Comanche Heart

  “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?”

  She hesitated, then with reluctance said, “I lead a pretty boring life, but I guess that’s fair.”

  He lifted his head, snubbed out his cigarette, and slid off the log. Stepping over to her, he leaned his chest against her knees and encircled her waist with his arms.
After looking up into her face for a long while, he said, “What is it that you dream about?”

  She smiled. “What does everyone dream about? Lots of things.”

  Swift watched her, feeling the sudden tension in her body. “That isn’t fair, Amy. I answered your questions. I’ve only asked this one, and I’d like a truthful, complete answer.”

  Even in the moonlight, he saw her grow pale. “I dream of Santos and his men. And sometimes about—” The corners of her mouth quivered. “Sometimes about my stepfather, Henry Masters.”

  Swift knew by the pain in her expression that she had told him the unveiled truth. “And what happens in your nightmares?”

  “How do you know I have them? Did Hunter tell you?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t actually a lie. Swift didn’t want to embarrass her by admitting he had heard her screams. “What happens in them, Amy?”

  She fidgeted in his embrace, her gaze chasing off from his. “You know what I dream of. Over and over, the same thing.”

  “And the dreams about your stepfather?”

  She hesitated, looking more and more uncomfortable with his questions. “You know how silly dreams are. Half the time they don’t make much sense.”

  Swift’s stomach tightened. He struggled to pose his next question matter-of-factly, not wishing to press her for information she didn’t want to reveal, but feeling a need to know more. “How old were you when your mother died, Amy?”

  “Sixteen.” She brushed at her forehead, her trembling hands a telltale sign that she was hiding something. “Cholera took her. It hit fast, and within two days, I was digging her grave.”

  Swift remembered the writing on the cross, how he had touched his fingers to the letters, never dreaming that Amy’s hand had carved them. “How old were you when you came here?”

  She looked uneasy and took a deep, shaky breath. “I was, um, about nineteen.” She flashed him an unconvincing smile. “My, how the years do fly. It hardly seems possible I’ve been here eight years.”

  Swift’s throat closed off so that he had difficulty asking the next question. “Why didn’t you wait for me in Texas, Amy, like we agreed?”

  She couldn’t seem to meet his gaze. “I . . .” She wrinkled her nose. “I never did like Texas very much. Not where we lived. And Henry cottoned to the mescal jug a little more than I liked. So one night, when he was in his cups, I got a bee in my bonnet and left.”

  Swift saw the haunted look in her guileless eyes, the fragile pride in the determined lift of her chin, and the guilt he felt nearly bent him double. He still wasn’t certain what had happened to her. He only knew that he had promised her he would come for her, and the war had kept him from doing so. While he had fought so valiantly for his people, there had been no one to fight the battles for Amy.

  Chapter 10

  HOLDING AMY’S FACE BETWEEN HIS HANDS, Swift moved his thumbs along her fragile cheekbones, his fingertips electrified where wisps of her silken hair touched. Bathed in moonlight, she shimmered, her coronet of hair a halo, her skin gleaming like polished silver, her beautiful eyes aglisten and so deep that he got lost looking into them. He couldn’t imagine anyone hurting her. But apparently someone had. Henry Masters? And if so, what had he done? After so long a time, Swift supposed it no longer really mattered. The here and now was what he had to deal with. And yet . . .

  “Did you say you decided to leave Texas at night?”

  She shrugged. “Well, not exactly at night. One evening. It was still light out.”

  “What’d you do? Take one of Henry’s horses?”

  Her mouth trembled. “I, um, we didn’t have a horse. Henry sold it. He wasn’t much for working. And the drink cost him. He ran low on funds there at the last and sold it to a peddler.”

  “Oh.” He considered that for a moment, wishing he could just let it drop. “One of the mules, then?”

  He felt the resistance drain out of her. “I walked.”

  “What?”

  “I walked,” she repeated. “One night, after he got drunk, I got my extra shoes out of the loft and I set out walking.”

  Swift swallowed a rush of fear, which came eight years too late. “What happened to the mules?”

  “One got sick.”

  “There were two. What happened to the other one?”

  “He, um—” She licked her lips, avoiding his gaze. “He shot it.”

  Swift’s heart started to slam. “Why in hell did he shoot the mule?”

  She twisted her face from his grasp and looked around her, as if seeking a way to escape. “I—You know, it’s getting awfully chilly out here.” Gathering her shawl around her, she shivered, still avoiding his gaze. “Winter’s coming. I can feel it in the air—can’t you?”

