remained stubbornly where he was, his eyes glazed and feverish.

“Bayard told me you killed those two government men,” she said.

“So I heard.” His lips thinned as a shudder of pain passed through his body. “Now you’ve heard two versions of the same story. Which one have you decided to believe?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why didn’t you turn me over to your hot-handed friend? He was packing a gun. It would’ve been easy enough to let him take me.” His pupils glittered like shards of black flint. Rose quivered as she forced herself to meet his gaze.

“I had to be sure,” she said. “If Bayard had taken you back to that posse, you would never have lived to reach Tucson, and I would never know if I’d done the right thing.”

“You…did right.” His speech had begun to slur. His hand dropped to his side, as if the blade had taken on the weight of a sledgehammer. “But under the circumstances, I’d say that you’re either very brave or very… very…foolish.”

The knife slid down his leg and clattered to the tiles. For the second time that morning, his body went limp, his knees buckled and, as Rose sprang from her chair, he slumped to the floor.

Sinking to her knees beside him, she eased him onto his back. A glance at his shoulder revealed blood seeping through the fabric of the old cotton shirt she’d found to put on him. The fall had most likely opened the wound, and he was already so weak from loss of blood that she feared for his life.

Feared?

Rose fumbled for his pulse, her eyes fixed on his proud Apache features—the sharp, high cheekbones, the bitter, oddly sensual mouth. This man was still her enemy, she reminded herself. If he died, she would be rid of him. She and the baby would be safe.

Her trembling fingers found the pulse point along the side of his neck. He was alive, but his flesh was clammy, his heart racing like the wheels of a runaway train.

Who was this man? What, if anything, did she owe him? Rose struggled to slow her pinwheeling thoughts and examine what she had heard.

It was possible that he had saved her husband’s company from an Apache massacre, she conceded. But what about the two government agents? The story about the white assassins was so preposterous it might as well have been a joke. Even his bullet wound could be explained in any number of ways. For all she knew, the dark-eyed devil was the world’s most convincing liar, and the price of trusting him could be her life and her child’s.

Was she harboring an innocent victim or a cold-blooded murderer?

Whatever Latigo was, Rose knew she could not turn her back and let him die.

He moaned incoherently as she jerked his shirt open to get at his bandaged wound. Stop the bleeding, that was her most urgent task. Then she would need to get him to bed and get him warm. Leaving him on the floor had been a mistake. The cold tiles, she realized, had chilled away his strength. But then, she had not been thinking clearly. She had been so afraid of the man, so unnerved by his fierce Apache features that even her thoughts had frozen.

Strange, she mused, how her fear had diminished now that she knew him.

Knew him?

The man had menaced her with a gun, Rose reminded herself as she ripped off the ruffled hem of her nightgown and wadded it against the seeping wound. He had arrogantly claimed that she was in his debt and told her stories that defied belief. No, she did not know this mysterious stranger at all, and she would be a fool to trust him.

But he would live, she vowed. He would live to tell her his whole story.

Off the kitchen was a small, unoccupied servant’s room with a bed. Rose stopped the bleeding as best she could. Then she picked up Latigo’s stockinged feet and slid his body carefully across the tiles. The isolated room had only one tiny window, high and securely barred. Its heavy door could be locked from the outside. When she was not tending to his needs, she could shut him in and feel safe.

But she would get the pistol and keep it close at hand whenever the door was open, she resolved. She could not afford to let Latigo get the best of her again.

She raced back to John’s office. There she took a moment to check on her sleeping son and retrieve the Peacemaker, which she thrust into the sash of her robe as she hurried back to the kitchen.

Panting with effort, she dragged Latigo’s body into the tiny room and turned down the bed. A beam of morning sunlight trickled through the window to fall across his inert legs. It was only then that Rose noticed his dust-caked cavalry trousers. Something fluttered in her stomach as she assessed his condition. Yes, she swiftly concluded, for the sake of hygiene and comfort, his dirty clothes would have to come off.

First she gingerly peeled away his remaining boot, then his threadbare stockings, resolving to burn them at first opportunity. Then, gritting her teeth, she bent over him to undo his belt buckle and the fastenings of his trousers. The uncivilized wretch had been bare skinned beneath his shirt. The lower part of him would likely be the same, Rose reasoned, steeling herself as she worked the stubborn buttons through their holes. But what could it possibly matter? After all, she was no longer a blushing schoolgirl. She had been a wife, a mother, a helpless man’s nurse.

“Do you do this to all your prisoners?”

His rough whisper jolted her like a swig of white lightning. Rose gasped as her startled glance met his eyes. Her hand flashed for the pistol. In an instant she had jerked the weapon out of her sash and was aiming it at his chest.

He grinned groggily. “You…won’t need the gun, Mrs. Colby,” he mumbled. “I’m not a man to object if a pretty woman wants to take down my britches.”

