The Easter egg hunt was like nothing Abbie had ever seen. She had expected a wild stampede when Miss Halliburton gave the signal. Incredibly, the children fanned out in a line as straight as a cavalry flank and slowly moved forward. Their eyes, the observant eyes of the true marksman, swept over the ground before them. Their sight homed in more accurately than any metal detector. Even more surprising was the way the children retrieved their booty—not all rushing to pick up the discovered egg but letting the child directly in its path collect it.
Following the students, Cody walked alongside Abbie and the stern-faced Miss Halliburton and joked every so often in Navajo with the children. Then it happened. That horrible moment when the wind swept Miss Halliburton’s wig from her head. “Oh, no!” she yelled in anguish. Her hands flew up to cover a head that was sparsely covered with short, brittle hairs. More scalp than hair was exposed.
The children—the teachers—Cody and Abbie —all stopped and turned to stare in confusion at the phenomenon of an almost-bald woman, while the wig hurtled along past them. The principal glanced desperately about her. “Oh, get it!” she cried out when nobody moved. “Oh, please, help me!” Tears of shame spilled over her veined hands. The nearest to her, Delbert and Joey, took out after the bouncing ball of hair, but sprint though they might, the wind blew the wig just ahead of their short legs.
“It’s all right, Miss Halliburton,” Abbie said, touching the woman’s arm in a consoling gesture.
Then Cody did something utterly unexpected. He unknotted the bandana from about his forehead and, covering the woman’s naked head, tied it under her quivering chin.
Abbie saw the look of deep gratitude Miss Halliburton bestowed on Cody. The woman’s trembling hands wiped the tears that furrowed her powdered cheeks. She leaned her head into his shoulder. “When I was a child—scarlet fever—” she hiccoughed. “The illness—it took all my hair. No man could ever want me.”
Abbie stood openmouthed. The dragon had changed into a kitten.
“I bet you never gave any man half a chance, did you, Miss Halliburton?” Cody said gently.
The woman sniffed into his shirt. “I was too afraid ...”
“Of rejection,” he finished for her. Over her head his gaze met Abbie’s, and she read the challenge in his eyes.
Deliberately she looked down just as Delbert ran up with the wig clutched in his hand. When she looked up again, Cody was leading Miss Halliburton, her wig now safely in hand, back to her office.
Damn him! Little children and old ladies. He should have been a Boy Scout.
* * * * *
Her purse under one arm, a stack of papers that she had meant to grade over the Easter vacation in the other, Abbie shoved her apartment door open with her hip. As she should have expected, the sheaf of papers slid onto the floor, the homework scattering like blown leaves.
“Hell,” she muttered and went down on all fours to collect them.
It had been a record day for testing the validity of the Peter Principle. Everything that could have gone wrong, did. First, Cody showing up for the Easter Egg hunt, as if his prime purpose was to annoy her. Then Miss Halliburton’s wig blowing away. For the rest of the day the woman had made St. George’s dragon seem tame.
But the worst had been when Robert’s father hadn’t come for him at the end of the day, when Easter vacation began. She had watched helpless ly as the boy, hands jammed in his jean pockets, his foot kicking at random rocks, made his way back to the dormitory. Before she left for the week, she had stopped by the dormitory to warn Dalah to keep a close watch on Robert. That was all she needed now, for the boy to take flight.
The one bright spot in the day had been Marshall’s visit—and his invitation. The Easter vacation had loomed like seven long, boring days at Kaibeto, but Marshall’s invitation for a three-day spree in Las Vegas had been like a visit from one’s guardian angel or an IRS refund—unexpected but desperately needed. Her slightly hesitant response had prompted Marshall to add wryly, “No strings attached, Abbie. Only the pleasure of your company.”
But it wasn’t merely the lure of a pleasant way to spend the Easter holidays that had prompted her to accept; if word got back that she had spent three days in Las Vegas with Marshall—yes, that could be the solution to her problem.
