“No.” Wyatt hesitated, then stepped around behind her, putting a hand on each shoulder to pull her into the shelter of his body. When she stiffened, he kneaded her shoulders gently. “Consider me a human windbreak.”
As he continued the massage—purely therapeutic, even if his heart and body wanted to think otherwise—she relaxed enough to tilt her face up to the sun, the crown of her head brushing his jaw, but her muscles vibrated with tension. He ached to wrap his arms around her and hold on for as long as he was allowed.
His phone buzzed, and he checked the text. “Hell. I forgot I had a haircut scheduled today. I won’t be able to reschedule before I leave for Reno.”
“You’ll have time to get it cut while you’re down there.”
Wyatt scoffed at the suggestion. “I’m not letting a stranger touch my hair.”
“What was I thinking?” But as snark went, it was far from her best effort.
He tilted his head to scowl at her, dragging out the inane conversation to distract both of them. “Oh, and you would walk into any old salon?”
“Always do.” She flicked the end of the ponytail that danced in the breeze. “I never get around to making appointments. I just walk into one of those mall places if I notice the ends are getting fried.” When she saw the look of honest horror on Wyatt’s face, she rolled her eyes. “As hairstyles go, this isn’t exactly rocket science.”
Unlike his, which required practice and precision. He’d had enough of the pretty-boy crap when Laura had persuaded him to let it grow out—very temporarily. My angel face, she’d called him, toying with his mop of curls. Back then, his future had been laid out like the squares on a Monopoly board—from Connecticut Avenue to Park Place, acquiring the requisite wife, children, and real estate along the way.
Now here he was, standing in the heart of the Blackfeet Nation with the woman who’d ended up owning him.
A black short-box pickup slowed to turn onto the gravel road leading to the airstrip, and Melanie stepped quickly away, as if not wanting to be seen too close to him. He tried to brush off the sting. It was possible Hank could be behind the tinted windows. If he saw Wyatt’s hands on his sister, this conversation would be over before it started.
But there was only one person in the vehicle, and the woman who stepped out was, at a guess, around five years older than Wyatt, with smooth, dark skin and jet-black hair cut in short, funky spikes. She wore a summer-weight black sweater, fashionably distressed jeans, caramel-colored suede boots, and a jacket to match. When she smiled, her face transformed from merely attractive to striking.
Wyatt had to force his answering smile past a knot of impatience. Bing had been maddeningly evasive on the phone, refusing to say anything specific about the situation beyond assuring him that Hank had recovered from his injuries, but she had promised to meet them herself. Why had she sent this—
The woman extended a graceful hand to Melanie. “You have to be the sister.”
“Uh, yes.” Melanie accepted the handshake but shot a quick Who is this? look at Wyatt.
He was trying not to gape, having recognized the rich, contralto voice. “And you’re Bing.”
He managed to make it a statement instead of a shocked question. To have a grandson near Philip’s age, she would’ve had to be…and then her son or daughter must have been… Wyatt gave up on the math, stepping closer to Melanie to give her a subtle nudge with his elbow. She blinked, as if he’d interrupted similar calculations on her part.
“No sense standing out here in this damn wind.” Bing gestured to her pickup. “I could use a cup of coffee. How ’bout you?”
Melanie opened her mouth, no doubt to demand to see Hank immediately. Wyatt grabbed her elbow and gave it a warning squeeze as he steered her toward the pickup. She jerked away, but clamped her mouth shut and climbed into the front passenger’s seat when he opened the door for her. Wyatt slid into the back seat behind her, where he could see Bing’s face and hold Melanie down if necessary. She was in no state of mind to be patient or tactful, which was why Wyatt had insisted that Philip give him Bing’s phone number, and that he be the one to talk to her.
They turned east on the highway, crossed over the crystal-clear river, and skirted the edge of the lake. Ahead and to the right, the Rockies loomed, row after row of sheer cliffs and razor-edged crests. These were the real deal, not glorified hills like the section of the Blue Mountains around Pendleton.
If Melanie pushed him off one of these, Wyatt wouldn’t limp away.
