Paper Rose (10 page)

“So you expect me not to worry about you? After what my own father put me and my mother through?”

S
he saw the hurt as if it were visible on his expressionless face. She got out of the chair and stood just in front of him. “People aren't basically cruel,” she said in a soft, sympathetic tone. “Sometimes they just hurt so much inside that they can't bear the pain. They can't cope with the ordinary pressures of day-to-day life, and they turn to drugs or alcohol for comfort.”

“What reason did my father have to hurt inside?” he demanded harshly.

That his son wasn't his son and his wife loved another man,
she thought. She looked at him, seeing plainly how the years of torment and anguish had formed the man he'd become. His face was like granite, but every line, every furrow, concealed an emotional wound from years past. “Steel tempered by fire,” she said aloud, without thinking.

“Am I?” he asked.

She smiled sadly. “Aren't you?”

He let out a long, slow breath and some of the tension drained out of him. He looked at her quizzically. “You give me peace,” he said unexpectedly. “The only time I ever feel it is when I'm with you. God knows why, when you set me off like a bomb.”

She searched his eyes. “Tate, Senator Holden has a reason for what he did,” she told him seriously. “I don't pretend to know what it is, but I know him. He's not like some politicians who lie when the truth would suit better. He has integrity. He doesn't hold grudges and he doesn't backstab. You know that,” she added with conviction.

He scowled. “Yes, I do.” His narrow eyes searched hers. “What do you know, Cecily?”

“I know archaeology,” she replied.

He reached out and touched her firm little chin with hard fingers. “You're keeping something from me,” he said in a low, deep tone. “I'm not sure why I sense that, but I do.”

“You think you know all about me,” she replied, trying to draw back. “Don't…do that,” she muttered, reaching up to catch his hair-roughened wrist in her warm fingers.

His breath caught. “Fatal error, Cecily,” he said huskily, moving in, giving in to the hunger that had really brought him to her apartment at this hour of the night. “You shouldn't have touched me…”

Before she could ask what he meant, his mouth was hard on her lips. He groaned and backed her up against the wall while his lips did unspeakably erotic things to her open mouth. She felt his powerful thigh parting her legs, felt his lean, fit body press itself hungrily to hers as he crushed her sensuously into the wall behind her.

She had no defense whatsoever. She was on fire for him. Her nails dug into the long, hard muscles of his back and she moaned harshly against his demanding mouth. There was a rhythm that she didn't recognize. It made little darts of pleasure run up into her body from some secret recess of joy. One lean hand was at her hip, teaching her the rhythm. His whole body was an instrument of delicious torture, taking her far beyond any small pleasure she'd had in her life. She sobbed under his mouth as her body began to swell with it. And at the same moment, she felt the change in him as well, a physical change that was all too noticeable given their proximity.

He knew they were getting in over their heads. He pulled back, despite the intense pain it caused him to stop. His eyes were dazed, ferocious as they met her own from a space of inches. He exhaled roughly, unsteadily, at her swollen mouth. He looked down to find her body so close that barely a breath could get between them. He was aroused and she knew. He'd let her know, for the first time.

He looked back up into her misty eyes. “You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily.

“If you'll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I'll be happy to…!”

He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn't a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver.

“That's…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor.

“It isn't,” he corrected. “I've just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm.

It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther.

“What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him.

She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn't a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn't been able to force her to do something she didn't want to do.

“Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!”

“That isn't what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.”

She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don't understand.”

“You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn't be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.”

He sighed heavily. “You've been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I'll still feel protective about you. It's the way I'm made.”

He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.”

“Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…”

“I don't have too many of those. Mostly, you're responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I'm supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You're breaking the rules.”

His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor always seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.”

“You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman's ego can only take so much rejection.”

His eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn't get it out of my mind,” he said, almost to himself, “the way it felt, back at my mother's house. I was never so hungry for anyone, but it wasn't completely physical, even then.” He frowned. “I want you, Cecily, and I hate myself for it.”

“What else is new?” She gestured toward the door. “Go home. And I hope you don't sleep a wink.”

