Paper Rose

by Diana Palmer

  It was the closest he came to an apology. She was tired of arguing, so she took the olive branch for what it was. “I know.”

  The mention of birthdays reminded him that he’d deliberately ignored Cecily’s this year. It wasn’t a pleasant memory. He shifted on the hay, staring at his mother in the circle. “Do you like the job at the museum?”

  “Very much. I’ll be in charge of acquisitions, which is one reason I came out here. I want to exhibit some Oglala pottery and beadwork.”

  He didn’t look at her. “How did you get to know Holden?”

  “He’s good friends with a member of the faculty at George Washington University,” she said. “I ran into him in the hall one day. He knew me from one of the hearings…” She stopped, because this was part of her life she hadn’t shared with Tate.

  “Hearings?” he prompted.

  She folded her hands on the warm fabric of her skirt. The sun was beating down on her uncovered head. “It was a public hearing on Native American sovereignty. I went to speak in favor of it before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, speaking for a committee from the Wapiti reservation. Holden is the chairman of the Senate committee.” She kept her eyes on the circle of dancers. “It was Leta’s idea,” she added quickly. “She said Senator Holden was impressed by anthropology graduates, and I was the only one they could dig up at such short notice.”

  “I didn’t know you involved yourself in political issues.”

  She glanced at him wryly. “Of course you didn’t. You don’t know a lot about me.”

  He scowled as he turned his attention to the circle and watched his mother dance, resplendent in her beautiful buckskins. No, he didn’t know a lot about Cecily, but he did know how devastated she’d been to discover he’d paid her way through college, absorbed all her expenses out of pity for her situation. He was sorry for how much that had hurt her. But over the past two years, he’d deliberately distanced himself from her. He wondered why…

  “I had dinner with Senator Holden last week,” she said conversationally, deliberately trying to irritate him. “He wanted to point me toward some special collections for the museum.”

  He stared at his mother in the circle, but he was frowning, deep in thought. “I don’t like Holden,” he said curtly.

  “Yes, I know. You’ll be delighted to hear that he returned your sentiment,” she said with a chuckle at his scowl. “He’s really stubborn on the issue of a casino on the Wapiti reservation. We’ve pointed out the benefits to the tribe time and time again, but he won’t give an inch,” she recalled. “We could build a bigger clinic, buy an ambulance and train and hire an EMT to drive it. We could fund recreational programs for teens to keep them from drinking and getting into trouble. We could have prenatal programs…”

  He was staring at her openly. “When did you talk to him about that?” he asked.

  “I’ve been a thorn in his side for months,” she said easily. “I’ve left him e-mail messages, put notes under his door, left voice mail, sent tapes of the poverty on the reservation through the mail. He knows me very well indeed. But most recently I got him to listen to me over a nice dinner at the local cafeteria between Senate sessions,” she recalled. “He’s afraid of organized crime. He seems to have some suspicions about the motives of the tribal chief who’s so determined to get the casino approved by the state government for Class III gambling.”

  “Tom Black Knife,” he said, nodding, because he knew the tribal chief, and there had been some gossip about the way he earmarked tribal funds. Not a lot of money was going into the reservation’s projects right now, and nobody seemed to know exactly where the money was going. Some was even missing, if Tate had understood a random comment one of his cousins had made earlier today. Tom was a good man with a kind heart, the softest touch on the reservation. Odd that his name would be connected with anything as unsavory as embezzlement. “But Holden is overlooking the benefits of the money the casino would bring in. Several Native American tribes have instituted casinos and had to fight state government all the way to get them. There are other casinos on Sioux land right here in our own state, but Holden is fighting our proposed compact with everything he’s got. Holden’s opposition hurts us in South Dakota, because he has powerful political allies in Pierre and no scruples about using them against us. One of them,” he added darkly, “is the state attorney general herself!”

  “I know,” she said. Her pale eyes gazed into his dark ones. “But I’m working on the senator.”

