Eagle, Kathleen (25 page)

And
the words "you are his son" stung her ears. She should not have been
the one to come to Bad River. She should have turned this assignment down. But
when it was offered, she could no more have refused it than to have denied her
next breath. Especially when she'd seen Roy Blue Sky's name in the report.

"Yeah,
well, I'm not that high-minded," Reese said. "I didn't ask for any of
it. Carter's job is his business. Your job is your business. The way I feel
about you has nothing to do with any of this intrigue."

Ah,
but it will, she thought. God help us, it will.

"But
I'll play it by the rules," he vowed, "whatever the hell they are.
It's your deal. Just be straight with me, okay? Don't deal me any sympathy
cards. I don't need that."

She
held her breath, yet the red flags were all aflutter again.

"Do
you?" he asked, his low voice exquisitely gentle. "You want me to
feel sorry for you because you had a problem with gambling?"

"No,
I don't, but the word is 'have.' I
have
a problem with it."

"You've
licked it," he said. "Looks to me like you wrestled that monkey to
the ground and made him say uncle."

She
swallowed hard. "How
do
you feel about me?" she asked quietly.

"Crazy,
but it's a pleasant kind of crazy." He traced her cheek and neck and
throat with caring fingertips. "Crazy in a good way."

"You
don't look crazy," she whispered, but her eyes were closed, her chin
lifted to abet his touching. "You don't sound crazy."

"You
asked me how I
feel."
His hand slid over her breast. "You're a
dangerous woman. You get me going, you might have me acting as crazy as I feel,
and then what? You go off and leave me stewing in my own hot juices, and that's
not a pleasant kind of crazy." Fingertips crept around the fullness of her
breast, outside, underneath, between... "Not a pleasant sight, either, a
big guy like me. I hate to look like a fool."

She
would not argue that it was he who had left. It was a poor argument. He hadn't
"gone off" and left her. He had simply gone elsewhere. He'd gone on,
and so had she. On and on, round and round. Round and round could drive you
crazy. Yes, and his fingers moved round and round, very slowly round and round.
He was driving her crazy. The closer he came to her nipple, the crazier she
felt. Crazier in a good way. She wanted it to go on forever.

She
had no arguments. There were no arguments.
How do you feel about me?
meant
so much more than she dared explain. Every minute she spent with this man was a
risky minute, a minute stolen from the safe place where she guarded her life
with her son. Every moment was at once a tiny golden treasure and a troubling
white lie, and she was shamelessly stealing all she could grab. Questions like
Do you love me?
and
Can you forgive me?
were perilous enough, and
they were only the beginning.

Tell
him, don't tell him, tell him, don't tell him. The monkey chased the weasel.

What
would he do? If he knew about Sidney, what would he do?

How
could she say,
Can I trust you with something far more precious than you and
me and our frail egos?

"I
feel a little crazy, too," she said. "And for me, it's scary."

"So's
a roller coaster."

"My
favorite ride." Better than the merry-go-round.

"Front
seat, right? You get to the top of the first hill and you reach for the sky,
don't you?"

Finally
he taunted her nipple with his thumb and made her smile crazily at the stars.
No more thinking, only feeling.

"Climb
on my shoulders, darlin'," he whispered.

"Anytime
you need a boost."

***

When
the night sky began to fade, they made their way down the hill, hand in hand
like two joyous children. Dewy grass brushed Helen's bare legs. A bat startled
Reese when they reached the car, but Helen credited the creature with clearing
the mosquitoes out for them. "I don't think I got any bites at all,"
she exclaimed when he slid behind the wheel. He apologized for the oversight
and asked her where she'd like one.

A
truck stop provided bathrooms, then coffee and doughnuts, which they enjoyed
while they sat on the hood of the car and watched the sun rise.

"Remember
when we did this before?" she asked. "The way we ditched the people
we were with—"

"You
were
with."

"
I
was with. And then we..."

"I
remember everything."

His
beautiful smiling lips were dusted with powdered sugar, just as she remembered
from the time before. She drew his head down to kiss and lick and love the
sweetness of his mouth. A passing semi saluted them with a happy honk, and they
laughed as they slid off the hood without spilling a drop of coffee.

He
didn't ask her about going to his place, but that was where they were headed.
She didn't ask any questions, either. The answer was that she would stay with
him as long as she could on this most beautiful of mornings. A white haze
hovered over the lush fields of August. The clouds they'd spoken of touching
billowed high overhead, casting racing shadows on an alfalfa patch that was
ripe for a second cutting. Fence posts flitted past the window. A profusion of
sunflowers filled the next field. The right-of-way had been cut and windrowed,
but one clump of sunflowers, missed by the mower, stood tall in a shaft of
sunlight. Golden frills anchored to solid brown hearts swayed in the morning
breeze.

Beautiful
morning. Sweet contentment. Comfortable silence. No questions, no need for
answers. Being together was enough for now. Being together was a precious
thing.

Reese
was thinking about taking her horseback riding if he could find something for
her to wear. She looked heartbreakingly beautiful in those long dresses of hers
that hugged her sweet breasts and fell in loose folds around her lovely calves,
but what could a guy do with a woman in a dress? He didn't dance, and she
didn't run or play ball. He had to make love to her. That was all there was to
it.

Eyes
on the road ahead, he was smiling a little to himself when she suddenly
unbuckled her seat belt and scooted close to him. He put his arm around her,
not too surprised that she'd read his mind considering how smart she was. But
then she put her hand on his chest, right over his heart, and he knew what was
on her mind again. Well, she was just going to have to get over it.

