At last, when the tumult broke on a lusty cry of triumph from Libby, she saw the stars above plummet toward her—or had she risen to meet them?
“Of course you’re going to the powwow!” cried Becky, folding her arms and leaning over the platter of french fries in front of her. “You can’t miss that and call yourself a Barlowe!”
Libby shrank down a little in the benchlike steak-house seat. As this restaurant was a part of the Barlowe chain, the name drew immediate attention from all the waiters and a number of the other diners, too. “Becky,” she began patiently, “even though Dad’s getting out of the hospital this afternoon, he won’t be up to something like that, and I wouldn’t feel right about leaving him behind.”
“Leaving Ken behind?” scoffed Becky in a more discreet tone of voice. “You just try keeping him away—he hasn’t missed a powwow in fifteen years.”
Libby’s memories of the last powwow and all-day rodeo she had attended were hardly conducive to nostalgia. She remembered the dust, the hot glare of the summer sun, the seemingly endless rodeo events, the revelers draped over the hoods of parked cars and sprawled on the sidewalks. She sighed.
“Jess’ll go,” Becky prodded.
Libby had no doubt of that, and having spent so much time away from Jess of late, what with him running the ranch while she stayed in Kalispell, she was inclined to attend the powwow after all.
Becky saw that she had relented and beamed. “Wait’ll you see the Sioux doing their war dances,” she enthused. “There’ll be Blackfoot, too, and Flathead.”
Libby consoled herself with the thought of the dances and the powwow finery of feathers and buckskin and beads. She could take her sketchbook along and draw, at least.
Becky wasn’t through with her conversation. “Did you tell Jess how you rode that electric bull over at the Golden Buckle?”
Libby tried to look dignified in the wake of several molten memories. “I told him,” she said shyly.
Her friend laughed. “If that wasn’t a sight! I wish I woulda took your picture. Maybe you should enter some of the events at the powwow, Libby.” Her face took on a disturbingly serious expression. “Maybe barrel racing, or women’s calf roping—”
“Hold it,” Libby interceded with a grin. “Riding a mechanical bull is one thing and calf roping is quite another. The only sport I’m going to take part in is stepping over drunks.”
“Stepping over what?” inquired a third voice, masculine and amused, from the table side.
Libby looked and saw Stacey. “What are you doing here?”
He laughed, turning his expensive silver-banded cowboy hat in both hands. “I own the place, remember?”
“Where’s Cathy?” Becky wanted to know. As she had become Libby’s friend, she had also become Cathy’s—she was even learning to sign.
Stacey slid into the bench seat beside Libby. “She’s seeing the doctor,” he said, and for all his smiling good manners, he seemed nervous.
Libby elbowed her brother-in-law lightly. “Why didn’t you stay there and wait for her?”
“She wouldn’t let me.”
Just then Becky stood up, saying that she had to get to work. A moment later, eyes twinkling over some secret, she left.
Libby felt self-conscious with Stacey, though he hadn’t made any more advances or disturbing comments. She wished that Becky had been able to stay a little longer. “What’s going on? Is Cathy sick?”
“She’s just having a checkup. Libby…”
Libby braced herself inwardly and moved a little closer to the wall of the enclosed booth, so that Stacey’s thigh wasn’t touching hers. “Yes?” she prompted when he hesitated to go on.
“I owe you an apology,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I acted like a damned fool and I’m sorry.”
Knowing that he was referring to the rumors he’d started about their friendship in New York, Libby chafed a little. “I accept your apology, Stacey, but I truly don’t understand why you said what you did in the first place.”
He sighed heavily. “I love Cathy very much, Libby,” he said. “But we do have our problems. At that time, things were a lot worse, and I started thinking about the way you’d leaned on me when you were going through all that trouble in New York. I liked having somebody need me like that, and I guess I worked the whole thing up into more than it was.”
Tentatively Libby touched his hand. “Cathy needs you, Stacey.”
