This time Renata grinned, and to her surprise, Michael grinned back. His smile took her totally off guard. It was brilliant, almost boyish, utterly charming. What a change from that fierce, anguished scowl!
“Good. I was hoping you’d be too hungry to notice that I’m piecing together a meal from odds and ends,” she confessed. “I keep staples here but I always need to get milk and fresh produce when I come to town. But if you’re hungry—”
“Ready to eat cardboard. Whatever you’ve got will be fine.”
He gave her another dazzling grin as she handed him a plate full of pancakes, dug in the cupboard for some syrup and rinsed off a clean but dusty fork. It occurred to Renata that coming back to her house in Tyler was sort of like arriving at a neglected backwoods cabin. It was cozy and quaint, but it wasn’t set up to entertain strangers. At least she had a phone and running water—the thumps and bangs in the pipes triggered by the old man’s shower were proof of that—but that was about the extent of the amenities.
Michael’s eyes met hers with an expression that reminded Renata of a little boy in a candy shop in a Norman Rockwell painting. “Are you going to join me?” he asked.
This time Renata laughed out loud. “For goodness’ sake, Michael, eat! I can hardly bear to look at you. In another second you’ll start drooling.”
The smile quickly vanished. “No worry about that. I drooled a lot when I ate raw buffalo in the wigwam, but at Georgetown they frowned on that.”
Renata was surprised that she’d offended him and even more surprised that he’d felt compelled to trot out his academic credentials. Honestly, she said, “I was only teasing, Michael, because you sounded so hungry. I wasn’t thinking at all about your...heritage.”
A dark flush reddened his angular cheeks. “After what’s happened outside this morning, I wouldn’t think you’d be able to think about anything else.”
He was so blunt that Renata decided she should be straight with him, also. “I’ll admit that your grandfather took me by surprise. I’m worried about him and I’m damned curious. You took me by surprise, too, but that’s because I’m having a devil of a time figuring out how a man who looks so comfy in a suit and acts so white can speak Winnebago and think like a traditional Indian.”
She drew a quick breath, but didn’t give him time to reply. “Now I’m wondering if I’ve done anything to cause you to believe that I’ve got some Neanderthal prejudice against people who aren’t just like me. Since I’ve spent my whole life as a square peg in a round hole, I’d have to dislike just about everybody if that were true. As it happens, I like people. I like diversity. Until you started making insinuations,” she finished a bit sarcastically, “I rather liked you.”
Michael was silent, but his eyes grew dark as he listened to her speech. For a long, tense moment his inscrutable gaze impaled her. Then he rose, abandoning the fork poised to snag a pancake, and slowly prowled across the room.
Renata wasn’t sure what to expect of this tightly coiled stranger. She knew he was angry, but she wasn’t sure if she was scared. She tried to remember just what Brick had said to her about Michael Youngthunder before he’d galloped off in his police car. He had acted as though Michael were a friend. He’d given Renata no overt or even subtle warnings. Surely he wouldn’t have left her alone with these two Indians if he had any reason to distrust them!
Still, Renata shivered as Michael approached her, his lips drawn down in a fearsome scowl. She wanted to duck away from him, to hide or bolt from the room, but she didn’t seem to be able to move.
And then he spoke, and she knew by the fresh shame in his voice that his anger was directed inward. And she also knew that the chill that feathered up and down her spine as he touched her wrist had nothing to do with fear.
“Renata,” he said softly, his voice taking on a low and tortured tone, “please forgive my rudeness. I am always overly touchy about my...bloodlines. And this morning, I am—” he shook his head “—a great deal more embarrassed by my family than usual.” His gaze met hers, then slipped away, reluctantly swinging back to hers again. “I’ve never been in a situation quite like this before, but that’s no reason for me to behave badly.” As the bathroom pipes upstairs stopped banging, he finished tensely, “You don’t have to feed me. As soon as my grandfather gets dressed, we’ll go.”
As he turned to leave the room, Renata caught his arm. She seemed to be doing a lot of that this morning—holding on to Michael—but she couldn’t seem to help herself. There was something about him that made her want very much to touch him.
“Michael, I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I know this whole situation is terribly awkward for you. But it’s kind of strange for me, too, you know.”
He turned around, met her eyes again and slowly nodded. A thin layer of tension seemed to leave the room.
“My grandfather lived to be ninety-six,” she told him, “and he just died a few years ago. I loved him dearly, but I was the only one left to take care of him near the end, and I didn’t always know what to do with him.”
Michael ran a nervous hand through his thick mane. “Grand Feather’s not senile,” he declared almost defensively. “I know it looks that way, but he’s still sharp as a tack. He’s stubborn and determined, but he’s not losing a grip on reality. At least, not on his reality. It’s just that his reality is probably different from yours.”
Again his dark eyes met hers, imploring Renata to understand what he didn’t seem to be able to say. She wanted him to go on, to share his feelings, for reasons that went beyond the need to satisfy her curiosity or ease her conscience after their spat. But she knew he was still ravenous and exhausted...and nearly proud enough to leave his pancakes uneaten and go.
“Why don’t you sit down and tell me about it while we eat?” she suggested. Renata wasn’t a breakfast person, but she saw no need to mention that to Michael. Grabbing a plate from the cupboard, she filled it with pancakes. “I’m pretty hungry myself,” she lied.
It was hard to say whether it was Michael’s hunger or Renata’s offer to join him that finally did the trick, but he did move back toward the table, where he waited behind his chair until Renata sat down. Only after she took a bite of pancake did he take a forkful from his stack. She tried not to watch him eat, certain that he was holding himself back. Deliberately she kept quiet until he’d consumed three pancakes and she’d discreetly refilled his plate. Mercifully, a companionable silence seemed to fill the room.
Despite her request to have him share the details of his grandfather’s reality, Michael didn’t mention the old man again. Instead he asked, “So where do you live when you don’t live here?”
If Renata had believed he was really interested in her, she would have been pleased by the question. Under the circumstances, she was reasonably certain that he was merely trying to be polite.
“I live in Milwaukee,” she answered simply. “How about you?”
“Sugar Creek.”
He made no effort to expand on the terse answer, so Renata asked another question. “Does your grandfather live with you?”
Michael exhaled sharply and shook his head. “No, unfortunately. I have begged him and begged him, but he won’t leave Wisconsin Dells. He won’t even let me buy him a nicer place. Even a little trailer would be an improvement.”
“Does he live alone?”
“For all intents and purposes. I have an uncle who owns some land nearby. He checks on him every night.”
Renata got the picture. Near the end her own grandfather had been too stubborn to live with anybody, either. She’d had to arrange for a year’s leave from the university—while she pretended to her grandfather that she’d dropped out of school—so she could come home and take care of