A Man of His Word

A white-tailed deer was high-tailing it away from him.

Cursing, Dan pulled Smokey to a stop and tried to figure out what the hell had happened. Maybe it hadn’t been real. People imagined sounds, right? But then he remembered his hat. It had come off in the confusion. No matter what had actually happened, he wasn’t going to leave his hat. He loved that hat—it fit his head perfectly. Slowly, Dan worked his way back down to the tall grass until he saw the brown brim of his Stetson. He got down to fetch it.

His gut clenched in a terrifying rage. A hole pierced the front peak of the hat, less than an inch from where it had rested on his head.

She’d shot at him. That beautiful woman—bare legs, bareback—had shot at him.

Somebody owed him an explanation.

Dan was still plenty steamed by the time he got back to the ranch house. For some crack-brained reason, his uncle had decided to set up the hydro division of Armstrong Holdings in one of those grand old mansions some cattle baron had built back in the 1880s. As far as mansions went, it was a beautiful piece of work—three floors of hand-carved banisters and stained-glass windows on sixty acres—but corporate headquarters it wasn’t. Why Cecil was camped out on the edge of the middle of nowhere, halfway between the state capital in Pierre and the Iowa border, instead of at the small staffed office he had in Sioux Falls was beyond him. It was almost like the old man was trying to hide.

As chief operating officer of Armstrong Holdings, the family business that Dan’s father had started with his brother Cecil forty years ago, Dan owned half of this house. Technically, he owned half of the water rights on the Dakota River over which the Red Creek branch of the Lakota Indian tribe was suing Cecil. He owned half of that pretty little valley where his hat had met an untimely death. Technically, he was an equal partner in this whole damn enterprise, and had been since he’d assumed control of the petroleum division in Texas from his mother when he turned twenty-one.

He’d be damned if he let Cecil destroy the company he’d worked so hard to expand.

Cecil had never been one for technicalities, an opinion made abundantly clear last week when he’d ordered Dan to drop everything in Texas and come to South Dakota. Cecil had a problem with the dam he’d spent nearly five years trying to build and had threatened that Armstrong Holdings would lose billions of dollars and just about every government contract they had if Dan didn’t get his ass on a plane within a week.

Dan hated to let anyone think he was at the old man’s beck and call—least of all, the old man himself—but this problem with the dam gave Dan the perfect opportunity to come up here and figure out what those little—and not so little—blips in the company’s financial reports were all about. He didn’t know what exactly he was looking for, but he knew he wouldn’t find it in Texas. He was going to have to suffer his uncle until he could force Cecil out of the role of chief executive officer.

Now that he thought about it, Dan remembered that it was Cecil who had warned him about the local Indians—that he was having trouble with negotiations with some of them. Dan just hadn’t realized that the problem would require body armor and a helmet.

The gabled roof of the ranch house looked even more ominous as the late-afternoon sun cast deep shadows over the front yard. The cast-iron fence looked less like it wanted to keep Cecil’s old coon dog in and more like it wanted to keep armed assailants out. Dan stormed through the front door, making the housekeeper jump.

“Is everything all right, Señor Armstrong?” Maria’s thick Mexican accent was the closest thing to Texas in this whole house.

Dan slowed. From what he could tell, Cecil treated this poor woman like dirt, which made Dan go out of his way to be polite. Being friendly with the staff had always helped him in the past—especially when he needed information. Mom always said Dan could catch more flies with honey when he wanted to, and right now, he had a bunch of flies bothering him. “Maria,” he said, his voice slipping down just a notch as he whipped off his hat. Her cheeks colored. “Do you all have trouble around here?”

The color deepened as she dropped her eyes to the ground. Dan guessed that maybe thirty years ago, Maria had been quite a looker. He didn’t mean to make her blush, but sweet-talking a woman was second nature for him. “Trouble, señor?”

“Native American trouble?” Maria blinked in confusion, so Dan tried again. “Indian trouble?” Even saying the phrase felt wrong, like it was the 1880s and he was stuck in the middle of a range war. He cleared his throat. If it weren’t for the bullet hole in his hat, he’d be certain he’d lost his mind. He held his hat out to her.

Maria went very still as she looked at the hole, and then at his head. “Dios mi! No, señor, we do not have that kind of trouble.”

Damn. Dan was good at reading people, women in particular. Maria was telling the truth.

“You’ll let me know if you hear of any, won’t you?” He shot her his please smile.

Her head bobbed as she began to back toward the kitchen. “Sí, señor.”

Satisfied, he continued on to his uncle’s office. It had probably once been the formal dining room, capable of seating twenty, but no more. Now it was crammed full of everything a man needed to run a major energy corporation. In Texas, Cecil had been a ruthless businessman, squeezing out smalltime operations and buying land for astonishing prices. By the time the SUV craze rolled around, he held a near monopoly on Texas oil.