“I’m just trying to get you to bed!” Rose snapped, her cheeks flaming as his grin broadened. “But now that you’re awake, you might as well do the job yourself.” She edged backward, brandishing the pistol. “Go on. Get those filthy trousers off. Then climb between the sheets and stay there. If nothing else, I’ll see that you live to hang!”

“I’m touched by your concern.” His expression had hardened again. His right hand fumbled awkwardly—too awkwardly—with the first of four remaining buttons. A spasm of pain rippled across his face as he tried to reach downward with the arm on his wounded side. “Unfortunately,” he muttered through clenched teeth, “I happen to be left-handed.”

“Take all the time you need.” Rose thumbed back the hammer of the gun, ignoring his thinly veiled plea for help. Oh, she knew what he was thinking. Get her to come closer, then overpower her and grab the pistol. But this time she wasn’t falling for his tricks. This time she was the one in charge.

Cursing under his breath, Latigo managed to undo the first button, then the second. On the third, he hesitated. His eyelids drooped, then blinked open as if he were battling waves of unconsciousness. Was it a performance, designed to lure her into lowering her guard?

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But it wouldn’t make any difference if you did get the gun. You’re too weak to go anywhere. You’ve proved that by passing out twice. You need me, Latigo.”

“Need you?” His eyes glinted sardonically. “A minute ago you were threatening to see me hang.”

“Did you kill those two government agents?”

“No.”

“If that’s true, you have nothing to fear from me.” Rose’s grip tightened on the pistol. Her hand was trembling, and she knew that Latigo had noticed.

“Nothing to fear?” His tongue moistened his dry lips. “How do I know there isn’t already a price on my head, and you’re just waiting to collect it? A widow woman, even on a big ranch like this one, could find herself in need of money—”

“Go on,” she interrupted icily. “Get those pants off.”

“Anything to oblige a lady.” A mocking smile flickered across his face. “But I’m warning you, don’t expect to see—oof!” His words ended in a grunt as he tried to brace himself on one elbow and inch his trousers down over his hips with his free hand. He was truly in pain, Rose realized, noticing the ashen ring around his lips as he sank back onto the floor. But she could not let herself feel pity for him. This man was a wild, wounded animal who could be every bit as dangerous as he looked.

“I’m waiting.” She willed herself to keep her gaze impassive, to keep the pistol pointed squarely at his chest.

He lifted his head, his slitted eyes chilling in their contempt. “It seems you have a choice, Mrs. Colby.” He spat out each word as if it were snake venom. “Either you can allow me to stand up and let gravity take its course, or you can trust me enough to get down here and give me a hand.”

Rose hesitated, every instinct screaming flight as the intimacy of the small room closed around her. “Get up, then,” she said. “But no tricks, not if you want to live.”

“You wouldn’t shoot me,” he said. “Hell, you couldn’t shoot anybody—a woman like you, soft, pampered—”

“Don’t bet your life on it!” Rose snapped in sudden fury. “You don’t know me! You don’t know anything about me!”

“And you don’t know much about me, either, lady.” He grimaced, clenching his teeth with the effort of hefting himself to his feet. “If you did, you’d put that big horse pistol away and—damn!” He staggered to his feet, one hand clutching the bedpost for support, the other holding up his unbuttoned pants.

“The trousers,” she said. “Get them off and get into bed before you end up on the floor again.”

“I’d advise you to turn your back. I may not dress as decorously as most men you know, and I wouldn’t want to offend your womanly—”

“Turn my back?” Rose’s sweat-slicked grip tightened on the pistol. She swallowed the dryness in her throat. “I’d just as soon turn my back on a snake!” she said. “Go ahead, I’ve seen a man before—and a better man than you, I’ll wager!”

The whites of his eyes flashed dangerously. Then without another word, he turned his back on her and let his trousers drop to the floor.

Rose stood thunderstruck, unable to avert her eyes from the full sight of him. She had tolerated her husband’s aging physique and grown used to it over the years. She had even come to accept his appearance as an example of the way any man would look without his clothes.

Until now.

Latigo’s naked body was as sleek as a cougar’s, tapering from powerful shoulders to a lean, sinewy waist. His long legs were crowned by high, taut buttocks, and his muscles flowed in feline curves, coiled strength beneath skin that captured the light like molten copper.

Rose’s hand slackened around the pistol. He was magnificent. Even with the ugly, bloodstained bandage marring his shoulder, Latigo, mixed-blood Apache and possible murderer, was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

“If you’re waiting for me to turn around—”

The edge in his voice shocked Rose back to reality. Her breath jerked. Her fingers seized on the pistol just in time to save it from clattering to the floor.

“Get into that bed.” The words emerged as a shaky whisper. “Go on, you arrogant, disrespectful, presumptuous—”

A small but piercing wail from beyond the kitchen ended her tirade. Her baby was awake and crying, and his needs pulled at her instincts with a power no mother could resist.

