But this was his son, and his son’s mother was with him and she, too, would have to endure another night of empty arms.
“Cord? Please, wait a minute.”
He straightened and slowly turned around. Because his attention had been focused on the faint road map of Matt’s journey left on the ground, it was several seconds before his eyes focused clearly on her. She stood some five feet away with the horses, which she’d been leading on either side of her. Splotches of color still highlighted her cheeks. Her eyes glistened from the effort of sorting through never – ending patterns of light and shadow-and maybe from unspent tears.
“I should be grateful.” She shook her head slightly as if she was aware of what her eyes had told him. “It doesn’t look as if it’s going to rain anymore. The birds have come out of hiding and I saw a butterfly a few minutes ago. If Matt stands in the open where the breeze can get to him, his clothes ought to dry. If the storm had gotten worse, well…”
“A storm’s nothing to fear.”
“Nothing to fear? Cord, you aren’t ten.”
“No, I’m not. Still, there’s beauty in rain and snow. The forest changes during a storm, becomes one with the wind. If you know to tuck the forest around you, let it absorb you, then a storm surrounds you but doesn’t frighten.”
Shannon ran the back of her hand impatiently over her forehead. “I don’t know who this ‘you’ you’re talking about is, but I didn’t come here to be surrounded by rain and wind and cold. I don’t want it for my son.”
She had an incredible presence. She might say she had no desire to be in the wilderness, but she belonged here. Jeans became her. A cotton blouse fit her as naturally as some women wore silk. And her body-her body with its long, lean limbs, competent hands and slender yet broad shoulders-was made for a life-style beyond walls.
Her breasts and hips and thighs were made for a man. For him.
Despite everything, he had never stopped wanting her.
“I’m trying to make it easier for you,” he said in an effort to place a smoke screen over what he was thinking and feeling. “Some children, especially those who’ve never been told that a storm is something to fear, see one the same way I do.”
“Children don’t like loud, sudden sounds-like thunder. Lightning frightens them. They don’t like being cold and wet and hungry and…and lost.”
She was right, of course. And as she stood up to him, he realized he had no more defenses against her than a leaf caught in the wind.
With an effort, he turned his attention back to the ground. “What you’re following now…” she said, “can you tell whether we’ve made any ground?”
“No.” He hated having to say this. “No. We haven’t.”
She drew in a quick breath and he barely stopped himself from reaching for her. “I’m sorry,” he started to say.
A sound, faint as a midnight whisper, pricked at him. He froze. He forgot where he was, what he’d been saying, even who was with him.
A rifle shot. Several miles away, and distorted by the rocks it was echoing off. So faint, most people wouldn’t hear it.
The sound was repeated.
For two, nearly three minutes, he remained with his senses open and receptive, but nothing else came to him. Finally, reluctantly, he brought himself back to where he was and ignored his heart’s erratic pounding.
“Did you hear something?”
Shannon hadn’t made any attempt to keep the combination of tension and anticipation out of her voice. Maybe she was beyond any pretense. He wanted to tell her about the shots; he didn’t want to carry this burden alone or have to find a way to battle cold fingers of dread alone. But someone with a rifle was on this mountain and, if possible, he wanted to spare her from knowing what she couldn’t do anything about.
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure?” When she leveled him a gaze, he wondered if he could keep anything from her.
“There are a million sounds out there, Shannon.” His throat didn’t want to work. “I can’t be sure of all of them.”
“I’ve never heard you say that before.”
Where did she keep those memories of him? “We don’t have much more time. It’s going to get dark-”
“Not for another four or five hours.”
“Five hours isn’t going to get us far enough.”
In the seconds that followed his words, he could hear her breathing. He didn’t need to probe into her to know what she was feeling and battling.
He knew because the same war was raging in his own soul.
This search was different from all the others. Love for a ten-year-old boy had gotten in the way of what he needed and wanted to do. He could fight the emotion, but it would only return, slamming into him just as memories of making love to Shannon did. Because he wasn’t up to the battle, he could only force himself to go on, to acknowledge why his heart felt so heavy.
He cared, truly cared for only two people in this world. He was trying to find one before that distant, deadly sound did. The other-
She looked so brave and determined and trapped.
Without moving, without having any control over what was happening, he reached out with his heart and absorbed her emotions.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“A deer! Didn’t you see-”
Chuck didn’t care what, if anything, Andrew might have been going to say. Cursing, he yanked the rifle out of his client’s hands and trained his binoculars in the direction Andrew had shot. Although he stared for several minutes, he didn’t see anything, but between the clouds and the sun trying to break out from behind them it was no wonder.
“We’ll have to go look,” he grumbled. “But I can guarantee you, you didn’t kill any damn deer.”
“How do you know?”
On the verge of telling Andrew that he couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn if he was standing inside it with the door closed, he hoisted Andrew’s rifle over his shoulder and started walking. Behind him, the three men chattered like drunken schoolchildren over whether Andrew had indeed made a kill and if he had, what the chances were that it was a trophy buck.
He wished they had. That way he could stop baby-sitting these overgrown morons and pick up some clients who understood that being caught hunting out of season would net him a lot more than a simple fine. He’d already been arrested twice, forfeited his hunting license, and been leveled fines that he’d had no intention of paying. Getting nailed again wasn’t what bothered him since bureaucrats were lousy at collecting, but the last thing he wanted was jail time.
Jail time?
He’d shoot all three of these jokers and leave their bodies for the buzzards before he let that happen-them and anyone else who tried to stand in his way.
“Something.”
What did he see, smell, hear that others couldn’t? Was it possible that
She prayed so.
