From Mission To Marriage

“Years?” she repeated with a soft chuckle. “Doesn’t your wife feed you well, Mr. Senate?”

He tossed Vanessa a sly look that said, Here it comes, that third degree you promised I wouldn’t get. Out loud, to her grandmother he answered dutifully, “I’m not married. In our business, it is difficult to maintain a normal family life. We travel too often.” Had the woman sensed his concealed interest in her granddaughter? He hadn’t betrayed it by so much as a look in Vanessa’s direction. At least not that sort of look.

Rebecca inclined her head and poured him another glass of iced tea. “A shame there is no one for you to come home to. Maybe someday you will find this. My husband liked the comfort of it.” The old man nodded indulgently and shot his wife a knowing grin.

“You traveled a lot, sir?” Clay asked politely.

The old man nodded. “War. Then business school. I used to buy up inventory for some of the trading posts. Retired now.”

Vanessa sipped her tea and expounded on her grandfather’s meager answer. “He purchased lots of stuff from some of the smaller reservations out west and up north who haven’t the tourist trade we have here.” She smiled at her grandmother. “E-ni-si and other locals with creative talents make baskets, pottery and paintings to sell. I’ll take you by the co-op shop so you can see.”

“You’re an artist?” Clay asked Rebecca. He could not believe how many questions he was asking. He rarely did that unless it had to do with investigations, but found himself interested enough to break a few more rules.

The grandmother ducked her head in a show of modesty. “I make baskets.”

“Those ones,” Dilly said after gulping her mouthful of pie. “Up there, see?” She pointed.

Clay reevaluated the row of baskets sitting along the top of the kitchen cabinets. One particularly beautiful, intricately woven example sat on the granite countertop holding a bunch of green apples. He decided he would buy one like that from her before he left. Something priceless to remember these people by.

“Well, come on with me if you’ve finished eating,” Vanessa ordered. “We’ll get your things settled in your room, then take a walk to wear off some of these calories.”

She dropped a kiss on her grandmother’s head as she passed by her chair. “Thank you, E-ni-si. Great meal, as always.” She winked at her grandfather who solemnly winked back.

Dilly laughed with delight as she tried unsuccessfully to wink and instead, gave Vanessa a playful swat as she passed the youth’s chair.

“It’s bath time for you, button nose. Better be clean and have those dollies in bed by the time I come in to say night-night. There’s a bedtime video in it for you if you don’t flood the bathroom, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dilly agreed. “Ni-si will make me behave.”

Clay felt his eyes burn a little as he witnessed the open affection among these four. A pang of envy struck him like an arrow through the heart.

The child was precious, a true ray of light, and so secure in the love that surrounded her. So was Vanessa, he realized. He envied them that.

How would that feel, being accepted and loved so unconditionally? He wondered where Vanessa’s parents were and if she had been raised by these two from an early age. But he wouldn’t ask. Maybe some of the manners of the elder Walkers had rubbed off on him.

Vanessa’s natural bearing and self-confidence attracted him almost as much as her lithe figure and her lovely, animated features. The swing of her hips wasn’t meant to be enticing, but her unconsciousness of that made it all the more so. He was sweating like crazy.

He followed her out to the Explorer where they retrieved his two bags. She insisted on hefting his carry-on. She led him up the stairs to a bedroom containing a large dresser that looked handcrafted and a queen-size four-poster. It cried out for testing his weight. Along with hers. Clay sucked in a deep breath and released it with a huff of self-disgust. He had to stop this. Stop thinking about her that way.

“Bathroom’s in there. We’ll be sharing that. My room’s on the other side. The grans’ room is downstairs, and Dilly’s, too, so you needn’t worry about noise.”

Noise? Oh, and didn’t that just plant a vision in his head?

“No TV up here,” she said, pointing, “but there’s a radio with a CD player and a few CDs. Mostly flute music, I’m afraid. Cousin Eddie plays and we have to support the family endeavors.”

“Flute,” he repeated. Apparently he was to get a good dose of native culture whether he wanted it or not. “That’s fine.”

But it wasn’t fine. Not the flute, the fry bread or the unfamiliar customs like tribal hospitality and ingrained politeness. He knew now why he had felt so apprehensive about coming here, aside from sharing a house with a female agent who stirred him up the way she did.

