Comanche Heart (6 page)

Her mouth quivered, then thinned. “I don’t want to talk to you. How dare you even come here? How
dare
you?”

To Amy, the closing of the door had resounded like a rifle shot. Her head swam, racing with so many thoughts she couldn’t begin to sort them. Swift was back. After fifteen years he had come for her. Swift, now a comanchero, a gunslinger, a killer. The words echoed inside her dazed mind like a witch’s chant.

She knew firsthand how men like him treated women. She also knew that Comanches believed promises were binding until death. Swift would try to hold her to the betrothal vows she had made to him as a child. He would expect, perhaps even demand, that she marry him.

She stared up at him, unable to reconcile his features with those of the young Comanche warrior she had known. His burnished face, once so boyish and appealing, had become chiseled over the years, his muscular jaw set in a stubborn line and heightened by a squared, deeply clefted chin. Tiny lines etched the corners of his dark brown eyes. His arched, blue-black eyebrows had grown thicker. His once regal nose now sported a knot along the bridge. A thin scar ran from the outside tip of his right eyebrow to his chin. His mouth, once almost too perfect for a male, had grown firm, the dimples at each corner now furrowed into deep crevices that slashed his cheeks. Wind and scorching sun had weathered his skin to a leathery toughness.

Those weren’t the only changes.

He had grown taller, much taller, and the years had hardened his body to a whipcord leanness, lending his shoulders a breadth they had lacked when he was younger. The boy she remembered was gone. Swift, her betrothed. A tall, dark, dangerous stranger who stood between her and the door.

“I thought you were dead,” he told her softly. “You have to believe that, Amy. Do you think I’d have come riding in like this, out of the blue, without sending word to prepare you?”

“I have no idea what you might or might not do. And, as you can see, I’m far from dead.”

“I went to the farm to get you, just as I swore I would. Henry told me you’d died of cholera five years before.”

Hearing Henry’s name made Amy stiffen.

“There was a grave out back. I couldn’t read the writing on the cross.” A wry smile slanted across his mouth. “It’s a miracle, finding you here. I thought I had lost you.”

Just in case he was entertaining the thought of embracing her, she took a step back. Gone was the stilted, charming English he had once spoken. Now he talked like a white man. Even the way he said her name had changed. In addition, he looked at her differently—the way a man looked at a woman.

“It—it was my mother’s grave, but whose it was doesn’t matter. It’s been so many years, Swift.”

“Too many years.” His smile deepened. “We have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we?”

Catching up? Amy tried to picture the two of them chatting over coffee. “Swift, it’s been a lifetime. You’ve—changed.”

“And so have you.” His gaze swept over her and warmed with unmistakable appreciation. “You were a promise as a girl, and now that promise has been fulfilled.”

His mention of promises unnerved her. As if he sensed that, his gaze sharpened, and a smile once again slanted across his mouth, tender with amusement this time. “Amy, would you relax?”

“Relax,” she repeated. “Relax, Swift? I never expected to see you again.”

He reached to touch a tendril of hair at her temple, his warm fingertips grazing her skin, sending jolts of alarm coursing through her. “Is seeing me again so bad? You’re acting like my arrival somehow threatens you.”

She inched her head back. “And you think it doesn’t? I haven’t forgotten Comanche customs. The past doesn’t have a place in my life, now. I can’t take up where I left off fifteen years ago. I’m a teacher now. I have a home here. I have friends and—”

“Whoa,” he broke in. Glancing quickly around the cozy classroom, he withdrew his hand from her hair. “Why would you think my coming here is going to change any of that? Or that I would even want it to?”

“Because I prom—” She made fists in her skirt, staring up at him, uncertainty flooding through her. Perhaps she had been jumping to conclusions. “Are you saying that—” She licked her lips and took a deep, bracing breath. “I always thought—when you came here, I mean—well, I assumed that you’d come because we—” Heat stole up her neck. “Does this mean you no longer consider us—betrothed?”

His smile slowly faded. “Amy, does that have to be an issue right now? We’ve barely said hello.”

“You walk back into my life when I haven’t seen you for fifteen years, and you expect me to leave something that important hanging? To not feel threatened? I know how Comanche betrothals and marriages take place.” She made a futile gesture with her hands. “Five minutes from now, you might decide to make a public announcement of our marriage and cart me off somewhere!”

