A Man of His Word
Sarah M. Anderson
Lawyer Rosebud Donnelly has a case to win.But no one warned her that the head of the company she’s fighting would be so…manly. From his storm-coloured eyes to his well-worn boots, Dan is a cowboy.Her yearning for the Texas tycoon goes against reason. And yet, inexplicably, in Dan’s strong arms, Rosebud feels she might be ready to risk everything…
“This is about you and me, Rosebud.
This is about me liking you and you liking me, slow dances to fast songs and not going down without a fight. You promised me you wouldn’t go down without a fight, and I’m going to hold you to that. Have dinner with me tonight.”
“I can’t.”
Which was a hell of a lot different from “I won’t.”
“Someplace quiet,” Dan continued. “That’s all I want. Just you and me.”
“What makes you think it would be any different the next time?” Her voice shook as she blinked rapidly and pulled away from him. “Or the time after that? Or any time? We can’t hide forever. I can’t, anyway.”
Anger flashed through him. “I do not hide, Rosebud—and you don’t, either.”
Dear Reader,
This story began when an image popped into my head of an Indian Princess riding bareback out of the past and into the hero’s present. Before the hero could figure out who she was, she took a shot at him and rode away. This image was so powerful that it stayed with me for months while the characters waited for me to figure out who they were, why she’d put a bullet through the hero’s hat and, most important, how they could ever fall in love.
I like to think of this book as my Polaroid
book—the story took a long time to develop, but it was worth the wait. The hero turned out to be Dan Armstrong, the Chief Operating Officer of an energy company looking to build a hydroelectric dam. The heroine was Rosebud Donnelly, the tribal lawyer for the Red Creek Lakota, whose reservation will be flooded by Dan’s dam. I imagined that having your whole world sunk to the bottom of an artificial lake was a good reason for a woman to be fighting-mad, and Rosebud agreed.
The surprise to Rosebud was how much Dan, an oil tycoon, turned out to be a man of principle and honesty. On top of all that integrity, he is one good-looking cowboy who knows his way around a horse—and a woman. He’ll use all that charm to get to the bottom of who killed his hat. The question Dan has to answer is, what else is he willing to lose?
A Man of His Word is my first Mills & Boon
Desire™ book, and for that alone, it will always be one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Be sure to stop by www.sarahmanderson.com and join me when I say, long live cowboys!
Sarah
About the Author
Award-winning author SARAH M. ANDERSON may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out west on the Great Plains. With a lifelong love of horses and two history teachers for parents, she had plenty of encouragement to learn everything she could about the tribes of the Great Plains.
When she started writing, it wasn’t long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought they’d go.
When not helping out at school or walking her two rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well-tolerated by her wonderful husband and son. Readers can find out more about Sarah’s love of cowboys and Indians at www.sarahmanderson.com.
A Man
of His Word
Sarah M. Anderson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Mom and Dad, two history teachers who planned
family vacations around national monuments and Civil
War battle sites instead of theme parks and beaches.
One
For today’s ride, Dan Armstrong had brought along his custom-made six-shooter, but he couldn’t believe he’d need it.
He didn’t normally wear it, but his uncle had told him to take a gun if he went out alone. And since it had been years since the man had shown a whit of interest in Dan’s well-being, he’d listened. Now he was glad he’d done so because his imagination was working overtime.
There was something about this forest that said Old West, South Dakota style. His sprawling estate outside of Fort Worth was a jewel, but north Texas didn’t have stands of pines this pretty or the carved sandstone bluffs that ran along the Dakota River.
It was a damn shame the trees, the river and the land wouldn’t be the same once his company got done with them. His uncle, Cecil Armstrong, who ran one half of Armstrong Holdings, wanted to clear-cut these hundreds of acres before building a dam on this river, about five hundred yards upstream. No sense in throwing away perfectly good logging rights, Cecil had said. Logically, Dan couldn’t argue with that, but he’d hate to see this forest go.
He didn’t doubt that this place looked the same today as it had hundreds of years ago, back when cowboys and Indians rode the range. If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear war whoops and the thunder of hooves.
He twisted in the saddle, squinting as he looked into the afternoon sun. He really did hear hoofbeats.
The sound stopped when he moved, and by the time he got his eyes shaded with the brim of his Stetson, all he could see was a dust cloud about a hundred yards back, down the well-worn deer path he’d come in on.
Instinctively, Dan dropped his hand to the butt of his pistol. Sure, the engraved nickel firearm was only good for six shots, but he’d wanted a piece that was specifically weighted to his grip.
His hand flexed around the gun and waited. The dust settled around a figure. The sunlight provided an almost sparkly air around her. He blinked. What he saw didn’t change, so he shook his head. Still there.
A Native American princess sat astride a paint horse. Her hair hung loose behind her, blowing in a breeze that Dan couldn’t feel. He couldn’t feel much of anything but sheer shock. What the hell?
Her horse took a step closer. She wore nothing but an old-fashioned, unadorned buckskin dress that rode high up on lean thighs that clung to the sides of her paint horse with natural ease. It was clear this princess knew how to ride bareback. The length of her legs ended with simple moccasins. Her horse’s face was coated in red. Was that war paint?
Could this be happening? She looked like she belonged to a different time, as pure and untouched as the land around her. He’d seen a few Lakota Indians in the three days since he’d arrived, but none of them looked like this.
None of them looked at him like she was looking at him.
One of her hands held the reins of her horse, the other was relaxed by her leg. She tilted her head, sending all that black hair off to one side. She was stunning. A princess of the high plains.
