portent not to be ignored.
More likely a warning from above, Johnny thought wryly. An omen that this woman harbored the kind of prejudice that had shaped him into the man he was. The smile he had considered bestowing upon her a mere moment ago turned into a sneer. Pushing himself out of the doorway, he leaned right into her personal space.
“What you can do for me, Ms. Wainwright,” he said drawing the “Ms.” into an intentional hiss, “is stick to teaching stained glass and stop putting that pretty little nose of yours into your students’ personal lives.”
She couldn’t have looked more stunned had he hauled off and slapped her right across the face.
“Please call me Annie,” she suggested, hastening to set the conversation on a more personal level before attempting to isolate the source of this man’s annoyance.
“Around here, we like to maintain the formality of addressing our teachers by their last names out of respect for the dignity of the profession,” he informed her coolly.
If this woman thought she could gentle him like some newborn foal with that soft, coaxing voice of hers, she was sorely mistaken. Just because her name was as simple and welcoming as the very sound of it rolling off her tongue didn’t mean he was about to succumb to her surprisingly down-to-earth charm.
Apparently deciding that it was time to step in, Crimson Dawn found her voice at last. “Stop hassling her, Uncle!” she admonished, spearing him with a look intended to convey the message that she fully intended to kill him later. Turning her attention to her newly found mentor, she attempted to underplay her uncle’s gruffness.
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Miss Wainwright. I’m sure my mother is the one who put him up to this.”
Annie didn’t look particularly reassured by this bit of information.
“Speaking of your mother, she’s waiting in the truck for you,” Johnny told his niece without so much as breaking eye contact with her teacher.
Sensing the girl’s reluctance to leave her alone with hostile forces, Annie urged her to, “Go on. I’ll be just fine. See you in class tomorrow.”
The determined set of Crimson Dawn’s shoulders as she marched through the open door gave every indication that a major confrontation between mother and daughter was imminent. One could almost feel the storm clouds gathering about the girl as she stomped down the hallway and prepared herself to do battle on her teacher’s behalf. A veteran of similar wars, Annie wished there was some way she could intervene but knew any such attempt on her part would be a waste of time. Attempting to stop a teenage girl on a mission was akin to stopping a tornado with nothing more than a book on etiquette and good intentions.
“Okay. What is this all about?” Annie asked the intimidating man towering over her. “I honestly have no idea what you are so upset about, and I’ve never been much of a mind reader.”
Johnny paused to consider this woman’s eyes. They were, he decided, more wary than cold as he had first been inclined to describe them. Something vulnerable flickering in those blue depths unsettled him and knocked him off balance. Something about the way she boldly stood up to him with her arms tellingly wrapped around her body made him suddenly feel like protecting her.
From himself no less.
“Said Custer to his troops,” he quipped, trying to make the raw feeling in his heart go away by employing a favorite weapon in his arsenal of defense: humor.
“If I may borrow the historical reference,” Annie said, tightening her smile, “if I’m about to be scalped, you might at least do me the honor of letting me know why.”
Johnny bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling. The lady had spunk. He had to give her that. Taking this game to the edge by indulging his curiosity, he risked reaching out to touch a lock of her hair. Neither true blond nor brunette, it was more the color of honey with cinnamon highlights swirled throughout. Between the rough pad of his thumb and fingertips it felt silky soft.
“Very pretty,” he said, as if considering it as an adornment.
Annie bristled. He had employed the word pretty twice now to describe her, albeit once in reference to her nose, and rather than a compliment, he somehow made it sound synonymous with stupid. Never having considered herself a great beauty, she was particularly uneasy with such teasing. Determined to put an end to it, she jerked her head back to free her hair from his hold. In the process, she caused his hand to graze her cheek. It tingled as if she had been caressed not by mere flesh but rather a tangle of loose, exposed wires. Instinctively she reached up to touch the spot with her own hand.
Johnny’s dark eyes narrowed. He was particularly sensitive to the fact that in every movie script written, white women were portrayed as being terrified of the savage “Injun.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, hoping she wasn’t going to faint on him like those fragile ladies of the silver screen. After all, he hadn’t thought to bring along the customary packet of smelling salts employed in those same films to bring the fairer sex back from the brink of hysteria.
“You didn’t,” Annie responded, keeping her eyes trained upon his.
It was only partly a lie. As big as this man was, Annie wasn’t in the least afraid of him in any physical sense—other than the way he made her skin itch and her stomach clench in feminine awareness. After being numb for so long, what really scared her was that he made her feel anything at all.
“Would you mind telling me what I’ve done to upset you?” she asked him, ready to put an end to all of his play-acting and get to the bottom of his grievance without further ado.
What she wasn’t ready for was the lyrical, lilting quality of his voice. The rhythm and cadence were specific to the man’s unique culture. To her ears, it sounded foreign. Exotic.
And erotic.
“Crimson’s mother thinks you’re to blame for putting wild ideas into her head about leaving the reservation to pursue an art degree in some fancy college in St. Louis.”
Troubled clouds passed over the clear skies of Annie’s eyes. “I didn’t advance any ideas that weren’t already there,” she told him frankly. “I’m sure you’re well aware that your niece has remarkable talent. I would assume you’d want to encourage it.”
Johnny rubbed his chin. The faint fragrance of tuberose and subtle musk from where Annie’s hair had touched his hand lingered upon his fingers and imprinted itself upon his subconscious. Like the woman herself, the scent was intriguing. Obviously strong enough to make her way in the world on her own, there was nonetheless an aura of vulnerability about Annie Wainwright to make a man want to challenge that sense of independence.
“When Crimson asked for my opinion, I simply told her that I thought she has what it takes to make it out in the ‘bigger world,’ if that’s what she really wants to do. I hardly see how that could be misconstrued as meddling.”
“Lady, in case you don’t know it, just being an outsider working on the reservation makes your motives suspect to a lot of people around here.”
The very idea confounded Annie. Her forehead wrinkled in consternation. “I’m just here to teach a class. A noncredit, community interest, elective class, at that,” she added defensively.
“Are
