The Ashtons: Walker, Ford & Mercedes. Emilie Rose

sent me a thirty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check after I got back to Pine Ridge. I didn’t want to cash it at first.”

      “But eventually you did?”

      “Yes.” She reached for his hand. “I did.”

      Walker wanted to pull away from her. But he allowed her to touch him, feigning indifference, pretending that he could deal with the money.

      With the sale of two small children…

      The following day Tamra arrived at Walker’s motel, per his request. He met her outside, looking like the city boy he was, with his well-tailored clothes and men’s-fashion-magazine haircut. He wore the thick dark strands combed straight back and tamed with some sort of styling gel. Short but not conservative, at least not in a boring way.

      Walker Ashton’s hair had sex appeal.

      “Hey,” he said.

      “Hey, yourself.” She noticed that he seemed troubled. She hoped they wouldn’t end up in another argument. “What’s going on?”

      “Nothing. I just want to talk.” He reached into his pocket and removed some coins. “How about a soda?”

      “Sure.” She walked to the vending machine with him and chose an orange drink. He picked grape. From there, they headed back to his room.

      She felt a bit odd going into the place where he’d been sleeping. She knew she shouldn’t, but being with him in an intimate setting caused her heart to pound unmercifully in her breast.

      She looked around his room and noticed the western motif. He’d chosen comfortable accommodations on Highway 20, but he was probably used to five-star hotels. This, she imagined, was foreign to him.

      The window air conditioner was on full blast, with color streamers attached, blowing like international flags.

      She sat at a pine table, and he leaned against the dresser, a big, sturdy unit that doubled as an entertainment center. She suspected that he’d climbed under the covers last night and watched cable TV.

      What else would he do in a cozy Nebraska town?

      “How old were you when my mom took you in?” he asked.

      “I was five, but my mother was alive then. We both moved in with Mary. My mom and your mom were friends, and we didn’t have anywhere else to go. It was winter. We would have frozen to death on our own.” She flipped open the top of her soda, memories swirling in her mind. “My mom died two years later. So I was seven when Mary became my guardian.”

      “How old are you now?”

      “Twenty-six.”

      A frown slashed between his eyebrows. “You’re only a year older than my sister.”

      She nodded. Did that bother him? Did it make him feel even more betrayed? She wanted to ask him if he’d called his sister, if he’d spoken to her in France, but she decided to wait until he finished interviewing her. She could see the unanswered questions in his eyes.

      “Is that common on the rez?” he asked. “To just raise someone else’s kid?”

      “Yes.” She tried to relax, but he was making her self-conscious. The way he watched her. His hardedged posture. “The Lakota have an adoption ceremony called Hunka, the making of relatives. It’s conducted by a medicine man or another adult who’d been a Hunka. This ceremony provides a new family for a child who doesn’t have a home.”

      “Did you and Mary do that?”

      “No.” She lifted her soda, took a sip, placed the can on the table. Walker’s gaze followed her every move. She tried to avoid eye contact, but it didn’t help. She could feel him looking at her. “In those days Mary wasn’t connected to her heritage. She was defying tradition, isolating herself from the community. A Hunka ceremony would have been too Indian. Too Lakota.”

      “So she just kept you without adopting you?”

      “Yes.” Tamra tasted her soda again, wishing Walker would quit scrutinizing her. “We could do it now, though. People of any age can become Hunka if both parties agree.”

      “Don’t,” he said.

      “Don’t what? Have a ceremony?” Tired of his male dominance, she lifted her chin, challenging him. “That’s not your choice to make.”

      “I don’t want you to be her adopted daughter. I don’t want to be related to you.” He moved away from the dresser. “And I’m sure you know why.”

      Did she? She glanced at the bed, at the maroon and blue quilt, at the plain white pillowcases. Then she looked at him. A bit woozy, she took a steadying breath. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

      “Yes, it is. Sooner or later, we’ll end up there.”

      There.

      His bed.

      She struggled to maintain her decorum, to seem unaffected. “That’s awfully presumptuous of you.”

      He finished his drink, then grabbed the chair across from her. In one heart-stopping move, he spun it around and straddled it. “I’m not saying that I want it to happen. I’m just saying that it will.”

      Tamra felt as though she’d just been straddled. Ridden hard and put away…

      …wet.

      She moistened her lips. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

      “Yes, you are.” He didn’t smile. He didn’t flirt. But he shifted in his chair, bumping his fly against it. “We’re going to tear off each other’s clothes. And we’re going to be sorry afterward, wondering what the hell we did.”

      “I don’t have affairs. Not like that.”

      “Neither do I.”

      “Then why are we having this stupid conversation?”

      “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you last night.” He made a tense face. “And it’s pissing me off.”

      She shook her head. He had to be the most difficult man she’d ever met. “Everything pisses you off, Walker.”

      He squinted at her. “Did you think about me last night?”

      Her pulse tripped, stumbled like a clumsy little kid playing hopscotch in the rain. “No.”

      “Liar.”

      Yes, she thought. Liar, liar, pants on fire. But she’d be damned if she would admit it. She’d slept with the windows open, letting the breeze stir her hair, her half-naked body. “You’re not my type.”

      “You’re not mine, either.” He paused, then checked her out, up and down, from head to toe. “But you’re hot, sexy as sin. For an Indian,” he added, making her scowl.

      “I wouldn’t go to bed with you if you were the last half-breed on earth.”

      He smiled at that. “Good. Then it won’t happen. We’re safe.”

      She was already safe. She’d been on the Pill since her baby girl died. Since she’d decided that she wasn’t getting pregnant again. At least not by a man she wasn’t married to.

      Walker rocked in his chair, and she tried to think of something to say, something to wipe that cynical smile off his face. She certainly wasn’t going to discuss birth control with him. She knew that wasn’t the kind of safe he was referring to.

      He was talking about their emotions, their feelings.

      Sex they would regret.

      “What did my mother do with the money?” he asked, changing the topic so abruptly, she merely blinked at him.

      “What?”

      “The thirty grand. How’d she spend it?”