Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 (7 page)

“Can you? Sure. I can’t stop you. But I’m not giving you permission.” Damn it all, he’d lost her. Right before his eyes. “You
may
not worry about me. I’m fine. It’s just been a long week.”

Did she think he was going to buy that load of shit? “You can’t
live
here. The clinic is not a life.”

She snorted. “Says the man who’s been here every day of the week and isn’t the least bit sick.”

Busted. But she wasn’t the only one who could ignore the obvious. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why?” She spun around to face him. The exhaustion was gone. Instead, he found himself staring into clear eyes the color of winter ice. No defenses, no second nature. She was just a woman, and he was just a man.

Who wasn’t quite ready to own up to the truth. He actually wasn’t so sure on the reasons himself. He pulled himself to his feet and shook the stiffness out of his back. Sitting on linoleum was a world of different from sitting on sand. “I doubt you’d understand.”

“Sure. I don’t understand the language, the customs, why over half my patients have the flu. I don’t understand why you tell my patients there’s nothing I can do for them when that’s not true. I don’t understand why my landline won’t work. I don’t understand a damn thing.” She was on her feet, backing away from him. “Least of all you.”

He swallowed. He’d pushed when he should have pulled. “I can check into your landline.”

She shook her head, like she couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Don’t you have a job? Someplace to be? Anywhere but here?”

Now they were getting somewhere. She was pulling again. She was the kind of woman who needed to pull. She was
that
good at it.

“Sure. I work.”

After she ran her hand over her hair again, she crossed her arms in frustration. Or was it protection? “Where?”

“Wherever I want.”

He would be lucky if he got out of here without her strangling him. At least he could tell that was what she was thinking. “Doing what?” She liked to pull. She liked the control. So she could just keep pulling.

He shrugged, like he wasn’t sure. “What I want.”

“For whom?” For a woman who’d seen patients all day, and unpacked supplies all evening, she was suddenly looking quite feisty. And there were no patients around this time. He could kiss her now, and the worst thing that could happen would be that she stabbed him with a scalpel.

As long as she didn’t hit a major blood vessel...he might risk it. “For me, myself and I.” She glared at him, and he knew he’d earned it. “This is the rez,” he added, trying to shrug it off. “Things are different here.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” She turned, looking at the whole of the clinic. He knew it had to come up lacking.

Again, he tried to imagine what she’d given up to come, and
why
she’d given it up. Others had come, filled with misguided hope about saving the noble savages from themselves. Those were the ones that lasted weeks, if not days. But she gave no indication that was the reason, and he didn’t have a clue. “We’re glad you came,” he offered, hoping to make peace.

“We?” She pivoted, and suddenly, Rebel found himself looking at Madeline.

“Me. I’m glad you came.”

Slowly, the smile developed like an old-fashioned Polaroid. Free from Dr. Mitchell, Madeline was beyond beautiful. It took everything he had not to step up, take that angelic face in his hands and kiss her. “Thank you for your help,” she said again, each word coming out precisely measured.

“Anytime,” he said. “Glad to do it.”
For you
, he silently added.

She held his gaze for a moment longer, and then, in a heartbeat, Madeline was gone. “Will you be gracing the clinic with your presence tomorrow?” Dr. Mitchell said, putting the desk between her and Rebel.

That was it—the sign that he should not kiss her. Not tonight anyway. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

She bit her lip, and he saw her. Madeline. Madeline wanted to see him tomorrow, no matter how much he irritated Dr. Mitchell. Who would win? “No,” she finally said with crushing certainty. “I do not want to see you tomorrow.”

Second nature. She probably didn’t even know she’d done it.

But he did.

By the time he got the car back to Irma’s and had ridden over to Albert’s, Jesse was in full whining mode again. Just like he’d been when Rebel had last seen him.

“Bro! Come on. At least change the channel for me. I’m
dying
over here.”