  He didn’t even blink. “Working on him, how?”

  Here we go again, she thought with resignation. Her eyebrows lifted. He was acting as if she’d already seduced the man! On second thought, why not live down to that image? She leaned forward avidly. “Well, first I smeared him with honey and licked my way down to his throat…” she began earnestly.

  He cursed sharply.

  She laughed helplessly. “All right, it was just dinner. But he really is a very nice man, Tate,” she said.

  He gave her a hard glare. “Listen, Cecily, going around with a man old enough to be your father isn’t the way to fight your hang-ups.”

  “My hang-ups?” She glared at him. “Do feel free to elaborate.”

  “You have friends instead of lovers,” he said curtly.

  “I’m a modern woman,” she said coolly. “That means I have the right to decide what I do with my body. Some women, I might add, advocate using men only for breeding purposes. I myself think they’d be more useful as house pets.”

  His black eyes twinkled. He waved to his mother who was just dancing past them with an ear to ear smile. “All the same, I don’t like seeing you with Holden.”

  “I don’t particularly care what you like,” she said and smiled sweetly at him.

  He hated that damned smile. It was like a red flag. “Listen, kid, you don’t know beans about some of the political superstars in Congress, and Holden is an unknown commodity. He guards his privacy like a mercenary. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him. He’s too secretive.”

  “Look who’s talking!” she exclaimed. “You could probably topple governments with things you know and don’t tell!”

  “Sure I could,” he agreed. “But I’m not shady.”

  She just looked at him. It was a speaking look.

  “Maybe a little shady,” he conceded finally. “A man has to have a few secrets.”

  “So does a woman.”

  He smoothed a hand down the buckskin leggings on one of his powerful thighs. “I hope you aren’t going to let what happened to you in Corryville ruin the rest of your life,” he said without looking at her. “You should go around with men your own age.”

  She met his narrowed eyes. “I had my share of dates when I started college. It’s amazing that every single one of them thought he was entitled to my bed in return for a nice dinner and some dancing. And you know what I got when I said no? They told me I wasn’t liberated.” She threw up her hands. “What does liberation have to do with rejecting a man with bad breath who looks like a lab rat?”

  “You won’t get around me by changing the subject,” he continued doggedly. “Holden isn’t the sort of man you need in your life and neither is Colby Lane.”

  The silence beside her was thick with suppressed anger. Colby was ex-CIA, too, now a mercenary who did freelance work for various organizations, including, so rumor had it, the government. He was almost as tough as Tate. But he had a few more visible flaws. Tate was his friend and he couldn’t miss the fact that Cecily and Colby were close—even Audrey had pointed it out to him. But he didn’t like having Cecily dating the man, and Cecily knew it by his very silence.

  She held up a hand before he could continue. “I know he’s had his problems in the past…”

  “He can’t keep his hands off a liquor bottle at the best of times, and he still hasn’t accepted the loss of his wife!”

  “I sent him to a therapist over in Baltimore,” she continued. “He’s narrowed his habit d
own to a six-pack of beer on Saturdays.”

  “What does he get for a reward?” he asked insolently.

  She sighed irritably. “Nobody suits you! You don’t even like poor old lonely Senator Holden.”

  “Like him? Holden?” he asked, aghast. “Good God, he’s the one man in Congress I’d like to burn at the stake! I’d furnish the wood and the matches!”

  “You and Leta,” she said, shaking her head. “Now, listen carefully. The Lakota didn’t burn people at the stake,” she said firmly. She went on to explain who did, and how, and why.

  He searched her enthusiastic eyes. “You really do love Native American history, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “The way your ancestors lived for thousands of years was so logical. They honored the man in the tribe who was the poorest, because he gave away more than the others did. They shared everything. They gave gifts, even to the point of bankrupting themselves. They never hit a little child to discipline it. They accepted even the most blatant differences in people without condemning them.” She glanced at Tate and found him watching her. She smiled self-consciously. “I like your way better.”

