A Wolf in the Desert Read online

  Patience whirled on him, peeling his hand from her arm as if it were scabrous. “Let me go. Don’t touch me.”

  Because they were alone again he let her go. As he watched her walk away a little distance into the desert, he listened to a stealthy retreat. Snake’s step was familiar, and Custer’s slight limp unmistakable.

  Taking little pride in his performance, he waited until the sounds faded completely before he went to her. “O’Hara.” He stood at her back, waiting for some sign, some reaction to his brutal burlesque of Jekyll and Hyde. “O’Hara, look at me.”

  She didn’t turn. Her back seemed straighter, more rigid.

  “This wasn’t what you think.” Indian touched her shoulder, meaning to turn her into his arms to justify, to comfort. “Let me explain.”

  She shrugged him off, swayed with the effort, then straightened again, assuming the ramrod posture. Drawing a shuddering breath, with the back of a shaking hand she wiped her mouth viciously. Her hand dropped stiffly to her side as an unnatural stillness enveloped her.

  Indian knew she was in pain, the silent, gut-wrenching, tearless pain of humiliating helplessness. Pain he caused her.

  Cursing himself and the world, he turned her into his arms. When she fought him, he let her, stoically suffering the claw of broken and unbroken nails, the pummel of poor, sore hands. He knew it wouldn’t be for long. She’d fought him hard and well, as he’d wanted, but she was near the end of her strength. He waited for this last spurt of rebellion to end, speaking softly to her in a nearly wordless murmur as he waited.

  When the inertia of mind-destroying fatigue overwhelmed her, when she was still again and quiet, he gathered her nearer. That there was not even token resistance proved how close she’d come to total collapse, how complete the despair that sapped the last of her vitality. Repulsed by circumstances that brought her to this, and for his necessary role in it, Indian tucked her head into his shoulder, stroking her hair, offering what respite he could.

  He suspected this was a rare occurrence in any circumstance. An uncommon moment when this spirited woman faltered, in need of restoring peace to her ravaged mind and body.

  She’d weathered more than he’d thought possible. When he’d caught his first glimpse of her pinioned in the glare of unmerciful headlights, she was small and fragile, her delicate heart-shaped face almost overwhelmed by a lioness’s mane of hair like flame. He wouldn’t have given a penny for her chances of outlasting the savagery he knew was coming. Yet he couldn’t intervene, not then. The odds in her favor escalated when she’d proven immune to the head games his fellow riders were so adept at playing.

  The derringer was a surprise. He didn’t expect it, but from the moment she’d palmed it like a pro, he knew this woman was a breed apart.

  The pièce de résistance was Blue Doggie. No one in his right mind would have believed that before Indian could reach her, this scrap of a woman, brutalized physically and mentally, could fell a man more than twice her size in one two-fisted uppercut.

  She’d endured beyond human endurance and hadn’t broken, until Indian took it upon himself to see to her welfare. Until Indian, in his own inimitable style, brought her to the brink. To this silent suffering.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered into her hair, and the hard shuddering that shook her finally stopped.

  With the flat of her palm, Patience pushed away from him, her face was bleak. “No, I’m sorry, for being weak. It won’t happen again.”

  “This isn’t weakness, it’s being human and civilized. But if it were a matter of strength, I’ve seen men who considered themselves far stronger than you could ever be break under less.”

  “You misunderstand me, Indian.” She turned a diamond-hard gaze at him. “I make no apologies for this. I’ve seen enough and done enough in my life to know that there are situations beyond our control, and times when the spirit and body fail us. My weakness was believing in you even a little. I won’t make that mistake again.

  “I’m not a complete fool.” Her arms hung tensely at her sides, her fingers flexed, a scrap of rawhide tumbled to the ground before they curled again into tight fists. A mouth made for laughter thinned to a grim line. “As mercuric as you are, I do know what you’ve spared me.”

  “Do you?” he interjected quietly. “Do you, indeed?”

  “Yes.” She spat the word at him. “I know.”

