Carol Finch - Texas Bride

Jonah kept a close eye on Maddie, bewildered by his sudden sensitivity and consideration of her needs. Each time her face became flushed and she squirmed uncomfortably in the saddle, he halted to let her rest and sip from his canteen. She held up well, all things considered, and she matched his relentless pace without complaining, not even once.

Her only near brush with disaster in eight hours came when her mare, spooked by a coiled bull snake, bolted and tried to run away with her. Being an experienced rider, she managed to rein in her horse before it tried to leap the creek and head for higher ground.

Maddie sent Jonah a questioning glance when he veered toward an oversize briar patch. It stood in the shadows of a rugged stone cliff beside the stream they had been following.

“As a boy, we camped here many times while hunting buffalo,” Jonah explained as he dismounted. “It doesn’t look like much—”

“I’ll say it doesn’t.” Maddie stared dubiously at the outcropping of rock on the cliff. “Looks like the perfect place to meet up with rattlers, mountain lions or wolves.”

Jonah tethered the horses, grabbed his gear and gestured for Maddie to follow him up. He climbed a winding trail that was camouflaged by the briar patch and led upward to an inconspicuous spring tucked into a deep crevice of the ridge. Setting aside his rifle, pallet and saddlebags, he waited for Maddie to make her way up the steep incline.

“You have to know where this secluded spring is or you’d never find it.” He directed her attention to the inviting pool when she stepped onto the flat stone cliff top.

Maddie sighed appreciatively as she assessed the hollowed-out basin of rock tucked beneath a jagged sandstone bluff. It resembled a gigantic bathtub. She pivoted beside him to admire the panoramic view of the lush valley below, alive with colorful wildflowers and spring grasses.

“Spectacular,” she commented as she sank down cross-legged to rest. “You could see a herd of buffalo coming from five miles away.”

Jonah stared out over the land—and remembered too much. “Yeah, if the buffalo weren’t practically extinct after the army ordered their slaughter to starve out the Comanche, Kiowa and Apache.”

Maddie could tell that this trek down memory lane was taking its toll on Jonah. Had she known what she was asking of him she never would have gone to him for assistance. Impulsively she came to her feet and walked up behind him to glide her arms around his waist, then glanced around his broad shoulder, wondering what he saw that she didn’t.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

To her surprise, he tugged her in front of him and rested his chin on the crown of her head while he stared through time and space. “It was a different way of life,” he murmured. “A peaceful coexistence with nature. Never taking from Earth Mother without giving something back. The problem was we stood in the way of white expansion. Our people paid the sacrifice so that you, and others like you, could lay claim to this land.”

“Jonah, I’m sorry,” she whispered as she rubbed her shoulder consolingly against his chest. “Fifteen years ago I was just a child in East Texas who thought her parents were being terribly unfair by uprooting her and dragging her away from the only home she’d known. I can’t even begin to imagine the violence, resentment and confusion you endured.”

“What happened to your mother?” he asked after a moment.

“She died giving birth to Chrissy. And your mother? How did she come to be with the Comanche?”

“A captive from childhood. She taught me to speak English, but she had no wish to return to her abusive father. She became Comanche, lived as a Comanche and died from complications of the bullet wound she sustained when our clan was captured and taken to the reservation.”

For the life of him Jonah couldn’t fathom why he was confiding in Maddie. Even his commander didn’t know the details of his life before he’d joined the Rangers. Jonah had kept his own counsel for half a lifetime.

And this certainly was not the time to become sentimental and talkative, he chided himself. He and Maddie were merely strangers who had crossed paths temporarily. By this time tomorrow she’d go her way and he would go his. That would be the end of it.

Clinging to that sensible thought, Jonah released her—and wondered what in the hell he’d been thinking by holding her possessively to him in the first place. That kind of physical contact was tempting and dangerous. It was as if he had needed her warmth and her gentle touch while he faced the onslaught of memories triggered by stopping at this old Comanche campsite.

She pivoted toward him, then flicked a glance at the rolled pallet on the stone ledge. He could practically see her mind churning with curiosity when her gaze returned to him.

“If you have only one bedroll, and I slept on it, then where did you sleep last night?”

He’d wondered when she would ask that question. He’d expected it earlier, but he supposed getting shot at had dominated her thoughts.

“I slept beside you, under the same quilt,” he said, expecting her to start ranting about propriety. But she surprised him by staring inquisitively at him.

“I was so exhausted last night that you could easily have taken advantage of the situation.” Those amber eyes drilled into him. “Why didn’t you?”

“Good question. Maybe because I was plumb worn-out, too.”

“Or maybe because you don’t like me and you don’t find me desirable.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

That was not it, but he’d be damned if he’d let her know she was getting under his skin and that getting naked with her was a fantasy that was occupying too much of his thought processes.

Jonah scooped up his rifle. “You can enjoy a leisurely bath while I hunt down supper.”

“No rattlesnake steak. Tried it once. Didn’t like it.”

“You’d be surprised what you can eat when left with no choice, princess,” he assured her, more gruffly than he intended. “Believe me, I’ve had worse.”

Jonah descended the trail and vowed he was going to be his old self again when he returned. Sharing his thoughts and emotions made him feel uncomfortable and exposed. He related better to Maddie when he relied on taunts and sarcasm. If he kept this up she might come to mean too much in the short span of a few days. He planned to leave her without regret, because he had regrets aplenty already and revisiting the outer boundaries of the Comanchería was getting him stirred up.

She was getting him stirred up, too.

It was amazing how quickly he had reached the point where just staring at those clingy clothes that accentuated her curvaceous figure made him want her—badly.

He just needed a woman. Any woman would do, he tried to convince himself. He could relieve that problem at the bustling town that had sprung up beside Fort Griffin. The Flat, as the raucous community was called, was known for its saloons, dance halls and harlots. Simple sexual pleasure was what he craved.

Maddie Garret was to be cautiously avoided because she came with all sorts of complications. Hell, he couldn’t even guarantee that she wasn’t feeding him some fantastic lie.

Oh, certainly, he wanted to believe her, wanted to think that he wasn’t that bad a judge of character. But he’d heard too many nightmarish tales of men who were enticed and betrayed by a beautiful woman. Maddie, with her hypnotic golden eyes, sun-kissed hair and honeyed lips could lead him into disaster like a sea siren luring a doomed ship into the eye of a hurricane.

“Well damn,” Jonah muttered as he stalked off to hunt. He was getting allegorical and philosophical all of a sudden, wasn’t he? If this wasn’t an indication that a tempting woman could tie a man up in knots and leave him waxing poetic, he didn’t know what was.