Bind Me Close: 3 (Knights in Black Leather) (13 page)

Each woman seized one of her hands. “A night you will
remember for a long time.”

Willow shrank back. “If we’re out for a ladies’ night, okay,
I do male strip clubs.”

“Better than that,” Cara said.

“Okay…I’ve gone to gay dance parties. Even an
exhibitionists’ gala.”

“And did you like that?” Sam asked.

“I did. Wished I was one of the those doing the exhibition.”

“Well, you’re in good company,” Cara said with a twinkle in
her eye. “We’re taking you to a local club. Private. Exclusive. Intimate.”

Willow thrilled to the lure, her mind instantly going to
Wade and her private exhibition for him. “How intimate?”

“Very. Where those who go play together as they wish by
mutual consent.”

“And if I don’t want to play? Not with a man I don’t know, I
mean.” She felt warm and soft, wet and eager.
I want to see this, understand
this…this freedom.

“That’s fine,” Sam responded. “You just say so. Still, the
sights are intriguing.”

Intriguing
. A good word. “And do they explain why the
people in Bravado are careful of their privacy?”

Sam tipped her head to and fro. “A little. But you’ll find
an answer about why Damian’s wife is divorcing him.”

“I see.”

And does Wade know about this club? Shouldn’t the sheriff
know about such places?

“Are you up for it?” Cara asked.

“I am.”

Oh, she definitely was. She was going to see how the town,
or some in the town, had fun. That tickled her.

She smiled at the very idea and threw herself back into a
conversation about researching Francine Turner, her first husband the Comanche
Chief Bull Elk and her two second husbands, Cole and Wyatt MacRae.

By the time Willow left to return to her room at the B&B
neither Samantha nor Cara had mentioned her moving in with them. She had
promised to see Wade tomorrow night and Giles Tuesday night and she had no
inclination to change or cancel. And no desire to let anyone else know about
either date.

Francine Turner stared up at Willow with beautiful, big
eyes. The photograph was aged, washed in the sepia browns and rusts and beiges
of the 1880s, but the woman in the portrait lived for Willow as if she breathed
the same air.

My god.
Willow put a hand to her heart as she sat at
Cara MacRae’s kitchen table the next morning and looked at the pictures arrayed
before her. She was unable to tear her gaze away from the portrait of the woman
who had lived more than a century before her but who looked in so many ways
like Willow herself.

Oh, Fancy was blonde and Willow dark. Fancy was delicate,
Willow strongly boned. Fancy had pale eyes. “Bluebonnet,” said the description
in one letter from Marguerite to her youngest sister. Willow’s eyes were deep
chocolate-brown. “Umber” was the way Fancy herself had described her dear
husband Bull Elk’s eyes—and that of his young sister, Willow Talks.

Cara touched Willow’s hand. “I wanted you to see her. After
I met you the other night I couldn’t wait to show you this. I was struck by how
you and she look alike. The shape of your faces, your expressions of hope and
anticipation.”

“Oh, surely, I am not as lovely as she.” Willow shook her
head, complimented.

“You are, you are. Look again. Oh, I am so thrilled you’re
here, Willow. To see her, know her must be wonderful. She was so strong in the
face of awful odds. She was brave and I think very wise.”

“I agree. The age she lived through was not kind to those
who lived a life that was different.”

Cara smiled and pushed a few yellowed envelopes toward
Willow. “You must also read her words. Fancy was well-educated and she wrote to
her sister Marguerite often, especially after she returned from the Comanche
reservation and few Anglos would talk to her. Oh, but she would be proud of you
and what you are writing. And the two of you look nearly identical.”

“I’m stunned,” Willow said in awe. “I never thought she
might look…or rather I might look so much like her. How is that possible?
Comanche features are so bold. The large, deep-set eyes and the high
cheekbones.” She traced her fingertips over the arch of her own cheeks. “My
hair is black like Bull Elk’s.”

Cara and she turned their attention to the faded photo of
the chieftain who had ridden up to the Turner ranch one bright spring morning
and stolen the fair young woman from her family and her home. Bull Elk sat in
semi-profile, his strong face rigid and impassive in the manner of the Native
American portraits of the late nineteenth century. Patu-um-ka was his Comanche
name and it suited him. In his buckskin and hawk feathers, his hair in black
braids and a silver earring in one lobe, he was the epitome of a tall, dark,
fierce-as-hell leader of his tribe, the Lords of the Southern Plains.

“He is breathtaking, isn’t he?” Cara asked her. “For Fancy
to be stolen from all that she knew and loved by such a warrior must have been
an earthshaking experience for her.”