“No,” he answered gruffly, looking at the flickering bowl candle in the center of the table. “She won’t allow herself to need me. After some of the things I’ve put her through, I can’t say I blame her.”
“She’ll trust you again, if you’re worthy of it,” Libby ventured. “Just be there for Cathy, Stace. The way you were there for me when my whole life seemed to be falling apart. I don’t think I could have gotten through those days without you.”
At that moment Jess appeared out of nowhere and slid into the seat Becky had occupied before. “Now, that,” he drawled acidly, “is really touching.”
Libby stared at him, stunned by his presence and by the angry set of his face. Then she realized that both she and Stacey were sitting on the same side of the booth and knew that it gave an impression of intimacy. “Jess…”
He looked down at his watch, a muscle dancing furiously in his jaw. “Are you going to pick your father up at the hospital, or do you have more interesting things to do?”
Stacey, who had been as shocked by his brother’s arrival as Libby had, was suddenly, angrily vocal. The candle leapt a little when he slammed one fist down on the tabletop and hissed, “Dammit, Jess, you’re deliberately misunderstanding this!”
“Am I?”
“Yes!” Libby put in, on the verge of tears. “Becky and I were having lunch and then Stacey came in and—”
“Stop it, Libby,” Stacey broke in. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Jess is the one who’s out of line here.”
The long muscle in Jess’s neck corded, and his lips were edged with white, but his voice was still low, still controlled. “I came here, Libby, because I wanted to be with you when you brought Ken home,” he said, and his green eyes, dark with passion only the night before, were coldly indifferent now. “Are we going to collect him or would you rather stay here and carry on?”
Libby was shaking. “Carry on? Carry on?”
Stacey groaned, probably considering the scandal a scene in this particular restaurant would cause. “Couldn’t we settle this somewhere else?”
“We’ll settle it, all right,” Jess replied.
Stacey’s jaw was rock-hard as he stood up to let a shaken Libby out of the booth. “I’ll be on the ranch,” he said.
“So will I,” replied Jess, rising, taking a firm grip on Libby’s arm. “See you there.”
“Count on it.”
Jess nodded and calmly propelled Libby out of the restaurant and into the bright sunlight, where her shiny Corvette was parked. Probably he had seen the car from the highway and known that she was inside the steak house.
Now, completely ignoring her protests, he dragged her past her car and thrust her into the Land Rover beside it.
“Jess—damn you—will you listen to me?”
Jess started the engine, shifted it into reverse with a swift motion of his hand. “I’m afraid storytime will have to wait,” he informed her. “We’ve got to go and get Ken, and I don’t want him upset.”
“Do you think I do?”
Jess sliced one menacing look in her direction but said nothing.
Libby felt a need to reach him, even though, the way he was acting, he didn’t deserve reassurances. “Jess, how can you…after last night, how could you…”
“Last night,” he bit out. “Yes. Tell me, Libby, do you do that trick for everybody, or just a favored few?”
It took all her determination not to physically attack him. “Take me back to my car, Jess,” she said evenly. “Right now. I’ll pick Dad up myself, and we’ll go back to his ho
use—”
“Correction, Mrs. Barlowe. He will go to his house. You, my little vixen, will go to mine.”
“I will not!”
“Oh, but you will. Despite your obvious attraction to my brother, you are still my wife.”
“I am not attracted to your brother!”
They had reached the hospital parking lot, and the Land Rover lurched to a stop. Jess smiled insolently and patted Libby’s cheek in a way so patronizing that it made her screaming mad. “That’s the spirit, Mrs. Barlowe. Walk in there and show your daddy what a pillar of morality you are.”
Going into that hospital and pretending that nothing was wrong was one of the hardest things Libby had ever had to do.
Preparations for Ken’s return had obviously been going on for some time. As Libby pulled her reclaimed Corvette in behind Jess’s Land Rover, she saw that the front lawn had been mowed and the truck had been repaired.
