Hidden in a Heartbeat (A Place Called Home, Book 3)

by Patricia McLinn

  They found him in his office, catching up on paperwork. He was friendly and open. Antonia was cool and distant. He explained the historic background of the old fort. She indicated an outpost on a latter-day frontier could hardly be interesting to someone who sat on the boards of museums dedicated to the founding of the country.

  As Rebecca steered slowly down the gravel road from the site, trying to avoid the worse pits and dips, she glanced at her passenger. Antonia sat upright, her low-grade expression of distaste upgrading to a grimace with each jounce. Rebecca had insisted on driving to avoid Banks. Now that didn’t seem such a good idea.

  Rebecca had been waiting for the right time to share Marti’s discoveries. Antonia wouldn’t understand why Rebecca cared – the Dahlgrens were enough for anyone of sense. But at least, Rebecca had hoped, she would accept it. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  * * * *

  Luke had driven past Helen Solsong’s house twice. Once on the way to his meal of crow with Fran Sinclair, and once afterward.

  No sign of Rebecca’s car either time, only a luxury rental that hadn’t been rented long enough to pick up much Wyoming dust.

  He should give it up. He’d thought he’d do this one thing for Rebecca, try to ease things some while still making it clear last night was a mistake. At least for her.

  He’d reached the stop sign when he saw Rebecca’s car coming from the right, ready to turn into Canyon Street. An older woman sat in the passenger seat. With the cars abreast, his eyes met Rebecca’s, hers widening to surprise with just enough of something else to make him turn the truck and follow her back to Helen’s.

  Rebecca went around to the passenger door to open it. Either her passenger was feeble or expected service. One look at the upright carriage and tight mouth of the woman who was easily pushing seventy, and he opted for choice number two – Grandma Dahlgren expected service.

  “Grandmother, this is Luke Chandler. He’s – “ He saw caution chase confusion across her eyes. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t know how he’d describe her, either. “ – the foreman of the Far Hills Ranch, where I’m working on the computer system. Luke, this is my grandmother, Antonia Dahlgren.”

  He cupped the front of his hat in his palm and tipped it all the way off his head with a polite, “Ma’am.” He resettled the hat with the brim higher than usual and met Antonia Dahlgren eye to eye.

  “Grandmother surprised me with a visit. She flew into Sheridan last night – ” She glanced at him, then away. Last night surged through him like a mountain stream in spring’s first burst. Fast, powerful, unexpected. “We’ve had a full day seeing the area and Grandmother’s eager to get back to Sheridan. It’s been a long day.”

  She sounded the way she had when she’d arrived. Stilted, careful, picking her words. She’d been reminded of her world, and slid right back into it.

  “Hope you enjoyed the day, Ma’am.” He heard himself saying. “You should be proud of your granddaughter. Rebecca’s been working real hard at the historic site.”

  “It hardly deserves to be called historic,” Antonia Dahlgren said. “Our family had been here several centuries before those newcomers began to move across this wasteland.”

  Luke said nothing. He could have said plenty, the mildest being that only a witch would dismiss her granddaughter’s hard work. His silence seemed to make Rebecca even more uneasy. Before she could step in, though, her grandmother spoke again, having clearly read his silence for lack of understanding.

  “The Dahlgrens,” she explained, “were among the earliest settlers in this country. An important force in politics and culture and commerce long before that fort was begun.”

  “Settlers?” Luke repeated. “You mean those late-comer Europeans? Because the other side of Rebecca’s family tree probably has you beat by a thousand years.”

  So much for holding his tongue.

  Rebecca flushed, a surge up her neck and across her cheeks. It offset the tired paleness of her skin.

  “I hadn’t had a chance to tell you yet, Grandmother,” she started without looking at her relative. “I happened across some material that sparked my professional curiosity, and I found a possible connection here to my father’s family.”

