by Lois Greiman
“Lily.” Vura rose slowly, able to remain silent no longer. “Lily …” Her voice teetered in the teeming stillness. “Please be here.”
No one answered. But from the far side of the clearing she heard a noise. She hissed a hopeful breath and spun toward it, but all she saw was Tonk stepping out from behind a bull pine.
“Anything?” she begged, but he shook his head.
“Lily!” Panic, loosed from its fragile bondage, consumed her. “Lily!” she yelled and something moved, a quick swath of purple.
“Mama?”
Vura snapped her gaze to the left. And there, not fifty feet away, a tiny figure rose from behind a boulder.
“Lily!”
“Mama!”
Vura scrambled upward, throat aching with unshed tears. “Baby!” she gasped, but suddenly the child was swung into the air.
It took a lifetime to understand what had happened, an eternity to realize that Dane had arrived, had scooped their daughter up against his chest as if she was no more substantial than a dropped sweater.
“Stay back!” he warned and lifted the gun he held in his right hand.
Vura stumbled to a halt. “Dane.” His name was no more than a croaked entreaty.
He shook his head and gritted a smile. “Geez, woman, are you some kind of hound?”
“Dane, what are you doing?”
“I didn’t want to do this.” He squeezed Lily higher, hugging her hard against his ribs. “But you didn’t give me any choice.”
“What are you talking about?” Terror gripped her lungs, squeezing her dry. “Let her go, Dane. Just …” She dropped to her knees. “Please. Just let her go.”
“I wish I could, Vey. Really I do, but …’ ”
A twig snapped. He jerked the pistol’s muzzle to the right. “Who’s there?”
The breath had frozen in Vura’s throat. She dared not drag her gaze from her husband, dared not give him any clues.
“That your boyfriend?” Dane’s voice was cold, bereft of the charisma with which he so easily charmed the world. “Is that who it is, Vey?”
She shook her head, barely able to manage that much, but he placed the muzzle of the pistol against Lily’s side and asked again.
“Is the chief here?”
“Yes.” The word was no more than a croak.
He shook his head. “You didn’t really think you could outsmart me, did you?”
Lily remained frozen, hanging like a broken puppet from her father’s thoughtless grip. But her eyes were alive, alive and alert, and sparking with anger.
“Tell him to step into the open,” he ordered.
“You’re hurting her.”
“I don’t want to,” he said, and tightened his hold. “But you haven’t left me much choice.”
“Dane …”
“All I was asking was what was owed me. But you had to be selfish.” He shrugged. “Now look where we are.”
“Please—”
He pressed the gun more firmly into Lily’s soiled shirt. “Tell him to step into the open before I do something you’re going to—” he began, but in that instant, Lily bucked against him.
His grip loosened for a fraction of a second. Her feet hit the ground. She twisted away, and then she was running, skidding over shale, scrambling over roots.
“Run!” Vura screamed, but Dane was already recovering. Stumbling on uncertain footing, he raised the pistol.
“No!” Vura rasped and lunged toward her daughter, but the distance was too great, the climb too steep.
It was Tonk who leapt, who rose out of nowhere and hit his prey from an oblique angle. They rolled, arms flailing before struggling to their feet. A shot snapped in the air. Tonk jerked, then grabbed his opponent’s arm and slammed it against a nearby boulder. The pistol flew through the air like a comet, arcing wildly.
Dane struck with his left fist. Knuckles met flesh in a sickening thud. Tonk fell to his knees as his opponent twisted frantically toward his weapon.
It wasn’t until then that Vura launched into action.
Lurching uphill, she scrambled over rocks and cactus. Gasping, struggling, searching wildly. There! She dropped to her knees, snatched up the gun.
“Stop it!” It felt solid and ungodly cold in her grip, but she tightened her hold and trained the deadly muzzle on her husband.
He staggered to a halt not thirty feet away.
Their gazes met. The world slowed, stalled, waited.
Dane smiled. That devastating grin that had once seduced her, mind and body. “You’re not going to shoot me, Vey.”
“Not if you stay where you are.”
He chuckled. “No matter what I do. You’re not going to shoot me, baby.” He took a step toward her. “I’m your husband.”
Her arms shook, her heart hitched in her chest. “Don’t come any closer.”
“The father of your child.”
“Father …” She rasped a laugh. “You kidnapped her. Threatened—”
“Not kidnapped,” he corrected and shook his head, looking confused, misunderstood. “I just wanted some time with her.” He took another step toward her. “Just wanted to get us back together.”
“You had a gun … had a gun to her …” The memory made her voice shake, her hands tremble like wind socks.
