He turned to look at her, his expression unreadable in the faint moonlight. “I care. Do you think I could live with myself if you came to harm?”
“Lance, please…wherever you’re going, let me come with you.”
“No.” He reached for the nearest horse’s bridle.
Desperately she moved closer, wrapping her arms around him to hold him to her, pressing her body against his.
For a brief moment, as if against his will, Lance’s arms came around her, tightening as if he would bring her inside him if he could.
His eyes shut in agony. He’d known want before. He’d known need and physical fear. But he’d never known anything like this savage twisting in his gut. This craving for something he knew now he couldn’t have. This raw, stark terror that he was about to lose the one thing in his life that meant anything to him. Summer. He was going to lose her. As sure as Indians and white men were mortal enemies, he wasn’t going to have any kind of future with her.
Unwinding her arms from around his neck, he pushed her away, distancing himself more than just physically.
“Summer, go back to your brother. He’ll keep you safe. I can’t manage it any longer.”
Chapter 22
The party broke up quickly with the festive mood shattered by the threat of Comanche raids. The guests scattered to their various vehicles, wanting to get home to their ranches and protect their stock and to prepare for the worst.
Summer, still furious over her sister’s betrayal of Lance, refused outright to ride home with Amelia. Instead, she borrowed a buggy from Harlan and had Reed escort her home, while Dusty drove her sister.
Summer fumed the entire way. “Why, why would she be so cruel and lie that way? She’s ruined his chances to become accepted into the community. Destroyed whatever trust he’d begun to develop—and she did it deliberately, maliciously.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t deliberate, Summer,” Reed temporized. “Perhaps she truly believes Lance is her enemy. You know what an ordeal she went through. Her mind is so…fragile nowadays that she could have talked herself into it.”
“I don’t care why she did it. I’ve made allowances for weeks for the terrible way she’s treated him, Reed, but I can’t forgive her this time. I can’t. And he won’t either.”
Lance didn’t come home that night, or the next—or any night during the following week. He hadn’t left the ranch altogether, Summer discovered to her profound relief. Although he was apparently no longer herding mustangs with the vaqueros, Dusty saw him occasionally during the days. Summer could only conclude that he was avoiding her. She spent the interval vacillating between fear for his safety, fury and despair at her helplessness to change the situation, and hurt that he was shutting her out.
For some time now she’d known her feelings for Lance had been changing gradually—had grown beyond gratitude and simple loyalty, beyond mere physical desire. The hollow ache that pulsed in the vicinity of her heart only confirmed her suspicions. Lance meant far more to her than she had ever allowed herself to admit. His presence fulfilled a need in her; his absence created a great emptiness. And his deliberate withdrawal from her left her in a turmoil of guilt and frustration.
Perhaps he only wanted to protect her by staying away, but he had no right to make such a decision for her, no right to spurn her help. He had been there when she needed him. She should be there for him now.
The building supplies started arriving for the house Lance had planned to erect—finished lumber from Bastrop, nails and bricks and plaster from Austin. Summer directed the deliveries to the homesite, but she was no longer certain that there would even be a house, or that they would have a future that required it. Reed had finished a preliminary set of drawings, but she couldn’t answer questions about Lance’s preferences for the small details, or make decisions for him in his absence.
Those unresolved questions, however, were minor compared to the terrible tension that permeated the rest of her life. Not only was her marriage in limbo, her future with Lance in doubt, but she felt as if she were waiting for an impending explosion. She jumped at shadows, froze at the merest creak of a floorboard.
The uncertainty was beginning to wear on her nerves, so much so that she was almost grateful when an incident occurred at midweek that allowed her to vent her temper. She had ridden into Round Rock with Reed in order to purchase some miscellaneous household supplies and sewing notions at the general store when she ran up against the kind of prejudice Lance had lived with all his life, coupled with genuine fear.
She had known the store owner, Jeb Parker, and his wife, Mary Sue, all her life, but incredibly, they refused to serve her and ordered her out of the store.
“We’ll fill your order, Reed,” Mrs. Parker said stiffly. “That woman isn’t welcome.”
Summer drew herself up, bristling. “That suits me fine, Mary Sue Parker. I don’t care to associate with blind, small-minded, bigoted people like you, either.”
Turning on her heel, she walked out. Reed found her a moment later, standing by the buggy, shaking with sick fury.
“That is exactly what Lance’s mother had to deal with all her life, what Lance had to put up with. Oh, it makes me so mad, I could scream!”
Not answering, Reed took her arm and urged her into the vehicle. “We’ll drive to Georgetown next week to buy what we need.”
“If they’ll serve us. No doubt they’ve heard about what’s happening down here by now.”
“Then we’ll go to Austin,” Reed said quietly.
“You shouldn’t have to go to all that trouble.” She hesitated. “Mary Sue said she would serve you.”
Reed shook his head. “You’re my sister, Summer. I told you I’d stick by you. It’s no more than you’ve done for me since I came back from the war.”