Hard to Handle (12 page)

She nodded. “With bullets whizzing around us and people trying to kill us for a mineral strike, right?”

“Stop that. Nobody’s going to try to kill you. They want the land, not bodies.”

She wished that was reassuring, but it wasn’t.

They pitched the tent at the site they’d occupied the first night when they were here before. It was a good six miles from the actual site, but still close enough that seismic tests could be detected with the right monitors. But Eugene was an old fox, and her rock samples had been assayed by now. He used seismic tests extensively when he was searching for oil deposits, but moly was a different element and there were all sorts of detecting devices he could use to search out deposits.

“Nervous?” Hunter asked as they pitched camp.

She nodded. “A little.”

He built a fire and proceeded to prepare food, a process Jennifer watched with fascination.

“Hunter, did you grow up around here?” he asked suddenly.

He nodded. “I used to wander all over this country as a boy. Within limits, of course. I kept to the reservation.”

She studied him across the campfire. “And now?”

He looked up, studying her face in the flames. Even in jeans and a floppy T-shirt she was gorgeous, he thought. “Now I live in Tulsa.”

“You said you kept horses.”

“Yes. On the reservation. I own a small homestead. The house is my refuge. Actually I should say that the tribe owns the land, and ownership is overseen by the tribal council. We aren’t allowed to sell any land without approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The reasoning for that is a long story, and one I’d rather not go into right now,” he added when she started to speak.

“All right,” she said easily. He handed her a plate of stew and a cup of black coffee, adding a couple of slices of loaf bread to her plate. She ate hungrily. “Something about the night air gives me an
appetite,” she sighed when she finished. “Look at the stars. They’re bigger here. And it’s so quiet…Well, except for the coyotes and an occasional four-wheel-drive vehicle and the sound of rifle fire as people shoot road signs for amusement.”

He glanced at her ruefully. “You’re poetic.”

“Oh, very.” She wrapped her hands around her knees and stared at them.

He watched her for a minute, remembering another night alone, at another campsite, and her bare breasts in the moonlight. He got up suddenly.

“I’ll have a look around. You might go ahead and turn in. It’s been a long day.”

“Yes, I think I will,” she agreed easily. She went into the tent and got into her sleeping bag. Amazingly she was asleep when he finally came to bed.

The days went by all too slowly, and by the end of the week, Jennifer’s nerves were raw and she was snapping at Hunter. He wasn’t in any too good a humor himself. Jennifer lying beside him in the tent night after night was driving him out of his mind. The scent of her, the sound of her, the sight of her were so firmly imbedded in his brain that he felt part of her already.

The memories didn’t help. He’d come so close to possessing her, and now his body knew the reality of hers and wanted it. The hunger kept gnawing at him, making him impatient and irritable.

“Must you keep turning those scanners on?” Jennifer asked when the police scanner began to get on her nerves the Friday night after they’d arrived.

“Yes, I must,” he said tersely. “They’re reporting an incident near here—presumably at the test site where Eugene’s geologic tech
nicians are working. I’m going to have a look. Stay close to the tent. Have you still got that .22 rifle I gave you?”

“Yes, and I can use it,” she replied. “Was anybody hurt?” she asked.

“If I knew that, why would I be going to check it out?” he asked curtly. “What a damned stupid question!”

“Well, I’m not a trained agent, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance!” she shot back. “Go ahead and get shot! I won’t cry over you!”

“I never expected that you would,” he returned. He got into the four-wheel drive and took off without looking back.

Jennifer’s nerve deserted her the minute the Jeep disappeared. She sat down beside the scanner and listened to it uneasily, glancing around with the rifle across her legs. She didn’t know what had happened, and the fact that the agents were the most likely people to be bothering the technicians was unsettling news. What if they came here and tried to shake the information they wanted out of her while Hunter was gone?

That was ridiculous, of course. She laughed out loud. Of course they wouldn’t come here…

The sound of a Jeep alerted her and she jumped up. Hunter, she thought with relief. She ran toward the rutted road with the rifle in time to be caught in the headlights of the vehicle that was approaching. There was an exclamation and a shot as the vehicle suddenly reversed and rushed off in the other direction.

Jennifer felt something hot against her arm, like a sudden sting. She touched it and her fingers came away wet.

She looked down at her arm. She could see a dark stain in the faint light from the campfire. She lifted her fingers closer and the unmistakable smell of blood was on her hand!

