The Return of Cord Navarro

“Is it? Fighting fear so it won’t take over everything is so hard, takes so damn much energy.”

She was right; he knew that better than she. “Pretending it doesn’t exist is even worse.”

He felt more than heard a deep sob tear through her. Clutching her to him, he thought to shield her from the worst of her pain. If only he could think of the words to say, but if he wasn’t careful, his own fear would spill out.

She needed him to be strong, to be there for her when she couldn’t do it on her own.

He clamped down on his anxiety and denied it. Buried it. Hid from it.

“It’s all right,” he whispered while she fought to gain control over her tears. “It’s all right to cry.”

She didn’t argue with him this time. In fact, if he was correctly reading her body’s silent messages, she was grateful he’d given her license to acknowledge what she’d been holding inside her.

Shannon worked with her fear, accepted it with tears that dampened his shirt and again made him long to spirit her away from this place, this journey. This nightmare. Feeling awkward and inadequate, he held on.

Still, a quiet, insistent part of his brain continued to listen, to assess their world.

Her loss of control didn’t last long. After half a dozen shuddering breaths and a raw sound deep in her throat, her body found its strength again.

“What else do the Taos believe?” she asked. “I think I need to hear it all.”

He kissed her forehead, wondering if that simple gesture might convey everything he felt at this moment and whether exposing his vulnerability, his need for her, was dangerous. It didn’t matter because he was past holding himself in. “That everyone-man, beasts, trees, birds, earth, all share the same breath.”

Her chest heaved with the effort of a deep breath. “It sounds so simple, too simple of course, but I want to believe that. Oh, God, how I want to believe.”

“You will. If you listen to what nature has to say.”

“Maybe-will you help me do that?”

Overwhelmed by her need for him, at least at this moment, he nodded.

“I’m sorry I caved in like that,” she whispered. “I-I didn’t know I was going to.”

“It’s all right.”

“That’s what you already said. Cord? I want you to tell me…to tell me I can trust you, that you’ll make it all come out the way we want and need it to. We’ve been through hell once-surely we won’t be asked to survive a child’s loss again.”

He brushed her hair away from her throat, came within a whisper of covering her trembling lips with his own and letting her feel his-everything.

“But you can’t, can you?” she whispered.

“No.”

Despite his hard truth, she held on with fingers that bit into his forearms. “I don’t want to hear you say that. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” More than you could possibly understand.

“No. Yes.” She echoed him while still holding on. “That’s all you’re going to say, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He winced at the word but it was too late.

“It’s all right,” she said, surprising him. “There really aren’t any other words.”

Because he felt the need to be doing something and remembered that the gesture used to calm her at the end of a long day, he slid his fingers around to the back of her neck and began massaging the top of her spine.

She rolled her shoulders backward and sighed. “You’re so good at that. I’d forgotten.”

“I hadn’t.”

“Oh, Cord, where did it all fall apart for us? Was it because of what happened to Summer and the way I isolated myself, the way we both did? Or was there more to it than that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do. More than we’ve talked about, anyway. But it doesn’t matter. Darn it, nothing does except getting our son back.”

No, he thought. Maybe nothing did except Matt’s safety. And yet… And yet he wanted affirmation that life would go on and he would hold on if… He couldn’t make himself finish.

As her tears dried, she continued to look at him and he had to tell himself she had no idea what was going on inside him. The strong lines of her mouth softened and he again fought the desire to take her-both of them-to places that once had been so easy to reach. Places that would take him away from the reality of today.

“Why do I keep beating myself up trying to reinvent the past?” she moaned before he’d ended his battle. “The past doesn’t matter-I just want it buried”

Can you? Can either of us?

“I’m trying to remember something,” she said after a silence that had become uncomfortable. “Matt came across it at school and brought it home to me. How does it go? ‘The earth does not belong to man-man belongs to the earth. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life-he is merely a strand in it.’ Yes. That’s it.”

Cord smiled, feeling incredibly close to her again and knowing how fragile it was. “Every part of this earth is sacred to my people,” he continued for her. “Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. Those were Chief Seattle’s words. At least, I’d like to believe they were. He was trying to explain to President Pierce why his people would never understand the concept of selling land. Matt told you about that?”

“Yes.” Her voice trembled slightly. “He said that’s the way you feel. He knows you very well, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Better than I do.”

Because he couldn’t let her go, he pressed her close to him and hoped that his body would say what he didn’t have words for. After a long minute of holding, rocking, giving, he caught the softest of sounds escape her lips, a sound far different from the sobs that had claimed her a few minutes ago.

The whisper told him everything, let him believe what he wanted. She’d let him place his arms around her because she was weary of carrying her burden alone. He’d been able to assume enough of that weight that she could now listen to what else was going on inside her. He struggled to find the words to tell her that everything and anything she felt was right, but no matter how he worked them, they seemed inadequate and half formed.

Maybe the truth was that with her pressed against him, no words would come.

Without regret, he gave up the fight and, beyond that, the need to learn whether hunters had found their son. Her mouth had once belonged to him; she’d given it to him freely. He’d lost any claim to her years ago, but for this moment, time had been stripped away and he could bury himself in what her body offered.

She couldn’t close her mouth. He sensed the tiny tremble that signaled her effort. Then she gave up and accepted. Invited.

So long-he’d waited so long for this. He had his arms firmly on her so that her arms were half trapped between their bodies. She pulled them free and wrapped them around his neck in an incredibly graceful gesture that made him hungry for something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for too long-maybe forever. He felt her fingertips on his sunburned flesh. Somehow they cooled and heated at the same time.

Twisting slightly to the side, he eased her cheek against his shoulder and began stroking her hair. His groin pulsed in need, but the rest of him-heart and head-needed more than sex.

Needed to love this woman.

Shannon. Shannon. Slight, strong, built for climbing mountains and making love and raising children and watching eagles and-and loving me. Making me feel whole, no longer alone.

She repeated her chest-deep whimpering sound. He pulled it into him through his pores. Physical need grew, and he knew the folly of fighting that. He’d been sleeping by himself for a long time and no matter what he demanded of his body through his work, it wasn’t enough to still that primitive need.

If-they could-she would-

He opened his eyes, only dimly comprehending that he’d shut out the world. A desperate need to lay himself open to her surged through him and for a. few beats of his heart separated him from years of work and training. After what they’d gone through and still had to weather, self-preservation didn’t matter. With Shannon he would be vulnerable, more open than-