Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 (18 page)

This is not a good idea.

If Madeline noticed the tension that gripped the air, she didn’t let on. She was, if anything, more friendly now than he’d ever seen her. Instead of the curt hello she used at the clinic, here she told people how happy she was to see them, asked how they were doing, and even shook a few people’s hands.

And she did it while keeping an eye on him. Nervous? Hell, he was practically paralyzed. But now, his fear had switched from worrying about her reaction to everyone else’s reaction. And those fears, it seemed, were a lot more justified.

“Is Albert inside?” she asked, tugging on the duffel.

Inside. More people inside. He swallowed again. It was becoming a regular occurrence. “Yeah. Come on in.”

The people in front of the house parted for them. Rebel felt the air cooling and it had nothing to do with the night.
Snap out of it
, he ordered himself.
Pull it together.

“Oh, Dr. Mitchell.” Tara was the first to notice them. She was holding Mikey in her arms. “You’re...
here
.”

“Tara, isn’t it time you started calling me Madeline?” She wrapped an arm around Tara in what looked like an awkward hug and chucked Mikey under the chin. “Who’s this cute little guy? How old are you, buddy?”

Mikey, for one, was downright gleeful to see the pretty white woman. Within seconds, his chubby little hand was locked onto a swath of Madeline’s curls. “This is my nephew, Mikey—he’s eighteen months old,” Tara said, trying to pull Mikey away without pulling Madeline’s hair. “My sister’s son.” She looked over her shoulder to her sister. “Tammy, have you met the new doctor?”

Tammy Tall Trees was a slightly shorter, slightly heavier and much quieter version of Tara. Rebel had to hide his grin as Madeline studied the two of them. He could tell she was thinking they looked a hell of a lot more alike than he and Jesse did. Helped to have the same parents. “It’s so nice to meet you. Tara, I didn’t know you had a sister.”

Something blunt hit him in the shins. “Ow!” he snapped, looking down to see Jesse pulling the crutch back toward the couch. “What the hell was that for?”

Jesse’s eyes darted between Rebel and Madeline. “You didn’t bring me any chew,” he said with his mouth. His eyes, however, asked what Madeline was doing here.

“That shit’s not good for you,” Rebel shot back. He lifted an eyebrow to send the message,
because I brought her
, to his brother.

Jesse looked around the room, silent except for Mikey squealing in delight at the strange hair that tickled his hands and Tammy politely making small talk with Madeline.
Big risk
, Jesse’s surprised look said.

Rebel knew this. But he’d done it anyway, despite it not being a good idea at all. He shrugged.

Jesse wagged his eyebrows, and Rebel knew exactly what he was thinking. He made a motion to kick Jesse’s cast, but Jesse cut him off at the knees. “Doctor, I’m glad you could come and see me,” he said with that impish smile that Rebel fiercely hated, his eyes not leaving Rebel’s face. “When the hell can I get out of this cast?”

The spell of the room seemed to shatter into chatter. Tara and Tammy roundly scolded Jesse for cursing in front of the children, Madeline shook her head at him like he was acting like the irritating little brother he really was and people met Rebel’s eyes, nodding their heads.

And through it all, Madeline kept an eye on Rebel.

“Three more weeks,” he heard her say. He snapped his attention back to her. “I’m sure Rebel will truck your butt in when you’re good and ready.”

“You have no idea,” Jesse moaned in a slightly faked whine.

“Sure I do. Broke my leg falling off a horse when I was fifteen,” she replied. “Now, where’s Albert?”

“Kitchen,” Jesse replied. “He’s always in the kitchen.”

With a nod of her head, Madeline motioned for Rebel to lead on. The kitchen was warm to the point of sweaty. Albert was in his normal chair, looking better now than he had when Rebel had left a few hours ago. The color had returned to his face, and the pain had eased back from his eyes. He could pass for normal.

