Beauty and the Brain (34 page)

“It’s not that I don’t have the normal urges
common to both men and women,” she hastened to assure him. “But I’m
not going to jeopardize my reputation, my career, or my morals for
a mere fling.”

This time she was sure she heard him groan,
as if he were in pain. She pulled away from him, worried all of a
sudden. “Oh, Colin! Are you uncomfortable? Are you cold? Are you
hurt?”

“No.” His voice sounded strange. “I’m
fine.”

She squinted at where she assumed his face
was. She could barely see it, but it looked to her as if his eyes
were squeezed shut and his mouth had scrunched up. He really did
seem to be in some kind of pain. “Are you sure?”

He nodded.

Because she thought he might be fibbing in
order to spare his own male vanity, she reached up and caressed his
cheek with her hand. He sighed into her palm, and she smoothed her
fingers across his lips. There was something wrong; she knew
it.

“Tell me what’s the matter, Colin,” she
urged gently. “I can sense you aren’t feeling well.”

“I’m all right.”

If he got any more clipped in his speech,
he’d be barking like a dog. Brenda frowned into the night. “No,
you’re not. Tell me what’s the matter. Please. I want to help
you.”

He sucked in a huge breath and let it out
all at once. “If you really wanted to help me, you’d go to bed with
me.”

She jerked away from him and stared hard
through the blackness and into his face. She suppressed her first
urge, which was to sock him in the jaw, when she saw how truly
miserable he looked. Because she didn’t want any misunderstandings
to exist between them, she said severely, “And I’d like to oblige
you, Colin, but I shan’t do so. Not unless you offer me more than a
single night of passion in order to slake your lust. I’m not that
sort of woman.”

“I know that. Now.”

She believed him. She also believed he was
unhappy about it. She sniffed. Too bad for him, the rat. If he
loved her, he’d ask her to marry him. But no. All he wanted was to
go to bed with her. It was all very upsetting. Standing, she shook
out her skirt. “I think we ought to go back to the lodge.”

“I don’t think I can walk.”

She squinted down at him. He still looked as
if he were suffering from something dire. Her heart had taken to
aching, and she wasn’t sure she believed him “Why not?”

“Sit next to me again and I’ll show
you.”

She put her fists on her hips and continued
to stare at him for a moment before she complied, being careful not
to do anything that might be remotely construed as seductive.

“What do you mean?”

He took her hand and laid it carefully on
his thigh. She jumped up again, as if she’d touched burning coals.
“My God! Is that what I think it is?”

He nodded miserably.

“Oh.” She didn’t know whether to be pleased
or appalled.

“I—ah—didn’t know.”

He groaned.

For no good reason she could comprehend, she
felt guilty. “I’m sorry, Colin.”

“Right.”

“I didn’t mean to let you think—I’d—I
mean—”

“Never mind. I know what you mean.” He took
a ragged breath. “Not your fault.”

“I should say it’s not.” That didn’t sound
very nice. But Brenda didn’t know how to be nice under these
circumstances. The whole situation was new and bizarre and out of
her realm. While it was true men had tried to seduce her before,
she’d always been able to put them off with a joke. And if a joke
didn’t work, she’d shame them into letting her alone. She felt
neither like joking with nor shaming Colin. The truth of the matter
was that she wanted him as a partner in a sexual liaison almost—but
obviously not quite—as much as he wanted her.

“This is very distressing,” she said,
beginning to gnaw on her knuckles. “Are you sure you can’t walk? We
can’t stay here all night.” Although it sounded like a sort of
romantic thing to do—except that, if anyone learned about it,
nobody would ever believe they hadn’t done what Colin wanted to
do.

“Give me a minute,” he pleaded. “I’ll be all
right in a minute.”

Hmmm. Is that how these things worked?
Brenda had never been this close to capitulation before, so she had
no experience—and none of the women who’d talked to her about this
sort of situation had ever refused to consummate the act.
Fiddlesticks. “Very well. I’ll—ah—walk around the clearing for a
second or two.”

“Don’t get lost again.”

That wasn’t kind of him. She decided not to
say so. “I won’t.”

