Warrior's Embrace

by Peggy Webb

  “What happened?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know

  “Somebody destroyed the clinic.” She tightened her grip on the teacup and jutted out her chin. “I’d like to find out who did it and beat the hell out of them.”

  Clayton’s laughter provided the release he needed. He sat in the chair next to hers and took a sip of tea. He might be able to survive the summer after all.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me to have patience?” Kate grinned at him.

  “Would it do any good?”

  “No. I just hope you have some influence with the authorities. I’d hate to be burned at the stake.”

  “I don’t think that’s done anymore, Kate, even in Witch Dance.”

  They chuckled together, then Kate lifted her arm and raked her hair off her grimy forehead. That’s when Clayton saw the scratch. When his fingers closed on her soft skin he almost lost control. Only years of medical training saved him.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing to worry about. Just a scratch from a nail.”

  “Tetanus?”

  “Up-to-date, Doctor.”

  “It needs cleansing and antibiotics.”

  “Eagle cleaned it.”

  Clayton stiffened. Eagle. Always Eagle.

  “Well, I’m going to take care of it properly, then I’m prescribing a long hot bath, a good dinner, and bed for you, young lady. You’ve been working much too hard.”

  “Is it all right if I take the time to write a letter home, Doctor Dictator, sir?”

  “The letter is okay, but no beating the hell out of anybody, no matter how much they deserve it.”

  “Aw, shucks. Foiled again.” She grinned at him, stretching her long, tan legs.

  He clenched his hands and balled them in his pockets.

  “Promise me, Kate?”

  “I promise.”

  He figured she had her fingers crossed behind her back when she said it. Kate was not the kind of woman to take adversity lying down.

  He tended her wound and after she left the kitchen, Clayton took a casserole out of the refrigerator. Chicken and mushrooms with a white wine sauce. Whatever else happened to him while he was in Witch Dance, he would not go hungry. He’d learned cooking from Melissa’s French chef.

  It was one of the few things he excelled at. Cooking. Medicine. Sex.

  He heard the sound of running water. Kate would be naked under the shower, young and naked and glorious. The casserole slipped from his hand and crashed to the floor. For a moment he gazed at the mess as if he were trying to figure out where it had come from.

  Kate was singing in the shower now, singing in a bluesy, smoky voice, slightly off key.

  Clayton got a dish towel and knelt over the smashed food. Dinner would have to wait.

  Chapter 6

  Charleston, South Carolina

  The letter lay open on the bedside table. Mick Malone skirted around it, trying not to notice. In the bathroom Martha was brushing her teeth, doing all that damned gargling he hated.

  He balled his socks into a wad and rammed them into his shoes. He’d wear them again tomorrow if Martha didn’t catch him. No sense in changing socks every day.

  Martha turned on the shower, and he could hear the door banging shut as she climbed inside. She used to hum in the shower long ago, so long ago, he could hardly remember.

  He glanced at the letter once more. Kate’s signature stared up at him, bold as she’d always been. What would it hurt to look?

  Dear Mother . . .

  Mick’s hands trembled.

  Witch Dance is a beautiful land, and I’m busy and happy with my work. I don’t want you to worry. I’ve made friends, and Dr. Colbert watches after me as if he were my father. I love you. Kate.

  There was no sound except that of water cascading down the bathroom drain. Silently Mick replaced the letter on the bedside table, exactly as he’d found it.

  He lay on his side of the bed, careful to leave enough room so Martha’s legs wouldn’t touch his. He closed his eyes and was soon breathing evenly, but his hands were clenched on top of the sheets.

  Chapter 7

  Witch Dance

  Anna Mingo liked to do her shopping on Saturday, especially when the weather was good. If she hurried with the grocery shopping, she always had time to go to her favorite store, the little needlepoint shop on the corner of Itawamba and East streets,

  “Now, mind your manners, boys. No running around the store and no touching the merchandise.”

  “We’ll be good, Mama,” Clint said stoutly, though Anna had her serious doubts. Her oldest son probably would be good if Bucky didn’t always get something started.

  “I mean it, children.”

  They were still nodding their heads vigorously as she took both their hands and started across the street. She hurried along, thinking about the pink embroidery thread she wanted to buy and if she had enough money left over, the length of lace. Distracted, she almost didn’t see the medicine woman until it was too late.

  Kate Malone was crossing the street from the opposite side. Anna knew it had to be her, for no one else in Witch Dance had hair the color of the sunset and legs so long that she could walk as fast as a man.

  Anna stopped dead in her tracks, and the medicine woman smiled directly at her.

  “Why, hello there. What darling little boys.”

  Anguished, Anna let go of Clint and placed her hand over her stomach. The baby gave a vigorous kick.

  Kate Malone stood in the middle of the street with an expectant smile on her face, waiting for an answer. It didn’t seem right to turn away from her.

  But Cole had been very specific, and Anna had absolute trust in her husband. Without a word to the medicine woman, she turned around and hurried back to her car.

  “I thought we were going to the ‘point shop, Mama.”

  “Hush, Clint.”

