Stirred by the passage of Nevada’s restless body, the mobiles moved. A shimmer of gold caught his eye. He turned and walked closer. An instant later he recognized the chain and the tiny braided ring he had last seen nestled in the hollow of Eden’s throat. Nevada’s breath stopped as his heart contracted in his chest.
I wear Aurora’s ring to remind myself that love is never wasted, never futile.
Shards of past conversations sliced through him, making him bleed with a pain he had vowed never to feel.
I love you, Nevada.
That’s what I was afraid you were telling yourself. Fairy tales. You can’t accept that all there is between us is sex. Pure and simple and hot as hell.
With great care Nevada freed the delicate chain from the mobile.
I’m worlds too hard for you, but I want you until my hands shake.
Now I know what life tastes like.
Eden’s fingertips brushing him, her husky voice whispering, words burning into his soul and the tiny ring gleaming as light caressed the intertwined strands of gold.
I’m not offering you love and happily ever after. I can’t be what you want me to be.
Hazel eyes luminous, alive with all the colors of life, watching him, loving him.
Love is never wasted. Never. But it can hurt like nothing else on earth.
Heaven and hell and the rainbow burning between.
I would sell my soul not to want you.
Fairy-tale girl, all laughter and golden light.
But no longer.
He had stripped her of laughter as surely as he had stripped her of innocence. She had loved him; he had denied that love was possible. He had left her without a word of hope
and now she no longer wore the chain and its tiny gold ring.
She hadn’t been able to teach him to believe in love, but he had been able to teach her to believe in despair.
Nevada made the low sound of a man who has just taken a body blow. He hadn’t meant to destroy anything at all, much less something as rare and beautiful as Eden. Yet he had destroyed just the same. The proof was lying in his hand, a dead child’s ring and a living woman’s endless loss.
For a long time Nevada stood motionless, staring into space, seeing nothing, not even his own tears.
*
The long wind blew, sweeping down out of the distant mountains, bringing restlessness to the mixed evergreen forest. A river ran pale with glacial melt, brawling through the wide, flat valley down to the sea. Everywhere there was the subdued frenzy of life that has only a short growing season and a whole new generation to raise.
Eden sat in the small log cabin that had been her parents’ first Alaskan home and now was hers. Although the early June day was vibrant with sunlight and wind, she wasn’t out searching for lynx across the fertile green land. The changes in her body had made her sleepy, slightly nauseated, lacking any ambition other than to sit in the sun and remind herself that tears were wasted. If she could have gone back and lived again the weeks in Colorado, she would have changed nothing that was within her power to change.
And if Eden were haunted by memories of a warrior’s unsmiling green eyes and gentle, passionate hands, then so be it. She would not change that, either. Nevada had given her more of beauty and ecstasy than she had ever dreamed of having. The fact that the pain of her loss was greater, too, than she had imagined possible, was something she would just have to live through as she had lived through the loss of Aurora, enduring until the bitter and the sweet were inextricably mixed, each defining and refining the other until they became a seamless, beautiful whole.
Baby sat near Eden’s feet, looking through the screen door toward the uninhabited land. His long black ears were erect, his narrow muzzle tipped into the cool rush of air, his yellow eyes gleaming.
Without warning he came to his feet in a lithe rush, drank the wind, and tipped back his head in a howl. The eerie, primal sound froze Eden. She heard that particular howl from Baby only when she returned to him after a long absence. But she hadn’t been absent. Her body had been present all the time, if not her heart and mind.
Perhaps Mark had returned early from his stint in the oil fields.
Eden sighed and stood up. As she opened the screen door, a man stepped from the willows sheltering the path to the cabin. His shoulders were wide and his walk was as easy as that of a cougar prowling. The world tipped and spun dizzily, forcing Eden to hang on to the door frame or fall.
It can’t be. Nevada.
Baby leaped through the open door and hit the ground running and yapping, nearly walking on the sky in delight. Nevada caught the wolf in midleap, spun around, and sent Baby flying off in another direction. The wolf turned nimbly and launched himself at the man again in a game that the two of them had created in a land thousands of miles distant.
Numbly Eden watched wolf and warrior play, wondering if she were dreaming
or if she had simply gone mad.
When the first exuberance of Baby’s greeting was quenched, Nevada looked toward the cabin door. A single glance at Eden’s blank face told him that the mistress wasn’t nearly as happy to see him as her wolf had been.
“Hello, Eden. You look
” Nevada’s voice died. He had no words to describe how Eden looked to him. Nor could he describe his hunger to hold her warmth and laughter within his arms once more.
“How did you find me?” she asked finally.
“It took some doing. I had to lean on some folks at the university pretty hard before they gave me any help.”
Nevada’s light green eyes searched Eden’s face, noting each sign of change, but most of all he saw the darkness of her eyes, a darkness she tried to conceal by looking away.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
“What?”
“Don’t look away from me.”
“I can’t Iseeing you
“
Eden laced her fingers together and looked at Nevada and felt as though she were being torn apart.
I’d give my soul not to want you.
She knew how Nevada felt, now. Too late.
She tried to take a deep, steadying breath, but no matter how much air she took in, it wasn’t enough. The world was spinning too quickly, she was off balance, no center, nothing stable, nothing but the longing for Nevada that would not end.
“Eden!”