I’ve been shot, she thought in astonishment. My God, I’ve been shot!

She sat down heavily next to the campfire, with the rifle still in her shaking hands. If only Hunter would come back! She was alone and afraid and she didn’t know what to do. Obviously the agents had come roaring into camp with the intention of seeking information. They hadn’t expected her to come running toward them with a rifle. They’d shot at her in apparent self-defense and had raced away before she could get a shot off at them. It might be funny later. Right now, it was terrifying.

Her arm hurt. She grimaced. The sound of a vehicle approaching came again, but this time, she didn’t run toward it. She raised the rifle, wincing as her arm protested, and leveled it at the dark shape spurting into camp.

“That’s far enough!” she called out.

The engine and lights were cut off. The door opened. “Shoot and be damned,” Hunter’s deep voice replied.

J
enny thought that as long as she lived, she’d never forget the expression on Hunter’s face when she collapsed in his arms and he discovered that she’d been shot.

She managed to explain what had happened while he laid her gently on her sleeping bag inside the tent and moved the Coleman lantern closer to check the wound.

“I must have passed them coming back. Damn it!” he burst out, adding something in a very gutteral language that seemed to raise and lower in pitch and stop suddenly between syllables.

“Is that…cursing?” she asked.

“Yes, and thank your stars you can’t translate it,” he added icily. He glanced down at her. “They raided the other camp, but they were a little too late. The technicians flew back to Tulsa this afternoon with the data. They left the tents and other gear, just as Eugene had instructed, to give them time to get away. They were supposed to contact us, but apparently they were being watched too closely.”

“Eugene will kill them,” she murmured, groaning when his fingers touched around the gash in her soft skin.

“If he doesn’t, I will,” he returned. “Which is nothing to what I intend doing to the man who shot you.”

She stared up at him through waves of pain. His eyes were frightening, and at that moment he looked pagan, untamed.

“It isn’t bad,” she said, trying to ease the tension she could almost taste as his hard, deft fingers searched around the cut. They seemed just slightly unsteady. Imagine anything shaking the stoic Mr. Hunter, she thought with hysterical amusement.

“I can’t see properly in this light. Come on.” He helped her to the vehicle and helped her into the passenger side. He turned on the overhead light after he’d climbed quickly in beside her, and once more his eyes were on the cut. “You can manage without stitches, but it needs an antiseptic.”

“There might be a drugstore…” she offered.

He turned off the light and started the engine. He never seemed to feel the need to answer questions, she sighed to herself. Amazing how he expected her to read his mind.

“But what about our things?” she asked.

He cursed again, turning around. “Wait here.” He left the engine running, put out the campfire, got her case and his out of the tent along with the technical gear, and left the rest of it.

“But the tent, the sleeping bags…” she began. He glanced at her and she stopped when she saw his expression. She cleared her throat. “Never mind.”

He set off into the desert and drove for what seemed forever until he came to a small house, set against the jagged peak of one of southern Arizona’s endless mountain chains. He pulled into the dirt driveway, and Jenny wondered whose home it was. The house was livable, just, but it needed painting and patching and a new roof.

“Come on.” He opened the door and helped her out.

“It’s a beautiful setting,” she murmured as she drank in the sweet, clear air and looked around the yard at the ocotillo and cholla and agave that surrounded the yard. “Like being alone in the world.”

“I’ve always thought so,” he said stiffly. He escorted her onto the porch and produced a key to unlock the door. He didn’t look at her as he opened it and pulled the screen door back to let her enter the living room.

It was nothing like the exterior of the house, she noticed as he pulled a long chain and the bare light bulb in the ceiling came on. The living room was comfortable and neat, with padded armchairs and cane-bottomed chairs, Indian rugs on the floors and spread over the backs of the chairs. There was some kind of furry round shield with tiny fur tails hanging from it, and basketry everywhere.

Hunter was watching her, waiting for disgust or contempt to show on her soft face. But she seemed fascinated; almost charmed by what she saw.

She turned back to him, her eyes shining despite the faint throb of the wound on her arm. “It’s your house, isn’t it?” she asked.

His dark eyebrows arched. “Yes.”

“You’re wondering how I knew,” she murmured dryly. “It’s simple. You’re the only person I know who would enjoy living totally alone in the world with no nosy neighbors. And this,” she gestured toward the living room, “is how I’d picture your living room.”

He managed a faint smile. “Come on. I’ll put a patch on the injury, then I’ll find something to cook.”

“All right.”