Dan’s heartbeat picked up and he slid his hand away from his revolver. She was not what he expected. Cecil had warned him that the local Lakota Indians were a bunch of lazy drunks—but not this woman. The proud way she held her body as her clear eyes swept over him made it obvious that neither of those adjectives applied to her. He’d never seen a woman as stop-what-he’s-doing-and-stare beautiful as she was. She leaned forward, and he caught the shape of her buckskin-clad chest. His pulse wasn’t the only thing that picked up. What the hell was wrong with him?
The princess flashed him a smile, which didn’t help. He had trouble reading her expression at this distance, but there was no mistaking the wide grin or the brightness of her teeth. Then, as quickly as she’d smiled, she was a blur of motion. Her horse shot forward in the same second her hand shot up. His hat went flying as an explosion rocked the valley.
His horse jumped and spun, and Dan lost track of the woman. His first instinct was to rein in Smokey; his second was to duck for cover. That explosion had sounded a hell of a lot like a gunshot.
By the time he got his stallion turned back around, she was gone. Dan didn’t think, he just acted. He touched his spurs to the horse’s side and took off for the deer trail. Fueled by adrenaline, he plunged into the shadowy woods. Beautiful or no, no one took a shot at him. No one.
He could hear the sound of a large body crashing through the underbrush, over to his left. Whoever she was, she was abandoning the deer path. Dan blinked hard, forcing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He thought he caught a flash of white ahead.
The harder he rode, the madder he got. In the oil business, he’d dealt with plenty of shady characters—men with agendas or histories—but no one had ever taken an unprovoked shot at him. Hell, no one had ever taken a shot at him, period. He didn’t have enemies because he didn’t make them. That “man-against-the-world” crap might have been the way of things back in the old days, but Dan was no gunslinger. He was a businessman—a successful one. His word was his bond, and his lawyer rode herd when a deal went south.
He caught the flash of white again and froze.
A white-tailed deer was high-tailing it away from him.
Cursing, Dan pulled Smokey to a stop and tried to figure out what the hell had happened. Maybe it hadn’t been real. People imagined sounds, right? But then he remembered his hat. It had come off in the confusion. No matter what had actually happened, he wasn’t going to leave his hat. He loved that hat—it fit his head perfectly. Slowly, Dan worked his way back down to the tall grass until he saw the brown brim of his Stetson. He got down to fetch it.
His gut clenched in a terrifying rage. A hole pierced the front peak of the hat, less than an inch from where it had rested on his head.
She’d shot at him. That beautiful woman—bare legs, bareback—had shot at him.
Somebody owed him an explanation.
Dan was still plenty steamed by the time he got back to the ranch house. For some crack-brained reason, his uncle had decided to set up the hydro division of Armstrong Holdings in one of those grand old mansions some cattle baron had built back in the 1880s. As far as mansions went, it was a beautiful piece of work—three floors of hand-carved banisters and stained-glass windows on sixty acres—but corporate headquarters it wasn’t. Why Cecil was camped out on the edge of the middle of nowhere, halfway between the state capital in Pierre and the Iowa border, instead of at the small staffed office he had in Sioux Falls was beyond him. It was almost like the old man was trying to hide.
As chief operating officer of Armstrong Holdings, the family business that Dan’s father had started with his brother Cecil forty years ago, Dan owned half of this house. Technically, he owned half of the water rights on the Dakota River over which the Red Creek branch of the Lakota Indian tribe was suing Cecil. He owned half of that pretty little valley where his hat had met an untimely death. Technically, he was an equal partner in this whole damn enterprise, and had been since he’d assumed control of the petroleum division in Texas from his mother when he turned twenty-one.
He’d be damned if he let Cecil destroy the company he’d worked so hard to expand.
Cecil had never been one for technicalities, an opinion made abundantly clear last week when he’d ordered Dan to drop everything in Texas and come to South Dakota. Cecil had a problem with the dam he’d spent nearly five years trying to build and had threatened that Armstrong Holdings would lose billions of dollars and just about every government contract they had if Dan didn’t get his ass on a plane within a week.
Dan hated to let anyone think he was at the old man’s beck and call—least of all, the old man himself—but this problem with the dam gave Dan the perfect opportunity to come up here and figure out what those little—and not so little—blips in the company’s financial reports were all about. He didn’t know what exactly he was looking for, but he knew he wouldn’t find it in Texas. He was going to have to suffer his uncle until he could force Cecil out of the role of chief executive officer.
Now that he thought about it, Dan remembered that it was Cecil who had warned him about the local Indians—that he was having trouble with negotiations with some of them. Dan just hadn’t realized that the problem would require body armor and a helmet.
The gabled roof of the ranch house looked even more ominous as the late-afternoon sun cast deep shadows over the front yard. The cast-iron fence looked less like it wanted to keep Cecil’s old coon dog in and more like it wanted to keep armed assailants out. Dan stormed through the front door, making the housekeeper jump.
“Is everything all right, Señor Armstrong?” Maria’s thick Mexican accent was the closest thing to Texas in this whole house.
Dan slowed. From what he could tell, Cecil treated this poor woman like dirt, which made Dan go out of his way to be polite. Being friendly with the staff had always helped him in the past—especially when he needed information. Mom always said Dan could catch more flies with honey when he wanted to, and right now, he had a bunch of flies bothering him. “Maria,” he said, his voice slipping down just a notch as he whipped off his hat. Her cheeks colored. “Do you all have trouble around here?”
The color deepened as she dropped her eyes to the ground. Dan guessed that maybe thirty years ago, Maria had been quite a looker. He didn’t mean to make her blush, but sweet-talking a woman was second nature for him. “Trouble, señor?”
“Native American trouble?” Maria blinked in confusion, so Dan tried again. “Indian trouble?” Even saying the phrase felt wrong, like it was the 1880s and he was stuck in the middle of a range war. He cleared his throat. If it weren’t for the bullet hole in his hat, he’d be certain he’d lost his mind. He held his hat out to her.
