Call Of The White Wolf

The scuffle ended immediately. Samuel and Derek bounded up like jackrabbits to wipe their bloody wounds.

“Get cleaned up on the double,” John ordered brusquely. “Calvin can tend the cooking while you’re gone.”

There was no back talk, Tara noticed, just perfectly executed about-faces and forward marches to the water barrel that sat beside the barn.

“I just don’t understand those two these days,” Tara said with a baffled shake of her head.

“Don’t you?” John asked as she stepped up beside him on the porch.

“No, I don’t. We can be in the middle of a conversation and suddenly a battle breaks out over little or nothing.”

“Intelligent woman that you are, Irish, I’d think you’d be able to figure those two boys out.”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Well, I can’t. I suppose you have the answer, O great and wonderful Apache wizard.”

“They’re smitten, infatuated,” he told her.

“Smitten?” she repeated stupidly.

“With you. It’s all part of male posturing and masculine rivalry that causes them to try to impress you and gain your notice and attention.”

Tara stared at John as if he were speaking a foreign language she couldn’t translate. He chuckled at her bewildered expression.

“The Apaches are wise enough to establish rituals, rules and regulations to follow during this difficult phase of adolescence. The whites, of course, just leave it all to hapless chance. You don’t see a respectable warrior walking around with a bloody lip or black eye. Energy and fighting is saved for battling enemies. If a warrior is interested in an Indian maiden, he simply appears beside her wickiup in the dark of night and stakes his horse by the door. If the girl favors the warrior’s attention she leads his prize horse to water. Of course, a maiden wouldn’t think to tend the horse the first day. That’d make her seem a mite too anxious or desperate. But then, leaving the animal standing for four days is regarded as playing extremely hard to get, and a warrior might wish to rethink the prospect of courtship.”

“And what if the young maiden isn’t interested in courtship?” Tara asked, a smile twitching her lips.

“If not, the poor horse stands there, neglected, for four days, at which time the jilted suitor knows his affections aren’t returned and he’d best hobble his prize horse on somebody else’s doorstep. If you see another horse tied in front of your sweetheart’s wickiup, then you wait your turn. Simple as that.”

Tara’s amused laughter danced on the evening breeze.

“Uh-oh, you aren’t gonna have another one of those hyena seizures, are you?” Calvin questioned worriedly.

Samuel and Derek, their recent battle forgotten, came running to check on Tara. Flora and Maureen appeared at the front door.

“I’m fine,” Tara hastily assured the children. Her gaze shifted to John, who was doing his best to conceal his grin. “I simply find John amusing. No harm in that, is there?”

“No, but if it turns out you’re not so fine, I’ll give you herbs to cure you,” Flora announced. “Zohn Whoof taught us how to gather all we need to make good medicine bundles that can cure whatever bothers anybody.”

“How is dinner coming along?” John asked the girls, without taking his eyes off Tara.

“Thirty minutes,” Maureen predicted. “C’mon, Flora, we don’t want our part of the meal to burn on the stove.”

When the children resumed their tasks, Tara forced herself to glance away from John. Staring too long into those silvery pools surrounded by long thick lashes gave her strange, tingling sensations. If she wasn’t careful she might get lost in those hypnotic eyes. They were entirely too magnetic, too entrancing, too overpowering.

“So…what do you suggest I do to alleviate this situation that has developed with Samuel and Derek?” Tara asked.

“Pretend to show interest elsewhere,” he replied.

His husky voice drew her gaze. Mistake. Big mistake. He was watching her in that unique, soul-searching way that sent all sorts of warm ripples undulating through her body. Mercy, she was exceptionally aware of John Wolfe. Tara wondered if the Apache had a medicinal herb to cure infatuation. If so, she needed it—desperately.

“You could use me,” he murmured. “After all, I owe you a favor.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tara tweeted, then was startled by the strangled sound of her voice.

“Why not?”

“If you don’t know the answer to that then your instincts and your Apache training have failed you.”