Cecil was whip-smart. By the time the writing was on the fossil fuel wall, he’d already invested deeply in hydroelectric dams. That’s what had brought him to South Dakota. The water rights were cheap up here, and the potential was huge. Armstrong Hydro was quickly becoming not just the major player in the field, but the only player.

Dan didn’t like the man, never had. Not one bit. But family was family, and Cecil and Dan were tied by blood and by business. Dan couldn’t get rid of the old man without hard evidence of malfeasance that he could present to the Board of Directors. Maybe on this trip, he’d find just what he needed to finally cut their connection. Without breaking stride, he burst into the room.

“Well?” Cecil demanded without bothering to look up from the report he was studying. The old man still had the same pompadour and trimmed mustache he’d worn since the 1950s. The only thing that had changed in five years were the jowls Cecil was now sporting. Those jowls, combined with the careful grooming, made Cecil look like the poster boy for the banality of evil. Emphasis on the evil. Those pictures of Cecil and his brother Lewis, Dan’s father, with their first oil derrick were the only proof Dan had ever seen that his uncle smiled. He’d certainly never smiled at Dan—not once.

Dan gritted his teeth and threw his hat on the desk. The hole landed directly in front of Cecil’s face. “Someone took a shot at me.”

Cecil appeared to study the wounded hat for a moment. “Did you get them?” He didn’t sound concerned or surprised.

“No. I lost her.”

A sneer wrestled one corner of Cecil’s mouth up. “You let a girl get off an unanswered shot?”

He didn’t have to defend himself here. Cecil had told him to pack his revolver. “Thanks for the warnin’.”

“Are you sure it was a girl?” The sneer didn’t falter.

Dan thought back to the lean, bare thighs, the long hair and that smile. Girl, no. Woman? Hell, yes. “Positive.”

“No one’s seen… her before.” Cecil hadn’t known a woman was out there? He seemed to be struggling to digest the information. “If it’s the same troublemaker, she’s sabotaged the engineer’s work site on more than one occasion.”

He had heard about the trouble with the work site, but only third-hand from an engineer Cecil had sent packing. Cecil apparently didn’t believe an ecoterrorist attack on an Armstrong project was worth reporting to the board—yet another thing he was hiding. How many other things were there?

Dan had dealt with ecoterrorists before. The Earth Liberation Front—ELF—had burned more than a few of his derricks before Dan had managed to negotiate a truce of sorts. But even ELF had never gone to all the trouble of disguises in broad daylight. They’d been strictly an under-cover-of-night group, more bent on the destruction of property than of people. He could handle ecoterrorists. What he couldn’t handle were armed—and beautiful—Native American princesses.

Without missing a beat, Cecil threw Dan’s hat back at him and picked up a sheaf of paper from the top of a neat pile. “I have a new assignment for you.”

Dan’s teeth ground together. An assignment. Cecil always tried to treat Dan like he was some two-bit underling instead of an equal partner. Like that little bit of self-delusion gave the old man sole control of the company. “Anyone going to be firing on me this time?”

Cecil let the comment slide. “I’m sending you to meet with the Indians. You’re better at—” his hands waved like he could grab hold of a word out of thin air “—talking.”

There’s an understatement, Dan thought with a concealed snort. Cecil didn’t talk. Cecil ordered. “Why them?”

“It’s a bunch of bull. They think they’re going to get an injunction against the dam construction over water rights—rights I already own.”

“That we already own. Don’t you have lawyers? Why the hell do you need me for this?”

“The tribal lawyer is a bearcat. Rosebud Donnelly. She’s eaten three of my lawyers for lunch.” Cecil spat the words out with true disgust.

Rosebud? Like the sled from that old movie Mom loved? Couldn’t be. Whoever she was, Dan felt a small thread of admiration for her. Anyone who could successfully stonewall his uncle was a person to be taken seriously. “And?”

Cecil looked him over with mercenary eyes. “You are an attractive man, son. Good with women. Hell, you treat that maid like she’s some damn queen.”

Dan’s jaw stiffened. Son. He hated it when Cecil called him that. Dan was many things to Cecil, but a son he wasn’t.

“You handled those ELF nuts in Texas. This is no different. She’s just a woman.”

Dan managed to clear his throat. “You want me to do what—sweep her off her feet so she forgets about suing us?” It was Cecil’s turn to stiffen. That’s right, Dan thought. Us. This is my company, too.

“All I’m suggesting is you distract her. And if you happen to get access to some of her files…” He let the words trail off, but the meaning was clear. He thought he could use Dan as nothing more than a male bimbo.

Dan snatched the papers out of Cecil’s hand. The sooner he got out of this room, the better life would be. Just breathing Cecil’s air was toxic. “Where?”

“On the reservation. Tomorrow at ten.” Cecil waved his hand in dismissal.

For the second time that day, Dan was so mad he couldn’t see straight. Cecil had known someone was out there. If Dan didn’t know any better, he might be tempted to think the old man was trying to get him killed.