by Peggy Webb
Never until tonight had Joseph wondered if he’d done the right thing. Never until Callie challenged him had he questioned his motives.
He fell asleep wondering how and why she had bewitched him.
The minute Callie woke she knew everything had changed.
Never again could she look at Joseph Swift Hawk in the same way. Not after their late-night conversation. Not after the kiss.
She groaned and wrapped the covers tighter around herself. She didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to see him.
“Callie?” Peg shook her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. What time is it?”
“Time to make breakfast. It’s your turn, remember?”
At least it would give her something to do besides sit across the table from Joseph sipping coffee and pretend nothing had happened.
There was a knock on the door. “Peg, I need to talk to you.”
“Speak of the devil,” Callie muttered.
“I couldn’t have put it better myself.” Peg raked a brush through her hair. “Be right there, Dr. Swift,” she called to him, then turned to Callie. “What do you suppose that ogre wants?”
“He wants to smoke the peace pipe.”
“How do you know?”
“Mind reading. Old Apache trick.” Callie threw back the covers then shoved Peg gently toward the door. “Go on out there and use your charm. I’ll bet you’ll discover that he’s more than willing to meet you halfway.”
She caught a fleeting glimpse of Joseph when Peg went out the door, but that was all it took. She felt a sweet rush through her body, and had to sit back down on the bed to recover. Callie Red Cloud was not the swooning kind, and yet here she was, languishing away.
That couldn’t be tenderness she was feeling, could it? That couldn’t be longing.
Callie Red Cloud was not the longing type. Instead, she hurried to the kitchen and made quick work of breakfast.
By the time Joseph and Peg joined her, she had stacks of pancakes dripping in butter, a huge pile of bacon, crisped exactly the way she liked it, and a pot of strong black coffee.
Peg was smiling, and even Joseph seemed to be in a jocular mood.
“What did you two talk about?” Callie asked Peg as they were suiting up. Though she knew the subject, she wanted all the details. Her brother used to laugh and call her Miss Inquisitive.
“Callie, don’t you know curiosity killed the cat?”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“And you’re avoiding the subject.”
“Right.”
“Does this mean you’re not going to tell me, or does it mean you want me to grovel and beg?”
“Grovel and beg.”
“Never. I’m not the groveling kind.”
Their good-natured bantering lasted until they went out into the sunshine for inspection, their arms around each other, laughing. Peg had a high ringing laugh, like bells, but Callie’s was full-bodied and deep-throated.
Joseph watched and waited, letting Callie’s laughter wash over him in sweet waves. It was cathartic, healing, exactly the antidote he needed before facing the task that lay ahead.
“Ready for inspection, Doctor,” Callie said.
Her usual disdain was missing…or was it merely wishful thinking on his part?
He inspected Peg first, and as she passed the barrier into the quarantined area he turned to Callie.
“I’ve saved the best for last,” he said, surprising both of them.
“Am I the best?”
Their eyes met, held, and she replayed their kiss in her mind a thousand times before he could answer her.
“Yes,” he said, all hint of levity vanished, “you’re the best.”
As they passed the barrier and walked toward the hospital every nerve in her body tingled with awareness of him. It was a great relief to Callie when Sister Mary Margaret rushed through the door to meet them.
“Dr. Swift, we have the most marvelous news. Little Ricardo is sitting up, demanding food. Tacos, of all things.”
Little Ricardo was not sitting on his bed: he was bouncing. Sister Beatrice flapped around him like a great black bird while Sister Mary Margaret covered her mouth like a schoolgirl to hold back her giggles.
Joseph sat beside the small boy, conversing in perfect Spanish while he checked all his vital signs.
“So, you want tacos?”
“Yes, with green chilies.”
“Are you planning to start a fire somewhere?” Joseph patted the small boy’s stomach. “Perhaps in here?”
The child’s laughter pealed through the hospital, and patients who hadn’t heard the sound in days smiled.
“First, let’s see what we can do about getting you a good bath and some clothes. Sister Beatrice?”
She gathered Ricardo in her voluminous embrace, and as they walked away nothing could be seen of him except the top of his dark head and legs as thin as matchsticks. Joseph stared after them, deep in thought.
“The doctor has a heart after all,” Callie said, softly.
“Did you think otherwise?”
“Yes.”
“Even after last night?”
Callie couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t answer his question. Instead, she changed the subject.
“How soon can he go home?”
“He has no home. His parents died in the first wave of the outbreak.”
“What about his other relatives?”
“All gone. Little Ricardo Valesquez has no one…except us.”
There was tenderness in Joseph’s face when he spoke of the child, a gentleness Callie had not seen. And his voice was so intimate when he said us that Callie thought he meant the two of them. Together. A team, and so much more.
She would have asked him what he meant, but he was already striding away, taking care of other patients.
“Best if I do my own work instead of mulling over him,” she muttered.
“Mulling over who?” Peg handed Callie a handful of charts.
“Nobody.”
“Would that be the same nobody who handled little Ricky as if he had a houseful of his own children?”
“Ricky?”
“He told Beatrice that’s what he wants to be called, and you didn’t answer my nosy question.”
