Paper Rose

by Diana Palmer

  It was an unusually quiet cocktail party, she thought, and conversation was muted and somber around her. Recent turmoil in Washington, D.C., had thrown a shroud over the celebration of Senator Holden’s birthday. Holden was the senior Republican senator from South Dakota, a fiery, difficult man who made enemies as easily as he ran the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, of which he was chairman. He had his finger in plenty of political pies and some private ones. His most recent private one was private sector funding for his pet project, the newly created Anthropological and Archaeological Museum of the Native American where Cecily now worked.

  She spotted Matt Holden and her eyes began to twinkle. He was a handsome devil, even at his age. His wife had died the year before, and the husky black-eyed politician with his glimmering silver hair and elegant broad-shouldered physique was now on every widow’s list of eligibles. Even now, two lovely elderly society dames were attacking from both sides with expensive perfume and daring cleavage. At least one of them should have worn something high-necked, she mused, with her collarbone and skinny neck so prominent.

  Another pair of eyes followed her amused gaze. “Doesn’t it remind you of shark attacks?” a pleasant voice murmured in her ear.

  She jumped, and looked up at her companion for the evening. “Good grief, Colby, you scared me out of a year’s growth!” she burst out with a helpless laugh.

  Colby only smiled. “Here’s your coffee. It’s not bad, either.”

  He handed her the cup and sipped from his own. She wondered why he’d been out of the country at the same time as Tate, and why. Then she shut Tate out of her mind. She wasn’t going to think about him tonight.

  “You never did say where you went,” she told the lithe congenial man at her side.

  He mentioned a war-torn country in Africa, then murmured, “And you didn’t hear that from me.”

  She sobered quickly. Everyone knew about the strife and the terrible aftermath of surreptitious bombings. It was all that people talked about. “Those poor people.”

  “Amen.”

  She glanced up at him. “I suppose you were involved somehow in the capture of the suspects?”

  He only smiled. He would never talk about assignments. Colby wasn’t a handsome man, especially with all the scars on his lean face. His thick, faintly wavy short black hair was his best asset. Still he did have a dangerous magnetism that Cecily knew didn’t go unnoticed by the ladies. Unfortunately he was too stuck in the past to even look at another woman twice. His wife of five years had left him two years back and found someone else; someone who was at home more, already had two children of his own and didn’t risk his life for his job. His benders since her departure were legendary. Cecily’s intervention with the Maryland psychologist had saved him from certain alcoholism, but he still teetered dangerously on the edge of ruin. A pity, she thought, to love someone so much and lose them and be unable to let go. Just like herself mooning over Tate, she thought with bitterness.

  “Seen Tate lately?” Colby asked carelessly.

  She stiffened. “No.”

  He looked down at her with a wry grin. “It was a boring banquet, anyway. You made all the news shows that night, and I hear one of the bigger late-night television hosts did a monologue about it!”

  “Go ahead,” she invited with a gesture. “Rub it in.”

  “I can’t help myself,” he said with an involuntary chuckle. “I believe it’s the first time in American political history that an ex-CIA agent was baptized with a tureen of crab bisque right in the middle of a televised political affair.” Colby had to work hard not to crack a smile. He sipped his coffee instead. Before he met Cecily, he couldn’t have imagined any woman doing that to tall, handsome, elegant Tate Winthrop. “Matt Holden seems to have forgiven you,” he added.

  She smiled wickedly. “He loved it,” she said. “Just between you and me, he thrives on publicity.”

  Colby’s dark eyes went to Holden. “You might also have been invited because he likes embarrassing Tate,” he mused. “Talk about natural enemies!”

  Cecily shifted from one leg to the other. Her high heeled shoes were getting uncomfortable. She didn’t go out much formally. “I know. Tate’s gung ho for that proposed casino on the Wapiti Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota to help raise tribal funds and support more programs for teens, to help cut down on alcoholism and violence. The senator, on the other hand, is violently opposed to the casino project on Wapiti. They’ve locked horns over that issue and several others involving Lakota sovereignty.”