“How far is it to where Hank is staying?” she asked.
“About ten miles up that way.” Bing waved a hand over her shoulder, opposite the direction they were traveling. She silenced any protest on Melanie’s part with a cool, assessing look. “When he got hurt, I asked if he had family I should call. He said no.”
Melanie sucked in an audible breath at the implication. He didn’t want you there. Why is that?
“Does he know we’re coming?” Wyatt asked, carefully neutral.
“Norma doesn’t have a phone.” One corner of Bing’s mouth curled down. “And a call might guarantee he’d be gone.”
Melanie thumped a clenched fist on the center console. “Why? He knows he can always come to me for help.”
Bing gave her an enigmatic glance. “Can he?”
Before Melanie could return fire, Bing made a left into the parking lot of a café housed in a large, purple tin shed with a bright-red door and Aliens Welcome painted on the roof in three-foot-high letters. The decor suggested they were referring to the kind who might arrive via flying saucer. Inside, the dining room was a mix of rustic wood and hippie kitsch. At just past eleven on a Monday, only one table was occupied—by a family with Iowa license plates, two squabbling elementary-school boys, and a teenaged girl mesmerized by her phone. The server who greeted them had a man bun and a Swedish accent.
Bing marched past him to the table farthest from the tourists. “We’ll take this one. And bring me a cup of coffee and a piece of huckleberry pie.”
“Ice cream?” he asked.
“Huckleberry.” She nodded at Melanie and Wyatt. “They’ll have the same. And give me two burgers with the works to go. Put it on my check.”
“I’ll take sweet tea if you have it,” Melanie said.
She settled into the chair across from Bing with an expression that made Wyatt feel as if he was taking a seat between two mama bears who’d laid claim to the same cub. Whatever Bing had to say, she didn’t expect them to like it. Damn. Wyatt wanted to smack himself. He’d been so thrilled to locate Hank that he hadn’t realized Bing had never actually agreed to take them to him.
And she was still in the process of deciding.
Chapter 35
Who the hell did this woman think she was? If she thought she could keep Melanie away from her brother much longer, she was fixin’ to get schooled. Any of the other locals could lead her to Hank, and Melanie would go around, over, or through anyone who tried to stop her.
Bing nodded her thanks to the waiter as he set down their drinks, then waited until he was out of earshot. “You heard what happened in Toppenish?”
“Only what Philip told us.”
Bing nodded again and took a sip of her coffee. She spoke with a less-pronounced version of Philip’s Native American…did you call it an accent? As when Melanie was using what she called her “professional voice,” the words revealed that Bing was educated, but the shapes of vowels and the weight of the consonants were different.
“Was it his fault?” Melanie blurted.
Bing shrugged. “The cowboys know the chance they’re taking when they climb on. The bullfighters can only do so much.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Bing looked Melanie straight in the eye. “There aren’t many bullfighters who can do what Hank does and make it look easy. Like this one—” She tipped h
er head toward Wyatt. “The kid got slammed down on his face practically under the bull’s nose, and that’s a hooky son of a bitch. Even if Hank had done everything right, he might not have gotten there in time. None of our other bullfighters would have had a prayer.”
“Does he understand that?” Wyatt asked.
Bing swung her dark eyes over to him. “What do you think?”
Wyatt didn’t bother to answer. In the same circumstances, he would never forgive himself. Neither would Joe. They understood the worst could happen every time the chute gate cracked, and they could accept it—eventually—if they’d done everything humanly, and sometimes superhumanly, possible to protect the cowboy. If they hadn’t…
They would have to try to live with it.
Melanie shook her head. “He started out so well after he left Jacobs Livestock. I can’t fathom what went wrong.”
“One of his new Florida friends asked him why he left Texas, and Hank made the mistake of telling the truth.” Bing’s hand tightened, as if she’d like to have more than words with those so-called friends. “When the story spread, they left out a few pertinent details—like how Hank never did more than kiss Mariah Swift, or that she was from Washington state and had no idea she was two months shy of legal in Texas. Keeping it quiet was as much self-preservation for her as for him. Imagine the guilt if he’d been hit with a mandatory two-year prison sentence, all for a summer fling.”
