|
Synopsis |
Reviews |
Excerpt |
Lakota Sioux rancher Dillon Black is slowly working his way back from losing everything he ever cared about. Ultimately, it was the horses that saved him. In his heart, he truly believes in the connection between the wild, majestic breed and the soul of the Lakota people.
Now he has a dream—the Mystic Warriors Horse Camp—a place where youth can connect with the Lakota ways. He has the land, the horses, and the history. All he needs is the money.
That’s where television producer Ella Champion comes in. She works on a reality show where community projects get a makeover. Dillon’s ranch could be her next show . . . and he could be exactly the man she needs off-screen.
Dillon’s ex-wife, Monica, thinks he could use some common sense, but deep down, she feels Dillon’s project might heal their shattered family. Especially because she’s about to reveal a secret that will change everything. Dillon and their teenage children will need all the help they can get . . .
Kathleen Eagle published her first book, a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award winner, with Silhouette Books in 1984. Since then she has published nearly 50 books, including historical and contemporary, series and single title, earning her nearly every award in the industry. Her books have consistently appeared on regional and national bestseller lists, including the
USA Today list and
The New York Times extended bestseller list.
Born in Virginia and raised "on the road" as an Air Force brat, Kathleen earned degrees from Mount Holyoke College and Northern State University. She taught at Standing Rock High School in North Dakota for 17 years.
Coming Soon!
Chapter One
DILLON BLACK slept with the horses.
Not the best
bedfellows he’d ever had, but far from the worst. Most of them were heavy with
foal, and there wasn’t a nag in the herd. Having slept with his own kind of
overdue female, Dillon would know. But some studs just naturally had it made.
Others were only human.
South Dakota sod
was not the most comfortable bed he’d ever had, either, but the view was
incomparable. His blanket was made of stars. From where he lay on the rise
above the Grand River, he could see every square foot of ground he truly cared
about, even on the darkest night. The prairie was never fully dark or
completely quiet. Something was always happening.
Lovemaking, for instance. The flat at the foot of his sleeping
hill rolled all the way to the place where Earth spread her grassy hair about
her shoulders, made her knees into two hills, opened her legs, and let the
night sky prevail. She took her voice from the coyote and her breath from the
night breeze. She was enjoying herself. Dillon could feel it in her rocky
bones, and it was all to the good, as long as the coyotes and the cats kept
their distance from his mares. He kept his hunting rifle in plain view, hoping
any predators who might be sitting on the fence would take it as reason enough
to hang back. That and the fact that Dillon was actually wearing his glasses.
He never missed when he remembered to wear his glasses.
And he was about to see a miracle happen not fifty yards away.
Closer, if need be. Sugar, the baldface dun he’d been watching over, had already blown her
water. She’d
been up and down a few times, and she’d
extruded two twiggy legs. She was down for the count now. Fifteen minutes,
tops. But she was nervous, and it wasn’t
about the foal. It wasn’t
about Dillon, who knew better than to crowd a foaling mustang. There was
something out there, something that was all teeth and claws. And for the next
fifteen minutes, there would be nothing the mare could do about it. Every part
of her was committed now to giving birth.
Rifle in hand, Dillon eased his way down the slope. The mare had
picked herself an open spot where she couldn’t easily be trapped. All she needed was a
little time, and she would have her baby on its feet and running with the herd,
probably by sunup. She lifted her head and eyeballed her guardian, letting him
know he was too close. He took her cue, squatted on his heels and laid the
rifle on the ground.
From this angle, the mare seemed to float on the moonlit river,
adrift in a spillway of stars. It was the perfect vision for a moment like
this. Dillon and his partner called their ranch Wolf Trail, after the Lakota
name for the Milky Way. It was a grand gesture on the part of two Indian
cowboys who’d hit
the ground hard and earned their re-ride.
But what the hell? Wasn’t
this the Grand River? It flowed from past to present, gathering strength
from winter’s
sleep and power from the spring equinox. The great Sitting Bull had lived and
died on its banks only a few miles upstream. And tonight Dillon imagined the
old man kicking some of those stars loose and sending them tumbling home to
brighten the night for the many times great-granddaughter of one of his
favorite horses, for such was the heritage of Wolf Trail Mustangs.
Sugar grunted. Scoffing at him, was she? Dillon shook his head.