Since he could remember, Clay had flaunted his Native American heritage, though he knew very little about it. Raised by his white father, away from any vestige of his mother’s culture since she had died, Clay had used his Native American looks as a form of rebellion against the man who had given him no choice about his upbringing and refused to discuss his mother or their marriage.

Clay had grown his hair long and adopted an attitude of stoicism and silence that he knew very well was stereotypical. Early habits died hard. Even when it no longer served any purpose to provoke Clayton Senate Sr., Clay had not let up. The image had suited him. Until now.

Vanessa and her grandparents made him feel whiter than the Pillsbury Doughboy. That was what bothered him. He had no mask to hide behind when it came to these people because they knew that his mask was about as authentic as a Sioux war bonnet on a Cherokee chief. He did not want Vanessa to see him as a caricature of their people. Or rather, her people. He wasn’t precisely sure he could, in all good conscience, claim either side of his family.

He felt a sharp need to fit in that he had not admitted to since he was eight and had realized he was rapidly forgetting what little he knew of his mother and her people. He had lost any stories, dancing, religion, belonging. His very identity.

“C’mon, let’s go meet Brother Billy Bear,” Vanessa said, catching his hand in hers as she strode past him to the door. “You can give him his daily Coke.”

Clay followed wordlessly, afraid to ask.

Vanessa giggled shamelessly as Clay held the old soft-drink bottle she had filled with the vet’s equivalent of Ensure for her grandfather’s pet. Billy accepted his daily dose with a grunt, bracing the bottle between his paws and sucking down the contents with expertise.

“I’ll be damned,” Clay muttered as he stepped back from the fence. “Where did you get it?”

The old bear was so rheumy-eyed and arthritic he offered no threat at all, but Clay obviously was a city boy with a healthy respect for what he saw as a wild animal.

“Old Billy did his time downtown back in the day, performing for the tourists until Mack Bowstring decided to close up shop. Since Billy was my very favorite attraction, my grandfather offered the man five bucks to take the bear off his hands and give him a good home.” She didn’t confess that she’d been required to work off that five bucks washing and drying dishes for a month in addition to feeding Billy every day until she’d left the mountain at eighteen.

“How old is he?” Clay asked.

“Over thirty now and thirty-five’s about the max for black bears.”

“Better he’s here than in a zoo, I guess,” Clay commented.

“Definitely. He was too domesticated to release in the wild and nobody could stand to have him put down. Gran pulled some strings to get permission to keep him. Uncle Charly’s a vet and keeps a close check on him.”

“I take it you have a large family,” Clay said as they watched Billy licking the bottle, exacting every last drop of the sweet nutritious liquid.

“Huge,” she admitted. “You?”

“Not so huge. I guess you’d never want to leave here, your family, this place.”

Vanessa turned, wondering why he’d ask such a thing. “I already left. I went to college, then the Academy and the job. I have an apartment in Asheville. I make it back most weekends to visit the grans. You thought I lived here?” She glanced back at the house, not minding the junky old mower, overgrown flower beds and the listing tree of gourd birdhouses. Rustic was the look and she loved it.

Clay tore his gaze from the bear and walked a few steps away, his back to her, his hands in his pockets. “I’m here to recruit you.”

Vanessa stared at him, lost for words. Recruit her? For what?

As if he’d read her mind, he answered, “We’re organizing a team of agents and you’ve been recommended for it. COMPASS, or Comprehensive Analysis of Stateside Security is affiliated with Homeland Security and deals with terrorist threats within our borders. I’m supposed to observe how you perform, see how you’d fit, both professionally and personally. If you’re not interested, I need to know.”

“So you can leave and not waste your time?” Vanessa asked. She made him uncomfortable and she knew it. She hadn’t made it to this age without recognizing the signs of physical attraction. She had probably been throwing out a few signals herself. He was ready to get out of here and this was his opportunity. All she had to say was no, she was not interested.

He turned, his expression unreadable. “No, I won’t leave until we’ve concluded the investigation. The thing is, if you can’t see yourself as a candidate for the team, then it’s merely business as usual and I won’t need to do an assessment on you.”

Vanessa considered that. “Where would I have to live?”

“In McLean, Virginia. At least for the first year. There would be extra training involved, connections to make. It would mean travel, but mostly to your southern sector, with occasional calls to other areas to assist fellow agents. We follow the trouble wherever it goes. Sometimes overseas.”