Nobody (Men of the White Sandy) (Volume 3)

by Sarah M. Anderson

  There—in the trees on the other side of the clearing. There was someone there. Was it one of the people who came for Rebel? No, it couldn’t be. They always came up on the gravel road.

  What was she supposed to do here? If this were Little Red Riding Hood, a wolf would be stalking her from the shadows and she should go back inside right now.

  She took a step toward the tree line. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  Then something … shifted. Like one part of the shadow got darker, somehow, as if the light was condensing into a black hole. Which didn’t make any sense. Shadows didn’t do that. Not like that.

  “Is someone there?” There was always a chance it was Jamie. That’s who she thought might have been hanging around the center earlier.

  Behind her, she heard the trailer door open and shut. She glanced back over her shoulder to see Rebel walking down the steps. He gave her an odd look before he went to get the firewood for the night.

  When she turned her attention back to the trees, the strange shadow was gone. Just plain old boring shadows as far as the eye could see.

  What the hell was going on in this place?

  Before long, another campfire was roaring. Melinda was still plenty pissed at Rebel, though. How many Jamies were there on this rez? On all the rezs? How many kids did they lose in the name of Indian-ness, when even one was too many?

  And how could someone like Rebel, who was supposed to be this medicine man who cared for his people, let it happen?

  She wanted to tell him he could go to hell so bad, but she was sort of living in his house at the moment. Back home, she would have had any number of couches she could have crashed on until the drama passed. Here? Well, she could go sleep on the couch in the center. For a night, maybe. And then?

  She’d already burned nearly every bridge she had in Ohio. She didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  Rebel sat cross-legged by the fire, staring into the flames. He had his beading things within easy reach, but he wasn’t doing anything. Just staring.

  He was starting to freak her out—normally, he was kind of chatty. Definitely not the silent, stoic Indian that Hollywood seemed convinced existed in great numbers.

  Definitely not like Nobody, her brain reminded her. Had he gotten her note? Would he leave her a response?

  “It’s good you came,” Rebel finally said.

  “I had to come, remember? I got myself run right out of Columbus.”

  He cocked his head to one side, as if he were listening—to what, she didn’t know. “You could have gone many places. But you came here.”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working.”

  He smiled into the firelight. “This isn’t me trying to make you feel better. This is me trying to tell you why you’re here.”

  She froze. “What?”

  “It’s good for him you’re here,” Rebel went on. “You see him. That makes him real.”

  “Who, Jamie? How does me seeing him make him real? Are you trying to be all mystical? Because it’s not working.” She thought about mentioning the weird shadow, but didn’t. He already thought she was nuts. No need to dig that hole deeper.

  Rebel heaved a mighty—and mighty patronizing—sigh. “You got yourself run right out of Columbus, you say?”

  “Go to hell.” There. She did actually feel better. Not much, but some.

  He laughed, which would have been sexy if it hadn’t been so damn irritating. “She did warn me about you.”

  No question who that ‘she’ was. “Yeah, yeah—I’m the flakey drama queen. Whatever.”

  “I understand why you’re not happy about Jamie,” he went on. “There are no good solutions at this point. But he’s not alone. There are those who look out for him, imperfect as it is. To remove him from that would be to cut him off from the only people who actually care about him.” Finally, the man turned and looked at her. “You are one of those people, Melinda. Do not underestimate the power of that caring.”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out—no snarky comebacks, no damnations.

  “How many people looked at you on your first day at the center?”

  “Not all of them,” she admitted. “Madeline said they might not.”

  “Did she tell you why?”

  Melinda shook her head. “Just that I wasn’t there.”

  Rebel sighed—less one of frustration this time. Just weariness. “It’s a pure form of denial.”

  “Not the river in Egypt?”

  He chuckled. “Not just a river in Egypt. When the white man first came across our territory looking for gold, some of the elders thought that they could just ignore the problem and it would go away. The white men would die when winter came and that would be that.”

  “It didn’t work that way.”

  “No,” Rebel agreed. “You kept coming.”

  She bristled. “I personally did not destroy your culture, thank you very much.”

  Rebel shot her a look that walked the fine line between amused and irritated, which was becoming a common occurrence. “The point,” he said in a tone of voice that was definitely irritated, “is that we have a long history of ignoring those who do not belong. Because you are an outsider, you see things differently. You see people differently. That is how you make them real.”

  She thought of how the other kids kept themselves separate from Jamie, how he didn’t interact with them, either. Did it start that early?

  “What if seeing them isn’t enough?” Just looking at someone couldn’t stop them from being beaten. It didn’t keep them safe.

  He gave her the kind of smile a teacher always gave a student when they were just about to figure it out—the quadratic equation, mitosis—whatever. He was leading her to something. Damned if she knew what it was.

  “But what if it is?”

  Before she could answer that bon mot, he turned to look down the drive. An older man was riding up on a horse at a slow walk.

  Rebel barely made sense—seeing made it real? She had no idea.

