Paper Rose Read online

  “That’s…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor.

  “It isn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm.

  It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther.

  “What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him.

  She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn’t a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn’t been able to force her to do something she didn’t want to do.

  “Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!”

  “That isn’t what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.”

  She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don’t understand.”

  “You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn’t be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.”

  He sighed heavily. “You’ve been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I’ll still feel protective about you. It’s the way I’m made.”

  He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…”

  “I don’t have too many of those. Mostly, you’re responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I’m supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You’re breaking the rules.”

  His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor always seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.”

  “You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman’s ego can only take so much rejection.”

  His eyes ran over her hungrily. “I couldn’t get it out of my mind,” he said, almost to himself, “the way it felt, back at my mother’s house. I was never so hungry for anyone, but it wasn’t completely physical, even then.” He frowned. “I want you, Cecily, and I hate myself for it.”

  “What else is new?” She gestured toward the door. “Go home. And I hope you don’t sleep a wink.”

  “I probably won’t,” he said ruefully. He moved toward the door, hesitating.

  “Good night,” she said firmly, not moving.

  He stood with his back to her, his spine very straight. “I can trace my ancestors back before the Mexican War in the early 1800s, pure Lakota blood, undiluted even by white settlement. There are so few of us left…”

  She could have wept for what she knew, and he didn’t know. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said solemnly. “I know how you feel.”

  “You don’t,” he bit off. He straightened again. “I’d die to have you, just once.” He turned, and the fire was in his eyes as they met hers, glittering across the room. “It’s like that for you, too.”

  “It’s a corruption of the senses. You don’t love me,” she said quietly. “Without love, it’s just sex.”

  He breathed deliberately, slowly. He didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help it. “Something you know?”

  “Yes. Something I know,” she said, lying with a straight face and a smile that she hoped was worldly. She was not going to settle for crumbs from him, stolen hours in his bed. Men were devious when desire rode them, even men like Tate. She couldn’t afford for him to know that she was incapable of wanting any man except him.

  The words stung. They were meant to. He hesitated, only for a minute, before he jerked open the door and went out. Cecily closed her eyes and thanked providence that she’d had the good sense to deny herself what she wanted most in the world. Tate had said once that sex alone wasn’t enough. He was right. She repeated it, like a mantra, to her starving body until she finally fell asleep.

  Cecily drove up to Leta’s small house on the Wapiti Ridge reservation late the next afternoon. It had taken a change of planes in Denver to get a flight up to Rapid City, South Dakota, and she’d driven to the reservation from there.

  Leta came out on the porch wiping her hands on an apron, grinning. “I barely had time to do a nice supper. You bad girl, you should have phoned yesterday, not from the airport!”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  Leta grimaced at the word “surprise.”

  “What’s wrong?” Cecily asked when she walked onto the porch with her bag.

  “I forgot to give it to you.”

  “Give me what?”

  “Tate gave me your birthday present when you were here before,” she confessed. “I put it on top of the cabinet in the dining room and forgot to give it to you. Here, I’ll fetch it!”

  Cecily felt as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her just at the sound of his name. She could almost taste him on her mouth, feel the fierce hunger of his body as he pressed her into the wall…

  “He remembered my birthday,” she said faintly, touched.

  “He always remembers it, but he said you weren’t speaking then.” She handed the small box to Cecily. “Go on,” she said when the younger woman hesitated. “Open it.”

  Cecily’s hands went cold and trembled as she tore off the wrappings. It was a jewelry box. It wasn’t a ring, of course, she told herself as she forced up the hinged lid. He certainly wouldn’t buy her a…

  “The beast!” she exclaimed. “Oh, how could he?”

  Leta looked over her shoulder at what was in the box and dissolved into gales of laughter.

  Cecily glared at her. “It isn’t funny.”

  “Oh, yes it is!”

  Cecily looked back down at the silver crab with its ruby eyes and pearl claws, and one corner of her mouth tugged up. “He is pretty, isn’t he?”

  She took the pin out of the box and studied it. It wasn’t silver. It was white gold. Those were real rubies and pearls, too. This hadn’t been an impulse purchase. He’d had this custom-made for her. Tears stung her eyes. It was the sort of present you gave to someone who meant something to you. She remembered his passionate kisses, and wished with all her heart that he’d meant those, too.

  She pinned the small crab onto the collar of her blouse and knew that she’d treasure it as long as she lived.

  “Now. Why are you here?” Leta asked pointedly while they ate the supper she’d cooked and drank black coffee.

  “I’ve got a line on an ancient artifact,” she began glibly.

  Leta looked at her. “There is no ancient artifact here, except the sacred bundle, and you know very well that it’s never displayed except on ceremonial occasions. Nor would any member of the tribe allow you even to touch it, much less carry it off to a museum.”

