Warrior's Embrace (12 page)

“Bolton Gray Wolf, I take back every nice
thing I said about you. Furthermore, I might just call a certain
woman in Mississippi and tell her how you hog all the popcorn at
movies.”

“You’re all heart, Callie. I knew I could
count on you.”

“Anytime, Gray Wolf.”

She winked, then loaded her Lab into the Jeep
and waved good-bye. After she had disappeared down the driveway,
Bolton picked up the telephone. There was no need for him to look
in his notes. He knew the number by heart.

Virginia didn’t answer the phone. Her
characters were finally talking to her, and she was right in the
middle of a crucial scene. She tapped away at her keyboard while
the phone on her credenza rang and rang.

Suddenly something caught her high in the
breastbone, some sixth sense that told her she was missing an
important call. She left Wayne and Gloria Denny in midsentence as
well as mid-embrace, and picked up her receiver.

“Virginia Haven speaking.”

“Hello, Virginia.”

She had to sit down. But there was nowhere to
sit because she’d dragged the chair over to her bookshelves in
order to reach a reference book on her top shelf, and so she sat
down on the floor.

“Bolton... it’s been a long time.”

“Too long.”

She knew she was breathing because she hadn’t
passed out yet. But she wasn’t sure her brain was functioning
right, and she knew her heart wasn’t. It was pounding so hard, she
could almost hear it.

“A week isn’t that long,” she said,
lying.

It had been the longest few days of her life.
In a week she’d created a thousand scenes between them, all with a
different ending. In a week she’d died a thousand small deaths. In
a week she’d torn her life apart and put it back together. Sort of.
She still felt as if she were clinging to sanity by a thread.

Suddenly she ran out of things to say. How
could she tell him that his was the voice she wanted to hear above
all others... and that she never wanted to talk to him again? How
could she explain to him the torture of not waking up with him in
her bed? How could she explain the brutal loneliness? The sense of
loss? The dreadful mood swings between hope and despair?

Silence overtook them, and she couldn’t even
hear him breathing. Was he still there? What was he thinking? Why
didn’t he say something?

“I’ve wanted to make this call a thousand
times,” he finally said.

I wanted you to,
she started to say.
But that was wrong.
They
were wrong. She put a palm to her
hot face and kept silent.

“I wanted to give you some time, Virginia,
some time to listen to your heart.”

At the moment her heart was clamoring so that
she couldn’t have understood its message even if she had tried.

“Virginia... are you there?”

“I’m here, Bolton.”

“I’ve developed most of the photographs.”

“Then that’s why you called, to talk to me
about the magazine layout.”

“No, that’s not why I called.”

She didn’t want to hear talk about love. She
didn’t want to remember the wonder of being in his arms, and the
emptiness of being alone.

“Look, Bolton, I’m very busy right now.”

“Are you saying that you don’t want to talk
to me, Virginia?”

“I’m saying I
can’t
talk to you.
Deadlines don’t wait.”

“I see.”

Bolton had always been impossible to
decipher. His voice told her even less than his face had when he’d
decided to be inscrutable.

She almost panicked. What if he never called
back? What if she never saw him again? She couldn’t keep him, and
yet she still couldn’t bear to let him go.

“Bolton...”

What could she say that would make him call
back without giving him false hope? Sweat broke out on her face,
and she wondered if she were having hot flashes on top of
everything else.

“I’m here, Virginia.”

She remembered how he looked when he used to
say that to her—his eyes so blue, they looked as if they were bits
of the sky, his mouth curved in one of those mysterious smiles that
drove her mad, his hands resting lightly on her bare stomach.

She held her breath waiting for the rest of
it.

“I’ll always be here for you.”

She exhaled slowly. Then she leaned against
the credenza and closed her eyes.

“Virginia... are you there?”

“Yes... and no.”

His voice stole through her like a thief in
the night, robbing her of all ability to think, let alone speak.
She shook her head to clear it. Now was not the time to go
soft.

“I’m here physically,” she added, “but not
mentally. You know how it is when you’re working on a project.
Nothing else matters.”