Latigo’s broad shoulders had tensed at the cry, but he did not turn his head. Rose kept her eyes on him as she backed warily toward the door. “Get into bed and rest,” she ordered. “I’ll be back later with something for you to eat, unless I decide you deserve to starve.”

A rough chuckle—or was it a growl?—rumbled in his throat but that was all. He was still standing next to the bed, his splendid back held rigid in an unspoken statement of disdain as Rose closed the door, slipped the bolt and fled on trembling legs to the sanctuary of her little son.

Latigo heard the bolt click into place. Then, giving in to waves of dizziness, he crumpled into the bed.

Crisp and fragrant, the clean sheets enfolded him like a shroud, their fineness one more reminder that he didn’t belong in such a place. He’d have been better off taking his chances in the desert At least he might have died in peace there, leaving his bones to be bleached by the sun and nosed by passing coyotes. Instead, here he was, caged and cosseted like a house cat, lying behind a bolted door, in a pretty white woman’s house.

Rose. That was the name that panting bull had called her. Rose Colby. She looked like a rose, all right, even smelled like one as she leaned over him, fragrance spilling from between her lovely, milk-swollen breasts. For all his weakened condition, it had been as much as he could do to keep from pulling her down on top of him and burying his face in that warm, satiny cleft.

Damn the woman!

Latigo’s vision swam as he lay on his back and gazed up at the small, barred window. He hated being closed in, where he couldn’t see the sky or feel the wind! He had to get out of here. And once he did, he vowed, he would die rather than let the whites lock him up in their jail.

Half in panic now, he raised his head and struggled to move his legs. They lay like inert slabs, defying all his efforts to rouse them. John Colby’s widow was right, he realized, sinking back onto the pillow in black resignation. He was too weak to go anywhere.

For now, he would bide his time, Latigo resolved. He would submit meekly to Rose Colby’s ministrations. He would allow her to feed him, to nurse his wound and to ravish his senses with her unsettling womanly presence.

But he would not lower his guard for so much as a heartbeat. Any slip—an open door, an unguarded moment—could be his key to freedom, and he would be ready to seize it. Get the gun, steal a horse and head straight for the Mexican border—that’s what he would do at first opportunity.

And heaven help Mrs. John Colby if she tried to stop him.

Chapter Four

Latigo woke to a spill of amber light through the barred window of the tiny room. Sunset. He muttered a bewildered curse. Had he slept for a day? A week? His blurred mind had lost all sense of time which, for him, could make the difference between life and death.

A mélange of mouth-watering smells drifted through the crack beneath the door. Chicken soup, richly laced with garlic and onions. Freshly baked bread. Hot coffee. Latigo’s empty belly growled in ravenous response to the delicious aromas. If the violet-eyed Widow Colby had chosen to torture her prisoner, she could not have devised a more exquisite punishment, unless she were to—

His thoughts scattered as the bolt clicked open on the other side of the door. In a flash he was fully awake, every muscle tense and quivering.

As he struggled to raise his body, the door swung open. Latigo’s breath stopped as he saw Rose Colby standing on the threshold, the light making a halo of the sun-colored hair that she wore in a loose bun.

She hesitated, then stepped into the room. Only then did he notice that she was carrying a tray with a bowl, a spoon and thick, buttered slices of bread on a china plate. Latigo’s vacant stomach emitted another loud rumble, causing her left eyebrow to twitch in wary amusement.

“I, uh, see you’re hungry.” She was wearing a calico apron over a faded chambray gown that narrowed enticingly at her slender waist. She looked young and tender and vulnerable.

“How long have I been asleep?” Latigo eased his painracked body upward as she put the tray down on the nightstand and bent close to adjust the pillow behind him, washing his senses with the subtle aroma of lavender soap. He imagined reaching up and tugging the pins from her hair, letting it fall around his face in a cascade of fragrant, golden silk. He imagined fondling it, smelling it, tasting it.

But those kinds of thoughts were crazy, he reminded himself harshly. Rose Colby was a white woman, pretty, pampered and spoiled. She wouldn’t condescend to spit on a man like him, let alone allow him to touch her. His time would be better spent figuring out what she’d done with the pistol and how he could get his hands on it.

“You’ve been asleep for nearly twelve hours, and I can see it’s done you a world of good,” she said briskly, pulling a chair up to the bed and sitting down. “Are you able to feed yourself?”

“Won’t know till I try.” He inched higher in the bed, the friction of fabric against bare skin reminding him that he was naked beneath the bedclothes. “Give me the tray,” he said. “I’ll manage.”

“In a minute.” She unfolded a linen napkin from the tray and spread it over his lap to protect the bedding from spills.

“You’re being awfully good to me, Mrs. Colby,” he ventured. “Why?”

She glanced up sharply. “Maybe I’m curious. Or maybe I just like a good story, and I do intend to get one, you know.” Her answer was flippant, almost careless, but her trembling hands jiggled the spoon in its bowl as she lifted the tray and set it across his legs. She was still afraid of him, Latigo calculated, even though she was trying her damnedest not to show it. Colby’s widow had courage, he conceded, for a white woman.

