The Return of Cord Navarro

Chapter 12

Cord had been sitting on that rocky outcropping for a long time, hadn’t he? Although the need to rest continued to pull at her, Shannon stood and slowly made her way up the hill to him. He acknowledged her with a look that didn’t quite connect. The sense that he was part and parcel of his surroundings hit her with the same force it had earlier. He would always belong to the mountains. No matter what life brought, he could renew himself here.

“What happened?” she asked. “My folks? Are they all right?”

“They’re holding up.”

The top button on his cotton shirt had come off. He sat with one shoulder resting against a rock. His position pulled the fabric away from his chest. She felt her hand begin to tingle and knew why. If she touched him, she would be filled with warmth and strength-his warmth, his strength.

Why now when she felt so tired that all she wanted to do was fall into bed? She should have been attracted to him earlier today, when for hours there’d been precious little to look at except him and nothing else safe to think about.

Safe? No, not at all.

“What did you tell them?” she made herself ask, and then listened as he relayed the essence of the conversation he’d had with her father. “I should have talked to him. Maybe I’ll call him back and-”

“Don’t. Please.”

She thought she caught a warning note in his voice, but before she could question it, he explained that her father had sounded deeply tired himself, and when he suggested he get some rest, her father had agreed. “If your folks and you start talking about Matt, they might not be able to sleep.”

That made sense, enough that she dismissed her nagging sense that Cord had left certain words and emotions untouched. He was trying to shelter her from the world; she’d be a fool not to, at least briefly, accept the gift.

“I must have fallen asleep down there.” Her legs began to tremble and she lowered herself, less than gracefully, near him. She’d been right; his warmth was enough to reach her. Ah, Cord, you are beautiful, beautiful and competent and primitively sexy. “Then-I don’t know what was going through me, something unsettling. It woke me.”

“You were thinking about Matt.”

Of course she was, but enough pieces of her dream remained that she had to admit it was more than that-something to do with Cord, his body, whispered words, coming together. Unsettling didn’t say the half of it.

“I hope he’s asleep.”

“I’m sure he is.”

He was saying that for her sake; she was unbelievably grateful to him for that. “He always sleeps curled up on his right side,” she began. “Do you remember when he couldn’t go to bed without that teddy bear my mother bought him cuddled in his arms?”

“He still has it, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. In a dresser drawer. He doesn’t want his friends to see it, and I don’t think he looks at it very much, but…he’s growing up so fast.”

“Too fast. I miss-How many times did you sit with him in that rocker your folks gave you, trying to get him to fall back asleep? I’d get up in the middle of the night and find you and Matt rocking in the dark. You humming. Him playing with your chin.”

“You remember that?”

“You looked so content, tired but content. And beautiful. The chair always groaned a little. I asked if you wanted me to fix it, but you said the sound lulled Matt.”

Momentarily stripped of words, she rested her head on his shoulder. When he wrapped his arm around her, she struggled to keep the sound inside her confined to a sigh. He called her beautiful? What he’d just told her was exquisite. “It was good then, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I want… I want-I have this unbearable need to send him some kind of message,” she tried around what boiled inside her. “Tell him we’re getting closer, and if he’d stop moving, it won’t take nearly as long for us to find him.”

“He wants to do this on his own.”

“I know he does. He’s made that clear, hasn’t he?” She shouldn’t run her hand inside his shirt and spread her palm over his chest, but the gesture seemed so natural. So right and necessary. Yes. It had been good between them, once. “He-am I a terrible person for saying this? All I’ve thought about for days now is Matt. I’m tired of it. Tired of being scared and upset, my stomach in a knot. I just want to go back to what it was before.”

“No. You aren’t crazy.”

Before she could think what, if anything, she needed to say in response to his incredible wisdom, he cupped his hand over hers and pulled it off his chest. With her fingers still cradled inside his, he held her palm close to his face and covered it with light kisses.

“Every emotion you have, no matter what it is, is all right.”

What about what I’m feeling now, Cord? How are you going to deal with it? How am I?

“I don’t know what my emotions are, not really.” She tried the words, but they didn’t feel right. Maybe nothing she said would. After a minute, during which he touched his lips to the back of her hand, she forced herself to straighten.

Never in her life had she felt more isolated. It wasn’t just the surroundings and the reason they were here. But over the past seven years, there’d always been something to keep her from concentrating totally on Cord and that hollow place deep inside her that refused to heal. She wanted it that way, fought to keep him locked away where he couldn’t reach her. When they talked about such things as shared custody and the particular stage Matt was going through and where Cord had just been, she hadn’t let herself think about him and her. About what remained of her love for him.

