The Savage

Summer shook her head. The days when luxury dominated her life, when expense and sacrifice had no meaning to her, were over. “I’m not a princess any longer, Lance. I don’t need a fancy house.”

His jaw hardened before he turned away. “Well, maybe I do.”

She watched him stride toward the barn, hearing the echo of his defiant marriage proposal in her ears. That’s all I want. A wife who can help me become a respected member of the community. He had wanted to marry her because of the advantage her background and family connections might bring him. And after experiencing firsthand the contemptuous treatment Lance had always been accorded, she had no trouble understanding why respectability and acceptance might be so important to him. She only hoped she could help him achieve it. She would try at least.

And Reed would, too, she knew. When she’d spoken to her brother last night, informing him they planned to live in the cabin, Reed had repeated his vow to support whatever decision she made and offered to send some of the hired hands and their wives over to help fix up the place—an offer that Lance stubbornly had refused.

Summer wasn’t nearly as certain of her sister, or that she would ever be able to persuade Amelia to see reason where Lance was concerned. When she’d tried once more, Amelia had again declared hysterically that she wasn’t staying with a “red devil” in the house. It was all Summer could do not to lose her temper.

With a sigh at the unpleasant remembrance, she rose from the rocker and carried her broom inside the cabin to tackle refilling the rope-bed mattress with clean straw. She hoped her sister would relent, but if not, then she would have to live with it. She intended to stand by her husband, no matter what the future held.

The first few days of that future were unexpectedly difficult as she and Lance adjusted to living with each other in close quarters, as man and wife. Accustomed to having the Mexican women as household servants, Summer was unused to keeping house totally by herself, let alone caring for someone else. And Lance wasn’t used to having to consider someone else’s welfare.

He was a loner, by choice as well as by circumstances, and had a hard time shedding his hostile defiance, even when he knew Summer was trying her damnedest to make their marriage work. He saw an ulterior motive in every gesture of tenderness and helpfulness she made, and viewed with suspi

cion any attempts to charm him. And she, weary from the exhausting work, tended to snap at him with alarming frequency, forgetting the old adage about catching more flies with honey and her own cardinal rules about using sweetness and flattery to get her way—not that it would have worked with Lance, in any case.

They often danced around each other, being scrupulously polite, testing one another, frequently misunderstanding, sometimes arguing. It was only in bed that they seemed to be of one mind, sharing a passion that was explosive and abandoned and totally satisfying. In the privacy of their bedchamber, they met as equals, both hungry and possessive as they learned to please and be pleased. In the sensual darkness, Summer lost any pretense of genteel inhibitions, and Lance lowered his own defenses in return.

It was three days after his arrival at the ranch, when their cabin was finally clean and comfortable enough, that Summer turned her attention to more difficult matters. After breakfast that morning, she went up to the big house and spoke to her brother about her husband’s place on the ranch.

It took a little doing, but despite Reed’s reluctance to relinquish the reins of power, she managed to persuade him to give Lance a chance at assuming greater responsibility with the herds. Afterward she talked to Dusty Murdock, the Sky Valley foreman, about the situation as he came in from the range.

“I’ve got no problem taking orders from Lance,” Dusty admitted easily. “And I doubt many of the boys will, either. He’s a regular hero for rescuing Miss Amelia, you know.”

Summer looked at Dusty in surprise. “No, I didn’t know.”

“Sure is. Most of the boys are right proud of him, though they might not let on.”

“And you think they would accept having him as boss if he takes over part of the ranch?”

“The Mexes won’t be a problem, for sure. Lance is the best man with a horse anybody around here’s ever laid eyes on, and the vaqueros respect that. And they know what it’s like, being looked down on ‘cause of their skin color. But the white fellas…There’ll be a few who’ll object to working for a mix-blood Comanche. Some might quit or even try to cause trouble, but Lance can take care of himself. Always has.” The foreman hesitated. “I guess I’m a lot more worried about Miss Amelia.”

Summer frowned; she was worried about her sister as well. In the past few days, some of their neighbors had come to call, but Amelia had refused to see any of them, even the women who had been her closest friends. “What are people saying, Dusty?”

He looked down at his feet, as if reluctant to meet her eyes. “They feel sorry for her, I reckon. But nobody blames her for what happened.”

“They wouldn’t dare say it to her face, at any rate,” Summer said sadly.

Dusty abruptly raised his head, his usually calm blue eyes suddenly blazing. “They do and I’ll beat the livin’ daylights out of ‘em.”

Summer was a bit surprised to hear the easygoing ranch foreman champion her sister so vehemently, and even Dusty seemed embarrassed by his outburst. His ears turned red, and he tugged on his hat, pulling it way down over his eyes as he squinted off in the distance.

“Well, anybody would,” he mumbled, before he excused himself, saying he had work to do.

Summer sighed. She would have to deal with Amelia’s problems eventually, but right now Lance deserved her concern more. She had won Reed’s and Dusty’s support to involve him more in the workings of the ranch. There remained only to convince Lance to agree—which might indeed be the hardest part. She ought to be able to charm any man into doing her bidding, but her husband was not just any man.

A short while later she found Lance out back of their cabin, where he was chopping a load of firewood he’d brought in off the range. He was shirtless, exposing a great deal of bronzed skin glistening with sweat, and the sight brought Summer up short. Lance was hard, uncompromising male, and she was always exquisitely conscious of being female when he was near—and yet just now she was shocked by the sudden surge of desire that streaked through her.

Right then Lance looked up and smiled at her, his teeth flashing white in his harsh face, as if he was glad to see her. Summer felt raw color rush to her cheeks. She had never been overly concerned with propriety, but still, it wasn’t proper to feel such fierce lust for one’s husband.

She had brought him a dipper of water from the spring, which he accepted gratefully. When he’d finished drinking, though, she didn’t leave. Instead she settled herself on a log.

“Something wrong, princess?”

“No, I just wanted to talk to you.”

He turned back to his work. “What about?”