Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

A…really tall…mountain.

The smell of rain blew in through the open window in Shannon’s bedroom. The scent, so much a part of Cord, cleared away the haze of sleep he’d only briefly managed to wrap around himself. Sleep was important. Although he’d learned to function without it for days on end, he knew how essential it was to replenish his body. If it had been any other time and the search ahead of him had involved anyone else-

His son was out there, a lean, growing boy with dark eyes that sparkled with excitement for life’s adventures. Thinking about Matt warmed him, warmed him and made him resent how quickly his son was leaving childhood behind.

That’s why Matt was out there on a rainy night, because he felt ready to take a giant step toward adulthood. Maybe he was ready. Maybe he wasn’t.

Yet that wasn’t what kept Cord awake tonight. In truth, if it wasn’t for Shannon, he would have been tempted to wait for Matt to finish his personal test and return, successful and boastful. He’d done what Matt was doing and more when he was even younger, proving to Gray Cloud that the lessons learned at his grandfather’s side had taken.

But Shannon’s eyes and voice and body language told him she couldn’t take Matt’s absence in stride. She was a mother without her child within reach and nothing mattered to her except being able to hold Matt in her arms again.

He understood why it was that way for her. She-they-had already lost one child. That pain…

Turning soundlessly in the bed that seemed to have taken on her contours, he repositioned her pillow and pulled in the scent of her shampoo. Her hair was still glorious, rich and healthy. What had she said once when he’d admired it? She couldn’t take credit for its condition and was grateful she’d been blessed with hair that didn’t require a lot of care because she had better things to do with her life than to spend it at a beauty parlor.

Everything about her was natural, honest.

Eyes open now, he stared at what he could see of her room.

While getting ready for bed, he’d paid as little attention as possible to this space that said the most about his ex-wife. Now, caught in that quiet time of night when there was nothing to do except think, his mind drifted back to a time when he’d known, or thought he’d known, the mother of his children.

She wasn’t the same seventeen-year-old girl he’d fallen in love with all those years ago. Although he missed the quick, shy grin that had first attracted him to her, he had no regrets that she was no longer a teenager. He might regret what they’d lost since that magical first year, but the woman she’d become-

That woman moved with a deer’s grace, her lean, athletic body challenging him in a way he didn’t want. But want it or not, the fact was, he still physically desired her. His heart might have put love behind it, but his body, his damnable body hadn’t forgotten what it felt like to make love with her.

What had he called her smile, honest? Her body was the same. Yes, she’d been an uncertain virgin when raging hormones and curiosity and loneliness, at least on his part, had brought them together that first time. But that hadn’t lasted long. Learning together, they’d tasted sensual experiences and, in the tasting, the testing, discovered that they were capable of igniting something in both themselves and each other that he now believed might never be extinguished.

Seven years after he’d left her bed for the last time, the flame still hadn’t been snuffed out.

When his jaw started to ache, he realized he’d been clenching his teeth. He forced himself to relax. Once he’d accomplished that, he worked on the rest of his body. Using techniques Gray Cloud had taught him, he visualized every muscle, mentally easing tension out of one after another. He fought to keep his mind clear of any other thought, fought and only partly succeeded. Whenever he slackened his grip, his thoughts went back to her-the woman curled on the couch in the next room.

She could have taken Matt’s youth bed, a bed the boy was rapidly outgrowing, but for reasons she kept to herself but he could guess, she hadn’t entered their son’s room again. Was she sleeping? He doubted that she had been any more successful at blocking out the world than he had been.

Only, it wasn’t the world that kept him awake.

Their missing son was responsible.

And that son’s mother.

A woman he’d once loved and made love to like a dying man clinging to life. A woman he’d lost somewhere in the tangle of the past and only wanted to forget.

Tonight wasn’t for forgetting.

Instead his body burned and ached and remembered.

Not a word.

When the stupid phrase skittered through Shannon’s mind for the umpteenth time, she stretched out her legs until her feet dangled over the arm of the couch, and she stared up at the darkened ceiling.

She’d managed to fall asleep, but that hadn’t lasted very long. Concern for Matt had been a large chunk of what had awakened her. But Matt Navarro wasn’t any ordinary ten-year-old boy. He was Cord Navarro’s son, an outdoor child who believed night was as fascinating and comfortable as day. Just because she couldn’t hold her son didn’t mean he wasn’t all right. She couldn’t sleep because Cord and she were under the same roof during night’s quiet for the first time in years.

Of course he was asleep, she told herself a little testily. The experienced tracker knew how to shut off his mind and get the rest he needed. He’d probably trained his mind as thoroughly as he trained his muscular legs and keen eyes and sharp hearing.

Muscular legs.

No! That was the problem; she couldn’t stop thinking about his thighs and calves and chest and arms-and the rest of him. Why was be so strong? So physical? So… so primitively masculine?

A long and not-too-steady sigh escaped her lips. She gave up trying not to think about Cord. He’d always slept on his side; at least he had when he’d been married to her. He seldom moved in his sleep, one of those fascinating/maddening things about him she’d never forgotten. When he wanted her in the middle of the night, he would place his hand lightly over her rib cage and run his forefinger up and down her side until she either responded or turned away from him. Most of the time she’d responded.

Past tense. Damn it, past tense.

She hadn’t known anything that first time, not a single solitary thing about what went on between men and women. Oh, yes, like most of her girlfriends, she’d spun fantasies about falling in love, making love. Doing “it.” But those fantasies had had nothing to do with reality.

Now she knew the reality, and her body refused to forget.

It had been his hands. In some instinctive way, Cord had known how to take her smoothly and cleanly from virginity to womanhood. He’d come to her as inexperienced as she’d been. Because he’d been a loner, she couldn’t imagine that he’d shared much locker room talk about what girls wanted and expected. She also couldn’t imagine him discussing sex with his grandfather, either. Somehow Cord’s hands had sensed what she’d needed. They’d played her, explored, taught, learned.

And she’d given herself to him with every fiber of her being.

A million years ago.

Before his silence had come between them.

Not a word. Don’t forget that. He walked away from you tonight without saying a word.

Shannon’s eyes felt as if she’d tried to wash them with sandpaper. Stepping out of the shower, she quickly toweled off and slapped a little cream on her face. After throwing on some clothes, she brushed her teeth, trying not to look at Matt’s smaller toothbrush next to hers. The constant sound of rain made her want to climb on the roof and yell at the heavens not to pour down on her son.