by Lyn Stone
“Well, Agent Mercier might have more to say about that. It’s far from a sure thing,” Vanessa said, “but thanks, Dani.”
“See you around,” the agent said and, with a final glance at the sleeping Clay, stepped out of the room and closed the door.
Vanessa took a seat in the chair beside Clay’s bed and waited for him to wake up.
Clay fought through the fog of pain. Hightower was getting away and he had to stop him.
“Clay? Can you hear me?” He felt a warm palm brush his brow.
“Vanessa?” he whispered and forced his eyes open. “Are you all right?”
“I’m great. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” he lied. He raised a hand and closed his fingers gently around her forearm. He needed the contact to make certain she was real, not a dream. “What did I miss?”
“Well, in case you don’t remember, we got Hightower. They haven’t found his body yet, but I heard him fall. The remote device is out of commission for sure and they’re still searching for the bombs. Danger’s passed now and the op’s all over except for doing the reports and the debriefing.”
He exhaled through his teeth as relief poured through him. “You…you look…different,” he said, squinting up at her and wondering whether his eyes were damaged. Her hair shone like satin and was caught up in some kind of Lara Croft slicked-back braid. She had on enough makeup for a Broadway production. “What happened?” Then he guessed. “Eric’s here, right?”
She giggled. “So you really are psychic.”
He winced as he looked up at her. “No, I just recognize his brush strokes. Next time, just say no.”
Again she laughed, the delighted sound, music to his ears. “He said you’d like it.”
Clay reached up and touched her lips. “Think you could stand losing some of that lip gloss if you kiss me?”
She leaned over the bed rail and touched his mouth lightly with hers. “Later we’ll do a serious lip-lock. I just needed to see you for a minute. You should sleep now and get well.”
He grasped her hand to keep her from leaving. “Wait. I need to marry you.”
She gasped and her eyebrows flew up. “And you are obviously on some seriously heavy drugs.”
Clay knew that hadn’t come out right. He had thought and thought about it while lying in the bottom of the ravine, expecting to die. If he lived, he had promised himself, he would have her and to hell with everything else. Somehow he would convince her that she would lose nothing by becoming his wife. He had to make her see that.
“I need you. I love you.” There, he couldn’t go wrong saying that. Or maybe he should have put the love first. He meant the love first. “No, I love you and I need you,” he muttered. “Yeah, that’s right.”
She patted his hand and pulled hers away. “What you need is rest. I’m going now and I’ll be back when you sober up.”
When he opened his eyes again, she was gone. Eric was there, dozing in the chair beside his bed. “Hey kid,” Clay said. “Where’s Vanessa?”
Vinland jumped up and leaned over the rail. “You must have scared the life out of her. She came out of here crying and shaking her head. I couldn’t get a word out of her, but she’s confused, man. Real confused. Couldn’t make heads nor tails out of her thoughts. Pure chaos. I ordered her not to drive if she was leaving the hospital, but she said she wasn’t. I think she went to the chapel. Her grandmother went with her.”
“I asked her to marry me,” Clay said. “I think.”
Eric rolled his eyes. “You think? Oh man, I should never have let her in here when you were so doped up on pain meds. Did you.. .mean it?”
Clay frowned at his friend. “Hell, yes, I meant it.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “But I’m not sure I said it right.”
“What did you say? Exactly?”
“I don’t remember. Exactly.”
Vinland thought for a minute. “Okay, let me go do some damage control.”
“Wait! Don’t help me, Eric. Please?” Vinland was too famous for his practical jokes and this was no time for that nonsense.
“Hey, what are friends for, huh? I’ll square it with her and she’ll be back in here in a minute ready to plan the wedding.”
Clay groaned. He had IVs in both arms, the plastic oxygen thingie up his nostrils, electrodes attached to his chest and was pretty well anchored to the bed. There was nothing he could do but hope Vanessa had gone home with her grandmother and that Eric couldn’t find their house.
