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stepfather’s violent attack. Although she dated, she’d never had a serious boyfriend. She had secret terrors of intimacy that had never really gone away, except when she thought of Tate that way. She loved him….
    â€œWhy aren’t you dressed properly?” Tate asked, scowling at her skirt and blouse. “I bought you buckskins for your birthday, didn’t I?”
    â€œThree years ago,” she said without meeting his probing eyes. She didn’t like remembering that he’d forgotten her birthday this year. “I gained weight since then.”
    â€œOh. Well, find something you like here…”
    She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to buy me anything else,” she said flatly, and didn’t back down from the sudden menace in his dark eyes. “I’m not dressing up like a Lakota woman. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blond. I don’t want to be mistaken for some sort of overstimulated Native American groupie buying up artificial artifacts and enthusing over citified Native American flute music, trying to act like a member of the tribe.”
    â€œYou belong to it,” he returned. “We adopted you years ago.”
    â€œSo you did,” she said. That was how he thought of her—a sister. That wasn’t the way she wanted him to think of her. She smiled faintly. “But I won’t pass for a Lakota, whatever I wear.”
    â€œYou could take your hair down,” he continued thoughtfully.
    She shook her head. She only let her hair loose at night, when she went to bed. Perhaps she kept it tightly coiled for pure spite, because he loved long hair and she knew it.
    â€œHow old are you?” he asked, trying to remember. “Twenty, isn’t it?”
    â€œI was, five years ago,” she said, exasperated. “You used to work for the CIA. I seem to remember that you went to college, too, and got a law degree. Didn’t they teach you how to count?”
    He looked surprised. Where had the years gone? She hadn’t aged, not visibly.
    â€œWhere’s Audrey?” she asked brightly, trying to sound nonchalant about it when her heart was breaking.
    Something changed in his face. He looked briefly disturbed. “She couldn’t get away,” he said in a tone that didn’t invite questions. “One of her friends was having a tea, and she promised to help. I flew out alone.”
    Cecily wondered if it was really because of a party that Audrey had stayed behind, or if his society girlfriend didn’t want to be seen on an Native American reservation. Tate had mentioned once or twice that Audrey had asked him repeatedly to get a conservative haircut. As if he’d ever cut his hair willingly. It was a part of his heritage, of which he was fiercely proud. At least she didn’t have to worry about him marrying Audrey. He might be smitten, but he’d said for years that he wasn’t going to dilute his Lakota blood by mingling it with a white woman. He wanted a child who was purely Lakota, like himself. If he ever married, it would be to a Lakota woman. The first time he’d said that, it had broken Cecily’s heart. But she’d come to accept it. When she realized that she was never going to be able to have Tate, she gave up and devoted herself to her studies. At least she was good at archaeology, she mused, even if she was a dismal failure as a woman in Tate’s eyes.
    â€œShe’s been broody ever since we got here,” Leta said with pursed lips as she glanced from Tate to Cecily. “You two had a blowup, huh?” she asked, pretending innocence.
    Tate drew in a short breath. “She poured crab bisque on me in front of television cameras.”
    Cecily drew herself up to her full height. “Pity it wasn’t flaming shish kebab!” she returned fiercely.
    Leta moved between them. “The Sioux wars are over,” she announced.
    â€œThat’s what you