Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4)(37)

“And Maggie?”

Joseph said, “It was the worst argument we ever had—and I don’t think either of us said a word about it.” He shrugged. “My father likes to argue, to use words. I think his way is better—but it is not Maggie’s way. So we were silent for a while and things went back to normal. Maggie likes her now.”

“But not Hosteen.”

Joseph frowned fiercely. “He keeps the old ways so alive he forgets what is true and what is false. He believes witches are evil because the Navajo stories of witches are all about evil witches. He still believes in the monsters in the stories his mother told him and her mother told her.”

“Navajo witchcraft is such that Navajo witches are evil. If they are not evil, then they are not witches,” Charles said. “And your father is right about the monsters. I’ve met a few of them. The worst monsters hide in plain sight.”

Joseph frowned at him. “Monsters here?”

“I’ve seen skinwalkers who wear the skins of dead men so they look like the person they have killed. I have seen the Cold Woman,” Charles said. He’d forgotten how easy it was to talk to Joseph. “So have you. Do you remember that woman in that old bar in Willcox? The persistent one who tried to get us both to come home with her?”

“Yes,” Joseph admitted. “You were pretty adamant that we had to wait for a friend we didn’t have.”

“Two men went missing that night and were found dead in their car a few weeks later a couple hundred miles away,” Charles said.

“She was the Cold Woman,” he said. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t know then, just knew that she didn’t smell human. She was gorgeous. In a room full of richer-looking, certainly better-looking men”—Joseph nudged him with an elbow—“she picks two dirty, tired cowboys? Felt like a trap. I figured out who she was after the bodies turned up. There were no wounds. Just two dead men sitting in a car in the middle of a pleasant spring day, frozen all the way through. The coroner figured someone had murdered them in an ice locker or commercial freezer, then staged the bodies.”

“The Cold Woman … why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

“By the time I figured it out, you’d met Maggie. The Cold Woman wasn’t as important as other things.”

“I think I’m glad I didn’t know,” Joseph said.

“Too much knowledge can make you paranoid all the time,” Charles agreed. “It can also make you a target.” They came to the junction where the Sani road met the highway. He turned the UTV around and headed back to the ranch house.

“So if my father is right about everything—is Chelsea evil?”

“Hosteen is not right about everything.” Charles grinned at Joseph’s ironic tones. “And Chelsea is no more evil than you or I.” He paused thoughtfully. “Than I am, anyway. I don’t know about you.” More seriously he said, “There is a scent to black magic—I would smell it.”

“Ah, good,” Joseph said. Then he said, in the same tone, “My wife will ask you to Change her after I’m dead.”

Charles had no time to prepare. No warning to brace himself, and he felt as though he’d been punched: Maggie.

He had loved her once. She was a fiery warrior, Maggie. Tough and smart and funny—and unexpectedly tender. If he closed his eyes he could still see her, her beautiful bright eyes wet and luminous. There were many things in his years on earth that were faded by time, but not that night. That night was clear as cut glass.

“If you would have me, I would be yours,” Maggie said, moonlight softening her fierce young features into something more accessible.

He knew how hard those words were from this proud woman who did not believe in making herself vulnerable for anyone. Her childhood had been hard and hadn’t made it easy for her to trust.

The night air was crisp—spring in the desert. The wooden boards of her porch were uneven under his feet. He could hear the wild-caught horses in the corrals moving idly a dozen yards from the little house. Could hear the soft sounds of Joseph’s sleeping breath.

Her roughened hands reached out slowly, and he did not back away. They touched his face and he closed his eyes, allowing himself the comfort of her touch. To be touched with love was uncommon in his life, and he treasured it, absorbed it.

She was beautiful, but that had nothing to do with why he loved her. He loved her for her refusal to give in to a world that twice judged her wrongly, first for the color of her skin and then for her sex. He loved her for the joy she took in the sun on her back and the horses she rode. He loved her for the laughter she found in danger and storms.

And that was why he’d let it go this far. Far enough that she risked her battered heart—and he’d done it knowing that he would break it. There was no name for the depth of hell he deserved for doing that to a woman he loved.

He pulled back gently. “You don’t know me, Maggie. If you knew what I am you would not touch me.” But he knew her. And that knowledge gave him no hope to cling to—no excuse for letting her think that they might be more than what they were.

“I know you,” she said, trying to hide her hurt. She couldn’t hide from him, but he didn’t let her know that. Her pride he would protect as well as he could; it was easier than protecting her poor heart. His poor heart.