Читать книгу Paper Rose - Diana Palmer - Страница 9

The annual Pow Wow on the Wapiti Ridge Sioux reservation in southwestern South Dakota was Cecily’s favorite event. She’d promised Leta that she’d show up for it, and she had, begging an extra day off past the weekend on the excuse that she was going to look into buying some handicrafts from the reservation for the museum. Tate wasn’t likely to be here. Colby had mentioned that he was abroad again, so Cecily felt safe, for the moment. It would have hurt Leta’s feelings if she hadn’t come, since Leta didn’t know why there was a rift between her son and Cecily.

She looked around at the beautiful costumes, many made of fringed buckskin and very old, some of more recent vintage. Most Pow Wows were held in the summer months. Then she reminded herself that mid-September was still summer, even if there was a nip in the air here.

She didn’t have a drop of Lakota blood, but she had closer connections to this branch of the Oglala tribe than most whites. Tate Winthrop and his mother Leta had given Cecily refuge when she was still in her teens. She and Tate still weren’t speaking after the crab bisque attack, but Leta was like the mother she’d lost.

“I see a lot more people here this year,” Cecily told Leta, scanning the colorful crowd while sitting on hay bales around a circle where a dance competition was being held to the throbbing beat and chant of the drummers.

“They advertised it more this year,” Leta replied with a grin. She was young-looking for fifty-four, a little plump but with a pretty face, dark brown eyes and braided silver-flecked dark hair. She was dressed in fawn buckskins and boots with beaded, feathered ornaments in her hair. One of the ornaments was a circle with a cross inside, denoting the circle of life.

“You look lovely,” Cecily said with genuine affection.

Leta made a face. “I’m fat. You’ve lost weight,” she added. Her eyes narrowed.

Cecily stretched lazily. She was wearing a simple blue checked shirt with a denim skirt and boots. Her long blond hair was braided and circled around the crown of her head. Pale green eyes behind large framed glasses stared into nothing.

“Remember what I told you on the phone, that I found out the truth about the grant that was paying all my expenses?” she asked.

Leta nodded.

“Well, it wasn’t a grant that was paying for my education and living expenses.” She took a harsh breath. “It was Tate.”

Leta scowled. “Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure.” She glanced at the older woman. “I found out in the middle of Senator Matt Holden’s political fund-raiser, and I lost my temper. I poured crab bisque all over your son and there were television cameras covering the event.” She turned her wounded eyes toward the dancers. “I was devastated when I found out I’m nothing more than a charity case to him.”

“That isn’t true,” Leta said gently, but a little remotely. “You know Tate’s very fond of you.”

“Yes. Very fond, the way a guardian is fond of a ward. He owned me.” She stared at the brown grass under her feet, grimacing at the memory. “I couldn’t bear the humiliation of knowing that. I guess he thought I wouldn’t be able to make it on my own. I wasn’t really very mature at seventeen. But he could have told me the truth. It was horrible to find it out that way, especially at my age.” She took a deep breath. “I quit school, moved out of the apartment and took the job Senator Holden was asking me to take at the new museum he helped open. He’s a nice man.”

Leta looked away nervously. “Is he?” she asked in a curiously strained tone.

“You’d like him,” she said with a smile, “even though Tate doesn’t.”

Leta’s shoulders moved as if she were suddenly uncomfortable. “Yes, I know there’s friction between them. They don’t agree on any Native American issues, most especially on the fight to open a casino on Wapiti Ridge.”

“The senator seems to think that organized crime would love to move in, but I don’t think there’s much danger of that. Other Sioux reservations in the state have perfectly good casinos. Anyway, it’s the tribes in other states trying to open casinos that are drawing all the heat from gambling syndicates.”

Leta hesitated. “Yes, but just lately…” She caught herself and smiled. “Well, there’s no use talking about that right now. But, Cecily, what about your education?”

Of course, Leta knew that Tate had enrolled her in George Washington University near his Washington, D.C., apartment, so that he could keep an eye on her. He worked as security chief for Pierce Hutton’s building conglomerate now, a highly paid, hectic and sometimes dangerous job. But it was less wearing on Leta’s nerves than when he worked for the government.

