LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Well, you weren’t a minister then,” Rourke teased, “and your embassy had to call in a lot of favors to keep you out of jail.”

      “What in the world did you people do in those days?” Carlie asked, shocked.

      “Bad things,” Reverend Blair said softly. “And it’s time to change the subject.”

      “The things we don’t know about our parents,” Carlie mused, staring at her father.

      “Some things are better not known,” was the reply. “And isn’t your chili getting cold, pumpkin?”

      “Why do you call her ‘pumpkin’?” Rourke wanted to know.

      “Now that’s a really long story...”

      “And we can forget to tell it unless we want burned meat for a week,” Carlie interjected.

      The reverend just smiled.

      * * *

      HER FATHER WENT to answer a phone call while Carlie was clearing the dishes in the kitchen. Rourke sat at the kitchen table with a second cup of black coffee.

      “You really don’t know a lot about your dad, do you?” he asked her.

      “Apparently not,” she laughed, glancing at him with mischievous green eyes. “Do you take bribes? I can make almost any sort of pie or cake—”

      “I don’t like sweets,” he interrupted. “And it’s worth my life to tell you,” he added with a laugh. “So don’t ask.”

      She made a face and went back to the dishes in the sink.

      “Don’t you have a dishwasher?” he asked, surprised.

      She shook her head. “Money is always tight. We get a little extra and there’s a pregnant woman who can’t afford a car seat, or an elderly man who needs dentures, or a child who needs glasses...” She smiled. “That’s life.”

      He frowned. “You just give it away?”

      She turned toward him, curious. “Well, can you take it with you when you go?” she asked.

      He paused, sipping coffee.

      “The Plains tribes had this philosophy,” she began, “that the richest man in the village was the one who had the least because he gave it all away. It denoted a good character, which was far more important than wealth.”

      “I would ask why the interest in aboriginal culture,” he began.

      She turned, her hands around a soapy plate. “Oh, my best friend was briefly engaged to a Lakota man,” she said. “We were juniors in high school. Her parents thought she was too young, and they made them wait a year.”

      “From your tone, I gather things didn’t go well?”

      She shook her head. She turned back to the sink to rinse the dish, aware of a pang in the region of her heart because the story hit close to home. “His parents talked him into breaking the engagement,” she said. “He told her that his religion, his culture, everything was so different from hers that it would be almost impossible to make a life together. She’d have had to live on the reservation with him, and his parents already hated her. Then there was the problem of the children, because they would have been trapped between two cultures, belonging to neither.”

      “That’s very sad,” Rouke commented.

      She turned to look at him, then lowered her eyes to the sink again. “I didn’t realize how much difference there was, until I started reading about it.” She smiled sadly. “Crazy Horse, Tashunka Witko in his own tongue—although that’s translated different ways in English—was one of my favorite subjects. He was Oglala Lakota. He said that one could not sell the ground upon which the People—what the Lakota called themselves—walked.” She glanced at him. “Things never mattered to them. Materialism isn’t really compatible with attitudes like that.”

      “You’re one of the least materialistic people I know, Carlie,” her father said as he came back into the room. “And I’d still say it even if I wasn’t related to you.”

      “Thanks, Dad,” she said with a smile.

      “I need to talk to you,” he told Rourke. “Bring your coffee into the office. Carlie, that new science fiction movie you wanted to see is playing on the movie channel.”

      “It’s not new, it’s four months old,” she laughed. “But you’re right, I guess, it’s new to me. I’ll watch it later. I promised Robin I’d help run one of his little toons through a dungeon.” She made a face. “I hate dungeons.”

      “Dungeons?” Rourke asked.

      “She plays an online video game,” her father explained, naming it.

      “Oh, I see. You’re Horde, too, huh?” Rourke teased.

      She glared at him. “I’m Alliance. Proudly Alliance.”

      “Sorry,” Rourke chuckled. “Everyone I know is in Horde.”

      She turned away. “It seems like it sometimes, doesn’t it?” She sighed. She turned at the staircase and held up her hand as if it contained a sword. “For the Alliance!” she yelled, and took off running upstairs.

      Her father and Rourke just laughed.

      * * *

      IT WAS FRIDAY. And not just any Friday. It was the Friday before the Saturday night when the Valentine’s Day dance was being held at the Jacobsville Civic Center.

      Carlie was all nerves. She was hoping that it would be warmer, so she could manage to go to the dance without wearing a coat, because she didn’t have anything nice to go with her pretty dress. She had to search out a file for the chief, which she’d put in the wrong drawer, and then she hung up on a state senator by pushing the wrong button on her desk phone.

      The chief just laughed after he’d returned the call. “Is it Robin that’s got you in such a tizzy?” he teased.

      She flushed. “Well, actually, it’s the...”

      Before she could finish the sentence and tell him it was her wardrobe that was the worry, the door opened and Carson came in. But he wasn’t alone.

      There was a beautiful blonde woman with him. She was wearing a black suit with a red silk blouse, a black coat with silver fur on the collar, and her purse was the same shade of deep red as the high-heeled shoes she was wearing. Her platinum-blond hair was pulled back into an elegant chignon. She had a flawless complexion, pale blue eyes, and skin like a peach. Carlie felt like a cactus plant by comparison.

      But she managed a smile for the woman just the same.

      The blonde looked at her with veiled amusement and abruptly looked toward the chief.

      “Chief Grier, this is Lanette Harris,” Carson said.

      “So charmed to meet you,” the blonde gushed in an accent that sounded even more Southern than Carlie’s Texas accent. She held out a perfectly manicured hand. “I’ve heard so much about you!”

      Cash shook her hand, but he didn’t respond to her flirting tone. He just nodded. His eyes went to Carson, who was giving Carlie a vicious, smug little smile.

      “What can I do for you?” he asked Carson.

      Carson shrugged. “I was at a loose end. I wondered if you’d heard anything more from your contact?”

      Cash shook his head. Just that. He didn’t say a thing.

      Carson actually looked uncomfortable. “Well, I guess we’ll get going. We’re having supper in San Antonio.”

      He was wearing a dark suit with a spotless white shirt and a blue pinstriped tie. His long hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. He was immaculate. Carlie had to force herself not to look at

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