The kid’s first day with the company might well be his last.
“Sure. Yeah.”
Casper stepped back into the break room. “I’ll talk to him. He’s young. He didn’t mean anything by it.”
“They never do.” Chaska sat again and finished the last few bites of his burrito, his mind shifting back to the Comet ST-5. His cell phone buzzed.
A text message from Win.
I just left Naomi at our place. Will be home as soon as I can. Grab something for dinner on the way home?
Naomi.
Chaska had forgotten that she would be staying with them. It was good and right to give her a place to rest and recuperate. Their grandmother had taught them to welcome strangers into their home and to offer help and protection to those who needed it. But Chaska knew there was more to his sister’s invitation to Naomi than old-fashioned Lakota notions of wacantognaka — generosity.
You were led to her.
No. No way. Naomi had been lying in that exact spot for hours before Chaska had spoken those foolish words. It was just a coincidence.
Chaska pushed it from his mind and got back to work.
Chaska unlocked the front door and carried the food to the kitchen, the house silent. He thought no one was home until he caught a glimpse of Naomi in the back bedroom. He walked to the bedroom door to say hello—and froze.
He’d thought she was beautiful when he’d first seen her, but now…
She slept with her face turned toward him, her lips parted, her breathing deep and even. Dark hair fanned out on the pillow around her, long lashes resting against her bruised cheeks, a bandage on her wounded shoulder. Her dress had ridden up to her thighs, revealing strong, smooth legs and soft skin. Her injured ankle was wrapped in a compression bandage and propped on a pillow, her feet delicate, her toenails painted a frosty shade of peach.
Is there anyone I can call for you—your family, a significant other, an employer?
No. No one.
He wondered how that could be true. How could a woman as brave and beautiful as Naomi have no man in her life? How could it be that there was no one—friends, family, neighbors—who would want to know what had happened to her, no one to help her get home again?
Life wasn’t easy, but walking the path alone made it much harder.
Chaska’s family was far from perfect, but when Winona had been attacked and drugged, there’d been a half dozen pickup trucks parked out front the next day. Their aunties had cooked more food than they could eat—wohanpi, buffalo burgers, fry bread, plum cakes, corn with walnuts. Their cousins had gotten underfoot trying to help. Old Man had held an inipi ceremony, pouring water, leading the songs and prayers for Winona. Chaska’s friends on the Team had done their best to help, too. Hell, everyone in Scarlet had pitched in, doing what they could to support Winona and Lexi, who’d been badly hurt, enfolding both women and their families in well-intentioned chaos.
It didn’t seem right that anyone should face a situation like this alone.
Chaska looked at Naomi’s sweet face, whatever doubts he’d had about having her stay here gone. She wasn’t alone—not any longer. She had Winona, and, yes, Chaska, too. They would travel this part of her journey with her, doing whatever they could to help her get back on her feet and home to Rapid City.
It was only when she stirred and he thought she was about to wake up that he realized he’d entered her room and was standing next to the bed, staring down at her.
Aiii. You idiot. What are you doing?
She’d just been attacked by two men. The last thing he wanted to do was startle her or make her feel unsafe.
He turned and walked quietly from the room, shutting the door behind him.
Chapter 6
Naomi awoke with a whimper, her leg throbbing, her shoulder aching. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand and realized she’d slept off her last dose of painkillers and was now two hours behind on the next. Carefully lifting her leg, she sat on the edge of the bed, her mind in a fog. Where had she left her pills?
She reached for her crutches, got to her feet, and made her way over to the rocking chair, where she’d put the bag that held everything from the hospital. She found the bottle of painkillers in the bottom of the bag together with the receipt. She took two pills from the bottle and popped them into her mouth, holding them there as she walked to the closed bedroom door and opened it. She stepped into the kitchen in search of a glass of water—and stopped short.
Chaska.
She forgot about the pills and swallowed hard, tablets dragging their way down her throat, leaving a bitter taste.
She recognized him. Of course, she did. And yet...
How could she not have noticed how beautiful he was?
He was tall, over six feet, a black T-shirt stretched over well-developed pecs, his arms lean and muscular. Thick, dark hair hung almost to his waist, long lashes framing intense brown eyes. His face looked like it had been sculpted by an artist—a proud nose, high cheekbones, a wide mouth with full lips.
This was the man who’d stayed with her, who’d promised to protect her, who’d helped save her life. He was the most stunning man she’d ever seen.
His dark brows drew together, and he took a step away from the refrigerator, where he’d been busy putting groceries away, toward her. “Are you okay?”
She searched for words, her thoughts scattered. “I came to get a glass of water.”
He walked toward a cupboard and pulled a glass out for her. “The glasses are here, silverware in the drawer down here, plates and bowls over there. Do you want ice?”
“Yes, please—and thanks.”
He pressed the glass against the dispenser in the refrigerator door, filling it first with crushed ice and then with water. He turned to hand it to her, his brow furrowing again. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Right.
She couldn’t carry the glass and walk with her crutches at the same time. She hobbled awkwardly over to the table. How clumsy she must look. “It’s going to take me a while to get the hang of this.”
