a lover. It wasn’t fair to treat her like this, not when he had no future to offer her. “You shouldn’t have let me do that, Cecily,” he said quietly.
He propelled her out of the chair and onto her feet, holding her firmly by the shoulders for a few seconds until he could breathe normally. “Go help Leta in the kitchen.”
“Bossy,” she accused breathlessly. The kisses had her reeling visibly.
“Thousands of years of conditioning don’t vanish overnight,” he mused. He searched her face with traces of hunger still in his eyes. “Do you still carry that week’s supply of prophylactics around with you?” he added wickedly.
She actually blushed. “I gave up on you and threw them out years ago.”
His eyes went up and down her soft body like hands. “Pity.”
“You said you wouldn’t, ever!” she protested.
One eyebrow arched and his lips pursed. He was trying to lighten the tension, but just looking at her now aroused him. “So I did. Eloquently, too.”
She was trembling. She wrapped both arms around herself to fight the emotion that was consuming her. She looked up at him accusingly. “You enjoy tormenting me, don’t you?”
He scowled. “Maybe I do.”
She turned away. “I’m flying out tonight.”
“No need. I’m not staying.” He went around her to the kitchen and kissed Leta goodbye where she stood at the counter making sandwiches.
“Make up before you go,” she pleaded with her son.
“I did,” he lied.
She touched his cheek sadly. “Stubborn,” she murmured, then she smiled. “Like your father.”
The mention of Jack Winthrop closed his face. “I’ve never hit you.”
She caught her breath and her hand came down. She gnawed her lower lip. “Someday,” she said hesitantly, “we must have a talk.”
“Not today,” he countered, oblivious to the guilt in her face. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“You don’t like Senator Holden.” She said it abruptly and without thinking, just as she’d said he was like his father. He didn’t know who his father was. She still couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
He turned. “There’s no one I like less,” he agreed. “He’s wrong down the line about Wapiti Ridge and what’s good for us, but he won’t see reason. He doesn’t know a thing about the Lakota, and he couldn’t care less!”
“He grew up here,” she said slowly.
“What?”
“He grew up here,” she continued. “Before his mother was a widow, she came here to teach at the school. He had friends on the reservation, including Black Knife.”
“You never told me that you knew him,” he accused.
“You never asked me. I’ve known him for a long time.”
He stared at her curiously. “If he knows the situation here, why is he fighting us on the idea of the casino?”
“He hates gambling,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in many years,” she added, “not since he married that pretty white woman and ran for the senate the first time.”
“His wife is dead.”
She nodded. “I read it in the papers.” Her eyes searched his. “Cecily says you have a pretty white woman of your own.”
“Damn Cecily!” he said through his teeth, hating his own stupidity for touching Cecily in the first place and frustrated by the painful attraction he couldn’t satisfy. “What I do is no business of hers! It never was, and it never will be!”
“Amen to that,” Cecily said from the doorway, a little less confident because of his biting remarks, but calm just the same. “Why don’t you go home to Audrey?”
“I don’t understand this,” Leta said worriedly as she studied her son. “You keep saying you don’t want to be involved with a white woman…”
“Only with a plain white woman,” Cecily corrected. “Isn’t that right, Tate? But Audrey is beautiful.”
It was only then that he realized how Cecily must feel about his relationship with the other woman, as if he’d bypassed her because she was no beauty. It wasn’t true. He’d been responsible for her for years, even if she hadn’t known it until recently. He’d fought his attraction to her because it was like exploiting her, taking advantage of her gratitude for what he’d done for her. How did he explain that without making matters worse than they already were?
Leta could have wept for Cecily, standing there with such dignity and poise, even in the face of Tate’s hostility.
“It has nothing to do with beauty,” Tate said finally.
Cecily only smiled. “I’ll finish the sandwiches while you see Tate off,” she told Leta.
“Cecily…” Tate began hesitantly.
“We all act on impulse occasionally,” she said, meeting his eyes bravely. “It’s no big thing. Really.” She smiled, avoiding Leta’s probing gaze, and turned to the refrigerator. “Are you eating before you go?”
He scowled fiercely. She thought he regretted touching her. Perhaps he did. He couldn’t remember being so confused.
“No,” he said after a minute. “I’ll get something at the airport.”
Leta went with him and waited while he got his suitcase and carried it out to his rental car, which was parked beside the one Cecily had rented. The reservation was a long drive from the airport, so a car was a necessity.
“You two used to get along so well,” Leta murmured.
“I’ve been blind,” he said through his teeth. “Stark staring blind.”
“What do you mean?”
He stared out across the rolling hills that were turning golden as autumn approached. “She’s in love with me.”
It was a shock to hear himself say it. Until then, he hadn’t really considered it. But Cecily had lain in his arms as trusting as a child, clinging to him. Her eyes had been rapt with pleasure, joy glistening in them. Why hadn’t he known? Or was it that he hadn’t wanted to know?
“You mustn’t let her see that you know,” Leta instructed grimly. “She is proud.”
“Yes.” He touched his mother’s shoulder. “There are so few of us left who are full-bloods,” he said, wondering why Leta grimaced. Perhaps she’d hoped that he might marry Cecily one day, despite her pride in their heritage.
“And you won’t marry a white girl,” she said.
