A Man of His Word (10 page)

“I'm sorry. It was all my fault.”

This time, the tears wouldn't be bitten back, choked down or hidden until she was alone. “I'm going to cry now,” she managed to say as the sobs broke free. “But I don't want this to negatively impact your opinion of me in the courtroom.”

Dan gave her a look that made it quite clear Rosebud had officially lost it. “It won't.”

“And this in no way reflects on our date—before the attack,” she sobbed. She sounded hysterical. The fear and pain and relief all melted into one major circuit overload, one that apparently tripped several wires in her head, because suddenly she couldn't stop babbling. “It was a nice date. I actually like you a whole lot. If only your name wasn't Armstrong. If only you weren't
that
Armstrong, Dan.”

The next thing she knew, the gravel wasn't digging into her knees anymore. Dan was clutching her to his chest and carrying her back to the truck, but he didn't set her down. Instead, he slid into the seat and held her on his lap, her feet dangling
out the door. He rocked her back and forth as he stroked her hair and whispered, “I know, darlin'. I know,” over and over, which Rosebud took as a sign that she was still talking.

She had no idea what she was saying.

S
low and easy, Dan said to himself as he tried to walk calmly into the Red Creek tribal headquarters Monday morning.

So what if the last time he'd seen Rosebud had been at about three in the morning on Sunday? So what if she hadn't let him walk her to her door? So what if she hadn't returned either of his calls yesterday? So what if he was nigh on to frantic with worry about her? As far as he knew, no one else was aware of the busted car, the dinner date or the near scalping, and he wasn't about to give anything away by running around like some fool chicken with its head cut off.

“Good morning, Mr. Armstrong,” Judy said, cup of coffee ever at the ready. “Ms. Donnelly is running a few minutes late. She'll be with you shortly.”

He couldn't help it. He looked past Judy, past the conference room door, down the long hall. Somewhere down there, Rosebud had an office. He prayed she was in it. “But she's here, right?”

“Of course.” Judy blocked the hall and motioned Dan to the depressing conference room.

Resigned to his fate, Dan handed over the cookie bars Maria had made and took to doing laps around the conference table. If Rosebud didn't get her behind in here in five minutes, he was going looking for her.

He was reaching for the doorknob when it turned and Judy appeared, carrying a different box of files. Behind her, Rosebud stood by the door, her eyes focused on something Dan couldn't see. It reminded Dan of that first day he'd come to the reservation, when Joe White Thunder had acted like Dan didn't exist. Bad sign. She had a small bandage over the cut, but she otherwise looked normal. Hair in that braid-bun thing, the suit over a light blue shirt, glasses settled firmly on her nose.

Rosebud stood stock-still until the receptionist was gone, and then she silently shut the door. Dan fought the urge to rush to her and pull her into his arms. He tried to tell himself that she was just upset, which was a far cry better than hysterical. Her behavior seemed like more than upset, though. She was acting like they were strangers.

Finally, he broke the tense silence. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” That was a lie. He could see her biting the inside of her lip. “I knocked my head against a kitchen cabinet.”

“Oh. Of course.” As good a story as any. “I was worried about you.” He felt obliged to drop his voice down to a whisper. “I called. Twice.”

She flinched, but finally, she looked
at
him, instead of
through
him. “My aunt was home.”

“I'm really sorry,” he blurted out, desperate to get some sort of reaction out of her. “I should have waited to take you to a better restaurant. I should have put that waitress in her place. I should have waited for you outside the bathroom.”
Those were the top three things he'd done wrong, but he was hard-pressed to tell which one would have kept her safe.

She moved slowly, like she had a raging headache. “It wasn't your fault,” she said as she settled into her chair. “I should have known better than to—”

“Wait—what happened Saturday night wasn't your fault.”

“Of course it was,” she continued, selecting a file from the top of the box and opening it up as if they were just reviewing the facts for the upcoming court date. She didn't even sound angry. “I…” Finally, Dan saw a crack in her professional demeanor. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I appreciate your offer to pay me for my time, but that won't be necessary.”

“What about your car?”

“Aunt Emily has a car I can use if I need to leave the reservation.”

“So you're just going to stay on the rez for the rest of your life?”

“This is where I belong.”