“You’re doing well for your first day.” He set the glass on the table and drew out a chair for her, holding it while she sat.
Oh, God. He even smelled good, the warm scent of sage making it hard to think.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He went back to what he’d been doing, sticking something in the fridge, his back to her. “Winona will be home in a few minutes. I grabbed a roast chicken for us. I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”
“Me?” Yes, you. Who else could he be talking to? “No. I’m not.”
She drank, washing the bitter medicine taste down her throat. She set the glass on the table, her mind searching for something to say. “I never got the chance to thank you for staying with me, for taking care of me, for calling the rescue team. If Shota hadn’t found me...”
He turned away from the fridge, leaned up against the center island. “You did the hardest part yourself—getting away from those men, staying alive. You’re a brave woman.”
She stared at him, taken aback by his praise. “I wasn’t brave. I was terrified.”
He nodded as if he understood. “That’s what courage is—doing something that needs to be done even though you’re afraid.”
She’d never thought about it like that before.
Chaska ate his supper, listening while the women talked, his gaze drawn repeatedly to Naomi’s face. There was a vulnerability about her, something fragile that tugged at him, set off some primitive instinct to protect her. She’d had to be strong to escape those men the way she had, and yet there were shadows in those blue eyes.
He wished they’d found the bastards. It would have given him immense satisfaction to watch McBride take them down and haul them away in chains. Prison was too good for them. In the old days among the Oceti Sakowin—the Seven Council Fires—a man who’d done what those men had wanted to do to Naomi would have been given a knife and commanded
to walk away from the village and end his own life. If he hadn’t had the courage to do it, the warriors of the village would have finished him.
Rape wasn’t a crime against an individual woman or her family alone. It was a crime against nature because it was through women that life came into this world. That’s what Chaska’s grandfather had taught him.
Chaska found Winona watching him.
“You look angry. Are things not going well at work?”
He didn’t want to ruin Naomi’s supper by bringing up her ordeal, so he searched for an excuse. “We have a new kid at the office—a frat boy type with a suit and Greek letters on his tie. He called me ‘chief.’”
Winona gave a disgusted hmph. “Are you going to tell Casper?”
“Casper was standing right there. He ordered the kid to his office. I guess we’ll see if the guy still has a job tomorrow.”
Winona turned to Naomi, who was looking down at her plate. “Chaska is lucky to work for a company that at least tries to do the right thing.”
Naomi looked over at Chaska. “You’re an engineer, right?”
He nodded. “I work for RMSA—Rocky Mountain Space and Avionics. I design propulsion systems for satellites.”
“That’s what Winona told me. You must be super smart.”
Winona laughed. “He’d be the first to agree with you there.”
“Funny.” Chaska glared at his sister. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of her running a PR campaign behind his back, telling Naomi about him.
Winona ignored his pointed glance and turned to Naomi. “What do you do?”
“I make jewelry.”
Chaska hadn’t been expecting that.
Win looked surprised, too. “What kind of jewelry? Beads?”
Naomi had just taken a bite of chicken. She shook her head, chewed, waiting until she had swallowed to answer. “I work mostly with silver and semi-precious stones, but sometimes gold, too.”
She tucked her dark hair behind her ear. “I made these.”
A silver raven, its wings outstretched in flight, dangled from her earlobe set off by small, irregularly shaped turquoise stones. The detail was amazing.
“You made those?” Winona leaned closer. “They’re beautiful.”
Naomi smiled. “Thanks.”
It was the first genuine smile Chaska had seen on her face, and it took the breath from his lungs.
“I have a website if you want to see more.”
Winona’s smartphone appeared in her hand. “What’s the web address?”
“It’s my name and then dot com.” Naomi spelled her name for Winona, who typed the URL into her phone’s browser.
Winona read aloud. “Naomi Archer: Jewelry inspired by the Black Hills. Oh, wow! Look at this, Chaska. This is fantastic.”
Win stood and walked around to his side of the table, bending down to share the images on her screen with him.
He found himself sharing his sister’s amazement. Jewelry wasn’t his thing, but he knew a good deal about metalworking, enough to understand that Naomi had true skill. “You’re good.”
Winona scrolled down the page, images of ravens, eagles, coyotes, wolves, bears, flowers, feathers, and different animal tracks rendered gracefully into silver rings, earrings, bracelets, pendants, tie clips, and belt buckles.
“Oh, wow!” Winona turned the phone to show Naomi what they were looking at.
The silver bracelet was inlaid with lapis lazuli, mother of pearl, coral, and onyx to create a tiny scene of a raven flying in front of a setting sun.
Naomi’s face lit up. “That’s one of my signature pieces. They’re one-of-a-kind pieces for people looking for something special. I really love working in mosaic.”
Chaska shook his head. “I take that back. You’re not just good. You’re an artist.”
Her face flushed at his compliment, her lips curving in a shy smile that made his pulse skip. “Thank you.”
