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“Hi, Brick!” she called out, pulling on a jacket to fight off the worst of the rain. “I heard you got married!”
Brick smiled back, both dimples deepening, looking a little bit embarrassed and terribly pleased. “It’s true, Renata. Married my boss. Finally found a woman who could keep me in line.”
It was during this brief exchange that Renata realized somebody else was bolting out of the car, somebody in a rumpled suit and loosened tie who was sprinting toward her so fast it was frightening. She only got a glimpse of him—young, dark, good-looking—before his gaze fell on the old Indian. He slammed to a stop, clutching the side-view mirror of her truck for support. The sight of his painful swallow filled Renata with a great ache for him. Love for the old man was written all over his face.
It was a magnificent face, the kind any artist would love to use as a centerpiece of a painting. But Renata knew at once that it wasn’t the artist in her that responded so keenly to this man’s barely veiled virility and passion. He was tall and lean, with dark brown eyes and thick lashes and a strong jaw. His bronze skin and handsome, angular features hinted strongly at some sort of Indian ancestry.
But Renata only had time to register his compelling good looks and his panic before Brick said softly, “Renata, this is Michael Youngthunder. We’ve spent the whole night looking for his grandfather.”
Brick was wasting his breath. Michael Youngthunder didn’t even see Renata; he certainly didn’t hear Brick or respond to his courteous introduction. Every nuance of his attention was directed toward the old man.
Under other circumstances, Renata would have resented being so totally ignored. But she had loved her own grandfather, and she understood the anguish in Michael’s bloodshot eyes. Even without Brick’s explanation, she could have guessed by his haggard demeanor that he’d been searching for the old man all night.
Instinctively, Renata stepped toward him and laid one hand on his arm. “He’s all right,” she said quickly, even though she knew Michael could see it for himself. “I found him about half an hour ago and begged him to come in. He won’t budge, but his voice isn’t getting any weaker.”
Michael’s well muscled arm was tensely knotted beneath Renata’s fingers, but a mighty sigh of relief escaped his invitingly full lips. For the first time he glanced at Renata, but even now she didn’t think he really saw her. Habit more than conscious thought seemed to prompt him to murmur, “I’m sorry for the intrusion. It may take me a few minutes to persuade him to come away.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she assured him. “Just let me know what I can do to help. I draped a rain slicker around his shoulders—” she gestured toward the yellow vinyl garment sprawled across the grass “—but he just let it fall to the ground.”
Again Michael’s beautiful mahogany eyes met hers. “Thank you,” he repeated in a choked voice.
When she felt the ripple of tension in his biceps, Renata realized belatedly that she was still holding on to him. Abruptly she let go. But Michael wasn’t paying any attention to Renata. His gaze was once again on the old man, who was still chanting. Not once had his eyes even flickered toward his grandson.
“I tried everything I could to make him come in and dry off,” Renata explained apologetically. “He acts as though he doesn’t see me. Doesn’t hear. I think he’s in some kind of a trance.”
“Trance?” Michael repeated, as though the single word alarmed him.
“Well, I don’t know what else to call it. It’s as though he’s gone somewhere that I can’t reach.”
Michael closed his eyes, shook his head, then whispered, “I’m not sure I can reach him, either.”
At that point Brick joined them, laid a hand on Michael’s shoulder and said, “This is like talking down a jumper, Michael. I’ll speak to him if you want me to. I would if you weren’t here.”
Quietly Michael said, “Thanks, Lieutenant, but this is something I have to do myself. If he doesn’t finish, he’ll find a way to come back here later. The best thing for me to do is to hurry him along a little.”
“Finish?” said Renata. “He sounds like he’s just repeating the same thing over and over again.”
This time Michael’s gaze focused on her face for a long, dark moment before he turned away. For some reason she could not fathom, Renata knew she’d disappointed him.
Hugging herself for warmth, she stood beside Brick and stared at Michael as he crossed the lawn to join his grandfather. They couldn’t have looked more different: young, old; business suit, Indian clothes; utterly contemporary, locked in another space and time. Still, there was a family resemblance, or at least a tribal one, in the coppery skin and straight, masculine nose. The old man’s hair was very long and braided, already thin and gray. Michael’s black hair was longer than average—thick and straight as it flowed over his broad shoulders—but it was such a magnificent mane that a proud display of it didn’t strike Renata as peculiar. In her arty crowd, lots of people cherished eccentricities in their appearance. None of her Milwaukee friends would have looked twice at Michael’s hair even if he’d worn it in feathered braids.
