Julia Stedman hesitated outside the Hip Hop Café, assuring
herself that she wasn't really stalling. She was merely
collecting herself after the long hot drive from Sheridan,
Wyoming, to Whitehorn, Montana. The Hip Hop looked like one
of those busy cafés found in almost any small western
town—the kind that included a juicy serving of gossip with
every cup of strong coffee and piece of homemade
pie.
She'd certainly worked in enough of them to
recognize one when she saw one, Julia thought with a
reminiscent smile. This one even had a Help Wanted sign on
the door. Her decision made, she stepped inside, sniffing
the tantalizing aromas of fresh coffee and grilling meat.
Perhaps if she ordered some lunch she would find the
information she needed.
A cute blond waitress with a
perky ponytail zipped toward a booth filled with teenage
boys, her hands and arms laden with plates of burgers and
fries. "Be right with you," she called. "Have a seat if you
can find one."
"Thanks." Julia glanced around the
room, but every table had at least one customer.
An
older woman, whose blond hair undoubtedly had benefited from
a hairdresser's magic, flashed a smile and nodded toward the
chair opposite her own. "I always enjoy
company."
Julia wasted no time accepting the
invitation. Every café she'd ever worked in had had at least
one customer like this woman—an unrepentant gossip who
sincerely loved her work. If she didn't personally know the
information Julia had come here for, she would know how to
get it.
The woman offered her hand across the small
table, three inches' worth of silver bracelets jangling with
the movement. "I'm Lily Mae Wheeler. I don't believe we've
ever met."
Shaking Lily Mae's hand, Julia smiled.
"Julia Stedman. And I'm sure we've never met, because I've
only been in Whitehorn for about five minutes."
"Are
you here on vacation?" Lily Mae asked.
"Partially,"
Julia replied. "My father grew up and lived in this area.
He's passed away now, but I'm hoping to find some of his
relatives or at least some people who knew him."
"How
fascinating," Lily Mae said.
The waitress arrived at
their table, order pad in hand. "Watch out for Lily Mae,"
she said with a teasing grin. "She'll have your secrets out
of you in ten seconds flat if you're not
careful."
"Oh, hush, Janie," Lily Mae said with a
laugh. "You make me sound like a terrible
busybody."
"Well, that's what you are." Janie laughed
and nudged Lily Mae's arm with her elbow. "You only get away
with it because you're so sweet."
Lily Mae rolled her
eyes in mock disgust. "You little stinkpot. Why don't you go
find that poor J. D. Cade fellow you've got such a crush on
and flirt with him for a while?"
Janie wrinkled her
nose at Lily Mae, then turned to Julia and wrote down her
order. When Janie hurried away to the kitchen with Julia's
ticket, Lily Mae sipped from her coffee cup.
"I'll
admit I do enjoy gossip, but I'm not malicious," she said.
"People are just my… hobby."
Julia had to laugh. "No
problem. I don't have any deep, dark secrets to
hide."
Lily Mae leaned forward, resting her forearms
on the table. A bell over the door jangled and five big,
swarthy men wearing jeans, work boots and yellow hard hats
entered the restaurant. Lily Mae automatically checked them
out before turning back to Julia. "Well, then, tell me all
about your father, and I'll see what I can do to help you
find his family."
"I'm afraid I don't know much about
him. He and my mother separated before I was born, and she
wouldn't talk about him."
"Oh, hon, that's so sad,"
Lily Mae said. "I've been around here a long time. I wonder
if I knew him."
Julia swallowed. Well, here it was.
Time to find out the truth about Lily Mae Wheeler's
character. "He was Northern Cheyenne. He lived at the
Laughing Horse Reservation."
Lily Mae's eyes widened
slightly and she tipped her head to one side, intently
studying Julia for a moment. Then she smiled again. "Well,
now, I guess that explains that gorgeous tan of yours so
early in the summer. And I've seen Indians with blue eyes
before, but is your hair naturally that
auburn?"
Julia chuckled. "What can I say? I can't do
much about how straight it is, but I like to see something
besides black once in a while."
"I hear you, hon."
Lily Mae patted her own perfectly coiffed curls, and glanced
upward as if she could see through her fluffy bangs to the
top of her head. "I get real sick of seeing gray hair,
myself. I always figured why put up with it if you don't
have to?"
"Exactly," Julia agreed.
