by Lois Greiman
He watched her, gaze steady. “Then you are not as bright as I believe you to be, Bravura Lambert.”
“You don’t …” She shook her head, trying to think, to understand, to make some sort of sense of the situation. “You don’t hate me?”
For a moment she was certain he would deny everything, would tell her she was delusional, would prove she was. But he huffed a quiet laugh.
“Tell me, Bravura, do you mistake every man’s obsess—interest… ” he corrected himself. A muscle danced in his chiseled jaw. “Do you mistake every man’s interest for hatred?”
“Every man’s …” She laughed, shook her head. “Men aren’t interested in me.”
He looked baffled and frustrated and irritated all at once. She would never know how he managed it, but finally he shook his head. “Did you always think so poorly of yourself, or is that, too, a gift from your husband?”
“I don’t think poorly of myself.”
He raised one brow, watching her, questioning her.
“I don’t,” she repeated.
“Tell me then, Bravura Marie, at what do you excel?”
She huffed a laugh, then backed away a step as if she could put space between herself and such a ridiculous question, but he followed her.
“What qualities do you possess that make you most proud?” he asked.
“I didn’t come here to brag.”
“That’s just as well, because I do not think you capable of such a thing.”
“I can brag,” she countered and wondered why she was so irritated by the idea that he thought otherwise.
“Then do so, Bravura. If he has not stolen your self-worth, tell me of your greatest accomplishments.”
“Well … I’m a …” Uncertainty washed through her. Or maybe it had been there all along, though she remembered times in her adolescence when she had been nothing but certain of her talents. Now, however, self-doubt seemed to be tearing away her footing, sweeping her under like shifting sands. When had that happened? And how had it occurred without her knowledge? She would never be a great beauty, but there had been a time when that hadn’t mattered, when she was aware of her value, despite that lack. “I’m a really good …” She refrained from shaking her head, though it was as difficult as calculus. “I have excellent …” She set her teeth and let her gaze drift to his hands, his beautiful artist’s hands. “I have good hands, too,” she murmured.
“What?”
She snapped her gaze to his. “My hands.” She swallowed. “I’ve always liked them.”
For a second she actually thought he would laugh, would break down and double over, but he kept his expression passive, his perfect body still. “What is it about your hands that you value, Bravura?”
“Well, they …” She glanced at them, almost rolled her eyes, then took a wild step toward the door. “This is ridiculous,” she said, and reached for the knob, but he grabbed it first. Their fingers brushed. She jerked hers away.
“Tell me of your hands.”
She blinked, sure, absolutely certain that one random brush of his fingertips hadn’t stolen her ability to think, hadn’t rendered her speechless.
“Your hands,” he repeated.
She tucked them self-consciously into the pockets of her overalls. “Well, they … they’re skilled. Not like for cooking and stuff,” she hurried to add. “But for …” She wobbled her head a little and wished to God she had never come. “For finishing work, that kind of thing … they’re pretty good. I mean … I’m not as good as Dad. But I …” She raised her chin, feeling like an idiot. “I can hold my own.”
“What else?”
She glowered at him, challenging, but he refused to back down, refused to back away.
“I’m tough,” she said and, feeling the truth of the words soothe her, straightened her back. “I can get things done that most women … most people wouldn’t want to do.”
He nodded, just the slightest bump of his stubborn chin. “Go on.”
She exhaled, feeling steadier. “I like my hair.”
The shadow of a smile shone in his eyes. Maybe it was because of the challenge that had infused her tone.
“I’m not vain about it,” she hurried to add, defensive despite herself. “But it looks decent … even though I don’t fuss.”
The smile had almost reached his lips, but for reasons unknown she no longer wanted to wipe it from his face.
“Anything else?”
“I’m honest. I try to be honest, and I’m steady. I do what I say I’ll do. My men trust me. I can see things other people miss sometimes. Potential,” she explained. “In a building. In a person.” She nodded. “And I’m a good mother. A pretty good mother.”