“I met Michael when Edward Wocheck came back to town and started talking about expanding Timberlake Lodge,” Brick explained sotto voce. “Old man Youngthunder’s got some idea that there’s a sacred burial ground around here. We drove through your property before but the ‘spirits’ didn’t speak to him.”
Renata was astounded. People were right when they said truth was sometimes stranger than fiction! The only burial ground nearby was the family plot out toward the barn, and nobody had been buried there in seventy or eighty years.
“So why do you think he came back here this morning?” she asked Brick.
“Edward’s having a ground-breaking ceremony for the new wing of Timberlake Lodge tomorrow. Last night Mr. Youngthunder heard it on the news.”
Michael was squatting in front of his grandfather now, meeting his eyes, but Renata found it odd that he still had not spoken. The old man was chanting again, and for some reason Michael’s head was nodding ever so slightly as though in time to the distinctive rhythm.
“Why doesn’t he say something to his grandfather?” Renata asked. “Aren’t they on good terms?”
“Very good terms. Winnebago terms. Don’t let the suit throw you. Michael still knows how to be an Indian when he has to, and I think he’s going to have to act Winnebago to get through to the old guy.”
Brick was right. A moment later the handsome man in the rumpled suit—a suit that looked as though it had fit him magnificently before his night in the police car—folded his long legs and sat down on the mud-soaked blanket in front of his grandfather. Then he held up both hands the way the old man was and started to chant right along with him.
Renata stared disbelievingly at Brick, then back at Michael again. She knew Michael loved the old man, so she wasn’t surprised that he was willing to do anything to get him to come inside. She might have been willing to sit in the mud herself, especially in her jeans. But Michael was wearing a suit! And he wasn’t just sitting there pleading with the old man. He was joining in the ritual, raising his hands, chanting the same syllables.
It took Renata a moment to realize the symbolism of that simple act. He wasn’t feigning understanding. He knew the chant. He knew the sounds, the words, the gestures! He knew why his grandfather had come to this place, knew what he was doing, knew why he wouldn’t just get up and leave. And he clearly shared some part of his grandfather’s way of thinking, something that Renata guessed he couldn’t put into English words.
She battled the weird feeling that she was sinking into quicksand. Right before her eyes, this terribly attractive businessman had turned into an Indian! All he was missing was the buckskin and braids.
Suddenly there was a crackle from the cruiser. Brick quickly strode back, picked up the mike, barked a quick response and waved a hand. “Got an emergency,” he called to Renata. “Tell Michael I’ll be back for him as soon as I can.”
In an instant the black-and-white car had pulled away, leaving Renata feeling like an interloper on her own property. It had been strange enough starting the day with one rain-soaked Indian doing eerie chants on her front lawn.
Now there were two of them.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f0b9e22f-5c75-5ffa-a629-8f695ea0feb1)
FOR NEARLY fifteen minutes, Renata stood on the porch, grateful for the overhang, while Michael and his grandfather chanted in the mud. She had no idea what was going through their minds, though she was reasonably certain it wasn’t the same thing. The old man was totally absorbed in his ritual, but Michael’s eyes were open and his neck muscles rippled with tension. Every now and then he made a mistake in the chanting and had to take a moment to pick up a clue from his grandfather. It was obvious that the ceremony, whatever it was, did not come easily to him.
At last the old man stopped and lowered his arms. It didn’t seem to Renata that he was tired or resigned. He just seemed to be finished. At first he did not speak, but at last he opened his eyes and looked at Michael.
A good two minutes of silence passed before Michael began to speak, and even then Renata could not understand him. To her he’d spoken clear, unaccented Midwestern English. To his grandfather he was speaking an unintelligible tongue that she took to be Winnebago. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound; it simply surprised her to hear a man in a suit use a language that seemed to belong to another world...another century.
When Michael was done, the old man spoke, his own voice weak and quavery. He sounded calm but stubborn. Michael spoke again, gesturing to himself and then Renata. He sounded angry and embarrassed. She didn’t need to speak Winnebago to understand the look on his face.