Janie
delivered her club sandwich and iced tea. Julia waited until
the waitress left before bringing up the subject she wanted
to discuss again.
"Is there a chance you would have
known my father, Lily Mae?"
Lily Mae's expression
turned serious. "I know a few folks from the reservation,
but not nearly as many as I know here in town, of course. A
lot of the Cheyenne tend to keep to
themselves."
Janie hustled back to the entrance,
counted out a stack of plastic-coated menus and escorted the
burly men toward the middle of the restaurant. When they
approached her chair, Lily Mae's expression brightened.
"Well, Sam Brightwater, you're just the fella we want to
talk to. Hold on there, will you, hon?"
The tall,
powerfully built man at the end of the line paused and waved
the others on, then turned toward Lily Mae. Julia's breath
lodged in the center of her chest when she caught her first
clear view of his face. Holy smokes, but he was…
arresting.
His black, piercing eyes, his bold,
uncompromising nose, those sculptured cheekbones and the
long, thick braid trailing down his back from the rear of
his hard hat, left no question about his ancestry. A century
or two ago, he would have been a proud, strong warrior,
perhaps even a chief. His dark skin and the brooding ridge
of his eyebrows made his quick, polite smile seem that much
brighter by comparison.
He shifted his weight to his
left foot, removed his hat and held it against the side of
his sleeveless blue work shirt with his elbow. Julia's mouth
went dry. Lord, she'd never seen a physique quite like his
outside of a movie theater.
His voice was pleasantly
low with a raspy quality to it. "Good to see you again, Ms.
Wheeler. Need some more work done on your road?"
"Not
right now." Lily Mae gestured toward another empty chair at
the table. "Sit down and have some lunch with
us."
Sam Brightwater stiffened, shot a glance toward
the table his crew had gathered around and took a step back
from Lily Mae's. He'd been at the job site all morning,
supervising while the guys staked out streets for a new
subdivision on the south side of Whitehorn. He was hot,
tired and hungry. Lily Mae wasn't a bad sort, but she could
talk the ears off a month-old corpse, and he wasn't in the
mood to listen to her prattle.
"I eat with my crew,"
he said.
Lily Mae flashed him a coaxing smile. "Oh, I
know you do, hon, but my new friend here needs some
information and I think maybe you can help her. Her name's
Julia Stedman."
Sam looked at Lily Mae's companion,
and felt a chill roll over him that had nothing to do with
the Hip Hop's new air-conditioning system. Julia Stedman was
striking, with long, dark hair, big blue eyes and a wide,
sweet smile that faltered when his gaze fully met hers for
the first time. There was a jolt of… what?
Recognition?
No, it couldn't be recognition. The idea
was ridiculous, of course. If he had seen this woman's face
before, he knew he would've remembered it. And yet, the
startled expression in her eyes told him she had felt the
jolt, too. Whatever it had been.
Groping beside her
plate, Julia found her iced-tea glass, took a sip, then
nodded at the chair Lily Mae had indicated.
"Please,
do join us. I'll be happy to buy your lunch."
Sam
felt an urge to smile at her earnest offer, but resisted it.
There was something going on here he didn't fully
understand. Until he figured it out, he had no intention of
getting involved. "I'll buy my own lunch, Ms. Stedman. I
don't need charity."
"I was simply trying to be
friendly, Mr. Brightwater."
She didn't add a pithy
phrase about friendliness being a foreign concept to him,
but her tone implied it.
Now he did smile, just
enough to acknowledge her jab, while silently cursing his
social ineptitude. He shifted again, distributing his weight
evenly on both feet and straightening his posture, doing his
best to intimidate her, though he wasn't sure why he wanted
to.
Lily Mae glanced from Sam to Julia and back to
Sam again, then uttered a soft chuckle. "Well, Sam, what's
it going to be? Will you join us or not? You're giving me a
crick in my neck just standing there like
that."
"I'll tell you what I can." He pulled out the
chair and lowered himself onto it before continuing. "But
I'll eat with my crew. What do you want to
know?"
Resting her forearms on the table, Julia laced
her fingers together above her plate. "I'm trying to find my
father's relatives or anyone who knew him."
"Why ask
me?" Sam asked.
"Oh, come on, Sam, lighten up," Lily
Mae scolded him. "The man's dead and gone, and this poor
girl just wants to know what her daddy was like."
Sam
rephrased his question. "Why do you think I would know
anything about him?"