“I can go back when I can afford to pay for it myself,” Cecily returned.

“There’s something more, isn’t there?” Leta asked in her soft voice. “Come on, baby. Tell Mama.”

Cecily grimaced. She smiled warmly at the older woman. She’d just turned twenty-five, but Leta had been “Mama” since hers had died and left her penniless, at the mercy of a drunken, lusting stepfather.

“Tate’s new girl,” she said after a minute. “She’s really beautiful. She’s thirty, divorced and she looks like a model. Blond, blue-eyed, perfect figure, social graces and she’s rich.”

“Bummer,” Leta said drolly.

Cecily burst out laughing at the drawled slang. Leta was one of the most educated women she knew, politically active on sovereignty issues for her tribe and an advocate of literacy programs for young Lakota people. Her husband had died years before, and she’d changed. Jack Yellowbird Winthrop had been a brutal man, very much like Cecily’s stepfather. During the time she spent with Leta, he was away on a construction job in Chicago or she’d never have been able to stay in the house with them.

“Tate’s a man,” Leta continued. “You can’t expect him to live like a recluse. His job involves a lot of social events. Where Hutton goes, he goes.”

“Yes, but this is…different,” Cecily continued. She shrugged. “I saw him with her last week, at a coffeehouse near my apartment. They were holding hands. She’s captivated him.”

“The Lakota Captive.” Leta made a line in the air with her hand. “I can see it now, the wily, brave Lakota warrior with the brazen white woman pioneer. She carries him off into the sunset over her shoulder…”

Cecily whacked her with a strand of grass she’d pulled.

“You write history your way, I’ll write it my way,” Leta said wickedly.

“Native Americans are stoic and unemotional,” Cecily reminded her. “All the books say so.”

“We never read many books in the old days, so we didn’t know that,” came the dry explanation. She shook her head. “What a sad stereotype so many make of us—a bloodthirsty ignorant people who never smile because they’re too busy torturing people over hot fires.”

“Wrong tribe,” Cecily corrected. She frowned thoughtfully. “That was the northeastern native people.”

“Who’s the Native American here, you or me?”

Cecily shrugged. “I’m German-American.” She brightened. “But I had a grandmother who dated a Cherokee man once. Does that count?”

Leta hugged her warmly. “You’re my adopted daughter. You’re Lakota, even if you haven’t got my blood.”

Cecily let her cheek fall to Leta’s shoulder and hugged her back. It felt so nice to be loved by someone in the world. Since her mother’s death, she’d had no one of her own. It was a lonely life, despite the excitement and adventure her work held for her. She wasn’t openly affectionate at all, except with Leta.

“For God’s sake, next you’ll be rocking her to sleep at night!” came a deep, disgusted voice at Cecily’s back, and Cecily stiffened because she recognized it immediately.

“She’s my baby girl,” Leta told her tall, handsome son with a grin. “Shut up.”

Cecily turned a little awkwardly. She hadn’t expected this. Tate Winthrop towered over both of them. His jet-black hair was loose as he never wore it in the city, falling thick and straight almost to his waist. He was wearing a breastplate with buckskin leggings and high-topped mocassins. There were two feathers straight up in his hair with notches that had meaning among his people, marks of bravery.

Cecily tried not to stare at him. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever known. Since her seventeenth birthday, Tate had been her world. Fortunately he didn’t realize that her mad flirting hid a true emotion. In fact, he treated her exactly as he had when she came to him for comfort after her mother had died suddenly; as he had when she came to him again with bruises all over her thin, young body from her drunken stepfather’s violent attack. Although she dated, she’d never had a serious boyfriend. She had secret terrors of intimacy that had never really gone away, except when she thought of Tate that way. She loved him….

“Why aren’t you dressed properly?” Tate asked, scowling at her skirt and blouse. “I bought you buckskins for your birthday, didn’t I?”

“Three years ago,” she said without meeting his probing eyes. She didn’t like remembering that he’d forgotten her birthday this year. “I gained weight since then.”