The mare had about as much time for a man as a mite right about now. Female
heritage, the instinct to survive and produce another survivor, that was her
be-all and end-all at the moment. In the moment, if horses had moments.
If horses had wishes—if
they were wishes.... How did that go?
How about, If wishes were horses, Sitting Bull’s people would ride? The
descendants of Sitting Bull’s
people would ride the descendants of Sitting Bull’s horses if Dillon’s horse would get her wish and produce
another survivor. That was the way it should go, would go, as long as
Dillon kept the teeth and claws at bay.
"Easy, girl. I know there’s something out there. It won’t get past me, I swear.”
Stop trying to get all philosophical and just listen to the
night, Black Bear, he told himself. This night. It’s all that counts right now.
Black Bear was an ancestral name, or part of one. His great-grandfather was Black Bear Runs Him, but the name
had been shortened twice— first
cut in half by some agency record keeper, and then halved again by Dillon’s father, who’d lied about his name, age and anything
else that might have kept him from enlisting in the army right around 1943.
Surnames weren’t
part of Lakota tradition, but neither was record-keeping. Dillon would take his
beloved grandfather’s
name one day, when he felt he’d
earned it. He would make Dillon Black Bear legal. Like blood and the eternal
river, it was a name that connected him to the Lakota circle, and he needed all
the connections he could get. They kept his feet on the ground.
But tonight, the notion of a river flowing out of the past was
distracting. Mixing with an imagination like Dillon’s, the current stirred up a fiery vision.
Flames danced on the water, taunting him with the river’s memory of another grand gesture. His damn
fire, his dream afire. Whatever he couldn’t
remember about that night, the river remembered for him in a single reflection,
indelibly etched in his brain. It showed him what was left of Dillon Black when
he’d
pushed himself up from the mud. A crazy drunk flipping God the flaming bird.
Remember when Dillon Black torched his house?
He’d had...
what? Seven years to live it down? He had to be pretty close. Lucky seven. He
still got razzed about it once in a while—first
rule of Indian humor being you were allowed to give only as good as you were
willing to take—but
he would hate like hell for anybody to mention it in front of Emily.
His daughter was coming home for the summer. His home, his
stomping grounds. The place where she was born. She’d lived with her mother for what was
undoubtedly the better part of her life, but she was coming home because she
believed in the horses and the sacred circle. And, wonder of wonders, she loved
her dad. Whenever Monica had told the girl that she was just like her father,
it generally meant she’d
fucked something up. Some small thing, but the kind that could lead to a big
thing unless Monica nipped it in the bud.
No way was Emily just like her father. The part of her life
after they’d
left him might have been—okay,was—better
than the first part. But lately, Dillon had begun to believe she took after the
better part of him. Her horse sense, for one thing. Her interest in her father’s people. Little things, maybe, but enough
to convince him that he still had a better part, even though he’d split the sheets with his better half.
The mare’s big
body shuddered with the proof of her pain. Dillon felt it, just as he had the
three times Monica had gone into labor, giving him two living children and one
dead one. He couldn’t
share the intensity of the mare’s
pain, but he felt its depth and heat. She was doing fine. It wouldn’t be long now.
It was good to have this birthing to occupy
his mind, good to feel useful after the bad news he’d gotten earlier in the day. Nothing tragic— nobody had died or moved to Texas—but news of the kind of personal defeat
that made him see the fire in the river. His grant proposal had been turned
down, the one Emily had worked on with him when she’d stopped over at Christmastime. He should
have been able to make it happen. He could have talked to a few people on the
Tribal Council about the idea to expand the horse camp he’d put together with Emily last summer with
a little help from one of the local churches. He thought he’d made a good presentation to the selection
committee, and people had been shaking his hand over it ever since. It was all his
daughter’s
doing, he’d
told them. She was studying horses at Montana Western University. She was
already ten times smarter about horses than her ol’ man, and he’d been around them all his life. The grant
money was in the bag, they’d
said.
What bag? Emmie would be out of school for
the summer soon, coming home to an empty bag and an empty promise. He hadn’t asked for much—just enough to finish the kitchen and
bathrooms in the old church building he’d
been fixing up over the years, and a little more for supplies and camping
equipment. Kids had been hounding him all winter about getting in on his next
horse camp, but without financial backing, it would be hard to accommodate
them all the way he wanted to, which would put a crimp in his daughter’s plans for her big honors project for
school.
