Paper Rose (11 page)

She grimaced. “Very well, thanks. He doesn't like it that I go out with Colby Lane.”

Leta lifted an eyebrow expressively.

“It isn't like that, Leta. He's concerned for me. Colby used to drink a lot. He doesn't anymore, but Tate thinks he's a bad influence.” She sipped coffee. “Big brother Tate, to the rescue.”

“He cares about you a lot.”

“Like he'd care about a kid sister, Leta, and we both know it,” she said curtly. “Audrey is the woman in his life, and she shows no signs of going away. If it hadn't been for his obsession about not marrying into another race, she'd probably be wearing a ring right now. She's gloriously beautiful.”

“She hates Native Americans,” Leta said coldly. “Just like another socialite I once knew. I've heard it all before—we're dirty, ignorant, primitive savages who sit down and let the government support us….”

Cecily got up and put her arms around the woman who'd taken the place of her mother in her life. “You're a clean, intelligent, modern woman with many skills and a great big heart!” she said. “And I'll knock down the first person who says different!”

“You do a lot for us, Cecily,” Leta said solemnly. “More than you know.” She studied her adoptive child with a puzzling scrutiny. “How did your face get scratched, there on your cheek?”

She remembered the faint rasp of Tate's unshaven cheek against hers the night before with shocking clarity. She flushed.

Leta pursed her lips. “So that's what's been going on,” she mused. “I thought so. I was making sandwiches and it got real quiet in the living room that night before Tate left…”

“Stop that,” Cecily muttered, sitting back down. “It didn't mean anything to him.”

Leta shook her head. “He wants you.”

The younger woman took a sharp breath. “Wanting isn't enough,” she said firmly. “I'm not going to become a diversion.”

The dark eyes that met hers were wise and sad, full of bitter wisdom. “You stick to your guns,” she said unexpectedly. “It's easy to give in, Cecily. But then you pay the price. Sometimes it's very high.”

As Leta had reason to know, left pregnant by an ambitious politician who married to advance his career. Cecily could feel Leta's pain.

She reached across the table and gently clasped Leta's hands. “Perhaps it is,” she said. “But there are some rewards worth the price.”

Leta frowned. She seemed to stop breathing.

“What do you know?” she asked Cecily. Faint horror claimed her features her hands went cold. “Cecily…”

Cecily's hands tightened. “I have no secrets from you,” she said. “But I made a promise not to say anything. I have to keep it.”

Leta was badly shaken. “This man who sent you out here…a senator?”

“I can't answer that.”

“A senior senator from South Dakota?”

“Leta…”

“Matt Holden?”

Cecily's eyes closed. She couldn't. She
wouldn't.

“My God,” Leta whispered, letting go of Cecily's hands. “My God, he knows. He knows, doesn't he?”

Cecily bit her lower lip. “I'm sorry. Yes, he does. The people I came out here to help investigate know the whole story. And they're threatening to go to the media with it. Considering Holden's prestige in the Senate, it could destroy his career, to say nothing of what it would do to you and Tate to have the truth come out that way.”

Leta put her face in her hands and wept silently.

Once again, Cecily got out of her chair and went to comfort the older woman. “It's going to be all right. Senator Holden thinks we can stop them in time, if we can find out exactly who they are and what they're holding over Tom Black Knife. We aren't beaten, Leta. We're going to get through this. Really we are!”

Leta clung to her. “I wanted to tell them. I wanted to tell my son, and his real father. But I waited and then waited some more, for the right time, the right place. But Matt was married and Tate was so proud of his heritage…” She sat up and dried her eyes. “Jack knew that I was pregnant when I married him, but he didn't know who the father was. He said he loved me enough to take us both on.” She lifted pained eyes to Cecily. “But he didn't, Cecily. It ate him alive to know that some other man had fathered my child, especially when we discovered that I was unable to conceive again with him. He hated me, he hated Tate. He punished us for his own sterility. He started to drink and he turned from a kind man into a monster. I did that to him,” she said simply. “To make matters worse, I denied Matt the knowledge of his son, and I denied Tate the knowledge of his real father. And now he's going to find out about it in some newspaper or on some television station. He'll hate me.”

