The Bride Price

For her part, Kyra was overwhelmed by his quiet power and almost mystical resonance. In the years they’d been apart, he seemed to have acquired a depth and maturity that were stunning for a man in his mid-thirties. How can someone whose loyalties were so shifting, so available for purchase, project such an aura of decency and wisdom? she asked herself.

There didn’t seem to be any answer. Meanwhile, his physical magnetism was overpowering her. Though he was dressed for his lawyer’s role in a charcoal gray suit, white shirt and tie, she couldn’t help but imagine him in faded, slightly shrunken blue jeans. Compared to him, the husband she’d divorced and the men she’d dated since were ciphers—pallid imitations of the standard he’d set.

Somehow she had to resist if he tried to jump-start their romance. Remembering the money he took ought to do it, she thought bitterly. In her experience, the principles he claimed to espouse were so much poppycock.

Conscious her father was watching her for signs that she was still susceptible, she shuttered her feelings and pulled a worn wooden chair up to one corner of his desk. “Please…don’t let me interrupt,” she murmured. “I assume no one will mind if I take a few notes.”

In Arizona an “open file” rule prevailed, in which both sides in a criminal case could consult a list maintained by the county clerk in which the opposing attorneys catalogued the evidence they planned to present and their proposed witnesses. However, Kyra’s father had always held discovery meetings. He claimed to like the give-and-take, the small-town camaraderie, not to mention the chance to pick up some tidbit of information or other he couldn’t have accessed by any other means.

Taking up where he’d left off, Big Jim continued to run down his list of witnesses. It turned out to be a lengthy one, given the number of people who’d seen Paul Naminga and Ben Monongye trade blows outside the latter’s trailer. Many of the names, both Anglo and Native American, were familiar to her. However, she didn’t know the young girl who’d seen a man in Paul’s costume go into Ben’s trailer. Moving on to the preliminary tests investigators had conducted on the bloodstains, he offered David a copy of the lab report. “Something else has, uh, come up,” her father added in a tone that alerted Kyra he regarded it as a chink in his armor. “The crime scene unit found several hairs in the trailer where Ben Monongye was stabbed that don’t match his or Paul’s. Their natural color seems to have been black-gray…”

David frowned with interest. “You say natural?”

“Turns out they were coated with black hair dye. Of course, they could have been shed in the trailer at some point before the murder took place…maybe even weeks earlier. On the day of the performance, lots of people were in and out of those trailers. Besides, they were rentals. No telling where they’d been before Suzy Horvath rented them.”

Suzy Horvath, a forty-something divorcee who owned and edited a local tabloid, had organized the dance festival. Out of the corner of her eye, Kyra caught David’s quick flash of smile.

“Thanks,” he said, the grooves beside his mouth deepening. “That’s a little bit of evidence we can work with.”

Big Jim shrugged, hiding any concern he might feel. “I don’t think it’s going to amount to much.”

They were almost finished when Judge Beamish, who would preside over Paul’s case, sauntered in from his chambers down the hall to perch on a windowsill. Though he didn’t interrupt, he gave Kyra a smile and nod of recognition. A moment or two later, he was followed by a bailiff, who’d brought the handcuffed defendant over from his cell in the nearby jail.

So there’s to be a bail hearing, too, Kyra realized, exchanging a silent hello with the clean-cut, boyish-looking paramedic. Seeing Paul again made it all the more difficult to believe he was guilty of murder, despite his public confrontation with the victim.

Watching the wheels turn in her head, David picked up on her sympathies as surely as if she’d laid them out for him on her father’s desk. She’s just the same, he marveled. Decent. Fair-minded. A champion of the underdog if it was merited. Despite her experience as a prosecutor, he could tell she was still an ethical defense attorney at heart.

If they’d married, as Kyra had wanted them to when they were working together on the Leonard Naminga case, they’d probably have slept and worked together. The happiness in his life would have been seamless. By now, they might even have become parents, he thought. Aware the heat of his regard was making her uncomfortable, David forced himself to pay attention.

As he marshaled his arguments for Paul’s release and Big Jim countered them, the buildup of tension in Kyra’s neck and shoulders from attempting to sit gracefully erect and pretend David was part of the furniture became excruciating.

At last it was Judge Beamish’s turn to speak. Citing the capital nature of the crime, he denied David’s request.

Excusing himself with a long, slow look at Kyra, David accompanied his client and the bailiff back to the jail so that he and Paul could hold a private conference.

For Kyra, it was as if all the light and energy in the room had departed with him. He didn’t bother to say goodbye, she thought. But then, why should he? There’s no precedent. A small, still voice inside her whispered, The twenty-two-year-old girl you once were was hoping he regretted his mistake, that he would try to win you back.

It was going to be a long six weeks. Slumping a little in her chair, she tried to center herself.

An informal bull session followed between her dad and the judge, a burly, fifty-something widower. Only half paying attention, Kyra was stunned to hear Hank Beamish remark that he and David were dating the same woman— Suzy Horvath, the newspaper editor who’d organized the dance festival.