  “Such confidence,” Indian mocked. “Such blind certainty.” He took a step closer. With a finger beneath her chin he lifted her face to meet her gaze again. “They were out there, Snake and Custer, the worst of the lot, watching, slavering over a tempting morsel.”

  Patience swung around to look to the road where six bikers lounged on Beauty’s hood, or hunkered around her on the ground. Bottles flashed in the light, drunken laughter spilled over the desert. Stumbling across her misfortune offered the perfect excuse for a binge.

  “There are six by the car,” she said. “No one was here. No one was watching.”

  “They were here.”

  “How do you know? How could you?”

  “I knew.”

  “Ah! You’re psychic? Telepathic, perhaps? Superhuman?” The latter was drawled contempt.

  “Neither.” He refused to rise to her baiting. “I’m a simple man, with simple skills.”

  Regarding him, she remembered how he held himself aloof from the others. How no one challenged his claim. He rode with them, lived by their laws, but he was not one of them. She was sure of it. Even in rage and terror she’d perceived him as separate. Different.

  Six bikers and an Indian.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you?”

  “A simple man called Indian. No more. No less.”

  “No,” she denied emphatically. “Not simple. Never simple.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “If you wish, not simple.”

  She recalled when she thought him as inscrutable as the saguaro, now she decided the saguaro lost, hands down. “Tell me how you knew these men were watching.”

  Indian shrugged a shoulder, bare beyond the edge of his vest. “I’m a tracker. A good one. My grandfather taught me to see things others don’t see, to hear things they don’t hear, to know things they will never know.

  “Custer and Snake came, not as secretly as they thought, seeking an excuse to take you from me. They will if we don’t play this right.” He stroked her hair. Mesmerized, he watched it glide through his fingers, glistening like dark fire in the moonlight.

  Red hair was prized by the bikers. Because of it she was a trophy coveted by too many men. Regretfully his fingers tangled in silk, holding her, keeping her, ignoring her hand at his wrist. “I can’t fight them all.”

  Patience ceased her silent rebuff of his caress. With her hand at his wrist and the steady throb of his pulse beneath her fingertips, she stared up at him. “Take me from you? They would do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “But your laws, your precious biker laws, what happens to them?”

  “They apply, but only if we are believed.”

  “You mean they have to believe that I’m truly your woman.” She caught a ragged breath, her tongue moved nervously over dry lips. “They have to believe that you’re my lover. Rapist, if you must.”

  “Yes.”

  Patience jerked her hand from his wrist as if contact burned her. In horror she backed away, ignoring the crumbling soil of a tiny wash. Whirling around, she stepped over the groove carved by some long ago rain. Her boots scattered coarse sand as she walked. Mesquite and creosote brushed at her jeans. Thorned ocotillo tugged at the sleeve of her shirt as if it wanted to hold her back. She ignored them.

  But she couldn’t ignore the footsteps that echoed her own. She knew she heard them because Indian wanted her to hear. In a moment of distraction she stumped her toe on the exposed roots of a creosote bush. His hands circling her waist kept her from falling.

  She jerked away, staggered on a few steps, and stopped, searchin
g beyond her. There was nothing. Neither light nor living thing. Not to the east, nor the west. The south or the north.

  “That’s right.” Indian stood a pace behind. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing for miles. You can’t walk out.”

  Patience spun around, and in the moonlight her hair was a veil of gossamer. “I don’t believe you.”

  She wasn’t speaking of the obvious desolation of the desert. Neither pretended she did.

  “I can’t give you proof.” He stood stolidly in front of her, making no effort to touch her. “Proof could only come from Custer, or Snake, or one of the others. Then it would be too late.”

  “You could let me go. Just turn around and go back to your bike and leave me to take my chances in the desert.”

  “I can’t.”

  “All you have to do is walk away.”

  “It would be certain suicide. You wouldn’t last a day.”

