Montana Wildfire (37 page)

He kept his gaze impassive when Amanda stumbled a few steps before catching her balance. Never, not even to himself, would he admit that he'd tensed imperceptibly, ready to catch her should she fall. Thank God she
didn't.
That meant he didn't have to make any moves toward her, meant he wouldn't have to touch her again. Not yet. That was more than fine by Jake.

"Did s-something happen that I should know about?" Amanda asked, her voice shaky as she leaned weakly against the wall.

The muscle in his jaw jerked furiously. His eyes were shimmering grey slits. "Thought I told you to shut up."

"But—"

"Then do it! Jesus, lady, just once I'd like to see you do what you're told." Jake guessed by the way Amanda shook her head that she was trying to clear it of the sleep he'd just so rudely jarred her from. If she thought his screaming in her face was rude... hell, that was nothing compared to the other ways of waking her that he'd contemplated after going through her saddlebag. It had taken a good hour before he'd trusted himself to touch her and not to hurt her.

Jake spun on his heel and turned his back on her. Over his shoulder he said harshly, "Hurry up. We don't have all night."

Amanda thought better of arguing. Whatever was going on here, she'd know soon enough. Meanwhile, it would be best to do what she was told and do it quickly. Hopefully, by the time she was done dressing his anger would have cooled.

Her hands shook when she dropped the blanket to the floor, then struggled into her clothes. The normally simple chore of working the buttons on her bodice closed proved to be difficult and time-consuming. The laces of her chemise couldn't be salvaged. They dangled down, making the neckline gape open; the severed tips tickled her skin.

Amanda tried not to think about how Jake had sliced them with his knife, but she couldn't
stop
thinking about it. Her cheeks flooded with heat when she thought of how eager his big copper hands had been to get past the linen, as eager as she had been for him to do it. Their joinings had been savage and greedy and wonderful. She'd thought they were equally as wonderful for him.

Again, his reaction surprised her. What surprised Amanda even more was that, for the life of her, she couldn't imagine what had brought about his sudden burst of temper.

Jake's foul mood and burning gaze implied she'd done something very wrong. Something infuriating. Something unforgivable. In the past, he'd always shown her quiet, leashed anger. There was nothing quiet or leashed about the fury he was showing her now. It was wild, untamed, dangerous. Much more frightening than his previous displays of control had ever been.

It was also, to Amanda's mind, totally uncalled for. No matter what had caused Jake's anger, she didn't deserve to be treated this way. Dammit, no woman did!

She smoothed her palm down her skirt and took a second to compose herself. She wanted an explanation, and she would get one, but not by getting angry herself. She knew Jake better now, knew that losing her own tattered control wouldn't get her that information. If anything, it would infuriate him more; and that wasn't something Amanda felt safe doing right now.

"I'm dressed," she said, her gaze straying to Jake. His stance was open-legged and stiff, his spine a rigid line from lean hips to tensely set shoulders. His hands, straddling his hips, were balled into white-knuckled fists. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong?"

"No."

He hunkered down and picked up one of the knives on the floor. Amanda recognized it as one of the knives he kept concealed in the cuff of his moccasin. The weapon, while not small, was dwarfed by his big copper hand. Silently, she watched as, one by one, he retrieved his knives and replaced them in the strategic sheaths hidden by his clothes.

Only once he was done did Jake turn toward her. The naked fury shimmering in his glare made Amanda take a step back. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw a flash of satisfaction momentarily relax his features.

"Get your cloak."

"My—?"

"Cloak." He jerked his chin in the direction of the chair on which her cloak had been draped to dry hours earlier. "Get it, and anything else you brought with you. Then turn around and walk out that door."

Amanda's blood ran cold. Surely she'd heard wrong. "I'm... leaving?
Now?"

"Damn right."

Her face paled. Sometime in the last few minutes she'd stopped shaking. Her tremors now resumed with force. Dear God, was he kicking her out? Abandoning her? She didn't want to know. She
had
to know. "You're not ccoming with me?"

