Heart of the Hunter (5 page)

She did miss shopping malls and TV, though, she thought,
frowning, and then she smiled. She had money. She could buy one of those
big-screen TVs she’d always wanted and a satellite dish to go with it.

With a start, she realized that Lee was standing at the car
door.

“You all right in there?” he asked, bending down so he could
see her better.

“Fine.” She pulled the key from the ignition, grabbed her handbag
and opened the car door.

“You look tired,” he remarked.

“Yes.”

Lee frowned. “Something wrong?”

“No.”

With a shrug, he turned away and went back to the corral. If
she wanted to tell him what was bothering her, she would. If not…he shrugged.
It was none of his business. He’d vowed never to get tangled up with a white
woman again, no matter how pretty she was and it was a vow he meant to keep.

Picking up the new rail, he laid it in place, then reached
for the hammer, cursing his weakness for smooth pale skin and soft blue eyes.

Melinda Kershaw’s image danced across the misty corridors of
his mind. Melinda, with her irresistible smile and honeyed words. Melinda, who
had teased and tormented the hired help one summer. Lee’s knuckles turned white
around the hammer. That was a summer he’d never forget.

He’d been seventeen the year he’d gone to work for Melinda’s
father. Rich and spoiled, secure in her beauty, she had trailed after Lee while
he cut the grass and trimmed the trees, flirting shamelessly, fascinated by the
fact that he was an Indian and therefore forbidden to her. She had paraded
around her family’s swimming pool in a hot pink bikini that left almost nothing
to the imagination. On more than one occasion, she had begged him to rub suntan
lotion on her back and shoulders.

Nights, she had met him on the sly, vowing that she loved
him, that it didn’t matter that he was an Indian and dirt poor. She had kissed
him and caressed him until he was on fire for her and then, when her father had
caught her in his arms, she had cried rape. And because Lee was just a dirty
redskin, not fit to be in the same room as Frank Kershaw’s virginal
sixteen-year-old daughter, Melinda’s father had believed her every word.

Melinda had spent the rest of the summer in the Bahamas,
recovering from her dreadful ordeal.

Lee had spent eighteen months in a correctional institution.

He drove the last nail into place, then hurled the hammer
across the corral. Chest heaving, he stared at his hands, remembering the
nights he’d spent wishing he could wrap them around Melinda’s pretty little
neck.

But that was all behind him now. He’d find his ancestor’s
gold, get the hell out of Cedar Flats and start a new life where nobody would
know, or care, who he was.

And he’d never look at another white woman as long as he
lived.

Chapter Six

He bent over the hand-drawn map spread on his desk. She
wouldn’t keep a fortune in gold in the house, he mused, that much was certain.
Probably not in the barn, either. She might have buried it somewhere, say in the
middle of one of the corrals or in the chicken coop. She might have hidden it
in the well, but he didn’t think so.

He frowned thoughtfully as his finger made an ever-widening
circle around the drawing of the house. Under a rock, perhaps, or in a cave…

His gaze moved to the mountain that rose behind the house. A
cave. What better place to hide a king’s ransom?

He grunted softly as he lifted his head and stared out the
window into the darkness. Roan Horse, a man who had avoided white women like the
plague, had gone to work for Kelly McBride. Why?

A slow smile spread over his features. It was all so simple.

Roan Horse knew about the gold.

All he had to do was sit back and wait for the Indian to
find it.

Whistling softly, he dialed the phone. “Trask? I need you.”

Chapter Seven

She woke, knowing immediately that she wasn’t alone. Her
first thought was that it was Lee. But then she felt that familiar warmth,
followed by a breath of cool air that sent a shiver down her spine.

“Who’s there?” She sat up, the blanket clutched to her
breast. “Lee?” Oh please, she thought, let it be Lee.

Kelly swallowed hard as a corner of the room brightened,
felt herself go cold all over when the light coalesced into the form of a man…a
tall, dark-skinned man with long black hair. A man who was not a man at all.

“You!” She shook her head, refusing to believe what she was
seeing. “No, it can’t be.”

The Indian stared at her through fathomless black eyes.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” Kelly asked. “The Indian from the cave?”

