But then, that was a moot issue. If Lance were white, he wouldn’t be the man he was now, and she wouldn’t need him to rescue her sister. Indeed, if Lance were white, there would be little question of his acceptance. He would probably have women fawning all over him. The ladies who shunned him now would be the first to flirt with him and seek his attention. He might not be a gentleman, but there was something primal and intently masculine about him, an attraction that drew a woman against her will, that led her to imagine dark, forbidden fantasies. Fantasies that entailed Lance making love to her, hungering for her, looking at her with the hot gleam of desire and arousal in his midnight eyes. Fantasies where she held him to her breast and tamed the savage within, softened the hard, unforgiving man he had become.
She certainly wasn’t immune to such feelings—despite Lance’s Comanche heritage, despite his dishonorable demands that had forced her hand, despite her determination to forget what had happened between them in their marriage bed. Indeed, that night had only served to heighten the physical attraction between them.
Lance had initiated her to sexual intimacy. She had experienced passion at his hands…rough, tender, incredibly arousing…She couldn’t possibly ever forget that.
Summer told herself it was loneliness, not desire, that caused her to seek him out the third morning of their journey. Loneliness and nerves. Even more than she wanted to share his familiar company, she wanted the reassurance that his steadying presence gave her. The blond woman had disembarked yesterday afternoon with her husband, leaving her alone inside the coach with only the male passengers. One man’s stare—the brown-haired Mr. Yarby’s—had grown bolder, more brazen, to the point of making her acutely uncomfortable.
It was barely daybreak when she left the station building and went in search of Lance. Her muscles ached from the hours of sleeping on the hard floor and the longer hours of being cramped in the coach, so it was a relief to be able to stretch her legs.
She found him in the stone corral, checking the soundness of one of the stage horses, while Pete and Shep rigged the others. For a moment she watched Lance…watched his lean hand moving carefully down the animal’s left foreleg. She stood mesmerized by the sight, remembering the feel of those same long fingers stroking, probing, her body…remembering the heat of his bare skin beneath her own clutching fingers…his naked torso that was so different from her own…the hard sculpted muscles, the broad, deep chest, the taut, flat belly…
He must have sensed her presence, for he glanced sharply over his shoulder to find her watching him. Summer was grateful for the morning air, cool and crisp, that wafted over her heated cheeks.
“I thought that was the drivers’ job, to handle the horses,” she murmured conversationally.
Lance’s jaw hardened at what he took to be a criticism. “I don’t like to be idle. And I don’t want one of the team pulling up lame before we reach Fort Belknap. We can’t afford the delay.”
He heard her push open the picket gate and step inside the corral, felt her move to stand behind him. His muscles tensed with awareness as they always did when she was around, all his senses becoming acutely alert.
“When you finish with that, would you mind…would you tie my bonnet strings? I have no mirror.”
Lance frowned, wondering what game Summer was playing now, even as a sharp memory from five years ago assailed him: a laughing Summer rigged out in Sunday finery before a buggy drive, gazing teasingly up at one of her countless beaux as he adjusted the bow under her chin. A flirtatious, beautiful Summer casting sideways glances beneath long eyelashes to see if the breed was watching, smiling when she realized he was. Her suitor’s name was Albert. Lance had hated that prissy name with a passion ever since.
Clenching his teeth as he finished with his inspection, he gave the bay’s shoulder a final pat and turned to his wife. His hard look was skeptical, but he grasped the ribbons of the low-crowned velvet bonnet she’d placed on her head and tried to tie them.
To his disgust, he found his fingers unsteady. Her upturned face, kissed by the rays of the breaking sun, looked as beautiful as he’d ever seen it, the pale skin flushed rose and gold, her green eyes soft and uncertain.
“There,” he said gruffly, straightening the bow and stepping back.
Summer regretted that he had finished the task so soon. With Lance so close, she’d fought the need to turn her face in to the cradle of his palm. Yet such a public display of intimacy, of need, of weakness, would do her reputation with the other passengers no good, nor did she think Lance would appreciate it.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
When she didn’t leave, Lance eyed her impatiently. “You want anything else from me?”
She smiled faintly, almost wistfully. “Well…yes…actually there is something.”
Without warning he felt hot desire pulsing to life within him, unwelcome but undeniable. That flush of heat, that pure raw wanting, was powerful enough to make him catch his breath.
Lance cursed himself. He’d done his damnedest to control his powerful need for her. For the past two endless day he’d kept his hands off Summer, leaving her alone even though it had near killed him.
Yet all she had to do was smile
at him now and he swelled up like a randy stallion. All she had to do was look at him with those pleading green eyes and he was ready to do nigh anything she asked.
“Would you ride inside the coach with me today? I’d prefer your company to the others’.”
He didn’t want to deny her anything—except that. Slowly Lance shook his head. “That’d be a mistake. I’m not exactly welcome in white society, or hadn’t you noticed?”
He saw her mouth tighten briefly. “So? Those people have no right to object to your riding inside. You’ve paid your money just like everyone else.”
He heard the edge of anger in her voice and wondered if Summer was incensed for his sake or her own. Probably her own. She’d never before had to deal with rejection from her own kind, the kind of rejection she’d been faced with the past two days from the other passengers.
“In any case,” she added, “our drivers would take your side, I’m sure of it.”
Remembering Shep’s response when the blond witch had tried to keep him off the stage the other day, Lance looked away restlessly. He didn’t need anybody sticking up for him, but he wasn’t sorry Shep and Petey had. His brief career driving the Butterfield Mail cross-country, over thousands of miles of hostile territory, had earned their respect, and he was proud to have something he didn’t have to be ashamed of in front of Summer. But he also knew what a liability he was for her with the other passengers.
“I wasn’t just thinking of me,” he said finally, in a low voice, “but you. It’ll only be harder on you if they see you with me. It’s best I keep away.”