Montana Wildfire (23 page)

It was an honest question. For once, Amanda gave him an honest answer. Glancing over her shoulder, she met Jake's gaze. Even though he was standing mostly in shadow, his eyes were hot and probing, savagely bright. "My father taught me to play games fairly, Mr. Chandler. He didn't believe in cut-throat anything. It's an opinion we shared."

"Strange man, your daddy. I'd like to meet him someday."

"Yes, well..." Amanda glanced away, not wanting him to see the pain in her eyes, not wanting to have to explain it. If Jake asked, she'd be forced to lie to him again, and for some insane reason she didn't want to do that.

When he didn't comment, she walked toward the trees, as glad for the distance separating herself from the confusion that was Jacob Blackhawk Chandler as she was for the privacy itself.

Getting out of the corset was simple compared to putting the painful contraption on. She returned to the clearing in no time.

Jake was gone, as was the pile of his clothes she had won.

The knife sank into the tree trunk with a satisfying
thunk.

Jake watched the hilt waver from the force of the collision. Moonlight caught on what little of the blade wasn't buried in bark. Silently, he retrieved the knife. Gritty bark clung to the long, deadly blade, he wiped it off on his pants leg, but then instead of sheathing it, stared at the bright metal.

The way the light reflected off the steel reminded him of Amanda Lennox's hair. The razorsharp edge, honed to kill, reminded him of her way with words, of how deeply they sliced.

Yes, well...

Jake shoved the hankie he was fisting in his left hand into his pocket. He couldn't stand the feel of it right now.

Yes, well...

He'd asked to meet her father. He'd been rejected. Stupid.
Stupid!
What had he been thinking of? Decent little white girls didn't bring savages like him home to meet Daddy. Hell, decent little white girls shouldn't know any half-breeds
to
bring home.

But Amanda Lennox did. She knew Jake. And she sure as hell wasn't going to bring him home to meet her father. She'd made that clear. And... Jesus, it hurt.

Jake was not pleased. He'd thought himself past the stage where he handed his feelings to white people on a platter, all but begging them to carve his insides to pieces. He shook his head, his hand straying to the scar on his neck, rubbing the puckered flesh, pinching it. He thought of the one white person—white
"lady"—
who'd done exactly that. She'd carved him good. In the process, Cynthia had taught him that all important last lesson he needed so desperately to learn.

Cynthia. Dammit, he had to remember her, remember what she'd done, remember his own past mistakes and misjudgments. He had to cling to them. Only in that way would he be able to get through the next few days with Amanda Lennox. Only in that way would he be able to keep his hands to himself, and keep what was left of his soul intact.

He'd do it. If it killed him, he'd get through it.

Jake gritted his teeth, stepped back, lifted the knife and threw. The blade landed in exactly the same spot; the fit was so perfect there wasn't enough pressure to keep the blade buried in the tree trunk. It quivered, then tumbled to the ground.

If it kills me,
he thought as he went to find his knife, had been a poor choice of words. Because he thought it just
might
kill him to be so close to a woman like Amanda Lennox day after day. To sleep near her, night after night and not touch her... not kiss her... not have her writhing beneath him in the raw, primitive way he hungered for her.

Yup, it was going to kill him, all right. And it was going to be a slow, agonizing death of the spirit, not the quick death of the body. But he
would
do it. Because he couldn't have her. Not
her.
Not
him.
Because he needed the money. And lastly, because he'd made the woman a promise.

Yancey Chandler had raised no slouch. When his bastard son made a promise, he kept it... providing that promise was made to someone else. It was the promises Jake made to himself that he had trouble keeping. And none so much as the one concerning Amanda Lennox, the one about not putting his hands on her.

She was tempting. Damn tempting. He wanted her in his bed badly. The itching in the fingers he curled tightly around the knife hilt told him right off that this wasn't going to be an easy promise to keep. That was a problem. A big one. It was Jake's job to see it didn't become an insurmountable one. The only way to do that was for him to remind himself often of who Amanda Lennox was. What she was. What
he
was.

He could never, not for a second, forget the rules of the game. Because this time the stakes were too high.

Jake was right.

The corset had been taxing Amanda's stamina more than she cared to admit. While her blouse felt a little snug, at least without the corset she could breathe. Riding took on a whole new meaning. Her ribs no longer ached, and no longer did she become short of breathe or have to slow the pace because her sides hurt so badly. It felt heavenly to not have her middle bound up by those stiff, whalebone stays. She felt free, liberated, and depressed.

Her despondency had nothing to do with her newfound ability to breath unencumbered. No, this feeling centered entirely on Jake Chandler.

Three days had slipped slowly past since the night of their poker game. They were the worst three days of Amanda's life. Being cast aside by her father, being shipped East to school, even the tediously regimented days at Miss Henry's... all of it paled in comparison to spending countless hours—days...
nights!—
in Jake Chandler's silent, brooding company.

Yesterday, Amanda had reached the conclusion that the man could not be called moody. Oh, no, when Jacob Blackhawk Chandler got in a bad mood, he stayed there. Indefinitely. The only way his mood went was down. His temperament had darkened by the day, and he always seemed grumpier at night. Like gathering storm clouds, the past seventy-two hours had seen the man's disposition go from murky gray to pitch black. And there wasn't a ray of sunshine in sight.

Amanda sighed and brushed back the bangs that wisped over her brow. The mare plodded through the shadowy woods, instinctively following the white.

Her gaze lifted and fixed on Jake's rigid back. He was wearing the grayish-blue shirt she'd first seen him in. The cloth was slightly wrinkled from having been balled up in his saddlebag, but most of the creases had been ironed out by the heat of his body. The cottony fabric was damp with sweat; odd, she thought, since the day was chilly. The material clung to his shoulders, back, and arms, outlining and defining the bands of muscle rippling beneath.

