A Man of His Word

He looked down at the papers, a Google map to the tribal headquarters and some names. On one hand, he detested letting his uncle think Dan would do his heavy-handed bidding. On the other hand, if Cecil was having “problems” with Indians, maybe they had something on him, something Dan could use. Besides, if a man was looking for a Native American princess packing a pistol, the reservation was the place to be.

He was going to start with one Rosebud Donnelly.

Two

Rosebud Donnelly looked over the rims of her glasses to see Judy, the receptionist, standing in the doorway with an unusual look of confusion on her face.

“He’s here.”

“Johnson came back for more?” Here, in the privacy of her office—even if it was just a modified broom closet—Rosebud allowed herself to smile at the thought of that twit Johnson breaking. A pitiful excuse for a lawyer, that one.

“No.” Judy’s eyes got wider.

“It’s not that man, is it?” She couldn’t imagine that Cecil Armstrong would actually show himself in public, in daylight. She’d never met him, but she imagined him to be some sort of vampire, except instead of sucking blood, he was hell-bent on draining her reservation dry—and then flooding it.

“He said his name was Dan Armstrong. He said he was Cecil’s nephew.”

The satisfaction was intense. She was getting to that man. Cecil Armstrong had run out of high-priced lawyers who wouldn’t know tribal law from a hole in the ground. He’d been reduced to family—as if Rosebud could be swayed by emotional pleas. “A regular mini-me, huh?”

“No,” Judy said again, her voice dropping. “He’s… something else entirely. Be careful with this one, Rosebud.”

Judy’s befuddlement was worrisome. “I’m always careful.” Which was true. She took no chances—she couldn’t afford to. “He can sit. Make sure he’s got coffee—plenty of coffee,” she added with a nod. She preferred her sworn enemies to be as uncomfortable as possible. “And let me know when Joe and Emily get here.”

After Judy left to go perk another pot of coffee, Rosebud took the time to break out her pitiful makeup bag. Her good looks were just one of her weapons, but she considered them her first best line of defense when meeting a new adversary.

After three years of representing the tribe in their dealings with Armstrong Holdings, she’d honed her game plan to perfection. Johnson was just the latest victim. Rosebud had played the bubble-headed babe for three weeks—long enough for Johnson to be sure he had the upper hand and, more importantly, long enough for Rosebud to secure some rather incriminating pictures of the man meeting with a supplier of prescription painkillers. Although he’d made bail, Johnson had recused himself from the case rather than tangle with Rosebud again.

Men, she thought with a snort. Especially white men. They all thought the rules applied to everyone else. She plaited her hair and wound the braid into a bun that projected both an old-fashioned innocence and an austere severity. To hold the bun in place, she inserted two sticks that would have looked like chopsticks, except for the bright green beaded tassels hanging from the ends. The sticks were the only things of her mother’s she’d kept.

Her lipstick set, Rosebud gathered up her files. She held no hope that this Dan Armstrong would be different from the others—after all, that rat-bastard Cecil had sent him—but there was always a small chance that he’d let something slip that could be connected back to her brother Tanner.

Judy knocked on the door. Rosebud glanced at the clock. Almost half an hour had passed. Perfect. “They’re here.”

“How do I look?” Rosebud batted her eyes.

“Be careful,” Judy repeated, sounding awed.

Oh, Rosebud couldn’t wait to see this guy, not if he was throwing Judy for such a loop. She met Joe White Thunder and Emily Mankiller outside the conference room. “Did Judy tell you it’s a new guy?” she said as she kissed her aunt on the cheek.

Joe’s eyes sparkled, and in that second, Rosebud saw the man who’d occupied Alcatraz back in the day. Some days, she longed to have known old Joe back when he raised a lot of hell, but she appreciated who he was now—a tribal elder whose vote carried a lot of weight. “I knew that last one was no match for you.”

Rosebud blushed under the compliment as Aunt Emily shook her head at Joe in disapproval. Aunt Emily had never been one for disobedience, civil or otherwise. “You’re making a dent, dear, but don’t get overconfident.”

Whatever, Rosebud thought as she nodded in deferential agreement. Cecil Armstrong had thrown the best lawyers money could buy at her, and she was not only holding them off, she was officially irritating that man. “I know. You guys remember what to do?”

Joe playfully socked her in the arm. “How, kemo sabe.” And then his face went blank and Rosebud stood in front of the stereotypical Stoic Indian. Joe wouldn’t say a single thing today. His job was intimidating silence. Rosebud knew he wouldn’t even look at Dan Armstrong. If there was one thing self-important lawyers hated, it was being ignored. It drove them to distraction, and a distracted lawyer was a defeated lawyer.

Aunt Emily sighed. Rosebud knew she hated these meetings, hated all the haggling and hated it when Joe acted like a fake Indian. But she hated the idea of Armstrong Holdings flooding the rez more. “We’re ready.”

Here we go, Rosebud thought to herself as she opened the door. Her blood started to pump with excitement. Another adversary was another battle, and Rosebud was confident she could win the battles. She honestly didn’t know if she could win the war with Cecil Armstrong, but she could slow him down for years.

The first thing she noticed was that Dan Armstrong was standing. His back was to the door and he was looking out the conference room’s sliver of a window. The prick of irritation was small. She preferred her victim to be sitting in the chair that was two inches shorter than the others, with the bum wheel that gave the chair an unexpected wobble with every movement.

What she noticed next erased the irritation. Dan Armstrong was tall without being huge, his shoulders easily filling out the heathered brown sport coat. The brown leather yokes on his shoulders made his back seem even broader. She could see the curl in his close-cropped hair, the light from the window making it glow a golden-brown.

She caught her breath. Johnson he wasn’t—in fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a real man in this building, a man who looked like he belonged out on the open range instead of in a dark little office. Hell, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a real man outside of this office.