  They’d been talking about Jamie, a boy she’d barely met. But the funny thing was, her thoughts turned back to Nobody, to the way he’d reacted when she’d asked about his scars. Because she’d noticed them. Because she hadn’t been able to look away.

  What if seeing didn’t make something real?

  But what if it did?

  Chapter Four

  Nobody stood in the shadows, watching her.

  She wasn’t leaving. Melinda Mitchell normally closed up shop and drove off by this point in the evening, but not tonight. It had to be close to eight—two hours after she normally left. Was that because it was Friday?

  What was she doing? Light streamed out of both the front and back doors of the center as she did something inside. He was tempted to edge closer and steal a look in.

  She couldn’t be painting. In the two weeks since she’d left him the last note, the inside of the center had gone from concrete gray to plain white to rainbows. Maybe that’s what she’d meant by creative chaos? Because it was still chaos. He wasn’t sure if it was beautiful, but it was definitely wild.

  The rainbow colors went vertically up over the walls—even over the foam she’d managed to hang from the ceilings. The foam covered the top four feet of the walls. Not that Nobody made a lot of noise, but even he could tell that the center was more hushed now. Less echo-y.

  At the height he’d come to think of as her eye-level, she’d hung bulletin board strips. Papers, splashed with finger paint and crayon scribbles, were tacked up along the wall now, some with kids’ names neatly printed at the bottom, others with names that were barely readable.

  Then, at kid level, the wall had been covered with tiny handprints. Each set of prints had a name and an age painted onto the wall underneath it. Jamie’s hands were up there—no last name, though.

  He’d been right. Melinda had taken the boy in. Good.

  But that didn’t explain what she was doing here now.
Didn’t she know this wasn’t the safest place on the rez? True, he hadn’t caught any junkies trying to break in recently, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try again.

  She appeared in the front door. Light streamed from behind her, giving her an otherworldly glow.

  He felt himself breathe at seeing her again. The two weeks since she’d almost walked right into him at Rebel’s place had felt long. Time, as marked by days and weeks, didn’t have much meaning for him. His world was divided into light and dark, warm and cold. He cleaned the clinic every day. There were no Mondays, no weekends.

  But the last two weeks had moved by at such a slow pace that he’d begun to feel … uneasy about it. Not his usual sense of when someone was in trouble. This had been different. He’d wanted to see her just because. Not because he had to keep her safe or anything. Just … because.

  But he’d forced himself to stay away from Rebel’s. She’d looked right at him, walked right toward him as if he were standing in broad daylight. If she hadn’t gotten distracted … no. He didn’t believe she could actually tell he was there. Something else had attracted her attention. That was all.

  Backlit, she stretched, her body reaching for the dusk sky. Something else began to make Nobody feel uneasy and that something was obvious—Melinda Mitchell had a hell of a body. Part of what had been bothering him had been those curves—those generous breasts, those hips.

  How would her body feel? Would she be terrified if he filled his hands with those breasts? Would she be afraid of him if he grabbed her hips and pulled her into him?

  Onto him?

  Or would she like it? Would she think it exciting to do it with someone dangerous? Would she moan or cry out?

  He got hard just thinking of it. Of her.

  Then she did something that snapped him out of his thoughts.

  She looked at him.

  There was no mistaking this—she looked right at him. And smiled.

  What the hell?

  He started to shrink back, but she turned away from him, gathering up something off the floor. Did she know he was here or not?

  He should go.

  He didn’t.

  She was putting on a jacket of some sort—a big thing that came down to her knees. And a … helmet? Yeah, a helmet. A welder’s helmet, he remembered.

  Then she grabbed a sheet of metal from just inside the door and carried it out to where the burn barrel was. She leaned it up against the barrel and lit a blowtorch.

  Nobody stood in absolute shock as Melinda began cutting into the metal. She sure as hell looked like she knew what she was doing—the helmet, the big gloves, the coat? Those weren’t things people had just lying around.

  Sparks flew as she worked. Nobody wanted to move so he could get a better view of what she was making, but he didn’t want to. If she saw him … well, then she’d see him.

  He knew he was being stupid. It’d been almost a month since he’d sat down next to her for dinner. A month since she’d talked to him. He wanted …

  Hell. He didn’t know what he wanted. But he wanted something with her.

  Chunks of hot metal hit the dirt around her feet, but she didn’t jump out of the way, didn’t squeal in terror. She just kept cutting.

  Finally, she stepped back. She turned the blowtorch off, set it down and then turned what was left of the metal sheet onto its side. She re-lit the blowtorch again, made a final cut, and shut it off a final time.

  The metal fell apart, but she didn’t cuss or cry. Instead, she stripped off her helmet and coat.

  His body clenched as she removed the top layer of clothing. She wasn’t any less clothed than she’d been before she started, but she made something as routine as taking off a coat sexy.

  “Well?” she called over her shoulder. “What do you think?”

  All sexy thoughts fled Nobody’s mind. He froze—didn’t even breathe. Was she talking to him? Was that even possible?