  Anna could still see the medicine woman, standing in the middle of the street. She looked as if she’d lost her best friend. Anna started the car and headed home, but for the first time in her marriage, she questioned Cole’s judgment.

  Kate watched the car drive away.

  “I will not cry,” she said, but she felt the tears gather anyhow.

  The letter she’d sent her mother was nothing but a pack of lies. But how could it be otherwise? How could she tell her mother that the people she’d come to serve hated her so much they stomped her flowers into the ground, tore down the walls of her clinic, and passed to the other side of the street when she walked by?

  In South Carolina everybody crossed streets to get to Kate, and in Virginia, where she’d gone to medical school, she was never without at least half a dozen invitations to go out for pizza and a beer. How could she say to her mother that she had only three friends in Witch Dance, and one of them had been so terrified of her father’s censure that she’d almost refused a brochure about nursing school, and the other came and went on his black stallion as the mood struck him.

  “If they think I’ll leave, they’ve underestimated me. I’m a Malone. Nothing can stop me.”

  Having added talking to herself in the middle of the street to her list of sins, Kate marched across the street and into the ice cream shop with her head held high and a smile on her face.

  Not only that, but she sat on a barstool at the counter and ordered the biggest banana split they had—even after the two people already there picked up their ice cream bowls and moved to a table. For good measure, she turned and gave them her best smile.

  She’d never known it was so hard to smile with a lacerated heart.

  o0o

  That night they came to her in dreams. Charles and Brian came to her with their hands outstretched and their voices distorted by the water.

  Help me. Help me, Katie.

  The dream was always the same. They called to her and she couldn’t answer. Weights held down her arms and legs, and a wide, watery expanse separated her from them. Her brothers.
r />   Her fault.

  “No!” she cried, her sleep-drugged voice as weak and mewling as a kitten’s.

  The covers were tangled around her legs like seaweed. She kicked frantically, trying to free herself. She had to get free.

  “Kate?” Clayton stood in the doorway of her bedroom. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Her hands trembled as she pushed her damp hair back from her forehead.

  “Are you sure? Can I get you a glass of water ...anything?”

  “I’m fine. Just a bad dream.”

  “Well . . .” He lingered in the doorway concerned.

  “I’m okay. Really.” She made herself smile at him.

  His footsteps were soft, padded by the moccasins he wore as he crossed the room and stood beside her bed.

  “Kate . . .” He reached toward her, wavered, then gently touched her forehead. His hands were damp against her skin. “Might as well make sure you don’t have a fever.”

  “I’ve always heard the doctors are the biggest worrywarts of all when it comes to people they—” Premonition sent shivers along her spine. She’d never felt self-conscious around Dr. Colbert, but suddenly she was aware of the thin white cotton T-shirt that barely covered her bottom, of her naked legs and her tumbled hair.

  “...when it comes to family,” she added briskly.

  It was an awkward moment. He took a step back.

  “You’re almost family, Kate. Like a ...daughter to me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well . . .”

  His eyes were too bright. Kate wanted to pull the covers over herself, but that would only draw attention to her attire. More than that, it would indicate a lack of trust in him. Her dearest friend. Her trusted mentor. She wouldn’t insult him in that manner.

  “If you’re sure you don’t need anything ...Good night, Kate.”

  Abruptly he wheeled away and was out the door before she could reply. Kate got out of bed and leaned against the windowsill. The walls of her clinic rose, ghostly, in the moonlight. It had taken four days to restore them. Four days of sweat and hard labor.

  Without the watchers on the hill. Without Eagle.

  Where was he?

  Kate opened the window and let the night breeze cool her hot face. Prickles still danced along the back of her neck.

  She tiptoed across the room and quietly closed her door. Then she turned the lock ...feeling disloyal to Dr. Colbert. And somewhat silly.

  Instead of going to bed and risking the dreams, she went back to the window. The yard was so bright, it might have been a South Carolina moon hanging in the sky, a moon that rose up over the ocean and took its iridescent glow from the waters.

  Memories flooded her mind.

  “Can’t catch me ...can’t catch me, Katie.” Brian’s hair was silver as he raced along the edge of the water.

  “I can, too. I can do anything because I’m Daddy’s girl.”

  Brian stuck out his tongue and raced off, his sturdy legs spewing up sand. He didn’t see the piece of driftwood in his path. When Katie got to him, he had blood on his leg and he was crying.

  She sat cross-legged on the sand and pulled him onto her lap.

  “It hurts.” Sniffling, he wrapped his arms around her neck.

  “It’s just a little blood ...see.” She wiped it away with the tail of her T-shirt.

  Nobody would ask her where it came from. At thirteen, she was already the neighborhood “doctor.” Her patients ranged from stray cats to baby birds fallen from their nests to an occasional playmate who was not strong enough to withstand her threats. “If you don’t let me doctor you, I’ll punch your nose and really give you something to cry about,” she’d tell them.

  “See,” she told her five-year-old brother. “It’s nothing but a little ol’ scratch.”

  He ran a chubby finger along his injury, then gave her a watery smile. “Don’t tell Daddy I cried.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “An’ Charles. Don’t tell Charles. He’d laugh.”