Walter White Mouse was sitting across from him, cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he boomed laughter across the room. Irma was standing next to Terry, Tara’s mom, as they made the fry bread and peeled the potatoes. Nelly was on sink duty, rinsing strawberries with her head cocked in the way that said she was struggling to understand the jokes Walter and Albert told in Lakota.

Albert looked up at the two of them, almost side by side in the doorway, almost touching. And he smiled. “
Hemaca wakta niye au cante skuye
,” he said.

“What?” Madeline’s smile faltered, just a little.

Nelly turned around, half-eaten strawberry in her hand and her face scrunched in concentration. “He’s glad you came, wight? That’s what he said, wight, Webel?”

Thank heavens Nelly hadn’t blurted out the part where Albert called Madeline
sweetheart
—as in Rebel’s sweetheart. “Good. That was good, Nell-Bell.” This was the most normal thing in his world, the grocery-day party, the people crowded in and around the tiny house, the traditions passing from one to the next. And Madeline was right here.

She hadn’t run screaming. Hell, she hadn’t even broken stride.

She belongs here
, he thought, his arm itching to wrap around her waist.
She belongs here with me.

As if he was reading Rebel’s mind, Albert nodded with a smile.

After Irma got her some tea, Madeline gave the old man a thorough work-up—as thorough as she could in the kitchen, anyway. When she finished, her brow was wrinkled.

“Well?”

Her eyes settled on him, and she chewed on her lip. “Has he always had that skip in his heartbeat?”

His heart. Rebel should have guessed. “It’s off?”

“It’s a little irregular,” she admitted. “But I don’t know if that’s normal for him or not. I didn’t bring his file... Otherwise, he seems okay. Definitely not the flu,” she added, shooting him a sharp look.

He felt the blood fade away from his face. With an ache of certainty, he knew what had happened. Albert had had a heart attack last night. A small one, maybe. One that left him up and walking. But a heart attack all the same.

He looked at his grandfather, who was telling another joke in Lakota that Tara would blush to know her daughter was hearing—and understanding. As he watched, Albert reached out and patted Nelly on the head, and then went back to his stories. He glanced up at Rebel and nodded again.

His time was coming. And he knew it.

That ache ran deep, and for a moment, Rebel felt not just nervous, but a full-on panic. Albert had made him what he was. Albert had saved him. He was a Lakota because that was what Albert had taught him. Without Albert...

The panic burned away with a certain knowledge. Albert had made him what he was, and what he was now was a medicine man, here to shepherd souls on to the heavens. He would be okay. They all would, because that was what Albert had prepared them for.

Albert looked at Madeline and his gaze darkened a little. He was worried about her, Rebel realized again. After all, she didn’t know much of a good Lakota death.

The rest of the evening passed in a whirl of people laughing and eating good, clean food, telling jokes in Lakota and telling them again in English and laughing at both. Madeline seemed most comfortable in the kitchen, helping Nelly cull the strawberries, so Rebel went back out to the bonfire alone, like he had something to prove. Some people smoked, some people drank, but he turned a blind eye to the bad parts and focused on the good. And the best of the good parts was that no one gave him any shit. In fact, several people mentioned that Albert had been expecting them a little sooner.

Maybe this wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had, after all. In fact, it might turn out to be a perfectly okay one. Rebel came in from the fire to find Madeline in an earnest conversation with Tammy, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Mikey was hell-bent on tugging on each lovely curl.

A hammer hit him in the chest. She’d always seemed so formal, so stiff around the kids at the clinic, but now? Now she was helping Nelly with the prized berries and bouncing Mikey on her knee like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Anna had not wanted children. She’d been afraid of the disorder a baby would bring, both to her world and her body. And, at the time, Rebel had been on board with that. He didn’t want any more kids to grow up with the kind of confusion that kept Jesse locked between two different worlds, and he sure as hell hadn’t wanted any child of his to be nothing but a dirt-poor red man to the rest of the world.

Madeline looked up at him, her eyes bright.