He nodded as if a great truth had finally been laid bare. “Do not forget again,” he said, and opened the door.
She glanced outside.
“Good night, Bravura,” he said.
She remained as she was. For reasons entirely unknown, she felt as if she had been tossed into the deep end of a pool and had forgotten how to swim. So she floated, weightless.
“Tonk, I …”
“Good night,” he repeated and nodded once as if she were excused, as if she had no choice but to leave.
She nodded back, and in a minute, though she didn’t exactly know how, she found herself in her truck, alone and strangely lonely.
She sat in silence, blinking into the darkness. But she was being idiotic. She wasn’t alone. Dane had returned, she reminded herself, and starting her Chevy, she headed toward home.
Chapter 30
The spring breeze fluttered tantalizingly against Vura’s cheek, soft and elusive as a butterfly. Its velvety caress carried the earthy scents of wildflowers and cook fires. Beneath her, the painted pony stirred, mane brushing softly against her leather-clad thigh.
“Maska Adsila.”
Vura glanced to her right, and there, buckskin calf pressed to hers, rode a tantalizing warrior. The eagle feathers in his midnight hair fluttered capriciously against his high-boned cheek, but it was the smile he gave to her alone that made her catch her breath, his eyes that made her dizzy. He leaned toward her, head tilted, lips canted and—
“Hey.”
She awoke with a start, found reality with a barely contained gasp.
Dane was sitting on the bed beside her. He chuckled. “Easy,” he said. “I didn’t interrupt a hot dream or something, did I?”
“No!” The lie came so quickly, so easily, causing instantaneous shame, but she sat up, shushing the truth. The dream hadn’t been erotic … not in the strictest sense of the word. It was deeper than that. More disturbing. “No. Of course not.” Clearing her throat, she glanced toward her bedroom window. Light had just begun to seep in from the east, casting a rosy glow over a snowcapped world. “What time is it?” she asked, and scrubbed at her face. But remnants of cook fires and wildflowers remained in her mind, still slightly more real than reality.
“Not too late for some nooky,” he said.
She pulled her attention back to his boyish grin. He had been conspicuously absent upon her return home the previous night. The night when she had seen the images of herself in Tonkiaishawien’s art. Or had that, too, been a dream?
“Was it about me?” he asked.
“What?” She shook her head, realizing that her gaze had been pulled to the distant hills outside her window again. Life had taken another odd spin.
“The dream.” Reaching out, he fiddled with a wayward lock of hair that had coiled against her shoulder. “Was it about me?”
“No. It …” She blinked, stopped herself. “Where were you last night?”
He laughed. “So you were dreaming.”
She pursed her lips. “Where were you?”
“Last night?” He scowled, looking confused. “What do you mean? I was here.”
A little shard of crazy sliced in, but she extracted it carefully, caught his eye. “When I got home.” She said the words slowly, succinctly,
as if he might be a little slow on the uptake. “You weren’t here.”
“Did you miss me?” His grin slanted up another quarter of an inch.
She remained silent, watching him. Seeing him. Really seeing him. Maybe for the first time.
The shadow of a scowl lowered his brows, but his grin won the bout. “I must have gotten here just a couple minutes after you did, but you were already sawing logs. I didn’t want to wake you.”
She watched him.
“So I bunked down on the couch.”
She opened her mouth to ask why, but he spoke before she could voice the question.
“Now that you’re awake, though …” He shrugged, then leaned in to kiss the corner of her mouth. “We might as well make use of that dream.”
Guilt filtered in. She glanced to the side. In the doorway, a small dollop of snow melted leisurely onto the ugly floorboards. It remained stubbornly outlining the divots left by the shoes he still wore.
Suspicion felt hot and shameful on her soul, but not so sharp, not so painful as before. “So you just woke up?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Looking for work is harder than an actual job,” he said, and traced a finger down her arm.
