Jake let his gaze wander to the wall. “I owe you an apology. I never meant to ridicule you. I thought—well, I misunderstood, and I’m sorry.”
His delivery sounded so damned stiff and formal and so totally unlike how he felt that he wanted to groan. He dragged his gaze back to her. She had her face pressed into the pillow again. Tendrils of tawny hair had escaped her braid and lay like molten threads of copper against her silken nape.
“It’s all right,” she said in a muffled voice.
It wasn’t all right. She was terribly upset, and he had been deliberately goading her to get a reaction, never dreaming that her upbringing forbade her to retaliate. The responsibility that placed upon him was frightening. He had been handed authoritarian rule over her life? Half the time he didn’t even understand the girl.
“I acted like an ass, and it isn’t all right.” He skimmed his fingertips up the leather of her blouse and toyed lightly with the curls that wisped so temptingly at her nape. “You see, I thought—”
He felt her shrink from his touch and realized how she resented it. He sighed and moved his hand. He didn’t blame her.
Bracing an arm behind him, he leaned back so he could see the side of her face. “Indigo, would you look at me?”
She turned her head and fastened injured blue eyes on him.
“I don’t deserve it, but could you find it in your heart to forgive me? And try to forget I did something so despicable?”
Her expression said more clearly than words that she didn’t see one good reason why she should. Jake had to accept that.
“I know it’s no excuse, but I have a sister—Mary Beth. You remind me a lot of her—not in looks, but in temperament. And she . . .”
Looking down into those gigantic spheres of shimmering blue, Jake kept talking, scarcely hearing what he said, hoping and praying that he could make her understand if he told her about his sister and their famous battles of will. When he finally fell silent, some of the hurt had been erased from her face.
“She truly broke all the dishes? What did you do?”
Jake smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek. “I hid the Chinese vase and yelled at her to stop. What else could I do?”
“What do you eat on at your house now?”
Jake’s stomach clenched. He had momentarily forgotten that he was supposed to be a man of limited means. Thank God she didn’t seem to realize how expensive a Chinese vase could be.
“We had to buy more dishes. Anyway, back to my reason for telling you about her. When Mary Beth wants something, she’ll do almost anything to make me change my mind, including trickery, if she can pull it off. Sometimes, she won’t speak to me for days at a time, and it drives me wild. I thought—when you—”
“You thought I was doing the same thing,” she finished.
Jake nodded, still feeling a little sick when he remembered the look on her face in the kitchen. “When I asked you to undress, I never dreamed you’d actually do it. I figured you’d turn tail and run.”
“Where would I go?” she asked in a hollow little voice.
The question caught at Jake’s heart. She had nowhere to go, he realized. Wolf’s Landing was the only world she knew. “I’ll never ask something like that of you again,” he promised.
“To undress, you mean?”
He hated to dash the flare of hope he saw in her eyes. “I won’t ask you to humiliate yourself,” he amended. “Do you forgive me?”
Her eyes softened to a cloudy blue. “Yes, I forgive you for making me take off my blouse.”
He heard a conditional note at the tail of that sentence and smiled. “But you don’t forgive me for making you stay at home.”
She made no reply, which was eloquent in itself. Jake looked away. “I wish I could change my mind, Indigo, but I can’t. I’m sorry my decision has made you so unhappy and angry.”
“I don’t feel angry now.” Her eyes closed. “Just empty.”
God, he felt like such a bastard. The most awful part of it was, he really hadn’t meant to be. He ached to gather her into his arms, to soothe her. But after their set-to in the kitchen, he didn’t want to do anything she might misconstrue.
He sat up, scooted backward on the bed, and braced his spine against the headboard. Patting the pillow beside him, he said, “Why don’t you come over here and sit beside me. Maybe if we talk, we can come up with some solutions so you’ll feel a little less empty, hm?”
She pushed up on her elbows and eyed the spot next to him.
“Come on,” he urged gently. “I promise not to bite.”