  The lies were interesting. But not nearly as riveting as the sight of Antonia Dahlgren going as pale as Rebecca had gone red. But she wasn’t going to say anything in answer to Rebecca’s announcement. Leastwise not in front of him. And Rebecca seemed to have said her fill. That left him.

  “That’s why I stopped by, Rebecca.”

  “Oh?” she said brightly, but without making eye contact.

  “A man I know’s over at the cafe. He’s Crow. He’s willing to talk to you if you want.”

  “Really?” One word, and the stiff surface fell away. “Oh, Luke, yes, I’d love to. I was hoping ... but so quickly! When?”

  “Tom’s there now. I could drive you.”

  “I suggest,” started Antonia, with no hint of suggestion about it, “you give this matter consideration, Rebecca. You are rushing headlong into another of your enthusiasms.”

  “I’m simply gaining information. I am not committing myself.”

  “It is too late for you to meet strange men. I do not share your impetuous optimism. This is foolhardy.”

  “I am not being impetuous.” She spoke without heat, but he could practically see the starch seeping back into her.

  Antonia’s facial muscles tightened. Luke suspected she wasn’t used to Rebecca contradicting her. But maybe Rebecca hadn’t ever wanted something as much as she wanted this.

  “I’m going to see this man, Grandmother.” Her voice was strong, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning.”

  She kissed the air near the woman’s cheek, then headed for his truck. He tugged his hat, murmured a “Ma’am,” and followed.

  * * * *

  As she hesitated inside the door of the cafe, she felt a directing hand at the base of her back. A fleeting, would-be impersonal touch. Except it couldn’t be impersonal. Not after the way she’d felt that hand last night at the same spot on her bare skin.

  She barely heard Luke ask Nan to bring three pieces of pie and she almost missed his nod to a dark-haired man seated at the counter as he guided her to a booth in back. She slid into the booth, and Luke followed, his side brushing against hers. She was still fighting her response, when the dark-haired man slid into the seat opposite.

  Tom Brackel nodded across the table as Luke performed the introductions, ending, “Rebecca’s got some questions for you, Tom.”

  “If you don’t mind,” she added.

  “Go ahead,” Tom offered.

  “Because of my work at Fort Big Horn, I’ve been reading for background on the tribes – especially Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne.”

  “Some books are good. Some make us laugh.”

  “Oh.” She wished she knew which was which, but she focused more narrowly. “I don’t know if Luke told you ... I have information that the man who was my father was three-quarters Crow. but I read membership in the tribe is from the mother?”

  “Yeah. But if you’ve got other relatives enrolled in the tribe, say the mother of your father, they can enroll you.“

  “If he had relatives, they might be on the reservation?”

  “Maybe. Crow Agency is just up I-25. You could check.”

  The waitress brought the pie then. The conversation shifted to some mutual acquaintance of Luke and Tom’s, then slid toward their days working together on a Montana ranch. After a while, she realized Luke was steering it back to Tom’s younger day. This time his friend told a little more about being Crow.

  “To enroll in the tribe,” Tom went on, “you’d go before the enrollment committee, to see if they’ll accept you. You have to be at least a quarter Crow. Sounds like you’ve got the blood.”

  “Would the committee teach me about the history and the customs and the life.”

  “No. Maybe some of your father’s clan would. Or the community college �
�� Little Big Horn Community College – has classes on things like that, Crow language, too. You know Crow’s mostly used on the reservation?” He waited for her to shake her head. “Most folks speak English, too. We get used to shifting from one to the other. Hardly think about it. You won’t need a translator or anything when you come to the reservation.”

  She leaned forward. “When could I come to the reservation?”

  “You could drive up any time, but if you want me to try to find some of your father’s clan ...?”

  “Do you think you could?”

  “Maybe.” He sketched a shrug. Then his eyes went to Luke. “I can try. I’ll call.”

  “Thank you, Tom.” Rebecca blinked fast against sudden tears.