Tara wheeled around to seek shelter in the house. Behind her she heard a bark of laughter, not unlike the hysterical fit she’d pitched that morning. Also behind her she heard Cal say, “Oh no, now John has turned into a hyena!”

John knew he was being ignored by Tara at supper, which turned out to be an exceptional feast. The rabbit meat was tender and juicy. The vegetables, seasoned with mesquite seeds, had a marvelous flavor. While the children chatted on—and on—about their survival excursion, Tara stared at her plate and ate her meal in silence.

All right, so John knew that crack he’d made about using him to discourage the boys’ amorous interests was way out of line—and too dangerous for his own good. And certainly, he’d told himself several times not to become attached to Tara. But hell, he was, damn it! She didn’t seem to have a clue about how attractive she was, especially in those trim-fitting breeches and shirts that accentuated every alluring curve and swell. She seemed to think that because she was a woman, with all the necessary body parts, a man would regard her as nothing more than a possession to be used for his lusty purposes. She didn’t seem to realize that it was her personality and character, as well as her ravishing good looks, that attracted male interest.

Why get into this? John asked himself as he chewed on the medley of wild vegetables. He was going to be the perfect gentleman while he shared the same space with Tara. He’d be gone soon and he didn’t want to hurt her in any way. She’d be hurt if he did something really stupid like…oh, say, forge a physical liaison.

If he felt the urge to satisfy an itch, then he could get himself into Rambler Springs to find a woman who made her living appeasing men. He’d made a pact to keep his hands off Tara, no matter how tempting she was. Furthermore, she’d find her own way to resolve the male rivalry going on between Samuel and Derek, without breaking their tender young hearts.

And so, being ignored as he was by Tara, he was thunderstruck when she pushed away from the table, came to her feet, strode to the head of the table where he was sitting and planted a kiss on his lips—right in front of five startled children, God and every deity known to the Apache nation. True, it wasn’t much of a kiss, as kisses went, yet the feel of her soft lips melting upon his sent his male body into a slow burn—and left him burning long after she withdrew. John struggled to draw a breath that wasn’t thick with her fresh, clean, alluring scent.

“Good night, John dear. I have some sewing to do before I go to bed.” She glanced surreptitiously at Samuel and Derek, whose eyes were bulging and whose jaws were scraping the table. “Somebody around here ripped their shirts during the Battle of Paradise Valley, and I’m the one who has to stitch the fabric back together.”

No one uttered a word. No one moved until Tara exited the room to retrieve her sewing kit, then reversed direction to breeze out the front door. Just as John predicted, all goggle-eyed gazes zeroed in on him.

“How come you kissed Tara when I’m the one who loves you and told you so, huh?” Flora demanded that very second.

“She kissed me,” John corrected.

“I never saw Tara kiss anybody on the mouth before,” Calvin said.

Samuel and Derek slouched down, as if their breath had been knocked clean out of them. Maureen slumped in her chair, staring at him as if he’d just broken her heart in about a million pieces. John had the uneasy feeling he had a silent admirer. Well damn, he was as oblivious as Tara, who hadn’t realized Samuel and Derek were infatuated with her.

And Tara, damn her ornery hide, had dropped a live grenade in his lap, then walked off, leaving him to answer awkward questions. He ought to storm outside and shake the living daylights out of her for that.

John sat there, wondering how to extricate himself from this situation, then decided changing the subject was the best strategy he could come up with. “While you children are clearing the table, I’m going to brew a poultice to pack on my wounds.”

“Are you sure you aren’t going to go outside to kiss Tara again?” Flora asked suspiciously. “Maureen says that’s how people make babies.”

“Flora! Shut your flapping jaws!” Maureen shrieked, humiliated.

Calvin blinked. “We’re gonna have more babies around here?”

Damn, could this situation get any worse? John wondered. Strangling Tara for her mischief was becoming more appealing by the second.

“Babies don’t come from kissing,” Samuel told Maureen, whose face had turned the color of cooked beets. “Damn, don’t you know anything?”

John’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He stared nonplussed at Samuel, then tried to speak, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.