“Do you suppose he plans to make the tacos himself?”
“Who?”
“Nobody.” Callie grinned. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter Six
Joseph had the tacos delivered to his trailer that night for dinner, and the doctors and nurses who could be spared as well as the team of virologists shared Ricky’s celebration meal.
Ricky sat between Callie and Peg, and both women doted on him. As it turned out, he spoke English most of the time, but when he was excited he always turned to the more expressive language of his parents.
“What did he say?” Peg asked. “Something about the ground?”
Callie laughed. “Grande. Big. He’s telling you how big his belly is.” She leaned over to pat Ricky’s tummy, then she patted her own flat stomach. “Mine, too. I think I ate too much. I’m on fire.”
She looked straight at Joseph, and what she saw in his eyes excited her beyond imagination. The same fire burned in them both, and it had nothing to do with tacos. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his, and she wondered if the others noticed.
Fortunately, Ricky saved her. “Tell me a story,” he said, tugging at her hand.
“All right. How about a fairy tale?”
“No.” He cocked his head and stared at her. “Are you a real Indian?”
“Yes, I am.” She sought Joseph, and found him studying her. “My mother is from Mississippi, but my father is a full-blooded Apache. That makes me a true Native American.”
The child didn’t need such a detailed explanation. Was she throwing another challenge at Joseph?
“Tell him the legend of the prairie rose,” Joseph
said.
“Yeah,” Ricky said.
“My mother told it to me when I was a child. It was always a favorite of mine,” Joseph said.
“Tell it, Callie. Tell it.” Ricky climbed into her lap and laid his head on her chest. Time moved backward and Callie was sitting before a campfire deep in the heart of the White Mountains, her head on her father’s chest while he told the legend of the rose. It was prairie lore, originating with the Dakota-Sioux.
That Joseph had declared it his favorite was almost the same as declaring himself Sioux.
“Long ago when the world was young and Mother Earth was just a girl,” Callie began, “the prairie had no flowers, only green grasses and brown shrubs, for nothing else could withstand the fierce breath of the Wind Demon.”
Her voice was lyrical, its musical cadences rising and falling as she told how the flowers came up from Mother Earth’s heart, one by one, only to be destroyed by the Wind Demon. Something inside Joseph trembled, melted, and he found himself longing for his childhood, for a time when he was certain of the goodness of the world and the honor of his father. For the first time in many years, his heart yearned, and he felt a glimmer of hope, not merely for himself, but for Callie, for Ricky, for all of mankind.
“And then the sweet shy prairie rose asked permission of Mother Earth to go to the prairie.”
Ricky was almost asleep, and Callie brushed his hair back from his forehead. The tenderness of the gesture tore at Joseph’s heart.
“And when the Demon Wind smelled the sweet fragrance of prairie rose his heart melted and he abandoned his fierce ways to became a kind and gentle breeze.”
Ricky was asleep in her lap. One by one the valiant warriors stole from the kitchen and went to bed so they would be prepared to do battle the next day.
Only Joseph and Callie were left, with Ricky cuddled against her breast. They didn’t speak for a long time, but instead sat in quiet communion with the magic of the story still between them.
“What will we do with him?” Callie said.
“For now, he stays with me. Does that surprise you so?”
“Am I that easy to read?”
“Not always, but sometimes. Last night, for instance.”
He was sitting across the table from her, not touching, and yet Callie felt his yearning. She tried to shut the door against him, but she was powerless.
She formed her mouth to make a denial, but nothing came out.
“You make me want too much, Callie.”
“I don’t think I want to hear any more of this, Joseph.”
“Your lips say no, but your eyes speak the truth.”
“Tonight when you admitted that the legend of the rose is your favorite story, were you also admitting your Sioux heritage?”
“Is that so important to you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know, Callie. Perhaps my heart was admitting the truth, but in my mind there is still a question.”
She nodded. It wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear, but for now it was enough.
She shifted the sleeping child. “Who will tell him about his parents?”
“I’ve already told him.”
“How did he react?”
“He has a child’s natural resilience as well as a child’s natural optimism… How do we lose that, Callie?”
“Reality forced upon us, I suppose. All the magic pushed out…I don’t know.”
“Do you know what he said?” Joseph came around the table and put his hand on the child’s head. “He said, ‘Who will be my mommy?’”
Tears stung Callie’s eyes, and she made no attempt to hide them. Joseph knelt beside her and caught the tear-drops with the tips of his fingers, then he cupped her face, softly, tenderly, in the way of a man who loves a woman.
“If I were any other man I would fall in love with you, Callie. I would fight demons and slay dragons to keep the tears from your eyes.”
He caressed her cheeks until the tears stopped, then he kissed her softly on the lips, lifted the child from her arms and left her alone in the kitchen.
“But you’re not another man,” she whispered. “And I’m not another woman. You are Wind Demon and I can never be Shy Prairie Rose.”
