Warrior's Embrace (62 page)

“Your stubborn pride is going to get you
killed,” she said.

“If I give in to that weakness, I’ve let him
win. No. I won’t accept protection.”‘

Deborah turned slowly around.

“Accept?”

“Eagle offered.” A heavy silence fell between
them. Kate reached out her hand then let it flutter to her
side.

“I knew he came to you.”

“That’s all it was, Deborah, an offer for
protection. Please believe me.”

“I believe you.”

The desperate will believe anything
.
Deborah had never thought of herself in that way, had never
imagined that she’d end up one of those women who clung to hope no
matter how faint or false.

“I believe you because I
have
to,”
she added.

The alternative was too painful. All the
books she’d read and all the dreams she’d dreamed were wrong. There
was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no wizard at the end
of the yellow brick road, no shining knight in Camelot. There was
only the stunning reality that life had no guarantees, not of
health or happiness or even friends.

Seeing Kate now, knowing that Eagle had gone
to her, not out of fear but out of love, Deborah made a bleak
bargain with herself. She would sacrifice her dreams and her pride
because she needed Eagle, just as he needed her. She would be the
full-blood receptacle for his seed and he would be her security.
With him she’d have a home, children, position, and support for her
father.

“Kate, no matter what happens, promise me one
thing.”

“Anything, Deborah.”

“Always be my friend.”

“Always.”

They both got teary-eyed for a second then
Kate brushed at her tears, laughing.

“Look how maudlin we’re getting. The next
thing you know, we’ll be bawling like newborn calves and there’ll
be nobody to look after our patients ...if we ever have another
one.”

“They’ll soon be coming in with sore throats
and runny noses and bellyaches.” Her spirits restored, Deborah gave
Kate an arch grin. “And if they don’t, I’ll put laxative in the
cheese at the general store.”

“Hey, it’s good to see your sass back,
woman.”

“You don’t look too bad yourself, Doc, with
that grin spread all over your face.”

“What do you say we close this joint down and
drive into Ada? I could use some real food for a change.”

“Only if you let me drive.”

“There won’t be a fence post standing between
here and Ada.”

“Live dangerously, Kate. You live only
once.”

“Is that an old Indian saying?”

“I think it’s an invention of Hollywood.”

Kate lined her arm with Deborah’s and went
out the door. For one afternoon she would forget her fear, and if
she tried hard enough, her laughter might become real.

o0o

Melissa loved the feel of silk against her
skin. She flung her hands over her head and arched her hips.

“Baby, you’re hotter than a firecracker
today.” Hal drove into her with such force, she was already
climaxing.

When the hard shudders stopped, she pulled
him down to her breast and tangled her hands in his hair.

“Shhh. Don’t talk. Make me scream.”

She’d taught him exactly what she liked. And
he always did as he was told.

As he bit down on her, she felt the frenzy
building. Power surged through her, and she knew that soon she
would have it all ...and Kate Malone would have nothing.

“Yes,” she said, “oh, yes. Now!”

He began to pump once more, faster and
faster, until she was screaming his name.

“Clayton! Clayton!”

o0o

Anna had learned to drive. As a matter of
fact, she’d learned many things. Working in Eagle’s office, her
neglected social skills as well as her forgotten secretarial skills
had returned, and with them a resurgence of well-being.

Her sister, who lived in California, was
greatly supportive of her efforts, and was even urging Anna and her
family to move out there.

“You could help me in my shop, Anna,” she’d
written in her latest letter. “You were always better with a needle
than I. And anyhow, the change might do all of you good.”

Change
. That’s what they all
needed.

With her sister’s letter in her handbag, Anna
walked into her house, calling her husband’s name.

“Cole?”

The house had the echoing emptiness of a
deserted dwelling. On the hall table a note from Clint said he’d
gone to his friend Michael’s house to study algebra and wouldn’t be
back till after supper.

Anna drew a deep breath, steadying herself.
She had to let go of the fear that something terrible would befall
her only child every time he left home.

“Cole!”