Dizzy with hunger, Latigo took the spoon awkwardly in his right hand and dipped it into the soup broth.

“It’s all right,” he muttered, determined that she would not see him spill. “Go about your business. I’ll manage fine.”

She waited in stubborn silence. When she did not leave, he focused his attention on raising the spoon to his mouth. But it was no use: he was as weak as a newborn colt. The soup dribbled from the shaking spoon and splattered back into the bowl.

“Here.” Her warm fingertips brushed his knuckles as she slipped the spoon from his hand. Latigo watched uneasily as she picked up the bowl and raised it close to his face.

“Don’t worry,” she said with an air of crisp bravado. “I’m an old hand at this. I had to feed John this way for four months before he…passed away.”

She dipped into the soup and thrust the first spoonful between Latigo’s parted lips. The delicious warmth trickled down his throat, jolting his deprived system to ravenous hunger. He gulped eagerly, noisily, shamelessly, as fast as she could spoon the precious liquid into his mouth.

She fed him with a practiced efficiency, but he could not help noticing that her hand trembled as she raised the spoon to his lips. Her gaze flickered away at every meeting of their eyes. Was she truly afraid of him or only repelled by his dark Apache features? Latigo could not be sure. He only knew that winning her trust would be like gentling a high-strung mustang mare. He would have to approach her gently and cautiously, and he could make no false or sudden moves that would startle her away.

Meanwhile, there was food and warmth and beauty here, and he could not resist savoring it all. Latigo filled his belly with nourishment and his eyes with the sight of Rose Colby, and little by little, he began to feel like a man again.

Rose put the bowl and spoon down on the tray, shaken by Latigo’s darkly intense gaze. “You can manage the rest,” she said, breaking off a hunk of bread and sopping it in the dregs of the broth. “Here—you’re going to be fine. I can tell you’re already feeling better.”

He accepted the bread in his elegantly long fingers, eating slowly now that the worst of his hunger had been slaked. “I’m obliged to you, Rose Colby,” he said. “And now, if you have any common sense, you’ll fetch my boots and clothes and give me leave to ride out of here.”

“You’re not strong enough yet,” she said. “You wouldn’t last an hour in the saddle.”

“Why should you care? I’ve invaded your home, held you at gunpoint, been as surly as a three-legged coyote with the mange—”

“I care because you saved John—at least that’s what you claim.” Rose caught the dark flash of his eyes. “If you’re telling the truth, I owe you for my son’s life as well as my husband’s.” She exhaled nervously. “I want you to tell me how it happened.”

Latigo had finished his meal. A twinge of pain flickered across his face as he sank back against the pillows. Rose stood up, lifted the tray from his lap and placed it on the nightstand, her breast brushing his shoulder when she leaned over him. Her face felt prickly hot as she lowered herself onto the edge of the chair. “Go on,” she said. “I’m waiting.”

“Do you want the pretty version of the story, or do you want the truth?” His hard eyes glittered with irony. A dark knot of premonition tightened in the pit of Rose’s stomach.

“Tell me the truth,” she said.

“You may not like it.”

“Go on. Tell me how you met John, and how you saved him.”

A cactus wren piped its evening song through the open window. Latigo hesitated, swallowed, then spoke slowly into the silence that followed.

“Your husband’s company had a reputation for fighting Apaches who couldn’t fight back,” he began, his voice as expressionless as book print. “Old ones, young ones, women—it didn’t matter as long as they were Apaches. This time they’d been chasing a bunch of Diablo’s squaws they’d spotted out foraging in the brush. They’d followed the women up a box canyon, bent on Lord knows what—”

“No!” Rose burst out in spite of her resolve to listen. “That can’t be true! John’s militia fought armed Apaches on the warpath! He was a hero. He was even awarded a medal by the territorial governor. I have it upstairs.”

“You wanted the truth.” His eyes had narrowed to piercing slits. “Do you have the courage to hear it?”

Rose stared down at her clenched hands, passionately wishing she had never asked him to tell her this story, wishing she had sent him on his way to take his chances in the desert.

“Go on,” she said, willing her voice to be as emotionless as his.

Latigo exhaled sharply. “One of the men in the company told me what happened. They’d managed to kill one woman and wound her baby when Diablo and his braves started shooting from the rocks above. The women scattered, and the Apaches blocked off the mouth of the canyon with a rockslide they’d rigged. By the time we came along, they had your husband’s company pinned down with rifle fire and were closing in to finish them off.”

Rose listened numbly, her hands clenched in her lap. The story was preposterous, of course, she told herself. John Colby had been a brave and chivalrous man, while this Latigo had shown her no sign of being anything but a lying desperado.

