Witch Dance (4 page)

There was no one to save him except her.

There was no one to save them except her. She was the oldest. She was responsible.

Swimming hard, she fought the water. She couldn’t let it win. Not this time. She went under, searching, searching . . . and saw a leg.

“Brian,” she screamed. Bubbles rose to the surface. “I’ve got you, Brian.”

She couldn’t hold on. He was struggling against her. She was losing him, losing him in the darkness and the rain and the winds that howled over the ocean.

“Stop!” Panic billowed through her as she fought to hold on to his leg. “Stop struggling, Brian. I have to save you . . . I have to save you.”

Brian cried as he fought her, screamed as he clawed her face. She couldn’t hold him. He was pulling her down. And where was Charles?

“Charles! Charles!” Tears streamed down her face, and water, so much water. She gasped for air. “Oh, God. I can’t find Charles.”

Hands grabbed her shoulders. Panic filled her, and such soul-searing agony, she wanted to die.

Charles was there now, and Brian, clinging to her, crying . . . Help me, Katie. Help me. Praying and crying, she swam. But which way was the shore? She couldn’t see. Brian was pulling her under . . . and Charles was too heavy. They would all drown.

“No!” she screamed. “I won’t let you die.”

“I won’t hurt you. Stop fighting.”

“No. You can’t die.”

But they did. First Brian slipped away, his little face contorted as he called her name, his hair floating around his head like a pale halo. Then Charles. In slow motion he drifted, always beyond her reach, until at last she couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see either of them. The sea swallowed them, swallowed her brothers, then spit her out onto the cream-colored sand. She hadn’t been strong enough. She hadn’t been good enough.

She closed her eyes, wanting to die. Why hadn’t she died?

Strong arms held her close. “Are you all right?”

That voice. It was the same one she’d heard moments earlier, the voice of thunder that beseeched the sky in a strange and wondrous tongue.

Coward that she was, she lay against his sun-warmed chest with her eyes shut. It was easier than looking into the face of the man she’d saved from the river.

“Are you all right?” he asked again as he lowered her to the ground. Oh, God, she remembered how he’d looked standing in the river, gloriously naked. He probably was a marathon swimmer who could take on the English Channel without ever getting winded, and here she was, wallowing around in his arms, getting goose bumps listening to his voice . . . and getting ideas besides.

“Of course I’m all right.” She sat straight up, intending to act efficient and intelligent as befitted someone who had earned the right to be called doctor. But then she saw him close up. And she nearly swooned.

He was more man than she’d ever seen. And every gorgeous naked inch of him was within touching distance.

For all he seemed to care, he could have been bending over her in a Brooks Brothers suit.

“What impulse sent you into the river?” He squatted beside her with both hands on her shoulders, and she’d never felt skin as hot in her life.

“I thought you were drowning.”

His laughter was deep and melodious, and as sensual as exotic music played in some dark corner of a dimly lit café where lovers embraced.

“I am Chickasaw,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“Well, I’m human and I made a mistake.” She pushed her wet hair away from her face. “Why can’t you just admit you made a mistake, staying under the water so long, I thought you were going to drown?”

“You were watching me?”

“No . . . Yes . . .” His legs were powerful, heavily muscled, bent in such a way that the best parts of him were hidden. He leaned closer, intent on answers. How did he expect her to think straight with his leg touching hers like that? “Not deliberately,” she said. “I was on a picnic. How did I know you’d be cavorting about in the river without any clothes on?”

He searched her face with eyes deep and black. Then he touched her cheeks, his strong hands exquisitely gentle.

“I’m sorry I ruined your picnic.” Ever so tenderly his hands roamed over her face. Breathless, she sat beside the river, his willing captive. “You’ve scratched your face . . . here . . . and here.”

Until that moment she hadn’t known that every nerve in the body could tremble. Now she could attest to it as a medical fact.

“. . . and your legs.” He gave her legs the same tender attention he’d given her face. She would have sold her soul to feel his hands on her forever. “I have remedies for your injuries.”

Oh, God. Would he kiss them and make them well? She almost said it.

“I can fix them. . . .” How? She could barely breathe. “I’m a doctor.”

