Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 (17 page)

“Come on,” she scoffed, digging around in her purse. “You’re a Native American, he’s a Native American. I brought a picture of Cynthia, just in case.” And she thrust the snapshot of his sister-in-law in a bikini before his eyes.

You all look alike to me.
That’s what she really meant, like using the P.C.
Native American
somehow balanced out the subconscious racism. They were all alike.

This was the worst idea he’d ever had. But he had to go home. He couldn’t breathe anymore in New Mexico, couldn’t think, couldn’t even create anymore. He had to come home. He just had to.

And Anna had insisted that she come with him.

She kept chatting about anything and everything—how excited she was to meet the rest of his family, how beautiful the sky was here, how tired she was of sitting in this car after three days on the road. But by the time they passed a small cluster of government-provided trailers, the Quik-E Mart with two drunks trying to brawl in the parking lot and the clinic where Albert had gotten a job to help cover the college bills, her silence was louder than the wheels crushing dirt.

This is about to get ugly.

They turned down the last road. Albert’s house—which was being generous—stood at the end, looking like it was being propped up by toothpicks. “You grew up...here?” She sort of squeaked out the last word, like he’d taken a pair of needle-nosed pliers and made straight for her fingernails.

He cringed.
The end.
The thought popped unbidden into his head. The end. “Yes.” He made damn sure he pronounced it right too.

He wanted to reassure her that this wasn’t who he really was. He wasn’t the kind of person who lived here, who even knew people who lived here. But that wasn’t the truth. And he couldn’t bear to live another lie.

Oscar was outside, standing in front of a barrel and feeding in trash. And for every piece he fed to the fire, he took a swig out of a bottle in a paper bag. When the Cadillac came to a halt, Oscar shook his head, like he couldn’t believe his eyes. The front door banged open, and Albert came out, his arms full of old paper. He didn’t have on a shirt, and his pants were held up with a length of twine.

Two things happened at the same time. Rebel’s gut unclenched, flooding him with relief from a pain he had only dimly been aware of. He’d known he needed to be here, needed to see his people again, but he hadn’t realized just how deep the need had run. The reaction was immediate and physical. He could breathe again, for the first time in six years. He could finally breathe free.

And Anna gasped in horror.

“My God,” she said, patting him on the shoulder like he was a lap dog, not a husband. He turned to look at her, knowing it was futile but refusing to believe it. Her lips were curled back in disgust, like she’d stepped in dog shit. And then her eyes swiveled over to him. The adoration was gone. Instead, she looked scared. Terrified. “I just had no idea. You poor thing.”

You poor thing.

She’d loved Jonathan Runs Fast, but he’d been just an idea, an abstract idea so well rendered that it had been a
trompe l’oeil
, an illusion mistaken for reality. She’d loved an idea named Jonathan.

She didn’t love a thing—especially a poor thing like him.

And she never would.

“Why are you going so slow?” Madeline demanded, the wind snatching her words out of the air and bending them until she sounded like she was howling. Blue Eye tossed her head in agreement. This was way, way too slow.

Because the slower they went, the longer he could put this off, that’s why. He had no reason to expect the same reaction from a different woman. None. Hell, she already knew everyone.

But that didn’t stop the clawing worry.

Finally, after what seemed like milliseconds but was probably twenty minutes of trying and failing to keep Blue Eye reined in, they hit the last dirt road. He could see cars already parked haphazardly along the road. Grocery day was as good a day as any to have a party, after all. It was what Albert wanted, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like feeling lousy interrupt a good party.

He didn’t want to dismount, as if staying safely up on his horse would somehow change the fate of the free world. Madeline parked in the grass behind the last car and hauled out a duffel bag half her size. Her back bowed under the weight.

Shit. He had to get off the horse. Only an asshole would let her carry that duffle around by herself. “Here. I’ve got it.”

She came up firing even as she let him take the duffel. “You know what you’ve got? You’ve got my boots. I want them back.”

