Warrior's Embrace (37 page)

Angry tongues of fire licked the sky, and he
leaned over his stallion’s mane, coaxing him in the ancient
language of his people. The phone call that had sent him flying
through the early dawn on his horse still echoed through his
mind.

“Mingo, I think Kate Malone may be in real
danger. My sources believe the man who calls himself her tormentor
is going to strike soon.”

“Get some men over there,” he had told Martin
Black Elk, chief of the tribal police and lifelong friend. “I don’t
care whether she wants protection or not. Get them over there.”

“I will. Soon as the first shift gets in
here, I’ll send a man to her place, but I don’t know if it will do
any good. She’s about as easy to persuade as a wildcat.”

“Tell her it’s my orders.”

“The last time I mentioned the governor’s
orders, she laughed in my face.”

“I’ll tell her, Martin. She won’t dare laugh
in mine.” She might scratch his eyes out, but she wouldn’t
laugh.

Eagle had meant to wait until sunup, but some
dark premonition had sent him flying to his stables in the predawn
hours. In this weather his stallion was much more reliable than
either his Corvette or his Jeep. His mount was one of the few
remaining of its kind, a Chickasaw horse, bred for speed and
endurance.

As he neared Kate’s place he thought he heard
a woman’s scream, but with the pounding of hooves and the howling
of wind, he couldn’t be certain. Leaning low over his horse, he
raced toward the blazing clinic.

“Deborah!” the woman screamed.

This time there was no mistaking the sound.
It was Kate’s voice ...coming from somewhere inside the
inferno.

“
Aiya
!” he urged his horse, bending
low over its neck. “Go like the wind.”

When they were close enough to feel the heat
from the fire, his stallion balked. Eagle knew he would never
survive the blaze on foot. He whipped off his jacket and tied it
around the horse’s head. Then he dug his heels into its flanks and
the stallion vaulted through the wall of flame.

There were two bodies lying together on the
floor, one with the long black hair of the Chickasaw and the other
with hair the color of fire. Until that moment Eagle didn’t know it
was possible to breathe after your heart had stopped beating.

The ceiling above them buckled, sending
flames shooting downward. Heat seared his leg and the flanks of his
horse. The stallion whinnied, sidestepping. Eagle wrestled him
under control.

There was movement on the floor, and Kate
twisted her head upward. In the eerie glow of the blaze she stared
at him with eyes widened by shock and terror. Deborah Lightfoot
stared sightlessly at him with eyes gone glassy in death.

“Reach for me, Kate!” She didn’t move. Eagle
leaned far over the saddle. “In the name of all that’s holy,
reach for me
.”

Tentatively she lifted her hand. He caught
her arm and jerked her upright. Flames roared around them, and his
stallion danced in place.

Counting on skills he’d learned as a child
racing across tribal lands, Eagle circled her waist and scooped her
upward just as the roof gave way. He couldn’t risk taking time to
get her into the saddle. Holding her in an iron grip with her legs
dangling over the side, he leaned low and urged his stallion
forward. As they leapt through the flames and into the dawn, the
roof caved in behind them.

“Deborah.” Kate sobbed as he pulled her into
the saddle. Heat from the inferno still licked at their backs.
Holding Kate against his chest, he leaned around her and jerked the
coat off his stallion’s head.

Kate clawed at his face. “Put me down.
Deborah’s back there.”

“There’s nothing you can do. Deborah’s
dead.”

“I won’t let her be.” Tears streaked down her
smoke-grimed face as she beat at his upper arms and shoulders. “Do
you hear me? I won’t let her die.”

He wrapped one arm tightly around her chest,
pinning her arms down, and with the other he guided the stallion
into the woods behind the clinic.

Kate coughed and sputtered.

“Breathe, Kate. Breathe the fresh air.”

Shivering violently, she sucked air into her
starving lungs. Then, with a strength born of desperation, she
struggled against him.

“I have to go to her. Let me down.”

“It’s too late.”

“No! Don’t you dare say that. It can’t be too
late.”

Sobs and shivers racked her body as she
fought him. The stallion pranced, skittish and ready to bolt.