“You came to Tribal Lands to practice medicine?”

“You doubt my word?”

“No. Your commitment.”

“Is it because I’m white that you think I’m not committed, or because I’m female?”

“Neither,
Wictonaye
.” In one fluid movement he stood before her, smiling.

And in that moment her world changed. Colors and light receded, faded until there was nothing except the bold Chickasaw with his glowing, polished skin and his seductive voice that obliterated every thought, every need except the most basic . . . to die of lust. Sitting on the hard ground, looking up at her nameless captor, she wanted to die in the throes of passion.

She stood on shaky, uncertain legs. Clenching her fists by her side, she faced him.

“If you’re going to call me names, use English, please.”

“
Wictonaye
. . . wildcat.”

“I’ve been called worse.” Would God forgive her if she left right now? Would He give her the healing touch and allow her to save lives if she forgot about her lust and focused on her mission?

She spun around, then felt his hand on her arm.

“I’ve been rude. It’s not my way”

“Nor mine.” She grinned. “Except sometimes.”

“You tried to save my life, and I don’t know your name.”

“Kate Malone.”

“Thank you for saving my life, Kate Malone.” His eyes sparkled with wicked glee. She’d never known a man of such boldness . . . nor such appeal. “I’m Eagle Mingo.”

“Next time you decide to play in the river, Eagle Mingo, be more careful. I might not be around to rescue you.”

She marched toward the bluff, thinking it was a good exit, until he appeared beside her, still naked as sin and twice as tempting.

“You forgot your shoe.” He held out one of her moccasins.

“Thanks.” Lord, did he expect her to bend down and put it on with him standing there like that? She hobbled along, half shoeless.

“And your picnic basket.” He scooped it off the ground and handed it to her. Then, damned if he didn’t bow like some courtly knight in shining armor.

If she ever got home, she’d have to take an aspirin and go to bed. Doctor’s orders.

“Good-bye. Enjoy your” —her eyes raked him from head to toe, and she could feel her whole body getting hot— “swim.”

She didn’t know how she got up the bluff, but she didn’t draw a good breath until she was safely at the top. He was still standing down there, looking up. She could feel his eyes on her.

Lest he think she was a total coward, she put on her other shoe, then turned and casually waved at him. At least she hoped it was casual.

And then he waved back. Facing full front. She might never recover.

 o0o

“Did you enjoy your picnic?” Dr. Colbert asked when she got back.

“Hmmm.” It was the best she could do.

“I’m glad. There are some wonderful sights around here.”

“I’ll say.”

Dr. Colbert picked up her bird-watching book and thumbed through. “We have magnificent birds here too. You’ll soon learn all their names.”

All she needed to know was one name. The name of the most magnificent of them all. Eagle.

Chapter 4

Home.

Eagle sat quietly on the redwood bench under a silver maple tree and took it all in. Nothing much had changed. The sprawling house with its wide verandas and tall windows was still the domain of Dovie Mingo. It had been Winston’s wedding present to his wife. Built of cypress and glass with an eye for the view, it faced the mountains, which were stained pink and purple now by the setting sun. The house was grand in scale and built to endure because Winston had said that’s how his love for Dovie was, magnificent and sweeping with an endurance that would last their lifetime and beyond to the Great Spirit world of Loak-Istohoollo-Aba.

The ravages of wind and rain and time had not dimmed the house’s grandeur, and it sat now, weathered and graceful, in its wide sweep of pasture in the shadow of the mountains.

Through the open windows Eagle could hear the low, singing murmur of his mother’s voice as she directed her two youngest children in the clean-up after their family meal.

“Not the pots too! Can’t they wait until morning?” Star’s wail of protest was tempered by the knowledge that she was engaged in a battle she would never win. “This is Eagle’s first day home.”

Eagle didn’t hear Dovie’s soft rebuke, only the firm tone of her voice. Then the unmistakable sound of his brother Wolf’s laughter.

“Hey, sis, what’s all the fuss about? You’ve got me.”

They’d been mere children when he left, and now they were rowdy, raucous teens, full of the raw energy and the high, bright dreams of the young.