Joseph tucked the child into bed, then kissed his downy cheek, turned off the lights and climbed into his own bed. A full moon rode the Texas sky, and in the pale light Joseph could see the small hump under the covers, a little bundle hardly bigger than a knapsack. He got up to check Ricky’s pulse and respiration, then stood for a while watching the slow rise and fall of his breathing. It was like having a child of his own.
Almost.
Ricky awoke crying in the middle of the night, crying for his mother.
“I’m here.” Joseph gathered the little boy in his arms and sat on the edge of the bed, rocking. “Everything’s going to be all right, Ricky. I’m here.”
Ricky wadded Joseph’s undershirt in his fists and cried even harder.
“How about a glass of warm milk?” Ricky’s answer was a fresh outburst. “How about a cookie? Does that sound great, pal?”
“I want my mommy.” Ricky went into a fresh gale of weeping.
Joseph walked the floor with him, he sang, he cajoled. But nothing could calm the child.
In desperation Joseph wrapped a blanket around both of them, Indian style, and stepped out into the night. A sliver of moon and stars sprinkled sparsely across the sky shed a surreal light, so that when Callie stepped out of her trailer she looked like a spirit, the legendary ghost woman of the Tetons who had stolen the heart of a Sioux brave.
She didn’t see them at first, for they were standing in the shadow of the trailer. Joseph took advantage of this camouflage to savor her, the golden skin turned luminescent by the moon, the tumble of hair like a waterfall, the exquisite face with cheeks like knife blades and lips made for kissing.
Selfish. He was selfish to the core for taking his fill of her while the child was in need.
“Callie, over here.”
In the darkness she seemed to drift toward them, a cloud, a spirit, a dream.
“I heard him crying,” she said.
“I’m sorry it woke you.”
“I wasn’t sleeping well anyhow.”
She was beside them now, and Joseph did the most natural thing in the world: he opened the blanket and she came inside. She wrapped her arms around the child, Joseph wrapped his arms around her, and the three of them stood cocooned by the blanket while the moon tracked across the sky.
Words weren’t necessary. Sheltered by love and compassion, Ricky grew quiet and finally fell asleep. And still Callie and Joseph stayed as they were, holding on to each other, an island unto themselves, safe under the blanket.
Her nightgown was white cotton and prim. But there was nothing prim about the body underneath. The imprint of her branded Joseph. Heart pounding like native drums, he memorized the curve of her hip and the shape of her breasts. In the pale moonlight he saw how the hollow at the base of a woman’s throat could drive a man mad with longing. He felt how the silkiness of a woman’s hair could inspire a man to write poetry. He understood how the touch of a woman’s soft skin could move a man to sing songs of love.
She stirred against him, sighing. “I suppose I should go.”
“Not yet.”
“Ricky’s sleeping.”
“He might wake up and need you.”
“I didn’t do anything, not really.”
“You held him, Callie.” He shifted Ricky onto one shoulder so her could draw Callie closer. “Sometimes that’s enough.”
She wrapped her arms tightly around his waist.
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes it is.”
Tension began to build along Joseph’s spine, and his body heat increased a hundredfold. What had started as a warm embrace rapidly turned into burning need. Callie’s response was instantaneous. She became liquid in his arms.
He bent down and caught her lower lip between his tee
th, teasing the tender flesh, sucking, nipping. Her mouth flowered open for him, and he braced his back against the trailer under the impact of their kiss.
He shifted. She moved. They swayed, hips perfectly melded, feeling each other through their clothes and wanting more, ever so much more.
The child was featherlight in his arms, and the blanket gave them privacy, shelter from the awful storm that raged a few feet away, just beyond the barriers.
Joseph knew he was courting danger, knew he had to put a stop to this madness, but not yet. Not yet.
He explored the soft inner recesses of her mouth with his tongue, taking her sweet nectar for himself. Need rode him hard, and his exploration became bolder, his tongue an extension of himself, a driving force that sought to be satisfied.
Callie was liquid heat, a dark mystery in his arms, a sweet hot miracle, and he knew if he held on too long he wouldn’t be able to let her go. Not now. Not ever.
The aching void opened within him even before he released her. She tightened her grip on him, sensing his turmoil, and then she let go. Her chest rose and fell rapidly with her breathing, and he felt as if his heart would burst.
“Sometimes holding is not enough,” he said.
“No. Sometimes it only makes us long for things we know we can’t have.”
She pressed her forehead into the hollow of his throat, and he kissed the top of her head.
“Callie, you are the most appealing woman I’ve ever met.”
She waited. He loved that about her, the dignified stillness that gave a man space to move and speak freely.
“I lost one woman I loved to the arbo virus. I won’t risk that again.”
She cupped his cheeks, kissed him softly on the lips, then lifted the edge of the blanket to steal away into the night. Something shifted inside Joseph, ideas rearranging themselves, reason abdicating to heart.
“Callie…stay.”
Chapter Seven
It was all so simple really. Joseph said “stay,” and once again Callie followed her heart instead of her mind.
In the morning she would tell Peg she’d stayed because of the child, but she knew that wasn’t so. She’d stay for one reason and one reason only: in a bed not two feet away, Joseph Swift Hawk lay sleeping, one arm flung above his head and the other crossed over his chest.
