Do I get to come in?” he asked.
She shrugged and stood aside. “I’m just packing.”
“Moving again?” he asked with faint sarcasm. “You used to be easier to keep track of.”
“Because I was living in a nest of spies!” she threw at him, having only recently gleaned that bit of information from Colby. “You got me an apartment surrounded by government agents!”
“It was the safest place for you,” he said simply. “Someone was always watching you when I couldn’t.”
“I didn’t need watching!”
“You did,” he returned, perching on the arm of her big easy chair to stare at her intently. “You never realized it, but you were a constant target for anyone who had a grudge against me. In the end, it was why I gave up government work and got a job in the private sector.” He folded his arms over his broad chest, watching surprise claim her features. “There was a communist agent with a high-powered rifle one day, and a South American gentlemen with an automatic pistol the following week. You were never told about them. But you had two close calls. If you hadn’t been living in a ‘nest of spies,’ I’d have buried you. Funerals are expensive,” he added with a cold smile.
She stared at him blankly. “Why didn’t you just send me back to South Dakota?” she asked.
“To your stepfather?” he drawled.
That was still a sore spot with her, and she was certain that he knew it. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of arguing. He seemed to be spoiling for a fight. She turned away to the kitchen. “Want a cup of coffee?”
He got up and took her by the shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a low blow.”
“Another in a long line of them lately,” she said without meeting his eyes. “I seem to do nothing except rub you the wrong way.”
“And you don’t know why?” he asked curtly, letting her go.
She moved one shoulder as she went about the business of getting down a cup and saucer. “At a guess, you’re mad at somebody you can’t get to, and I’m the stand-in.”
He chuckled. “How do you see through me so easily? Even my mother can’t do that.”
If he thought about it, he’d know, she thought miserably.
You were just in South Dakota a couple of weeks ago,” he pointed out. “Why didn’t you get it then?”
“It wasn’t available then.” She brushed back a tiny strand of loose hair. “Don’t cross-examine me, okay? It’s been a long day.”
He ran a hand around the back of his neck, under his braid of hair, and stared at her own hair in the tight bun at her nape as she replaced the errant strand. “I thought you took it down at night.”
“At bedtime,” she corrected.
His eyes narrowed. “Lucky Colby,” he said deliberately.
She wasn’t going to give him any rope to hang her with. She just smiled.
He glared at her. “He won’t change,” he said flatly.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Tate, but my private life is my own business, not yours.”
“That’s a hell of a way to talk to me.”
“That works both ways,” she replied, eyes narrowing. “What gives you the right to ask questions about the men I date?”
Her words made him mad. His lips compressed until they made a straight line. He looked like his father when he was angry. He finished his coffee in a tense silence and got to his feet. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go. I just wanted to see how you were.”
“You just wanted to see if Colby was here,” she corrected and smiled mirthlessly when he blinked.
“You know I don’t approve of Colby,” he told her.
“Like I care?” she said.
He took a step toward her. His black eyes glittered with conflicting emotions. She aroused him more lately than any woman he’d ever known. Just looking at her sent him over the edge.
On some level she recognized the tension in him, the need that he was denying. He was upset about Matt Holden pulling him out of the security work, not because of the money, but rather because it seemed nothing more than spite. Actually Holden was saving them both from a political upheaval because he could have been accused of nepotism. But deeper than that was a frustration because he wanted a woman he couldn’t have. Cecily knew that at some level. He was trying to start a fight. She couldn’t let him.
“Colby is a sweet man,” she said gently. “He’s good company and he doesn’t drink around me, ever.”
“He’s an alcoholic,” he said quietly, trying to control the anger.
“I told you before, he’s in therapy,” she said. “He’s trying, Tate.”
“So you expect me not to worry about you? After what my own father put me and my mother through?
Steel tempered by fire,” she said aloud, without thinking.
“Am I?” he asked.
She smiled sadly. “Aren’t you?”
He let out a long, slow breath and some of the tension drained out of him. He looked at her quizzically. “You give me peace,” he said unexpectedly. “The only time I ever feel it is when I’m with you. God knows why, when you set me off like a bomb.”
She searched his eyes. “Tate, Senator Holden has a reason for what he did,” she told him seriously. “I don’t pretend to know what it is, but I know him. He’s not like some politicians who lie when the truth would suit better. He has integrity. He doesn’t hold grudges and he doesn’t backstab. You know that,” she added with conviction.
He scowled. “Yes, I do.” His narrow eyes searched hers. “What do you know, Cecily?”
“I know archaeology,” she replied.
He reached out and touched her firm little chin with hard fingers. “You’re keeping something from me,” he said in a low, deep tone. “I’m not sure why I sense that, but I do.”
“You think you know all about me,” she replied, trying to draw back. “Don’t…do that,” she muttered, reaching up to catch his hair-roughened wrist in her warm fingers.
His breath caught. “Fatal error, Cecily,” he said huskily, moving in, giving in to the hunger that had really brought him to her apartment at this hour of the night. “You shouldn’t have touched me…
You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily.
“If you’ll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I’ll be happy to…!”
He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn’t a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver.
“That’s…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor.
“It isn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm.
It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther.
“What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him.
She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn’t a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn’t been able to force her to do something she didn’t want to do.
“Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!”
“That isn’t what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.”
She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don’t understand.”
“You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn’t be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.”
He sighed heavily. “You’ve been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I’ll still feel protective about you. It’s the way I’m made.”
