by Pamela Clare
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” Chaska didn’t want Naomi worrying about him. “Do you think you’ll be comfortable in here?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
“If it helps you sleep at night, I’m happy. I’m going to go get your stuff out of the bathroom and bring—”
“Chaska, who are you talking to?” Winona appeared in the doorway in her pajamas. “Oh! I … uh … I’m sorry.”
Naomi’s eyes went wide.
“It’s not what you think, Win.” Chaska fought not to laugh.
“It’s not?” Win sounded disappointed.
Chaska told his sister about the phone call from McBride. “Naomi didn’t feel safe downstairs by herself. I offered to switch rooms with her.”
“That’s awful.” Winona sat next to Naomi. “That would shake me up, too.”
Chaska left the women to talk and made his way downstairs. Winona could comfort Naomi far better than he could. He had no idea how it felt to be female, to know that one was physically weaker than most men. He’d grown up bigger and stronger than most boys on the rez and had never once been afraid for his physical safety.
He checked the guest bedroom once more to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then went into the bathroom and grabbed her stuff. He made his way back upstairs to the main bathroom, the women’s voices drifting out into the hallway.
“For the first few months after it happened, I kept expecting the man who’d done it to walk in again, even though I knew he was dead,” Winona said.
“Arlie isn’t dead. He’s out there somewhere. He drew a dick on my face. I’m sure he’s the one who did it. He was the one who kept trying to grope me.”
“Disgusting pig.”
That was kinder than the words Chaska would use to describe the son of a bitch.
He went downstairs one last time and grabbed Naomi’s tea and her crutches, then made his way back to his bedroom to find Winona changing his sheets, Naomi standing on one leg beside the headboard. The two women had fallen silent the moment he’d hit the landing, the oh-so-innocent look on Winona’s face a dead giveaway.
His sister had been meddling again.
He set the tea down on his nightstand and handed the crutches to Naomi, fighting to rein in his irritation. “Thanks, Win. I’ve got it. You head back to bed.”
Winona must have sensed his frustration with her because she didn’t argue.
“Right. Yeah. Okay.” She walked around to the other side of his bed and gave Naomi a hug. “I’m right down the hall if you need anything, okay? I’ll help you get settled in here in the morning.”
“Thanks, Win.” Naomi made her way to the sofa and sat.
Chaska picked up where Winona had left off, smoothing the flat sheet over the fitted sheet and tucking it in at the foot of his bed.
“It must be wonderful to have a sister who loves you so much.”
“Most of the time.” Then he remembered that Naomi would never know whether she had siblings. “I didn’t mean that. I’m very lucky, and I know it. But she’s stuck on the idea of you and me getting together, so take everything she says about me with a grain of salt.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Chaska looked over in time to see Naomi’s expression fall.
Shit.
What had Winona said to her?
He walked to the sofa, sat down beside her. “I moved all of your things from the downstairs bathroom to the upstairs bathroom.”
“Thanks. What about my pain pills?”
“I brought them up, too.” He walked over to her backpack, stuck his hand in one of its pockets. “Where do you want me to put them?”
“The nightstand would be perfect. I could use a glass of water, too, please.”
“Sure thing.” He went back downstairs, filled a glass with ice water.
When he reached his bedroom again, she was looking out one of the windows.
“I heard Shota howl.”
“He does that sometimes. The coyotes start it, and there goes the neighborhood. He joins in. It can go on for hours. I’m sure the entire town of Scarlet can hear him. So far, they haven’t kicked us out.”
“I don’t know why they would. What an amazing sound—haunting and beautiful at the same time. Primal.”
That’s what he’d always thought, but he’d never had the words.
She turned away from the window, made her way over to him. “I feel really guilty kicking you out of your own bed.”
“You didn’t kick me out. I’m giving it to you.”
He ran his thumb over her cheek and kissed her. “Sleep well, Naomi. No one is going to hurt you while you’re in this house.”
He left her to get ready for bed and went down to the kitchen, where he lit the braid of sweetgrass, blew out the flame, wafted smoke over his head, and prayed for the first time in a decade.
Tunkasila, Creator, guard this house and keep Naomi and Winona safe.
Naomi woke the next morning to see sunlight streaming in around the blinds. She sat up, stretched, the terrible news of last night, and the panic she’d felt, seeming far away. She lay back and let herself remember the good parts of last night—Chaska kissing her again, Chaska holding her, Chaska giving her his room, carrying her up the stairs.
You are the only woman my brother has been attracted to in a very long time.
Warmth blossomed in her chest—and then vanished.
She’s stuck on the idea of you and me getting together, so take everything she says about me with a grain of salt.
Clearly, Chaska didn’t plan on getting together with her—outside of the occasional kiss. Why else would he have told her that?
It doesn’t matter.
Had she really believed that a man as amazing and handsome as Chaska could fall in love with her? For a woman with no education, no money, no family, that would be like winning the lottery, and Naomi had never had that kind of luck.
