She followed a deer path through dense, old-growth forest just beginning to fill in with spring greenery. Nothing was too absurd for her tortured mind today, not the hope that he was headed for a place that had been special to them, not even the idea that he’d be secretly pleased if he discovered her following him.
Not even if she looked foolish in her yellow, crisply tailored jacket and skirt with sweat soaking her silk blouse, her hose shredded by briars, and her hands covered in heavy leather work gloves. Oh, yes, I have to protect my hands. They’re worth a fortune.
She congratulated herself for having traded her pumps for jogging shoes. Small evidence of sanity, but she’d take it.
Sam halted suddenly, halfway up a crest where the mountain’s stony backbone protruded in great hummocks of granite streaked with white quartz. Her foggy concentration had almost let her clamber right up to Sign Rock. She skirted the crest and climbed through a gnarled rhododendron thicket on its sister ridge. From that vantage point she could look down on the jutting ledge of Sign Rock. And spy on him, a weary inner voice rebuked. I have to know if he went there, she answered.
Her hair slithering from her neat French braid in tangles around her neck, she crept to the edge of the thicket and scrubbed a gloved hand across her face. Sign Rock was a wide ledge of stone jutting from the mountain’s side, with a view of blue-green mountains stretching below it to the horizon. Ancient hands had carved messages into it; mysterious, crisscrossing lines blurred by centuries of patient rain.
God, yes, he was down there, close enough to hear if she gave in to the painful urge to call his name. He stood with his back to her, long legs braced apart among the faded lines, as if he were surveying the edge of the world to prove that there were no more walls in front of him.
Jake had told her the lines pointed the way to the great mother towns of the old Cherokee Nation. A traveler could stand there and see his way home. Towns that were ghosts now, under highways and shopping centers, carved apart by state lines. Towns that had been forgotten except as vague notes in anthropology books.
He had known the name of each one, and she’d listened, fascinated, as he’d described them. It hadn’t mattered to her that he was weaving the details only with his imagination. He loved this place, and he had brought her there because he loved her too.
She prayed he’d come there today because he wanted to remember that.
Her breath stalled when he suddenly pried his shoes off and began unbuttoning his shirt. He shrugged it off and tossed it aside, never taking his eyes off the misty ocean of mountains before him. Sam clawed the heavy rhododendron branches aside with drunken, agonized intrigue. She wanted a new imprint of him in her mind, every new mark, every muscle, every inch of skin.
There was something, some dark splotch on one of his forearms. She leaned forward, breathless, straining her eyes to decipher it.
He stepped closer to the rim of the ledge. Terror washed over Sam. Going home. Seeing the way. Remembering. He wouldn’t step off the edge of the world, would he?
She started down the steep slope, shoving at branches. One whipped back soundlessly and caught her cheek. She recognized the pain only because it made her eyes blur with tears.
Jake pivoted and stared up at her.
She hadn’t needed to call his name. He couldn’t have heard her movements. But the instant she hurt, he’d turned around and looked straight at her. And now she saw the tears on his face.
Sam didn’t have time to analyze another mystery on a day that made no sense. She scrambled down to him gracelessly, sliding on her well-dressed rump the last few inches and collapsing on Sign Rock with her legs folded under her. She tilted her head back and gazed up into his bleak expression. He towered over her, his hands clenched by his sides. Maybe he was furious. Maybe he thought she was pathetic. Maybe he didn’t care either way.
But she did. “I was afraid you were going to jump.” Her voice echoed. The mountain was throwing her fear back at her.
“If I wanted to give up, I’d have done it in prison.” His voice, deep and raw, poured through her. All she could feel at the moment was relief. She shut her eyes and bent her face into her trembling hands. “Thank God.”
“I’ve forgotten what it feels like to make choices. To go wherever I want to. To live without always being watched. I don’t want you following me.”
