Wed to the Witness Read online

  “Doctor Kent.”

  “Jackson.” Kent crouched just as Johnny’s eyelids fluttered open. He thrashed, his eyes half-open, the whites showing, straining.

  “Easy, Johnny.” Jackson placed a hand on his chest, held him down.

  “Just relax, son. We’ll get you taken care of.” Kent’s evaluating gaze swept the boy’s arm, then lifted. “What happened?”

  Jackson used a forearm to wipe the sweat off his forehead. He had to force every word past his dirt-dry throat as he related events of the accident. “One of the bull’s hooves caught him in the left elbow,” he finished.

  The doctor nodded. “I sent one of the hands to drive my car over here. My medical bag’s in the trunk.”

  A thick moan rose up Johnny’s throat.

  Kent placed a practiced hand on his shoulder. “I know it hurts. I’ll give you something for the pain in just a minute. Then I’ll drive you to the hospital. I need a couple of pictures of that elbow.”

  “Gotta…go…to…hospital?”

  “That’s right, son.”

  The teen’s dazed, half-shut eyes met Jackson’s. “You…go, too?”

  “Sure.” The knot in Jackson’s chest tightened. Over the past week, he and Johnny had developed a camaraderie while they’d worked side-by-side.

  Dragging in a steadying breath, Jackson inclined his head toward the boy’s arm, which was bent at an almost impossible angle. A bloody slice ran down the length of his forearm, which was already turning black and blue. “Listen, Collins, there are easier ways than this to get yourself taken off my paint crew.”

  “Yeah. I’ll remember that…next time.”

  Blake furrowed a brow. “I’ll follow you to the hospital and take care of the paperwork.” He looked at Cheyenne. “You’ll let the other counselors know what happened? Take care of things here?”

  “Of course.” Her voice hitched. “Don’t worry about anything.”

  A ranch hand barged through the circle of onlookers and handed Dr. Kent a black bag.

  While Kent tore paper off a disposable syringe Jackson patted Johnny’s good arm. “Cheyenne and I need to talk for a minute before I leave. I have to make sure she’s got everything lined up to judge the target shooting in my place.”

  Johnny rolled his head, gazed up though dazed eyes at Cheyenne. “I guess I messed up. Can’t…be on your archery team.”

  “You’re on my team.” She cupped a hand against his cheek. “You just get to take a break from practice for a while.”

  Jackson rose, held out a hand to help her up. She hesitated, then slid her hand into his.

  He pulled her through the maze of onlookers, stopping a few feet away. Turning, he placed his hands on her shoulders. Beneath his palms, she felt as taut as a coiled spring.

  “You okay?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes. It’s good Johnny asked you to go with him, Jackson.” She kept her eyes on the injured boy while she spoke. “He trusts you. For Johnny, that doesn’t come easy.”

  “For a lot of people, I think.”

  “If someone could call from the hospital, let us know how Johnny’s doing…” Her voice broke. “You saved his life.”

  “We saved his life.” Jackson cupped her chin in his hand, nudged it up until her gaze met his. Her eyes were huge and dark in the pallor of her face. “I’m not sure how we did that. When I get back, you and I have to talk. I need to know what just happened.”

  “I know.” For a brief instant, the wrenching sadness in her voice closed around him. “I know you do.”

  Hours later, Cheyenne stood alone on her dark porch. Under the pale light of the moon, her small front yard was a mix of subdued shades of gray and black, with occasional patches of white. Leaning a shoulder against the porch rail, she wondered if she had actually thought she could open herself intimately to a man, yet keep secret the gift of her heritage. A gift that coursed through her veins.

  “Idiot.” Her quiet voice drifted on the warm night air, blending with the music coming from the far-off bandstand. After Johnny’s accident, she had forced herself to work, carry out the duties required of her. Yet, she had drawn the line at going to the dance, so she’d asked another counselor to take her place. She had opted for the coward’s way out by refusing to watch couples move beneath the dance floor’s twinkling lights while the memory of Jackson’s voice replayed in her head.

