The Bride Price

So why did he feel so restless this morning? he wondered.

Most of what he consciously wanted was within his reach. From impoverished beginnings on the reservation, as the son of a widowed, mostly Navajo mother and a father of mixed Navajo, Anglo and Hispanic background, who’d been killed in a railroad accident before his birth, he’d come a long way. Thanks to the U.S. Army, which he’d joined in order to be eligible for the G.I. Bill, he’d earned a bachelor’s degree, then begged and borrowed his way into law school.

After serving as one of Jim Frakes’s assistants in Flag to establish some credentials for himself, he’d gone on to create a way of life that included a good income—by virtue of his successful lawsuits against negligent corporations— and the satisfaction of helping deserving underdogs win vindication or redress.

In many ways he’d achieved the best of what the Anglo world had to offer. Meanwhile, his Native American ancestors had bequeathed him a rich spiritual heritage. From his great-grandfather, who’d died of advanced old age several years earlier, he’d learned ancient medicine man secrets known only to a few, which allowed him to step beyond the distortions of the present and get at the hidden truth in situations.

Yet something fundamental was missing from his day-to-day existence. He felt it most whenever he finished a case and returned to Flag, with enough leisure to step back from the quotidian flow of work and think about his situation.

This time, because of the trouble that had befallen Paul Naminga, there wouldn’t be much time for reflection. Yet the prospect of defending the Hopi paramedic in what would probably be Jim Frakes’s last major case hadn’t assuaged his yearning.

A chance discovery had only made it worse. While going through some notes David had saved from the Leonard Naminga trial on his first night home, he’d run across a group snapshot taken in the county attorney’s office on the occasion of Tom Hanrahan’s fortieth birthday. In the picture, a smiling, slightly younger version of himself stood with his arm around slim, blond Kyra Frakes—Martin now, he reminded himself. Bronze in contrast to the freckled paleness of her skin, his fingers curled about her upper arm, which was bared by her sleeveless blouse.

He’d almost been able to smell the perfume she wore, feel the heat and vitality that radiated from her body as he stared at the photograph. I shouldn’t have let Jim talk me into walking out on her that way, he thought now, by the corral, for perhaps the thousandth time. I could have helped her finish law school—made whatever sacrifices it took. As husband and wife, we’d have lit up the sky with a fire that would be still burning.

If she cared at all after so much time had passed, that caring took the form of aversion, he guessed. He supposed he could count himself lucky that she wouldn’t be around during the trial to make the besotted thirty-year-old inside him, whose memories were alive and well, eat his heart out. Being civil to the former boss who’d wanted him out of her life for what in retrospect he considered offensive reasons would be difficult enough.

Finishing with the horse, David patted the glossy animal’s neck and led him to his stall. He was just closing the stall gate when the cellular phone in his hip pocket chirped.

His caller turned out to be Jim Frakes’s secretary since time immemorial, Jody Ann Daniels. “Hey, gorgeous. How ya doin’?” the fortyish mother of three greeted him. “The boss asked me to call and set up the discovery exchange in State v. Naminga for a week from Monday. That fit with your schedule?”

He hadn’t been able to do his usual thorough investigation yet. “So long as he’s willing to revisit if and when new information comes to light,” he conceded.

Jody Ann laughed outright. “Knowing you’d ask, he so stipulated. By the way…your old friend Kyra’s taking a leave of absence from her high-powered Kansas City job to help her pop, what with Tom Hanrahan bedridden in Missoula. Guess she’s a little freer to flit around the country, now that she’s divorced. It’s gonna be like old home week around here!”

Kyra was divorced. She was coming back to Flagstaff.

Folding the phone and slipping it back in his pocket after saying goodbye to Jody, David walked back to the corral and leaned over the fence. He rested the astonishing blue gaze he’d inherited from Anglo ancestors on his father’s side and W. W. Trask, the legendary Irish-American-Native American scout who’d been his mother’s great-great-great-grandfather, against the mountains’ enduring beauty.

Did he still have a chance with her? His thoughts in turmoil, he found himself staring into the void his estrangement from Kyra had created. Though he’d tried to phone her a year after they’d parted, around the time she’d graduated, he hadn’t been able to reach her. Soon afterward he’d heard she had been married. After that the notion of contacting her had seemed pointless.

