“I—well, I know him. We met a couple of days ago at a business dinner in Washington.”
Travis Tall Wolf looked relieved. “Then he told you.”
“Told me what?”
He stopped looking relieved. “About Dove.”
“No.” She paused, a sense of dread sinking in her stomach. We almost ravished each other in an elevator, he tackled me in an alley, but we’re strangers.
“What about Dove?” she asked in an uneasy voice.
Travis looked at her grimly. “James owns her place. And everything she left in it.”
JAMES KNEW THERE was trouble the second he heard his brother’s voice on the phone. For one thing, Travis never called; he left that social nicety to their sisters. He and Travis hadn’t had anything pleasant to say to each other in years.
Travis didn’t beat around the bush. “Erica Gallatin has moved into Dove’s house,” he told James. “I helped her pry the boards off the front door and I got the power hooked up for her.”
“What?” James sat speechless and listened to his brother’s explanation. When Travis finished, James had almost conquered disbelief. Erica Gallatin was related to Dove. But what in hell was she trying to do about it? “She can’t stay in Dove’s house.”
“Then you come down and make her leave. It’s her and her cousins’ place by tradition.”
“It’s my place by law.”
“You’re a white man now, huh? Always call in the law to settle your personal problems? Or will you just try to solve your problems with money, like always?”
James bit back harsh words. He grieved for the days when he and Travis had been best friends, before tragedy sent them on different missions in life.
Travis had been his idol. Travis could have played college football and probably pro, too, but he’d joined the marines right of high school and had been sent immediately to Vietnam.
Three years later, when James turned eighteen, he’d been determined to join the marines too. Then Travis had come home with a piece of shrapnel buried permanently in one leg, and Travis had vowed to punch him silly if he didn’t go to college and play football.
“Be somebody important and make us proud,” Travis had told him. “You’ll do more for your people that way than I ever did.”
James had become somebody important and for a few years he’d made the family and his tribe proud. They’d never know the price he had paid to do that.
Now Travis spoke softly, fiercely. “The old man wants to see you. Becky and Echo want to see you.” He paused. “So do I. I don’t know if this Gallatin woman is sincere or not, but if she gets you back home, she’s worth the trouble.”
James gave a humorless chuckle. That was the problem—she was worth the trouble. “I’m on my way.”
ERICA LEFT THE motel in town and drove back to Dove’s place early the next morning, armed with a crowbar, hand tools, and camping gear. She was in her element, wearing cut-off jeans, an old T-shirt, and ratty tennis shoes, her hair pulled up in a ponytail, and thick leather gloves covering her hands. She went to work on the boards barricading the windows, fueled by righteous anger.
How had James dared to buy this place out from under an old woman who needed money? How had he dared to try to put her in a nursing home against her will? The day before she was supposed to leave here. Dove Gallatin had walked into the woods, sat down under a tree, and died. Of grief, the staff at the motel said.
Erica wrenched another board free from its moorings and slammed it to the ground. Travis Tall Wolf hadn’t told her the complete story, only that James had bought Dove’s home and furnishings.
She walked around behind the house and began jamming the crowbar under the boards on a back window. She’d buy this place back. James Tall Wolf had a lot of explaining to do.
Erica flipped a set of Walkman earphones over her head, attached the tape player to the waistband of her cut-offs, and returned to work listening to the sound track from Phantom of the Opera.
The Phantom was singing his solo about revenge, when a hand grasped her arm.
Erica screamed and swung around with the crowbar raised in defense. James intercepted it with his free hand, jerked it out of her grip, and threw it into the weeds behind him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.
She gaped at him and stood there with her hand in midair. He looked tired and rumpled in loose khaki trousers and a wrinkled blue sport shirt; he must have traveled hard and fast to fly down this early and make the long drive from the nearest airport, at Asheville.
“I’m fixing up my family home,” she said between gritted teeth. “I want to buy it from you.”
His face was a mask of rigid control as he stared down at her through narrowed eyes that crinkled at the corners, not the least bit merrily.
Erica put the earphones around her neck and snapped off the tape player. The sounds of the spring day pushed eerily into the silence; katydids singing in the rhododendrons, birds chirping, her breath rasping like sandpaper on concrete.
“I said I want to buy this place.”
“No.”
“No one in town understands why you want it. Mr. Tall Wolf.”
“That’s none of their business.”
“You took advantage of a woman who was almost ninety years old! My grandfather’s cousin! I’m not sure what relationship that makes her to me, but Dove Gallatin was my family, just about the only family I have on the Gallatin side, and I intend to protect what was hers!”
During the tirade his gaze had gone to the thick gold medallion that lay near the center of her chest. He reached for it boldly, the backs of his fingers brushing across her breasts as he lifted the medallion for inspection.
Erica shivered with anger and frustration over the intimate way he always invaded her personal space. “That’s none of your business,” she told him, and took the medallion out of his hand.
She slipped it under the neck of her T-shirt and frowned at the way his eyes followed its journey.
“Where’d you get it?” he demanded.