Tonight she couldn’t tap into the world beyond Copper Mountain, and she didn’t dare let her thoughts go to Matt. That left only Cord and stars and the moon, trees that had been growing for hundreds of years, memories of ancient Indian tribes, Mother earth, Father sun; breathing with everything that made up the incredible wilderness.

Cord.

She’d never told him this, but she followed his career with the devotion of a loyal fan. She didn’t cut out newspaper clippings or keep the article in People magazine because…

Maybe because that would mean acknowledging something she didn’t want to. But she’d committed those accounts to memory. Because, if he possibly could, he always called Matt before leaving on a rescue, and she’d know when to start listening to the news for word of him, when to worry about his safety.

This time she didn’t have to listen and read and wait for a phone call. She had Cord next to her.

“I love the night sky.” She’d said that last night; she was sure of it. But she needed to hear the sound of her voice and learn how Cord might respond to it. Forget danger. Forget everything except need and hunger and the two of us alone, together. “Those city lights we used to look out at when we were in that stupid, cramped little apartment? How could I think they were exciting?”

“They are to some people.”

“But not to us.” Us. “Cord?” She heard her voice speaking his name but couldn’t think what she’d been about to say, if anything. “Cord?” she tried again. “I am so glad you’re here.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

She expected him to assume that she needed his expertise to locate Matt and that’s why she wanted him on the mountain with her. If he’d said that, would she have let it go at that?

But he didn’t speak. Instead, he freed her hand and with weathered fingers and palm began an exploration of her throat. She sat as motionless as his caress would allow. Her mind drifted, briefly, flitting into the past, touching on a thousand restless nights when she slept alone. There’d been two men she’d thought she’d begun to care for, but they hadn’t touched her soul in that way only Cord had.

She should have put him behind her. They were divorced, finished.

But they weren’t.

There was no need to ask permission. His touch had already told her everything she needed to know about his reaction to tonight and them. When she bracketed his face with her hands and pulled herself close to kiss him, she felt a deep shudder that might have come from either or both of them.

He met her open-mouthed; his breath rushed against her.

Her body came alive.

Bold, so bold that there was no questioning the move, she slid her hands down him, unbuttoning and pulling at the same time until she’d laid his chest bare. Although he tried to continue their kiss, she pulled free so she could run her mouth over his chin, down his throat, to the soft mat of hair that covered his chest. With her tongue she worked her way through the slight barrier until she could take his taste, his essence even, deep into her.

She felt his body tense.

She still needed words and emotions from him. She would always need those things. But tonight she could forget what had torn them apart and lose herself in what was both achingly familiar and so new that her heart sang with discovery.

He’d caught a few strands of hair that dropped along the side of her neck and was letting them slide lazily through his fingers. She concentrated on the slight tugging followed by a sensation of release. He held her hair in the shelter of his hand. Played with her. Promised.

Feeling hot and wild, free beyond belief, she ran her fingers around his waist until she touched the hard ridge of his backbone. It was both sheltered and surrounded by muscle and flesh and hers to explore. Simply searching that part of him dug a molten path through her.

Words flitted through her, questions, a promise freely given that tonight meant as much to him as it did to her. She opened her mouth to ask him to gift her with that, spotted the moon cradled between great tree shadows, lost the ability to speak.

When he ran his thumb along her collarbone, she again leaned forward, twisting her head at the same time. She took his right nipple between her teeth.

She felt his shudder, heard the rumble of his groan. Accepted when he freed himself.

Quickly, gently, almost tentatively, he concentrated on her blouse buttons. She worked with him as he slid the garment off her shoulders. She felt a cool rush of air at the base of her throat and across her back, but he must have known that was going to happen because before the cold could distract her, he pulled her against him. She thought he might want to stop with yet another embrace and wondered how long she could keep her body still, but he soon let her know that his needs went beyond that-matched hers.

He unfastened her bra with an ease that made a lie of the last seven years. With the heels of his hands brushing, always brushing against her, he pulled the garment off and dropped it on top of her blouse. Through eyes that wouldn’t focus, she stared at the moon and stars. The points of light blurred, came together.

Together. Like her and Cord.

Alive. The word, the emotion, melted through her. She lapped at his breast and then quivered when he held her in his strong hands so he could do the same to her. She felt her breasts swell and the tips harden, felt him draw her breast into his mouth as she would soon…soon take him into her.

