in a strong clasp. A flash of anger crossed his face as he looked down at broken nails and bruises and the drying blood of cuts from splintering glass. But when he spoke again the anger was hidden. “Come, there is more we have to do.”
“What might that be?”
“You’ll see.” When she resisted, jerking away from him, in the same quiet voice he’d used to reason with his companions he said, “You have a choice. Indian, or the rest of them, which will it be?”
She hesitated, weighing choices that weren’t choices. When she put her battered hand in his again, it was her life, as well.
“No matter what I say, no matter what I do,” he said softly, “remember I will never hurt you.”
He led her then to the center of the road, waiting in silence for the revelers to attend him. Slowly, one by one, they turned, curious looks on their faces. When all was quiet he spoke. “Blue Doggie lies there in the gutter, felled by the woman. She would have escaped, I stopped her. By our law that makes her mine to do with as I wish.”
“Law! What law?” Patience whirled on him, her protest lost in the roar of complaint from the bikers.
Indian ignored them, he ignored her. Keeping her hand firmly in his, he addressed Custer, the leader, with the stilted formality of a declaration. “She is a woman befitting a warrior. From now and for as long as I wish, she will be my woman.”
Patience stared at him, for once she was speechless.
Turning to her, meeting her stunned gaze, into a hostile hush he declared, “Only mine.”
Two
“All right, Just Indian, what the devil was that all about?”
As they moved beyond the hearing of capering, beer-guzzling revelers, Patience ripped away from the grasp that guided her over a nearly hidden stretch of rough terrain that separated his bike from the others. A grasp, if she could believe her own muddled perceptions and trust this man called Indian, that was solicitous rather than restraining.
But she didn’t trust him. She wouldn’t trust anyone until she walked out of the desert, free and unharmed.
Spinning around in front of his bike she faced him, bootheels digging into crumbling soil, fisted hands at her hips. “What was that gibberish about laws?”
“Sticks in your craw, doesn’t it? Being called my woman,” he asked quietly. Before she could lash out again, he added just as quietly, “It isn’t gibberish.”
“It isn’t gibberish when a pack of lawless morons prattle about laws?” The moon was fully risen. A perfect leviathan ball hanging in the sky, half as bright as the sun, painting the desert in sharp silvered edges and inky pools. In an eerie moonscape he loomed over her, as somber as the land in the night shade of a saguaro. More than half a foot taller and an easy sixty pounds heavier, he was an intimidating figure, but she was too indignant to be intimidated. “Law,” she snarled. “From creatures who give themselves animal names and play at being human?”
His hands shot out of shadow, catching her shoulders in a firm hold. “I brought you out here to talk to you, not quarrel, you hotheaded little fool. So shut up and listen before you make matters worse than they are already.”
“Worse!” Patience flung back her head, her eyes blazing. “What could be worse? Stranded in the desert. Harassed, attacked. Pawed and fondled. Fought over by mad dogs. Parceled off like a...” She cast about her mind, searching for the ultimate insult.
“Like a squaw?” Indian supplied.
“Exactly.” Patience’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. “Why don’t you explain what could possibly be worse than being your squaw.”
“Hush! Now!” He shook her, just once, but it was enough to signal how near he’d come to the end of his tolerance. “Put a check on your Irish temper and shut that pretty little mouth or I’ll...”
“You’ll what? Hit me? Ravish me? Or do you plan to threaten me to death?” Her chin lifted a notch, her voice was laced with contempt. “So much for Indian’s word.”
“Damn you!” His fingers bit into her shoulders, driving closely trimmed nails into her flesh as he moved closer and into the light. His chest heaved in controlled anger, his body was as unrelenting as stone. “I’m not going to hit you, or ravish you. And anything I say will be fact or promise, never threat. Yes, I gave you my word on it before. I’ve kept my part of the bargain.”
“And I didn’t?”
“You promised you wouldn’t fight me.”
“I’m not Cochise.” She pulled away from him then and was surprised that he let her go. Crossing her arms at her breasts in a belligerent attitude she glared up at him. “I didn’t promise I would fight no more forever.”
His look moved over her in grudging admiration for her defiance, her courage against impossible odds. “No, you didn’t, did you?” Something akin to a smile ghosted over his lips and vanished. “It was Chief Joseph.”
“So?” Patience shrugged her indifference, neither understanding nor caring to understand the cryptic remark.
“You were quoting Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. The correct phrase is ‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.’”
“That’s just lovely.” Her drawl was saccharine. “I doubt there were six bikers and one Indian threatening him with every conceivable indignity.”
“No,” Indian answered thoughtfully, “there were no bikers.”
“Lucky man.”
“An intelligent man, who knew when to fight and when to stop.”
Her head moved abruptly side to side, rejecting the subtle overture. “I’ll stop fighting when one of us stops breathing.”
He sighed heavily, threads of frustrated tension frayed as he struggled against the urge to break his word and throttle her. If there was ever even a ghost of a smile it was forgotten and buried. His face was somber, a startlingly tantalizing mask of stark lines and planes. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian? Is that it?”
Patience should have heeded the savage undertone in his words, but she was too lost in her own hostility to hear. “Considering that you’re the only Indian I know, yes, that’s precisely it.”
He moved, then, like a striking snake. Quicker than the eye could focus, or the mind comprehend, he swept her into his arms. One hand locked around her waist, the other cradled her head in uncompromising control. Her head was yanked back, her face lifted to his. If the moon had been a strobe, the disgust he felt couldn’t have been clearer. “Considering your reckless mouth and your ungoverned temper, I’m surprised you survived this life long enough to lose yourself in the desert. Since you have, and since it’s my misfortune to be stuck with you, we have to do what we must and make the best we can of a bad situation.”
“Your misfortune?” She struggled against his embrace, but he was far too strong for her. “Yours!”
“Yes,