It didn’t have to be that way, he realized. Jesse had let himself be stuck in the middle. And who the hell cared what the rest of the world thought?

And then she smiled at him, and the hammer hit him harder.

“Just the man I needed to see,” she said.

His gut clenched, which left him wide open for what she said next.

“How big is Jesse’s truck?”

Huh?
“Standard bed,” he replied as he noticed that Tammy had a huge grin on her face. “Why? What did I miss?”

“I need someone with a truck to go with me to Rapid City. I’m going to buy some filing cabinets.”

He’d missed something, all right. No one had breathed a word of filing cabinets. “More than one?”

“Tara thinks it’ll take at least two,” she replied, and both sisters nodded. “If we had things in filing cabinets, I would have been able to pull Albert’s file before we left. I need filing cabinets and someone to organize them for me.”

“Dr. Mitchell,” Tammy said, her voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

He’d definitely missed something. “For filing cabinets?”

All three women looked at him like he was a tree stump. “I’ve decided that I need filing cabinets,” Madeline said, her voice dropping well into teasing range. In front of other people. Maybe someone had gotten her a beer? “And it turns out that Tammy finished a year of a secretarial program at, where again?”

“Sinte Gliske,” Tammy replied, staring at her feet.

That’s right
, Rebel remembered. Tammy had been following in Tara’s footsteps—their mother was a huge fan of higher education—and then she’d gotten pregnant and dropped out. And with an unfinished degree and a newborn, a paycheck had suddenly become out of reach.

Until Madeline showed up. Madeline, who seemed to understand about these things. Madeline, who was going to save the world, one person at a time. Starting with Tammy.

Hell, who was he kidding? Starting with him.

“And Lord knows I don’t have time to organize anything,” Tara said, shooting him the kind of look that demanded agreement.

Finally, he caught on. “So you’re going to test Tammy’s organizational skills?”

“On a trial basis,” Madeline added, smiling with genuine warmth. “It’s not like we couldn’t use a little more help.”

“She said I could bring in Mikey if Mom was too busy,” Tammy added, the embarrassment coloring her cheeks.

“Nelly can help,” Tara reassured her, a sisterly arm on her shoulder.

“That’s...” Well, hell. He didn’t have a word. And everyone could tell.

Tara rolled her eyes as Tammy blushed even harder. Madeline notched an eyebrow at him. “Assuming,” she said, the sarcasm dripping, “someone keeps paying his bills.”

His mouth opened to give her what-for—
his
bills? More like everyone else’s bills—but Nelly bounded into the room.

“Webel. Dr. Mitchell.
Th
̌
unkášila
Albert told me he wanted to talk to you. I think,” she added as she scratched her head. “Maybe he said...oh, shoot.”

Madeline had that same look—a little worried, but not too much—as she handed Mikey off. “We’ll go check, Nelly. Thanks for telling us.”

He fought the urge to grab her hand—not because he was afraid it might be the last touch, but because he wanted her to know that she didn’t need to be afraid, not while he was here. But he didn’t. Jesse was watching. Hell, everyone was watching as they wove their way back to the kitchen.

Walter was gone now, and Irma brushed past them with an old grin on her face. Rebel thought he heard her whisper, “Easy on the eyes, yeah?”

Madeline’s back stiffened and, although he was behind her, he was sure he saw her ears shoot red. But then she giggled and patted Irma on the arm. “Those potatoes were amazing, Irma. The best I’ve ever had.”

No, certainly not the worst idea he’d ever had.

“
Yanka
.” Albert said.

“Have a seat,” Rebel translated, beginning to wonder what this was all about. The kitchen was now empty; the sounds of people talking and laughing in the next room seemed faint.

Albert began to talk. The beautiful music that was Lakota flowed out of him like an old, well-loved song, one that Rebel never got tired of hearing. He began to translate.

“You are a good doctor,” he said, doing his level best to get the spirit, if not the letter, of Albert’s words right. “You do much good in this world.”