She was pissing him off, plain and simple. “You're going to let a bunch of dumb hicks at one bar scare you off like that? If you want, I'll buy the damn place and raze it to the ground.”

Her hand smacked the table. The sudden pop made him jump. “You don't get it, do you? It's not just one bar. Believe it or not, that's just how people around here treat me. Us. Ignorant savages and slutty squaws—the only good Indian is a dead one.”

Dan's jaw dropped. “That's not how I treat you, and you know it.”

For a second, she looked away, but then she came right back at him, both barrels blazing. “No? Get back to me in three and a half weeks, Dan. Then we'll see how you treat me.”

Damn his uncle. Dan had thought it before, lots of times,
but he'd never meant it as much as he did right now. Just as Rosebud had said that night, if only he wasn't that Armstrong—an Armstrong like Cecil. “I don't give a damn about that dam. That is
not
what this is about.”

“Then what?”

He grabbed that crappy chair and pulled it up next to her so that he could look her in the eye. “This is about you and me, Rosebud. This is about me liking you and you liking me, slow dances to fast songs and not going down without a fight. You promised me you wouldn't go down without a fight, and I'm going to hold you to that.”

As hard as she was biting it, she had to be putting a hole in that lip. A blotchy red blush broke over her face, and for a second, she didn't look that different from when he'd driven her home—just miserable.

“Have dinner with me tonight.” It wasn't much, but he had to do something to get her to stop being so mule-stubborn. And he owed her a better ending—if she'd let him give her one.

“Or?”

He gaped at her. The way she said it made it sound like he was holding something over her head. “Or I'll eat alone?”

She forcibly swiveled her chair away from his and picked up her pen again. He waited. He'd pushed this just about as far as it was going to go, and whatever she said next was going to have to stand—for the time being, anyway.

“I can't.”

Which was a hell of a lot different from an
I won't.
“What if I found some neutral territory?”

Her eyebrows jumped and she winced. “Neutral?”

“You can't come to my place, I know. You don't want me at your place. Obviously, local bars are a no-go….” He reached out and traced a finger along her bandage. She scrunched her eyes shut, and he thought she might be on the verge of
crying. “Someplace quiet.” His finger trailed down the rest of her face until he was running his thumb over her cheeks. He wanted to kiss her, but this wasn't the time or the place. “That's all I want. Just you and me.”

“What makes you think it would be any different the next time?” Her voice shook as she blinked rapidly and pulled away from him. “Or the time after that? Or anytime? We can't hide forever. I can't, anyway.”

Anger flashed through him. “I do
not
hide, Rosebud—and you shouldn't, either.”

“You'd tell your uncle about this?” She pointed to her forehead, her eyes swimming. “About me?”

“No. I'm not stupid.” He leaned back, frustrated with how lousy a job he was doing of convincing her. “Look. It's nobody's business when we see each other or what we do, and I want to keep it that way. I don't want to have to worry about what your aunt or my uncle or some moron on the street thinks about me or you or us.” He'd like to kiss that lip she was hell-bent on chewing, but he didn't want to corner her. “It's like you said,” he added, trying to back off a little, but not succeeding. He stroked her cheek again. “I'm just trying to stay out of the society pages. That's all.”

Her whole face tensed, but then quickly relaxed as she leaned into his hand. Her eyelids fluttered. “Where?”

“Do you know where Bonneau Creek is?” At least, he thought that was what the map said. She nodded, so he must have said it right. “I think there's a cabin near there. No roads, no wires. Nothing else around for miles.”

“That's almost ten miles away. I can't ride there tonight.”

“What about this weekend? Will you spend it with me?”

The words hung in the air, and he realized exactly what he'd asked. Not dinner, not dancing, but the whole weekend—nights included.

Say yes,
he thought.

Her hand covered his. She was shaking, just a little. “You won't tell anyone?”

His heart jumped. “Not even on my dying day.”

She turned her head and kissed his palm. “Don't make me hold you to that,” she said as she shot him a sly look and then pushed his chair away. Her meaning was clear—
Yes. Now get back to work.

A yes was a yes. Despite the world's worst date, she'd still said yes. He was probably grinning like an idiot, but he didn't care. Even though he was an Armstrong, she actually liked him a whole lot—enough to come away for a weekend. “Don't worry. I won't.”