  “Most whites never come close to understanding us, no matter how hard they try.”

  “I had you and Leta to teach me,” she said simply. “They were wonderful lessons that I learned, here on the reservation. I feel…at peace here. At home. I belong, even though I shouldn’t.”

  He nodded. “You belong,” he said, and there was a note in his deep voice that she hadn’t heard before.

  Unexpectedly he caught her small chin and turned her face up to his. He searched her eyes until she felt as if her heart might explode from the excitement of the way he was looking at her. His thumb whispered up to the soft bow of her mouth with its light covering of pale pink lipstick. He caressed the lower lip away from her teeth and scowled as if the feel of it made some sort of confusion in him.

  He looked straight into her eyes. The moment was almost intimate, and she couldn’t break it. Her lips parted and his thumb pressed against them, hard.

  “Now, isn’t that interesting?” he said to himself in a low, deep whisper.

  “Wh…what?” she stammered.

  His eyes were on her bare throat, where her pulse was hammering wildly. His hand moved down, and he pressed his thumb to the visible throb of the artery there. He could feel himself going taut at the unexpected reaction. It was Oklahoma all over again, when he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ever touch her again. Impulses, he told himself firmly, were stupid and sometimes dangerous. And Cecily was off-limits. Period.

  He pulled his hand back and stood up, grateful that the loose fit of his buckskins hid his physical reaction to her.

  “Mother’s won a prize,” he said. His voice sounded oddly strained. He forced a nonchalant smile and turned to Cecily. She was visibly shaken. He shouldn’t have looked at her. Her reactions kindled new fires in him.

  He reached down suddenly and caught her arms, pulling her up with him, deliberately closer than he needed to. He drew her a step closer, so that he could feel the whip of her excited breath against his throat. His fingers tightened on her arms, almost bruising them. Time seemed to stop for a space of seconds. He didn’t even hear the drums or the chants or the murmur of conversation around them. For the first time in memory, he wanted to crush Cecily down the length of his body and grind his mouth into hers. The thought shocked him so badly that he let her go all at once, turned and walked toward the circle without even looking back.

  Cecily stared after him and her legs shook. She must have dreamed what just happened, she told herself. It was years of hunger for Tate that had made her mind snap. Besides, he wasn’t even attracted to her. Yes, she thought, moving toward Leta like a sleepwalker, it had only been a dream. Only another hopeless waking dream.

  Cecily had planned to stay overnight and fly out the next morning, but when she and Leta went back to the small frame house in the headquarters village where Leta lived, Tate was sprawled in the easy chair watching the color television he’d given Leta last Christmas. She had good furniture and propane gas heat, one of the few houses to boast such luxuries. Tate made sure Leta lacked for nothing. It was a different story elsewhere, with elderly people trying to keep warm in fifty-below-zero temperatures with woodstoves in houses that were never tight enough to keep in the heat. The reservation was small and poor, despite the efforts of various missionary groups and some government assistance. Education, Cecily thought, was certainly the key to prosperity, but that was another difficulty that needed to be overcome. Native American colleges were springing up these days when funding could be had, places where the people could keep their traditions and their culture alive while learning the skills that would give them good jobs. It was one of Leta’s dreams to have such a place on the Wapiti Ridge.

  “You still here?” Leta asked her son with a broad grin.

  “I thought I’d stay until tomorrow,” he replied without looking at Cecily.

  “I have to get to the airport,” Cecily remarked cheerfully, her eyes cautioning Leta not to contradict her. “I’m due back at work Monday morning.”

  She and Leta knew that wasn’t true, but Cecily couldn’t imagine staying under the same roof with Tate. Not now.

  “How about some coffee?” Tate asked his mother as he rose from the chair and turned off the television.

  “I’ll make it,” Leta volunteered and hurried to the small kitchen to hide her glee.

  Tate moved close to Cecily, an unusual thing for him to do. He never liked her closer than arm’s length. Having him so close now made her nervous.

