Straddling the Line (8 page)

He braced himself for another confrontation—who was going to call him
wasicu
now? But instead of a glowering Indian, a blondish boy who was maybe fourteen stood behind him in a full pout.

“Jared? What’s up, buddy?” Josey’s voice took on a soft, motherly tone as she stepped around Ben and went to the kid.

“They’re calling me
it
again.” The kid was way too old to sound like he was on the verge of crying, in Ben’s opinion. “The girls won’t even talk to me.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Josey put her arms around the kid’s shoulders and gave him an awkward squeeze. “We discussed this. You can’t let them get to you.”

“What?” When Ben spoke, both the boy and Josey looked up at him like they’d forgotten he was there. “What’s the problem?”

“Tige and his gang call me a half-breed,” the boy said as he rubbed his nose on the back of his hand. “No one likes me.”

“That’s not true. Seth likes you.”

“That’s because he’s your cousin. The girls all laugh at me.”

Ben could not stand here and watch this kid cry. It wasn’t dignified. Josey might be trying to help, but she was in serious danger of smothering the kid with pity. “Look, Jared, right? You’re going about this all wrong.”

The kid looked up midsniffle. “Huh?”

Ben grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from Josey’s misplaced sympathy. “You want girls to like you, right?”

The kid shot Josey a terrified look. “Yeah?”

“Then you’ve got to
be
someone they want.”

“But I’m—”

“Doesn’t matter what you are or aren’t. Girls want what they can’t have. You’ve got that wounded, sensitive thing down, but whining like a baby about how no one likes you? You’re killing any mystery. You,” he said, poking the kid in the chest, “don’t go to them. You make them come to you. You don’t give a damn if they want to be your friends or not.”

“Language!” Josey scolded behind him.

Ben kept going. “You don’t need anyone, okay? You’re better than them, and you know it. Everything you say and do should convince people it’s true. Look, I know what it’s like when people expect you to be this or that and you’re not any of those things.” Boy, did he know. “But you can’t let them define you. You have to define yourself. That’s how it works.”

The kid looked less terrified and more confused. “But won’t that make girls like me less?”

Was it possible that Ben had been this clueless back when he was a squirt? Lord, he hoped not. “Once girls think you don’t want them, they’ll be curious—why don’t you want them? What’s your secret? If you’re doing it right, they’ll get it into their girl brains that you should share your secret with them, because only they can take away your pain. Girls like a challenge.”

For a second, the kid brightened up, but then his face fell again. “But I’m—”

“No buts. And you’re what, fourteen?”

“Fifteen,” the kid said with a flash of anger.

“Hey—that was good. Keep that anger. Drives girls wild. And what about that— Who was it, Josey? The one who’s father made the drum?”

“Livvy?” The look on her face was one of pure horror.

Ben ignored the horror. He was actually having a little fun. “Yeah. She was cute. What’s wrong with her?”

The boy rolled his eyes—something he’d clearly practiced. “She’s, like, eleven, mister.”

“Listen,
kid,
” Ben said, trying not to smile. “Give her a few years. Some girls are worth the wait. Until then, watch some James Dean movies and practice being the lone wolf, okay? Pick a few fights, take up a dangerous hobby, stop doing
that
to your hair,” he said, waving to all that styling gel, “and for God’s sake, stop sniveling. Chicks don’t dig wimps. They dig bad boys.”

The kid had definitely stopped sniveling. “You really think it will work?”

“I don’t think. I know. When you know who you are, everyone else will want to know, too. And when you’re sixteen, maybe we’ll get you on a bike, okay?”

“Really?” The kid flipped his hair out of his eyes, puffed out his chest and adopted what was probably supposed to be a look of disdain. “How’s this?”

“Good start. Keep trying.”

“I’m going to go tell Seth! Thanks, mister!” He took off like a shot.

Ben watched him go. “Kids,” he said to himself.