Whatever he said seemed to impress his grandfather, because for the first time the old one’s watery gaze drifted toward Renata. Then he looked down, as though he, too, were ashamed. By this time Renata was shivering with cold and so was the old man. Michael still looked tense. And incredibly handsome.
At last he stood. Muddy water dripped down the legs of his ruined suit. He held out a hand to his grandfather, who ignored it but painfully struggled to rise on his own. The old man had to roll sideways to his knees and use both hands to push away from the ground, and even then he almost fell over. Michael kept his hand outstretched, leaning close to him, but he did not reach out to catch him. Renata was touched by his obvious effort to save the old man’s dignity.
When Michael’s grandfather stood up and started toward the house, Renata could see that the night in the rain had taken its toll. He looked shaky and cold and exhausted. At once she said to Michael, “Why don’t you take him upstairs and warm him up with a hot shower while I find you both some dry clothes.”
Michael’s eyes met hers with embarrassed gratitude as he nodded just once. Then Renata quickly slipped down to the basement while Michael and his grandfather moved slowly into the house.
It wasn’t hard to find clothes for two men; the basement was full of Renata’s parents’ and grandparents’ clothes and keepsakes. She even had a trunk of her great-grandparents’ things. Sometimes, when she was feeling lonely, Renata spent hours down here, perusing old photos and letters or rearranging her grandpa’s box of artifacts. She had never regretted being raised without brothers and sisters because she’d had so much love from the grown-ups in her life. But one by one, death had claimed them all—tractor accident, cancer, kidney disease. Her grandfather had lived longer than his son; he’d been the last to go. But for four years now, Renata had been the last of her branch of the Meyers in Wisconsin. Until recently she’d been too busy trying to launch a career to worry much about marriage and children, but she knew that she was nearly ready to settle down. The pull was always strongest on the days she came to Tyler.
Pushing away her maudlin memories, Renata quickly dug out several sizes of men’s jeans and T-shirts, plus some old long johns and a heavy jacket, despite the humidity, for the shivering old man. She took the clothes to the extra bedroom upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door. Over the sound of running water she called out, “The clothes are in the room next door. I’ll be down in the kitchen making breakfast if you want anything.”
She heard a muffled “Thanks,” but nothing more.
The instant Renata reached the kitchen she remembered that she hadn’t been here for more than a month, and she’d planned to stop at the grocery store after the meeting, on her way back from town. Fortunately she always kept a few staples on hand, so she had no trouble finding some coffee and a box of pancake mix. Normally she added milk and a fresh egg to the batter, but under the circumstances, water would have to do. Pancakes were a better choice than soup at this hour of the morning.
She’d just started dropping batter onto the griddle when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She turned as Michael stepped into the room.
He looked different in a pair of old jeans than he had in a suit. Renata’s father had been heavier than Michael, so the jeans were loose on him. So was the T-shirt. The casual look did nothing to diminish Michael’s attractiveness; if anything, it made him seem more accessible. Renata noticed that his hair was just as appealing wet as it was dry—thick, shiny, the fullness lifting it off his face before it curved under slightly on his shoulders.
But what really drew her to him was the expression on his face. She’d never seen a man look quite like this—proud, grateful and embarrassed all at the same time. When Michael had arrived and found his grandfather, Renata had guessed he was caught up in fear and relief. But since then, a measure of shame had crept into his regal bearing.
“I know Brick introduced us,” he greeted her quietly, “but I’m sorry to say I didn’t get a grip on your name.”
“Renata Meyer.”
“Michael Youngthunder.” He held out one strong brown hand, and Renata slipped hers into it. His was still cold, but the chilliness of his skin didn’t linger in his eyes. “I want you to know how much I appreciate your kindness to my grandfather. Most people would have called the cops and had him towed away.” He glanced toward the front lawn. “I put the slicker on the porch to dry.”
“Thanks.” Renata tried to give him a reassuring smile, but somehow a smile didn’t work at the moment. When he gently disengaged his hand from hers, she realized belatedly that she’d gripped it in greeting and forgotten to let go.
“We’re indebted to you,” Michael said sincerely. “If there’s anything my family can ever do for you, don’t hesitate to let us know.”
Renata was touched by the offer—and by the sincerity in Michael’s beautiful dark eyes. Lots of people, if they’d made the offer at all, would have said “I,” not “my family.” Obviously his family obligations were important to him.
