Comanche Heart (20 page)

“I’m just afraid you might have an entirely different idea of what’s good for me than I do,” she admitted.

He laughed and pulled the door closed behind them. Amy peered into the gloom, liking this idea less by the moment.

“Swift, it’s going to be pitch dark any minute, and you know how blind I am at night.”

“I can see fine.” His hand closed around her elbow. “I won’t let you fall, Amy. Relax. Remember when we were kids, running wild along the river after dark? You’d grab my belt and trail along behind me when you couldn’t see.”

“I remember you tripping once, too, and both of us falling down a bank.”

He led her across her yard toward the trees. About two hundred yards away, the schoolhouse loomed like a ghostly specter.

“I tripped on purpose.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.” He angled her a warm look. “I stole a hug at the bottom of that bank, if you’ll recall.”

Amy squinted to see ahead of them. “Swift, the woods are so dark. Let’s walk along the boardwalk.”

“Nope. I want you alone with me, out of shouting distance of everybody.”

Her heart leaped. “Why?”

He drew her closer as they circled a tree in their path. Taking advantage of the moment, he released her elbow and slipped his arm around her. His hand, large and warm, stole under her shawl to settle on her side, his fingertips staking claim just below her right breast. Amy stiffened and grabbed instinctively for his wrist.

“Trust, Amy,” he reproved. “That hand’s not going anywhere.”

She shot a glance over her shoulder toward town, her heart sinking when she saw that they were already beyond shouting distance. Her throat tightened. Against her better judgement, she relinquished her hold on his wrist.

The two hours loomed ahead of her, promising to be the most nerve-racking of her life. She began to wish she never had sought Swift out yesterday, that she had used her head and encouraged him to leave for Texas instead of challenging his pride. More fool she, for here she was, traipsing toward the woods with him, half his size, blind as a bat, and undeniably stupid for ever letting him talk her into this insanity in the first place.

Swift led her toward Shallows Creek,
led
being the operative word, because it soon grew so dark inside the timber that she couldn’t see. An owl hooted and swooshed down at them, nearly scaring her out of her skin. She instinctively pressed closer to Swift, and once he had tightened his hold on her, he seemed loath to loosen it. Her hip bumped his thigh as they walked.

Soon she could hear the rushing of the water. They came upon a clearing, bathed in bright moonlight, the trees gilded silver, the shadows cast into frightening blackness. Swift led her to a huge fallen log and, seizing her by the waist, swung her up to sit on it. She braced her palms on either side of her, gazing down at him nervously, unsettled to have her feet dangling so far above the ground when she couldn’t see what lay below her.

A looming shadow dressed in black, he hopped up beside her, looping his arms around one knee. The moonbeams shone upon his face and glistened in his ebony hair where it curled across his forehead. Looking over at him, she could only wonder what in God’s name she was doing out here alone with him.

After gazing at the water for a long while, he turned his head to study her, his eyes black splashes against the dark planes of his face. “Well, Miss Amy, this is the moment you’ve been dreading, isn’t it? You’re completely alone with me. There’s no one to come if you scream. What’s supposed to happen next? I’d sure hate to disappoint a lady.”

She swallowed and toyed nervously with the fringe on her shawl. “I, um . . .” She glanced over at him. “I guess that’s up to you. That was the whole idea, wasn’t it?”

His teeth shimmered in the moonlight as he grinned—a slow, smug grin that sent her heart into a skitter. “I was thinking about doing something you never expected, something that would take you totally by surprise, now that I’ve got you out here, completely at my mercy.”

“L-like what?” she asked in a small voice.

“Like talking.” His grin widened. “That is the last thing you expected, isn’t it?”

Relief made her feel giddy. “Yes,” she admitted with an airy little laugh. “What shall we talk about?”

“I don’t know. Anything about me you’re dying to know?”

Her smile faded. “Yes. What made you start carrying a gun? You never were one to kill merely for the sake of killing or for fighting without a cause. How did it happen that killing became a part of your daily life?”

