Authors: Jo Goodman
She shrugged. "It seemed too much," she said vaguely. His palms were warm on her arms, and where her back touched his chest she could feel his heat. Mary crossed her arms in front of her as another breeze eddied through the entrance, whistling in the chamber behind her and raising a soft sighing sound from the pine trees ahead.
"You're cold," said Ryder.
"A little."
He rubbed her arms lightly. "I should have brought a blanket."
"No, it's all right." She turned her head to the side, raising it slightly to see him better. "This is enough," she said. "To smell the pines... the fresh air... even if there's no—" Mary broke off as a crescent of light appeared on the horizon. Almost immediately there were bands of mauve and deep lilac running along the underbelly of the clouds. The vision blurred as tears washed Mary's eyes.
Sunshine scattered its bright light across the plateaus and mountain peaks and carved out an arc that crossed the mouth of the cavern. Mary and Ryder stood in the center of it. Her solemn face was raised in greeting, in thankfulness. He was watching her.
Ryder handed Mary the bandana. She stared at it, stricken. "Already?" she asked hoarsely. "Can't we stay—"
"For your tears," he said. "We can stay."
Mary gave him a discomfited, watery smile but her eyes radiated her pleasure. "Thank you."
Ryder took his bandana back and wiped her tears himself. The backs of his fingers brushed her cheek when his hand fell away. He turned her around to face the sun before her pleasure prompted promises from him that he shouldn't make and couldn't keep.
The clouds lifted, spread, and claimed the sky like a sheer white shroud floating in a cerulean sea. The first rays of heat had just radiated from the ground outside the cavern when Ryder touched Mary's shoulder lightly and said it was time to go. She nodded in understanding, but she didn't move and Ryder didn't force the issue.
"The Apache call this time of year ghost face," he told her.
"Ghost face," she repeated softly. It fit. Sunshine was falling on a mostly barren land. Evergreens brought color to the landscape, but the shrubs were bare and the low vegetation was brown and scrubby. "That's a proper name for winter in this part of the country."
"Not winter exactly. The Apache divide the year into six seasons, not four. We've just finished earth-is-reddish-brown."
"Autumn," she said.
"Late fall," he corrected her. "When your survival depends on the availability of wild plants you're particular about naming your seasons."
"And spring?"
"Little eagles is March and April; many leaves is May and June."
"How do you say those names in the Apache tongue?" she asked.
Ryder told her.
Mary listened to the unfamiliar language, trying to catch its cadence and intonation. "What do they call summer?"
"Large leaves." He gave her the Apache word and smiled at her attempt to repeat it. "Early fall is the season of large fruit. The Apache reckon a month as a moon and a year as one harvest. There are thirteen moons to one harvest and six seasons."
"How is it that you know so much, know the language, yet aren't one of them?"
Ryder's long fingers raked his dark hair. He looked over the top of Mary's head at the vastness of the land beyond the cavern's mouth. "I never said I wasn't one of them," he said finally.
Mary turned, frowning. "But you said—"
"I said I wasn't Apache, not by blood or birth." His pale gray eyes watched her carefully, gauging her reaction. "I'm Chiricahua," he said, "by choice."
* * *
The subject had been closed and remained so. Dozens of questions had come to Mary's mind and all of them were unasked. Ryder had placed the blindfold around her eyes and led her back to the chamber, his manner less solicitous than it had been on the outgoing journey, his tone more brusque. Mary did not know what she had done to elicit this response, yet it was clear to her that Ryder thought she had done something. She wondered about it throughout the day, but any overture she made was summarily rebuffed.
Mary couldn't know that it was merely her acceptance of Ryder's disclosure that had brought about the change. Confusion warred with the mask of calm indifference he usually wore like a mantle. He had expected distaste, even shock. It wasn't an unfamiliar response to his words, and he knew how to deal with it. If she had been fascinated as someone of Anna Leigh Hamilton's ilk might have been, he'd have known how to brush her aside. Mary wasn't even accusing. His admission could have prompted her to rethink her position on the Colter Canyon raid, could have swayed her opinion of his guilt or innocence.
Instead she hadn't judged him. Her clear, intelligent eyes were curious, not condemning; and her lovely face held the placid purity of an angel's.
In spite of her habit, Mary Francis Dennehy was a very dangerous woman.
That night, when Ryder lay down beside her, he didn't put his arm around her. Mary missed it immediately, missed the weight and security, the way he bound her to him with the proprietary embrace. She told herself that she shouldn't be so aware of him, that she shouldn't listen for the sounds of his even breathing or the hushed words that sometimes escaped his lips as he slept. She shouldn't care if he slept or not, shouldn't concern herself with his thoughts or his displeasure, shouldn't wonder if he didn't trust himself to touch her or if he just didn't want to.
Mary turned on her side to face him. His eyes were closed and his cheek rested on an outstretched arm. The lantern had been turned back so that only a thin layer of light marked his profile. His lashes and brows were every bit as dark as his hair which was pulled back in a leather thong. His features were strong, almost predatory, and the illusion of sleep softened them only by the narrowest margin. Months in the stockade and almost two weeks in the cavern had leached color from his skin. Even so, he was still darker than she, and when he was able to bathe in sunshine again he would be as bronze as he had been on the occasion of their first meeting.
"I know you're not sleeping," she said. When he didn't open his eyes she went on. "I've been lying beside you these past thirteen nights. I think I know when you're sleeping."
His pale gray eyes opened, their expression steady yet watchful. "I'd think you'd know when I want to sleep."
"I do," she said. "And right now you only want to ignore me. Some people might take the hint."
Ryder's sigh was telling. "Obviously you're not one of them," he said dryly.
