Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) (17 page)

The part she couldn’t handle. Mary Beth took a deep breath, resting her hand on her chin. “You know damn well she doesn’t look at people. I’ve been watching you get her for months, and she’s never once looked at me or anyone else at the café, not even Robin. She looks at the ground. If she can’t see people, she thinks they can’t see her. She thinks it makes her invisible. And she looked at me.”

“You’re pretty observant,” he dryly remarked.

“I’m a doctor.”

“You’re a vet,” he corrected, leaning forward and kissing her.

Unlike the haul-you-out-of-the-saddle kiss he’d given her on horseback a few weeks ago, this was a tender kiss, like the kiss he’d given Kip’s forehead while she lay sleeping.

For just a second, Mary Beth let herself be distracted as she tasted his deep musk, salty and earthy. But then her brain snapped back to attention, and she realized she’d almost fallen for the trap.
Fine. You’re going to play dirty, I’m going to play dirty
. Stealthily, she reached up to grab at the strap of his mask.

In less than a heartbeat, he had her hand and was holding her flat against the bed.

“I told you not to do that,” he growled as the weight of his body pinned her against the mattress.

“Then stop changing the subject,” she quietly snarled back. “If you’re going to be a jerk, I’m going to be a jerk, okay?”

“Fine. No jerks allowed.” He frowned as he let her go and they both sat up.

Hell, she wasn’t sure she believed it either. “Now,” she demanded, hopping off the bed to pace around the small room, “tell me why you watch over her, and I don’t want to hear any crap about how you used to love her mom. She’s special, and I want to know
why
.”

Jacob sat there, his shoulders tense as he hid his eye behind his hand.

“Jacob?” she asked, fearful she’d pushed him too far. “What is it?”

“You aren’t supposed to know about her,” he whispered, his voice dangerously low.

“Apparently, I’m not supposed to know a lot of things,” she replied evenly. “And yet here we are.”

Jacob threw himself off the bed and walked right up to Mary Beth, grabbing her by the shoulders so tightly she was afraid he would leave marks. “Kip—here’s the thing,” he said as he leaned into her ear, like he was afraid someone would hear them. “I think—it’s possible—she’s a holy woman.”

“A what?”

“Okay. This all makes sense if you just believe,” he whispered, his eye pleading for understanding.

“Believe she’s a holy woman?”

“Kip comes from a long line of powerful women. Susan was the daughter of the last holy woman to lead our people, Joy Clear Waters, although Susan didn’t get the same gifts.”

“You are talking about psychic powers, right?”

“Right.” He nodded. “It’s more common for those who follow the traditional old ways.”

“Yeah. Sure. Of course,” she said as she forced a smile. “Makes perfect sense.”

“It does if you believe,” he replied, finally letting go of her, albeit slowly, trailing his fingers down her arms.

Darned if he didn’t give her goose bumps even through the sweatshirt. “Do you believe?”

At that, he seemed to struggle. “I…I believe I’m supposed to keep her safe. That’s good enough for me.”

He didn’t sound convinced—at least, not about the whole holy-woman thing. But she wasn’t going to push him on that. She had no room to talk about spirituality or religion or anything. “Okay. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I believe. Stranger things have happened. How does that explain anything?”

“Okay. If you believe, it makes perfect sense,” he repeated, although he didn’t look like he thought he could convince her. “After Joy Clear Waters died, there was a vacuum in power in the tribe.”

“One woman held the tribe together?”

“It’s not like that,” he scoffed, and Mary Beth resolved to keep her mouth shut. “She kept the tribe rooted in the old ways—our traditions, our culture—what makes us Lakota. And when Susan didn’t take her place, a lot of people thought that was a sign that the old ways had died too.”

“So when Kip was born—”

“A white child is special.” That was something of an understatement—how many albino Indians were there? But the way he said it made it clear that he meant
special
in a different sense. “Susan and Fred knew she had received her grandmother’s gifts. But a lot had changed in fifteen years.”

“You’re saying some people wouldn’t want the old ways—which I still don’t understand, but that’s okay—to come back.”

“Buck McGillis sure as hell doesn’t,” Jacob grumbled.

Lord, am I ever going to be able to keep up with what goes on in this town
? She tried not to sound like a smartass. “Why does he matter? He’s not Lakota, is he?”

“Rumor is that his grandmother was—a black soul who abandoned her people for the white man.”

That doesn’t bode well for whatever we’ve got then.
Mary Beth winced as she tried to sympathetically nod.

“And since Joy’s death, McGillis has convinced some in the tribe to sell their lands, taken it from others.”

“Okay.” She knew she was whining, but she couldn’t help it. Her head was swimming. “I really don’t understand what he wants with the land. I mean, no offense, but when all of us bad white people shoved all you noble Natives onto reservations a hundred years ago, didn’t you get the worst land there was and the whites got the good stuff?”

Jacob smiled, bitter and rueful. “That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before uranium.”

She froze. “
What
?”

“The reservation sits on huge deposits of uranium. Buck has already started to strip the land on the northern tip of his ranch. He’s making millions. He’s sitting on millions more.
Millions
.”

Sweet merciful heavens. This wasn’t just about some bad beef or sick horses. Those were small, isolated things. But uranium? She had horrid visions of Chernobyl—a wasteland so complete nothing could live. And the hell of it was, she knew Jacob was right. Uranium wasn’t exactly a renewable resource. To find a huge vein of it? Buck could be sitting on closer to billions. With a B. “So he’s ripping the Lakotas off?”

“Some. Others, he’s paying.”

“He’s paying you.”

“That’s not why I do it,” he growled.

“Then why?” she pressed. “Robin told me you gave up your own rightful place in the tribe and went to work for that sleaze. How is what you’re doing any different than him paying off some other Indian?”

