Apache Flame (7 page)

The waitress came to take their order. At the last minute,
Alisha decided on the chicken, too.

“You look real pretty this evening,” Mitch remarked.

Alisha ran a hand over her skirt. “Thank you.”

“Is that a new dress?”

She nodded. She had fully intended to buy a red one, had
even tried one on, but at the last minute she had decided on this one. It was a
soft shade of blue, pretty as a robin’s egg.

“I always liked you in that color.”

Was that why she had picked this color? Had she
subconsciously remembered that blue was his favorite color?

She met his gaze, wishing she could think of something to
say, something clever, something witty. Something. But she couldn’t think at
all when he was watching her through those dark, dark eyes. No one else had
ever looked at her the way he did, made her feel the way he did.

“I’ve decided not to sell the ranch after all.”

She blinked at him. “What?” Oh, Lord, that meant he was
going to be staying in Canyon Creek. Permanently.

Mitch nodded. Until that very moment, he had been planning
to move on as soon as he sold the ranch. But seeing Alisha, being with her, he
knew he couldn’t leave. She might be engaged to Roger Smithfield, but she
wasn’t married yet. And in spite of everything that had happened, he still
loved her, still wanted her.

“You don’t look very happy about it,” he remarked.

“I…I’m just surprised. I thought you hated it here. When you
left, you said you’d never come back.”

“Yeah, well, things change.” He smiled at her. “What did you
tell your old man?”

“About what?”

“About tonight. About having dinner with me.”

“Oh.” A fresh wave of heat flooded her cheeks. “I told him I
was going to visit one of my students. To talk to his parents about his
grades.” It was something she did from time to time, so her father hadn’t
questioned her.

“I see.”

She lifted her chin, her eyes sparking with defiance. “You
didn’t expect me to tell him the truth, did you?”

“No, I guess not. I don’t suppose Smithfield would be too
happy about your being here, either.”

Alisha felt a sharp stab of guilt. “No.” Roger was a good
man. He was building them a house, planning for their future. Besides running
his own carpentry shop, he worked part-time at the mercantile. Tonight, he was
working late at the store, earning some extra money by taking inventory. She
should be there, helping him. At any other time, she would have been.

“Why did you agree to have dinner with me, ‘Lisha?”

“Why?” She blinked at him, a dozen answers scampering around
in her mind. “Why shouldn’t I?” she asked, unwilling to tell him the truth.
“What’s wrong with old friends having dinner together?”

“Friends?” He looked mildly amused. “Is that what we were?
Just friends?”

Another wave of heat swept into her cheeks as she recalled
the moonlit nights they had spent near the creek, the warm hugs, the long lazy
kisses, the hours they had spent making love…the promise he had not kept…the
child she had lost.

The waitress arrived a short time later with their dinner.
Alisha stared at her plate, her appetite gone. Taking a deep breath, she
clenched her fists in her lap as she summoned the courage to ask the question
that had plagued her for the last five years.

“Why, Mitch?” she asked. “Why didn’t you send for me?”

He looked up from his plate. “What are you talking about?”

“You promised. You promised to send for me. Why didn’t you?
I waited and waited.”

He put his fork down and leaned across the table. “I sent
for you. And you wrote me back and told me you had married Smithfield.”

“I never got a letter from you.”

Mitch reached into his back pocket and withdrew a piece of
paper. It was badly creased and stained. He unfolded it carefully and handed it
to Alisha.

She took it from him with a growing sense of trepidation,
her eyes widening as she read the faded words. The handwriting was
unmistakable. She didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to think that her
father was capable of doing such a low-down, despicable thing, but the proof
was in her hands.

“I didn’t write this.” Alisha dropped the letter on the
table, not wanting to touch it a moment longer. She felt suddenly empty inside,
numb, as if everything she had ever believed in had suddenly been proven a lie.

“No? Then who did?”

“My father.”

