Black Hills Native Son: a Hollywood-meets-the-real-wild-west contemporary romance series (Black Hills Rendezvous Book 5)

by Debra Salonen

  “Lib? Are you there?”

  “Um…yeah. Just processing the fact that you took in a scruffy drifter and let him stay at your house. That’s not like you, Char. You’re the smart and savvy skeptic of the book club, remember?”

  And I gave him one of my best pairs of moccasins. “Eli isn’t drifting. He’s on a vision quest. I already told you that.”

  “Are you part of the vision?”

  Libby was quick. And intuitive. Char didn’t want to give away anything until after she and Eli had talked. In the shower, she’d come up with a plan she intended to run by him over breakfast. If he agreed to it, she was going to need Libby’s help.

  “He was pretty wiped out last night. We didn’t talk much. If the road’s open, I’ll probably give him a lift to his uncle’s place in Sturgis. If I can get Pia to come in. I didn’t talk to her last night.”

  “You let her close without double-checking everything? Wow. This guy really does have some swoo over you.”

  Char ignored the comment. “How bad is this storm supposed to get? Should I even bother opening?”

  They talked weather for a few minutes longer, as Char put the finishing touches on her outfit. Jewelry—her personal addiction—came last. Three silver necklaces. A wide, pounded silver bracelet from a Santa Fe artist. And last, her favorite turquoise ring.

  Finally, Char told Libby goodbye and walked to the bedside table to push the off button on the unit. That’s when it struck her that she so rarely had guests she truly had no idea how well sound carried through the walls. When you were used to living alone, noise was not an issue.

  Now you ask.

  Char applied a moisturizing lip gloss that didn’t require her to look in the mirror then she opened the door of her bedroom and marched down the hall. If he heard, he heard. More than likely, he was still sound asleep.

  “Hey.”

  Or not.

  She missed a step as she entered the combination kitchen and dining room. He was standing near the window. Same clothes as yesterday, of course, but clean. And he was wearing the moccasins she’d given him.

  “Good morning. I thought you’d probably sleep in.”

  He looked at her in a guy way—not a cop way—his gaze lingering on her squash blossom necklace. Or her breasts. For once, she hoped it was the latter. She liked her body a lot better now than she had as a teen. Men liked her body, too. Sometimes that was okay…depending on the man.

  “The sound of snow woke me. Thank you for not making me sleep outside last night. That would not have been fun.”

  “You’re welcome.” She paused to turn up the thermostat then she walked to the sink. She twirled the wand of the miniblinds. The whitish-gray sky seemed to absorb the outline of the teepee. Even the dark green roof of the cabin was buried under a couple of inches of fluffy snow. “Wow. We’ve got ourselves a storm.”

  She reached for the handle of her coffee maker’s thermal carafe. “Coffee?”

  “Sure. Thanks. A quick cup and I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Self-consciously, her fingers brushed back a still-damp lock. She’d finally found a hair stylist who understood that the right cut could save hours of wasted time. “Your hair has a life of its own. You need to respect that and work with it,” she’d explained to Char. “Stop trying to make it be something it isn’t.”

  That simple credo had become a turning point for Char in several aspects of her life. She’d added the money in her breast-reduction-surgery fund to the inheritance from her mother and bought a business. She’d quit her government job and moved to the Black Hills where she found new friends and a fresh start—with hair she still colored, but no longer tortured.

  “I suppose you’re wondering about the highlights, huh?” She kept her focus on the task at hand. “They were bright orange last week. For Halloween.”

  From the freezer, she grabbed the bag of Kona blend she bought online. “For years I went to the same hairdresser. She used a technique she called ‘glitzing.’ I don’t know what it was, but my hair looked okay. Nothing out of the ordinary, but okay. Then Margie moved and the girl who took her place was straight out of beauty school.”

