Straddling the Line by Sarah M. Anderson Page B

kiss him. “Mr. Bolton, you’re becoming quite the savior to our little school.” Luckily, instead of a smooch, she handed him something that looked a little like a soft taco.
    “Fry bread taco,” Josey said, getting one for herself. “I’ll take you over to the drums after the opening dance, okay?”
    He could only nod, because he was already halfway through the fry bread taco. Salty and spicy and greasy—this wasn’t health food by any long shot, but it was a whole bunch of good. Taco was a lousy name for this, because he’d never had a taco anywhere near this good.
    Josey was chowing down on hers, too. For some reason, that made him smile. He didn’t like women who picked and poked at dead lettuce before taking “a bite” of his dessert because they weren’t going to “eat a whole one” themselves. He liked a woman who wasn’t afraid of food.
    The drumming intensified, and some dancers began to make their way into the ring. “Grass dancers—they flatten the grass for everyone else,” Josey said, hiding her full mouth behind her hand.
    Ben nodded as he chewed. Sure, the outfits were crazy—feathers everywhere, ribbons and more mirrors than he would have guessed—but the rhythm was tight and the men in the ring were keeping the beat with their feet on the ground.
    As the song went on, the moves the dancers made got more frenzied. They swung wider, jumped higher and landed harder. It should have looked like a mosh pit with better accessories, but Ben found it almost beautiful. He ate a second fry bread taco and bobbed his head in time with the music.
    Suddenly, the beat paused—and the dancers stopped, too, crouching down in low positions that made it look like they were stalking something. Then it kicked back up. Josey leaned against his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “It’s a competition. Better score for stopping with the music.”
    For a second, he forgot about the dancers, the drummers and the tacos. All he could think about was the feeling of her weight leaning against his, of her warmth touching the side of his face. He turned to look at her, and their eyes met. Heat flashed through his groin as she blushed and looked at him through her lashes.
    Yeah, he was having a decent time. Fun, even.
    But he couldn’t wait to get her alone.

Six
    D on was drumming, so Josey felt okay leaving Ben in the drum circle for a few minutes. He seemed comfortable—sitting on his heels, rocking in time to the beat, a boyish grin on his face. He was too good-looking to pull off cute, but right then, he came darned close.
    She hurried back to Mom’s blanket. “Remember, I’m not coming out tomorrow. I’ve got that meeting at ten at the University of South Dakota about certification.” Which was true. But Josey felt the need to have an iron-clad reason she wouldn’t be out on the rez at the break of dawn that had nothing to do with waking up in Ben Bolton’s bed.
    Don’t get ahead of yourself, she thought as Mom’s eyebrows notched up with uncontained suspicion. She didn’t know for certain that she’d be waking up with him.
    “That’s fine, dear.” Mom looked back across the circle and past the fancy dancers to where Ben was now handling a drumstick alongside Don. “He seems like a good man.”
    Josey relaxed a bit. They’d let Ben sit at the circle; Mom gave all indications that she approved of him. Heck, he’d won over some of the toughest kids on the rez. Maybe she’d been wrong to think that Ben would be excluded—and, by extension, that she would be, too. “I think he is.”
    For a hard-rocking, bike-building tough guy who cursed like a sailor, he seemed to have a fundamental core of decency.
    She gave her mom a peck on the cheek. “See you in a few days.”
    Mom caught her in a quick hug. “Have fun, and be careful.”
    That was a perfectly normal Mom thing to say, but it hit Josey a little differently, as if Mom was giving tacit approval to the wanton carnality that Josey hoped was