He punched the button for an extra spurt of morphine. He hurt like hell and had probably lost any chance to hook up with the woman he loved on a permanent basis. Damn.
Vanessa couldn’t believe Clay had really asked her. Would he if he had been lucid? Probably not. Should she take advantage of it? It wouldn’t be fair, would it?
Her grandmother sat with her in the chapel and held her hand, saying nothing, letting her mull it over in her mind and decide how to handle this.
“What should I do?” Vanessa asked her finally, needing some advice.
“What your heart tells you. You love him. He loves you. I see no problem here.”
“But he never once mentioned marriage before, not when he was thinking straight. I know he thought that getting serious with me would compromise my chances at the new job, but I told him I didn’t care about that.”
Her grandmother placed a hand over hers and squeezed as she leaned closer. “His worry goes deeper than that, Vanessa, and has probably affected every relationship he has. You know what has bothered Clay all his life. If he found his place in the world and got centered, he would feel more confident about sharing himself.” Her grandmother pulled an envelope out of her purse. “You were right to ask for my help. I think this will do it. It’s the information you wanted me to find.”
Vinland interrupted them, tapping her on the shoulder. “Our boy’s going nuts in there waiting for your answer. If it’s not yes, I think he’ll die.”
“Liar!” Vanessa scoffed. “He sent you, didn’t he?”
Eric nodded. “I’m here to tell you, Clay’s not one to make any offers lightly. I’ve never known him to date a woman twice, much less propose to one.”
“Well he’s never dated me at all, not even once,” Vanessa replied. “Now he drops this proposal on me with no warning?”
Vinland smiled sweetly. “It’s his way. He’s not smooth, I grant you that. But he is totally sincere. So sincere we worry about him all the time. Now it’s your turn. Marry the man and give us some relief, will you?”
Her grandmother gave her a nudge, the closest thing to interfering with Vanessa’s decision that she was likely to offer.
“Both of you let me be alone for ten minutes?”
They left together, Eric already plying her grandmother with broad hints for a visit to her home.
Vanessa opened the envelope and began to read. After scanning only half of it, she refolded it, her decision made. This couldn’t wait ten minutes. Clay had been waiting too long already.
“Hi,” she said, offering Clay a smile. “I have something for you, a get-well gift from my grandmother and me.”
Clay looked at the envelope. “Get-well card?”
“No. Information. You are White Mountain Apache,” Vanessa told him proudly. “How about that? My grandmother has many contacts and she used them all. She and my grandfather have attended powwows all over the country and met many of the People. They have formed e-mail loops you wouldn’t believe, a countrywide grapevine.”
“So someone admitted they knew a woman named Margaret in this tribe you mentioned?” Clay asked, obviously unwilling to believe what he was hearing. Or maybe afraid to believe.
She took his hands in hers and placed the envelope in them. “It’s true, Clay. Your parents met in Arizona at the Sunrise Ski Resort, where she was working as an instructor. He married her in a traditional ceremony on the res, then took her back to Boston with him.”
Clay shook his head. “How is it
I missed getting this? I checked there and everywhere else. Investigated for all I was worth. No records existed of any marriage that might have been theirs. I’ve worked on this for years!”
“Unrecorded marriages happen all the time. Unless your mom tried to claim something of his, such as in a divorce settlement or social security or something of that nature, she would not have needed documents. People attended. There were witnesses aplenty, but unless they were called on to help her in that way, they wouldn’t have volunteered the information.”
“Why in the world not?”
“She died, Clay. You told me yourself that your people do not speak of the dead. They won’t even touch things belonging to the deceased. It’s custom. If you went there asking about a woman named Margaret, they probably said there were many named that, right?”
He nodded, looking thoughtful. “Yet they told your grandmother?”
“She knew the questions to ask and how to phrase them. She inquired about a gray-eyed child who was taken by his white father after his mother was lost. She took it from there. Apparently, your mother died in an accident at the ski resort. Fell from a precipice. Your father came and took you away. He didn’t want you living there, obviously. Your grandfather is still alive. And two of your aunts.”