She raised her head and looked at him wearily. “There’s a part of you I’ve never understood. I let you keep it to yourself because I thought it didn’t hurt anything between us. You used to go off without me. You wouldn’t let me watch you track people, or go with you when you dug for gems. You wouldn’t let me help you search the ruins of your parents’ house—you wouldn’t even tell me what you were looking for. And then you went after Malcolm Drury without telling me. I’m not going to let you shut me out again. It did hurt us.”
“It will hurt more if you don’t stop.”
“Nothing could hurt more right now. Nothing could hurt more than wanting to touch you and knowing you won’t let me.”
He dropped to his heels. The look in his eyes made her shiver. She thought of animals who had been caged apart from their own kind in the old zoos. Put them with a mate and they became dangerous, their courtship rituals forgotten in a frenzy of violence or shy bewilderment.
“I thought about you and clawed my skin at night,” he said slowly. “To make me stop thinking.”
“That’s the one thing about your life in prison I understand perfectly. Because I’ve gone through it every night with you.” She hesitated, weighing every word. “It could be a starting point now. There doesn’t have to be anything pretty about it at first.”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be pretty,” he answered with a bitter edge. “And it’d be over faster than you can blink.”
“I’ll blink slowly and often.”
“Tell me the rules, Samantha,” he said abruptly. “What do I have to do to earn my keep? How many times a day, and what do you want me to whisper in your ear to make you feel good about it?”
His brutal words numbed her. “I don’t think you can get away with it,” she whispered tightly. “I think you know you’ll crack like an oyster the second you touch me. And, mister, when you open up, I’ll go pearl hunting.”
“You’d come up empty-handed.” But that vow didn’t register in his eyes. She’d struck a chord, and suspected he knew it. Sam searched his eyes desperately. He is still in there, she thought. The man I knew is there. It was the first real victory in a terrible day, the first evidence she wasn’t operating on blind hope alone. She had new strength. She could move this mountain. She felt dangerously giddy. Sam jerked her bulky gloves off and held up her hands. “These are good for a lot more than posing for pictures and working at a loom. These can turn you inside out. I’ve reduced strong men and their cameras to dewy-eyed delight with these hands, without so much as laying a finger on them.”
Sam reached out boldly. He flinched but didn’t draw back. It was as if he were testing himself. Her fingertips floated a sparse inch from his chest, brushing the fine black hair, trembling, moving across his heart, begging him to lean forward and prove her right. He didn’t. But there were invisible tremors in him, a heat wave rising off his skin, making her drunk and reckless. Her hand reached the waist of his trousers, and for one urgent moment she considered unfastening them. No, too easy. Cruelly easy. She wanted to feel his hand in hers, needed to complete the old circle they’d begun the day a solemn little boy had reached down to a girl who could answer only by taking his hand.
She drew her fingers to his arm. Afraid some flicker of anger in his eyes might break the spell, she followed the course of her hand. Olive skin stretched over sinews and thick muscle, softened by downy hair.
And scarred by that strange new mark she’d tried to decipher before. Sam’s fingers curled into her palm. She stared at a blurry blue tattoo. It covered an area the size of her fist. Four lines of Cherokee script, welded into his skin.
/> Sam raised her startled eyes to his. “Why did you do this to yourself?”
“I had the time.” His voice was raw and thready. “All it takes is time and an ink pen.”
And the courage to stand the pain, she added silently. He looked away from her and started to reach for the shirt he’d thrown nearby. Sam grasped his wrist. Her fingers reached only halfway around it—a useless manacle if he wanted to pull away. But he froze. The connection held them both in speechless misery. His eyes were riveted to hers again, this time with an intensity that seemed to melt into her. “What have you done?” he whispered, not with accusation. With terrible surrender.
Sam felt dazed. She clung to his arm and forced herself to look at it. One small step at a time. “I … did everything that would make me feel closer to you. I am … your wife. My name is Raincrow. I belong to you. I belong to the people who left their signs on this ledge. I wanted to be able to speak and write their language.”
