Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1

by Sarah Anderson

  The room was silent except for the steady sound of the drumbeat from the corner. The three men there kept chanting, the sound growing louder and louder as Albert’s breath got shallower and shallower.

  No! No, she prayed. It wasn’t too late. She lurched forward to begin chest compressions. She could save him. She knew she could.

  Rebel latched onto her arm. “Let him go, Madeline.” He was doing it again, using that calm voice. “It’s his time.”

  She tried to shake him off, but he wasn’t having any of it. “This is ridiculous!” she hissed. “He’s dying!”

  He tightened his fingers as he hauled her to her feet and backed her away from Albert. “We all die,” he said in her ear as he stood her next to Tara. “Today is as good a day as any.”

  “Here,” Tara whispered, and suddenly Madeline found herself holding the dead weight of a sleeping kindergartner. “Thanks.”

  Damn it, she was trapped, and all she could do was watch Albert’s breathing get slower and slower. Rebel lit something on fire and held it near Albert, but the old man didn’t move except to draw in another breath. The seconds between one breath and the next stretched as time got blurry. No matter how much she blinked, the whole world just got blurrier. She could barely breathe, her throat was so closed up.

  Albert’s chest rose. And fell.

  And didn’t rise again.

  The chanting from the corner peaked in a jarringly happy crescendo as Rebel did something she couldn’t see. The world had gotten too blurry, and all she could do was clutch Nelly to her chest because she needed to hold onto someone, someone real and solid and still breathing. Even asleep, Nelly felt like the safest person in the world right now.

  Time stayed stretched. People started to move around, some of them even coming up to say things to her she couldn’t understand. She could tell they were talking to her, but the words all came out garbled. Maybe she signed the death certificate, maybe not. She didn’t know. Nothing anyone said or did made any sense.

  Then Rebel was next to her, prying her arms away from Nelly and pulling the sleeping child away from her. Madeline clung briefly, but then Tara was there, taking her child back.

  “Thank you, Madeline,” Tara said, She sounded like she was whispering at the end of a great tunnel. “Thank you for everything.”

  For what? Everything? She hadn’t done anything, nothing she should have. She should have made Albert take the nitro pill and done chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth and gotten the man to a damn hospital. She should have tried to save him. But she hadn’t—she’d just let him die. She’d just let him die. She opened her mouth to say as much, and nothing came out but dead silence.

  Rebel was still next to her. She thought he seemed upset too, finally upset. One arm was around her shoulders, and she found herself in a firm hug. “Don’t cry,” he whispered, so low that no one else could hear it. “It’s okay, babe.”

  Not cry? What the hell? This was like some horrible, first-person version of The Twilight Zone, where doctors let people die and no one cried.

  “It’s not okay,” she managed to get out. She sounded like she was choking. “He’s gone.”

  The arms around her tightened. “You need to get out of here?”

  Maybe she nodded or said yes or did something—she couldn’t tell, but then they were moving, his arm still holding her shoulders to his chest, still holding her together as the clear air hit her in the face. “We’re going, babe,” he said a little louder now. “Almost to the car.” But then he pulled up short.

  She blinked, and blinked again, and the world un-blurred enough that she could see a dark shadow separate from a car.

  “A good death?” Nobody Bodine asked.

  She did not know what was going on. A good death? What the hell was that?

  “Yes. He went with peace.” Rebel answered like he knew exactly what Nobody was talking about, which only added to her Twilight Zone sense of things. “It’s good you were here.”

  She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Nobody was somehow embarrassed by this statement. And then he turned to her. “Ma’am.” And he was gone again.

  Nothing. She understood nothing about any of this, but she was pretty sure Rebel had been telling the truth earlier. Albert had been calm, not agitated, not scared. Certainly not a prisoner in his own home. And Rebel didn’t seem like a murderer. He seemed like, well, a medicine man taking care of his people. His grandfather.

  She was the one who’d been wrong. Completely, totally, wrong. About everything.

  Especially Rebel.

  “I’m so sorry,” she choked out as Rebel put her back in the Jeep.

  “Don’t be.” How could he sound so normal, so calm even after watching his grandfather die? “It’s okay, Madeline. It really is.”

  “But you let him go. I let him go.” Saying it out loud made it all the more horrible to her own ears and, in the enclosed privacy of her Jeep, she began to cry. “I didn’t do anything—nothing I should have. You didn’t let me.”

  “You did everything you needed to,” he countered in that damningly calm voice again.

  For the second time that evening, she thought about punching him, just to get some sort of reaction out of him.

  “He wanted you there. He wanted to say goodbye, to say not to worry. What else was there to do?”

  “You—I—we let him go, Rebel. I didn’t even fight for him. I didn’t even put up a fight.” The tears came harder now, choking up her words and making the world one giant blur. “I failed.”

  He sat quiet while she sobbed. Strangely, it didn’t help her feel any better. Instead, she felt like she always had back in all those advanced math classes she’d had to take just because she was smart enough. She knew there was something she should be understanding, something she was fully capable of understanding that was right there in front of her, but she couldn’t get it. She was just spinning her wheels in the mud, and that upset her all over again.

