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Medicine Man
Cheryl Reavis
OPPOSITES ATTRACT. BUT THEN WHAT?He was about to go to a war zone. He couldn' t get involved with a woman now.She was in a battle for custody of her son. She couldn' t risk a new romance.He was half Navajo; he embraced the spiritual wisdom of his ancestors.She knew nothing about his traditions.And both Will Baron' s and Arley Meehan' s big, protective, opinionated families opposed the two of them being together.If they were smart, they' d walk away from each other fast. If they followed their hearts, who knew what might happen….
The sound of the rain grew louder overhead, and there was a loud crack of thunder.
“Male rain,” Will said, watching the trees bend under the onslaught of the rising storm.
“Rain has a gender?”
“Where I come from it does.”
“What’s a female rain like?”
“Steady. Gentle. Soft.”
After a moment Arley stepped closer.
“I know you’re tough—Airborne and all that—and I don’t want you to panic because this is not because I think you need it,” she said. “This is because I need it—so I’ll feel better.”
With that, she slid her arms around him, resting her head against his shoulder.
He intended to end the embrace, to step away while he still could, but she lifted her head and looked at him. She was so close, her body soft and warm against his. He tried to smile and didn’t quite make it. Instead, he slowly lowered his mouth to lightly touch hers.
Dear Reader,
What a capricious thing a writer’s muse can be. More than once I’ve thought a character’s story had ended only to discover that that wasn’t the case at all. They’re still there somehow, but out of sight, waiting for just the right opportunity to step into the limelight again.
I first encountered Will Baron when he was three years old, and what a great writing pleasure it was to create a better life for this abandoned little boy. Will was happy. End of story. Or so I thought.
Then, here he came again when he was a teenager, both helping and needing help, filling an important supportive role in other stories I wanted to tell and yet still yearning for things he would have been hard pressed to name.
And now, here he is one more time—with his own story at last. Medicine Man is Will Baron’s journey to finally find the place where he truly belongs and to win the heart of the woman he is struggling so hard not to love.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading it, and I hope you’ll visit me at my Web site: www.members.authorsguild.net/cherylreavis/
Best always,
Cheryl Reavis
Medicine Man
Cheryl Reavis
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHERYL REAVIS
award-winning short story author and romance novelist who also writes under the name of Cinda Richards, describes herself as a late bloomer who played in her first piano recital at the tender age of thirty. “We had to line up by height—I was the third smallest kid,” she says. “After that, there was no stopping me. I immediately gave myself permission to attempt my other heart’s desire—to write.” Her Silhouette Special Edition novel A Crime of the Heart reached millions of readers via Good Housekeeping magazine. Both A Crime of the Heart and Patrick Gallagher’s Widow won the Romance Writers of America’s coveted RITA
Award for Best Contemporary Series Romance the year they were published. One of Our Own received the Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series Romance from Romantic Times BOOKreviews. A former public health nurse, Cheryl makes her home in North Carolina with her husband.
For all the readers who have written to ask me what
happened to Will Baron. This is for you, with my
sincere thanks for your kind comments and support.
Special thanks, too, to Vanessa’s sergeant
for answering my many questions.
Any mistakes are mine, not his.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
I never should have come.
Arley Meehan stood in the middle of her sister Kate’s boisterous wedding reception, trying not to look as miserable as she felt. The pub was packed with military personnel, the Airborne contingent from Fort Bragg, courtesy of Kate’s new husband—his side of the family, as it were. She was happy for Kate, for them both—of course she was—and she had wanted this opportunity to get out and have a good time for a change. But weddings were no place for the newly-divorced, no matter how bad the marriage had been, and Arley wished now that she had stayed home with her little boy for an evening of fast food and popcorn, a rented movie and lots of giggling.
The Celtic/bluegrass band her uncle Patrick had hired for the occasion suddenly straddled both genres and began to play a wooden-whistle-and-banjo-spiked rendition of “Sally Goodin,” much to the delight of the guests. A few of the more adventurous couples began to dance, whether they actually knew how to or not, making Arley’s immediate vicinity a dangerous place to be. She moved out of the way, dodging a number of low dips and high kicks in the process, and she recognized a soldier standing alone on the other side of the pub. She knew his name—Specialist Will Baron. He was a medic who worked with Kate at the post hospital and, at the moment, was looking every bit as alone as she felt. Arley had met him once, in passing, last summer, before she and her sisters had even noticed that Kate had been well on her way to marrying a seriously injured paratrooper.