Maria went very still as she looked at the hole, and then at his head. “Dios mi! No, señor, we do not have that kind of trouble.”
Damn. Dan was good at reading people, women in particular. Maria was telling the truth.
“You’ll let me know if you hear of any, won’t you?” He shot her his please smile.
Her head bobbed as she began to back toward the kitchen. “Sí, señor.”
Satisfied, he continued on to his uncle’s office. It had probably once been the formal dining room, capable of seating twenty, but no more. Now it was crammed full of everything a man needed to run a major energy corporation. In Texas, Cecil had been a ruthless businessman, squeezing out smalltime operations and buying land for astonishing prices. By the time the SUV craze rolled around, he held a near monopoly on Texas oil.
Cecil was whip-smart. By the time the writing was on the fossil fuel wall, he’d already invested deeply in hydroelectric dams. That’s what had brought him to South Dakota. The water rights were cheap up here, and the potential was huge. Armstrong Hydro was quickly becoming not just the major player in the field, but the only player.
Dan didn’t like the man, never had. Not one bit. But family was family, and Cecil and Dan were tied by blood and by business. Dan couldn’t get rid of the old man without hard evidence of malfeasance that he could present to the Board of Directors. Maybe on this trip, he’d find just what he needed to finally cut their connection. Without breaking stride, he burst into the room.
“Well?” Cecil demanded without bothering to look up from the report he was studying. The old man still had the same pompadour and trimmed mustache he’d worn since the 1950s. The only thing that had changed in five years were the jowls Cecil was now sporting. Those jowls, combined with the careful grooming, made Cecil look like the poster boy for the banality of evil. Emphasis on the evil. Those pictures of Cecil and his brother Lewis, Dan’s father, with their first oil derrick were the only proof Dan had ever seen that his uncle smiled. He’d certainly never smiled at Dan—not once.
Dan gritted his teeth and threw his hat on the desk. The hole landed directly in front of Cecil’s face. “Someone took a shot at me.”
Cecil appeared to study the wounded hat for a moment. “Did you get them?” He didn’t sound concerned or surprised.
“No. I lost her.”
A sneer wrestled one corner of Cecil’s mouth up. “You let a girl get off an unanswered shot?”
He didn’t have to defend himself here. Cecil had told him to pack his revolver. “Thanks for the warnin’.”
“Are you sure it was a girl?” The sneer didn’t falter.
Dan thought back to the lean, bare thighs, the long hair and that smile. Girl, no. Woman? Hell, yes. “Positive.”
“No one’s seen… her before.” Cecil hadn’t known a woman was out there? He seemed to be struggling to digest the information. “If it’s the same troublemaker, she’s sabotaged the engineer’s work site on more than one occasion.”
He had heard about the trouble with the work site, but only third-hand from an engineer Cecil had sent packing. Cecil apparently didn’t believe an ecoterrorist attack on an Armstrong project was worth reporting to the board—yet another thing he was hiding. How many other things were there?
Dan had dealt with ecoterrorists before. The Earth Liberation Front—ELF—had burned more than a few of his derricks before Dan had managed to negotiate a truce of sorts. But even ELF had never gone to all the trouble of disguises in broad daylight. They’d been strictly an under-cover-of-night group, more bent on the destruction of property than of people. He could handle ecoterrorists. What he couldn’t handle were armed—and beautiful—Native American princesses.
Without missing a beat, Cecil threw Dan’s hat back at him and picked up a sheaf of paper from the top of a neat pile. “I have a new assignment for you.”
Dan’s teeth ground together. An assignment. Cecil always tried to treat Dan like he was some two-bit underling instead of an equal partner. Like that little bit of self-delusion gave the old man sole control of the company. “Anyone going to be firing on me this time?”
Cecil let the comment slide. “I’m sending you to meet with the Indians. You’re better at—” his hands waved like he could grab hold of a word out of thin air “—talking.”
There’s an understatement, Dan thought with a concealed snort. Cecil didn’t talk. Cecil ordered. “Why them?”
“It’s a bunch of bull. They think they’re going to get an injunction against the dam construction over water rights—rights I already own.”
“That we already own. Don’t you have lawyers? Why the hell do you need me for this?”
“The tribal lawyer is a bearcat. Rosebud Donnelly. She’s eaten three of my lawyers for lunch.” Cecil spat the words out with true disgust.
Rosebud? Like the sled from that old movie Mom loved? Couldn’t be. Whoever she was, Dan felt a small thread of admiration for her. Anyone who could successfully stonewall his uncle was a person to be taken seriously. “And?”
Cecil looked him over with mercenary eyes. “You are an attractive man, son. Good with women. Hell, you treat that maid like she’s some damn queen.”
Dan’s jaw stiffened. Son. He hated it when Cecil called him that. Dan was many things to Cecil, but a son he wasn’t.
“You handled those ELF nuts in Texas. This is no different. She’s just a woman.”
Dan managed to clear his throat. “You want me to do what—sweep her off her feet so she forgets about suing us?” It was Cecil’s turn to stiffen. That’s right, Dan thought. Us. This is my company, too.
“All I’m suggesting is you distract her. And if you happen to get access to some of her files…” He let the words trail off, but the meaning was clear. He thought he could use Dan as nothing more than a male bimbo.
Dan snatched the papers out of Cecil’s hand. The sooner he got out of this room, the better life would be. Just breathing Cecil’s air was toxic. “Where?”
“On the reservation. Tomorrow at ten.” Cecil waved his hand in dismissal.
For the second time that day, Dan was so mad he couldn’t see straight. Cecil had known someone was out there. If Dan didn’t know any better, he might be tempted to think the old man was trying to get him killed.