  “For that day I would be free and my own person, not a piece of property.” She’d stood stiffly in front of him, now she made a gesture of entreaty, or anger, or both. She didn’t know herself. “Have you ever been a prisoner, Indian? Made to be a lesser person?”

  “I’ve always been free,” he said. “Different degrees of freedom, at different times, but free, nevertheless.”

  “That’s what I’m asking for now, a different degree of freedom. The right to choose where I live and die, and how.”

  “I can’t. You wouldn’t have a chance, and you wouldn’t have a choice. You would be hunted down.”

  “Then I would have tried, that counts for something.”

  “You wouldn’t think so if Snake got to you first.”

  She gestured toward the road, so far away Beauty looked like a toy and the bikes like pawns of a board game. Even the bikers seemed innocuous from this perspective. Comic, toy soldiers scattered by a petulant child, waiting to be put away at the end of a hard day of play.

  Appearances were misleading, the handsome man standing in front of her was proof of that. “Snake, Custer, Blue Doggie, the one called Hogan. The others.” Her arm fell heavily to her side. She returned her gaze to him. “You. Why would it matter?”

  He showed no reaction to her scorn. “Then consider this. When all choices are evil, isn’t it wise to choose the lesser?”

  “Something else your grandfather taught you?” She sneered.

  “No.” His grandfather would have fought to the death. It was his way. The Apache way. Indian didn’t want that choice for her. He wouldn’t want it for any innocent, but especially not for Patience O’Hara.

  “Then you thought up this tidbit of wisdom all by yourself?” Patience taunted recklessly. “In your tiny, screwed-up little mind?”

  A muscle flickered in his jaw, his teeth clenched as he silenced a reply. “We will discuss the size and condition of my mind another time,” he said instead. “And, yes, the tidbit was mine.”

  “Let me guess. The lesser of the multitude of evils I seem to have attracted would be...” She pointed a finger at his chest, as if it were a gun. “Of course! You.”

  “For a woman who has more guts than brains, yes.”

  “My choice is a man who gives his word, most solemnly, then waffles and bends his promise to suit his needs?”

  “Enough!” The command underscored an imperious gesture. “It’s no wonder you have no husband! You would talk a man to death.”

  “You don’t know that I’m not married,” Patience lashed back at him. “You know nothing about me.”

  “You wear no ring.”

  “Neither do you and for all I know, or care, you could have a dozen wives.”

  “I have no wife. When I do, there will be only one.”

  “Only one, huh? And you would wear her ring?”

  Indian didn’t hesitate. “If she wished, yes.”

  “Have you, in your great wisdom, considered that perhaps my husband is a modern man? A man not bound by ancient symbolism, who doesn’t wish it?”

  “Never.” He wondered if she knew how mysteriously beautiful she was in the half-light. How magnificently courageous. “The man who becomes your husband will put his ring on you,” he said thoughtfully, “to show the world that such a woman is his.”

  The response startled her, catching her with no caustic reply. “But you said—”

  “I know what I said.” He cut her short, exasperated with himself. He wasn’t a man who revealed his thoughts, a natural trait and habit that had saved his life many times. He would need to watch carefully with this woman. She had the skill to draw from him more than he wished. More than was wise.

  “Come.” Catching her by the shoulder, he pulled her to his side. “We’ve wasted too much time. By now the last of the beer from the saddlebags will be consumed. I should see that they move along before their mood turns ugly.”

  When he meant to return to the road with her in tow, she resisted, digging her heels into the sand. “No!”

  He spun around, his face a dark visage. “Don’t try me more. You’ve pushed your luck as far as it can go.”

  “So?” She glared at him when he would not release her arm. “What do I have to lose? What have I ever had to lose?”

  “A fight, then? To the bitter end?”

  “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “At given and appropriate times.”

  “On cue?” She laughed, a sound completely lacking humor. “In your dreams, chief.”

  He raised a sardonic brow. “I’ve been promoted? Good. Perhaps you’ll be happier with a chief than a lowly Indian.” He pulled her along the trail with him, ignoring her opposition.