  She shook a domed mountain of aromatic grounds into the filter then pushed the brew button. Turning to rest the small of her back against the counter, she finished her story. “The first time she tried to duplicate Margie’s color, my hair wound up looking like Little Orphan Annie meets Pink.” She shrugged. “It was wild. We both cried. But she didn’t dare do a reverse color for fear all my hair would fall out. I had to live with it for a few weeks, and do you know what I discovered? When you’re in the business of selling things, it pays to stand out.”

  She glanced over her shoulder when the first hiss of dripping coffee hit the carafe. “Since then I’ve found that I like being different. I change the color to suit my whims and moods. It’s rather liberating.”

  Eli had a bemused look on his face. She had the impression he didn’t give a flying fig but was too polite to say so.

  She spun back around. “Cereal or eggs?”

  “Coffee will be fine.” He barely got the word out before a deep, punishing cough intruded. He put one hand to his chest and leaned over.

  Char filled a glass of water and hurried to his side. “Here. Maybe you should go back to bed. I have a vaporizer I could set up on the night stand. And several kinds of cough syrup.”

  He accepted the glass and took a drink but waved aside her other suggestions. “I’m okay.”

  “You need a sweat lodge.”

  “No, thanks. That’s what got me into this mess.” He gave her a flinty look. “What’s with your fixation on all things Indian? Is this your way of trying to make up for what you did with me?”

  She backed up so fast she nearly tripped over her feet. The sudden and unprovoked attack seemed to come out of nowhere. “I like the heat,” she said, giving the first answer that came into her head.

  “Well, I like the truth,” he said after taking a gulp of water. “Comes with the job.”

  His tone wasn’t as forceful and sincere as she’d have expected from a police officer. She wondered about the catalyst that had motivated the journey he now found himself on. “I told you the truth last night,” she said. “I don’t know what else you want from me, but I have something I want from you. Can we talk about it over coffee?”

  He didn’t answer but he did pull out a chair and plunk down heavily.

  “Exactly the reason I don’t take sleep aids,” she murmured, grabbing two large, Sioux Pottery mugs from the cupboard. When she turned around, she caught the barest hint of a smile before his frown returned.

  “Cream and sugar?”

  His glossy black hair danced momentarily in the light from the window. Thick, beautiful hair. Board straight but cut to lie nicely when it was clean and combed.

  She hurried to bring him a spoon, the sugar bowl and a little cardboard container of cream that she took from the refrigerator. Finally she sat across from him.

  As she stirred her coffee, she debated about how to broach the subject. “You said the reason your uncle set you on a vision quest—” He started to correct her, but she stopped him. “I know. That’s not the right word. I’ve tried to learn the Lakota language, but I seem to have a mental block.”

  Eli could sympathize. He was the same. But he didn’t plan to tell her that. He’d slept well thanks to the pills he took, but in the early morning she’d come to him in his dream. He’d been sitting on a rock beside a fast moving river. The water looked so cool and inviting he was tempted to jump in—even if it meant certain death. Then she appeared, smiling in that anything-is-possible way of hers. She fed him sun-warmed berries from nearby bushes, then they made love in the soft grass near the water’s edge. At the exact moment of climax they’d both turned into birds, soaring high above the plains tableau, which, to his surprise, was now covered in snow. The river was gone, and he was forever changed.

  He’d awoken choked up a
nd turned on. Who needed that kind of emotional turmoil? His life was crazy enough without bird metaphors and thoughts of suicide.

  “Joseph was messing with my head. I plan to find out with what when I see him. Does your car have snow tires?”

  “Yes, but I’m not taking you anywhere until we talk about this. What if Joseph was right? What if the reason you’re here is to find the missing piece? Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t a child you didn’t know about qualify?”

  “Alleged child,” he said, mostly out of habit. He stirred a heaping teaspoon of sugar into the aromatic black liquid then picked up the cup. His mouth started to water, but before he could take a sip, he looked across the table. Her anger was obvious in the squint of her eyes.

  “Are you a cop or a lawyer? Do you want to see the alleged child’s birth certificate?”

  “Yes.”