Looking none too enthusiastic, she rose to her knees and came forward. As she settled herself beside him, Jake draped an arm around her shoulders. The moment he touched her, he felt the trembling rigidity of her body, and he realized the very last thing she wanted was to be close to him.
An awful suspicion slipped into his mind. Is that your wish? Tucking in his chin, he regarded her bent head. He’d be wise to find out exactly where he stood, he decided, before he dug himself in any deeper.
Lightly touching a wispy curl at her temple, he said, “You know, I love your hair in a braid. But I think I like it best when you wear it down.”
She lifted her hands and began plucking hairpins. With an ache in his throat, Jake watched the tawny rope of braid loosen as she combed her fingers through it. Silken tresses spilled onto his arm, then over onto his lap. He hated himself for what he was about to do. But, dammit, he had to know.
“I didn’t mean for you to take it down right now, Indigo.”
She dragged her hair back from her eyes to regard him. Never more than in that moment had Jake noticed the blend of both her parents’ features, her mother’s fragile beauty, her father’s proud regality, all molded together to create a face as striking as it was lovely. Indigo, a puzzling combination of pride and humility, strength and vulnerability. He’d never understand her.
Jake’s heart caught at the confusion he read in her expression. Then she averted her face and began gathering her hair to rebraid it. She was going to think he had a serious problem making up his mind, but at least he had his answer.
He leaned his head against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “Now that you’ve taken it down, Indigo, just leave it,” he said in a gravelly voice.
From the corner of his eye, he saw her lay the hairpins aside and settle her small hands on her lap. Silence. For the moment, Jake welcomed it. The magnitude of what he had just discovered nearly overwhelmed him. God, no wonder she had rebelled against marriage. Since the first day he had known her, three things about her had stood out, her wild streak, her fierce pride, and her fidelity to her father’s beliefs. Now, as she saw it, she had become a white man’s chattel.
Jake thought back, trying to recall those times when he had seen Hunter issue an order. The only times Jake had witnessed had occurred last night, the first a subtle lifting of his hand to silence his wife when she protested Indigo’s marriage, the second a stern denouncement when Indigo dared to protest the marriage herself. Do you defy me, Indigo? Jake closed his eyes as he recalled her quavery response. No, my father, I will never defy you.
Now the ultimate power Hunter had wielded over his daughter had been handed to Jake.
Slowly, the reality of it sliced through the fog of revulsion in Jake’s mind. Not that he didn’t believe the male head of a household should have authority. He did. It just nauseated him to think that his every wish had become Indigo’s command. If he continued to ask, how long would she sit quietly beside him, braiding and unbraiding her hair? Jake had the sinking feeling that she’d do it all night. Whether or not it made sense didn’t seem to play into it.
He wasn’t cut from the right kind of cloth to live up to this. It frightened the hell out of him to think Indigo might take everything he said literally and obediently do it. In a fit of anger, he might tell her to go stick her head in the horse trough or to go drown herself in the creek. Where Jake came from, people said things l
ike that. He said things like that. Mary Beth’s reaction was to poke out her tongue or thumb her nose. Jake couldn’t count the times he had threatened to strangle her. Indigo might take a threat like that seriously.
Jake had the horrible urge to laugh. The entire situation was incongruous when he thought about it. In a white household where authority was often questioned, there was no doubt who the boss was because, in varying degrees, he blustered, threatened, and sometimes resorted to physical force to see his orders carried out. In Hunter’s household, where his authority was absolute, no one could tell who ruled whom because Hunter seldom felt a need to assert himself.
Jake supposed it was a good way to live. Everyone in Hunter’s home seemed happy, more so than most. The only problem was, he wasn’t at all certain he could walk in his father- in-law’s footsteps. He had never felt a need to weigh his every word before he spoke. No one had ever kowtowed to him, carrying out his smallest wish. Having that kind of power over someone was frightening.
It was also tempting.