  Save me every dance tonight. After that, I’m going to take you home and make love with you. All night.

  Her throat tightening, Cheyenne shrank away from the thought. Instead of dwelling on what might have been she had to face what was.

  Johnny would recover, that was the important thing. Blake had called after the teenager had been wheeled out of surgery, with two pins in his elbow. Dr. Kent predicted a full recovery. For that, Cheyenne was grateful.

  What made her heart clench was the knowledge that Jackson had witnessed what he had that afternoon. At this point he didn’t know any specifics, but he had seen enough to know she had willfully deceived him.

  He would walk away, just as Paul had. The blame was all hers. She had intentionally kept the truth from Jackson and fate had taken a hand.

  He had been honest with her. He’d come to her, told her the police suspected him of two attempted murders. By doing so, he had given her a choice of accepting or backing away. Because she’d been afraid of the outcome, she had denied him the truth about herself.

  “Idiot,” she said again.

  “Are you talking to me or yourself?”

  Jackson’s voice caught her like a slap in the face, had her spinning around. When he moved across the lawn through a swath of weak moonlight, the grimness in his face had her nerves jittering.

  “Myself,” she managed. “How’s Johnny?”

  “Out like a light.” Jackson came up the porch steps, then paused. “Blake’s spending the night at the hospital. Dr. Kent says we can bring Johnny home tomorrow.”

  “Good. That’s good.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, cupped her elbows in her hands. “I owe you an explanation.”

  He moved toward her like a shadow, controlled and observant. “I’m not sure you owe me one, but I would appreciate one.” His voice was even, his eyes intent. Unnervingly so.

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve mentioned to you that my mother died the night she gave birth to me. I never heard her laugh. The only memories I have of her are through the stories River and Rafe tell me. Even so, I feel she is always with me because she passed a gift to me, through the blood. The gift of sight.”

  “Are we talking ESP?”

  “A form of it.”

  “I’d say it’s a pretty exacting form. Today you saw the accident before it happened. You knew Johnny was in danger before that bull kicked the fence.”

  “Yes. I have visions. I see certain things and events before they happen.” She put an unsteady hand to her throat. “I know what I’m telling you is hard to believe, but it’s true.”

  “If I hadn’t been there today, I wouldn’t believe it. But I was a part of what happened. Johnny would probably be dead now if it weren’t for you.”

  “Us. We were both meant to be where we were.”

  Jackson raised a hand, let it fall. “I chose the oak tree as a place for us to meet off the top of my head. I could have just as easily asked you to meet me at the shooting range.”

  “You didn’t. We were meant to be near the corral.”

  “So, you’re saying fate put us there so we could save a life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how incredible that sounds?” he asked, his voice taking on a hard edge.

  “Of course I do. And I know you would like me to give you a rational explanation for everything, but I can’t. Any more than I can explain why the visions that come to me don’t always have a clear purpose, like the one did today. I sometimes don’t know why I see the things I do, why I sense them, or what they mean. I just accept what I see and deal with it the best I
can.” She pulled in a ragged breath. “I’m sorry, Jackson.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you sorry that you have visions, or that you failed to mention them to me?”

  Pride stiffened her spine. “I’m not ashamed of my gift. My mother’s people revere my visions for their power to do good. I am sorry I wasn’t truthful with you.”

  “So am I.” He took a step toward her, his hands clenched. “That first night we ran into each other, when we went for coffee, I told you I remembered something about that shy, skinny little girl who used to follow River around like a shadow. I asked if you read palms or minds.” His fingers flexed, fisted again. “You said no.”

  “That’s because I don’t do either. I can’t look at the lines in your hand and predict your future. I can’t gaze into your eyes and read your thoughts, only imagine them, like now.”

  He angled a rigid shoulder against one of the porch’s columns, crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you imagine I’m thinking right now?”