She reached for her crutches and made her way to the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth and took a shower, voices at times drifting up from the kitchen below. She couldn’t tell what Chaska and Winona were saying because they were speaking Lakota. At times, it sounded like they were arguing.
Were they arguing about her?
It’s none of your business.
She dressed in a black tank top and her new denim shorts, then made her way to the stairs—and froze. She looked down, felt almost dizzy. Eighteen stairs. Last week, this would have seemed like nothing, but now…
Damn.
The only stairs she’d done had been the front porch steps, but that had been on the way up. This was going down.
She thought about calling for help, but that would be wimpy. She remembered what Ellie had told her and tried to tuck both crutches under her left arm so that she could hold onto the railing with her right hand. Just when she thought she had it, one of the crutches slipped and went tumbling down the stairs.
The sound of running feet.
Chaska was there first, shirtless in a pair of jeans, Winona still in her pajamas a few steps behind him, relief coming over their faces when they saw her.
Win put a hand on her chest. “Oh, thank goodness! I thought you’d fallen.”
Chaska picked up the crutch. “I think you dropped something.”
Naomi was such an idiot. “I’ve never gone down stairs with crutches before.”
“I guess it’s a good time to learn.” Chaska walked up to stand on the step immediately below her and handed her the crutch, long, dark hair spilling over one shoulder. “Is this how they taught you to do it?”
She had a hard time answering because right now her mind was more focused on the man and muscle standing inches away from her. “Um, yes.”
“Just take it one step at a time. I’ll be here to catch you if you fall.”
“Won’t I just knock you down the stairs, too?”
A grin flashed across his face, making her pulse skip. “Not a chance.”
; She drew a breath, steeled herself. “Okay.”
He stepped back to give her room. “Take it one stair at a time.”
One hand on the banister, the other holding her crutches, she moved the crutches down to the next step, then brought her good foot down.
“You’ve got this.”
She moved slowly downward, Chaska staying a couple of steps ahead of her. By the time she reached the bottom, she felt like a pro. “I did it—well, thanks to you.”
“I didn’t do anything.” Chaska stepped aside, walking beside her back to the kitchen. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes. How about you?”
“Like a rock.”
Naomi had a bowl of cereal, while Winona and Chaska finished their coffee, whatever they’d been arguing about put aside for now.
Winona refilled her coffee mug. “Chaska and I thought you could spend the morning at the clinic with me so that he can get some work done. Then, this afternoon, you can go on a drive through the mountains with him.”
Naomi stopped, the spoon inches from her mouth. “In the mountains? But isn’t he up there somewhere?”
Chaska took his smartphone out of his pocket, typed something into his browser, then turned it so that she could see it. “We’re here, and Crestone is four hours south of us. We won’t be going that direction. There are lots of things to see around here. Trust me. I would never put you in danger. Besides, I’ll be carrying.”
It took her a moment to realize that “carrying” meant “carrying a gun.”
The warmth in his gaze confused her. Was he interested in her?
Did it matter?
She hadn’t come here for romance.
He slipped his smartphone back into his pocket. “You came to Colorado to see the mountains and photograph wildlife, right?”
She nodded.
Chaska’s expression grew serious. “Don’t let that bastard steal this from you. You’ve worked so hard.”
She had worked hard, harder than anyone could know. “Okay. If you think we’ll be safe…”
“I know we will.”
Chapter 12
His lunch eaten, Chaska scooted closer to Naomi so that he could see the images on her camera.
“This is the burrowing owl.” She had that same bright smile on her face that she had Thursday after spending the day at the clinic. “He bobbed his head and made a rattlesnake sound when I sat down to sketch him.”
“You sketched him? Show me.”
“Oookay.” She set the DSLR down on the table and reached for a sketchpad, opening it and flipping past several pages to find the owl. “They’re not very good.”
“Wait. Hey. Slow down. Go back to the beginning.”
She did as he asked, showing him a sketch of a raven. “I use the sketches to inspire jewelry, so they’re not meant to be art or anything.”
Art or not, Chaska was impressed. With a few strokes of pencil, she had managed to capture the essence of a raven in flight—the flare of its flight feathers, the stretch of its wings, the curve of its body. The next drawing showed a raven tumbling through the air, playing with the wind, the next a raven sitting on a fence post, the wind tousling its feathers. Page after page of drawings—mostly ravens—left him wondering how Naomi had gotten the idea that she wasn’t skilled at this.
“I don’t care what you say. These are good. Where did you take art classes?”
“I haven’t—just jewelry-making classes.”
Okay, that blew his mind. “You have natural talent then.”
“I loved to draw, even as a kid.”
“You must really like ravens.”
“I watched them a lot when I was a little girl.” She smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes now. “They were free to fly wherever they wanted, free to do whatever they wanted. The couple who adopted me tried to keep them out of their corn, but it never worked. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to fly away, to play with the wind like they did, to be as free as they were.”
“Were the people who adopted you strict?”
She hadn’t used the word parents, so he didn’t use it either.
