From Mission To Marriage

He finished every crumb of the pie and found it delicious. Had he only imagined an aversion to peaches? These were different, wonderful. “My compliments, Mrs. Walker,” he said sincerely, placing his napkin beside his plate. “That is the best meal I’ve had in years.”

“Years?” she repeated with a soft chuckle. “Doesn’t your wife feed you well, Mr. Senate?”

He tossed Vanessa a sly look that said, Here it comes, that third degree you promised I wouldn’t get. Out loud, to her grandmother he answered dutifully, “I’m not married. In our business, it is difficult to maintain a normal family life. We travel too often.” Had the woman sensed his concealed interest in her granddaughter? He hadn’t betrayed it by so much as a look in Vanessa’s direction. At least not that sort of look.

Rebecca inclined her head and poured him another glass of iced tea. “A shame there is no one for you to come home to. Maybe someday you will find this. My husband liked the comfort of it.” The old man nodded indulgently and shot his wife a knowing grin.

“You traveled a lot, sir?” Clay asked politely.

The old man nodded. “War. Then business school. I used to buy up inventory for some of the trading posts. Retired now.”

Vanessa sipped her tea and expounded on her grandfather’s meager answer. “He purchased lots of stuff from some of the smaller reservations out west and up north who haven’t the tourist trade we have here.” She smiled at her grandmother. “E-ni-si and other locals with creative talents make baskets, pottery and paintings to sell. I’ll take you by the co-op shop so you can see.”

“You’re an artist?” Clay asked Rebecca. He could not believe how many questions he was asking. He rarely did that unless it had to do with investigations, but found himself interested enough to break a few more rules.

The grandmother ducked her head in a show of modesty. “I make baskets.”

“Those ones,” Dilly said after gulping her mouthful of pie. “Up there, see?” She pointed.

Clay reevaluated the row of baskets sitting along the top of the kitchen cabinets. One particularly beautiful, intricately woven example sat on the granite countertop holding a bunch of green apples. He decided he would buy one like that from her before he left. Something priceless to remember these people by.

“Well, come on with me if you’ve finished eating,” Vanessa ordered. “We’ll get your things settled in your room, then take a walk to wear off some of these calories.”

She dropped a kiss on her grandmother’s head as she passed by her chair. “Thank you, E-ni-si. Great meal, as always.” She winked at her grandfather who solemnly winked back.

Dilly laughed with delight as she tried unsuccessfully to wink and instead, gave Vanessa a playful swat as she passed the youth’s chair.

“It’s bath time for you, button nose. Better be clean and have those dollies in bed by the time I come in to say night-night. There’s a bedtime video in it for you if you don’t flood the bathroom, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dilly agreed. “Ni-si will make me behave.”

Clay felt his eyes burn a little as he witnessed the open affection among these four. A pang of envy struck him like an arrow through the heart.

The child was precious, a true ray of light, and so secure in the love that surrounded her. So was Vanessa, he realized. He envied them that.

How would that feel, being accepted and loved so unconditionally? He wondered where Vanessa’s parents were and if she had been raised by these two from an early age. But he wouldn’t ask. Maybe some of the manners of the elder Walkers had rubbed off on him.

Vanessa’s natural bearing and self-confidence attracted him almost as much as her lithe figure and her lovely, animated features. The swing of her hips wasn’t meant to be enticing, but her unconsciousness of that made it all the more so. He was sweating like crazy.

He followed her out to the Explorer where they retrieved his two bags. She insisted on hefting his carry-on. She led him up the stairs to a bedroom containing a large dresser that looked handcrafted and a queen-size four-poster. It cried out for testing his weight. Along with hers. Clay sucked in a deep breath and released it with a huff of self-disgust. He had to stop this. Stop thinking about her that way.

“Bathroom’s in there. We’ll be sharing that. My room’s on the other side. The grans’ room is downstairs, and Dilly’s, too, so you needn’t worry about noise.”

Noise? Oh, and didn’t that just plant a vision in his head?

“No TV up here,” she said, pointing, “but there’s a radio with a CD player and a few CDs. Mostly flute music, I’m afraid. Cousin Eddie plays and we have to support the family endeavors.”

