Straddling the Line - By Sarah M. Anderson Page 0,50

met before.”

“You’ve met other trust-fund babies with a last name like White Plume?”

“Point taken.”

Josey topped off her wineglass. How many trust-fund babies did he know? “My great-grandfather Harold Stewart was a banker. He ran things for J. P. Morgan, II.” She pointed to her head. “That’s where the red hair came from.”

“Impressive.”

“I don’t know if you know this, but Morgan Sr. fronted the money for Edward Curtis to take all those famous photos of American Indians. And Harold idolized the Morgans. So he took it upon himself to do a little documenting. He packed up my grandfather, George, and lit out for the Plains in a Cadillac.”

“I’ve heard of Curtis.”

He waited for her to go on. A man who listened, she marveled. How rare was that?

“They got a flat tire forty miles from Wall, South Dakota. A Lakota named Samuel Respects None found them.”

“How old was George?”

“Ten. They spent the whole summer vacation with Samuel. Harold bought anything—ancient artifacts, new dance costumes—he could get his hands on. He spread more money around the rez than most people had seen in their lifetimes.” Harold had been an outsider, and he’d bought the respect of the tribe. Josey wondered if Ben was doing the same. Some days, she wondered if, with her trust fund, that’s what she was doing, too.

“So Sam invited him back?”

“Every summer for the rest of his life. They were family. When Harold died in 1952, Sam even made the trip to New York for the funeral.” She smiled. This was the part of the story she liked. “He brought his granddaughter, Mary, with him. She stayed.”

It had always seemed like such a romantic tale—two star-crossed lovers from different worlds finding a way to be together, no matter what the cost. She looked at Ben. Is this connection what Grandma had to go all the way to New York to find?

“So Samuel Respects None’s granddaughter was your grandmother? The one from the bluff?”

“And Mom was their only child. He loved my grandmother very much.” That one truth—the truth that no one could ever deny or take away—was the thing that made Josey hold her head high when people looked at her sideways.

Grandpa and Grandma had loved deeply and passionately until their last days on this earth. The dementia that took her grandmother away from Josey, then her mother, couldn’t touch her love of George Stewart. Even when Grandma couldn’t recognize her husband as an old man, she would sit with photos of him from his first visit to the rez, when he had been ten and Grandma had been six, and tell Josey in an awestruck whisper, “I like this boy. I’m going to marry him.” And Josey would pat her hand and assure her that, yes, she would, and they’d live happily ever after.

Sheesh. One or two glasses of wine, and she was getting misty-eyed. Reading too much into Ben’s attentiveness was a recipe for disaster. She sniffed and tried to pull herself together.

Ben gave her a minute to get things under control before he blissfully steered the conversation away from loves-of-a-lifetime. “He wanted to make things better.”

“His father had paid for Grandma to go to a private school off the rez when she was young. He had a provision in his will that paid for her college in New York, too. When she died, Grandpa tried to think of the best way he could honor her memory. So Mom and I got enough to live on, but the rest of the money went toward building the school.”

“Warren Buffet would have been proud.”

Josey broke out in a laugh. “Actually, they didn’t get along. Grandpa preferred Pepsi.”

Ben laughed with her, a rich, full sound that warmed her even further. So it probably was the wine, but really—how many men could she sit down to dinner with who would make jokes about Warren Buffet? Who’d also heard of Curtis and not one, but two J. P. Morgans? And—this was the kicker—who didn’t laugh at names like White Plume and Respects None?

Very few. She’d be hard-pressed to come up with another.

The remains of dinner sat on the table. Ben stood and began to gather the dishes. “So, Gina talked your ear off?”

“Both of them.” She handed him the dishes, he rinsed them under the tap and put them in the dishwasher. Despite having hired help, he seemed comfortable fending for himself.

Ben laughed again. “At least she doesn’t have access to any of my baby pictures.” He shut the dishwasher and, leaning