“Oh. Well, find something you like here…”

She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to buy me anything else,” she said flatly, and didn’t back down from the sudden menace in his dark eyes. “I’m not dressing up like a Lakota woman. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blond. I don’t want to be mistaken for some sort of overstimulated Native American groupie buying up artificial artifacts and enthusing over citified Native American flute music, trying to act like a member of the tribe.”

“You belong to it,” he returned. “We adopted you years ago.”

“So you did,” she said. That was how he thought of her—a sister. That wasn’t the way she wanted him to think of her. She smiled faintly. “But I won’t pass for a Lakota, whatever I wear.”

“You could take your hair down,” he continued thoughtfully.

She shook her head. She only let her hair loose at night, when she went to bed. Perhaps she kept it tightly coiled for pure spite, because he loved long hair and she knew it.

“How old are you?” he asked, trying to remember. “Twenty, isn’t it?”

“I was, five years ago,” she said, exasperated. “You used to work for the CIA. I seem to remember that you went to college, too, and got a law degree. Didn’t they teach you how to count?”

He looked surprised. Where had the years gone? She hadn’t aged, not visibly.

“Where’s Audrey?” she asked brightly, trying to sound nonchalant about it when her heart was breaking.

Something changed in his face. He looked briefly disturbed. “She couldn’t get away,” he said in a tone that didn’t invite questions. “One of her friends was having a tea, and she promised to help. I flew out alone.”

Cecily wondered if it was really because of a party that Audrey had stayed behind, or if his society girlfriend didn’t want to be seen on an Native American reservation. Tate had mentioned once or twice that Audrey had asked him repeatedly to get a conservative haircut. As if he’d ever cut his hair willingly. It was a part of his heritage, of which he was fiercely proud. At least she didn’t have to worry about him marrying Audrey. He might be smitten, but he’d said for years that he wasn’t going to dilute his Lakota blood by mingling it with a white woman. He wanted a child who was purely Lakota, like himself. If he ever married, it would be to a Lakota woman. The first time he’d said that, it had broken Cecily’s heart. But she’d come to accept it. When she realized that she was never going to be able to have Tate, she gave up and devoted herself to her studies. At least she was good at archaeology, she mused, even if she was a dismal failure as a woman in Tate’s eyes.

“She’s been broody ever since we got here,” Leta said with pursed lips as she glanced from Tate to Cecily. “You two had a blowup, huh?” she asked, pretending innocence.

Tate drew in a short breath. “She poured crab bisque on me in front of television cameras.”

Cecily drew herself up to her full height. “Pity it wasn’t flaming shish kebab!” she returned fiercely.

Leta moved between them. “The Sioux wars are over,” she announced.

“That’s what you think,” Cecily muttered, glaring around her at the tall man.

Tate’s dark eyes began to twinkle. He’d missed her in his life. Even in a temper, she was refreshing, invigorating.

She averted her eyes to the large grass circle outlined by thick corded string. All around it were makeshift shelters on poles, some with canvas tops, with bales of hay to make seats for spectators. The first competition of the day was over and the winners were being announced. A women-only dance came next, and Leta grimaced as she glanced from one warring face to the other. If she left, there was no telling what might happen.

“That’s me,” she said reluctantly, adjusting the number on her back. “Got to run. Wish me luck.”

“You know I do,” Cecily said, smiling at her.

“Don’t disgrace us,” Tate added with laughter in his eyes.

Leta made a face at him, but smiled. “No fighting,” she said, shaking a finger at them as she went to join the other competitors.

Tate’s granitelike face had softened as he watched his mother. Whatever his faults, he was a good son.

“She’s different since your father died,” Cecily commented, sitting down on one of the bales of hay, grateful for the diversion. “I’ve never seen her so animated.”

“My father was a hard man to live with,” he replied quietly. “If he hadn’t spent most of his life away on construction jobs, I’d probably have killed him.”

