The Coyote's Cry

“He does.” Bram frowned suddenly. “I expected Gran to have a long and healthy life, too. That stroke was a shock.”

“For the whole family, apparently.” Jenna couldn’t believe it. They were actually having a normal conversation.

“I’ve got to drive out to George’s place and tell him about Gran,” Bram said, sounding as though he were talking more to himself than to Jenna.

“He doesn’t know?”

“I didn’t want to alarm him without cause. After what you told me earlier tonight, I think I’d better go out there very soon. I’m sure he’ll want to see Gran.”

Jenna’s heart sank. “And what I said to you tonight is the reason you’re not able to sleep. Do you understand that I only said what was necessary?”

“I don’t understand a damn thing. She was always a live wire. What causes a stroke, anyhow? Why was she struck down like that?”

“Would you like me to explain the medical causes of strokes?”

“No.” Bram turned his head, reminding Jenna of Gloria both from the action and from their physical similarities. “Hearing a bunch of medical terms I probably wouldn’t comprehend isn’t going to make me accept Gran’s affliction. She doesn’t deserve what she’s going through, Jenna.”

“I know she doesn’t,” Jenna said quietly, although a part of her rejoiced that her name had rolled off his tongue as though he said it all the time. She lifted her eyes and met his, and for the first time ever she thought she saw something personal gleaming in their black depths. Her pulse rate quickened, and when he suddenly looked away again her breath stopped as though trapped in her throat.

To alleviate the sensation she got up and brought her cup to the sink. She heard Bram getting up, too, and then felt him behind her.

“Just forming a line to rinse my cup,” he said.

But he was standing a lot closer to her than he had to, and again Jenna couldn’t breathe normally. “I—I’ll only…be a minute,” she stammered. “Give me your cup. I can take care of it and you can go back to, uh, bed.”

He reached around her and put his cup in the sink in front of her, and she felt his long muscular body against her back.

“Jenna,” he whispered, and placed his hands on the counter on each side of her. Her mind could hardly digest what was happening. He had never, ever touched her, not once, and now his entire body was pressed against hers and his arms were virtually enclosing her within a very sensual circle.

She didn’t think, just reacted. Dropping her cup in the sink, she swung around, at the same moment raising her arms to his neck. She leaned into him and his arms tightened around her. She turned her face up and silently begged for his kiss, and he didn’t disappoint her. His lips touched hers gingerly, then, in the next heartbeat, almost roughly. It was her fantasy come true, or at least the beginning of it.

She opened her mouth under his and kissed him back with all the desire she’d kept bottled up for so long. She knew she would do anything he wanted; all he had to do to get everything he could possibly want from a woman was to keep on holding her and kissing her.

She moved against him, an involuntary action caused by total surrender to Bram’s will. She felt his hands moving on her back, up and down, and finally stopping on her bottom. The groan she heard deep in his throat as he cupped her buttocks excited her further, and she brought her hands down from his neck to explore his chest. More than his chest was hard, though, and that was the most exciting thing of all. He wanted her. He couldn’t hide his desire or pretend it didn’t exist, not when the proof of his feelings pressed into her abdomen. She was so thrilled and elated that she mumbled between kisses, “Wait…wait. Let me get out of some of these clothes.”

He inched away from her and watched her shed the robe and let it drop to the floor around her feet. His black eyes devoured the sight of her in a rather sheer white nightgown with tiny straps, standing in front of him with all that long, golden hair draped over her shoulders.

“You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said raggedly.

“Oh, Bram, do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” she whispered. And then fear gripped her, for something in what she’d said caused him to begin withdrawing before her very eyes.

He touched her cheek gently. “We can’t do this.”

She had no shame, not now, not when they’d been so close to something meaningful. “Why not?” she whispered.

“I think you know why not.”

Jenna cleared her throat. She couldn’t let this happen. Bram had crossed the line tonight and she couldn’t stand the thought of him retreating behind it again.

“Because of my dad’s attitude?” she said in a stronger voice. “Bram, you must ignore him. Prove you’re the bigger and better man by overlooking his ignorance.”

“How does anyone in Black Arrow overlook Carl Elliot?” Bram took a backward step, and Jenna quickly moved forward, wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her cheek on his chest. “Don’t do this, Jenna,” he said huskily. “I was afraid of this happening the second I saw you getting out of the ambulance. I want you to stay and care for Gran…you are the best nurse in town…but you and I can never be anything but speaking acquaintances.” He grasped her arms and moved away from her. After one more yearning look at her beautiful face, he spun on his heel and walked out.

Jenna was devastated. He’d broken her heart, this time for real, for he’d given her just enough of himself to also give her a glimpse of paradise. Then he’d yanked it all away and told her it would never happen again. With tears burning her eyes, she pulled on her robe and dragged herself back to her lonely twin bed in Gloria’s room.