  “You’re angry that I kept this from you. You feel betrayed and hurt.” She shut her eyes. “I never meant to hurt you, Jackson. My intention was to help.”

  “Help?”

  “Do you think we met in the lobby of the movie theater by chance?”

  “Hell, yes,” he answered, even as something flickered in his eyes. “I walked out of the police department and started driving. I didn’t know I was going to wind up at the movie until the minute I whipped a U-turn in the street.” He leaned in. “Why were you there?”

  “I was meant to be there,” she answered quietly. “The last thing I planned to do that evening was see a movie. I was at home, writing a grant for funding of a new vocational work-training program for the ranch. Then a vision came to me of a man’s eyes, hard and gray. I didn’t know whose eyes they were. All I knew was he was in trouble, that he needed my help and that I would find him at the movie theater. I went there, bought a ticket and waited in the lobby. I didn’t know the man in my vision was you until I saw your eyes.”

  “So you just dropped everything and headed to the movies?” Although his voice remained steady, raw emotion flickered in his gaze. “You didn’t know why or how, you just came?”

  “My visions are always for good. I don’t question them. I accept and respond. I still don’t know how I’m meant to help you, Jackson. The answer will come in time.” She turned and stared out at the moonlit yard. She could smell the poignancy of the yellow roses that edged against the porch. “It always does.”

  “Is that why you’ve let me hang around you?” He jerked her around to face him, forcing a stunned breath from her lungs.

  “I—”

  “Is that why you let me kiss you?” His hands clamped on her upper arms. “Agreed to make love with me? So you can bide your time until some vision lets you know how you can help me?”

  She blinked. “I… No, I… No—”

  “You claim you wanted time for us to get to know each other. We’ve had a hell of a lot of long talks lately, Cheyenne. I even managed to squeeze in that the police suspect me of trying to kill my uncle. I told you that little tidbit because I couldn’t in good conscience let you walk deeper into a relationship with me without knowing how things stood.”

  “I know—”

  “You had plenty of opportunity to tell me about this…gift.” His fingers tightened like steel rods on her arms. “Instead, you kept it to yourself. Dammit, Cheyenne, it hurts that you don’t trust me.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” Guilt weighed like a stone, dead center in her heart. “I thought about telling you, even sometimes imagined myself doing that. I was afraid to take a risk, so I stopped myself.”

  “Why? Why couldn’t you just tell me?”

  “It would have changed everything.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “I do know!” Jerking from his touch, she fisted her hands against her jeaned thighs. “What you’ve learned about me tonight changes how you look at me. What you think of me. I’m different, Jackson. Too different to have a normal relationship.”

  His dark brows slid together. “Who the hell told you that?”

  “No one told me. I learned it. My father left me with my aunts on the reservation because he couldn’t handle the fact I was different. He was a drunk, he beat my brothers, but I didn’t know that when I was little. All I knew was my mother was dead and the father I needed didn’t want me.” She felt tears she’d thought she had finished with years ago stinging her eyes. “At the Anglo schools I went to, the other kids called me names, shunned me because I wasn’t like them. In college, I told the man I loved about my visions. He looked at me as if I had some terrible disease. He told me to stay away from him—stay away—then he walked out.” Her voice hitched with the memory. “You can stand there and tell me that being different doesn’t matter, Jackson. I know better.”

  “All right, so you know.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “You thought that was what I would do? If you told me about your visions, you thought I would walk away?”

  A single tear spilled over and ran down her cheek. She turned her head so he wouldn’t see her swipe it away. “Look at history. People have hanged, burned or drowned those who seemed different. These days they mostly avoid them.”

  “Dammit, Cheyenne.” He scrubbed his hands over his face then dropped his hands and stared out at the dark yard. “Dammit.”

  They stood in silence, thoughts and space separating them while music from the bandstand floated, soft and sensuous, on the breeze.

