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Apache Fire
Elizabeth Lane
A dangerous man lay near death at Rose Colby's feet - and though logic told her to flee from the unpredictable half-breed, instinct whispered a different tale. Latigo was a worthy man who desperately needed her help - and her heart… ! The brave young woman made Latigo yearn for what he knew he could never have - acceptance, family… and love. Such things were not for the likes of him. For he was a renegade Apache, the white man's posse claimed, and could only bring the widowed Rose Colby more grief… .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u4a778b9f-4fff-5176-b39d-cd87f0f232a4)
Excerpt (#uf39ae6b5-9b98-586f-91c7-07bf108696d8)
Dear Reader (#ub65b365d-4a0c-58a7-8eb8-0dd555b19102)
Title Page (#u47e166c2-4304-5bd0-a2c8-b6ebb1f5fa44)
About the Author (#u1a5b8e0e-c6bc-59fe-b0c9-e3795ee6293e)
Dedication (#ua8cd1320-bce7-52bf-b1f6-4c61acc9b278)
Chapter One (#u5a9af97c-db37-5e02-be6f-248d178fe0d1)
Chapter Two (#u30c94081-b0dc-5177-9419-16371f3a9218)
Chapter Three (#uedc4473b-781d-5805-a185-61afb8fba614)
Chapter Four (#ued795f8a-6f94-5c30-a6d0-cfd3e2a89acd)
Chapter Five (#u2e84e9ba-8607-5a7e-9506-c4f6c68b2350)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
This was a man who trusted no one. A man alone, his spirit raw with unhealed wounds.
Had he known many women? Surely he had. Latigo’s rugged features and dark, feral grace would be enough to draw the gaze of any female he passed. But love? Rose mentally shook her head. Loving a man like Latigo would be like loving the wind.
His knuckles brushed her leg as he reached for the wrappings again. The unexpected touch sparked a ripple of awareness through Rose’s body. She turned to find him looking up at her, his eyes intent but guarded.
“Who are you?” she whispered again, quivering as his gaze pierced her defenses like a stone-tipped arrow.
“To you—no one and nothing,” he murmured. “A passing ghost with the first light of sunrise.”
“So when will you go?” Rose heard herself asking…
Dear Reader,
This month we’ve covered all the bases. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll find romance. We are thrilled to bring you Apache Fire by longtime historical and contemporary romance author Elizabeth Lane. As with all of her books, this Western sizzles with emotion and romantic tension. It’s the story of a beautiful young widow with a newborn son, who finds love and hope in the arms of the Native American army scout she’s hiding on her. ranch.
In Lost Acres Bride by rising talent Lynna Banning, a rugged, by-the-book cattleman must contend with the female spitfire who inherits a piece of his land—and gets a piece of his heart! And Tori Phillips returns with another of her CAVENDISH CHRONICLES, Three Dog Knight, about a shy earl and an illegitimate noblewoman who forge a marriage of convenience based on trust, and later love, despite the machinations of an evil sister-in-law.
Rounding out this month is Blackthorne, Ruth Langan’s first medieval novel in nearly four years! Packed with intrigue and emotion, this is the tale of a haunted widower, the lord of Blackthorne, whose child’s governess teaches him how to love again.
Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historicals® novel.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell, Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Apache Fire
Elizabeth Lane
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELIZABETH LANE
has traveled extensively in Latin America, Europe and China, and enjoys bringing these exotic locales to life on the printed page, but she also finds her home state of Utah and other areas of the American West to be fascinating sources for historical romance. Elizabeth loves such diverse activities as hiking and playing the piano, not to mention her latest hobby—belly dancing.
For Alec
September 23, 1997
Chapter One (#ulink_2aa7db69-46a3-52cb-b5b1-1a94cf3e3ff6)
Arizona Territory
April 7, 1876
Latigo’s vision was a red blaze of pain. He sagged over the neck of his spent mustang, teeth clenched as he battled to stay conscious. He had been riding most of the night, every lurch of the horse like a lance thrust into his bleeding shoulder. The Colby Ranch couldn’t be much farther unless, in this cursed stupor, he had somehow become lost.
The ghost face of the waning moon hung low in the western sky. Startled by hoofbeats, a miniature owl exploded out of its burrow and flapped screeching into the darkness.
Latigo cursed, fighting pain as he struggled to calm his spooked mount. He had lived all his life in the desert, and he was as much at home here as the sharp-nosed coyotes that ranged along the lonely arroyos. But tonight he was no coyote. He was wounded prey, and in the danger of darkness even the wind’s familiar voice was an alien moan.