  “Sometimes, you have to let people go.” The car stopped, and she was surprised to see that they were in front of her dinky cabin. It looked lost and forlorn in the woods. Alone.

  God, she didn’t want to be alone. She was tired of being the person people needed for one moment, one crisis at a time. And as soon as that crisis had passed, they went on their way without a look back at her. She didn’t want to be the person everyone needed and no one wanted anymore. Not anymore. “What about me?”

  His eyes found hers, and she saw. She saw who she really was reflected back in those endless black eyes. Someone whose two halves could make a whole. Please, she found herself praying. Please.

  “What about you?” It came out soft.

  Please. “Will you just let me go? Without a fight?” Please.

  The blackness ended as he looked out the windshield. She saw his hands flex around the wheel.

  The shame was like a sledgehammer right down the middle of the two halves that would never, ever be a whole. The pain was so intense that she could only feel it in a disembodied kind of way, like it was someone else breaking to bits in the front seat, not her.

  Another night with Rebel, another screw up. Of course he’d let her go. His own wife had walked away, and he’d never gone after her. His wife. And who was she? Who was Dr. Madeline Mitchell? Nothing but a stupid white woman who’d thought she could do a little good in this world, one patient at a time.

  She couldn’t even cry. She could for Albert, because she’d lost him forever. But she had nothing left to lose. Least of all herself.

  Suddenly, Rebel was out of the car, moving silently through the night. Her door flew open, and he lifted her out and cradled her to his chest.

  “Rebel?” But he didn’t answer, and he didn’t set her down either. Instead, he carried her across the cabin threshold like she was a new bride, not an utter failure of a woman.

  He didn’t let her go, not when he kicked off his boots, not when he sat on the bed and held her even tighter, and not when he
kissed her. “My Mad-e-line.” His voice shook almost as much as his hand when he stroked her cheek. “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand anything.” Least of all why he was stroking her hair and kissing the tears away from her cheeks. Why he was peeling the T-shirt off, then her tank top. Why he was laying her out on the bed, then taking her jeans off. Why he was stripping off his own clothes as if they were on fire, and why he was rolling on a condom.

  “I don’t understand anything,” she whispered again as he found his way back inside her, each gentle thrust tying all the little shards of her back together until she stopped caring about understanding anything, anything but the way he held her legs, the way he wrapped her hair around his fingers, the way he kissed her like forgiveness was on her lips.

  She didn’t understand, but her body did, and it shuddered around his until she cried out, the relief at being wanted, really and truly wanted for who she was, not what she did so strong that it crested over the orgasm. The waves of release left her unable to do anything but hold on for dear life as he moaned her name to a finish against her neck.

  He pulled out, but he didn’t leave her. He rolled onto his back, pulling her into his arms and running his fingers through her hair. She clung to his chest, warm and solid and there. He was there. With her.

  She couldn’t ever remember being this tired, not even when she was pulling a thirty-six-hour shift in the E.R. Then, she’d just been physically tired. Now, she was emotionally drained on top of being exhausted. And Rebel’s warmth was fast lulling her into sleep. But she fought against it because he hadn’t answered the question, the one question that held her world in the balance.

  She had to know. “Please.” The effort to get the word out was just enough to send her rushing toward the inky darkness of sleep.

  He sighed as he stroked her hair, the motion hypnotizing her. It sounded like surrender to her fading ears. “I will never let you go, Madeline. I couldn’t, even if I tried.”

  Never.

  She drifted off, feeling wanted and loved for the first time ever.

  Feeling whole.

  And she knew he’d still be there in the morning.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rebel sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. He didn’t want to wake her up, but the coffee had already made itself, Blue Eye was pawing around outside and Albert wasn’t getting any deader. He needed to get going before the sun started racing across the sky.

  But he didn’t want to wake her. It was easier to ignore the complications of his reality when her eyes were closed, her hand tossed over her head as her chest rose and fell, one perfect breast exposed for his eyes only. Like a composition, her form was balanced in a perfect function of femininity.

  A loud clomp came from the front of the house, followed by another. The floor trembled under his feet. Damn. His reality could not be ignored, not when Blue Eye was standing on the porch. If he didn’t get his ass in gear, that mare would be inside in minutes. Madeline didn’t like horses in the clinic. He was sure she wouldn’t want one in her cabin. Short of him just leaving, he couldn’t imagine a worse way for her to wake up.

  He leaned over and kissed her, fighting the urge to let his hands get underneath the sheets and do the waking for him. Instead, he just licked her lips until she startled beneath him. Slowly, her eyes opened. Man, he hated to wake her. Her eyes were still bloodshot from too much crying and too little sleep, and the way she scrunched them shut made him think she was working on a hell of a headache. Still, she kissed him back as she touched his cheek, like she was making sure he was real and not a dream.

  “Good morning, Madeline.”

  Her eyes cracked open again with a tired smile. “Hmph. What time is it?”

  Damn reality. Always complicating things. “Almost six thirty. I need to get going.” For a second, she just looked at him, like he’d said something in Lakota instead of English. Then her eyes closed again as she turned her head away and pulled the sheet up high. She looked like he’d slapped her in slow motion. Always easier to jump to conclusions when she wasn’t awake yet. That had been his problem last time. She’d started jumping and he’d just let her go. This time, he wasn’t going to make things worse. Not if he could help it. “Have you ever gone camping?”

