For the Love of Suzanne (7 page)

“No. She can’t be one of your girls,”
he said sternly, knowing her intention. “She is in a fragile
state.”

She frowned at her half-breed friend. “What
do you mean,
fragile state
?” she asked suspiciously.

He gave her a look that told her what she wanted
to know.

She caught on immediately and began to back away.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she declared. “I ain’t
takin’ care of no girl that can’t earn her own way,
especially a pregnant one.”

He dropped his tone of voice, “Annalee,
please. I’ll get you some money but I cannot take her to the
village.”

“Why not? It’s never bothered you
before,” she said smartly.

“You know I’ve never taken any women
there,” he refuted quietly, holding her gaze. “She’s
different. Come on,” he coaxed.

Suzanne watched the two bicker over her and felt
incredibly sad. She finally grasped Cody’s strong forearm. “If
you can just show me which way to go, I can get there,” she
said in a pleading voice. “Just point me in the right
direction.”

He knew she was talking about that thing she’d
called a
car
and wasn’t impervious to her touch. He felt
tingling go through his entire body and gazed into her distraught
blue eyes. “I can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The reason I was out there to begin with is
because there are some renegade Indians raising hell, stealing and
killing. I wanted to find them before the cavalry does to avoid an
all-out war,” he explained. “It’s just too
dangerous right now.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “This can’t
be happening. I must be dreaming,” she murmured to herself,
lowering her forehead into her hand.

“You aren’t dreaming,” Annalee
said crisply. “This young half-breed means what he says and
he’s in a position to know these things. Where is your
husband?”

Suzanne looked at Cody, waiting for him to answer
and when he didn’t, she cleared her throat nervously. “Cody
found me in the desert. I was lost and my husband is still out
there.”

Annalee looked at Cody again this time with
disbelief in her eyes. “I guess that’s as good a story as
any.”

He nodded without saying anything.

“Are you this child’s daddy?”
she asked Cody, loosely gesturing to Suzanne.

He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

She stared at him coldly. “I ain’t
takin’ care of none of your brats either, Cody. I like you and
you’re a good customer at times even if you don’t drink,
but I’m drawin’ the line right here and now.”

He nodded. “What she said is true. I found
her in the desert. I didn’t know she was pregnant until just a
short time ago. I’m just trying to help her. That’s all.
The village is no place for her.”

“Can’t argue with that,” she
said simply and looked at Suzanne again. “Are you willin’
to work?”

She nodded without looking at her.

She fell silent for a moment, then looked at Cody.
“I’m going to have a mutiny on my hands if you keep
comin’ in here like that,” she abruptly changed the
subject. “Or worse yet, my girls will all want you and not even
make you pay,” she said with a short burst of laughter.

Suzanne didn’t think it was funny, but
smiled congenially as she looked at Cody. He hadn’t changed his
clothes and still wore the buckskin pants and moccasins, but had
slipped a baggy white shirt over his head as they were approaching
the fort. She didn’t see anything wrong with how he was
dressed. She thought it was rather sexy and knew men that would kill
for a body like his.

Cody smirked. Annalee was always outrageous and a
terrible flirt, but he liked and respected her. She always treated
him with kindness, and always looked past the color of his skin and
saw him for the man he really was. He wished he could get treated
that way everywhere, but he knew as long as he didn’t cut his
hair, dress the way he did, have brown skin, and continue to
communicate with Indians in the desert, he would never be anything
more than a dirty half-breed.

“Will you take care of her?” he asked
Annalee amiably when she stopped laughing.

“Aw Cody,” she whined.

Suzanne swallowed hard, trying to bury her hurt
feelings. Nobody wanted her and she was a burden. There had to be a
way for her to make it back to her car. There had to be.

Annalee looked at Suzanne. “Are you willin’
to work?” she repeated.

She nodded. “But I don’t want to be
with men.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “You can
scrub floors.”

“Okay. Thank you,” she said quietly.

Cody gave Annalee a nod of appreciation. “Yes.
Thank you.”