“From Dove. And I want to know what it means. What did you do with her belongings? If she left any personal papers, I want them.”
He smiled sardonically. “They wouldn’t do you any good without an interpreter. Dove only wrote in Cherokee.”
“There are papers, then. Where are they?”
“In storage.”
“What did you do with her furniture?”
“I didn’t do anything with it,” he retorted. “Dove gave most of it away; what she left is in storage too.”
Erica made a sharp gesture at the house and land. “Why would a man like you want a place like this? Did you con her out of—”
He cut her off with a brow lifted in warning and a look that could have started a fire. “I never conned her out of anything. We made an honest deal, and I paid her more than the place was worth. I plan to live here someday.”
“You’re kidding. Your brother said you haven’t been home in four years. And not very often before that.”
His voice never rose, but it became more commanding. “This land means something to me, more than it will ever mean to you.”
“I’m not the only Gallatin who may want it.” She told him about Tess and Kat. “Kat’s practically full-blooded, and Tess is half. They look like Cherokees. You wouldn’t deny them their heritage.”
He turned away, shaking his head, his hands propped jauntily on his hips. “Sounds like they don’t know any more about the tribe than you do.”
“We can learn.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You have to live it. You have to grow up with it. You have to see the contrasts between the Cherokee and the white world.”
“This is a heritage I’m proud of! Why do you want to keep me away from it? How am I hurting you?”
He swiveled toward her, his eyes glittering with anger. “You want to play at being a Cherokee. The glamour’ll wear off as soon as you see that life’s
not quaint or easy here. You won’t fit in.”
You won’t fit in. How many times she’d heard those words in her life. And they always hurt.
Erica went to the back porch and sank down on a step. She propped her arms on her knees and, blinking hard, tried to focus her anger on a solitary clump of grass between her feet.
“I’ve always been an outsider—in my mother’s family after she remarried, in the construction business because I’m a woman, in social situations because I’m too tall, I’m too plain, I’m too aggressive. I don’t expect to fit in.”
She glanced up as he came to the porch and sat on the step between her feet. Erica leaned back from the sudden closeness when he propped one hand beside her hip. He rested the other hand on his updrawn knee.
He’d lost a lot of his anger, for some reason she couldn’t fathom.
“You’re sincere,” he said gruffly. “And don’t ever think I don’t admire that.”
“Ah.” She looked away from the searing scrutiny of his eyes, feeling awkward.
“But you’re naïve. I’ve seen it before. It’ll wear off quickly.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I’ve brought outsiders to visit the reservation. They never wanted to stay.”
She propped her chin on one hand and tried to look casual. “Women, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m not one of your lady friends, and you didn’t bring me. I came on my own. So don’t write me off so soon.”
She stared at him. “I heard that Dove Gallatin walked out into the woods and willed herself to die because she didn’t want to go to a nursing home.”
Slowly, he nodded. “She did. She had a way about her. The old people said she had powers.”
“Did you … what part did you play in the nursing-home thing?”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
Erica took a deep breath. “I heard that you had something to do with making her go.”
His voice was bitter. “Like maybe I conned her out of her place so she had nowhere else?”
Erica nodded.
“Will you believe me or believe people in town?”
“I don’t know. You’re almost as much of a stranger as they are.” She paused. “I want to believe you. I’ll try.”
He rubbed his forehead in mild exasperation. “I bought this place years ago because she needed money and she wouldn’t take a gift. She had to pay back taxes on some piece of land she owned in Georgia, and she was desperate.”
Erica wanted to cry. Gallatin land, in Gold Ridge. Oh, Dove. Oh, Wolfman. He’d saved the land from being sold for taxes. She owed him the truth about it. “It’s mine now,” she murmured sheepishly. “Mine and my cousins’. Dove left it to us.”
James gazed at her with an expression of astonishment that quickly turned into a grim smile. “She gave up everything to save that land for you. Why don’t you go stay there?”
“My cousins and I will reimburse you for the taxes.”
“I bought this place. Dove paid the taxes.”
“But—”
“This place is mine, and I’m not giving it to a bunch of five-dollar Indians.”
“What?”
“People who get themselves on the tribal roll just to collect benefits.”
Erica wanted to scream. “I feel like slapping you for that, but from what I’ve heard you’d slap me back.”
He raised a finger and pointed at her with slow, furious emphasis. “When I was growing up my only goal in life was to be a famous football player, so that my people would be proud of me. I did what I had to do to make that happen.
“I did and said a lot of stupid, humiliating things when I was taking steroids, but I was willing to pay that price. Football’s a tough game. I got punished and I punished back. But I never hurt anybody off the football field and I never hit a woman in my whole life.”
She had watched his eyes as he talked, and the brutal honesty in them was obvious. Erica hung her head, embarrassed by her accusation. “I’m sorry if I misjudged you.”
When she looked up, his blank expression told her that her apology had surprised him. “When I’m wrong I say I’m wrong,” she muttered.