  Cecily sighed and sipped coffee. “Leta, it would be so much easier if you’d just believe me when I lie.”

  Leta chuckled. “You don’t do it well.”

  “I can’t tell you everything,” she said. “But I’ll tell you what I can. I’m here to do some snooping.”

  Leta’s eyes widened. “Covert ops,” she said enthusiastically. “Oh, boy. What do we do?”

  “Listen, this is serious stuff,” came the reply. “There are some bad people running arou
nd here.”

  “Going back and forth in chauffeured limousines with out-of-state license plates,” Leta said. “And every time they come and go, Tom Black Knife goes down to his nephew’s house and has several jiggers of whisky.”

  Cecily’s mouth fell open.

  Leta gave her a speaking look. “I know everything that goes on. I know when something’s not right. Tribal funds are vanishing, and I can’t believe Tom would steal. He’s my cousin.”

  “He’s also the good friend of a powerful man in Washington,” Cecily said carefully, “who’s going to blow the whistle on the whole operation if he can get enough evidence.”

  Leta silently picked at her food. “These people don’t come at you head-on,” she said. “They come from behind, or both sides. They prey on people with secrets.”

  “Not people like you,” Cecily teased deliberately. “You don’t have secrets.”

  Leta was silent again. “Have you seen Tate?”

  Her heart jumped. “I saw him last night, in fact.”

  “Is he well?”

  She grimaced. “Very well, thanks. He doesn’t like it that I go out with Colby Lane.”

  Leta lifted an eyebrow expressively.

  “It isn’t like that, Leta. He’s concerned for me. Colby used to drink a lot. He doesn’t anymore, but Tate thinks he’s a bad influence.” She sipped coffee. “Big brother Tate, to the rescue.”

  “He cares about you a lot.”

  “Like he’d care about a kid sister, Leta, and we both know it,” she said curtly. “Audrey is the woman in his life, and she shows no signs of going away. If it hadn’t been for his obsession about not marrying into another race, she’d probably be wearing a ring right now. She’s gloriously beautiful.”

  “She hates Native Americans,” Leta said coldly. “Just like another socialite I once knew. I’ve heard it all before—we’re dirty, ignorant, primitive savages who sit down and let the government support us….”

  Cecily got up and put her arms around the woman who’d taken the place of her mother in her life. “You’re a clean, intelligent, modern woman with many skills and a great big heart!” she said. “And I’ll knock down the first person who says different!”

  “You do a lot for us, Cecily,” Leta said solemnly. “More than you know.” She studied her adoptive child with a puzzling scrutiny. “How did your face get scratched, there on your cheek?”

  She remembered the faint rasp of Tate’s unshaven cheek against hers the night before with shocking clarity. She flushed.

  Leta pursed her lips. “So that’s what’s been going on,” she mused. “I thought so. I was making sandwiches and it got real quiet in the living room that night before Tate left…”

  “Stop that,” Cecily muttered, sitting back down. “It didn’t mean anything to him.”

  Leta shook her head. “He wants you.”

  The younger woman took a sharp breath. “Wanting isn’t enough,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to become a diversion.”

  The dark eyes that met hers were wise and sad, full of bitter wisdom. “You stick to your guns,” she said unexpectedly. “It’s easy to give in, Cecily. But then you pay the price. Sometimes it’s very high.”

  As Leta had reason to know, left pregnant by an ambitious politician who married to advance his career. Cecily could feel Leta’s pain.

  She reached across the table and gently clasped Leta’s hands. “Perhaps it is,” she said. “But there are some rewards worth the price.”

  Leta frowned. She seemed to stop breathing.

  “What do you know?” she asked Cecily. Faint horror claimed her features her hands went cold. “Cecily…”

  Cecily’s hands tightened. “I have no secrets from you,” she said. “But I made a promise not to say anything. I have to keep it.”

  Leta was badly shaken. “This man who sent you out here…a senator?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “A senior senator from South Dakota?”

  “Leta…”

  “Matt Holden?”

  Cecily’s eyes closed. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  “My God,” Leta whispered, letting go of Cecily’s hands. “My God, he knows. He knows, doesn’t he?”

  Cecily bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry. Yes, he does. The people I came out here to help investigate know the whole story. And they’re threatening to go to the media with it. Considering Holden’s prestige in the Senate, it could destroy his career, to say nothing of what it would do to you and Tate to have the truth come out that way.”

  Leta put her face in her hands and wept silently.

  Once again, Cecily got out of her chair and went to comfort the older woman. “It’s going to be all right. Senator Holden thinks we can stop them in time, if we can find out exactly who they are and what they’re holding over Tom Black Knife. We aren’t beaten, Leta. We’re going to get through this. Really we are!”