A question crept into his eyes. “Do you really believe I’d do that to you?”

“I don’t know what you might do,” she cried. “You’ve turned killer. You’ve been riding with comancheros. I can tell you what I’d like you to do. I wish you’d climb back on your horse and go back where you came from. You’re a chapter in my life that I thought was closed, that I want to stay closed.”

“I’ve just ridden over two thousand miles to get here.” His teeth flashed as he spoke, straight and brilliant white against his dark skin. “And even if I had a notion to go, Amy, there’s nothing for me to go back to.”

“Well, there’s certainly nothing for you here.”

Swift had never intended for this conversation to turn ugly. But she was leaving him very little room to sidestep. What did she expect? That he should release her from their betrothal and ride out, pretending there had never been anything between them? “I’d say there’s plenty for me here,” he replied evenly.

She paled. “Meaning me, I take it?”

“Not just you. There’s Hunter and Loretta and their children. Amy . . .” He heaved a tired sigh. “Don’t back me into a corner on this right now.”

“Don’t back
you
into a corner?” Amy worked her mouth to speak, but for a second no sound would issue from her throat. She fastened her gaze on his silver-studded gun belt, shaking so badly she could scarcely stand. “Fifteen years is a long time. Too long a time. I won’t marry you. If that’s what you have in mind, now that you’ve found me here, then just forget it.”

She stepped around him to the door. He planted a palm on the rough wood planks to bar her escape. She stood there with her hands knotted on the handle, her heart pounding, her senses electrified by his nearness.

“You’re determined to have this out right now, aren’t you?” His voice, pitched low and husky, flowed over her like ice water. “Why that surprises me, I don’t know. You never did have much sense when it came to going up against bad odds.”

“Is that a threat?” she asked shakily.

“It’s just fact.”

Her neck stiff with tension, she turned her head to look up at him. “Meaning?”

“You know damned well what I mean.”

She tightened her hands on the door handle. “I knew it. The instant I saw you, I knew it. You’re going to hold me to those promises I made, aren’t you? It doesn’t matter that I was only twelve years old. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen you in fifteen years or that you’ve betrayed everything that was ever between us. You’re going to hold me to them.”

The tensing of his jaw gave her all the answer she needed. She stared up at him, feeling trapped. As if he read her thoughts, he withdrew his hand from the door.

“Make no mistake, Swift. This is Wolf’s Landing, not Texas. Hunter may honor many of the old ways, but he will never countenance your trying to force me into a marriage I would abhor.”

With that, Amy ran out, slamming the door behind her. As she raced down the steps, she half expected to hear boots resounding on the weathered planks behind her. Relief flooded through her when she didn’t. Scurrying past the black horse tethered at the hitching post, she pressed a hand to her throat, her one thought to reach Hunter and talk to him before Swift did.

Chapter 3

THE SMELL OF BAKED BREAD FILLED THE LARGE main room of the Wolf home. Amy paused just inside the door, trying to regain her composure. Hunter stood at the planked table. He held a slice of warm, honey-slathered bread halfway to his lips.

“Where is Swift?” he asked.

“H-he’s coming,” she replied, her voice shrill. The room rushed at her, familiar and comforting, yet strangely out of focus. To her left stood Loretta’s prized Chickering piano, shipped from Boston around the Horn and hauled from Crescent City by Hunter in a wide-tread wagon. The well-polished rosewood glistened in a ray of sunlight. The braided rugs on the puncheon floors, bright and multicolored, seemed to swirl and undulate. The heat radiating from the wood cookstove seemed suffocating. “Hunter, where’s Loretta? I have to talk to you both.”

“She’s down at the smokehouse getting a ham.” His brows drew together. “You look like you just came across a skunk in the woodpile.”

“I did.” Amy concentrated on the family portrait hanging above the settee, taken shortly after her arrival from Texas, by a photographer named Britt, in Jacksonville. Typical of Britt’s work, the picture was lifelike, capturing Loretta’s family and herself just as they had looked eight years ago. At that time, Amy had prayed Swift would come to Oregon. Now, ironically, those long-abandoned prayers had been answered. “I can’t believe he’s here,” she croaked.