“Flute,” he repeated. Apparently he was to get a good dose of native culture whether he wanted it or not. “That’s fine.”

But it wasn’t fine. Not the flute, the fry bread or the unfamiliar customs like tribal hospitality and ingrained politeness. He knew now why he had felt so apprehensive about coming here, aside from sharing a house with a female agent who stirred him up the way she did.

Since he could remember, Clay had flaunted his Native American heritage, though he knew very little about it. Raised by his white father, away from any vestige of his mother’s culture since she had died, Clay had used his Native American looks as a form of rebellion against the man who had given him no choice about his upbringing and refused to discuss his mother or their marriage.

Clay had grown his hair long and adopted an attitude of stoicism and silence that he knew very well was stereotypical. Early habits died hard. Even when it no longer served any purpose to provoke Clayton Senate Sr., Clay had not let up. The image had suited him. Until now.

Vanessa and her grandparents made him feel whiter than the Pillsbury Doughboy. That was what bothered him. He had no mask to hide behind when it came to these people because they knew that his mask was about as authentic as a Sioux war bonnet on a Cherokee chief. He did not want Vanessa to see him as a caricature of their people. Or rather, her people. He wasn’t precisely sure he could, in all good conscience, claim either side of his family.

He felt a sharp need to fit in that he had not admitted to since he was eight and had realized he was rapidly forgetting what little he knew of his mother and her people. He had lost any stories, dancing, religion, belonging. His very identity.

“C’mon, let’s go meet Brother Billy Bear,” Vanessa said, catching his hand in hers as she strode past him to the door. “You can give him his daily Coke.”

Clay followed wordlessly, afraid to ask.

Vanessa giggled shamelessly as Clay held the old soft-drink bottle she had filled with the vet’s equivalent of Ensure for her grandfather’s pet. Billy accepted his daily dose with a grunt, bracing the bottle between his paws and sucking down the contents with expertise.

“I’ll be damned,” Clay muttered as he stepped back from the fence. “Where did you get it?”

The old bear was so rheumy-eyed and arthritic he offered no threat at all, but Clay obviously was a city boy with a healthy respect for what he saw as a wild animal.

“Old Billy did his time downtown back in the day, performing for the tourists until Mack Bowstring decided to close up shop. Since Billy was my very favorite attraction, my grandfather offered the man five bucks to take the bear off his hands and give him a good home.” She didn’t confess that she’d been required to work off that five bucks washing and drying dishes for a month in addition to feeding Billy every day until she’d left the mountain at eighteen.

“How old is he?” Clay asked.

“Over thirty now and thirty-five’s about the max for black bears.”

“Better he’s here than in a zoo, I guess,” Clay commented.

“Definitely. He was too domesticated to release in the wild and nobody could stand to have him put down. Gran pulled some strings to get permission to keep him. Uncle Charly’s a vet and keeps a close check on him.”

“I take it you have a large family,” Clay said as they watched Billy licking the bottle, exacting every last drop of the sweet nutritious liquid.

“Huge,” she admitted. “You?”

“Not so huge. I guess you’d never want to leave here, your family, this place.”

Vanessa turned, wondering why he’d ask such a thing. “I already left. I went to college, then the Academy and the job. I have an apartment in Asheville. I make it back most weekends to visit the grans. You thought I lived here?” She glanced back at the house, not minding the junky old mower, overgrown flower beds and the listing tree of gourd birdhouses. Rustic was the look and she loved it.

Clay tore his gaze from the bear and walked a few steps away, his back to her, his hands in his pockets. “I’m here to recruit you.”

Vanessa stared at him, lost for words. Recruit her? For what?

As if he’d read her mind, he answered, “We’re organizing a team of agents and you’ve been recommended for it. COMPASS, or Comprehensive Analysis of Stateside Security is affiliated with Homeland Security and deals with terrorist threats within our borders. I’m supposed to observe how you perform, see how you’d fit, both professionally and personally. If you’re not interested, I need to know.”

“So you can leave and not waste your time?” Vanessa asked. She made him uncomfortable and she knew it. She hadn’t made it to this age without recognizing the signs of physical attraction. She had probably been throwing out a few signals herself. He was ready to get out of here and this was his opportunity. All she had to say was no, she was not interested.