He looked down at the papers, a Google map to the tribal headquarters and some names. On one hand, he detested letting his uncle think Dan would do his heavy-handed bidding. On the other hand, if Cecil was having “problems” with Indians, maybe they had something on him, something Dan could use. Besides, if a man was looking for a Native American princess packing a pistol, the reservation was the place to be.
He was going to start with one Rosebud Donnelly.
Two
Rosebud Donnelly looked over the rims of her glasses to see Judy, the receptionist, standing in the doorway with an unusual look of confusion on her face.
“He’s here.”
“Johnson came back for more?” Here, in the privacy of her office—even if it was just a modified broom closet—Rosebud allowed herself to smile at the thought of that twit Johnson breaking. A pitiful excuse for a lawyer, that one.
“No.” Judy’s eyes got wider.
“It’s not that man, is it?” She couldn’t imagine that Cecil Armstrong would actually show himself in public, in daylight. She’d never met him, but she imagined him to be some sort of vampire, except instead of sucking blood, he was hell-bent on draining her reservation dry—and then flooding it.
“He said his name was Dan Armstrong. He said he was Cecil’s nephew.”
The satisfaction was intense. She was getting to that man. Cecil Armstrong had run out of high-priced lawyers who wouldn’t know tribal law from a hole in the ground. He’d been reduced to family—as if Rosebud could be swayed by emotional pleas. “A regular mini-me, huh?”
“No,” Judy said again, her voice dropping. “He’s… something else entirely. Be careful with this one, Rosebud.”
Judy’s 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 Judy had warned her about this one.
She stepped away from him, pulling her hand with her. He tried to keep his grip for just a second, then the firm pressure was gone. She shivered, but forced herself to forge ahead. “This is Joseph White Thunder, a tribal elder, and Councilwoman Emily Mankiller.” Yes. Formal introductions were the next step. She needed to get back on track here.
Emily must have sensed Rosebud’s hesitation, because she stepped into the gap. “Mr. Armstrong,” she began as she and Joe took their seats without shaking hands, “are you familiar with the Treaty of 1877 between the United States government and the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Sioux tribes of South Dakota?”
“Ma’am,” Armstrong replied with a polite half bow as he sat down. Rosebud smiled internally as the whole thing tilted off-kilter and he clawed at the table to keep his balance. Still, he managed to sound nonplussed as he said, “I can’t say that I am.”
Thank God for that. Aunt Emily was one of the few women on this reservation with a master’s degree in American history, and her role in this little meeting was to wear the adversary down with a complete recounting of the wrongs the Lakota Indians had suffered back in the day at the hands of the American government, and now, thanks to corporations such as Armstrong Holdings. Rosebud had about forty minutes to get her head together.
Aunt Emily droned on while Joe stared at a spot on the wall just over Armstrong’s head. Rosebud unpacked her files and began reviewing her notes from the last go-round with Johnson. There wasn’t much new to go on. Unlike with Johnson, usable dirt on Cecil Armstrong was just plain hard to dig up. He was courting both political parties, visited a respectable divorced woman twice a month in Sioux Falls and had no personal secretary. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t ever set foot in the Armstrong Hydro office in Sioux Falls, and what few staffers worked there didn’t seem to know anything. That was all she had after three years. It was frustrating.
She snuck a glance at Armstrong. Not only was he paying attention to Aunt Emily, he was taking notes. What the hell? Rosebud thought when Armstrong interrupted the lecture to ask for the specific dates of the last treaty signed. He must not be a lawyer, she decided. Lawyers didn’t give a hoot for history lectures. Why would that man send someone who wasn’t a lawyer?
Aunt Emily began to wind down when she got to the reason they were all here today. Rosebud waited as Armstrong finished his notes before she began. “Mister Armstrong,” she began, going right past condescending and straight on over to contemptuous, “are you aware that Armstrong Holdings is preparing to dam the Dakota River?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, trying to lean back in the chair without tipping. “Down in a valley about two miles from here, as the crow flies. Armstrong Holdings owns the water rights and has secured the government permits to begin construction this fall.”
Oh, she knew where the valley was. “And are you also aware that the reservoir created by that dam will flood thirty-six hundred acres of the Red Creek reservation?”
Armstrong regarded her with open curiosity. “I understood the reservoir will cover several hundred square miles. I was told that land was mostly unoccupied.”
Her eyes narrowed. What the hell was that man doing, sending an unarmed nephew into battle? He might as well have sent an errand boy instead of this… male. There was just no way around it. Everything about Dan Armstrong said male, from the good—no, great—chin to the way he sat in that chair, legs spread wide like he was just itching to get back on his horse.
God, he’d looked so good on that horse. Looking had been her first mistake. Instead of just firing over his head from the shadows like she’d planned, she’d wanted to get a better view of the behind that had been sitting in that saddle, a better look at the forearms laid bare for the sun. She’d come out of the shadows, and he’d spotted her. She’d nearly shot his head off, all because he was a man who looked good in a saddle.
She had to remind herself that, at this exact moment in time, she was not a woman, no matter how much she might like to be one. Right now, she was a lawyer, damn it. Men and women didn’t count in a courtroom, and she couldn’t afford for them to count in this conference room. The only thing that mattered was the law. “Then this is just a waste of our time, isn’t it?” She stood and began to shove paper back into the files. Aunt Emily and Joe scrambled to their feet.
“Ms. Donnelly, please.” Armstrong rose to his feet, too, which didn’t make Rosebud any happier, because nothing good could come from looking up into those green-gray eyes. The only other option was to look at his jaw, which was strong and square and freshly shaved. “Educate me.”
Educate him? After that history lesson, he was coming back for more? Suddenly, Rosebud realized just how great a danger Dan Armstrong was. She knew how to fight against faceless corporate stool pigeons. She had no idea what to do with a real man who apparently had a grasp on compassion—and already had her at a disadvantage. The feeling of helplessness left her with only one other emotion to grab at—anger.
