White Wolf. Lindsay McKenna
up to his full height, his hands resting tensely on his hips. “I see your game. Your arrogance precedes you, Ms. Wolf—or whoever the hell you want me to think you are. I see through your games. You’re no different than a businessman or a board of directors at a corporation. You’re manipulating me. Trying to take my power away from me. Well, it’s not going to happen. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I ask you or anyone for help, believe me.”
Shrugging, Erin said, “Fine, believe what you want to believe, Dain.” She gestured to the road, mostly washed away by the recent rain. “Your life has been in your hands at all times. I do not wish to take anything from you, but rather, invest it back into you. But you don’t see that yet. Follow these tracks. You will go past a series of hills, and then, down below the mesa, is my hogan. I must continue to walk with my sheep so they may find enough to eat today. I will be back at the hogan near sunset.” She hoped he would never show up.
Dain watched in disbelief as she turned and spoke in a foreign language to the white wolf. Instantly, the wolf was up on his feet, herding the sheep along the wash, where there were new sprigs of grass to eat. At first Dain hated Erin Wolf. And then, as he felt the fever and weakness begin to eat away at his anger, he almost shouted out for help. But he didn’t. To hell with her!
He stood his ground on locked knees as he watched her disappear from sight down a draw that led into the huge gulch about half a mile away. So what should he do? Turning, he looked at the truck. Should he walk back to the highway and hitch a ride back to Many Farms and leave? Go back to the East Coast? And do what? Die?
Shoving his fingers through his short black hair, he glared in the direction Erin and her sheep had disappeared. What an enigma she was! She’d said she couldn’t heal him—that he could heal himself. Snorting violently, Dain turned around and began to clump back to his vehicle. Hell of a thing! Well, no doctor had ever told him that. Just the opposite. They all said they couldn’t help him with their drugs, radiation or fancy, million-dollar pieces of equipment. And though some may have inferred they could help eradicate his tumor, they all eventually found out they couldn’t.
As he slipped and slid down the wall of the wash, Dain cursed out loud. The words echoed off the walls.
As he trudged drunkenly back to the vehicle and jerked open the door, he felt the fever draining him, as it always did. Out of breath due to his weakness and the six-thousand-foot altitude, he climbed into the truck and laid his head back on the seat, closed his eyes and literally trembled. Exhaustion claimed him, all his anger destroyed in the wake of the fever. He hated the fact that the tumor was controlling him. All his life he’d worked to make sure nothing ever controlled him again, and yet this damn tumor was doing exactly that.
Erin’s oval face with its high cheekbones danced gently behind his closed eyes. Her light brown eyes danced with such life in their depths—life he wanted for himself. Sitting there, feeling like a rag doll that had had all the stuffing knocked out of it, Dain clung to her serene, beautiful features. Her image haunted him and for a moment, in his fevered state, he wondered if she were really an angel in disguise.
She’d admitted she couldn’t heal him. He had to heal himself. How? Intrigued by her challenge, his mind bounced over their conversation. During the last year all he’d heard was how doctors could heal many things—just not his illness. So why was she saying he could heal himself, that she couldn’t do it for him?
As he lay weakly against the seat with the warmth of the sun just beginning to strike the top of the truck, Dain tried to understand what Erin had said. If healers didn’t heal, just what the hell did they do? Medical doctors healed with their shots, their drugs and their expensive equipment. If she was who she said she was, he knew she’d healed others of terrible, encroaching diseases. Why would she lie to him then?
Barely opening his eyes as he felt trickles of sweat winding their way down his temples, Dain cursed. She was an arrogant bitch. Oh, he’d met her type back in the boardrooms and halls of power around the world. Erin didn’t fool him. What had thrown him off guard was the fact that she was Indian and a shepherd.
But a voice, barely heard, niggled at him. Was she really arrogant? Wouldn’t arrogance, true arrogance, preclude her saying something like, “Of course I can heal you of your brain tumor”? And had she said that? No.
“Dammit,” he snarled, forcing himself to sit up. Reaching for a thermos filled with water, he unscrewed the cap with trembling hands.
Okay, so maybe she wasn’t arrogant. At least, not in the true sense of the word. She’d promised him nothing. She’d thrown his disease back into his lap, into his hands, which no doctor anywhere in the world had ever done to him.
Something wasn’t right, Dain decided as he poured himself some water. He gulped it down and poured some more. Soon the dryness in his mouth abated and he stashed the thermos away. Lying back, he sighed raggedly. The fever was eating at him, making him feel weak as a baby.
He opened his eyes. How the hell had she known about him being abandoned as an eight-year-old? How? Stymied, he tried to explain it with the kind of logic that had made him billions. She lived out in the middle of a godforsaken desert where there weren’t any phone or electric lines. And besides, he made damn sure that his life story wasn’t privy to any news media, having had things about it sealed up permanently through court injunctions. No, Erin couldn’t have known about his young, miserable life—but she had. How?
“Damn her,” he muttered weakly, closing his eyes again. Because he didn’t have a logical answer for her intimate knowledge, he felt a little frightened of her. That was power over him, as far as he was concerned. And yet the look in her eyes when she’d shared that with him had touched him as nothing ever had. He’d seen such love and pity for him in her eyes. He hated pity in any form and he had wanted to hate her in that moment, but the feeling wouldn’t form within him. If anything—and Dain fought this feeling violently—he’d sensed he could trust her with his life.
It was a silly, crazy thought brought on by the fever, he rationalized. Or some stupid hallucination of hope that would dissolve when the fever left him in a couple of hours. Trust! Yes, she had a trustworthy face. He liked her voice, even if he didn’t like what she’d said to him. It was a low, husky voice laced with honeyed warmth that was undisguised, untainted by anything except…what? Truth.
Well, here he was again with that word and Erin Wolf. Truth and trust. His damnable heart, the heart of that eight-year-old boy, wanted to trust her and believe her truth. The man did not. Not now. Not ever.
So what was he going to do? Hitchhike back to the highway, stay here with the truck or go to her hogan? The prideful part of him said to leave and walk to the highway. The rational part said stay with the truck for the next three days, wait for the ground to dry out sufficiently and then drive back to Many Farms. He certainly had enough groceries in the back to live off of in the meantime.
But his heart whispered that he should go to her hogan and leave everything in the vehicle.
Dain didn’t know what to do, so he slept as the fever ate away more and more of his limited supply of energy. He couldn’t even think straight. He was crazy to think of going to her hogan. He wasn’t going to give the arrogant woman the pleasure of showing up on her doorstep. His pride wouldn’t let him.
As he spiraled into darkness, he heard what he thought was singing. It was a woman singing. It was Erin, he realized from the dark embrace of sleep. The song, soft and gentle, was in an Indian language. As he lay there, feeling very warm and safe, the song embraced him and he sighed. Yes, it was a lullaby. He had no idea what the words were, but the song was so beautiful that it brought tears to his tightly shut eyes.
In his sleep, he felt the warmth of tears oozing from the corners of his eyes, trickling down his face. The song was warm and husky, filled with love and hope. And though he had no idea what the lyrics meant, it didn’t matter. He felt their meaning, felt it vibrating through him, touching his walled-off heart and wrapping him in a sensation he’d never experienced before.
A part of him panicked because he never wanted the song to end, because it fed him, nurtured him like the arms