He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.”
“Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…”
“I don’t have too many of those. Mostly, you’re responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I’m supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You’re breaking the rules.”
His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.”
“You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman’s ego can only take so much rejection.
His eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” he said, almost to himself, “the way it felt, back at my mother’s house. I was never so hungry for anyone, but it wasn’t completely physical, even then.” He frowned. “I want you, Cecily, and I hate myself for it.”
“What else is new?” She gestured toward the door. “Go home. And I hope you don’t sleep a wink.”
“I probably won’t,” he said ruefully. He moved toward the door, hesitating.
“Good night,” she said firmly, not moving.
He stood with his back to her, his spine very straight. “I can trace my ancestors back before the Mexican War in the early 1800s, pure Lakota blood, undiluted even by white settlement. There are so few of us left…”
She could have wept for what she knew, and he didn’t know. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said solemnly. “I know how you feel.”
“You don’t,” he bit off. He straightened again. “I’d die to have you, just once.” He turned, and the fire was in his eyes as they met hers, glittering across the room. “It’s like that for you, too.”
“It’s a corruption of the senses. You don’t love me,” she said quietly. “Without love, it’s just sex.”
He breathed deliberately, slowly. He didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help it. “Something you know?”
“Yes. Something I know,” she said, lying with a straight face and a smile that she hoped was worldly. She was not going to settle for crumbs from him, stolen hours in his bed. Men were devious when desire rode them, even men like Tate. She couldn’t afford for him to know that she was incapable of wanting any man except him.
The words stung. They were meant to. He hesitated, only for a minute, before he jerked open the door and went out. Cecily closed her eyes and thanked providence that she’d had the good sense to deny herself what she wanted most in the world. Tate had said once that sex alone wasn’t enough. He was right. She repeated it, like a mantra, to her starving body until she finally fell asleep.
Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I’ll fetch it!”
Cecily felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall…
“He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched.
“He always remembers it, but he said you weren’t speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.”
Cecily’s hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. I wasn’t a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn’t buy her a…
“The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?”
Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter.
Cecily glared at her. “It isn’t funny.”
“Oh, yes it is!”
Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn’t he?”
She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn’t silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn’t been an impulse purchase. He’d had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he’d meant those, too.
She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she’d treasure it as long as she lived.
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!
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.
Bring Cecily home,” he said curtly. “I won’t have her at risk, even in the slightest way.”
“I’ll take care of Cecily,” came the terse reply. “She’s better off without you in her life.”
Tate’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, affronted.
“You know what I mean,” Holden said. “Let her heal. She’s too young to consign herself to spinsterhood over a man who doesn’t even see her.”
“Infatuation dies,” Tate said.
Holden nodded. “Yes, it does. Goodbye.”
“So does hero worship,” he continued, laboring the point.
“And that’s why after eight years, Cecily has had one raging affair after the other,” he said facetiously.
The words had power. They wounded.
“You fool,” Holden said in a soft tone. “Do you really think she’d let any man touch her except you?” He went to his office door and gestured toward the desk. “Don’t forget your gadget,” he added quietly.
“Wait!”
Holden paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned. “What?”
Tate held the device in his hands, watching the lights flicker on it. “Mixing two cultures when one of them is all but extinct is a selfish thing,” he said after a minute. “It has nothing to do with personal feelings. It’s a matter of necessity.”
Holden let go of the doorknob and moved to stand directly in front of Tate. “If I had a son,” he said, almost choking on the word, “I’d tell him that there are things even more important than lofty principles. I’d tell him…that love is a rare and precious thing, and that substitutes are notoriously unfulfilling.”
Tate searched the older man’s eyes. “You’re a fine one to talk.”
Holden’s face fell. “Yes, that’s true.” He turned away.
Why should he feel guilty? But he did. “I didn’t mean to say that,” Tate said, irritated by his remorse and the other man’s defeated posture. “I can’t help the way I feel about my culture.”
“If it weren’t for the cultural difference, how would you feel about Cecily?”
Tate hesitated. “It wouldn’t change anything. She’s been my responsibility. I’ve taken care of her. It would be gratitude on her part, even a little hero worship, nothing more. I couldn’t take advantage of that. Besides, she’s involved with Colby.”
“And you couldn’t live with being the second man.”
Tate’s face hardened. His eyes flashed.
Holden shook his head. “You’re just brimming over with excuses, aren’t you? It isn’t the race thing, it isn’t the culture thing, it isn’t even the guardian-ward thing. You’re afraid.”
Tate’s mouth made a thin line. He didn’t reply.
“When you love someone, you give up control of yourself,” he continued quietly. “You have to consider the other person’s needs, wants, fears. What you do affects the other person. There’s a certain loss of freedom as well.” He moved a step closer. “The point I’m making is that Cecily already fills that place in your life. You’re still protecting her, and it doesn’t matter that there’s another man. Because you can’t stop looking out for her. Everything you said in this office proves that.” He searched Tate’s turbulent eyes. “You don’t like Colby Lane, and it isn’t because you think Cecily’s involved with him. It’s because he’s been tied to one woman so tight that he can’t struggle free of his love for her, even after years of divorce. That’s how you feel, isn’t it, Tate? You can’t get free of Cecily, either. But Colby’s always around and she indulges him. She might marry him in an act of desperation. And then what will you do? Will your noble excuses matter a damn then?
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 pic 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 girn.
“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.
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