“Fine.” She unpacked all the files again at a rate that struck even her as irritated. “Cecil Armstrong has been a blight upon this land since he came here five years ago. He’s strong-armed local ranchers—many with whom we had unspoken agreements—out of their water rights and lands. He’s filed frivolous lawsuits against the tribe and attempted to use eminent domain as legal justification for taking our land.” Eminent domain was the biggest threat to her whole legal standing, the one she knew she’d lose. Who the hell cared about a few hundred Indians when they could get their electricity for pennies-on-the-kilowatt cheaper? No one, that’s who. No one but the tribe.
Armstrong sat down and began scribbling furiously. If this was an act, it was a damn good one, she decided. This must be why that man had sent him. The new, caring face of Armstrong Holdings. When he paused, she continued.
“He has engaged in a campaign of intimidation against members of the tribe.” And wouldn’t it be lovely if she had some proof of that? But who else would be responsible for Aunt Emily’s shot-out windows or Joe’s missing spark plugs and punctured tires? Who else would have left another skinned raccoon spread-eagled on her front porch three days ago? No one, that’s who. No one else hated her with the passion of Cecil Armstrong.
“That’s a serious charge,” Dan said without looking up. His voice held steady, with no trace of knee-jerk denial.
“Men have died.” Too late, she realized her voice was cracking. Aunt Emily reached out and rested a calming hand on Rosebud’s arm. Dang it, she was losing her cool in a meeting. She never lost her cool.
Armstrong raised his eyes to meet hers. “Do you have proof?” It didn’t come out sneering. It was just a simple question.
With a complicated answer. “The FBI determined that both cases were suicides. The tribal police didn’t agree. Nothing ever came of it.” Because money talks. The tribe had no money. Cecil Armstrong, it seemed, had it all. Broken, drunk Indians shot their heads off all the time. What were another two? Who cared that Tanner had never had a drink before in his life? He was just another Indian—who’d realized the danger Armstrong Holdings posed to the tribe from the beginning. Who’d happened to be making a run at the tribal council. Who’d happened to be her brother. Just another Indian, that’s all.
Armstrong looked at her, then at Aunt Emily’s hand, then back to her. “I’m sorry for your loss.” And the hell of it was, he really seemed to mean it. Rosebud felt the ground shifting under her feet. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure where she stood. “As I said, those are serious charges. I’d like to review your documents before I do anything else.”
Finally, something technical she could hold on to. “I’m sure you can understand that we can’t let the originals leave this building.” That man would have himself one hell of a bonfire, that much she knew.
“Of course,” he agreed far too easily. “Can you have a copy made for me?”
Another unpleasant reality smacked Rosebud upside the head. Of course this Dan Armstrong was used to a world where copiers worked. That world had shiny new computers that connected to the internet, real office space and chairs that didn’t try to eat a person alive.
That wasn’t her world.
She held her head high. “Your predecessor in negotiating, Mr. Lon Johnson, had a copy of all my files.” Or at least, that was what he thought.
“Actually, I looked into that last night.” Armstrong’s mouth bowed up into an appreciative smile. “It appears that all those files up and disappeared out of his car one day, about a week ago. In addition to his laptop, iPod and three candy bars.”
Hmm. That sounded like Matt, who was trying to fashion himself as the ideological heir to Tanner but thus far had just succeeded in being a low-level criminal. She would have loved to have gotten her hands on Johnson’s laptop, but there was no question that it had already been pawned off or sold outright. Dang it, she thought. Another missed opportunity. She tried to look surprised, but given how Dan’s grin got bigger, she didn’t think she’d made it. “That’s unfortunate.” Armstrong cleared his throat. Time to go to the lame-excuse file. “Our copier recently had an… incident, shall we say. We are awaiting the parts.” Which was only a small lie. The copier had had an incident, all right. Two years ago.
Armstrong seemed to buy it. “I guess that leaves only one other option. I’d like your permission,” he said, directing his statement to all three of them, “to come back and review the files myself and take notes. That way, they don’t leave the building, and I still get what I need.”
Rosebud deferred to Aunt Emily, who was weighing the offer. Finally, she nodded. “Of course, Mr. Armstrong, you understand that there’ll be conditions.”
“Of course,” he agreed, leaning back in the chair. He seemed to be getting used to the wobble. He looked to Rosebud, and again she saw the arrogant smile. A man used to getting his way. “I imagine you won’t want me to have un-supervised access to original documents.”
The implication was clear. He had her cornered, and they both knew it. Nobody else on the rez grasped the full import of all the details Rosebud had meticulously collected over the last three years, not even Aunt Emily. Rosebud was the only one who could possibly make sure nothing original “walked off.” She was going to have to sit in this small room for hours—days—on end with a handsome, charming man while he copied her life’s work by hand. He was going to leverage all that compassionate charm against her under the auspices of a fact-finding mission.
Whoever the hell Dan Armstrong was, she had to give him credit. He was a worthy opponent.
Aunt Emily took up her cue again. She began to go on about how the tribe just wanted to be left in peace and get a little respect from the outside world. Rosebud tuned her out. Instead, she found herself studying Armstrong’s hands. He had calluses that told her he’d earned them the hard way. As he leaned back, she saw an impressive buckle that didn’t look store-bought. Actually, upon closer inspection, she didn’t think that his shirt was store-bought, either. She glanced down at his boots. Top-of-the-line alligator. They probably cost more than she took home before taxes last year. He wasn’t some office gopher, but a man who worked and made more than a nice living. Somehow, she knew he didn’t send anyone out to do his bidding. If this Dan Armstrong needed something done, he either asked the right person or he went and did it himself.
If she wasn’t careful, she was going to be caught staring. She wondered what he’d been doing in the valley, and immediately, the guilt began to build. God, what a mess. She’d assumed he was one of Cecil Armstrong’s mercenary “security” guards. That had been her second mistake. She couldn’t be sure it had been her last one.