Scooping up several more wayward sheets, Abbie had to smile smugly at how adroitly she was working out what had threatened to be a sticky situation . . . until her eyes encountered the scuffed boot before her. Slowly, reluctantly, her gaze followed the jeans leg upward. There Cody sat on her sofa, arms spread across its back, one ankle propped on the other knee.
“How . . . how did you get in here?” she asked in a low voice.
His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Oh, we Indians have devious methods of breaking and entering.”
She pushed herself up on her knees and shoved a swath of hair back off her forehead. “Now that you’ve entered, you can just leave.”
He leaned forward and she almost jumped, she was so edgy. Calmly he clasped his hands between his knees. “I will when I find out the answer to my question.”
“Try the school. I’ve finished answering questions for the day.”
“This isn’t a student’s question.”
She came to her feet and turned away. “I only get paid to answer students’ questions,” she flipped over her shoulder with a nonchalance she was far from feeling, and continued into the kitchen. “Now, would you please leave?”
In three strides he was across the room. Jerking her around by her arm to face him, he cornered her against the counter. His eyes blistered hers. “I want to know the answer—now.”
Tomorrow, she promised herself, she was going to buy five cartons of cigarettes. “And what will you do if I refuse to answer you—seduce me like you did the last time you showed up at my apartment?”
His voice was unnaturally soft. One hand came up to caress the angle of her jaw. “I would hardly call that seduction, my love.” She tried to avert her face, but his fingers held her jaw firmly. “That was total unconditional surrender on your part.” Her lids drooped before those penetrating eyes.
“You’ve got your history mixed up. It was the Indians who surrendered, and surrendered and surrendered.”
“And you’re forgetting Custer’s fate. Now, are you going to tell me what I want to know?”
She forced her eyes to meet his unflinchingly, forced the firmness into her voice that she would have used with one of her recalcitrant students. “Cody, whatever happened between us didn’t work out. But there’s no reason why we can’t establish some sort of friendship.”
He released her jaw then, but blocked any avenue of escape by locking his hands on the counter’s edge to either side of her waist. “Yes, there is Abbie. What’s between us is too powerful to contain in some mild-mannered friendship. It’s either everything or nothing.”
“Well, then, I choose the latter.”
“You’re not the only party involved in this relationship. And I mean for it to be the former.”
Her eyes flashed up into his. “And just how do you propose to achieve this feat?”
He lifted a brow. “Didn’t you know that Indians are relentless?”
“And has Miss Halliburton told you yet that my one vice is indomitability?”
“When two equal forces collide . . .’’He grunted. “Abbie, I’m finished bantering words around with—”
“—with someone who speaks with a forked tongue?” she asked archly.
“Damn it, Abbie.” He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers bruising her flesh. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
“No!” she gasped out.
“Don’t lie to me. I know your body as intimately as any doctor or your husband ever did. Your breasts—they’re fuller. Your complexion—you practically glow with sudden robust health.”
She pushed aside his arm. It would be fruitless to deny the pregnancy. He would find out soon enough, when she had to resor
t to maternity dresses. “Yes, I am.” She moved past him to stand in front of the vertical window next to the door and putting distance between them. “But what happened between you and me,” she continued in a toneless voice, “does not give you any right to interrogate me.”
“It does when you’re carrying my child,” he rasped out behind her.
If ever she was to escape, to be her own woman . . . Slowly she turned to face him. He watched her with the intensity of an Old West tracker. She would have to be convincing. “When? How about ‘if,’ Cody?”
The light in the room was growing dim, and his eyes glinted with the incandescence of some night creature’s. His voice, when he spoke, was measured. “I don’t like guessing games. What exactly are you implying?”
She drew a deep, fortifying breath. “Cody, I hate to damage your supreme masculine ego, but you’re not the only man I have been seeing.”