  Swift eased back, giving her some space, which he sensed she needed—perhaps desperately. “Yes, it’s getting nippy all right.” He waited a moment, picturing her walking across the endless Texas plains. Suddenly he realized he didn’t know the meaning of the word courage. “Amy, why did Henry shoot the mule? Was it ailing? Or was he just having a temper fit?”

  With a panicked look in her eyes, she jerked away from him and pushed off the log. Swift managed to catch her from falling. When he set her on her feet, she twisted away from him. He dogged her heels, afraid she might trip over something she couldn’t see. “I want to go home now,” she said in a thin voice. “I’m getting awfully chilly. Really I am. And I—” She broke off and took a jagged breath. “Don’t ask me any more questions, Swift. Please?”

  He stepped around her so he could see her face. “Amy, can you look at me?”

  She made a strangled sound and averted her face. “I want to go home now.”

  “Amy . . .”

  “I want to go home.”

  “All right. But look at me for just one minute.”

  “No. You’ll just ask more questions. I don’t want to talk about it, not now, not ever. I never meant for you to know, and now I want you to pretend you don’t.”

  Swift still wasn’t exactly sure what he supposedly knew. He could only guess. The suspicions roiling through him made him feel sick. “I can’t pretend we never talked like this.”

  “Then stay away from me.”

  “I can’t do that, either. Amy, don’t look at the ground.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Don’t start what?”

  “Preaching.”

  Swift made a futile gesture with his hands. “I’m the last person to preach. I just say things that are true.”

  “I know all about your truths . . . tomorrows on the horizon and stars in the heavens, and keeping your eyes ahead of you.”

  “You’ve got a good memory.”

  “I also know what happens if you walk around without watching your feet. Don’t waste your breath saying pretty things to me, Swift.”

  He reached out and touched her bowed head. “Amy, without pretty things, what do any of us have?”

  “Reality.” She sniffed and finally looked up at him. “Will you take me home now?”

  Swift knew the mere fact that she believed he would take her home was a small victory. For tonight he’d have to settle for that. “Can I say just one more thing first?”

  Resignation crossed her face. “I suppose you’ll say it anyway, so do it and get it done.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

  Her mouth tightened, and an ache crept into her eyes. “I’m sorry you weren’t, too.”

  Swift slid his hand to her nape and drew her forward into a walk, guiding her through the darkness as he would have liked to guide her through the rest of her life. Amy had become a whole lot more than just night blind.

  When her house came into view, Amy felt relieved. Swift hadn’t even tried to kiss her while they were in the woods. She wondered if it was because of what he had learned about her. She shoved the thought away, determined not to let it hurt. Very little got past her defenses nowadays.

  She didn’t want to be kisse
d, anyway. Not by him, not by anyone. Especially not by him. The thought terrified her. Once he got into a habit of that, he’d press for more. If he ran scared after tonight, so much the better. Her life could return to normal. After him, she’d never have to worry that another man might gain power over her. She’d be able to stop feeling threatened, stop feeling off balance, stop feeling, period.

  Swift was dangerous for her in more ways than one. He always had been a dreamer, reaching for pretty things over the horizon that didn’t exist. As a child, she had let him spin his dreams around her, and she had believed . . . for a while. Dreams had a way of shattering, though, and when they did it was sometimes impossible to pick up the pieces.

  As she stepped onto her porch, he pulled his timepiece from his pocket and tipped it in the moonlight.

  “I timed that perfectly,” he said. “We made it with ten minutes to spare.”

  Amy hugged her shawl close. “How can you tell time when you can’t count?”

  He closed the watch and returned it to his pocket. “I can’t tell it real good. But what I do know, Rowlins taught me. The straight numbers make more sense to me than your curly ones.”

  The breeze picked up, cool and brisk, slipping icy fingers down the collar of her dress. She shivered and hunched her shoulders. “Curly ones?” She considered that a moment. “I guess my numbers are kind of curly, aren’t they?”

  He didn’t seem interested in pursuing the topic. He put a boot on the bottom step and brought his face level with hers. She liked being eye to eye; it made him seem less intimidating.

  “Well . . .” She shivered again. “Thank you for the nice walk. It was a pleasant two hours.”

  “Less ten minutes,” he reminded her. “We’re still on my time. I figure that’s plenty of time to say good night.”

  “I’ve never taken ten minutes to say good night in my life.”

  “There’s a first time for everything.”

  He placed a hand on her waist and drew her against his chest. His other hand cupped the back of her head. Looking into his eyes, Amy knew he meant to kiss her. So much for his running scared. She started to move away, but his fingers fisted in her hair to hold her still, and his hand slid from her waist to the small of her back. She felt the leashed strength in him and knew struggling would be futile. As it had always been.