  “Wait.” She clutched at his vest, her fingers brushing the heated flesh beneath. “I haven’t made my choice.”

  He stopped, turning to catch her in his arms as she bumped into him. His face was fierce, his eyes narrowed. “I made the choice for you.”

  She gripped the supple leather as if she would tear it. Through gritted teeth, she spat, “You have no right.”

  “I have every right, and you have none.”

  When she would have lashed back at him, he silenced her with a look so savage her protest died in her throat.

  “What? No grievance?” he taunted. “Has the wildcat finally sheathed her useless claws?”

  She looked up at him, seeing a man she hadn’t seen before. “Who are you? What are you?” she asked, bemused. “How many men are you?”

  Though he spoke sternly, the anger in him subsided. An anger addressing his weakness as much as her stubborn strength. “I’m one man. Who I am isn’t important. What I am, what I became the moment you chose to travel this path, is your only hope. With or without your cooperation I’m going to find a way to get you out of this. Unharmed and unmolested by anyone.”

  “Does that little declaration include you?” The caustic gibe slipped from her tongue before she could recall it.

  “Yes, especially me.” His expression was impassive. “There is one choice you have. We’re going to your car. If you have luggage—” a shocked and angry look confirmed his instinctive guess that she did “—you will select the clothing and necessities you might need at our camp. You can cooperate and come willingly, or I’ll carry you.”

  “Like so much garbage.”

  “Like a willful squaw.”

  Patience knew the leeway he’d allowed her had ended. Painfully she admitted “allowed” was the proper description. Given his half-foot advantage in height, and the extra sixty pounds on his ruggedly muscular physique, allowed was exactly the right word. Now he was allowing her to make a choice. To do what she must with grace and dignity, or to be done with gracelessly as he wished.

  She had few weapons, and dignity could be one of the few. She’d seen it happen. When needed, Mavis, her usually happily undignified mother, could dig deeply for an icy dignity that intimidated the surly as well as the arrogant.

  Dignity, a weapon to preserve and protect. Uncommon and effective, perhaps even against In
dian. She released her hold on his vest and stepped past his reach. “I’ll walk.”

  He wasn’t a man to exult in his mastery, one lone, spare move of his head acknowledged victory. “I thought you might.”

  The path he chose to return wandered through shrub and grasses. He didn’t look back or offer an assisting hand. He knew she would follow, that the oblique surrender pledged she would. He knew, as well, she would accept no helping hand.

  “Indian.”

  He didn’t slow or turn. “Yes?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  His step didn’t alter.

  “Indian.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I never will.” Her defiance evoked no response. She expected none, suspecting taciturnity, rather than heated and lengthy discourse, was his true nature. She watched him, his honed body, his sure and easy step. He moved through the desert as if he were of it, an integral part, and all else was intrusion. And she wondered what manner of man held her life in his hands. Engrossed in thought, she put a foot wrong. The step jolted, but she righted herself with only little effort.

  Indian slowed imperceptibly until he heard her steady step again. He smiled, visualizing her frown in her concerted effort to keep him from knowing her passage was not without difficulty.

  Their trek continued, Indian leading, Patience following, saguaro lining their path like spine-encrusted sentinels. The scent of beer, peculiar smokes, and drunken mutterings reached out to them before the refracted light of headlights still burning.

  “I won’t stop fighting, Indian,” she declared in a hushed tone. “Not ever.”

  Indian stopped at the shoulder of the road, keeping his back to her. His shoulders lifted in a long, drawn breath, a breath exhaled in a resigned sigh. “I know.”

  As he stepped into the light, a haggard Blue Doggie looked up at him and beyond. Virulent hate burned in rheumy eyes.

  Indian reached back, pulling her to him. “Go to the car. Choose what you will need. Sturdy serviceable clothing as you’re wearing now, and no more than a couple of changes. A hat if you have one, but don’t bother with a bag, bundle everything in a shirt. When you’ve finished, tie your hair back and wait until I come for you.”