Follow the Sun (26 page)

Gallatins. Cherokees. James Tall Wolf. If it hadn’t been for him she would have escaped last night. It was his fault she’d lost half a million dollars that day.

He’d said she didn’t know anything about being a Cherokee. Well, she’d learn, and she’d be a better Cherokee than he was.

Erica stood up, filled with grim resolve. “Marie, get me a plane ticket to North Carolina.”

“What’s in North Carolina?”

Erica lifted the medallion and looked at it thoughtfully. “My tribe.”

CHAPTER 3

E
RICA HADN’T HAD
a clear-cut mental image of Dove Gallatin’s house; she had even wondered if Dove had a house, because Dove’s lawyer, T. Lucas Brown, hadn’t mentioned a home or personal belongings in the will.

But here it was, perched halfway up a mountain in a little grove of oaks and maples, a small log-and-clapboard structure with a front porch so big that it looked like a jutting chin on an otherwise well-proportioned face.

She left her rental car under an enormous oak in the yard and walked around, eyeing the weedy ground for snakes. There was an old barn nearby, still in good condition; there was a concrete pad where a fuel-oil tank had once sat; there was an overgrown garden plot and a black mound, where decades of household trash had been burned.

The home’s windows and doors were boarded over with new two-by-sixes; whoever had done the care-taking had wanted to make certain no one got inside.
But the place looked solid enough to withstand almost anything; and that fact alone made her like it immediately.

Erica discovered a small back porch with a concrete well in one corner. The well was boarded over, but an old electric pump was still in place atop it. Charmed, she studied it with an engineer’s interest in quaint gadgets.

Then she returned to the big front porch and stood gazing in awe at a panorama of rounded blue-green mountains so vibrant that a painter might have just finished giving them their spring coat. Delicate white clouds hugged the tops of the taller ones, and low in the valleys a late-afternoon fog was already gathering.

Erica shivered with delight. She understood now why these were called the Smokies: Mists shrouded them as if preserving ancient secrets. These mountains were older than the Rockies, more gentle in their grandeur, more hospitable. And the Cherokees had loved them for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.

She squinted at a hawk gliding overhead and took a deep breath of air so clean, it made her feel fresh inside. Yes, she understood why people would fight to stay there. A friendly meowing sound caught her ear, and she looked down to find a fat calico cat walking toward her across the porch.

“Hello, kitty.” She knelt to pat it. “Are you a Cherokee elf in a cat’s body?”

The distant crunch of wheels on gravel made her look up anxiously. Dove’s driveway was nearly a quarter-mile long; it occurred to Erica that she was effectively trapped at the end of it.

She stood, watching closely as a police car rounded the last bend, then sighed with relief as she noted that the car belonged to the tribal authorities. She studied the tall man who climbed out, and a puzzling sense of recognition tugged at her.

Dressed in neat slacks and a short-sleeved shirt bearing official emblems, he might have been an officer from any small-town police force, except that he
was Cherokee. Suddenly she understood. He looked like an older, more solemn version of James, full of the same controlled power and easy self-confidence.

Nodding to her, he strolled to the foot of the porch steps and stopped. “Ma’am, you lookin’ for someone in particular?” he asked in a gravelly drawl.

Erica smiled. “Word travels fast around here.”

He nodded again. “I heard at the motel that you’d asked about this place. And the neighbors called when they saw you go up the driveway.”

She puzzled over that. “What neighbors? I didn’t see another driveway near here.”

“Boy was on his way back from a fishing trip. Saw you from the woods.”

Erica’s spine tingled. The forest suddenly seemed alive with watchful eyes. “I’m a relative of Dove Gallatin’s. I just wanted to see her house. I thought I’d talk to the new owners, but I see that there aren’t any.”

“A relative of Dove’s?” His voice showed his surprise.

Erica explained the family history, and as she did, his face took on a pleased expression. He really was a handsome man, and he reminded her more and more of James.

“So I’ve come down for about a week to learn about my Cherokee history,” she said in conclusion. “And I’d like to know what became of Dove Gallatin’s possessions—particularly anything that has to do with the family, such as diaries or a Bible.”

The officer held out a hand. “Let me introduce myself. I’m the reservation’s director of community services—fire, police, and sanitation. And I’m the U.S. deputy marshall around here. Name’s Travis Tall Wolf.”

Erica clenched his big paw so fiercely that he frowned at her in discomfort. “Do you have a brother named James?”

An odd wariness gleamed in his eyes. “Yes.”

“I—well, I know him. We met a couple of days ago at a business dinner in Washington.”

Travis Tall Wolf looked relieved. “Then he told you.”

“Told me what?”

He stopped looking relieved. “About Dove.”

“No.” She paused, a sense of dread sinking in her stomach.
We almost ravished each other in an elevator, he tackled me in an alley, but we’re strangers
.

“What about Dove?” she asked in an uneasy voice.

Travis looked at her grimly. “James owns her place. And everything she left in it.”

J
AMES KNEW THERE
was trouble the second he heard his brother’s voice on the phone. For one thing, Travis never called; he left that social nicety to their sisters. He and Travis hadn’t had anything pleasant to say to each other in years.

