all the things asked of her—leaving home for so many years to get that damned law degree when she really wanted to study art; giving up any semblance of a normal life to eat, drink and breathe legal proceedings against Armstrong Holdings; having dead animals show up around her house; losing her brother—sleeping with the enemy was the worst. Even if the enemy was as attractive as Dan Armstrong. That was irrelevant. It didn’t matter that she’d given her life to the tribe. Now it wanted her body, too.
“No, no,” Joe finally protested, too late. “But a beautiful woman can muddle a man’s thinking.”
“This may be the chance we’ve been waiting for, dear,” Emily added. Rosebud could hear how little her aunt really believed it, but she kept going. “He could let something… useful slip about his uncle. He might know something about Tanner.”
The blow was low. For a second, Rosebud wanted to smack the woman for pouring salt in her wound, but it was a short second. Of course, they were right. Dan Armstrong was an opportunity to do a little domestic spying, that was all. And if she could link Tanner’s death to an Armstrong—any Armstrong—she’d be able to sleep at night. Hell, she might even find a new way to stop that dam.
Aunt Emily gave her an artificial smile. “It’s what Tanner would do.” She pulled Rosebud’s glasses off her face and gently tucked them into the pocket of her one-and-only suit jacket. “Do it for Tanner.”
Tears that she normally kept out of sight until the middle of the night, when no one would know she cried them, threatened to spill. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep them in. “All right,” she managed to get out.
Aunt Emily kissed her cheek in painful blessing. “Find out what you can. Give away nothing.”
“Do your best,” Joe added, finally removing his clamping hand from her shoulder.
Her best. She’d been doing her best, fending off that dam for three years, but it hadn’t been good enough. She wondered if anything ever would be.
She heard both car doors shut, heard both of them drive away, but still she couldn’t open her eyes. The breeze tickled her hair, and the sun tried to reassure her it would, in fact, be all right, but she couldn’t move. When Tanner had died, she’d sworn to do anything to find out who put that gun in his hand and pulled the trigger. She’d never thought it would come to seducing Cecil Armstrong’s nephew.
“Ms. Donnelly?”
Oh, hell.
“Mr. Armstrong,” she said without turning around. How on God’s green earth was she supposed to muddle his thinking when her own mind was exactly as clear as the Dakota River during the spring floods? “Thank you for coming today.”
He stood next to her. She didn’t know how she felt it, but one moment, she was alone, and the next, his solid warmth was close enough that she thought he was touching her arm. Moving slowly, she turned to meet his gaze.
As she did, the breeze surged like a trickster, throwing her hair around. The look in his eyes went from curious regard to recognition—the wrong kind of recognition. His nostrils flared as his jaw clenched. She was no longer facing a compassionate man. Any fool could see that Dan Armstrong was fighting mad.
“Tell me, Ms. Donnelly,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do you ride?”
He knew—or thought he knew. In a heartbeat, she realized she needed to play innocent. “Of course. Everyone out here does. Do you?”
She couldn’t even see those lovely greenish eyes. They were narrowed into slits. He wasn’t buying it. “Sure do. What kind of horse do you ride?”
“Scout is a paint.” She wanted to cower before that hard look, but she refused to break that easily. With everything she had, she met his stare. “Yours?”
“Palomino.” He stepped around her so quickly that she couldn’t help but flinch. “In fact, I was riding him near the dam site in a pretty little valley the other day.”
“Is that so?” That was the best she could do as he threw open the door of an enormous, shiny black truck and yanked out a brown cowboy hat.
With a bullet hole through it.
She’d gotten a lot closer than she meant to. She hadn’t actually been trying to hit him. She’d been trying to go right over his head, just close enough that he could hear the bullet. But she’d missed. She’d come within an inch of killing a man. For the first time in her life, she felt really and truly faint. The only thing that kept her on her feet was the knowledge that fainting was a confession of the body. No weakness. No confession.
No matter if she was guilty of attempted murder.
Armstrong was watching her with cold interest. “Someone took a shot at me in that valley.”
She managed to swallow, hoping that her reaction would be interpreted as mere shock and not guilt. “That’s awful!” Her voice sounded decidedly strangled, even to her own ears. “Did you see who did it?”
He took a step toward her, until he was close enough that she could see how much his pupils had dilated. The almost-green was gone, replaced by a black so inky that he looked more like a sica, a spirit, than a man. “It was a woman.” His voice was low and quiet, which gave him an air of danger. “A beautiful Native American woman with long, black hair.” With his free hand, he reached out and grabbed a hank of her hair, twisting it around his hand until she had no way to escape. He pulled her face up to his. “Wearing buckskins and moccasins. Riding a paint.”
Beautiful. She swallowed again. He smelled vaguely of coffee and horse, with a hint of something more exotic—sandalwood, maybe. He smelled good. And he was less than a minute from committing assault.
“Buckskins, Mr. Armstrong?” She paused long enough to muster up a look of slight disbelief. “Most of us prefer T-shirts and jeans these days.” His mouth opened to protest, but she cut him off. “I can ask a few questions, Mr. Armstrong.” Oh, thank God her lawyer voice had returned. She pressed on. “While we do not approve of your uncle’s actions, we certainly wouldn’t resort to attempted murder.”
“A few questions?” His lips—nice, full lips, with just a hint of pink—twisted into a full sneer as he leaned in even closer. “I want answers.”
Friends close, enemies closer. She swallowed, and saw his eyes dart down to her mouth. This was playing with fire, but what else was there? “Are you going to kiss me?” Her lawyer voice was gone again, and instead she sounded like a femme fatale from a ‘40s film. Where that came from, she didn’t know. She could only hope it was the right thing to say.
It was. His jaw flexed again, answering the question for her. Then his other hand moved, brushing a flyaway hair from her face and stroking her cheekbone with the barest hint of pressure. A quiver went through Rosebud, one she couldn’t do a thing to stop. The corner of his mouth curled up, just enough to let her know that he’d felt that betraying quiver, too.
He wanted to kiss her, which should have made her feel successful—Aunt Emily would be proud. But his mouth had something else to say about the matter. “Are you fixing to take another shot at me?”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” She couldn’t even manage to pull off indignant. The best she could do was a throaty whisper better suited