  Ten-year-old Charles probably would. He prided himself on being a man ...just like his father.

  “I won’t tell Charles.”

  Brian wrapped his arms around her neck and gave her a kiss that left sand on her cheek.

  “I love you best in all the world, Katie.”

  “I love you too, Bee Boy.” It was the family pet name for Brian, a name he’d given himself when he was first learning to talk.

  “Will you love me always, Katie?”

  “Always.”

  “And take care of me forever and ever?”

  “Forever and ever and ever.”

  He wiggled out of her lap and flew across the sand with his arms outstretched. “You can’t catch me,” he yelled, his joyous voice lifting on the wind.

  A year later she’d broken her promise to Brian.

  His forever lasted only six years.

  Would nothing take the dreams away? Even wide awake she couldn’t escape them, couldn’t escape the guilt.

  Kate pressed her hands against her face and felt tears. Angrily she wiped them away.

  She was in Tribal Lands for a fresh start. She leaned her elbows on the windowsill, determined to see nothing except the trees and the mountains.

  And that’s when she saw the horse and rider silhouetted against the moon. A man sat tall and majestic on a horse as black as the night.

  “Eagle!”

  His name ricocheted off the walls of her room, mocking her. She was so mesmerized by him that now she was seeing mirages. Rubbing her hands over her tired eyes, she glanced at the hillside once more. The horse and rider were gone.

  She watched out the window awhile longer, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Nothing moved, nothing marred the horizon. And yet ...she was certain she’d seen them, the horse and rider so clearly outlined on the hillside.

  Could it be an intruder come back to wreck the clinic once more?

  “Over my dead body,” she muttered.

  Moving quickly, Kate pulled on a pair of jogging shorts; then she raced through the house, her bare feet scarcely touching the smooth wooden floors.

  She’d been a long distance runner in her high school and college days. During her years in medical school she’d often relieved the tedium and stress by racing on the nearest track.

  On her way out the back door she grabbed the first weapon she could get her hands on, the string mop hanging on a nail, still damp from scrubbing the kitchen floor. The Lord only knew what she would do with the mop, but she wasn’t about to sit idly by while someone destroyed her work again.

  Hiding wasn’t her style.

  o0o

  Eagle saw her coming, her red hair as bright as a beacon. He’d expected the intruders, but he’d never expected Kate Malone, brandishing a mop.

  She was as noisy as a freight train, roaring through the night with the mop held aloft. Fearless, she stormed through the clinic.

  Eagle watched her, amused. She was in no danger, for he’d kept watch all night. The clinic was empty.

  He knew the art of stillness. The years away from Witch Dance had not taken it from him, nor the ability to blend with the night, to be a part of it.

  Kate passed so close, he could have reached out and touched her. Eagle stayed his hand. The touching would come. For now, watching was enough.

  “Come out,” she said. “I know you’re in here.”

  She poked the mop behind a stack of lumber and jabbed it into dark corners.

  “Come out with your hands up and I might be generous.”

  Leaning forward with the moon impossibly bright upon her hair and on the whiteness of her shirt, she shaded her eyes, trying to see into the darkness.

  The wanting of her pierced him like arrows, and watching, he knew it would always be so. She was in his blood, and the mere sight of her stirred him beyond imagining.

  He stepped from the shadows
, so close his thigh touched hers. She spun around, dropping the mop, her mouth round with surprise. The knowledge of what they were to each other and what they would be sparked in their eyes.

  “Be generous, Kate,” he said, reaching for her.

  She hesitated only a moment, then, surrendering, she wrapped herself around him, her arms circling his shoulders, her hands woven in his hair, her left leg pressed against his groin and her right curved around his leg.

  “Where have you been?” she whispered.

  He cupped her face. “Waiting for this.”

  Her sigh was as soft as prairie grasses bending before the wind.

  Even before his lips touched hers he knew the honeyed taste of her, the warm, musky scent of her. It filled his nostrils and the pores of his skin. It raced through bone and sinew and blood, pounding with the insistent beat of war drums.

  There was no need for words. Mouths joined, skin touching skin, they sank to their knees, weak and dying of the love-lust that consumed them. His hands were under her shirt, on her soft breasts, and hers massaged him through his well-worn jeans.

  She made a soft, keening sound, like a wounded animal, and Eagle scooped her into his arms. He whistled once, twice. Out of the darkness came his black stallion. Kate was no burden to him as he mounted.

  “I will not submit to these barbaric ways,” Kate said even as she wrapped her arms around his chest.

  “Submissive women bore me, Wictonaye.” He bent close, his eyes challenging hers. Kate held his stare while night winds soughed softly about them. From far away came the cry of a coyote.

  Still holding his gaze, Kate unlaced the leather thongs at the neck of his shirt, wet the tip of her finger with her tongue, then slowly traced his nipple.

  “I will never submit,” she whispered.

  Smiling, Eagle dug his heels into the stallion’s flanks.

  Thundering across the prairie with the wind in her hair, Kate existed in a state of being beyond time and light and knowledge.

  All she knew was the sound of hoof beats on the hard prairie floor and the swaying motion of the horse that rocked her in Eagle’s arms.