Well, Mitch thought, that explained a lot of things. Picking
up the letter, he crushed it in his hand. He had kept that cursed letter all
these years because he thought it had come from Alisha, because, painful as the
words had been, the letter and his memories were all he’d had left of her.

A vile oath escaped his lips. He was tempted to march up to
the Faraday house and confront the old man face to face, demand to know why
Faraday had lied to him. Except that Mitch already knew the answer. He was the
illegitimate, half-breed son of a gambling man. He hadn’t been good enough for
Alisha then, and he probably wasn’t good enough for her now. But he was madder
than hell.

“So,” he said, reining in his anger, “where does that leave
us?”

“What do you mean?”

“You promised to marry me.”

“That was a long time ago. I’m not the same girl I was
then.” She shook her head. “Besides, I’m engaged to Roger.”

“I asked you first.”

“Mitchy…” She spoke her childhood name for him without
thinking.

His expression softened. “No one else has ever called me
that, you know. Just you.”

“You don’t even know me anymore.”

“I know you,” he replied quietly. “I’ve always known you.”
He leaned across the table again. “I know you better than you know yourself,
better than Roger Smithfield will ever know you.”

Did he still want her? Hope flared in her heart, a wild
sweet hope as she thought of what it would be like to be Mitch’s wife. She
savored it for one precious moment, and then shook her head. “My father would
never approve. And Roger…he’s been good to me. I can’t hurt him.”

He sat back in his chair, as tense as a cat ready to spring.
“But you don’t mind hurting me.”

“You could have written me again,” she retorted, feeling all
her old hurt and anger welling up inside her as she recalled how awful it had
been when she realized she was pregnant, how much easier it would have been to
tell her father if Mitch had been there beside her, lending her his strength.
“If you really loved me, you would have come back for me.”

“For what?” He slammed his fist on the table, causing the
cutlery to rattle. Water splashed over the edge of her glass, making a dark
stain on the white damask tablecloth. “I thought you were already married.”

Alisha glanced around the restaurant. Several people were
staring in their direction. What had she been thinking when she agreed to meet
Mitch here tonight? By tomorrow morning, it would be all over town that she’d
had dinner with Mitch Garret. What would her father say when he found out? What
would Roger say?

She looked around the restaurant, at the curious stares. She
couldn’t face them, she couldn’t face Mitch. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Throwing her napkin on the table, she stood up and hurried
out of the restaurant. She paused on the boardwalk a moment, her heart
pounding. She couldn’t go home, not now. Her father would take one look at her
face and know something was wrong.

Lifting her skirts, she ran across the street and down the
narrow path that led to the creek.

* * * * *

Mitch swore under his breath as he watched Alisha run out
the door. Unconsciously, he shoved the letter into his pants pocket. Rising, he
dropped a couple of dollars on the table, then grabbed his hat and left the
restaurant.

Darkness had fallen. Standing on the boardwalk, he glanced
up and down the street. There was no sign of her. He stood there a moment, and
then crossed the street toward the path that led to the creek. She would be
there.

He followed the familiar path, remembering all the times he
had traveled it in his youth, usually with Alisha at his side. He had walked
her home from school, glad for any excuse to be with her. They had parted where
the trail forked. She had gone left and he had gone right, across the creek,
down the rutted road that led to the shack that had never been a home.

He rounded the bend and made his way toward the creek. She
was there, as he had known she would be. Standing on the rock, silhouetted in
the light of the moon, just as he had imagined her night after night when he
couldn’t sleep, when thoughts of Alisha, of what he had lost, tormented his
mind.

She didn’t turn, but he heard her voice clearly. “Why did
you have to come back here?”

“You know why.”

“Go away, Mitch. Please, just go away.”

“Is that what you really want?”

“Yes.”

He moved up behind her, almost but not quite touching her.
He took a deep breath, filling his senses with the sight of her, the scent of
her, the nearness of her. “‘Lisha…”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, no.” And yet even as she
spoke, she was turning, yearning, reaching out for him.

