Colton's Folly (Native American contemporary romance) (14 page)

Abby tried to read his expression, but the coming darkness had put his face in shadow; still, she could hazard a guess as to what he was feeling.

“You don’t like that, do you?” she taunted. “You’re annoyed because they’ve accepted me, and that means you just might be wrong about me.” She yanked her hand out of his grasp and brushed past him toward the house. “Not that you’d ever admit it.”

She found the living room empty and a fire burning in the hearth. She sat down in the nearest chair and watched the flames. Damn the man, she thought. Damn!

Abby felt the fire creep inside, warming her and making her drowsy. It had been a long, busy day, and the temptation to doze in the chair was irresistible. She put her head back and closed her eyes with a sigh. Oh well, she thought, that ought to keep him away.

She let the sounds of movement and voices in other parts of the house fade into silence and held thoughts of Cat at bay while her body sank deeper into the chair and her mind drifted off into the blackness of sleep.

But before long something summoned her back, and she struggled to trace the source
--a tiny voice calling her name between sobs, and a hand patting hers and clutching at the sleeve of her blouse. Abby opened her eyes to see Penny standing beside her with tears streaming down her face.

Abby lifted the little girl onto her lap and held her tightly, crooning in her ear, rocking her and smoothing her tousled curls as she listened to the strange new sound of Penny’s voice, tiny and birdlike and full of fear and pain. Finally the child quieted, finding solace in her thumb, a gesture as unfamiliar to Abby as the sound of Penny’s voice.

“Why were you crying, baby?” Abby whispered, then kissed the top of Penny’s head. “I wish you would tell me.”

“I thought you was... deaded.”

So, Abby thought, it wasn’t a dream. “And you got scared?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you okay, now?”

“I guess so.”

“I’m sorry I scared you like that, but I’m glad you’re speaking to me. I like the sound of your voice.”

Penny snuggled closer and sighed with contentment. Abby held her, feeling the tiny heart beat against her breast and Penny’s warm breath at her throat. She closed her eyes and savored the feel of the child in her arms.

Sian would have been almost Penny’s age, she thought. I might have held her just this way and soothed away her fears. But she’s gone, and instead, I’m comforting someone else’s child, giving all my love to someone else’s little girl.

And because Penny
was
someone else’s child, Abby hoisted her on her shoulder and carried her into the dining room, where a group had gathered for seconds on coffee. She handed the child to her father and stepped back, unaware that Cat was standing just behind her. Penny wrapped her arms around her father’s neck and, after a last look at Abby, whispered in his ear. A broad grin lit his face as he whirled her around in sheer joy. Abby turned away as tears filled first his eyes and then her own.

She wanted to leave, but Cat stood in her way, looking from their faces to hers, as if trying to understand what had just happened. As silent tears rolled down her cheeks he put an arm around her shoulders and led her outside. Once they were down the steps and had reached the street he withdrew his arm, but he stayed close by.

They walked silently side by side for a few moments, then he said softly, “Buy you a cup of coffee?” She nodded absently, and he steered her toward the pickup.

They rode silently for a few minutes, Abby closed off and turned inside herself, and Cat strangely concerned by her obvious unhappiness, and also because he cared
--and shouldn’t.

“You got the kid to talk?”

“She had a scare,” Abby said simply.

“You ought to be pleased, not unhappy,” he said in a gruff voice.

“I’m not...unhappy.” I’m not, she thought, annoyed by his tone. But how could she explain to someone like him how it had felt to see a father and daughter so close and with so much love to give to each other when, at the age of seventeen, she had gone on a search for her own father, only to be rejected by him and sent on her way? She shrugged and repeated, “I’m not unhappy.”

Some twenty minutes later they pulled up to a small combination restaurant and pub known as Arly’s that stood about a block from the center of town. Abby looked at the yellow and green neon sign and the beer logos shining in the front window and heard a hum of sound emanating through the closed door. She looked at Cat.

“I’m not sure I’m up to a crowd just now.”

He gave her a searching look. “You got a problem being seen in public with me?”

She sighed. “For a smart man you can be awfully dumb sometimes.” She brushed past him and walked toward the entrance, then turned and waited for him to join her, watching his slow, loose-hipped walk, like a cat on the prowl, she thought. Like his name. He reached around her and opened the door, then held her under the elbow as they walked into the small, crowded room.

“The joint’s jumping,” he remarked ruefully. “Sorry, I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

Abby shrugged. “It’s Saturday night.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Guess I forgot.”

Surprised, Abby smiled. “How long has it been?”

“A while,” he answered. “I don’t come into town unless I have to.”

“Then why tonight?”

This time he shrugged. “I thought it might cheer you up.”

Abby smiled. “Thank you.”

He grinned and ducked his head. “’Tweren’t nothin’, ma’am.”

He found them a table in a corner away from the crush of people. “You want coffee, or something more potent?”

“Coffee’s fine, thanks,” she replied, looking around at the couples dancing to a jukebox, people standing three deep at the bar and a noisy group some twenty feet away. Cat returned from the bar and set down two cups of steaming coffee, then sat across the table from her. “Would you like something to eat?” he asked.

Abby laughed. “After the meal your mother made? I won’t eat for a week!”

The noise level rose and fell with a strange rhythm in the dimly lit, smoky room, reaching an almost deafening pitch, then dropping back to a low murmur before picking up again. Behind it all the jukebox played country and western music, and couples moved slowly around the center of the room.

“Would you like to dance?” Cat asked.

Abby raised an eyebrow. “Would you be insulted if I said no?”

He looked at her smiling face and answered with a smile of his own. “No. Despite what you said before, I’m not dumb.”

