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320 pages, Paperback
First published October 18, 2011
From the cover:I’m just going to share a few thoughts with you, since there are already so many wonderful reviews on this book.
After escaping robbers intent on murder, Katherine Grant says, "I jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Before long I'll be dancing on the coals." The highwaymen were the frying pan; the handsome young Apache who saved her from them was the fire; and the coals? Gaetan.
Rage against the enemies of his people has consumed Gaetan from boyhood. The only use he ever found for any white was to test the sharpness of his knife. Forced by his brother to endure Katherine's company, Gaetan tries to deny what he sees—the white woman has a man's temper and a lion's courage. She has an Apache heart.
In spite of hate, distrust and fear, surviving in the rugged country of southern Arizona and northern Mexico forges a strange bond between Katherine and Gaetan. When the bond turns to love, can they admit it? Can they bear the consequences?
What kind of Apaches spoke excellent English, killed highway men, didn't scalp them and rescued their victims?
Before she decided whether to ask or how to ask those questions, the savage of nightmares charged down the road on a dark horse. Frozen by the sight, Katherine waited for man and animal to smash into her and trample her into the dust or knock her over the side of the mountain to the same rocky grave as the stagecoach. Rage masked his face better than any war paint. His eyes glittered with fury as he pulled his horse to a sliding stop that sprayed gravel and raised his rifle.
“Your skin is white, but I think the white god made a mistake, or maybe he did it on purpose to play a joke. He gave you an Apache heart.”
“She is my wife. The soldiers had no right to give her to you.”
“If a man could taste wind and fire, they would taste like Katherine. When he stood in high places looking down on things made small by distance, he tried to feel what the eagle felt soaring free on the wind. He was an earthbound man. Only his spirit could ever soar, and only Katherine raised him so high.”
“He entered her in a single hard thrust, opening her, stretching her and forcing a moan of surprise from her. She was ready, so ready, and yet totally unprepared. She’d been wrong. She was still virgin to this, to his strength and her need, to the pleasure and the pain and the sheer triumph of having him. He drove into her and she rose to him, clutched him tighter, harder. Her nails raked and dug into his back, her teeth into his neck.”
“She toyed with the top button of his shirt. “Do Apaches kiss?”
“The people believe the mouth is only for eating.”
“Oh.” She didn’t try to hide her disappointment.
He shifted her against him a little and cupped her breast with one hand, his thumb rubbing across the nipple. “They also believe a woman’s breast is only for nursing a child.”
Lowering his mouth over hers, he ran his tongue between her lips, exploring her tongue, making her shiver with a stroke along the roof of her mouth.
When he raised his head at last, she whispered, “I’m glad you’re an unbeliever.”
“Your skin is white, but I think the white god made a mistake, or maybe he did it on purpose to play a joke. He gave you an Apache heart.”
“If a man could taste wind and fire, they would taste like Katherine. When he stood in high places looking down on things made small by distance, he tried to feel what the eagle felt soaring free on the wind. He was an earthbound man. Only his spirit could ever soar, and only Katherine raised him so high.”
“Dying is easier than living sometimes, I suppose […].” – Katherine Grant
“Sometimes I think if Gaetan is cut, his blood will spill out black from the poison inside him.” – Nilchi
“Your skin is white, but I think the white god made a mistake or maybe he did it on purpose to play a joke. He gave you an Apache heart.”
*********************
“There aren’t so many things I don’t believe. Our ways are good, and they make strong people. I had to pretend to believe many more stupid things when I was in the white school, but those who think the school made me different are right. I’m not what I would have been.”
No, he wasn’t, and Katherine would never stop being grateful. “You’re more than you would have been.”
*********************
Gaetan laughed. Katherine stared open mouthed for a moment, then crowed. “I did it! I made you laugh!”
His face closed into expressionless Apache, his eyes still dancing. “No, you dreamed it, like the moose.”