  “I know you’re there, you know.” She was still admiring her pile of metal. Not looking at him. “You’re stealthy, but you’re not invisible. Come tell me what you think.”

  Shit. She was talking to him.

  He had two choices here. He could turn tail and run—be the coward people thought he was. Or …

  Or he could do as she asked.

  “I don’t bite,” she added, sounding cheerful about it. Like this whole thing was no big deal. “If you want, I won’t ask about the scars. Deal?”

  She really did know it was him. If he bolted, she probably wouldn’t leave him any more extra-polite notes.

  He took a deep breath and, heart racing, stepped out into the circle of light.

  He saw tension ripple down her bare shoulders but otherwise, she gave no sign that she’d heard him.

  He wanted to trail a finger down those shoulders, watch her skin jump at his touch.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he made damn sure to keep a good distance between them. Say, about six feet.

  “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Moving slowly, she turned to him.

  His lungs quit working. She had the most beautiful smile on her face, all warm and inviting. Especially the inviting part.

  God, he wanted to close the space between them and kiss her. It’d been so long … just one kiss. Was it wrong to want that? With a woman as beautiful as Melinda—a woman who smiled at him, for crying out loud?

  “Hello, Mr. Bodine. How nice of you to join me on this lovely evening.”

  The last time she’d asked him a direct question, he’d run back to the safety of the shadows. He wasn’t going to do that this time. Not as long as she was smiling.

  Still, that meant he had to talk to her and talking was not something he did in great quantities. He cleared his throat, trying to find his voice. “Ma’am.”

  He wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but her smile grew. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what, Ma’am?”

  She wrinkled her brow at him, but she didn’t lose that smile. It lit up her whole face. “That stealthy thing. You’re almost invisible.”

  No ‘almost’ about it. He was invisible to everyone—everyone except her. “Don’t know.”

  “Really? You have no idea how you blend into the shadows like that?”

  “No, Ma’am.” She kept looking at him like she expected him to say something more, but what else could he say?

  “Do you call everyone Ma’am? Or just me?”

  This could be worse, he decided. She could be asking about the scars.

  But it was still pretty bad. He didn’t know how to answer her. He didn’t talk to women, really. Just her sister, and only then when he needed stitches. But to say that out loud? ‘I don’t talk to women all that much and they don’t talk to me’?

  Hell, no.

  So he didn’t answer. She waited a moment longer before saying, “It was just a question, Mr. Bodine. It’s called a conversation—two people talking.”

  She was making fun of him. It stung for a moment, but then she made a face at him—like she was waiting for him to laugh with her or something?

  “Okay, one person talking.” She tilted her head to one side, sizing him up. Studying him. “Anyway, it’s nice to see you again.” Then, thank God, she looked back at the metal remains on the ground in front of her. “What do you think?”

  “About what, Ma’am?”

  “Here, you can put all those muscles to good use. Help me, please.” She grabbed one of the sheets of metal and poked at the other with her toe. “Thank you.”

  All his muscles? He knew he was a brute—that’s how involuntary manslaughter happened—but the way she said it, it didn’t come out as a criticism. It almost sounded like a compliment.

  Nobody did as requested, picking up what was left of the metal. What had started out as a solid sheet was now in about forty pieces.

  But the piece in his hand had a—well, maybe not a pattern to it, but it didn’t look like she’d just randomly attacked it with a blowto
rch. Circles and swirls were cut into it. Same with the piece she was holding.

  “Now,” she said, heading toward the door, “do you think that part should go on the outside or the inside? Here, hold that one up to the top of the door.”

  Nobody stood there, unable to move as she bent over and jammed her section against the bottom of the door. Even in her non-skin-tight skirt, the outline of her ass was enough to give any man pause.

  She straightened up but didn’t move away from the door. “Well? Go on.” She shooed him forward.

  Nobody hefted the metal up against the door, but he was having trouble focusing. Melinda was closer now—barely two feet away from him now. He could smell the tang of hot metal, but underneath that was a bright scent of … oranges? She smelled good enough to eat.

  “What do you think?” she asked again.

  He couldn’t really tell, not while he was holding the metal up. But she’d asked him that several times now, so he felt like he had to come up with some sort of answer. “Looks good.”

  For some reason, that made her laugh. It was a pretty sound. It fit her well. “Here, take your piece down.” Then, thank God, she stepped away from him.

  Nobody did as she asked. By the time he set his metal down, she was already behind him, grabbing the parts she’d cut out off the ground. “See, it’s going to be a reverse image. On this side, we’ll have the bottom piece here and these that I cut out of the top. Then, on the other side, we’ll have your part on top and the pieces I cut out of the bottom in roughly the same place.” She held a few of the smaller bits up, which had the effect of stretching her body right in front of his eyes. The skirt may not be skin tight, but the tank top sure as hell was. “See?”

  The only thing he could see was the black bra strap that couldn’t be contained by the tank top. Black would look so good against her creamy skin. God, so good.

  He forced himself to take a step back. Then another one. “Yeah,” he offered when she snapped her head around. “Looks good.”