Warrior's Embrace (67 page)

Anguish stole her will, and she sagged
against Eagle.

“Where are you taking me?”

He didn’t answer, just glanced briefly at her
with terrible eyes, then off again into the distance, as if he
might be planning to take her all the way to hell.

Grief and guilt battered her, and she doubled
over with the force of it. Her tears soaked the collar of Eagle’s
coat.

“We’re home, Kate.” He lifted her from the
stallion and cradled her as tenderly as if she were a child.

“It should have been me, Eagle. I should have
been the one in the clinic.”

“No, Kate. It was fate.”

“Damn fate. Damn fate all to hell.” She
battered against him, barely seeing her target through her tears.
“It was me. I killed her.”

“Stop it, Kate.”

“I killed her with my damned Irish
stubbornness and stupid pride.”

“Shhh.” She felt his strong arms tighten
around her, felt his cheek resting against the top of her head. He
began to speak in the fluid tongue of his fathers. Lulled by the
sound, lulled and somehow comforted, Kate drifted out of her skin
and stood apart to watch as the shell she’d left behind
grieved.

Winds moaned around the eaves, and snowflakes
the size of flower petals swirled past the window. A Sunday-morning
quietness descended on the house, and from somewhere deep in the
heart of the village, bells tolled, their melodic mournful notes
echoing Kate’s sorrow.

Where was Eagle’s sorrow? Had he no feelings
at all for the woman he’d intended to marry?

Just when Kate had condemned him as
unfeeling, she felt his tears fall upon her hair. And she knew that
she would no longer fight him, at least for a little while.

When he released her and stepped back, there
was no evidence of mourning in his face. He was as cold and
implacable as chiseled stone.

“You will stay here, Kate.”

She nodded, still too full of death and tears
to speak.

“I’m sending my ranch foreman up to the house
to guard you until Martin’s men can get here.”

Again she nodded, thinking that it felt good
to let decisions be made for her for a change, and that she might
drift along this way forever, nodding her head while the rest of
the world performed its macabre dance.

In the doorway, Eagle hesitated, and then he
said, “I’m going to find Deborah’s killer.”

Had she asked, or was it merely mental
telepathy between two people who knew each other so well that words
were unnecessary?

Eagle moved as he always did, without sound,
and when he had gone, Kate made her way toward the sofa, one step
at a time.

o0o

Charleston, South Carolina

The French doors were open to let in the
afternoon breeze. Mick propped his feet on the footstool and sipped
his iced tea while a news reporter barely as old as his tennis
shoes told him what was happening in the world. Not that he cared
too much. Old age and southern breezes did that to a man, made him
so mellow, his world got small.

Outside, Martha was humming while she
puttered in her rose beds. At dinner she’d told him that her peace
rose would still be blooming at Christmas if she got very
lucky.

Hell, Martha didn’t need luck with flowers:
She had a green thumb. Not that he was complaining. He liked the
look and the smell of freshly cut flowers in the house. They added
class.

Being the red-necked, brawling Irishman he
was, he’d always envied class. Now that he was rich, he could
afford to buy it.

The cute young thing on the television
prattled on about riots and murder and mayhem. Mick took a long,
cool drink of tea.

“And in Witch Dance today . . .”

Ice rattled against glass as Mick banged his
drink onto the table. He snatched the remote control and turned up
the volume.

“...a young woman was murdered in the clinic
of Dr. Kate Malone.”

A band of fear squeezed his chest so hard he
thought he was having a heart attack.

“The victim, Deborah Lightfoot, was a nurse
at the clinic, which was destroyed in the fire that swept through
it in the predawn hours.”

Mick’s footstool overturned as he leapt out
of his chair.

“Martha!” he yelled, grabbing for the
phone.

“What is it, Mick?” She poked her head around
the French doors.

“What’s Kate’s phone number?”

“You want Kate’s phone number?” Dirt from the
flower garden dribbled down the front of her dress as she put a
gloved hand over her heart.

“Dammit, woman, are you going to stand there
all evening gawking, or are you going to give it to me?”