  Eyes suddenly wide, she turned to look at him. “Not really. Why?”

  That was better. At least she didn’t look like he was wounding her again. “It’s Saturday.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve got to take Albert to the funeral home in town. And while I’m there, I’ll need to get a few more...supplies.”

  She still looked confused, but at the mention of condoms, she managed a small grin.

  “But I don’t have anything to do tomorrow, and I’m under the impression the clinic is closed on Sunday.”

  The relief crept over her face like a sunrise after a stormy night. “Your impression is correct.”

  “If you want,” he said, fighting the urge to kiss that sunrise smile, “I’ll come back for you tonight.”

  “So we can go...camping?”

  “Just for the night,” he said, feeling way more hopeful than he really had a right to. One night of camping was a hell of a lot different than one week, one month, or even one year of camping. But he hadn’t lied. He couldn’t let her go, and he’d hold onto her for as long as she’d let him. And, judging by the look she was giving him—sleepy and awake and coy and knowing all at the time—she might let him hold on for a while longer. “You won’t have to walk it this time.”

  She took a deep breath, and he wished she hadn’t covered up with the sheet. Well, there’d be time for that tonight.

  “How could I refuse an offer like that?”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t. Pack light—and a swimsuit is optional.”

  She hit him with the pillow just as another ominous thud came from the front door. “What the—”

  “Blue Eye,” he said, catching another kiss. “I really do have to go.”

  “Go then,” she replied, pushing him off the bed. “But come back.”

  “I will.” He leaned down and took a quick kiss. “I promise.”

  The image of Madeline, bare shoulders and bright smile, stayed with him on the brisk ride to Albert’s. But it wasn’t enough to make his reality any less complicated.

  Jesse was sitting on the front step, his cast jutting out in front of him. He looked like hell that hadn’t even been warmed over.

  “Hiya, Rebel.” Somehow he managed to sound worse than he looked. “I, uh, got a sleeping bag into the truck. I couldn’t get...Albert,” he said, like the name was shards of glass in his mouth. “In. By myself, I mean.”

  “You doing okay?” Nothing like an obvious question with an obvious answer, Rebel thought. But he was just as responsible for the living as he was for the dead. And Jesse was still living.

  “I...” Jesse looked to the sky. Rebel dismounted and sat on the step.

  “I thought I hated him,” Jesse said, and Rebel waited. Jesse wasn’t known for introspection, but this sounded serious. “He loved me. I wasn’t even his own family, and he loved me anyway.”

  That much was true. “He was your family, Jesse.”

  “You’re the only family I’ve got now.” Jesse sounded in serious danger of breaking up.

  Rebel looked at him. His first instinct was to remind him not to cry, because true Lakotas did not cry over their dead. If Albert’s spirit saw Jesse crying, he would worry, and a worried spirit wouldn’t move on to the afterworld.

  But Jesse needed another reminder that he wasn’t a full Lakota like he needed another broken leg. No, what he really needed was to finish growing up. Albert was gone, and Rebel couldn’t babysit him the rest of his life. Not if he wanted to hold onto Madeline for as long as he could. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “What?” Jesse jumped, like he’d been asleep and Rebel had dumped a bucket of water on him.

  “You have a fa
mily, or did you forget? Tara, your woman? Nelly, your daughter?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You know what Albert did for you? He raised you because you didn’t have a father, the same thing he did for me. You want someone else raising your kid?”

  Jesse began to squirm. “No, but—”

  “No buts. It’s your turn to be the man.”

  Jesse squirmed, looking like Rebel had issued a life sentence. He dropped his gaze to the ground. “Albert—he told me, after you left to get her—”Amazingly, Rebel didn’t hear anything but sorrow in Jesse’s voice. All the sneer that used to color his voice any time he talked about Madeline was gone. “After you left, he said you would see something. He told me you’d tell me what to do, Rebel.”

  Jesse looked up at him, and suddenly Rebel was nine and Jesse was four again, and they’d been alone all night, all alone until Albert had come to get them. He’d taken them home and then, three days later, taken them to their mother’s funeral. Jesse had been so little, younger than Nelly, too young to really understand that Mom had died, face down in a ditch outside a bar. All he had known then was that Mom wasn’t coming back. Rebel remembered standing next to the pine casket, his arm around Jesse’s little shoulders, and Jesse looking at him with watery eyes—not crying—because Albert told them they couldn’t. Mom was going to have enough trouble getting past Owl Woman without the tears of little boys pulling her back. “What are we going to do, Rebel?” Jesse had asked in that little-kid voice. “What are we going to do now?”

  “Don’t worry. I promise I’ll take care of you,” was all Rebel could say then. “We’ll do what Albert tells us to.”

  It was a promise he’d kept—maybe for too long. Then, now—it was the same. Even though Albert’s spirit had gone on, his will was still strong. Albert had made Rebel who he was. Now, it seemed, he wanted Rebel to do the same for Jesse.