“I know seeing him made the ground turn to air under your feet, but now that you’ve talked, surely you’re feeling better.”

Amy swallowed and brushed her sleeve across her mouth. “I’m afraid he’s going to make me honor the promises I made to him.”

“Ah. And you don’t want to? That isn’t like you. Words we speak are for always.”

“Surely you don’t expect me to become that horrible man’s wife.”

Hunter took another bite of bread, chewing with maddening slowness, his indigo eyes resting thoughtfully on hers. “Swift, a horrible man? He’s been my good friend for more years than I can count. When I rode with him in battle, I trusted him with my life many times. Have you forgotten all he did for you, Amy?”

“He’s not the same person you knew. Not the same person I knew. He’s a killer. And God only knows what else.”

“And only God should judge him.” He studied her. “It isn’t like you to be unforgiving. Can you condemn Swift for what he’s done? When I looked into his eyes, I didn’t see a killer, just a lonely man who had ridden a long way to find his friends.”

“I don’t want to judge him. I just want to be free of him.”

“The promises you made are between you and Swift. It is not my place to—”

“He was threatening to announce his marriage to me. To drag me off.”

Hunter’s gaze sharpened on hers. “Did he say that, or are those your words, Amy?”

She took another step into the room. “He didn’t have to say it, Hunter. I could tell what he was thinking.”

“It would be better if he found a priest so it would be a marriage for both the
tosi tivos
and the Comanches.”

Amy stared at him, horror growing apace with disbelief. “You’d let him do that?”

Hunter glanced hopefully toward the window, as if he wished Loretta would hurry and get back. He cleared his throat. “It isn’t for me to say.”

Amy advanced on him, fists knotted at her sides, shoulders rigid, so close to losing her temper that she shook. “I’m part of your family. Since the day you rescued me from the comancheros, you’ve always protected me and been my friend. How can you stand there now and—and eat!”

He studied the bread for a moment, then fastened confused eyes on hers. “I’m hungry?”

Amy found it difficult to breathe. She threw an arm toward the door, lungs convulsing, chest heaving. “That man is a killer. You’ve known it for months. Yet you’d let him take me? You’d just stand by and let him carry me off? I’ve just told you he threatened me, and you act as if you don’t even care.”

Hunter slid his gaze to the closed door. “He didn’t pull his gun on you, did he?”

Amy gaped at him. She recognized that gleam in Hunter’s eyes. He found this horrible turn of events amusing.

“If he draws on you, I will kill him,” Hunter added, taking another bite of bread. “If he pulls his knife on you, I will kill him.” He lifted one eyebrow. “But if all he threatens you with is marriage? That’s between you and him, Amy. You shouldn’t have made promises you didn’t intend to keep.”

“It’s been fifteen years!”

“Ah, yes, a very long time. But, fifteen years or a lifetime, betrothal promises are unbreakable. I suppose you could ask Swift to set you free. . . .”

Amy clamped a hand over her heart in a futile attempt to stop its wild pounding. She couldn’t believe this was happening. “He’d never agree to that. You know he wouldn’t.”

“Have you asked?”

“Not in so many words, but he must know how I feel.”

Hunter smiled. “I think you’re doing a lot of Swift’s talking for him, instead of giving him a chance to speak for himself. How do you know he’d refuse you if you went to him and calmly asked to be released from your promises?”

“Beg him, you mean.”

“Whatever it takes, eh?”

Amy swept past him toward the back door. “I can see where your sympathies lie. Well, we’ll just see how you feel once I talk to Loretta. This is supposed to be a household where the Comanche and
tosi
beliefs are blended. It seems to me you’re leaning mighty heavily one way.”

Amy found Loretta just as she was stepping out of the smokehouse, golden curls escaping the braided coronet atop her head. Latching the door, Loretta noted the high color on Amy’s cheeks and frowned. “Amy, love, surely it can’t be as bad as that.”

Amy clutched her collar, swallowing rising panic. She could count on Loretta. She only had to explain what was happening, and her cousin would march inside, give Hunter a tongue-lashing, and settle this matter with all speed. The problem was that Amy couldn’t gather her thoughts to put them into words.