“To protect her,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt her. You know that. You know me, baby. All I ever wanted was to make you happy. Maybe I made a few mistakes.” He gestured behind him. Tonk lay on his side, eyes open, palm pressed to his ribs. “Even now, even knowing you’ve cheated on me, I didn’t want to hurt anybody, but it tears me up to think of you with someone else, cuz I love you.” He shook his head, brow creasing charmingly. “Come on, sweetheart, you can’t blame a guy for protecting what’s his. No one could.”
“You were holding her for ransom!” Wasn’t he? Wasn’t that what this was about? Confusion swamped her, washed in on a wave of fatigue, of mind-bending terror. “Your own daughter. Your own—”
“Ransom! You’ve got it all wrong, baby.” He held up an imploring hand, took another step. “I just needed a little cash so I could go back to school. So I could start fresh. We could start fresh. I just want to make you proud. Remember how it used to be? Before things went crazy?” His shoes were almost soundless against the rocky soil. “It can be that way again. Only better. Because now we have Lily and I realize”—he shook his head, curled the fingers of his right hand against his chest in earnest agony—“I realize that family is everything.” He paused, eyes sad. “Even though you let me down. Didn’t believe in me. Just like my old man.”
She scowled.
“You’re the lucky one, baby. Always had your father to lean on. I suppose I was jealous. Wanted to be your everything. Just wanted to prove myself to you. And I was doing great. On a roll. I was up nearly ten grand when …” He shook his head. “I just needed a little stake to get back in the game. But those boys play for keeps. Just needed to pay back the loan, maybe get a little stake to get me back in the game.” Disappointment flickered over his boyish features, but he smoothed it away and took another step. Six feet of scruffy foliage separated them. “I forgive you, though, honey,” he said, and reached for the gun.
“But I can’t forgive you,” Vura said and, raising the pistol, pulled the trigger.
He hit the earth with a jolt, shock and fear and confusion bright as cactus blossoms on his handsome features.
“Geez! Vey!” Blood seeped from a hole in his left sleeve. He blinked at it. “You shot me.”
Rage, hot and cold and hard as steel, gripped her. “And I’m going to shoot you again.”
“No!” he scrambled backward, hands and feet skittering. “No! Vey.”
” Because you might be right. Maybe people wouldn’t blame you.” She inhaled carefully, exhaled slowly. Nodded. “You’re convincing, and charming and evil and slippery. They might think you deserve another chance. Might think you should spend time with your daughter.” She winced, shook
her head, raised the pistol. “And I won’t take that chance.”
“Are you crazy?”
She smiled. “You always made me think so,” she admitted, and shrugging, aimed again.
“Bravura.” The voice from behind was as steady as the earth. “We heard you had headed this way.”
She didn’t turn toward him. “Hey, Hunter.”
“Vura!”
She smiled a little at the sound of her sister’s voice. “Isn’t it time for morning chores, Syd?”
“What are you doing?”
“I was just about to shoot my husband”—she squared her stance. Gamps had been a stickler about having a good solid frame—“again.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, honey?”
“She’s crazy! She’s crazy!” Dane’s voice squawked like a banty hen’s. Blood dripped from his elbow into the thirsty earth beneath.
“Yeah.” Vura tilted her head a little as if considering. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Listen … Bravura …” Sydney’s words were quick, her tone soothing. “I don’t think it is.” Footsteps eased up behind her. “I don’t think it’s a very good plan at all.”
“Well …” She shrugged. “You’ve never been married, have you?”
“Bravura!” Hunter raised his voice. She shifted her gaze to his. He stood ten feet to her right, midnight eyes deep with concern, chiseled face etched in lines of worry. “Little sister … I know you hurt.”
“He took …” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat. “He took Lily, Hunt.”
A muscle jumped in his granite jaw, but he kept his gaze on hers. “Perhaps he deserves to die bloody.”
She nodded, agreeing.
“But our Lily needs a mother. Needs her here.” He stabbed a finger toward Mother Earth. “Not locked away like an animal in a cage.”
A needle-sharp shard of reality sliced through her. She blinked.
“They would put you away, little sister.”
She shook her head as though waking from a nightmare. “Well, he’s not worth that,” she said and, handing the weapon to Hunter, stumbled through the brush toward her daughter.
Chapter 38
“And then he swooned.” Though Hunter’s expression was as solemn as stone, his eyes were bright with mischief, crinkled at the corners like a playful pup’s.
Beside him, Quinton Murrell rubbed his hand over his chest as if his heart ached.
Vura shifted her gaze back to Tonkiaishawien. He was well. He was safe, she reminded herself, and fisted her hands to keep from touching him.
