Hearth Song

by Lois Greiman

  But she caught his arm in a talon-like grip. “You think you’re so—” she began, but she stopped in her proverbial tracks as a canary yellow Dodge turned into the yard, driven, of course, by the husband of the woman who was currently half-dressed and holding him captive.

  Chapter 18

  It took a moment for a dozen wayward thoughts to tumble into Tonk’s overheated brain: It was barely six in the morning. Dane Lambert was just arriving. Bravura was in a stunning but inexplicable state of undress. How did these facts align?

  Something rumbled from her throat. It sounded a little like a growl. Had Tonk been free to do so, he would have taken a step to the rear, though he was almost inclined to believe he wasn’t the cause of her ire. Or at least not the only cause. Why had her husband been absent? True, she was a spitfire, but wasn’t it just that kind of woman who intrigued, who accomplished, who fulfilled and created and inspired? What kind of man could walk away from that?

  It took a moment for the answer to soak into his soul: his kind. His kind would walk away. His kind was exceptional at doing just that. Or at least he had been before being dragged kicking and cursing into an AA meeting, where Bill W’s crazy ideas of forgiveness and redemption were consumed like magic Kool-Aid.

  But he tried. God knew, he tried to walk that line … to improve himself so that maybe someday he’d be good enough for …

  He let his gaze slip back to Bravura as the sunburst muscle car pulled to a halt beside them. She wasn’t his type, of course. He preferred women who had more … He gritted his teeth, thinking hard. Or at least some … Still, any woman who could raise a daughter like Lily deserved a good deal. Kindness, for sure. Thoughtfulness, definitely. But more than that. She should have all good things. What she deserved was a man like his brother, someone who would stand behind her, beside her.

  Seeing her now, however, he wondered if she needed anyone at all. Her head was high, her eyes flashed with spirit, and for a moment he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze away.

  But the slam of the Viper’s door shattered his reverie.

  Dane Lambert stepped out, brows raised. “What’s going on?”

  Bravura shrugged, seemed to realize at the last moment that she was still gripping Tonk’s arm like a milling vise, and slowly peeled her fingers away. “Tonkiaishawien brought his horses.” She said the words crisply, almost like a challenge.

  Tonk tensed. It wasn’t the first time he would be on the knuckles end of an angry husband so he would take his lumps, but it did seem a little unfair that he was about to be decked by a man whose wife he hadn’t even had the pleasure of seeing naked. Step eight, however, insisted that he be willing to make amends to those he had harmed, and since his alcohol-induced stupidity did not allow him to remember all those he had injured, he was just going to have to take it on the chin from someone whom he would kind of like to pop. He clenched his jaw, tempted to do so, but Dane grinned and reached out his right hand. “Good to see you again, Tonk.” They shook, civil as democrats. “But I don’t understand.” He glanced from one to the other without so much as a single curse. And what the hell was that about? His wife was a scrap of plaid from being naked. If the situation was reversed, Tonk would swing an uppercut into the other man’s jaw, coax his wife into the house, and spend the day doing something far more constructive than grinning like an ape. “You going for a ride?”

  A muscle ticked in Bravura’s cheek, but she managed to pry her jaws apart. “I said he could keep his horses here.”

  Tension bubbled around them like boiling tar, but if Dane noticed, he was a master of deception, Tonk thought, and wondered if he had just hit the nail dead on the head.

  “If that’s okay with you,” Bravura added.

  Another silence, stretched to the breaking point then gently released by Dane’s easy shrug.

  “Sure. I mean, we’ve got the space, right?”

  Holy cats, what was wrong with this guy? Okay, maybe not every living, breathing woman in America was ready to throw her panties at Tonk’s feet, but he had the blowing-in-the-wind hair, the invincible warrior-stance, the entire proud Native persona firmly in place. Surely, he was something of a threat to this idiot man’s seemingly unimpeachable security.

  “Right,” Bravura said, and made the single word sound surprisingly like a curse.

  “I will pay, of course,” Tonk said into the odd abyss.

