“It’s obvious that you two are very close.”
Renata was rewarded with another smile—tentative, but beguiling nonetheless.
“He raised me after my grandmother died. He felt he’d failed to teach my father the old ways, so he tried to pass them on to me. That’s the only reason I know—” he gestured with his head toward the front lawn “—a few words of Winnebago. Enough to fake my way through a couple of old ceremonies.”
Renata was quite certain that he knew far more than “a few words of Winnebago” and “a couple of old ceremonies.” His Winnebago conversation with his grandfather had sounded quite fluent, and though he’d stumbled a few times with the chanting, she’d gotten the impression that he’d been struggling to remember something he’d known very well at one time. It took no genius to deduce that his Indian roots made him uncomfortable, and not just because his grandfather had made a scene.
The kitchen became suddenly silent when the old man padded through the doorway, his eyes not on Renata but on Michael. She didn’t know if he’d heard Michael’s last words. If he had, they had surely hurt him.
He was wearing a pair of her grandfather’s jeans, which were far too big and far too long. He’d rolled up the hems several inches in a way that almost made him look like a clown. He’d disdained the heavy jacket, but he was wearing three wool shirts. His hair, soaking wet, had been carefully rebraided. One soggy feather hung from his head.
The old man whispered something in Winnebago, then stood absolutely still. Michael turned around, gazed at him for a moment, then said in English, “This young lady has offered us her hospitality and it would be rude to refuse it. It would also be rude to exclude her from our conversation. If you’re not ready to break your fast, come sit down and join us anyway. We can’t leave until the policeman comes back.”
The old man looked affronted at the quiet reprimand, but he did not move toward the table. He glanced briefly at Renata and said in quavery but perfect English, “I am sorry for the trouble. I am grateful for the clothes. I will wait on the porch until my grandson is done eating.”
Shame colored Michael’s sharp, handsome features as the old man left the room.
* * *
IT WAS NEARLY NOON when Michael helped his grandfather out of Lieutenant Brick Bauer’s black-and-white cruiser at the police station, where Michael had left his car. As he shook Brick’s hand, he said quietly, “Thank you again for helping me search last night. And assure the young lady that I’ll return the clothes just as soon as I can.”
Brick waved a negligent hand. “I’m just glad we found your grandfather in one piece, Michael. I’ll give Renata your message, but don’t worry about the clothes. She’s not likely to need them till the next time a soaking-wet stranger shows up on her doorstep.”
Michael managed a smile before he slipped into his BMW, but his face was stony by the time his grandfather joined him inside. Forcing the old one to speak English to Renata had demonstrated a measure of filial disrespect, but it had been unavoidable. Tongue-lashing the old man would wait until the white people were out of earshot.
“I have never been so frightened in my life, Grand Feather,” Michael snapped in English. “And once I found you, I was ashamed and angry. I spent a whole night looking for you with a policeman. We must have made three dozen phone calls. We knocked on doors of strangers and got them out of their beds! And then—” he sucked in a breath, finding it was hard to tackle the worst thing “—you forced that white woman to take us in. To feed us, to get us warm, to give us clothes! And then you treated her with contempt!”
His grandfather looked gray, utterly fatigued. “I was too tired to speak English to a woman whose people stole our land.”
“You were rude to a decent person who could have had you arrested for trespassing! You got me so upset that I was rude, too!” Michael knew that was what bothered him the most. He’d been grateful to Renata, but he hated feeling in debt to her. Not just because she was white, and not just because she was a woman. She was also—how could he put it?—the sort of woman who beckoned to him.
“I want your promise that nothing like this will happen again, Grand Feather,” he said sharply, in fluent Winnebago this time.
“I am old,” his grandfather answered softly. “It is time for me to go. I want to go to my people. I should not have to explain this to you.”
Michael took a deep breath. “You said there was a Winnebago graveyard here. Lieutenant Bauer looked for it. I looked for it. You looked for it! We could not find it.”
The old eyes bored into his. “That doesn’t mean it is not here.”
Michael threw up his hands, wondering what he’d do with this stubborn old man when he really did become senile. He hoped he’d spoken the truth to Renata when he’d insisted that the old man was not becoming irrational yet.
“You were lucky you pulled that stunt on land that belongs to a kind woman. If she’d been a different type of person you could have been shot or arrested.”
If she’d been a different type of person, I wouldn’t feel so ashamed, he added silently. He knew dozens of Winnebagos who would have responded the way Renata Meyer had, but very few white people. She’d gone out of her way to help an old man. She hadn’t accused him of trespassing. She hadn’t called him a dirty Indian. She hadn’t ordered him never to bother her again. She’d fed and cleaned him up and gotten him warm. And she’d smiled...oh, had she ever smiled....
Angrily he thrust away the memory of that smile. It was the sort of smile that could get a man in serious trouble if he dwelt on it.
Still, as he drove back to the Dells, Michael couldn’t seem to put Renata out of his mind. She was not the sort of white woman he dealt with impersonally every day at work. Most of his female customers were professional women who strove to keep their conversation light, and his co-worker, Maralys Johnson, was an aggressive career woman with a sharp tongue and a hard edge. Maralys wasn’t a bad sort, but she sometimes got on Michael’s nerves. Always jockeying her way to the top, she spoke the language of power and even dressed to look the part of a rising young executive.
There were no hard edges to Renata Meyer. She spoke her mind, but gently. She opened her home to the rain-soaked and wayward. She wore ratty jeans and a paint-speckled T-shirt, and her luscious blond hair cascaded unfettered to her trim waist. She wore no makeup, no jewelry, no power suit. Everything about her was natural and unpretentious.
And she was damn easy on the eyes to boot.
But it wasn’t really her appearance that had moved Michael. It was her honesty, her compassion, her warmth. She’d surely felt as awkward as he in their unusual situation, but she’d handled it a lot better than he had. She’d admitted her curiosity, but she hadn’t pressed. She’d tried to anticipate his needs and meet them. When he’d botched everything, she’d tried to make amends.
She was a rare woman, and he was sorry—as well as relieved—that he’d never see her again.
Oh, he could return the clothes to her house. He could even call ahead to make sure she’d be home when he got there. He had a hunch she’d be more flattered than distressed. But Michael Youngthunder was not a foolish man, and he knew trouble when it bit him on the kneecap. He’d been clever enough to crawl out of a shack and drag himself through college; he’d been clever enough to get three promotions in the past two years. He was certainly clever enough to remember how painfully he’d learned that he should never, ever, get romantically involved with a white woman.
He’d loved one once—surrendered himself body and soul—and he’d believed, with every ounce of his heart, that she had truly lived for him. When he’d proposed marriage, Sheila had accepted with what seemed like true joy. When she’d taken him home to meet her parents, she had seemed proud of him. But when he’d introduced Sheila to his grandfather and asked that her parents