A Man of His Word

by Sarah M. Anderson

  The waitress snatched the bills out of his hand and shoved one into her back pocket. “Anything you want, sugar.”

  “If she calls you that again, I’m going to rip her lips off,” Rosebud whispered as the waitress finally left them alone. She sounded serious, too.

  The note of jealousy had him grinning. “I wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty.”

  “Do you do this often? Go out to the dives and pay too much for beer?”

  “Naw.” He leaned in—so she could hear him better, not so he could catch a hint of her scent. “And before you ask, I don’t spend all my time in an exclusive club sipping martinis, either. I don’t have the time for that, and I don’t often have anyone I want to go out with, either.”

  Rosebud took a long sip of her Coke before she settled back into his arm. “What about Tiffany?”

  What was he going to do with—to—this woman? “I suppose I should have seen that one coming.”

  “Probably,” she agreed. He couldn’t see her face, but her shoulders sort of moved, like she was giggling at him.

  “If I tell you about Tiffany, will you be done researching me?”

  Unexpectedly, her hand wrapped around his waist and she hooked a finger through a belt loop as she molded herself to his chest. The full-body contact—oh, sweet Jesus, the weight of her breasts pressed against him—made his erection try to stand up and salute. “Well, done with the secondhand research, anyway.”

  Which left firsthand possibilities wide-open. He shifted his hips until he was certain that the table was covering them both from the waist down. “Deal. What do you want to know?” Talking about his oldest lady friend didn’t seem like foreplay, but if it worked for Rosebud, then it worked for him.

  “I counted about thirty or so mentions of you two in the society pages of the Dallas papers—none of which involved places like this. That seems like a lot for not having anyone you want to go out with.”

  He knew what this was. This was Rosebud trying to figure out if he was a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy or not. Full disclosure was the only way to go. “Tiffany’s a wonderful girl. I haven’t seen her since I danced with her at her wedding, though. She thought that was for the best. She still sends me Christmas cards. Got a couple of cute babies now. Her husband’s a real nice fellow.”

  “Why didn’t you marry her?”

  He went stiff, and not in the fun way. Just when he thought he’d gone and figured this woman out, she went and asked him something like that. Hands down, this was the weirdest date he’d ever been on. “I didn’t want a wife.”

  She stilled against him. “What do you want, Dan?”

  That was the second time she’d asked him that question tonight. If they were going to get all deep, he sure wished he could have another beer. “Tiffany was what I needed in Texas—someone to go to charity balls with, someone who understood that my company comes first.”

  “Men have married for less than that.”

  “I don’t want a wife,” he repeated with more force. “I want a partner. I don’t want someone to cook my dinner and make my bed. I don’t want a maid. I want an equal. I want someone I can talk to, someone I can respect.”

  Someone like Rosebud.

  The thought popped into his head like a prairie dog popping out of the ground.

  Dan had thought once—only once—about actually marrying Tiffany, but aside from the sex and the next corporate dinner party, he didn’t actually have a single interesting thing to say to her, and vice versa.

  Despite his little outburst, he realized he was stroking her hair. And that she was still holding on to him. She didn’t say anything, but she hadn’t run screaming, either.

  The waitress shot Rosebud a look when she came back with the steaks, but when Dan pleased and thanked her for a Coke to go with his meal, he got the kind of smile a waitress gives a big tipper. Man, he’d forgotten how hungry he was, and the steak was bleeding red. Perfect.

  “What about you?” he said between bites of meat.

  She was digging in herself, which he found refreshing. Too many times he’d taken a woman out to dinner only to have her pick at a sad little salad. “What do you want to know?”

  Well, now, that was a change of pace. “I found some stuff. I’m honored to be in the presence of the Indian Days Powwow Princess.”

  She rolled her eyes, but still gave him a royal wave. “I bet there was a picture with that one.”