  Colby’s brows drew together. “Isn’t the senator Lakota?”

  Cecily grinned. “His father was from Morocco,” she said. “He hasn’t got a drop of Lakota blood. But he looks it, doesn’t he? Maybe that’s why he gets the Lakota vote every election. That, and the fact that his mother used to teach at the Lakota school on Wapiti Ridge, or so I’ve heard.” Thinking about that, she wondered if Leta had ever met Matt in her youth. They were about the same age.

  “Did he know Tate’s family then?”

  “He may have known of them, but he ran for congress before Tate was even born, and he came to D.C. as a freshman senator the same year in a landslide victory.”

  “You didn’t know him until this museum thing came up.”

  “That’s true.” She smoothed down the narrow skirt of her dress and glanced with irritation at a mud spot on her black suede sling-backs. “Darn,” she said. “It was raining and I had to walk on the grass. I’ve got mud all over my shoes. They’re brand-new, too.”

  “I’ll carry you across the grass on the return trip, if you like,” Colby offered with twinkling eyes. “It would have to be over one shoulder, of course,” he added with a wry glance at his artificial arm.

  She frowned at the bitterness in his tone. He was a little fuzzy because she needed glasses to see at distances.

  “Listen, nobody in her right mind would ever take you for a cripple,” she said gently and with a warm smile. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Anyway,” she added with a wicked grin, “I’ve already given the news media enough to gossip about just recently. I don’t need any more complications in my life. I’ve only just gotten rid of one big one.”

  Colby studied her with an amused smile. She was the only woman he’d ever known who he genuinely liked. He was about to speak when he happened to glance over her shoulder at a man approaching them. “About that big complication, Cecily.”

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “I’d say it’s just reappeared with a vengeance. No, don’t turn around,” he said, suddenly jerking her close to him with the artificial arm that looked so real, a souvenir of one of his foreign assignments. “Just keep looking at me and pretend to be fascinated with my nose, and we’ll give him something to think about.”

  She laughed in spite of the racing pulse that always accompanied Tate’s appearances in her life. She studied Colby’s lean, scarred face. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a pinup, but he had style and guts and if it hadn’t been for Tate, she would have found him very attractive. “Your nose has been broken twice, I see,” she told Colby.

  “Three times, but who’s counting?” He lifted his eyes and his eyebrows at someone behind her. “Well, hi, Tate! I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”

  “Obviously,” came a deep, gruff voice that cut like a knife.

  Colby loosened his grip on Cecily and moved back a little. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said.

  Tate moved into Cecily’s line of view, half a head taller than Colby Lane. He was wearing evening clothes, like the other men present, but he had an elegance that made him stand apart. She never tired of gazing into his large black eyes which were deep-set in a dark, handsome face with a straight nose, and a wide, narrow, sexy mouth and faintly cleft chin. He was the most beautiful man. He looked as if all he needed was a breastplate and feathers in his hair to bring back the heyday of the Lakota warrior in the nineteenth century. Cecily remembered him that way fro
m the ceremonial gatherings at Wapiti Ridge, and the image stuck stubbornly in her mind.

  “Audrey likes to rub elbows with the rich and famous,” Tate returned. His dark eyes met Cecily’s fierce green ones. “I see you’re still in Holden’s good graces. Has he bought you a ring yet?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Tate?” Cecily asked with a cold smile. “Feeling…crabby?”

  His eyes smoldered as he glared at her. “What did you give Holden to get that job at the museum?” he asked with pure malice.

  Anger at the vicious insinuation caused her to draw back her hand holding the half-full coffee cup, and Colby caught her wrist smoothly before she could sling the contents at the man towering over her.

  Tate ignored Colby. His eyes began to glitter as he looked at Cecily. “Don’t make that mistake again,” he said in a voice so quiet it was barely audible. He looked as if all his latent hostilities were waiting for an excuse to turn on her. “If you throw that cup at me, so help me, I’ll carry you over and put you down in the punch bowl!”