“I was leading a scouting party two hours ahead of the main column,” he continued in the same dispassionate tone. “We heard shots and guessed what had happened. There were only four of us, and we knew there was no time to get help. But one thing was in our favor—I knew the country, and I’d been in that canyon before. There was a way out, a side branch, hidden by rocks. The other scouts set fires to create a diversion while I went in after the trapped men. I had to save them. It was my job.”

“And you led them out, I suppose. You saved John and the whole company all by yourself.” Rose’s pulse hammered as she challenged him. “You’re lying!” she snapped.

“Lying?”

“John would never have pursued a band of helpless women and babies! And your story—it’s too neat, like something out of a dime novel! You didn’t save my husband’s life or anyone else’s! You’re making it all up so I’ll feel obligated to—”

The blaze of cold fire in his eyes shocked her into silence. “Your husband was wounded when a bullet grazed his left thigh,” he said. “I bandaged it myself. The wound wasn’t deep, but it would have left a scar.”

“No, you couldn’t possibly…” Rose remembered the raw, pink groove, newly healed, along John’s upper left leg. She had seen it whiten with time. She had touched it every day as she tended his all-but-lifeless body.

“Listen to me, Rose Colby.” The last rays of the dying sun blazed their reflected fire in his eyes. “I don’t know where you were during the Apache wars, but nothing about that time was noble or heroic. It was dirty and bloody and just plain, damned awful, and each side was as bad as the other.”

“My parents were massacred by Apaches,” Rose whispered, gazing out the window at the bloodred sky. “We were on the way to Prescott, and I’d left our camp to gather some nopales. I came back just in time to see them die. John’s company found me the next day, wandering through the brush, half out of my mind.”

He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“You were part of it, too,” she lashed out at him. “You were with the army, fighting against your own people. If things were as bad as you claim, why didn’t you leave?”

Something hard slipped into place behind his eyes. “Let’s just say that I had nowhere else to go.”

Chilled by the cold finality in his voice, Rose stood up and reached for the tray. “You can rest the night here. I’ll give you breakfast in the morning and enough food and water to get you to the mountains.”

“And a gun. I’ll find some way to pay you for it.”

“You can have some of John’s old clothes,” she continued, ignoring his demand. “They should fit well enough. I had to burn yours, except for the boots—” “You’re not listening to me, Rose.”

Her breath caught at his use of her given name. “No,” she said. “No gun. Supplies are one thing, but what if I’m wrong about you? What if you really murdered those two men? How can I, with any good conscience, give you the means to kill others?

“Anyway, your story doesn’t make sense to me.” Rose paused in the doorway, the tray balanced on her hip. “Why should white men ride onto the Apache reservation and shoot down agents from their own government?”

“Does it make any more sense to you that I would shoot them?” he asked. “I was responsible for their safety! I would have been the first one blamed.”

“Unless you’d somehow managed to be shot along with them.”

“From behind?”

Rose had no answer for that. She set the tray on the kitchen table and turned back toward the door, still hesitant. Lock him in and walk away, her common sense argued. She had already heard enough of this stranger’s talk to shake her world.

“Was there something else you wanted?” he asked.

The edge in his voice unnerved her. “No,” she said. “I only meant to tell you there’s water in that clay pitcher on the dresser, and there’s a necessity under the bed if you need it. Be careful getting up.”

He gazed at her in mocking, slit-eyed silence. Flustered, Rose spun away, swung the door shut and jammed the bolt into its slot. Then she wilted against the wall, eyes closed, heart slamming her ribs.

How could she let the man unsettle her so? Everything he said, everything he did, threw her off balance, causing her to question things she’d always been sure about, leaving her vulnerable, exposed and shaken.

Even now, his image flashed through her mind as she had last seen him—Latigo, half Apache, half devil, sitting up in bed, his beautiful, tawny chest and shoulders naked except for the dressing on his wound, the bedclothes scrunched around his hips—his jet-black eyes seeing her secret thoughts, thoughts no decent woman should be having.

It was as if, suddenly, she no longer knew what she believed, or even who she was.

Her thoughts flew to the baby. She had left him upstairs, fast asleep, less than an hour ago. He could be awake and crying, needing her.

Rose crossed the kitchen to the hallway and raced upstairs, urgently needing the comfort of her child in her arms. Mason was her anchor. He was her link to reality, to John and to her own duty.

Rose stole inside the bedroom to find her son still fast asleep beneath the soft lambs-wool blanket she had crocheted before he was born. Tenderly she bent over the cradle, her gaze caressing every delicate curve of his tiny face. She ached to gather him up, to hold him close and lose herself in the bliss of cradling his precious little body. But Mason needed his sleep, she reminded herself. He would be cross if she woke him too soon.

As she glanced up, her eyes caught the last glimmer of sunset on John’s medal where it hung on its blue ribbon above her son’s cradle.

Pride…Honor…Courage…Duty.

The words mocked her as the image of John and his cohorts, riding down on a band of helpless squaws and papooses, flashed through her mind. She slumped over the cradle, her whole body quivering. If Latigo was to be believed—and the evidence of the scar was too strong to deny—John’s militia had gunned down Apache women and children with no more mercy than the Apaches had shown her own family.

