by Peggy Webb
Jenine remained quiet. What was she thinking? Had Callie come on too strong? She moderated her tone.
“I really do love him, and he loves me.”
Finally Jenine looked at her. “That counts, Dr. Red Cloud.”
Chapter Twenty
When Callie got off the plane at Dulles she vowed to put everything behind her except the matter at hand, the International Conference of Virologists. She’d always loved D.C.—the hustle and bustle, the grandeur of the government buildings, the imposing monuments, the art, the deep sense of history.
Being in D.C. always made her think of her own history, of her Apache heritage from her father and her Southern heritage from her mother.
She smiled to think of her mother’s people, of their long slow drawls, their love of storytelling, their high-ceilinged houses with the cool porches. Verandas, her Aunt Jessie Queen, her mother’s sister, used to remind her. “You’re in the Deep South, now, young lady, and don’t you forget it.”
Callie hadn’t thought of Aunt Jessie Queen in years. She’d been dead at least ten. Or had it been longer?
“I wouldn’t set foot out the door without a hat,” she always said, and her hats were worthy of the society pages: “Jessie Queen Bussard attended a showing at The Gallery wearing one of her famous hats, a confection of pink tulle and satin rosettes with streamers made from real silk Jessie herself brought back from the Orient.”
Surrounded by the history of a nation, Callie remembered that bit of family history word for word. Jessie kept all the newspaper clippings about herself in a big pink leather scrapbook with her name embosssed in gold on the cover.
I can give all this to Ricky, she thought. A rich heritage that cuts across ethnic and geographical boundaries.
She would keep his Hispanic heritage alive, as well. Ricky would grow up knowing exactly who he was…and being proud.
The next time I see Jenine Rayborn, I’ll tell her all this, Callie thought. It might make a difference.
But for now she was going to focus on the matter at hand. Peg would be joining her tomorrow and they would see the town together in Peg’s slapdash, ripsnorting way. Today Callie was going to sightsee her own way, walking, taking her time, making up her own itinerary as she went.
She stayed in front of the Whistler exhibit until closing time, then she took a cab into Georgetown for dinner. By the time she got back to her room she was pleasantly exhausted and asleep by the time her head hit the pillow, which was exactly the way she wanted it.
The next morning, conference madness caught up to her. Hoards of people milled and surged around the conference room, greeting old friends, chatting with colleagues, queuing up at the registration tables.
Callie went to the table labeled R. “Red Cloud,” she said. “Callie.”
The young woman sitting at the table would have looked more at home on a movie set than at a medical conference. Her makeup was perfect, her hair artfully windswept and her body all bones and lean muscle. A Boy Scout in a bra, Peg would have called her.
Callie grinned. Where did they find these young women?
Her name tag said Casandra. She rifled through the files, then pulled out a folder labeled with Callie’s name and registration number.
“Here you are, Dr. Red Cloud.”
Casandra’s enthusiastic bray startled Callie. Where was the hidden mike? Where was the megaphone?
“Thank you.”
Callie deliberately spoke quietly, hoping Casandra would take a hint. Her ploy didn’t work.
“You’re welcome, Dr. Red Cloud. Have a nice day, Dr. Red Cloud.”
She might as well have announced Callie over the PA system. Callie tucked her folder into her briefcase, then wove her way through the crowd toward the elevators.
“Callie.”
She froze. She didn’t have to turn around to know the speaker. She didn’t have to see his face. His voice told her everything. It spoke of warm nights in a house trailer in Texas with a small boy cuddled between them. It spoke of deep woods and moonlight and the haunting strains of a harmonica. It spoke of pungent cedar boughs and cool waters and passion so unbridled she lost her breath just thinking about it.
Joseph was at her side now, touching her arm. Just one touch, and Callie trembled inside. She bit the inside of her lower lip. Hard. She had to have pain to divert the tears.
She took a step backward, not enough to look obvious, but enough so that Joseph was no longer touching her. Now she could think. Now she could breathe.
“Joseph…nice to see you.”
So cool, so brittle. Was she turning into one of those women she hated? Those artificial creatures with the insincere smiles and the superficial conversations?
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Callie.”
“I didn’t expect you, either.”
His eyes searched her face, pierced her soul. But Callie was Apache. She knew how to mask her feelings in the face of the enemy.
The enemy. How had it all happened? How had Joseph gone from colleague to lover to enemy?
The silence stretched for an eternity. Callie gripped her briefcase tighter, trying to anchor herself to the convention hall and the people around her.
But Joseph moved in and bent close. “How have you been, Callie?”
To the casual observer they appeared to be having an ordinary conversation. Only Callie knew the truth: they were in a realm beyond time where eternity could be captured in a single glance, a single word, a single touch.
“How have I been?” she repeated, so softly he had to bend closer. She could see the fine lines spread out from his eyes and the creases of worry on either side of his mouth. “You’ve lost the right to know, Joseph.”
She whirled from him with the intention of striding away, but he caught her arm and fell into step with her.
“So this is how it is between us now,” he said. “After all we’ve been through together.”
