Wild Desire by Cassie Edwards

Author:Cassie Edwards [Edwards, Cassie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

I love you for putting your hand

Into my heaped-up heart.

—ROY CROFF

Stephanie broke the awkward silence. “You are Damon Stout’s sister?” she said.

She looked slowly around her again, at the squalor. How could anyone send their sister away to live in such deplorable conditions? she thought incredulously. Even Damon!

“Damon is my blood kin,” Sharon said solemnly. “But I don’t like to admit that he is actually my brother.”

“I can see why,” Runner said, walking slowly around the room, studying the disarray. “Any man who allows his sister and her child to live like this is not a man at all. He is a coward of the worst kind.”

Stephanie shook herself out of her shock. She went and knelt down before Sharon. She gazed sadly at the baby who was struggling to get milk from the small, thin breast. Then she looked up at Sharon, saddened anew over her pallor. Her eyes were like two dark coals in her drawn flesh.

“We’re going to take you out of here,” Stephanie said, running her hand over the baby’s dirty, scab-infested scalp. “I will pay for your stay at the hotel. You will be given food, clean clothes, and water for a bath. Tonight you will be sleeping on a clean bed. Your son will be given clothes and warm, clean blankets.”

Sharon listened with parted lips and wide eyes. She slipped her breast back inside her dress. “Why would you do this for me and my son?” she asked, tears flooding her eyes. “I stole from you. I watched you leave the pack mule with the saddlebags on it. When you and this man went to the lunchroom, I took everything that I could carry. I was going to sell them tomorrow to whomever would pay me the highest price.”

Stephanie interrupted. “My name is Stephanie,” she murmured. She gestured with a hand toward Runner. “This is Runner.”

Sharon hung her head in shame. “I’m sorry for having stolen from you,” she said, “but I was going to buy some milk. I need milk to give my son the nourishment he needs. Or . . . or . . . he might die.”

Runner took the child into his arms. “Neither of you will die,” he said thickly. “Come with us. Tonight you will stay in the white man’s establishment. Tomorrow you will go with me to my village. My people will welcome you with open arms, as they did me, so many years ago.”

Stephanie marveled over what Runner was offering. She knew the depths of his hate for Damon Stout; it matched her own. Yet he was taking Damon’s blood kin into his heart and village.

Then she smiled slowly. She understood that he was not doing this only from kindness but also to irritate Damon when he discovered where his sister had been taken. No matter how much Damon had neglected his sister, there was no way on this earth that he would want her living with the Navaho. He hated the Navaho with a passion.

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