  “Well, that’s great then. It’s a win-win.” Lambert raised his brows a little. “But hey, honey …” He grinned at his wife. “Maybe you should button up a little before you catch a cold.“

  Bravura’s scowl darkened. She lowered her gaze to her shirt. Then, hissing a thin gasp that might have been comical under less stimulating circumstances, clutched her shirt together at the chest.

  Dane chuckled a little. “That’s my Vey,” he said and, wrapping a companionable arm around his wife’s shoulder, drew her up against his side like an adorable puppy. “Totally unaware when she’s got something else on her mind. Once when we was kids, she raced Billy Clayton across the reservoir. Beat him, too. But maybe that was because she’d lost her bikini top. Didn’t even realize she was half-undressed till she climbed out of the water. Remember that, honey?” he asked, and gave her a friendly little shake. “Hey, Tonk, you wanna join us for breakfast?”

  “He can’t!” The words seem to spurt from Bravura’s lips. Her cheeks were as red as an autumn apple.

  Tonk raised one questioning brow. If things got any damn weirder, he could sell tickets.

  “I mean, he’s got to take care of his horses and …” She glanced away, looked like she wished she was anywhere else, and tightened her grip on her shirt. “We don’t have any … bread … for toast.”

  “Well, shoot. If I had known that when I went out this morning. I could have picked some up.”

  Tonk watched Bravura’s eyes shadow with doubt. Watched her clench her teeth as if biting back inquiries, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t know he should leave. It wasn’t that he was unaware of the fact that he should allow them some privacy to hash out their differences. If this Dane Lambert was a red-blooded male, that hashing out wouldn’t take long, not with Bravura all flushed and disheveled and breathtakingly stunning in that sweet-earth way that was hers and hers alone … And … dung on a donut, he had to get out of there.

  But before he could take a single step toward sanity, she spoke.

  “You left this morning?” she asked, and Tonk found himself immobilized again. Why the devil didn’t she know when her husband had vacated the premises? But Dane smiled and tightened his arm companionably around her shoulder.

  “You were sleeping so sound. I didn’t want to wake you,” he said and, grinning suggestively, winked at Tonk. “Not after last night.”

  Her cheeks burned hotter, but something flared even brighter in her eyes. What was it? Embarrassment? Rage? Tonk resisted taking a cautious step back. “Oh, well …” She cleared her throat, inhaled. “That was … considerate of you. Thanks.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t thank me yet,” he said and, releasing her, hurried to his car. “Not until you see …” He paused as he popped the trunk on the Viper, then pulled out a long flat box. PANASONIC was printed in bold letters on the top.

  Bravura scowled at it. “What’s that?”

  “What’s that?” Dane echoed and laughed as he jerked his gaze to Tonk’s in chummy male bonding. “Leave it to Vey to be so caught up in her own little world she can’t even recognize a fifty-four-inch, high-definition flat screen. Hey …” His grin amped up a little. “Give me a hand here, will you, buddy?”

  It took a moment for Tonk to realize the man whose wife was standing next to him in a scrap of nothing, the man whose wife he was trying like hell not to ogle, was referring to him with convivial camaraderie. But he jerked himself out of his weirdness-induced trance and stepped forward to take one end of the ungainly box.

  “It’s a television,” Dane explained and winked at Tonk as if they shared som
e secret only Y genes understood.

  “But we …” Hands still fisting her shirt across her chest, Bravura scowled at the offending box. “We already have a television.”

  “Is that what that is?” Dane asked and, after folding back the sleeves of his fancy cowboy shirt, tossed his chin toward the house. “You okay backing up the steps with this thing, Tonk?”

  “Ai.”

  “Great,” Dane said, and turned back to his wife. “I thought that clunky black box was something left over from the Dark Ages or something.”

  “You left me to …” She tightened her jaw and shifted her line of interrogation. “You bought it this morning?” she asked, and Dane chuckled as Tonk rose carefully to the first step.

  “Well, sure. I bought a few things for you in Williston, but a couple pairs of jeans and a new handsaw aren’t going to cut it after all these months.”

  “You bought me a handsaw?”

  He laughed at her hopeful tone.

  Well, crapola, wasn’t he a jolly elf? And did he usually laugh while considering where to bury the bodies of the men who gawped at his wife?

