response came from the house, but Ari took a breath and launched another one of those soundless screams. He followed the trajectory of her gaze. The knife. She was aware he still held it behind his back. He didn’t want to speculate on why, but he couldn’t help a quick check of her hands, her neck, her face. Not that there had to be scars where a man could see. Tracker knew too well how creative a Comanchero could get with a knife and an unwilling woman.
He moved his hand from behind his back, watching her expression as the weapon came into view. It didn’t change. Just because the knife had been out of sight didn’t mean it had been out of mind.
“Sorry about the knife. I forgot.” Hell, now there was a calming thing to tell a terrified woman. He looked toward the house. Still no one coming. Very slowly he reached down and slid the knife back into its sheath, attempting a smile.
“It’s just your luck to get scared out of your bloomers by a man who doesn’t know what to do with your fears.”
He didn’t really think she heard him, which was probably a good thing. He was pretty sure decent men didn’t refer to a woman’s bloomers. Tia would have had his head if she’d heard, because lord knows, she’d tried to teach him better. Sometimes he just had a hard time remembering the rules.
Ari didn’t respond to his smile or his words. She just kept staring at the knife in its sheath, still screaming in rasping pants of soundless terror.
Time to try something else. Grasping the knife between his forefinger and thumb, Tracker made a big production of removing it. She stopped breathing altogether. Holding his hand as far away from his side as he could, he reached back and set it on a ledge behind him.
“It’s okay, ma’am. No one’s going to hurt you.” Least of all him. How could anyone hurt a woman like that? Tracker had had the same thought when he’d first seen Desi huddled in Caine’s coat over a year ago, wearing her fear like a second skin. Now, looking at Ari, he experienced it all over again. She was so delicately formed, she made him think of fine china. The kind a man was afraid to touch, but felt compelled to because the sheer fragility of it demanded cherishing. Protecting. Because what it represented was what kept every man hoping.
He stepped to the left, away from the knife.
Ari’s focus switched from the blade to his face. Tracker debated trying another smile, but as wild as he must look to her, all dark and scarred, he opted for remaining expressionless. At least she’d stopped screaming.
As she panted for breath, he had a chance to study her more closely. Each angle of her face was cut with precision, the fine grain of her skin reflecting the sun like cream, the blue of her eyes shining with the brightness of a summer sky. Her lips were plump and soft and as silky looking as a rose petal. He remembered a poem he’d read once where the author compared his love to a red, red rose. Ari was like that. A beautiful flower that flourished no matter how much shit had been thrown at her. He might never know how much, but the Moraleses had started her healing, and being at Hell’s Eight would finish it. There was no judgment there, just acceptance. A lot of lost souls came to Hell’s Eight and found peace. Ari would, too. She had a sister and a niece to love her. A family waiting to claim her. All Tracker had to do was get her there.
Looking into her terrified eyes, he remembered that silent scream that couldn’t find a voice, imprisoning her in a memory from which he couldn’t save her. Tracker wanted to promise her that he’d hunt down the men who’d done this to her, and make them pay. But Caine had already made that promise and Hell’s Eight had already fulfilled it. That left her with a stranger’s word on something she likely wouldn’t believe. Not that Tracker didn’t think she wouldn’t appreciate knowing it someday. Just not today.
“Ma’am.” Where the hell was Vincente and his wife? “I don’t have the knife anymore. And my gun belt is clear over there by your feet.”
She blinked. For a heartbeat Tracker thought he saw sanity in Ari’s eyes. She licked her lips. Her gaze locked with his and then went to the gun belt.
He read her intent before she dived, but he wasn’t fast enough to catch her before she got her hands around the pistol. If his reflexes had been a hair slower, he wouldn’t have gotten there in time to stop her from blowing his brains out. He caught her hand, gun belt and all, letting their momentum roll them over, taking as much of the force of the fall on his shoulder as he could.
“Let go. Those guns have a hair trigger.”
She sank her teeth into the back of his hand. He swore and held on. One wrong move and she’d kill them both.
“Dammit! Let go!” What she lacked in muscle she made up for in wiggle. It was all he could do to keep her finger off the trigger. He pressed her down into the dirt, using more and more of his weight until she went limp beneath him.
“Ma’am?”
Ari didn’t respond. Tracker carefully removed the pistol and gun belt from her grip. She didn’t fight. He stood. She continued to lie in the dirt at his feet.
He’d thought it odd that she didn’t have scars from her ordeal. She did. He’d only been able to see what was uncovered. And all it had taken to bring them out was one fool, half-naked Indian reaching for his knife. Hell.
You’re ugly enough to scare a bad woman decent.
Once again his father had been proved right. The older Tracker got, the more he began to accept that the insults his dad had tossed out in Tracker’s youth were actually truths he’d been too stubborn to accept. The proof lay prostrate on the ground at his feet.
It wasn’t right that Ari lay in the dirt like trash thrown aside. Looking at her there, her skirt hiked around her thighs, her beautiful blond hair a tangle around her shoulders, he grimaced. It was easier than it should be to imagine her time with the Comancheros, to envision the hell she’d been through. They’d probably walked away from her, leaving her just like that when their lust was spent. Left her to rot in the devastation of her soul, this woman who had been created to be cherished.
Tracker wasn’t any different from the Comancheros. Faced with Ari’s reaction, faced with his own demons, he wanted to walk away, too. Instead, he found himself kneeling, sliding his hand beneath her head, lifting her to his chest.
“It’s going to be all right, Ari. I promise.”
Her hair smelled like sweet flowers and heaven, her skin like vanilla and spice. Innocence and passion, a hint of who she might have been if she hadn’t been stolen, raped, sold. Looking toward the house, making sure no one watched, Tracker rested his forehead against hers.
“A lot of people have been looking for you a long time, little one.”
No one harder than him, for reasons he didn’t understand, except that he was driven. He took a napkin from where it had fallen and wiped at the smudge of dirt on her cheek. It felt right to be the one caring for her. Goddammit, he was losing his mind. This was dangerous. She was dangerous. It had to stop. Now.
“Goddammit, Vincente, I know you can hear me. Get out here.”
In Tracker’s experience, women in a swoon didn’t stay out long, and he didn’t want to trigger another bout of hysteria when she woke in his arms, en route to the house. So he sat there and held her, and pretended that he could make it all right, while he gave her a minute or two to come back to herself. After all she’d been through, she deserved that minute. And it was the only