Clutching Clint’s note, she raced up the
stairs and checked all the rooms. Resolve almost failed her in the
doorway to Mary Doe’s room. Then she pushed it open and stood with
dust swirling around her. Late afternoon sun turned the spinning
dust to gold, and as it brushed against her cheek, Anna thought
Father Sky had sent Mary Doe down as an angel to give her
comfort.

Her feet felt heavy as she walked into the
room, and dust and tears clogged her throat. A film of dust lay
over all the feminine things she’d bought for her daughter, who
preferred frogs to frills.

It was time to clear the dust away. Past
time. No matter what Cole said.

She called his name once more, and the
echoing silence mocked her.

She hurried outside, filled with purpose. The
sweet smell of hay tickled her nose as she pushed open the heavy
barn doors. Cole stood in the center of the barn, pitching hay. He
didn’t even look up, but his mare whinnied a greeting from her
stall.

“I was looking for you in the house.”

Cole stared at her as if she were a stranger,
or worse, someone he had grown to hate. Anna shivered at the power
of grief.

“I want to talk to you, Cole.”

A wisp of hay drifted down from the loft and
settled on his cheek. He continued pitching hay as if he hadn’t
heard her.

Rage built in Anna. A senseless disease had
stolen her children, and now a senseless silence was stealing her
husband.

“Dammit, Cole. Speak to me.”

Slowly he turned to stare at her, his entire
body rigid and unforgiving, as if she had personally been
responsible for the death of their children.

“I can’t go on like this.” She launched
herself at him, knocking the pitchfork from his hand. “Do you hear
me, Cole? I can’t go on this way.”

He caught her upper arms to keep them both
from falling. A muscle ticked in the side of his jaw, and his own
rage was plainly stamped on his face.

She beat his chest with her balled-up fists.
The mare whinnied and kicked the wall of her stall.

“You killed my children and now you’re
killing our marriage. I won’t let you. Do you hear me? I won’t let
you.” Tears streamed down her cheeks as she caught the lapels of
his shirt. “I love you, Cole. I won’t let you do this to us.”

Desolate, she pressed her face into his chest
and her tears soaked the front of his shirt. Softly, he touched her
hair. Astonished, Anna looked up into the face of her husband.

“Sweet
lhokomuk
,” he whispered. “My
sweet
lhokomuk
.”

Standing on tiptoe, she wrapped her arms
around his neck and felt the blessed touch of his lips upon hers.
She clung to him with the urgency of a parched desert wanderer who
had suddenly discovered water.

“My darling ...my love.” As she swayed
against him, the months of their discord vanished.

Locked together, they fell upon the
sweet-smelling hay, desperate in their haste. With the hungry
grunting of animals, they tore aside restraints until at last they
were joined, legs tangled, hips melded, wild in the ancient rhythms
they knew so well. There were no sweet words, no erotic
meanderings, no tender caresses, only the hard straining of bodies
too long denied.

If Anna missed the whispered love music of
Muskogean and the slow-melting heat of kisses that started at the
throat and went to the outer edges of her being, she wasn’t about
to say so. It was enough that Cole was in her, filling her with his
hard flesh and the sweet semen that spewed from him like warm
honey.

Afterward she lay in his arms, hoping for the
soft love words she remembered so well. But he lay silently against
the hay, holding her so tightly, she could barely breathe.

“Cole?” When he didn’t answer, she lifted
herself on her elbow and kissed his lips. “I love you, Cole.”

His eyes were black pools, sucking her down
until she was filled with his tragedy and his despair.

Winds moaned around the eaves and snow
drifted through the cracks. Anna shivered, suddenly so cold, she
had to bite her bottom lip to keep her teeth from chattering.

“I’m cold, Cole. Let’s go inside.”

They straightened their clothes, then went
into the house, side by side, not touching. Inside the warm
kitchen, where they’d made love against the refrigerator and on the
floor and in the pantry, giggling like teenagers, Cole sat on a
tall stool, as silent as the mountains. And Anna knew she was
losing him. She put water on the stove for tea then, and stood in
front of him, forcing him to look at her.