Nevada caught Eden as her knees gave away, carried her into the cabin and set her gently on the bed. The pallor of her skin made him want to cry out in protest. Her lashes stirred, then opened to reveal eyes that were darker than he remembered. She started to sit up.
“No,” he said, catching Eden’s shoulders gently, pressing her back into the bed, brushing his lips over her forehead, her cheek. “Just lie still, fairy-tale girl.”
Nevada’s glance went over Eden like hands, noting everything. His nostrils flared, drinking in the subtle change in her scent. His whole body went still. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes.
“You’re pregnant,” he said flatly. “I knew it. Damn those university bureaucrats! I should have been here weeks ago!” He cursed once, savagely. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“Bull. You fainted.”
“Shock, not pregnancy.” Eden closed her eyes, unable to bear Nevada’s scrutiny. “I never expected to see you again. It was like having someone come back from the dead.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That I’m pregnant?”
Nevada nodded curtly.
“And make you feel even more trapped than you did in Wildfire Canyon?” Eden shook her head and opened her eyes. “I can’t bear watching your pain. I can’t heal it. I can only make it worse. I won’t do that, Nevada.” Not wanting to, unable to stop herself, she lifted her hand and touched the coarse silk of his beard. “Don’t worry, warrior. I’ll be a good mother to our child.”
“But you don’t think I’ll be good father.”
“In every way but one, you would be a marvelous father.”
Nevada waited, watching Eden with hooded eyes.
“Children need love,” she whispered. “You don’t believe in it.”
“Neither do you, now. I took that from you as surely as I took your innocence.”
Eden stared at Nevada. “What do you mean?”
He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a golden chain and tiny braided ring.
“You told me that you wore this to remind you that love was never wasted, never futile. And then you left it behind.”
“I didn’t need Aurora’s ring anymore. My reminder was alive within me. Your baby, Nevada. My baby. Our baby. A child of the love you don’t believe in. But I understand why, now. If you allowed yourself to feel emotion, you would be vulnerable again. Your emotions run strong and hard and so very deep. Your ability to feel could destroy you. It nearly did. So you walked away from feeling, from emotion, from love”
“Eden, I
” Nevada’s throat closed.
She smiled sadly. “It’s all right, warrior. If I weren’t pregnant, I would have done the same thing you did. Walked away from feeling, shed my pain like a snake shedding skin, and walked away, just walked away. Then I held Carolina and remembered little Aurora’s laughter and I prayed that I was pregnant. And I am. Thank you for that, Nevada. Thank you for allowing your control to slip that much.”
Eden’s husky voice made Nevada’s throat close around emotions he no longer could deny. Silently he bent down and fastened the gold chain around Eden’s neck once more. The metal was warm from his body, almost weightless. He kissed the tiny gold ring where it lay in the soft hollow of her throat, then gathered Eden close and held her, simply held her, fighting for the self-control that always slipped away when he was close to Eden.
“Do you want to live here or on the Rocking M after we’re married?” Nevada asked without lifting his face from the warm curve of Eden’s neck.
The subtle rasp in his voice was like a cat’s tongue licking over Eden’s nerves. The temptation he offered was dizzying, almost overwhelming.
“No,” she breathed.
“Then where?”
“No. Just no.”
“Why?”
“Don’t. Please, don’t. If I weren’t pregnant, you wouldn’t be talking about marriage.”
“Are you sure of that?” Nevada asked softly.
“I’m sure I can’t bear to watch your eyes turn bleaker each time we make love,” Eden said with desperate calm. “I’m sure I can’t bear being something you don’t want yet can’t refuse.” She closed her eyes but couldn’t prevent her tears from falling as she whispered, “I can’t heal you but I can set you free. Walk away, warrior, just walk away.”
Eden felt Nevada stir, sitting up, moving away from her. It was what she knew must be, yet even knowing it she had to bite back a cry of pain.
The feel of Nevada’s lips against Eden’s left hand was like a soft brand burning her. She made a tiny sound of protest, but couldn’t free her hand. Something smooth and warm slid over her third finger.
“Open your eyes,” Nevada said, brushing away Eden’s tears with his kisses.
When Eden opened her eyes she saw gold gleaming on her ring finger, a circle of braided metal that was exactly like the tiny ring lying in the hollow of her throat. Silently Nevada held out his left hand. On his hard palm a third ring gleamed, golden braids intertwined.
“If you believe I can love,” he said, “put the ring on me.”
Eden looked into his eyes for a long moment, remembering the instant when she had caught his wrist in the bar and seen both the darkness and the light that was Nevada. Slowly she picked up the golden ring, kissed it and slid it onto his finger, whispering her love against his palm. Nevada kissed her ring in return, lifted his head, and looked into the eyes that saw so deeply into him, accepting him for what he was, loving him despite the darkness he had known.
Her love was like stepping into the sun, a blazing joy transforming him as surely as pain once had.
“Nevada
?”
Eden’s breath stopped, for she had seen nothing more beautiful than her dark warrior’s smile, a smile to make angels weep. With trembling fingers she touched Nevada’s lips. His hard and gentle hands framed her face, holding her, seeing the reflection of his newfound freedom in her radiant hazel eyes.
“You are my life, my soul, everything I wanted and feared I would never have,” Nevada whispered, bending down to Eden. “Fairy-tale girl, I love you.”