befuddlement was worrisome. “I’m always careful.” Which was true. She took no chances—she couldn’t afford to. “He can sit. Make sure he’s got coffee—plenty of coffee,” she added with a nod. She preferred her sworn enemies to be as uncomfortable as possible. “And let me know when Joe and Emily get here.”
After Judy left to go perk another pot of coffee, Rosebud took the time to break out her pitiful makeup bag. Her good looks were just one of her weapons, but she considered them her first best line of defense when meeting a new adversary.
After three years of representing the tribe in their dealings with Armstrong Holdings, she’d honed her game plan to perfection. Johnson was just the latest victim. Rosebud had played the bubble-headed babe for three weeks—long enough for Johnson to be sure he had the upper hand and, more importantly, long enough for Rosebud to secure some rather incriminating pictures of the man meeting with a supplier of prescription painkillers. Although he’d made bail, Johnson had recused himself from the case rather than tangle with Rosebud again.
Men, she thought with a snort. Especially white men. They all thought the rules applied to everyone else. She plaited her hair and wound the braid into a bun that projected both an old-fashioned innocence and an austere severity. To hold the bun in place, she inserted two sticks that would have looked like chopsticks, except for the bright green beaded tassels hanging from the ends. The sticks were the only things of her mother’s she’d kept.
Her lipstick set, Rosebud gathered up her files. She held no hope that this Dan Armstrong would be different from the others—after all, that rat-bastard Cecil had sent him—but there was always a small chance that he’d let something slip that could be connected back to her brother Tanner.
Judy knocked on the door. Rosebud glanced at the clock. Almost half an hour had passed. Perfect. “They’re here.”
“How do I look?” Rosebud batted her eyes.
“Be careful,” Judy repeated, sounding awed.
Oh, Rosebud couldn’t wait to see this guy, not if he was throwing Judy for such a loop. She met Joe White Thunder and Emily Mankiller outside the conference room. “Did Judy tell you it’s a new guy?” she said as she kissed her aunt on the cheek.
Joe’s eyes sparkled, and in that second, Rosebud saw the man who’d occupied Alcatraz back in the day. Some days, she longed to have known old Joe back when he raised a lot of hell, but she appreciated who he was now—a tribal elder whose vote carried a lot of weight. “I knew that last one was no match for you.”
Rosebud blushed under the compliment as Aunt Emily shook her head at Joe in disapproval. Aunt Emily had never been one for disobedience, civil or otherwise. “You’re making a dent, dear, but don’t get overconfident.”
Whatever, Rosebud thought as she nodded in deferential agreement. Cecil Armstrong had thrown the best lawyers money could buy at her, and she was not only holding them off, she was officially irritating that man. “I know. You guys remember what to do?”
Joe playfully socked her in the arm. “How, kemo sabe.” And then his face went blank and Rosebud stood in front of the stereotypical Stoic Indian. Joe wouldn’t say a single thing today. His job was intimidating silence. Rosebud knew he wouldn’t even look at Dan Armstrong. If there was one thing self-important lawyers hated, it was being ignored. It drove them to distraction, and a distracted lawyer was a defeated lawyer.
Aunt Emily sighed. Rosebud knew she hated these meetings, hated all the haggling and hated it when Joe acted like a fake Indian. But she hated the idea of Armstrong Holdings flooding the rez more. “We’re ready.”
Here we go, Rosebud thought to herself as she opened the door. Her blood started to pump with excitement. Another adversary was another battle, and Rosebud was confident she could win the battles. She honestly didn’t know if she could win the war with Cecil Armstrong, but she could slow him down for years.
The first thing she noticed was that Dan Armstrong was standing. His back was to the door and he was looking out the conference room’s sliver of a window. The prick of irritation was small. She preferred her victim to be sitting in the chair that was two inches shorter than the others, with the bum wheel that gave the chair an unexpected wobble with every movement.
What she noticed next erased the irritation. Dan Armstrong was tall without being huge, his shoulders easily filling out the heathered brown sport coat. The brown leather yokes on his shoulders made his back seem even broader. She could see the curl in his close-cropped hair, the light from the window making it glow a golden-brown.
She caught her breath. Johnson he wasn’t—in fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a real man in this building, a man who looked like he belonged out on the open range instead of in a dark little office. Hell, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a real man outside of this office.
And then he turned around.
Him. The breath she’d caught was crushed out of her chest. Suddenly she felt vulnerable, the kind of vulnerable that comes from making a mistake and then thinking she’d gotten away with it, only to be caught red-handed.
She was screwed.
He must have noticed her confusion, because he smiled the kind of smile a man wore when he knew exactly what effect he had on a woman. The implied arrogance—and not recognition—was enough to snap Rosebud out of her momentary terror. She might know who he was, but he didn’t seem to recognize her. And if there were no witnesses, who was to say that a crime had occurred?
“Mr…. Armstrong, is it?” she began, striding into the room like she couldn’t be bothered to remember his name. That’s right, she thought as she drew herself up to her full height in three-inch heels, there wasn’t a single thing wrong with any of this. Except he had a good four inches on her. “I’m Rosebud Donnelly, the lawyer for the Red Creek Lakota Indian reservation.”
“A pleasure, ma’am.” Oh, he had a faint drawl, a way of stretching out his vowels that sounded like warm sunshine. Ma’am had never sounded as good as it did coming out of his mouth. Armstrong lifted a hand as if to tip his hat, but then appeared to realize that he wasn’t wearing one. Instead, he swung his hand down and offered it out to her. Rosebud wondered if he’d gone back for the hat she’d seen fly off his head, or if it was still out there. She’d have to check tonight. No hat, no crime.
Rosebud thanked God she’d done this enough to go on autopilot, because her head was swimming. Not one of the last three lawyers had even sniffed at a polite introduction. She let the seconds stretch as his hand hung in the air. Normally, she let her hand loosely clasp the other person’s—all the better to create an impression of weakness—but not this time. This time, she felt an intense need to be in control of this situation. She returned his grip, noting that his hand was warm, but not sweaty. He wasn’t nervous at all. She was going to have to do better, so she gave him her best bone-crushing shake.
He tilted his head to one side as if he was questioning her. Eyes the color of the sky right before a twister measured her with something that looked a hell of a lot like respect. God only knew what his uncle had told him about her—it probably started with ball-buster and ended with bitch. As the heat from his hand did a slow crawl up her arm, she had the sudden urge to tell him that she really wasn’t like that.
Which was ridiculous—the whole point of this little introduction was to demonstrate that she was exactly like that. No wonder