“I wish I could have gotten him inside sooner, Michael,” she apologized. “I only arrived an hour or so ago. For all I know, he could have been out there all night.”
“I suspect he was,” Michael agreed sadly. He looked absolutely exhausted, but he made no move to sit down.
Abruptly Renata realized he was probably waiting for an invitation. “Please have a seat,” she was quick to offer. “I’ll have pancakes for you in just a second. Did you have anything to eat this morning?”
Slowly he took a chair, his gaze gratefully brushing her face in a way that made her skin tingle. It occurred to Renata that she must look as bedraggled as Michael and his father. Before, she hadn’t minded, but for some reason she didn’t want to look her worst now that she was talking to Michael face-to-face.
“I haven’t had an appetite since I first found out he was gone,” he admitted. “Now that he’s in there steaming himself, I’m absolutely ravenous.”
This time Renata grinned, and to her surprise, Michael grinned back. His smile took her totally off guard. It was brilliant, almost boyish, utterly charming. What a change from that fierce, anguished scowl!
“Good. I was hoping you’d be too hungry to notice that I’m piecing together a meal from odds and ends,” she confessed. “I keep staples here but I always need to get milk and fresh produce when I come to town. But if you’re hungry—”
“Ready to eat cardboard. Whatever you’ve got will be fine.”
He gave her another dazzling grin as she handed him a plate full of pancakes, dug in the cupboard for some syrup and rinsed off a clean but dusty fork. It occurred to Renata that coming back to her house in Tyler was sort of like arriving at a neglected backwoods cabin. It was cozy and quaint, but it wasn’t set up to entertain strangers. At least she had a phone and running water—the thumps and bangs in the pipes triggered by the old man’s shower were proof of that—but that was about the extent of the amenities.
Michael’s eyes met hers with an expression that reminded Renata of a little boy in a candy shop in a Norman Rockwell painting. “Are you going to join me?” he asked.
This time Renata laughed out loud. “For goodness’ sake, Michael, eat! I can hardly bear to look at you. In another second you’ll start drooling.”
The smile quickly vanished. “No worry about that. I drooled a lot when I ate raw buffalo in the wigwam, but at Georgetown they frowned on that.”
Renata was surprised that she’d offended him and even more surprised that he’d felt compelled to trot out his academic credentials. Honestly, she said, “I was only teasing, Michael, because you sounded so hungry. I wasn’t thinking at all about your...heritage.”
A dark flush reddened his angular cheeks. “After what’s happened outside this morning, I wouldn’t think you’d be able to think about anything else.”
He was so blunt that Renata decided she should be straight with him, also. “I’ll admit that your grandfather took me by surprise. I’m worried about him and I’m damned curious. You took me by surprise, too, but that’s because I’m having a devil of a time figuring out how a man who looks so comfy in a suit and acts so white can speak Winnebago and think like a traditional Indian.”
She drew a quick breath, but didn’t give him time to reply. “Now I’m wondering if I’ve done anything to cause you to believe that I’ve got some Neanderthal prejudice against people who aren’t just like me. Since I’ve spent my whole life as a square peg in a round hole, I’d have to dislike just about everybody if that were true. As it happens, I like people. I like diversity. Until you started making insinuations,” she finished a bit sarcastically, “I rather liked you.”
Michael was silent, but his eyes grew dark as he listened to her speech. For a long, tense moment his inscrutable gaze impaled her. Then he rose, abandoning the fork poised to snag a pancake, and slowly prowled across the room.
Renata wasn’t sure what to expect of this tightly coiled stranger. She knew he was angry, but she wasn’t sure if she was scared. She tried to remember just what Brick had said to her about Michael Youngthunder before he’d galloped off in his police car. He had acted as though Michael were a friend. He’d given Renata no overt or even subtle warnings. Surely he wouldn’t have left her alone with these two Indians if he had any reason to distrust them!
Still, Renata shivered as Michael approached her, his lips drawn down in a fearsome scowl. She wanted to duck away from him, to hide or bolt from the room, but she didn’t seem to be able to move.
And then he spoke, and she knew by the fresh shame in his voice that his anger was directed inward. And she also knew that the chill that feathered up and down her spine as he touched her wrist had nothing to do with fear.
