The overwhelming smell of onions and whiskey smacked her upside the face. She couldn’t see past the do-rag embroidered with flames on his head—where the hell was Dan? Before she could sidestep him, he grabbed the arm that had the pen. “My buddy bet me twenty bucks I couldn’t get you to dance with me, Pocahontas.”
That was her least favorite racist nickname, the one that irritated her like lemon juice in a paper cut. She tried to twist out of his grip, but the jerk held tight as he pulled her toward the dance floor. At least they weren’t in the hall anymore. Her eyes shot around the bar, but she didn’t see Dan. Where the hell was he?
“Sorry,” she said, forcing herself to smile while she tried to peel his fingers off her biceps. Why were bikers always so burly? “I’m afraid you’re going to lose that bet.”
“One dance, little squaw. I saw you out there dancing with that cowboy. I want some of that sugar.”
Squaw. She took it back. That was her least favorite nickname. “Let me go,” she said with more force, hoping she sounded serious instead of just terrified.
It didn’t work. “You think you’re too good for me? Is that it? You’re just some damn Injun!” He hauled her up, closer to his face.
“Hey!” That did it. Screw this scared thing. She wasn’t going down without a fight. She kicked toward his groin as hard as she could, ever thankful she’d worn her boots today. “I said—”
The biker snarled a curse at her. He didn’t let go, but he did bend double. Confident that she’d connected with his nuts the first time, Rosebud tried for two.
Suddenly, her head whipped back with enough force that she lost her footing. Between the hold the biker had on her arm and whoever had a death grip on her hair, she was suddenly, completely helpless. Fight or no, she was going down. “Dan! Help!”
The biker staggered to his knees, pulling her down with him, but she couldn’t go far. “You little slut,” a female voice screeched behind her as her head jerked back again. Rosebud saw stars. “What did you do to my man?”
“Dan!” Rosebud screamed at the top of her lungs. Pain and fear were duking it out, and the fear was winning.
Her head jerked again. A sharp pain on her forehead blinded her to everything else. That waitress wouldn’t scalp her, would she? “Savage,” the woman’s voice said, close to her ear, as calm and as clear as the noon sun. “I’ll teach you to show your red face around here.”
Oh, hell, she would. She was.
Rosebud heard bones crunch, but instead of feeling the searing pain that should have gone with it, she only heard the biker’s howl.
“Let her go.” Dan. Even better, he sounded furious—worse than when he’d realized she’d shot at him.
Her arm was free. In the next second, her head was free and she fell. But instead of hitting the floor, she fell into familiar arms and was up on her feet before she knew what was going on. Blinking the tears out of her eyes, she saw that Dan was standing on the biker’s hand. He had one arm looped under both of hers to hold her up, and in the other he had a knife. A knife? Rosebud’s eyes narrowed in on the flash of metal, but it still took a few seconds for her to realize it was a steak knife from dinner.
“She kicked my balls!” The biker wailed from the floor. Dan responded by grinding his heel in a little harder. “My hand!”
“I don’t want any trouble,” Dan said, his voice low—but she heard him loud and clear. He swung around, blade out, pulling Rosebud with him. The music, she realized. The band had stopped playing. The entire bar was silent. Off to her left, the unmistakable sound of a pump-action shotgun filled the air. “No trouble,” he repeated.
They were going to die, all because Dan asked her out on a date and she’d had the nerve to say yes.
“Walk,” Dan said under his breath. His hand was clamped around her ribs, so when he took a step forward, he practically carried her with him.
Rosebud was too afraid to look in the direction of the shotgun, too afraid to look at anyone but Dan in case they took that as an act of aggression. She kept her eyes focused on his hand and the blade. A steak knife was a hell of a lot better than a pen. He held it like he wasn’t afraid to use it, but it still didn’t beat a shotgun. She didn’t want to die in this bar. The steak hadn’t even been that good.
Dan spun around again, careful to make sure she followed. They were backing toward the door, she realized. Freedom.