She knew he wasn’t kidding. Jack Winthrop had beaten Leta once, and Tate had wiped the floor with him after coming home unexpectedly and finding his mother cut and bruised. By then, he’d been in espionage work for some time. Jack Winthrop, big and tough as he was, was no match for the experienced younger man. It was the last time Leta ever suffered a beating, too. Jack became afraid of his son. Cecily remembered that Jack had never spoken one kind word about his only child. Oddly he seemed to hate Tate.

“You didn’t like your father much, did you?” Cecily remembered.

“He wasn’t a likable man.” He sat down beside her.

She felt the warm strength of him and closed her eyes briefly to savor it. He hardly ever touched people, not even his mother. In all the long years she’d been part of his life, he’d never touched her with intent. Not to hold her hand, kiss her even on the cheek, brush back her hair. That one time, when she’d flown to Oklahoma to help him with his case was the closest they’d come to intimacy, and that was anticlimactic, even if she had lived on it for weeks afterward. She’d ached for any contact at all, but that wasn’t Tate’s way. Yet she’d seen him holding hands with Audrey that day in the coffee shop. Nothing had ever hurt so much. It was an indication of the attraction he felt for the gorgeous socialite.

She smiled as she watched Leta doing the intricate steps of the dance inside the circle. All the women were wearing buckskins, a feat of endurance because it was almost ninety degrees in the South Dakota September sun.

“That was a nasty crack I made about you and Senator Holden at his birthday party,” he said after a minute. “I didn’t mean it.”

It was the closest he came to an apology. She was tired of arguing, so she took the olive branch for what it was. “I know.”

The mention of birthdays reminded him that he’d deliberately ignored Cecily’s this year. It wasn’t a pleasant memory. He shifted on the hay, staring at his mother in the circle. “Do you like the job at the museum?”

“Very much. I’ll be in charge of acquisitions, which is one reason I came out here. I want to exhibit some Oglala pottery and beadwork.”

He didn’t look at her. “How did you get to know Holden?”

“He’s good friends with a member of the faculty at George Washington University,” she said. “I ran into him in the hall one day. He knew me from one of the hearings…” She stopped, because this was part of her life she hadn’t shared with Tate.

“Hearings?” he prompted.

She folded her hands on the warm fabric of her skirt. The sun was beating down on her uncovered head. “It was a public hearing on Native American sovereignty. I went to speak in favor of it before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, speaking for a committee from the Wapiti reservation. Holden is the chairman of the Senate committee.” She kept her eyes on the circle of dancers. “It was Leta’s idea,” she added quickly. “She said Senator Holden was impressed by anthropology graduates, and I was the only one they could dig up at such short notice.”

“I didn’t know you involved yourself in political issues.”

She glanced at him wryly. “Of course you didn’t. You don’t know a lot about me.”

He scowled as he turned his attention to the circle and watched his mother dance, resplendent in her beautiful buckskins. No, he didn’t know a lot about Cecily, but he did know how devastated she’d been to discover he’d paid her way through college, absorbed all her expenses out of pity for her situation. He was sorry for how much that had hurt her. But over the past two years, he’d deliberately distanced himself from her. He wondered why…

“I had dinner with Senator Holden last week,” she said conversationally, deliberately trying to irritate him. “He wanted to point me toward some special collections for the museum.”

He stared at his mother in the circle, but he was frowning, deep in thought. “I don’t like Holden,” he said curtly.

“Yes, I know. You’ll be delighted to hear that he returned your sentiment,” she said with a chuckle at his scowl. “He’s really stubborn on the issue of a casino on the Wapiti reservation. We’ve pointed out the benefits to the tribe time and time again, but he won’t give an inch,” she recalled. “We could build a bigger clinic, buy an ambulance and train and hire an EMT to drive it. We could fund recreational programs for teens to keep them from drinking and getting into trouble. We could have prenatal programs…”

He was staring at her openly. “When did you talk to him about that?” he asked.

“I’ve been a thorn in his side for months,” she said easily. “I’ve left him e-mail messages, put notes under his door, left voice mail, sent tapes of the poverty on the reservation through the mail. He knows me very well indeed. But most recently I got him to listen to me over a nice dinner at the local cafeteria between Senate sessions,” she recalled. “He’s afraid of organized crime. He seems to have some suspicions about the motives of the tribal chief who’s so determined to get the casino approved by the state government for Class III gambling.”