  “We’d best get going,” Luke said smoothly. “Long day.”

  Rebecca wondered if he meant the carryover from last night, or her day with her grandmother. She didn’t want to think about that too closely as they went out to the truck.

  “Didn’t he approve of me?” She’d teethed on disapproval, knew its shades and moods. But she’d been left unsure if that was what she’d sensed from Tom. “He hesitated each time before he spoke. I wondered if...” If Luke had twisted his friend’s arm into coming to talk to her.

  “That’s his way. A lot of Indians I’ve known do that. Tom’s grandmother says silence is as much a part of conversation as words.” He glanced toward her. “She’s the only other person I’ve ever heard use that phrase My heart fell to the ground. She’s Crow, too.”

  Had she inherited the phrase from her Crow ancestors, along with her dark hair and eyes? A phrase her mother had heard, adopted and unknowingly taught her daughter.

  He pulled to a stop in front of Helen’s house, which no longer sported a rental car in the driveway. He didn’t turn off the engine.

  “You, uh, could come up for coffee if you’d like.”

  “Better not. Gotta pick up Em at Kendra’s.”

  “Good night, then.” She opened the truck door, then looked over her shoulder. “With Grandmother here, I probably won’t get to Far Hills for a few days.”

  He nodded.

  “But if something comes up, if you need me ... I mean to help with Emily or ... anything, just call. And, Luke,” she added quickly, before he could say he couldn’t envision needing her, “thank you. Thank you so much for arranging for me to talk to Tom. And for coming with.”

  “No problem.”

  * * * *

  Luke couldn’t remember another time he’d been glad to hear the phone ring. Most often it meant something more that needed doing around the ranch or, worse, an intrusion on his privacy. This Thursday evening it interrupted what he’d been doing too damned much of – thinking.

  The four days since dropping Rebecca off at her apartment had been hell. He hadn’t seen her or heard from her. He’d heard of her – more than he’d wanted to. Especially the rumor that Rebecca planned to go back to Delaware “for a while.”

  His usual therapy of working himself into a stupor hadn’t been available because of watching Emily. Added to that, the girl had asked when Rebecca was coming back about fifty times a day.

  He’d been more than happy to say yes when Ellyn offered to take Em for the night and run her into town in the morning for her return to the babysitting co-op – everyone thought it best if he was not on hand for that event. Trouble was, that left him alone with his thoughts, and they were crappy company.

  “Hello.”

  “Luke, it’s Ellyn. We, uh... I thought you should know...”

  “What? Something wrong?”

  “It’s just ... When we drove back just now from picking up Emily, I saw Rebecca’s car parked where the road curves to Dry Creek. She’s not in it. I would have checked more, but with it getting dark and having the kids ...”

  He was pulling his jacket on while he juggled the phone. “I’ll go.”

  “Good, good. And Luke, if you need something, if there’s anything we can do, you will call, won’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  * * * *

  “What are you doing, Rebecca?”

  She hadn’t heard Luke coming, yet she wasn’t startled. Did that mean she’d expected him at some level? Or that her instinct for self-preservation was too preoccupied with other matters to notice a man approaching her in the dark in the middle of nowhere?

  “Thinking.”

  “You couldn’t think somewhere more civilized?”

  A tip of his head indicated her suit. She’d peeled off her nylons and traded her pumps for flats before walking out here, but the skirt would never be the same after sitting on the ground.

  She gave a wry nod toward the stars emerging as twilight faded. “The thinking light’s better here.”

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “It’s your ranch.” He sat beside her on the bank of the empty creek bed, not quite touching, but close enough for her to pick up his heat. “I was trying to find the creek where we had the campfire. They say water’s good for helping you think things through, and I liked that creek, with the rocks and everything. But this is where I ended up. Where did I end up, Luke?”

  “Dry Creek.”

  She snorted. “Figures. So much for my wilderness skills.”

  “What happened, Rebecca?”