“She started it!” That had to be the waitress, screeching at the top of her lungs.
Rosebud tensed, afraid that was the straw and she was about to become the camel’s back. She couldn’t even protest her innocence. Her throat was clogged with terror—if anything came out, it would be a scream.
“I don’t care who started it. I’ll finish it.” How in the hell could Dan manage to sound so calm? They were outnumbered two hundred to two, and he sounded like he was negotiating a business deal!
Rosebud heard the sound of chairs scraping over the floor, but they kept moving backward. “Get ready,” he whispered to her. A rush of night air hit her in the back of the neck, and then suddenly they were outside while all those angry faces were still inside. Dan let go of the knife and the tip stuck into a wood slat of the porch at the same time his fingers unglued themselves from her ribs. “The truck,” he said. “Now!”
They ran so fast that Rosebud couldn’t hear anything but her own sounds—her breathing, her heartbeat—so she couldn’t tell if anyone was behind her. She sure as hell wasn’t going to stop and check. Dan had a hold of her arm now, pulling her along with him in the mad dash to his truck. They made it in seconds. “Get down,” he ordered as he cranked the engine.
“Your shotgun?” she asked. Adrenaline flooded her system. Part of her wanted to fire that bad boy off. They wanted a savage? By God, she’d give them savage.
“No,” he replied, still pulling off calm even as the truck peeled out of the parking lot. He adjusted the mirror and zigged the truck left. “Just stay down for a minute. We’re almost clear.”
A huge boom exploded behind them, and Rosebud screamed as the truck lurched hard right. Dan floored it.
“They just fired over us,” he said, like this whole assault was no big deal. “We’re on the highway, darlin’. We’re okay now.”
Rosebud tried to nod, tried to do something, but the last ten minutes flashed through her mind again—the bathroom door shuddering, the guy’s repulsive breath as he manhandled her, the way her neck snapped when her hair had been yanked. She touched her forehead and her fingers came away with a smear of blood. Her stomach rolled. “I’m going to be sick,” she gasped.
“Hold on.” The truck picked up speed, and then took another hard right before coming to a screeching halt.
She flung the door open and stumbled out of the truck, landing on her knees on a gravelly patch of scrub grass. Her stomach gave up the fight.
Suddenly, her hair was pulled up and away from her face, and a warm hand rubbed between her shoulder blades. Oh, just wonderful. Here she was, throwing up her guts and a bad steak in front of Dan. She supposed it beat the hell out of gunshot wounds, but at this exact moment in time, things couldn’t get any worse. The sickening embarrassment brought on another round of heaving.
When she was finished, she sat back on her heels. Dan crouched down next to her, still holding her hair. “Better?”
“Um…um…” No. But even in her weakest moment, with the undeniable evidence all over the shoulder of the road, she couldn’t admit it.
Dan’s eyes searched her all over. She couldn’t meet his gaze—she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to again. “I’ll be right back.”
Rosebud sat there in a state of shock, and all she could coherently think was, You knew it was three and you were out, girl. And this is out.
Dan’s footsteps crunched on the gravel behind her, and then he held out a bottle of water and a damp cloth. She rinsed out her mouth, which helped tremendously. “Hold still,” he said, and he wiped her face for her.
The cut stung, but the pain told her it was small. “It’s not bad,” he said, his voice doing its level best to be calm. He cupped her chin in his palm and tilted her head toward the truck’s headlights.
Suddenly the terror that had been clogging her throat dissolved into hysterical cries. Clamping her eyes shut, she tried to bite them back.
“I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”
This time, the tears wouldn’t be bitten back, choked down or hidden until she was alone. “I’m going to cry now,” she managed to say as the sobs broke free. “But I don’t want this to negatively impact your opinion of me in the courtroom.”
Dan gave her a look that made it quite clear Rosebud had officially lost it. “It won’t.”
“And this in no way reflects on our date—before the attack,” she sobbed. She sounded hysterical. The fear and pain and relief all melted into one major circuit overload, one that apparently tripped several wires in her head, because suddenly she couldn’t stop babbling. “It was a nice date. I actually like you a whole lot. If only your name wasn’t Armstrong. If only you weren’t that Armstrong, Dan.”
