Susan Johnson

He grinned back and walked over to the stove.

  The bath was pleasant and refreshing. Hazard leaned back against the headrest and sighed contentedly, his arms holding Blaze snugly tight. She was seated between his legs, her back resting against his chest. “Have you ever taken a bath with a woman before?”

  “No,” he lied.

  “Why not? It’s very nice.”

  “No time,” he lied again.

  “I think a tub for two is a glorious invention.”

  “Thought of at least four thousand years ago, sweet. Sex is not an original idea.”

  “Really?” she teased. “You mean we’re not the first?”

  “The first on this side of the Big Belt Mountains in Montana Territory, in a cabin on claim 1014—maybe—but I wouldn’t bet on anything more than that.”

  “Such a cold, callous realist.”

  “The world does that to you, bia—takes away the illusion. Often at the point of a rifle. I can’t speak for Boston society misses, of course; the disillusion for them might be articulated more in terms of an emerald ring smaller than a pigeon egg.”

  “You needn’t be so sardonic.”

  “Sorry, you’re right. Tonight there is illusion along with some other extremely enchanting … sensations.” His fingers gently stroked the curve of her hip.

  “And society misses don’t just count their jewels. We do all sorts of things,” she said with just a hint of lofty condescension.

  “Anything useful, though, bia-cara, is the moot question … besides that,” he added, smiling into her upturned eyes. “Tell me, pet—seriously now, my hunger pangs are coming a very close second to my carnal appetites at the moment—do you think you could do one of your ‘all sorts of things’ and make a chocolate cake once I get you a cookbook? I have this overwhelming desire for chocolate cake.”

  “More overwhelming than your desire for me?”

  “Never, bia,” Hazard responded, the perfect gentleman, his smile alight with mischief. “You are the chocolate cake of my existence, and I much prefer eating you to anything in the world.”

  “Libertine,” she said, laughing and twisting in his arms and splashing him with a handful of water.

  “It’s all your fault,” he reproved, hauling her up on his lap. “Damned if there’s a thing I can do about it.”

  “Is anyone asking you to?” she sweetly asked.

  Chuckling, he touched his lips to her nose. “You’re the most forward female I’ve ever met, chocolate cake of my life.” She was more forward than he’d ever allowed for—more than he’d ever encountered.

  “More forward than Lucy Attenborough?”

  He seemingly calculated for a moment. “Yup.”

  “Good,” Blaze said, a very satisfied look on her lovely face. “I was wondering then … if I word this properly …”

  His smile began slowly.

  There was a minute tilt at the corner of her eyelids, and a corresponding one at the corner of her lips, that denied subtly but unmistakably the literal obeisance of the words that followed. “I mean in order not to offer any unseemly challenge …”

  The amusement reached Hazard’s eyes.

  “That is … considering how well you seem to be … refreshed …” Blue eyes met his with unwavering need and she could feel his refreshed vigor rising smoothly against her thigh. “Only one more time,” she whispered.

  “Heaven forbid,” he quietly remonstrated, his smile warming the softness of her cheek.

  “I didn’t mean it literally,” she murmured, purely, naturally, without artifice, the last syllable gasped midway between a sigh and small cry, for Hazard, his large hands holding her easily, obeyed her with a smile and slowly eased her down his militant arousal. Can one die, she thought, of joy?

  Much later, Hazard carried a very sleepy, very content young woman over to the soft bed of buffalo robes and tucked her in. She was sleeping before he finished arranging the supple blanket over her. He looked at her and smiled; sweet as cottonwood candy in the spring, he decided, viewing the fragile, flushed face and tumble of silky hair. Sweet everywhere, he reflected, blissful weariness seeping into every pore of his body. She needed him, she’d said over and over that night, but damn, he needed her too, and until tonight, he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed having a woman.