“No comment about the cooking?” he added, leading her into a stark white bathroom with aging fixtures.

“I’d be surprised if you couldn’t cook. You seem so self-sufficient.”

“I’ve always had to be,” he said simply. He stripped off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and got out medicine and bandages from the cabinet over the sink. “My father died when I was small. I lived with my grandfather, on the reservation, until I was old enough to enlist. When I got out of the Green Berets, I kicked around for a few years doing other things. Eventually Ritter offered me a job and I’ve been there ever since.”

“No wife, ever?” she asked hesitantly.

His dark, quiet eyes met hers. “Women don’t fit in a place like this,” he said. “It’s stark and bare-bone comfort, and it’s lonely. In case you haven’t guessed, this is part of the reservation, too.” He waited for her reaction, but there wasn’t one. He shrugged and continued. “I’m away most of the time. I’ve never asked anyone to share it because I don’t think a woman could. My job would be an immediate point of contention and my heritage would be another. I live on the reservation,” he added with a mocking smile. “I can see how that would go over with most in-laws. And I believe in some of the old ways, especially in family life.”

“A woman’s place is three steps behind the man…” she began.

“A man should behave as one,” he returned simply. “And a woman has her place—a very special place—in the order of things. She gives life, nurtures it. She gives warmth and light to her man, her children.” He ran a basin of water, found a cloth and bathed the wound on Jenny’s arm. “But, no, I don’t think her place is three steps behind her man, or that she becomes property when she marries. Perhaps you don’t know, but in the old days, many Apache women fought right alongside their men and were as respected as the warriors.”

“No, I didn’t know,” she confessed. The touch of his fingers was
painful delight. Her eyes glanced over the hard lines of his dark face with pure pleasure. “You’re proud of your ancestry, aren’t you?”

He looked down at her. “My people are like a separate state, under federal jurisdiction,” he replied. “We have our own laws, our own reservation police, our own code of behavior. When we live in your world, we seem alien.” He laughed coldly. “I wish I could tell you how many times in my life I’ve been called Tonto or Chief, and how many fights I’ve been into because of it.”

She was beginning to understand him. He’d grown a shell, she supposed, because of the difficulties. And now he was trapped in it and couldn’t find his way out.

“I know a little about prejudice,” she said, surprising him. “I’m a female geologist and I work in the oil business.” She smiled. “Equality is all the rage in accounting and law firms back east, and even in corporations. But out in the boondocks in the oil exploration game, there are Neanderthal men who think a woman goes to those lonely places for just one reason. I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to threaten someone with a suit for sexual harassment.”

“Looking the way you do, I can understand your problem,” he mused, glancing at her with dancing dark eyes. “How does this feel?” he added when he’d put antiseptic on the wound and lightly bandaged it.

“It feels much better, thank you,” she said. Her eyes searched his dark face while he put away the medicine. “What do you mean, the way I look?”

He closed the cabinet and gazed down at her. His face was expressionless except for the dark, disturbing glitter in his eyes as they slid down her body and up again. “Is it important to hear me say it?” he asked. “You know how lovely you are.”

Her breath caught. “I’ve been told I was,” she corrected. “It never meant anything. Before.”

His jaw clenched. He stared at her until she flushed and still his eyes didn’t waver or even blink. “Be careful,” he said quietly. “I still want you very badly.”

“I’m twenty-seven years old,” she whispered. “If it isn’t you, it won’t be anybody. Ever. I said that once. I meant it.”

His breath expelled roughly. He caught her around the waist and pulled her up from the edge of the bathtub where she’d been sitting. His arm was steely strong, and the feel and scent of him so close made her almost moan with pleasure.

“How much do you know about birth control?” he asked bluntly.

“I know that babies come if you don’t use any,” she replied, trying to sound sophisticated with a beet-red face.

His eyes were relentless. “And do you think I’m prepared for casual interludes with women all the time?”

“Most men are,” she faltered.

“I’m not most men,” he returned. “These days I think of sex as something that goes hand in hand with love, respect, honor. It used to be a casual amusement when I was a young man. I’m thirty-seven now, and it isn’t casual or amusing anymore. It’s serious business.”

She could have reminded him that for a few minutes one night, he’d forgotten all those reasons, but she didn’t. Her eyes fell to his firm chin. “It isn’t casual with me, either,” she whispered “But I’d give anything…!” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

His hand came up, framing her own chin, lifting her eyes to his. “You’d give anything…?” he prompted slowly.