The next thing she knew, the gravel wasn’t digging into her knees anymore. Dan was clutching her to his chest and carrying her back to the truck, but he didn’t set her down. Instead, he slid into the seat and held her on his lap, her feet dangling out the door. He rocked her back and forth as he stroked her hair and whispered, “I know, darlin’. I know,” over and over, which Rosebud took as a sign that she was still talking.
She had no idea what she was saying.
Eleven
Slow and easy, Dan said to himself as he tried to walk calmly into the Red Creek tribal headquarters Monday morning.
So what if the last time he’d seen Rosebud had been at about three in the morning on Sunday? So what if she hadn’t let him walk her to her door? So what if she hadn’t returned either of his calls yesterday? So what if he was nigh on to frantic with worry about her? As far as he knew, no one else was aware of the busted car, the dinner date or the near scalping, and he wasn’t about to give anything away by running around like some fool chicken with its head cut off.
“Good morning, Mr. Armstrong,” Judy said, cup of coffee ever at the ready. “Ms. Donnelly is running a few minutes late. She’ll be with you shortly.”
He couldn’t help it. He looked past Judy, past the conference room door, down the long hall. Somewhere down there, Rosebud had an office. He prayed she was in it. “But she’s here, right?”
“Of course.” Judy blocked the hall and motioned Dan to the depressing conference room.
Resigned to his fate, Dan handed over the cookie bars Maria had made and took to doing laps around the conference table. If Rosebud didn’t get her behind in here in five minutes, he was going looking for her.
He was reaching for the doorknob when it turned and Judy appeared, carrying a different box of files. Behind her, Rosebud stood by the door, her eyes focused on something Dan couldn’t see. It reminded Dan of that first day he’d come to the reservation, when Joe White Thunder had acted like Dan didn’t exist. Bad sign. She had a small bandage over the cut, but she otherwise looked normal. Hair in that braid-bun thing, the suit over a light blue shirt, glasses settled firmly on her nose.
Rosebud stood stock-still until the receptionist was gone, and then she silently shut the door. Dan fought the urge to rush to her and pull her into his arms. He tried to tell himself that she was just upset, which was a far cry better than hysterical. Her behavior seemed like more than upset, though. She was acting like they were strangers.
Finally, he broke the tense silence. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” That was a lie. He could see her biting the inside of her lip. “I knocked my head against a kitchen cabinet.”
“Oh. Of course.” As good a story as any. “I was worried about you.” He felt obliged to drop his voice down to a whisper. “I called. Twice.”
She flinched, but finally, she looked at him, instead of through him. “My aunt was home.”
“I’m really sorry,” he blurted out, desperate to get some sort of reaction out of her. “I should have waited to take you to a better restaurant. I should have put that waitress in her place. I should have waited for you outside the bathroom.” Those were the top three things he’d done wrong, but he was hard-pressed to tell which one would have kept her safe.
She moved slowly, like she had a raging headache. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said as she settled into her chair. “I should have known better than to—”
“Wait—what happened Saturday night wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it was,” she continued, selecting a file from the top of the box and opening it up as if they were just reviewing the facts for the upcoming court date. She didn’t even sound angry. “I…” Finally, Dan saw a crack in her professional demeanor. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I appreciate your offer to pay me for my time, but that won’t be necessary.”
“What about your car?”
“Aunt Emily has a car I can use if I need to leave the reservation.”
“So you’re just going to stay on the rez for the rest of your life?”
“This is where I belong.”
She was pissing him off, plain and simple. “You’re going to let a bunch of dumb hicks at one bar scare you off like that? If you want, I’ll buy the damn place and raze it to the ground.”
Her hand smacked the table. The sudden pop made him jump. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not just one bar. Believe it or not, that’s just how people around here treat me. Us. Ignorant savages and slutty squaws—the only good Indian is a dead one.”