She thought he nodded but didn’t lean close
enough to be able to tell for sure. She didn’t dare; she feared he
might take her leaning as some kind of seductive ploy on her part,
and she didn’t want to tease the poor fellow any more tonight. She
hadn’t intended to tease him in the first place.

Which irked her. It wasn’t her fault men
found her attractive. It wasn’t her fault men’s libidos—not to
mention their egos—were such that they assumed any woman to be fair
game. It was probably men’s uncontrolled sexual natures that had
forced women into being creatures whom men believed were designed
solely for their pleasure. This was why men liked to believe women
incapable of serious thought: because if men acknowledged women’s
equality of intellect, they would no longer be able to think of
them as objects. Brutes. They were all brutes.

She was becoming downright irritated by the
time Colin at last struggled to his feet. “Better now?” she asked
sarcastically and then could have bitten her tongue. She didn’t
want to start another fight.

“Yes. I think so.” She heard him take a deep
breath. “Thank you for being understanding.”

That was nice of him, especially when she’d
lately been on the verge of kicking him with her heavy walking
shoe. “You’re welcome.” Deciding that wasn’t enough, she went on to
say, “Thank you for coming to find me.” No one else had thought to
do so. Then again, she hadn’t called attention to the fact that she
was going out for a walk; probably nobody else knew she was missing
to begin with.

“You’re welcome.”

This conversation was leading nowhere in a
hurry. With a sigh, Brenda said, “Shall we go back?”

“Yes.”

But not, it soon became evident to her,
immediately. Colin pulled that torch thing out of his pocket and
monkeyed with it for several minutes. Brenda, who was anxious to
return to the lodge because tomorrow would be another full day of
filming, restrained her impatience with something of an effort.
When he finally got the blasted thing to send out a thin stream of
light, she expelled a breath of relief.

Needless to say, her show of impatience
vexed him. He glared at her. “It will be much easier to find our
way back if we have some light.” His voice was snippy.

“I’m sure of it.” Hers was hard.

A mood of deep depression had descended upon
Brenda by the time they straggled back to the Cedar Crest Lodge. It
was past midnight, and they had to awaken the night watchman to
unlock the front doors for them. The fact that he did so with a
broad smirk on his face did nothing to ease Brenda’s state of
gloom.

“This is for you.”

Brenda felt ghastly the morning after her
night in the woods with Colin. As ever, though, she put on a happy
face, even though she was nearly asleep on her feet, her head
ached, her eyes burned, and she wanted to sleep more than she
wanted food, money, or sex with Colin.

When Jerry Begay’s voice penetrated the fog
in her brain, however, she perked up a trifle. She saw he was
holding out the baseball he’d brought with his band to the Peerless
lot. It was, evidently, a gift for her to remember them by.

Brenda was delighted. “Oh! Thank you, Mr.
Begay. How nice.”

“That’s very nice of you, Jerry.”

She wasn’t overjoyed when she heard Colin’s
confirmation of her words. In point of fact, she felt like turning
and hollering to him that she could speak for herself. She held in
her temper and her hot words and merely smiled at Jerry.

“You’re a good sport,” Jerry said simply.
“You play baseball like a man.”

In her present state of exhaustion, Brenda’s
emotions were perilously close to the surface. That she’d managed
to earn Jerry’s respect and make a friend of him touched her so
deeply, she nearly cried. Having learned to be strong over the
years—and knowing from Colin how little most Indians showed their
emotions except in the bosoms of their families—she didn’t
humiliate herself thus, but smiled and said, “May I give you
something, too, Jerry? I’d like to.”

He smiled. “Yes. Thank you.”

She’d had no idea that Jerry would give her
a gift, but she recalled reading that Indians—which tribes of
Indians, she had no idea—valued tributes, so she’d prepared one for
him already. She’d have asked Colin about it before offering it to
Jerry but feared he’d only sneer at her. She wasn’t up to being
sneered at this morning.

Therefore, she’d decided to give Jerry a
small music box she liked a lot. It played “Polly Wolly Doodle,”
which she didn’t expect any self-respecting Navajo would
understand, but she didn’t either, and the tune was lively, so she
guessed it would do. Then, although it had felt like vanity at the
time, she’d also decided to give Jerry a photograph of herself.
Signing the photograph, “With fondest wishes to Jerry Begay, in
memory of working in the pictures together. Brenda Fitzpatrick,”
she hoped it, along with the music box, would be appropriate gifts
and might convey a modicum of her appreciation of the band’s
professionalism during the filming of their scenes.

