Warrior's Embrace

by Peggy Webb

  “Did you have a good day, dear?”

  He loosened his tie and reached for the glass of lemonade she had waiting for him on the wicker table.

  “That’s a foolish question, Martha. It’s hotter than hell out there. How could anybody have a good time in hell?”

  I could, she wanted to reply. If only you loved me.

  She didn’t say that, of course. What good would it do? It would only stir up Mick’s temper, and she was about to stir it up anyway, so why spoil the next few minutes?

  “Glen Ellison called you about that new power plant—”

  “Solid rocket booster plant, Martha. If you’re going to tell something, get it right.” Mick set his glass down so hard, the ice rattled. “Now I guess I’ll have to spend all evening jawing with him on the damned telephone.”

  Martha’s heart came up in her throat. Kate used to laugh when she’d say that.

  “My heart’s in my throat,” she’d say.

  “That’s physically impossible, Mother,” Katie would reply, laughing.

  Oh, dear merciful Father. Her Katie.

  Martha swallowed so her heart went back down to its rightful place. She had to be brave just this once for her Katie.

  “Did you see the invitation on the hall table?” She sounded like a timid gray mouse. No wonder Mick no longer loved her.

  “What invitation?”

  She could tell by the way his face mottled that he was lying. He’d read Kate’s invitation, just as he read all her letters when he thought nobody was looking.

  Deep down, her Michael Malone was a wonderful man. Long ago, right after the boys died, and later after Katie left for medical school, Martha would plan how she would leave him. She wouldn’t take a thing except the clothes on her back and enough money to get as far as her folks in Virginia.

  She wouldn’t even take the car, but would go on the bus, being frugal. She even planned what she’d say to him in her good-bye letter.

  Dear Mick, I love you fiercely. Always have and always will. But I can’t stand to live in this lonely prison you’ve shut me up in.

  She never wrote the letter, of course, partially because she didn’t want to leave behind as her last testament a sentence ending with a dangling preposition. But mostly because she knew that deep, deep down Mick was a wonderful man.

  “It’s an invitation to the open house of her clinic in Witch Dance.” She spoke all in a rush before she could lose her courage. “I’ve planned how we can go. Matilda can water the plants when she comes to clean, and Jim can take care of your insurance clients” —Mick looked like a peach pit with his face all bunched up and turning red— “that is, if you have any scheduled ...not that I would try to run your business . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she twisted her hands together.

  Fidgeting. Knowing how Mick hated it.

  “Hellfire and damnation.” He leapt up so fast, his chair fell back against the polished Mexican tiles. “As if I didn’t have enough to do without running off to some godforsaken land to sip tea with savages.”

  He left the room so fast that the soles of his shoes left scuff marks on the tiles. Martha stared at the black marks for a while.

  Finally she got up to fetch a scrub brush and some good floor cleaner. Bent on her knees, she felt like a scrub woman ...or a suppliant at early Mass.

  She’d never wanted Mexican tiles in the first place.

  Chapter 13

  Ada, Oklahoma

  The invitation lay open on Winston’s desk.

  Not wanting to think about all the ramifications of that simple piece of paper, he surveyed his office. Some governors in the past had opted for fine furnishings and rich appointments, but Winston had surrounded himself with simple things—a plain oak desk, neither fancy nor expensive, and the most basic, functional chairs.

  Why should he sit in the lap of luxury while most of his people contented themselves with the basics? Basics were good enough for any man.

  He picked up the invitation. It was a simple printed card, not engraved, not ostentatious, nothing that would call attention to the fact that Kate Malone was Virginia blueblood on her mother’s side and the daughter of a fighting Irish senator.

  The invitation was visible evidence that she was a smart woman. But then, Winston already knew that.

  How else could she have held his eldest son enthralled for the better part of the summer?

  “The Honorable Governor and Mrs. Winston Mingo,” the card said.