With excruciating effort, he focused his eyes on the notched peak that was his beacon point. He could feel his life oozing through the makeshift bandage that covered the bullet wound in his shoulder. In the seven hours since the ambush, he had lost a dizzying amount of blood. If John Colby refused him shelter…
But how could Colby refuse, when his very honor was at stake? Ten years ago, during the bloody Apache wars, Latigo had saved Colby’s life, and the rancher—more out of pride, to be sure, than gratitude—had vowed to repay him one day. Now it was time to call in the old debt.
Under any other circumstances, Latigo would just as soon have let the matter go. He was a man who asked little of others, especially where whites were concerned. But now he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live.
As he clung to the horse, he fueled his strength with his own anger at what had happened. Hours earlier, on the San Carlos Reservation, he had been guiding two U.S. government agents on an inspection tour. As their mounts passed through a narrow ravine, a hail of rifle fire had erupted from the rocks above and behind them. The two federal men had died at once, but the bullet meant for Latigo’s heart had struck a handbreadth too high and to the left. Reeling with shock, he had managed to spur his horse and gain some distance before the four attackers had time to mount up and come after him. He had barely glimpsed their faces, but he had seen enough to know they were not Apaches.
Twisting painfully in the saddle, he peered into the darkness behind him. He had not sighted his pursuers since yesterday afternoon when he’d holed up in a rocky crevice to wait for nightfall. Surely he had lost them. Whites weren’t worth spit as trackers, and they’d had no scout along. Surely he could afford to roll into the brush and rest for the space of a few precious breaths.
But he could not even think of stopping. The ebbing strength in every part of his body told him that if he were to lie down he would never get up again.
A snort from the mustang jolted Latigo to sudden alertness. He felt the horse shudder beneath him and caught the eager prick of its ears. Instinctively his hand groped for the empty holster where his U.S. Army issue Colt would have been, had he not dropped it when the bullet slammed into his body. He was weaponless except for the braided rawhide whip that lay coiled like a rattlesnake along the flank skirt of his saddle. Latigo’s prowess with the whip had earned him the Spanish name by which he’d been known for half of his thirty-three years. But little good that would do him now, when he could scarcely raise his arm without a stab of nauseating pain.
Latigo’s thoughts scattered as his ears picked up a distant shrillness on the wind. Horses. A dozen perhaps, maybe more, about a mile ahead. They sounded close together, as they might be in a corral.
The Colby Ranch.
Had he found it, or was he riding into a trap?
The half-wild mustang bugled eagerly, trotting hard in its urgency to be with its own kind. Latigo was too weak to stop the animal. He clenched his teeth as the pain jolted through him. Hold on, he ordered his shock-numbed arms. Just hold…on…
Fire…smoke from the blazing wagon blinding her eyes, searing her throat…her mother’s scream, and the cold twang of arrows striking flesh…her gentle father pitching facedown next to the mules, his fingers clawing lines in the powdery red dust…savage Apache faces streaked like bloodied hatchets with vermilion war paint, eyes glittering, as they moved in for the kill…no!…please, God, no!
Rose Colby awoke in a frenzy of silent screams.
Her fingers clutched the patchwork quilt as she battled her way back to reality. Her heartbeats echoed like gunfire against the wall of her ribs.
It’s all right. Beneath the long muslin nightgown, her body was drenched in sweat. It’s all right. You were only dreaming.
She lay rigid while the nightmare faded, quivering in the warm darkness of the bed she had shared with John Colby for more than a third of her twenty-six years. Yes, it was all right, she reassured herself. The Apaches had long since been beaten by the army and herded onto reservations. The adobe walls of the big house were as thick as a fortress, every window barred with wrought-iron grillwork. John’s Colt .45 Peacemaker lay loaded on the nightstand. The vaqueros had taught her how to use it, and she could hit a playing card dead center at fifty paces.
You’re safe, Rose. Perfectly safe.
But Rose knew she would never feel safe from the terrors that lurked in her own mind. No walls, however strong, could shut out the nightmare visions that had haunted her for nine long years.
Brushing back her tawny mane of hair, she sat up, slid her bare feet to the floor and pattered across the cool Mexican tiles. The hand-carved mahogany cradle sat against the near wall, sheltered by the inward slope of the roof. Bathed by moonlight, her two-month-old son lay deep in slumber, his eyelids closed, his upflung fists curled like tiny pink chrysanthemum buds. His breath whispered sweetly in the darkness.
Mason, she called him—John Mason Colby, after her husband and her own father. She would raise her boy well, Rose vowed, aching with love. He would grow up to be a fine man, and he would carry on the names he bore with pride, honor and courage.