“Good.” She rose from her seat. “Then I’ll dance with you.”

She followed him onto the dance floor and stepped into his arms. They moved to the music, silent for the most part, until Cat said into her ear, “You’re just the right size, you know?”

Abby chuckled. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

He held her at arm’s length, searching her face, but for what, Abby didn’t know. Just as he pulled her close again a hand reached out and tapped Cat on the shoulder. Startled, both he and Abby turned to find a bearded young man standing beside them with a grin on his face.

“Mind if I cut in?” he asked in a voice husky with alcohol.

Cat looked at Abby, caught her warning glance and answered softly, “Sorry, friend, not this time.”

The man turned to Abby. “How come a pretty thing like you wants to hang around with the likes of him? Surely you can do better than that.”

Abby saw the dark look on Cat’s face and the hardening of his eyes, and put a hand firmly on his arm. He turned to her and inclined his head in silent assent, quietly leading her back to their table.

By the time they had seated themselves again the man was on his way over to them. He pulled out the empty chair next to Abby and sat down, totally ignoring Cat’s presence. He leaned toward her, and she pulled back, repelled by his whiskey-scented breath.

“Tell me something, darlin’, he got anything better between his legs than us white guys?”

Cat reacted almost before the words registered on Abby’s brain. He grabbed a handful of the man’s shirtfront and hauled him out of his seat, slamming him up against the dark paneled wall behind them.

“Watch how you talk to the lady, creep, or I might have to teach you some manners.”

Then he swung the man around and shoved him in the direction of the table where his friends were silently watching the scene. Cat looked down at Abby, whose face had taken on a ghostly hue in the dim light.

“I think we’d better go, Abby.”

He coolly went over to the bar and dropped a couple of bills to pay for their coffee, then took Abby’s arm to steer her toward the door.

“Why don’t you lay off the white women?” the man called out in a room gone suddenly totally silent. “Stick to your own kind, you half-breed son of a bitch.”

With two long steps Cat crossed the room. Then, in a lightning-fast move, he smashed his fist into the man’s midriff. As the drunk doubled over with pain and the effort to draw breath, Cat hit him with a blow across his jaw that flattened him. Without bothering to look at the man sprawled on the floor, Cat held a hand out to Abby. She came to him, and he led her out of the room in which the only sound was now the low hum of the jukebox.

Once outside, Cat paused for a second and took a deep breath, then let it out silently. Then they walked to the truck and started for home. Abby found herself unable to speak, still in a kind of shock from the episode.

Finally Cat spoke. “I’m sorry you had to be a part of that. I never should have taken you there.”

She looked at his profile and the deadly hands on the steering wheel. “Do things like that often happen to you?”

“Often enough.” He glanced over at her for a moment, then looked at the road again. “I figured you for a street fighter, but you looked kind of shook-up in there.”

Abby shook her head. “It wasn’t the fight. I’ve seen worse. And it wasn’t even what that stupid jerk said.”

“Then what was it?”

Abby hesitated, then answered. “It was the fact that it happened... in this day and age. The attitude behind the words. That’s what stunned me. I guess I couldn’t believe it was happening.”

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Believe it, because it happens all the time. I’ve been hearing crap like that since I left the reservation at fifteen to go to school. I left college because of it. I h
eard it in boot camp, and in the military, and I’ve been hearing it ever since I got back. I should be used to it by now.”

“But you’re not?”

He shook his head. “Just when I begin to think it doesn’t matter, something like tonight happens and I realize...” He left the thought unfinished.

“Is that why you came back to the reservation? Because you knew you’d be accepted there?”

“Accepted? Lord, lady, are you naive!” His voice was bitter, his anger obvious. “They didn’t accept me any more easily than the white community does. I’ve been under a microscope all my life while the leaders tried to figure out if my loyalties lay with my mother’s people or my father’s. They watch me even closer now, just in case I show any signs of slipping and selling out to the white man. I’ve never found the word acceptance in any book I’ve ever read.”

Chapter
8

Left to her own devices the following Saturday, Abby was in her kitchen making sandwiches when a short rap sounded at her front door. Simultaneously she heard the door slam back on its hinges, a heavy booted step enter her living room and Cat roaring out her name.

She stood in the kitchen doorway and asked quietly, “What have I done now?”

He hadn’t seen her in a week; he realized now that he’d missed her and that, as angry as he was, he was still glad to see her again. His eyes took in the grubby sweatshirt and paint-spattered jeans, the bare feet and tousled hair, the dab of white on the tip of her nose. In his eyes, she was beautiful.

“What are those kids doing next door?” he asked with forced patience.

“What does it look like?” She didn’t want another confrontation, but she could feel one coming.

“Why are they in there slinging paintbrushes?” he recited slowly, then discarded any pretense of tolerance. “Is that your idea of cheap labor or something?”

“The school was badly in need of paint. What would you suggest?”

“Do it yourself,” he answered sourly.

“I started to,” she replied, matching his tone exactly, then assuming a normal tone, “but they volunteered their help. When we finished they decided to decorate the walls with murals. It was their idea, and I didn’t see any harm in it.”

“They ought to be doing other things,” he persisted. “They’ve got other responsibilities.”

“It’s Saturday, Cat.” She took a step closer, and her resentment became more evident. “Did you see anyone in that room who should be somewhere else at this moment, working on some other project?”

He thought and shook his head.

“Have any of the parents complained because this is keeping their children from their chores?” Again he responded in the negative, and she prodded, “Is there one child, even one, who looks as if he or she has been beaten, blackmailed or otherwise coerced into being there?”