She seemed to hesitate. “They weren’t just strict. They were religious fanatics. Peter had his own church where his word was God’s word.”
There was nothing Chaska despised more than a hypocrite. “That’s convenient.”
“Isn’t it? He truly believed that God spoke through him, that he was among the chosen. His little congregation believed it, too. Ruth was his submissive helpmeet. On the outside, they looked like the perfect family—a husband and wife with nine children, one of whom they’d adopted.
“But Ruth bludgeoned people with the power that came with being Peter’s wife. And Peter took absolute control over every aspect of the lives of his congregants. He told them what to wear, how to talk, what to sing, when to plant, what to grow, when to harvest, how many babies to have, what to name those babies, how to raise their kids. He decided who could get married and when, marrying girls who were fourteen and fifteen years old to much older men as a reward for joining his church. I’m sure it wasn’t legal, but no one intervened.”
“It sounds like a cult, not a church.” It made him sick to think her childhood had been lost to that kind of … insanity.
Naomi gave a little laugh. “When you grow up with it, you don’t see that. It’s just how the world is. You believe it because all the adults around you believe it and you’re a child. Of course, I don’t believe any of it now. I don’t believe in anything.”
Chaska knew what it felt like to be disillusioned, to feel betrayed by one’s parents, to lose one’s beliefs. “Why did they adopt you if they had so many children?”
“Peter always said he felt called to adopt me the moment he heard about me on the TV news. He and Ruth told me over and over again how lucky I was that my birth mother abandoned me. Otherwise, I might have been raised by heathen Indians.” Naomi’s gaze shot to Chaska’s. “I don’t want to offend—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “Don’t apologize. The words aren’t yours. I take it they weren’t Native?”
“They were white. I don’t think Ruth ever really wanted me. When she got angry with me, she would hit me or pinch me and call me a dirty Indian brat. I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me.”
Chaska had heard stories like this from old-timers who’d been taken from their parents and forced into government schools. His grandfather had repeatedly had his mouth washed out with soap for daring to speak Lakota.
But Naomi went on. “I asked her once why God would make a whole race of people who were beyond redemption. Could it be that God had made a mistake?”
“That seems like a fair question. What did she say?”
“She slapped me.”
Chaska bit back a stream of profanity. “Did no one stand up to them?”
She shook her head, a faraway look in her eyes. “Anyone who questioned them was verbally berated in front of the others, told to repent, and banished from the church if they refused.”
Chaska had to know. “Is that what happened to you?”
Chaska’s mind filled with all kinds of ideas—about what might have happened to an innocent sixteen-year-old girl in a place like that, about the hardships she must have faced on her own at such a young age, about the loneliness she must have felt.
“Not exactly. I ran away when I was sixteen after Peter told me he’d found a husband for me. The man was old—older than Peter. I just couldn’t. When I refused, he beat me. So the next night, I took my medicine wheel out from beneath the floorboard where I’d hidden it and ran away.”
“How did you survive?”
She’d been so young and inexperienced.
“I was walking along the highway in the dark when a big truck pulled up. A woman named Gloria offered to give me a ride. ‘You better come with me, or the wolves will eat you up,’ she said. I was so naïve that I thought she meant real wolves. She drove me to Sioux Falls, h
elped me get a job waiting tables at a truck stop, and rounded up some normal clothes for me so that I didn’t have to walk around looking like an extra from Little House on the Prairie. That night, she let me sleep in her truck.”
Thank you, Tunkasila, for Gloria.
“Things got better after that, though it wasn’t easy. It was a truck stop, so I had access to showers. I tried getting into a women’s shelter, but they didn’t take girls under eighteen. I slept on the floor in the restaurant storeroom until I could afford to get a little apartment. I had so much to learn—my job, how to use a microwave, how to use a computer, how to drive, how to use a TV remote and cell phone, how to deal with men who thought that any waitress within reach was fair game. I didn’t know anything about technology or how normal people lived. It was like waking up and finding myself in another world. Everything I’d been raised to believe had been a lie.”
“You are incredibly strong, Naomi.” He reached over, ran his thumb over her cheek, sorry that his questions had erased her smile and brought her fears to the surface again. “You know what I say?”
“What?”
“To hell with Peter and Ruth. You are free of them. Let’s go enjoy the afternoon.”
Naomi sat in the front seat of Chaska’s pickup truck, looking out the window at the astonishing beauty that surrounded them. He took her first to Caribou, the site of the old mine that Joe owned, showed her the ghost town where many of the mine’s workers had once lived, and helped her out of the truck so that she could photograph the little cemetery with its touching grave markers.
“So many children.”
“Life in the mountains was hard back then.”
When she’d taken all the photos she wanted, they climbed back into the truck and drove to a place called Moose Lake.
“Are there moose here?” she asked.
She’d never seen a moose before.
“I’ve seen a few moose here. Maybe we’ll get lucky. The trail is fairly level, so you ought to be okay.”
He carried her camera bag, going slowly so that she could make her way around rocks and exposed tree roots. “Let me know if you need to rest.”
