Читать книгу Arrowpoint - Suzanne Ellison - Страница 11

IT WAS THE SOUND of a door opening that woke Renata. No woman living alone in a big city fails to develop a certain wariness about unexplained sounds and movements in her own home. The clack was enough to jolt Renata out of her grogginess in a flash. Her heart was pounding crazily before she remembered where she was...and that she was not alone.

There had been a change in Michael after her little speech in the basement. Before then he’d been alternately warm and distant. Since then he’d been apologetic, almost meek. When he’d thanked her—profusely—for putting him up for the night, his tone had been decidedly impersonal. But his intimate gaze hadn’t left her face until she’d shut the door to her own room.

With her mind so full of worries—about the old man, the crafts fair and Michael—Renata hadn’t expected to doze off. But after an hour, even the gripping spy novel she was reading couldn’t keep her awake. Now, in the darkness, she seized the hardback book as though it were a weapon.

She stood up, crossed the room and groped for her own door, still securely shut. She opened it and whispered, “Michael?” When he didn’t answer, she turned on the light in the hall. The door to the guest room was open, but there was no one inside.

Quickly Renata grabbed a robe—the lightest one she owned, since it was a humid night—and hurried downstairs. There was a light on in the kitchen, revealing an open pickle jar and an unwrapped pack of bologna on the counter she’d cleaned off a few hours before. She called Michael’s name again, but there was no answer. Hoping his grandfather had finally shown up, Renata opened the front door and peered out at the porch. There was no sign of Michael...or his grandfather.

Resigned to the fact that Michael must have gone off searching again without her, Renata turned to go back inside. She almost didn’t hear the quiet, reluctant voice that said, “I’m over here, Renata.”

Her pulse pounded in a second’s quick fear before she recognized Michael’s voice and sought his virile face in the darkness. He was sitting on the lawn in the shadows. Right about the spot where he’d first joined his chanting grandfather.

Tightening the sash of her robe, Renata crossed the porch to the railing. Between the porch light and the moon, she could see him and he could surely see her, but somehow Renata felt they both welcomed the emotional barrier the hand rail provided. She’d invited Michael the yuppie to spend the night in her guest room. It was Michael the Indian who was sitting on her front lawn.

“Sorry if I woke you,” he said in a troubled tone. “I did my best to be quiet.” Then, with an apologetic smile, he reminded her, “You told me to make myself at home. I was hungry.”

“I’m beginning to believe that’s a permanent condition with you,” she teased.

He chuckled. “Maybe it’s because I hadn’t eaten for nearly a day when I first showed up here. Maybe it’s because I had to fast when I was young. Maybe it’s because I don’t have a squaw to cook for me.”

Renata wasn’t sure how to handle a line like that. Every time she’d broached the subject of his background, Michael had gotten a bit testy. She wasn’t at all sure what to say when he was the one who brought it up. She wasn’t at all sure he was teasing.

Uneasily she asked, “Why were you fasting?”

“My grandfather was determined to give me a traditional Winnebago upbringing,” he explained, “even though most Winnebagos don’t honor the old ways very strictly anymore. When he was a boy, Winnebago youths were trained to fast as part of their vision-quest ceremonies.” He gave an expansive gesture that seemed to embrace the world. “Personally, I think they also did it as training for times when food was scarce, so they’d be accustomed to starvation and still be able to hunt or fight or whatever.”