“Thank you.”

Marisa tore into the first package, discarding the wrapping and lifting the lid.

“Sorry about the makeshift packaging. I had to have them wrapped after customs and...”

“Jack!” Marisa cried in delight, lifting a royal blue robe of heavy fuji silk from the box and holding it aloft. Emblazoned across the back of it was a golden imperial dragon, and it was encrusted with sapphire bugle beads at the collar and cuffs. The dragon’s head swirled down one arm and the tail trailed down the other, the gilt embroidery contrasting sharply with the smooth silk.

“This is gorgeous,” she breathed.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said. “It’s really for me.”

Marisa looked at him.

“Just kidding,” he said.

Marisa stood, dropping her tired chenille robe to the floor and then wrapping herself in the satiny folds.

“How do I look?” she said, striking a pose.

“Like the first blonde empress of Japan,” he said, saluting her with his glass.

“Too bad I can only wear this at home,” Marisa said sadly, fingering the lapels.

“I don’t recommend wearing it to the office. Charlie Wellman will have a stroke.”

Marisa grinned.

Jack took another sip of his drink and added, “Open that small one next.”

Marisa tore into the wrappings greedily and came up with a jeweler’s box.

“You’re spoiling me,” she said, opening it.

“I’m trying.”

“Pearls,” she said, lifting a string of perfectly matched lustrous gems from the bed of cotton wool.

“I thought that necklace would match your earrings pretty well,” he said.

“Oh, it does, thank you, thank you so much,” she said, running to embrace him.

“Hey, hey, you’re not finished yet,” he protested, disentangling her arms from his neck. “There’s another one.”

Marisa glanced over her shoulder at the last package, forgotten on the floor.

“Dinner’s been warming in the oven. I should take it out before it ossifies,” Marisa protested.

“It can wait a minute. Open that.”

Marisa knelt obediently and opened the last package. Marisa lifted it, puzzled at first.

“What?” she said.

“Look at it closely,” Jack advised.

Comprehension dawned.

“This is an Indian baby board,” she said, examining the flat back and front bundling used to hold a papoose.

“Right.”

“You didn’t get this in Japan.”

“Right again. It’s Blackfoot, my mother sent it. I picked it up on the porch on the way in. It must have been left by the parcel service earlier today.”

“You knew it was coming.”

“I had an idea.”

“Is this a family heirloom?”

He nodded.

“Am I jumping to wild conclusions, or is this a hint?”

“That’s my mother, world famous for her subtlety.”

Marisa put the carrier on the floor and walked over to sit next to Jack, slipping her arms around his neck.

“Jack?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I have something to tell you.”

– THE END –

MEDICINE MAN’S AFFAIR

Doreen Owens Malek

–

Originally published as

Native Season (1983)

–

Published by

Gypsy Autumn Publications

PO Box 383 • Yardley, PA 19067

–

Copyright 1983 and 2012

by Doreen Owens Malek

www.doreenowensmalek.com

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: 1983

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

Dedication

For Anne Baldwin Freiberger, 

companion of my childhood, 

lifelong confidante. 

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Chapter 1

It was a beautiful midsummer morning in Philadelphia, still cool at this early hour, the sky a cloudless, pale blue. Jennifer pulled her car into the company lot and showed her pass to the security guard, who waved her on to her assigned space. She drove into it mechanically, her mind on the business of the day. It would be a long one.

She walked across the marble floor of the lobby of the Freedom Building, past the tall potted plants and the glass-enclosed business rosters on the walls. She nodded at another security guard seated at a desk and unlocked the employee elevator. Her ascent to the third floor was swift and noiseless.

Outside her office, Dolores, her secretary, handed her a stack of mail and coffee in a plastic foam cup. “Bradley Youngson at nine,” Dolores reminded her, wearing a mischievous smile.

“Why the Cheshire Cat grin, Dolores?” Jennifer said, depositing her purse and the correspondence on her desk.

Dolores paused in the doorway, her smile widening. “You’ll know when you see him. He was here last week when you were in Chicago.” She rolled her eyes. “Sexy as hell.”

“Thank you, Dolores, for that capsule assessment,” Jennifer said dryly. “I only hope he can read.”

Jennifer was the publicity director for the Philadelphia Freedom football team and was responsible for the contracted promotional appearances the players made on behalf of the club. In her previous dealings with the athletes she had found quite a few of them, to put it charitably, something less than bright.

“When you look like him” Dolores said, “it doesn’t matter if you can read, write, or even think. The world will beat a path to your door.”

Jennifer gave Dolores a look that sent her scuttling back to her typewriter. Dolores had an unfortunate tendency to moon over the more attractive players. She was otherwise an excellent secretary, but her sophomoric hero worship made Jennifer feel like the den mother at a sorority house. She was always sending Dolores off on a manufactured errand to prevent her staring, thunderstruck, at some gloriously healthy young quarterback who had arrived to sign papers. Judging by this preview, Jennifer might have to give her a one-way ticket to the Ozarks while Youngson was around.

Jennifer sat and sipped her coffee, reviewing the material on Youngson. He was an American Indian, raised on a reservation in Montana, whose athletic prowess in the school there won him a scholarship to Cornell. He had been a star halfback in college and had signed with the Green Bay Packers upon graduation. He had had a magnificent career since, at the top of the league in yardage gained and passes received wherever he had played. He had been brought to the Freedom with the publicity of an astronaut returning from Jupiter. His salary could feed the population of China for a decade, and that did not include the perks—the cars, the clothes, the residuals from advertisements. The man was loaded. Jennifer always found herself resenting the amount these players were paid, but Youngson was in a class by himself. And all for playing a children’s game.

Jennifer was not impressed. She knew the type, all brawn and no brains. She had been married to one of them for three years. College degrees meant nothing in this business. Athletes were supplied with free tutoring in order to pass the most basic courses. And there had been more than one scandal about grade fixing and credit given for classes never attended, so that the starting lineup would be eligible to play. Jennifer had met some of the products of this system: college graduates who were functional illiterates, reading on a fourth or fifth-grade level, unable to decipher the material she handed them. She knew that quite a few of the faces she saw grinning from the sports pages couldn’t read the stories written about them. It had a tendency to dim the brightness of their accomplishments on the field.