And then he turned around.

Him. The breath she’d caught was crushed out of her chest. Suddenly she felt vulnerable, the kind of vulnerable that comes from making a mistake and then thinking she’d gotten away with it, only to be caught red-handed.

She was screwed.

He must have noticed her confusion, because he smiled the kind of smile a man wore when he knew exactly what effect he had on a woman. The implied arrogance—and not recognition—was enough to snap Rosebud out of her momentary terror. She might know who he was, but he didn’t seem to recognize her. And if there were no witnesses, who was to say that a crime had occurred?

“Mr…. Armstrong, is it?” she began, striding into the room like she couldn’t be bothered to remember his name. That’s right, she thought as she drew herself up to her full height in three-inch heels, there wasn’t a single thing wrong with any of this. Except he had a good four inches on her. “I’m Rosebud Donnelly, the lawyer for the Red Creek Lakota Indian reservation.”

“A pleasure, ma’am.” Oh, he had a faint drawl, a way of stretching out his vowels that sounded like warm sunshine. Ma’am had never sounded as good as it did coming out of his mouth. Armstrong lifted a hand as if to tip his hat, but then appeared to realize that he wasn’t wearing one. Instead, he swung his hand down and offered it out to her. Rosebud wondered if he’d gone back for the hat she’d seen fly off his head, or if it was still out there. She’d have to check tonight. No hat, no crime.

Rosebud thanked God she’d done this enough to go on autopilot, because her head was swimming. Not one of the last three lawyers had even sniffed at a polite introduction. She let the seconds stretch as his hand hung in the air. Normally, she let her hand loosely clasp the other person’s—all the better to create an impression of weakness—but not this time. This time, she felt an intense need to be in control of this situation. She returned his grip, noting that his hand was warm, but not sweaty. He wasn’t nervous at all. She was going to have to do better, so she gave him her best bone-crushing shake.

He tilted his head to one side as if he was questioning her. Eyes the color of the sky right before a twister measured her with something that looked a hell of a lot like respect. God only knew what his uncle had told him about her—it probably started with ball-buster and ended with bitch. As the heat from his hand did a slow crawl up her arm, she had the sudden urge to tell him that she really wasn’t like that.

Which was ridiculous—the whole point of this little introduction was to demonstrate that she was exactly like that. No wonder Judy had warned her about this one.

She stepped away from him, pulling her hand with her. He tried to keep his grip for just a second, then the firm pressure was gone. She shivered, but forced herself to forge ahead. “This is Joseph White Thunder, a tribal elder, and Councilwoman Emily Mankiller.” Yes. Formal introductions were the next step. She needed to get back on track here.

Emily must have sensed Rosebud’s hesitation, because she stepped into the gap. “Mr. Armstrong,” she began as she and Joe took their seats without shaking hands, “are you familiar with the Treaty of 1877 between the United States government and the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Sioux tribes of South Dakota?”

“Ma’am,” Armstrong replied with a polite half bow as he sat down. Rosebud smiled internally as the whole thing tilted off-kilter and he clawed at the table to keep his balance. Still, he managed to sound nonplussed as he said, “I can’t say that I am.”

Thank God for that. Aunt Emily was one of the few women on this reservation with a master’s degree in American history, and her role in this little meeting was to wear the adversary down with a complete recounting of the wrongs the Lakota Indians had suffered back in the day at the hands of the American government, and now, thanks to corporations such as Armstrong Holdings. Rosebud had about forty minutes to get her head together.

Aunt Emily droned on while Joe stared at a spot on the wall just over Armstrong’s head. Rosebud unpacked her files and began reviewing her notes from the last go-round with Johnson. There wasn’t much new to go on. Unlike with Johnson, usable dirt on Cecil Armstrong was just plain hard to dig up. He was courting both political parties, visited a respectable divorced woman twice a month in Sioux Falls and had no personal secretary. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t ever set foot in the Armstrong Hydro office in Sioux Falls, and what few staffers worked there didn’t seem to know anything. That was all she had after three years. It was frustrating.

She snuck a glance at Armstrong. Not only was he paying attention to Aunt Emily, he was taking notes. What the hell? Rosebud thought when Armstrong interrupted the lecture to ask for the specific dates of the last treaty signed. He must not be a lawyer, she decided. Lawyers didn’t give a hoot for history lectures. Why would that man send someone who wasn’t a lawyer?

Aunt Emily began to wind down when she got to the reason they were all here today. Rosebud waited as Armstrong finished his notes before she began. “Mister Armstrong,” she began, going right past condescending and straight on over to contemptuous, “are you aware that Armstrong Holdings is preparing to dam the Dakota River?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, trying to lean back in the chair without tipping. “Down in a valley about two miles from here, as the crow flies. Armstrong Holdings owns the water rights and has secured the government permits to begin construction this fall.”

Oh, she knew where the valley was. “And are you also aware that the reservoir created by that dam will flood thirty-six hundred acres of the Red Creek reservation?”

Armstrong regarded her with open curiosity. “I understood the reservoir will cover several hundred square miles. I was told that land was mostly unoccupied.”

Her eyes narrowed. What the hell was that man doing, sending an unarmed nephew into battle? He might as well have sent an errand boy instead of this… male. There was just no way around it. Everything about Dan Armstrong said male, from the good—no, great—chin to the way he sat in that chair, legs spread wide like he was just itching to get back on his horse.

God, he’d looked so good on that horse. Looking had been her first mistake. Instead of just firing over his head from the shadows like she’d planned, she’d wanted to get a better view of the behind that had been sitting in that saddle, a better look at the forearms laid bare for the sun. She’d come out of the shadows, and he’d spotted her. She’d nearly shot his head off, all because he was a man who looked good in a saddle.