  “I know you don’t think you’ll use it, baby. But you’ll love it when you get used to it. Once we get hooked up, we’ll be able to get a hundred stations. Grab the door for our guest, will you, sweetheart?”

  Bravura stepped past Tonk to swing open the door. It squealed like a crypt in a second-rate slasher flick.

  Dane rambled on. “Westerns, soaps, the jewelry station.”

  “Jewelry station?” Bravura sounded dubious at best.

  Dane grinned over the TV at Tonk. “I knew that would get her. The only kind of sparklers Vey is interested in are diamond-cut wafering blades … or whatever the hell they’re called. But, hey”— he shifted his attention back to his wife—“you’ll be able to get … what’s that show you like so much? This Old House. It’ll be like that Bob Vila guy is right there in our living room.”

  “That’s … great,” Bravura said, but if she was trying to sell that lie, she would have to do so to someone who didn’t have brothers.

  “Isn’t it?” Lambert asked, and shuffled into the living room. “Let’s just set it down in the corner there.”

  Tonk did as told. The living space was cluttered but cozy, occupied with piles of children’s books, a plethora of toy horses, and wallpaper stamped with images of … cattle, maybe?

  Bravura stared at the Panasonic as if it had just committed a felony.

  “Come on, honey, tell me you like it,” Lambert coaxed, and taking her into his arms, bumped his hips against her.

  “It’s … That was really nice of you.”

  “And I got some cool stuff for Lily, too. Wait till you see. You sure you don’t want to join us for breakfast, Tonk?”

  The question jarred Tonk from a hundred uncharitable thoughts. “No. Thank you. I will see to the horses and begin the fencing.”

  “Fencing?”

  “It is part of my payment.”

  “Oh, well, great. I’ll be out to help you later. After I convince my wife here that she’s the luckiest woman on the planet.” He winked again. It was as creepy as hell, and strangely, rather made Tonk want to sock him in the throat.

  Bravura blushed, and he laughed. “It may take a while,” he said, and set her free. “I’m going to get Lil’s gifts in. Why don’t you get dressed up, baby. We’ll have ourselves a nice breakfast.”

  “Oh … okay,” she said, and turned uncertainly toward the stairs.

  Tonk scowled. Since when did Bravura Lambert feel uncertain of anything? he wondered, but it only took him a moment to remember it was none of his business. A little longer to pass the living room bovine, escape the kitchen poultry, and tap down the steps into clean, fresh air.

  Lambert went with him. “So you’re Hunter Redhawk’s brother, right?”

  “Ai.”

  “You live with them at the institute there?”

  It took Tonk a second to follow his line of inquiry. “I occasionally help out at Gray Horse Sanctuary, but I do not live there.”

  Silence echoed around them. Perhaps this guy wasn’t as foolish as he seemed, Tonk thought. Perhaps he had simply been waiting for his wife’s absence before he jumped him like a wolf on a hapless deer.

  But his tone remained convivial. “So, where you bunking?”

  “I rent a place in Buffalo Gap.”

  “Yeah? I used to raise hell in the Gap before …” He tilted his head toward the house behind them. “Before the family come along. Whose place you renting?”

  “Halvorson’s.”

  “Honey Halvorson’s?” Dane raised his brows. “You lucky dog.”

  “Do you know her?”

  Dane laughed, expression nostalgic. “Everyone knows Honey. But, hey …” Reaching out, he shook Tonk’s hand again. “Thanks for helping out.”

  “You are welcome,” Tonk said, and turned away. He felt strangely disoriented, oddly off-kilter, and he didn’t know why. Okay, maybe it was because he had just spent ten minutes in the company of a dime-store cowpoke and his mostly naked wife. But come on, it wasn’t as if Bravura’s attire had really been that scandalous. One could see more skin at the beach … if one had a beach. So maybe it was his self-enforced celibacy that made the situation so disorienting.