She had always believed John to be brave and honorable, and she had vowed to raise Mason by his father’s code. Now that code had crumbled away to reveal something she could not even pretend to understand.

Rose struggled to rationalize what she had heard. How could she judge what John had done? Terrible things had happened on both sides of the conflict Even Latigo had said so. John and his fellow volunteers had done no more than repay the Apaches in kind, following the old biblical law of an eye for an eye. Was that so wrong, in view of what Apaches had done to her own family?

Torn, Rose gazed down at her sleeping son—John’s son, too, she reminded herself. In a few years Mason would be old enough to ask questions about his father. How could she tell Mason the truth about his father when she knew so little of it herself? The quest for answers would be long and painful, Rose knew. And her search would have to begin now, before the trail grew too cold to follow.

She had not known many members of John’s militia. Of those she had met, most of the older ones had died, and the younger ones had moved on. There was Bayard, but— no, she could not go to Bayard! Not now!

Rose sighed raggedly as she realized her one sure source of knowledge lay downstairs, locked in the little room off the kitchen. For all his rough manners, Latigo was the one man she could count on to give her honest answers. He might hurt her. He might outrage and offend her, but he would not lie.

Tomorrow he would be gone. She needed to talk with him now, tonight, while she still had the chance.

Crossing the room, she raised the lid of the chest that stood against the far wall. Inside, John’s clothes lay clean and neatly folded. John was gone. Why had she kept them?

Maybe this was why.

Piling everything on the bed, she selected a cotton union suit, a soft gray flannel shirt, some woolen socks, and a pair of new Levi’s to give to Latigo.

The thought of opening the door and seeing him there in the narrow bed, his black Apache eyes as fierce and alert as a hawk’s, sent a strange hot chill through her body. The man was everything she hated and feared. All the same, she burned to know the secrets that lay behind that bitter face, behind the anger, behind the sadness that seemed to steal over him at unguarded moments.

Hurrying across the room, she discovered Mason awake and cooing. He smiled up at her as she lifted him.

Then, she kissed one rosebud ear, clutching the fresh clothes under one arm and cradling her baby with the other, Rose made her way down the darkening stairs. This time, she vowed, she would ask all the difficult questions, and this time she would not turn away from the answers.

Latigo’s pulse leaped at the sound of Rose’s footsteps. Strange, he mused, how he had already come to recognize the light, graceful cadence of her walk, the agitated rush of her breathing, the husky little catch in her voice when she spoke. Even blindfolded, he would know this woman from all others.

Sitting up in the bed, he waited tensely for the sliding of the bolt. He had not expected Rose Colby to return so soon, but he was far from dismayed at the thought of seeing her again.

Time seemed to stop as the door swung open.

“I brought you some clothes,” she said, stepping into the room. “You can have your boots in the morning.”

“Are you that determined to keep me prisoner?” he asked, half-amused.

“It’s for your own good. You’re still very weak.”

“For my own good, I should be leaving right now. I don’t fancy the idea of playing tag with that posse in broad daylight.”

“Then stay until nightfall tomorrow.” She tossed the bundle of clothes onto the foot of the bed. A wry smile tugged at Latigo’s lips as he noticed the union suit—one trapping of white civilization he had stubbornly rejected.

“Your husband’s?” he asked.

“Yes.” Taut and expectant, she lowered herself to the edge of the chair. Nested in the crook of her arm, the baby gazed at him with innocent, violet-blue eyes. Her eyes.

“You never told me how your husband died,” he said.

“You didn’t ask. It was an accident.”

“An accident?” He stared at her.

“Why should that be so surprising?” she asked.

“You’d mentioned hand-feeding him. From that, I assumed it was an illness, maybe a stroke.”

She shook her head. “It happened last summer. John had ridden out alone to check on the herd—something he often did. When his horse came back with an empty saddle, I sent the vaqueros out to look for him. They brought him back in the wagon just before nightfall, unconscious. Evidently he’d fallen, or been thrown, and struck the back of his head on a rock.”

“I’m sorry,” Latigo said, reminding himself to be gentle with her. “If it’s too painful—”

“No, it helps me to talk about it. Most people don’t seem to understand that.” Rose sat in near darkness now, her beautiful, sad face obscured by shadows. “At first we didn’t expect him to last through the night. But John was a strong man. He lived for four months, if you could call it life. He was bedridden. He couldn’t stand or speak, and he didn’t seem to know anyone, not even me.”

“And you took care of him?”

“I was his wife.”

Latigo gazed at Rose Colby’s delicate face through the soft veil of twilight. Pampered, he had called her. Spoiled. Lord, how could a man be so wrong?

“Of course, I couldn’t have cared for John all alone,” she added swiftly. “I had Esperanza to help with the housework and cooking, and Miguel to keep the ranch running. And there was Bayard, of course.”