“He'll probably hate us all for a little while, when it comes out,” Cecily said comfortingly. “He'll get over it.”

Leta shook her head and wiped her red, swollen eyes again. “He won't. He's like you about lies. He won't forgive us.”

Cecily felt sick to her soul at those words. It was probably the truth.

“We can't guess the future,” Cecily said quietly. “We can do something about it, if we try. You have to look at the positive side.”

“Is there one?” Leta asked on a sob.

“Certainly. We're going to single-handedly foil a renegade gambling syndicate and save the tribal chief and the tribal funds from embezzlement. We'll make the evening news shows!”

“Again,” Leta mused, remembering how Cecily had made it before.

Cecily's fingers touched the dainty little crab fixed to her collar. “This time will be much more politically correct,” she said.

“How does Matt look?” Leta asked, when she'd never meant to ask the question.

“Wickedly handsome. Silver-haired and arrogant, stubborn and hot-tempered—just like someone else we know,” she said with a smile. “He speaks highly of you. He regrets what he did, you know,” she added. “He said that he made bad choices.”

“He hates me for not telling him about Tate, doesn't he?”

“No! Not at all!” Cecily met the older woman's miserable gaze. “Leta, he only feels guilty at what you both suffered at Jack Winthrop's hands. He certainly understands why you kept the secret from him. It's just that…well, he and Tate are bitter enemies. It was a shock for him.”

“I loved him,” Leta recalled, her eyes soft and faraway. “He and I grew up together. He was older than me, but he was so centered on how he was going to live his life, so dedicated to helping people here. I was amazed when he started taking me places. I would have done anything for him. Then he said he was going to marry that rich society woman and run for office. We argued. But after the election, before he left for Washington, he came to see me one last time. We'd been apart for so long, and I'd missed him so much. We started kissing and couldn't stop.” She colored, embarrassed. “Then he told me he was already married. He was ashamed and sorry, but I wasn't. It was all I'd ever have, and I knew it. A few weeks after he left, I knew I was pregnant.”

Leta smiled. “You can't imagine the joy it gave me. I knew I could never tell him, but I was happy. Then Jack Winthrop offered me a home and I took it.” She shook her head sadly. “I should have known better. I paid, and Tate paid. I tried to run away once, but Jack beat me so badly that I couldn't even walk. He threatened to hurt Tate if I tried again, so I stayed.” She glanced at Cecily. “They say it's easy to leave an abusive husband, you just walk out. Cecily, if I'd walked out, he'd have come after me and killed us both. He said so, and he meant it. Drunk, he was capable of cold-blooded murder. In those days, there were no shelters for battered women, nobody to protect us. Now, things are different. But Tate has many scars, inside where they don't show. So do I.”

“You don't regret having Tate,” Cecily said.

Leta shook her head. “I'll never regret it. But it makes me sad that Matt had to find out like this. He hasn't told Tate?” she added worriedly.

“No. He said I could,” she murmured dryly. “And I said for him not to hold his breath waiting.”

“Tate won't like it that we kept the truth from him.”

“I'm resigned to that,” Cecily said half-truthfully. “He would never have turned to me, anyway, even if he knew he had mixed blood. I've been living on dreams too long already.”

“If you go away from him, he'll follow you,” Leta said unexpectedly. “There's a tie, a bond, between you that can't be broken.”

“There's Audrey,” Cecily pointed out.

“Honey, there have been other Audreys,” she replied. “He never brought them home or talked about them. They were loose relationships, and not very many at all—never any who were innocent.”

“Audrey's lasted a long time.”

Leta searched her eyes. “If he's sleeping with Audrey, Cecily, why can't he keep his hands off you?”

Cecily's heart turned over twice. “Wh…what?”

