Follow the Sun (40 page)

T
HERE WAS NO
doubt about it. James had taught her a self-confidence that went beyond the appeal of makeup, a new hairstyle, and a shimmering blue dress that left one shoulder bare and hugged her body from chest to ankle.

Something was different about her, whatever it was. Because for the first time in her life. Erica Alice Gallatin was surrounded by flirting men.

“Your mother tells me that you build houses. Perhaps we could have dinner and discuss an addition to my cottage at Cape Cod. You really ought to come out and see the place.”

“Now you’ve given me proof—tall women are sexier than short women.”

“I never knew Dorland Monroe had a beautiful stepdaughter living in Washington. Why don’t you come up to Capitol Hill and have lunch with me?”

“The Boston Symphony’s having a tea next week to honor a violinist from Surador who just won a big
international competition. Care to attend as my guest?”

The attention had depressed her all evening, and the last invitation nearly dissolved her party smile.

Surador. The home of the great Cherokee diplomat Rodriguez y Montasantonio, alias James Tall Wolf. Erica blinked rapidly, made a polite excuse, and moved leadenly through the glittering crowd of gowns and tuxedos, feeling like a dark cloud surrounded by painfully bright sunshine.

She gave her empty champagne glass to one of the liveried waiters who was roaming the ballroom. The waiter had the terrified look all employees of her mother’s wore.

Her beautiful, petite sisters breezed by, husbands in tow like cheerful penguins, all quite comfortably in their element.

Erica eased her way through the crowd to a distinguished, dapper little man who was holding court at one of the flower-decked cocktail tables.

“Pop,” she murmured, and kissed his cheek. “It’s a wonderful celebration.”

Her stepfather looked up and smiled. “Your mother outdid herself.” Dorland Monroe took her hand and frowned. “Are you having a good time? The Portuguese ambassador says you have an, ahem, ‘alluring air of sorrow.’ I suggested that you might have indigestion from the airplane food on the flight from Washington.”

Erica chuckled. “I’m fine. Pop. Don’t worry about me. Just enjoy your night.”

She wandered outside, where the beauty of a star-canopied sky shone on guests who were dancing to elevator music provided by a small orchestra.

Elevators. Where were a private elevator and a big wolf when a big butterfly needed them? Erica bit her lip and felt the familiar anguish deep in her chest. She had a plan for learning to live without James. She’d simply move about in a daze and hope that no one noticed.

“There you are.” She was grabbed low around the waist by a lanky man who seemed intent on jiggling her with one hand and his martini with the other.

Erica leaned tactfully away from his campaign-promise smile. “Senator, I—”

“You’re just what a politician needs. Big, strong, healthy. Republican—”

“Independent.”

He was trying to dance, but his martini olive was the only thing keeping rhythm. “I like independence in a woman.”

“Not that kind of independent. The political kind.”

“Baby, I can be very persuasive—”

“Not with my daughter, you can’t. Excuse me. Erica. Senator, please help yourself to the buffet. Immediately.”

Tall, commanding Patricia Gallatin Monroe swept between them, a brusque referee uniformed in an Adolfo original. She sent the senator scurrying and faced Erica with a grandly annoyed expression. “A man wishes to speak to you.”

Erica groaned. “Not another one.”

“You should have told me you’d invited a guest.”

“I didn’t invite anyone.”

“Then Mr. Tall Wolf invited himself, and I’ll tell him you’re not available.”

Energy shot through Erica like a tonic. “Where is he?” She was already on her way inside.

“In the front hall,” her mother called. “We really don’t have space for another guest.”

Like a dead horse doesn’t have room for more flies
, Erica, thought ruefully, to quote Grandpa Sam. She hitched up her dress and ran as best she could despite spike heels.

James waited in the foyer, smiling with sly satisfaction because people were openly staring at him. His midnight hair and bronzed skin seemed more exotic than ever in the light of the foyer chandelier, and his
big, powerful body was perfectly packaged in a sophisticated black tuxedo.

Erica met his dark eyes as she tottered through the crowd, and he wasted no time cataloging every curve outlined by her gown. The smile that slid across his mouth said that wolves liked such goodies.

Breathless, Erica stopped at the foyer entrance and gazed at him in amazement. Happiness and bewilderment bubbled up inside her. “
Siyo, wa-ya egwa.
”

“
Si yo, kamama egwa
,” he answered solemnly.

“I think he’s from the Middle East,” she heard someone whisper behind her. “They’re speaking Arabic.”

As Erica crossed the foyer to him she pressed her fingertips to her lips to hold back a smile that could too easily have accommodated tears.

Dangling over the lapels of his jacket was a necklace of wolf teeth that had been left to his family by his great-great-grandfather William. In one hand James casually held a leather bag covered with Becky’s beadwork, and his feet were clad in mocassins.

“I’m the ambassador from North Carolina,” he said gruffly, just before she kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I have a gift for you.”

James presented the bag to her and said gruffly, “These are yours and Tess’s medallions. Grandpa hasn’t translated Kat’s yet. It’s giving him some problems.”

Erica tenderly clasped the gift to herself. “Oh, James. You didn’t have to come up here just to bring these to me.”

He frowned again. “Well, it’s my responsibility. I’m trying to tie up loose ends before I get too busy with things at home.”

“Oh.” Hope crashed inside her. He had an extraordinary sense of responsibility. Perhaps he just felt guilty for keeping Dove’s papers from her all these weeks.

Erica straightened formally. “Well, did you just get here from the airport?”

“Yeah.”

“Then come and have a drink, and something to eat.”

“No.” He nodded toward the bag. “Grandpa hasn’t finished with Dove’s papers, but he made some notes on what he’s translated so far. She wrote some poetry that will, well, sort of surprise you. I can see that you’re busy right now. Read the notes and call me tomorrow.” He gave her the name of his hotel.

