The tart reproach in her voice amused him, and he wondered how he had ever thought her mousy. Her clothes were dowdy, but her personality was anything but timid. She said exactly what she thought and didn't hesitate to take someone to task. Less than an hour before she had taken on the entire county on his behalf. The memory of it sobered him.
"I'll drink the coffee if you insist on making it, but I'd rather you just sat down and listened to me."
Turning, Mary slid into a chair and primly folded her hands on the table. "I'm listening."
He pulled the chair next to her away from the table and turned it to the side, facing her, before he sat down. She turned an unsmiling gaze on him. "I saw you in the hall tonight."
He looked grim. "Damn. Did anyone else notice me?" He wondered how she had seen him, because he'd been very careful, and he was good at not being seen when he didn't want to be.
"I don't think so." She paused. "I'm sorry they said those things."
"I'm not worried about what the good people of Ruth think about me," he said in a hard tone. "I can handle them, and so can Joe. We don't depend on them for our living, but you do. Don't go to bat for us again, unless you don't like your job very much and you're trying to lose it, because that's damn sure what will happen if you keep on."
"I won't lose my job for teaching Joe."
"Maybe not. Maybe they'll have some tolerance for Joe, especially since you threw the Academy at them, but I'm another story."
"Nor will I lose my job for being friendly with you. I have a contract," she explained serenely. "An ironclad contract. It isn't easy to get a teacher in a place as small and isolated as Ruth, especially in the middle of winter. I can lose my job only if I'm judged incompetent, or break the law, and I defy anyone to prove me incompetent."
He wondered if that meant she didn't rule out breaking the law, but didn't ask her. The kitchen light was shining directly down on her head, turning her hair to a silvery halo and distracting him with its glitter. He knew her hair was brown, but it was such a pale, ash brown that it had no red tones, and when light struck it the strands actually looked silver. She looked like an angel, with her soft blue eyes and translucent skin, and her silky hair slipping from its confining knot to curl around her face. His insides knotted painfully. He wanted to touch her. He wanted her naked beneath him. He wanted to be inside her, to gently ride her until she was all soft and wet, and her nails were clawing at his back—
Mary reached out and put her slim hand on his much larger one, and just that small touch burned him. "Tell me what happened," she invited softly. "Why were you sent to prison? I know you didn't do it."
Wolf was a hard man, by nature as well as necessity, but her simple, unquestioning faith in him shook him to the bone. He had always stood alone, isolated by his Indian blood from Anglos and by his Anglo blood from Indians. Not even his parents had been close to him, though they had loved him and he had loved them in return. They had simply never truly known him, never been admitted into his private thoughts. Nor had he been close to his wife, Joe's mother. They had slept together, he'd been fond of her, but she, too, had been kept at a distance. Only with Joe had his reserve been breached, and Joe knew him as no other person on earth did. They were part of each other, and he fiercely loved the boy. Only the thought of Joe had gotten him through the years in prison alive.
It was more than alarming that this slight Anglo woman had a knack for touching nerves he'd thought completely insulated; he didn't want her close to him, not in any emotional way. He wanted to have sex with her, but he didn't want her to matter to him. Angrily he realized that she already mattered to him, and he didn't like it at all.
He stared at her fragile hand on his, her touch light and soft. She didn't shrink from touching him, as if he were dirty; nor was she grasping at him as some women did, rapaciously, wanting to use him, to see if the savage could satisfy their shallow, greedy appetites. She had simply reached out to touch him because she cared.
Ever so slowly he watched his hand turn and engulf hers, enfolding the pale, slim fingers within his callused palm as if to protect them.
"It was nine years ago." His voice was low, harsh; she had to lean forward to hear him. "No—almost ten years. Ten years this June. Joe and I had just moved here. I was working for the Half Moon Ranch. A girl from the next county was raped and killed, and her body dumped just within the far boundary of Half Moon. I was picked up and questioned, but hell, I'd been expecting it from the minute I heard about the girl. I was new to the area, and Indian. But there was no evidence against me, so they had to let me go.
"Three weeks later, another girl was raped. This one was from the Rocking L Ranch, just to the west of town. She was stabbed, like the other girl, but she lived. She'd seen the rapist." He paused for a minute, the expression in his black eyes shuttered as he looked back at those long-ago years. "She said he looked like an Indian. He was dark, with black hair, and he was tall. Not many tall Indians around. I was picked up again before I even knew another girl had been raped. They put me in a lineup with six dark-haired Anglos. The girl identified me, and I was charged. Joe and I lived on Half Moon, but somehow no one remembered seeing me at home the night that girl was raped, except Joe, and a six-year-old Indian kid's word didn't carry much weight."
Her chest hurt when she thought of how it had been for him, and for Joe, who had been only a small child. How much worse had it been for Wolf because of Joe, worrying what would happen to his son? She didn't know of anything she could say now to lessen that ten-year-old outrage, so she didn't try; she just tightened her fingers around his, letting him know he wasn't alone.