They hadn’t talked or even glimpsed each other in passing since the day her father had pressured him into leaving her for her own good, and he’d been fool enough to swallow the bait.

Now fate had taken a hand.

Seeing her again will either cure me or reinfect me with the same old yearning, he thought. As he pondered what to do about it, a remark his mother’s grandfather had once made drifted through his head. You can’t change the past, even if you acquire the wisdom to visit it, Henry Many Horses had observed in his quiet way. But you can learn a great deal from the lessons it has to teach.

Chapter Two

Thanks to a last-minute flurry of activity in Kansas City, where she was pressed into taking depositions for another assistant who had the flu, Kyra wasn’t able to leave until noon on Saturday. I probably won’t make it to Flag in time for the discovery exchange, she thought as she headed southwest on Interstate 35 toward Wichita in her cherry red Jeep Cherokee. And I’ll miss my first opportunity to come face-to-face with David. It’s almost as if I planned it that way.

Kyra didn’t bargain on the fact that her compulsion to see him again would build as the miles racked up, causing her to press her foot a little harder on the gas pedal. By the time she reached Gallup, New Mexico, late Sunday afternoon, her yearning to see him and the strong apprehension that gripped her at the prospect were at each other’s throats. Within striking distance, she decided to stop early.

More alone in a roadside café and her motel room than she customarily felt in her Kansas City apartment, she tossed and turned that night, getting very little sleep. Finally, around 5 a.m., she gave it up, showered and dressed and headed for the checkout desk.

She arrived in Flagstaff shortly after 9 a.m., the appointed hour for the informal exchange of discovery in State of Arizona v. Naminga to start. Parking the Cherokee in a recently vacated spot and getting out to smooth her beige wool gabardine suit and neat French-braided chignon, she couldn’t quell her nervousness.

What if I’m still in love with him after all this time? she tormented herself. I don’t think I could bear it. I. have a right to get over him—to learn to be happy with someone else.

With its prominent clock tower, the red sandstone court-house where her father’s office was situated had long been a Flagstaff landmark. The dark-paneled lobby, with its murky portraits in oil and broad, imposing staircase leading to the second floor, was just as she remembered it. Only the anteroom to his private lair had changed. If possible, it appeared to be even more choked with files and papers.

“Long time no see,” Jody Ann Daniels greeted her, interrupting her typing to give Kyra her usual insouciant grin. “I hate to say it, but you look better every time I see you. The meeting got started a few minutes ago. Your dad said to tell you that if you made it in time, you were to go right in.”

Her heart in her throat, Kyra entered her father’s office, which hadn’t changed much since her childhood. Law books and Zane Gray novels still filled the shelves. Paintings of cowboys and hunting trophies crowded the walls, reflecting the bluff, plainspoken county attorney’s interests. A pair of skis he hadn’t used for a decade reposed in one corner, gathering dust.

Keenly conscious of David’s presence and the fact that he’d risen to his feet, Kyra postponed acknowledging him as she returned her father’s affectionate squeeze and greeted the court reporter he’d summoned, whom she’d known since high school.

At last, swallowing, she turned to face the man she’d snubbed, who owned the lion’s share of her attention.

So surprising against the palette of his coppery skin and coal black hair, David’s light, beautiful eyes seemed to burn with a fire that had something hidden at its heart. All the lectures she’d given herself notwithstanding, she wanted to drown in them, offer to be his hostage.

“Kyra,” he said simply in his soft, deep voice, holding out his hand to her.

If she was to maintain any semblance of control over the situation, she had to take it. Grasped lightly, it was firm, callused and warm enough to send little shivers of awareness racing up her arms. Every kiss they’d exchanged, every intimacy she’d permitted him in her formerly besotted state, seemed to hover between them in memory, suggesting renewed, even more passionate congress.

“Hello…good to see you again,” she murmured, realizing too late how idiotic and awkward the words must sound. They were hardly strangers. Or even mere acquaintances.

