Paper Rose. Diana Palmer

She was in glittering company, but she was a stranger, alone in this packed gathering. She’d have been more at home in her office at the museum. Or on the reservation with Leta.

      It was an unusually quiet cocktail party, she thought, and conversation was muted and somber around her. Recent turmoil in Washington, D.C., had thrown a shroud over the celebration of Senator Holden’s birthday. Holden was the senior Republican senator from South Dakota, a fiery, difficult man who made enemies as easily as he ran the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, of which he was chairman. He had his finger in plenty of political pies and some private ones. His most recent private one was private sector funding for his pet project, the newly created Anthropological and Archaeological Museum of the Native American where Cecily now worked.

      She spotted Matt Holden and her eyes began to twinkle. He was a handsome devil, even at his age. His wife had died the year before, and the husky black-eyed politician with his glimmering silver hair and elegant broad-shouldered physique was now on every widow’s list of eligibles. Even now, two lovely elderly society dames were attacking from both sides with expensive perfume and daring cleavage. At least one of them should have worn something high-necked, she mused, with her collarbone and skinny neck so prominent.

      Another pair of eyes followed her amused gaze. “Doesn’t it remind you of shark attacks?” a pleasant voice murmured in her ear.

      She jumped, and looked up at her companion for the evening. “Good grief, Colby, you scared me out of a year’s growth!” she burst out with a helpless laugh.

      Colby only smiled. “Here’s your coffee. It’s not bad, either.”

      He handed her the cup and sipped from his own. She wondered why he’d been out of the country at the same time as Tate, and why. Then she shut Tate out of her mind. She wasn’t going to think about him tonight.

      “You never did say where you went,” she told the lithe congenial man at her side.

      He mentioned a war-torn country in Africa, then murmured, “And you didn’t hear that from me.”

      She sobered quickly. Everyone knew about the strife and the terrible aftermath of surreptitious bombings. It was all that people talked about. “Those poor people.”

      “Amen.”

      She glanced up at him. “I suppose you were involved somehow in the capture of the suspects?”

      He only smiled. He would never talk about assignments. Colby wasn’t a handsome man, especially with all the scars on his lean face. His thick, faintly wavy short black hair was his best asset. Still he did have a dangerous magnetism that Cecily knew didn’t go unnoticed by the ladies. Unfortunately he was too stuck in the past to even look at another woman twice. His wife of five years had left him two years back and found someone else; someone who was at home more, already had two children of his own and didn’t risk his life for his job. His benders since her departure were legendary. Cecily’s intervention with the Maryland psychologist had saved him from certain alcoholism, but he still teetered dangerously on the edge of ruin. A pity, she thought, to love someone so much and lose them and be unable to let go. Just like herself mooning over Tate, she thought with bitterness.

      “Seen Tate lately?” Colby asked carelessly.

      She stiffened. “No.”

      He looked down at her with a wry grin. “It was a boring banquet, anyway. You made all the news shows that night, and I hear one of the bigger late-night television hosts did a monologue about it!”

      “Go ahead,” she invited with a gesture. “Rub it in.”

      “I can’t help myself,” he said with an involuntary chuckle. “I believe it’s the first time in American political history that an ex-CIA agent was baptized with a tureen of crab bisque right in the middle of a televised political affair.” Colby had to work hard not to crack a smile. He sipped his coffee instead. Before he met Cecily, he couldn’t have imagined any woman doing that to tall, handsome, elegant Tate Winthrop. “Matt Holden seems to have forgiven you,” he added.

      She smiled wickedly. “He loved it,” she said. “Just between you and me, he thrives on publicity.”

      Colby’s dark eyes went to Holden. “You might also have been invited because he likes embarrassing Tate,” he mused. “Talk about natural enemies!”

      Cecily shifted from one leg to the other. Her high heeled shoes were getting uncomfortable. She didn’t go out much formally. “I know. Tate’s gung ho for that proposed casino on the Wapiti Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota to help raise tribal funds and support more programs for teens, to help cut down on alcoholism and violence. The senator, on the other hand, is violently opposed to the casino project on Wapiti. They’ve locked horns over that issue and several others involving Lakota sovereignty.”

      Colby’s brows drew together. “Isn’t the senator Lakota?”

      Cecily grinned. “His father was from Morocco,” she said. “He hasn’t got a drop of Lakota blood. But he looks it, doesn’t he? Maybe that’s why he gets the Lakota vote every election. That, and the fact that his mother used to teach at the Lakota school on Wapiti Ridge, or so I’ve heard.” Thinking about that, she wondered if Leta had ever met Matt in her youth. They were about the same age.

      “Did he know Tate’s family then?”

      “He may have known of them, but he ran for congress before Tate was even born, and he came to D.C. as a freshman senator the same year in a landslide victory.”

      “You didn’t know him until this museum thing came up.”

      “That’s true.” She smoothed down the narrow skirt of her dress and glanced with irritation at a mud spot on her black suede sling-backs. “Darn,” she said. “It was raining and I had to walk on the grass. I’ve got mud all over my shoes. They’re brand-new, too.”

      “I’ll carry you across the grass on the return trip, if you like,” Colby offered with twinkling eyes. “It would have to be over one shoulder, of course,” he added with a wry glance at his artificial arm.

      She frowned at the bitterness in his tone. He was a little fuzzy because she needed glasses to see at distances.

      “Listen, nobody in her right mind would ever take you for a cripple,” she said gently and with a warm smile. She laid a hand on his sleeve. “Anyway,” she added with a wicked grin, “I’ve already given the news media enough to gossip about just recently. I don’t need any more complications in my life. I’ve only just gotten rid of one big one.”

      Colby studied her with an amused smile. She was the only woman he’d ever known who he genuinely liked. He was about to speak when he happened to glance over her shoulder at a man approaching them. “About that big complication, Cecily.”

      “What about it?” she asked.

      “I’d say it’s just reappeared with a vengeance. No, don’t turn around,” he said, suddenly jerking her close to him with the artificial arm that looked so real, a souvenir of one of his foreign assignments. “Just keep looking at me and pretend to be fascinated with my nose, and we’ll give him something to think about.”

      She laughed in spite of the racing pulse that always accompanied Tate’s appearances in her life. She studied Colby’s lean, scarred face. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of a pinup, but he had style and guts and if it hadn’t been for Tate, she would have found him very attractive. “Your nose has been broken twice, I see,” she told Colby.

      “Three times, but who’s counting?” He lifted his eyes and his eyebrows at someone behind her. “Well, hi, Tate! I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.”

      “Obviously,” came a deep, gruff voice that cut like a knife.

      Colby loosened his grip on Cecily and moved back a little. “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said.

      Tate moved into Cecily’s line of view, half a head taller than Colby Lane.