  “You and the CIA, maybe!” Cecily hissed. “Go ahead and try…!”

  Tate actually took a step toward her just as Colby managed to get between them. “Now, now,” he cautioned.

  Cecily wasn’t backing down an inch. Neither was Tate. He’d gone from lazy affection and indulgent amusement to bristling antagonism in the space of weeks. Lately he flew into a rage if Cecily’s name was mentioned, but Colby hadn’t told her that.

  “You have no right to make that kind of insinuation about me,” she said through her teeth. “I don’t get jobs lying on my back, and you know it!”

  Tate’s black eyes narrowed. He looked formidable, but Cecily wasn’t intimidated by him. She never had been. He glanced at her hands, which were clenched on her cup, and then back to her rigid features. It had infuriated him to be the object of televised ridicule at the political dinner, and Audrey’s comments had only made things worse. He was carrying a grudge. But as he looked at Cecily, he felt an emptiness in his very soul. This woman had been a thorn in his side for years, ever since an impulsive act of compassion had made her his responsibility. In those days, she’d been demure and sweet and dependent on him, and her shy hero worship had been vaguely flattering. Now, she was a fiery, independent woman who didn’t give a damn about his disapproval or, apparently, his company, and she had done everything except leave town to keep out of his way.

  She was still like an adopted daughter to his mother, but Tate couldn’t get near her now. He didn’t like admitting how much it hurt to have Cecily turn her back on him. All Audrey’s charms hadn’t been able to erase the memory of Cecily’s wounded, accusing eyes when Audrey had told her the truth about her so-called grant. He wished he’d never confided in the socialite. In the early days of their relationship, he’d been more forthcoming about the past than he should have been. It never occurred to him that Audrey would tell everything she knew to everyone who came within speaking distance. Amazing that he could be so easily taken in by a pretty face. Not that he hadn’t learned his lesson. Audrey heard nothing from him now that he wouldn’t mind having the media overhear. But the damage was done. It was standing in front of him with blazing green eyes and clenched hands. And to have Colby Lane, his friend, on the verge of an affair with Cecily…

  “Why are you in town?” he asked Colby abruptly.

  “I wasn’t needed any longer,” the other man replied with a grin. “Apparently my methods of interrogation were a little too…intense for some of our politically correct colleagues. They sent me home.”

  “Marshmallows,” Tate muttered. “And did you see who was handling the investigation?”

  “I did.” Colby finished his coffee. “Whatever happened to the good old days when the “company” handled overseas intelligence?” he wondered.

  “Oh, no,” Audrey said in her husky voice as she joined them, ravishing in a red satin dress with a matching chiffon overlay. It looked like couture, and frightfully expensive. It probably was. She was dripping diamonds. “No shop talk,” she continued, pressing Tate’s arm to her breasts. She gave Cecily a cursory, contemptuous glance and transferred her blue eyes to Colby with a flirtatious smile. “Hi, Colby. Long time, no see.”

  He smiled back, but his eyes didn’t. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Too busy to come and see your best friend?” she chided. “We’ve invited you for dinner twice and you always have an excuse.”

  Insinuating, of course, that she and Tate were living together, which Cecily already knew because of what Leta had told her. Cecily didn’t react visibly. Inside, she was slowly dying at the images of Tate and Audrey together.

  “I’ve been out of the country for a week, myself, upgrading the security on one of our new oil rig projects in the Caspian Sea,” Tate replied. “We’ve had a few problems.”

  “So I heard,” Colby said. “Brauer had friends, didn’t he?” he added, mentioning the German national who’d involved Tate’s employer in a kidnapping scheme. “I guess even from prison he can hire cleaners.”

  Tate shrugged. “Pierce and I can handle it.” He smiled down at Audrey. “I’m not ready to cash in my chips yet.”

  Cecily unobtrusively slid her free hand into Colby’s real one for comfort. Surprised, his fingers tightened around it.

  “Well, it was nice to see you,” Colby said, reading the tiny signal, “but we need to leave pretty soon.”