“Hank wasn’t just having fun,” Wyatt said quietly.
“No.” Bing gave a pitying shake of her head. “He fell hard. Understandable if you’ve ever met Mariah. Hank’s not the first cowboy she’s blown out of his boots, and she’s always liked ’em older. Drives her parents insane.”
“You know them?” Melanie asked.
“His mother is Shoshone. They show up once in a while at the bigger Indian rodeos. Mariah is an amazing girl—smart, talented, gorgeous, and very mature for her age. Hank thought they would just let things blow over, then pick up again once she was old enough.” Bing’s mouth twisted down at the corners. “She had other ideas. Six weeks later, she was posting pictures with her new beau.”
Oh God. Poor Hank. He’d tried to tell Melanie how he felt about the girl when she’d charged to the rescue after Mariah’s daddy had busted his jaw and Cole Jacobs had fired him. She’d been too busy calling her brother ten kinds of an idiot to listen.
And she wondered why he had stopped coming to her with his problems.
“That’s why he didn’t go back to Florida for the beginning of the new season,” Wyatt guessed.
Bing nodded. “The biggest contractor in that region had asked him to work all of their rodeos for the next year, but he took it back when he heard the rumors. Told Hank flat out that he wasn’t bringing someone like him on board when he had a fourteen-year-old granddaughter.”
“Fourteen?” Melanie burst out. “For God’s sake. Hank might not’ve used the best judgment where Mariah was concerned, but he’s not a predator.”
Wyatt put a settling hand on her arm. “We know that, but a bunch of strangers are going to believe what they hear.”
“Especially when it’s been blown all out of proportion,” Bing put in sourly. “That’s when it finally hit him. What had happened with Mariah wasn’t no big deal. The law and the gossips didn’t give a shit about his intentions. In their eyes, he was no better than scumbags who hang out at the mall stalking the teenyboppers. That’s when he really started coming unraveled.”
“Right around Thanksgiving,” Wyatt said.
“Yeah. And then he went home and made it all worse.”
Getting into a yelling match with their dad. And sleeping with Grace. His friend. His little red-haired girl. Then getting drunk and expressing his regret in the most humiliating way possible.
Melanie propped her elbows on the table and pressed the heels of her hands into temples that threatened to explode. “God. This thing with Mariah—it’s like the gift that won’t stop giving.”
“She was also at Toppenish,” Bing said flatly. “Like I said, they occasionally pop up at the big-money rodeos. Seeing her knocked Hank on his ass. He made it through the rodeo that night—probably on auto-pilot—but the next day…whatever he did overnight to dull the pain hadn’t worn off. That would have to be the day something horrible happened. When he needed to be at his absolute best, and wasn’t.”
“And the bull that ran him down?” Melanie braced herself to hear the worst. “What was that?”
“The beginning of an emotional meltdown. But if you’re asking if he was suicidal—I’m not sure even he can answer that question.”
“What about now?” Wyatt asked, when Melanie couldn’t force out the words.
“He’s making progress. But he’s got a lot to deal with—the breakdown of his family, the loss of his alternative support structure as part of the Jacobs crew, damage to his self-worth from the thing with Mariah. And now there’s an eighteen-year-old boy in a wheelchair, and Hank’s convinced he helped put him there. I don’t know many people who possess the coping mechanisms to deal with that much emotional trauma.”
At the rise of Wyatt’s eyebrows, she smiled. “Did I forget to mention that I’m an addiction counselor at Indian Health Service? I can talk all the jargon.”
“You aren’t his counselor, or you wouldn’t be able to tell us any of this,” Wyatt said.
“No. I’m his friend. He needs that right now more than anything.”
Even more than his sister?
Bing’s dark gaze settled on her, reading the obvious thought. “He needs someone who isn’t part of his old life. A person who has nothing invested in anything but him.”
“And that’s you?” Melanie asked, hurt sharpening the question to a near insult.
