by Diana Palmer
She yanked the ties off the ends of his braids and unwound them, burying her fingers in the wild mass of his hair. Ah, yes. The lady had a thing about his long hair. He found her arms with his hands and followed them to her wrists, which he anchored on either side of her head. She huffed in indignation and, he thought, frustration.
Smiling to himself, he knelt beside her and shook his hair down over the top of his head. Then he swept it back and forth, swirling it across her breasts and waist, changed direction, catching her hips and thighs with the next flick of his neck. He rolled her onto her stomach and brushed it over her back and bottom and legs.
She rolled away from him, sat up and, with a mock-ferocious glare, shook her finger at him. “Enough already. Stop it.”
He flipped his hair back out of his eyes and gave her a wicked grin. “Come on, you don’t really mean that.”
“Well, no,” she admitted, her tone tinged with exasperation. “But I’m sick and tired of being the only naked person in this room. Now, either you strip, or it’s all over.”
Sensing there was more behind her request than a desire for shared nudity, he sat back on his heels and studied her for a moment. “I was only trying to give you pleasure.”
“You did. You’re a wonderful lover.”
“Then I don’t understand what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that I like to give pleasure, as well as receive it. You’ve hardly let me touch you. For heaven’s sake, you’ve still got your boots on.”
“I was plannin’ to take ’em off before—”
She cut him off with one word. “Now.”
“But—”
“Now. I mean it. Strip, or I’m outta here.”
He scrambled backward off the bed. In an attempt to lighten the atmosphere, he held his hands out at his sides and said, “What? Don’t I even get any music?”
Her lips twitched, but she yanked a pillow in front of her breasts, quickly repressing the smile. “Now.”
Gripping the front plackets of his shirt, he popped open the snaps with one quick yank and tossed the shirt onto the floor. Then he unbuckled his belt, unzipped his jeans, sat on the edge of the bed and yanked off his boots and socks. Standing again, he shucked off his jeans and shorts and kicked them aside.
Approaching the bed again, he said, “Okay, I’m naked. Are you happy now?”
“I would be, if you weren’t glaring at me like that. This isn’t like you at all, Jackson. What’s going on?”
“I thought I was doing something really special for you.” He sat down beside her and tugged the other pillow over his lap. “But somehow, the mood seems to have gone somewhere else.”
“Jackson.” She took his hand and folded her palms around it. “I’m sorry if I spoiled your fun, but what was happening didn’t feel right to me. It felt like you were…I don’t know, using sex as a weapon. Like you were punishing me for not wanting to talk before.”
“Aw, Maggie, that’s not what I was tryin’ to do at all.”
“Well, what were you trying to do?”
There was no other human being on the planet who could have dragged this admission out of him, but for Maggie, he would try to explain. “When you get your hot little hands all over me, sometimes I forget I’m supposed to hold back, and…well, hell, I just plain go nuts. So I thought if I left my clothes on, maybe I could make it last longer, and really satisfy you.” He looked down at the pillow on his lap. “And…I wanted to give myself a special memory of you. In case you decide to go back to Washington.”
He felt her fingers under his chin, but he didn’t want to look at her if she was mad at him again. Or, worse yet, if she felt sorry for him because of what he’d admitted. Her fingers tugged harder. When he finally raised his head, she got right in his face, and her eyes were all misty, as if she might burst into tears.
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me, Jackson. But, as for satisfying me, believe me when I tell you I have no complaints whatsoever. Haven’t you noticed when you get your hot little hands on me, I just plain go nuts, too?”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t ever want to disappoint you.”
“Disappoint me? You crazy man! Half of my pleasure is seeing your pleasure. When you go nuts like that, I feel like the sexiest woman alive.”
“You are the sexiest woman alive.”
She tossed her pillow aside and looped her arms around his neck. “Is that so?”
He tossed his pillow aside and leaned forward, gently tipping her onto her back. “Damn straight it is.”
Ah, God, there was that gorgeous smile of hers, the one that never failed to make his heart beat a little faster. He dipped his head and kissed her inviting lips.
She nibbled down the side of his neck, raising goose bumps with each soft nip of her teeth. “Do you think the mood might come back anytime soon?”
“I think it’s back already. How ’bout you?”
She narrowed her eyes in a thoughtful pose. “I think it might be possible.”
“What do you s’pose it would take to be sure, honey?”
Her eyes glinting with mischief, she spread-eagled herself on the bed. “That thing you did with your hair was quite a turn-on. Why don’t you start there, and we’ll see what happens?”
Jackson threw back his head and laughed. Then he swirled his hair over her again and did everything else he’d done before. But this time she was with him, matching touch for touch, kiss for kiss, stroke for stroke. It was better than ever before, and they both went totally, joyously nuts at the same moment.
Holding her in his arms when the storm had ended, he realized it wasn’t the particular sexual acts or how long they lasted that made a memory special. It was this feeling of oneness, of wholeness and complete acceptance, that came afterward. He kissed her brow and caressed her back, and silently promised her they would always have this together.
If only she would stay.