“Men,” Josey countered. She wasn’t smiling. “Pick a few fights? Take up a dangerous hobby? Really? He’s just a boy.”

She could try to be mad at him, but he wasn’t buying it. “A boy who needs to figure out how to be a man. So he gets a few black eyes—it’ll be good for him. You can’t coddle boys. The sooner he learns to fight for what he wants, the better off he’ll be.”

Josey stared at him. He had no idea what she was thinking—he was a jerk? He’d permanently damaged that kid? “Besides,” he added, “I thought you liked the ride.”

Finally, her face relaxed into a rueful smile. “I’d argue with you if you weren’t so right. Come on.”

He walked next to her as she threaded her way through the crowd. It wasn’t that difficult—people got out of the way with feet to spare on either side. He looked around. Not too many “outsiders” were around. He picked out Josey’s mom at a hundred paces. As they closed the distance, he noticed that people were quick to smile and exchange a few words with the older woman, but no one stayed long—and no one was sitting near her. It was almost as if she had a demarcated line around her that no one dared to cross.

Again, he wanted to ask what the deal with that kid had been, but he picked up the scent of fried bread and beans and meat—venison, he’d guess—about the same time the drummers kicked the beat up a notch or two.

By the time they reached Sandra White Plume’s blanket, a hush had fallen over the crowd. “You’re late,” the older woman whispered.

“Got sidetracked with Tige and Jared.”

Sandra looked mortified. “They weren’t fighting, were they?”

“No.” Josey shot him a look that might be admiration, but it was gone before he could tell for sure. “Ben talked to them.”

Sandra looked like she might kiss him. “Mr. Bolton, you’re becoming quite the savior to our little school.” Luckily, instead of a smooch, she handed him something that looked a little like a soft taco.

“Fry bread taco,” Josey said, getting one for herself. “I’ll take you over to the drums after the opening dance, okay?”

He could only nod, because he was already halfway through the fry bread taco. Salty and spicy and greasy—this wasn’t health food by any long shot, but it was a whole bunch of good.
Taco
was a lousy name for this, because he’d never had a taco anywhere near this good.

Josey was chowing down on hers, too. For some reason, that made him smile. He didn’t like women who picked and poked at dead lettuce before taking “a bite” of his dessert because they weren’t going to “eat a whole one” themselves. He liked a woman who wasn’t afraid of food.

The drumming intensified, and some dancers began to make their way into the ring. “Grass dancers—they flatten the grass for everyone else,” Josey said, hiding her full mouth behind her hand.

Ben nodded as he chewed. Sure, the outfits were crazy—feathers everywhere, ribbons and more mirrors than he would have guessed—but the rhythm was tight and the men in the ring were keeping the beat with their feet on the ground.

As the song went on, the moves the dancers made got more frenzied. They swung wider, jumped higher and landed harder. It should have looked like a mosh pit with better accessories, but Ben found it almost beautiful. He ate a second fry bread taco and bobbed his head in time with the music.

Suddenly, the beat paused—and the dancers stopped, too, crouching down in low positions that made it look like they were stalking something. Then it kicked back up. Josey leaned against his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “It’s a competition. Better score for stopping with the music.”

For a second, he forgot about the dancers, the drummers and the tacos. All he could think about was the feeling of her weight leaning against his, of her warmth touching the side of his face. He turned to look at her, and their eyes met. Heat flashed through his groin as she blushed and looked at him through her lashes.

Yeah, he was having a decent time. Fun, even.

But he couldn’t wait to get her alone.

Six

D
on was drumming, so Josey felt okay leaving Ben in the drum circle for a few minutes. He seemed comfortable—sitting on his heels, rocking in time to the beat, a boyish grin on his face. He was too good-looking to pull off cute, but right then, he came darned close.

