But why did he want her? she had to wonder. Did he think that because he had saved her he had a right to her? Had he simply seen her naked as she floated in the water and become aroused? Was this merely an animal instinct that he longed to gratify? Or did he truly love her?
Most important, did the answer really matter?
Yes. It mattered very much.
When Sun Hawk finally dived into the water and surfaced at the opposite end of the pool, desire coursed through Skylar, but instead of swimming toward him, she made her way to the bank and slipped out of the water. She glanced over her shoulder and discovered that he had turned away. If disappointment or hurt was etched on his face, Skylar couldn’t see it.
Quickly she dressed and hurried back to the cave without acknowledging his presence. Keenly aware of every sound below her, she listened as he bathed and scrubbed his clothes. Then the noises stopped, and a few minutes later Sun Hawk climbed up to the cave wearing only his breechclout and car-159
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rying the sacks he had brought. They clattered when he dropped them at her feet, but his eyes never met Skylar’s.
“We have good food now, and other things we need. I will make a fire below so that you can cook.”
“As you wish.”
He left abruptly and Skylar began opening the sacks. In one she found tins of meat and bags of flour, meal, and sugar. In another she found blankets, a cook pot, and several knives and other utensils. The third held sacks of dried beef and boxes of rifle cartridges, a sewing kit and soap, scraps of material, a shirt, and even a long skirt and other articles of clothing.
What he had brought her, supplemented by what they could forage from the mountains, would keep them alive for weeks. But at what cost?
Her heart tripping with dread, she hurried down the rocky bluff to where Sun Hawk was carefully creating a fire that would make hardly any smoke at all.
He knew she was there, but he didn’t look at her, even when she quietly asked, “Where did the provisions come from?”
“A small ranch many miles to the west.”
Skylar knelt beside him, terrified of hearing the answer to her next question. “You didn’t—” She hesitated, and finally he looked at her with cold, lifeless eyes.
“I did not kill to get the food, if that is what you want to know. It was not necessary.”
Skylar’s relief was overshadowed by the knowledge that her doubts had hurt him. “I’m sorry. It is only that I don’t want anyone else killed because of me,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm, but her jerked away from her.
“I will do what I have to do to keep you alive,” he said harshly.
“But I would rather die than know I had caused the death of another innocent person.”
He continued laying wood for the fire. “You think the soldier I killed was innocent,” he said flatly.
“In a way, he was,” she replied. “But I know that if you had not silenced him, I would be dead now.”
“Then what I did was right.”
Skylar didn’t know how to debate the moral implications, and she didn’t want to. It had been done, and there was no way to turn back time. “What you did saved my life, and I am grateful.”
“It is not your gratitude I want,” he snapped.
“Then what do you want?” When he remained silent, a vision of him as he had stood naked at the pool flashed into Skylar’s mind. “You have given up everything for me, but I do not understand why. You made it clear long ago that I am not fit to be the woman of an Apache warrior.”
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Sun Hawk paused in his work. “That is true.”
Skylar swallowed hard and summoned all her courage. “Then why did you come to me at the pool?”
He looked at her then, and the veil of coldness fell away from his eyes. The tender expression that remained told Skylar everything she needed to know.
She reached out and gently touched his face. “If you had ever spoken of love, I might understand better why you risked so much for me,” she said gently.
“Do you need me to speak of it?” he asked hoarsely, moved by her touch and the soft lights in her eyes.
Skylar nodded. “Yes. I do.”
Abruptly Sun Hawk pulled away and stood. Irritation replaced tenderness in his eyes. “My wife has been dead a long time, but I did not imagine that when it came time to select another one, my heart would choose someone like you.”
Skylar wondered if that was as close to an avowal of love as she would ever get from him. He loved her, but clearly he didn’t want to. “Are you asking me to be your wife?”
He drew his shoulders back proudly. She had humiliated him once with her rejection at the pool. He didn’t want to give her the chance to do it again by speaking foolish lovers’ words to her. “We have both killed white soldiers,”
he said flatly. “Neither of us can go back to our people and live as before. It makes sense that we should live together because we have no one else now.”
He was offering her a marriage of convenience? The very idea was ludicrous, since nothing about their situation was even remotely convenient.
Obviously he had not considered the possibility that her white family might be able to clear her of the charges, but there was no reason why he should give the possibility any credence. His treatment at the hands of white men had been vastly different from hers.
Would he take her to Rancho Verde if she asked him to?
Possibly. But Skylar couldn’t bring herself to ask it. Instead, she told him,
“I will think on what you have said because you have saved my life and taken care of me.”
“As I told you, I do not want your gratitude,” Sun Hawk said angrily. “Do not come to me as a wife because you owe me a debt.”
“Then do not come to me as a husband because it is a practical thing to do,” she flung back. “If you want someone to cook for you and see to your needs, you have only to ask and I will care for you as a sister would care for a brother.”
“I do not want a sister, I want a wife!”
“And I am the only woman available? That is not enough for me, Sun Hawk.” Skylar came to her feet and placed one fist against her breast. “What I 161
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feel in my heart for you is more powerful than anything I have ever known, but I will not be your wife unless I know your heart feels the same.”
Torn between salvaging his pride and the joy her confession brought him, he studied her angry face. “Why do you think I saved your life?” he asked, gentling his voice.
“I have asked you before to tell me, and you would not.”
“If your heart is as strong as you say, it should tell you the reason.”
Skylar did know. She had known it, most likely, from the moment he had given her the knife almost a week ago. “I need to hear the words from you.”
He hesitated a moment. “I love you. Why else would I give up everything to keep from losing you?” he asked quietly.
There. He had said it and there was no turning back. Skylar felt no elation, no flush of longing, only a strange sense of inevitability. All she was certain of was her own love for him and his for her. She had to stay with him now, to go where he went, give up her dreams of being reunited with her family, and spend whatever was left of her life as his wife.
“Very well.” She nodded slowly and turned away.