I need this, Cord. Need you loving me. Giving yourself to me.

Without you I might die.

When he pulled back, leaving her dampened flesh vulnerable to the air, she moaned. Then, with indistinct vision, she watched as he spread their shirts out on the ground. She trembled, feeling like a sixteen-year-old virgin. He touched the base of her throat; it was the touch of a sixteen-year-old boy bombarded by emotions beyond his comprehension.

Then he leaned into her, eased her onto her back, and followed her down.

With one hand bracing himself, he worked at her jeans’ zipper. She arched her hips upward, helping. When her jeans caught around her hips and he had to work at pulling the denim off her, she whimpered at the delay. Night air found her newly naked thighs; the heat in her body surged to the surface, kept her hot.

The sound of a zipper slicing downward caught her attention. While she’d been lost in what he’d already done to her, he had stood and stepped out of his jeans. He started to reach for his briefs, but she reared up and grabbed his hands, stopping him. She needed his help to reach a kneeling position, then she finished the act of disrobing him while he stood with the night surrounding him and his eyes staring down at her, dark as midnight. He was a mountain, part of their untamed surroundings. Take me! Carry me to the horizon! Together we’ll find yesterday, tomorrow, a place without time!

He knelt in front of her, thighs and hands and breasts touching. Then he gripped the fragile elastic that held her panties in place and began a slow downward journey. When he could go no further, he stretched her out on their shirts and lifted first one leg and then the other, the gesture both practiced and new.

She lay naked beneath him, no longer existing anywhere else. The breeze, now like cool lace, brushed against flesh that felt touched by moonlight and lightning and, most of all, by Cord.

I need this, Cord. Need you loving me.

He seemed to hesitate. Could he, a man who saw the vast wilderness as his home, be afraid of making love with his wife? What little remained of her rational mind knew she hadn’t been his wife for a long, long time, but that didn’t matter.

Tonight they were right for each other, or if not right, beyond caring.

She held out her hands, accepted the swirling ball of heat deep inside her, and issued a silent invitation.

He heard, came, slowly at first, then with a sense of urgency that matched hers. There was no more foreplay, no more time wasted erasing the years.

She spread herself for him, took him into her. Lost herself against him.

And she cried, tears without meaning or understanding.

Sometime during the night, they left where they’d made love and, shivering a little, returned to their sleeping bags. She started to lower herself to her bed, but he stopped her with a touch and she responded. They made love again, just as silent and frenzied.

In the morning, she woke with the weight of his arm over her breast.

She opened her eyes to look at him. In the newborn day, she saw that he was already gazing at her. His eyes asked if she had any regrets, and because she couldn’t answer him or herself, she didn’t speak.

Instead she kissed his powerful shoulder, the tanned hollow at the base of his throat, answered his silent kiss, and then, because he’d already taken too much of her, she slid away from him.

Now he was getting dressed and she was trying to remember how to braid her hair and regret swirled around her like a free-moving river.

She’d spent so many years and so much energy getting to that hard-won place where she believed she no longer loved Cord and couldn’t be hurt by him. Last night, twice, he’d made a lie of that belief and it would take years to undo two acts of lovemaking.

But he wasn’t the only one responsible for the way her heart felt this morning; she couldn’t blame him for that. She’d let it out of its quiet, cushioned prison and learned that the years had changed nothing of what she felt for him after all.

The realization terrified her.

“Shannon, there’s a small elk herd around here. We aren’t that far from a spring they’ve been using. If Matt finds it, he might follow it down.”

Although she wasn’t ready for this or any other conversation, she agreed that what he said made sense and should make sense to Matt, too-if the boy had given up on his goal of making it to the top of the mountain. She asked if that meant he intended to stop following their son’s tracks.

“No. That’s the last thing I’d do. His footprints are our only tie to him.”

Only. “It scares me when you say that.”

He kicked into his boot and stepped closer to her. She thought she read the slightest hint of fear in his eyes, but couldn’t begin to comprehend its source. Not once during the hard past few days had he truly given her access to what was going on inside him. She’d come to expect that curtain to remain in place and could only guess at the changes inside him that had allowed it to momentarily slip away.

If he was afraid for Matt, she didn’t want to hear about it. If what happened between them last night had changed him in some way he had no control over and left him vulnerable, honest about Matt’s chances, she didn’t want to know that, either.

Cord was the mountain. Strong, invincible, the man she’d charged with bringing her son back to her.