“Stop it, Kate. You can’t go back in
there.”

“How dare you decide other people’s lives?
Who made you God?” She drew back and her fist connected with bone.
Tomorrow he’d have a black eye for his troubles.

He caught her right wrist, and she rammed his
jaw with a left hook. “I don’t want to have to hit you, Kate.”

“You don’t give a damn about her, do you?”
Her chin came up. “Hit me, almighty governor of the Chickasaw
Nation.”

Snow and cinders from the burning building
swirled around them. She was nearing hysteria.

With the swiftness of his namesake, he bent
down and crushed her mouth under his. Her lips were cold and tasted
of smoke and tears.

For a moment she struggled, wild and fierce,
then suddenly her arms stole around his neck.

And he knew that in five lonely years he’d
never stopped loving her. He held her close, kissing her with the
desperate knowledge that this time would be their last. The murmurs
of pleasure he remembered so well started deep in her throat, a
soft humming sound that set his blood on fire. He became primitive,
savage, with one goal in mind, one need overriding all others—to
possess Kate.

“Eagle ...Eagle.” Her voice was a broken
plea, and he didn’t know if it was a cry for release or a cry for
mercy.

He died a little inside. Breaking his long
silence with the Father Creator, he called upon that all-powerful
deity to pull them both back from the precipice of hell. When he
released Kate, she sagged against him, spent.

He cupped her face, and they stared at each
other, linked by a passion that had survived five endless years and
yet separated by duty and honor. Eagle wanted to shake his fists at
the heavens and curse the day he was born. Kate’s eves mirrored his
agony.

Slowly, he traced her lips with one finger.
Kate flicked her tongue against his skin, but the searing touch was
gone so swiftly, he might have been dreaming.

“I should have let you burn,” he
whispered.

“I wish you had.”

The river cried out to her in
a voice full of anguish,

And out of the waters rose a
creature, magnificent and golden, splendid in all his
glory.

The sun lay along his wings
and its heat spread outward,

Reaching toward her with hands
of flame,

Reaching even the places she
held most secret,

Reaching ...reaching . .
.

Until at last it burned her
heart.

Charleston, South Carolina

Summer 1989

She’d had her medical degree only three days
when she realized it was not enough to please her father. Nothing
was ever enough.

Sitting at the polished walnut table that had
belonged to four generations of Malones, Kate watched him. U. S.
Senator Mick Malone, the pride of Charleston, the hope of the
South.

“This damned heat. A man can’t think in this
damned heat.” Wiping his face with a perfectly pressed, perfectly
white handkerchief, he looked at his wife as if the heat might be
all her fault.

“I’ll turn up the air-conditioning.” Martha
left her soup to get cold while she scurried from the room, careful
to walk softly, careful not to call attention to herself.

Kate wanted to scream. Instead, she sipped
her iced tea. Mick Malone concentrated on his soup.

The only sounds in the room were the tinkling
of ice against crystal, the clink of silver against bone china, and
the whirring of the ceiling fan. Beyond the French doors the
setting sun was putting on a spectacular display, gilding the ocean
and turning the Spanish moss dripping from the live oaks to gold
lace.

Neither of them noticed.

“Martha still makes the best carrot soup in
three counties,” her father said when the silence got too
uncomfortable. “You’d do well to learn.”

“Yes, the soup’s delicious,” Kate said.

It was not the conversation she’d imagined.
Three days before, standing in the line of medical school graduates
waiting her turn to walk across the stage, she’d pictured her
father saying, “I’m so proud of you. Top of your class. I knew you
could do it.”

She’d smile ...modestly, of course; then he
would put his arms around her and say, “I love you, Katie. I’ve
always loved you.”

What he had actually said that day was “If a
school that charges this much tuition can’t afford enough parking
spaces, they ought to fire the administration and start all
over.”

Kate pushed her soup bowl away, her appetite
gone.

“Is that better, dear?” Martha asked her
husband as she slid back into her chair.

“It’s too soon to tell.”

“Maybe the fan’s not turned on high.” Martha
rose halfway from her seat, glancing anxiously at the ceiling
fan.

