Apache Fire by Raine Cantrell Page B

him.
    â€œCome quickly, Niko. It is dangerous for you to come here.”
    â€œDo you share your fire with another?”
    She repeated the words to herself, and shook her head when she understood his meaning. “There is no one here with me. Please, come inside.”
    He was as she remembered, overwhelmingly male, filling her small house with his presence. Gone was the nut brown shirt. He wore the faded gray of rain clouds, tucked into buckskins.
    She closed the door and bolted it, then turned to lean against the solid wood, seeing her home through his eyes as he stood and looked around.
    Angie felt pride in the trades she had made with her carpetbags and some clothing. It was all she had had left. Her wedding ring and two pairs of earrings had been long gone before she arrived in the territory.
    Her needs were few, her wants simple. She cataloged her possessions as he moved to touch them. A pan to heat water, a coffeepot, the frying pan. He picked up the fork and turned it over and over, as he did with the knife and spoon. His finger grazed her single plate and the handle of her cup. They were the sum of her kitchen supplies.
    Her gaze followed his to the two windows, bare of curtains, of any covering. On the floor by the small pot-bellied stove was the rag rug she had started fashioning from clothes beyond repair. The shelving she had made was crude boards salvaged from one of the shacks, separated by rocks she had hunted for their flat sides.
    She caught a faint smile on his lips as he reached out to touch the two baskets. They had been a gift from Mary Ten Horses. The bucket had been left behind when the agency was moved—another of her finds, which allowed her to draw water.
    But he stared the longest at the blanket covering the thick pile of sweet grass that made her bed.
    Niko turned to her then, and she bore his darkeyed study with as much calm as she could muster. A most difficult task, she discovered. Her knees felt as if they would give way if she moved, her heart seemed to triple its beat, and the heat of his gaze sent an answering warmth to chase the dreary chill of the night away.
    She still wore white woman’s shoes, but her skirt fell against the flare of womanly hips. There was no longer the scent of the stiffened layers of clothing that had covered her the first night. She wore no cloth belt, her shirt hung outside the skirt like the Chiricahua women.
    â€œYour hair is as straight as my own.”
    â€œI no longer have the pins to keep it in place. That’s what made it curl, Niko.”
    â€œYou are changed. There is peace within you.”
    â€œIs that why you’ve come? To see—”
    â€œI have come to know why you live here.”
    Without a tinge of the self-pity she had felt those first few weeks, Angie told him what had happened.
    â€œTo be cast out is a grave matter, iszáń ,” he said when she was done. “There is no one to care for you.”
    She stared at the small scar above his eye, the only visible sign she found of his beating. When he rephrased his last words into a question, she stopped musing and answered him.
    â€œI care for myself, Niko. I am learning how, and liking it a great deal.”
    â€œThen you have chosen to walk your path alone?”
    â€œI’ve not been given a choice. And I’ve been rude to you. Please, sit upon my blanket, I’ll make us tea. Mary has shown me how to collect the right herbs and grasses, and I even have some yucca buds dried for sweetening.”
    He sat, because she wished it. The scent of her rose from the sweet grass and the blanket, clouding his senses when he needed them clear. There was much he had to say to her, much more he wished to show her, but that would have to wait. She was eager to show off her new skills, and share with him this home she had made. He could not steal her pleasure in this.
    â€œMary promised to take me with the women to the mountains when they collect the