"Because he was a Northern
Cheyenne," Lily Mae said. "You know most everybody out at
Laughing Horse, don't you?"
Sam nodded, then
scrutinized Julia again. Yeah, now he could see it, and now
he knew why she'd bugged him so much. Her skin was
definitely darker than Lily Mae's and she had the prominent
cheekbones, but her blue eyes were rounder than most
Indians'. The reddish streaks in her hair had to be dyed.
With them, she could pass for white if you didn't look too
closely.
Julia Stedman probably picked up and
discarded her Indian heritage whenever it was convenient.
Irritated and making no effort to hide it, he asked, "What
was your father's name?"
"Talkhouse. Daniel
Talkhouse."
Anger at the woman swept through Sam like
a strong wind blowing through tall dry grass. Dan Talkhouse
had become a surrogate father for him the day Sam's own
father had lost his final battle with alcoholism and died in
the charity ward at Whitehorn Community Hospital. Dan had
badgered Sam into finishing high school, recommended him for
summer jobs at the Kincaid Ranch and helped him sort through
the mountain of Bureau of Indian Affairs paperwork to
qualify for a college scholarship. He'd even gone to Sam's
graduation from Montana State University, just to be sure at
least one person would applaud when Sam received his
diploma.
From Sam's fourteenth birthday straight on
through until today, the only times Sam had ever heard Dan
sound discouraged or sad were the times when he talked about
the child he had lost to a broken love affair with a white
woman. This young woman claimed to be that lost child, and
she was only here now because she thought Dan was
dead?
Stubborn and wrong as he sometimes
was, Dan Talkhouse was a man of great integrity. He deserved
better than a child who ignored him her whole life and then
came sniffing around in case there was an inheritance. Dan
Talkhouse deserved a hell of a lot better.
"Now, I'm
sure I've heard that name before," Lily Mae said, chattering
as if the sound of her own voice could stop the flow of
hostility coming from Sam's side of the table. Ignoring Lily
Mae, Sam shoved back his chair and stood, glaring down at
Julia.
"What's wrong?" Julia jumped to her feet and
her voice took on an imploring note. "I promise I won't
bother anyone, but I'd at least like to visit my father's
grave if you could just tell me where to look."
"That
would be difficult, Ms. Stedman."
"Oh. You mean the
Northern Cheyenne don't, um, bury people when they die? You
still build those platforms—"
Sam snorted in
derision. "No, what I mean is, Dan Talkhouse isn't a good
Indian yet."
She shook her head in confusion. "Excuse
me?"
Jeez, they didn't come any dumber. Sam muttered
a string of Cheyenne curses under his breath at the
unbelievably ignorant woman gaping at him. How could anyone
so beautiful and at least half-Cheyenne be so damn dense?
"You never heard the old saying that the only good Indian is
a dead one?"
"Well, of course, but you can't possibly
mean—"
"Hey, believe what you want," Sam said. "But
Dan Talkhouse is alive and kicking. At least he was when I
argued with him at the tribal-council meeting last
night."
That said, Sam stalked away. When he sat down
with his men, he saw Julia still standing where he'd left
her, gazing into space with the blank stare of an accident
victim going into shock. His conscience pinched him a little
over the way he'd delivered the news about Dan, but he
shrugged it off.
If Julia Stedman didn't care enough
about her own father to know whether he was alive or dead,
she deserved a shock or two. Besides, she'd get over it soon
enough. Lily Mae was already on her feet, fussing over her
as if Julia was a wounded chick and shooting Sam outraged
glances at the same time. Julia's knees suddenly gave way
and she dropped awkwardly onto her seat, knocking the
shoulder strap of her purse off the chair back with her
elbow.
If he didn't feel so outraged himself on Dan's
behalf, it almost would have been funny to watch her
reaction. Just how much of an inheritance had she expected
when she came here, anyway? And why had she thought Dan was
dead?
Sam munched his way through a barbecued-beef
special, keeping one eye on Julia Stedman. She was having
quite a discussion with ol' Lily Mae and she appeared to
have lost her appetite. Truth was, she really did
look…wounded. His conscience pinched him again, harder this
time. He'd been called a hothead too many times to deny the
accusation completely, but it really wasn't his habit to be
cruel.
It was just that for all of her white features
and mannerisms and ignorance about Indians, Julia was one
fine-lookin' woman. She touched off some mighty strong urges
inside him, but he had no business feeling anything at all
for a woman like her.