A Man of His Word Read Online Free

Armstrong replied with a polite half bow as he sat down. Rosebud smiled internally as the whole thing tilted off-kilter and he clawed at the table to keep his balance. Still, he managed to sound nonplussed as he said, “I can’t say that I am.”
    Thank God for that. Aunt Emily was one of the few women on this reservation with a master’s degree in American history, and her role in this little meeting was to wear the adversary down with a complete recounting of the wrongs the Lakota Indians had suffered back in the day at the handsof the American government, and now, thanks to corporations such as Armstrong Holdings. Rosebud had about forty minutes to get her head together.
    Aunt Emily droned on while Joe stared at a spot on the wall just over Armstrong’s head. Rosebud unpacked her files and began reviewing her notes from the last go-round with Johnson. There wasn’t much new to go on. Unlike with Johnson, usable dirt on Cecil Armstrong was just plain hard to dig up. He was courting both political parties, visited a respectable divorced woman twice a month in Sioux Falls and had no personal secretary. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t ever set foot in the Armstrong Hydro office in Sioux Falls, and what few staffers worked there didn’t seem to know anything. That was all she had after three years. It was frustrating.
    She snuck a glance at Armstrong. Not only was he paying attention to Aunt Emily, he was taking notes. What the hell? Rosebud thought when Armstrong interrupted the lecture to ask for the specific dates of the last treaty signed. He must not be a lawyer, she decided. Lawyers didn’t give a hoot for history lectures. Why would that man send someone who wasn’t a lawyer?
    Aunt Emily began to wind down when she got to the reason they were all here today. Rosebud waited as Armstrong finished his notes before she began. “ Mister Armstrong,” she began, going right past condescending and straight on over to contemptuous, “are you aware that Armstrong Holdings is preparing to dam the Dakota River?”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” he replied, trying to lean back in the chair without tipping. “Down in a valley about two miles from here, as the crow flies. Armstrong Holdings owns the water rights and has secured the government permits to begin construction this fall.”
    Oh, she knew where the valley was. “And are you alsoaware that the reservoir created by that dam will flood thirty-six hundred acres of the Red Creek reservation?”
    Armstrong regarded her with open curiosity. “I understood the reservoir will cover several hundred square miles. I was told that land was mostly unoccupied.”
    Her eyes narrowed. What the hell was that man doing, sending an unarmed nephew into battle? He might as well have sent an errand boy instead of this…male. There was just no way around it. Everything about Dan Armstrong said male, from the good—no, great—chin to the way he sat in that chair, legs spread wide like he was just itching to get back on his horse.
    God, he’d looked so good on that horse. Looking had been her first mistake. Instead of just firing over his head from the shadows like she’d planned, she’d wanted to get a better view of the behind that had been sitting in that saddle, a better look at the forearms laid bare for the sun. She’d come out of the shadows, and he’d spotted her. She’d nearly shot his head off, all because he was a man who looked good in a saddle.
    She had to remind herself that, at this exact moment in time, she was not a woman, no matter how much she might like to be one. Right now, she was a lawyer, damn it. Men and women didn’t count in a courtroom, and she couldn’t afford for them to count in this conference room. The only thing that mattered was the law. “Then this is just a waste of our time, isn’t it?” She stood and began to shove paper back into