For the first time in his life, Jake came face-to-face with a dark side of his nature. What man hadn’t harbored secret yearnings at least once to have a lovely dream creature at his beck and call, part slave, part seductress, who would satisfy his every whim? In most instances, the fantasy was just that and perfectly harmless. Only for Jake it had become a reality.
Within the circle of his arm sat a beautiful, sweet, innocent girl who would do anything he told her. Even now, she sat quietly, waiting for him to speak. Seductive images slipped unbidden into his mind of Indigo kneeling over him, gloriously naked, her hair a coppery curtain around his face as she bent to let him suckle her breasts.
Jake slid his hand from where it rested on her shoulder until he found the silken slope of her neck. Absently rubbing his knuckles along the column of her throat, he envisioned her lying before him, lifting her hips and opening herself so he could taste the honeyed moistness of her. His pulse quickened, and he pressed a fingertip against the underside of her fragile jaw to raise her face to his.
With her dusky lips inches from his own, her breath so warm and sweet, Jake didn’t know for a moment if he could resist kissing her. She was his. Not even God would condemn him. He not only didn’t have to wait, but he could demand anything he wanted from her.
That was a potent and heady thought. Is that your wish? God help him, he wouldn’t be human if he weren’t tempted. He swallowed and shoved the image away. Maybe to be tempted was human enough, but if he carried through on it, he’d be the world’s most heartless bastard.
Her eyes shimmered up at him, their usual milk-glass blue darkened to silver by what he could only guess was fear. All of this might be a revelation to him, he realized, but not to Indigo. She had entered into this marriage knowing she would be thrust into a lifetime of servitude. As early as last night, she probably had considered the possibilities and accepted that her fate was entirely up to him. Was it any wonder she leaped when he got close to her?
Jake felt as if someone was squeezing his throat. “We were going to talk about ways to make you feel a little less empty.”
“The feeling will pass,” she replied softly. “In time I will grow accustomed to things as they are.”
An ache spread through Jake, accompanied by an unprecedented tenderness. He couldn’t name the emotion and didn’t want to take time right now to analyze it. For the moment, it was enough to deal with the fierce feeling of protectiveness that welled inside him. She was more vulnerable to him than any other person had ever been, completely and irrevocably vulnerable, a precious gift presented to him in marriage by her father. Jake knew Hunter loved her, which meant he had handed her over on an act of faith. If it was the last thing Jake did, he wanted to prove himself worthy of that trust.
“I suppose that in time we’ll both grow accustomed to things, Indigo,” Jake told her gently, “but there’s no point in your being more unhappy than necessary, is there? In the last twenty-four hours, you’ve had a number of things taken away from you. I’m thinking that maybe we can lessen your feeling of loss by coming up with a few substitutes.”
Though he still had his fingertip pressed against the underside of her jaw, she averted her face. Jake curled his fingers loosely around the side of her neck, acutely aware of the pulse point in her throat.
In a taut voice, she whispered, “Some things can’t be replaced.”
“That’s true. I can’t bring Lobo back to you.”
“No.”
“I do think I can do a few other things, though.”
She lifted curious eyes to his. “What things?”
Jake smiled. “I know you’re really unhappy because you won’t be allowed to wander in the woods. I don’t suppose it’ll be the same if I tag along, but I’m willing to leave the mine early enough every day to take you walking.”
“You are?”
“Sure.”
She didn’t look overjoyed. “That would be nice, Jake. Thank you.”
He wasn’t going to be discouraged too early in the game. “And until you can go back to the mine, I’ll be happy to sit with you along the creek while you pan for gold. Would that help?”
A trace of the silvery darkness faded from her eyes, and she nearly smiled. “Yes, that would help a lot.”
Jake paused a moment for effect. “I know you’re probably worried about meat for Toothless, too, since I’ve forbidden you to go into the woods hunting. So until you can resume that activity, I promise to keep the smokehouse supplied with plenty of fresh meat. It’ll mean your having to give up your walk one evening a week, but if you get outdoors the other days, maybe that won’t bother you too much.”