  “There’s a dance tonight,” he told her. “We’re going.”

  “I think Leta’s had enough dancing,” she began.

  He shook his head. “You and I are going.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “I wasn’t asked.”

  Without counting the cost, he framed her face in his lean, warm hands and brought his mouth down gently on her shocked lips.

  She made a sound that aroused and delighted him. He gathered her in, riveting her to the length of him while the kiss suddenly became hungry, demanding, intimate.

  It was like falling. It was like having every single dream of her adult life come true. His mouth was hard and slow and exquisitely sensuous. She didn’t like knowing how he’d gotten the experience that made him such a tender lover, but the wonder of it erased the jealousy. She held to his hard arms to keep from falling down and tried to respond enthusiastically, if a little inexperienced. He tasted of heaven. She opened her lips a little more to tempt him, and her hands tightened on the hard muscles of his arms, trying to hold him where he was. Years of dreaming of this, waiting, hoping, and it was actually happening! He was kissing her as if he loved her mouth…

  His head lifted. His black eyes told her nothing as they searched her face intently. His hands on her arms were bruising. “We’ll have supper before we go to the dance,” he said, his voice a little strained.

  “What do you want to eat?” Leta called suddenly from the kitchen.

  “Sandwiches,” he called back. “Okay?”

  “Okay! I’ll make some.”

  Tate’s eyes went back to Cecily. She was looking at him as if he were the very secret of life. He was in over his head already, he reasoned. He might as well go the rest of the way. His body throbbed all over with just that one small taste of her. He had to have more. He had to, and damn the consequences!

  He bent, lifting her in his arms like precious treasure, and carried her back to the armchair with his heart threatening to push through his chest. He settled down in it, his hand pressing her cheek to his buckskin-clad shoulder as he bent again to her mouth before she could speak.

  The seconds lengthened, sweetened. Cecily’s hands explored his long hair, his cheeks, his eyebrows, his nose as if she’d never touched a man in her life. It was delicious, taboo, forbidden. It was exquisite. She moaned softly, unable to contain the sheer joy of being in Ta
te’s arms at last. He heard the tiny sound and his mouth suddenly became demanding, insistent.

  Kissing was suddenly no longer enough. His lean hand went to her rib cage and slowly worked its way up over one of her small, firm breasts. He lifted his head to search her eyes as he touched the hardness there, because this was difficult territory for her, with her memories of her stepfather. The man had all but raped her. Even therapy hadn’t completely healed her fears of intimacy after eight years.

  She read that thought in his eyes. “It’s all right,” she whispered, worried that he was going to stop.

  In fact, he was. He searched her bright eyes and smoothed his hand deliberately over her small, hard-tipped breast, but guilt consumed him. She’d never even had a lover. It wasn’t fair to treat her like this, not when he had no future to offer her. “You shouldn’t have let me do that, Cecily,” he said quietly.

  He propelled her out of the chair and onto her feet, holding her firmly by the shoulders for a few seconds until he could breathe normally. “Go help Leta in the kitchen.”

  “Bossy,” she accused breathlessly. The kisses had her reeling visibly.

  “Thousands of years of conditioning don’t vanish overnight,” he mused. He searched her face with traces of hunger still in his eyes. “Do you still carry that week’s supply of prophylactics around with you?” he added wickedly.

  She actually blushed. “I gave up on you and threw them out years ago.”

  His eyes went up and down her soft body like hands. “Pity.”

  “You said you wouldn’t, ever!” she protested.

  One eyebrow arched and his lips pursed. He was trying to lighten the tension, but just looking at her now aroused him. “So I did. Eloquently, too.”

  She was trembling. She wrapped both arms around herself to fight the emotion that was consuming her. She looked up at him accusingly. “You enjoy tormenting me, don’t you?”

  He scowled. “Maybe I do.”

  She turned away. “I’m flying out tonight.”