She hurried back to Mom’s blanket. “Remember, I’m not coming out tomorrow. I’ve got that meeting at ten at the University of South Dakota about certification.” Which was true. But Josey felt the need to have an iron-clad reason she wouldn’t be out on the rez at the break of dawn that had nothing to do with waking up in Ben Bolton’s bed.

Don’t get ahead of yourself,
she thought as Mom’s eyebrows notched up with uncontained suspicion. She didn’t know for certain that she’d be waking up with him.

“That’s fine, dear.” Mom looked back across the circle and past the fancy dancers to where Ben was now handling a drumstick alongside Don. “He seems like a good man.”

Josey relaxed a bit. They’d let Ben sit at the circle; Mom gave all indications that she approved of him. Heck, he’d won over some of the toughest kids on the rez. Maybe she’d been wrong to think that Ben would be excluded—and, by extension, that she would be, too. “I think he is.”

For a hard-rocking, bike-building tough guy who cursed like a sailor, he seemed to have a fundamental core of decency.

She gave her mom a peck on the cheek. “See you in a few days.”

Mom caught her in a quick hug. “Have fun, and be careful.”

That was a perfectly normal Mom thing to say, but it hit Josey a little differently, as if Mom was giving tacit approval to the wanton carnality that Josey hoped was coming. Again, Josey wondered if that was because Mom liked the man, or because he had so easily stepped into the role of savior for their little school.

Not that it mattered. She would like to have some good, old-fashioned, man-on-woman fun. And she’d rehearsed her must-use-condoms conversation in her head. She could sleep with him without it getting too serious. She was good to go.

Ben was watching her as she made her way back to the drum. She could feel the energy sparking off him as he held her gaze literally without missing a beat. He didn’t belong here—this wasn’t a show powwow for the tourists, but a real one for the tribe—but between Tige, Jared, Mom and now the drum circle, he seemed to fit in just fine.

A lifetime—two lifetimes, if she counted Mom—of struggling to be accepted by her own people, and they were already welcoming him with open arms. Mom loved him, but Josey found herself wondering how Dad would have felt about this outsider.

The strangeness of the whole situation caused her step to falter. Was it just because of the money Ben had been throwing around? Grandpa had money, too—but when his back was turned, everyone talked about the wannabe
wasicu.
Was it the way Ben commanded respect? Maybe it was like he’d told Jared.
You don’t go to them. They come to you.

Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe this was exactly like it had been for Grandpa. Maybe once they left, everyone would sit and gossip about how Josey White Plume was so white she couldn’t get a decent Lakota guy and had to take up with a
wasicu.
True, he was a
wasicu
with money—but had he earned their respect or bought it? What would happen when the money, the things, stopped rolling in? Would Ben—would
she
—be less welcome?

She turned a slow circle. No one met her gaze. The throbbing in her head did not keep tempo with the drumming. She’d worked for so long to earn her place at this circle—would she really throw all that away for a white man? Even if that man was Ben Bolton?

What was she doing here?

Ben hit a downbeat before backing out of the circle, Don seamlessly taking up his stick. Everyone nodded to everyone else. No hint of malice, no kissing up. It looked so normal.

Ben walked toward where she’d stopped, his eyes focused on her. He didn’t care about what everyone would or would not be saying after they left. She could tell by the way he moved, a coiled confidence underneath his easy gait.

When he got close to her—not quite touching, but close enough—he said, “A little dancing, some food, a little drumming. I think I’ve seen the powwow.”

“We should go.” Go home—with him.
Sleep
with him. Was this what she wanted? Was this what she should do? Would those two things ever be the same thing?

She needed to get away from the confusion that was threatening to swamp her.

Ben looked her in the eyes, his concern obvious. No, she didn’t want to see anything that even hinted at pity, so she turned and walked back to where the bike was. Thankfully, no one was around, although there were enough footprints in the dust to let them know that plenty of people had been snooping.

“Where to?” Ben said.