His gaze narrowed. His eyes were sharp with a fury reflected in his biting tone. "Oh, yeah, I'm coming. Or did you forget you hired me to do a job for you? Unfortunately for both of us, I'm a man of my word. I'll see it through. You'll get your cousin back if it kills me, and I'll get..."

"What?" she gulped, not liking at all the ominous way his words had drifted off. "What will you get, Jake?"

"My money. Every last cent of it." He nodded toward the door. "Let's go. The sooner we get that brat back, the sooner I can be rid of you."

Be rid of you... be rid of you...
Amanda tried to ignore the way his words cut into her. She couldn't. They echoed in her mind, slicing deeper into her heart each time.

The last few months had been the hardest of her life. She'd suffered hunger, cold, pain and exhaustion at every turn. Deprivation had become a way of life. Not once during all that time had she broken down and cried. She was proud of that. What she wasn't at all proud of was the way her eyes were stinging with unshed tears now.

Why,
why
did Jake's words hurt so much? Why was the admission he wanted to be rid of her akin to having one of his knives thrust into her chest and viciously turned?

Amanda turned her back so Jake wouldn't see her tears. Snatching up her cloak, she whipped it around her shoulders and tied it sloppily beneath her chin. Then she picked up her saddlebag and hugged it close.

She heard Jake moving behind her, but she didn't turn around to see what he was doing. She couldn't. If she looked at him, if he returned her look with more anger, she would lose what little control she'd manage to retain. Pride forbade her to do that. Pride demanded Jacob Blackhawk Chandler never know how easily he could hurt her.

"Ready?" he asked, his hand poised on the door latch.

Amanda nodded, but didn't move. To do so would have brought her closer to Jake than she could stand to be right now. It was bad enough she could smell his earth-sharp scent mingling with the charred aroma of the fire. Bad enough she could smell that same sensuous scent clinging to her skin and hair. That woodsy aroma, interlaced with her own feminine scent, reminded her of things Jake's fury said they would both do well to forget.

A cold wind blasted through the door when he flung it open. The cloak fluttered around her ankles and the brisk air snuck beneath the hem, caressing her ankles.

Amanda shivered and tugged the hood over her head. She noticed her hair had worked free of its usual plait as she tucked the long strands beneath the hood. She wondered about that, but not too much; she had too many other problems to waste time dwelling on something so trivial. She huddled in the warm, soft woolen folds of the cloak and thought that she'd better enjoy what comfort she could now, because the garment wouldn't provide heat for long. Nor, since the snow had lessened but not stopped, would it stay dry.

Wind kicked the snow over the ground, drifting it against the cabins outer walls. The airy white crystals danced down from the sky. Moonlight glinted off the blanket of whiteness, making the night silvery and bright.

"Well?" Jake asked when Amanda had stepped around him and paused for a moment in the doorway. "What are you waiting for?"

The heat of him invaded her cloak and seeped past the layers of clothes beneath. It was no longer a comfortable feeling, because Amanda could no longer be certain whether the warmth was based in mutual attraction or raw anger. "We should tell Gail and Little Bear we're leaving."

"They'll figure it out."

"No, Jake, I won't leave without telling them goodbye, and thanking them. They've been very good to me."

Amanda tensed when she felt a hot spot near her shoulder. She didn't have to look to know Jake had lifted his hand, that his palm was poised a mere inch from her shoulder. She knew the exact second his hand dropped back to his side; it was the same instant a surge of despair iced through her. God, what had she done that he couldn't even touch her anymore?

"Tell you what, I'll pass the word on for you. Let's go."

She stubbornly refused to move forward. "How? How will you pass the word on, Jake? You aren't speaking to them, remember?"

"Like everything else, you've got that wrong.
They
aren't speaking to
me."

One golden brow arched. Neither Gail nor Little Bear had said what caused the rift between them and Jake. Amanda was too polite to ask, but that didn't mean she wasn't curious. She was. And that worried her. Because suddenly she had a deep, burning desire to know everything there was to know about Jacob Blackhawk Chandler. And she wanted Jake to tell her. "Why?"

"None of your goddamn business. Now, let's go."

"No, Goddammit! Not extending my thanks to them would be rude in the extreme."