  Turning back to the tub with a small shrug of dismissal, as if such thoughts were best not considered and, at worst, dangerous, he contemplated the puddles of water on the uneven plank flooring. He could leave the mess until morning; Blaze could take care of it. Or could she? He grinned to himself. Or would she? Hazard had been raised to view all household duties as woman’s work, and in this preconception he differed very little from any nineteenth-century male regardless of race. “Oh, hell,” he muttered and reached for a towel. In ten minutes, the floor was wiped dry, the tub emptied outside, all the damp towels draped over the porch railing. Then he lay down next to Blaze and slept better than he had for days.

  Chapter 19

  Hazard woke early in the morning, in accordance with the Absarokee maxim “Do not follow sleep to the end, but waken when it requires determination.” Leaving Blaze asleep, he took his clothes and walked outside into the sunlight. He left the door unlatched.

  When Blaze woke sometime later, her first reaction was disappointment. Hazard was gone. She’d wanted to find him still beside her, wanted to whisper good morning and be warmed by his smile. He smiled like no other man she knew—a slow, lingering smile that started in his eyes and then curved his mouth upward with a tentative reticence like his quiet speech. And then suddenly the smile touched you intimately, as if no one else existed in the entire universe, as if he had reached out and embraced you.

  He was too charming, Blaze warned herself, too perfect, too experienced. A man with a sensual reputation; a man from a tribe with a sensual reputation. He called it natural. The righteous moralists among the whites had always called it scandalous. The Absarokee simply offered both men and women freedom, he’d said. Theirs was an egalitarian society where women owned property, where descent was matrilineal—at least in theory, he’d amended with a smile—where women as well as men could choose their lovers, could choose to divorce, could choose to remarry. This in an age when women were chattel everywhere in the world. Even his words were persuasively charming.

  I want him, though—a pulsing rhythm of thought signaled along every singular pathway of her brain—I want him. Too charming, too perfect, too experienced, too seductive, not only to her, Blaze ruefully reminded herself, but to any woman. She knew all that; she understood. But it didn’t matter a scrap. She intended to have Jon Hazard Black for herself. And she hadn’t acquired the sobriquet Blaze for the color of her hair alone. Her eyes shone now with a purposeful intensity that had never yet been thwarted.

  Throwing off the fur robe, she sat up and glanced around the room. Would he be back for breakfast or had he taken food already? She couldn’t tell, but she noticed that the tub and towels and water puddles were gone. He was unbelievably endearing, this man who’d insisted not too many days ago that he’d have her hide if she didn’t learn to do the work.

  Was it possible he cared for her in the same way she did him? Or was it only that he was gallant as well as charming, chivalrous in the true meaning of the word? None of the men in her world back East would have cleaned up after a woman; they would have been both disdainful and ultimately inept. Neither of which Hazard was. In a way, he was the most gentle man she knew. And he was never disdainful of another human being or inept. Not Hazard.

  Finding a shirt to wear, she surveyed the kitchen, wondering if she should start breakfast, when she noticed that the door was ajar. A thin sliver of sunlight cut across the rough floor and she moved toward it uncertainly, as a prisoner would contemplate a green grassy field. She pushed the door open another two inches and waited. Then a moment later, suddenly brave, she threw the door open and stepped out onto the low roofed porch.

  It was quite lovely, s
he decided, this new, shiny sunlit world of hers—the mountain range in the distance, the green pine and paler aspen, the fresh perfume of clean morning air. Uncertain of her future, uncertain of her lover’s susceptibility, acutely aware that Hazard had tangible duties that superseded both his wishes and hers, she nevertheless, with buoyant youthfulness, felt a thrilling sense of happiness. For right now, at this precise moment, she was where she most wanted to be. And of one thing at least, she was certain. She did love him.

  Moving off the porch, Blaze slowly walked around the cabin, the sensation of freedom exhilarating. Barefoot, she walked carefully over the rough gravel, paused for a moment in the cool, damp grass under the wild cherry tree near the creek, and then wandered down the pathway that led to the rim where Hazard had stood short days ago watching her approach.

  She stood on the very crest, looking down the schist-strewn trail she’d climbed that day, and marveled at how a person’s life could be altered irrevocably in so brief a time. The slate was warm under her feet, warm and soothing, like the morning breeze lightly ruffling her long hair and swirling Hazard’s shirttails against her bare legs. She took a small step and curled her toes over the ledge.