“Simple question,” came the droll reply. She grinned at the younger woman's embarrassment. “When you came in the kitchen that last time you were here, before Tate left, your mouth was swollen and you wouldn't look straight at him. He was badly shaken. It doesn't take a mind reader to know what was going on in my living room. It isn't like Tate to play games with innocent girls.”

“He doesn't think I am, anymore,” she returned curtly. “I let him think that Colby and I are…very close.”

“Uh-oh.”

She scowled. “Uh-oh, what?”

“The only thing that's kept him away from you this long is that he didn't want to take advantage of you,” Leta replied. “If he thinks you're even slightly experienced, he'll find a reason not to hold back anymore. You're playing a dangerous game. Your own love will be your downfall if he puts on the heat. I know. How I know!”

Cecily refused to think about it. She'd put Tate out of her mind, and she was going to keep him there for the time being.

“I'll worry about that when I have to,” she said finally. “Now you dry up those tears and drink some more coffee. Then we have to plan strategy. We're going to take down the enemy by any means possible!”

I
n the days that followed, Cecily was introduced to Tom Black Knife, an elderly man with twinkling dark eyes and a kind disposition, as well as to several members of the tribal council. None of them seemed shady or underhanded in any way. Cecily was almost certain that whatever was going on here, they weren't part of it.

She shared her thoughts with Leta one night.

“The problem is, they're not going to want to confide in me,” Cecily replied, thinking hard. “I wish Colby had come back. He could get in, pose as someone in a different gambling syndicate and infiltrate. I can't do that.”

“Don't look at me,” Leta mused. “I can't even win at gin rummy!”

“I'm going to call Colby,” she said, reaching for the telephone that Tate had ordered installed for his mother years ago and still paid for. “If he's home, he'll help us.”

She dialed his number, direct, and waited while it rang several times. She was about to hang up when a deep voice came on the line.

“Lane,” it said curtly.

“I was afraid you were still out of the country,” Cecily said with relief. “Are you all right?”

“A few new scars,” he said, with lightness in his tone. “How about a pizza? I'll pick you up…”

“I'm in South Dakota.”

“What?”

“It's a long story. Leta has a comfortable sofa. Can you come out here right away?”

There was a pause. “If you miss me that much, maybe we'd better get married,” he pointed out.

“I'm not marrying a man who shoots people for a living,” she replied with a grin.

“I only shoot bad people,” he protested. “Besides…I know what a foramen magnum is.”

“Darling!” she exclaimed theatrically. “Get the license!”

He chuckled. “That'll be the day, when you take me on. What sort of mischief are you up to, Cecily?”

“No mischief. Just an artifact-buying trip. But I need you.”

“In that case, I'm on the way. I'll rent a car at the airport. See you soon.”

He hung up.

“You're not going to marry Colby Lane,” Leta said like a disapproving parent.

“But he knows what a foramen magnum is,” she said teasingly.

“A who?”

“It's the large opening at the back of the skull,” Cecily said.

“Gory stuff.”

“Not to an archaeologist,” Cecily said. “Did you know that we can identify at least one race by the dentition of a skull? Native Americans are mongoloid and they have shovel-shaped incisors.”

This caused Leta to feel her teeth and ask more questions, which kept her from thinking too much about Colby's mock proposal.

 

Colby arrived the next day, with stitches down one lean cheek and a new prosthesis. He held it up as Cecily came out to the car to greet him. “Nice, huh? Doesn't it look more realistic than the last one?”

“What happened to the last one?” she asked.

“Got blown off. Don't ask where,” he added darkly.

“I know nothing,” she assured him. “Come on in. Leta made sandwiches.”

Leta had only seen Colby once, on a visit with Tate. She was polite, but a little remote, and it showed.

“She doesn't like me,” Colby told Cecily when they were sitting on the steps later that evening.

“She thinks I'm sleeping with you,” she said simply. “So does Tate.”

“Why?”

“Because I let him think I was,” she said bluntly.

He gave her a hard look. “Bad move, Cecily.”

