A Man of Distinction

by Sarah M. Anderson

  Tanya’s brain exploded with everything that was wrong with those statements. Some Indian people? A witness? Letting her stay here? Where the hell else would she stay? Any thoughts of being polite went out the window. “Don’t you need to put on some pants, or do you usually walk around in your underwear?”

  She shouldn’t have said that because whatever Clarissa Sutcliffe was, she had Tanya beat in the “bitch” category, hands down. She took her sweet time giving Tanya the once-over, which had the weird effect of making Tanya feel like she was the naked one in the room. The whole time, her mind spun in wild circles around two words—Nick’s witness.

  He was going to use Bear. He was going to put her on the stand. Her whole life would be dragged into court. The other lawyers—they’d cut her to shreds. Everyone would think she was a terrible mother.

  Nick had lied to her.

  This Clarissa shook her head, a gesture of mock pity and condescending disapproval. “He’s mine, you know. It’s adorable that you think he’s in love with you, but when he’s done with…” she waved her hand in Tanya’s general direction “…you, he’ll come back to me.” She rolled her shoulder, a move that would have come off as seductive if it hadn’t been so mercenary. “He knows which one of us is the smart money.”

  A wave of nausea piled on to Tanya’s confusion. This Clarissa was right, of course. Money—and power—were what Nick wanted, more than he wanted her. Tanya had always known that, but the confirmation sucked more than she’d thought it would.

  “Do you know where he is?” she asked Clarissa. She wasn’t about to go down without a fight, damn it. She had weapons at her disposal—facts. “Do you have any idea where he’s at right now? Or last night? Or the night before?”

  Finally, she saw a crack in Clarissa’s supreme confidence. “I—” But whatever she was going to say tripped her up. She just glared at Tanya instead.

  “He’s at Children’s Hospital.” The facts—that’s what Tanya had. And she was going to use them, by God. “He’s keeping a bedside vigil over his son—our son. Our one-year-old son who has brain cancer.” Clarissa took a step back, then two, in shock. That’s right, Tanya thought. Just the facts. “He won’t come back here tonight. He won’t be back tomorrow night. So if you’re arranging any other surprises, you might want to reconsider those plans.” Now it was her turn to wave her hand in dismissal. “All of them.”

  Which was ridiculous. She had absolutely no control over what Nick would do next. But right now, she wanted to make sure this woman didn’t think she could walk all over Tanya just because she was poor and Indian and didn’t dress or look like a lingerie model.

  “He has a son?” Clarissa looked truly horrified. “With you?”

  That did it. Tanya was too exhausted and worried about Bear to stand here and be cut to shreds by a socialite playing chef. Tanya took three quick steps forward, the lavender smell getting stronger with each step. Clarissa fell back so fast that she lost one of her heels and almost toppled over. That was satisfying enough, but one other thing bothered Tanya. “You want to say that again?”

  Tanya must have looked like she was about to clock Clarissa something good because any trace of superiority was gone, replaced by a look of sheer terror. Clarissa lost her other shoe, then retreated to where some clothes were spread out on a couch. “He told my father you were a witness! He said you were here for his case!” She scooped up her things and gave Tanya a wide berth. “He never said he had a son.”

  Then she was gone in a swirl of floral perfume.

  Tanya stood there in a state of shock. Nick was building his case on his own son’s health, even though he knew she didn’t want Bear involved. All because he wanted to win. He was going to put her on the stand, where the bad guys would have plenty of chance to make her look like the world’s worst mother. And to heap insult on to injury, he’d done all of this without as much as a whisper about his plans to her.

  Because she wasn’t a part of his plans.

  The truth hurt worse than she’d thought possible.

  Fourteen

  As he’d done for the last week, Nick pulled Bear’s copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar out of his bag. “I have some new stories,” he told his son. “My secretary brought in a few that she said her kids loved. But we’ll start with your favorite, okay?”

  He settled down in the chair, keeping one hand on Bear’s chest. He felt better having that firsthand knowledge of Bear’s continual breathing.