He nodded and then took a step forward.

Kelly’s eyes widened as the Indian closed the distance
between them. He looked even more impressive now than he had in the cave. There
was no illumination in the room, yet he seemed to be surrounded by an aura of
soft blue light. His skin was the color of dark copper, smooth and unblemished
save for two faint scars on his chest. There were three white-tipped eagle
feathers tied in his hair. A distant part of her mind wondered why he had
removed his shirt and why she hadn’t noticed the feathers before. His brows
were thick and black and straight. Standing so near, he seemed taller, broader.
Alive…

He’s a ghost. Just a ghost. He can’t hurt you.

She repeated the words in her mind as the specter reached
the foot of the bed. Arms crossed over his chest, the phantom stared down at
her.

Go away from here.
He didn’t speak, but she heard the
words in her mind, as deep and dark as the night.

Kelly shook her head. “No. This is my home.”

The Indian continued to stare at her, his expression blank.
This
is my home.

“Who are you?” Kelly demanded, though her voice quivered
with trepidation.

The Indian smiled at her, silently applauding her courage.
White people were always frightened by his appearance, probably because they
had no ties to the world of spirits. They were a peculiar people. They had no
bond with Mother Earth, or with their four-footed brothers. They sought no
vision to guide them through life. Not that he had known that many white
people, he thought, amused. In the last hundred years, only a handful of
washicu
had found their way into the cave.

All had come to steal the gold.

All had left empty-handed.

All except this girl.

“I am Blue Crow of the Lakota.”

Kelly blinked at him several times. “So you can talk,” she
muttered under her breath. “What do you want?”

“I want you to leave here. Like all
washicu,
you take
what is not yours.”

“This is my house,” Kelly retorted indignantly. “It belonged
to my grandfather and his father before him and now it belongs to me.”

The Indian made a sound of derision low in his throat. “You
have taken gold that is not yours.”

The eagle
, Kelly thought.

“Give it to me.”

She hesitated a moment and then reached under her pillow,
withdrawing the golden eagle. She couldn’t keep her hand from shaking as she
offered it to the Indian. His fingertips brushed hers as he took it from her
hand. She felt the heat of his touch, the shock of it, sizzle through her like
lightning.

Stunned, she stared up at him. Ghosts weren’t supposed to
have substance. She watched, unblinking, as he opened the small buckskin bag
that hung around his neck and slid the eagle inside.

“How…? Why…?” Kelly shook her head. He wasn’t real. He
couldn’t be real.

“You want to know why my body was in the cave.”

“Yes.”

“I was killed by a
washicu
who wanted the gold. His
companion buried me in the cave and I have slept there ever since.”

“But how…? Why? I mean, you’re not alive and yet…” Her words
trailed off as he came around the bed to stand beside her.

“My spirit awakens whenever a
washicu
enters the cave.”

“You’ve been there all this time to guard the gold?”

Blue Crow nodded.

“But why?”

“He mitawa,”
he said. “It is mine.”

“But you don’t need it!” Kelly exclaimed.

“Do you?”

Kelly opened her mouth, intending to say yes, of course she
needed it. Who wouldn’t need a fortune in gold? But the words died in her
throat.

“You have taken enough for your needs,” Blue Crow said. “You
have paid your grandfather’s debts, you have enough to live on, you have this
house for shelter.”

“But it’s no good to you. You’re…” She couldn’t bring
herself to say the word.

“Dead,” Blue Crow said, supplying the word for her.

“Right. So why do you need a fortune in gold?”

“It is mine,” Blue Crow said again. “I will decide who
should have it.”

“I don’t believe any of this,” Kelly muttered. “I don’t
believe you’re real. I don’t believe I’m sitting here at three o’clock in the
morning arguing with something that doesn’t exist.”

“I am real, Kelly McBride,” Blue Crow replied quietly. He
held out his hand. “Look at me. Touch me.”

She swallowed hard and then, feeling as if she had no
control over what she was doing, she gazed deep into his eyes, felt her heart
swell with compassion as she sensed the loneliness he had endured for over a
century.