She shifted away. “Any possibilities?” she asked and, drawing her legs from under the covers, winced a little as she scooted past him and tugged a long-sleeved shirt over her bruise. It pulsed a little, but nothing she couldn’t bear.
“Not yet,” he said, and twisted to watch her pull on her jeans. “Hey.”
She turned toward him.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” she said and, nodding, found, as she trotted down the stairs, that it was shockingly true. Even as she stepped outside and set her palm on the hood of his Viper, even as she felt the heat of the recently used engine, she knew that she was right; she was fine … despite his lies. Or at least, she would be.
“I’m a mustang,” Lily said, and charged into the kitchen on slapping hands and flying knees.
Vura laughed and poured orange juice into a glass cup. She tried to avoid allowing her daughter to drink from plastic. It was ridiculously difficult.
Thirty-six hours had passed since she had visited Tonk, had met his cat, had seen his art.
“Well, the mustang had better eat her Raisin Bran before her Pops arrives.”
“Mustangs don’t eat Raisin Bran,” Lily declared and reared to paw the air with splayed fingers. “Besides, I have to gallop across the range, right now,” she said, and dashed into the living room, elbows and knees flying like pistons.
“Oh no, you don’t,” Vura said, and rushed after her. Lily squealed and pivoted toward the stairs, her mother in hot pursuit.
Seconds later they tumbled onto the couch, laughing and panting.
Vura was still gasping for breath when her cell phone rang.
“Hey, Dad.”
“What’s wrong? You okay?” Worry was already straining his voice.
She tickled her daughter one more time and straightened. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You sound winded.”
She smiled at his concern. Ridiculous, really, how good it felt to know he was there. That he cared. “Rounding up wild mustangs is exhausting,” she said as her daughter dropped onto the floor with a defiant whinny.
There was a moment of silence, then “Is the steed in question smart as a firecracker but kind of accident-prone?”
“Good guess,” she said, and headed back toward the kitchen to continue breakfast preparations. For her, a gourmet meal generally involved toast. “What’s up?”
“My temperature.”
“What?”
“I think I’ve got the flu.”
“You don’t get the flu.” She glanced up as her daughter made a quick circuit through the kitchen and back into the living room.
“Tell my immune system that, will you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as Ethan’s going to be.”
“What’d he do?”
“If he’d told me he was coming down with the bubonic plague, I would have handed him a white flag and sent him home for a week,” he said and, turning from the phone, coughed hard enough to hack up a kidney. He sounded listless and raspy when he resumed their conversation. “Maybe Dane can take care of the Lily today, huh?”
Vura scowled, just now realizing the problems her father’s illness would cause her. But that wasn’t his concern. Or at least, it shouldn’t be. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure out something.”
There was a pause filled with angst and parental guilt. She had come by her self-reproach honestly. “Hey, listen,” he said, making an audible attempt to sound healthy … or at least alive. “Maybe I could—”
“No,” she said, cutting him off at the verbal pass. “You couldn’t. You’re going to rest.”
“I can rest and take care of Lily.”
She laughed at the absurdity of such a ridiculous notion. “No mortal being can rest and take care of Lily.”
He couldn’t, in good conscience, argue, it seemed, and in a minute they hung up.
Vura slipped the phone back into her pocket and rose as footsteps sounded on the stairs leading from the upper floor.
“So the house is still standing,” Dane said, and appeared in the doorway. His hair stood up at odd angles, lacking its usual panache.
She raised her brows.
“The noise,” he explained. “I thought maybe someone had detonated a bomb.”
“I’m sorry if we woke you,” she said, but he shook his head.
“I had to get up anyway.” He shuffled closer. Despite his disheveled appearance, he still smelled good. Like … She tested the scent. Spiced peaches, maybe. He wore distressed jeans and a black shirt with a yellow rose embroidered above the pockets. A shirt that begged for attention, Gamps would have said. “Got to get to work.”
“You got a job?” Surprise speared through her.
“Neut Irving just called.” He took a sip from the mug she’d left by the sink, made a face, and returned the coffee cautiously to the counter. “I thought you’d be glad.”