Not a frail, insecure, sometimes helpless human being.

Like her.

“I don’t want you to be scared. If I could, I’d take you out of here so you wouldn’t have to go through this.”

“I wish you could, too, but the only way I’ll leave is when we find Matt.”

“I know. And we will.”

When? she wanted to shout at him, but didn’t ask, just as she hadn’t pushed for the reason behind what lurked in his eyes. As she watched him turn his attention to what little needed to be done before they could get going, she struggled for a memory of anything that had happened in her life before coming here with him. Nothing surfaced and after a minute she gave up the search.

Her body needed his touch. If he reached for her, the gesture might put an end to the unease that flowed through her. But he, like she, must have decided that reaching for any more of what they’d experienced last night would only throw them into more turmoil.

She took a handful of nuts and dried fruit and began chewing. Neither had any flavor. When Cord approached, she handed him the bag and told him that she wasn’t sure she but she thought the fruit was apple.

“You made wonderful apple pies,” he told her around a healthy bite. His eyes settled on her, dark, keeping their secrets. “I tried making one a couple of times, but the dough I bought didn’t taste anything like yours.”

Needing relief from his intensity, she pretended to be shocked. “Packaged dough? Did you ever see me use that?”

Frowning, he shook his head. “I should have paid more attention to how you did it.”

“I guess you should have.”

He ate as if it was something he knew he had to do but which concerned him little. She remembered pressing against his right hip last night and noting how quickly he’d pulled away. He must have bruised himself during one of those times when he’d scrambled over rocks, but like fueling his body, bruises didn’t concern him.

Despite herself, she couldn’t help wondering if he’d dismissed their lovemaking just as easily. If that’s why he was able to stand near her and talk about apple pies and now look around him instead of into her eyes; she hurt for both of them.

But maybe it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe, as for her, last night still bombarded him.

“There’s going to be a wind,” he said. “Coming from the north and probably lasting all day.”

“Does that make a difference?”

“It might make it harder for us to hear Matt.”

She nodded, barely understanding herself because talk and thoughts of how Matt was doing no longer brought her to the brink of tears. Had she been through so many emotions that they’d all been washed away? Maybe without knowing it, she’d become so tired that her system simply couldn’t reach to anything.

And maybe making love with Cord had left such an impact that precious little else could penetrate. “We aren’t going to talk about it, are we?” she asked as he watched her adjust the straps on her pack.

“About what?”

“Last night.” He stood so close that she would only have to take a single step to touch him. There wasn’t a square inch of her that didn’t want to answer her heart’s demand. Still, she remained where she was-standing safe and alone and untouched. “Cord, we can’t pretend we didn’t make love.”

“I’m not going to apologize.”

Was that what he thought she wanted? Surely he knew her better than that. She shut her eyes and lost herself in darkness until she began to feel dizzy. The question repeated inside her. Maybe he didn’t know her at all anymore. Maybe she didn’t know him. “I didn’t expect you to apologize.” She spoke with her teeth clenched and her eyes barely open. “Maybe what I want is a better understanding of why we wound up in each other’s arms.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you?” This argument, if that’s what they were having, was insane. “Is that the difference between us? I’ve surrounded myself with emotion. I need to know the strength, the boundaries of that emotion. You-maybe you just act.”

“Is that what you believe?”

She’d asked him an impossible question. Now he’d thrown the same back at her. “I don’t know.” She forced herself to relax and took a step designed to let him know she was ready to get started. “I don’t know what goes on inside you.”

Only his hair, buffeted by the breeze, moved. She couldn’t free herself from the power and probe of his eyes. Had her words wounded him? Was that why he was reacting this way? She couldn’t begin to guess what she might say or do to drag an answer out of him. It was easier to rock back on her heels and incline her head in the direction she believed they would be heading. Something dark and cloudlike drifted over his features, but she couldn’t penetrate that anymore than she’d ever been able to penetrate his silences.

He started to turn away. She felt the keen stab of disappointment at the realization that he was actually going to do what she wanted him to. Then, letting the gesture speak for him, he reached out and brushed his hand over her cheek.

“The first peace is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their oneness with the universe and all its powers.”

“Cord, what are you-”

“Not me. The Sioux. They believe that the Great Spirit dwells at the center of the universe, that this center is everywhere, and is within each of us.”

Not philosophy! Not ancient words! I need-you. And yet I’m afraid.

They should have gone camping more. If she’d made the time, Cord might have taught her how to build a shelter from branches and leaves and limbs and she’d know how to start a fire without matches.