“She was only twenty-two when he captured her,” Willow said.
“How terrified she must have been. I’ve read a lot of Comanche folklore and
stories written by the Plains Indians. The Comanche were the most feared
because they were quite cruel, raping women and skinning them alive.”

“Yes, horrible stories. Here in the Hill Country so many
people tell tales of their own women and children who were taken. Some returned
to live with their own families but often those taken as children returned to
the Comanche tribesmen they lived with.”

“Do you have any other pictures of him?”

“Just this. But Case and Samantha have a sketch of him done
by Wyatt.”

Willow clasped her hands in glee as she smiled at Cara.
“Wyatt drew Bull Elk?”

“Wyatt was a Texas Ranger and he often attended powwows with
Bull Elk. This drawing was done in 1865. See Wyatt’s note here in the corner?”

Willow leaned over and squinted at the print. “Did Wyatt
draw any of the other family members?”

Cara shook her head. “A few of Cole, one of Reg Saxon and
his wife Marguerite. She was lovely and frail but she bore Reg two sons. But
what you really want to see are the ones Wyatt did of Fancy. We have the best
of them under museum glass in the dining room. Come see them.”

Willow rose with Cara and let her take her hand to lead her
into the room where one old map of Texas territories and many old photos
decorated the walls.

Cara stood back to admire the collection. “When I found
these drawings by Wyatt in the attic last year, I took them into town and had
them all preserved. Jed and Will talked about giving them to museums, so we did
donate a few to the state historical society. But I wanted most of these here
with us. After all, they are our family.”

Willow couldn’t get enough of the fabulous pen-and-ink
drawings. Most showed Fancy in various poses. One of Fancy with a small baby.
One of her with two men, each man standing behind her, one hand on each of her
shoulders. “Wyatt and Cole were very proud of her.”

“They were. When you read the letters that Collette, her
older sister, wrote to her you’ll see accompanying letters from Wyatt or Cole
telling Collette to mind her own business. Both brothers thought that Fancy had
lived through enough trouble in her young life and that many members of her
family were unfair to her. After all, she couldn’t help that Bull Elk had
stolen her. She couldn’t help it either that she grew to love her Comanche
husband.”

“Her family were unkind to her?”

“Worse, they told her to leave Bravado. Once a gang tried to
ride her out of town. Wyatt and Cole drew guns on the mob. But her brother
Jeremiah ignored her. He ordered their sister Collette to do the same. And they
nearly broke Fancy’s heart.”

Had their actions nearly broken my great-grandfather’s
heart too?
Was their prejudice a contributing factor to Blade’s need to
leave Bravado? Willow had to know more. “Wade told me that it was his
great-grandfather who married Marguerite and turned the tide against Fancy
after she returned from the reservation.”

“Yes. All of us have letters from various family members
that tell that tale.”

“But Fancy lived and lived well, I think,” Willow said.

“She did. She died in 1920 at the age of seventy-two. In
that day that was a ripe old age. She was survived by three sons, two of them
MacRaes, and of course your great-grandfather Blade.”

Willow leaned close to see the expression on Fancy’s face as
she held one baby in her arms and had one hand on the shoulder of a little
three- or four-year-old boy who stood in front of her. “Is this Blade?”

“I think so. Don’t you? He has the look of Bull Elk, I’d
say.”

Dark-haired and cute as a button, the little boy in a white
shirt and baggy pants stared out of the drawing with the sweet face of youth
and innocence. “I would too.”

“Why did he leave, Willow?”

She inhaled and twisted toward Cara. “He wanted to be free
of his past. He thought he could find it by going East. He went to college. We’re
not sure how he paid for that but he finished. He became a lawyer and a
prosperous one.”

“Did no one back East ever think he might be Comanche?”

Willow shook her head. “In his diary he wrote that often new
acquaintances looked at him oddly when they first met. But after a while, no,
no one asked. And he never told them. It was his goal to forget what he was.
Where he came from.”

“We have letters that declare how Fancy loved him. Adored
him.”

“I am certain of that. He wrote that his mother was his shining
moon. And that, of course, is the name that Bull Elk gave to Fancy.”

“Still, Willow, Blade never returned here. Fancy writes and
others do too about how she grieved over that.”

“I can understand that. But Blade couldn’t bear to come back
here and face the ridicule of those who thought of him as a half-breed. He said
he had escaped that and he would never return to such degradation again.”

Cara sighed. “It’s terrible what we can do to one another.
If only Jeremiah and Collette had been forgiving or understanding of what had
happened, how many lives would have been different. Why, you might even be
living here with us now.”

They both laughed.

“I doubt it, Cara. My mother came from San Diego and my
father persuaded her to stay in snowy Boston only by bribing her with Caribbean
vacations every year.”

“And where are they now?”

