by Lois Greiman
Hunter rose to his feet, eyes haunted, big hands clenched.
Beside him, Sydney smiled. “I didn’t even think it was possible,” she said, and shook her head.
Lily blinked her marble-round eyes. It was late now and she wobbled a little as she squeezed Vura’s index finger in one tight fist.
“But you’re cuter than ever.” Sydney narrowed her eyes as if trying to decipher the ways of the world. “If I had known that getting bit by a horse makes you prettier, I would have tried it years ago.”
Lily wrinkled her garden-fairy nose. “I don’t want to be pretty.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Sydney said.
“I wanna be tough,” Lily said and, dropping her mother’s hand, crossed the floor to Hunter. He lifted her in his arms as if she were as fragile as a dove’s egg. “Like Hunk.”
Hunter, Vura noticed, looked rather suspiciously as if he might burst into tears like a spanked toddler, but if Lily was aware of that fact, she didn’t make mention. Perhaps the child was a bit more diplomatic than her mother.
Lily’s face contorted. “Truth is …” The words were a whisper, meant for Hunter alone. “I was kinda scared.”
His arms tightened around her, and his jaw clenched as she settled her earnest gaze on his.
“Can I still be a warrior, anyways?”
His lips trembled traitorously. Closing his eyes, he smoothed a broad hand down her runaway hair. “You are the mightiest warrior I have ever known, little one.”
“Honest?”
He cleared his throat and refused to look at the women who watched too closely, could see too much. “We shall call you Brave Flower.”
Her eyes widened even more. “Brave Flower,” she lisped and smiled crookedly. “I like it.” Sighing, she rested her head against his chest. His expression suggested he was being subjected to yet another form of diabolical torture.
Vura glanced at her sister, wondering how much he could take.
“He’ll be all right,” Sydney assured her and, slipping her arm around Vura’s shoulders, turned her toward the exit.
“Are you sure?”
“He’s tougher than he looks.”
“Normally I wouldn’t have even thought that was possible,” Vura said, and Sydney chuckled.
“Hey …” Lily said, glancing up suddenly. “Where’s Papa?”
It wasn’t until that moment that Vura realized she had forgotten about Dane completely. Guilt sloshed messily with irritation.
“He, umm …” Sydney smiled, caught the girl’s gaze with her own, and shrugged a little. “He had to go.”
“He left?” Lily asked.
Hunter’s brows dipped the slightest degree, but he said nothing.
“He had some very important things he had to do. But he was extremely worried about you.”
“What important things?” Lily’s voce was curious, entirely devoid of either irritation or guilt.
“I’m sure he’ll tell you when you see him,” Sydney said.
“Is he coming to the farm?” Lily brightened.
“Well, I’m certain he’ll want to see you as soon as possible,” Sydney told her and carefully tucked a wayward lock behind her undamaged ear. “He was very worried. But he looked exhausted. He’ll probably be sawing logs by the time you get there.”
“Sawing logs?” She narrowed her eyes. “In the dark?”
Sydney laughed. Hunter still looked as if he might not survive the ordeal, and Vura abolished the newest wash of emotion without trying to identify it. Lily would heal. Her little ear might always bear a scar, but her daughter would be fine. For that she’d be eternally grateful. “Thanks for staying,” she said, and Hunt huffed an indiscernible growl.
Sydney was more articulate. “We’re so sorry, Vura.”
“Sorry enough to give us a ride back to the rodeo grounds?” Now that the crisis had passed, Vura felt as if the energy had been sucked out of her by a wet vac. Still, she doubted if she was as exhausted as Hunter, who looked as if he were fighting a legion of diabolical demons.
Slipping a hand through his arm, she gave him a little shoulder bump.
“We’re driving you home,” he said.
“Uh-uh.” Vura shook her head. “We’ve taken up enough of your time already.”
“We will drive you home,” he repeated. “And deliver your truck later.”
Outside, it had begun to rain, small, sharp drops that slanted in from the northwest and froze on contact. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, but Sydney disagreed.