“Not so sure about that,” he replied, taking a long step to put him out of swinging range. This was more like it. She was pulling, and he was enjoying it. “Those were serious blisters. It wouldn’t be sound medical advice to continue irritating your skin like that.”

She snorted, but kept pace. A slow pace. “You’re a fine one to be dispensing medical advice over there.”

He smiled in spite of the dread fact that they were getting closer to the light of the fire. There was no backing out now—but then, there’d been no backing out, period, not since he’d showed up at her clinic tonight, intent on seeing her again. All of her. He had the sudden urge to take her hand, to hold onto that touch for as long as he could, just in case.
Just in case
. “Don’t have to be a doctor to know that intentionally blistering your feet is not a good idea.”

They passed another car. “Rebel,” she said, and he heard the note of uncertainty in her voice. “How many people are coming to dinner?”

“I went grocery shopping. Anyone who needed groceries is here.”

She stopped behind the third car in line, Henry’s rusted-out Camaro long past its muscle car prime. “But it looks like half the rez is here.”

He couldn’t help but smile at the amazement in her voice. Amazement. Not horror. And that, in itself, was amazing. “Nah. Probably only forty or fifty people.”

“You bought groceries for forty or fifty
people
?”

He noticed it was taking that much longer to get to the house than normal.
So?
“In case you haven’t noticed, the only grocery stores on the rez are the Quik-E Mart and the food pantry. And Nelly could eat a pound of fresh strawberries in one sitting. Besides,” he added, knowing he needed to take a step forward, a step toward those strawberries but still not able to move his feet, “I wanted everyone to have reliable beef for a while.”

She let that slide. And she took a step toward him, a step closer. The dim light of the fire behind her gave all those wild curls a 24-karat glow, and the moon above made her eyes gleam like the brightest turquoise. She was such a jewel, a jewel of the High Plains. “And how exactly did you do that?” Her voice dropped a notch. He could see the wheels turning. She was trying to pull again, but she was going about it a new way. New since Saturday, anyway. “Hook a rack wagon up to Blue Eye?”

Shit, it was working too. Damn intruding zippers. She was going to pull him right over the edge. “Jesse’s not exactly capable of handling a stick shift right now. I took his truck. Like when you get your...supplies.”

Moving with what he prayed was steady deliberation, she took another step in and then placed a single hand right over his pounding heart. Her eyelashes fluttered as she gave him the kind of look that would bring him to his knees in broad daylight. “And where did you get that kind of money?”

He couldn’t help it. The duffel hit the ground and he had one hand on her neck, the other around her waist, and she was right where she belonged. “Somebody bought a bag,” he whispered as he kissed her ruby lips. Right where she belonged. And, as she nipped at his lower lip, it was painfully, wonderfully obvious that she knew it too.

Everything that had been wrong with the world for the last five days was suddenly right. Five days without seeing her had been five of the longest days of his life. Five days with no one challenging him every step of the way, no one to spar with, no one who brought so much light into his life to look forward to. Five days that made six years seem like a three-day weekend. Five days that had been the longest decade of his life. And suddenly, with her back where she belonged, he wanted time to slow even more, so he’d never have to let go of her. He never wanted to let go of her.

Until he heard the twig snap. His head shot up so fast that Madeline didn’t have time to release her hold on him. She nipped a hole into his lower lip as a dark figure stepped out from behind a van on the other side of the road.

Not again
, he thought.

But it was different this time. Without the blinding flash of light, even Madeline could see that Nobody Bodine was watching them. She spun around with a much smaller squeak this time and jammed her hands onto her hips with enough force that Rebel was afraid she’d bruise herself. “Nobody! Stop sneaking up on us!”

Rebel smiled again. Nobody hadn’t had to tell him she’d given him hell when he’d finally left Rebel Monday afternoon. Nobody snapped his hat off his head as he nodded to her. “My apologies, ma’am.” Then he looked to Rebel.