“I probably won't,” he said ruefully. He moved toward the door, hesitating.

“Good night,” she said firmly, not moving.

He stood with his back to her, his spine very straight. “I can trace my ancestors back before the Mexican War in the early 1800s, pure Lakota blood, undiluted even by white settlement. There are so few of us left…”

She could have wept for what she knew, and he didn't know. “You don't have to explain it to me,” she said solemnly. “I know how you feel.”

“You don't,” he bit off. He straightened again. “I'd die to have you, just once.” He turned, and the fire was in his eyes as they met hers, glittering across the room. “It's like that for you, too.”

“It's a corruption of the senses. You don't love me,” she said quietly. “Without love, it's just sex.”

He breathed deliberately, slowly. He didn't want to ask. He couldn't help it. “Something you know?”

“Yes. Something I know,” she said, lying with a straight face and a smile that she hoped was worldly. She was not going to settle for crumbs from him, stolen hours in his bed. Men were devious when desire rode them, even men like Tate. She couldn't afford for him to know that she was incapable of wanting any man except him.

The words stung. They were meant to. He hesitated, only for a minute, before he jerked open the door and went out. Cecily closed her eyes and thanked providence that she'd had the good sense to deny herself what she wanted most in the world. Tate had said once that sex alone wasn't enough. He was right. She repeated it, like a mantra, to her starving body until she finally fell asleep.

 

Cecily drove up to Leta's small house on the Wapiti Ridge reservation late the next afternoon. It had taken a change of planes in Denver to get a flight up to Rapid City, South Dakota, and she'd driven to the reservation from there.

Leta came out on the porch wiping her hands on an apron, grinning. “I barely had time to do a nice supper. You bad girl, you should have phoned yesterday, not from the airport!”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

Leta grimaced at the word “surprise.”

“What's wrong?” Cecily asked when she walked onto the porch with her bag.

“I forgot to give it to you.”

“Give me what?”

“Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I'll fetch it!”

Cecily felt as if she'd had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall…

“He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched.

“He always remembers it, but he said you weren't speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.”

Cecily's hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. It wasn't a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn't buy her a…

“The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?”

Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter.

Cecily glared at her. “It isn't funny.”

“Oh, yes it is!”

Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn't he?”

She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn't silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn't been an impulse purchase. He'd had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he'd meant those, too.

She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she'd treasure it as long as she lived.

“Now. Why are you here?” Leta asked pointedly while they ate the supper she'd cooked and drank black coffee.

“I've got a line on an ancient artifact,” she began glibly.

Leta looked at her. “There is no ancient artifact here, except the sacred bundle, and you know very well that it's never displayed except on ceremonial occasions. Nor would any member of the tribe allow you even to touch it, much less carry it off to a museum.”

Cecily sighed and sipped coffee. “Leta, it would be so much easier if you'd just believe me when I lie.”

Leta chuckled. “You don't do it well.”

“I can't tell you everything,” she said. “But I'll tell you what I can. I'm here to do some snooping.”

Leta's eyes widened. “Covert ops,” she said enthusiastically. “Oh, boy. What do we do?”

“Listen, this is serious stuff,” came the reply. “There are some bad people running around here.”

“Going back and forth in chauffeured limousines with out-of-state license plates,” Leta said. “And every time they come and go, Tom Black Knife goes down to his nephew's house and has several jiggers of whisky.”

Cecily's mouth fell open.

Leta gave her a speaking look. “I know everything that goes on. I know when something's not right. Tribal funds are vanishing, and I can't believe Tom would steal. He's my cousin.”

“He's also the good friend of a powerful man in Washington,” Cecily said carefully, “who's going to blow the whistle on the whole operation if he can get enough evidence.”

Leta silently picked at her food. “These people don't come at you head-on,” she said. “They come from behind, or both sides. They prey on people with secrets.”

“Not people like you,” Cecily teased deliberately. “You don't have secrets.”

Leta was silent again. “Have you seen Tate?”

Her heart jumped. “I saw him last night, in fact.”

“Is he well?”