“Don’t you dare bring up the past, Joseph Swift. Don’t you dare.” She shook him loose once more. “And quit grabbing me.”
The wounded look he gave her was genuine. Callie hardened her heart. She had enough on her plate without taking on a single added worry, a single added pain.
“I never meant to hurt you, Callie.”
“Who says I’m hurt?”
“You do.”
She was saved by the arrival of the elevator. Without a backward glance she hurried inside. Safe.
Just as the doors started sliding shut, Joseph got on and squeezed through so he was standing by her, so close their thighs touched.
Act as if he’s not there, Callie told herself. But that was impossible. Every atom in her body was aware of him.
Thank goodness for the crowd. He made no attempt at conversation.
One by one the others left the elevator until they were the only two left, but Joseph never budged from his spot.
Her floor was coming up, and for some perverse reason she didn’t want Joseph to know which one was hers.
“What floor?” he asked.
“What’s yours?”
Stalemate. They faced off while the elevator door slid open on her floor. She wasn’t about to get off, nor was she about to back down. Squared off, they stood there while the doors slid shut once more.
There was only one floor left, and when the doors opened Callie got off. Joseph followed.
“Is your room on this floor?” she said.
“No.”
“Where are you going?”
“To your room.”
Color slashed her cheeks. Joseph in her bed, covered with nothing but a white sheet. The thrill of it. The joy.
The agony.
“You presume too much,” she said.
“To talk. Just to talk.” His voice softened. “We never did say goodbye, Callie.”
Suddenly all the stiffness went out of her. She didn’t want to fight with Joseph. She needed every ounce of her courage in her battle with the state of Texas over c
ustody of Ricky.
“This is not my floor,” she said.
“I guessed as much.”
“But you followed me anyway.”
“I would follow you into hell.”
Their eyes met, locked.
“You already did,” she whispered.
“Callie…” He reached out to touch her cheek, but she drew back.
“Don’t…”
He rammed his hands into his pockets, but not before he clenched them into fists.
“I wish I could change everything that happened,” he said.
“What, Joseph? What would you change?” She challenged him with a defiant look. “If you had a second chance would you do a single thing differently?”
She saw his inward struggle, and her heart bled for him. Bled for both of them.
“No,” he whispered. “With you I’m caught up in some force beyond my control. I can’t look at you without wanting you, without…”
What? Callie wanted to scream, but she knew. Deep down she knew. Behind her the elevator door swung open, and two people got off, a gray-haired man in floral print Bermuda shorts and a woman wearing a wild red wig and bright-yellow pedal pushers. Callie and Joseph stared at each other until the odd couple passed.
“God forbid you should need anybody, Joseph.”
She stepped quickly into the elevator just as the doors shut. What was Joseph doing? Standing there watching the floors? Just in case she rode all the way to the bottom, and then back up to her floor.
She felt foolish. It was something a teenager might do. Furious at herself, at him, Callie flung her briefcase into the closet then slumped into a chair. She’d lost her appetite for lunch. She’d lost her appetite for everything except brooding, for that’s exactly what she was doing when somebody knocked on the door.
Joseph. Shock waves went through Callie. How did he find her?
The knock came again, and then the sound of a key turning the lock.
“Hey, Callie, are you in there?” The door swung open, and there was Peg. “It’s me, your roomie.”
Callie could have kissed her. “Welcome,” she said.
“My lord, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Peg flung her purse in one direction and her shoes in the other. “What’s wrong? If it’s that old bat in Texas I’ll go down there and beat the shucks out of her.”
“Why don’t you sit down and catch your breath, Peg?”
“If that’s your polite way of telling me to mind my own business, you’re wasting your breath.” Peg surveyed the room. “Umm. Nice. I’m starving. Let’s go somewhere and eat a huge high-fat calorie-laden lunch.”
And risk running into Joseph? No way.
“I’m a little tired, Peg. You go ahead. I think I’ll take a nap.”
Peg studied her closely, opened her mouth to comment, then changed her mind and stepped back into her shoes.
“I think I’d better go check the lay of the land,” Peg said casually. Too casually. “I hear Dr. Joseph Swift is going to be here,” she added.
“I can never fool you, Peg.”
“Why do you even bother trying?”
“That’s my stubborn Apache side… Joseph’s already here.”
“And?”
“For all the good it did we might as well be worlds apart.”
“And so you’re planning to hole up here for the entire conference so you won’t run into him. Is that about right, Callie?”
“You make it sound so cowardly.”
“You’re no coward, Callie. One of the first things I thought when I met you was, here’s a woman with guts, a real grits woman.”
“Grits woman?”
Peg grinned. “Girls raised in the South.”
“I wasn’t raised in the South.”
“Yes, but your mother was, and let me tell you, Callie Red Cloud, that kind of courage doesn’t wear thin in one generation. Now put on your shoes and let’s go to lunch.”
Callie not only put on her shoes, but she put on fresh makeup and a fresh dress.
“After lunch, let’s go shopping,” she told Peg.
“Good lord, is the world about to end? You never want to go shopping. What brought that on?”