  Leta clung to her. “I wanted to tell them. I wanted to tell my son, and his real father. But I waited and then waited some more, for the right time, the right place. But Matt was married and Tate was so proud of his heritage…” She sat up and dried her eyes. “Jack knew that I was pregnant when I married him, but he didn’t know who the father was. He said he loved me enough to take us both on.” She lifted pained eyes to Cecily. “But he didn’t, Cecily. It ate him alive to know that some other man had fathered my child, especially when we discovered that I was unable to conceive again with him. He hated me, he hated Tate. He punished us for his own sterility. He started to drink and he turned from a kind man into a monster. I did that to him,” she said simply. “To make matters worse, I denied Matt the knowledge of his son, and I denied Tate the knowledge of his real father. And now he’s going to find out about it in some newspaper or on some television station. He’ll hate me.”

  “He’ll probably hate us all for a little while, when it comes out,” Cecily said comfortingly. “He’ll get over it.”

  Leta shook her head and wiped her red, swollen eyes again. “He won’t. He’s like you about lies. He won’t forgive us.”

  Cecily felt sick to her soul at those words. It was probably the truth.

  “We can’t guess the future,” Cecily said quietly. “We can do something about it, if we try. You have to look at the positive side.”

  “Is there one?” Leta asked on a sob.

  “Certainly. We’re going to single-handedly foil a renegade gambling syndicate and save the tribal chief and the tribal funds from embezzlement. We’ll make the evening news shows!”

  “Again,” Leta mused, remembering how Cecily had made it before.

  Cecily’s fingers touched the dainty little crab fixed to her collar. “This time will be much more politically correct,” she said.

  “How does Matt look?” Leta asked, when she’d never meant to ask the question.

  “Wickedly handsome. Silver-haired and arrogant, stubborn and hot-tempered—just like someone else we know,” she said with a smile. “He speaks highly of you. He regrets what he did, you know,” she added. “He said that he made bad choices.”

  “He hates me for not telling him about Tate, doesn’t he?”

  “No! Not at all!” Cecily met the older woman’s miserable gaze. “Leta, he only feels guilty at what you both suffered at Jack Winthrop’s hands. He certainly understands why you kept the secret from him. It’s just that…well, he and Tate are bitter enemies. It was a shock for him.”

  “I loved him,” Leta recalled, her eyes soft and faraway. “He and I grew up together. He was older than me, but he was so centered on how he was going to live his life, so dedicated to helping people here. I was amazed when he started taking me places. I would have done anything for him. Then he said he was going to marry that rich society woman and run for office. We argued. But after the election, before he left for Washington, he came to see me one last time. We’d been apart for so long, and I’d missed him so much. We started kissing and couldn’t stop.” She
colored, embarrassed. “Then he told me he was already married. He was ashamed and sorry, but I wasn’t. It was all I’d ever have, and I knew it. A few weeks after he left, I knew I was pregnant.”

  Leta smiled. “You can’t imagine the joy it gave me. I knew I could never tell him, but I was happy. Then Jack Winthrop offered me a home and I took it.” She shook her head sadly. “I should have known better. I paid, and Tate paid. I tried to run away once, but Jack beat me so badly that I couldn’t even walk. He threatened to hurt Tate if I tried again, so I stayed.” She glanced at Cecily. “They say it’s easy to leave an abusive husband, you just walk out. Cecily, if I’d walked out, he’d have come after me and killed us both. He said so, and he meant it. Drunk, he was capable of cold-blooded murder. In those days, there were no shelters for battered women, nobody to protect us. Now, things are different. But Tate has many scars, inside where they don’t show. So do I.”

  “You don’t regret having Tate,” Cecily said.

  Leta shook her head. “I’ll never regret it. But it makes me sad that Matt had to find out like this. He hasn’t told Tate?” she added worriedly.

  “No. He said I could,” she murmured dryly. “And I said for him not to hold his breath waiting.”

  “Tate won’t like it that we kept the truth from him.”

  “I’m resigned to that,” Cecily said half-truthfully. “He would never have turned to me, anyway, even if he knew he had mixed blood. I’ve been living on dreams too long already.”

  “If you go away from him, he’ll follow you,” Leta said unexpectedly. “There’s a tie, a bond, between you that can’t be broken.”

  “There’s Audrey,” Cecily pointed out.

  “Honey, there have been other Audreys,” she replied. “He never brought them home or talked about them. They were loose relationships, and not very many at all—never any who were innocent.”

  “Audrey’s lasted a long time.”

  Leta searched her eyes. “If he’s sleeping with Audrey, Cecily, why can’t he keep his hands off you?”

  Cecily’s heart turned over twice. “Wh…what?”

  “Simple question,” came the droll reply. She grinned at the younger woman’s embarrassment. “When you came in the kitchen that last time you were here, before Tate left, your mouth was swollen and you wouldn’t look straight at him. He was badly shaken. It doesn’t take a mind reader to know what was going on in my living room. It isn’t like Tate to play games with innocent girls.”