Jacob’s eyes flashed with a dangerous anger. “I run a good ranch.”

“I know that. Bill said that my first day there.”

“I keep the land clean.” His voice was rising in righteous anger.

“That’s obvious too.”

“I give good jobs to guys like Tommy, guys who need a place.” His voice was got louder and louder as he defended himself. “I keep a Lakota hand on the land.”

“I know all that,” she said calmly, trying to bring his volume back down. “But why do you have to do it for Buck?”

The anger peaked and quickly fizzled. Jacob sighed heavily as he flopped in resignation back onto the bed. “If I let the ranch go, he’d strip the whole thing tomorrow. He’d ruin it forever.”

“What’s he waiting for? I’d think a guy like Buck would want more money now, not later.”

Jacob shrugged. “He wants more land. He knows that as soon as he starts mining no one else will sell him their land, so he’s trying to steal everything he can before he starts. I make him enough money that he’s content to sit and wait. The tribe sues him every so often, but our lawyers…” he half-shrugged. “That’s why I sent Tommy’s younger brother, Shawn, to Harvard. Cost me a chunk of change, even after all those minority scholarships he got.”

“Wait…you? You sent a guy to Harvard just so you can sue McGillis?”

“The lawyers the tribe has aren’t good enough. I’m in this for the long haul, Mary Beth,” he said calmly as he patted the bed next to him. “I can wait while Shawn finishes up next year.”

“Seriously?” She sat down next to him, and his hand was instantly on her back, fingers splayed out as he gently traced up her spine.
There go the goose bumps again
. She shivered under his touch but forced herself stay on the topic.

“Seriously.” He smiled at the repetition. “Not even Robin knows about that. And between you and me,” he whispered, “Robin’s going to get some help next fall too.”

Her mouth was on the bed as she gaped at him. “You fund scholarships?” He nodded. “
You
?”

“Anonymously.”

Mary Beth couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Well, duh. But I still don’t know what any of that has to do with Kip.”

“Try to understand,” he muttered in frustration even as he rubbed her back in slow, sensual circles. “A return to the old ways would cost some people a lot of money. Strip-mining the land isn’t a part of the old ways.”

“So let me see if I understand this.” She hopped up and paced around the room, struggling to understand everything before he tried to distract her again with soft touches. “Kip is a holy woman because she’s from a long line of powerful psychic women who kept the tribe rooted in the old ways, whatever those are.”

“Right.”

“And there are some people, white and Indian, who don’t want the old ways to come back because of uranium?”

He sat up and nodded. “Right.”

“So her life is in danger because of money?”

“Basically. Susan and Fred decided they couldn’t take the chance that someone would come after her, so they ran.”

“Okay. I can believe that. It makes sense.” Mary Beth sat next to him and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she opened her mouth. “So who killed her parents?”

Jacob’s confident façade faltered. “I don’t know if it was an evil spirit after her powers or something more…mortal after the money.”

“The evil spirit thing is still on the table?”

Jacob nodded in all seriousness. “The evil spirit is still on the table. It makes sense.”

“If I believe—” Anything else she was going to say was cut off as he nuzzled her head back with his forehead to push her lips up to his.

“Mary Beth,” he breathed against her skin.

“Jacob…” She let the sentence trail off, feeling paralyzed by the desire rolling off him.

He tilted his head into hers, the stiff leather nose pushing hers to the side as he kissed her with the perfect blend of tenderness and ferocity. His hand was holding her face, his rough calluses brushing against the fine hairs on her cheek.

As he tentatively traced her lips with his tongue and entwined his fingers in her hair, pulling her in closer, she forgot about the mask. She even forgot about the holy Lakota child sleeping peacefully on the couch. She forgot about the creature, her student loans and the blizzard blowing outside.

All Mary Beth could remember was the last time she’d had sex with Jacob—that frenzied coupling of frantic bodies in desperation to focus on something,
anything
, else.

As she remembered how he effortlessly filled her, easily made her come three times in a matter of minutes, harder than she’d ever come—with or without a man—her body trembled at his touch.

“Do you believe?” he asked, his voice filling her ear as he slipped his hand to the small of her back, pushing her into that broad chest.

“Jacob,” she whispered in warning. “Rule number one.”

“I fully intend to satisfy, Mary Beth.”

All of her sexual frustration ebbed from her into the bed. Satisfaction, after two long months, was near.

He nipped at her ear. Then he dipped his head down to hers again, his tongue searching hers out. When he pulled back, his eye focused on hers.

Then her bra gave beneath her sweatshirt.

“I want you.” His hand was up under her sweater, pushing the bra aside as he found her nipple. God, his voice carried right into her body, setting everything on fire.

“Okay,” she weakly replied, powerless to do anything but let his thumb roll her nipple against all those calluses.

“I want to make love to you.” He cupped the whole of her breast in his hand. “Not like before.”

Through the haze of yearning that was clouding her mind, she held onto one of the facts of his past. “Like with Susan.”

“Better,” he said as he ducked his head down and traced her nipple with his tongue while he moved his hand down beneath the waistband of her pants. “Better.”

As he touched her sweet spot, she bucked under his hands, pushing her breast farther up into his mouth. “Don’t make me beg again, Jacob.”

“I won’t.”

Quickly, they were naked, curling into each other beneath the mound of blankets. Every part of him was hot to the touch, and Mary Beth touched it all. He hadn’t been circumcised, she discovered as she moved his hood up and down, eliciting a low groan that shook his entire body.

“Please,” he begged. “Don’t. Not yet.”

She nodded. She still didn’t have any condoms, but she hadn’t been with anyone else since last time, and she was willing to bet he hadn’t either. Without hesitation, she slipped on top of him. “This?”