She saw she had rendered him speechless. But the excitement in his eyes spoke volumes. How he wanted a family of his own. He had even been thrilled to share hers for a little while. “Now you have a tribe,” she said softly, smiling up at him. “Will you go to Arizona for a visit?”
Clay had closed his eyes and the look on his face was sublime. “You have to ask?” Then he opened them and gazed at her with such love. “Will you come with me?”
Vanessa drew in a deep breath and released it along with his hand. She turned away so he wouldn’t see the longing in her eyes as she refused. This was something he needed to do alone. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” he asked softly.
Why, indeed? Vanessa asked herself. What was preventing her from giving him the support he wanted? She knew why. “Because I want you to love me for myself, Clay. You once admitted you weren’t sure if it’s me you love or what I represent to you.”
“That’s not true any longer,” he assured her. “It is you, for yourself alone, Vanessa. Marry me, Vanessa. Or at least come with me to McLean where we can be together. Think of the advantages we could give little Dilly there. She is so bright and needs to be in a challenging school where she’ll shine.”
Vanessa was already shaking her head. “We’ve already had this conversation, Clay. What do you think my grandparents, not to mention Cody and Jan, would say to that plan?”
“They would miss her, of course. Bring them, too!”
“Listen to yourself, Clay,” Vanessa said gently, patting his hand as she might a child in need of counsel. “You are thinking exactly the way your father thought. That our life here with the people is not good enough. That our culture is lacking somehow. I assure you it’s not. I would never take Dilly from the home she knows and loves. It will be her decision to stay or go when she comes of age, just as it was mine.”
“Oh my God,” he said, pressing his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. “It must be the morphine.”
She smiled down at him. “No, it’s your protective instinct kicking in, just the way your dad’s did. You need to get a better understanding of what went down when you were seven, Clay. You need to forgive your father. And you need to forgive yourself.”
“Me?” he snapped. “What for?”
“That guilt that’s making you crazy. I don’t know. Being half white, maybe? Accepting a privileged lifestyle? Being angry with your mother for dying and leaving you? I can’t answer for sure because I’ m no psychiatrist and it’s not up to me to analyze you. You need to do that on your own. Go to Arizona. Meet your family and your tribe. Find what you’ve been searching for all this time.” She shrugged. “Seek another vision.”
His gray eyes pleaded with her, told her he loved her and wanted her with him. But she knew he wouldn’t ask again and risk another refusal.
“I just want you to be sure,” she insisted, feeling like the worst hypocrite in the world because she wanted so badly to go with him wherever he went. “Find your grandfather. Find yourself, Clay. Then if you still want me, come back and we’ll see.”
“You’ll wait?” he asked.
Vanessa nodded. “I promise. Besides, that spirit guide of yours would eat me alive if I messed around, right?”
One corner of his mouth kicked up in a half smile. “Right. I’ll give him orders.”
“Speaking of orders, I expect mine any minute now. I have to go back to Cherokee today and see about wrapping this up. We have to recover James’s body and that remote, find and account for all the C-4 he took, then there’ll be all the paperwork. Eric told me they’re airlifting you to Bethesda first thing in the morning so I might not see you again while you’re here.”
He nodded and gave a long sigh, his eyes filled with longing that nearly erased her resolve. “Then could you just come here and let me have that lip-lock you promised? I’ve been dreaming about it.”
Their kiss in the rain. She would dream of that magic moment, too, and all that followed.
Vanessa kept this kiss fairly chaste in spite of his demand. She didn’t want to weaken now that she had done the right thing.
Was this a goodbye kiss? Would he come back to her?
Chapter 15
Clay rotated and stretched his shoulder, cursing the month it had taken to get it that mobile. Two weeks in Bethesda navel hospital had seemed like a lifetime. At least he had completed his report and been debriefed while he was there. Now he was recuperating further at his grandfather’s home.