"Obviously not." She hesitated. Now that she had his attention, she wasn't certain what she wanted to do with it. "I don't know why you're angry with me," she said at last. "I don't know what I've done."
"I'm not angry with you."
Mary studied his face, the enigmatic gray eyes, the impenetrable calm he wore like armor. She had penetrated it at least once, she thought, no matter that he had drawn it on again. "But you're angry," she said, then reconsidered. "At least you were."
"So it had to be about you."
He made her sound very self-centered, and that didn't set well with Mary. "Doesn't it?" she asked.
Ryder raised himself on one elbow. "There are two of us here. It could be about me. Don't you ever get angry with yourself?"
"Well, yes, but—"
He leaned forward, placed a finger on her lips and stopped her objection. "Enough. Go to sleep."
Mary waited for him to remove his finger. "I can't."
"Can't. Or won't?"
"I say what I mean," she said tartly. "I can't and neither can you." She didn't tell him why. Mary simply turned over, her back to him again, and reached behind her for his arm. She brought it across her waist then adjusted her position in a way that had become familiar to her over the last thirteen days. "Mary." He said her name like a warning. "It's all right," she said. "We both can sleep now." Fifteen minutes later, when Mary was breathing quietly and evenly, Ryder realized she was half right.
* * *
"What do you mean you're not going to wear it?" Ryder asked. He was holding her habit out to her, but she continued to let it dangle at the end of his hand.
"Just what I said." Mary's voice was flat, stubborn. "There's nothing wrong with your hearing."
"Well, you can't go around all day in that blanket." By his count she had adjusted it four times across her breasts, and it was in danger of slipping again. They had been awake less than an hour. One misstep on the trailing hem and she was likely to lose the entire thing.
"Why can't I?" she demanded. "You think it's good enough for me to sleep in."
"It's supposed to deter you from sneaking out while I'm sleeping."
"Maybe that was your original aim, but I don't think it's true any longer."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I think you really do want me naked."
Ryder stared at her. Her bold words were at odds with her flushed face, a flush, he could see now, that started just below the edge of the blanket cutting across her breasts. "I'm trying to give you your clothes," he said. "So that argument doesn't—"
Mary stamped her foot. Her toes caught the hem of the blanket and it was tugged lower. She managed to catch it before the tips of her breasts were exposed, but it was a narrow save. Though her flush deepened, she held her ground. "I'm tired of suffering alone, Ryder McKay."
He regarded her curiously, his head tilted to one side. Still holding the habit, he sat down slowly on the trunk lid. "Perhaps you'd better explain. I wasn't aware you were suffering."
Some of Mary's bravado faded at his calm request for an explanation. Was the man as stoic as he would have her believe? Or merely bluffing? Hands down Mary Francis was the best poker player in her family and her edge had always been the serenity of her expression. Now, watching Ryder McKay's carefully guarded features, Mary considered she might finally have met her match. And wasn't that just the point?
"Perhaps suffering is overstating it a bit," she admitted slowly. She bit her lower lip, thinking. "Uncomfortable would be more accurate. It isn't right that I'm the only one who has to be uncomfortable with this arrangement."
Ryder glanced around. "Not what you're used to certainly, but it's—"
He was deliberately misunderstanding her. "That's not what I'm talking about," she said. "I'm talking about sleeping next to you, your arm around me, your lips against my hair, your—"
"Mary." The caution was back in his voice.
She ignored it. "And none of it seeming to matter to you while it cannot help but unsettle me." She pointed to the habit he still held. "Do you think that makes me less of a woman, that somehow I have no woman's needs or desires? Do you think you can touch me with no consequence to my mind or my body?" Mary saw that she had engaged his complete attention. "And you," she added, scoffing, "now, you hide behind it, thinking yourself quite safe because there will be no response from me. You believe nothing can come of it so you find it all very easy to torment me. Well, I'm not going to make this easy for you. I'm not wearing that habit any longer."
Ryder's gaze dropped from Mary's face to the habit. He stared at it, thinking about her last words, wondering that derision and triumph both edged her tone. He got to his feet and came to stand in front of her. He held the habit out to her again. "Last night it was you who forced closeness on us," he reminded her. "Here. Take this. I wouldn't have you break your vows on my account."
"You think too highly of yourself," Mary said. He understood little about her vows and nothing about her. She took the habit and promptly tossed it aside. "You don't mean so much to me. It's not my heart you've engaged." Her green eyes flashed, and her stance was challenging. She could hardly speak any plainer.
Ryder's hand went to the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes a moment as he massaged away the beginning of a headache and tried to remember how the argument had begun. He could hear her saying "I won't wear it" when he handed her the habit. Why hadn't he said, 'Suit yourself?' Why had he let her draw him in?
All Ryder had to do was open his eyes. The answer was there in the bare curve of her shoulder, in the length of calf opened by a split in the blanket, and in the eyes that seared him with their brilliance. The habit protected her. She was right about that. It protected her from him, and it protected her from herself.
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked quietly.
A strand of red-gold hair had fallen across Mary's cheek. She brushed it back impatiently. "Because you can no longer depend on me to be the conscience for both of us." She tugged at the blanket again, raising it a notch and trying to secure it better; then she turned her attention back to him. "I just thought you should know."
"I wasn't aware I had asked you to be my conscience."
"You didn't." She pointed to the discarded habit. "You expected that to stand for something. It doesn't. Not anymore."
Ryder glanced at the habit, then back at Mary, his dark brows drawn. "What do you mean?"
Mary raised her chin and faced him squarely. Against her will she felt her breathing quicken. "I left the order in September," she said. "I'm no longer a nun. I haven't been one for months."