“We’re not really rivals, of course,” he confided with a wink at her. “So there’s no ground for prejudice. I don’t need to recuse myself.”

If Big Jim found the conversation a little awkward, in view of Kyra’s presence, he didn’t let it show. “How’s that, Hank?” he asked negligently.

The judge laughed outright as he stood and smoothed down his robe. “Hell, Suzy would tumble for him in a minute, if she thought he was serious. Of course, she’s a couple of years older than him. But that doesn’t mean much nowadays.”

Why should I feel as if a knife has been plunged into the softest part of my stomach? Kyra asked herself. It’s just gossip, after all. I should have expected something of the sort. David’s had a lot of women since I refused to surrender my virginity without marriage. And he’ll have a lot more. It’s no skin off my nose.

Her heart stubbornly aching despite the brave words she’d summoned to comfort herself, Kyra bade Judge Beamish goodbye and spent a few additional minutes hugging and talking to her dad. However, when an important phone call came through for him, she decided she’d had enough of hanging around the courthouse for one morning. Her parking meter had probably expired, anyway. Scribbling him a note that she planned to drive out to the house and take a dip in the pool, after stopping to see Red Miner’s wife, Flossie, who’d all but adopted her when her mother died, she headed for the stairs.

In the interim, David had finished with his client and headed back in search of her. He came striding into the shadowed, momentarily deserted lobby just as she reached the bottom of the stairs. There was nobody around to form opinions or take notes.

“Forget something?” she asked as casually as she could, taking a tentative step toward the door.

His blue eyes glittered against the tan of his face. “As a matter of fact, I did. And I came back for it.”

She realized abruptly that he was blocking her exit. “Dad’s still upstairs if you need to talk to him,” she whispered.

“It isn’t your Dad I came back to see. And I suspect you know it, Changing Woman.”

It was one of the love names he’d used for her. Beneath her staid, lawyerly suit, Kyra was tingling all over.

“David, I don’t think…” she began.

He wasn’t thinking, either. He was leading with his heart. Cutting off her flow of words before she could say something to discourage what he wanted, he tugged her to him and covered her mouth with his, boldly inserting his tongue.

To be in his arms again, thigh to thigh and mouth to mouth, was like regaining a missing part of herself. Passion rose in a flood, racing through the parched arroyos of her loneliness like the male rain of a summer deluge anointing the high desert. The taste of him, both salty and sweet, his clean remembered scent of piñon and musk invading her nostrils, nearly blew her away.

Yes, oh yes, she thought helplessly. This is what I’ve needed. What I’ve longed for with every breath, despite his treachery.

Pliant as an aspen shedding its leaves on an October mountainside, she didn’t pull away. He was the first to break contact. Holding her back from him, though he continued to grip her upper arms, he gazed down at her with a gamut of emotions on his face.

“Kyra, Kyra,” he said softly. “You’ll never know…”

Abruptly, there were footsteps on the stairs behind them. One of the typists from the county clerk’s office gave them a sidelong glance as she brushed past them and hurried down the hall, her high heels clicking on the tiles.

The woman was known to be something of a gossip. Wrenching free, Kyra regarded David with fire in her eyes. Her delicate, ringless hands had settled belligerently on her hips.

“How dare you do…what you just did, after the way you walked out on me five years ago?” she demanded, unconsciously offering him a full confession of how badly he’d wounded her. “Surely you realize you’re the last man in the world I’d have anything to do with!”

It wasn’t the time or the place to engage her in a shouting match. He wanted to make love to her, not fight over past mistakes. If she wanted an apology, he’d be glad to give it. He shouldn’t have left as he did. He’d realized that a hundred miles down the road.

He just couldn’t let the falsehood stand. “You know you wanted me to kiss you…that we both wanted it,” he asserted in his soft, deep voice.

It was true, God help her. One glimpse of him, one touch, and she was burning up with need for him.

She’d never confess the truth—not if she lived to be a hundred. Turning on her heel without a word, she walked out the courthouse door. He didn’t follow. She didn’t have to turn around to know that he was staring after her.

Pulling herself together, she strode toward her Cherokee with the energy of ten. She supposed it was too much to hope that Cheryl Garcia, the typist who’d caught them kissing, wouldn’t spread the story around. Though it was the county seat, Flagstaff was still a small town. Most people knew each other. It wouldn’t be long before everyone thought they were having an affair.

Furious with David for putting her in that position and even angrier at herself, Kyra unlocked the door on the driver’s side. She almost didn’t see the sweet-faced young woman who’d just emerged from the county jail, a few paces down the street.

“Kyra…Kyra Frakes…is that you?” the woman called, motioning her to wait.

Thoughts of David and her tangled feelings for him faded. The woman was Paul Naminga’s wife, Julie. They’d met five years earlier, during the Leonard Naminga case. It was safe to say that, at the moment, she had more crushing burdens than Kyra did.

“Julie…I was so sorry to hear about what happened,” she said earnestly when they were face-to-face. “I’ve always liked Paul so much…”