His jaw was tight, his gaze thoughtful. A little disconcerted, he fiddled with a blade of grass at his feet. “I intended to let Dove live here as long as she wanted. But finally I did talk her into moving to the nursing home. She had arthritis so bad that she could barely walk. She was half blind. She couldn’t stay up here alone any longer.”
“But didn’t she have family—”
James’s expression went grim again. “Obviously not,” he muttered, and rose to his feet.
Erica looked up at his ominous expression, the straight black brows pulled together, the clean-cut angles of his face looking majestic even in anger.
“If we had known,” she murmured, “if Tess and Kat and I had known about Dove, we would have come to see her. We would have tried to help.”
“But you didn’t know because you never cared to find out. I don’t really blame you for that. Just don’t come up here now and try to take over. It’s too late.”
He headed toward the front of the house with a long, swinging stride, and Erica trotted after him. “I don’t want to take over.”
“You can’t have the place,” he said over his shoulder. “What were you going to do—stay here a week or so and then board it back up when you leave for Washington?”
He grabbed a hammer and a plank. “If you’ve got anything inside, go get it. I’m closing the place up again.”
Erica stepped in front of him, fury scorching her skin, her hands clenched by her sides. “I’ll go to the tribal council or the Bureau of Indian Affairs or wherever I have to go, and I’ll get myself listed on the tribal roll.”
He started at her in dismay. “So you have checked out the system.”
“Yeah. I guess that makes me a five-dollar Indian, all right. I found out that anyone who’s at least one-sixteenth Cherokee can ask for land on the reservation. The council has to approve all transactions, and I’m going to ask it to take a second look at the way you bought Gallatin land. You’re not very well liked around here, so I suspect I can at least get a hearing on my predicament.”
“They may think I’m an arrogant bastard, but they won’t like an outsider either.”
“From what I’ve heard everyone worshiped Dove Gallatin, and they’ll treat any of her relatives with respect.”
His silent, frustrated glare told her she’d hit pay dirt. Erica thought about the half-million-dollar contract back in D.C, and smiled. She’d won a measure of revenge.
His voice vibrated with control. “What exactly do you want to do on your little vacation in Injun land?”
“Visit. Go into town and talk to people. Read books about the tribe.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. For once in my life, I’m not going to set a schedule.” She eyed him regally. “What about those personal papers of Dove’s? How can I get them?”
A dangerous gleam came into his eyes. A slow smile slid across his mouth. “There’s only one way you’ll ever get those.”
Erica’s regal confidence faltered. “How?”
“Never say ‘How’ to an Indian. Oh, excuse me, you are an Indian, I forgot. You’ll have to prove it.”
“How—I mean, in what way?”
He walked to the edge of the yard, his head down in thought, his hands shoved into his pants pockets. After a few seconds he turned around and said loudly, “You have to stay here for two months. At the end of two months I’ll hand over all of Dove’s papers, and I’ll even find someone who reads Cherokee well enough to interpret them for you. And if you still want this place, I’ll give it to you.”
Erica leaned against a porch support and crossed her arms, not loosely, but with the hands clamped on the elbows to form a stubborn shield. Anyone who knew her well would have recognized the gesture as evidence of despe
rate inner turmoil. Thankfully, James Tall Wolf didn’t know her well.
“Don’t get upset,” he called. “It’s a simple offer.”
She almost groaned. How could he be so stern and so insightful at the same time? “Two months? I have a business to run.”
“If you could leave it to come down here, you must have a trustworthy foreman. I know the construction business. You don’t have to stay on site if you’ve got a good straw boss.”
Erica paced, her hands clasped behind her back. “Can I fly home for a day or two at a time, if I need to?”
He nodded. “All right, but you live here. This is home. And you’ll learn what I tell you to learn.”
She halted suddenly. “You’re staying on the reservation?”
“For a while.”
“You just want to make this difficult for me.”
“Yeah.”
Erica’s shoulders slumped. “Do you disapprove of me that much?”
He didn’t answer; he seemed to be struggling for something polite to say. “That’s not the point. Because if you make it through two months here, you’ll still go back to D.C. It won’t matter how I feel about you.”
It matters to me, she thought sadly. But she’d be sensible and accept the fact that he only thought of her as misguided and aggravating. Erica made a grim correction. When he felt the urge to prove his seduction skills in an elevator, he also thought of her as a lonely, willing old maid.
Well, there were no elevators here. There weren’t even any buildings over two stories tall, from what she’d seen thus far, so she’d be safe, she thought drolly. Somehow, that didn’t make her happy.
“I’ll take you up on your deal,” she called. “And I’ll win.”
He answered with a wolfish smile.
NO ONE HAD warned her that peace and quiet could be so unnerving! Erica sat on her sleeping bag in the middle of Dove’s bedroom floor, a tuna-salad sandwich laying uneaten in her lap, her head tilted toward the window screen. Actually there were night sounds—the rustling of tree limbs, the poignant calls of whippoorwills, a chorus of tree frogs.
But she’d been raised in cities, weaned on the unceasing hubbub that formed the background drone of urban life, and there in the mountains the night noises weren’t sounds so much as a form of mysterious silence. They weren’t human.
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