Finally, as Aunt Emily began to wind up, she noticed that Armstrong was starting to fidget in his chair. All that coffee was finally getting to him. Normally, she’d take advantage of his discomfort to really rake him over the coals, but not today. She needed to get out of this room, far away from this unusual man, and figure out her next move.
On Dan’s way out the door, Joe still didn’t shake Armstrong’s hand, but Aunt Emily did. Then Dan shook Rosebud’s hand. “I look forward to working with you,” he said as he put the slightest pressure on her fingers. The warmth was still there, but this time it moved up her arm with a greater urgency until she was afraid her face was going to flush.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. She was afraid she was looking forward to it, too.
Three
Rosebud was sure she’d thrown the files in her office and locked the door, but that part was a little hazy. The next thing she was really conscious of was the soft breeze and the warm sun on her face as she stood in the parking lot, facing south. The breeze still had a touch of cold spring in it, which was just enough to let her mind clear a little.
The situation was far from out of control, she quickly decided. Dan Armstrong might be a different kind of danger to her, but he was still just a man, and a woman didn’t make it through law school without figuring out how to handle a man. She just needed to remember who he represented, not what he looked like or how he addressed her with all that “respect” and “compassion.”
“You okay, Rosie?” Joe’s hand rested on her shoulder.
“Oh, fine.” Not true, but she was a lawyer, after all. Never admit weakness, because weakness is defeat. She opened her eyes to see Aunt Emily standing before her, a serious look on her face. “What?”
Aunt Emily looked to Joe and then sighed. “That man…”
“I can handle him.”
Aunt Emily regarded her for a painful second. Then she leaned forward and grasped the sticks holding Rosebud’s braided bun into place. The whole thing unfurled like a sail. “He is different. He is a handsome man, dear. And you are a handsome woman.”
Something about the way she said it hit Rosebud funny. “What are you saying?”
“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,” Joe said, sounding surprisingly serious about it. The weight of his hand suddenly felt like a vise, pinning her in place.
“You want me to—what? Sleep with him?” When Aunt Emily didn’t say anything, Rosebud tried to take a step back, but Joe held her in place. The breeze—colder now, so cold it chilled her to the bone—caught the straggling remains of her braid and unwound it for her. “You want me to sleep with him?” Shame ripped through her.
Of 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 to that kiss that still hung in the air between them.
His hand tightened around her hair. Oh, no, he wasn’t about to let her off easy. “I thought lawyers were better liars.”
Now she was back on more familiar footing. “That’s funny. I always heard that liars were better lawyers.”
Her stomach turned in anticipation. She’d been kissed, of course, but she’d never been hit. She had no idea which way this would go.
Kiss me. The thought popped into her head from a deep, primitive part of her brain that had nothing to do with Aunt Emily or self-defense. How long had it been since she’d been properly kissed? How long had it been since she’d been this close to a man who looked this good, a man who smelled this good? That primitive part of her brain did a quick tally. Way too freaking long. That part didn’t care that this was the enemy, didn’t care that she’d perpetrated a crime upon his hat. It just cared that he was a man touching her hair, a man who seemed to see past all of her artificial “lawyer” constructs—a man less than three inches from her face.
Kiss me.
He didn’t. With a jerk of his head, he let her hair slip through his fingers and took an all-important step away from her. A sense of irrational rejection immediately took up battle with relief.
She wasn’t out of the woods yet, though. He was still watching her every movement, her every twitch. Her footing became more familiar. She could do this, whatever this was. “I do not take kindly to being a target,” he finally said into the wind.
“I don’t know of anyone who does.” She watched his face as she flipped her hair back over her shoulder. His eyes followed the movement. Why hadn’t he kissed her? “If I find out anything about it, I’ll let you know.”
He licked his lower lip. Yes, it did appear that a beautiful woman could muddle a man’s thinking. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and fished out a business card. “If you find out anything,” he said, the sarcasm dripping off every syllable, “give me a call. I’d like to press charges. That address is wrong, but the cell number is still good.”
Armstrong Holdings, the card said. Wichita Falls, Texas. Daniel Armstrong, Chief Operating Officer. Damn. He wasn’t just some errand boy, he operated the whole company. Did that include the part that wanted to build the dam? “Of course,” she tried to say smoothly as she tucked the card into her pocket behind her glasses. She had the feeling that pressing charges was the least of her worries. But a cell phone number wasn’t exactly an in. She needed something more. “Where are you staying now?”
The steel left his eyes a little. Yes, maybe they were both back on familiar footing now, because a smaller version of that arrogant smile was back. “At my uncle’s house.” He slouched back against the side of his truck, one thumb caught in a belt loop, the other holding the apparently forgotten hat. Now that the anger had left his face—or at least gone deeper under cover—he was right back into handsome territory. “You should come to dinner.”
“Excuse me?” Of all the things she thought he might say at that exact moment, dinner wasn’t even on the list.
“Look, I can appreciate you not—” he shrugged his shoulders in defeat “—liking my uncle very much. But he’s not such a bad guy. You should see for yourself.”
The spawn of Satan wasn’t such a bad guy? Even Dan didn’t sound like he believed it. With her last bit of self-control, she managed to keep her snort to herself. Besides, a dinner invitation was exactly the sort of in she’d been angling for. Aunt Emily would be thrilled that Rosebud had managed to get invited to that creepy ranch house. God only knew what sort of dirt she could dig up from the inside.
He was falling into her trap—or, she suddenly realized, she was falling into his. After all, two could play at this game.
He notched an eyebrow at her. Oh, yes, play was the operative word. She mustered up her best sly grin as she pretended to think about it. “Quite the peacemaker, aren’t you, Mr. Armstrong?”