Mercier wanted Vanessa on the COMPASS team. He had conveniently overlooked Clay’s personal involvement in light of Vanessa’s success, obvious suitability and remarkable record with the Bureau. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the boss continued to be intrigued by her incredible escapes and the fact that she had been able to transmit psychic messages to Eric Vinland. Yeah, she was definitely in, if she wanted to be.
Clay would remain with Sextant, so they would not be working together directly. He wondered if he could convince her to take the job. If she showed the slightest reluctance, he had decided to transfer out of Sextant, much as he loved the work, and ask HSA for an assignment closer to her home.
Unless she had changed her mind. He had called her frequently, but she had remained noncommittal, waiting for him to iron out his personal life. He hadn’t pushed her. Maybe she had a few doubts she needed to settle in her own mind. He did come with a lot of baggage and she might be having second thoughts about getting involved.
It had been an interesting couple of weeks here, he thought with a smile, but it was time to go. Saying goodbye to this place was not as easy as he’d thought it would be.
He patted the pinto who danced eagerly beneath him and gazed out at the vista he now considered home. It was rough country, stark and beautiful.
He couldn’t live here, but at least he had a home base now, a foundation he recognized. Much of his early years had come back to him through his grandfather’s stories. They had not seen one another for nearly thirty years, but the old fellow acted as if Clay had been living with him all along. No strangeness existed between them or with the two aunts he had met. They’d welcomed him with open arms. Clay felt he knew his mother better through her sisters.
She had loved his father, but had been unable to adjust to his lifestyle in Boston. Apparently she had encountered more prejudice and curiosity than she could handle and wanted to get Clay away before he was old enough to experience that, too. His father had let them go for a visit to her family and she had refused to return.
Clay deduced that he had either witnessed his mother’s fall or perhaps had seen it in one of his early visions and had blocked it from his mind. That would account for his acrophobia.
; He now had a firm grasp on all that had happened and was okay with it. How self-centered he had been all this time, thinking only of how events had affected him and not considering what his parents had endured. Neither of them had been prepared for dealing with the problems associated with a mixed marriage. Love had not been enough. Maybe if his mother had lived longer, they would have worked something out, but Clay didn’t think so.
Was he ready for marriage? “Damn straight I am,” he muttered to the horse. Clay’s things were packed and ready. The new truck he had purchased in Tempe for his grandfather was gassed up. They would drive to the airport where Clay would fly to Vanessa. He was good and ready.
A yowl in the distance spooked the pinto. Clay calmed it as he searched the landscape. Far away on a large boulder, he spied a flash of tan. He eased closer and the cry came again. A panther. The horse reared and Clay almost lost his seat. When he got control and quieted the animal, he looked again for his spirit guide, but the big cat had disappeared.
“Thank you, brother,” Clay said sincerely. “I am on the right path now.”
He urged the pinto into a gallop that would speed him back to his grandfather’s house and then on to his beloved. That’s what the old man called Vanessa when referring to her, your beloved. A fitting term for the woman who had changed Clay’s life.
Vanessa scanned the horizon where Mr. Tanner had indicated. Clay’s grandfather had shown no surprise when she’d arrived an hour ago. He had merely smiled and called her granddaughter. After a nice chat, in which she’d done almost all of the talking, he’d told her Clay would ride in from the west and it was time to watch for him.
She almost danced on her toes in anticipation. From the first day she’d seen Clay, she had imagined him riding across the wide open spaces on a horse, his hair flying in the wind, his strong legs gripping the animal and guiding it where he wanted it to go.
“There he comes!” she cried, laughing and pointing. “Oh my goodness, he’s a daredevil! Look at him go!”
The old man chuckled, his weathered face a study in pride. He reminded her so much of his grandson. Though his stature was much shorter and his eyes were dark brown, they shared many features and even gestures as they spoke. He had that deep timbered voice and a way of speaking that made a person stop and listen to every word.