He turned, his expression unreadable. “No, I won’t leave until we’ve concluded the investigation. The thing is, if you can’t see yourself as a candidate for the team, then it’s merely business as usual and I won’t need to do an assessment on you.”

Vanessa considered that. “Where would I have to live?”

“In McLean, Virginia. At least for the first year. There would be extra training involved, connections to make. It would mean travel, but mostly to your southern sector, with occasional calls to other areas to assist fellow agents. We follow the trouble wherever it goes. Sometimes overseas.”

“I see. Is McLean where you live?”

“Yes.”

“It’s expensive there, isn’t it?” she asked.

“More so than here.” He looked off toward the mountains, her beloved Smokies. “You’d jump a couple of pay grades, get a cost-of-living increase and a hefty clothing allowance.” He sighed and shrugged as if he didn’t expect her to care about all that, as if he didn’t himself. “Same basic benefits as you have with the Bureau. Hazardous-duty pay for certain assignments.”

“Would I be the token redbird?” she asked without any bitterness. She knew all about equal-opportunity employment by the government. Had to have those minorities and women.

He smiled. “That plays into it, sure, but your qualifications weigh much more heavily in this instance. Not just any old Indian will do to meet the quota, if that’s what you’re asking. Nor would any female who could shoot straight and speak three languages. The requirements on paper are quite specific and you meet them. Interested?”

She paused for a full minute before she spoke. “You know some people aren’t crazy about being called Indian anymore. Think it’s not politically correct.”

“Does it offend you?” he asked, really curious.

“The majority of people called Indian are satisfied with it. Know why?” Her dark eyes shone with mischief.

“Why’s that?”

“Because the majority really are from India,” she said, laughing. “Gotcha!”

“Cute. Seriously, what do you prefer? Native American? Indigenous person?”

“Cherokee works for me. I guess you have a problem there, don’t you, since you don’t know which tribe to claim.”

“Yes, but I don’t obsess over it. You know we’re digressing here, and I think you’re doing it on purpose. You want time to consider what the job entails, right? But you’re not saying no.”

She frowned as she nodded reluctantly. “I’d be a fool to say no.”

“Would you?” Again he looked around them, taking in the wildness of the landscape, the beauty she usually took for granted, and drew in a deep breath, releasing it slowly. She saw this place through his eyes now. Could she leave for good?

“You’re worried about living so far away from your people?” he asked.

She nodded. “A little. I feel I have a responsibility to the tribe. If I stay in Asheville, at least I can act as a liaison when something like this pops up.”

His steel-gray eyes both challenged and warmed her with that piercing gaze of his. “Have you ever thought that maybe the world could be your hunting ground, the people of it, your tribe? They need you, too, Vanessa. Be a Cherokee, but be a world citizen, too. Could you handle that?”

“Interesting thought. How long do I have to consider it?” she asked. What he said intrigued her. Maybe he was right and she did need to broaden her horizons, give more than she was giving here.

“Until we finish this,” he replied.

“Then I guess you’d better take some notes on me just in case,” she advised. “Could be that I’m not what you’re looking for after all.”

“I think you’re exactly what I’m looking for,” he replied. For some reason, Vanessa thought that sounded personal. Or maybe she was just reading her own fantasies into it. This guy really was every woman’s dream. Unfortunately, all she could afford to do was dream that fantasy, not act on it.

His eyes met hers, their unusual steely color warming. “You could try bribing me with another piece of that peach pie. Maybe a cup of coffee to go with it? I’d probably support you for president.”

She grinned. “Whoa now! Don’t tell me you’re still hungry.”

He nodded, smiling, though his expression faltered a bit, leaning toward sadness. His cynicism and professional distance seemed to desert him all of a sudden. He looked vulnerable to her, almost lost, before he turned away, pretending to focus on the empty birdhouses.

Vanessa could sense his hunger, but it wasn’t for food. It appeared to be a soul-deep need she wasn’t sure she knew how to feed, but she wished she could try. Her grandmother had warned her time and again that she took things too much to heart, that she shouldn’t think she had to try to fix everything and everybody.

