Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 (11 page)

“Penny loafers?” She giggled, and he felt her head move up. She was looking at him. “He had a vision of you in penny loafers?”

He waited for the water to carry her disbelief away. “Crazy, I know. He said people tried to get me to wear the moccasins, but I was not happy. Then people tried to get me to wear the loafers, but I wasn’t any happier. I was unhappy until I chose for myself. And then I was happy. And that was the vision. He said I would rebel in both worlds until I found my place. Hence Rebel.”

“And?” She wasn’t sure she was going to believe it, but at least she wasn’t dismissing him outright. Which was a pleasant thing—that and the way her fingers were lying flat against his neck, digging in with just enough pressure to make sure he wouldn’t forget she was there.

As if that were a risk. “And that’s what happened. People recognized my talent early on. Walter White Mouse taught me to tan leather. Irma taught me how to string the beads on sinew. Burt taught me to carve. Everyone taught me something.”

“What did Albert teach you?”

“Everything.” Everything he was, everything he would ever be was because Albert had raised him right. “He taught me how to be Lakota.”

“What about your parents?”

Old memories, memories he’d long ago tried to make peace with, ran free again. “My father left to find work and never came back. Mom—well, after she had Jesse, she got more and more gone. She died of alcohol poisoning.” But after all these years, the memories didn’t run far. He managed to get himself back under control again.

She made a pained little noise. “I...I didn’t realize...”

Desperate to avoid pity, he forged ahead. “That’s just how it is on the rez. That’s why I wanted out.” Out of the crushing poverty, out of the way of life that wasn’t living at all. He hadn’t wanted to be an Indian, not if that was what being an Indian was. He remembered opening the acceptance letter to the university, and knowing for sure that it was the best day of his life, because he could leave and never come back.

“So you put on penny loafers?”

He found himself hugging her, making sure she stayed close. Making sure he could feel all of her against his chest. And she didn’t protest. Not even a thread of steel tightened her body. “Not literally. Someone knew someone, who pulled a few strings, and I got to New Mexico. And it didn’t take long to figure out that no one wanted anything by a dirt-poor red man. When people buy Indian art, they want a little piece of the Indian. And the Indian they want a part of is this...this...this
thing
that only exists in the imaginations of Hollywood directors and romance writers.” It still got his hackles up. No one—not a single damn person—had ever seen just him. They’d only seen what they wanted to see. “So if you want to be a
serious
Indian artist, you have to be this Indian that you never were and never will be.”

She was silent, but then she looped her arms back around his neck and held him even tighter than he’d been holding her. “That was surprisingly cynical.”

“
That
is life in the art circuit. I just had to figure out which pieces of myself I could give away with each painting, with each sculpture, with every single thing I made—and which pieces I could keep.”

“And you got married.” There wasn’t a single note of pity in her voice, not a single tone of poor-little-you. Neither was there any recriminations, no accusations of betraying his people, his family.

That, more than anything, was why he was dancing in the water with a white woman in the middle of a summer day. He wasn’t an object, a thing to be bought and sold, but he wasn’t a thing to be pitied or ashamed of either. He was just a man. Holding a woman.

“Anna.” The memory of her came rushing back to him. This memory was harder to contain. He told himself it was because it was newer. He barely remembered his father, after all. “She was not that different from Karen at the gallery.”

“Are you sleeping with Karen?”

Now,
that
was a distinctive note of jealousy. “No. I gave up women a long time ago.”

She leaned back, way back, in his arms, until her head was half dipped in the water again. Then she pulled his face down until he had no choice but to look at her. “That comes as somewhat surprising news to me.”

Hell, she was beautiful. Just beautiful. The water had her yellow hair slicked back, and she had a teasing, flirting grin on her face. Her eyes, always so ice cold, held nothing but unresolved challenge for him. Like he was only halfway up the glacial wall he was climbing.

“Recently, I’ve thought about reconsidering that stance.” Careful not to lose his grip on her, he shifted to free a hand and stroke her face. Then he noticed her hair.

Trailing behind her in the water, it was wavy. All of it. He lifted her head out of the water a little and the wave didn’t stay in the water. It only got wavier as the water dripped free. “You have curly hair?”

She jumped in his arms, her hands flying to her head. The exact same motion she did every time she saw him. “Oh! Uh, well, uh...damn. The water.”

The light bulb was bright when it went off. She had curls. That she hated. At least now he knew why he thought she always looked a little off. She was just hiding her true self. “No, I like them.” He pulled her hand away from her hair and held it to his chest. She splayed her fingers out against his skin on contact.

“I bet it only makes you prettier.” But probably not as pretty as the pink-rose blush that started on her cheeks and went south. Suddenly, he was feeling a lot warmer in the water. “I’d like to see it all curly.”

“You’re doing it again,” she murmured, her eyes dropping back to watch her toes. “Changing the subject. You got married...”

When he was done with this subject, he’d show her changing. “Yeah. Anna. My ex-wife.” He forced himself to look away from the woman in his arms and think about the woman who would never be in his arms again. “She was the daughter of this wealthy collector. She worked at an influential gallery for a major player in the art world. She was, well, beautiful. Pale skin, black hair—like Snow White, but without the silly dress.”

He felt the shock pass through her body. “You were married to a white woman?”

Again, there wasn’t any pity, and absolutely no accusations. She was just surprised.

“Yeah. For about eight months.”

She nestled her head back into the crook of his neck and was silent. Maybe eight months wasn’t too long of a time. He wondered how long she’d been with the one her father had loved—the one she’d left to come here.

“And then it ended?”

“Yeah. Badly.”

“What happened?”