  Her frown intensified but after a moment she eased back in her chair. “Fine. Drink your coffee. It’s in my safe in the shop. I don’t open until noon on Sundays in the winter. And if this snow doesn’t let up, I might not open at all,” she added, looking out the window past his right shoulder.

  Eli turned his chin. When he’d looked outside earlier, he’d felt a strange sort of peace. He liked the grouping of pine trees that formed a kind of sheltering cove around her little home. Another inch of the wet white stuff had fallen while they had talked.

  He didn’t begrudge the moisture. The entire state needed it, but he wasn’t thrilled about setting out in search of his uncle in this kind of weather. Maybe he was better off calling someone else to ask for help.

  But as his mind ran through the list of possible names, the emptiness in his belly became more pronounced. He hadn’t made it easy for his friends and family to be supportive the past few months. The bridges were probably still there, but they were mined with sympathy. He didn’t want to give people any more reason to feel sorry for him.

  Maybe that had been the reason he wound up with Joseph. For all his faults, Joe spoke the truth. He didn’t try to gloss over the ugly parts to make Eli feel better. “If the way was easy, people would complain about that, too,” Joseph had said over their first six-pack. Their first of many.

  As if tapping into his thoughts, she said, “I met your uncle at a powwow near Bear Butte a few months ago. He asked about my aunt. Small world, huh?”

  He set down his cup a bit more forcefully than necessary. He knew what she was implying and he refused to believe it. “You think I’m here because my uncle—mystic seer that he is—found out where you lived and figured I’d unerringly stumble across you and you’d share the deep dark secret of your life with only a stolen pellet gun at your temple.”

  She not only laughed, she pretended to clap. “Now, that’s more like the Eli I remember. Smart, funny, irreverent, full of himself.”

  “How could you know me? Except for that one night—.”

  “Alleged night,” she put in.

  He gave her a look that would have made his daughters sit back and listen.

  It didn’t work with her. She made a face and said, “I knew you better than you could have imagined. It’s one of the most underrated advantages of being invisible.”

  He got up and walked to the counter to refill his coffee cup. “You were younger than me. I didn’t know any underclassmen—unless they were on the basketball team or related to someone on the basketball team.”

  She nodded. “I’m not accusing you of ignoring me. Heck, no. I went out of my way to be invisible. You would, too, if the only thing that set you apart from the rest of the world was a pair of giant upright udders.”

  He bit his lip to keep from smiling. “There wasn’t a single guy on the team that would have called them that.”

  He could tell the topic embarrassed her, but she’d been the one to bring up the subject.

  “Well, maybe girls today are more comfortable with their sexuality, but my mom made such a big deal out of my figure—like I was trying to outdo her on purpose—that I did my best to be inconspicuous.”

  He could be thankful that at least Bobbi was a good mother. When she’d first told him she was leaving, he’d wanted the girls to stay with him. They’d looked at him like he was crazy. Another killer blow to his ego coming on top of learning his son wasn’t his biological offspring.

  He was about to bring up the subject of their supposed kid, when she said, “I signed up for every after-school activity where you might be. I took tickets at games, sold popcorn and candy at the school store, and worked in the library because you sometimes studied there.”

  He let out a gruff hoot. “I made out with Bobbi in the stacks, you mean. I didn’t have to study that hard because I knew I was getting a basketball scholarship.” He’d had one, too. For a week. “You sound like a stalker.”

  “I was a listener. I heard things. I knew Bobbi planned to snag you before you could get away by going to college. Although, in all fairness, I think her goal was to go with you, not to make you give up school altogether.”

  Bobbi. His wife’s name didn’t sound right coming from this stranger’s lips. And yet, Char wasn’t a stranger. She knew more about him than he thought possible. And it made him curious. “What else do you know?”

  She got up to refill her mug. He could have offered to do that for her, but this way brought her closer to him. Standing shoulder to shoulder, he could smell her light, citrus fragrance. When she leaned over to retrieve the creamer, he caught a wonderfully evocative glimpse of her breasts—even though they were completely covered all the way to her chin. Still, the outline was sexy. Black was sexy. Funny how he already knew she didn’t think of herself that way. At all.