His arms were ready for her, open and inviting, just as they
had always been, and she stepped into his embrace, wary as a rabbit scenting
danger, eager as a child reaching for a treat that been too long denied.

“‘Lisha!”

His arms closed around her, crushing her close. She buried
her face against his shoulder, her hands sliding up and down his back, restless
and wanting. He was taller, broader, than she remembered.

“I’ve dreamed of this,” she murmured, her voice muffled.
“Dreamed of it and yearned for it.”

She felt his lips move in her hair, felt his arms tighten
around her, and then he was lifting her chin, gazing down into her eyes, and
she knew he was going to kiss her.

Her eyelids fluttered down as his mouth closed over hers. As
if by magic, the years fell away, and she was thirteen again, being kissed for
the first time. It was as wonderful, as magical, as she recalled. At thirteen,
she had been confused by the yearnings of her body, by the heat that had flowed
through every particle of her being, by feelings she had not understood. At
twenty-three, she knew what desire was, knew that one kiss would surely lead to
another, and another. And feared that she was no more capable of denying him,
of denying herself, now than she had been at seventeen.

She pressed against him, reveling in the feel of his arms
around her—arms that were stronger and more muscled than she remembered. She
breathed in his scent, ran her fingers through the thick hair at his nape. How
had she lived all these years without this, without him?

She closed her eyes, imprinting this memory in her mind

And then, summoning every ounce of willpower she possessed,
she drew away, her hands clenched at her sides. “That shouldn’t have happened,”
she said. “It can’t happen again.”

“Tell me you didn’t like it.” His gaze bored into hers,
demanding the truth. “Tell me you don’t want me to do it again.”

“It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m promised to Roger. And I
keep my promises.”

“Is that right?” he asked, and there was no mistaking the
barely suppressed anger in his voice. “What about the promise you made to me?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Dammit, ‘Lisha, I told you I would have come back for you,
but I thought you were married.”

“It doesn’t matter now. I’m engaged to Roger, and I won’t
hurt him. He’s been good to me.” She knew about hurt, about the pain of broken
promises and broken hearts. She wrapped her arms around her body to keep from
reaching for him. “Please, Mitch, just go away and leave me alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he muttered, “but if you mean what
you say, I won’t bother you anymore.”

“I do mean it.”

Mitch nodded slowly. “All right, ‘Lisha, if that’s the way
you want it. I hope you won’t regret it.”

“I won’t,” she said, but it was a lie, the worst lie she had
ever told. She watched him turn and walk away, and it felt as though he was
taking her heart and soul with him.

When he was out of sight, she hurried home, trying to
convince herself she had done the right thing in sending Mitch away. For a
moment, she stood on the porch, staring down at the creek. He was crazy to
think they could just pick up where they had left off five years ago, and she had
been crazy to consider it even for a moment. She had promised to marry Roger,
and she meant to keep that promise.

What about the promise you made me?
Mitch’s voice
rang in her mind, his voice angry and hurt-filled.

With a sigh, she opened the door and stepped into the foyer.
“I’m home, Papa.”

“In here, Alisha.”

She followed the sound of her father’s voice into the den.

Her father looked up from the letter he was writing. “Roger
came by a little while ago.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. He said he was sorry he missed you. So,” Russell said,
dipping his pen in the ink well on the corner of his desk. “How did it go? Did
you get everything straightened out with Will and his folks?”

“What?”

Russell frowned. “Are you feeling well? You look a little
pale.”

“Papa, why did you write to Mitch and tell him I married
Roger?”

There was a taut silence. The pen dropped from her father’s
hand. Drops of ink spread over the neatly written letter.

“What?” Russell asked weakly. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. How could you do such a terrible thing? What
gave you the right?”

“How…?” Russell stammered. “Who?” He shook his head. “Where
did you hear such a thing?”

“From Mitch. I went to dinner with him tonight.”

Russell surged to his feet. “You did what?”

“I had dinner with him tonight.”