Crimp. Not the complete
kibosh. He had a little cash put away. He could round up a couple of tipis this
year and add an overnight trail ride to the program. They’d had bigger ideas, though, the beginnings
of an ongoing program. Flushed with last summer’s success, Dillon had developed a sense of
mission. He didn’t
want his generation to be the last to keep and know horses in some small but
blessed semblance of the old Lakota way.
The foal’s head appeared, slick and slender,
glistening wet. Dillon’s
stomach quivered as the mare’s
muscles undulated with the final push. In a stunning split second, the slippery
foal slid free of its frantic host. Mother and baby were especially vulnerable
now. All they needed was a few minutes for the mare to catch her breath,
transfer a last shot of her life’s
blood to her baby before it hauled itself up on wobbly legs and broke the cord.
Then she would finally begin expelling the placenta, which could take a bit of
time. The mare lifted her head and nosed her new baby.
But the coyotes smelled it, too. They were
close. Dillon sensed the heat of their bloodlust and their stealthy advance
before he could detect any movement. Then shadow slid past shadow. They were
downwind, but the succulent smell of a fresh birth overpowered the scent of a
mere man.
Dillon remained perfectly still while he rehearsed the shot in
his mind’s
eye. When he moved, he was quick, sure and deadly accurate.
Chapter Two
MONICA
WILSON-BLACK slept with a window open.
Time, place, or season made no difference.
Her former husband had introduced her to the wonders of the night
sky—available
for a limited time only in the world she had, in the end, happily left to him—and clean air. He’d been a fresh-air freak, and the open-window
habit had stayed with her, along with the children and half the family
pictures, which she’d
transferred from albums to indexed file boxes.
He’d
burned his half.
Monica had been sleeping single for more than ten years. Or not
sleeping, as had lately been the case. Her routine—working until bedtime, reading until sleep
time, and then putting a down comforter between her tired body and the
Minnesota spring chill—just
wasn’t
doing it for her anymore. For some reason, her brain had become a nightly
spawning ground for worries.
Menopause, maybe. Nice, normal menopause with its limitless symptoms.
Menopause, she wished.
On the whole, her life had never been better. The kids were
doing well. Her knack for decorating on a shoestring had turned into a business,
two books, guest spots, and finally a regular television show. It had been
seven years since the divorce had actually been final. A few technicalities
had dragged the process out—the
fact that her children were enrolled members
of their father’s tribe, that he never
wore a watch, seldom had phone service and only looked at
his mail about once a week— but she’d needed the actual
divorce less than she’d needed a new
address.
Lucky seven, except for one little bump in the road.
It had been eighteen months since she’d sacrificed a piece of a lung. A small
piece, really, and she’d
managed to keep it a secret from nearly everyone. The kids knew, of course. Not
every friggin’detail, but they knew they’d
been right about her smoking. It could kill her. But it hadn’t, and on the whole, life was good. It was
only that one small piece that had been contaminated. Her doctors had been
clear on that point. They’d
gotten it all. Contamination contained, cut out, and cast away. Worrying was
simply part of her nature—one
of the few parts she could do without. Otherwise, she liked herself better
than just about anyone she knew.
Except for her children. Emily and Dylan had gone her two
better. Emily was truly good, and Dylan was a seriously talented musician. They
were her legacy. If anything happened to her, they had her genes, and goodness
and talent would prevail. They had their father’s genes, too, but Monica’s were surely dominant, at least in the
important areas. It was fine with her that they had their father’s looks. Dillon was one hell of a looker.
Fortunately, they’d
never had to rely on his bread-winning capacity. Monica had always made a
decent living, but making do with decent had gone out the window the day
she’d
discovered her television persona. What self-respecting celebrity, however
minor, could or should live by bread alone? She and her children lived well, as
well they should. Emily would get her undergraduate degree in another year, and
Dylan was so talented that colleges would be throwing money at him when the
time came. There was little to worry about, really.
Other than the fact that Emily could not be dissuaded from
wasting another summer on an Indian reservation involved with another one of
her father’s
doomed projects. And the fact that Dylan, soon to be sixteen, could not be
persuaded to venture beyond the self-imposed limits of his secure triangle—home, private school, and McPhail Music
Academy. He hardly knew his father.
Worse—and
this was her own fault—his
father didn’t
know Dylan.