  “Yup.” In fact, she’d looked exactly like an old-fashioned Indian princess—her hair in two tight braids, her dress covered with those little jingly cone things—but not a whole lot like his Indian princess, the one in the simple buckskin dress with loose hair. Except for the smile—Rosebud’s smile of victory. “But there were huge holes.” In fact, all he’d found were the honor rolls. Top of her high school class, summa cum laude all four years at the university, top twenty-five percent in law school. That, and the ongoing legal battle with Armstrong Holdings. That was it.

  She grinned at him, fork hovering in the air. “Some of us have the good sense to stay out of the society pages.”

  “Trust me, I’m all for keeping a low profile these days.”

  Her eyes shot over his shoulder. He followed her gaze and saw their waitress standing with several other barmaids, doing everything but pointing. “You need more practice.” At least she sounded amused. He hoped.

  “Tell me about the holes. Do you like being a lawyer?”

  Her face hardened a little, but not so much that she stopped chewing. “I’m good at it.”

  “Now, ain’t that jest like a lawyer,” he said in his heaviest drawl. “Answerin’ the question she wants to answer, not the question I asked.”

  She notched an eyebrow at him that said, Oh, come on. “Well, I am. But I wanted to study art—fiber arts. I…” Her eyes dipped down, and he swore she was blushing. “I like to quilt.”

  Quilting? At first, that surprised him, but then he thought about it. One tiny stitch at a time, over and over, until the big picture was finished. Methodical. “I bet you’re good at it.”

  Even in the dim light of the bar, the blush deepened. Now he was getting somewhere. “I don’t get the chance to do it very much. Something else takes up all my time.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, finishing his beer. No way was Cecil invited to any part of this party.

  “Agreed.” He watched her finish her steak fries. She caught him looking. “What?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  She sort of smiled, in that grimacing kind of way. “About?”

  “What else you did while you were staying out of the society pages.”

  “That’s not a proper question.”

  “Technicalities. You know all about Tiffany. Did you ever have a boyfriend?”

  “Ever?” She snorted at him, but at the same time, she pushed her plate away and leaned back into him. “You make it sound like I’m either a nun or a leper.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” he replied, settling his arm back around her. It just felt so easy, so right. “I bet you’ve had a lot of men chasing you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Why don’t you give me one?”

  She giggled—yeah, he was sure that’s what the gentle shaking meant. “I worked at a coffee bar to help pay for college. It didn’t take long to figure out that more lipstick meant better tips.”

  “That’s just guys hitting on you—most any red-blooded American male would do that. That’s not what I’m askin’ about.”

  Her hand looped back around his waist. Maybe she felt safer there—or maybe she liked it. Either way, he wasn’t about to shoo her away. “I had one, once. In law school.”

  “A boyfriend?”

  “Was Tiffany your girlfriend?”

  “Not really. She was just…convenient.” Which sounded bad, but happened to be the truth. Convenient for both of them, really, until it wasn’t anymore. That’s when it had ende
d with a smile and a handshake.

  “Friends with benefits,” she agreed. “That’s what James was.”

  Lucky bastard. The name rang a faint bell, but he couldn’t place it. Dan could only hope this James had known how lucky he was. “A James doesn’t sound like your type.”

  “He wasn’t. He was from this real blue blood D.C. family.” She sighed. Her free hand was resting on his thigh now, and he thought she might be swaying to the beat of the music a little. Dancing was about to occur. Whether or not they made it to the dance floor remained to be seen. “No one knew. He wouldn’t have ever taken me home to meet his parents, and there was no way in hell he would have made it one day on the rez. Just one of those things.”

  He pulled her to her feet and led her out onto the dance floor. Whatever this thing between them was, it would be different from what she’d had with James, from what he’d had with Tiffany, he decided as the band began to butcher some Toby Keith song. Because Rosebud was different.

  With one hand on her waist, the other wrapped around her fingers, he led her into the crowd of two-steppers. Space was tight, so he was forced to hold her real close as they moved in small circles around the floor.