He crossed the intervening space to stand before her. His hands cupped either side of her head, at the base of her skull and pressed oh so firmly. “You may be seeing Marshall,” he said quietly, “but I would know if you have given yourself to him. And you haven’t.”
She played her last card. “That’s merely your male vanity speaking. How can you be so certain? Why else would I be going off to Las Vegas with him tomorrow for the Easter holidays?”
Chapter 10
With one of those unexpected reversals characteristic of high desert weather, winter howled back through northern Arizona. The wind blew across old Flagstaff, down past the railroad tracks and up Santa Fe Avenue, making the tum-of-the- century buildings look even more decrepit than usual, as if they huddled against each other to shield their worn facades from further aging.
College kids in snow-country clothes and cowboys in heavy sheepskin coats hunkered down by Pulliam Airport’s see-through fireplace, waiting the next plane out or in, not a regular occurrence in that airport that looked more like a ranch house headquarters, with its shingled roof and native stone facade. Every so often someone would toss a log on the fire to keep it properly glowing. A Hopi Indian sat reading a college text on the Continental Congress while his redheaded neighbor absorbed a book on Kiva art.
Abbie, dressed warmly but fashionably in riding boots and a calfskin leather skirt and jacket, plunked several coins into the vending machine and retrieved her package of cigarettes from the tray below. Her nerves were badly frazzled. The confrontation with Cody the previous day had wreaked havoc with her composure. She felt like some medieval tapestry being plundered by a raiding cossack . . . frayed and rent by his angry lance.
Oh, Cody hadn’t as much as touched her the day before, when she had announced her planned excursion with Marshall. He had simply stared at her with eyes that scorched her with their loathing, which terrified her more than his few demonstrations of frustrations ever had. Then he had coolly swung away from her and left her apartment.
As she tore off the cigarette package’s cellophane wrapper, she reminded herself that she had achieved the freedom from Cody that she had sought with relatively little problem. Or so she thought . . . until the turquoise-inlaid lighter appeared with its tongue of flame in front of the cigarette she held. Her fingers visibly trembling, she looked up into Cody’s dark eyes.
“Where’s Marshall?” he asked.
“Parking the car.” She tipped her cigarette to the flame and inhaled. Lifting her head, she let the smoke drift slowly from between her lips, then said, “I suppose it’s a coincidence that you’re here.”
“Quite.” His eyes laughed, crinkles fanning from their outer edges, but she caught the challenge reflected in their depths. He was dressed in tobacco brown corduroy slacks and a down vest of lambskin. “I’m flying out to L.A. to negotiate an art show.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that.”
He grinned and pocketed the lighter. “I would be surprised if you did—after I warned you how relentless we Indians are.”
“Why?” It was a husky whisper.
He leaned back against the airport bulletin board that was covered with notices and flight information and crossed one boot over the other. “After I left you, I started thinking more rationally. Call it male ego, if you wish, but I know you, Abbie. Better than you realize. And I know that the child you carry is mine.”
“I told you that—”
He held up a forestalling hand. “And I also know that, even if I weren’t the father of the child, I’d still want you.”
She felt like screaming right there before everyone. “Don’t you understand,” she sputtered, “that I don’t want you? I don’t want any man! Now go on back to your hogan and your hermit’s life.”
He grinned. “Sorry. I’ve already made up my mind to have you. Besides, like I told you, I have to fly out to L.A.”
“I just bet!”
“There you are,” Marshall called out. Looking extremely handsome in a white ski jacket that enhanced his suntanned face, he crossed to her. “Cody, great to see you!”
“He was just leaving,” Abbie said.
“On my way to Los Angeles,” Cody explained. Marshall sighed. “Looks like we might as well be. Sky West just informed me that there’s a layover at Page followed by a change of flights in St. George, Utah, before we ever make it to Las Vegas.”
Above the high ridges of his cheekbones Cody’s eyes glinted, and Abbie knew what was coming. “I pass right over Las Vegas, Marshall. Why don’t you let me drop you two off there?” Marshall arched a questioning brow at Abbie. “It would save us a lot of time.”