Most men wouldn’t have asked. Most men would have just headed for the nearest bed and taken what she’d more or less promised. If Josey had learned anything, though, it was that Ben wasn’t most men.

She needed to get her head back on straight, and there was only one place in the world where she could do that. “There’s someplace I’ve got to show you first.”

*

Yeah, the powwow hadn’t been nearly as miserable as it could have been. Don had even let him get in a few licks on the biggest drum he’d ever seen. The dancers had been cool. The tacos were awesome.

Something about Josey had changed, though. By the time he’d gotten back to her, she’d seemed further away from him. He wanted to take her home—but he wanted her to
want
to go. So when she said she needed to show him something, he went along for the ride.

They left the powwow far behind, but instead of heading back toward civilization, they went deeper into the middle of nowhere. After twenty minutes, he was navigating something that was little more than a deer path in the grass.

It had been a long time since he’d taken his bike this far off road, but thanks to the dual-sport tires, the terrain wasn’t a problem. They were coasting around the bottom of a long line of hills. To his left was a sea of brown grass. To his right was a stand of pines that rose a good ways over their heads and seemed to go on forever.

He’d lived his whole life in South Dakota—except for college in California—and he’d never seen this side to the state. The contrast was stark, but that only made it more postcard-pretty.

Josey tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a draw up ahead. He rolled to a stop.

“Where are we?”

“Nowhere” was all she said as she shed the jacket and helmet. Her voice was quiet. Hollow, even. Like she was seeing a ghost. Before he could respond, she’d climbed the draw and disappeared behind the trees.

“Josey?” he called out as he made his way through the forest. The pine-fresh smell was a thousand times stronger than that stuff Cass used to clean the office. The place was a sort of noisy quiet—birds chirping, wind rustling—but the overall effect was one of silence. No manmade noises, he realized. At least, none now that he’d turned the bike off. He pressed on, trying to catch a glimpse of her. Where was that woman?

The trees opened up, and Ben found himself on top of a bluff that overlooked a river and a wide, deep valley.

Josey was sitting on a huge boulder, her arms curled around her knees—something that was sensuous and natural while also innocent and sweet, even. Clearly, she’d sat like this before.
She belongs here,
Ben thought. No business suits, no schools.

“Josey?”

She didn’t move, and Ben didn’t feel quite right about interrupting the moment. Instead, he focused on where he thought she was looking. In front of him was a view bordering on spectacular—miles and miles of nothing but Great Plains. Part of him would have been happy to just sit here with her and watch the world spin. The other part wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“This was my grandmother’s place,” she began with no other warning. “They lived in New York during the school year, but they came back to the rez for Christmas and the summer. She would come here first so she could get right with the spirits.”

What was he supposed to say to a statement like that? He decided the best course was to say nothing. The wheels in his mind were spinning fast, though. New York—
that’s
what Sandra’s accent was. Josey’s wasn’t as strong, but if he remembered right, she’d said her MBA was from Columbia. He’d just assumed she’d grown up here on the rez. And was this the same grandfather who had left her in charge of a trust fund?

“I remember she’d swoop me up on a horse, and we’d go flying over the grass.” Josey’s voice was far away. Either that, or the ghosts were really, really close—because Ben got the distinct feeling that spirits were hanging around. “That’s what it felt like, anyway.
Flying.
She’d hold me up on the rock and say, ‘Never forget who you really are, Josey-girl.’” Josey gave Ben one of those vulnerable smiles. “She called me that. Josey-girl.”

“She loved you.” Man, he hoped that was an appropriate thing to say. Talking was not something that usually happened in great quantities on his dates. Maybe that was why he hadn’t been on one in a while.

“She did.” Josey uncurled and stood on the rock. Ben couldn’t help but watch as she stretched out, her lithe form close enough to touch and yet still so damn far away. “Grandma, she walked in both worlds and loved them both.”