He knew what the man wanted. He’d known Nobody for a long time, and had gotten something like good at reading him. “She got it all ready to go out in the mail tomorrow.”

Nobody crushed his hat to his chest. It was as much of a tell as he had. “Much obliged, ma’am. I’ll watch the clinic tonight, then.”

Madeline took an agitated step toward him, and Nobody took a parallel step back.

“You’ll
what
?”

Nobody shot him a pained look, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Rebel shrugged his shoulders.
Yeah
, he thought,
whatcha gonna do about her?

“Ma’am, I’ll guard the clinic. It wasn’t easy to get those things. I don’t want nothing to happen to them.”

Wow. Another three sentences. Something about Madeline made the normally silent man downright chatty.

This fact didn’t seem to impress her, though. She jutted out her chin and said, “You mean, you aren’t coming to dinner? I thought everyone was coming to dinner?” in the same kind of voice she used when another whatever-it-was broke on her. Rebel decided that was just the way she talked when reality didn’t meet her high expectations. Which threw him right back over into worried about dinner.

Well, he wasn’t the only one worried about dinner, although Nobody would never admit to it. “Your groceries are still in the back of the truck. Parked behind the shed. Extra carrots,” Rebel added. Nobody’s horses were the most important things in his life.

Madeline elbowed him in the ribs. “You should come to dinner, Nobody. The clinic will be fine.”

“Ma’am.” Nobody took a deep breath. “Two of my horses died. And they shot me,” he added, almost as an afterthought. No doubt about it, the dead horses were the more important of the two events. “I’ll be at the clinic, just to be safe.” And then he stepped back into the shadows. Rebel knew no one else would see him, no one else would even know Nobody had been here. Just Madeline. Whether he liked it or not, Nobody had to trust her too.

“Wait. Nobody, wait!” Despite her call, he didn’t reappear.

But that didn’t mean he was gone. “He’s listening,” Rebel whispered in her ear, savoring the way one of her curls danced over his nose. “Go on.”

Madeline nodded. She just took it all in stride. Just another night on the rez, and she could deal. Suddenly, Rebel knew it was high time to get her up to see Albert. “Can you leave me a list of what was wrong with your horses? What were their symptoms?”

“Yes, ma’am,” came the distant reply, already thirty feet down toward the shed. And then he was gone.

“Come on,” Rebel whispered. “Albert’s waiting.”

Chapter Ten

“You seem nervous,” she said as they got ever closer to the house.

“I’m not,” he defended. Maybe a little too quickly.

Stopping again, she shot him a look that was easier to read in the stronger light. Hell, he was lucky she was just looking at him. “You said you trusted me.” Her voice was low but warm.

He swallowed. The challenge was in her eyes, and he was suddenly afraid he wouldn’t be able to meet it. “I do.”

Her smile was small, but it looked just right on her face. “Then trust me.” And she walked into the circle of light. He had no choice but to follow.

Everyone is here
. He watched a hundred different daily soap operas play out before his eyes. Current lovers avoided old ones as the people in between tested the waters. Kids played hide and seek in the shadows, never far from the fire. Tim, the law around here, was keeping an eye on Oscar and the other ones who never had enough money for food but always seemed to be able to buy beer.

It would have been funny if he wasn’t, in fact, nervous. One after another, his friends—his family—called out to him from around the fire and then pulled back when they realized the good doctor was at his side. He could see the confused looks on their faces as they all politely welcomed Madeline to the party—which was something, he guessed. They were looking at her, talking to her. Everyone seemed to agree that the white woman amongst them existed, although the jury was still out on whether or not she belonged.

He saw the looks people gave each other over the fire. He knew they were jumping on the nearest conclusion—the correct conclusion—that she was not just here with him, but here
with him
. That he’d lost his heart to another white woman, another outsider who would blow away with the breeze as soon as she was done with him, done with all of them. That their medicine man didn’t want one of his own. That he was a traitor, again. That he would always betray the Lakota way.