Ken, still not knowing the story of his daughter, his truck, and the bear, paused after stepping out of Jess’s Land Rover, his arm still in a sling. He looked his own vehicle over quizzically. “Looks different,” he reflected.
Jess rose to the occasion promptly, smoothly. “The boys washed and waxed it,” he said.
To say the very least, thought Libby, who would never forget, try though she might, how that truck had looked before the repair people in Kalispell had fixed and painted it. She opened her mouth to tell her father what had happened, but Jess stopped her with a look and a shake of his head.
The inside of the house had been cleaned by Mrs. Bradshaw and her band of elves; every floor and stick of furniture had been either dusted or polished or both. The refrigerator had been stocked and a supply of the paperback westerns Ken loved to read had been laid in.
As if all this wasn’t enough to make Libby’s services completely superfluous, it turned out that Becky was there, too. She had strung streamers and dozens of brightly colored balloons from the ceiling of Ken’s bedroom.
Her father was obviously pleased, and Libby’s last hopes of drumming up an excuse to stay the night, at least, were dashed. Becky, however, was delighted with her surprise.
“I thought you were working!” Libby accused.
“I lied,” replied Becky, undaunted. “After I left you and Stacey at the steak house, I got a friend to bring me out here.”
Libby shot a glance in Jess’s direction, knew sweet triumph as she saw that Becky’s words had registered with him. After only a moment’s chagrin, however, he tightened his jaw and looked away.
While Becky was getting Ken settled in his room and generally spoiling him rotten, Libby edged over to her husband. “You heard her,” she whispered tersely, “so where’s my apology?”
“Apology?” Jess whispered back, and there was nothing in his face to indicate that he felt any remorse at all. “Why should I apologize?”
“Because I was obviously telling the truth! Becky said—”
“Becky said that she left you and Stacey at the steak house. It must have been a big relief when she did.”
Heedless of everything but the brutal effect of Jess’s unfair words, Libby raised one hand and slapped him, hard.
Stubbornly, he refused her the satisfaction of any response at all, beyond an imperious glare, which she returned.
“Hey, do you guys…?” Becky’s voice fell away when she became aware of the charged atmosphere of the living room. She swallowed and began again. “I was going to ask if you wanted to stay for supper, but maybe that wouldn’t be such a good idea.”
“You can say that again,” rasped Jess, catching Libby’s arm in a grasp she couldn’t have broken without making an even more embarrassing scene. “Make our excuses to Ken, will you, please?”
After a moment’s hesitation and a concerned look at Libby, Becky nodded.
“You overbearing bastard!” Libby hissed as her husband squired her out of the house and toward his Land Rover.
Jess opened the door, helped her inside, met her fiery blue gaze with one of molten green. Neither spoke to the other, but the messages flashing between them were all too clear anyway.
Jess still believed that Libby had been either planning or carrying on a romantic tryst with Stacey, and Libby was too proud and too angry to try to convince him otherwise. She was also too smart to get out of his vehicle and make a run for hers.
Jess would never hurt her, she knew that. But he would not allow her a dramatic exit, either. And she couldn’t risk a screaming fight in the driveway of her father’s house.
Because she was helpless and she hated that, she began to cry.
Jess ignored her tears, but he too was considerate of Ken—he did not gun the Land Rover’s engine or back out at a speed that would fling gravel in every direction, as he might have at another time.
When they passed his house, with its window walls, and started up a steep road leading into the foothills beyond, Libby was still not afraid. For all his fury, this man was too tender a lover to touch her in anger.
“Where are we going?” she demanded.
He ground the Land Rover into a low gear and left the road, now little more than a cow path, for the rugged hillside. “On our honeymoon, Mrs. Barlowe.”
Libby swallowed, unnerved by his quiet rage and the jostling, jolting ascent of the Land Rover itself. “If you take me in anger, Jess Barlowe, I’ll never forgive you. Never. That would be rape.”