“It...I...” The guilt reared its ugly head. If he hadn’t been so convinced that she was his ticket to the big time, if she hadn’t been so convinced that he was her ticket out of Taos... “She wanted to own a piece of this Indian I was supposed to be, this brand image I’d built.”

“Is that who you are in that picture? The one in the gallery?”

“Oh, that.” Now it was his turn for his face to get hot. He never felt less like his brand image than at this exact moment. “Yeah. That’s me as a commodity. Jonathan Runs Fast. Serious Artist.”

She stilled, but just for a second before her chest was rubbing against his. She was laughing. “Which piece of you did I overpay in commissions for?”

Yeah, she owned a piece of him. No doubt, she considered it leverage of some sort. “The piece that waits for the first day of summer sun to come set the world free from the spring rains.” He’d thought of that bag from his spring spot, up higher in the hills, where he could look down on the prairie and watch the world wake up. “But don’t worry. I’ll get that piece back next spring.”

“
Jonathan
. I think I like Rebel better,” she murmured as she touched his reddening cheek.

God, he wanted to kiss her, but that would be pushing it right now. She’d get mad and flustered and accuse him of changing the subject again. “By the time I married her, I’d given away so many pieces that I didn’t have much left.” The emptiness had clawed away at him until his dreams were filled with nothing but grass and river, wind and sky. “I needed to come home, come back to this land and remember what it meant to be a Lakota again. What it meant to be a real Indian again.”

“Did she come with you?”

“For about three days. Then she left. And I never did.” For eight months, Anna had treated him like he was the Indian, the noble savage she was personally educating. And then she’d see Albert’s shack, seen the wasteland that was his home, and in a heartbeat, everything had changed. The noble devotion had sunk under the weight of disgust. Horror. Sheer shock that he would even consider coming home to a bunch of Indians too drunk to do anything but drink some more. Which is how the other half of the white world treated him. A thing to be feared. A thing to be contained. A thing.

The divorce had been quick and uncontested. He’d signed the papers by mail.

Her hand was back on his chest, like she was checking his heartbeat. “Did she ever see this place?”

“No.” This place stayed pure, unfouled. And now Madeline was here. “The only people who come here are people looking for a medicine man.”

“Really?” Suddenly, she was leaning up against him, her mouth as close to his ear as she could get and stay covered by the water. “I came here looking for
you
.”

Her voice trickled down his neck, down his chest, until its warmth overpowered the cold water. “You found me.”

While he looked down at her, hoping to kiss those lips, to finally taste that mouth, she was grinning at him. She was toying with him. Maybe he had a little of that coming his way.

“But you wear cowboy boots now, not moccasins or loafers.”

Don’t push it.
But he didn’t know how much longer he could
not
push it, because she was pushing him. He laughed. It felt good. “True. Visions are always open to interpretation, you know.”

She stretched out, her skin moving under his until he was afraid he would have to let her go, just to keep from touching her in all the wrong, right ways. “You have visions too?”

Her body—her body was begging him to come on in, the water was fine. But her brain was still tap-dancing around things, like it was some sort of test he had to pass. She was going to drive him mad.

“I had to learn how to see them. It took a lot of practice. I have to be patient and completely still.”

Now she laughed, throwing her arms wide into the water. If he looked down... Mad. He was absolutely mad. For her.

“How much practice?”

He wasn’t looking, but he couldn’t help touching. He moved his hands over her ribs, half-stroking, half-tickling. And she responded by splashing him.

“Years,” he said, finding a belly button that was a surprising outie. His fingers moved over it with something that was far less tickling and far more something else. “Years of practice.”

Her breath caught in her throat as he rubbed her belly. A nice belly, gently rounded out under smooth skin. Firm, but soft. His fingers itched to find out if the rest of her was just as soft, just as firm. He’d touched so much, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough to make up for the last six years of no one to touch.

And then she was gone, twisted right out of his arms and moving toward his side where he couldn’t see her. She moved slowly, testing her footing. She was in no mood to be rescued again. Damn. He stood there, surprised by how cold her sudden absence left him.

“I think I’ve cooled off enough now. I’d better get out of this river before I catch something. I’d like another drink of water.”

She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

Rebel sighed and closed his eyes. He’d pushed instead of letting her pull, and Madeline had slipped right through his hands.

She’d come here looking for him, but what would she take with her when she left?

Chapter Seven

What was she doing? “I’d like another drink of water.” Really? That was really what she’d
like
? She wanted a damn drink of water more than she wanted him to keep touching her, his hands moving over her body with something that was close to reverence? She’d come pitifully close to marrying a doctor—a man who’d performed delicate surgeries on delicate areas—and she’d never, ever been touched by a man who was as good with his hands as Rebel was.

The confusion on his face just made it worse. Damn it all, his arms were still stretched out in her direction, which made him look like he was nigh onto begging to get her back.

This should be a victory. Once again, she’d completely, totally outflanked him. She’d won this round, fair and square.

Funny how winning felt like losing.

Slowly, his arms drifted back to his sides at the same speed his eyes closed and his face went blank. “The stew should be done,” he said, his voice as blank as his face. “I’ve got a clean towel in the tent. I’ll bring it down for you.” He turned to go, but then paused. “Will you be okay in the water?”

God, what was she doing? He’d given her everything she’d asked for today—and more. He’d kept his promise, told her what she wanted—needed—to hear, and she was still going to be a bitch?

No, she almost said. No, she would not be okay, not until he got that ass she was afraid she’d hallucinated over here and picked her up and went right back to a kind of freedom she’d never even dreamed existed before she fell into the river and right into his arms. “I’ll, uh, try not to drown.” Which was not the same as being okay in the water.