Pride…Honor…Courage…Duty. Moonlight gleamed softly on the words etched around the border of the silver medal that hung on the wall above the crib. The medal had been John’s, awarded to him by the territorial governor for valor during the Apache wars. John had treasured it. So would his son.
Rose’s throat hardened with emotion as she bent low to feather a caress across the downy silk of her baby’s hair— dark, as John’s hair must have been in his youth, although she had never known it to be other than gray. What a tragedy John had not lived to see this baby, the heir he had wanted—demanded—for so long. He would surely have forgiven her, then, for the long, barren years and the heartbreaking miscarriages. The two of them might have even known some happiness, drawn together at last by their love for this beautiful child.
Closing her eyes, Rose inhaled the sweet, milky, baby aura that cloaked the tiny body. Let him sleep, her practical side argued. But her motherly instincts cried out for her son’s warmth in her arms. She reached into the cradle only to freeze in midmotion, her heart convulsing in sudden alarm.
Outside, just below the window, the sound of a horse.
Rose darted to the nightstand and caught up the loaded Peacemaker. Maybe it was nothing—one of the vaqueros returning early from the mountains, where they’d moved the herds for spring grazing, or some visitor from Tucson, or—
But what was she thinking? The grandfather clock in the downstairs hallway chimed two in the morning. No one would be so foolhardy as to travel at this hour. No one, at least, with any good intent.
Gripping the heavy pistol, Rose crept along the wall and peered around the edge of the window. Except for the baby, she was alone in the house. The vaqueros were out with the herd. Esperanza, the cook, and her husband, Miguel, who tended to things around the place, had left that morning to visit their newborn grandchild in Fronteras. Rose herself had insisted they go—foolishly, she realized now. Whatever trouble lurked outside, she would have no choice but to deal with it alone.
An artery pulsed along the curve of her throat as she scanned the moonlit landscape, the barren front yard where John had never allowed so much as a paloverde or creosote bush to sprout because it might provide cover for marauding Apaches; the open-sided ramadas and the adobe bunkhouse; the corrals where those horses not taken on the cattle drive milled and stamped.
Yes, something was out there.
Rose pressed closer to the glass, the pistol leaden in her shaking hand. She had fired the big gun at tins and bottles, but never at any living target, let alone a human being. Her Quaker parents had raised her to detest violence. All the same she knew, with a ferocious maternal certainty, that if threatened, she would kill to protect her child.
At first she saw nothing. Then, directly below her, almost hidden by the overhanging shadow of the roof, the dark shape of a solitary horse emerged, its head drooping, its saddle empty.
A gasp of relief escaped Rose’s taut lips as she sagged against the wall. A riderless horse was a matter for concern, but it posed no immediate danger, unless—
Nerves screaming, she pressed toward the window again. The horse could be a ruse, she reminded herself, a trick to lure her outside. She would be a fool to drop her guard now, when an army of intruders could be waiting in the shadows.
Rose’s breath stopped as the horse shifted its stance to reveal, dragging from a stirrup by one entangled boot, the dark, limp form of a man.
She pressed close to the glass, forgetting to hide herself. Judging from what she could see, the rider appeared to be a stranger. He was tall. Rose could calculate that much from the length of his trapped leg and the lean sprawl of his body. His clothes were plain, dark and trail worn. But beyond that, she could not tell how badly he was hurt, or even whether he was still alive.
She gripped the gun in an agony of indecision. To go downstairs and open the door would jeopardize her own safety and, infinitely worse, that of her baby. But how could she leave a man—a good man, for all she knew, maybe with a wife and children waiting at home—to die on her very doorstep?
As Rose hesitated, torn to the point of anguish, she saw the man’s arm move, saw his hand stir and lift. His fingers strained, quivering toward the stirrup, only to fall back, clenched in pain and frustration.
A moan of pity broke in Rose’s throat Whatever the peril, no decent soul could turn away from this human being.
Laying the gun on the bed, she flung on her flannel wrapper and knotted the sash tightly around her waist. Then she picked up the weapon again, paused to thumb back the hammer and, with a last glance at Mason’s small, sleeping form, hurried down the dark hallway toward the stairs.
Her steps faltered as she neared the massive front door. For the space of a heartbeat she clung to the heavy crossbar, gathering her courage. The entry way was pitch-black, the house eerily silent. If only she’d thought to bring a lantern…
But the stranger was in pain and need, and there was no more time to be lost. The moon was shining outside, Rose noted as she shoved back the bar. She would be able to see well enough.
Her knuckles whitened on the pistol grip as the door creaked open. For a moment she held her breath, gulping back old terrors as she waited for a rush from the shadows. But this time, except for the solitary horse drooping next to the hitching rail, there was nothing.
