style="font-size:15px;"> So what, if anything, could she do about filling the chasm between them? Bridget didn’t know. But she was sure of one thing. She was older, wiser and much, much stronger than the woman he’d pushed out of his life five years ago. This time he was going to find that pushing her away wouldn’t be easy.
Chapter Four
Johnny had hiked halfway up the mountain behind the Chino house before he realized where he was or what he was doing and the only reason he’d noticed was because one of his dogs, a Redbone named Rowdy, had nearly tripped him.
Pausing on the well-trodden trail, he looked over his shoulder to the eastern ridge of mountains, then down below where the house sat nestled in the small clearing.
The sun was still low in the clear sky, while wood smoke drifted from the chimney and spiraled lazily downward in the heavy, dew-drenched air. Clouds of vapors created by his rapid breaths swirled about his head and reminded him how far the temperature had dropped this morning.
When he’d slammed out of the house, he’d not taken the time to grab a jacket. But he hardly needed one, he thought with self-disgust. Even before he’d made the rapid climb, his whole body had been heated and burning from Bridget’s kiss.
Damn it! Why did he have to be such a fool? So weak and willing?
He’d thought the past years would have dimmed his passion for the woman. He’d believed that fire she’d built in his gut so long ago had turned to nothing more than a candle flame, just a warm, flickering memory.
God, how wrong he’d been.
Touching her again had set off an explosion in him and now he could only imagine what she was thinking.
That he still loved her? Wanted her?
Hell, Johnny, she already knew that much. You didn’t have to grab her and kiss her just to point all that out to her again.
With a helpless groan, he scrubbed his face with both hands while wishing there was some way he could wipe Bridget and the whole hopeless situation completely out of his mind. But there was no magic potion to take away his misery. Like a wolf pining for his one and only mate, he was caught as surely as an animal snared in a steel trap.
Wearily, he eased his lanky frame onto a nearby boulder and, resting his forearms across his parted knees, he bent his head and closed his eyes.
Maybe by the time he got to be as old as his grandfather, if he was to be that blessed, he would be over this fascination with Bridget. Maybe by then his body would be too old to burn with longing, his heart too hard to ache.
God only knew that he’d certainly never planned to get involved with her. Even though he’d been a childhood friend of Brady Donovan, he’d never considered him or his family a part of his own social circle. He’d never looked at Bridget with a plan to seduce her. Hell, he’d never even thought to get near enough to have a conversation with her, much less make love to her.
She was the stuff that poor Apaches could only dream about. And Johnny had never been much of a dreamer. He was a realist. Even as a young boy, he’d known what he could or couldn’t expect out of life. And Bridget had come under the heading of couldn’t.
But shortly after he’d come home from his last stint in the army, he’d unexpectedly run into her at an isolated cabin on the lake where he and Brady had often gone to camp and fish. She’d been alone, trying to recuperate from the stress of studying for final exams at medical school and he’d taken one look at her lovely face and fallen like an idiot walking too close to a dangerous ledge.
Before Johnny could stop it, his mind wandered back to a bright spring day. The leaves on the aspens had been pale green and hardly bigger than a squirrel’s ear, while the snowmelt had left the streams flowing and the lake rising. He’d been home from Iraq less than a week and his soul had been craving the peace and quiet he could only find in the wilderness of the Sacramento Mountains near his home. He’d gone to the old cabin with the intentions of enjoying several days of solitude. Never in his wildest imaginings had he expected to find Bridget sitting on the rickety front porch, sipping coffee from an old, chipped granite cup.
In spite of his friendship with Brady, he’d never formally met Bridget or, for that matter, any of his sisters. Mainly because Johnny had always avoided attending anything and everything that involved his friend’s family. As long as the two of them were away from the sprawling Diamond D it was easier to forget that the Donovans had money and class and the Chinos lacked it. Still, there’d been a handful of occasions when he’d seen Bridget from a distance and that day at the old cabin, he’d instantly recognized her bright copper hair and pale face.
She’d greeted him like an old friend, calling him by his first name and inviting him to share her coffee as though their chance meeting was nothing out of the ordinary. Johnny’s first instinct was to get out of there as fast as his legs could carry him. He’d even gone so far as to apologize for intruding and turned on his heel to leave. But with a hand on his arm she’d stopped him and urged him back to the little porch.
Thirty minutes later he’d been enthralled by her warm smile and gentle voice, the sparkle in her green eyes. And by the time the sun had settled behind the mountain and shadows had darkened the woods, she’d persuaded him to stay and share the cabin with her.
Johnny had never meant to make love to her, but she’d seemed to want him as much as he’d wanted her, making it impossible for him to refuse all that she’d offered. After three days they’d left the cabin and gone back to their respective homes, but by then their taste for each other had been whetted and not long afterward, Bridget had driven to the reservation to see him.
What followed was a white-hot affair that had changed Johnny’s life. Loving Bridget had pushed his hopes and dreams beyond a mundane life on the reservation. Her love and compassion had helped him deal with the haunting memories of serving in the military and seeing, in a far too personal way, the brutality of war. Fighting battles for freedom were oftentimes necessary, but those battles also tore at a man’s soul. After his stints in Iraq, Johnny had needed healing in the worst kind of way, and without Bridget he wasn’t sure he would’ve ever been able to come to terms with the demons that, at times, were still hard for him to face.
But five years ago he’d been a weary soldier just back from a war zone, and meeting Bridget had been almost like an escape to a gentler world. He’d started believing in himself and the idea that the two of them could actually make a life together. He’d been on the verge of proposing and giving Bridget the go-ahead to tell her family about their love, when the ground had suddenly opened up and hell had spewed out in the form of a so-called friend.
Johnny had never considered George Barefoot as anything more than an acquaintance, even though he lived on the reservation and had gone to high school with Johnny’s mother, Scarlett, and professed to be one of her closest friends. He was considered by most to be lazy and always looking for an easy angle to make money. Johnny usually did his best to avoid the man, but one day in Mescalero, he’d inadvertently passed the man on the sidewalk and before he could protest, George had pulled him into a nearby bar.
Over a beer, George had begun to tell Johnny that there was something about his rich girlfriend’s family that he ought to know. Johnny hadn’t been in any mood to hear tales about the Donovans. Most of them were far-fetched and based on unfounded gossip anyway, but when George had suddenly brought up Scarlett’s name, he’d forced himself to listen to the man.
Thirty minutes later, Johnny