“I think he actually does.”
Vura tried to remain adamant, but she was too tired to argue. It was a tight fit inside Hunt’s ancient pickup truck, but they managed to squeeze in, Sydney in the middle, Lily tucked like a precious blossom onto Vura’s lap. It was a much slower trip home than it had been to the hospital. Time rolled lazily toward midnight.
“I’m sorry we kept you from your mustangs,” Vura said, and smoothed a hand down her daughter’s melted gold hair. The gesture was, she knew, entirely for her own benefit. Lily was already asleep, purple sutures dark against the delicate curl of her ear.
“Tonk did chores for us.” Sydney slipped her knuckles over Lily’s satin cheek.
“Chores!” Vura gasped but kept the tone quiet. “Shoot! I forgot about the birds.” She snapped her guilty gaze to her daughter. Lily loved their motley flocks, but the child’s eyes remained closed, downy lashes soft against flushed cheeks. “If the coyotes—”
“They’re fine,” Sydney said.
Vura steadied herself with a hand on the door as they took a careful turn onto the gravel.
“Tonk called a couple of times to check on Lily.” Reaching out again, Sydney smoothed a wrinkle out of the child’s lilac sweatshirt. “Said he’d already herded the chickens in for the night.”
Vura dropped her head against the battered cushion behind her. “You can herd chickens?”
“Maybe it’s an Indian thing.” Sydney shrugged. “Or he might have had help.”
Vura’s hand joined her sister’s on the dash. Her fingers looked surprisingly dark in comparison to Sydney’s. “She didn’t look like the poultry type.”
“What?” Sydney turned toward her, surprised expression close in the darkness.
Vura immediately felt like an idiot. She didn’t care if Tonk was given mouth-to-mouth by every busty skank in the state of South Dakota. “The redhead,” she explained, and managed, quite admirably, she thought, to keep her tone as bland as oatmeal. “It was a good thing she was there.”
The cab went absolutely quiet.
“To resuscitate him,” Vura explained.
Hunt’s brows had risen a half a hair. With another, the mannerism might have gone unnoticed. With Hunter Redhawk it was as loud as a shout.
“Okay,” Sydney agreed. “But I was actually thinking about Mutt.”
“Oh!” Vura tightened her grip on the dash and tried not to feel like an imbecile. How could she have forgotten about his dog? Mutt was, without a doubt, the ugliest canine to ever have lived. His coat, an indeterminate color to begin with, was as motley as an old rug. Half of his left ear was missing, and after a fight with an unfortunate adversary, it had been necessary to suture his right eye closed. Proving the old adage, she was sure, that it was wisest not to antagonize ugly enemies … they had nothing to lose.
The cab was silent again as their headlights swept across her shabby yard. It was, Vura noticed, devoid of Dane’s Viper. There was no reason in the world, she was certain, that that fact should make her angry at Tonk.
“Mutt. Sure. His dog. Well …” She cleared her throat as Hunt shifted into Park. “Thank him for me, will you?”
Hunter turned the key. The engine shuddered to a miserable death. “My brother or the dog?”
“What?”
“Do I thank Tonk or Mutt?”
“Both.” Vura forced a quiet laugh and smoothed another hand down her daughter’s hair, stealing a sliver
of peace from the contact. “Well, I’m going to put her to bed. You don’t have to come in.” She eased open her door, but Hunter was already rounding the bumper of his truck.
“May I take her?” In the uncertain light, with the raindrops striking sharp and quick, his face looked as if it had been chiseled from ancient stone.
For a moment Vura found it almost impossible to loosen her grip, but his haunted expression convinced her to share. Turning, she settled her daughter carefully into the big man’s outstretched arms. Lily sighed once and dropped her thistledown head against his chest. His lips jerked under the onslaught, but he bore up and turned, footsteps almost silent against the gravel, absolutely soundless on the hideous living room carpet.
“Upstairs?” he asked.
