Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

“Bonding?”

“Yes. No matter what you and I are to each other, we created a child. Two children. That’s precious.”

When he didn’t say anything else and she couldn’t find a way around the emotion that clogged her entire being, she turned her attention to where she was going to spend the night. Although she stepped on a pinecone and felt a stab of pain in her instep, she managed to make her way back to her bed. She sat down, aware that her brain wasn’t nearly as tired as her body and that sleep might be hours away.

They’d created a child. Two children .

And Cord carried pictures of both of them.

He’d left his shelter of darkness. She could hear him moving around. “Does it bother you, not having a fire?” he asked.

“If I thought Matt would see it, I’d have already set the woods afire. But you’re sure he’s far enough away that he couldn’t see one, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry.”

The words were simple enough but there was nothing uncluttered in the emotion behind them. As if drawn to Cord by what was going on inside him, she got up and walked over to stand beside him. The moonlight had made its impact on his features. He was now a dark, brooding, silver-touched melody of shadow. She was unable to do more than guess at what was going on behind the dark center of his eyes, so she took her cue from what she knew about him.

He was lost deep in that place he went when she’d never been able to reach him. Too many times she’d asked for an explanation of what he was thinking about and had to settle for what little he’d been willing or able to give her. Tonight she wouldn’t try, not because she didn’t care but because for once she didn’t need words from him.

She’d simply stand beside him and share a little of herself. And she wouldn’t listen to her body’s restless hum. Somehow.

“I think, if I wasn’t doing what I am, I might want to be an astronomer,” she told him. She was grasping at the first thing to come to mind. “I don’t know what qualifications I’d have to bring to the job-probably a lot more schooling. But I love the idea of discovering some unknown moon, maybe a whole galaxy. I’d engage in lofty discussions with other scientists about whether there’s more intelligent life out there.”

“I hope there is.”

“Because maybe they’ve come up with some solutions we haven’t?”

“That’s part of it. And because I want to see if they have big heads and eyes and long, thin fingers.”

His attempt at humor made her smile. “What about you? Are you at all interested in doing anything else?”

“Archaeology.”

“You’re serious? You’d really like to dig in the dirt for signs of ancient life?”

“Yeah. I would.” He sounded pensive.

“Why?” she prompted. She’d had to push him so many times in the past that it came instinctively.

“Curiosity, I guess. Maybe I’m looking for my roots.”

Gray Cloud had been his only roots. “You never told me that.”

“I never used to think about it, but… There’s a place in California’s Saline Valley where the Shoshone Indians once had a winter camp. Their civilization may have been over six thousand years old when the white man came. Six thousand years.” Wonder painted his tone. “I was there once on a search and stayed an extra week talking to BLM archaeologists about Shoshone art and religious beliefs.”

“A week? It must have made quite an impression to keep you in one place that long.”

“It did. And it made me aware of how little I know about a great deal of my own heritage. Since then I’ve been intrigued by what ancient civilizations left behind. Nevada, southeastern Oregon, the four corners area, all that and more is rich with remnants of the past, if people who know what they’re looking for can get to it before vandals do.”

“I hope that happens. I mean it, I’ve never heard you talk about this kind of thing before.”

“I think, until just a while ago, I was too young to be interested in the past. Really interested.”

And now he was. Circumstances had taken him to part of the country and an experience that excited him and opened him up to interests he’d never expected. Would that continue throughout his life, or was he reaching into the past because his present felt incomplete?

With a silent groan, she shook off the heavy thought. “I love looking at stars.” She was barely aware of what she was saying. “There’s an endlessness about them. A permanence. And yet they’re so illusive, so mysterious. I know it’s been said a million times, but I feel as if I could reach out and touch one.”

“What would you do if you could?”

The question was so totally unlike Cord to ask that it turned her toward him. He waited in dark as old and enduring as the stars. This mountain was his place, the night with its stars and moon created for him. “Do?”

“I’m trying to picture you standing on the top of a mountain holding a star in your hand.”

Oh, Cord. “You are?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why? Being here with you…”

She didn’t want him to say anything that might make her feel even more off balance than she already did. Another word, a whisper, a touch, and she’d spin off into eternity. Stil-“What about our being here together?”

“I think you know.”

He’d sounded unsure of himself a few heartbeats ago. Now he was once again the strong, confident man she’d fallen in love with and-in many ways-still loved. She wanted to be like him, to have control over her emotions, but how could she if they were alone, together, and the night had them in its embrace?

“Do you?” he pressed.

Do I what? Your voice-just your voice . “Cord? Cord, there isn’t enough of me left over to try to deal with anything except Matt.” Liar .

He rocked forward slightly and then back. The movement did beautiful and mysterious things to his features as the moon caressed him. He looked unreal, a mountain man created from wilderness and wind. She didn’t know how to stop her reaction or even if she wanted to. But to tell him?

Only an insane woman would try to touch a bolt of lightning.

Feeling more peaceful than she had since the ordeal had begun, Shannon watched the early morning sun touch the sky and turn it from black to a soft gold. It was going to be warm, summer’s promise seeping through deeply shaded valleys and touching them with life-heating their son’s body.

“He’s all right,” she said, her voice still filled with sleep. “I’d know it if he wasn’t.”

She fully expected Cord to tell her she couldn’t possibly be sure about what she’d just said. If he did, she wouldn’t argue with him because it was nothing except her mother’s heart speaking. Instead, he nodded, stretched, and began rolling up his sleeping bag. He’d worn only briefs to sleep in. Although they’d settled down some ten feet from each other, she plainly saw the dark dusting of hair that covered his thighs and calves. Once she’d run her fingers, toes, lips over his legs, lost in wonder at the belief that he loved her.

Now all she could do was look and remember.

When he stepped into his jeans and sat to put on his boots, she tried to eat a few bites of dried apple, but her stomach seemed to have lost all interest in food. Maybe she was becoming more and more like Cord. As long as she searched for their son, she wouldn’t be aware of her body.

Only, that wasn’t it. At least, not all of it. She didn’t even have to be near Cord for her body to pick up signals from him.

He seemed unnaturally quiet this morning. Maybe it was only her need to be diverted from the disjointed and disturbing thoughts flitting through her that made her ache for conversation, but she didn’t think so. Giving up on her breakfast, she reached for her own jeans. She wondered if his attention might be drawn to her legs, but he’d stopped what he was doing and was sitting with his head cocked to one side, his fingers clamped tightly over his knees. She felt as if she could reach out and touch the tension in him, and struggled to hear anything except the stiff breeze, the way the birds welcomed the morning. Cord had exceptional hearing; she’d been impressed by it from the beginning. She longed to ask if he might be able to hear Matt, but if that had been the case, he surely would have told her.