“Tom Black Knife,” he said, nodding, because he knew the tribal chief, and there had been some gossip about the way he earmarked tribal funds. Not a lot of money was going into the reservation’s projects right now, and nobody seemed to know exactly where the money was going. Some was even missing, if Tate had understood a random comment one of his cousins had made earlier today. Tom was a good man with a kind heart, the softest touch on the reservation. Odd that his name would be connected with anything as unsavory as embezzlement. “But Holden is overlooking the benefits of the money the casino would bring in. Several Native American tribes have instituted casinos and had to fight state government all the way to get them. There are other casinos on Sioux land right here in our own state, but Holden is fighting our proposed compact with everything he’s got. Holden’s opposition hurts us in South Dakota, because he has powerful political allies in Pierre and no scruples about using them against us. One of them,” he added darkly, “is the state attorney general herself!”

“I know,” she said. Her pale eyes gazed into his dark ones. “But I’m working on the senator.”

He didn’t even blink. “Working on him, how?”

Here we go again, she thought with resignation. Her eyebrows lifted. He was acting as if she’d already seduced the man! On second thought, why not live down to that image? She leaned forward avidly. “Well, first I smeared him with honey and licked my way down to his throat…” she began earnestly.

He cursed sharply.

She laughed helplessly. “All right, it was just dinner. But he really is a very nice man, Tate,” she said.

He gave her a hard glare. “Listen, Cecily, going around with a man old enough to be your father isn’t the way to fight your hang-ups.”

“My hang-ups?” She glared at him. “Do feel free to elaborate.”

“You have friends instead of lovers,” he said curtly.

“I’m a modern woman,” she said coolly. “That means I have the right to decide what I do with my body. Some women, I might add, advocate using men only for breeding purposes. I myself think they’d be more useful as house pets.”

His black eyes twinkled. He waved to his mother who was just dancing past them with an ear to ear smile. “All the same, I don’t like seeing you with Holden.”

“I don’t particularly care what you like,” she said and smiled sweetly at him.

He hated that damned smile. It was like a red flag. “Listen, kid, you don’t know beans about some of the political superstars in Congress, and Holden is an unknown commodity. He guards his privacy like a mercenary. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him. He’s too secretive.”

“Look who’s talking!” she exclaimed. “You could probably topple governments with things you know and don’t tell!”

“Sure I could,” he agreed. “But I’m not shady.”

She just looked at him. It was a speaking look.

“Maybe a little shady,” he conceded finally. “A man has to have a few secrets.”

“So does a woman.”

He smoothed a hand down the buckskin leggings on one of his powerful thighs. “I hope you aren’t going to let what happened to you in Corryville ruin the rest of your life,” he said without looking at her. “You should go around with men your own age.”

She met his narrowed eyes. “I had my share of dates when I started college. It’s amazing that every single one of them thought he was entitled to my bed in return for a nice dinner and some dancing. And you know what I got when I said no? They told me I wasn’t liberated.” She threw up her hands. “What does liberation have to do with rejecting a man with bad breath who looks like a lab rat?”

“You won’t get around me by changing the subject,” he continued doggedly. “Holden isn’t the sort of man you need in your life and neither is Colby Lane.”

The silence beside her was thick with suppressed anger. Colby was ex-CIA, too, now a mercenary who did freelance work for various organizations, including, so rumor had it, the government. He was almost as tough as Tate. But he had a few more visible flaws. Tate was his friend and he couldn’t miss the fact that Cecily and Colby were close—even Audrey had pointed it out to him. But he didn’t like having Cecily dating the man, and Cecily knew it by his very silence.

She held up a hand before he could continue. “I know he’s had his problems in the past…”

“He can’t keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife!”

“I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore,” she continued. “He’s narrowed his habit down to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays.”

“What does he get for a reward?” he asked insolently.

She sighed irritably. “Nobody suits you! You don’t even like poor old lonely Senator Holden.”