The familiarity was comforting, in that pain-in-the-ass kind of way. “Suffer. You’re the damn fool who broke his leg. Not me.”

“I don’t remember you trying to stop me,” Jesse huffed as he tried to shift on Albert’s couch.

Rebel couldn’t help but compare Jesse’s whining to Nobody’s stoic silence. Damn, but he could go for a little stoic silence right now. “Jesse, I gave up trying to tell you what to do when you were seven.”

“Some medicine man you are. Can’t even tell your own brother when he’s going to crash and burn,” Jesse muttered, giving up on shifting. He threw his arms over his head to block out PBS. “Just change the channel, Rebel.”

“Suffer. You might learn something.” Like not to be a jerk, but after all these years, the chances were slim. “Seen your daughter today?”

“
Hanyanke’ci
,” Albert hollered from the kitchen, where he was frying venison steaks. Tomorrow. At least Albert was keeping track of these things. But he always did.

“I hate it when he talks Lakota,” Jesse whimpered, wrapping his arms over his ears. “I hate it here.”

Which meant staying with Albert was good for the twerp. “Nelly doesn’t whine this much. You sound like a baby,” Rebel scoffed, turning up the volume on a program about seed pods. Static rippled across the TV. He headed into the kitchen where Albert already had the tea cooling. The tension eased out of his body. Man, it was good to come home.

Albert looked over his shoulder and nodded with a tired smile. Yeah, Rebel wasn’t the only one who had to put up with Jesse’s bitching. But then he squared around. “You like her.”

Not a good sign, not when Albert spoke English. “Just helping out,” he replied, hoping that was enough.

Albert’s smile was a whole lot less tired. “Ayup,
wacáŋto wagnaka
,” he said again, repeating himself in Lakota. The language may change, but the sentiment did not.

His face shot hot. It could be worse. This was Albert. More than anyone else on this rez, Albert would understand. He had understood long before Rebel had.

But that didn’t mean he wanted to stand here and have his grandfather break down his school-aged crush for him. He’d rather take his chances with Jesse. Jesse wasn’t nearly as perceptive. What could go wrong?

Lots. Jesse came up firing. “Heard you were back at the clinic again today.”

Rebel stiffened. Albert was one thing. Jesse was an entirely different beast. But it wasn’t like Albert to gossip. Was word getting around
that
fast? Shit. He was in trouble. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” For a man who was supposed to be in agony, Jesse sure as hell looked like he’d just won the lottery. And, like usual, Rebel would have to foot the bill. “Same as yesterday. And the day before.”

Damn it. Damn it all. He should have known this was coming. He’d walked right into it, and now he had no choice but to brazen it out. “So?”

He hated that smile of Jesse’s. All the more so because people said that was when they most looked like brothers. He hated smiling like Jesse. He hated
being
like Jesse. “So I thought you swore off white women. Women in general, in fact.”

It wouldn’t be fair to punch that smile in. The man was defenseless. “This has nothing to do with that.”

“Right, right. I forgot. I forgot you were the high and mighty Rebel Runs Fast, better than everyone else. You never chased a skirt. You never did anything for a woman. You certainly never married a white woman. I just forgot.” Jesse glared at him from the couch, the TV throwing the blue light of PBS onto his face until he looked like a
sica
, a spirit. And not a good one. “Or maybe it was you who forgot, Rebel. Maybe it was you who forgot who you really are.”

Still. Be still. Because moving would mean punching Jesse’s lights out. “I hope your leg gets infected.”

“What, so you can take me back to the clinic and hit on the pretty doctor again? Go right ahead. I can’t hurt any worse.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Hey!” Albert appeared in the doorway, wielding the kitchen knife Rebel had gotten him three hunting seasons ago. “Knock it off.”

Rebel didn’t doubt the old man still had enough in him to at least do some collateral damage with the blade. Well, Jesse would get what was coming to him, that much was sure. “Yes,
Th
̌
unkášila
.”