She bent her head over the tattoo. A second later she gave a soft cry and looked up at him again. “Proverbs,” she said hoarsely. “It says, Proverbs 31:10.” Sam took his hand in both of hers. “You never forgot. Clara quoted it the day you asked me to marry you. It was the blessing she gave us. The day we knew everything would be all right. ‘Who can find a virtuous woman?’ ” she recited. “ ‘For her price is far above rubies.’ ”
Whether he realized it or not, his hand curled around hers like a vise. Sam leaned toward him urgently. “If you still believe that, nothing else matters. I’ll never forgive myself for what happened to you, but I won’t give in to the idea that you’d be better off without me. We had so much to look forward to, and we can have it again.”
“You can start by giving the ruby to me. You’re wrong if you think it’s the only hold you’ve got on me.” When she looked at him hopefully, he added, “I owe you for taking care of the Cove while I was gone.”
Sam felt as if he’d slapped her. “It always comes back to the damned stone,” she said wearily. “And I’ll never understand why. But the answer is still no.”
The rest of the answer lay hidden inside her. She would never voice any thought that played into ridiculous fears about forces beyond their control. But the thought was there, taunting her.
The stone was the only thing that could start trouble between them and Alexandra again. Sam could keep it away from her. And her away from Jake.
Give the stone back, and he’d stay because he owed her. Keep it, and he’d stay because he owed her. Either way was an empty victory. Her way, at least, would protect him from more horrors. Alexandra had not caused his family’s death, of course, though Sam felt certain her aunt didn’t mourn the tragedy. Alexandra hadn’t put Malcolm Drury into Mom’s life, hadn’t put him in Jake’s path finally.
But Alexandra might feed off the past and use it to advantage. Jake had already suffered so much. The fear that he could be drawn into new trouble, this time by Sam’s own flesh and blood, overrode everything.
He drew his hand out of hers slowly, and she let him go. Her heart stopped as he brushed his fingertips over her bruised cheek so lightly, he seemed to be drawing the pain out. But the strange mixture of emotions that compelled his sudden gentleness ended when she reached for his hand again.
He rose and stepped back quickly. There was nothing gentle in his face. “You have your rules, I have mine. Believe this one, because I won’t give you a second chance if you break it. There’s only one thing that’ll make me leave you. And if you do it, I will leave, by God, without a backward glance.”
Still drugged from his small caress, Sam nodded weakly. “What is it?”
“Don’t touch me again. Not for any reason.”
He watched her for a moment as if making certain the words had registered. Oh, they had. So strongly, she remembered how it felt to have no voice, to be trapped inside her own small world with nothing but her hands to talk for her.
Now he had even taken that away.
She was on display, and being on display made Alexandra rise to the occasion with expert charm. She believed in the traditional role of the political wife—smile, be a gracious hostess, tirelessly promote her husband’s issues, stay in the background, and quietly control far more than the public ever suspected. She had paved the yellow brick road to Oz. Orrin was governor because of her work behind the scenes. And Tim, well, Tim was a manageable liability.
She knew how to handle the prowling, eagle-eyed scouts from party headquarters too. The plump-faced man sitting beside her looked impressed. “How long have you had your pilot’s license?” he asked over the drone of the Piper’s engine.
“A year. Getting it was one of the goals I set for my fiftieth birthday.” Alexandra banked the tiny two-seater plane skillfully. “Look to your right. You can just glimpse Pandora in the top of the mountains.”
“The governor is very proud of you. He calls you his inspiration.”
Alexandra smiled. “Herb, I’ve been telling you people for years that we’re a perfect couple. It’s no pretense. No skeletons in our family closet. The party won’t find a more promotable family for any, well, let’s just say any special service the party has in mind.” She threw a jaunty glance Herb’s way.
The wretched little fanny-kisser gazed at her thoughtfully. “You know we don’t enjoy prying into personal backgrounds. It’s just that we want to avoid surprises. It’s not enough for a potential candidate for national office to measure up politically. The media is so damned vicious about digging up gossip. My God, the next thing you know, they’ll be doing exposés on the candidates’ pets. ‘Candidate Admits Dog Bit Mailman, Denies Cover-Up.’ ”
Alexandra laughed. “I have only horses, and they wouldn’t dare bite the mailman.” She brought the Piper closer to the rounded, cloud-shadowed peaks approaching Pandora. “It’s a wonder any worthwhile public servants survive the scrutiny. But Orrin and I will, I assure you. Don’t pull any punches with me, Herb.”