“I am,” she said, and shushed a hundred nasty suspicions; wasn’t it odd that the one time her father couldn’t care for Lily was the one time Dane would be employed for the day? “But I have to get the Snellings’ windows installed and—”
“Why can’t your crew do it? Isn’t that what we pay them for?”
“Glen’s finishing up the Hillers’ solar panels. Maynard’s bidding a job in Hot Springs, and Hip took Mrs. Washburn to Tampa to get her brother’s blessing.”
“What?”
“Exactly.” There was talk of a June wedding. The idea of the cantankerous lovers/haters canoodling in Mrs. Washburn’s blood and alabaster kitchen almost blew the top right off of her head. She pushed the thought aside to spare her sanity. “Anyway, I was thinking maybe you could spend the day with your daughter.”
“Isn’t it your dad’s time with her?”
“He’s sick.”
“That’s too bad.” He shook his head once, glanced at the coffee again, and thought better of it. “If I had known that, I would’ve told Neut ‘no go,’ but he’s in a tight spot and I hate to break my word.”
“He just called this morning?”
He nodded. “He’s paying cash, but listen … I’ll call him back if you want me to. Tell him I can’t—”
“No. That’s not necessary,” she said. “I just didn’t hear your phone.”
He nudged the cup. “Great coffee, by the way,” he said, and smiled at the lie. “I put my cell on vibrate last night. Didn’t want it going off and waking Lily.”
“Oh. Well … maybe you could take her with you.”
He canted his head. “You really want to expose our little girl to Neut’s crew?”
“She’s practically been raised with Hip and the boys.”
“Yeah, well, I think your dad’s scared the bad language right
out of them. Anyway, isn’t there a drop-in daycare place in Custer or somewhere?”
“Maybe, but …” She shrugged, feeling itchy.
“But what?”
Vura glanced through the kitchen door. Lily was grazing on the carpet. Ever since the Redhawks’ arrival in their lives, flooring had been prairie grass and frosted Wheaties, crimped oats.
“Listen, Vey …” Dane’s voice had taken on that we-gotta-talk tone that made her teeth grind and her stomach cramp. “You’re doing a great job with her. Everybody knows it. Mother Teresa couldn’t be more patient with a kid like Lily.” She waited for the “but.” “But … she’s growing up. She’s going to need other people. Maybe special schooling, even. I hear there’s a great place in Sioux Falls.”
“What?”
“It’s not that far away. We could see her on weekends or—”
“On weekends!”
Irritation zipped across his sleep-deprived features. He’d gotten in late again the previous night. Drinks with the guys, he’d said. You couldn’t put out too many feelers, and he was determined to get a good solid job, make some real money before he went back to school. So he’d had a couple beers with friends and potential employers at the Drop On Inn’s little pub. “I thought that’s what you wanted. A specialist.”
“Well, yeah, maybe once a month. Or a couple times a week. But I’m not sending her away.”
“I’m just trying to help,” he said, and snatched his keys from the counter. “I gotta go.”
“You’re not even going to shower?”
“See you tonight,” he said, and hurried out the door.
Vura turned back toward the sink. Outside, the engine of his Viper rumbled as if angry with the world. She ran water over the dishes and added detergent. It wasn’t until she was slipping a pair of plates into the suds that she noticed he’d forgotten his wallet. Grabbing it, she ran to the door, but he was already turning onto Big Rock Road.
Pulling out her cell, she punched in his number and was rewarded a moment later by the distant sound of his ringtone.
She scowled as she made her way upstairs. On the wooden sawhorse beside the bed, his phone sounded off loudly.
She stared at it, cell still to her ear. But finally, she ended the call. Lifting his phone, she held it like another might a spider. Cautiously, as if it could bite. But she was being ridiculous. So what if it wasn’t on vibrate as he had claimed? That didn’t mean anything. He had probably just switched it back to normal when he realized Lily was awake. Or maybe …