“Bayard?” The name triggered a taste as bitter as creosote in Latigo’s mouth.

“Bayard rode out from Tucson as soon as he got word of John’s accident.” She paused, head tilted, lost in thought. “You know, I truly can’t imagine what got into him this morning. Bayard was wonderful the whole time John was dying—sitting with him by the hour, bringing us things from town…”

“If he was so wonderful, maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to run him off!” Latigo growled.

He regretted the remark instantly, but it was too late to call it back. He saw her body stiffen and, even in the darkened room, caught the fire, like flecks of Mexican opal, in her splendid eyes.

“My relationship with Bayard Hudson is none of your concern!” she retorted sharply. “You asked me how my husband died, and I was telling you. That’s all you need to know!”

Silence hung between them. Then, deliberately, Latigo allowed himself to laugh. “You have a fine way of slapping a man’s face without touching him, Rose Colby,” he said.

“If that’s true, maybe I should do it more often!”

“It is true, Rose. Everything I’ve told you is true.”

“How can I be sure of that?” The anguish in her voice was real. She wanted to trust him, Latigo sensed, but she was still fearful.

“Would it be easier if I were a white man?” he dared to ask.

“That’s not a fair question,” she answered. “There are different kinds of white men and, I suppose, different kinds of Apaches.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Latigo said dryly. “So, what kind of Apache am I? Have you decided?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you.”

She made a move to rise, then settled uneasily back onto the chair as if she’d changed her mind. Once more the darkness lay heavy and still between them.

Latigo battled the urge to reach out and demand to know what she was doing here. Her husband’s clothes had only provided her with an excuse to come to him—she could just as easily have delivered them in the morning. If she were a different sort of woman, he might have construed it as an invitation. But Rose Colby was not bent on seduction. Her modest, distant manner and the presence of her child were enough to tell him that.

“Light the lamp,” he said. “I want to see your face. And I want you to see mine.”

She hesitated in the darkness, then rose from the chair with her son in her arms. “The lamp’s in the kitchen. Wait here. I’ll go and light it.”

“You’ll need both hands,” Latigo heard himself saying. “Give me the baby. I’ll hold him for you.”

Her lips parted as her arms tightened around the blanketed bundle. Only then did Latigo realize what he had done. In his readiness to be helpful, he had demanded the ultimate token of her trust, a trust he had yet to earn.

“It’s all right, Rose. I would never harm your son.”

“I know.”

Despite her words, she did not move, and Latigo knew better than to push her. “Never mind about the lamp, then,” he said. “Darkness makes it harder for each of us to know what the other is thinking. Maybe that’s not so bad after all.”

For a long moment, the only sound in the tiny room was the soft rush of her breathing. Then she took a step toward him and very carefully held out her baby.

Latigo’s heart jumped as she thrust the small, squirming bundle toward him. His outstretched hands received the precious weight like a blessing.

“I’ll get the lamp,” she said, and walked swiftly into the kitchen.

The baby whimpered, then relaxed, gurgling contentedly as Latigo settled the tiny body awkwardly against his chest. In all of his adult life, he could not remember having held an infant.

An alien sweetness, frighteningly close to tears, stole through him as he cradled Rose Colby’s son in his arms. Most men his age had sons of their own. Daughters, too, and wives and homes. But a family had no place in the life of a man caught between two worlds. He was alone and destined to remain so, a fugitive spirit, tied to no place, bound to no other human soul.

Light flickered in the kitchen as Rose struck a match and touched it to the lamp wick. The glow moved with her as she crossed the tiles to stand in the doorway.

“Mason seems to have taken to you,” she said as she placed the lamp on the dresser. “He’s settled right down. You should be flattered, he doesn’t do that with everyone.”

“Well, let’s hope the boy acquires better sense as he gets older,” Latigo remarked dryly.

A wan smile flickered across her face. “I can hold him now.”

“He’s fine where he is.”

She settled back onto the chair, making no move to take the baby from him. Latigo watched her, savoring her gentle beauty and the fragile warmth of her child against his heart.

This was foolhardy, his instincts shrieked in the stillness. John Colby’s widow had lost her family to the Apaches and he could not afford to trust her. True, she had not given away his presence this morning. But under different conditions, she could easily betray him. Lovely, brave and gentle she might be, but he could not allow himself to fall under her spell.

“What are you doing in here, Rose?” he asked, his voice unexpectedly rough. “You could be taking an awful chance, you know. I could overpower you, force you to get me the gun, take you and your baby hostage to use against that posse.”

“You don’t hide behind children, or women, either, I take it. At least that’s what you said.”

“But what if you’re wrong about me?” he persisted. “What do you want so much that you’d take this kind of chance?”

“The truth.” Her eyes, reflecting the lamplight, held tiny gold flames. “I want to know exactly how you came to be on this ranch, and I want to hear everything you know about my husband.”

“Even if you don’t like my answers?”