She’d have a greater understanding of Sioux beliefs and why Cord had learned so much about them.

She might know why his simple yet eloquent words had stripped her down to nothing except emotion.

They’d been walking for nearly two hours now. The ground was steep and almost barren here, all but the hardiest of trees below them. From a distance, one would believe it easy to spot another human being, but the land was deceptive. It contained deep pockets of shade where the sun seldom touched, and rocky outcroppings impossible to see around. She felt surrounded by rocks and boulders and seldom saw the prints that guided Cord slowly but well.

She could see only his powerful shoulders and muscular legs, learn how to walk herself from the sure way he kept his footing. His eyes took in everything, his head almost constantly in motion. A few days ago she’d tried to see everything he did, but that no longer seemed important.

No longer pressed through the web of emotion that last night and this morning had left in her.

If they’d been born generations ago, he would have been an Indian scout and her a mountain woman. They’d weave their lives around the elements. They wouldn’t need much; enough food to fill their bellies, a shelter when the weather became too raw for even Cord Navarro. She’d make their clothes from deer hide and he’d create exquisite arrowheads to place on strong, straight shafts. Their friends would be other Indians or the few mountain men who traveled through their wilderness.

They’d raise their children here, make love under stars and moon.

And whether or not they used words to communicate, they’d always understand each other.

In that misty world where everything was right.

Shaken by the depth of her need, she forced herself to focus on her surroundings. The effort succeeded for maybe two minutes, then Cord extended his hand to help her over loose shale.

She stood beside him on their precarious perch, unable to remember how to work her muscles to free her hand. His shoulder was now molded to hers, a mountain of strength. They hadn’t spoken for hours. Other than pointing occasionally at wildlife or uncertain ground, he’d done nothing to make her think she was on his mind. But now, although he could have easily moved away, he didn’t. Instead, he turned her slightly so she could see what he’d been looking at. Just below them, maybe no more than two hundred feet away, a spring bubbled up from the earth. Overflow trickled downward to be lost among grass and shrubs. Between them and the spring she could see several distinct tracks-the tracks they’d been following for days.

“We’re close.”

Her heart skittered and then caught. “How…close.”

“Very. The grass he stepped on is still bent.”

Feeling weak, she slid her free arm around his waist and continued to stare at the fragile proof of their son’s existence. He held her to him and brushed his lips over her forehead. There was no imagining it; she knew she could hear his heart beating. She prayed he could hear hers, as well.

She had no words in her, nothing that could possibly express what she felt at this moment. When his breath caught as he tried to inhale, she knew the same emotion had entered him. She continued to cling, sharing in the only way she had. Their son was near; they’d soon find him; he’d feel his parents’ love.

“Do…do you want him to know?” she whispered.

“Not yet. I want to make sure he’s safe first.”

Tears built behind her eyes, but with an effort, she managed to keep them there. Cord had done the impossible, brought her to her son-their son.

“Where?”

“I can’t say for sure. From the angle of his prints, its obvious he was headed toward the spring.”

“He…he’s thinking he’ll have to follow the creek all the way to the bottom, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

A sudden sense of urgency washed over her. With all her heart, she wanted to be able to cut the bruise out of the remaining apple and feed it to Matt. She wanted to watch as Cord clutched his son to his chest.

Only two things held her back: realization that the thick brush around the little creek could accommodate a child but prove daunting to adults, and the belief that no one else in the world except Cord could possibly know what she was experiencing at this moment.

“I thought…” She shuddered. “I tried so hard not to think about it, but I couldn’t help – There’ve been times when I was terrified of what we’d find.”

“So was I.”

No. Cord wasn’t supposed to have nightmare. thoughts. Although she’d accused him of having buried his emotions so deep that he might have lost them, she needed him to be as strong and confident as her mythical Indian scout, a miracle-working machine.

“You? You were-”

What was that?

Cord started, suddenly gripping her with a strength that took her breath away.

A rifle shot!

Comprehension of what she’d heard came so close on the heels of Cord’s reaction that she couldn’t separate the two. Her blood seemed to stop in her veins; her heart skittered; her lungs screamed with the need for breath but she couldn’t remember how to accomplish that incredibly difficult task.

Another shot! A rifle blast echoing, at the same time sounding so close that if Matt hadn’t been more important than her own life, she would have dropped to the ground.

“No!” Cord’s deep scream all but shattered her senses. “Oh, God, no!”