“You handled it by returning my love to me like a gift you didn’t wish to open.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his head bent, and she believed that he was.

She touched his hair, so soft and silky, so unlike the rest of him. “Then why did you come after me, Drew? Has anything changed?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “Once your thesis is accepted and you get your degree, you’ll be free to go anywhere and look for a job, right?”

“Right.”

He raised his eyes to hers. “What about coming to Florida?”

“To do what?”

“To be my wife,” he answered, clearly afraid that she would refuse him, but determined, as always, to complete his mission.

Cindy bent forward to rest her head on his shoulder. She put her arms around his waist and closed her eyes.

“Is that a yes?” he asked huskily, stroking her back and arms as if to assure himself of her reality.

“I want to marry you, more than anything in the world. But what you just said about your life is still true, and I don’t think I could stand worrying about you every time you went out on a case,” Cindy said.

“I know. That’s why I got a new job.”

Cindy raised her head.

He nodded. “I’ll be running a security agency in Tampa. With the connections I had from working with the police it wasn’t hard to arrange.”

Cindy stared at him, hardly daring to believe it.

“I want you, princess,” he said. “And I’ll do anything I have to do in order to get you.”

“But will you be happy? Tracking has always been your life.”

“I’ll be happy with you. You’ll be my new life.”

She hugged him again, closing her eyes. “What about the differences between us?” she asked. “They seemed to bother you so much.”

“We’ll work them out,” he said in her ear. “It’s not fair to blame you and deny both of us happiness for something my mother did over thirty years ago.”

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” she said, and he chuckled.

“Are you saying I should have listened to you in the first place and avoided all this conflict?” he asked her.

“Certainly not,” she whispered.

“I didn’t think so.” He pulled back from her and stood up, looking around the room.

“Does this door lock?” he asked.

“Drew, you’re not suggesting...”

“I certainly am. I’ve waited long enough.” He picked her up and carried her to the vinyl love seat in the reading area. “This will have to do.” He went to the door and locked it, then blocked it with a filing cabinet.

When he joined her she asked, “What would you have done if Richard showed up first at the office instead of me?”

“I’d have found you,” he said grimly, unbuttoning her blouse. “I would have gotten the information out of him.”

She opened her mouth to say something else and he covered it with a large, tanned hand.

“I love you,” he said, “but if you say one more word I am going to gag you.”

He kissed her, and she discovered that she had nothing left to say.

– THE END –

BLACKFOOT

AFFAIR

Doreen Owens Malek

–

Published by

Gypsy Autumn Publications

PO Box 383 • Yardley, PA 19067

–

Copyright 1992 and 2012

by Doreen Owens Malek

www.doreenowensmalek.com

Originally published as

Arrow in the Snow (1992)

The Author asserts the moral right to be

identified as author of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this book, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author or Publisher.

First USA printing: 1992

All of the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1

The dark man was watching her again.

Marisa Hancock squared off her stack of notes and fastened the pages neatly on the clipboard before her, ignoring the intense gaze focused on her. Staring at the opposition’s table in order to unnerve its attorney was an old lawyer’s trick and she wasn’t going to fall for it. She turned slightly sideways so she wouldn’t have to see him and concentrated on the task at hand.

They were deep into the third week of arguments and things were not going well for Marisa. A property and land grants attorney retained for the case by the federal government, she had taken over from another lawyer at the last minute and found herself plunged into a controversy for which she was not prepared.

Outside the windows the mild sun of a Florida winter shone down on the pale green leaves of trees barely visible through the beveled glass. She knew that the protesters were still lined up along the sidewalk outside, flanking the impatiens beds with their signs, but their chanting was not audible in the fourth floor courtroom. Marisa sighed and tried to concentrate on the droning of the court clerk’s voice, but she still felt the keen gaze on her face and, yielding to impulse, she turned and confronted the man who was staring at her.

He gazed back at her, unperturbed. She knew his name, of course: Jackson Bluewolf, the founder and President of Natives for Nature, a coalition of Native Americans fighting for conservationist issues, especially the preservation of American Indian shrines and cultural sites. Bluewolf and his group were in Florida trying to block the federal takeover of an ancient Seminole burial ground. The government wanted the land to connect two sections of an interstate highway, and the Indians wished to keep it and open a museum and cultural bookstore on the site.

“Ms. Hancock, do you have anything to add to your argument before I rule on your motion for summary judgment?” Judge Lasky said briskly, interrupting her reverie.

“Yes, your honor,” Marisa replied, rising from her seat. “I would remind the court that the savings to the taxpayers of this state if the government’s plan is implemented would be substantial—in the neighborhood of eight million dollars.”

“Thank you, Ms. Hancock. I have given due consideration to your motion and I now rule that it is denied.”

Marisa returned to her seat, keeping her face expressionless, feeling the heat of Bluewolf’s gaze on her back. The two forces had been squaring off for almost a month, and during that time Bluewolf had not said one word to her. He merely watched her with his peculiar intensity, and it was making her very ill at ease. Her discomfort was increased dramatically by the growing conviction that she was representing the wrong side.

Bluewolf’s group wanted to prevent the government from exercising its rights under “eminent domain”— a doctrine permitting the takeover of any land deemed necessary to further the public interest. Marisa had flown south from her home and practice in Maine to handle the case when another lawyer in her firm was forced to bow out of it. When she showed up for the preliminary hearing at the last minute she had to fight her way through a crowd of protesters outside the courthouse. Bluewolf had noticed her distress and cleared a path for her, unaware that she would be his adversary. And since that moment it seemed he had never taken his eyes from her.

Marisa had resigned herself to a long stay in Florida when she lost round one and the injunction to halt the highway was granted. Her explanation that the government had no desire to destroy a cultural site but merely wanted to save taxpayers money had carried no weight with the judge. It would cost a fortune to go around the cemetery rather than through it. She had outlined in detail the government’s plan to make monetary reparation to the tribe, but it all went for naught. The NFN’s argument that money could not make up for the loss of history and tradition that would result from the destruction of the three hundred year old burial ground had carried the day. And Marisa knew that Jackson Bluewolf, the NFN lawyer’s chief adviser, had been its architect.