“I won't let him think I'm waiting around for him to notice me,” she said icily. “He's already convinced that I'm in love with him, and that's bad enough. I can't have him know that I'm…well, what I am. I do have a little pride.”

“I'm perfectly willing, if you're serious,” he said matter-of-factly. His face broke into a grin, belying the solemnity of the words. “Or are you worried that I might not be able to handle it with one arm?”

She burst out laughing and pressed affectionately against his side. “I adore you, I really do. But I had a bad experience in my teens. I've had therapy and all, but it's still sort of traumatic for me to think about real intimacy.”

“Even with Tate?” he probed gently.

She wasn't touching that line with a pole. “Tate doesn't want me.”

“You keep saying that, and he keeps making a liar of you.”

“I don't understand.”

“He came to see me last night. Just after I spoke to you.” He ran his fingers down his damaged cheek.

She caught her breath. “I thought you got that overseas!”

“Tate wears a big silver turquoise ring on his middle right finger,” he reminded her. “It does a bit of damage when he hits people with it.”

“He hit you? Why?” she exclaimed.

“Because you told him we were sleeping together,” he said simply. “Honest to God, Cecily, I wish you'd tell me first when you plan to play games. I was caught off guard.”

“What did he do after he hit you?”

“I hit him, and one thing led to another. I don't have a coffee table anymore. We won't even discuss what he did to my best ashtray.”

“I'm so sorry!”

“Tate and I are pretty much matched in a fight,” he said. “Not that we've ever been in many. He hits harder than Pierce Hutton does in a temper.” He scowled down at her. “Are you sure Tate doesn't want you? I can't think of another reason he'd try to hammer my floor with my head.”

“Big brother Tate, to the rescue,” she said miserably. She laughed bitterly. “He thinks you're a bad risk.”

“I am,” he said easily.

“I like having you as my friend.”

He smiled. “Me, too. There aren't many people who stuck by me over the years, you know. When Maureen left me, I went crazy. I couldn't live with the pain, so I found ways to numb it.” He shook his head. “I don't think I came to my senses until you sent me to that psychologist over in Baltimore.” He glanced down at her. “Did you know she keeps snakes?” he added.

“We all have our little quirks.”

“Anyway, she convinced me that you can't own people. Maureen couldn't live with what I was. She's happy now,” he added with only a trace of bitterness. “Her new husband is a bank vice president with two children from his first marriage. Very settled. Not likely to get shot up in gun battles, either.”

“I'm sorry, Colby.”

He leaned forward with his forearms on his splayed thighs. “I loved her.”

“I love Tate. But at least you had a marriage to remember. I'll never have that.”

“You're better off without anything to remember,” he said harshly. “Tate's a fool. He doesn't know who he is, Cecily,” he said unexpectedly.

“Why do you say that?”

“He puts too much emphasis on the culture. He's defensive about it. He uses it to identify himself. Heritage is important, but it isn't the whole man. Tate lives in a white world, makes his living in a white world. Surely it's occurred to you that a man with such an obsession about his roots would logically live in that world?”

She wondered if Tate had ever thought of that. She hadn't. “You mean, he doesn't live with Leta, or near his own people.”

“Exactly. Some of the people he's associated with have made him self-conscious about his background. They've made him uncomfortable, reminded him that he's part of a minority culture, intimated that it's just not quite sophisticated or urbane enough to be proud of.”

“Colby…”

He looked down at her. “You're white. You have no idea what it's like to be a minority, be treated like a minority. You can never know, Cecily. Even though you work for native sovereignty, even though you understand and admire Tate's culture, you can never, never, be part of it!”

She was uneasy. Even Tate had never said such things to her. She ran a hand over her forehead absently, disturbed by the truth in those harsh words.

“You want to know how I know that.” He nodded at her quick glance. “I'm Apache, Cecily,” he said. “You can't see it plainly, because I'm light-skinned through the addition of a little Scotch and German blood a generation back, but I'm almost full-blooded. I qualify for Apache status. I could live on the White Mountain reservation if I wanted to.”

“You never said that before,” she murmured.