“Mr. Armstrong is my uncle.” His smile broadened. “Please call me Dan, Ms. Donnelly.”
Suddenly, she decided she might not mind playing this game. After all, she could string him along with a wink and maybe a kiss—okay, definitely a kiss—without giving away anything, including her body. Just so long as she was the one doing the stringing. “Rosebud,” she corrected him as she batted her eyes and managed a faint blush.
His smile grew warmer—she thought. “Saturday night? Around seven?”
Two days? He wasted no time. She wouldn’t have the chance to find out anything about him before then. She’d be walking into the devil’s lair with nothing but her wits and her looks to keep her safe. Sometimes, she thought as she carefully considered his offer, that was all a girl needed. “All right. Saturday at seven.”
If she wasn’t careful, that smile was going to be her undoing. “Would you like me to pick you up?”
Chivalry had apparently not died. But there was no way in hell she wanted this man in this truck to be seen picking her up on the rez. The wrong people would get the wrong idea, and she had enough to deal with right now. “I know where it is.”
He nodded his head in acknowledgment, and she felt the heat from three paces. Definitely a kiss. At least one. One kiss to hold her for the next three years—was that too much to ask? “Good. I’ll see you then.”
She couldn’t tell if it was a threat or a promise.
Four
Dan sat in his truck, fighting the urge to head straight for the barn, saddle up Smokey and head for the valley. The expectation of bad days were the whole reason he’d driven himself and his horse up here from Texas. He wasn’t going to leave Smokey, his champion palomino stallion, at home—being around Cecil practically guaranteed he’d need to ride.
A bad day at the office was always made better by taking Smokey out to check on the Armstrong oil derricks. Dan paid people to make sure the derricks ran properly, but there was something about getting his own hands dirty that made him feel like the company was all his. Usually, by the time he rode back in, whatever problem that had been bugging him had either ceased to be important or a solution had presented itself. Sometimes both.
He could sure use a solution to his long list of current problems, starting with who’d fired on him. He had a feeling that if he camped out in that valley long enough, his Lakota princess would come back to the scene of the crime. He’d rather take his chances there than go in and see his uncle. Going in would mean reporting back, and reporting back would mean having to say something about Rosebud Donnelly, and saying something about Rosebud was… tricky.
He couldn’t be sure, but damned if that woman hadn’t looked just like his Indian princess, minus the horse. She had the nerve to do it, too. The cold-eyed determination he’d seen when he called her on it told him she had nothing but ice water running through her veins. No doubt about it, that was the bearcat Cecil wanted dealt with. She was why Dan was here. Regular lawyers couldn’t budge her. He was supposed to woo her, for God’s sake, with all his “talking.” He was supposed to talk his way into her panties, compromise her position and report back.
He was no lapdog.
His princess. Somehow, he knew there was more to her than just that. Underneath all that cold determination, he’d seen something in her eyes, something that had spoken of a deep sorrow, a deep regret. Something that made him think that if she had taken that shot, she hadn’t shot to kill.
He couldn’t be sure. But he had a hunch, and he hadn’t had one lead him astray in a long time.
But what was he supposed to do with it? Make wild accusations—the kind Rosebud was making? What the hell was that about—”Men have died”? Cecil was an ass—that much he knew—but he wasn’t a killer. He didn’t need to be one—it was just a dam.
Most every person has a reason, his mother’s voice whispered in his ear. If ever there was a situation where his mother’s sensibilities would come in handy, this was it. He turned his phone over in his hand, debating whether or not he should check in with Mom. On one hand, her opinion on these sorts of matters was worth its weight in oil. On the other hand, he’d have to tell her about the gunshot, and once he did that, she’d go all Mom on him, and she was plenty busy keeping the day-to-day operations going while he was up here dealing with the Cecil “situation.” She was the reason he had time to spend days taking notes with Rosebud. Nope. He couldn’t bring Mom in on this yet. He needed her focused on the meetings and deals he’d lined up before he left.
Dan thought hard, trying to review the interview as his mother would. Rosebud Donnelly’s voice had cracked and Emily Mankiller had touched her, like a mother comforting her child. His first instinct—she’d lost someone, maybe a husband—had been true. Maybe Rosebud had taken a shot at him to make up for a different shot, a better shot. That had to be it.
Did that even the score? Was she satisfied? No, he decided. A woman like that was never satisfied with just once. He smiled at the thought. But he didn’t think she was going to take another shot at him. He’d looked her in the eyes. Her mouth may have been lying, but he didn’t think her eyes were telling the same tale.
No, they’d been saying something… different. He adjusted his jeans. Damn it all. He shouldn’t have gotten so close to her, so close to the way she smelled, to those beautiful eyes the shade of a doe’s fur in the early spring. He never should have touched her hair, one long swath of silk. He never should have shaken her hand.
For that matter, he never should have come here.
And now, he thought in resignation, he had to go in there.
Time to get this over with. Dan grabbed his dead hat off the dash. He needed a new one, pronto. A man didn’t go without a hat where he was from.
“Well?” Dan hadn’t even made it to the door of the dining room. He sighed. There was no avoiding his uncle. The whole house stunk of him.
Dan was so busy mulling over the best way to handle telling Cecil about the situation that he didn’t see the man in the black leather jacket sitting in front of Cecil until he stood up. Another Lakota Indian? What was Cecil doing with someone who sure as hell looked like one of the very people suing Armstrong Holdings?
“Dan Armstrong,” he said, making the first move. A fellow could tell a lot about a person by his handshake.
“Shane Thrasher,” the stranger said. His grip started out rock-hard, but quickly went limp, like he was trying to hide something. Dan decided he didn’t like the man, an opinion reinforced by his uncle’s warm smile for Thrasher. Nope. Didn’t like him at all.