“Like him? Holden?” he asked, aghast. “Good God, he’s the one man in Congress I’d like to burn at the stake! I’d furnish the wood and the matches!”

“You and Leta,” she said, shaking her head. “Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn’t burn people at the stake,” she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why.

He searched her enthusiastic eyes. “You really do love Native American history, don’t you?”

She nodded. “The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them.” She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. “I like your way better.”

“Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try.”

“I had you and Leta to teach me,” she said simply. “They were wonderful lessons that I learned, here on the reservation. I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.”

He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before.

Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him.

He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard.

“Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper.

“Wh…what?” she stammered.

His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off-limits. Period.

He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her.

“Mother’s won a prize,” he said. His voice sounded oddly strained. He forced a nonchalant smile and turned to Cecily. She was visibly shaken. He shouldn’t have looked at her. Her reactions kindled new fires in him.

He reached down suddenly and caught her arms, pulling her up with him, deliberately closer than he needed to. He drew her a step closer, so that he could feel the whip of her excited breath against his throat. His fingers tightened on her arms, almost bruising them. Time seemed to stop for a space of seconds. He didn’t even hear the drums or the chants or the murmur of conversation around them. For the first time in memory, he wanted to crush Cecily down the length of his body and grind his mouth into hers. The thought shocked him so badly that he let her go all at once, turned and walked toward the circle without even looking back.

Cecily stared after him and her legs shook. She must have dreamed what just happened, she told herself. It was years of hunger for Tate that had made her mind snap. Besides, he wasn’t even attracted to her. Yes, she thought, moving toward Leta like a sleepwalker, it had only been a dream. Only another hopeless waking dream.

Cecily had planned to stay overnight and fly out the next morning, but when she and Leta went back to the small frame house in the headquarters village where Leta lived, Tate was sprawled in the easy chair watching the color television he’d given Leta last Christmas. She had good furniture and propane gas heat, one of the few houses to boast such luxuries. Tate made sure Leta lacked for nothing. It was a different story elsewhere, with elderly people trying to keep warm in fifty-below-zero temperatures with woodstoves in houses that were never tight enough to keep in the heat. The reservation was small and poor, despite the efforts of various missionary groups and some government assistance. Education, Cecily thought, was certainly the key to prosperity, but that was another difficulty that needed to be overcome. Native American colleges were springing up these days when funding could be had, places where the people could keep their traditions and their culture alive while learning the skills that would give them good jobs. It was one of Leta’s dreams to have such a place on the Wapiti Ridge.

“You still here?” Leta asked her son with a broad grin.

“I thought I’d stay until tomorrow,” he replied without looking at Cecily.

“I have to get to the airport,” Cecily remarked cheerfully, her eyes cautioning Leta not to contradict her. “I’m due back at work Monday morning.”

She and Leta knew that wasn’t true, but Cecily couldn’t imagine staying under the same roof with Tate. Not now.

“How about some coffee?” Tate asked his mother as he rose from the chair and turned off the television.

“I’ll make it,” Leta volunteered and hurried to the small kitchen to hide her glee.

Tate moved close to Cecily, an unusual thing for him to do. He never liked her closer than arm’s length. Having him so close now made her nervous.

“There’s a dance tonight,” he told her. “We’re going.”

“I think Leta’s had enough dancing,” she began.

He shook his head. “You and I are going.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “I wasn’t asked.”

Without counting the cost, he framed her face in his lean, warm hands and brought his mouth down gently on her shocked lips.

She made a sound that aroused and delighted him. He gathered her in, riveting her to the length of him while the kiss suddenly became hungry, demanding, intimate.

It was like falling. It was like having every single dream of her adult life come true. His mouth was hard and slow and exquisitely sensuous. She didn’t like knowing how he’d gotten the experience that made him such a tender lover, but the wonder of it erased the jealousy. She held to his hard arms to keep from falling down and tried to respond enthusiastically, if a little inexperienced. He tasted of heaven. She opened her lips a little more to tempt him, and her hands tightened on the hard muscles of his arms, trying to hold him where he was. Years of dreaming of this, waiting, hoping, and it was actually happening! He was kissing her as if he loved her mouth…

His head lifted. His black eyes told her nothing as they searched her face intently. His hands on her arms were bruising. “We’ll have supper before we go to the dance,” he said, his voice a little strained.