“Don’t fidgit, Martha. It makes me nervous.”
Mick banged his glass onto the table. “Women!” he said, and that
summed up his philosophy of life.

Kate shoved her chair back from the table and
stood up.

“You’re not excused,” her father said.

She drew herself up to her full height, five
feet ten inches, and every bit of it imposing. They faced each
other from opposite ends of the table, father and daughter, so much
alike, with eyes as green as the sea and hair the color of flame.
Years and grief had lined Mick’s face, but they’d done nothing to
dim his hair.

He stared at his daughter with her square jaw
so like his own. She had his temper too, and his stubbornness. Kate
was a Malone through and through. Every now and then he looked at
her and felt a little bit of hope ...but it always died as quickly
as it came. She was a woman. She would never carry on the Malone
name. She would never replace Charles and Brian.

The old pain settled around Mick’s heart,
sapping his strength, draining his energy.

Kate flattened her hands on the table and
leaned toward him. “I’m a grown woman. I no longer need your
permission.”

“Katie Elizabeth!” Her mother’s hands
fluttered about as if she were swatting moths, then settled over
her heart.

“And you don’t either, Mother.” With her head
held high, Kate marched from the room.

“Mick ...say something to her. Please.”

“Let her go, Martha. She’ll come to her
senses.”

She already had. About the time he’d told her
she’d do well to learn to make soup.

Kate got her bags down from the top of the
closet and began to pack. The first thing she put in was her winter
coat. She’d heard the winters in Oklahoma were very cold.

Her suitcases were half full when she became
aware of him standing in the doorway.

“And where might ye be goin’, Katie.”

When her father lapsed into an Irish lilt and
called her Katie, she always lost her resolve. But not this time.
Taking a deep breath, she faced him.

“I’m going to Oklahoma.”

“What does Tulsa have that you can’t find
right here in Charleston?”

“I never said I was going to Tulsa.”

“Where, then?”

So, finally he was inquiring about her plans.
Did that mean he cared?

“I’m going to Chickasaw Tribal Lands.”

“Do you hate me that much, Katie, that you’d
squander a fine education off in the wilderness?”

Guilt. He’d always used guilt to manipulate
her.

“I don’t hate you, Father. I never hated
you.” Was it a lie? She didn’t know. “And it’s not a wilderness.
Dr. Colbert says it has a very fine hospital.” He’d said other
things too, the brilliant mixed-blood Chickasaw who had been her
mentor during her student year at Massachusetts General. “You have
talent, Kate, and a caring heart. There is a great need among my
people for a doctor like you. You could make a
real
difference.”

“You were going to practice right here in
Charleston,” her father said. “We had it all planned.”

“No, you had it all planned. You never
consulted me. You
told
me.”

“You’ve let that savage corrupt your
thinking.”

“Dr. Clayton Colbert is not a savage. He’s
the finest endocrinologist in the nation.”

They faced each other across the space that
separated them—Kate beside her suitcase, Mick beside the door. Just
once she wished he’d come close enough to touch her, come close
enough to pat her cheek or take her hand and say, “Everything is
going to be all right, Katie.”

She waited, waited for the words she knew he
would never say. Mick clenched his jaw and held his ground.

“My mind is made up,” she said at last, “and
there’s nothing you can do or say to change it.”

“If you do this thing, if you go off to this
wild land and waste your talents on people who are not like us
...you’re no daughter of mine.”

She’d never been a daughter of his, not since
that awful day thirteen years earlier. Tears threatened to spill
from her eyes, but she bit down on her lower lip, counting on the
pain to keep her from showing any weakness in front of him.

“So be it,” she said, and returned to her
packing.

Mick watched her awhile longer, wishing he
could take back his words. She had the same stiff-necked pride that
had backed him into more corners than he cared to think about.
Katie Elizabeth. His firstborn. He remembered the day she came into
the world, red-faced, red-haired, and squalling. He’d thought she
was the most beautiful thing in the whole universe. Still did. He’d
planned to give her the sun and the moon, with all the stars thrown
in for good measure.