“I did not swoon,” he objected and slowly settled his hand over her fist. The bruised knuckles looked dark and torn, but she wouldn’t cry. She was tough. Always had been. Always would be. But on the monitor above his hospital bed, digital lights blinked and lines wavered, green and red. She blinked, eyes stinging.
“Swooned,” Hunter repeated and lifted the back of his hand to the broad width of his brow. “Like an underfed debutant.”
“I reclined with manful grace,” Tonk corrected and gently squeezed Vura’s fist.
Their gazes met in a soft clash of unspoken promises. Bravura exhaled, turned her hand, and let his strong artist’s fingers slip like magic between hers.
“Had to haul him down the mountain like a sack of moldy grain.”
“Holy …” Quinton breathed and clenching his jaw, let his gaze settle on his daughter. Vura shifted her eyes to his, but she still wouldn’t cry. Even surrounded by the unyielding strength of the men she loved more than life itself, she would not cry.
“I believe you would have been more gentle with a bag of wheat,” Tonk said, and shifted his shoulders carefully. “What were you carrying me with, meat hooks?”
“I don’t know when you became such a prima donna,” Hunter said, and snorted.
Tonk grinned.
“He’s a hero,” Lily said and, trotting into the room on her wooden steed, clambered onto his bed, Styx in tow. The hobby horse struck an errant elbow here, a too-close nose there.
Tonk winced.
“No!”
“Baby!”
“Lily!” they all spoke at once, all rushed forward to snatch her up before she tore open any unhealed wounds, but Tonkiaishawien had already curled his free arm around her like a cocoon.
“No.” His eyes struck Vura’s, and in their river-water depths was a devotion so deep it seemed to flow from his very soul. “Please. Let her stay. She’s good medicine.”
“And a warrior,” Lily said and, twisting, straddled him. Cupping his face in hands already dirty from who knows what, she caught his gaze and grinned, full to the top with brimming joy. “I love you, Tonka.”
It took a moment before he could speak. But he nodded finally, found his voice. “And I you, Chitto Sihu,” he said. A single tear, diamond bright and bulging with emotion, slipped down his handsomely carved cheek.
Silence thrummed in the room like a war drum.
Hunter cleared his throat. Quinton brushed a thumb beneath his eye and turned manfully toward the window.
“Hey!” Sydney rushed into the room, carrying a pot of flowers as big as the moon. “I brought you some …” Her footsteps slowed, her brows raised as she glanced from one tearstained face to the next. “Pansies,” she said, and grinned. “But it looks like you got that covered.”
There was a moment of silence, then Vura chuckled. Hunter snorted and Lily, filled with so much love it all but burst from her pores like lightning, hugged Tonk’s neck until he worried that he might, in fact, swoon like that silly debutant.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
HEARTH SONG
Lois Greiman
About This Guide
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s
reading of this book.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Bravura Lambert believes strongly in the importance of family. Did she tolerate too much in an attempt to keep her marriage intact?
2. Tonkiaishawien Redhawk is a wounded soul whose parents failed him on a fundamental level. What are the chances that such an individual can become an exemplary father?
3. Sydney Wellesley and Bravura Lambert are half sisters, but have vastly different personalities. This brings up the age-old debate of nature versus nurture. How would things be different if they had both been raised by Sydney’s father? What if they had lived with Bravura’s dad?
4. Tonkiaishawien competes in Indian relay races, one of the most dangerous sports in America. Is he punishing himself for perceived shortcomings, or does he simply enjoy the adrenaline rush associated with that kind of performance?
5. Bravura is still dealing with the guilt of disappointing her father by becoming pregnant as a teenager. Does she accept her husband’s flaws in an attempt to prove she made the right choice in marrying him?
6. Quinton Murrell has embraced being a grandfather just as surely as he did fatherhood. Did he give up too much on a personal level to raise the girls he adores?
7. Lily is an extremely inquisitive, seemingly accident-prone child. Knowing this, would you, as her parent, ever be comfortable leaving her in the care of someone like Tonkiaishawien?
8. Tonkiaishawien and Hunter think of themselves as brothers even though they do not share biological parents. Do you believe people with difficult upbringings tend to become emotionally closer than biological siblings?
9. Bravura’s mother died when Bravura was very young. If she had lived, how would her presence have changed her daughter’s disposition?
10. Tonkiaishawien considers himself a recovering alcoholic and a strong proponent of Alcoholics Anonymous. Do you believe that people who have addictions and consequently embrace the twelve-step program tend to be more self-aware?
11. Dane Lambert has a history of making poor decisions. Is he inherently evil or just weak?
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of t
he author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 by Lois Greiman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-603-2
eISBN-10: 1-61773-603-1
First Kensington Electronic Edition: February 2016
ISBN: 978-1-6177-3602-5