Holding her captive a moment longer than necessary, David responded that it was good to see her, too. She’d been a girl when he’d left. Now she was a woman. Another man had initiated her. With a fierceness he didn’t let show, he longed to step back in time and undo that hurt, claim the priceless opportunity he’d missed for himself.

He’d never been able to manage the first half of that equation where she was concerned. His feelings always got in the way. As for changing things, he’d long since learned that only the future held possibilities.

For her part, Kyra was overwhelmed by his quiet power and almost mystical resonance. In the years they’d been apart, he seemed to have acquired a depth and maturity that were stunning for a man in his mid-thirties. How can someone whose loyalties were so shifting, so available for purchase, project such an aura of decency and wisdom? she asked herself.

There didn’t seem to be any answer. Meanwhile, his physical magnetism was overpowering her. Though he was dressed for his lawyer’s role in a charcoal gray suit, white shirt and tie, she couldn’t help but imagine him in faded, slightly shrunken blue jeans. Compared to him, the husband she’d divorced and the men she’d dated since were ciphers—pallid imitations of the standard he’d set.

Somehow she had to resist if he tried to jump-start their romance. Remembering the money he took ought to do it, she thought bitterly. In her experience, the principles he claimed to espouse were so much poppycock.

Conscious her father was watching her for signs that she was still susceptible, she shuttered her feelings and pulled a worn wooden chair up to one corner of his desk. “Please…don’t let me interrupt,” she murmured. “I assume no one will mind if I take a few notes.”

In Arizona an “open file” rule prevailed, in which both sides in a criminal case could consult a list maintained by the county clerk in which the opposing attorneys catalogued the evidence they planned to present and their proposed witnesses. However, Kyra’s father had always held discovery meetings. He claimed to like the give-and-take, the small-town camaraderie, not to mention the chance to pick up some tidbit of information or other he couldn’t have accessed by any other means.

Taking up where he’d left off, Big Jim continued to run down his list of witnesses. It turned out to be a lengthy one, given the number of people who’d seen Paul Naminga and Ben Monongye trade blows outside the latter’s trailer. Many of the names, both Anglo and Native American, were familiar to her. However, she didn’t know the young girl who’d seen a man in Paul’s costume go into Ben’s trailer. Moving on to the preliminary tests investigators had conducted on the bloodstains, he offered David a copy of the lab report. “Something else has, uh, come up,” her father added in a tone that alerted Kyra he regarded it as a chink in his armor. “The crime scene unit found several hairs in the trailer where Ben Monongye was stabbed that don’t match his or Paul’s. Their natural color seems to have been black-gray…”

David frowned with interest. “You say natural?”

“Turns out they were coated with black hair dye. Of course, they could have been shed in the trailer at some point before the murder took place…maybe even weeks earlier. On the day of the performance, lots of people were in and out of those trailers. Besides, they were rentals. No telling where they’d been before Suzy Horvath rented them.”

Suzy Horvath, a forty-something divorcee who owned and edited a local tabloid, had organized the dance festival. Out of the corner of her eye, Kyra caught David’s quick flash of smile.

“Thanks,” he said, the grooves beside his mouth deepening. “That’s a little bit of evidence we can work with.”

Big Jim shrugged, hiding any concern he might feel. “I don’t think it’s going to amount to much.”

They were almost finished when Judge Beamish, who would preside over Paul’s case, sauntered in from his chambers down the hall to perch on a windowsill. Though he didn’t interrupt, he gave Kyra a smile and nod of recognition. A moment or two later, he was followed by a bailiff, who’d brought the handcuffed defendant over from his cell in the nearby jail.

So there’s to be a bail hearing, too, Kyra realized, exchanging a silent hello with the clean-cut, boyish-looking paramedic. Seeing Paul again made it all the more difficult to believe he was guilty of murder, despite his public confrontation with the victim.

Watching the wheels turn in her head, David picked up on her sympathies as surely as if she’d laid them out for him on her father’s desk. She’s just the same, he marveled. Decent. Fair-minded. A champion of the underdog if it was merited. Despite her experience as a prosecutor, he could tell she was still an ethical defense attorney at heart.