“It wasn’t exactly daily, Amy. Sometimes I went weeks, even months, without using my gun.” He sighed and shifted his position slightly. “As for picking up a gun in the first place, it was fate, mostly. You know me and weapons. Rowlins, my boss, taught me to shoot a revolver.” He shrugged. “It’s a necessary skill when you’re a cowhand. And once he taught me the basics, I practiced every day, until I felt I could handle it well.”

She remembered how accomplished Swift had been with other weapons, how important that had been to him as a warrior. “So, of course you became excellent.”

“Fair.”

“Swift, I read the news story. They say you’re the fastest gun in Texas, maybe the fastest anywhere.”

He scowled into the darkness. “After the first gunfight, I had to be fast. Once you kill a gunslinger, there’s no end to it. Your reputation follows you everywhere you go, and there’s always someone who wants to test his skill against you. You either draw or die. In my first fight, I had the misfortune of killing a man who had a name. I went to town with the fellows one Saturday night, he saw me, didn’t like my looks, and challenged me. From that night on, my life became a nightmare.”

“What if—what if someone follows you here?”

He sighed. “I hope no one does.”

“But if someone does?”

He turned to regard her, all trace of a grin gone. “The coward in me will draw on him. Remember what I said to you about wishing you could die, and it not being that easy? I know firsthand. I’ve tried not to go for my gun at least a dozen times—promised myself I wouldn’t—but when the smoke cleared, I was still standing.” He studied her for a long while. “You’re not the only one to ever feel afraid, you know. We all do sometimes. Unfortunately for the other fellow, the more afraid I am, the faster I can draw.”

“Surely you don’t wish—” She tried to read his expression and couldn’t because of the shadows. “Those men would have killed you. Why would you want to let them?”

“They weren’t always men.” He gazed into the trees, his body immobile, not even appearing to breathe for a moment. “You saw Chase’s eyes that first night when he was asking about my gunfights. Some were kids, Amy, just a few years older than Chase. Legally, I guess you could call them men . . . nineteen, twenty, some a little older. But that isn’t much consolation when you look into their faces.” He waved a hand as if he couldn’t find the words to express how that had felt. “Boys who practiced slapping leather until they thought they could take me. They were dead wrong.” He swallowed. When he continued, his voice sounded hollow. “Me or them, that’s what it boiled down to, and sometimes—sometimes I wished it was me.”

Amy dug her nails into the bark of the log. Averting her face, she said, “I’m sorry, Swift. I shouldn’t have asked about something so painful.” She yearned to ask him about why he had become a comanchero, how he could have betrayed her that way, but now, after hearing the pain in his voice, she couldn’t.

His voice went gravelly. “Don’t be sorry. I think it’s something you need to know. I never set out to be a gunslinger. It just happened.” He grew quiet a moment. “What else do you want to know?”

Her heart aching for him, she sighed and glanced at his face. “Who took a knife to you?”

His mouth twisted. “I did.”

She turned to stare at him. “You? But why?”

“It’s a mourning scar,” he said huskily.

Amy knew enough about the Comanches to realize that men only scarred their faces when close relatives or their women died. “You lost someone very dear to you, then?”

“I lost everyone who was dear to me,” he replied. “This scar was for the woman I loved. Because of the war, we were separated. When I learned of her death, I marked my face.”

Amy closed her eyes. She had always known, deep down, that Swift was bound to have found someone else. Fifteen years was a very long time. She took a deep, cleansing breath and opened her eyes again. “I’m so sorry, Swift. I didn’t know. . . . Did you have children?”

He tipped his head, studying her. “We haven’t yet.”

She nearly nodded, then realized what he had said. “But I thought you said she—” Amy’s eyes widened and shifted to the scar. A horrible trembling seized her. “Oh, God, Swift, no.”

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “You’re crazy if you think I ever loved anyone else. There have been women—I won’t lie to you about that. Lots of them, over the years. But I never felt anything but a passing fondness for any of them. Everyone has one great love in his or her life, and you were it for me.”

Tears blinded Amy. “I never dreamed . . . Why didn’t you tell me that first night? Why did you wait?”

“I didn’t want you to feel like I was using it against you. You would have felt bad. Hell, you feel bad now. I just didn’t think telling you was fair.”