Her head came sharply around, and she fastened startled eyes on his. “Toothless? But you said you didn’t—”
Jake slanted a finger across her lips. “I know what I said. The problem was, I didn’t say exactly what I meant. I don’t really disapprove of your feeding the cougar. It just worries me.” He shrugged. “A little worry won’t kill me.”
“You mean you’ll let me feed him?”
“I never meant for you not to, Indigo. It was all a misunderstanding. I’ll try really hard from now on not to say things I don’t—”
His words were cut short by the impact of her small body against his chest. Jake was taken so off guard that he nearly lost his balance. She wrapped both arms around his neck to give him a strangling hug.
“Oh, Jake! Thank you. I’ve been so sad all day about Toothless. Thank you!”
For a moment, Jake wasn’t sure what to do with his hands because he didn’t want to unsettle her. But he had only enough willpower to resist one fantasy a day, and this one tempted him far more than the last. To have Indigo, willing and responsive, in his arms. . . . Pressing his face against her silken hair, Jake let instinct take over and embraced her.
In sharp contrast, instead of making him feel black and ugly, this fantasy was golden. It was also brief. Within a heartbeat, he felt her stiffen, and he loosened his hold so she could pull back a bit. It was all he could do not to chuckle when he saw her face. Her expression told him she wasn’t at all certain how she had come to this pass and that she was even less certain how to extricate herself from it.
In keeping with his decision to make their relationship as easy on her as possible, Jake solved her dilemma by drawing away first. One day soon, maybe she would come into his arms and want to stay. Cupping her chin in his hand, he leaned forward to look her in the eye. “Let’s clean up the kitchen and go feed that damned cat so he doesn’t keep your parents awake all night.”
Moisture that looked suspiciously like tears glistened in her eyes. Then her chin dimpled and started to quiver. Jake wondered what he had done, but before he could ask, she whispered, “Topper was right. You didn’t say all those things about me to Denver, did you?”
His heart stilled, then raced with dread. “What things?”
The glistening tears pooled behind her lashes and spille
d over onto her cheeks.
“Sweetheart, what things?” Jake asked again.
She gave her head a little shake. “It isn’t important. It’s enough just to know that Topper was right and that you didn’t say them. I won’t honor lies by repeating them.”
Jake knew by her tears that whatever Denver said had hurt her, and badly. “Indigo, Shorty heard every word that passed between me and Denver this morning. If you have a question, all you have to do is ask him. Or me, if you trust my word.”
She brushed at the wetness on her cheeks and shook her head. “I have no question. Not now.”
Jake couldn’t let it drop, not when it brought tears to the eyes of a prideful girl who never cried. “What did he say, Indigo? Would you mind telling me?”
She flashed him a stricken look, and her face flushed scarlet. She curled her hands into tight fists.
Jake sighed. “Honey, if it’s that hard to say it, just forget it.”
She shook her head. “He said that as soon as you grew bored with me that—” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down, turning the surrounding flesh white. “He said that I would have to do a lot of—entertaining to earn back the bride price you paid my father and that he would be seeing a lot of me.” She sucked in a breath, then exhaled with a little sob.
“Jesus.” The word erupted from Jake as though projected up his throat by a blow to his midsection. “Indigo, why didn’t you come and tell me?”
Her eyes clung to his. “I, um . . .” She lifted her hands in a wordless gesture.
Jake swallowed around a lump in his throat. “You thought maybe it was true?”
She stared at him a moment, then finally nodded. “Have I made you angry?” she asked in a tremulous voice.
He groaned. “No, Indigo, not at you.”
Catching her around the waist, he moved off the bed and stood up, carrying her with him. Holding her tightly against him, he made a fist in her hair and tipped her head back.
In a ragged voice, he whispered, “I’m going to promise you two things. I want you to listen closely and never forget them. All right?”