  “I wouldn’t go any further if I were you.” The voice was familiar and cool and charged with enough volume to reach her, each syllable clearly enunciated.

  She turned casually, annoyed by the implied cynicism. She hadn’t realized she’d been onstage the last few minutes. Her gaze slowly scanned the mountainside in the direction of Hazard’s voice. It took perhaps thirty seconds before she found him, high up above the mine entrance, some three hundred yards away. She began walking toward him.

  He didn’t move, only watched, taking in the beautifully formed body scarcely concealed beneath the shirt, the face exquisite in both its beauty and character, her flame hair that made him want to bury his face in it. And he wondered, as he watched, if his stubborn, thorny, independent hostage would have taken a second step forward if he hadn’t called out.

  “What is it?” Blaze asked when she was close enough, indicating the artillery piece with a small nod of her head.

  “A Gatling gun.”

  “It looks lethal.” Her glance took in its size, the numerous barrels, the strung cartridge belt leading into the firing mechanism.

  “It is.”

  “Would you have used it on me?” she softly asked.

  “I have to be careful,” he said, after an age, ignoring the question he wasn’t sure he could answer. “Until I learn to know you better.”

  Her downy, irregular eyebrows rose, a dark silky incongruity in a perfect face.

  He smiled and added, “In other ways, I mean. And I must say,” he annotated, “I look forward to the discovery with profound …” He paused, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time.

  Blaze smiled now, reassured, and finished for him, “Delight?”

  “Ko-dak.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Amen.”

  Hazard began work late that morning; he’d never made love before in the shadow of a Gatling gun. The morning sun and air bathed their senses; the rush of enchantment roused their passion; the wonder of discovery piqued their inventiveness, and the world disappeared, or rather, the world became them.

  “HOW long are we supposed to sit and wait for the Colonel to come back?” Yancy grumbled. He was on his second bourbon after dinner and the ascendant issue in his mind came to the fore.

  Millicent sat across from him, composed and relaxed. They had convinced the other members of the mining group to start back for Boston ahead of them and she had just bidden goodbye to her oldest friend, Elizabeth Talmadge. It had taken some convincing, but as the days stretched on, Millicent’s arguments had gained ground. William had instructed them to “sit tight and do nothing,” after all, she reminded them, so their presence was hardly a necessity. And they all knew Billy Braddock as a man who took charge of his own affairs, a man who wouldn’t appreciate any interference. She was feeling supremely content at the moment and increasingly confident. “Now that all William’s friends are gone, we may not have to wait at all,” she calmly replied.

  Yancy’s glance was suddenly predatory and alert. “You mean one dead Injun won’t matter now?” He smiled faintly.

  Millicent helped herself to an inch more sherry, took a dainty sip, and, setting the glass down, said, “I think an unfortunate accident to William and then one dead Indian would be a more suitable sequence.” She looked over to where he sat opposite her on a brocaded settee and lifted one brow inquiringly. “Does that make sense to you?”

  “Love it,” he replied, his smile widening.

  “Highway men, I thought, would be appropriate. Another slaying after the dozens in the neighborhood lately will hardly cause comment, I’m sure. Gold robbery and its attendant violence seems a primary occupation out here.”

  “It might take a while to find him up in those mountains.”

  “Why not wait until he returns? Can you trust some of your men?”

  Yancy nodded. “We could set up a small camp on that north trail into Crow country. Catch them before they get too close to town. I could send some trackers out too. Might speed things up.”

  “How long would that take?” Millicent casually remarked. She could have been inquiring about the stage schedule, for all the emotion in her voice.

  Yancy was wondering himself how long it would take before he could marry the Colonel’s millions, but he answered Millicent’s more immediate question with a shrug and a quick narrowing of his eyes. “Considering he’s been out for so long,” he went on to explain, “it can’t be many more days before he starts back with or without the tribesman he’s looking for. A few days, a week at the most, I’d say.”