  His mouth found her ear. It took just about everything he had not to wrap his tongue around her earlobe. “What about this?”

  “This what?” She tilted her head into his until they were dancing cheek-to-cheek, which sure as hell seemed like an invitation to him.

  “Is this ‘just one of those things’?” He actually felt a little nervous about the question, mostly because he had no idea what she’d say.

  She didn’t answer for a few beats, but then she pulled away, just far enough that she could look him in the eyes. “No,” she said, and her soft voice found his ears despite the thumping bass beat. “This isn’t.”

  She kissed him. She kissed him, and not one of those slow-building, wait-and-see kisses like the ones he’d been giving her. She bit his lower lip as her fingers dug into his shoulder. She’s hungry, he thought as she devoured his mouth.

  He went hard in a second. Given that there was no space between them, she knew it immediately, and answered by grinding her hips into his. She was going to bring him to his knees, right in the middle of the dance floor. He fought back the only way he could, by kissing her with a vengeance. Yeah, they were supposed to be two-stepping around the floor, but he pulled her hand in close enough to their bodies that he was able to graze her breast with his thumb. She shuddered into him with a moan he felt more than heard.

  They had to get out of here, pronto.

  Finally, she saved him from himself by pulling back, just enough that he could catch his breath. “Three,” she breathed, her eyes closed as she licked her lips at a painfully slow speed.

  “Three?” His brain wasn’t working, but he wasn’t sure he cared, just so long as she kept kissing him like that. “You wanna get out of here?”

  Starving, he thought as she looked at him, the need in her eyes naked for the world to see. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  The bar was more crowded and the band was louder, but finally they made it back to their table, hands locked together. “Just give me a second,” she said, pointing at the restrooms sign.

  “Okay.” Hell, she could have a whole minute if she wanted, as long as they got out of here and went…where?

  Damn, he thought as she disappeared down the hall. They probably couldn’t go back to her place, and Cecil’s house was out of the question. Once they’d left the university area, he didn’t remember seeing a single hotel that had a room for the night, and, damn it all, he didn’t want to make love to her in the front seat of his truck. He may be hard up, but that was crass. She deserved silk sheets and whirlpool tubs big enough for two.

  Neutral territory. For some reason, the blueprints he’d been looking at this afternoon—a lifetime ago, it seemed—popped into his mind. No, not the blueprints. The map of Armstrong land and the Dakota River underneath them.

  A small building, he remembered seeing now. Just a dinky square next to a little creek that fed into the Dakota, about seven miles from the dam site and a long way away from anything else. No roads went there, no power lines, either. At the time, he hadn’t thought much of it, but now, in his desperation, he wondered what that building was. If it was a cabin, territory didn’t get much more neutral than that. Probably didn’t have silk sheets or room service, but if it was quiet…

  They couldn’t get there tonight. But this wasn’t just about tonight. This was about—

  “Hey!” A shrill shout broke above the ending chord of a song. “I said— Dan! Help!”

  Ten

  Rosebud pushed her way down the crowded hall to the ladies’ room, her head swimming. Someone shoved her, but she barely noticed. Three kisses, and she was supposed to be out, but she was in deeper than she’d ever thought possible. They were leaving and she didn’t know where they were going, but she’d officially stopped caring the moment he’d touched her. That clear moment of sheer heat made thinking an unnecessary, unwelcome action. Instead, the only action she wanted was to peel his jeans right off him and see exactly what she’d been missing.

  Three kisses, three years. How could she have forgotten what she was missing? Maybe it was because James had never made her feel quite this hot, and certainly never this weak. Unlike the other white men she’d known before college, James had never treated her like The Indian, which had been a relief. But he’d never really treated her like a lover, either. She’d just been a girl he knew, just as he’d always been a boy she knew. Just some guy she occasionally went to bed with.

