Music drifted out of the gaily decorated church into the
humid night air, wrapping around Sally Mae in a breath of
lilting joy. She shifted her hip on the railing, leaned her
head against the rough porch support and let the notes roll
through her, not feeling the guilt so strongly this time.
She was healing, from the inside out, the way Jonah said she
would in what he'd considered a kindness. But then Jonah had
been that type of man, always able to put others before him,
always able to see God's light with no questions attached to
the end of the message. His way had always been clear while
hers was always a struggle.
Despite their differences, or maybe because of them, she'd
been a good wife to him. Their marriage hadn't been the kind
that little girls dreamed up while playing in the yard on a
summer's day, but it had been the stable kind an impulsive
woman valued. No matter what her inclinations, Sally had
always known that if she couldn't find the answer in
meditation, she would find it with Jonah. He'd been her
rock, her balance, her guiding light, and when he'd been
murdered, it had shattered her inner light into a
never-ending pitch of black, to the point that she'd stopped
feeling anything.
For months, she'd walked around in a daze, going through
life as if she hadn't lost a vital part of her faith. And
then the townsfolk had started coming to her for healing,
seeing her as the next best thing to a doctor, and she'd
found solace in being needed. From that solace had come a
light that flickered through the darkness. Purpose. Life
since Jonah's death hadn't been perfect, but she'd found a
reason to get out of bed, a pretense on which to keep
functioning, and gradually, that pretense had grown into a
calling she'd only assumed was hers before Jonah's death. A
calling that distracted her from the emptiness left by her
husband's death. An emptiness she'd been able to ignore
until six months ago when Tucker McCade had come back to town.
She grimaced and shifted her position, the star-studded
vastness of the landscape striking her anew with its beauty,
almost as though it was the first time she was seeing it.
And maybe it was. Sometimes she felt that Jonah's death had
wiped clean her understanding of who she was and left a
stranger in its place. A stranger who was familiar in her
love of these beautiful nights of endless sky and sparkling
stars, yet foreign in her attraction to the big Texas Ranger.
She couldn't pinpoint what drew her to the man. Tucker was
too big, too wild, too unpredictable to be described in easy
terms. He breathed the violence she abhorred, seemed to
believe in nothing but the moment, and the only emotion he
let anyone see never made it to his eyes. He was a man of
secrets and pain, larger than life, and nothing to which she
should be attracted, and yet, somehow, he'd become part of
her emerging life.
Laying temptation in front of a man like me is
dangerous, pretty thing.
The remembered warning rumbled over her nerves in a deep
promise. At the time, she hadn't thought she'd been laying
anything anywhere, just tending the nasty cut on his arm,
but looking back, she had stood closer than she'd
needed to, and her fingers had lingered longer than
they'd needed to. She blamed it completely on the utter
fascination of the man. His eyes alone would be enough to
fascinate most women—a shocking silver-gray in his dark
face. But for her, the fascination went much deeper than his
heavily muscled frame and harshly exotic good looks. For
her, the fascination went to the glimpses of gentleness that
he hid beneath a sarcastic wit and a propensity for
violence. A gentleness she suspected he wore with the same
ease with which he wore his guns and knives. Tucker McCade
was a man who was very comfortable with himself, in the same
way Jonah had been, but for different reasons. While Jonah
had been comfortable with the path God had revealed to him
and his ability to stick to it, Tucker was comfortable with
the path he had laid out for himself, and comfortable with
his ability to hold it where he wanted.
Sally shook her head, breathing deeply of the humid night
air, fragrant with the aroma of the roasting pig that had
been served up earlier. Tucker fought at the drop of a hat.
He'd fought for Cissy Monroe, who'd changed her mind about
prostituting herself to make ends meet, fought for a mongrel
puppy pinned down after stealing a loaf of bread, and
sometimes he just fought for reasons that had no discernible
cause other than that he wanted to. It was in those moments
that Tucker McCade scared her, because those were the
moments when he was everything his reputation held him to
be. Everything she feared. The very thing that had taken her
husband. A man as lawless and as violent as this land.
But he was also beautiful and compelling in the way of all
wild things. And, much like the music she was trying not to
break her mourning by enjoying, he had a way of getting
under her skin, reaching down to the primal part of her that
responded on instinct and didn't give a hoot about logic or
her Quaker beliefs. The part of her that wanted him very badly.
Closing her eyes, Sally indulged in a bit of harmless
fantasy. Imagined Tucker was before her, so wonderfully tall
he made her feel small while those broad shoulders of his
blocked her view of anything else. Most of all the past. His
silvery eyes, so startling above the high slash of his
cheekbones, would stare down at her in that semimocking,
farseeing way he had that made her both nervous and
breathless at the same time. And that long, shiny black hair
he wore parted in the center would fall free about his
exotic face as he leaned down, enhancing his Indian ancestry
to the point of challenge. Enhancing the power of his
personality, the magnetism of his sexuality, the sensual
fullness of his mouth… He'd reach for her with his big,
callused hands that never touched, but instead lingered a
scant breath from her skin, promising so much even as they
withheld everything. Passion, pleasure, heaven. Hands that
killed as easily as they gave joy. A shiver, half negation,
half anticipation, shook her from head to toe.
As a Quaker and a pacifist, she never saw the point of
fighting. She also didn't see the point of daring everyone
around a body to make something of nothing, but Tucker
definitely had a take-me-as-I-am-or-suffer-the-consequences
element in his approach to the world. When a woman added the
easy confidence with which he did everything to that
disregard for convention, it totaled up to a potent
combination. One she was finding harder and harder to resist
in the bright light of common sense. One she didn't want to
resist in the soft cloak of night with the moon shining
brightly and her imagination so willing to sketch out a
moment between them.