  Dovie wouldn’t go, of course. He’d take the card home and show it to her, but she would ignore it as she’d chosen to ignore Eagle’s involvement with the medicine woman all summer.

  Once Winston had tried to talk to her about it, at the beginning of the summer, when the whole thing happened, when it was evident that Eagle had more on his mind than sleeping under the stars.

  “Do you remember that summer I worked on a rig off the shore of Louisiana, Dovie?”

  “I remember everything you ever did, Winston Mingo, including that business with the girl.”

  “Charlsie was her name, a lively, honeyed-talking, confection of a girl. She almost made me forget who I was. I never knew why except that there was a slow, sweet wildness in her. Do you suppose that’s what has Eagle enthralled, that Kate Malone is wild at heart?”

  “I suppose that you should feed the dog. And on your way out, water the petunias by the back door. If we don’t get some rain soon, they’re all going to die.”

  Remembering, Winston drummed his fingers on the invitation. No, Dovie would not go.

  Would he?

  He stuffed the invitation in the top drawer of his desk and walked toward the window. Halfway there, he reeled. Steadying himself on the edge of the bookshelves, he held on until his equilibrium returned.

  A little dizzy spell. Probably inner-ear trouble. Dovie kept telling him that he was going to have to see a doctor.

  There was no putting anything past Dovie. She knew everything ...except what had happened the night before. As he lay beside her in their cherry wood double bed, he heard the owl call his name.

  o0o

  Boston

  “If you go back to Witch Dance, you need not bother coming home. Ever again.”

  Melissa Sayers Colbert quivered with rage. Clayton stood at the window with his back to her, rigid. Between them, the invitation lay on the table like an accusation.

  “I won’t have it,” she continued. “Do you hear me, Clayton?”

  “I hear you, Melissa.” He didn’t even turn around.

  With her fists clenched, she wanted to scream. And then she realized she was already screaming, yelling like some common wife off the back streets of Boston. She forced herself to unclench her fists and take a moderate tone.

  “Kate Malone used you to get what she wants, and now that she has it, do you think she’s going to look twice at you?” Melissa hated the way he bowed his head, like a broken man. Where was the man she used to love, the sexy, spirited man who could do anything? The man she still loved?

  “Please, Clayton ...look at me.” He turned slowly, still hunched over in his defeat. “Am I not enough for you?”

  “Melissa ...don’t.”

  “You used to say you couldn’t get enough of me ...of this.” She ripped aside her blouse. Buttons rolled onto the Oriental rug and the sound of tearing silk rent the silence. Her fingernails scored her tender skin as she grabbed her bra. It was nothing more than a delicate bit of lace, and it tore easily.

  “For God’s sake, Melissa . . .” Clayton jerked up her torn blouse and moved to cover her.

  “Not this time, Clayton.” She shoved his hands aside. “I won’t let Kate Malone come between us this time.”

  Quickly, she knelt in front of him and opened his zipper. He was flaccid, but that didn’t deter Melissa. She knew exactly what to do, exactly what he liked.

  “Stop, Melissa ...please. You’re only humiliating us both.”

  She raked the tips of her long red fingerna
ils over his sensitive flesh. Power surged through her as he began to pulse in her hand.

  Clayton tried to regain control, but his body betrayed him. Defeated, he stood in his richly appointed study in his fancy house and looked down at the top of his wife’s head. Her mouth was warm and wet, and she made soft, catlike sounds of satisfaction.

  A half-breed at stud. Bought and paid for with Melissa’s money. Rage and semen spewed from him.

  With the easy grace of a tigress she rose to face him. Even with her lipstick smeared she was very much in control.

  “Did you think I’d let her win, Clayton?”

  She didn’t even pick up her torn clothes when she left the room. Rigid, Clayton stood in the wreckage, afraid to move lest he shatter.

  There were no sounds in the house except the ticking of a clock that had belonged to the first Sayers to set foot in New England, and even that sound was discreet, as befitted anything connected to the Sayers name.