“Not my grandfather,” Jesse said with more pout than Nelly ever got away with. That’s what you got when dealing with a grown man who didn’t know who his father was. Pouting.

It was time to leave before someone in this house lost it, and he was at the top of the list. “
Th
̌
unkášila
,” he said, mindful of keeping the respect proper. And he walked away. He walked away, no matter how good the dinner he’d hunted and given to his grandfather smelled. Blue Eye trotted after him, but he wasn’t in the mood to ride right now. He needed to just walk away. He walked away from his little brother, his mother’s only remembrance of a one-night stand with a white man she met at a truck stop. He loved Jesse, but he could not be around him when he was irrational. Not when he reminded Rebel of everything he’d almost been once.

Not when Jesse reminded him of everything he could still be.

He was done with white women.

It was better this way.

Chapter Five

A month. One month. Madeline had made it one long, overworked, underpaid month.

Only four to go until she broke the last guy’s record.

She sat outside the High Plains Art Gallery in Rapid City, finishing her latte and enjoying the urban wilderness again. Sidewalks. Dogs on leashes. Self-absorbed hipsters. Bright awnings on freshly painted buildings. Man, she was loving the city today. Not that the clinic wasn’t on her mind. She had a Jeep full of medical supplies and canned goods, and had only one more errand on her to-do list. Mellie’s birthday was in less than a month, and she had demanded something nice. “Something Indiany,” her one and only little sister had said just over a month ago.

Had it really been a month since she’d had a latte? The days had flown by in a blur of clinic, cabin, clinic, cabin.
Challenging
didn’t begin to describe it. Despite her rather childish insistence that she didn’t want to see him in the clinic again, Rebel had come in on a regular basis—he seemed to know when the older patients needed a translator. Not that he ever told them what Madeline wanted him to tell them, though.

She’d gotten a shipment of flu vaccine—money talked, after all. And when it arrived on Thursday, Rebel had shown up and said a whole bunch of things to a whole bunch of people in that language that was so lovely she almost wasn’t irritated listening to it. Except that no one would let her vaccinate them. Something about the government—but what the hell did that have to do with the flu? And how had he known that was the day the vaccine would get there? It bothered her, like a micro-cut on her hands she didn’t know she had until she spilled orange juice on them.

That man. She wanted to hate him—desperately wanted to hate him—for making her job harder than it already was. But every time she wanted to strangle him, he’d turn around and do something that made her life easier. Her landline had miraculously developed a dial tone one day. He brought in some blocks and a ball, and would sit on the floor with Nelly, playing with fussy babies and talking to them all in soothing Lakota tones until they stopped squalling. And—damn it all—some of the people he talked out of medical advice had the nerve to get better anyway. Mr. White Mouse had come in—Rebel had already been there, waiting—and explained that after the sweat lodge, he was feeling much better. As much as she thought they were all nuts, people who felt better were still people feeling better. She didn’t know how an unknown quantity like Rebel made things better, but he did.

Aside from Rebel—certainly
not
because of him—things were, on the whole, improving. Things had slowed down after the first few weeks. Clarence had been right—they just had a backlog to work through. It had taken some serious wheeling and dealing, but she’d gotten the hospital in Columbus to ship out some stuff. The gauze supply was safe. Rebel paid a couple of people’s bills, and part of a couple of others. Where he got that kind of money, she didn’t know, and she’d decided not to think about it too much. A few other people gave her some money, and one woman gave her a quilt for bringing down a child’s fever. A quilt in July. At least it was a thoughtful thing. Patients were starting to look at her. Progress.

More and more people were coming in with that stomach bug, though, and that was beginning to be a problem. Some were repeat visits—and she was beginning to worry about the old and the young. Clarence said someone’s grandmother had died last week, but she’d never made it into the clinic. And just yesterday, a four-year-old girl had to be carried in by her mother because she was too dehydrated to walk.