She nodded. “Put her …” She exhaled softly. Lily was fine. She knew that … and yet. “Put her in my bed, will you?”
He nodded once, dark eyes shining, and then he was gone, leaving her alone with her sister.
Sydney rubbed her hands together and glanced around the kitchen. “I’ve always admired this wallpaper.” Oddly proportioned chickens perused them from every angle. Banties, Rhode Island Reds, Wyandottes, Orpingtons.
Vura raised a brow. “You ought to see the bathroom.”
“Ducks?” Sydney guessed.
“Pigs.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish. Want some coffee?”
“At ten o’clock at night?”
Vura shot her a glance. She had never known her sister to turn down caffeine.
“Make it quick,” Sydney whispered.
Vura grinned as she reached for the coffeemaker that perpetually occupied her counter. “Don’t tell me Hunt’s trying to limit your intake again.”
“He’s such a bully,” Sydney said, and Vura laughed. A bully he was not. A puppy maybe, or a teddy bear, possibly a wooly caterpillar. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Vura exhaled as she dumped water into the reservoir.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“It’s not your fault.” She closed her eyes for a second as exhaustion washed over her in a fresh wave. “I just …” She shook her head and continued with the coffee preparations. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No!” Sydney put a hand over her sister’s. “Don’t even start with the shouldn’t-haves. You did everything right, honey. It was my fault.”
Vura laughed and punched the appropriate button. “Maybe if we both share the blame, Hunt won’t have to lift all of it.”
Sydney glanced toward the stairs, where he had yet to reappear. “He’s pretty strong.”
It was the understatement of the decade. Still … “Can you convince him to forgive himself?”
“Probably not, but I’ll try.” Sydney glared at the unoffending coffeemaker. “We’ll be so careful from now on. Like hawks. I promise.”
Vura shook her head, settled her hips against the counter, and glanced out the window. So far she’d only managed to repair one of them. “Horses are dangerous.”
“Yes.” Sydney sighed. “I’m aware.”
“Oh man!” Vura said, guilt and foolishness vying for room in her overtaxed emotional system. “I’m sorry. I didn’t-t—” she began, but her sister waved away her worry.
“You know what?” She glanced out the same window, looking as if her thoughts were a thousand miles away. “I’m glad it happened.”
“What?”
“Not this! Geez, not this,” Sydney repeated, looking appalled. “My accident.”
“The accident in which you broke your back and shattered your femur and lost your chance at a place on the Olympic team?”
“Yeah.” Sydney grinned. The expression was a little shaky.
“The accident in which you nearly died?”
“That’s the one.”
“Tell me how that was such a boon,” Vura said.
She smiled, a little sheepish, a little rueful. “I wouldn’t have come here otherwise.” She shrugged. “Wouldn’t have seen this way of life. Wouldn’t have found Courage.”
Courage … the first mustang Sydney Wellesley had saved. But maybe that wasn’t the courage she was talking about. It was hard to say. “Wouldn’t have met you,” she added.
“Or Hunter,” Vura supposed and poured a cup of coffee. It didn’t look quite right, but hers never did.
“Or Hunter,” Sydney admitted and took the cup she offered.
A black and white rooster was stamped on the mug. A Dorking, Vura thought, and fervently wished she didn’t know so much about poultry.
Sydney sampled her brew, then lifted her brows and lowered the cup.
“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Vura asked, and her sister laughed. She did so easily these days. A complete transformation from the cool elitist who had arrived at the Lazy Windmill Guest Ranch just a few months before.
“Not awful …” she began, but Hunter appeared from the stairwell, expression somber.
“If you lie, she will only give you more.”
Sydney wrinkled her nose, an expression that would never have crossed her regal features a year before. “I think you might have forgotten the coffee grounds.”
“Seriously?”
“But you’re an excellent carpenter, Bravura.”
“And mother,” Hunter added.
“Yeah. You’re doing a fabulous job with Lily,” Sydney added, and took another sip.