The word “rape” got through Jess’s hard armor and stung him visibly. He paled as he stopped the Land Rover with a lurch and wrenched on the emergency brake. “Goddammit, you know I wouldn’t do anything like that!”
“Do I?” They were parked at an almost vertical angle, it seemed to Libby. Didn’t he realize that they were almost straight up and down? “You’ve been acting like a maniac all afternoon!”
Jess’s face contorted and he raised his fists and brought them down hard on the steering wheel. “Dammit it all to hell,” he raged, “you drive me crazy! Why the devil do I love you so much when you drive me crazy?”
Libby stared at him, almost unable to believe what she had heard. Not even in their wildest moments of passion had he said he loved her, and if he had found that note she’d left for him, betraying her own feelings, the day the bear was killed, he’d never mentioned it.
“What did you say?”
Jess sighed, tilted his head back, closed his eyes. “That you drive me crazy.”
“Before that.”
“I said I loved you,” he breathed, as though there was nothing out of the ordinary in that.
“Do you?”
“Hell, yes.” The muscles in his sun-browned neck corded as he swallowed, his head still back, his eyes still closed. “Isn’t that a joke?”
The words tore at Libby’s heart. “A joke?”
“Yes.” The word came, raw, from deep within him, like a sob.
“You idiot!” yelled Libby, struggling with the door, climbing out of the Land Rover to stalk up the steep hillside. She trembled, and tears poured down her face, and for once she didn’t care who saw them.
At the top of the rise, she sat down on a huge log, her vision too blurred to take in the breathtaking view of mountains and prairies and an endless, sweeping sky.
She sensed Jess’s approach, tried to ignore him.
“Why am I an idiot, Libby?”
Though the day was warm, Libby shivered. “You’re too stupid to know when a woman loves you, that’s why!” she blurted out, sobbing now. “Damn! You’ve had me every way but hanging from a chandelier, and you still don’t know!”
Jess straddled the log, drew Libby into his arms and held her. Suddenly he laughed, and the sound was a shout of joy.
Chapter 14
The powwow of the Sioux, Flathead and Blackfoot was a spectacle to remember. Held annually in the same small and otherwise unremarkable town, the meeting of these three tribes was a tradition that reached back to days of mist and shadow, days recorded on no calendar.
Craning her neck to see the authentic tepees and their colorfully clad inhabitants, she could hardly stand still long enough for the plump woman at the admission gate to stamp her hand.
There was so much noise—laughter, the tinkle of change in the coin box, the neighing and nickering of horses that would be part of the rodeo. Underlying all this was the steady beat of tom-toms and guttural chants of the singers.
“Enjoy yourself now, honey,” enjoined the woman tending the cashbox, and Libby jumped, realizing that she was holding up the line behind her. After one questioning look at the hat the woman wore, which consisted of panels cut from various beer cans and crocheted together, she hurried through the gate.
Jess chuckled at the absorbed expression on Libby’s face. There was so much to see that a person didn’t know where to look first.
“I think I see a fit of creativity coming on,” he said.
Libby was already gravitating toward the tepees, plotting light angles and shading techniques as she went. In her heart was a dream, growing bigger with every beat of the tom-toms. “I want to see, Jess,” she answered distractedly. “I’ve got to see.”
There was love in the sound of Jess’s laughter, but no disdain. “All right, all right—but at least let me get you a hat. This sun is too hot for you to go around bareheaded.”
“Get me a hat, get me a hat,” babbled Libby, zeroing in on a group of small children as they sat watching fathers, uncles and elder brothers perform the ancient rites for rain or success in warfare or hunting.
Libby was taken with the flash of their coppery skin, the midnight black of their hair, the solemn, stalwart expressions in their dark eyes. Flipping open her sketchbook, she squatted in the lush summer grass and began to rough in the image of one particular little boy.
Her pencil flew, as did her mind. She was thinking in terms of oil paints—vivid shades that would do justice to the child’s coloring and the peacock splendor of his headdress.
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