Alexandra didn’t wait for him to answer. She wanted to drive her point home with smooth confidence. “Your people have questioned me about my son before. I’ll tell you what I’ve told them. He’s doing a good, solid job as a state senator—he’s outspoken and aggressive, so yes, he makes enemies. Any good legislator does that. His opponents envy him—I mean, after all, he’s a Vanderveer, and that name carries a lot of respect in this state.”
“Alexandra, I didn’t—”
“I know what they say about him—the lurid stories they pass around about his ear. People are rarely eager to believe the truth when lies are so much more interesting. But the truth is simply that ten years ago he was assaulted in a dark parking lot by two garden-variety thugs looking for a wallet to steal. When Tim refused to cooperate, there was a fight. They ran, and the police were never able to locate them. His poor ear is an honorably won urban battle scar as far I’m concerned. He keeps his hair long enough to cover the tip. No one even notices it.”
“Alexandra, please, I’m not interested in—”
“And as for his failed marriage a few years ago, well, it was a well-intentioned mistake. His wife was a smart young woman from a good family, but she simply didn’t realize how much she’d have to put her own ambitions on hold in order to further Tim’s.” Alexandra sighed. “You can’t have two chiefs in a political tribe.” Taking a deep breath, Alexandra added quickly, “Tim was heartbroken, but he learned from the experience. He’ll remarry. In the meantime, yes, he is cutting a wide swath through the female population, but there’s nothing notorious about that. To be bluntly honest with you, Herb, the media won’t catch my son with his pants down.”
Herb coughed awkwardly. Alexandra congratulated herself. Just the right touch of earthy honesty tended to assuage his type. “Almost home,” she announced cheerfully, pointing toward a tiny airstrip nestled in a mountain plateau. The metal rooftops of several small hangars glinted in the sunshine, and a small private plane ascended from the runway as they watched. “Have I ever
mentioned that there was no airport of any size between here and Asheville until Orrin and I organized a business coalition to build one? You’ll meet some of our VIPs at dinner tonight. They fly in from all over the southeast to spend summers in their homes here. We have quite a social season. Now—any more questions, or have I put your mind at ease about my rambunctious son?”
The man’s uncomfortable silence set her nerves on edge. He fiddled with the crease in his tailored slacks. “Alexandra, I didn’t come here to ask you about Tim. I came to ask you about your nieces.”
She jerked the control, and the Piper bounced on a wind current. “My nieces? Isn’t that delving unnecessarily far from the trunk of the family tree?”
“Not these days, I’m afraid.” He hesitated. “It’s my understanding that your nieces left your home while the younger one was still underage. And that you were her legal guardian. You haven’t seen either of your nieces in ten years. I also understand that the older girl married your nephew, and that her husband is serving time in prison on a manslaughter conviction.”
“Good Lord, Herb, you make it sound as if I’ve got a hidden batch of incestuous hillbillies. My eldest niece was infatuated with my first husband’s nephew. They weren’t blood cousins.”
“Of course, I know that. But—”
“Despite everything I could do to dissuade her, she married him. He was a rough character—part Indian, I suppose that gave him an exotic appeal my niece couldn’t resist. I knew it was a mistake, I knew the family was unstable, but what could I do about it? Samantha was eighteen; I couldn’t stop her. I pleaded with her; I offered her every alternative. But she married this boy and took her younger sister with her. I had a choice between allowing the girl to live with her new in-laws or locking her up like an unmanageable animal.”
“But how did circumstances end up—”
“There was a fire. My niece’s in-laws were killed. Her husband lost what little common sense he had and immediately became involved with some low-life drug peddler. He killed the man. Orrin and I were, of course, determined to take my nieces under wing again, but they disappeared. We hired detectives, with no luck. Losing contact with them has been one of the great sorrows of my life.”