This time, Jake's hand did make contact with her shoulder. But not in the way she'd hoped. His fingers bit through the cloak, dug into her flesh. His fingers were trembling.

"Rude? Do you think I care?" His voice was low and edgy, his grip on her shoulder painfully tight. "I told you once, Miss Lennox, that I'm not a very nice person. You should have listened. If you had, we wouldn't be in this mess."

"Miss Lennox," she sneered, giving in to a sudden burst of temper herself. The surge of anger felt good. Much better them the confusion and pain that had preceded it. "You keep calling me that. An hour ago you called me princess."

"Yeah, well, an hour ago I liked you."

"You did more than 'like' me, Jake. You made love to—"

"Move!" he barked, and started to push her forward.

"No." Amanda dropped the saddlebag and dug her feet into the hard dirt floor. Her hands shot out, her fingers curling around the roughly hewn door frame. "I won't leave until I've thanked your sister and Little Bear. I owe them that much."

"I said I'd pass the words on."

"Well, I don't trust you to do it."

His grip on her shoulder flexed, then melted away. Amanda wasn't sure which was worse: Jake Chandler's fingers biting into her, or Jake Chandler not touching her at all.

"That's the real problem, isn't it, Miss Lennox? Trust. Or, in your case, the complete lack of it." His tone dripped sarcasm.

She didn't need to face him to know his glare was stabbing into her back, she
felt
it. A shiver of foreboding scratched its way down her spine. "Wh-what are you saying, Jake?"

"Same thing I've
been
saying for the last five minutes. It's time to leave. Let go of the door, Miss Lennox."

"Not until you tell me why you're mad at me,
Mr. Chandler."

Amanda heard him shift, felt him move into place beside her. His inky head dipped into view when he snatched up her saddlebag and shoved it roughly into her hands.

"You're a smart girl, figure it out," he growled. The second her arms curled around the weather-softened leather, Jake roughly shoved her through the door, and into the snowy night.

The door slammed closed behind them.

"This way. The horses are in what's left of the damn barn." His feet sunk into the four inches of newly fallen snow as he stalked around her and moved to the far corner of the house.

Amanda almost followed him. Why not? There was no point in fighting any longer. He'd proved his will and physical strength were stronger than hers. Only one thing held her back. Her attention had snagged on the upstairs window, and the sight she focused on rooted her feet firmly to the snow-blanketed ground.

Golden light poured through the glass, slicing a distorted rectangle over the ground, silhouetting the figure who stood rigidly framed in the window.

From the size and shape, Amanda knew it was Gail who was silently watching the scene playing out below. She couldn't see the woman's expression, and Amanda thought that was just as well. She remembered too clearly the stricken look on Gail's face the first time Jake's name had been mentioned. It was the same look the woman got every time conversation turned toward her brother.

Amanda turned her head and glanced at Jake.

He was standing exactly where she'd last seen him, only now he was statue-still. Flakes of snow danced around him, melting on contact with his head and shoulders. His sleek black hair was being whipped around his face by the bitter-cold wind.

Though he stood mostly in shadow, Amanda knew exactly where his gaze rested. On the upstairs window. On his sister.

Amanda lifted her skirt and took a few steps toward him, not enough to put them into contact, but enough so she could see his expression. Instantly, she wished she hadn't.

She didn't mean to gasp, she just couldn't help it. Never had she seen such naked torment on a man's face before. She hadn't expected to see it now. Not on Jake.

The skin covering his cheeks was pale and tight, emphasizing the harshly carved bones beneath. The muscle there throbbed. His brow was wrinkled in a brooding scowl, his sooty lashes lowered to hood his gaze in a way that looked almost self-protective.

Amanda didn't realize she was going to reach out and cup his cheek in her palm until she'd already done it. His flesh felt hot and smooth beneath her fingertips. Damp with melted snow. Gentle tremors played in the corded tendons beneath his skin.

Jake's fingers manacled her wrist, thrusting her touch aside. His gaze was still trained on the window. It was now empty; Gail had moved away. Jake closed his eyes and allowed himself one painful second of regret. Then he forced the emotion aside and let his gaze slide slowly over the woman who had, he realized suddenly, just offered him comfort.