Maybe, like old Billy, this man just needed someone to show him they cared and that he had a place in the world. She could do that much, surely. It had worked wonders for the bear.

Chapter 3

C lay felt the change in Vanessa’s attitude since telling her about his real reason for being here. It wasn’t anything abrupt, just an obvious softening. He would have thought it might intensify that eagerness to please she had exhibited earlier, but somehow it had the reverse effect.

Now she seemed more at ease with him, and as if she were trying to take him under her wing or something. The odd thing was, he didn’t mind.

They sat in her grandparents’ den where earlier he had used the fax to send the information to McLean. The child had been in bed for hours and the older folks had retired at ten, leaving Clay and Vanessa alone.

“We’ll go into town in the morning,” she was saying, verifying the thought he’d just had. “You’ll need to meet the chief, the council and our local force. Jurisdiction’s not much of a problem, because we keep the lines of communication open.”

“Cooperation, that’s the new byword, isn’t it? That’s what my team is all about. We have agents from six different diciplines and so far, it has worked out to our advantage.”

“Things are improving at the top levels, but also on the local scene,” she said.

He leaned back in his chair and watched her dark eyes shine as she continued in earnest, obviously proud of her role in law enforcement.

She had beautiful eyes, large and black fringed, beneath perfect eyebrows. Her voice had a quality about it that fascinated him for some reason he couldn’t quite explain. He could listen to her forever. Why had he ever thought she talked too much?

“Generally speaking, we go by North Carolina laws here on the boundary, but we have our own court system, our own police and everything. As I’ve told you, I spoke with the chief already and touched base with the sheriff. But even though you and I are already on it and will handle it anyway, protocol dictates that we be invited to run this investigation. It’s a formality I think we should observe.”

Clay nodded, attempting again to focus his attention more closely on her words instead of her mouth. It was bow-shaped, naturally rosier than her skin, not too full or bee-stung, but refined, sort of ethereal. Malleable. Kissable. With a sharp shake of his head, he yanked his thoughts back to the business at hand. “It will be your op, Vanessa, but I agree. You should go by the rules, even the unwritten ones, whenever possible.”

And so should he. Especially that one about not coming on to fellow agents, Clay decided.

He had a great deal of respect for her already. She was determined to share all she knew in order to help him understand how things were done here. Listening to her and getting her personal perspective sure beat having to research all of that.

She should be the one to set things up, show him how she interacted with local law enforcement, which she would certainly get plenty of if she took the job with COMPASS. Cooperation was the cornerstone of success in a multilevel investigation.

Along with the politics, she continued to salt in local customs and unwritten rules the Eastern Band lived by. She bragged about the tribe’s success in establishing the current constitution, their thriving new compost business and the added revenues from Harrah’s casino. A woman so proud of her community, she glowed with it.

“And that,” she said, clapping her hands once as she leaned forward, facing him over the ottoman, “is enough of local history for now.”

Clay leaned forward, too. And he kissed her.

Surprised at first, she stilled, then slowly began to participate. Her lips tasted exactly the way he’d expected, soft and generous, flavored with peaches, which he now loved, and hot, sweet coffee.

For all of two blissful seconds, she responded, opening to him like a flower to rain. Suddenly she backed off, breaking the kiss, her dark eyes wide.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” she rushed to say, touching her fingertips to her bottom lip. “Really!”

“You didn’t do anything,” Clay said with a gusty sigh of regret. “I did.” He sat back, hands carefully clasped in his lap. He wished he’d grabbed a sofa cushion to better hide the evidence of his feelings. “And I didn’t mean to, either. I apologize, Vanessa. It was…just an impulse. A mistake.”

“Yeah, huge error,” she breathed. “We’d better not do it again, huh?”

Clay released a self-deprecating chuckle and shook his head. “No, unfortunately. Better not.”

She scooted back in her chair and tucked her feet under her. “If I kissed you—seriously, I mean—you might think I was trying to persuade you to choose me for that team of yours.”

“No, I wouldn’t. But you could think I was offering the job in exchange for sexual favors. Which I am definitely not doing,” he added with emphasis.