Martha hurried into the room and pulled her
address book from the middle drawer of the telephone table. Behind
her, the television blared.

“On site at the Witch Dance fire is Governor
Eagle Mingo.... Governor, do you have any suspects in the murder at
Dr. Malone’s clinic?”

Martha dropped the telephone book. Wordless,
she stared at the television while Mick picked up the book and
dialed Kate. The phone rang and rang and rang. She could hear the
faint electronic buzz, like a crazed bee that wouldn’t hush.

She jumped when Mick banged the receiver
down, then, weak-kneed, sank onto the floor beside the footstool.
He was dialing again.

“This is Senator Mick Malone. Get me on the
first plane to Ada, Oklahoma.”

“Mick?” she said after he’d hung up.

“I’m going to bring Katie home.”

o0o

Witch Dance

When Eagle came home, Kate was asleep on the
sofa, curled in a ball, using her coat for a pillow. One shoe lay
on the floor beside her and the other dangled from her foot.

A faint pink light filtered through the
curtains, and a band of hot gold painted the sky just beyond the
mountains.

Eagle knelt beside the sofa and gently traced
the tear-stains on Kate’s cheek. She didn’t even stir.

“I see the new dawn in the East, Kate,” he
whispered.

Once, they had greeted it properly, coupled
together in the medicine wheel to celebrate the continuity of
nature and the magic circle of life. Once, so many years
before.

Kate breathed softly with her mouth slightly
open. Eagle slipped off her shoe, then covered her with his blanket
and quietly walked away.

Some things were harder to endure than
death.

o0o

Kate jarred suddenly awake with the frantic
feeling of someone trying desperately to outrun danger.
Disoriented, she stared at the Indian blanket covering her, and
then slowly she remembered the horror and where she was.

She swung her feet over the edge of the sofa
and scrambled for her shoes. Her coat was wadded at the end of the
sofa. Dressed, she felt like yesterday’s laundry.

“Good morning, Kate.”

Eagle was sitting beside the fire, drinking a
cup of coffee and watching her with eyes as dark and pitiless as
the bowels of hell.

“I didn’t see you,” she said.

“Obviously.” He stood up slowly and
gracefully, like one of the giant cats that prowled the mountains.
“Going somewhere?”

“Yes.” She started toward the door then
remembered that she was at his mercy for a ride home. “Can you lend
me your car ...or a horse?”

“You won’t be needing either one, Kate.
You’re staying here.”

“Like hell I am.” Chin up and eyes blazing,
she struck out for the door. He caught up with her in three easy
strides. His face and hands were ruthless as he gripped her
shoulder and spun her around.

“The killer is still on the loose, and you’re
the target. You will stay here until it’s safe for you to
leave.”

“Make me.”

“Don’t think I can’t ...or won’t.”

Lesser men would have quailed under his
stare, but she was fighting Irish. Nothing deterred her.

“If you think I’m going to knuckle under and
do your bidding, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“I’m Chickasaw. Unconquered and
unconquerable. Don’t try me.”

“And I’m Irish. We may not have a motto, but
we’ve got damned fine tempers and the grit to go with them.”

“You can do this the easy way or the hard
way, Kate. Take your choice.”

She tried to stare him down, tried to get
past the iron control that masked his emotions. He remained
implacable, and underneath her heavy coat she could feel the sweat
of pure rage and certain defeat.

“What is the hard way, Eagle? Do you plan to
tie me up and lock me in my room?”

“Do you plan to try me, Kate?”

“Don’t think I won’t.”

They stared at each other, unmoved and
unmovable, while a log on the fire burned in two and split with an
audible crackle. The air was thick with challenge and the desire,
lambent and intoxicating, that always smoldered between them when
they were in the same room.

The doorbell rang, but even that sound could
not bring them out of the spell that bound them. It rang again
...and again, its insistent clanging no more to the two beside the
fire than the annoying noise of a distant mosquito.

“Does nobody ever answer the door in this
godforsaken place?”

Senator Mick Malone strode through the door,
and cold air swirled in with him. The shock of seeing her father
after so many years paled Kate’s face.

