on the grapevine that everyone should keep an eye out for him and notify us when he’s spotted. That’s one great advantage to living in a community with only a few thousand people. Like Cheers, everybody knows your name.”
“Clever, involving the citizens.” Clay smiled. She was rapidly justifying a chance with COMPASS. So what if she was mouthy, nosy and had a warped sense of humor? He had put up with worse from the Sextant crew. He didn’t know the members of the COMPASS team very well yet, but she’d probably fit right in.
“Hungry?” she asked, braking as they reached the paved road and waiting for his answer.
“I am. Is there somewhere around here we can grab a few burgers before you take me to my hotel?”
She put on the left blinker and began to turn. “Oh, we’ll do better than that. How about barbecue, beans and fry bread? My grandparents eat at five, a blood-sugar thing, but there’ll be plenty left.”
Clay frowned. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Not feed you and put you up? What are you thinking? If I don’t bring you home, the tribal council will haul me into court for sedition or something, not to mention that the grans would skin me alive.” She shook her head fiercely. “Uh-uh, no way you can get off the hook, so deal with it.”
“Put me up? Stay with them? No, I couldn’t—”
“You don’t understand. You have to unless, of course, you want to insult the whole tribe. And discredit yours while you’re at it.”
“No, you don’t understand,” he said, knowing the time had come to make things clear to her. “I don’t have a tribe.” It was true. He could not remember his mother’s people and his father refused to tell him who they were. The first few years of Clay’s life were a blur, spent at a place only God could identify, because Clayton Senate Sr. had gone to the grave with that secret six years ago.
She flashed a saucy grin. “Well, you have one now, brother, whether you want one or not. Tsi lu gi. That means welcome.”
Clay huffed out a breath of resignation and muttered, “Wa do.”
“My God, you speak Tsalagi?” she asked with a laugh of delight. “You’re Cherokee! Why didn’t you say so?”
He didn’t tell her he also knew Navajo and several other Native American tongues. He had a way with languages and these were simple to learn, a relative hobby, compared to Russian and Arabic.
Wherever you went in this business, it paid to talk the talk, or at least to be able to listen to it.
He normally kept his mouth shut and did just that, but this woman had a strange effect on him. In one afternoon, she had slipped under his guard, caused him to reveal a hell of a lot more about himself than his best friends knew, and had even made him laugh out loud.
For the first time, Clay sensed how dangerous Vanessa Walker was going to be to life as he knew it. And yet, he also realized he would not avoid her even if he could. Running scared was not his way. Father had called him a brave countless times and, while it had been meant as more insult than compliment, Clay did his damnedest to live up to the name.
Chapter 2
A fter driving for about half an hour, Vanessa turned off on a nearly invisible, unpaved side road that led up one of the mountains. “The grans are expecting us. I phoned them about it this morning,” she explained while easily negotiating the twisting path with its overhanging branches and low visibility.
“Take me back to a hotel, will you? I really need to process these prints and fax those and Hightower’s old license photo to—”
“No problem. You can fax from the grans place. They love company. Today is barbecue day. Maybe goat, maybe pork, maybe both.”
Clay’s apprehension grew. Primitive accommodations and food cooked over an outdoor fire didn’t bother him in the least, so he didn’t quite understand this niggling sense of unease in his gut.
“Don’t worry. I promise you won’t get the third degree. Now you might if they got the idea I was bringing you home to get their approval as a potential husband. The tribe’s pretty strict on consanguinity rules, so they’d politely insist on your background if that were the case. But I’ll explain you’re only here on business. I’ll make that very clear.”
“Consanguinity?” He knew what the word meant, of course, but what the hell was she talking about?
“Oh yeah,” she said with a chuckle. “No relatives considered, goes without saying. Also, I can’t marry within my own clan whether there are blood ties or not. Usually there are, to some degree, but it’s not a problem.”
“Yet you aren’t married,” he observed. “Must cut down on the number of potential candidates.”
“Not really. There are seven clans to choose from. But I’ve never felt the urge to go looking.”
“Why not?” And why did he insist on prying into her life as if it were any of his business?
She shot him a saucy look. “Ambition outweighed lust. Simple as that.”
That raised his eyebrows. “A virgin, at your age?” God, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He bit his tongue. “Sorry.”
She laughed again, this time a low, seductive sound that sent a ripple of desire straight to his groin. “I never claimed that,” she quipped as she wheeled around a curve and pulled up in front of a two-story log house. “But they probably think so, so let’s end that topic before we get out of the car.”
She tooted the horn, unfastened her seat belt and opened the door all in what seemed one motion, exiting before Clay could pry any further.
Not that he would. What business of his was it if she had a lover? He didn’t even want her to tell him. He’d known the woman barely half a day and had already violated every rule he’d ever made about conversations with the fairer sex.
He couldn’t get over how different she was from every woman he had ever known, how off balance he felt around her. This was not good, and still he knew he would seek her out again, even if something separated them right this minute. If Mercier recalled him and ordered him never to come back here, Clay knew he would disobey orders just to see her, to explore this weird, unsettling connection or whatever it was. It made no sense at all.
“Hey, Du-da, my man! What’s cooking?” Clay heard her cry as she took the stone steps two at a time. He watched as she embraced a gray-haired man who was frowning at Clay over her shoulder.
This wasn’t what Clay had expected. The house impressed him with its charm, slate roof and sturdy construction. The Walkers weren’t poor, that was for sure.
Wind chimes tinkled in the breeze. Oak rocking chairs and a swing graced the porch. The view up here was fantastic, the air sweet, the landscape lush even this late in the year.
The old man didn’t fit Clay’s preconceived image, either. Though probably pushing seventy, he looked like an aging adventurer who kept in excellent shape.
Vanessa turned and beckoned Clay up on the porch. “A-gi-du-da, this is Clay Senate, an agent