An additional dose of uncertainty zipped through Vura. She glanced toward the steps up which her daughter, the light of her life, had disappeared. “Are you sure?”
“I’m no expert on the subject.” Sydney’s mother had left her before her fourth birthday, and she had been the better of her two parents by far. “But I’m pretty confident.”
“I am an expert,” Hunter rumbled and taking the cup from his fiancée’s hand, set it on the counter. By all accounts, his parents should have been canonized. The good, it turned out, did often die young. “And I’m absolutely sure.”
“Thank you,” Vura said, and in an effort to refrain from blubbering like a prom queen, changed the subject. “Did, um …” She poured herself a cup of coffee. It did look pretty pale. “Dane didn’t say where he was going, did he?”
“He was terribly worried,” Sydney said.
“I know.”
“I didn’t realize until tonight how hard it is to sit and wait when someone’s in surgery.”
Yet Sydney had done just that, as had Hunter.
“I bet he’s …” Sydney paused for a moment as if searching her imagination. “His parents live around here, right?”
“Up by Hill City.” Setting her mug of non-coffee aside, Vura rinsed the glass Lily had used for breakfast. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Maybe he went there. He’s been away from home a long time. He’s probably checking in with them.”
It was doubtful. His father barely spoke to him, and while that relationship annoyed Dane, his mother’s simpering attentions seemed to bother him even more. He rarely visited them, always preferring more raucous company.
“I bet you’re right,” Vura agreed and stared dismally out her kitchen window at the darkness beyond. “I bet that’s what he’s doing.”
Chapter 8
“Tonk!”
“There he is! The Indian of the hour.”
“Tonkiaishawien!” The greetings rang loud, if a little unsteady as Tonk entered the Branding Iron Bar and Grill. It was an auspicious nomenclature considering its only concession to the glory of the Old West was one rusty horseshoe hanging kittywampus beside the window. In fact, the word dive might have been considered a euphemism, but Tonk had been in worse. Hell, who was he kidding? He’d had some of the best times he’d never remember in places considerably more crude. And tonight, he didn’t want to be alone.
So he settled into a high-backed booth near the kitchen where the scents of burnt oil and ketchup were strong enough to make his stomach clench with something other than ner
ves. “Brothers,” he said, and gave his companions a nod. Technically, only he and Riley shared blood. Though they were all remotely linked by Native genes.
They raised their glasses in unison. Four men, all a little glassy-eyed. In the bad old days, there would have been five, maybe even seven. Like Garth, Tonk had friends in low places. Just not as many as he used to. He sighed in silence and wished he liked country music. So much more acceptable than the alternative.
“Nice place,” he said, and glanced around. The single, open room was crowded with cowboys, plowboys, and the occasional slumming suburbanite.
“Better than that hole in Mandan. Remember?” Jake Teton had shared a relay team with Tonk on more than one occasion. Now, Teton and his cousins ran an opposing trio of horses on an on-again, off-again basis. “Petey got drunk as a skunk and challenged that slick dude to a wrestling match. Then you jumped in. Remember?”
Tonk nodded, though in reality, he didn’t remember much. Petey had not been the only one who had enjoyed one too many. Or, if he was going to be honest, an idea with which Bill W seemed outrageously enamored, ten too many.
Off to Tonk’s left a trio of twenty-something girls were sharing laughs and secrets while eying the occupants of his booth. Their dark, glossy hair shone in the dingy overhead lights, and their smiles reflected interest. But they seemed painfully young, regrettably empty-headed, and Tonk had discovered, not so long ago, that he preferred the company of more mature-minded women. Women with a plan … maybe even a purpose. It had been the most depressing day of his life.
“You okay?” Monroe Jackson was one of Tonk’s holders and had a knack for keeping horses quiet in the box even when their comrades were galloping in at breakneck speeds. He wasn’t much older than the girls who watched them, but he was a little more intuitive than the other guys. Or perhaps, more precisely, he was just a little less drunk.
“Ai.” Tonk gave him a ghost of a smile and wished the girls were older. “I am well.”