“Yes,” he said, and she silently thanked him
for not challenging her lie.

“I have to go now, Bolton.” Once again the
long silence overtook them. Was he hanging on to the receiver the
way she was, reluctant to break the fragile connection?

“Call me,” she whispered.

“You can count on it.”

Impossible hope sprang to life, and she knew
she was setting herself up for heartbreak. More than that, she was
setting him up for another fall.

“To talk about the magazine layout,” she
added. “That’s all I meant, Bolton. I know how it is when you start
to write something and discover you don’t have all the information
you need. So if you come to that point, please feel free to call
me, and if I don’t answer, you can leave a message on my machine.
I’ll return your call if you’ll just be sure to tell me what you
need.”

She sounded like a babbling idiot. Virginia
bit her bottom lip to keep from rattling on.

“I need
you
, Virginia.”

Another hot flash almost felled her, but this
time it was not something she could blame on menopause. The culprit
was desire, pure and simple.

There was another long silence, and then a
soft click as Virginia hung up. She closed her eyes and hugged the
receiver.

“I need you, too, Bolton,” she whispered.
“Oh, God, I need you.”

o0o

In honor of Callie’s homecoming, Jo Beth had
prepared her favorite meat loaf as well as some ancient Apache
foods—pit-baked mescal, boiled locust tree blossoms, and cactus
fruits. Tradition was important to Colter Gray Wolf, and he and Jo
Beth had worked hard to see that neither of their children forgot
their Apache heritage.

Their grandmother, Little Deer, had a place
of honor at the table. Though shrunken by age and almost crippled
by arthritis, she still had a mind that was razor sharp.

Callie was her first target.

“Tell me what you did in that foreign
country.”

“I helped find a way to stop a dreadful
virus.”

“Your father once went to a foreign country
to do that.”

“San Francisco is not a foreign country,
Grandmother, and he’s a general practitioner.”

“It’s not Apache tribal lands. It’s foreign,
and he’s a powerful shaman.”

Callie was going to argue but Colter shook
his head.

“You should stay home where you’re needed,”
Little Deer said.

Bolton came to Callie’s rescue, just as he
always had when their grandmother brought up the subject of her
leaving tribal lands. He pressed a bowl into Little Deer’s
hands.

“Here, Grandmother, have some more of this
pit-baked mescal. It’s delicious.”

Little Deer turned her scrutiny on him.

“Then why don’t you eat it?” She squinted up
at him, her dark eyes full of life and intelligence. “It’s a
woman,” she decided.

Bolton shot Callie a look.

“I didn’t say a thing,” she said.

“She didn’t have to,” Little Deer announced
loudly. “You look just like your father did when he fell in love
with Yellow Bird.”

It was Colter’s pet name for Jo Beth, so
called because of her hair. Bolton thought of the way Virginia’s
hair looked in the sunshine. Such longing overtook him that he
shoved his plate aside.

“Is she a yellow hair?” Little Deer
asked.

Bolton had nothing to hide from the people he
loved.

“Yes,” he said. “She’s fair-skinned and
golden-haired and very beautiful, inside and out.”

Little Deer nodded sagely.

“She’ll make pretty babies,” she said.

There was a fine line between truth and
betrayal. How could he explain the truth to his family without
betraying Virginia?

Callie kicked him on the shin, then shoved
back her chair.

“Hells bells, Grammy, this is a new
generation. Not everybody in this family is going to raise
snot-nosed brats. I for one prefer a house where I know I won’t be
interrupted by babies squawking about wet diapers.”

“Where did you learn such language?” Little
Deer glared at her son. “Colter, where did she learn such
language?”

“In foreign countries,” Callie said,
laughing. Then she pulled out Little Deer’s chair and waltzed her
grandmother around the room. “Smile, Grammy, and Bolton will take
our picture.”

Little Deer loved nothing better than having
her picture taken. She fluffed at her hair with one gnarled
hand.

“Does my hair look all right?”