For a moment Kate felt the way she always did
when she saw him, as if she’d been caught stealing cookies when
she’d been told a dozen times not to eat them and ruin her supper.
Hard on the heels of her childish guilt came rage.

“You are on Tribal Lands in the house of the
governor, Father. You owe him the courtesy of a polite greeting.”
She felt the loss as she stepped apart from Eagle. “Governor Mingo,
this is my father, Senator Mick Malone.”

The two men assessed each other like
gladiators who found themselves by chance in the same arena.

“Governor,” Mick said, nodding curtly.

“Senator. Please be seated.” The great
dignity that was as much a part of Eagle as his long black hair and
his beaded elk-skin boots came to the fore.

“Don’t mind if I do. It’s a hell of a long
way from Charleston to Witch Dance.”

He sank into his chair like an old man. The
sight of his infirmities saddened Kate ...and scared her. Mick
Malone was supposed to be invincible.

“I’ll get you some coffee, Senator.” Eagle
left the room as soundlessly as the snow that drifted in fat flakes
beyond the window.

Kate sat in a chair opposite her father, and
an uncomfortable silence descended over them. Sweat inched down the
side of her face, and she wished she’d taken a chair away from the
fire.

“How are ye, Katie Elizabeth?”

“Dirty, disheveled, grief stricken at the
loss of my friend and my clinic. Other than that, I’m fine,
Father.” She wouldn’t give Mick the satisfaction of seeing how hot
she was by taking off her coat. “How’s Mother?”

“She misses you, Katie.”

What about you, Father? Do you ever miss
me?

Kate stared at him, knowing she would never
ask the question that pressed upon her mind.

“I’ll call her today ...reassure her.”

“There won’t be any need for long distance
calls, Katie. I’m taking you home.”

“I’m not going.”

“I’ve already bought your ticket.”

“Cash it in. I’m staying here.”

“This is all the doings of that savage.”

“Don’t you dare speak of Eagle Mingo in those
terms.”

“I’ll use any terms I by God please. Do you
take me for some kind of fool? I saw the two of you together when I
walked into this room.”

Kate stood up, giving herself the advantage
of towering over Mick as he sat in his chair.

“You should have knocked first.”

“I practically tore the damned bell off the
wall, ringing it.” Mick stood up to face her, his shoulders squared
like a boxer’s. “Katie Elizabeth, get your things.”

“I don’t have any things, and I’m not about
to be picked up and shuffled around like a mail order package.”

Eagle came into the room as silently as he
had left.

“Kate, go with him. It’s best.”

She whirled on Eagle. “Best for whom? Who the
hell gives a damn who it’s best for? Certainly not you,
Governor
.” She fixed a fierce glare on her father. “Nor
you,
Senator
.” She jerked off her coat and flung it onto
the sofa. “While both of you are bickering over my life, I have
patients who are dying. As soon as I take a bath, I’m going to make
a house call, with or without your permission, Eagle Mingo.” She
turned to her father. “As for you, you gave up parental rights the
day you told me I was no daughter of yours.”

The look on his face might have moved her if
she’d had any heart left to move. But she was stripped bare of
feeling, totally naked emotionally. The only thing that mattered
now was the Chickasaw children.

“I’m staying in this land you call
godforsaken with this man you call savage.”

“Not while I have breath in my body,” Mick
said.

“She’s made her decision, Senator.”

Kate marched out with her head held high,
leaving the fighting Irish senator and the unconquerable Chickasaw
squared off before the fire. Her righteous indignation got her out
of the room and down the hall. In the bathroom that held the
masculine smells of Eagle, in the shower that held the spicy soap
still damp from his bath, she leaned against the wall and wrapped
her arms around herself until she could stop shaking.

From the den came the sound of their
battle.

“She’s made her decision, Senator. I will not
allow you to go after her.”

“I don’t need your permission to go after my
own daughter.”

“This is my house.”

“Why, you arrogant whippersnapper. Do you
know who you’re talking to? I’m a by God United States
senator.”

“You’re on Tribal Lands, Senator. Your title
and power are meaningless here.”