Desert Angel (17 page)

March smiled hesitantly, wondering why he was suddenly so irritable. Granted, he was eating unfamiliar foods, but they were well prepared and tasty, although she wasn’t too sure how he was going to react when she told him what he’d been eating.

“The … uh, mashed one is mescal …”

“Century Plant? The same one the Apache use to make their own kind of alcoholic drink?” he asked with disbelief. He had seen more than one reservation Apache drunk on the beverage fermented from the long leaf, spikelike plants that grew everywhere.

March nodded as his eyes narrowed. “The green one is tumbleweed. It’s not tumbling, of course.”

“Of course,” he agreed sarcastically, still holding the final offering untasted on his fork.

“You have to pick the stems when they’re only two or three inches long.”

“And this?” He held up his fork.

“That’s … ah, well …”

“Let me guess.” Jim looked at the strange food with the crisp, golden crust. He felt like he wanted to tear something into tiny little pieces. “Cactus, right?”

“Right,” she agreed quickly.

Watching her sit with her hands folded demurely in her lap and her breasts pushing against her blouse, Jim didn’t hear her answer. He was too consumed with an appalling need to taste her rather than the food.

Biting back a curse, he put the food into his mouth and chewed. It was firm and yet mushy, crunchy but slimy, and bitter. Good lord, it was bitter. Jim spit it out, wiped his mouth, and tried to drown the taste with a mouthful of coffee.

“My God, what is that?” he asked, shuddering with distaste.

“I told you — cactus. Fried, prickly pear cactus.” Jim’s eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. Ranching in Arizona provided its own special problems; the lack of water, rattlers the size of a man’s forearm, and thorny plants that were waiting for the unwary to pass too close.

Was it too much to expect, at the end of a long day, for a man to come home and find a good meal waiting for him?

This was it, the final thing that destroyed his tightly reined control. He pushed back his chair with a violent shove that frightened Jamie into a whimper, and rose to tower over March.

“Lady, since I moved to Arizona, I’ve chopped down cactus, kicked them out of my way, and even picked them out of my butt, but I don’t — I repeat —
I don’t
eat them!”

ELEVEN

With the utter stillness in his office broken only by the occasional ruffle of a piece of paper, Jim had no difficulty hearing the quiet closing of the back door. He knew it was his restless housekeeper. He’d heard her quiet steps as she’d come down the stairs.

Hours ago, she had brought him a cup of coffee, offered him something to eat — which he had gruffly refused — and then said a quiet good night.

As he had watched her walk out of his office, he’d felt the desire to call her back and apologize, explain to her that his outburst had nothing to do with her choice of meals. But watching the gentle sway of her skirts had forcibly reminded him exactly what had put him in a foul mood.

How could he explain to her that it wasn’t eating cactus that had caused his explosion? Granted, the prickly pear cactus had been so sour he would have refused it at any time, but it wasn’t what caused his explosion of temper. Hearing her soft voice, seeing her gentle smile, watching the femininity in every movement, had needlessly pointed out to him that she was a desirable woman.

And damn it, he was horny!

Jim smiled at his own description. Accurate, but crass, he thought. A gentleman did not apologize to a lady using
that
as an excuse for his bad manners. In fact, he doubted that March would even know the meaning of the word. And then he’d have to explain it to her. He chuckled as he pictured her face turning scarlet with embarrassment.

His chuckle turned to a frown, as he thought of the fear that would replace the embarrassment when she finally understood that he wanted the same thing from her that the young cowboy had wanted this afternoon. He wanted her, but not at the expense of her fear. She’d had enough of that in her young life.

A shadow crossed by his window, and Jim rose to his feet. There was no moon to light her path, yet her steps didn’t falter. Using the door in his office, he walked outside to join her restless prowl.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked quietly, taking care that he didn’t startle her.

March looked up, watching warily as he approached. “Just planning my garden,” she offered lamely.

“There have been many nights when I couldn’t sleep. I always found it relaxing to walk in the dark. There’s something peaceful about being alone, while others are asleep.”

“My sister May is afraid of the dark.” Crossing her arms over her waist, March shook her head sadly. “She could never understand how I could venture out alone at night. As soon as it began to get dark, she’d dart for the light of the fire, but not me. I liked the night, I could hide from other eyes and think my own thoughts.”

“Privacy.”

Surprised that he understood, March nodded. “With a family the size of mine, there was never the time or the place to be alone, except in the dark where no one could see me.”

“What did you think about?” Coming to a stop beside her, he detected the floral scent of her skin. Even dressed in clothing suitable only for the rag bag, she always smelled clean and fresh.

“Oh, things of great importance.” March smiled softly. “Depending on my age, of course.”

“Things like the color of a hair ribbon or a dress for a new doll?” he teased.

“No.” Her single word reminded him that she’d had very few hair ribbons, and he wondered if she’d ever had a doll. He wanted to give her the things that she’d never had. She was a little old now for a doll, but he could shower her with hair ribbons of every color of the rainbow, new dresses, and ruffled petticoats, shoes without holes, and frilly bonnets that served no purpose other than to make their wearer happy.

“Things like how many stars were in the sky, and why did I only see them in the dark. And what fish do at night, how do they sleep while they swim. And more important things, like do all daisies have the same number of petals, and what does an ocean look like.”

Jim refrained from telling her the answers to all of her questions, deciding instead to encourage her to read the books that would give her the answers. He was aware that she’d had little formal schooling, but her vocabulary and manner of speaking belied that fact. With a little self-help, few people would ever question her lack of education.

