And the worst thing was…he'd started to care.
Wiley's house was completed just as the weather turned cold. Hallie hadn't gone inside once it was finished. She didn't want him to get the idea that she was in any way interested. She felt badly about avoiding him; his company and friendship had been pleasant—but that's where it ended.
The women parted tearfully on the last day of the house raising, knowing it could be months before they saw one another again. Hallie wished them well, glad she had Chumani, Yellow Eagle and Cooper to winter with.
During their evening lessons one night the following week, Yellow Eagle made an announcement.
"I thought up a gift for Hallie."
Cooper looked up from the boots he drew laces through and gave his nephew an encouraging nod.
"It isn't a gift I made or bought, because her gift to me wasn't made or bought. It's something she'll carry with her always, like my reading and writing, and it will make her life better, just like her gift to me."
"You've thought this out carefully, haven't you?" Cooper said.
Hallie listened with growing interest. Yellow Eagle never missed an opportunity to display his resentment, but he would do anything to please his uncle.
"I've thought of it every day," the boy replied.
"What is it?" Cooper asked.
Yellow Eagle's flashing dark eyes darted from his uncle to Hallie. "A sicun."
Hallie remembered the word from the time she'd asked Cooper what was in the pouch he wore on a thong around his neck. A spirit stone.
A thoughtful expression softened Cooper's handsomely rugged face. "At first you didn't want to accept Hallie's gift, did you?"
Shamefacedly, Yellow Eagle shook his head. "I didn't know how important it was. I do now."
Hallie heard his admission with surprise.
"Maybe Hallie won't be ready to accept your gift, either," Cooper said. "Not until she understands how important it is."
Yellow Eagle absorbed that and grinned. "The gifts are equal then, aren't they?"
Cooper lit his pipe and puffed. "And…" He looked over at Hallie.
"What?" she asked skeptically.
"Yellow Eagle had to work to receive his gift. You will, too."
"What do you mean?"
"No one can give you the stone. You have to find it yourself."
"Well, I can do that," she said, gesturing toward the door. "There are rocks all over out there."
Cooper shook his head. "This has to be a special stone. A pure stone. From a riverbed or from inside the earth."
Was it Yellow Eagle's plan to have her drown or freeze swimming in the river? Not excited about the implication, she said, "I either swim or dig."
The three of them exchanged glances.
Hallie rejected the first idea immediately. "That river's got to be awfully cold by now."
Uncle and nephew agreed.
Excitedly, Yellow Eagle spread both palms out flat and then rapidly poked two fingers on his right hand forward and pulled them back.
Cooper's broad smile divulged how brilliant he thought the suggestion.
Not understanding the sign, Hallie stared at them in exasperation. "What are you talking about?"
"There's hundreds of prairie dogs out toward Standing Rock," Yellow Eagle explained.
"And…?" she prompted, leaning forward.
"They push stones up from their burrows and tunnels."
"Oh." She sat back. "So we ride out there and I pick out a rock."
They nodded.
"Then I put it in a pouch and wear it."
They shook their heads.
"There's more?"
"You take the stone to the Yuwipi man," Yellow Eagle explained.
"The who-what-i?"
"The Yuwipi man," the boy repeated. "He does the sacred naming ritual so the spirits enter the stone."
Was this sacred stone thing really important to him? Was this a sincere gesture? If so, he'd no doubt be insulted if she refused, and she didn't want to ruin the first bit of progress she'd made toward gaining his acceptance. Hallie bit her nail. Imagining the bizarre activity with more than a little hesitation, a fortuitous thought came to her. Her gaze slid to Cooper.
He raised a dubious brow as though wary of her thoughts.
A sacred Indian ritual! She would be one of the few whites to ever participate in such a thing! Her father would jump at this story. "Where's this Yuwipi man?" she asked in excitement.
"At the reservation," Cooper replied.
"When can we get the stone?"
He shrugged. "Tomorrow?"
Hallie clapped her hands. "I can't wait!"
He studied her curiously, finally turning to Yellow Eagle. "That took a lot of thought," he said. "I'm proud of you."
Yellow Eagle's chest swelled.
"Close your book now," he said. "We'll get an early start."
The boy obeyed and wished them good-night, slipping into his coat and leaving.
Cooper made tea, and surprised her by carrying the slates to her. The other evenings after Yellow Eagle was gone, she'd had to coerce him into doing letters. "You've decided it's not so bad?" she asked.
He sat cross-legged beside her and handed her a piece of chalk. Their fingers brushed. "I've decided you were right. I do need to learn to do the books after you're gone."
"Cooper."
He tilted his head.
"There's something I've been wondering about."
"That's no surprise. You ask more questions than anyone I ever knew."
She shrugged.
"Okay, what is it?"
"Who wrote the letter to Tess Cordell?"
He looked at his blank slate. "Mrs. Kell."
"Nellie Kell?" She imagined him asking the woman to write the letter for him. Had he been embarrassed? Nellie was so down-to-earth and practical, she would have been easy to approach with the favor. "Well, I'll be," she murmured, then turned her attention to their lesson. "Where were we?"
"We finished and we were going to start over."
