Invincible

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 him too closely.

“That desk is a mess! Don’t you know how to file things away?” Lanette asked Carlie with studied humor, moving closer. Her perfume was cloying. “However do you find anything?”

“I know where everything is,” Carlie replied pleasantly.

“Sorry,” Lanette said when she saw Cash Grier’s narrow look. “I can’t abide clutter.” She smiled flirtatiously.

“Don’t let us keep you,” Cash replied in a tone that sounded as icy as his expression looked.

“Yes. We’d better go.” Carson moved to the door and opened it.

“Nice to have met you, Chief Grier,” Lanette purred. “If you ever want a competent secretary, I might be persuaded to come out of retirement. I used to work for a law firm. And I know how to file.”

Cash didn’t reply.

“Lanette,” Carson said shortly.

“I’m coming.” She smiled again at Cash. “Bye now.” She didn’t even look at Carlie.

She went to the door and through it. Carlie didn’t look up from her computer screen. She hoped she wasn’t going to bite through her tongue. Only when she heard the door close did she lift her eyes again and looked through the window.

Carson was striding along beside the blonde and not with his usual smooth gait. He was almost stomping toward his black sedan.

Carlie started coughing and almost couldn’t stop.

“You okay?” Cash asked with concern.

“Got...choked on the air, I guess,” she laughed. She could barely stop. “Gosh, do you think she bathes in that perfume?”

“Go outside and take a break. I’ll turn the AC on for a few minutes to clear the room,” Cash said abruptly. “Go on.”

She wasn’t about to go out front and risk running into Carson and his beautiful companion. “I’ll just step out back,” she managed, still coughing.

She got outside and leaned against the door, dragging in deep breaths until she was able to get her breath again. There must be something in that perfume that she was allergic to. Although, come to think of it, she’d almost choked sitting next to a woman in church the week before who’d been wearing a musky sort of perfume. She’d learned long ago that she could only manage the lightest of floral colognes, and not very often. Funny, her lungs giving her so much trouble over scent, and she didn’t even smoke.

She went back inside after a couple of minutes. Cash was talking to two patrolmen who’d stopped by with a legal question about a traffic stop.

She went back to her desk and sat down.

“You should see your doctor,” Cash said when the patrolmen went out.

She raised both eyebrows. “He’s married.”

He burst out laughing. “That’s not what I meant, Carlie. I think you had a reaction to Ms. Harris’s perfume.”

“Too much perfume bothers me sometimes, it’s just allergies.” She shrugged. “I have a problem with pollen, too.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“I’ll get the files in better order,” she offered.

“Don’t let some outsider’s comment worry you,” he said curtly. “Women like that one tear holes in everything they touch.”

“She was very beautiful.”

“So are some snakes.”

He turned and went back into his office. Carlie tried not to mind that Carson’s elegant girlfriend had treated her like dirt. She tried to pretend that it didn’t bother her, that Carson hadn’t brought her into the office deliberately to flaunt her.

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