Naomi looked into Chaska’s eyes, his words warming her. She’d learned a long time ago not to take other people’s opinions about her work seriously, but what he’d just said had touched her.
Winona turned off her smartphone and went back to her seat. “How did you get into jewelry-making? Did you study it in college?”
“Oh, I couldn’t afford college. I only have a GED.” Naomi hesitated to tell them more. She couldn’t tell them the whole truth without talking about her heritage, so she settled on the partial truth. “Ever since I can remember, I was fascinated by jewelry. I waited tables to earn the money for jewelry-making classes—metalsmithing, inlay, repoussé, enameling, stone setting, wax casting, PMC.”
“PMC? What’s that?”
“Precious metal clay. I’d be happy to show you how it works once I get my tools and things back. They’re still in my SUV.”
She had no idea when the police would release her vehicle.
“So, you took classes and…” Winona waited for the rest of the story.
“I took all the classes I could, buying the tools as I went along. When I felt ready, I started selling my pieces.”
“People must have gone crazy for it,” Winona said.
Naomi couldn’t help but laugh. “It was an uphill battle just to be noticed. There are so many artisan jewelers, all of us competing for clientele. I set up tables at trade shows and farmers markets when I could afford it. I thought I was going to end up waiting tables forever.”
She told them how the buyer for a western jewelry catalog had come by her table at a trade show in Phoenix. “She invited me to submit images of my work and suggested I get a website. The catalog picked me up and started carrying my work. My clientele grew. I finally launched a website, and things really took off after that.”
Winona set her fork aside and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I love stories like that—about people who find success doing what they love. When I left home to go to college in Fort Collins, a lot of people were against it. Chaska had already moved away, and they didn’t want me to go, too. But I knew that it was what I was meant to do. Is that how it was for you?”
Nothing about Naomi’s life had been simple—except for her love of jewelry-making. “Yes, that’s exactly how it was for me, too.”
Chaska had sat, listening, until now. “We are all born with a gift, and part of the journey is finding out what that is and learning how to share it.”
Naomi liked that. “Your gift is engineering?”
“I used to think so.” He told her how he’d moved to Colorado to go to college but had seen people rock climbing and decided to try it. “It’s like engineering in motion. It’s geology and physics and engineering wrapped together. Every climb is a different equation, a different problem that has to be solved. Putting my abilities to use for the Team and helping to save lives—that means a lot more to me than building propulsion systems.”
“My brother has designed a lot of the gear the Team uses during rescues,” Winona said. “He’s always in his workshop, trying something new.”
Chaska’s gaze fell on an empty saucer that sat in the center of the table, his brows knitting in a frown. He took some chicken from the serving dish and set it on the plate, together with a tiny amount of potatoes and salad.
“Is that for Shota?”
Chaska chuckled. “It’s a spirit plate.”
Winona explained. “We share a little bit of everything we eat during the day with the spirit world. It’s a way of showing our gratitude, of being mindful of the abundance in our lives.”
“Don’t the animals just eat it?”
Winona nodded. “Yes, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the offering that counts.”
Naomi didn’t know much about Lakota customs or culture.
“Where do you get your blood?” Winona’s question—inevitable as it was—sent a jolt of adrenaline through Naomi.
Why did it always come to this? Everyone assumed that everyone else came from normal families like they did, but it wasn’t true. Not everyo
ne was comfortable making small talk about their families—or lack thereof.
Naomi tried to deflect the question with a joke. “I get it from the same place as everyone else—my bone marrow.”
As the words were out, she regretted them. They sounded less like a joke and more like she was being a smart ass. Chaska and Winona had been so kind to her. They’d shared a meal with her, given her a place to stay. They had saved her life. The last thing she wanted to do was offend them. But why did her heritage matter?
Winona didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile, her gaze flicking to her brother. Chaska watched Naomi for a moment, his dark eyes inscrutable. Then he got to his feet and carried the spirit plate out the back door.
Chaska spread out the work he’d brought home on the drafting table, the door to his office closed. Winona occasionally brought Shota inside for a while after dinner, but Chaska couldn’t share his workspace with a hundred pounds of energetic wolf. Shota could destroy everything in a room in a few minutes if he felt like it, and there was nothing here that Chaska was willing to lose. Monday’s meeting with the NASA team was coming up fast, and he needed to make progress. Still, he couldn’t get his mind to focus on propellant loads, pressurant subsystems, and cavitating venturi, and he didn’t have to be a genius to know why.
Naomi.
He’d spent only a few hours in her company—not counting helping with her rescue—and yet something about her got to him. He had met lots of beautiful women in his life, but until Naomi, he hadn’t met a woman who could knock the breath from his lungs with a smile. She was talented, too, her work showing not just skill but artistry. And there was that strange combination of courage and vulnerability.
His reaction to her was probably just the result of having helped to save her life. He’d never had contact with anyone he’d helped rescue afterward. He’d never watched them struggle with the aftermath of almost losing their lives. Whatever he was feeling would surely fade as she recovered.
Where do you get your blood?
I get it from the same place as everyone else—my bone marrow.