“Renata,” he said softly, his voice taking on a low and tortured tone, “please forgive my rudeness. I am always overly touchy about my...bloodlines. And this morning, I am—” he shook his head “—a great deal more embarrassed by my family than usual.” His gaze met hers, then slipped away, reluctantly swinging back to hers again. “I’ve never been in a situation quite like this before, but that’s no reason for me to behave badly.” As the bathroom pipes upstairs stopped banging, he finished tensely, “You don’t have to feed me. As soon as my grandfather gets dressed, we’ll go.”
As he turned to leave the room, Renata caught his arm. She seemed to be doing a lot of that this morning—holding on to Michael—but she couldn’t seem to help herself. There was something about him that made her want very much to touch him.
“Michael, I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I know this whole situation is terribly awkward for you. But it’s kind of strange for me, too, you know.”
He turned around, met her eyes again and slowly nodded. A thin layer of tension seemed to leave the room.
“My grandfather lived to be ninety-six,” she told him, “and he just died a few years ago. I loved him dearly, but I was the only one left to take care of him near the end, and I didn’t always know what to do with him.”
Michael ran a nervous hand through his thick mane. “Grand Feather’s not senile,” he declared almost defensively. “I know it looks that way, but he’s still sharp as a tack. He’s stubborn and determined, but he’s not losing a grip on reality. At least, not on his reality. It’s just that his reality is probably different from yours.”
Again his dark eyes met hers, imploring Renata to understand what he didn’t seem to be able to say. She wanted him to go on, to share his feelings, for reasons that went beyond the need to satisfy her curiosity or ease her conscience after their spat. But she knew he was still ravenous and exhausted...and nearly proud enough to leave his pancakes uneaten and go.
“Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it while we eat?” she suggested. Renata wasn’t a breakfast person, but she saw no need to mention that to Michael. Grabbing a plate from the cupboard, she filled it with pancakes. “I’m pretty hungry myself,” she lied.
It was hard to say whether it was Michael’s hunger or Renata’s offer to join him that finally did the trick, but he did move back toward the table, where he waited behind his chair until Renata sat down. Only after she took a bite of pancake did he take a forkful from his stack. She tried not to watch him eat, certain that he was holding himself back. Deliberately she kept quiet until he’d consumed three pancakes and she’d discreetly refilled his plate. Mercifully, a companionable silence seemed to fill the room.
Despite her request to have him share the details of his grandfather’s reality, Michael didn’t mention the old man again. Instead he asked, “So where do you live when you don’t live here?”
If Renata had believed he was really interested in her, she would have been pleased by the question. Under the circumstances, she was reasonably certain that he was merely trying to be polite.
“I live in Milwaukee,” she answered simply. “How about you?”
“Sugar Creek.”
He made no effort to expand on the terse answer, so Renata asked another question. “Does your grandfather live with you?”
Michael exhaled sharply and shook his head. “No, unfortunately. I have begged him and begged him, but he won’t leave Wisconsin Dells. He won’t even let me buy him a nicer place. Even a little trailer would be an improvement.”
“Does he live alone?”
“For all intents and purposes. I have an uncle who owns some land nearby. He checks on him every night.”
Renata got the picture. Near the end her own grandfather had been too stubborn to live with anybody, either. She’d had to arrange for a year’s leave from the university—while she pretended to her grandfather that she’d dropped out of school—so she could come home and take care of him. Knowing all the hours of worry that Michael surely had to put up with, all the trips back and forth, she said kindly, “But when he’s in trouble, you’re the one they call?”
He looked surprised at her deduction.
“It’s obvious that you two are very close.”
Renata was rewarded with another smile—tentative, but beguiling nonetheless.
“He raised me after my grandmother died. He felt he’d failed to teach my father the old ways, so he tried to pass them on to me. That’s the only reason I know—” he gestured with his head toward the front lawn “—a few words of Winnebago. Enough to fake my way through a couple of old ceremonies.”
Renata was quite certain that he knew far more than “a few words of Winnebago” and “a couple of old ceremonies.” His Winnebago conversation with his grandfather had sounded quite fluent, and though he’d stumbled a few times with the chanting, she’d gotten the impression that he’d been struggling to remember something he’d known very well at one time. It took no genius to deduce that his Indian roots made him uncomfortable, and not just because his grandfather had made a scene.