“What do you want to eat?” Leta called suddenly from the kitchen.

“Sandwiches,” he called back. “Okay?”

“Okay! I’ll make some.”

Tate’s eyes went back to Cecily. She was looking at him as if he were the very secret of life. He was in over his head already, he reasoned. He might as well go the rest of the way. His body throbbed all over with just that one small taste of her. He had to have more. He had to, and damn the consequences!

He bent, lifting her in his arms like precious treasure, and carried her back to the armchair with his heart threatening to push through his chest. He settled down in it, his hand pressing her cheek to his buckskin-clad shoulder as he bent again to her mouth before she could speak.

The seconds lengthened, sweetened. Cecily’s hands explored his long hair, his cheeks, his eyebrows, his nose as if she’d never touched a man in her life. It was delicious, taboo, forbidden. It was exquisite. She moaned softly, unable to contain the sheer joy of being in Tate’s arms at last. He heard the tiny sound and his mouth suddenly became demanding, insistent.

Kissing was suddenly no longer enough. His lean hand went to her rib cage and slowly worked its way up over one of her small, firm breasts. He lifted his head to search her eyes as he touched the hardness there, because this was difficult territory for her, with her memories of her stepfather. The man had all but raped her. Even therapy hadn’t completely healed her fears of intimacy after eight years.

She read that thought in his eyes. “It’s all right,” she whispered, worried that he was going to stop.

In fact, he was. He searched her bright eyes and smoothed his hand deliberately over her small, hard-tipped breast, but guilt consumed him. She’d never even had a lover. It wasn’t fair to treat her like this, not when he had no future to offer her. “You shouldn’t have let me do that, Cecily,” he said quietly.

He propelled her out of the chair and onto her feet, holding her firmly by the shoulders for a few seconds until he could breathe normally. “Go help Leta in the kitchen.”

“Bossy,” she accused breathlessly. The kisses had her reeling visibly.

“Thousands of years of conditioning don’t vanish overnight,” he mused. He searched her face with traces of hunger still in his eyes. “Do you still carry that week’s supply of prophylactics around with you?” he added wickedly.

She actually blushed. “I gave up on you and threw them out years ago.”

His eyes went up and down her soft body like hands. “Pity.”

“You said you wouldn’t, ever!” she protested.

One eyebrow arched and his lips pursed. He was trying to lighten the tension, but just looking at her now aroused him. “So I did. Eloquently, too.”

She was trembling. She wrapped both arms around herself to fight the emotion that was consuming her. She looked up at him accusingly. “You enjoy tormenting me, don’t you?”

He scowled. “Maybe I do.”

She turned away. “I’m flying out tonight.”

“No need. I’m not staying.” He went around her to the kitchen and kissed Leta goodbye where she stood at the counter making sandwiches.

“Make up before you go,” she pleaded with her son.

“I did,” he lied.

She touched his cheek sadly. “Stubborn,” she murmured, then she smiled. “Like your father.”

The mention of Jack Winthrop closed his face. “I’ve never hit you.”

She caught her breath and her hand came down. She gnawed her lower lip. “Someday,” she said hesitantly, “we must have a talk.”

“Not today,” he countered, oblivious to the guilt in her face. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“You don’t like Senator Holden.” She said it abruptly and without thinking, just as she’d said he was like his father. He didn’t know who his father was. She still couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

He turned. “There’s no one I like less,” he agreed. “He’s wrong down the line about Wapiti Ridge and what’s good for us, but he won’t see reason. He doesn’t know a thing about the Lakota, and he couldn’t care less!”

“He grew up here,” she said slowly.

“What?”

“He grew up here,” she continued. “Before his mother was a widow, she came here to teach at the school. He had friends on the reservation, including Black Knife.”

“You never told me that you knew him,” he accused.