Arley swiftly headed in his direction. She had been given a token assignment for the night—something her oldest sister, Grace, had devised to keep Arley the Handful out of trouble. She was supposed to circulate among the guests and make sure everyone was having a good time, which had seemed totally unnecessary until now. Clearly, Will Baron was the place to start.
“So how homesick are you?” she asked when she reached him.
He looked around, his quick double take suggesting he remembered who she was.
“Arley Meehan,” she said anyway. “Welcome to the Kate Meehan-Cal Doyle wedding festivities. Are you having a good time, Specialist Baron?”
“Yes,” he said politely.
She gave him an arch look. “Not true, I think.”
He almost smiled. “Actually, I…forgot how much I missed it…these family things.”
So did I, she thought. She had missed her sisters terribly, despite deliberately isolating herself from them for a long time. The humiliation of having been betrayed by the man she’d loved, of having made yet another bad choice by marrying him in the first place, had been too much for her. She’d needed to have time to recover and regroup, and to get over the fact that her sisters had been so right and she had been so glaringly wrong. Tonight was really her first big venture back into the fold.
“How’s Scottie?” Will asked, and she smiled.
She’d forgotten that her son had been with her when she and Will Baron had run into each other last summer. “You remembered his name,” she said in surprise.
“It’s something I do—remember things. Is he still collecting rocks?”
“Still,” she said. “At the moment, though, he wants to go on the honeymoon.”
“Well, that ought to be…interesting.”
“Especially since he’s learned to make armpit noises.”
He grinned—something Arley decided he should definitely do more often.
“Good for him,” he said. “Is he here tonight?”
“No, he and the rest of the cousins are having their own wild party—pizza and video games and wedding cake with the great-aunts. I think he’d rather be elsewhere. Tonight’s our regular fast food and movie rental night. So where are you from?”
There was a lull in the music, leaving a strange gap in the din around them.
“Arizona. Window Rock. The Navajo Reservation.”
“So you’re…Navajo?”
“Half,” he said. “My birth mother is one of The People.”
“Your birth mother?” she asked, but he didn’t respond to her clear invitation to elaborate.
“You were brought up with…‘The People,’ I take it,” she said, deciding to respect his reticence. She had plenty of things she didn’t want to talk about, either.
“With. By. For,” he said.
“And your father—what was he?” she asked, without considering whether it was polite to do so. She wanted to know, and she had earned her “Arley the Handful” title as much from being curious as from being reckless.
The band started up again, as lively as ever.
“A Tar Heel,” he said over the racket. “Full-blooded.”
She smiled, appreciating his reference to his father having been born in North Carolina.
“Is he from around here?”
“Not exactly,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“He…died when I was three. I don’t know much about him, actually.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Well, you can always kill two birds with one stone,” she said, and he gave her a puzzled look.
The noise escalated, and she leaned closer to explain.
“If I’d joined the army to see the world…” she began, trying to make herself heard over the drumbeats.
“I think that’s the navy,” he interrupted.
“Whatever. If I’d joined the army to see the world and I’d ended up in the state where my long lost father had lived, I’d probably try to check it out. Especially if I didn’t know much about him. Two birds. See?”
He didn’t say whether he did or didn’t. The music suddenly softened, enough so she didn’t need to yell anymore.
“Was it hard to get sent to Fort Bragg?” she asked, disregarding his lack of enthusiasm for her opinion that he might find a personal advantage to being posted here.
“Well, it took a certain amount of jumping out of high-and low-flying aircraft.”
“I’ll bet—”
“Who’s this?” a man’s voice said behind her, and Arley froze. She had no doubt that the question was meant for her.
“Will Baron—coworker of the bride,” Will said easily, extending his hand to her ex-husband, someone who was not supposed to be here.
“Scott McGowan,” Scott said pointedly. “So just how do you know him?” he asked Arley, ignoring Will’s outstretched hand.
Arley forced herself to look at him—and didn’t answer. She knew he’d take offense at whatever comment she made, and she wasn’t about to let him cause a scene in the middle of Kate’s reception. She glanced past him at the guests. She couldn’t see any of her sisters.
“I asked you a question, Arley,” Scott said, his voice deceptively calm. She didn’t miss the menace behind the remark, the subtle threat of consequences, and, neither, she thought, did Will Baron.