“For how long, Cody?” she demanded
coolly. “I’m gonna need that extra room eventually and I
can’t have a screamin’ baby hangin’ around the
customers.”

“I’m going to take care of this,”
he assured her. “You won’t even know when the baby comes.
Now, do you have some clothes she can wear?”

“I’ll get one of the girls to bring
her a dress,” she muttered. “Her room is at the end of
the hall. Dinner is at six,” she said gruffly and stood up and
shook her finger at Cody. “You owe me for this,” she said
coldly and walked out.

Before Cody could even open his mouth, Suzanne had
his arm again and was pleading with him. “Please take me back.”

He covered her hand with his. “I can’t.
I don’t understand how you even got here,” he tried to
reason with her.

“Neither do I, but if I can get back to
where the accident was, maybe I can figure it out. Please take me
back. Please,” she begged.

He met her tear-filled blue eyes with compassion.
“I can’t. Please try to understand. It is dangerous out
there right now and it would be bad for you to get caught by these
renegades, especially in your condition.”

“But we’ve made it this far,”
she reasoned.

“We won’t make it back,” he said
confidently. “Not yet. There’s going to be war and when
that war comes, it’s going to be bloody. I just hope it’s
short. When the war is over, I’ll take you back,” he
promised.

Once again, she wished she’d paid attention
in history class. She would have known if there had been a war and
who’d come out victorious, but she didn’t know anything
about it.

“But that could be years,” she said
shakily.

“I’ll come back for you. I won’t
leave you here forever,” he promised, caressing the top of her
hand with his fingers.

“Don’t leave me at all,” she
said in a trembling voice, unable to stop the tears from rolling down
her sunburned cheeks. “Please.”

He felt his heart wrench, but knew what he had to
do. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “But I
have to go.”

“What if you get killed? How will I get
back?”

He shook his head. “I won’t get
killed.”

“How do you know that?” she asked
anxiously.

“It’s a long story, but I can tell you
that I will not be killed in war. I know this to be true.”

He didn’t want to tell her of the vision
that had been sent to him where he was told he wouldn’t die in
a war by his spirit animal, the black fox. It was his guide and he
knew of its power. To tell her that would serve no purpose. He firmly
believed it and that’s what protected him.

She took her hand back. “Then take me with
you. Annalee doesn’t want me here,” she said with a
sniff. “She’s made that perfectly clear.”

“She owes me,” he told her quietly.
“She’ll get used to you.”

“She says you owe her,” she
contradicted in a hushed voice of anger. “I don’t want to
stay here,” she said and rose to her feet. “I can’t
stay here.”

He didn’t look up at her, but instead stared
at the clean but battered table top. “You don’t have a
choice. Please don’t go against me,” he said calmly.

“I didn’t ask for this!” she
exploded. “I don’t know how I got here. I don’t
want to be here,” she trailed off and covered her eyes with her
hand. “This is such a mess,” she said in defeat.

He stood in front of her, standing a good head and
shoulders over her, making her step back and cower a bit. Her actions
didn’t escape him, but he pushed it aside, hating it when women
were afraid of him. “This is a mess,” he agreed. “But
we have to give it a chance to work out. Be patient, Suzanne. This is
some sort of strange happening that we can attribute only to the
Creator.”

Her mouth dropped open and she looked at him in
disbelief. “You have got to be kidding.”

He shook his head. “I am not kidding.
There’s something to be done here. We just have to figure out
what it is.”

She looked at him for a moment and then looked
away, hardly believing what he was saying. He had dragged her here to
dump her, never to return. He didn’t want her. Beau hadn’t
wanted her. Nobody wanted her. She’d known that for a long
time. What would it matter if she stayed here or not? Nobody would
miss her.

He gently lifted her chin to gaze into her teary
eyes. He felt bad, but he knew he had to do this. He had kissed her
in the desert and it had sent his senses reeling. He wanted more but
knew not to ask. It wouldn’t be right. She was going to have a
baby and that meant there was another man somewhere. She belonged to
another. Still, he would not bury his compassion. He gently brushed
her tears away. “You’ll be okay here,” he assured
her.