“Is that all?” Erica asked softly, her throat on fire. “You don’t want to stay and visit?”

He glanced through the foyer and smiled at the finery and the crowd. James shook his head. “Not my style, Red.”

“Not mine, either.”

They traded a quiet, intense gaze. She searched his eyes desperately. “James, I—”

“Ms. Gallatin. Pardon me. Uh, pardon me, sir.” A nervous waiter nodded to her, then James, then her again. “The senator asks if you’ll meet him outside for the next dance.”

Erica groaned inwardly. “Tell the senator that—”

“He can go stuff his ballot.”

“James!”

Erica gaped at him as he strode to her. His teasing facade was gone.

“What senator?” he asked, glaring down at her.

Sorrow and confusion made a dangerous mixture. Erica retorted, “If you don’t want to stay and dance with me, why do you care if someone else does?”

James grabbed her by one hand. “I’ve had enough politeness to last me my whole damned life. We’re not getting anywhere this way. Come with me.”

“James?” She teetered after him, clutching the leather bag and trying to kick her shoes off so that she could keep up with his long, impatient strides. “What’s wrong?”

He halted, looked around, and finally trained his
gaze on the winding staircase to the second level. “There.”

“Let me …” She tried to get her high heels off before she broke an ankle. “I can’t—”

He scooped her up over one shoulder and started climbing the stairs. Erica’s undignified yelp brought guests running into the foyer. Hanging head down with her free hand braced on James’s rump, she raised her gaze awkwardly and saw her mother gaping at her in disbelief.

“It’s all right,” Erica called. “It’s a game.”

James reached the second-floor landing and walked down a wide hallway, where the solemn furnishings whispered money and decorum. “It’s not a game,” he told her fiercely. “Not any longer.”

He looked for an open door, found one, and carried her into her stepfather’s private library. Erica watched him speechlessly after he plopped her on a massive antique reading table. “Open that bag,” he ordered. He shoved the library door shut and locked it.

Erica fumbled distractedly with the leather sack. “Is it that important?”

He stood in front of her, scowling, his arms crossed, his legs apart. He looked like a modern war chief. “It’s that important to me.”

Her hands shaking, she laid hers and Tess’s medallions on the table, then reached into the bag again. Erica cried out softly as she pulled her great-grandmother Erica’s locket from the bag. It gleamed with a new covering of gold.

“Oh, James.” She opened the locket and found the inscription restored. “ ‘Wed June 21, 1860. R.T.G. to E.A.R.’ ”

“I took it to a jeweler after I went back to Washington,” James explained.

Erica pressed it to her lips and looked at him tearfully. “I’ll never forget this moment.”

“Look at Grandpa’s notes about the medallions.”

She put the locket aside and pulled a sheaf of typewritten pages from the bag.

“Echo typed them for him,” James explained. “His handwriting’s not too steady.”

Her heart racing. Erica gazed down at the first page.

Feeling awed. Erica raised her head and looked at James. “Then my Cherokee relatives are buried on the land in Gold Ridge. Katherine’s family.”

James nodded. “You don’t want any mining company to come in and tear up that land.”

“No.” Trembling, Erica shook her head fervently. “Absolutely not. I’m sure Tess and Kat will agree that we don’t want to lease it for mining.”

He came to her and took the notes. After shuffling through them for a moment, he handed her back one page. When his hand brushed hers she felt the tremor in it. “James? Are you all right?”

“Read that,” he murmured. “It’s a poem Dove wrote.”

Erica bent her head and read:

Erica slid off the table and sat weakly in a chair. She couldn’t describe the feeling of awe that shimmered in her veins. “It’s amazing.”

James knelt beside the chair. “A white
kamama
of the blue clan inside a house with blue walls,” he whispered, his hand on her arm. “A house with rooms painted blue, like Dove’s house. You put up floodlights so you wouldn’t be afraid of the darkness. Your cousin Kat came to visit you with a fractured ankle.” He paused, then added gruffly, “And you certainly gentled the wolf.”

She looked at him through a haze of tears. She was crying from the wonder of it—the beauty of Dove Gallatin’s gift. She finally felt like a Cherokee. “She even said my name. Eh-lee-ga.”

James nodded. “And she said you’d be contented, because you’d be where you belonged.”

Erica glanced away, swallowing hard. “I did feel that I belonged there.”

He put the other pages in her lap. “Here,” he said gruffly. “Read about your medallion.”

She looked down, heedless of the tears slipping from her eyes. “ ‘I left my footprints on the trail where they cried, but I left my heart with Justis Gallatin’. On the other side of the medallion it says—”

Erica halted as James covered her lips with one finger. His gaze held hers desperately. “It says,” he whispered, “ ‘A wolf will find his mate, no matter how far she roams.’ ”

She made a soft sound full of bittersweet emotion and said in a barely audible voice, “Do you think Justis rescued Katherine from the trail?”

James nodded. He gripped her arms tightly and, without ever taking his eyes from hers, added, “I hope it means something else, too. I think that’s why Dove gave it to you.”

Old prophecies were a fragile bridge between them, waiting for her to send them crashing or strengthen them. Erica took a deep breath. She would always be a builder.

“Is that why you’ve come here tonight? To … to find your mate?”

Past and future were suspended as James searched her eyes. “
Yes.
”

She took his face between her hands. “Then you’ve found her,” Erica answered softly.

T
HE BUTTERFLY WAS
content again, and the wolf was more gentle than ever. He lay on his back in a mountain meadow, sighing peacefully from time to time.

“James?”

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t you think we’ll get sunburned if we do this very often?”

“Cherokee skin doesn’t get sunburned,” he answered, pulling her closer to his side.