  She didn’t answer right away, though she knew she would. Apparently he knew it, too, because he let the silence ripen.

  “I was in Sheridan. I showed Grandmother the papers Marti found – the ones about me, about my father’s family. I didn’t expect her to be interested, but it was worse than that.”

  All this nonsense about your father’s family. You don’t know these people. They’re not like us.

  No, I don’t know these people, Grandmother. Perhaps when I do, I won’t choose to have any more to do with them. Until I do know them, I can’t make that choice.

  Rebecca, it would be foolish of you to pursue this. As a Dahlgren –

  But I’m not a Dahlgren. At least I wasn’t born a Dahlgren. Not according to this birth certificate.

  “I ... I couldn’t believe what I said to my grandmother. I’d never spoken to her like that. I think – ” Her attempt at a chuckle sounded odd. “ – I expected the earth to open up and swallow me.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “No, it didn’t. I was so ... I just don’t understand how she could have not told me. All these years and she never told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “My parents were married, and she knew it. The marriage was annulled. I don’t know what went wrong, but they did love each other enough to get married. Maybe –”

  “You can drive yourself nuts with maybes.”

  “That’s just it, Luke. I didn’t have to have all these maybes. Mother died before I was old enough to ask, but if I could have found Clark Pryor, I could have asked him. Grandmother admitted she knew who he was and where he was all that time. I can understand when I was a child, but later? If she’d told me when I was twenty-one, I’d have had a year, maybe two to know him, to ask... Now I’ll never know. The two biggest things in my life – being illegitimate and not knowing who my father was – and my grandmother had the information, and never gave it to me. She would never have told me – never – if it hadn’t been for Marti.”

  “Your grandmother was probably doing what she thought was best for you.”

  She shook her head. “What she thought was best for the Dahlgren name.”

  She’d said it. The thought she’d never even let form in her brain before. She’d said it, and lightning hadn’t struck.

  “So you came out here to think about that?”

  “I didn’t want to go back to my apartment. Helen probably has listening devices planted for thinking.” He didn’t crack a smile at her sorry joke. “I drove around,” she shrugged, not wanting to admit how strongly she’d been drawn to this land, how she’d resisted, until she couldn’t resist any longer, “and I ended up here.”

 
“You could have come to me instead of sitting in a pasture.”

  “I didn’t want to bother you.”

  “Rebecca, you’ve bothered me – ” He stopped, reached down to scoop up a handful of rocky earth from the bank, then started again, the drawl thickened with self-mockery. “I don’t take women to bed every time they show up at my doorstep wanting to talk. You’d probably have been safe.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.” The words were out before she could think to stop them. With her gaze pinned on his hand, she plunged on. “I didn’t want to show up on your doorstep in tears again. If we ended up making love, I’d feel like a charity case, and you’d regret it the next morning. And if we didn’t, I’d feel even worse.”

  He threw the dirt down, verbally sent regret to eternal damnation, stood, and with less fuss than she could have believed drew her up next to him.

  “C’mon.”

  “Luke!” she protested as he started her toward the road.

  He spun back, his face intense. “You don’t say something like that if you don’t mean it, Rebecca.”

  “I mean it, but – ”

  “You are no charity case. Never will be. I’ve wanted you in my bed from the minute you stepped out of that car the first day, one long leg at a time under that stupid skirt. If you want to talk, we’ll talk. But if you want to be in my bed, I’m not wasting any more time here.”

  * * * *

  Rebecca had some time for second thoughts as he hurried her back to her car. She certainly had time for second thoughts as she followed his pickup to his house. But the second thoughts didn’t hit until he held the door open and she had to decide which direction to take.

  Living room to talk? Or bedroom to ... not talk?

  She stopped dead by the back of the couch.

  He dropped his jacket and hat on a chair by the door, never taking his eyes off her, then came to stand just in front of her. She leaned back for the couch’s support.