Montana Wildfire (31 page)

Amanda noticed Jake's wet, clinging clothes, his snow-damp hair and skin. She also saw the proud way he sat atop the white, the determined line that etched his hard jaw. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask where he was going, how he planned to spend his time until the storm passed. She bit the words back. That type of questioning smacked of caring, and instinct said Jake would shy away from that. Instead, she said, "When the storm ends, you
will
meet me back here, won't you?"

"I said I would."

"That isn't an answer, Mr. Chandler."

The muscle in Jake's cheek jerked, and he shifted his gaze to the falling snow. Why was she calling him Mr. Chandler again? It wasn't hard to guess. He'd reverted into a cold-hearted bastard. Why shouldn't Amanda retreat behind the polite facade of his surname?

He didn't know why he should care what she called him, but he did. It was annoying that she no longer felt comfortable enough to call him Jake. He told himself it didn't bother him—distance was, after all, what he wanted, what he'd gotten—but it did. It bothered him a lot.

"Believe it or not, Amanda, I'm a man of my word," he said finally, his voice giving away none of his inner turmoil. "I said I'd be back for you, and I will be. I can't help it if you don't trust me enough to believe me." He nodded to the downward, wooded slope of the hill. "Go."

Amanda went. She really had no choice. Huddling inside the warmth of her cloak, she went to the mare and climbed into the saddle. Having come from Jake's horse, the saddle felt hard and uncomfortable beneath her. There were other reasons for her discomfort, she knew, but none she would let herself dwell on.

She sent Jake one last, confused look, then flicked the reins and started picking her way down the hill.

Jake watched her go and, try though he did to deny it, he felt a part of him winding its way down that hill with her. What was it about that woman that affected him so strongly? What? Though he searched himself for a reasonable answer, he came up dry. Plain and simple, he didn't know.

He watched Amanda rein in the mare next to the door and dismount. She knocked, waited, then eventually the door opened. She shook off the snow and cold before entering the sweet, beckoning heat of the house.

Still Jake didn't leave. The snow swirled around him long after Amanda had been swallowed up by things he'd put in his past long ago—hospitality, shelter, friendship... love. They were foreign terms to a man like Jacob Blackhawk Chandler. But they weren't foreign to gently reared ladies like Amanda Lennox.

No matter what he'd told her to drive her away, Amanda was a lady to the core. That was why he'd had to anger her, had to let her go. Watching her pick her way down that hill had been one of the hardest things he'd ever done. But he'd proved to himself he
could
do it. Jesus, how he'd needed to know that!

Jake sat atop the white, which was growing restless from the inclement weather, and stared at the cabin until a flutter of movement caught his attention. He glanced down, and was surprised to see that he'd removed Amanda's handkerchief from his pocket and was now clutching half of it in a white-knuckled fist. The linen flapped in the breeze and slapped at his thigh. It wasn't possible, but he could have sworn he felt that daintily embroidered
A
sear right through his pants leg, right into his skin and bloodstream.

Fifteen minutes later, Jake turned the horse away and rode into the storm.

Amanda had assumed the couple living in the cabin were settlers from back East, people she would be comfortable staying with. Wasn't that what she'd been led to believe? Either she'd severely misunderstood things, or she'd again misjudged the ever-perplexing Jacob Blackhawk Chandler.

The man who opened the door to Amanda's insistent rapping was not the eager homesteader she expected. Oh, no. This man was a full-blooded Indian. Unlike Jake, he dressed the part.

Amanda had been studying the scuffed toes of her ankle boots. Her gaze shifted to the man's feet. She scanned the red-and-white beaded moccasins he wore, then traced upward over his thigh-high leggings. The weather-softened deerskin left no doubt as to the heavily muscled legs beneath. His britches were made out of the same material, and they were snug. An unadorned, tuniclike shirt, also deerskin, hung from his shoulders. While the garment was loose fitting, the slackness couldn't conceal the solid bands of muscle in his chest and biceps.

Like Jake's, this man's hair was long and straight and pitch-black. Unlike Jake's, his was gathered into two neat plaits that ribboned down over each broad shoulder.

His face was comprised of hard copper planes and angles. The high-bridged nose and wide brow Amanda recognized from Jake. The rest of his features were foreign to her. Weathered creases bracketed his thin mouth and suspicious brown eyes. The creases didn't look like they'd been put there from years of smiling.

Amanda took an instinctive step back, her gaze lifting those final few inches. She swallowed hard, and her hand fluttered at her throat when her attention was captured by a pair of eyes as cold and as shiny as shards of polished ebony.

"Jake Chandler sent me," she said, and it was a fight to make her voice sound calm and rational—not high and panicky, the way she felt.

The man's gaze narrowed. He assessed her in one cold, sweeping glance, then his attention snapped over her shoulders. He looked marginally relieved to see that she was alone.

Amanda forced a smile when his gaze returned to hers. He didn't return the gesture, but stepped aside, opened the door wider, and waved her in. One inky brow slanted high when she shook the snow off her cloak and head and then immediately complied.

Mustering up her courage and filing away what she was sure was—she hoped—an irrational fear born of surprise, Amanda stepped over the threshold. She told herself that Jake wouldn't have suggested she stay with these people if he didn't think they were safe. No, of course he wouldn't.

I can't help it if you don't trust me,
he'd said. Well, she was trying to trust him, while at the same time proving to them both that she was
not
a shallow white princess. But... well, this was simply too much! The least Jake could have done was to warn her!

Perhaps this was Jake's way of testing her? Did he want to see how the prissy society lady would react to spending a few days alone with people she was supposed to feel were beneath her? Jake didn't seem the type who played such childish games. Then again, he wasn't exactly what she would call predictable. It was a possibility she couldn't dismiss.