  “Wonderful,” she replied with a complacent smile. “Now then, I think we should settle on the exact number of men and arms you’re going to need to storm that mine. If you give me a money figure, I’ll have that overly friendly banker next door measure out the gold tomorrow. Do you need anything else?”

  “All you need is money, Millicent. You and I know that. Everything else arrives on schedule after that.”

  “My daddy used to say something along those lines. You seem very much like him at times, Yancy. I like that. Come here and sit beside me. You haven’t touched me since this morning.”

  Chapter 20

  A week later, in the grey hour before dawn, Rising Wolf looked in the window, pursed his lips, and exhaled softly. His gut feeling about Hazard and the woman had been right after all; but with Hazard one could never be sure. By the time he entered the cabin his initial surprise was controlled.

  Hazard, hearing the moccasined footfall, had relaxed the hand reaching for the pistol he kept near, checked quickly to see that Blaze was covered, and was pulling on his pants when Rising Wolf entered. The softly spoken Absarokee woke Blaze, but she lay drowsily quiescent, letting the sibilant cadence wash over her.

  “Tell me what day, so I’ll know who won the wager,” Rising Wolf said. His smile was so outrageously benign Hazard couldn’t miss his meaning.

  “I’d forgotten what a bunch of gossips you and your friends are,” Hazard replied, casting Rising Wolf an appraising glance. “I don’t suppose it would do any good to feign ignorance.”

  “You must have known it was an opportunity for a lottery no one in their right mind could pass up. Knowing you,” Rising Wolf continued, glancing meaningfully toward Blaze, “as well as we all do.”

  Knowing the issue wouldn’t be put to rest without an answer, Hazard gave in with good grace. “Eight days ago.” Diverting his gaze briefly to Blaze, he found her awake. With a smile to her, he murmured so his voice didn’t carry past Rising Wolf, “Now let’s drop the subject in front of the child. She may not understand the language, but your confounded leer is universal.”

  Unchastised, Rising Wolf continued to smile. “Red Bear won, then. Personally, I didn’t think you’d hold out that long. I?
??d picked the day after I left last time.”

  “Thanks for the pledge of confidence.”

  “Hell, Hazard, what do high principles have to do with making love? That never corrupts. It’s the fear of it that corrupts. Making love only brings you nearer to heaven.”

  Hazard laughed. Rising Wolf never took life too seriously.

  “I like your heaven, by the way. When you get tired of her …”

  “Don’t hold your breath. She’s not the kind you get tired of.”

  “Inventive?”

  “Spontaneous.” Pleasure showed in his eyes, lifted his mouth into a smile.

  “The spontaneity may be bartered away any moment, and then what will you do?” Rising Wolf reminded him.

  Hazard found himself forgetting that often these days. Found himself forgetting Blaze had a family and another life outside his world.

  Rising Wolf saw Hazard’s smile disappear, saw the instant sobering.

  “Has anyone seen her father?” Hazard asked abruptly, a score of possibilities racing through his mind.

  “No.”

  “Rose says he’s out looking for the summer camp.”

  “Rumor has it he’s dead.”

  It’s over, was Hazard’s first startled thought. If Colonel Braddock was dead, all the rules of the game were obsolete. “Whose rumor?” he quickly asked.

  “The Lumpwood band. One Heart heard it from his wife’s brother.”

  “How sure are you?”

  “One Heart’s brother-in-law saw the body.”

  “Could it have been some other white man?”

  Rising Wolf shrugged. “Possibly. I’m not sure.” He smiled. “They all look alike.”

  “Damn.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  “Could be. The Colonel’s more apt to be amenable than some third party.”

  “Why don’t we just bring a guard down. Twenty or thirty wolves, say.…”

  “I don’t want that. All the third-rate politicians running the territory would love to call in the army. And since the end of the War Between the States, every ambitious officer looking for a promotion is galloping over the Northern Plains hoping like hell to start an Indian war. I’d just as soon not be some glory boy’s excuse for a colonel’s bars.”