"Oh, yes. With capitals this time," she said. She drew the a he remembered and added another symbol beside it that looked like a tepee with a bar across the center. "Lowercase a, capital A," she said, pointing.
Cooper drew the same symbols. "Why two that mean the same thing?" he asked.
"Names start with capitals, names of people and cities and countries."
"Why?"
"Because they're important."
"And other things are not important?"
"The first word in a sentence starts with a capital letter, too," she added.
"Why?"
"So you can tell it's the beginning of the sentence when you're reading, I guess. Are you trying to pay me back for all the questions?"
He shook his head. "Words and thoughts on paper are amazing."
Hallie turned and observed the chiseled line of his jaw in the firelight. "You're right. It is amazing. I've taken it for granted my whole life."
He looked up and met her eyes. "You probably think I'm ignorant."
"Not at all," she replied. "Communicating without writing, now that's hard," she said. "I've learned more from you and Yellow Eagle and Chumani than I ever knew before."
"Like what?"
"Oh, like how to dye quills and fabric, and how to survive on my own cooking, and what to do for a snakebite— or mosquito bites."
They shared an irrepressible smile.
"Practical things," she said. "Things about life." She was quiet for several minutes. "You know what one of my greatest fears has always been?"
He shook his head.
She brushed a strand of hair from her face and left a streak of chalk on her cheek. "That I'd end up like my mother."
"Would that be so bad?" he asked softly.
"It would be awful," she whispered. "Once her years of producing children were over, she became like an expensive but ugly gift that no one knows quite what to do with. You k
eep it around because it would be unthinkable to get rid of it, but everyone's uncomfortable having to look at it."
"Doesn't your father…" His voice trailed off. "Don't they have a…good relationship?"
"It's good for him," Hallie said, and heard the resentment lacing her tone. "He has a comfortable, well-ordered home and someone to entertain guests. She could have been anyone—anyone capable of giving him sons."
"You wouldn't be like her, Hallie." His deep-strung voice was low and reassuring.
"I would be if I gave my father his way."
"And what is that?"
"Forget the paper. Marry one of the fine young men he and my brothers parade before me."
"But you won't do that."
"No." She adjusted her skirts and their knees bumped.
"What's wrong with the men?"
She shrugged. "Nothing. They're just—men."
"Egotistical, rutting dogs?"
She blushed and snuck a glance at him from beneath her lashes. "You heard that, huh?"
"I didn't take it personally."
"Why not?"
"Should I have?"
"No!"
Graciously, he let it go. "A is a vowel," he said.
Mildly surprised, she nodded. "And how does it sound?"
"Ay and ahh," he said, making the letter sound like an expression of pleasure.
She grinned. "Now give me words that start with a."
"Alive."
"Anxious," she said.
"Ache," he said.
She looked at his hands on the slate and her heart beat a little faster.
"Alone." He looked up, and his clear blue eyes drew her into their depths. "Amazing," he whispered.
They leaned toward one another until their lips were inches from touching. "Admit," she said.
Blue fire burned in the depths of his eyes before Hallie closed hers against the pounding of her heart and the expectation quivering in every pore. Their lips touched briefly, his warm and unassuming, hers hesitant…guileless.
Hallie pulled back and he made no move to stop her. She looked at the seductive lips she'd just kissed and instinctively reached up to touch them, running a finger across the pliant flesh, two fingers down the cleft in his chin, and flattened her palm against his rough cheek.
Releasing the slate, she leaned toward him and used both hands to trace the strong line of his brow and thread the hair away from his temples. She drew a line down his nose and paused, bracketing his mouth with both thumbs, her fingers lying along his jaw.
His passivity lent her freedom to enjoy the feel of his skin beneath her hands. His very difference from her own skin and hair infused her with an ardent desire to learn more. Satiating her curiosity, she skimmed his muscled neck to his shoulders. Beneath the leather shirt he was broad and solid. For a brief moment Hallie considered the impropriety of touching him this way.
But she was a questioner at heart and all the answers to the mystery that made up this man were beneath her fingertips, so she availed herself without a second thought. Had he returned the caress, had he done anything but sit pliantly beneath her exploration, he would have broken the wondrous trust that allowed her shameless awakening.
She discovered his muscled chest and the eloquent beating of his heart beneath the shirt. She fingered the mysterious stone that rested upon his breastbone and ran her palms down and back up his rock-hard sides. She met his blazing eyes and saw the muscle in his jaw twitch.
Her hands couldn't circle even half of his bulging biceps. She wished he wasn't wearing the shirt, so she could touch his smooth dark skin and see the play of firelight over his body.
"Would you…" she heard herself asking in a voice not at all like her own, "take your shirt off?"
His expression didn't change. Slowly he set his slate aside and unlaced the front of the shirt. With a graceful motion, he pulled it off over his head and sat back.
Hallie moved directly in front of him. He was even bigger and broader without the shirt. She hesitated.
"Shall I put it back on?"
"No." Her hand stopped in the air between them.
Cooper raised his palm against it. His long fingers dwarfed hers. She examined the calluses on his palm and laced her fingers with his briefly before dropping his hand and splaying both hands against his chest.
