by Peggy Webb
At midnight he decided she wasn’t going to call. But he put the phone right beside his pillow. Just in case.
For the next three days, Callie practiced the art of evasion. She waited until the very last minute to enter the lecture halls, stood at the back scanning the crowd until she spotted Joseph, then took at seat on the opposite side of the auditorium, close to the door.
But his note burned in Callie’s mind. Daily she argued with herself. She would see him, it was the least she could do, all he wanted was to apologize, after all. What harm could come of it? Her mind whirled with controversy.
In the end it was the harmonica that made up her mind.
For all practical purposes the conference was over. Virologists checked out of the hotel in droves, crowding the lobby with their suitcases and armloads of books.
Callie went downstairs to see Peg off.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go to the airport with you, Peg?”
“Absolutely not. Get some rest, Callie. You’ve worn yourself out avoiding Joseph.”
“Was I that obvious?”
“It couldn’t have been plainer if you had written it on a billboard.”
Good, Callie thought.
Then she went back to her room and crashed. Something startled her awake—a sound, a dream, a teardrop. Her face was wet. She’d been crying in her sleep.
It was dark outside, and rain slashed the window. Her bedside clock said ten. Stumbling into the bathroom to splash water on her face, Callie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked haunted.
“The harmonica,” she whispered.
That’s what had startled her awake. She still had Joseph’s harmonica.
Her heart racing, she went back into the bedroom, picked up the phone and dialed.
Be there, she silently pleaded. Please be there.
The phone rang four times. Five. Six. What if he had already checked out? What if he had gone back to Italy?
Callie started to cradle the receiver when she heard his voice.
“Hello.” For a moment she couldn’t speak. “Hello. Is anyone there?”
“Joseph.”
“Callie? Is that you?”
Her hand tightened on the receiver. “I need to see you.”
“I’ll come right up,” he said.
Callie panicked. If she let him into her bedroom, she would never have the heart to ask him to leave. Control would be in his hands.
“No, I’ll come there.”
Silence. What was he thinking? What did it matter? She would be in charge. She would enter, state her piece, and leave. Just that simple.
“I’ll be waiting,” he said.
Stunned, Joseph replaced the receiver. Callie had avoided him for days, and now she was coming to his room. It was beyond comprehension.
But then, Callie was not the kind of woman you could predict. That was part of the fascination.
Joseph shoved the suitcase he’d been packing into the closet and shut the door. Tidying up. As if that mattered. He checked the bathroom to be sure he hadn’t left wet towels on the floor. It was a totally useless errand. Joseph never left wet towels on the floor. He never even left a dirty coffee cup in the sink.
He ran a comb through his hair, and was sitting at the window when she knocked. He straightened a pillow on the way to the door. And there she was, as if he’d dreamed her, backlit by the hall lights, hair shining, eyes glowing. He didn’t trust himself to speak. All he could do was stare at her like a shipwrecked seaman who had finally caught a glimpse of the shore.
“May I come in?”
He noticed her smile didn’t touch her eyes, and guilt smote him. Was he the cause?
He held the door open, and she stepped into his room. Suddenly the bed loomed, took on enormous significance, and it struck Joseph that he had never made love to Callie in a real bed. They had loved on blankets and cedar boughs and seashores and even in the depths of the lake, but never on a bed with her hair fanned out on the pillow and her skin glowing golden against the white sheets.
As if she knew what he was thinking, her gaze traveled to the bed, then back to him. Joseph rammed his hands into his pockets to keep from touching her.
He had made that mistake once. He would never do it again. His obsession had hurt Callie, and Joseph had no intention of hurting this woman again. Ever.
“Joseph, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about my coming here.”
“You know me better than that. I would never presume anything with you, Callie. Won’t you sit down?”
So polite. As if she were a stranger. As if he had never shared an intimate moment with her. As if he had never known her deepest mysteries.
Callie perched on the edge of a chair, her chin thrust forward, her back upright, her expression determined. Joseph wanted to take her in his arms and caress that stiff back until she relaxed. He wanted to smooth her silky hair until she melted against him, boneless and yielding.
But he had no right.
“You’re leaving tomorrow?” she asked.
“Yes. And you?”
“I’m leaving on an early morning flight.”
It was small talk fraught with significance. What they were saying to each other was this: I’ll go my way and you go yours.
Joseph discovered he had deep reservoirs of pain that had never been tapped. Loss stormed him, and he had to use Herculean effort to remain in his chair, to keep from leaping across the table, grabbing Callie and yelling, “I don’t care about any of it, I don’t care about your job, I don’t care about heritage, I don’t care as long as I can have you.”
He was selfish. Thinking only of himself, his needs, his desires. It surprised Joseph to think of himself that way.
Tonight, he had been given a chance to redeem himself.
“Callie, I’m so glad you came. After the past few days I was afraid you wouldn’t respond to my note.”
“It wasn’t the note that brought me here. It was this….”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out his harmonica. Her fingers closed around it briefly, then she laid it on the table between them.
