suspected this was a rare occurrence in any circumstance. An uncommon moment when this spirited woman faltered, in need of restoring peace to her ravaged mind and body.
She’d weathered more than he’d thought possible. When he’d caught his first glimpse of her pinioned in the glare of unmerciful headlights, she was small and fragile, her delicate heart-shaped face almost overwhelmed by a lioness’s mane of hair like flame. He wouldn’t have given a penny for her chances of outlasting the savagery he knew was coming. Yet he couldn’t intervene, not then. The odds in her favor escalated when she’d proven immune to the head games his fellow riders were so adept at playing.
The derringer was a surprise. He didn’t expect it, but from the moment she’d palmed it like a pro, he knew this woman was a breed apart.
The pièce de résistance was Blue Doggie. No one in his right mind would have believed that before Indian could reach her, this scrap of a woman, brutalized physically and mentally, could fell a man more than twice her size in one two-fisted uppercut.
She’d endured beyond human endurance and hadn’t broken, until Indian took it upon himself to see to her welfare. Until Indian, in his own inimitable style, brought her to the brink. To this silent suffering.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered into her hair, and the hard shuddering that shook her finally stopped.
With the flat of her palm, Patience pushed away from him, her face was bleak. “No, I’m sorry, for being weak. It won’t happen again.”
“This isn’t weakness, it’s being human and civilized. But if it were a matter of strength, I’ve seen men who considered themselves far stronger than you could ever be break under less.”
“You misunderstand me, Indian.” She turned a diamond-hard gaze at him. “I make no apologies for this. I’ve seen enough and done enough in my life to know that there are situations beyond our control, and times when the spirit and body fail us. My weakness was believing in you even a little. I won’t make that mistake again.
“I’m not a complete fool.” Her arms hung tensely at her sides, her fingers flexed, a scrap of rawhide tumbled to the ground before they curled again into tight fists. A mouth made for laughter thinned to a grim line. “As mercuric as you are, I do know what you’ve spared me.”
“Do you?” he interjected quietly. “Do you, indeed?”
“Yes.” She spat the word at him. “I know.”
“Such confidence,” Indian mocked. “Such blind certainty.” He took a step closer. With a finger beneath her chin he lifted her face to meet her gaze again. “They were out there, Snake and Custer, the worst of the lot, watching, slavering over a tempting morsel.”
Patience swung around to look to the road where six bikers lounged on Beauty’s hood, or hunkered around her on the ground. Bottles flashed in the light, drunken laughter spilled over the desert. Stumbling across her misfortune offered the perfect excuse for a binge.
“There are six by the car,” she said. “No one was here. No one was watching.”
“They were here.”
“How do you know? How could you?”
“I knew.”
“Ah! You’re psychic? Telepathic, perhaps? Superhuman?” The latter was drawled contempt.
“Neither.” He refused to rise to her baiting. “I’m a simple man, with simple skills.”
Regarding him, she remembered how he held himself aloof from the others. How no one challenged his claim. He rode with them, lived by their laws, but he was not one of them. She was sure of it. Even in rage and terror she’d perceived him as separate. Different.
Six bikers and an Indian.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “What are you?”
“A simple man called Indian. No more. No less.”
“No,” she denied emphatically. “Not simple. Never simple.”
“All right.” He nodded. “If you wish, not simple.”
She recalled when she thought him as inscrutable as the saguaro, now she decided the saguaro lost, hands down. “Tell me how you knew these men were watching.”
Indian shrugged a shoulder, bare beyond the edge of his vest. “I’m a tracker. A good one. My grandfather taught me to see things others don’t see, to hear things they don’t hear, to know things they will never know.
“Custer and Snake came, not as secretly as they thought, seeking an excuse to take you from me. They will if we don’t play this right.” He stroked her hair. Mesmerized, he watched it glide through his fingers, glistening like dark fire in the moonlight.
Red hair was prized by the bikers. Because of it she was a trophy coveted by too many men. Regretfully his fingers tangled in silk, holding her, keeping her, ignoring her hand at his wrist. “I can’t fight them all.”
Patience ceased her silent rebuff of his caress. With her hand at his wrist and the steady throb of his pulse beneath her fingertips, she stared up at him. “Take me from you? They would do that?”
“Yes.”
“But your laws, your precious biker laws, what happens to them?”
“They apply, but only if we are believed.”
“You mean they have to believe that I’m truly your woman.” She caught a ragged breath, her tongue moved nervously over dry lips. “They have to believe that you’re my lover. Rapist, if you must.”
“Yes.”
Patience jerked her hand from his wrist as if contact burned her. In horror she backed away, ignoring the crumbling soil of a tiny wash. Whirling around, she stepped over the groove carved by some long ago rain. Her boots scattered coarse sand as she walked. Mesquite and creosote brushed at her jeans. Thorned ocotillo tugged at the sleeve of her shirt as if it wanted to hold her back. She ignored them.
But she couldn’t ignore the footsteps that echoed her own. She knew she heard them because Indian wanted her to hear. In a moment of distraction she stumped her toe on the exposed roots of a creosote bush. His hands circling her waist kept her from falling.
She jerked away, staggered on a few steps, and stopped, searching beyond her. There was nothing. Neither light nor living thing. Not to the east, nor the west. The south or the north.
“That’s right.” Indian stood a pace behind. “There’s nothing out there. Nothing for miles. You can’t walk out.”
Patience spun around, and in the moonlight her hair was a veil of gossamer. “I don’t believe you.”
She wasn’t speaking of the obvious desolation of the desert. Neither pretended she did.
“I can’t give you proof.” He stood stolidly in front of her, making no effort to touch her. “Proof could only come from Custer, or Snake, or one of the others. Then it would be too late.”
“You