Jake turned his head to the side, his steely gaze inspecting the area. His hair was secured at his nape with a frayed leather thong. A few black strands on both sides weren't quite long enough to be tied back out of the way; they fell forward, framing his prominent cheekbones, softening the hard line of his jaw as much as it could be softened. There was nothing soft about the muscle throbbing in his cheek, or the brooding slash of his brows.

Amanda recognized his expression instantly; she'd seen it enough these last few days to be familiar with it. He was...
annoyed
again. She wondered if losing Roger's trail for the third time in as many days was the sole cause of his frustration. Probably not. She knew it wasn't the sole cause for
hers.

She sent Jake a speculative look when he slowed the white and began scanning the forest floor. "Anything?" she called out.

"No," he snapped. Not sparing her a glance, he tightened his knees around the horse's sides, clicked his tongue, and sent them plunging deeper into the woods.

Amanda gritted her teeth and followed. She supposed it had been a foolish hope on her part that his disposition had improved from yesterday's brisk sourness... and the day before... and the day before
that.
She should have known better.

Silence stretched taut between them as they picked their way through the woods. It took Amanda a full hour to realize they weren't going to stop for lunch. Finally, she pulled a strip of jerky from her saddle bag and gnawed on the chewy, salty meat. Oh, how she longed for a few precious seconds to sit on something other than a saddle that felt like it had been molded of iron... something that didn't sway and jostle her... something cushiony. Even the cold, lumpy ground would do—if Jake would only stop!

Amanda knew she should be used to the grueling pace he set. She wasn't. Her routine at the end of each punishing day varied only slightly. First, she would clamber awkwardly from the saddle, her muscles sore, her body stiff and aching. Some nights she was too tired to do more than gulp down a quick meal, then fall instantly asleep. Most times she skipped the meal. Baths in icy mountain-fed lakes or rivers were confined to the early hours of the morning, when her energy was at a premium.

Jake, on the other hand, appeared not to suffer at all from the endless hours of riding. If he was sore, if his back ached from so much time spent straddling a horse, he didn't show it. If he was tired from scouting the woods well into the night, long after Amanda had fallen asleep, he didn't show that either.

Each night Amanda had studied him critically in the firelight. Her reaction was always the same. Disgust—with herself, with him. She'd yet to see him look as bone-weary as she always felt. Just the opposite; the expended energy brought a healthy flush to his coppery cheeks. The daily exertion seemed to already be filling out muscle tone that, in her jaded opinion, couldn't stand much more improvement. It was frustrating that he could look so good, while she felt like a wrung-out dishcloth.

What had started off as a cool but sunny autumn day soon turned sour. Shortly after noon clouds began rolling across the sky. The dimming light made finding Roger's trail almost impossible.
Almost,
because Jake
did
somehow manage to locate the prints. Amanda was beginning to think he was a better tracker than he'd let on, and that only confirmed her belief that she'd picked the best man to help her locate Roger.

Roger.

Amanda shivered and hugged the cloak she'd tossed over her shoulders. It didn't help. While the thick black wool kept some of the cold afternoon air at bay, it did nothing to soothe the chill inside of her. What, she wondered, was happening with Roger?

Though she'd been struggling to keep her fears to herself—what good would sharing them with Jake do?—they still ate at her. And now that Jake was no longer talking to her, Amanda found herself with endless hours to think, to dwell on the situation, to worry. What had the kidnapper done to Roger so far? What horrible things would he do to the boy in the future? How was Roger faring? Was he cold? Frightened? Did he think she'd abandoned him? Better yet...
who had taken him and why?

Her mind whirled, yet she came up with no concrete answers.

Ignoring Amanda Lennox as best he could, Jake followed the tracks. He pushed onward even when the storm clouds began to look ominous. It wasn't until a rumble of thunder echoed in the distance that he grudgingly slowed the pace. Though the storm was brewing a good distance off, it
was
coming. He could no longer hope it would blow past them.

The breeze picked up in the late afternoon. The thunderclaps started coming closer together, louder, reverberating over the densely wooded mountains, making the ground tremble.

Sighing with aggravation, Jake reined in the white.

Instinctively, Amanda knew Jake was stopping because of her. A quick glance confirmed the suspicion. His rigid seat said that, had he been alone, he would have continued, impending rain be damned. His uncompromising posture bespoke an aversion to all things weak and feminine—especially those hailing from Boston.

Amanda's jaw ached and her temples pounded from gritting her teeth throughout the day. It was the only way she knew to contain her anger. What was the man's problem now? she wondered crossly. Did he think she would melt if a little rain splattered on her? That she'd drown in tears from a good dousing? Not likely! She was made of stronger stuff than that—at least she
hoped
she was. And
that,
Amanda decided hotly, was a lesson about her that Jake Chandler sorely needed to learn. The sooner the better.

She maneuvered the mare up close to the white. The horses had long since grown used to the smell of each other; neither shied from the enforced proximity, nor did they give the other more than a curious glance, "Why are we stopping?" she demanded.

He shrugged. It was a tense, frustrated gesture. "In case you haven't noticed, princess, it's going to rain."

"Hard as this may be for you to believe, storm clouds and that distinct, acidy aroma are indigenous to all parts of the country before a storm. And thunder sounds the same no matter where you are." Her fingers tightened on the reins, and her chin tipped up a haughty notch. Amanda thought it a pity Jake didn't glance her way and therefore missed her subtle show of defiance. "I know it's going to rain, Mr. Chandler. What I
don't
know, but what I'd like for you to explain to me, is why we are stopping."