  He opened the book and started reading. By this point, he didn’t actually have to look at the words. He had this story down cold. As he went through the book, his mind rehashed the day.

  And what a day it had been. Marcus had called him in for a briefing first thing this morning. Nick was all but mainlining coffee at this point, but he hadn’t been quite as sharp as he’d needed to be. After they’d gone over the state of Nick’s case, Marcus had said, “You haven’t been by to see Rissa yet, son,” in a tone of voice that should have set off every single warning bell in Nick’s head but hadn’t.

  “I’ve been busy.” It was only after that pat answer had hung in the air for a few moments that Nick had realized how thin the ice he was treading upon really was. “This case has been taking up a lot of my time,” he added, but that excuse had sounded plenty weak.

  “Is everything okay between you two? I’d expected you to get engaged before you took this case.” Marcus had started shuffling papers around on his desk, but now that he was fully awake, Nick wasn’t going to let that casual activity distract him.

  No doubt Rissa had expected the same thing. He’d been gone for two months and had apparently forgotten how to play the game in that short amount of time. Either that, or the game had become much less important. “We’re fine.”

  Marcus had steepled his fingers together, looking like a cartoon caricature of a boss. “I know that these are your people, Nicholas, but I’m worried that you may be in over your head on this case. I’m thinking of asking Jenkins to join you. Just to help out.”

  That had been a demotion, plain and simple—a vote of little-to-no confidence. Maybe Marcus no longer felt like he had Nick completely under his thumb; maybe Rissa had planted a whole garden of doubt. Maybe it was just that Marcus had remembered how much of an Indian Nick really was. Whatever the reason, Nick was on his way down.

  The odd thing was, he hadn’t really cared. For once, it wasn’t his career that pushed him. For perhaps the first time in his life, it was justice. “I’ll see this case through to the end, one way or another,” was all he had said. No grand posturing, no veiled threats. He wasn’t playing the game anymore.

  And then that call from Rissa. Like her crocodile tears would have swayed him now. There would have been a time when he might have let that work—it had been easier to keep her happy than to provoke her—but not any longer. Talking to her again was just another reminder of how much he had to get away from the life he’d made here. How had these people become his definition of success? How had he let himself get drawn into a world of emotional manipulation?

  Tanya had shown him another way—a way to be happy, with her and with Bear. Maybe he’d just needed to hear Rissa’s voice to realize how life with her would always be a game of lies and deceit—in stark contrast to how honest, how real, Tanya was. How much he needed her, like he needed the wide-open sky and the smell of the prairie after a hard rain. With Tanya, what he saw was what he got.

  They had a future together. For the first time, he considered a future that didn’t involve the law firm of Sutcliffe, Watkins and Monroe, a future that didn’t involve Chicago. He would see this case to the end—of that, he had no doubt. But he didn’t have to be tied to the Sutcliffes to make it in the world, not anymore.

  As soon as he and Tanya had weathered this storm together, they needed to sit down and figure out how to make things work, starting with getting married. He could buy that house, or he could build her one a little closer to the rez. Emily Mankiller would
hire him outright to see the case through, and after that, he’d start his own high-powered environmental law firm. There was a whole world of possibilities out there—a whole life of his own making, just waiting for him.

  But right now, he had bigger things to worry about. Like the little boy in the bed next to him, his chest rising and falling in a steady beat. Nick could feel Bear’s tiny heartbeat under his skin. The rhythm was strong, like the drumbeat at the powwow.

  He leaned down, resting his head next to Bear’s on the bed. The smell was both the familiar scent of his son and the sterile antiseptic of hospital bandages. He couldn’t wait to get the boy out of here.

  “I know you’re going to be fine. I can feel it here,” he said, patting Bear’s chest. This was as close to holding the boy as he could get with all the tubes and wires. He knew he had already done everything within his power for his son, but it didn’t feel like enough. Despite his wealth and his track record in the courtroom, he couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t make Bear wake up.