  Retrieving the lead of the grazing Arrow, Tonk opened the crooked wooden gate that led to a tiny pasture and led the pinto inside, but his mind never stopped spinning. What the hell was going on here? What kind of guy didn’t care that his wife was scantily clad while talking to another man? And why would that guy leave in the small hours of the morning when he had a woman like Bravura Lambert in his bed? Okay, she could be a bear cat when riled, and Tonk himself favored soft women, sweet women, women who didn’t want to kill him at the drop of a hat. But Bravura was probably as cuddly as a bunny where her husband was concerned.

  It was impossible to say why she started spitting tacks when Tonk was near. But he had seen her with Lily, had felt the warmth, had heard the laughter. Not that he cared. Not that he was attracted to her. But other men might be. She wasn’t, after all, physically repulsive. Reaching for Arrow’s halter, he snugged up the cheek piece, ready to turn him loose.

  But just then a few sheets of paper, blown from Lambert’s Viper, tumbled past in the rising wind. Tonk managed to stomp on one … tuck it into the pocket of his jeans.

  “Dumb ass,” Tonk muttered and managed to snatch a receipt from a nearby buttonweed. “No respect for our mother.” Arrow glanced at him from one suspicious eye. “What?” Tonk asked. The pinto shook his head a little. “He’s a polluter,” Tonk explained. Arrow blew a gust of air through wide nostrils. It sounded a little like a scoff. “Listen, I don’t have anything against the cute little dime-store cowpoke.”

  That eye again.

  “I don’t,” he said, and wondered dismally when he had become such an abysmal liar that he couldn’t even fool a horse. He had spent a lifetime faking everything from interest to innocence. But old Bill W insisted that he change. He glanced toward the house into which the cowpoke had disappeared, and though Tonk did his best, he couldn’t quite banish the image of Bravura in the other man’s arms. Bending, he retrieved another scrap of paper that had come to a halt against a leaning post. He crumpled the narrow sheet in his fist and ground his teeth.

  What the hell was he thinking? She was married. Married! And if he was trying to change, honestly attempting to improve, then he had to at least honor that sacred vow.

  Letting his shoulders drop, he stared into the pinto’s eyes. They were solemn and bright and unwavering.

  “Fine! You’re right. Again. Is that what you want to hear?” he asked and, pivoting on his heel, led the gelding back toward the trailer. “We shouldn’t be here.” He glanced toward the house, wondering, against his will, if they were, even now, tearing the clothes from each other’s bodies. “We’re leaving,” he added and stepped into the trailer “But don’t act so damned smug, cuz y
ou’re going to be missing out on a butt load of grass.”

  The pinto snorted and followed him inside. Shod hooves rang solidly against the matted floorboards.

  “And the other two …” He nodded toward the duo that remained in the trailer. “They’re gonna blame you.”

  Arrow shoved his muzzle into the nearest hay bag, not caring a whit.

  “Yeah, well …” He secured the gelding with the nearest clip. “You think it doesn’t matter right now, but wait until Lark finds out.” Two slots ahead, the gray mare pawed at the wall, making the trailer clang like the inside of the Liberty Bell. “See what I mean? She’s going to make your life a living hell.”

  The gelding snorted, spewing out a spray of green goo before returning happily to his alfalfa.

  “Some proud steed you are.”

  The front door of the house banged again. Lambert tapped down the stairs, cute hair bobbling.

  Tonk gritted his teeth, coming up with a hundred reasons to dislike him, though Bill W suggested it best to leave judgment to a higher power. The idea stopped him cold. “We’re leaving. Right now,” he said, but just when he was about to step out of the trailer, Lambert turned to retrieve yet another item from his Viper.

  With his back turned, the roses embroidered across the shirt’s yoke were visible for the first time.

  Tonk froze. He’d seen that shirt before. At the Branding Iron. On the man with Sherri.

  He pressed his shoulders against the wall of the trailer and tried to catch his breath, his wits. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be. No man, no matter how irrational, would step out on a woman like Bravura with a chippy like Sherri Unger.

  Certain that was true, Tonk reached for the door, but doubts struck him like boulders. What if he was wrong? What if Lambert was doing just that? He physically winced at the thought. Bravura would be devastated, and Lily, that wild warrior child, would be wounded, left to wonder if she was somehow to blame, if it was her fault her father was a pile of dog—