Free Indigo Blue by Catherine Anderson Page A

down and froze, still holding her fast. Her hat had been knocked off when he grabbed her. After trying to guess the color of her hair for most of the afternoon, he couldn’t help but stare. It was neither mahogany like her father’s nor a lighter brown, yet it wasn’t what he’d call blond either. Tawny was the only word that came to mind, its overall shade that of dark, rich honey with wispy streaks of coppery gold throughout. During their brief tussle, it had come loose from its moorings and tumbled to one shoulder, a straight, silken mass still half wound in a coronet and caught with hairpins.
    Oddly enough, its light hue struck such a contrast to her dark complexion that it earmarked her as part Indian, whereas a darker color might not have. With that tawny hair and those incredibly light blue eyes, anyone who looked at her would know she hadn’t attained that skin tone from exposure to the sun.
    Nature had played one of its jokes on Indigo Wolf. She was a rarity in that she had inherited the burnished skin of her Comanche ancestors and hair that belonged on a fair-skinned white woman. One of nature’s jokes, yes, but Jake wasn’t laughing.
    Without the god-awful hat, she was the most striking woman he’d ever seen. She had a wild look, yet at the same time encompassed all that was feminine, so fragile and light in his arms that she seemed to have no substance. Except softness. He could feel warmth building wherever they touched.
    He started to speak and then forgot what he meant to say when he looked into her eyes. So suddenly that it seemed to hit him between heartbeats, a rush of longing swept through him, and for several endless seconds, he couldn’t think beyond that.
    Because he was so tall, Jake usually found himself attracted to statuesque women, but Indigo Wolf felt perfectly right clasped in his arms. Her breasts, so warm and soft, hit him just below the ribs and burned through his shirt with white heat. With his arm vised around her waist, her pelvis was thrown forward to ride his thigh. For a fleeting instant, he imagined lifting her a bit higher, imagined her skin and how silken it would feel, imagined her legs looped around his waist as he buried himself inside her.
    “M-Mr. Rand?”
    Though he heard the uncertainty in her voice, Jake couldn’t immediately surface and shifted his gaze to her mouth. Only the innocence that he had read in her eyes forestalled him from bending his head and kissing her. He could feel her heart pound and knew he was frightening her. She had gone rigid, her small hands fisted in his shirt, her back bent to put some distance between them.
    “Mr. Rand?”
    Jake blinked. He swallowed. He tried to breathe with lungs that didn’t want to work. Then, with little grace and no warning, he released her. Caught off balance, she staggered. He grabbed her arm to steady her. She cast around for her hat, spied it and pulled away from him to fetch it.
    What in hell was the matter with him? She was scarcely out of the schoolroom. When he looked at her, he couldn’t believe she was nineteen and old enough to marry. Men who preyed on innocent girls disgusted Jake, always had and always would. He also disliked faithless men, and he had a fiancée waiting for him in Portland. Yet here he was, lusting after Hunter Wolf’s daughter? He needed a swift kick in the ass.
    Blood still racing, Jake watched as she wound her hair back up and pinned it. An instant later, she yanked the hat back down around her ears. He felt as if someone had just snuffed the only candle in a dim room.
    Her hands were shaking, so he knew she had felt the change in him while he held her. He’d been with too many women not to realize when he ran across one who was man shy. God, how could he have behaved that way? She was just a kid. The problem was that she hadn’t felt like one in his arms.
    He glanced toward the trees and tried to think of something to say to smooth things over. Nothing came to mind. She might be