Travis didn’t beat around the bush. “Erica Gallatin has moved into Dove’s house,” he told James. “I helped her pry the boards off the front door and I got the power hooked up for her.”

“What?” James sat speechless and listened to his brother’s explanation. When Travis finished, James had almost conquered disbelief. Erica Gallatin was related to Dove. But what in hell was she trying to do about it? “She can’t stay in Dove’s house.”

“Then you come down and make her leave. It’s her and her cousins’ place by tradition.”

“It’s my place by law.”

“You’re a white man now, huh? Always call in the law to settle your personal problems? Or will you just try to solve your problems with money, like always?”

James bit back harsh words. He grieved for the days when he and Travis had been best friends, before tragedy sent them on different missions in life.

Travis had been his idol. Travis could have played college football and probably pro, too, but he’d joined
the marines right of high school and had been sent immediately to Vietnam.

Three years later, when James turned eighteen, he’d been determined to join the marines too. Then Travis had come home with a piece of shrapnel buried permanently in one leg, and Travis had vowed to punch him silly if he didn’t go to college and play football.

“Be somebody important and make us proud,” Travis had told him. “You’ll do more for your people that way than I ever did.”

James had become somebody important and for a few years he’d made the family and his tribe proud. They’d never know the price he had paid to do that.

Now Travis spoke softly, fiercely. “The old man wants to see you. Becky and Echo want to see you.” He paused. “So do I. I don’t know if this Gallatin woman is sincere or not, but if she gets you back home, she’s worth the trouble.”

James gave a humorless chuckle. That was the problem—she
was
worth the trouble. “I’m on my way.”

E
RICA LEFT THE
motel in town and drove back to Dove’s place early the next morning, armed with a crowbar, hand tools, and camping gear. She was in her element, wearing cut-off jeans, an old T-shirt, and ratty tennis shoes, her hair pulled up in a ponytail, and thick leather gloves covering her hands. She went to work on the boards barricading the windows, fueled by righteous anger.

How had James dared to buy this place out from under an old woman who needed money? How had he dared to try to put her in a nursing home against her will? The day before she was supposed to leave here. Dove Gallatin had walked into the woods, sat down under a tree, and died. Of grief, the staff at the motel said.

Erica wrenched another board free from its moorings and slammed it to the ground. Travis Tall Wolf
hadn’t told her the complete story, only that James had bought Dove’s home and furnishings.

She walked around behind the house and began jamming the crowbar under the boards on a back window. She’d buy this place back. James Tall Wolf had a lot of explaining to do.

Erica flipped a set of Walkman earphones over her head, attached the tape player to the waistband of her cut-offs, and returned to work listening to the sound track from
Phantom of the Opera
.

The Phantom was singing his solo about revenge, when a hand grasped her arm.

Erica screamed and swung around with the crowbar raised in defense. James intercepted it with his free hand, jerked it out of her grip, and threw it into the weeds behind him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.

She gaped at him and stood there with her hand in midair. He looked tired and rumpled in loose khaki trousers and a wrinkled blue sport shirt; he must have traveled hard and fast to fly down this early and make the long drive from the nearest airport, at Asheville.

“I’m fixing up my family home,” she said between gritted teeth. “I want to buy it from you.”

His face was a mask of rigid control as he stared down at her through narrowed eyes that crinkled at the corners, not the least bit merrily.

Erica put the earphones around her neck and snapped off the tape player. The sounds of the spring day pushed eerily into the silence; katydids singing in the rhododendrons, birds chirping, her breath rasping like sandpaper on concrete.

“I said I want to buy this place.”

“No.”

“No one in town understands why you want it. Mr. Tall Wolf.”

“That’s none of their business.”

“You took advantage of a woman who was almost ninety years old! My grandfather’s cousin! I’m not sure what relationship that makes her to me, but Dove Gallatin
was my family, just about the
only
family I have on the Gallatin side, and I intend to protect what was hers!”

During the tirade his gaze had gone to the thick gold medallion that lay near the center of her chest. He reached for it boldly, the backs of his fingers brushing across her breasts as he lifted the medallion for inspection.

Erica shivered with anger and frustration over the intimate way he always invaded her personal space. “That’s none of
your
business,” she told him, and took the medallion out of his hand.

She slipped it under the neck of her T-shirt and frowned at the way his eyes followed its journey.

“Where’d you get it?” he demanded.

“From Dove. And I want to know what it means. What did you do with her belongings? If she left any personal papers, I want them.”

He smiled sardonically. “They wouldn’t do you any good without an interpreter. Dove only wrote in Cherokee.”

“There
are
papers, then. Where are they?”

“In storage.”

“What did you do with her furniture?”

“I didn’t do anything with it,” he retorted. “Dove gave most of it away; what she left is in storage too.”

Erica made a sharp gesture at the house and land. “Why would a man like you want a place like this? Did you con her out of—”

He cut her off with a brow lifted in warning and a look that could have started a fire. “I never conned her out of anything. We made an honest deal, and I paid her more than the place was worth. I plan to live here someday.”

“You’re kidding. Your brother said you haven’t been home in four years. And not very often before that.”