Mystic Cowboy: Men of the White Sandy, Book 1 (21 page)

“Your coffee makes itself.”

She giggled. “You didn’t know that?” The bed squeaked again. Sounded like she was standing now. “Coffee does that now. I’m beginning to think you have a predilection for towels.”

“Pink’s not my color.” Yeah, right, this was all normal.
Normal in that temporary, short-lived kind of way
, he thought as his gut took another turn south. “Sorry. It was the only one I could find.”

Maybe not normal. She didn’t say anything, and it didn’t sound like she was moving either. And still, he couldn’t turn around.

“Rebel?” All traces of light-hearted banter were gone now, and he heard the worry, loud and clear.

And then he remembered murmuring
my love
last night.

“Is everything okay?” she went on, sounding smaller and smaller.

Shit and double shit. Not only was this whole thing doomed, he was dooming it a whole lot faster by being an A-number-one asshole. “Yeah, yeah.”
Suck it up. Suck it up and take it like a man.
He turned around.

Triple shit. Madeline—his Madeline—was standing two feet from him, that sheet wound around her as she clutched the front with one hand. Her hair was wild, curls springing out in all directions with happy abandon, which made the confusion in her eyes that much more painful. She looked like something out of a Degas painting, the form and the function of art embodied with the soul of a woman.

God, it hurt to look at her.

Then, right before his eyes, she was gone, and Dr. Mitchell was standing before him. One hand jabbed onto a hip, and the confusion was erased with furrowed brows and set lips. “Look,” she began, and he only heard a whisper of tremor in her voice, “if this is about last night...” But she couldn’t finish the sentence without closing her eyes, like she was bracing for the worst.

Not last night, he wanted to tell her. Not last night. This morning. The world was a different place in the light of day. “I was just thinking we should get going. Nobody’s waiting on us at the clinic, you know.”

Eyes still scrunched shut, she nodded. “Sure. Yeah.” Then those ice-blues opened, and Madeline was right there, scared. Of him. Of what he would say. “Will I...” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and started over with a hell of a lot more bravado than he was expecting. “Will I see you again tonight?” like he was scheduling a check-up, not like he was her lover.

Shit, he hadn’t even gotten to tonight. The list of things he had to do today began to run through his head like a Rolodex at top speed. Steinman at the gallery wanted five more bags before the Christmas season. He needed to take the rest of the groceries to the elders who had no way of getting to the party last night. And then there was Albert. “I have to check on Albert and start on the sweat lodge.” That was the top of the list. Albert couldn’t wait.

That look would have been tearful if she hadn’t been so mean about it. She was doing it again, ignoring what her body was saying. “Of course. I know you’re not used to being at certain places at certain times. You’re quite busy.” She turned away from him, that sloped shoulder filling the room with cold. “I’ll be ready in twenty minutes, if you can wait that long.”

The unspoken words—if not, he could just walk his ass out of here—hung in the room long after she shut the bathroom door with enough force to shake the jerry-rigged walls.

He’d waited six years for a woman like her.

He knew he’d have to wait for forever to find another one who even came close.

After a drive that gave new meaning to the word
chilly
, they made it to the clinic by 7:40. And the whole time, Rebel was trying to figure out what the hell he should do and getting nowhere.

He felt like the best course of action would be to go into the sweat lodge and ask Albert about it, but the lodge wasn’t for him. It was for Albert. That’s what he had to remember, he decided as she parked the Jeep. Right now, he had to focus on Albert. Madeline would be here long after Albert had crossed on over.

“I don’t see him,” Madeline said in that same pissy tone of voice. “I thought he said he was going to be here, guarding the place.”

Rebel was going to owe an apology to Tara and Clarence for getting Madeline into this pissy of a state. He didn’t have much left after the grocery run—only a couple hundred bucks. Maybe if he gave her the money left over from the bag? That would still be enough for some supplies, wouldn’t it?

“Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not here.”

On command, part of the wall separated from the shadows on the west side of the building and Nobody stepped into the sun.

Madeline gasped a little but kept her composure. She just took it all in stride, he thought again, and his gut ached a little more. He’d never find another woman like her.

“Morning, Nobody.”

Nobody tipped his hat. “Ma’am.”

Madeline looked at him like he was a teenager and curfew had been about twelve hours ago. “Did you have a quiet night?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She let go a weighty breath. She hadn’t seemed the least bit worried about potential vandals last night, but she still seemed relieved. “Did you write a list of symptoms like I asked?”

Nobody fished something the color of a paper bag out of his back pocket. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, handing it over.

“A paper bag?”

Rebel bit back the grin as Madeline’s scowl deepened. Later, he’d apologize to Nobody too. Hell, at the rate he was going, he was going to owe the whole tribe an apology for unleashing the mad doctor on them.

“All I had, ma’am,” Nobody replied, managing to look sheepish about it. Then his head snapped up and he stared off down the road. “How long will it take?” he asked as he began to edge back into the shadows.

“Four to six weeks,” she replied, looking a little concerned. “Where are you going?”

“Someone’s coming,” was the only answer she got before he was gone.

Seconds later, Clarence’s truck rattled around the corner. “Nobody was never here,” Rebel whispered as he too took a step away from her. Madeline stiffened at the motion.

Which was ridiculous, after all. They’d left together last night, and were standing here, together, at the clinic before eight in the morning. A man would have to be an idiot not to put one and one together, and Clarence was no idiot.

But all Rebel could think was that this wasn’t going to last, because she couldn’t give up a house and he couldn’t give up the stars, and when it ended—which, at the rate he was screwing it up, was going to be sooner rather than later—he wanted her to be able to hold her head high.