Amanda squared her shoulders as she breezed past the man. If Jake was putting her to the test then, by God, she was going to pass it. Perhaps once she'd met this man's wife—Jake
had
said a young couple was living here, hadn't he?—she would feel more at ease. Somehow, Amanda rather doubted it, the same way she doubted she would be able to keep her anxiety a secret from probing brown eyes for very long.

The man who'd greeted her at the door was
not
a reassuring sight. Far from it. Everything about him—his rugged body, his impassive expression, his wary gaze—seemed coiled and tense, like a twisted wire ready to break. .

The door slammed shut. The sound was unnaturally loud, magnified all out of proportion by the taut silence.

Amanda shivered. She felt as if she had been thrown into a jail cell, with impenetrable iron bars being slammed into place, caging her in. Though she tried to shake the feeling off, it clung tight.

"Blackhawk sent you?" the man said thoughtfully. His words were slow and precisely spoken.

Amanda turned to face him, just as he moved away from the door. She watched as, with unnaturally quiet steps, he crossed to the center of the room. Lacing his arms over the firm wedge of his chest, he stared at her, stared
through
her.

A small fire crackled in the hearth at his back. The muted light came low to the ground, casting his features in indecipherable orange shadows. But that was all right. Amanda didn't need to see his face to know his suspicions were aroused. She
felt
it. An icy chill rippled over her shoulders.

"Yes, Jake sent me. Is...?" She discreetly scanned her surroundings. The lower floor of the cabin consisted of this one room and a closet carved into the far right wall. An old curtain fell in tattered folds from the top of the doorframe down to the freshly swept dirt floor. Thick, planked stairs edged the timbered wall to her left. Was the man's wife up there? If so, the woman was sitting in the dark; though Amanda squinted, she couldn't detect a shred of light coming from the upstairs room.

Her attention returned to the man, who was studying her as though she was some rare form of bird. "Where is your wife?"

His eyes narrowed cautiously. "Why?"

Amanda shrugged, her fingers playing nervously with the ribbons that secured her cloak beneath her chin. She considered untying them, then decided against it. At this rate, she wouldn't be here long enough to bother getting comfortable. "No reason. I just thought it would be nice to meet
her...
if she's here, that is. She
is
here, isn't she?"

"No, woman, you misunderstand," he said, and he shook his head. The fringed ends of his blacker-than-black braids bobbed against the solid wall of his chest. On this man, what she had thought of as a feminine decoration most assuredly was not. "My question was why Blackhawk sent you here, not why you would want to see my wife. You
will
tell me."

"Of course I'll tell you," Amanda snapped, her gaze shifting to the table on her right. Her legs felt watery, and her knees were shaking beneath her damp skirt. While she wanted nothing more than to sit before she collapsed, something told her a move like that would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. That was not the impression she was striving to convey.

"So, you will tell me," he insisted coldly.

Amanda waved a hand at the window. Her fear, oddly enough, made her bolder than she normally would have been. It loosened her tongue. She would not let this man intimidate her. Dammit, she would
not!
"I don't suppose you've looked outside recently?" she asked in her most proper Bostonian tone. "If you had, you would have noticed that it's storming. That's why Jake sent me here. He didn't want me caught out in it."

"And where is Blackhawk now?"

Amanda feigned an unconcerned shrug. "I imagine he had better things to do." She wouldn't tell this man the real reason Jake wouldn't come to the cabin with her, mostly because now that she'd seen who was living here, she wasn't sure of his reasons herself!

"You imagine?" He sighed impatiently. "In other words, you are only guessing?"

"Of course. If you know Jake Chandler at all, then you also know that
no one
knows what goes on inside that man's head."

Was it her imagination, or did a hint of a grin tug at one corner of his mouth? It could have been a trick of the light—he
was
standing mostly in shadow—but she didn't think so.

"I know Blackhawk," he said finally, flatly.

One golden brow arched. If the man hadn't had her full attention before, he had it now. And not only because of what he'd said. Something about him—she wasn't sure what—seemed more relaxed, less cautious. Why? "You know Jake?"

He nodded. Briskly. Just the once.

"And do you know him well?"

He nodded again, and this time added the barest of shrugs. "Better than most."

"Then maybe you can tell me—"

"No." The braids whipped against his shoulder as he spun on his heel and stalked to the closet she'd spotted earlier. With a flick of his wrist he swept the curtain back and reached inside.

Amanda took an instinctive step back. She didn't know why she expected his big copper hand to come back with a loaded rifle leveled at her chest, she just
did.
She was taken aback when, instead, he tugged out a woman who was cradling to her chest two small, squirming bundles in either arm.

The woman was shorter than Amanda, thinner, though close to her in age. She had a pretty—albeit thin—heart-shaped face, with smooth white skin and kinky, chestnut colored hair that refused to stay in the loosely coiled bun at her nape. Wispy brown strands curled over her cheeks and brow, softening her features and making her eyes look unusually large and very green.

The woman's attention lifted, locking skeptically with the man's dark, brooding gaze. Amanda sensed the unspoken words flying between them. The man bent forward, leaning his dark head close to the woman's, murmuring something in her ear. The woman's eyes widened, sweeping to Amanda, who shifted uneasily under the intense scrutiny of those lovely green eyes.

The woman nodded, then handed the two bundles—one of which, not surprisingly, gurgled with newborn delight—to the man. Smoothing the wrinkles from her faded, yellow muslin skirt, she stiffened and walked with silent, fluid grace over to Amanda.

"I'm Gail Chandler," the woman said, her voice ringing with the twang of a dreadfully familiar drawl. She extended her small hand in a gesture meant to welcome.