She closed her eyes so that he wouldn’t see the longing. So that she wouldn’t throw herself at him again, as she had that night in Washington. “Nothing. I’m just tired. I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know you’re infatuated with me,” he said out of the blue.

Her eyes flew open, startled. “What?”

“It isn’t something you hide well,” he replied. His eyes narrowed. “I’ve had hell trying not to take advantage of it. I’m a new experience for you, something out of the ordinary, and I know already how you seek the unusual. But since you don’t know, I’ll tell you. Sex is the same with an Apache as it is with a white man, in case you—”

He broke off because she slapped him, with the full strength of her arm behind the blow. Tears welled in her eyes; her face had gone white with shock and grief.

He didn’t flinch. He let her go, very gently, and moved away. “I’ll see about something to eat,” he said, with no inflection at all in his voice as he started toward the kitchen.

Jenny cried. She closed the bathroom door and cried until her throat hurt. If he’d tried for months to think up something hurtful, he couldn’t have succeeded any better. She knew he was aware of her desire for him, but she hadn’t known he was aware of her feelings, too. It made her too vulnerable.

Finally she dried her eyes and went out without looking in the small mirror. She could imagine what she looked like without having to see herself.

He glanced at her and his expression hardened as he proceeded to fry steak and eggs. “I’d expected to spend the weekend here, so I loaded up on supplies yesterday,” he said. “You can set the table.”

She took the dishes from the cabinet he gestured toward and set two places, including a mug for the coffee that was brewing in the modern coffeepot. She took her time meticulously folding two paper towels to go at each place.

“Utensils?” she asked in a totally defeated tone.

“Here.” He opened the drawer beside him, but as she moved closer to reach inside it, he turned suddenly and pulled her to him. His mouth eased down over hers with a gentle, insistent pressure that caught her completely off guard. She felt his strong teeth nipping tenderly at her lower lip until her mouth opened for him. Then she felt his tongue inside, touching her own, his arm contracting, the sound that echoed out of his throat, deep and gruff and faintly threatening.

Her nails bit into his back where her arms had gone under his and around him, and she bit off a short, sharp little cry as the pleasure cut the ground from under her feet. The injury to her arm was still throbbing, but she held on for dear life, uncaring in the thrall of such aching pleasure. She didn’t want him to stop, not ever!

All too soon, he lifted his head. His eyes were dark with emotion, his jaw clenched. “Finish setting the table,” he said huskily, and abruptly let her go to concentrate on the Spanish omelet he was making.

She couldn’t help the trembling of her hands as she complied with that request. It wasn’t until they were halfway through the impromptu meal and the strong, fresh coffee that she was able to get some kind of control over herself.

“To continue what I started to say when we were in the bathroom, I’m not prepared for an intimate encounter,” he said when she laid down her fork. He didn’t look at her as he said it. His eyes were on the coffee cup in his hand. “And as I told you in Washington that night, half-breed children belong in no one’s world.”

Her eyes searched his face. A suspicion at the back of her mind began to take shape. He looked Apache. There was no doubt about
that part of his heritage. But the way he felt about mixing the races, wasn’t it violent if he’d never had experience of it?

“Which one of your parents was white, Phillip?” she asked softly.

His head jerked up. His eyes flashed at her. “What did you say?” he asked in a tone that should have backed her down. It didn’t.

“I said, which one of your parents was white?”

“I’d forgotten that I told you my given name,” he said softly. “You’ve never used it.”

She began to realize, belatedly, that it was her use of his first name that had rattled him, not her reference to his parentage. She hesitated. “I didn’t realize I had,” she said after a minute.

He leaned back, troubled, the coffee cup still in his lean, dark hand. He watched her intently. “My mother was white, Jennifer,” he said finally.

“Is she still alive?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. She couldn’t take life on the reservation, and my father was too Apache to leave it. She left when I was five and I haven’t seen her since. My father died a year later. He gave up. Life without her, he said, was no life. I always consider that I lost both my parents when I was five, so I don’t qualify the statement. I don’t know where my mother is.” His face hardened. “I don’t care. Her family put me through school and supported me while I was younger. I didn’t find out until I was much older. My grandfather never would have told me, but I found a check stub. He was a proud man.” He looked down at his hands. “Life on the reservation is hard. Unemployment, infant mortality, poverty…It’s no one’s idea of the American dream. He took the money for my sake, not for his. What he didn’t spend on me, he sent back.”