  At the coupling of their names, Tate glanced speculatively from one of them to the other. Everyone knew that Colby was still in love with his ex-wife, but he was holding Cecily’s hand and acting protective of her. He didn’t like that. Colby was teetering on alcoholism, and Tate didn’t want Cecily’s life ruined by him. He’d have to think of some way to handle this; for her own good, of course, he decided firmly.

  “So you did show up, after all,” Matt Holden said shortly, joining the small group. He glared at Tate. “I’m not giving one inch on the casino issue, just in case you wondered,” he said without preamble.

  Tate glared back at him. “You’re one man. You won’t stop progress.”

  “Yes, I will,” Holden said in a clipped, hostile tone. “I’m not having organized crime at Wapiti Ridge, and if you don’t like it, you know what you can do.”

  “Bull! There’s no connection to organized crime at Wapiti. That’s just an excuse. But you don’t own the governor or the state attorney general,” Tate told him. “And you have no influence whatsoever on the res.”

  “Do you really want to be partners with men who’ll take eighty percent of the profit and shoot anybody who tries to stop them?” Holden asked. “I won’t have organized crime making a living at the expense of children’s food and clothing and housing!”

  Tate took a step toward the man, who was a head shorter than he was, and his black eyes were every bit as intimidating as Holden’s. “That’s strong talk from a big shot Washington bureaucrat who rides around in chauffeured limousines and has his meals on china plates! What the hell do you know about children whose parents can’t even afford heat in the winter, who live on a reservation that hasn’t even got a damned ambulance to take injured people to the clinic?”

  “I know more about it than you think you do,” Holden shot back. “Listen here…”

  Cecily walked between them, just as Colby had gotten between her and Tate minutes earlier. She smiled at Holden. “My boss at the museum told me that you had a collection of projectile points dating back to the Folsom point,” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of your showing them to me?”

  Holden stood for a moment vibrating with unexpressed anger, but as he looked at Cecily, his rigid features relaxed and he smiled self-consciously. “Yes, I do have such a collection. You really want to see it?”

  “Paleo-Indian archaeology is still my first love,” she replied. “Yes, I’d very much enjoy that.”

  He took her arm. “If you’ll excuse us?”

  Cecily didn’t look back. Sh
e went right along with the senator, apparently hanging on every word.

  “Why do you do things like that?” Audrey asked snappily, glancing around to find some people still watching them in the wake of the very audible disagreement. “He’s a very powerful man, you know. And I think he’s right about casinos.” She tossed back her shoulder-length blond hair. “There shouldn’t even be any reservations in the first place,” she muttered, missing Tate’s angry stare. “We’re all Americans. It’s stupid to support a bunch of people who’d rather live with bears than in cities. They should just phase out the reservations and let everybody live together.”

  Colby pursed his lips and glanced at Tate. He spoke a few words, softly, in a gutteral language that the other man understood very well.

  “Why are you dating Cecily?” Tate asked instead of answering the question he’d been asked in Lakota.

  Colby looked nonchalant. “She’s single. I’m single. I like her.”

  “I can’t imagine why you’d agree to be seen with her in public,” Audrey sniffed. “She has no breeding and she’s a social disaster.”

  “Listen, she didn’t pour crab bisque all over me,” Colby said with a deliberately provoking glance at Tate. “She wouldn’t have poured it on you if you’d told her the truth from the beginning. Cecily hates lies. I can’t imagine that you’ve known her for eight years without realizing that.”

  “She has the pride of Lucifer,” he returned. “She’d never have gone to college in the first place if I hadn’t paid for it. She’s self-supporting and able to take care of herself. It was worth every penny.”

  “She is going to pay you back, now that she knows, isn’t she?” Audrey asked. “You don’t owe her anything, Tate. You were stuck with her, and you’re certainly not a relative or anything.”

  “There are things about my obligation to Cecily that you don’t understand,” Tate told the woman. He drew in a short breath as he watched Cecily cling to Holden’s arm on the way out of the room.