If they’d married, as Kyra had wanted them to when they were working together on the Leonard Naminga case, they’d probably have slept and worked together. The happiness in his life would have been seamless. By now, they might even have become parents, he thought. Aware the heat of his regard was making her uncomfortable, David forced himself to pay attention.

As he marshaled his arguments for Paul’s release and Big Jim countered them, the buildup of tension in Kyra’s neck and shoulders from attempting to sit gracefully erect and pretend David was part of the furniture became excruciating.

At last it was Judge Beamish’s turn to speak. Citing the capital nature of the crime, he denied David’s request.

Excusing himself with a long, slow look at Kyra, David accompanied his client and the bailiff back to the jail so that he and Paul could hold a private conference.

For Kyra, it was as if all the light and energy in the room had departed with him. He didn’t bother to say goodbye, she thought. But then, why should he? There’s no precedent. A small, still voice inside her whispered, The twenty-two-year-old girl you once were was hoping he regretted his mistake, that he would try to win you back.

It was going to be a long six weeks. Slumping a little in her chair, she tried to center herself.

An informal bull session followed between her dad and the judge, a burly, fifty-something widower. Only half paying attention, Kyra was stunned to hear Hank Beamish remark that he and David were dating the same woman— Suzy Horvath, the newspaper editor who’d organized the dance festival.

“We’re not really rivals, of course,” he confided with a wink at her. “So there’s no ground for prejudice. I don’t need to recuse myself.”

If Big Jim found the conversation a little awkward, in view of Kyra’s presence, he didn’t let it show. “How’s that, Hank?” he asked negligently.

The judge laughed outright as he stood and smoothed down his robe. “Hell, Suzy would tumble for him in a minute, if she thought he was serious. Of course, she’s a couple of years older than him. But that doesn’t mean much nowadays.”

Why should I feel as if a knife has been plunged into the softest part of my stomach? Kyra asked herself. It’s just gossip, after all. I should have expected something of the sort. David’s had a lot of women since I refused to surrender my virginity without marriage. And he’ll have a lot more. It’s no skin off my nose.

Her heart stubbornly aching despite the brave words she’d summoned to comfort herself, Kyra bade Judge Beamish goodbye and spent a few additional minutes hugging and talking to her dad. However, when an important phone call came through for him, she decided she’d had enough of hanging around the courthouse for one morning. Her parking meter had probably expired, anyway. Scribbling him a note that she planned to drive out to the house and take a dip in the pool, after stopping to see Red Miner’s wife, Flossie, who’d all but adopted her when her mother died, she headed for the stairs.

In the interim, David had finished with his client and headed back in search of her. He came striding into the shadowed, momentarily deserted lobby just as she reached the bottom of the stairs. There was nobody around to form opinions or take notes.

“Forget something?” she asked as casually as she could, taking a tentative step toward the door.

His blue eyes glittered against the tan of his face. “As a matter of fact, I did. And I came back for it.”

She realized abruptly that he was blocking her exit. “Dad’s still upstairs if you need to talk to him,” she whispered.

“It isn’t your Dad I came back to see. And I suspect you know it, Changing Woman.”

It was one of the love names he’d used for her. Beneath her staid, lawyerly suit, Kyra was tingling all over.

“David, I don’t think…” she began.

He wasn’t thinking, either. He was leading with his heart. Cutting off her flow of words before she could say something to discourage what he wanted, he tugged her to him and covered her mouth with his, boldly inserting his tongue.

To be in his arms again, thigh to thigh and mouth to mouth, was like regaining a missing part of herself. Passion rose in a flood, racing through the parched arroyos of her loneliness like the male rain of a summer deluge anointing the high desert. The taste of him, both salty and sweet, his clean remembered scent of piñon and musk invading her nostrils, nearly blew her away.

Yes, oh yes, she thought helplessly. This is what I’ve needed. What I’ve longed for with every breath, despite his treachery.

Pliant as an aspen shedding its leaves on an October mountainside, she didn’t pull away. He was the first to break contact. Holding her back from him, though he continued to grip her upper arms, he gazed down at her with a gamut of emotions on his face.