"I
think I made some waves at my first council meeting," he told her. He
figured politics was as good a distraction from matters of the heart as any.

"Already?"

"The
gaming committee made a recommendation, and I moved to table it. I said I
didn't think we ought to be eliminating options just yet, and I got enough
people to agree with me that, well, the thing actually got tabled." He laughed.
"Kinda surprised me, you wanna know the truth."

"So
you just walked right in and started making plays, huh?"

"Yeah."
He grinned. "That's what I did. I set it up and took a shot. I did get a
little pre-meeting tip from my buddy who's on the gaming commission, which is
different from the gaming
committee,
which was hand-picked by Sweeney,
and I don't trust Sweeney. Titus—you know Titus Hawk?"

He
was buoyant with his achievement, and she was smiling with him now. Okay, a
little sadly, but he would put her blues on the run soon enough now that he had
her smiling, acknowledging that she knew who his friend was, that she knew the
commissioners were the tribe's watchdogs, operating independently of the
council, and that he could tell her again, tell her more, tell her anything
about his first day as a councilman. She was with him now, and she was smiling.

"A
presentation from Ten Star is next on the agenda," he told her. "I've
been looking over my old man's papers, and I've got some questions I want
answered. I don't know any other way but to ask straight out. I don't have time
for much fishing around, and I figure if I ask, they have to explain. Hell, I'm
on the
council."

"Yes,
you are."

"And
I—" He saw a white pickup top the rise in the road ahead. "Honey,
I've got a feeling there might be a tribal cop or two who wouldn't hesitate to
haul me in on a seat-belt charge."

"Oh,
I'm sorry."

He
was, too, but he was a little suspicious of pickup drivers now, and he'd be a
hell of a lot sorrier if she went flying through the windshield. "A
regrettable precaution," he said. "Anyway, do you know we could have
bought the slots we're leasing from Ten Star three times over by now? My first
question is whose piss-poor plan that was and how they plan to compensate for
it."

"The
council agreed to it. After the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed, a lot
of tribes agreed to whatever terms they could get when outfits like Ten Star appeared
on the doorstep with the money and the experience in the gambling business to
help them get started."

"Well,
it's time to change the terms. The debt's almost paid off, and we've got
experience now. For one, we've got Carter."

"He
works for Ten Star."

"The
way I see it, we hired
them.
That means they all work for us." He
lifted one shoulder. "Carter belongs to the tribe. He's Bad River
Lakota."

"So
is Preston Sweeney."

"Yeah,
but Sweeney's always been a damn suck-up. In grade school he used to get in
good with the nuns by selling the rest of us out."

"That
was a long time ago."

"Once
a suck-up, always a suck-up."

"You
don't know what your brother was like in grade school."

"No,
I don't. But somebody's been selling us out, Helen, and it looks to me like my
father died trying to stand in their way." He glanced at her as he slowed
to make the turn to his place. "That somebody wasn't my brother, no matter
what other kind of trouble he might be in."

It
surprised Reese, hearing himself get defensive over a suggestion nobody had made.
Surprised Helen, too, from the look she was giving him.

Then
a wail went up from the house. Crybaby came bounding down the driveway, howling
as though Reese had a particular scolding coming for being out all night. He
was about to laugh before he noticed that the dog was favoring his left hind
leg.

"Hey,
buster, did you tangle with a bear or something?" Reese slammed the car
door and knelt in the gravel to greet the dog, who was so happy to see him he
spelled it out in piss, all over Reese's boot and down his pants leg.

Helen
was right there with a bundle of baby talk. "What's wrong, sweetie?"

"Hold
his collar," Reese said, trying to get a look at the leg while the dog
whined and wagged and peed. The black hair of Crybaby's hindquarter was matted
and sticky, and when Reese touched him, the shepherd yelped and jerked away
from Helen, nipping at the cause of his pain.

"Easy,"
Reese said. "I won't hurt you, boy. Just let me have a—"

With
a snarl this time, Crybaby warned him away.

"There's
blood, but that's all I can tell. How far do we have to go to get to a vet? Is
it still...?" Damn, he couldn't remember ever calling a vet. There had
never been many cattle on the place, but as a small-time rancher, his father
had always given the shots, stitched, birthed, medicated, put down...

"The
Yellow Pages? We could call a neighbor for a recommendation," Helen
suggested.

The
local phone book was a mere pamphlet.

"I
recommend Indian Health," he said as he lifted the protesting animal in
his arms. "It's the closest, and I know how to get there."

She
opened the door to the backseat of the car. "Do they treat dogs?"

"They'll
treat this one."

They
didn't want to. The young nurse who met them at the emergency door told them in
no uncertain terms that dogs were not allowed. But Reese soon found an ally in
one of the ambulance drivers.

"Hey,
Blue, what's up?"

"Hey,
Dexter," Reese greeted the small, wiry man. He couldn't shake his hand
with his arms full of whimpering dog. "Tell this lady to find me someone
who can give my friend here a little Novocain or sodium pentothal or whatever
you've got in the medicine cabinet so we can fix his back leg up. We might need
to X-ray him, too."

"Jeez,
I don't know, Blue." Dexter squinted at Helen. "She don't look
Indian."

"Helen,
this is Dexter White Mountain," Reese supplied, and she offered a
handshake. "The
dog,
Dex."

"We
don't—"

"Full-blooded
Lakota shepherd."

Dexter
grinned. "Good try, Blue, but it's against—"

"Dex,
Crybaby was my father's dog."

"Oh."
The little man nodded solemnly. "How bad is it?"