“Thrasher is—what are you, again?” Cecil opened a lockbox Dan hadn’t seen before and pulled out a thick file. The box looked old—like the house. Definitely not something Cecil normally had in his office.
“Half Crow,” Thrasher replied as he sat back down. He acted like he’d sat in that chair a lot.
Hadn’t Emily Mankiller said something about the Crow tribe? Something about Custer and Little Bighorn and Greasy Grass? What Dan needed was an eighth-grade history book, but if he was remembering correctly, according to Ms. Mankiller, the Crow were the ones who worked with the whites against the Lakota.
“That’s right. I can’t keep you all straight.” Dan winced at Cecil’s words, even though Thrasher didn’t blink. “Thrasher is my head of security. An inside man, if you will.”
Head of security? Dan looked him over. More like gun for hire. The bulge at his side wasn’t hard to see. Maybe Rosebud Donnelly had taken a shot at Dan, maybe she hadn’t. Dan had a hunch that he needed to be more worried about Shane Thrasher than a beautiful, conflicted lawyer. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
A muscle above Thrasher’s left eye twitched in response. It appeared the insincere feeling was mutual.
Cecil was studying a thick file. “What did you think of that Donnelly woman?”
“She’s trouble.” An honest assessment—but he couldn’t figure out if she was the good kind or the bad kind of trouble. More than likely, she was both.
Thrasher snorted in a way that struck Dan as too familiar. Wielding a red pen, Cecil made a note in the file. “Think you can handle her?”
For the first time in his life, Dan wasn’t sure if he could handle a woman. In the space of one afternoon, he’d been impressed by, furious with and turned on by Rosebud Donnelly. The combination was dangerous. “I invited her to dinner Saturday night.” Cecil’s eyebrows shot up. “She accepted,” he added. In the space of a second, he’d seen a crack in her ice-cold lawyer front. He had the feeling that keeping her on her toes was the only way to get through to her. That, and making sure she wasn’t armed. But he’d be damned if he’d bring up any of that in front of Thrasher.
“That’s my boy.” Cecil’s grin was wide. He looked downright happy, in an evil sort of way. “What did I tell you, Thrasher?”
“You were right,” Thrasher replied, the butt-kissing tone of his voice at odds with the way his face kept twitching.
Dan had the sudden urge to punch that face. Instead, he dug his fingers into the chair’s armrest. “I thought it would help if she could see you as a person, not just an adversary.” Although, with that grin, Dan was having trouble seeing Cecil as more than an adversary right now, too.
Cecil gave him the same look he’d been giving Dan since the day after his father’s funeral—the shut-up-and-be-an-Armstrong look. “I don’t give a rat’s ass how she sees me. I’m not running some feel-good love-in around here. I want you to find her weak spots. I want you to bring her down. Understood?”
Right then, Dan wished he’d never had to leave Texas. In Texas, he ran a tight ship. Armstrong Holdings was one of the twenty best places to work in Texas, or so some award hanging in the reception area said. But the South Dakota division of Armstrong Holdings seemed to be a different can of worms, and Dan was feeling particularly slimy today. He reminded himself that Cecil’s lack of ethics was the exact reason he’d come—there was no place for slime in any part of Dan’s company. “She won’t make me any copies of her files, but she’ll let me see them to take notes.”
A look that was dangerously close to victory flashed over Cecil’s face. “Well, then, that’s something, isn’t it? I underestimated you, son.”
Son. The chair creaked. Dan was in serious danger of breaking off an armrest or two. Thrasher had the nerve to snort in amusement.
“I’ve got a fundraiser in Sioux Falls Saturday night. It’ll be just the two of you,” Cecil went on as he made another note with the red pen. “I expect results.”
Dan would also like to see some results—but he wanted to believe his reasons were more noble. “Interested lust” was better than “cold-blooded scheming.” Wasn’t it? At least Thrasher hadn’t gotten this assignment. But then, Dan didn’t think Thrasher would get anywhere with Rosebud. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman who went for jerks.
“What about him?” Dan didn’t even look at Thrasher—he was too afraid he’d lose the last of his cool and punch him.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about me,” Thrasher replied as he stood, conveniently moving out of range. “In fact, I doubt you’ll ever see me again, Armstrong.”
Dan shot to his feet. But by the time he got turned around, Thrasher was gone. Dan swung back around, his fists ready.
“We’re all on the same side here,” was all Cecil said as he locked the box back up.
No, Dan didn’t think they were.
He didn’t know whose side he was on.
Five
Her aged, dented Taurus made it to the Armstrong ranch house. That was a good thing. And the weather wasn’t so hot that she was sweating in her suit, so that was also a good thing.
But beyond those two good things, Rosebud was grasping at straws. The whole situation had an air of unreality to it. Was she really about to have dinner—at his house—with the one-and-only Cecil Armstrong? With Dan Armstrong? Was she really this scared about it?
Oh, yeah, she was terrified. If she’d owned chain mail, she would have put it on under the jacket, but she didn’t, so she’d settled for a lower-cut-than-normal tank top in a soft-and-flirty pink under her gray suit. That was as close as she got to pretty when she was about to do battle.
She could do this. She was a lawyer, damn it. She’d argued a case before the South Dakota Supreme Court, for God’s sake—argued and won. She could handle the Armstrong men.
She grabbed her briefcase and put on her game face. But before she could get anywhere, the front door swung open and out stepped the cowboy of her dreams.
The white, button-up shirt was cuffed to the elbows, and the belt buckle sat just so on the narrow V of his waist. For a blinding second, she hoped he’d turn around and go right back inside, just so she could see what that backside looked like without a saddle or a sports coat to block the view. She thought she saw a loaded holster at his side, but she realized it was a cell phone. All that was missing was a white horse and a sunset to ride off into.
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