“Kyra, Kyra,” he said softly. “You’ll never know…”

Abruptly, there were footsteps on the stairs behind them. One of the typists from the county clerk’s office gave them a sidelong glance as she brushed past them and hurried down the hall, her high heels clicking on the tiles.

The woman was known to be something of a gossip. Wrenching free, Kyra regarded David with fire in her eyes. Her delicate, ringless hands had settled belligerently on her hips.

“How dare you do…what you just did, after the way you walked out on me five years ago?” she demanded, unconsciously offering him a full confession of how badly he’d wounded her. “Surely you realize you’re the last man in the world I’d have anything to do with!”

It wasn’t the time or the place to engage her in a shouting match. He wanted to make love to her, not fight over past mistakes. If she wanted an apology, he’d be glad to give it. He shouldn’t have left as he did. He’d realized that a hundred miles down the road.

He just couldn’t let the falsehood stand. “You know you wanted me to kiss you…that we both wanted it,” he asserted in his soft, deep voice.

It was true, God help her. One glimpse of him, one touch, and she was burning up with need for him.

She’d never confess the truth—not if she lived to be a hundred. Turning on her heel without a word, she walked out the courthouse door. He didn’t follow. She didn’t have to turn around to know that he was staring after her.

Pulling herself together, she strode toward her Cherokee with the energy of ten. She supposed it was too much to hope that Cheryl Garcia, the typist who’d caught them kissing, wouldn’t spread the story around. Though it was the county seat, Flagstaff was still a small town. Most people knew each other. It wouldn’t be long before everyone thought they were having an affair.

Furious with David for putting her in that position and even angrier at herself, Kyra unlocked the door on the driver’s side. She almost didn’t see the sweet-faced young woman who’d just emerged from the county jail, a few paces down the street.

“Kyra…Kyra Frakes…is that you?” the woman called, motioning her to wait.

Thoughts of David and her tangled feelings for him faded. The woman was Paul Naminga’s wife, Julie. They’d met five years earlier, during the Leonard Naminga case. It was safe to say that, at the moment, she had more crushing burdens than Kyra did.

“Julie…I was so sorry to hear about what happened,” she said earnestly when they were face-to-face. “I’ve always liked Paul so much…”

Though Julie Naminga’s tone was cool, it didn’t ring with censure or condemnation. “I understand you’re here to help your father prosecute him,” she said.

Kyra wasn’t sure how to respond. For some reason she felt incredibly guilty. Yet she hadn’t done anything. “Dad phoned and asked for my help, since Tom Hanrahan is out of commission,” she answered a bit defensively. “Since I happen to love him, I said yes.”

A licensed practical nurse at the local hospital, Julie didn’t attempt to soothe her with polite clichés. Or launch into a diatribe. Instead, she seemed simply to absorb Kyra’s explanation and accept it for what it was—the reason she’d chosen to give for her actions. She’s reacting as David might have, in her place, Kyra realized.

“I’d like to say something for the record,” Julie told her after a moment. “My husband’s innocent, just as Leonard was. When you and David were helping your father prosecute him, you sensed he wasn’t responsible for that elderly couple’s death. And you did what you could to find out the truth instead of pushing for a conviction.”

Kyra bit her lip. “You’re right. We did,” she admitted. “We weren’t very successful, I’m afraid.”

Again, Julie didn’t attempt to reassure her with platitudes. The fact that they’d failed was the simple truth. There could be no denying or glossing over it.

“I don’t expect you to switch sides…join in the defense,” she said. “Just that you’ll give my husband the same chance you gave Leonard, by keeping your eyes and ears open for holes in your father’s case. Or conflicting evidence.”

Kyra felt keenly that she was being put on the spot. “I can’t act as an informer for David Yazzie,” she said reprovingly.

“I’m not asking for that. Just that you keep an open mind.”

A loose strand of Kyra’s hair blew in her face and she brushed it back. “I like to think I’m capable of that.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

Kyra nodded. “Yes.”

They stood there, looking at each other for a moment.

“Any idea who might have wanted to kill Ben Monongye, if not Paul?” Kyra asked.

Julie Naminga laughed bitterly. “Lots of people,” she said, tossing off some names that ran the gamut from Anglo to Native American.