  “I’m not your drunken father or the moron you dated in college,” Jackson said finally.

  She slid him a look. “What?”

  “I saw what happened today. A boy is alive because of you. Maybe I had a hand in things, but I wouldn’t have been there to pull Johnny out of harm’s way if it hadn’t been for you.”

  As he spoke, Jackson reached out and took her arm, then turned her to face him. “I’ll concede your gift of sight makes you different from most everyone else. Since I’ve seen it at work, I know it also makes you special. Very special.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it on a shudder and felt the first tingle of relief loosen the fist around her heart. “Special.”

  “I don’t like secrets, Cheyenne. I’ve seen what they do to relationships. I wish you could have trusted me enough to tell me your secret.”

  “I didn’t want this to end. What we have, what we maybe could have.” She closed her eyes for a brief instant. “I care about you, Jackson. I was selfish. I didn’t want you to walk away.”

  “Like most every man you’ve cared about.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just when I think I get my footing, you knock me off-balance again.” He gently traced the line of her earlobe, idly fingering the simple gold hoop she wore there. “I’m not used to a woman doing that to me.”

  Her heart began to pound. “You’re not?”

  “No. This gift of yours—the way you are—is new to me. I need time to take it all in.” Slowly, he pulled her into his arms until his body brushed hers. “That doesn’t mean it changes how I feel about you.”

  Her throat went dry. She still couldn’t quite believe. “Doesn’t it?”

  “We’ve stayed in each other’s minds since the night of my uncle’s party because you and I sparked something in each other that’s impossible to ignore. I don’t want to ignore it. I want to find out what that something is and exactly how I feel about you.” His eyes stayed on hers as he lifted a hand to her cheek and stirred her heart. “Is that what you want, too, Cheyenne?”

  “Yes.” The word came out on a shaky breath. The band’s steady, sensuous beat matched that of her pulse.

  His mouth took a slow, quiet journey over her jaw, down the line of her throat, back to her trembling lips. Even as a shiver coursed through her she felt her body warming, melting. The air seemed to go very still, very suddenly. Now the only sound was her own uneven breathing.

&nb
sp; “You were supposed to save me every dance,” he murmured against her mouth.

  Her hands wound into the fabric of his shirt. Her mind blurred. “I can’t…hear the music…anymore.”

  “To hell with dancing, then.” One of his hands slipped beneath her loose braid to cup the back of her neck as she arched her head back. In the moonlight, reckless need glinted in his eyes. “I want you.” His other hand cupped her breast, kneading, tormenting. Her nipple budded, strained against the silk of her bra. “I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you.”

  Her arms slid up, and she dug her fingers into his hair. The remembered vision of candlelight glowing gold against their joined bodies played back in her head. Destiny, she thought dimly. This man was her destiny.

  “Candlelight.” Her breath caught in gasps as she raced greedy kisses down his neck.

  His hand shoved beneath her blouse, her bra, seeking flesh. Heat flashed so fast and hot, it incinerated her skin. Her body strained and trembled against his. When her legs went weak, she clutched at him for balance. “I want candlelight. And sweet wine. But first, I want you.”

  “You’ll have them. You’ll have all that and more,” he said, then latched his mouth onto hers.

  Eight

  “Inside,” Cheyenne managed to moan before Jackson’s mouth clamped against hers in a dazing, dizzying kiss that heated her blood until it flash-fired beneath her skin, roared in her head.

  “We…can’t do this…on the front porch.”

  She scraped her teeth over his jaw and felt him tense like a runner on the mark.

  “We’re going inside.” His voice was rough, urgent while one of his hands worked at the buttons on her blouse. “And we’re not coming out. Ever.”

  “Fine. Good.”

  They staggered together across the porch, hot, hungry mouths locked. When she took a stumbling step backward, he swept her up into his arms and jerked open the screen door. Her fingers plunged into his hair, her body straining against his with urgent need.