“Yes.”
They fell silent as the waiter brought slices of pie, the dark berry filling oozing out to pool around generous scoops of paler-purple ice cream. Wyatt ignored his. Melanie picked up her fork and tested the crust, then took a small bite. The intense flavor of the berries exploded in her mouth.
“Good?” Bing asked.
“Excellent.” Although the pastry was no match for Miz Iris’s, but nothing ever was. Melanie took another bite, this time with ice cream. Even better. She kept eating because she didn’t know what else to do. Finally, she paused. “What about now? Is he…safe?”
“As far as I can tell. He’s in a situation where, in his words, it’s nearly impossible for him to screw up anything else. We have to start there and give him the tools he needs to rebuild.”
“How long will that take?” Melanie asked, realizing even as she spoke that it was a ridiculous question.
Bing just shrugged.
“And this…state he’s in. I suppose you have a name for it.”
“He hasn’t been formally evaluated, but I would call it a major depressive episode. I have seen no signs of substance abuse. He doesn’t even drink more than a beer now and then. With therapy, time, and possibly medication, he could come out of this just fine.”
Could. Melanie lifted her eyes to challenge Bing’s steady gaze. “And you think he can get all of that here.”
“I do.” Bing gave her a long, thoughtful look, then a slight nod, as if she’d come to a decision. “And you need to judge for yourself. Just don’t expect him to be happy to see you.”
Chapter 36
When Melanie turned she saw that behind the corral, a pickup camper had been set several yards back into the trees on a platform of wooden pallets, with moldy, disintegrating straw bales packed around the bottom for insulation. Lord. The thing must be crawling with mice.
“Hank?” Melanie had to ask because the blade-thin man leaning in the camper door bore almost no resemblance to her brother.
Like Wyatt, he’d given up shaving, but the result was scraggly and uneven, as if he whacked at it oc
casionally with a pair of dull scissors. The hair he’d always kept short fell well past the collar of a tan canvas chore coat worn through at the cuffs and hem. But it was his eyes that unnerved her, dark and flat in his gaunt face.
“What are you doing here, Mel? And with him?” He jerked his chin toward the pickup.
Wyatt stood utterly still, but Melanie knew he was as cocked and ready as that shotgun—muscles primed to explode into action. It took considerable effort to keep her voice level. “You haven’t called, and I couldn’t find you. I was worried.”
“Yeah? What kind of deal did you make with the devil to track me down?” Then he snorted in contempt. “As if I need to ask.”
She bit back the knee-jerk response. She hadn’t really expected Hank to attack. Not like this. Why hadn’t she thought to make Wyatt stay…somewhere? Anywhere but here. Why hadn’t he offered to stay back? He had probably thought she needed protecting—and assuming that gun was loaded, he might be right—but the sight of him was enough to ruin any chance of a civil conversation between her and Hank.
Ever.
“He’s awful pretty.” The old woman shuffled out onto the warped wooden step, as hunched and gnarled as the wind-tortured trees. She leered at Wyatt, showing three rotting brown teeth. “I’d do him for nothin’.”
Wyatt didn’t quite hide his grimace. Norma cackled, leaning on her shotgun as she squinted at them from a face that had collapsed in on itself as if the bones had dissolved along with her spine.
“I s’pose you want to haul that one back to Texas.” She waved a bony claw at Hank. “Go ahead. Ain’t worth a shit anyway.”
“Neither is the pay,” Hank retorted.
Norma hmmphed, then scowled at Bing. “You bring me anything besides tourists?”
“Always.” She held up a carton with the pie Wyatt hadn’t touched and a bag with the takeout burgers. “Let’s go inside and give them some privacy.”
“I’ll wait in the pickup. I can use the rest before the flight home.” Wyatt climbed into the front seat and closed the door. From there, he could keep an eye on Melanie and Hank without listening in…and avoid being trapped in the close confines of the trailer with a woman who didn’t appear to have had her spring bath yet. He tilted the seat back and closed his eyes, but Melanie had no doubt he was still watching.
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