Willow smiled sadly. “Both gone. More than ten years ago.
I’ve brought up my younger sister on my own since then.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-two. She just graduated from UT in Austin in June.”
Willow rolled her eyes but didn’t reveal the reason why she was glad her sister
was soon to be self-supporting.

“You have no other relatives?”

“No. Mom and Dad were only children. No extended family on
either side.”

Cara took Willow’s hands then and squeezed. “You have
extended family now. Folks who want to help you, not just to finish this book
either.”

“Thank you.” Willow rolled a shoulder. “That will take some
getting used to. Being alone only breeds more of being alone.”

“Alone is fine,” Jed declared from the hallway, removing his
Stetson and grinning at them both. “Lonely is not. And we have a cure for
that.”

“I told her, Jed, we have a lot of good things here in this
county. Family, fun, friends. We might even have a job for her if she wants it.”

Jed strolled in to wrap his arm around his wife’s middle and
hug her close. “What kind of a job would you like, Willow Turner? We got ’em,
babe.”

“I’m a teacher. High school.”

“Well, damn, lady, we got a few vacancies we need to fill.”

“Really?” Willow’s ears perked up. “How many?”

“Two in the high school, one in the middle and one in the
elementary.”

Willow grinned at him.

He arched dark brows. “You’d be interested? Wow. Okay. Tell
me, woman, I got to get on with filling up that roster.”

“My sister Skye just got her education degree to teach
elementary school and she does need a position. Badly.”

“Get her on the phone. Tell her we need her. The application
is online and she should fill it out and hit Send ASAP. To you, I’ll give the
paperwork. Hold on. It’s in my office.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

She hesitated. The idea of living in the same town or even
the same house as her sister appealed to her. She hadn’t enjoyed Skye’s company
day after day in four long years—and her sister had told her she wasn’t
interested in teaching anywhere near Oklahoma. But could she herself leave
Oklahoma? Could she remain close to the searing temptation of Wade Saxon and
not make a fool of herself? How would that look to him if she did come here?

One comfort was that Wade wasn’t the only man in town. She
could see Giles Benedict. In fact she could go out with any of those
great-looking guys she’d met at the MacRaes’ party. That would be more fun than
she’d had in years. And Wade could see she wasn’t the type to move into town
and expect things from him just because they had gone to bed. She was no needy,
horny broad. “It’s appealing but I don’t know, Jed. This is really fast.”

“But great too. We know how to treat women as equals with
their own rights to say how and where and when they work or play.”

Play
, Willow heard, as the operative word in that
sentence. “Good to know.”

“Consider it. The pay is exceptional.”

“I told her,” his wife chimed in.

“We’re in good shape then.” He kissed his wife on the top of
her head. “We have great things for lunch?”

Cara curled into her husband’s arm. “Darlin’, I have no
idea. We better go out to the barn and ask Will and Harry. They cooked up a
storm for us all morning.”

“Let’s get on it, then.” Jed looped his other arm around
Willow’s waist and led the women toward the kitchen. “Two ladies at the table.
This is a treat.”

“Believe me,” Willow said, “the treat has been all mine.”

“Found a lot you liked, didn’t you?” he asked her, his warm
smile brilliant with humor.

“I did. And I wonder,” she said as she tipped her head
toward the drawing of Fancy and her two children, “if I might have a copy of
that one of the three of them made to take with me?”

“And a copy of Wyatt’s drawing of Bull Elk too,” Cara added.
“Of course, we knew you’d want him. And you must have him. What do you say,
Jed? The original for Willow?”

“Where it belongs,” he said, nodding. “With family.”

* * * * *

Flush with excitement from her day of pouring over the
hundreds of pictures of MacRaes, Turners, Saxons and Benedicts, Willow emerged
from her new rental car in front of Wade’s house and felt her heart race with
new anticipation. A thousand times today she’d warned herself to show some
spine with him tonight. No nice little roll in the hay.

But one look at him challenged her good intentions.
Devastatingly handsome in a black t-shirt and faded denims Wade opened his
front door and walked toward her. His lush mouth he’d drawn tight even as his
arms reached to bring her right against him. He didn’t kiss her mouth but buried
his lips in her hair. “You smell wonderful. Like sex and lavender.”

She had to laugh.

He drew back and caught her chin. “I missed you.”

The man was too enchanting for her own good. “I’ve been
working all day, focusing on learning all the details of family history that
all of you seem to know like the back of your hand.”

He cocked a brow, a twinkle in his eyes. “So you didn’t have
time to miss me?”

“I did.” She told him the truth, marveling at how quickly
she had fallen into his spell. “When I saw photos of you as a child in diapers.
Or in your cap and gown when you graduated from high school.”
In a tux on
your wedding day.
“In your army uniform. Each one taught me more about
you.”