She met his dark gaze, wishing he would kiss her
again. It had been so nice and, even though Beau hadn’t been
gone all that long, she hadn’t been at the receiving end of his
kindness for months. She had enjoyed Cody’s attention. He’d
been very sweet and she longed for more, but knew he was right. She
had to let him go. She didn’t want to be a burden to him
anymore.

She nodded. “Okay,” she resigned with
a heavy sigh. “Thank you for helping me.”

“The only thing I’ve helped you with
is to make you unhappy,” he said morosely. “I’m
sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault. You go on now.
It’s okay,” she said with a soft sniff.

“I do have to go,” he said
reluctantly. “But I’ll be back.”

She knew he wouldn’t, but didn’t say
anything. He was dumping her. Why had he picked her up in the first
place? He should have left her there to die because that was how this
was going to end anyway. He was just putting off the inevitable.

“Suzanne, I need to know something,”
he said seriously.

“What,” she muttered.

“Are you a person of the stars?”

“A person of the stars?” she repeated
with a frown, meeting his eyes and saw the genuineness in them. “You
mean, like an alien?”

“I just need to know.”

She shook her head. “I guess not since I’m
not even sure what you mean.”

He nodded as he looked at her, wanting to kiss her
again and thinking she wanted the same thing. Their eyes locked as a
warm, tense moment passed between them.

He lowered his head to give into his desires and
abruptly raised it again and stepped back. “I’ll find a
way to get you back to your husband,” he said in a brusque tone
and left before she could even say goodbye.

A little girl of about six came in carrying a
dress over her arm, passing Cody without looking at him. She was
dirty and raggedly dressed in a calf-length red gingham dress and
holey shoes that laced to her ankles. Her hair was long, dark and in
two braids on each side of her head, and she had a missing tooth in
the front of her mouth as she smiled. “Hi,” she said
shyly. “My name is Mika. Me and you are going to share a room.
Follow me.”

Suzanne followed her up the steps to the upper
level of the building, oblivious to the stares from all the people
who were gathered in the saloon.

Cody went back to his village and was distressed
to see another one of Tall Deer’s white slaves hanging dead
from a tree as he entered the camp. The chief had stripped her of her
clothes, severely beaten her and gouged out her eyes. Blood was caked
to her entire body.

“Chief Tall Deer killed another woman,”
Lame Bird said quietly as she held Cody’s horse by the halter
and Cody slid to the ground.

Lame Bird was a fine woman who he knew he should
marry, but he didn’t want to get married or have children with
anybody. He’d never even entertained the idea. He was nothing
but a half-breed. He didn’t want his children to carry that
stigma or bear that hardship so he laid with women and paid them for
it. He’d never lain with Lame Bird and never would, but he
hunted for her and kept her in provisions from the fort in return for cooking,
repairing his clothes and the cleaning she did for him. Every once in
awhile, he’d give her some sort of trinket he’d obtained
in trade, and she was always happy to get them. She still wasn’t
married and sometimes he caught her looking at him with more than
friendly interest. She was a fine looking woman with very long hair
that she kept in braids, long dresses that he’d seen other
women at the fort wear and moccasins. She had a pretty face that was
round and pleasant, dark brown eyes, a beautiful smile and she’d
always been kind to him. But he didn’t love her like a man
should love his wife and he respected her enough to not tie her down
with marrying him.

He nodded. “I see that. What did she do?”

She shrugged and walked away, leading the horse to
where the others were.

He would bathe and sleep later. Right now, he had
to tell Chief Tall Deer that he had found nothing on his scouting
expedition.

~~~

Suzanne was not adapting well to the hard life of
the fort. Her biggest jobs were cleaning the saloon and
rooms and doing laundry, which made her appreciate her vacuum cleaner
and washer and dryer more than ever. She’d never worked so hard
in her life and it was so hot, it left her queasy most of the time.
The best part of her job was taking care of Mika, whom she loved like
her own.