Dillon and Dylan. Her son was only a few letters away from being
a Jr. A few letters and a million light-years. But Monica had been the one to
fill out the birth-certificate application, and maybe she’d been a bit pompous in those days. For
conversational purposes, she had been mentally well rehearsed on the subject of
naming her children after her favorite
poets. It had turned out to be one of the many topics she’d prepared that only came up in conversation when she
brought them up herself, which was why she was so well suited to her current
occupation. Teaching had stunted her growth. High-school kids were like
husbands, their attention rarely encompassing the answers to their own
questions, assuming they cared enough to ask you anything.
Monica remembered the look in Dillon’s eyes when he’d signed his son’s birth-certificate form. Not cold, but
certainly cool. She’d
been ready for him to say something, ready to remind him that they’d talked about this—or she had, anyway. But he’d signed without challenging her spelling.
By that time, he’d
known better. Like everything else, she and Dillon had seen eye to eye on
names. One of her eyes to one of his. They’d
agreed that names meant something, but they couldn’t agree on what that something was.
Truth be told, by the time Dylan was born, Monica had known the
marriage was headed south. It had taken her a few more years to get out of
Dillon’s
house, off his land, and head east, but the handwriting— scrambled by her libido, but undoubtedly
scrawled across the wall all along—had
been coming into focus when she’d
christened the child with the name they’d
first chosen for the second baby, the stillborn boy whose grave had been marked
by his father: Little Black Bear Runs Him.
They had been living in Montana at the time, but Dillon had
taken the tiny body back to South Dakota and placed it in a desolate prairie
graveyard near his relatives. Monica had refused the dead child a given name, had
visited the little plot only once, and only for a moment. It was enough. No
point in dwelling in territory where she had no control.
To her mind, rather than being a point well taken, it was the
absence of point well proven. And well worth the cost if somehow the kids’ dues were paid in the bargain. But Emily
was her father’s
daughter, determined to pay her own dues, and she was old enough to decide how
she would go about it.
Still, having little say about Emily’s crazy plans didn’t mean Monica couldn’t get involved. With her connections, she
could see their plan for a one-shot summer camp and raise the stakes to a whole
new level. She could give them an hour of fame and a future in the summer-camp
business. The way things seemed to be shaping up for her health-wise, and the
more she thought about it...
But in the end, what would other people think? How would it look
if she got involved? Her concern was for more than appearances, even though the
appearance of grandstanding on her part would never do. She really wasn’t like that. Monica Wilson-Black was Every
Woman. In the end, she truly didn’t
want anyone—not
even, in her heart of hearts, Dillon—to
think badly of her.
A sporadic cough turned serial, forcing her to sit up, throw her
legs over the side of the bed, and hack to the point of pain before she gave in
and reached for a cigarette. Too early for coffee. She got up, pushed the
window open a few more inches and blew a killer stream of smoke. Budding trees
cast sketchy shadows across the moonlit backyard. In the flowerbed directly
below her bedroom window, a swath of Emperor tulips had closed up for the
night. Drifts of daffodils had already bloomed and faded with little notice
this year. The earliest days of spring had galloped past.
The pool stood empty. She would have it
filled and tended for show, but after Emily left for the summer, it
would get little use. Her television show was called It Only Looks Expensive,
but Monica had spared no expense in creating the showplace where she and her
children could, in theory, spend quality time making Kodak moments and entertaining
their friends. The pool had gone in just in time for Emily’s high-school graduation party. Two more
years, and Monica would have the place all to herself when she wasn’t broadcasting her show from her own
kitchen or workroom. If she hung on to the house for two more years.
If she had two more years.
But of course she would. Why wouldn’t she? Things had a way of working out,
because she wouldn’t
have it any other way.
She’d
built the show herself from weekly ten-minute spots on a local morning show to
half-hour syndication for cable. She’d
built a lot of things from the ground up—contacts
into networks, opportunities into accomplishments, children into young adults.
Monica was a go-getter, and given more time, she would go get a good deal more.
Two was the magic number. In six months, she would be two years
beyond her surgery. Not that she was thinking about it, talking about it,
marking off the days or anything. That kind of behavior would be counterproductive,
and Monica was nothing if not productive. Two was only a number. When she
reached it, then she’d
call it magic. Meanwhile, there would be no sidelining Monica Wilson-Black. She
was a major player.