But she was like a wild bird. The harder he tried to cage her, the harder she would struggle to fly away from him. Which left him with nothing to do but hope, and pray, and wait.
God, how he hated waiting.
Thirteen
On Monday morning, Maggie entered the final revisions on her laptop, copied the report onto a diskette, then drove to the Indian school and printed a copy on the laser printer her father had donated. She proofread it one last time. Confident she had caught as many typos as possible, she made another copy for her own files and one for Frank’s, tossed them in the back seat of her car and headed for Whitehorn.
Traffic was light, allowing her to relax and enjoy the sunshine and Montana’s big blue sky overhead. She’d been so wrapped up in her work and Jackson lately, she’d barely noticed the passage of time. But it was already the twenty-fifth of April. The calves in the pastures were much larger than when she had arrived.
Thank heaven the report was finally finished. She could have mailed it from the reservation’s post office, but she needed some time alone to take stock of her feelings for Jackson. And since she hadn’t left the res for several weeks, she also felt a need to reconnect with the outside world.
As Sara had pointed out, she had agreed to give up her Indian heritage without understanding the extent of the sacrifice her mother had asked her to make. She didn’t intend to make that mistake a second time. For Jackson’s sake, as well as her own, she had to be absolutely certain of the decision now facing her.
The usual assortment of cars and trucks lined the streets of Whitehorn’s business district when Maggie arrived. She stopped at a traffic light, thinking the little town looked familiar and oddly strange at the same time, almost like alien territory. Goodness, had she been out on the res that long?
An ambulance roared by, lights flashing and siren blaring. She watched it pass, feeling a moment’s sympathy for whoever needed emergency medical aid on such a beautiful day. Then she drove on to the post office and mailed her report, enjoying a deep sense of accomplis
hment.
If Mr. Baldwin used half of the information she had provided, and Congress enacted half of the recommendations she had drafted, life at the Laughing Horse Reservation, and perhaps on other reservations, as well, would change for the better. Her people would have better medical facilities, better educational and job-training opportunities, and a solid foot up on the ladder of economic independence. And she, little Maggie Schaeffer, would have been instrumental in laying the foundation for all of it.
The thought brought with it a heady sense of power and pride. This was legislation with implications for the entire nation, and only a job such as the one she had in Washington could put her in a position to wield the behind-the-scenes influence she now enjoyed. If she gave it all up in order to be with Jackson and work for the tribe, she would still have opportunities for achievement, but on a much smaller scale.
Would she be satisfied with that? Or would she eventually resent both Jackson and the tribe for her loss of power and prestige? Could she willingly subordinate her own, perhaps selfish, interests for the good of the tribe, as so many others had done on Saturday afternoon?
On the other hand, the power and influence her present job afforded her was secondhand at best. All she really did was provide information in a concise, coherent manner. The elected officials were the ones who actually voted on the issues, and she had virtually no control over their final decisions.
Seen in that light, the alleged glamour of her career faded abruptly. Was she willing to give up the only man she had ever loved for it? Or the dreams she had started to have of the children they would raise together? The new friends and relatives she had also come to love? Give up all of that for a job of questionable influence and a lonely apartment in a crime-ridden city?
With those questions echoing in her mind, Maggie went back to her car and slowly cruised the streets. The contrast between these smug, well-kept homes and prosperous businesses and the unrelenting poverty at the reservation offended her. Compared to Whitehorn, the res looked like a Third World country. Granted, many of her people would never choose to live as the white society did, but the differences didn’t have to be so vast.
Driving past the high school, she remembered the day Wanda and Nina had told her they weren’t allowed to check out library books. She passed the school district’s administration building, and felt a fierce surge of satisfaction at the memory of her confrontation with Edward Reese.
She thought of the many pitiful stories she had heard of people who had surrendered to despair, but she also recalled the ones who had not—the ones who fought in the trenches for social change every single day.
Jackson and Frank, who worked side by side, up to their ears in legal documents and law books, demanding the return of the tribe’s land.
Sweet old Earnest Running Bull, who had lost a wife and three children to the ravages of alcohol and drug abuse, and ran the rehab center so that others wouldn’t lose their loved ones.
Sara Lewis, who was the artifacts curater at the Native American Museum in Whitehorn and then helped out at the school with the younger children and even at the clinic at the reservation.
Dr. Kane Hunter, who devoted a large share of his time and energy and passed up untold extra income he could have earned in Whitehorn, while he treated sick and hurt tribal members with modern medicine and still managed to respect his patients’ traditional beliefs.
The elders, including her own grandmother, who drove over ungodly roads in rattletrap vehicles to pass on beautiful Cheyenne stories and songs to the tykes at the day-care center, maintaining an oral tradition centuries old. The ones who taught the traditional dances to the children.
These people were heroes. All of them. Without their efforts, Laughing Horse would be a miserable, hellish place, with no hope at all.
Maggie pulled into the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant, shut off the car’s engine and remembered the traditional Cheyenne saying Sara had stitched in needlepoint and framed on her living room wall. It said:
A Nation is not conquered
Until the hearts of its women
Are on the ground.
