Paper Rose

“Hearings?” he prompted.

She folded her hands on the warm fabric of her skirt. The sun was beating down on her uncovered head. “It was a public hearing on Native American sovereignty. I went to speak in favor of it before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, speaking for a committee from the Wapiti reservation. Holden is the chairman of the Senate committee.” She kept her eyes on the circle of dancers. “It was Leta’s idea,” she added quickly. “She said Senator Holden was impressed by anthropology graduates, and I was the only one they could dig up at such short notice.”

“I didn’t know you involved yourself in political issues.”

She glanced at him wryly. “Of course you didn’t. You don’t know a lot about me.”

He scowled as he turned his attention to the circle and watched his mother dance, resplendent in her beautiful buckskins. No, he didn’t know a lot about Cecily, but he did know how devastated she’d been to discover he’d paid her way through college, absorbed all her expenses out of pity for her situation. He was sorry for how much that had hurt her. But over the past two years, he’d deliberately distanced himself from her. He wondered why…

“I had dinner with Senator Holden last week,” she said conversationally, deliberately trying to irritate him. “He wanted to point me toward some special collections for the museum.”

He stared at his mother in the circle, but he was frowning, deep in thought. “I don’t like Holden,” he said curtly.

“Yes, I know. You’ll be delighted to hear that he returned your sentiment,” she said with a chuckle at his scowl. “He’s really stubborn on the issue of a casino on the Wapiti reservation. We’ve pointed out the benefits to the tribe time and time again, but he won’t give an inch,” she recalled. “We could build a bigger clinic, buy an ambulance and train and hire an EMT to drive it. We could fund recreational programs for teens to keep them from drinking and getting into trouble. We could have prenatal programs…”

He was staring at her openly. “When did you talk to him about that?” he asked.

“I’ve been a thorn in his side for months,” she said easily. “I’ve left him e-mail messages, put notes under his door, left voice mail, sent tapes of the poverty on the reservation through the mail. He knows me very well indeed. But most recently I got him to listen to me over a nice dinner at the local cafeteria between Senate sessions,” she recalled. “He’s afraid of organized crime. He seems to have some suspicions about the motives of the tribal chief who’s so determined to get the casino approved by the state government for Class III gambling.”

“Tom Black Knife,” he said, nodding, because he knew the tribal chief, and there had been some gossip about the way he earmarked tribal funds. Not a lot of money was going into the reservation’s projects right now, and nobody seemed to know exactly where the money was going. Some was even missing, if Tate had understood a random comment one of his cousins had made earlier today. Tom was a good man with a kind heart, the softest touch on the reservation. Odd that his name would be connected with anything as unsavory as embezzlement. “But Holden is overlooking the benefits of the money the casino would bring in. Several Native American tribes have instituted casinos and had to fight state government all the way to get them. There are other casinos on Sioux land right here in our own state, but Holden is fighting our proposed compact with everything he’s got. Holden’s opposition hurts us in South Dakota, because he has powerful political allies in Pierre and no scruples about using them against us. One of them,” he added darkly, “is the state attorney general herself!”

“I know,” she said. Her pale eyes gazed into his dark ones. “But I’m working on the senator.”

He didn’t even blink. “Working on him, how?”

Here we go again, she thought with resignation. Her eyebrows lifted. He was acting as if she’d already seduced the man! On second thought, why not live down to that image? She leaned forward avidly. “Well, first I smeared him with honey and licked my way down to his throat…” she began earnestly.

He cursed sharply.

She laughed helplessly. “All right, it was just dinner. But he really is a very nice man, Tate,” she said.

He gave her a hard glare. “Listen, Cecily, going around with a man old enough to be your father isn’t the way to fight your hang-ups.”

“My hang-ups?” She glared at him. “Do feel free to elaborate.”

“You have friends instead of lovers,” he said curtly.

“I’m a modern woman,” she said coolly. “That means I have the right to decide what I do with my body. Some women, I might add, advocate using men only for breeding purposes. I myself think they’d be more useful as house pets.”

His black eyes twinkled. He waved to his mother who was just dancing past them with an ear to ear smile. “All the same, I don’t like seeing you with Holden.”

“I don’t particularly care what you like,” she said and smiled sweetly at him.

He hated that damned smile. It was like a red flag. “Listen, kid, you don’t know beans about some of the political superstars in Congress, and Holden is an unknown commodity. He guards his privacy like a mercenary. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him. He’s too secretive.”

“Look who’s talking!” she exclaimed. “You could probably topple governments with things you know and don’t tell!”

“Sure I could,” he agreed. “But I’m not shady.”

She just looked at him. It was a speaking look.

“Maybe a little shady,” he conceded finally. “A man has to have a few secrets.”

“So does a woman.”

He smoothed a hand down the buckskin leggings on one of his powerful thighs. “I hope you aren’t going to let what happened to you in Corryville ruin the rest of your life,” he said without looking at her. “You should go around with men your own age.”

She met his narrowed eyes. “I had my share of dates when I started college. It’s amazing that every single one of them thought he was entitled to my bed in return for a nice dinner and some dancing. And you know what I got when I said no? They told me I wasn’t liberated.” She threw up her hands. “What does liberation have to do with rejecting a man with bad breath who looks like a lab rat?”

“You won’t get around me by changing the subject,” he continued doggedly. “Holden isn’t the sort of man you need in your life and neither is Colby Lane.”

The silence beside her was thick with suppressed anger. Colby was ex-CIA, too, now a mercenary who did freelance work for various organizations, including, so rumor had it, the government. He was almost as tough as Tate. But he had a few more visible flaws. Tate was his friend and he couldn’t miss the fact that Cecily and Colby were close—even Audrey had pointed it out to him. But he didn’t like having Cecily dating the man, and Cecily knew it by his very silence.

She held up a hand before he could continue. “I know he’s had his problems in the past…”

“He can’t keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife!”

“I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore,” she continued. “He’s narrowed his habit down to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays.”

“What does he get for a reward?” he asked insolently.

She sighed irritably. “Nobody suits you! You don’t even like poor old lonely Senator Holden.”

“Like him? Holden?” he asked, aghast. “Good God, he’s the one man in Congress I’d like to burn at the stake! I’d furnish the wood and the matches!”

“You and Leta,” she said, shaking her head. “Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn’t burn people at the stake,” she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why.

He searched her enthusiastic eyes. “You really do love Native American history, don’t you?”

She nodded. “The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them.” She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. “I like your way better.”

“Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try.”

“I had you and Leta to teach me,” she said simply. “They were wonderful lessons that I learned, here on the reservation. I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.”

He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before.

Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him.

He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard.

“Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper.

“Wh…what?” she stammered.

His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off-limits. Period.

He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her.