“No sex on the table, huh? Well, flattering to know the thought occurred to you somewhere along the way. But you’re right.” Her lips turned up at the corners. “Boy, we sure know how to gum up a situation, don’t we?” She sighed. “Okay. No kissing. No sex. We should just forget this happened.”

Fat chance of that. Clay could not believe what he’d done. Mercier would fire him on the spot, probably see he never worked in the field again if he found out about this. But he then remembered how Mercier had met his wife on an op in France. That was different, though. Solange had been a civilian.

Same deal with Joe and Martine Corda. Then there were Holly and Will Griffin, who actually were fellow agents and partners on some assignments. Their getting together had almost caused a serious flap and they still had problems to iron out because of it. No, no good precedent in favor of his pursuing Vanessa Walker existed. He had to leave her alone. Besides, he wasn’t looking for a relationship. Never had, really. Bad time to start.

His own composure was so rattled right now, he had the urge to run out of here and down the mountain as if his pants were on fire. In fact, that was close to the truth. But despite the wrongness of it all, he wanted nothing more than to crawl across that damn ottoman and kiss her again, harder, longer and without stopping.

“Well, I guess I’ll say good-night now,” she said, hopping up from the chair and pulling the lapels of her jacket together. But not before Clay saw the beads of her nipples, erect as they could be, showing through her shirt and bra. No way he could hide his response to her. So with as much aplomb as he could muster, and without standing, he simply said, “Good night, Vanessa.”

Clay’s cell phone chirped at five o’clock in the morning, waking him. He fumbled around on the nightstand for it and answered. It was Mercier. “Don’t you ever sleep?” Clay asked, rubbing his eyes. “What’s so urgent?”

Ten minutes later he was dressed and knocking softly on Vanessa’s door. When she opened it, he almost forgot why he was there. He watched, breathless, as she hitched the thin strap of her nightgown back onto her smooth, bare shoulder and raked a wealth of silky black hair off her brow. Her dark eyes were slumberous and a little unfocused.

“Clay?” she murmured, “Anything wrong?”

He cleared his throat and looked past her into the room, trying to regain his equilibrium. “I got a call from my office. About Hightower.” Clay put his hand on her arm, touching her before he thought about it. “He’s former military, you knew that, right?”

She frowned and stepped away from his touch, raking both hands through her hair and fanning it out around her shoulders. “Sure, he went in the army right out of high school.”

“Guess what he did while in the service,” Clay said rhetorically, then answered, “EOD.”

Her gaze locked on his. “Explosive Ordnance? That I didn’t know. I thought he was a ground-pounder.”

“Apparently he knows his stuff. Not the amateur I wish he was,” Clay admitted.

Clay braced his hands on the door frame, needing the support to remind him not to take her in his arms to reassure her. She was a woman, yes, but a professional in law enforcement, one whose strengths he was supposed to be evaluating, not shoring up.

He spelled out his greatest concern. “There was a reported theft last month, a shipment of C-4 used in training exercises at the EOD school over in Alabama. No viable suspects until now. Hightower trained there and would have known the probable location of the substance and how to gain access to it.”

She nodded slowly. “So he’s saving the good stuff for the big bang. The little homemade device with the dynamite was only the prelude.”

He gave the only answer that made any sense. “He’s probably got things wired to blow that we haven’t even thought about yet. He has a boatload of this stuff, Vanessa. He could blow this whole county off the map, little by little or all at once.”

She looked so small and vulnerable. And way too sexy. “I bet he wants the judge, jury and everyone else who had a hand in punishing him.” Her shoulders drooped, causing the gown to slip dangerously low.

Clay cleared his throat and tried to look away. His eyes just wouldn’t cooperate. She quickly caught up the front of her nightgown in a fist. “So get out of here and let me get dressed. We’ve got to go find the bastard and take him down.”

Clay reached to close the door even though she had already turned and was striding to her walk-in closet. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

In the mirror of her dresser, he caught her reflection. Her back was to him and she had already shucked her gown. The glimpse of her totally naked, pale light from the window bathing her in its soft glow, nearly did him in. With a major effort, he pulled the door shut and closed off the sight.