“I don’t feel bad,” she said tightly. “I feel devastated. You’re face was so—so beautiful.”

He narrowed one eye at her. “Beautiful? Amy, you’re beautiful.”

“So were you.” She caught her lip between her teeth. “You still are, in a different way. The scar gives you a certain look—
character
, I guess would be the word.”

“That’s because it has your name on it.”

The tears in her eyes spilled over onto her cheeks. “Oh, Swift . . . you truly did love me, didn’t you? Every bit as much as I loved you.”

“I still love you. Die on me, and I’ll slash my other cheek. I’ll be so ugly no other woman will have me. And I won’t care. You’re the only woman I ever wanted, the only one I’ll ever want.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out his Bull Durham pouch. “And you know what?” he asked as he rolled a cigarette. “You still love me just as much as you ever did. You’re just too damned scared to admit it.”

She wiped at her cheeks. “I love the memories of you,” she whispered. “I never stopped loving the memories. Even when I learned you were a comanchero, I couldn’t burn my sketch of you, because I still loved the boy you were.”

Swift struck a lucifer and lit his cigarette. Waving out the match, he flicked it into the creek with his finger, then took a deep drag, slowly exhaling smoke. “I wish we could go back.” He turned his head toward her, his shadowed eyes looking haunted. “I wish I could undo everything I’ve done, Amy. But I can’t. I’m not the boy you knew. I never can be again. I can only be who I am now.”

“We’ve both changed.”

Swift nodded. “I know I refused to accept that when I first came here, but it’s the truth, and only a fool denies what smacks him right between the eyes. I’ve changed. And so have you—so much that sometimes I’m not sure the girl you were ever existed. At first I tried to force you to be the way I remembered you. But it isn’t in you anymore. You finally popped me in the nose, but only because I pushed until you didn’t have much choice.”

Amy shivered and hugged her shawl close. “I was a very foolish girl back then, with more temper than brains sometimes.”

He chuckled. “You were glorious! If ever anyone had Comanche heart, it was you, blond hair, blue eyes, and all. Even at the very worst times, when you were the most terrified of me, I could see the courage in your eyes. What happened to you, Amy? Have you ever asked yourself that?”

She tipped her head back, smiling at the memories with a trace of sadness she couldn’t quite conceal. “Life happened,” she said softly. “The little girl grew up, and she found out the hard way that all the courage in the world didn’t put any thrust behind her fist when she pitted herself against a man.”

Swift studied her intently, watching the bitter twist to her mouth, knowing that she smiled only because the alternative was to weep—which she would never do. “Santos? Tell me, Amy. I thought—well, after Santos, I thought you came through it, that you were all right.”

She shivered again and spoke slowly. “A person never gets all right after something like that. I lived through it and kept my sanity. Wasn’t that enough?” She turned tear-bright eyes on him again, eyes that reached clear down inside him and wrenched his heart. “I’m sorry I’m a disappointment to you. But like you, I can’t go back. I am the way I am.”

“Honey, you’re not a disappointment to me. Don’t ever think that.”

“Yes,” she said in a taut voice. “I’m even a disappointment to myself sometimes. But there we are, hm? The cloth’s been cut. I am who I am.”

“I just want to know you as you are,” he said softly. “The other night, after you hit me, when you described how I was making you feel, I realized I was going about things wrong. I’m sorry for that. But, mistakes or no, I love you, Amy, the girl you were, and the woman you are.”

She shook her head. “No. You don’t know who I am, Swift, not really. You loved a girl who was glorious. You said it yourself. There’s no glory left. I’m just a humdrum teacher, in a safe little town, in a safe little house, with a safe little life.” She peered through the gloom at him. “You should find someone glorious. You should! A woman you can admire, someone feisty, like Indigo will be. A woman like me has to have her battles fought
for
her.”

“Then let me be the one who fights them,” he said huskily.

Her luminous eyes caught the moonlight, shimmering at him like prisms. “Until you came along, there weren’t any battles to fight. I liked it that way.”

He conceded the point by inclining his head. Studying the orange tip of his cigarette, he said, “I let you ask me questions. Now it’s my turn for one. Agreed?”