“Not Joseph, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Callie linked arms with Peg, and the two of them went out the door.
“Did I ever tell you about my Aunt Jessie Queen?”
“No. Jessie Queen? She sounds like a hoot.”
“She was. And she never went anywhere without a hat. Aunt Jessie Queen said the whole world looked better from under the brim of a good quality hat.”
Joseph would know that laugh anywhere. He leaned around the potted palm where he’d been sitting with the newspaper, not spying, really, but hoping. Callie and Peg emerged from the elevator, arms linked, laughing.
He started toward them at a fast clip that could only be called a lope. They had their heads close together and they were headed toward the front doors.
The lobby was crowded, and he had to literally push his way through. Rude. He knew exactly what people were thinking. He would have thought the same thing himself if some tall rawboned foreigner barreled past him.
“Excuse me,” he muttered. “Pardon me.”
Thank God Callie was tall. Peg had quickly disappeared in the crowd, but Joseph could still see the top of Callie’s head.
Funny how even the top of her head could do crazy things to his heart. He got trapped behind a woman struggling with two stubborn standard poodles on leashes.
Up front he could see the revolving doors moving, see Peg burst into the sunshine with Callie following close behind.
He was losing them. Meanwhile, the poodles wrapped their leashes around the woman, and she was surging this way and that, trying to untangle herself.
The only way around her would be to knock her down. For a crazy moment, Joseph considered doing just that. Fortunately his better judgment won out.
“Can I help you?” he asked her.
“Oh, would you? I can’t seem to get Napoleon and Josephine going in the same direction at once.”
“Let me take one of those leashes.”
The woman thrust the blue one into his hand. “Napoleon,” she said. “He’s been a very naughty boy today. Mama will have to punish him.” The woman lapsed into baby talk, speaking to the dog who showed not the least bit of interest in her. “Mama will have to take away his widdle treat today, yes she will.”
Joseph could think of a better punishment. He glanced toward the door. There was no sign of Callie.
“Now you be careful,” the woman said. “Napoleon has been known to bite when he’s upset.”
Great. That’s all he needed. A dog bite.
On the other hand, it might be just the thing to restore his sanity. Suppose he had caught up to Callie? What would he have said? She’d made her position perfectly clear, and so had he.
Even if she changed her position, he could not. There was no way he would ever go through the agony of watching the woman he loved expose herself to danger on a daily basis.
Napoleon and his entourage turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
“Good boy,” Joseph said, and suddenly the blessing in disguise bared his teeth and growled.
Most people thought Native Americans had a natural affinity for all animals. Joseph was living proof of the fallacy of that kind of thinking.
As he set about separating Napoleon from his owner, he wondered why his blessing in disguise had to come in such a snarling package.
“I look silly.”
Callie wore a hat the saleslady had called perky and Peg had called cute. It was the color of old mushrooms, and that was exactly what it looked like on Callie. Or so she thought. But she kept this opinion to herself. Her mind was on far more important things than the hat.
Joseph. She’d seen him in the lobby, just a glimpse out of the corner of her eye but that was enough to set her mind racing in four different directions.
W
hy was she so upset? He had made himself perfectly clear on the mountain. So had she, for that matter. She could never love a man who denied his heritage. And yet…
“I think you ought to buy it,” Peg said.
“What?”
“The hat. You said you wanted one.”
“Maybe not this one.” Callie took off the sad-looking mushroom and reached for one with a wide brim that would cover her face if she tilted her head just right. “What about this one?”
“Wow. You look like Greta Garbo, sort of mysterious and sexy and unattainable.”
“I agree,” the salesclerk said. “It lends you a certain glamorous air.”
Callie almost laughed aloud. She’d never been remotely interested in glamour. All her life she’d been called a tomboy, and not without reason. Ellen used to say she spent more time in the barn with the horses than she did in the house with her family. And when she wasn’t riding horses, she was picking up stray cats and mangy dogs and birds with broken wings, then taking them to the clinic for Calder to show her how to make them well again.
Still, change was sometimes a good thing.
“I’ll take it,” she said.
Over lunch Peg kept making Callie adjust the brim until she was satisfied the hat was at the perfect angle. Callie entered the spirit of the thing, laughing as she tipped it down first so her eyes were barely visible—“It makes you look like a gangster,” Peg said—then over her right ear at a rakish angle that Peg said made her look like a queen christening a ship.
She settled for the eyes-barely-visible look when all of a sudden she caught a glimpse of a tall dark-haired man, and her breath got caught in her throat.
“What’s wrong?” Peg said.
Callie couldn’t speak. All she could do was watch the man at the checkout counter. He turned so his profile was to Callie, and she saw that it wasn’t Joseph, after all. She had never expected such acute disappointment, such a sharp sense of loss.
“I thought I saw Joseph, that’s all.”
Peg whistled softly. “You’ve got it bad, girlfriend.”
“I don’t…” Callie cut off her protest in midsentence. For the past few months she’d done nothing but deny her feelings for Joseph. She, who prided herself on honesty.
