Warrior's Embrace (61 page)

“This is not love, Deborah,” he said as he
moved them inexorably toward the bed.

“I know.”

“It will never be love.”

“I don’t care.”

He would never know how she lied. Love was a
beautiful dream she’d had once, but like all dreams, it faded in
the light of reality. She was twenty-six years old, and every night
she still went to her cramped little room at the back of the
general store. When morning came, she woke up to the quarrelsome
voice of a father who hardly ever remembered her name.

He needed to be in a nursing home, but her
salary at the clinic wouldn’t stretch far enough to add those
expenses, and Hal was no help at all. She rarely ever saw him, and
when he did come to visit, he was distant and unapproachable. The
brother she’d once known and loved was filled with a subterranean
darkness that Deborah didn’t dare explore.

Even if Eagle Mingo wouldn’t be the love of
her life, he would be her way out. Sighing, Deborah stretched upon
his bed, bartering her body for freedom. The red light from his
telephone answering machine cast a ruby glow across her cheek.

Cupping her face, Eagle bent toward her. With
his warm breath fanning her cheek and his lips only inches away, he
tensed. The light on his answering machine beckoned.

Without a word he snaked out his hand and
punched the message button.

“Eagle, I just thought you needed to know . .
.” The voice of Black Elk, chief of tribal police, filled the room.
Deborah closed her eyes, trying to shut out reality

“Somebody is trying to kill Kate Malone.”

Eagle grabbed the phone and punched Black
Elk’s number. Holding her blouse together over her naked breasts,
Deborah sat up, listening to one side of a brief, clipped
conversation.

“This is Eagle. What’s happened to Kate?” His
back was rigid with tension.

“When?” Deborah heard his long, shuddering
breath.

“Do you know who did it?”

Black Elk’s reply was a muted, distant
murmuring, and when it ceased, Eagle replaced the phone. In the
screaming silence Deborah held her breath. Finally, he turned to
her.

“I’m sorry, Deborah.”

She sat on the bed, watching him leave. His
footsteps echoed down the hall and through the den. Still clutching
her blouse, she heard the front door slam, then the distant
pounding of horse’s hooves.

Humiliation came over her, and on its heels a
deep, creeping shame. Her best friend’s life was threatened, and
she hadn’t even asked any questions. The shame stayed with her
while she buttoned her blouse and mounted her horse. By the time
she got home, her humiliation was beginning to abate. But not the
shame. It would be with her always, a black thread woven into the
fabric of her life.

“Deborah, is that you?” Her father was having
a lucid moment.

“Will you find my bow? I have to go out and
kill an elk. The children are hungry.”

“Yes, Father, I’ll find your bow. But first,
let me make you a nice bowl of soup.”

Outside her window the sun painted the earth
pink and gold, and in her imagination Deborah heard the thundering
hooves of a black stallion racing across the prairie.

Eagle, going to Kate.

o0o

He heard the shots long before he reached her
house. Leaning low, Eagle urged his stallion to a gallop.

Another shot rang out just as he topped the
hillside. Below him Kate was silhouetted against the setting sun,
coat off, red hair blowing in the wind. And in her hand was a Smith
and Wesson .38. Eagle pulled his mount to a halt then sat on the
hillside, watching, as relief washed through him.

She got off two quick shots, and two tin cans
kicked into the air. Eagle smiled for the first time in months.

“Go, Heloa,” he said to his mount.
Heloa
. Thunder. Issue of Kate’s Mahli and Eagle’s black
stallion. A magnificent product of an explosive mating.

Kate heard him coming. She turned to him with
the gun in her hand and a big unlit cigar in her mouth. Her face
registered neither shock nor surprise. And certainly not
welcome.

“Got a light?” she said.

Eagle dismounted and held a match to her
cigar. It was man-size, a big Cuban variety that would stink to
high heaven.

The end of the tip glowed as she took a draw.
Her eyes watered and her face turned slightly green, but she didn’t
back down. Watching him, she took another draw

“You’ve taken up smoking, I see.”