“I don’t want you, toad breath,” Star said.

“Yeah, well, that’s what you’ve got till we finish these dishes. Shake a leg, squirt blossom, or we’ll be here all night.”

The argument in the kitchen was like the ones that had been waged years before. Nothing had changed except the names and the players. When Eagle was a teen, he and his brother Cole had been the ones bickering over the dishes. Dovie had always been a stickler for order. No matter what was taking place—weddings, births, homecomings, natural disasters—she always insisted that everything in the house be put in its proper place.

Eagle and Cole had thought they were doomed to carry on the chores forever, and had sat together in the barn loft, smoking a forbidden pipe and planning their revolt, when the unexpected had happened. At the age of forty-two Dovie had given birth to a baby girl.

“Who’d have thought the two of them were still doing it?” Cole said. He took a long draw on the purloined pipe, then passed it to his twin.

“I thought the equipment quit working when you got old.” At the age of fourteen, Eagle considered anything over thirty ancient.

A year later, when Wolf was born, Dovie and Winston proved once again that everything was indeed in perfect working order, and that they enjoyed making it work.

Now a sophisticated fifteen, Cole and Eagle discussed this new turn of events over their first taste of alcohol—a bottle of cooking sherry clipped from their mother’s kitchen cabinet.

“Papa’s as bad as that old stallion,” Cole said, and Eagle voiced his hearty agreement, but there was a certain element of awe and pride in their voices.

Remembering now, Eagle smiled. Judging by the evidence, Cole had inherited his father’s prowess. His young wife, Anna, was ripe with child, and he already had two fine sons—Clint, secretive and stoic even at seven, and Bucky, exuberant and wild with the joy of childhood, racing around on his sturdy legs, defying his tender age of three by being as surefooted as one of the antelope that roamed the Arbuckle Mountains.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Bucky yelled as he raced around the yard. “Watch, Daddy!”

He lunged for the black Lab, and boy and dog went down in a heap. The Lab licked Bucky’s face, then dog and boy were up and running again. It was hard to tell who was chasing whom.

“Watch, Daddy! Watch!”

With his arms held up toward the sun, the child spun round and round, ending in a dizzy tangle against Eagle’s legs.

“Whoa, there.” Laughing, Eagle lifted the child.

His nephew. Issue of the brother whose very soul was twined with his own. As the soft little arms went around his neck, there was a blooming in Eagle’s heart . . . and something akin to envy.

“You’re dizzy, little sport. Time to slow down.”

“Daddy?” Bucky put his dimpled hands on either side of Eagle’s face and cocked his head to one side.

“No. I’m Uncle Eagle.”

“Unca Eaga?” Bucky puckered his brow and looked from Eagle to Cole, then back again.

Cole laughed at his son’s puzzlement. “That’s your uncle Eagle, son, the best man in Witch Dance besides your daddy. Give Uncle Eagle a kiss.”

With the trust inherent in children, Bucky pressed his rosy mouth against Eagle’s, then squirmed out of his arms and gave chase to the dog once more.

“‘Bye, Unca Eaga,” he yelled, his laughter lifting high and bright as a kite toward the fading sun.

“You should see your face,” Cole said. “You look like you did that day you brought home the trophy for the debate team.”

“I never knew that holding your own flesh and blood would feel like that.”

“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Cole wrapped his arm around his wife’s thick waist. “It makes a man proud. Two sons already and another on the way.”

Anna smiled at her husband, never daring to suggest that the child she carried might not be a son. She loved her tall, handsome husband with an adoration that bordered on worship and took every opportunity to show it.

If he let himself, Eagle could envy that too.

“Now that you’re back, it won’t take you long to catch up,” Cole said.

Inseparable as children, Eagle and Cole had done everything together—ridden their first horse, climbed their first tree, bagged their first deer. They’d even broken their arms at the same time, the left ones, fractured when they’d fallen from the barn loft in an ignoble heap, drunk on their mother’s cooking sherry.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to carry on the family name,” Eagle said. “At least for a while.”

“You always were a visionary.” Cole leaned down for Anna’s kiss, then watched as she waddled off toward the house. “You build your bridges: I’ll make sons.”