Then it is done, no matter
How brave its warriors
Nor how strong its weapons.
Those few short lines had embedded themselves in her memory at first reading. Maggie had thought of them often, but they had never struck her more powerfully than they did at this moment.
Her mother had left Laughing Horse with her heart on the ground. She had run away from the hurt and shame inflicted on her because she belonged to a conquered nation. She had sacrificed everything and fought with all her determination to shield her only child from ever knowing that hurt and shame.
Maggie was grateful for the opportunities she had been given as a result of her mother’s sacrifice. She admired her mother for having had such strength and courage.
But she also admired the strength and courage of the unsung heroes and heroines who had stayed on the res, struggled for justice and insisted the Northern Cheyenne could rise above their status as a conquered nation. Despite incredible odds, their hearts were not on the ground, and they never would be.
Margaret Speaks Softly Schaeffer could make a significant contribution to their struggle. These people were her people, their fight was her fight. Her background and education gave her a unique perspective and unique skills to build bridges between the res and the white world, instead of walls. She desperately wanted to do so.
The question was, could she do it without feeling she had betrayed her mother’s dying request?
Maggie was ninety-nine-percent certain she’d already made her decision, but there was one person she wanted to talk to before sharing it with Jackson. Spotting a phone booth on the other side of the parking lot, she got out of her car and hurried across the pavement. Using her credit card, she placed the call, smiling when she heard her father’s voice.
“Maggie, I was just thinking about you,” he said.
“That’s probably because I’ve been thinking about you,” she replied. “I need some advice, Daddy.”
“Uh-oh, there’s that daddy word again. What’s up?”
And there, in a grungy phone booth in the middle of a funky little Montana cow town, Maggie poured out her heart. Her father was silent for a moment after she’d finished.
Then he said, “What happened to your mother happened a long time ago, honey. Nothing you do or don’t do can change it. If I were you, I think I’d try to respect the intent behind the promise Bev demanded of you, and not worry so much about the actual words.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” she said.
“All she ever really wanted was for you to be safe and happy. If you feel safe and happy with this Jackson Hawk fellow, well, I don’t see why your mother would object. Even if she would, it’s your life, Maggie.”
“Thanks, Daddy. That’s what I needed to hear.”
“When do I get to meet this guy? Maybe I should fly up there tomorrow and check him out.”
Maggie laughed. “Give me a little more time than that. We still have some things to work out.”
“You really love him, huh?”
“Oh, yes, Daddy. Almost as much as I love you.”
“Aw, you’re just saying that to protect my ego.”
“Nope. It’s a different kind of love, that’s all. I’ll always be your little girl.”
“Good. Now, you’d better find Jackson and start working out those things you mentioned. And don’t forget to keep me informed of your progress.”
Feeling as if an elephant had been lifted from her shoulders, Maggie bought a burger and a soda in the restaurant, then stopped at the congressman’s office to use the WATS line to call Washington. The second she stepped through the door, Bonnie Jenkins, the executive secretary who ran the operation, heaved a melodramatic sigh of relief.
Bonnie was a heavyset woman in her mid-forties. She wore her fading red hair in a curly do that always l
ooked a little frazzled. She had run the congressman’s Whitehorn office for fifteen years. Though extremely efficient, she was a friendly soul, and Maggie had enjoyed getting acquainted with her.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re here. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning,” Bonnie said.
“Why? Is something wrong?” Maggie asked.
“Haven’t you heard the news?” Bonnie rushed on before Maggie could even shake her head. “Jeremiah Kincaid died today. Mr. Baldwin can’t get away from Washington for the funeral, and he wants you to act as his personal representative.”
“I was planning to ask for two weeks of vacation,” Maggie said, grimacing at the thought of doing funeral duty instead of being with Jackson.
“You can probably take it after the funeral,” Bonnie said. “Oh, please do this, Maggie. There’s a family visitation thing tomorrow at the mortuary, and you already know Mary Jo Kincaid better than I do. Mr. Baldwin asked for you specifically. You’re supposed to call him right away.”
“I will, but what happened to Mr. Kincaid?”
Bonnie’s voice dropped to a confidential murmur, as if she feared being overheard. Maggie glanced toward the inner office the congressman used when he was in town, but didn’t see anyone.
“Well, they say he fell in the shower, hit his head, and then drowned in the bathwater,” Bonnie said.
“But you don’t believe that?” Maggie asked.
“Oh, I suppose I do. He was getting on in years, and sometimes, he was a little absentminded. But you know, it just doesn’t seem like Jeremiah to be so careless. He was always such a powerful man around these parts, it’s not going to be the same without him.”
“What about his son?” Maggie said. “Won’t he take over?”
“Dugin?” Bonnie rolled her eyes, then let out a derisive laugh. “He’s not half the man Jeremiah was. Back when we were in high school, he was nothing but a spoiled-rotten rich kid, and he hasn’t improved one bit with age. Please, say you’ll do it, Maggie. You don’t know Dugin well enough to hate him, but I’d have to bite my tongue bloody to be nice to him for five seconds.”