Her pale throat moved as she swallowed, then nodded. “I need to know for my own sake, and for Mason’s one day, when he’s old enough to understand.”

Latigo shifted his body higher on the pillows. The baby stirred in his arms, turning to gaze up at him with wide indigo eyes, and he knew that whatever he said, it would be for both of them. And whatever he said, it would be true.

But would it be the whole truth? Could he trust her with everything he knew?

Gazing at her through the amber haze of lamplight, he cleared his throat and began with a question.

“Rose, how much do you know about the so-called Indian Ring?”

Chapter Five

The Indian Ring?

Rose stared at the man in the shadows. She had never heard of the Indian Ring, but something about the name, or perhaps the way Latigo had said it, sounded so sinister that it triggered cold prickles along the flesh of her forearms.

“Your husband never mentioned the Ring to you?” he pressed her. “You never overheard him talking about it with his friends?”

“My husband believed women should keep still and tend to their knitting. His friends did come to the ranch sometimes, but I was never invited to join them.” Rose twisted the hem of her apron, her eyes on her son lying contentedly in the cradle of Latigo’s bare brown arms. In the dancing lamplight, Latigo’s lean Apache face had softened to tenderness, which tore at her defenses. She forced herself to meet his calm gaze. “If you want to talk about the Indian Ring, you’ll have to start by explaining what it is,” she said.

Latigo’s eyes narrowed. Cool evening air drifted in through the barred window, smelling of dust and rain. Thunder rumbled faintly from beyond the horizon.

“Most people would say the Ring never existed,” he said. “But I know better.”

“Maybe so, but I’m not following you!” Rose broke in impatiently. “Are you implying the Indian Ring had something to do with John?”

“I was hoping you might be able to tell me that.”

“You’re speaking in riddles.”

“I know.” Pain rippled across Latigo’s face as he shifted his weight against the pillow. Seeing his discomfort, Rose leaned forward and lifted Mason out of his arms. His eyes watched her guardedly, their black depths whispering unspoken secrets, and suddenly she was afraid.

“Can I get you something?” she asked, taking an emotional step backward.

He shook his head.

“This is taxing your strength,” she persisted.

“I’m all right.”

Rose held her son close, seeking comfort in his small, warm nearness. “Tell me about the Indian Ring,” she said softly.

“The Ring is secret, and powerful.” Latigo bit back pain as he spoke. “It’s made up of white men who’ve profited from the Apache wars, legally by selling beef and supplies to the army, illegally by smuggling guns and whiskey to the Apaches.”

“And you think John was involved?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it’s certainly no secret that this ranch has furnished beef to the army for years.”

“Let me finish.” His eyes warned her to listen. “The men in the Ring got rich off the Apache wars during the sixties. It suits them to keep things stirred up, especially with all the talk of the railroad coming in. That’s the last thing the Ring wants to see because most of them would be ruined. They’re banking on the hope that nobody will want to lay track through hostile Indian territory.”

Rose stared at him in disbelief. “You’re saying that the Ring deliberately causes trouble with the Apaches? That sounds awfully farfetched to me.”

“Not as farfetched as you might think. You remember the Camp Grant massacre in ‘71?”

“Yes, of course I do.” Rose’s flesh went cold as she spoke. No one in the territory could have missed hearing about the slaughter of 125 peaceful Arivaipa Apaches by an armed mob of Tucson citizens.

“But John wasn’t there!” she protested, springing once more to her husband’s defense. “He was out on the range with the herd! And you know as well as I do there were only five white men involved in the massacre—the rest were Mexicans and Papago Indians.”

“All true.” Latigo’s eyes glittered like sharp black flints. “But I worked as translator for the army commission that investigated the massacre. The five whites all had connections to the Ring—as hirelings, most likely. The Ring’s leaders are prominent men. They call the shots and pay the money, but they don’t get their hands dirty.”

Thunder rolled dimly, echoing along the fringe of Rose’s awareness as she stared at him, horrified. “You’re saying John could have been involved in the Ring and in the massacre?”

“Rose, there’s no proof either way.”

“And Bayard?”

“Again, there’s no proof. When you get right down to it, there’s no proof the Ring even exists. Any such proof could be a very dangerous thing to possess.”

Rose sank back into the chair, feeling strangely light, as if the marrow had been drained from her bones. “Your wound,” she said, forcing the words out of her right throat. “The murder of the two government agents—you’re saying that was the work of the Ring, too?”

“Again, there’s no proof. But I know what I saw. And I know that the two federal men were looking into smuggling activities on the San Carlos, which could also have been the work of the Ring. If I hadn’t escaped the ambush, it would have been natural for the authorities to blame the murders on the Apaches and call in more troops. As it was—”

“They had to blame you.” Rose closed her eyes for a moment as she struggled to make sense of the things she had just heard. She had asked Latigo for the truth and resolved to accept it, but he had shown her a glimpse of something so large and dark that it defied belief.

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