“It looks fabulous, Grammy. You’re not a bad
dancer, either.” Callie winked at Bolton.

o0o

“Thanks,” he told her later. They were in the
kitchen helping Jo Beth with the dishes while Colter took Little
Deer home.

“It’ll cost you,” she said.

“What?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll think of
something.”

“I’m sure it will be something wicked,” Jo
Beth said, wrapping an arm around Callie’s waist. Side by side they
looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. Jo Beth was
still as trim as she had been at twenty, her face was virtually
unlined, and the light streaks looked more like blond highlights
than a graying process. “Darling, must you be so outrageous?
Especially in front of your grandmother.”

“I’m just like you,” Callie said.

“Not quite.” Her mother lifted a strand of
Callie’s raven-colored hair. “Not only do you have your father’s
hair, you have his stubborn streak. Both of you.” She smiled at her
son. “So, when will we meet your chosen woman?”

“Not for a while, I’m afraid. I’ve chosen
her, but she hasn’t chosen me. Not yet, anyhow.”

“Ahhh.” Jo Beth smiled, remembering. “She
will. When a Gray Wolf sets out to court, no woman in the world can
resist him.”

Virginia couldn’t get Bolton’s phone call out
of her mind. She propped herself on pillows, turned on the lamp,
and reached for one of the books she kept stacked on the bedside
table.

She tried to lose herself in the story, but
she kept thinking about Bolton quoting Apache poetry. She
remembered every small detail of him, the way he looked bending
over her, the way his blue eyes lit up, the way his untamed black
hair swooped across his forehead.

The book slid out of her hands, and she sat
on her bed fighting the most horrible case of the blues she’d ever
had. Everything in her bedroom reminded her of Bolton. There was
not a single nook or cranny that didn’t have his imprint. Even when
she closed her eyes she couldn’t shut out the image of him. Bolton
Gray Wolf had marked her house, and it would never be the same.

The phone rang, jarring her rudely back to
the present. Virginia glanced at the clock. Only two people called
her this late, Candace or Jane—her daughter usually with a problem
she considered an emergency and her friend generally with gossip
she considered too juicy to keep.

“So... what is it this time?” Virginia said
when she picked up the phone.

“It’s the same thing this time that it will
be every time, Virginia: I love you.”

“Bolton...” Virginia slid down and rolled to
her side, cuddling the receiver against her cheek. Reaching out,
she touched the side of the bed where he had slept, long legs
taking up most of the space, one arm flung over his head and the
other resting on her stomach.

“Were you expecting someone else?”

“No. Candace and Jane are the only ones who
call this time of night.”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No.” Not in ways she could tell him
about.

“I couldn’t wait till morning.”

The sound of his voice flowed through her
like warm honey. She bent her legs and pressed her knees
together.

“You’re working, then,” she said.

“This is not a business call, Virginia. It’s
personal.”

“We don’t have anything to discuss. We’ve
said everything that needs saying.”

“On the contrary. We’ve only just begun. I
want you to get to know my family and my friends. I want to
introduce you to the mountains and the forest and the rivers that I
love. I want to show you the kind of life we can have together.
Tomorrow I’m flying out to get you and bring you home with me.”

“I can’t possibly do that. I have too much to
do, the notice is too short, I have a full calendar... the flights
are probably all full.” She ran out of breath and excuses at the
same time.

“Two days, then. Cancel everything and pack a
bag. Jeans, sweaters, rugged mountain gear. And you don’t need a
plane ticket. I’ll be in my private plane.”

“I haven’t said yes.”

“I’ll be there at five, and I’m not coming
back without you.”

“You would kidnap me?”

“No. But I would take you captive. After all,
I am Apache.”

This time Bolton was the one who hung up.
Virginia thought of a dozen things she should have said.

“I can’t believe this.” She hung up the
receiver and began to pace. “Why didn’t I tell him no? Why didn’t I
just hang up on him? Why didn’t I...”

Suddenly she ran out of steam. Sinking onto
the side of the bed, she put her head between her hands.

“Good grief. I can’t believe I’m thinking
what I’m thinking.”