“Yep. Today. Went all the way to Ada for
these things.” She flicked an ash his way. “And you’ve taken up
prying.”

“I’m not prying.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Black Elk called me.”

“He asked you to come?”

“No. That was my idea. I came to assure
myself of your safety.”

“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine,
Governor.” She took another draw on the cigar then blew a smoke
ring his way. “Leave.”

The smoke curled around them, and in that
veil of intimacy the physical impact of Kate screamed along Eagle’s
nerve endings. He moved then, as swift and sure as his namesake,
closing in on her until their thighs were touching. With one hand
he took the cigar from her mouth and with the other he cupped her
chin.

“I will leave when I’m satisfied that you’re
safe, and not before.” He could feel the shivers that rippled
through her, and a selfish side of him exulted, glad she wasn’t
immune to him, as she pretended.

“Come,” he said, sliding his arm around her
shoulder.

She dragged her heels, resisting him.

“Where do you think you’re taking me?”

“To your house.”

“Do you think all you have to do is show up
on my doorstep and I’ll invite you into my bed?”

“As enticing as that sounds, I have no
intention of going to your bed. I want to see where the intruder
was.”

Kate felt her face flame, but she wasn’t
about to admit her embarrassing mistake.

“Black Elk has already investigated.”

“You can come under your own power, or under
mine.”

Remembering how he’d manhandled her the last
time he said that, she jerked her arm free and stalked ahead of him
to her cottage. It was high time to go in anyhow. She’d been out
with her gun all day, and she was freezing to death.

“This is an exercise in futility,” she
grumbled, mostly to have the last word. “I don’t know what you
think you’ll see that Black Elk didn’t.”

What he saw was her red silk gown tossed
carelessly across the tumbled covers of her bed. The languid,
exotic sweetness of her perfume permeated the air. Riveted, he
stood in her bedroom, breathing in the fragrance, absorbing it into
his lungs and his skin.

“This is where he left the circle of hair?” A
redundant question, he knew, but he had to say something to break
the spell.

“Yes.”

Did she feel it, too? The insidious sexual
heat that moved about the room like a living thing? If he didn’t
leave, he’d break every vow he’d made, destroy everything he
believed in.

He quickly inspected her windows then moved
out into the hall, where the air didn’t conspire against him. He’d
found nothing in Kate Malone’s house except the past.

“I’m sending someone to guard you,” he said
when he finally made it back to her front door.

“I’ll send him right back.”

“These threats are serious, Kate.”

“I understand the serious nature of the
threats. What I don’t understand is how you have the nerve to tell
me what to do.” Angry and frustrated almost beyond endurance, Kate
glared at him. “This is my life. I make the decisions.”

“I want to ensure your safety.”

“No one is ever completely safe. It’s the
nature of the world we live in. And I won’t give whoever is
tampering with my life the satisfaction of seeing me hiding behind
some muscle-bound goon sent over by the governor.”

In spite of her stubbornness, Eagle couldn’t
hold back his smile.

“I hadn’t planned to send a muscle-bound
goon; I had planned to send Gloria Running Deer of the tribal
police.”

“No.”

She stood framed against the front door with
the fading rays of sunset pouring over her hair and her skin,
exotic and deceptively fragile. And he knew then the price he’d
have to pay for marriage without love and passion—the memory of a
woman who would steal every shred of life and joy and emotion until
he was nothing more than an empty shell.

“Kate . . .” he said, raising his hand as if
he might reach for her.

“No.” She stepped back, out of his reach,
forever out of his reach. “Go to Deborah.”

Something must have registered on his
face—shock, surprise, despair—though he sought desperately to
appear unmoved.

“Don’t you think she talks to me?” Kate said.
“Don’t you think I hear her sighs and see the glow in her face when
she speaks your name?”

The vast gulf of silence threatened to
swallow them, and they stared at each other, bleak.

“Go to her,” Kate whispered. “And don’t you
dare
break her heart.”

“I have no intention of breaking her
heart.”

He left her standing in her doorway. Alone.
As he was alone.

Alone on the hillside, he watched Eagle
leave.

Soon. Soon.