“I didn't know you well enough before. It's almost funny. Tate's a fanatic about his roots, and I'm ashamed of mine. I don't even visit my people. I hate having to see how they live.”

The confession rocked her to the soles of her feet. She didn't know how to talk to him anymore. The Colby she thought she knew had vanished.

“That's why Maureen really left me,” he said through his teeth. “Not because of my job, or even because I took an occasional drink. She left me…because she didn't want half-breed children. You see, I didn't tell her that I was almost a full-blood until after we'd been married for a year. A little drop of Native American blood was exciting and unique. But a full-blooded Native American…she was horrified.”

Cecily's opinion of the legendary Maureen dropped eighty points. She ground her teeth together. She couldn't imagine anyone being ashamed of such a proud heritage.

He looked down at her and laughed despite himself. “I can hear you boiling over. No, you wouldn't be ashamed of me. But you're unique. You help, however you can. You see the poverty around you, and you don't stick your nose up at it. You roll up your sleeves and do what you can to help alleviate it. You've made me ashamed, Cecily.”

“Ashamed? But, why?”

“Because you see beauty and hope where I see hopelessness.” He rubbed his artificial arm, as if it hurt him. “I've got about half as much as Tate has in foreign banks. I'm going to start using some of it for something besides exotic liquor. One person can make a difference. I didn't know that, until you came along.”

She smiled and touched his arm gently. “I'm glad.”

“You could marry me,” he ventured, looking down at her with a smile. “I'm no bargain, but I'd be good to you. I'd never even drink a beer again.”

“You need someone to love you, Colby. I can't.”

He grimaced. “I could say the same thing to you. But I could love you, I think, given time.”

“You'd never be Tate.”

He drew in a long breath. “Life is never simple. It's like a puzzle. Just when we think we've got it solved, pieces of it fly in all directions.”

“When you get philosophical, it's time to go in. Tomorrow, we have to talk about what's going on around here. There's something very shady. Leta and I need you to help us find out what it is.”

“What are friends for?” he asked affectionately.

“I'll do the same for you one day.”

He didn't answer her. Cecily had no idea at all how strongly her pert remark about being intimate with Colby had affected Tate. The black-eyed, almost homicidal man who'd come to his door last night had hardly been recognizable as his friend and colleague of many years. Tate had barely been coherent, and both men were exhausted and bloody by the time the fight ended in a draw. Maybe Tate didn't want to marry Cecily, but Colby knew stark jealousy when he saw it. That hadn't been any outdated attempt to avenge Cecily's chastity. It had been revenge, because he thought Colby had slept with her and he wanted to make him pay. It had been jealousy, not protectiveness, the jealousy of a man who was passionately in love; and didn't even know it.

 

It was two days later that Tate Winthrop, still nursing a few bruises and a sore jaw, went to the museum to find out why Cecily had really gone to South Dakota. He knew it had nothing to do with artifacts. Something was going on, and she was acting oddly—just like her paramour, Colby Lane. He was going to find out why.

He talked to Dr. Phillips, who said blandly that Cecily had located some unusual artifact that would make the museum famous and she'd gone to South Dakota to acquire it. In fact, Senator Holden thought so highly of that project that he'd even paid her airfare!

Armed with that tidbit, Tate went storming into Matt Holden's office, past his affronted secretary.

“It's all right, Katy,” Holden told the young woman. “Close the door, will you?”

She did, with obvious apprehension. Tate looked like a madman.

It was the first time they'd seen each other face-to-face since Matt Holden had learned that the man across the desk from him was his son. He studied Tate's face intently, seeing resemblances, seeing generations of his people in those black eyes, that firm jaw, the tall, elegant build of him. Tate wouldn't know that he had French blood as well as Lakota, that his grandfather had been a minor royal in Morocco, that his grandmother had been French aristocracy. Tate was the continuation of a proud line, and he couldn't tell him. If things worked out in South Dakota, Tate would never have to know at all. The thought saddened him. He'd made so many mistakes…