“Your loss is mine too, Cole. Your pain is
mine.” She might as well have been one of the kitchen appliances
for all the notice he took. “Every day of my life I feel the
emptiness ...and it hurts so much, I want to fall with my face to
the ground and never get up.”

“But I don’t give in, Cole. I won’t be
defeated. I have my son and I have you.” She caught both his hands.
“Let’s leave here. Let’s go to California and make a fresh
start.”

Water boiled over, hissing like snakes in the
quiet room. The front door banged open and Clint called, “Hey,
anybody here? I’m home.”

Cole squeezed her hand, then abruptly he
released her and stood up.

“I’m sorry, Anna.”

His footsteps echoed on the tile floor and
the back door banged shut behind him.

“Hey, where’s Dad going?”

“I don’t know.”

“He forgot his coat.” Clint lifted Cole’s
leather jacket with the sheepskin lining off the coat rack.

“Maybe he’ll be right back.” Anna knew she
was lying to herself.

Cole didn’t come back, not even when all the
stars left the sky and the snow came down so thick, she couldn’t
see the trees in her front yard.

o0o

Wrapped in his buffalo robe, the shaman stood
in the doorway of his cabin and watched the snow cover the tops of
the mountains. The north wind wailed his winter song, and the smoke
from his pipe curled upward to join the wind. Out of the smoke and
the snow came the white buffalo, charging across the mountaintops
like thunder. With its dazzling white skin, it flashed by so
quickly that he was temporarily blinded.

Feeling his way, the medicine man went inside
and shut the door. He’d seen the sign. Soon the white witch would
be driven from the land, and once more it would be filled with
peace and light, its people begging for the return of the Great
One.

Filled with power, he cast aside his robe and
pipe and began the ancient dance of his ancestors.

o0o

Winds buffeted the barn door, and snow sifted
through the cracks to cover the piles of hay like powdered sugar.
Eagle leaned against the side of an empty stall with his arms
wrapped around himself, not certain whether the cold he felt came
from outside or whether it was a bone-deep malady destined to
freeze his soul.

Anna had been in tears when she called him.
Cole never touched her anymore, she said, spilling intimate secrets
that Eagle had no right to hear. He took no interest in his son,
none in her work, and he wouldn’t even talk about moving to
California for a fresh start.

“He can’t seem to work through his grief,
Eagle,” she’d said. “I don’t know what to do anymore. Please help
me.”

Cole stared at him with eyes as black as tar
pits, showing nothing, neither love nor welcome.

“Anna sent for you,” he said.

“I came to help,” Eagle said, ashamed of
himself. Anna shouldn’t have had to call for help. He should have
been there to offer. He’d failed his family.

“Get on your horse and leave.”

In spite of his months of grieving, Cole
still had the look of a man who could wrestle with the cougars that
prowled the mountains and come out a winner.

“No. I won’t leave. Not until you talk to
me.”

Cole turned his back and began to pour feed
into a bucket.

“Let’s talk about your family, Cole. Anna
loves you, and Clint worships you. How can you turn your back on
them? And what about our parents? They’re old and needy.”

Dovie cried over her lost grandchildren every
day, and Winston, whose stroke had left him emotionally fragile,
was unable to provide the kind of comfort and support she needed.
Wolf and Star, away at school in Boston, had no idea what was
happening to the family.

Yesterday, standing in Dovie’s kitchen with a
mug of hot chocolate warming his hands, Eagle had listened to his
mother’s anguished ramblings.

“Remember when you were six years old and so
sick . . .” She laced her hands tightly together across her lap.
“How can you remember? You were almost dead ...like our little
Bucky and Mary Doe.”

Her voice broke, then she pulled herself back
together. “Cole sat by your bed the whole time, refusing to even
come to the kitchen for meals. I had to bring his food on a
tray.”

Dovie reached a fragile, blue-veined hand
toward Eagle, and he clasped it tightly. “He loves his family so.
Why doesn’t he come to see us now?”

If there were any mercy left in the universe,
it would surely have rained down upon Dovie Mingo’s head. She was
good, a woman whose purity of heart should have kept her folded
under the protective wings of the Great Spirit.