“You never asked me. I’ve known him for a long time.”

He stared at her curiously. “If he knows the situation here, why is he fighting us on the idea of the casino?”

“He hates gambling,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in many years,” she added, “not since he married that pretty white woman and ran for the senate the first time.”

“His wife is dead.”

She nodded. “I read it in the papers.” Her eyes searched his. “Cecily says you have a pretty white woman of your own.”

“Damn Cecily!” he said through his teeth, hating his own stupidity for touching Cecily in the first place and frustrated by the painful attraction he couldn’t satisfy. “What I do is no business of hers! It never was, and it never will be!”

“Amen to that,” Cecily said from the doorway, a little less confident because of his biting remarks, but calm just the same. “Why don’t you go home to Audrey?”

“I don’t understand this,” Leta said worriedly as she studied her son. “You keep saying you don’t want to be involved with a white woman…”

“Only with a plain white woman,” Cecily corrected. “Isn’t that right, Tate? But Audrey is beautiful.”

It was only then that he realized how Cecily must feel about his relationship with the other woman, as if he’d bypassed her because she was no beauty. It wasn’t true. He’d been responsible for her for years, even if she hadn’t known it until recently. He’d fought his attraction to her because it was like exploiting her, taking advantage of her gratitude for what he’d done for her. How did he explain that without making matters worse than they already were?

Leta could have wept for Cecily, standing there with such dignity and poise, even in the face of Tate’s hostility.

“It has nothing to do with beauty,” Tate said finally.

Cecily only smiled. “I’ll finish the sandwiches while you see Tate off,” she told Leta.

“Cecily…” Tate began hesitantly.

“We all act on impulse occasionally,” she said, meeting his eyes bravely. “It’s no big thing. Really.” She smiled, avoiding Leta’s probing gaze, and turned to the refrigerator. “Are you eating before you go?”

He scowled fiercely. She thought he regretted touching her. Perhaps he did. He couldn’t remember being so confused.

“No,” he said after a minute. “I’ll get something at the airport.”

Leta went with him and waited while he got his suitcase and carried it out to his rental car, which was parked beside the one Cecily had rented. The reservation was a long drive from the airport, so a car was a necessity.

“You two used to get along so well,” Leta murmured.

“I’ve been blind,” he said through his teeth. “Stark staring blind.”

“What do you mean?”

He stared out across the rolling hills that were turning golden as autumn approached. “She’s in love with me.”

It was a shock to hear himself say it. Until then, he hadn’t really considered it. But Cecily had lain in his arms as trusting as a child, clinging to him. Her eyes had been rapt with pleasure, joy glistening in them. Why hadn’t he known? Or was it that he hadn’t wanted to know?

“You mustn’t let her see that you know,” Leta instructed grimly. “She is proud.”

“Yes.” He touched his mother’s shoulder. “There are so few of us left who are full-bloods,” he said, wondering why Leta grimaced. Perhaps she’d hoped that he might marry Cecily one day, despite her pride in their heritage.

“And you won’t marry a white girl,” she said.

He nodded solemnly. “Audrey is costume jewelry. I wear her on my arm. She’s sophisticated and savvy and shallow. It means nothing. Just as the other handful meant nothing.”

Leta’s eyes fell to his chest. “That isn’t all.”

He sighed. “I’ve taken care of Cecily for eight years,” he reminded her. “Even without the cultural differences, I’m in the position of a guardian to her, whether she likes it or not. I can’t take advantage of what she feels for me.”

“Of course you can’t.” Leta linked her fingers together. “Drive safely.”

He pulled a small package from his jacket pocket. “Give this to her after I’m gone. It’s her birthday present.” He smiled ruefully. “We weren’t speaking, so she didn’t get it on her birthday.”

“She may not want it.”

He knew that. It hurt. “Try.”

She watched him drive away down the winding dirt road that cut through to the main highway. She knew that one day soon she was going to have to share a painful truth with him. Things were happening that he didn’t know about. Things that involved herself and Matt Holden and some vicious men in chauffeured limousines and the tribal chief. It was not a prospect she relished.