Dan’s jaw dropped. “That’s not how I treat you, and you know it.”
For a second, she looked away, but then she came right back at him, both barrels blazing. “No? Get back to me in three and a half weeks, Dan. Then we’ll see how you treat me.”
Damn his uncle. Dan had thought it before, lots of times, but he’d never meant it as much as he did right now. Just as Rosebud had said that night, if only he wasn’t that Armstrong—an Armstrong like Cecil. “I don’t give a damn about that dam. That is not what this is about.”
“Then what?”
He grabbed that crappy chair and pulled it up next to her so that he could look her in the eye. “This is about you and me, Rosebud. This is about me liking you and you liking me, slow dances to fast songs and not going down without a fight. You promised me you wouldn’t go down without a fight, and I’m going to hold you to that.”
As hard as she was biting it, she had to be putting a hole in that lip. A blotchy red blush broke over her face, and for a second, she didn’t look that different from when he’d driven her home—just miserable.
“Have dinner with me tonight.” It wasn’t much, but he had to do something to get her to stop being so mule-stubborn. And he owed her a better ending—if she’d let him give her one.
“Or?”
He gaped at her. The way she said it made it sound like he was holding something over her head. “Or I’ll eat alone?”
She forcibly swiveled her chair away from his and picked up her pen again. He waited. He’d pushed this just about as far as it was going to go, and whatever she said next was going to have to stand—for the time being, anyway.
“I can’t.”
Which was a hell of a lot different from an I won’t. “What if I found some neutral territory?”
Her eyebrows jumped and she winced. “Neutral?”
“You can’t come to my place, I know. You don’t want me at your place. Obviously, local bars are a no-go….” He reached out and traced a finger along her bandage. She scrunched her eyes shut, and he thought she might be on the verge of crying. “Someplace quiet.” His finger trailed down the rest of her face until he was running his thumb over her cheeks. He wanted to kiss her, but this wasn’t the time or the place. “That’s all I want. Just you and me.”
“What m
akes you think it would be any different the next time?” Her voice shook as she blinked rapidly and pulled away from him. “Or the time after that? Or anytime? We can’t hide forever. I can’t, anyway.”
Anger flashed through him. “I do not hide, Rosebud—and you shouldn’t, either.”
“You’d tell your uncle about this?” She pointed to her forehead, her eyes swimming. “About me?”
“No. I’m not stupid.” He leaned back, frustrated with how lousy a job he was doing of convincing her. “Look. It’s nobody’s business when we see each other or what we do, and I want to keep it that way. I don’t want to have to worry about what your aunt or my uncle or some moron on the street thinks about me or you or us.” He’d like to kiss that lip she was hell-bent on chewing, but he didn’t want to corner her. “It’s like you said,” he added, trying to back off a little, but not succeeding. He stroked her cheek again. “I’m just trying to stay out of the society pages. That’s all.”
Her whole face tensed, but then quickly relaxed as she leaned into his hand. Her eyelids fluttered. “Where?”
“Do you know where Bonneau Creek is?” At least, he thought that was what the map said. She nodded, so he must have said it right. “I think there’s a cabin near there. No roads, no wires. Nothing else around for miles.”
“That’s almost ten miles away. I can’t ride there tonight.”
“What about this weekend? Will you spend it with me?”
The words hung in the air, and he realized exactly what he’d asked. Not dinner, not dancing, but the whole weekend—nights included.
Say yes, he thought.
Her hand covered his. She was shaking, just a little. “You won’t tell anyone?”
His heart jumped. “Not even on my dying day.”
She turned her head and kissed his palm. “Don’t make me hold you to that,” she said as she shot him a sly look and then pushed his chair away. Her meaning was clear—Yes. Now get back to work.
A yes was a yes. Despite the world’s worst date, she’d still said yes. He was probably grinning like an idiot, but he didn’t care. Even though he was an Armstrong, she actually liked him a whole lot—enough to come away for a weekend. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”
A Man of His Word Page 10