The music slowed to a swirling crescendo. Inside dancers
would be gliding to a stop with varying degrees of style,
poised for the next beat, the next partner. While for her,
here in this dream, hers already waited. All she had to do
was take that step toward Tucker, that forbidden, terrifying
step she'd never managed in real life, because in many ways
she was a coward. Not because he was half-Indian, not
because society said that was wrong—in her world all women
and men were equal—but because Tucker McCade stood with his
feet in blood while she followed a different path. But
still, in her dreams, she could have him, and in her dreams
she took that step forward into the touch of his hand, into
the warmth of his embrace, into the protection of his strong
arms. She sighed as desire coursed through her body at the
imagined culmination of months of longing.
He was a cruel man, some said. A hard man, others whispered.
But, on an instinctive level, she knew the only thing she
would find in his arms was joy. She'd seen the promise of it
in his marvelous eyes, felt it vibrate between them whenever
they got close, knew deep inside that Tucker would take care
of her body the same way he took care of her safety. Totally
and completely, whether she wanted it or not.
Folding her arms across her chest and balancing her weight,
Sally Mae hugged the knowledge to her, letting it weave
through the fantasy, granting to Tucker in dreams the access
that she couldn't in the daylight. Access to touch, access
to pleasure. Through the break between songs, when
everything was possible, she gave her fantasy permission to
move forward into the forbidden with a sense of
inevitability. Tucker was a force to be reckoned with at any
time, wearing down his quarry with slow, steady pressure.
And when it came to resistance, she was apparently no
stronger than the outlaws who inevitably surrendered to his
law. She didn't want to fight him anymore. Fighting was
draining, especially when what she was resisting was the one
thing instinct said could color the darkness that enshrouded
her life.
The music inside broke into a merry jig, the rhythm
percolating through her blood, picking up her spirits,
increasing the tempo of her fantasy, moving from languid to
fervored as she imagined his long fingers closing around her
wrists, skimming her forearms, her upper arms, her
shoulders, the rough calluses abrading her skin in a
delicious way that Jonah's smooth hands never had.
The edges of her dream rippled at the disloyalty. Tucker was
Jonah's opposite in many ways, and it might be the biggest
delusion in the world to believe he could be gentle with a
woman, but this was her daydream, her escape, and she wanted
to believe Tucker could be gentle enough to bring her to the
point where she didn't need gentleness anymore. She forced
herself to be honest. Past the point where Jonah had always
stopped.
She flinched, shattering the last of her dream, and it was
once again just her, the night and the longing that wouldn't
go away. For the warmth of a man's embrace, the strength of
his arms, the burn of his passion. And not just any man.
She'd never been indiscriminate. Jonah had been her only
lover and until his death she'd never looked at another man,
and in those first weeks, hadn't even been aware that Tucker
existed. But one day she'd looked up from the cup of coffee
that had been placed in her hand, and there he'd been, his
expression solemn, his touch gentle, his eyes reflecting the
understanding of the loss she couldn't accept. He'd been
there ever since, popping into her life when he came into
town, sheltering her from the worst of everything while he
was there, making sure she ate, making sure her patients
didn't get ideas, making sure she was safe and cared for.
Making sure she knew he waited. For her.
Moonlight became Sally Mae. It poured over the paleness of
her skin with a lover's tenderness, bringing out the silver
gilt in her hair, the smooth perfection of her skin, the
mystery of who she was. By day Sally could hide the truth
under a bustle of activity, but in the quiet of the night,
her secrets escaped. Her loneliness, her hunger, her thirst
for adventure. Tucker was a man who'd always preferred night
and those things it embraced. Sally was no exception. The
woman had integrity, beauty, and an appeal from which he
couldn't walk away. Even if he should. She turned ever so
slightly and he could just make out the gentle swell of her
breast beneath the inevitable gray of her dress. He narrowed
his gaze until the tempting curve filled his line of vision.
He smiled. Thank God he'd never been much on "shoulds."
He watched her, perched like a fairy against the support,
her arms crossed over her chest, her head dropping back. The
blond of her hair not covered by the fine lawn cap perched
on the back of her head shimmered against the dark wood.
Sunshine and shadow. The woman was a mystery. Her shoulders
lifted on a slight sigh. That emotion he'd noticed lately
and couldn't place shifted over her expression, narrowing
her eyes and drawing her upper lip between her teeth.
She'd been in that strange mood a lot lately. Full of a
restlessness that teased the edges of his awareness. Made
him hard with its potential promise. He'd like nothing
better than to step out of the shadows, take her hands in
his, uncross her arms and draw them around his neck,
accepting the weight of her willowy body against his, her
troubles as his. If it were left to him, he'd wrap her in
cotton wool and keep her safe from any threat, any worry.
But it wasn't up to him. Though it sure as hell should be up
to someone. Sally took too many risks. And lately, whenever
he came into town from the hunt for Caine's wife's sister,
nerves jangled, senses hungry for respite, she'd be watching
him with those dark gray eyes that had no idea how they
tempted, and he'd forget why he was keeping his distance.
Sally Mae sighed and closed her eyes as the music leaped
into the calm of the night. The same moonlight that cast her
skin in a silvery glow provided the shadows in which he hid.
He knew she wasn't aware of his presence. She'd be strung as
tight as a drum if she had any inkling that he watched her.
And not because she found him distasteful. He wasn't a fool.
He knew Sally Mae wanted him, the same as he knew she'd
never get serious about it. A brief affair to see how it
would be to lie down with a savage, maybe, but he'd learned
the hard way that a white woman did not openly take up with
a man with Indian blood—not for love or money. She might
enjoy him on the side, if the affair could be safely hidden,
but there was too much hate between whites and Indians for
any more than that to be tolerated. Already there were
rumblings because he stayed in her barn.