Actions had consequences. He knew that well enough by now.
She had been a pretty girl but had become a classic beauty of a woman. When she danced at powwows, she drew the photographers like a blossom drew bees. The camera loved her, and he had a copy of a magazine where she’d been chosen as a cover model back in their senior year. Dressed in her regalia, she had a poise and intelligence that shone past the bright beads around her neck and white paint that ran down her lip to her chin. The cover that should have been a coup turned into another source for teasing as the lighting highlighted that her brown eyes were more cinnamon and revealed red highlights in her hair. Where was that magazine? His eyes popped open and he glanced about his living space, hoping she wouldn’t spot it before he could tuck it away.
Lori continued on, “My grandmother, my dad’s mother, told me once to look out for a baby with a caul. It means the baby is special.”
“All babies are special,” he said, thinking of one in particular.
* * *
LORI GLANCED AT the newborn, a little girl, checking her toes and fingers and finding her perfectly formed, if somewhat small.
“Do you have a kitchen scale?”
“A what?”
She smiled. “No way to check her weight, then. Grab my medical kit.”
Jake darted away as Lori examined the umbilical cord. Someone had tied it with a strip of green bark over a foot from the baby and then sliced the cord cleanly through. It was not the sort of cut a midwife would make, and it was not the sort of twine you would find in a home. More like the materials someone who had given birth outdoors would use.
Her mind leaped immediately to a teenage mother. Lori checked the baby and found nothing to indicate where the child had been born, but by the look of her, she was white.
“Here it is.” Jake set the kit down on the chair with a thump.
“Hold on to her so she doesn’t fall,” said Lori.
“Hold on how?”
Lori wrapped the baby again and then took his big, familiar hand and placed it on the baby’s chest.
“Easy. Don’t press.”
Then she retrieved a diaper from a side pocket. When she returned, it was to find him using a piece of gauze to wipe the blood from the infant’s face.
“We’ll do that at the clinic,” she said.
“It’s a blood sample,” he said. “Mother’s blood, right?”
She stilled. What she had seen as a childcare issue he saw as a crime scene.
“It’s probably some scared kid,” she said.
“It’s a felony. There are places to bring a baby. Safe places. She left it outside in my truck.”
She looked down at the tiny infant. Someone had given birth and then dumped her on a windy, cold September morning. She had treated babies abandoned by mothers before. They did not all survive. This little one was very lucky.
“Fortunate,” she said.
He met her gaze.
“To be alive,” she qualified.
Jake nodded. “I think she was still out there, watching me.”
“The mother?”
He nodded.
“That’s likely. She would have been close. Any idea who?”
“I need to take a look around the house.”
She nodded. “Go on, then.”
Jake tucked the gauze into one of the evidence baggies he had on his person and then slipped it into one of the many pockets of his tribal police uniform.
“Done with your evidence collection?” she asked.
He nodded. “For now.”
“Then I’ll get the little one fed and ready to transport while you have your look around.”
“Did you call Protective Services?” he asked.
“Betty called while I got my kit.” Betty Mills was her boss and the administrator of the Tribal Health Clinic. “She said they have to contact whoever is on call in our area. It could be a while.”
“Do you have a car seat for a newborn?” he asked, the unease settling in his chest.
Lori readied the diaper. “Yes. In my trunk. I’ll bring her to the clinic for a checkup. Unclaimed babies always come to the clinic now. Do you think the mother could still be out there?”
“I’ll know soon.” He zipped his police jacket and replaced the white, wide-brimmed Stetson to his head. Then he cast her a long look that made her stomach quiver. She pressed her lips together, bracing against her physical reaction. Fool me once, she thought. “Thanks for coming, Lori.”
“You want me to wait?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She nodded and watched him go. Jake Redhorse was her poison, but she was not going to be the tribe’s source of gossip again. She couldn’t go back and fix what was broken between them. Only he could do that, and it would mean admitting he had protected his reputation at the expense of hers. Left her out in the storm that never reached him. His luck, his reputation, his honor and his willingness to do what was right had all played in his favor. While her family legacy had cast her in the worst light. The natural scapegoat for daring to taint the reputation of the tribe’s golden boy.
So, you’re saying it’s mine? That was what he’d actually said to her. He wasn’t the first to suspect she’d pulled a fast one. How could they be so willing to think so little of her? After the gossip flew, she became the target of disdain. Her appearance in the classroom drew long silences, followed by snickering behind raised hands. Meanwhile, everyone felt sorry for Jake. Forgave him instantly. Who could blame him? He’d been tricked. Swindled. Seduced.
During junior year, Jake was still playing soccer and planned to play basketball but was already planning to get a part-time job moving cattle when the baby came.
When she mentioned her intention to work at the Darabee hospital as a health care aide, he’d scoffed.
“Finish high school, Lori,” he’d said. “So you don’t end up like your mom.”
So he’d planned to drop out and have her stay in school. More fuel to make him the hero and her the parasite.
She had glared at him. “You could still go to college.”
“No. I’ll be here for my child.”
Yes. Of course he would. But he had never had to.
Instead, he had accepted condolences first for the unplanned pregnancy and later for his loss. His loss. Never their loss. She clamped her teeth together as the fury spiked. Instead, he had finished high school and gone to college and she had gone. too. Become a nurse. Shown them all. Only, no one had really noticed or cared.
Yet one look at the wiggling, smiling baby and her temper ebbed. As she looked down into her eyes, she felt a tug in her belly and breasts.
She knew this feeling, had felt it once before, even though her baby had already left.
Uh-oh, she thought. Pair bonding, her mind supplied, as if reviewing for one of her tests in school. That magic thing that made a baby uniquely yours.
“Don’t do this, Lori,” she warned herself. But it was already too late.
* * *
JAKE WALKED AROUND the truck.