  “Well…,” she said closing the fridge. “I knew that your cousin, Robert, and Bobbi—people with the same first name should never get together, don’t you agree?—had a thing going before you broke up with Jenny Reid. She was a nice girl. A lot friendlier to the less popular kids than Bobbi was. But I’ve observed that sometimes nice isn’t as exciting as naughty. That was certainly the case with my mom.”

  Eli hadn’t thought of Jenny in years. “Jenny’s parents didn’t like me.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “They were white. My dad was the groundskeeper at the State House.”

  “You think they were prejudiced?”

  He couldn’t explain something as complicated as race relations to a woman like her. But she appeared so scandalized, he tried anyway. “They were nice to my face, but I always felt as though they were relieved when I left. Especially after a quick count of the silver.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Did you discuss this with Jenny?”

  He shook his head. “It was easier to date Bobbi. Her mom’s Lakota. Her grandmother was Nell Thompson. Did you ever meet her?”

  She took a box of instant oatmeal—the variety pack of flavors, he saw—from the cupboard. She looked at him and said, “I get jittery if I drink coffee without eating something.”

  He wasn’t sure he believed her, but he got out of her way and returned to the table. After she set a kettle of water to boil, she answered his question. “Yes, I remember Nell. I was sorry to hear of her passing.”

  “I’m glad she’s gone,” he said, without really meaning to. “She never would have understood any of this.”

  She tilted her head to one side and fiddled with the long, silver and turquoise earring. The design looked complicated and expensive. For someone living in a mobile home—even a nicely finished doublewide on a permanent foundation—she seemed to have expensive tastes in jewelry.

  “What else did you observe about me?” he asked, both curious and anxious to fill the silence between them.

  “Well, you got better grades than anyone else on either the football team or the basketball team. Several of the track guys had 4.0s, but you were pretty smart for a jock.”

  “Not really. Look where I wound up.”

  She gave him a scolding look that reminded him of his mother. He w
ondered how it was possible to miss someone who had been dead for half his life.

  “I do a lot of business with members of your tribe, Eli,” she said. “Mostly by phone or over the Internet,” she added, as if anticipating his question. How come I’ve never seen you in Lower Brule?

  “From what I’ve heard, you’re a good cop. Serious. Conscientious. Forward-thinking. My friend, Linda Thompson, said your son was involved in ritual dancing thanks to you.”

  Eli didn’t dance. He would have felt like an imposter. But he had tremendous respect for the art and passion of traditional Lakota dances. He’d gotten into the project as a way to connect with E.J., who had a bit of the performer in him. Bobbi’s contribution, he’d always assumed. Now, he wondered if that came from Robert’s side of the family.

  “Past tense. My s…so—” The word wouldn’t come out. “E.J. quit dancing. The only ritual I’ve been involved with was courtesy of my uncle, whose brain has probably become pickled from all the booze he’s imbibed over the years.”

  The whistle from the kettle made her turn to the stove, but over her shoulder, she said, “And yet you chose him as your spiritual advisor.”

  Her soft snicker made him smile. Even though he was still pissed off about his circumstances, he could appreciate the irony. But he quickly reverted to his impassive cop face when she brought him his bowl of hot cereal. Surly helped keep her at a distance, which was the smart thing to do. She was pretty, kind, smart and forgiving. And he was attracted to her. Too attracted.

  They ate in silence. He wolfed his down in five or six bites, the way E.J. would have. He didn’t know where he left his manners—in the Badlands, maybe?

  “So. Your first point was my uncle’s supposed insight into my fractured psyche. What’s number two?” he asked, pushing his bowl to the middle of the table.

  Her hand stopped halfway to her mouth. She lowered the spoon and took a deep breath before answering. “Last night you said that seventeen was a pivotal age for you. I bet you’ve arrested your share of kids who made some dumb mistake at that age and spent the rest of their life regretting it.”