But no book could describe an ocean; only a person who had seen one and traveled one could do that.

“An ocean is all colors of blue, from the palest blue green to nearly black. It goes on forever, until it seems to touch the sky with waves of water that swell until they burst into bubbles of white.”

“You’ve seen an ocean?” Her voice was filled with curiosity.

“Seen it, and traveled to Europe and back on it.”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Only once.” He paused, remembering the very real fear he had felt as the ferocity of the wind clashed with the power of the water in a vigorous contest neither could win, while almost destroying the insignificant ship caught helplessly in the battle.

“What happened?”

“We were in the middle of the Atlantic, and ran into a storm they call a hurricane.”

“What’s a hurricane?”

“That’s a wind that blows so hard, it makes waves into mountains of water taller than the masts of the ship. You look up and up and up, and still can’t see the top of the mountain, and then suddenly the ship rides the shoulders of the giant, and you’re on top instead of the bottom. But when you get up there, all you can see is the next wave and the next.

“And the wind blows until you’re sure that the poor, feeble ship won’t survive. It blows so hard that the rain comes at you sideways.”

“You’re teasing me,” she accused with a chuckle. “Everyone knows that rain falls straight down.”

“Not during a hurricane. I swear to you that it comes sideways.”

“You were scared?” March was amazed that he so freely admitted to feeling fear. It was her experience that few men would admit to fearing anything.

“That’s putting it mildly I swore that if I ever got back home, I’d never venture out on the sea again.”

“Have you?”

“No. Maybe that’s why I chose to settle in the desert. It’s as faraway and as different from the ocean as anything in the world.”

“Have you traveled much?”

“Enough.” Jim shoved his fingers into his pockets to stop himself from reaching out to gather up the threads of March’s hair that blew in the gentle breeze. “I took a grand tour of Europe after I finished my education. And I’ve seen a lot of this country, enough to know that this is where I want to live until I’m an old, old man.”

“If I had my way, I’d never move again,” March mumbled.

“You moved around a lot?” he asked quietly.

“We were always packing up to move on to someplace new. We’d no more than get settled, before we were on the go again. I never had many friends, because by the time I met girls my own age, Pa was thinking of moving on. After a while, I just quit trying. Why go to all the work of meeting people, when I knew we’d only be there until we got run out, or until Pa heard of a better place and wanted to go.”

It was a statement of her childhood, spoken without rancor, while asking for neither pity nor sympathy. Yet Jim felt sorrow for the young girl who had never had a chance to be a child, to experience the carefree existence inherent to childhood. But he couldn’t regret that that same little girl had grown to become an intelligent, generous, and sometimes exasperating young woman.

Stars hung overhead, looking close enough to touch. In the distance, a coyote howled and was answered by others of its kind. A gentle breeze danced over the sand, and a poor-wili whispered its mournful cry.

“I’m sorry about losing my temper earlier,” Jim said quietly.

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have served you cactus, but when the roast burned, I knew I needed to fix something else, and that seemed to me to be the quickest thing.”

“I thought I detected the distinct aroma of burnt something,” he teased gently.

“It wasn’t just burnt,” March chuckled, as she thought of the roast. “It was charred beyond recognition. I think we’d all eat better, if I confine my cooking to the fireplace rather than the stove. Next time I might burn down the house.”

“As I told you, it just takes some getting use to.”

“So does starving!”

Jim enjoyed her sense of humor, but never more than when she laughed at herself. Melanie had never even smiled at her own mistakes, and had sometimes pouted for days because she had done something humanly stupid.

Melanie had been blessed with every advantage in life; loving parents, financial security, and an excellent education. While March had been denied those same things. Yet it was this tiny little bit of a woman-child who so readily accepted the things she couldn’t change, and smiled even when life was at its worst.

He hated the constant comparison he seemed to make between his dead wife and March. It wasn’t fair to either of them, and yet he seemed incapable of stopping. He remembered times when Melanie had been happy and carefree, but even then she hadn’t had the sparkle of life that so easily rode March’s thin shoulders.

The differences between the two women, not only physically but in outlook, was night and day. Melanie had suffered through life, March embraced it.

“In spite of the disaster of your first experience with the cook stove and your choice of substitute menus,” Jim continued gravely, “I deeply apologize for my behavior. I have never eaten cactus before, and really would rather not again.” He shuddered dramatically at the thought of the bitter taste of the prickly pear.

“I thought you kinda liked the mescal and the tumbleweed,” she commented innocently, too innocently.

“I still can’t believe that I ate tumbleweed,” he shook his head with amazement. “I guess they weren’t bad, but the other one . . . “

“It just takes some getting use to.”

“I’d rather starve!” His smile gleamed momentarily in the darkness, then became more serious. “That wasn’t why I exploded.”

“No?”

“No! ” He reached over and tapped her button nose. “I wasn’t in the best of moods, because that horse and I had trouble coming to an agreement. And then when I finally got back to the ranch, Breed had a story to tell.”

“I wondered if he’d mentioned that little incident.”

“Being accosted by a man in what should be the safety of your own backyard, is hardly a little incident.”

“Nothing happened,” she reassured him. “Breed rode… ah, walked, to the rescue.”

“But what would you have done, if he hadn’t gotten there in time?”

“Screamed so loud that the owls would have woke up, kicked like a mule, and if necessary, bite any place available.”

“Your self-defense techniques are admirable, but the whole thing should never have taken place. You deserve to feel safe in your own home, and I won’t have a man on this ranch I can’t trust.