Memories swarmed through Joseph: the campfire, the full moon, the night breezes, and the two of them warding off the chill by holding each other close.
Callie’s eyes were suspiciously bright. Was she thinking the same thing?
“It belongs to you,” she said.
He made no move toward the harmonica. As vividly as if it were yesterday he remembered seeing her emerge from her tent, discover the harmonica then lift it to her lips. All these lonely weeks he had enjoyed thinking of her that way, putting her lips where his had been, perhaps caressing the silver, thinking of him, missing him, wanting him.
“Keep it,” he said.
“No.”
He had never known a woman who could make getting up from a chair an act of grand defiance. Like some angry goddess arising from Mount Olympus, Callie towered over him, her eyes shooting sparks.
“Isn’t that exactly like you, Joseph? Arrogant. Presumptuous. Self-important.”
God, she was glorious when she was mad. Joseph was so busy admiring her, he had a hard time concentrating on what she was saying. She came around the table, stalking him.
“What do you think I am, Joseph Swift? Some starstruck little teenager who wants a bauble that belongs to the great doctor from Italy? Somebody who’s going to moon over you? Do you think I’m going hold on to your harmonica and weep?”
He stood so fast his chair toppled over. In one swift move he captured Callie’s lips. The contact sent shock waves through him, and he had a hard time sticking to his purpose. He wanted to shock Callie into silence, not set his own blood racing. He wanted to regain his control, not lose it.
And yet…
Moaning, Callie parted her lips to give him access. Without thought, without design, he plunged his tongue into the soft inner recesses, tasting once again that hot honeyed sweetness that drove him mad.
She moved in his arms so that their bodies were fitted perfectly together, and Joseph clung to his sanity by a thread. Just a while longer. Just one more taste. And then he would let her go. Then he would be in control.
She bloomed in his arms. He could feel her soft yielding, feel the melting of her body, the bending of her will.
It would be so easy to take her. A few steps and they would be on the bed. A flick of the wrist and her clothes would be on the floor.
Need was a tiger, clawing his back, snarling deep in his throat. He wanted to grind himself into her, to feel the sweet relief as her hot flesh closed around him.
Her arms stole around his neck, and Joseph trembled on the brink of disaster. He was torn in two. His heart yearned for completion while his mind screamed danger.
A soft whimpering sound of sheer need escaped Callie, but Joseph took no pleasure from the sound. He wouldn’t allow himself that. Callie was vulnerable. Only a cad would take advantage of her.
Every nerve in his body screaming, Joseph pulled back. Callie raked her hair back, her hands shaking. But she didn’t step back. Not his Callie. Eyes blazing, she looked up at him.
“Are you quite finished, or is there something else you want from me?” Deliberately she moved in on him, so close he could see the flecks of gold in the centers of her sky-blue eyes. “Before I go, perhaps you’d like another taste of the mirror dance? Or is it the medicine wheel you have in mind?”
“I didn’t know you had claws, Callie.”
“All cats have them. Didn’t you know?”
In one smooth featherlight sensual movement, she raked her fingernails down the side of his face.
“There are lots of things you don’t know about me, Joseph Swift…things you will never find out.”
He caught her wrist and looked deep into her eyes, trying to read her. But she had shut herself off from him.
No, he would never find out. The knowledge saddened him beyond imagining.
“Callie, don’t do this.”
She tried to jerk away from him, but he held her fast.
“You’re the one who started it. I just came here to talk.”
Something wild and perverse broke lose in him. Something savage. Something that put polite reserve to rout.
“Is that why you kissed me back?”
She wrenched herself free. “Go back to Italy, Joseph. Go back and take your damned harmonica with you.”
She whirled around and was halfway to the door before his brain could function.
“Callie, wait…”
For a fraction of a second he thought she would keep on going, but she turned around and the look on her face drove a stake through his heart.
“Don’t you ever kiss me again. Don’t you ever touch me again—” her voice dropped to a whisper “—unless you mean it.”
She glided through the door quickly, a ghost, a wraith, a phantom, already a part of his past.
He couldn’t let her go this way. Not with anger and tears. He’d never even said he was sorry.
He raced to the door and caught the handle…then leaned his head against the door and shut his eyes.
It was better this way, better for her to hate him than to spend one moment in the lonely agony of defeat.
“Goodbye, my love,” he whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Four
If it hadn’t been for airport security, Joseph would be on his way back to Italy. They’d pulled him aside to search his bag.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Something that looks like a hammer.”
They pawed through his belongings until they found what they sought.
“What is it?” the security guard asked him.
After Joseph left the Black Hills he had put the pipe out of his mind, but there it was in the hands of a stranger, the red clay pipe with its carvings and its adornment of eagle feathers.
The sacred pipe. His destiny.
“It’s just a souvenir I picked up on my travels to South Dakota,” Joseph said, knowing a simple explanation would be easier to understand.
Satisfied, the guard searched through the rest of the bag’s contents.
“All set, sir,” he said.