“And airfare,” Cody said. “You can invest a couple of dollars for me on the roulette table.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Marshall said.
“We . . . I can't.” Abbie looked at Marshall pleadingly. “I get a nervous stomach when I fly in light aircraft.”
“That’s no problem,” Cody said smoothly. “I keep a packet of air sickness tablets in the Cherokee’s glove compartment.”
“Great!” Marshall said.
“Great,” Abbie echoed dully.
So, Cody was flying them to Las Vegas. He wouldn’t dare invite himself along.
He would.
He did.
The plane was winging low over Hoover Dam, with her in the copilot’s seat, when he flicked a leering grin at her. He turned to Marshall in the back seat. “It just happens that I don’t have to be in L.A. until the day after tomorrow. You wouldn’t mind if I lay over here, would you, Marshall? I’d find something to do with my time while you two are . . . busy. I could take in the shows, sit in on a couple of hands of twenty- one. . . .”
“Of course not,” Marshall said. “We could even arrange to meet for dinner.”
Abbie could think of no objection to raise. Cody’s air sickness tablet was having its tranqui lizing effect on her, so she could only acquiesce to whatever the predator suggested. And predator he was. He was stalking her as the primitive Indian did the helpless deer.
No, she wasn’t completely helpless. She managed to glare at him later while Marshall withdrew their luggage from the baggage compartment at the rear of the Cherokee. “You’re taking advantage of Marshall’s friendship for you,” she accused.
His eyes made love to her lips. “I’m merely making certain I keep what’s mine.”
“I am not yours!”
Her denial had little effect on Cody. She found herself wedged between him and Marshall on the cab trip into Las Vegas, with Cody’s arm across the back of the seat, subtly staking his claim to her. She thought about explaining to Marshall just what Cody was up to, but the story wasn’t very pretty. And it could only hurt Marshall. She liked him too much for that.
They checked into the hotel, and Marshall insisted that Cody get a room on the same floor as theirs. “That way we can check in with each other,” he said congenially.
If ever Abbie had considered staging an orgy, her hotel room would have served as an excellent location. It had a royal purple velvet spread
and window curtains, plush carpeting of lavender blue and, incredibly, mirrored walls—and ceiling. She looked into the mirror and said, “You won’t get away with it, Cody Strawhand.”
It seemed that he was as obstinate and perverse as she was—and as cunning as Geronimo. He was with Marshall when they met before dinner for drinks at the hotel bar. Abbie never heard the entertainer at the piano. She was too disconcerted by the hand that stroked her knee under the table, his fingers smoothing their way up the inside of her thigh.
And, worse, she found her thighs betraying her. Through no volition of her own, her thighs parted allowing ever so slightly, his long dexterous middle finger to deliver several arousing strokes against her silk panties before deserting the hollow of her thigh’s juncture, leaving her responsive sigh near audible and her panties definitely damp.
He was with them when they visited the casino. While he and Marshall played several chummy hands of single-deck twenty-one, she desultorily dropped quarters into a one-armed bandit, unwilling to risk more of her teacher’s salary. Every so often she glanced at the two men. Cody, with the bandana about his forehead, was every inch the handsome savage and drew frequent visits from the cigarette and bar girls.
He was with them when they took a cab to another hotel to watch a famous comic’s act. In the darkened room she was squeezed into the circular booth between him and Marshall. Marshall held her hand—while Cody’s fingers idly stroked the back of her neck. For her part, she kept her legs tightly pressed together against any future foraging fingers.
He was with them when they returned to the casino, where Marshall lost at roulette and Cody won at craps. The two men drank and laughed like old war buddies, and she watched. She listened to the clicking whir of the ivory ball on the roulette wheel, the incessant ringing of the slot machines, the raucous laughter—and wondered what she was doing there.
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