He was going to hurt her, and she was going to take a chunk out of him that he wasn’t sure he’d ever get back, all because he hadn’t been able to swear her off. He would get what he deserved.

“Morning, Doc. Morning, Rebel,” Clarence said, his eyes shifting between the two of them. He must have caught a whiff of Madeline’s cold shoulder, because he made straight for the clinic. “I’ll, uh, just get that coffee going.”

Rebel heard her make a guttural noise that sounded a hell of a lot like she was growling.
So much for holding her head high
, he thought as she swung those cold shoulders and colder eyes to him.

“You’re still here.” She sounded pissed and confused, but not even a little bit happy. “Is there something else you wanted?”

What he wanted was for the world to go back to the way it had been before she’d come here and taken everything he’d worked so hard to become and tossed it all on its ear. What he wanted was to be beholden to no one and nothing, to come and go as he saw fit.

And what he wanted was another night in her arms, to kiss that perma-scowl away from her face and to plunge into her body again and again until she screamed his name and drained him of everything he ever had to give.

And, more than anything, he wanted those two things to be the same thing. But they weren’t and would never be, and the sooner they both saw that, the better off they’d be.

Then he remembered the filing cabinets. If he helped her get her filing cabinets, that would count for something, right? “Did you want me to go with you to get some filing cabinets this weekend?”

She stared at him like he’d asked her how she liked Tupperware. He saw her swallow once, then again as her eyes narrowed into fine slits.
Here it comes
. And he had it coming.

“You do what you want. I know you always do.”

And she left him alone in the middle of the parking lot.

Chapter Twelve

Madeline let her hair stay curly, although she wasn’t exactly sure why. She could come up with a couple of perfectly good reasons if she thought about it hard enough. Getting out the door was a hell of a lot easier when she didn’t have to fry her hair one lock at a time. Everyone had already seen it, and showing up with straight hair would probably set more tongues wagging.

She could look in a mirror now and not shudder at the sight of her mop. It was kind of pretty, she had to admit, especially after she started wrapping each curl around her finger to set it, as per Mellie’s long-distance instructions. She liked it. After all these years, she finally liked her own hair.

But, solid as each of those reasons were, they weren’t
the
reason.
He
was the reason, damn it. She just couldn’t figure out if she was hoping to woo Rebel back with it, or torture him some more by letting him see and not touch.

Because he was never going to touch again. Period, end of sentence.

God, what had she done? Screwed up, that’s what. She’d screwed up in a highly old-fashioned kind of way, losing her head and a whole lot more to a smooth-talking, untamed bad boy. Plus, she’d slept with a—well, he wasn’t exactly a patient, but he paid the bills. More like a client. She’d slept with a client, and had put the entire financial health of the clinic on the line. If Rebel stopped paying everyone’s bills, the clinic would go under faster than the
Titanic
. She only had so much money to work with, and her selfish
wants
and
needs
had put the clinic and the wellbeing of the entire damn reservation in danger of sinking.

And for what? For a one-night stand? So what if one night with Rebel had been mind-bogglingly good? So what if she was suddenly unsure if she could live without that kind of personal attention, that kind of shattering release? So what if she felt whole again? So
what
? He’d made it perfectly clear how he felt the morning after. Hey, thanks, she was a swell kid, maybe he’d call her some time. A one-time deal. It wouldn’t happen again, and she was all the more fool for even having believed it might. He’d sworn off women. He’d said so himself.

Against her will, she still tingled at the thought of
it
happening at all.

A week passed. A long week. A week that had her sitting on her porch at sundown, drinking wine until the sky went as dark as she felt.

And, of course, Rebel hadn’t shown up during the week. She’d hoped—against her will—that he would show up on Thursday to mop the floors and that she might be able to figure out what she’d done wrong so she could try to fix it, but no. Instead, Nobody Bodine had just appeared in the waiting room and began to empty the trashcans without a word. Her blood had boiled. Rebel wouldn’t even face her. He sent his lackey instead.

So she’d driven herself to Rapid City and coldly flirted with the office-supply stock manager until he’d loaded the cabinets for her. Strangely enough, Nobody had been waiting in the shadows for her Monday morning and had gotten both of them out of the trunk and unpacked in the corner of the waiting room Tara had cleaned out before Clarence showed up.

She wanted to be mad at the big, silent man, but there was little good in that. It wasn’t Nobody’s fault Rebel was an asshole, and besides, Madeline was still a little afraid of him. So they kept their conversations to pleases and thank yous and yes, ma’ams, and the world kept on turning. People still got sick, the sun rose and set, and she ran out of iodine again.

Her world kept right on turning.

Without Rebel in it.

Bambambam.

Madeline shot straight up in bed, her heart pounding. What the hell?

Bambambam
.

Someone was pounding on her door at—she rolled over and looked at her clock. 12:47 in the morning? Someone was pounding on her door at 12:47?

By the third round of pounding, she was up and out of bed, shrugging into her summer-weight bathrobe as she dug around the island drawer for a knife. Just in case.

“Who is it?”

“Madeline?” the muffled voice shouted. “It’s me. Open up!”

Me? Me who? Grabbing the biggest knife she could find, she attempted to shake the last of the cobwebs from her head and tried to place the voice. For a heart-stopping second, she was certain that Darrin had shown up, driven all night to beg and plead for her to come with him, come home back to Ohio, back where she belonged.

The thought terrified her.

Knife at the ready, she opened the door a crack. A shaft of light spilled out of the doorway and right onto Rebel.

“It’s me,” he repeated, but without all the shouting this time.