He began to sweat in spite of the cold wind.
Drawing his coat close around his face, he waited in the shelter of
the silver maples until the sound of hoof beats was merely a faint
echo in the distance. Lights flicked on and off in the small
cottage, showing Kate Malone’s progress through her house.

She didn’t stay long in the kitchen. She
never did. Next she sat a short time in her den. Probably reading a
book. Watching, he’d learned her habits. Television shows didn’t
interest her. Only the books. Fiction titles with bookmarks
sticking out and the fat medical texts she brought home from the
clinic.

Rage came over him, a red, boiling rage that
made his hands tighten into fists. In the dark he held out one of
his hands and studied his fist. It was big and solid as a rock,
capable of smashing through the white witch woman’s fragile
bones.

He could feel how it would be, the soft
cushion of flesh, then the tender female bones cracking under the
pressure of his fists. Sweating now in earnest, he started from his
hiding place, intent upon smashing the witch woman until she was
nothing but a bloody mess.

But, wait . . .

He’d been told ...First she must suffer.

Forcing himself to remain calm, he waited in
the darkness until she went into her bath. The stealth of foxes
descended on him, and he stole into the night, silent and deadly,
leaving no traces of himself for those who would keep him from his
purpose.

Silently he laughed at the locks on her doors
and windows. Would the white witch woman keep him out? Easier to
keep out the north wind.

Steam from the bathroom seeped under the door
and fogged the mirrors in her bedroom. He stood in the midst of the
steam, listening to the sounds of her in the shower—the rush of
water down the drain, the thump as she dropped her soap, the soft
sound of her muttered curse.

Power filled him. He stole silently through
her bathroom door, then stood in the steam and watched through the
glass shower door as she lifted her right arm and drew her
washcloth around her breast and down her rib cage.

Such a slender rib cage. It would crack like
the tender branch of a sapling.

Watching her amused him, but he had other,
more important things to do. He eased toward the door, and suddenly
her head snapped up.

“Who’s there?” she called.

Rivulets of moisture ran down his face as he
stood in the steam. Hidden. Invincible.

“Is anyone there?”

He held his breath as she reached toward the
faucets. If she discovered him now, he’d have to kill her. A pity.
It was too early for death.

“Nerves,” she muttered, changing her
mind.

As the water cascaded around her, he slipped
from the bath and into her bedroom. It didn’t take him long to do
what he had to do.

Afterward, he stole into the night and let
the darkness swallow him. She would never see him now.

Watching. Waiting.

o0o

Wrapped in her bath towel, Kate reached for
the gun on her bathroom vanity. How sad to carry a weapon even to
her bath. And yet, she’d be foolish not to.

Someone was after her.

Involuntarily she shivered. Some malevolent
presence hovered, as if her enemy had been there, in the bathroom
with her.

That was a silly notion, of course. No one
would be that bold. Or that foolish.

Still holding her gun, she pushed open her
bedroom door. The scream started in her soul and pushed its way
past her constricted throat.

Her red silk gown had been ripped to shreds
and scattered about the bedroom. Jagged red ribbons hung from the
curtain rods and the lampshades and the bed posts. Bits of red
dangled from the doorknob and the back of her chair and the top of
her armoire.

She clamped her free hand over her mouth to
stop the screaming. Then with the gun held firmly in both hands she
advanced into the room.

Light from a lamp fell across her vanity, and
on the mirror was a message. The
time is at hand, witch
.
Steam from the bathroom had made the lipstick run, so that it
looked like blood.

Paralyzed, Kate stared at the words. Then her
gaze moved downward. On the vanity was a single eagle feather, its
tip dipped in blood.

“I think you should ask for protection,
Kate.”

“I won’t.”

Headlines screamed from the newspaper in
Deborah’s hand. “Dr. Malone Under Siege.” Somebody had leaked every
gory detail to the press, even to the shredded red gown.

Had Kate been wearing red silk when Eagle
raced to her side? Quickly ashamed of her jealousy, Deborah made
herself forget her own loveless plight and concentrate on the
safety of her friend.