Jenna thought she would cry her eyes red, but instead she stared at the ceiling and accepted the painful knowledge that she’d responded to Bram with the same fervor with which a starving person devoured food. She felt like a fool, a woman with no will of her own. She would never forgive herself for behaving like a tart, nor would she forgive Bram for treating her as one. He’d kissed and touched her intimately, and she would feel his hands on her body for the rest of her life. Damn him! She turned to her side and the tears finally came, and she wept quietly into her pillow until she finally fell asleep.

Bram never did go back to sleep. An immutable fact nearly drove him crazy: he could have made love to Jenna, his beautiful golden girl, in his own kitchen, and he’d turned her down. Dear God, he could have brought her to his bed and made love with her. The many places in his house where they could have made love haunted him, until he finally gave up on sleep and threw back the covers.

He was dressed and on his way to his great-grandfather’s place before dawn broke.

Chapter Four

Traffic was light and Bram’s thoughts naturally turned to Jenna while he drove. He despised himself for making that pass. He’d gone way past the line he’d drawn between himself and Jenna, and he knew he was going to pay a heavy penalty for acting without thinking, because nothing about that kiss had been ordinary. In fact, he was positive that what had occurred in his kitchen was one of those life-altering events that befell a person every so often. In its own way, that embrace was as destructive to his peace of mind as his grandmother’s stroke. He actually gritted his teeth from mental anguish.

Out of self-preservation, his thoughts segued from Jenna to the Colton Ranch, and the contentment living there gave him. It had been home since his birth, and occasionally he thought of talking to his siblings about buying everyone out so it belonged only to him. And yet no one ever interfered with his use of the place, or gave him unwanted and unneeded advice simply because he or she owned as much of the land as he did.

He remembered growing up happy in a loud and boisterous household, with parents who laughed a lot and openly adored their five children. He thought of his brothers and sister, each one of them, and suffered again the agony of learning that their parents had been killed in a plane crash. It had been a terrible time, and he’d had to downplay his own shock and grief to comfort the others.

All in all, though, his life had gone relatively smoothly. He’d learned to live with grief and an ache for a woman he couldn’t have, but it was funny that he had rarely thought of his Indian blood until falling for Jenna. There were so many mixed marriages and relationships between Native Americans and whites that most of the population in and around Black Arrow paid scant attention to ancestry. There were a few pure whites, like Carl Elliot—or so they claimed—and there were also a few pure Comanches, like his great-grandfather.

But George WhiteBear was the only pure-blooded Indian in the family. And he was one of the handful of Comanches who proudly clung to the old ways, to teachings handed down from generation to generation. It was George who had educated his offspring and their offspring in Comanche history. Bram remembered most of what he’d been taught.

The Comanche, like the Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cheyenne and Sioux, were considered Plains Indians. In the old days sign language permitted different tribes to communicate, and George had even shown his progeny some of the signs. George also boasted about the Comanches’ amazing horseback-riding abilities and their ferocity in battle. Then there was the subject of counting coup—the act of touching a live enemy and getting away from him—which brought great honor to the brave warrior who managed that feat. That had always fascinated young Bram.

But then George would speak in a quieter voice, a sad monotone, about the Comanche people being forced onto the reservation in Oklahoma in 1867. “The government developed what might be called a conscience in the early 1900s and gave each Comanche still living—not many by then—160 acres of land. Many did not like farming, and sold or leased their land to whites. My father kept his and it is still my home,” the old man declared.

But the stories Bram had always liked best were about the traditional vision quest that was so important to most of the Plains Indians, as their religion centered on spiritual power. Everyone had to find his personal guardian spirit, and would go off alone with a little food and water to search for it. George WhiteBear had stayed alone in the wilderness for eight days and nights, and then he’d heard coyotes communicating with each other all around him. One had entered the circle of light from his campfire and looked directly at him with eyes glowing amber from the fire, and it was at that moment that George had known that the coyote was his guardian spirit. To this day, George listened to the cries and calls of coyotes and knew what they were saying to him.

Sometimes, when life became more drudging than satisfying, Bram would cynically wonder if he should undress down to a breechcloth, find some wilderness and look for his personal guardian spirit. But he was more white than Comanche, if not by blood then by lifestyle, and he wondered if he would have a successful vision quest. After all, he’d been raised almost as white as Carl Elliot had raised Jenna, with a few notable exceptions, of course, mostly brought about by Great-grandfather George WhiteBear.

The sun was just beginning to bathe the landscape in a peachy-orange light when Bram reached the turnoff from the highway that led to George’s acreage. It was a dirt road with a row of power poles along the side, accommodating George and Annie McCrary. Annie had become widowed only two short years after she and her husband, Ralph, bought their land. Annie and George weren’t bosom buddies, by any means, although Annie acted as if she wished she were. She kept an eye on her neighbor and dropped by George’s place about once a week with something from her garden—fresh or canned—as an excuse to check on him.