His skin jumped at the first touch.
She flattened her hands and ran them across his warm, silky skin, his flat brown nipples puckering at the contact.
He closed his eyes and breathed through his flared nostrils.
Hallie kneaded his shoulders, stroked his corded neck and rose on her knees to brush his ponytail aside and explore his back. She absorbed him, learned him, discovered the places his skin was rough and the places it was as soft as a two-year-old's.
The knowledge was no longer satisfying. The tactile information her fingers relayed to her brain stirred a sweet hunger to life, and her self-taught senses responded with spontaneous desire.
Hallie cupped his face in her hands. "Kiss me now," she said on a ragged breath.
Cooper buried his primal craving deep and called on the spirit gods to endow him with the strength this self-denial called for. He knew enough about her to know that she didn't want to be intimidated by a man.
Oh, she was sweet, her curiosity natural, her instincts innocent and sensual. He wanted to know her the same way she knew him. He wanted to undress her and explore her with his hands and mouth. But more than that, more than anything, he wanted her to trust him. Why that trust was so important he didn't know, but rational or not, the desire overshadowed his physical passion.
He raised himself on his knees to meet her, reverently held her jaw, the pulse points beneath his fingertips hammering, and lowered his face to hers.
She met his lips with a soft, yielding sigh and a tightening of her arms around his shoulders. He kissed her sweetly, inhaling her fresh feminine scent, tasting her, fascinated by the unidentifiable sensations that surged within his head and heart. He didn't stop at sweet, but ripened the kiss with an open mouth and seeking tongue.
Instinctively her lips parted and she met him, returning boundless exploration with blissful deliberation. Her soft breasts crushed against his chest, and he knew she must feel him hot and hard between them.
She withdrew in heart-stopping hesitation, parted their bodies and looked up into his eyes.
A little fearful, a little credulous, her dark-eyed expression stole his breath.
He wanted to crush her against him and fill himself with her. At that moment he'd never felt weaker, never felt more selfish or so remorsefully inadequate.
Her black lashes fluttered and her pink tongue darted across her kiss-swollen lips. "Ask," she said.
It took his brain a second to translate the message. "Ask what?"
"Ask starts with an a," she said. "Ask for anything."
His overworked heart threatened to stop then and there. She was a boundless mystery, full of surprises and innocent charm. "A kiss," he said. "One more kiss."
A smile of genuine pleasure crossed her parted lips. Placing a hand behind his head, she pulled herself flat against him and kissed him. Breathlessly. Intensely. Confidently.
He would never sleep.
His body trembled.
A groan erupted deep in his throat.
She answered it with the ardent invasion of her tongue.
His heart thundered.
She released him and sat back on her heels.
Cooper stared at her shining eyes, her reddened lips and the heartbeat at the base of her throat. A log rolled in the grate and the fire hissed.
"Good night," she said.
He forced a response. "Good night."
She steadied herself with a hand on the hearth and stood. With a silken rustle of clothing, she turned and shut herself in her room.
Cooper stared at the door until the fire burned down and the room grew cold. Unfolding his furs, he star
ed at the ceiling until dawn crept across the beams. And then…he went for a swim in the river.
"We'll leave the horses here and go the rest of the way on foot," Cooper stated. He and Yellow Eagle dismounted carrying bows and slung pouches filled with arrows over their shoulders.
Feeling like an accomplished horsewoman after her second ride, Hallie slid from the saddle, biting back a groan and ignoring both the ache in her posterior and the biting cold wind against her cheeks. Cooper hobbled the horses and the three of them silently climbed a small rise. He and Yellow Eagle crouched low and waited for her to do the same. She stifled a groan at the arthritic pain in her legs and lowered herself.
Yellow Eagle reached the top first and lay flat on his belly. Cooper stretched his considerable length out beside him and both turned to Hallie. She got down on all fours, crawled to where they lay and peered over the wedge of land.
The prairie dogs darted here and there, scampering about playfully and poking their heads in and out of the hundreds of holes littering the expanse of ground.
"Oh, aren't they darling?" she whispered, turning.
Cooper and his nephew exchanged a look and both fitted long arrows against their bowstrings and squinted down the shanks.
"You're not going to kill them, are you?" she asked. They released the arrows with a whooshing sound. Hallie turned in time to see two of the creatures impaled. The sound whizzed past her ear a second time and two more fell. Shaken, she stood and ran toward the holes.
In the blink of an eye all the prairie dogs vanished inside their tunnels.
"Hallie, you scared them away!" Yellow Eagle shouted impatiently.
"I didn't know you were going to kill them!"
Cooper and Yellow Eagle strode toward her. "They're meat for supper," Cooper said.
"But they're so cute…and little…."
"That's why it takes several." White breath puffed from his lips.
"Yeah, well…" She glanced around. "I'll leave the meat for you fellas tonight."
The two slung their bows over their shoulders. "Start looking for your stone, Hallie," Yellow Eagle said.
"It's probably too cold for rattlesnakes, but just to be safe don't stick your hands into any of those holes," Cooper cautioned.
Badlands Bride Page 17