  Without bothering to zip his pants, Clayton picked up the invitation and went to the Louis XIV desk. Sun poured through the French doors and warmed his cold skin.

  He ran his hands across the invitation. The words blurred. Witch Dance Clinic. Dr. Kate Malone.

  He closed his eyes, envisioning her bright hair and the intoxicating smell of her skin. Dr. Kate Malone, his Kate, with her future still before her.

  Still clutching the invitation, he reached into the top right hand drawer of his desk. His fingers closed around the cold steel.

  With slow deliberation he laid the gun on top of the desk.

  o0o

  Witch Dance

  “Nobody’s coming.”

  “I’m here, Kate.”

  She was standing in the doorway of the clinic, looking at the empty road. Not a speck of dust marred the horizon. With Deborah’s help she’d mailed a hundred invitations, and not a soul had come to the open house except Eagle.

  She felt his hands on her shoulders. Gently but firmly he turned her around.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “A flower garden, thanks to you.”

  He had brought dozens of flowers, roses of every color and even white ginger, shipped from Hawaii. It was the closest thing to jasmine he could find, he’d said, knowing her love for the waxy, fragrant flower of the Deep South. Her mother had sent flowers too—purple violets with yellow throats—and had signed both their names, Mick and Martha. Dr. Colbert sent orchids, and Deborah had come early, while her father was still asleep, and brought a bouquet of Indian paintbrush she’d picked on the hillside. It was in a prominent place in the reception room.

  A reception room without a receptionist. A clinic without patients. If she let herself, Kate could go into a blue funk.

  “What else do you see?”

  “Ice cream melting in paper cups I went all the way to Ada for, and cookies I burned with my own two hands in the oven from hell.”

  “Kate ...Kate ...what am I going to do with you?” Laughing, he hugged her hard. “You have a building you never thought would be finished, the most up-to- date equipment money can buy, a fine medical degree, and more grit than a grizzly bear. Eventually people will come to you for healing, Kate. Trust me.”

  “Oh, God, Eagle.” She wrapped her arms around his chest and was suddenly bawling like a newborn baby. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had ...the only friend I have besides Deborah.”

  He held her close, rocking her in the cradle of his arms. His beautiful, passionate Kate. The woman his people shunned.

  Didn’t they know? Couldn’t they see? Kate’s clinic was the kind of progress needed in Witch Dance. Eagle believed in preserving the culture of his people, believed passionately, but he also understood that the little village would eventually die if it refused to move forward at all.

  He smoothed her hair from her forehead and dried her tears with the tips of his fingers. His skin absorbed her tears, and he felt them in his own heart.

  “They will come to accept you in time, Kate.”

  “How can you say that? After all they’ve done?”

  “Good. Your spunk is back. Fight, Dr. Kate Malone. Fight for what you believe in.”

  “Is that what you do? Fight for what you believe in?” He tightened his hold while his silence screamed through the room. Kate pushed back the fear that threatened to defeat her. “I believe in you, Eagle Mingo, in the courage and wisdom of the man who defied his own people to help me build this clinic, in the essential goodness of the man who helped Deborah Lightfoot and her father face Hal’s disappearance.” She cupped her face and drew it close. “And I believe in us ...in you and me together ...on your blanket under the stars....”

  As he drew her hips into his, he wondered if there would ever be a time when Kate Malone would not bewitch him.

  “How about on your examining table in your clinic, Dr. Malone? Don’t you think it deserves a proper christening?”

  “Eagle.” With her hands tangled in his hair and her lips inches from his, she breathed his name.

  Already they were flying.

  o0o

  Winston Mingo saw them through the window, his son with the white medicine woman. The fears he’d held at bay all summer came crashing around him. There was no mistaking that look.

  Dr. Kate Malone was more to Eagle than a passing fancy, more than a summer affair. If he told Dovie, it would break her heart. And Cole . . .

