“They accepted you that young?”
Chase grinned. “This was in ‘64, Jessie. They were taking anybody then.”
“Of course,” she gasped. “The War between the States. You joined the North?”
He nodded. “I signed up for the duration, a green kid learning the hard way how to be a man. I took off for California after that.”
“Why California?”
“That’s where my mother met my father.”
“So you went there to find him?”
He nodded. “But I didn’t find him. The Silvela ranch was sold when the gold rush started. So many years had passed, there was no one to tell me where the Silvelas had gone, but I figured they went back to Spain.”
“Your father was a rancher?”
“It was his uncle’s ranch, according to my mother.”
“A Spaniard,” she commented thoughtfully. “You must take after him.”
“I guess so.” Chase smiled lazily. “My mother was a redhead with bright green eyes.”
“But I gathered she was from New York. What was she doing in California?”
“The way she told it, her mother had just died. It was only her and her father, and he lived more at sea than at home. He was captain of a tallow ship that made regular runs from the California coast to the East. It was the first time she had ever gone with him, and the Silvelas were one of the rancher families her father dealt with. Apparently Carlos Silvela, young and handsome, swept her off her feet. He did not promise marriage, though.
“She realized she was pregnant before her father sailed back East, and she told her father. He insisted on marriage, and I’ve heard several versions of what happened then. One was that my mother begged Carlos Silvela to marry her, but he wouldn’t. Another was that the uncle, the head of the clan, refused to give his consent, humiliating my mother by saying an americana was not good enough for his nephew. Then there was my mother’s drunken version, where she swore Carlos loved her and would have married her if he had known.”
“Don’t you know which is true?”
“No. But I’ll find out someday.”
“You’ll have to go to Spain to do that. Why haven’t you gone?”
Chase shrugged. “It seemed hopeless. I didn’t know where to start. Spain’s a big country. Also, I don’t speak the language.”
“Spanish isn’t difficult to learn,” she scoffed.
“I suppose you speak it?”
“Well... yes,” she admitted.
Spanish happened to be the only language John Anderson knew besides English, and Jessie had been eager for him to teach her everything he was capable of teaching. But she wasn’t going to explain that to Chase.
“Why didn’t you learn it, if it would help you find your father?” she pressed.
“I was too disappointed and angry in not finding my father where I thought he’d be. It had taken me a hell of a long time just to get to California. Then to find I had made the trip for nothing ...”
“So you just gave up?”
“I was twenty and restless, Jessie. I didn’t have the money to get to Spain, anyway.”
“That’s when you got a job dealing cards in San Francisco?” she concluded.
“Yes. I drifted back East after that. Thought I’d see a bit more of this country,” he explained. “I tried life on the Mississippi for a couple of years, but one too many boiler explosions and collisions made the river steamers unappealing. A big game down in Texas drew me there, and then I drifted to Kansas. They have some fancy saloons in the cow towns there, if you don’t mind the wild goings-on at the end of every trail drive.”
“You’re a gambler!” Jessie realized finally. “My God! Of all the shiftless, lazy things!”
Chase chuckled at her contempt. “It’s a living. I can take it or leave it. It’s made traveling easy. I just happen to have uncommon luck at cards. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of it?”
She calmed down a little. “Can you really make a living at gambling?”
“Enough to live quite comfortably in the good hotels,” he admitted.
“But what kind of a life is that?”
That hit a sore spot. “Let’s just say, a life with no ties. Now it’s my turn to ask a few questions, don’t you think?”
Jessie shrugged, reaching for the last biscuit. “What do you want to know?”
“You said you’ve only been happy with your Indian friends. Why is that?”
“They let me be myself.”
“I saw you looking and acting like one of them. You call that being yourself?”
“I looked like a girl, didn’t I?” Jessie threw back at him.
“You looked like an Indian.”
“But a girl,” she persisted.
“Yes, of course, but what has that—”
“It’s the only place I can be a girl—what I am. My father never let me, you see. He burned all the clothes I came here with and never let me buy a dress. Dresses weren’t appropriate for the things I had to learn to do. Nothing could remind him I was a girl.”
Chase hissed. “I thought you dressed like that by choice.”
“Hardly.”
“But your father’s dead now.”
“Yes,” Jessie replied without thinking. “But my mother is here.”
“But she doesn’t approve of the way you dress and act. You must know that.” And then he whistled softly. “Yes, of course you know it. I see.”
“It’s none of your business,” Jessie snapped.
“Anytime I hit a touchy subject, it’s none of my business.” He sighed. “I’m not judging you, Jessie. I don’t care how you dress. You looked mighty pretty, though, in that Indian dress,” he said nicely, trying to cool her temper.
But Jessie wasn’t having any of it. She got up, her eyes flaring. “I cooked, now you can clean up. I’ll be back.”
He sat up straight. “Where are you going?”
“Out back to wash.”
But before she could leave, he was up and facing her. “What did you tell Little Hawk about marrying him? You did give him an answer, didn’t you?”
“If you must know, I refused him. I won’t share the man I settle for. Little Hawk already has a wife.”
Chase let that sink in. “And if he didn’t?”
“I probably would have agreed.”
She went outside, and Chase stared at the closed door for a long time.
Sometime later, Jessie came in shaking her wet hair. It was loose and as black and glossy as sable. Without a glance in his direction, she walked to her saddlebags on the foot of her cot, got a brush, and sat down cross-legged on the shaggy fur by the fire.
Chase watched her as she began running the brush through her hair, but then he turned away, feeling edgy. He moved to his own cot, only a few feet from hers. He stared at the narrow thing, looked at hers, and realized it would be easy to push the two together. The thought made him edgier.
“Thanks for cleaning up the mess,” she said suddenly.
“Thanks for making dinner,” he returned.
They fell silent. She turned back to face the fire, giving him her profile. Chase couldn’t take his eyes off her. Absently, he began to unbutton his shirt. She was raising her hair to the heat, shaking it, swaying it, then brushing it. He became mesmerized by that floating black hair. It was so shiny, reflecting the fire. And when she leaned back, tilting her head back to shake her hair, the smooth contour of her throat enraptured him.
Chase didn’t know what he intended when he got up and started toward Jessie. He knelt behind her and gathered her hair in his hands, pressing his lips to the side of her neck. She tried to pull away from him, and he came to his senses and let her go.
Jessie scrambled to her knees to face him. “What—?”
“I want to make love to you.”
His eyes were smoldering as they caressed her face, her neck, her hair. All she could think of was that other night when he’d looked at her the same way. Funny, but that was all she could think of. Jessie moved toward him and let him gather her into his arms. One hand entwined in her hair, the other held her lower back, pressing her close to him. His mouth captured hers in a kiss that inflamed her, and it went on and on until she lost all sensation but that. His lips moved to her neck, and she groaned with the tingling they caused. He lowered her to the rug, and she tried to pull him down on top of her, but he held back, shrugging out of his shirt first. She devoured him with her eyes, watching the hard muscles that played under his skin, such darkly tanned skin. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, over those muscles that fascinated her so, down those strong arms.