Tracker's Sin. Sarah McCarty

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      “And you’ve asked?”

      “Yes.”

      “Are you sure you got the right answers?”

      No. “Yes.” She motioned with her hand, hurrying him along. “I thought you were going to get a drink?”

      “I thought you were trying to seduce me.”

      She blinked, the last of the darkness fleeing before the outrageousness of the statement. All she had to defend herself with was a bluff. She wasn’t a confident woman. She didn’t think she ever had been, but she wanted to be, and with the birth of her son, she’d decided she would be. Vincente and Josefina were wonderful, but they were old and they had lives of their own to live. She’d heard them talking at night about wanting to move back to Mexico and live with Josefina’s sister and her family. They just couldn’t take her with them. She was too white to be safe, and they were too old to protect her. They’d saved her life, and never made her think they begrudged her, but she was their son’s responsibility, not theirs. She had to learn to make her own way and find a place where she and her own son would be safe.

      “Was I?” she asked.

      “Might have been my mistake.”

      No, the mistake had been all hers. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually so…” She waved her hand. “It’s just been so long.”

      “Since you’ve been with a man?”

      She blinked at the bluntness. She hadn’t even thought of that. “No.” She looked at him and answered with dawning comprehension, “I think it’s just been a long time since I felt alive.”

      “Son of a bitch.” He walked his horse forward the two steps it took to tower over her. “Screwing me won’t keep you alive. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re white and I’m Indian.”

      He was doing it on purpose, trying to intimidate her. Using crudity to push her away. Was this the real man? Did it even matter? He was right: she was a mother. She was right: she was crazy. Whatever she did to feel alive, it couldn’t involve using this man. He wore the pain of his life on his person and in his eyes. It wasn’t her place to add to it.

      “I’m sorry,” Ari said, hearing Josefina call to her from the house. “Miguel is awake. I have to go.”

      Tracker backed up the horse. “So do I.”

      Her stomach dropped to her toes. Was he leaving? Panic must have shown in her face because he swore and the horse shifted.

      “Don’t worry. I’ll be back. I haven’t forgotten what I promised.”

      She felt guilty at the relief that flooded her. Helping her meant putting his life on the line. It was wrong to ask someone to do that, but she had no choice. She needed him. Without him she had no way to protect those she loved. And to save those she loved, she needed this man to risk his life. It wasn’t right. It just wasn’t. She pushed back the curl that fell over her eye. With an annoying stubbornness, it bounced back. She inhaled a breath.

      Tracker’s anger struck her like a blow.

      She took a step forward. His hands tightened on the reins. If he turned away now he’d never know how she felt, because she’d never get the courage to say it and he would always think her a coward. Formless memories howled behind the wall as she took that step. He scared her and he drew her.

      But she owed him. That was all that mattered.

      The horse tossed his head as she placed her hand on his rider’s thigh. Tracker controlled the nervous prancing with tension on the reins and the pressure of his knees. Muscle flexed against her palm. He was a very strong man with a reputation that made the worst outlaws cower. They said he was lethal with a knife, deadly with a gun and brutal with his fists. But looking up at him, all she saw was a man with the same haunted look in his eyes that she saw when she looked in the mirror. She wore a calm facade to hide her turmoil. He wore anger. But beneath both facades was pain. Common ground.

      “I’m not afraid of you.”

      He snorted and backed the horse up. “Who are you trying to convince, me or yourself?”

      She closed her fingers around the lingering warmth from his skin. Both. She couldn’t meet his gaze. “I’m not afraid of you.”

      He gave a curse she couldn’t understand, then muttered, “I’m going to get that drink.”

      She didn’t have anything to say to stop him. Ari watched as Tracker walked the horse out of the barn, ducking his head to avoid hitting the lintel. Not for the first time, she missed the freedom to vent her frustrations that men had. Since her husband’s death she’d often wanted to pound on something or someone. And failing that, drink away the pain of memory she couldn’t recall.

      Josefina called again. Before she left the barn, Ari grabbed Tracker’s untouched plate of food. Because of her, he was going hungry. Why did life have to be so complicated?

      When she got to the yard, she could just make out rider and horse in the distance. Blowing errant curls off her forehead, she sighed and muttered, “Have one for me, too.”

      Miguel was his normal cheery self. After tying his nappy, Ari blew on his plump little belly before tugging his shirt down. His toothless smile and happy giggle were as familiar as the routine. If it hadn’t been for him in those bleak months following her husband’s death she wasn’t sure she would’ve survived. Until his birth, her nights had been plagued by nightmares and her days with the struggle to remember.

      But the day Miguel was born, she found an anchor for all the emotion inside, a reason to live that had nothing to do with needing to remember. Miguel was her future. She followed it. Josefina had been worried about her getting up to nurse the baby. She’d felt that maybe it would be too much for Ari to handle, and had suggested they put him on a bottle. But Miguel’s frequent need to feed had been a blessing, breaking the pattern of nightmares and allowing Ari to start a new, healthier pattern.

      She touched Miguel’s button nose now and smiled into his deep brown eyes. She loved him so much. He gave her so much. She slid her hand down his cheek, marveling at the perfection of his much darker skin, searching as she always did for some familiarity in his features, checking the shape of his eyes, the sound of his laughter for some reminder of the man she had married. As always, there was nothing.

      She picked him up, not finding her usual peace in his presence. “Your daddy would’ve loved you very much, cutie pie.”

      “Sí, he would have been a very proud father.”

      Settling Miguel against her shoulder, Ari turned to Josefina. “I wish I could remember him. It would be good to be able to tell Miguel something of his father.”

      The woman smiled. “Vincente and I will tell him what he needs to know.”

      There was that possessiveness in Josefina’s voice again that had been showing up more and more of late. Combined with the wording that eliminated Ari’s importance, it made her uneasy.

      Josefina held out her hands. “I will take the little one.”

      Ari turned away, not missing СКАЧАТЬ