A Promise of Thunder

“Accommodate you, Mr. Stryker? In what way?”
    “We both need to go to Guthrie tomorrow to file our claims and we both need supplies. Perhaps you’d be good enough to carry some of my supplies back in your wagon since we are going to be neighbors.”
    Immediately Storm relaxed, realizing she had jumped to the wrong conclusion. But she’d be a fool to trust the half-breed renegade. Obviously he hated whites, and his hatred extended to women as well as men. He seemed to hold white women in as much contempt as he did white men. Curiously, she wondered what had happened in his past to turn him against the white race. He was intelligent and well educated, and he spoke English as well as she did, better even. Yet something had turned him against all white men and their ways.
    Grady Stryker was secretive concerning his past. All she knew about him was that he was born in Wyoming on a ranch, hated whites, and could handle a gun like a pro. And he was heart-stoppingly handsome in a rugged way that brought shivers to her flesh.
    “It’s a deal,” Storm agreed. “Though it boggles my mind to think of a man like you settling down on a farm, we
are
going to be neighbors,and it would behoove us to help one another. But don’t get the wrong idea, Mr. Stryker. I still hate you for what you are and the way my life has changed because of you. If Buddy were alive today, we would have been here first to claim land on the river. Good night, Mr. Stryker. I’ll be by for you in the morning.”
    Grady was waiting for Storm early the next morning when she drove the wagon past his claim. Dressed in skintight buckskins and moccasins, he had his long ebony hair tied back with a leather thong. He must have been wearing his spare shirt, for there were no telltale holes where the bullet had entered or exited his flesh. In fact, he gave little sign that he had been wounded at all. Was the man not human? Did he not feel pain like other mortals? Though the wound hadn’t been life threatening, it surely was serious enough to cause him distress. Yet there he was, looking as hale and hardy as he had the first time she saw him in Guthrie.
    “I’ll tie Lightning to the back of the wagon and ride beside you,” Grady said as he led his saddled horse over to the wagon.
    Lightning and Thunder, they made a good pair, Storm thought, fascinated by the blatant play of muscles beneath Grady’s buckskins as he moved gracefully to the rear of the wagon. And where did Storm come into the scheme of things? Had their meeting been preordained? Thunder and Storm. She shook her head at such a silly notion. Their meeting had beenpurely coincidental, and unhappily for her, an unforeseen tragedy. When Grady leaped into the wagon beside her, the brief pressure of his leg pressing against hers sent a shudder through her body.
    “Are you cold? Perhaps you should have worn a jacket.”
    She was dressed in a split skirt and blouse, and if it weren’t for the half-breed sitting beside her, she would have been perfectly comfortable. His presence confused her, made what she had felt for Buddy seem tame.
    It made her angry.
    “I’m fine,” Storm snapped as she slapped the reins against the horses’ rumps. “I just don’t want you to think our being neighborly is anything but a mutual need for survival. Until I can get my well dug I’ll need to use the river that flows through your land. And you’ll need—”
    “You may not be willing to provide what I need,” Grady said with slow relish. His blue eyes, so incongruous in his dark face, blazed with an unholy light.
    Storm gasped, stunned at the sexual innuendo inherent in his words. “You, Mr. Stryker, are an unprincipled rogue. How dare you speak to me in such a suggestive manner. If Buddy were alive you wouldn’t dare—”
    “I said nothing to offend you,” Grady said, quickly defending himself. His innocent stare made her want to give him a thorough tongue-lashing. “Don’t you think we should be on a first-name basis after all we’ve shared?”
    “What we shared is the tragic death of my husband, Mr. Stryker. If you don’t stop badgering me, we can forget all about the cooperation between us. I’ll bargain with another homesteader for water until my well is dug.”
    “Don’t get your dander up, Storm,” Grady said, trying not to smile, but failing miserably.
    Why was he feeling more lighthearted than he had in years? He couldn’t recall when he’d smiled last or bantered with a woman as