What did that mean, walked in both worlds? Was that code or something? Before Ben could ask, Josey turned to him, her eyes a little brighter at the memory. “She took me to the Met my first time, and the Statue of Liberty, before she got sick. I have a picture….” She trailed off again, and turned her eyes back to the vista in front of them. He saw her swallow. A minute passed before she said, “Mom couldn’t do it. She never belonged to that world. She tried once, but she doesn’t talk about it. So she married a Lakota warrior and came back to the rez. Permanently.”

Ben was pretty sure he’d remember meeting a Lakota warrior. He pictured someone a lot like Don, but with more feathers. “What happened to him?”

“He died. A long time ago.” Her voice was flat. She didn’t elaborate.

“Yeah. My mom…” Even though it had been a long time—sixteen years—it still hurt. Time had taken the sharp edge off the loss, but dull pain was still pain.

“Yeah.” Josey took a deep breath and stretched out her arms, like she wanted to hug the wind or something. Maybe the wind was looking for a hug, because it picked up the pace and started to blow with meaning. “I try. I really do. When I’m out there, I smile and nod and ignore the people who laugh because my last name means I’m not white enough. And then I come home, and I smile and nod and ignore the people who laugh because my hair, my mom’s hair, means we’re not Indian enough.”

People laughed at her? A surprising anger hit him in the gut. Who cared what her last name was, or what color her hair was? Who cared if her granny liked New York or her father was a warrior? He didn’t. What he cared about was protecting the woman standing before him from the small-minded people of the world. She was too sweet, too gentle, too damn
good
for people to laugh at her.

He was about to say as much when she turned to him, her eyes wide open and knowing. “I still come here when I need to remember who I am.”

“Who are you, really?”

“You know what? No one ever asks me that.” She stepped down off the rock and stood on the edge of the bluff.

“I’m asking.”

A breeze came up the side, doing sexy things with her hair. He couldn’t help it. He took a step toward her.

She shot him a mysterious smile over her shoulder. Whatever distance she’d put between them seemed to blow away with that breeze. “Maybe that’s why I like you.”

His blood began to hammer in his veins. Maybe he understood what she was saying about walking in two worlds and remembering who she was—maybe he didn’t. He could understand never being what people wanted him to be, because he was never going to be Billy and he was never going to be Bobby and no matter how many gigs he played or how well he managed the money, he was never, ever going to be someone his father could be proud of. He would never be the son his father wanted.

What he knew for sure was that this place was special to her, and she’d brought him here. Because he was special to her.

When he slipped his arms around her waist, she leaned back into him without hesitation and laced her fingers with his, just under the swell of her breasts. His chest rose and fell against her back and he rested his chin on her head.

In that moment, Ben felt the way he’d felt in the bar, only in reverse. The solitary quiet he usually felt was less solitary, replaced instead with a gentle calm. He understood how alone Josey felt surrounded by her tribe, how hard it was to try and try and try and never be enough, how tired she was of doing it by herself. He understood it all and was happy to take some of the burden off her shoulders.

“Maybe that’s why I like you, too.” He whispered the words in her ear, but they seemed to echo over the bluff and into the grassland below.

She took a deep breath, her chest expanding against his arms. Together, they took a small step away from the edge. He couldn’t help it if his arms tightened around her, if his hands splayed out so he could feel more of her. He couldn’t help it if the way her hips moved against him made him think thoughts that had nothing to do with the sacredness of this place. He couldn’t help wanting her.

“Do you like me?” She pivoted in his arms and, palming his face, looked him in the eye. “Do you?”

What kind of question was that? He’d suffered baptism by fire in meeting her mother and her tribe—on multiple occasions—and she had to ask if he liked her? Women, he thought to himself as he let his lips do the answering for him.

He took his time tasting her. No mothers, no bandmates—nothing but the breeze was around to watch her run her fingers through his hair, or to see him pull her shirt out of the back of her jeans so that he could get his hands on her bare flesh. She responded by shimmying those hips against his.