Except for when her aunt Emily came in to check on her and to thank Dan for all the cookies, they worked in near silence for the rest of the day. Rosebud kept a safe distance from him above the table, but underneath, she rested one bare foot on his thigh.

Friday seemed a hell of a long way off.

 

Five days later, as he rode Smokey toward Bonneau Creek, the first thing Dan noticed was the way the world hushed around him. The silence wasn't something that came down like a hammer, but instead seemed to sneak up on him until he couldn't hear anything but the sound of Smokey's legs cutting through the tall grass. No birds. No bugs. Not even the wind blew.

A twig snapped. Dan zeroed in on the noise. About a hundred yards over his right shoulder, on the same deer path he'd heard it the first time. He grinned. She'd come. Keeping his ear focused on the spot, he carefully turned Smokey.

He blinked. Instead of his Indian princess, Rosebud sat astride her paint, buried within the shadows of the wood. Her horse took one more step out of the woods and into the sunlight. Her hair hung in a long, loose braid draped over her
shoulder underneath a straw cowboy hat. She had on a plain white tank top, jeans and boots this time.

Same smile, though. She trotted down to him, and he took the time to appreciate the way her body moved. “Hi.”

He leaned over as far as he could in the saddle and kissed her. Honey sweet—he wondered if the rest of her tasted the same. “I thought you were beautiful the first time, but I think I like you even better like this. More modern.”

Her mouth opened and shut while she gave him a hell of a look. Yup—she was biting her inner lip again. He was getting a little tired of his former hat coming between them. Dan wished she'd just tell him the truth—and
why
would be nice, while she was at it. Giving her time to get herself organized, he turned Smokey north. At a walk, it would take them an hour and a half to get to the cabin.

“Here's what I don't understand,” she said as her paint came parallel with him. “
If
you think that I took that shot, why are you here with me now?”

“I don't
think.
” The horses fell into an easy stride, and he gave Smokey his head. They'd made this journey every night this week in preparation—although sometimes Dan took a different route, just in case. Smokey knew where they were going. “I
know.
”

“If I took that shot,” she repeated with more force.

Stubborn to the very end, he thought with a smile. He'd sort of thought that saving her at the bar might have gotten him a little more in the trust department, but he wasn't really surprised. “My mother always says, ‘Most every person has a reason.'”

“And you think
that person
who took the shot had a reason?”

Dan's eyes swept along the valley and over the woman at his side. Her hips swiveled with every step her horse took, and her chest was a thing of beauty in slow motion. She held
the tail end of the reins in her free hand, against her thigh. The sun glittered off her bare arms, but his eyes kept coming back to her face. No forced smiles, no dangerous stares. Just Rosebud, as nature intended. She belonged here, by the river, on horseback—not in some stuffy suit in an ugly office.

Most every person had a reason. He'd made it through all the police reports for vandalism on the rez in the past seven months. What had she said, back at the beginning? “What if
that person
had reason to believe they were shooting at someone who had ‘engaged in a campaign of intimidation against members of the tribe'—that's what you said, right?” He knew now that was lawyer-speak for someone had been slashing tires and leaving bloody animal parts on her doorstep. She'd given him the files, but he hadn't asked her about the dead animals yet.

She was silent. He forced himself not to look at her. She'd spook easy right now, and that wasn't what led to a good weekend. But he wanted to know—he had to know—before they took this date to the next level. “That would be…a reason, but I'm sure
that person
wasn't trying to hit you. I'm sure
that person
was just trying to scare you off. I'm sure it was a mistake—
just
a mistake.”

Lawyers, he thought with a snort. Still, this was progress. At least they were talking about it—without blanket denials. “
That person
needs to work on her aim. Scared the hell out of me—and Smokey.” Smokey bobbed his head in agreement.

In the distance, he could see the river bend. After that, it was less than a mile until Bonneau Creek fed into the Dakota. They were halfway there.

Part of him—the part that needed to keep her safe—wanted to ask her if she knew who Shane Thrasher was, if that was who she'd thought she'd shot. But the part of him that was going to spend the weekend hidden away from the world with his Indian princess—that part held him back.
They couldn't do anything about Thrasher right now anyway. No need to ruin the moment.

“I'm sorry,” she said unexpectedly. Her voice was soft and shaky, he thought, like she was making a confession. “I'll pay for your new hat. It's a nice one.”