  He forced himself to stay positive. Kids fed off of positive energy—one of the nurses who had come and gone in the last week had said that. “You’re going to grow up to be a man with a voice—a strong warrior that makes us proud. But you’ve got to wake up first,” he went on, feeling the catch in his throat. “Your mommy is worried about you, you know. She’s scared…” He paused, clearing his throat. He was scared, too, and he hated that feeling. He’d give up everything—the fancy car, the condo, the perks of power—all of it, in exchange for his son being okay.

  He had to stay positive. “So let’s make her feel better, okay? Let’s make Mommy happy. All you have to do is wake up, Bear.”

  And then, because even though Bear was still unconscious, his pulse was beating out a steady rhythm, Nick began to sing. Not the nursery rhymes that Tanya sang, but the song of the powwow. Songs Nick hadn’t sang in years—decades—came back to him. He felt the “Honored Warrior” song raise itself from some forgotten part of his memory, the words shaking the dust off themselves to flow from his mouth. He didn’t know the words in Lakota, but he remembered the English version.

  “They have made a brave warrior,” he sang, his voice soft but keeping time with Bear’s heartbeat, “from this Lakota boy. They are walking with him.”

  He sang those words over and over, feeling the power of the beat. The song wasn’t a prayer; it was a promise, carried from the past through the present, to the future. This was his promise to his son. He would honor his promise, come hell or high water.

  He finished one refrain and was about to start again when he heard a noise. When he lifted his head, he saw Tanya standing in the doorway.

  For a fraction of a second, he was happy to see her, happy that she’d come. But that fraction of happiness was all he got.

  Her eyes flashed with a rage that any fool would be afraid of, and Nick liked to think he was no fool. He could see her hands were clenched into fists, and her chest heaved with angry breaths.

  Hell.

  “When were you going to tell me, Nick?” She kept her voice low, but there was no mistaking the danger in her tone. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  Rissa. That was all he knew for sure. Part of his brain scrambled for damage control—but the problem was, he didn’t know exactly what kind of damage he was trying to control. “Babe…”

  “Don’t you ‘babe’ me. Don’t you dare.” She advanced on him, her arms swinging low. She wouldn’t punch him in a hospital, would she? He scrambled to his feet and took a precautionary step away from her. The only place to go was on the other side of Bear’s bed. “Why did you do it?”

  It probably wouldn’t help his point to ask which “it” she was referring to. He decided to stick with the least incriminating. “Rissa and I agreed to see other people before I left. I hadn’t even talked to her before today.”

  He expected more fury from her, but the wash of sadness caught him off guard. As quick as it had come, though, it was gone. “You think this is about that—that—her? Oh, for God’s sake.” She threw up her hands and spun on her heels, which had the convenient side effect of taking her out of swinging range. “This is about the case, Nick. Your case. The one where you’re going to use my son as your first—hell, maybe your only—piece of evidence. When were you going to tell me about that, huh? When you called me to the freaking stand?”

  Rare had been the day when Nick had met a situation he couldn’t talk himself out of. Hell, that’s all that being a lawyer really was—being able to talk your way out of whatever trap the opposition laid for you.

  But this was different. Maybe it was the lost nights of sleep, maybe it was that Tanya hadn’t laid him in a trap at all—more like she’d caught him in his own. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t talking his way out of this one.

  “I was going to discuss it with you.” Even as he said it, he knew it would help nothing.

  “Are you serious? You let me sit here for days—weeks—thinking that you listened to me when I told you I didn’t want Bear to be a part of this. And did that matter to you? No. You don’t care about me, you don’t even care about our son. You only care about two things, Nick—you and your stupid case.”