Of its own volition, Kelly’s hand reached for his, but it
was his fingers that closed over hers. For a moment she stared at their locked
hands—his was large and scarred, hers was small and very white in comparison to
his. But it was the heat of his touch that made her pulse race and her blood
sing a new song.

When she tried to take her hand from his, he refused to let
go, and for the first time since he’d entered the room, she was truly afraid.
Afraid and confused. He couldn’t be a ghost. Ghosts were vaporous, without mass
or substance.

She blinked up at him, mesmerized by the heat in his gaze,
by her sudden awareness that, ghost or no ghost, this was a man with all of a
man’s desires.

“I will not harm you,” Blue Crow assured her, and though
that had been his intent when he entered the house, he knew now that this woman
was a part of his destiny. He would not harm her and he would destroy anyone
who tried. “I will not harm you,” he repeated. “It is only that your skin is so
soft, so warm and alive, and it has been so long since I have held a woman…”

His fingers tightened on hers and she felt him tremble and
then, without warning, he vanished from her sight.

In the morning, Kelly tried to convince herself it had all
been a dream. There were no such things as ghosts.

But the eagle was gone.

And when she got up, she discovered a single eagle feather
on the floor beside the bed.

Distracted, she dressed and went into the kitchen to prepare
breakfast. A short time later, Lee entered the room and took a seat at the
table.

Unable to help herself, Kelly stared at him all through
breakfast. It was uncanny, his resemblance to Blue Crow.

“Something wrong?” Lee asked when she poured him a second
cup of coffee.

“No, why?”

Lee shrugged. “I feel like a bug under a microscope.”

With an effort, she drew her gaze from his face. “Sorry.”

“You gonna tell me why you’ve been staring at me?”

“I…it’s just…no reason.”

“Can’t be my good looks,” he mused, locking his fingers
around his coffee cup. “Did somebody say something to you in town the other
day? Maybe warn you to stay away from me?”

She flushed guiltily, remembering Harry Renford’s
admonition. “No, of course not.”

“Maybe you’re having second thoughts about my working here?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“What then? Come on, Miss McBride, tell me what’s bothering
you.”

Kelly shook her head. She couldn’t tell him she’d been
visited by a ghost. The ghost of Christmas past, she thought, smothering the
urge to laugh. Oh Lord, maybe she was losing her mind.

Lee frowned, wondering what was troubling her. She’d gone
suddenly pale.

“Somebody told you I’d been arrested, didn’t they?”

She started to deny it, then nodded. “Mr. Renford, at the
bank, told me you’d been arrested for breaking into my grandfather’s house.”

A muscle tensed in Lee’s jaw.

“He said you did a
year in jail.” Kelly took a deep
breath. “That seems like a rather harsh sentence.”

“I was carrying a gun at the time,” Lee replied tersely.

“A gun! Why?” She stared at him in horror. “Surely you
didn’t mean to—”

“Of course not.”

“Then why did you need a gun?”

Lee shrugged. He couldn’t tell her about the gold and yet…he
swore under his breath, wondering if she knew about the treasure rumored to be
hidden in the mountains, wondering if that was why she was so determined to
stay.

Stalling for time, he lifted the cup to his lips. He wasn’t
the only one searching for the treasure. He’d seen tracks near the foot of the
mountain, tracks that weren’t his. Tracks that definitely weren’t Kelly’s.
Somehow, he’d have to warn her she might be in danger without telling her why.

Kelly leaned forward, her elbows propped on the table, her
chin resting on her folded hands. “Well?”

“It’s dangerous out here after dark, Miss McBride. There are
still wild animals prowling around and not all of them are four footed.”

Kelly grimaced. Wild animals, indeed, she thought. And then
she shivered. Not all of them are four footed, he’d said. Did he know something
he wasn’t telling her?

Lee stood abruptly. “I’d better get to work,” he said, and
then paused, his hand on the door, one brow arched in question. “If I’m still
working here, that is.”

“You are.”

His lips flattened into a thin line. And then, as if he’d
made a difficult decision, he took a deep breath and blew it out in a long
sigh.