Seeing Is Believing Read Online Free Page B

I felt sorry for Ruth Horner. You have nothing to do with it.”
    Wes nodded. Okay, he’d had that coming. He was surprised at how well she handled her own anger. Maybe he could learn a thing or two from her after all. “My boss is used to paying for what he gets, so keep the money and let me make the flight arrangements. All right?”
    Diana hesitated. “I can’t tell my mother where I’m going?”
    “Sure, just don’t tell her what you’ll be doing.”
    She smiled a little. “You don’t know my mother, Mr. McDonald.”
    “Oh?”
    “Walk With Wolves is my mother’s name. She is a very well known medicine woman here on the reservation, and very much loved by our people. She reads minds as easily as you and I communicate with our mouths. Even if I don’t tell her, she’ll know.”
    He snorted. “Come on!”
    Diana’s smile broadened, but the look in her eyes was one of challenge. “You don’t believe me?” she taunted.
    “No.”
    “Good. You make the travel arrangements, then meet me at four-thirty, when I get off work. I’ll take you home to meet my mother, and you can see for yourself.”
    “What’s to stop you from making a phone call to her in the meantime?”
    Diana hated his snideness, his way of expecting the worst. “That does it! We’re going home right now,” she retorted angrily. “You’re so negative! So distrustful!”
    Wes grinned just a tad. She was beautiful when she got angry, he’d give her that. Her eyes gleamed with a golden light of challenge, her full lips pursed and her cheeks turned rosy. “Okay, let’s go meet Mama,” he said, his tone still cynical.
    “Be sure to follow me back to my office—to make sure I don’t try to call her,” Diana jeered.
    “I intend to do just that,” he said silkily, falling into step at her side.
    * * *
    On the way home, Diana had Wes stop at the grocery and buy several bags of groceries.
    “Why are we doing this?” he demanded at the checkout counter.
    “Because it’s bad etiquette to visit a medicine person’s home without a gift.”
    “Groceries?”
    Diana nodded and watched him slip several twenties from his billfold. “That’s right. Mother gives the food away to those who need it.”
    “Oh…”
    “You thought it was for her?”
    “Sure.”
    “Just like a white man. You have no conception of true generosity of spirit.”
    He slanted a glance down at her. “You have spunk, I’ll give you that.”
    “I don’t care what you think of me,” Diana said in a low, warning tone, “but you’d best not be rude to my mother, or I’ll be in your face in a split second.”
    Wes grinned fully. He believed her. Picking up the grocery sacks, he said, “Let’s go.”
    Diana felt shaky with anger, with the urge to slap his rugged face. Even his smile was twisted, as if he was in some kind of internal pain only he knew about. And that underlying pain was what stopped her from really wanting to slap him. Somehow, Wes McDonald was a beaten dog, and she’d never kick a hurt animal, no matter how many times it snapped or bit at her.
    * * *
    Wes was impressed with the beauty of the reservation as they drove deeper and deeper into the foothills crowned by the magnificent Smoky Mountains. The dirt road they drove paralleled another creek, and he wondered if there were some nice, fat brown trout in there just waiting to be someone’s dinner. Soon the road narrowed, and they came into a hollow, a small meadow ringed on three sides by rounded hills aflame with autumn colors. At the far end of the yellow meadow stood a small log cabin surrounded by a white picket fence. A profusion of red geraniums graced its border.
    Wes realized the log cabin was very old and in need of a vast amount of repair—beginning with its rusted tin roof. But the yard was neatly kept, the picket fence freshly painted and recently washed clothes hung on an outdoor clothesline. Obviously, this medicine woman didn’t have a dryer.
    “What does a medicine person