“Thanks.” Joseph picked up his bag and headed back through the security gates.
“Hey, you’re going the wrong way,” the guard called after him.
“No, I’m finally going the right way.”
The house nestled in a garden around the bend from the clinic. Mountains rose behind it and a stream meandered through the east side of the gardens, spanned by a small arching bridge Callie’s grandfather had built.
He had built the house, as well, and after he died her grandmother stayed on in spite of failing health, bound by her deep love of the garden. She’d called her place Eden, and it had stood empty since her death six years earlier.
Now it was Callie’s house.
Sitting on a curving wooden bench in the garden, she tested the words aloud, and the sound of them brought joy to her. Her house rang with laughter and blazed with lights, but she stayed in the garden awhile longer. A moonvine had opened, its blossoms shining stark white under the stars, scattering their fragrance throughout the garden.
She heard the back door open and shut.
“Callie.” It was her brother calling to her from the back porch. “Everything all right out here?”
“I’m fine, Eric.”
The moonlight silhouetted him, a tall man with high cheekbones and a handsome nose. He came toward her slowly. Eric did everything with an economy of movement and a tranquility that Callie envied.
In time, maybe she would acquire his great sense of peace.
He propped one foot on the wooden bench. “Mom’s worried about you.”
“I know. It’s my housewarming party, and I’m selfish to linger in the garden.”
“Call it self-preservation.”
Callie stood and linked arms with her brother. “Brenda’s a lucky woman.”
“We’re both lucky.” He squeezed her hand. “Someday you will be, too. If that man had a brain in his head.”
“Shhh. He’s brilliant.”
“Maybe that’s his problem. He’s too cerebral. Love defies logic.”
Callie’s laughter was fond. “I don’t think that’s a new concept, Eric.”
“I should have told that to Brenda. She thinks everything I say is original and brilliant.”
“Smart woman.”
Callie could see her sister-in-law through the French doors, her belly big with child. Envy stabbed her. Always tuned in to her moods, Eric squeezed her hand.
“It’s going to be all right, Sis. When Jenine Rayborn sees this place and this family, she’s going to fall all over herself trying to rush that adoption through.
Callie was too much a realist to think that would happen, especially in the face of Jenine’s early opposition.
“You’re not buying it, are you?”
“You know me too well, Eric.”
Calder Red Cloud appeared on the back porch, his mane of white hair gleaming in the moonlight. Callie thought he looked like a fine old mountain lion, poised and regal in spite of the slight droop to his shoulders.
She and Eric paused a moment, awestruck by their father.
“Callie? Eric? Are you out here?”
“Here we are.” Eric moved them into a path of moonlight so Calder could see.
“Good. I think I’ll join you. There’s too much racket inside.”
He moved slower than he used to, but he was still majestic. Callie and Eric waited for him beside a weeping Japanese cherry tree their grandmother had ordered from a nursery in South Carolina.
“How can Jenine doubt that this is the best place for Ricky when she meets him?” Eric nodded toward their father.
Callie couldn’t help but think it was so. When their father came abreast, she took his arm on one side and Eric, the other.
Calder lifted his face toward the s
ky. “Ahhh, that’s better. Peace.”
“Are you all right, Dad?”
Calder snorted. “Fit as a fiddle. You’re practicing medicine on the wrong person, Daughter. Save your skills for the clinic.”
“I have plenty left over for you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He winked at his son. “I don’t know why I wanted her to come back home. She’s going to make my life pure hell.”
“I intend to.”
Suddenly Callie blossomed, like a puny philodendron that had been given a large dose of root fertilizer. She loved this friendly sparring with her family.
It was good to be home.
Calder bent down, grasped a handful of earth and held it to his nose. “Ahhh,” he said. Then he straightened up slowly and pressed the dirt into Callie’s hand.
“The dust of our ancestors is here, Callie. The ashes of their council fires are cold and white, and smoke curls no more from their lodges, but their spirit remains. A strong and powerful totem. We are not birds with a broken wing—we are The People, proud and brave.”
When her father spoke of the old ways he was transformed, no longer a modern man who had studied medicine at Harvard, but an ancient Apache shaman, with a soul full of poetry and a mind full of healing secrets revealed to him through the Great Spirit.
Callie loved it when her father was like this. Rapt, she and Eric listened.
“My bones are growing weary, and soon I’ll rest with our ancestors, but the two of you will carry on. You will tell the stories to your children and grandchildren, and they will teach the old ways to their children. The People will live forever.
He took their hands and joined them over his heart, then he kissed Callie’s cheek.
“That’s why you’re home, Daughter.” Calder brushed the tears from her cheek. “Come now. Let’s go back inside. Your mother is waiting for us.”
Joseph’s spirit quest to the sacred land of the Sioux was a solitary one, made on horseback as his ancestors had done in the days of old. As he approached his destination it was easy to see why the Sioux considered the Black Hills sacred. Tall needles of rock touched the sky, warm springs flowed through the Hills, and crystal beckoned from hidden caves.