  What could he do? Denial was pointless—she had him dead to rights. In any other situation, he would have told her so. His only hope was to make her see his side. “Tanya, I have a legal obligation to my client—”

  She whirled around. “Seriously? You’re going to throw that out there?” Something in her face softened. She knew he was right. But she wasn’t done with him yet. “Yet another choice you made for me, instead of with me. And what about your legal obligation to your family? What about your obligation to me?” Her voice caught, and he saw the tears she was fighting so hard to keep in. “Why did you make me think you cared for me if all you wanted was to use Bear as evidence? You didn’t have to break my heart again, Nick. That was just cruel.”

  To hell with this. He crossed the space between them, grabbed her arm and spun her around until they were face-to-face. “I did no such thing, and you know it. I love you—I always have. You’re the only person who makes me feel like an actual person—not some object of pity, not some token of affirmative action. You make me real, Tanya. I lost that for too long, but coming home again…” The tears spilled over now, cutting glistening paths down her cheeks. He cupped her face and wiped them away with his thumbs. “This isn’t how I planned to tell you, but I’m not going to let you go without a fight. I want us to work this time, Tanya. I want to make a life with you—here or there, it doesn’t matter to me anymore because I see now that my home is wherever you are.”

  “How can I believe you?” Her voice broke, but she didn’t let that stop her. “How can I trust you, Nick? How do I know that there won’t be other fancy women in their underwear, waiting to make you dinner?”

  Oh, hell. He could see it now—Rissa waiting for him to come back to the condo, and having a drama queen–sized hissy fit when Tanya innocently walked in. Obviously, Marcus hadn’t bothered to maintain the same level of confidentiality that Nick did.

  “She told you about the case?” He knew he was risking another outburst, but he had to make sure he had everything right. He didn’t want to fly off the handle with incomplete information.

  Tanya nodded. More tears. But unlike Rissa, Nick knew these weren’t designed to get her way—these were real. “She said…you’d go back to her. You knew which one was the smart money.”

  “Someone once told me something important—‘I don’t need all that stuff, not as long as I’ve got you.’” She gasped a little when he said it. That had been what Tanya had always told him, back when he was too young and impulsive to really hear what she was saying. He knew better now. “I only wish I’d listened then, because you know what? I will pick the smart woman over the smart money every day of the week.”

  She stared at him, a few errant tears escaping. He could see her confusion as she tried to figure out if she
should trust him or not. “But the case…”

  “Tanya, I was going to talk to you about it—not to trap you, not to trick you and not to make you do anything you didn’t want. But you’ve got to look at the bigger picture here. Midwest Energy destroyed our land—the land you’ve worked so hard to keep. They’re hurting our people—not just Bear, not just your mother, but our people.” The words felt freeing as he said them. He realized that while he’d been counting Tanya and Bear as “his,” he hadn’t made that final leap to the entire tribe. But for all of his jerky racism, Marcus Sutcliffe was right. The Red Creek Lakota were Nick’s people—and he would fight for them, first and foremost. “You’ve worked so hard for the tribe, for Emily—you can’t turn your back on that just because you’re afraid of some lawyer’s dirty tricks. That doesn’t help Bear, and that doesn’t help our people.”

  The tears flowed a little heavier. “You—you know I’m not a bad mother, though, right?”

  “Oh, babe.” He couldn’t help but laugh at that statement as he pulled her into a hug. “Even if the defense attorneys tried to paint you as a terrible mother, you think I don’t have a few tricks of my own up my sleeve? You think I wouldn’t come back at them with guns blazing? You think I’d let someone slander you in public and walk away in one piece?” He kissed her forehead. “Not a chance. I’m going to fight for you—both of you. You’re not only not a bad mother, you’re the best mother I could want my son to have.”

  She gasped in surprise. Was it possible that she’d spent all this time thinking she wasn’t good enough? “I want to believe you this time, Nick. I really do. But…”

  Boy, had he earned that hit. Despite himself, he felt a smile twitch at the corner of his mouth. “May I assume you told Rissa about Bear?”

  “You mean Clarissa Sutcliffe, of the Chicago Sutcliffes?” She snorted in derision. “I suppose I should be comforted by the fact that she had no idea you had a son. I’m not the only person you hold out on. When were you going to tell me about that?”