  Now Winston understood his son’s concern, his anger. With trembling hands he opened the door and went inside. Without knocking. It was an open house, wasn’t it?

  The bells over the door tinkled, and Kate and his son moved apart. Without hurry. Without guilt.

  Somehow that made Winston proud.

  “I’m glad you came,” Eagle told him. “Kate, this is my father, Winston Mingo.”

  “Governor, you honor me.”

  “Just Winston.” Dovie would kill him. He might not tell her. “You have a fine clinic here, Dr. Malone.”

  “Just Kate, please.” She smiled at him.

  Kate Malone had everything his son admired—grace, courage, intelligence. And she was the most beautiful woman Winston had ever seen. Dovie would flail him alive for that, too.

  “Would you like a tour of the clinic?” she asked.

  She showed him the modern equipment and talked enthusiastically about the need for accessible health care in Witch Dance.

  “Will you stay with us, Kate?” he asked.

  “Do you mean, am I committed or am I just passing through?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eagle asked me that the day we met.” Winston didn’t miss the look that passed between them. “Yes, Governor, I’m here to stay.”

  Seeing the proud tilt of her head and the stubborn set of her chin, Winston never doubted for a minute that she would keep her word. A man could do worse than have grandchildren from such a woman.

  Winston stayed for punch and cookies. And in that time, not a single person came through the door. He thought of the old medicine man who shook his gourds and waved his turkey feathers over the sick. He thought of all his people who had died because they refused to travel to Ada to the modern facilities there.

  Eagle was right: There should be a way to blend the old ways with the new. When Winston took his leave, he had a new mission in mind, one he would carry through as quickly as possible ...if he were not weighed on the path and found light.

  o0o

  The clinic bell was still ringing from Winston’s exit when Eagle locked the door.

  “Closed for the day,” he said, reaching for Kate.

  The sweet madness overtook them, and they reeled against the walls and rolled on the floor. Eagle’s voice lifted and soared with the dark beauty of his native tongue. Impaled by him, impaled and dying the bright, exquisite death of passion, Kate knew that she would never hear his voice without wanting him.

  “You will come to me tonight,” he said even as they still lay tangled together.

  “Yo
u could stay with me.” Forever, she thought, pulling his face down to her aching breasts.

  “The nights will soon be too cool to sleep under the stars.”

  “Will we sleep?” she said, laughing.

  “Only if you wish.”

  He began to move in her once more, and she knew that she would go to him, galloping through the night on Mahli, flying to him on the wind.

  o0o

  The first thing Kate heard when she returned from Eagle’s campsite was the sound of the phone, ringing and ringing in the cold half-light of early morning. She drew Mahli to a halt, dismounted, and patted her neck.

  “Wait here, old girl.”

  There was no need to tie the mare. Eagle had trained her well.

  Kate took the steps at a run, the sound of the telephone setting her nerves jangling.

  “Hello,” she said, breathless. She placed her hand over her pounding heart.

  The woman at the other end of the line was crying. “Kate, you have to come to Boston. Something terrible has happened. Clayton . . .”

  The line went dead. Kate jiggled the receiver.

  “What? Who is this?”

  Her only answer was silence.

  Chapter 14

  “Don’t expect too much, Kate.”

  Exhausted from her long flight across the country, Kate stood in the hospital corridor and listened to Dr. Wayne Epsmith’s report on Dr. Clayton Colbert.

  “The bullet went in close to the heart. We’ve done what we can to repair the damage, but . . .” Wayne Epsmith shook his head.

  “Is he going to die?”

  “With this kind of damage, the odds are not in his favor, Kate. You know that.”

  As a doctor, she did. As Clayton Colbert’s friend, she didn’t want to know. She wanted to sit by his bedside and hold his slack hand and watch the machines do his breathing and hope that tomorrow everything would be better.

  She wanted to believe in miracles.

  “I’m sorry, Kate.” Dr. Epsmith put his hand on Kate’s shoulder. “I know how much Clayton meant to you.”