She crushed the last half of the cigarette in a small plastic
ashtray. The one vice she’d
permitted herself seemed to be making up for all the vices she’d avoided. Proof that all it took was one.
In her next life, she would opt for total perfection. She’d gotten off the smokes for a good six
months, but started in again last summer. Now she was taking a different
approach, allowing herself half a cigarette at a time. Since she hated waste,
surely she would soon be obliged to quit. She’d been down to four halves a day until she’d smoked a whole one last night when she
was on the phone with Emily.
"You
just don’t
want me to spend another summer with Dad,”Emily had claimed. "It
has nothing to do with what’s
going on with you or D.J. or any internship you want to arrange for me, and you
know it. You want me to be like you, and I’m
not. It’s as
simple as that.” She
paused long enough to dramatize, and then lowered her voice to a tender timbre."I
love my father. I know you don’t,
but I do.”
"You shouldlove your father. I have no problem with that, Emily. He’s quite loveable.
It’s
just that you have so many opportunities right here, and this might be the last—”
"It’s not going to be the last anything,
Mother.”Emily sounded half disgusted, as though Monica had been piling on guilt, which
she certainly had not.
"The
last summer you spend at home.”Monica had scowled as she pulled the carafe from the coffeepot and touched the
glass. Cold. It was either nuke it or miss out on her fourth cup. "All right, yes, I have a problem with you
choosing his home instead of mine. Again.”
"It’s not about you or him. It’s about the horses. It’s about—”
"It’s about your father.” Monica took a turn at the dramatic pause. "I know him.”
"What’s that supposed to mean? You know him.”
"I
know all about his quixotic schemes and how seductive they can be.”
"The
Mystic Warrior Horse Camp is a good idea, Mom. We proved it last summer. It
brought the horses back into those kids’lives. As Dad would say, in a good way.”
"And
you’re
not sure what that means, but it’s so
simple, it must be profound.”
"I
have no idea what you mean.”
"But
since it’s
something I said, whatever the meaning, it has to be mean-spirited.”
"Oh,
get over yourself, Mother.”
"All
right, I will.”Monica had smiled, enjoying the notion that her comeback bore gifts. "Remember how you said that your project
would be perfect for Ella Champion’s
makeover show?”Monica had landed a spot in the rotation of guest decorators on the network
reality show, Who’s Our
Neighbor? thanks in part to her friendship with the production manager
who scoped out projects for the show, which focused on small communities and
common people in need of an uncommon infusion of television fairy dust.
"And
how you laughed and said get real? Like you thought I was serious.”
"You
sounded serious.”
"Yeah,
right. Like I don’t
know what Dad would think of having a TV crew come in and mess with his
property.”
"His property?A trailer house and an old church?” Had
she been talking to anyone else, she might have laughed again. But she caught
herself and changed her tune. "No,
really, honey, I think you might have hit on something. Your father and I get
along well now, and, frankly, quixotic schemes make for good TV. He’s got the Indian mystique going for him,
plus the reservation with all its problems. And can you imagine what we could
do with that place? I can. You planted the damned seed in my head, and it won’t stop growing. It could be—”
"Now
you do sound halfway serious.”
"I’m never halfway anything, Emily, you know
that.” She’d dragged on her cigarette. "I’m
fully over myself at the moment, thinking completely outside the box. It could
be quite a project. Quite a story. We wouldn’t get into unpleasant details, but we could
show a family—”
"We
wrote an excellent grant proposal, Mother. I know it’s going to come through. That’s part of my honors project—the grant proposal,” Emily enthused. Clearly, she really didn’t think her mother was anywhere near
serious. "Nobody
else’s honors
project even comes close. It has everything. It’s more than just a dream. We’re going to make it happen.”
There was no changing Emily’s
mind, and, ultimately, that was probably not a bad thing. She wanted to do
something worthwhile. In this post-Age of
Aquarius world, what kind of a mother would discourage such instincts?
Which was why she had already approached her good friend Ella
with the idea. Not a word to anyone but Ella—unlike her former husband, Monica never
made promises she had no chance of keeping—but
she knew her friend. She’d
mapped out Ella’s
buttons. Had to. Her friend was also a business associate, and buttons, like
contacts and bottom lines, were part of the business of living and earning a
living.
And Monica no longer had time for a simple friendship.