  To Dan, she was a woman, pure and simple. Not merely a lawyer or an Indian, but all of those things and more. In his arms, she felt alive. To hell with dams and lawsuits, family members long gone and still here. Right now, she was really living.

  Which was why she chose to ignore all the drunk and disorderly people around her. It didn’t matter how evil their glances were. The only eyes she was concerned with were Dan’s.

  She pushed her way into the ladies’ room. The bathroom wasn’t big, but it was packed. The air was thick with hair-spray, cheap perfume and industrial-strength air freshener as women crowded around each sink and mirror, a sea of bottled blond, exposed bra straps and short skirts.

  By the time the door shut behind her, the whole bathroom had come to a silent halt. Mascara wands froze in midair, cigarettes dangled from lipsticked mouths and every eye was on her.

  Damn. Her euphoric high dissipated in a heartbeat. That waitress was in the corner, giving Rosebud a look she’d seen before, too many times to count.

  She’d seen it the first day of junior high, when her aunt had arranged for Rosebud to go to a successful white school off the rez. She still remembered the way the girls had acted like she was a blatant threat. No one had talked to her for months, but the rumors had reached her ears anyway. She stole purses, did drugs, screwed the teachers, ate garbage, had the IQ of a dog and on and on.

  What was she to do then? She’d only been twelve. She wasn’t the fighter Tanner had been, so she did what Aunt Emily told her. She said nothing. She looked at no one. She’d done the best work she could do. The first time she’d said something in social studies—in February—the teacher was shocked that Rosebud actually knew how to speak English.

  After that, Rosebud had found her own way. She didn’t brawl like Tanner, but she refused to be silent. The next time she’d heard the whispers, she went on the offensive. Her mouth was her gift, so she used it. But that was then, in the relative safety of a public school. The worst that had happened was the fat lip she’d gotten for pointing out that one of her tormenters wasn’t smart enough to know that her boyfriend was cheating on her with her so-called best friend.

  This was now, in the middle of a dive bar in a state with concealed carry laws on the books. She was not welcome. She swallowed, torn between a flash of panic and her always intense need to be in control of the situation. Control? Plea
se. This was fast becoming one of the more dangerous situations she’d been in.

  No fear, she decided as she strode to the only open stall, her head up and her shoulders back.

  Just as she sat down, the stall door shuddered under the weight of a sudden, silent kick, quickly followed by a second. Rosebud managed not to scream, but she clutched her purse to her chest. The third hit was higher, like someone using the palm of her hand, but the fourth one was another kick. Rosebud braced a leg against the door as it bowed, and each succeeding kick felt like a sledgehammer driving into her hip socket.

  Peeing while every single woman smacked or kicked the door on their way out was nothing if not challenging, but finally, the room was silent. Rosebud managed to finish. Before she opened the stall door, she listened, but she couldn’t hear the sound of breathing over the reverberations of the band. Just to be sure, she dug in her purse until she came up with a ballpoint pen. Her gun would have been better, but guns and university libraries didn’t mix. A ballpoint would have to do.

  She slung her sack over her shoulder and slowly opened the door. Empty, thank God. Even that waitress was gone. Rosebud washed quickly, reviewing her exit strategy. She had twenty-five feet of hallway to get through, and then another fifteen feet to get to Dan. She assumed he was still at their table, waiting for her. If she went low and fast, she might be able to snake through the crowd without anyone noticing her.

  Hell, who was she kidding? Almost half the place knew she was in here.

  I am not afraid, she thought, as if thinking it would make it so. Taking a few deep breaths, she clutched the pen like a knife. She’d stab anyone who tried to stop her. Sometimes, self-defense was the only defense. Forty feet. She could do it. She barreled out the door.

  She only made the first twenty feet before she ran into a wall of bikers. Actually, it was just one biker, but he made a wall all by himself, completely blocking the last few feet of the hallway. “Well, now,” the man said, leering down at her.