Now, as the Navajo band began climbing into
the motorized trucks hired to return them to Los Angeles, where
they’d take a train back to Arizona Territory, she realized she’d
left her gifts inside the lodge. Frustrated with her carelessness,
which had probably been a result of her state of exhaustion and
unhappiness, she said, "Oh, dear, I’ll be back in just a little
minute. I left the things on a table in the parlor.”

Jerry nodded. She didn’t even look to see if
Colin was still there when she turned to retrieve the gifts. To
heck with Colin.

It didn’t take her more than three minutes
to accomplish her trip. When she got back to the truck, she stopped
short when she saw Jerry and Colin chatting. Unless she was out of
her mind, Colin was blushing! Now why should that be? Then Jerry
saw her, she noted the twinkle in his eye, and she knew exactly
why.

Darn it to the earth and skies, Jerry Begay
had deduced that Colin and she were attracted to each other.
Perhaps he even knew they’d stayed out late in the woods together
last night. Indians were supposed to know things like that, weren’t
they? Obviously he’d said something to Colin about it, too. How
embarrassing.

Suppressing her impulse to turn tail and run
back into the lodge, Brenda donned her most blasé, nonchalant,
friendly pose. “I hope you will accept these small gifts, Mr.
Begay. I sincerely appreciate your help in making this
picture.”

Jerry nodded. He seemed especially pleased
with the music box, which he turned over and over in his big rough
hands. Brenda showed him how to wind it up. “See? It plays music
every time you open the lid as long as you keep it wound up. But
don’t wind it too tightly, or the spring will break.”

The Navajo nodded again. He peered at the
photograph unsmilingly, and Brenda hoped she hadn’t violated some
sort of cultural taboo by giving it to him. He said, “Thank you,”
and she guessed she hadn’t.

With one last handshake for Colin, Jerry
climbed into the truck. Brenda heard the driver cranking away at
the motor and the motor catch. The driver hurried up into the cab
of the vehicle, the truck started down the mountainside, followed
by the second truck, both vehicles taking the villains of
Indian
Love Song
with them. She shook her head, thinking it really
wasn’t fair to cast those good men as villains. There was nothing
to be done about it now.

She stood there in the dust churned up by
the trucks’ wheels, waving, until the trucks were out of sight.
There were lots of farewells trailing after the band of Navajos,
since Martin and the rest of the
Indian Love Song
cast and
crew had come outside to see the Indians off.

There was nothing the least bit villainous
about those fellows. They’d been polite and quiet and gentlemanly
in a way that had seemed utterly natural. Colin had told her that
they were behaving as they always behaved. In other words, they’d
never been anything but themselves, yet they’d made friends of the
entire crew—although they were wildly competitive on the baseball
field.

It was an interesting phenomenon. Brenda,
who had never, since her twelfth year, felt able to be herself, had
also made friends of all with whom she worked. In her case, the
result had been a lot more difficult to achieve.

Of course, Indians, no matter of what tribe,
were a conquered race. She supposed white men, who enjoyed feeling
superior to everyone else on earth, now considered it politic to be
gracious to them. She, on the other hand, was merely a freeborn
white woman and remained an object that must be subjugated to the
white man’s will.

Boy, was she being melodramatic this
morning. To counteract her mood, she turned to Martin once the
trucks were out of sight, again ignoring Colin. “What’s up for
today, Martin? Are we doing the reconciliation scene?”

“That’s it,” Martin confirmed. He rubbed his
hands with pleasure. “The picture’s almost in the can.”

And then they’d all go home, and she’d never
see Colin Peters again. Her eyes filled with tears so suddenly, she
didn’t have time to stop them. She wiped them away immediately.

Good heavens, she was a total wreck.

She hadn’t wiped her eyes quickly enough to
deceive Martin, who looked at her sharply. “Is anything the matter,
Brenda? Are you not feeling well?”