Aimee Thurlo - Black Raven's Pride

“It nearly killed me to leave you at the pueblo when my father kicked me out,” he said, his voice soft. “All you had left was your grandmother, and you barely knew her. You needed me, but I had no way to provide for myself or you.”

“It was hard to say goodbye,” Eden said, settling against him, her cheek and the palm of her hand resting on his chest.

“The pain our families caused is finally behind us. Let’s not look back. We have each other, and that’s all that’s important.”

Only through passion had he ever been able to say everything he felt, and once again he began to show her what he couldn’t put into words. As long as they had each other, they’d never need anyone else. He molded her body with his hands, fitting her against him. He fed her soul with his kisses, speaking wordlessly to her of needs that would be shared for a lifetime.

“When you look at me that way, all I see in your eyes is love, steady and sure,” she whispered.

Always and forever. The words were in his heart when he entered her again, loving her fierce cries as he plunged deep inside her. Their release was sweet and he lay over her, their bodies still locked together.

Then suddenly Nick’s dreams shifted. Another scene unfolded, and Nick’s heart began to drum against his chest, anger and pain gripping him. He was standing in the center of his old room, trying to accept the fact that Eden was really gone. The note she’d left for him was balled up in his fist, the words branded in his mind. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. There’s life and there’s love, and we’ll never be able to make the two come together.

Black sorrow filled him and, with a sharp, angry cry, Nick jackknifed to a sitting position, coming abruptly awake. He got his bearings slowly as he looked around the bunkhouse and tried to focus on the present.

Back then he hadn’t understood what had happened. Afterward he’d wondered if it had been his stand on children, but if Eden had loved him enough, she would have understood. They’d both lived through so much pain as kids on the pueblo that it had seemed inconceivable to him that she might have felt differently from him on that issue.

They’d known each other well as children, but he wondered now how well they’d really known each other as adults. One moment they’d had an entirely new life waiting for them. The pueblo and the sadness in their pasts would have eventually been nothing more than a memory for them. Yet she’d vanished without explanation, taking a piece of his heart.

The love he’d felt for her had been real but the closeness he’d wanted and had thought they’d shared had only been an illusion. It hadn’t been anything said or left unsaid that had split them apart. What had really come between them was that there’d been another man in Eden’s life.

He took a deep breath. The gut-wrenching pain he’d felt fifteen months ago had not diminished with time. He’d simply filed it away mentally, banishing it to a spot where he could handle it. Now, understanding the depth of her betrayal, a coldness settled over his steel-encased heart.

Naked, he walked to the window and stared out at the stars. He would never again allow anyone to come as close to him as Eden once had. Gone forever was the boy who’d thought love could conquer all, and the faith that had allowed him to give his heart.

The only thing he would do now was protect her. As a cop it was his duty—and as a man who’d once lover her it was his debt of honor to the past they’d shared.

It was shortly after eight the following morning and Nick was on his second cup of coffee. All night long he’d lain awake, unable to stop thinking about Eden. At one time in his life, she’d been the world to him. But now everything was different except for the way she could make desire twist through him. And, as always, she’d turned his life upside down.

The letter Eden’s grandmother had written to her mentioning Tall Shadow had disturbed him deeply. He’d only been a young boy, but he remembered how his father had hated the nickname, thinking that it made him sound like some kind of big boss the pueblo was required to look up to. His father had chewed out Martin, the ranch foreman, for using it, and he’d given orders that he was “Paul” on the ranch. Any ranch hands referring to him as Tall Shadow would be stuck with cleaning out the horse stalls permanently.

Lost in thought, Nick almost didn’t hear the phone. On the third ring, he picked up the receiver, half expecting to hear Captain Mora’s voice telling him he was needed to go on duty earlier than his originally scheduled shift.

Instead, it was his brother, Jake. “Nick, I need to talk to you. Can you come over this morning?”

“Sure.” Nick had moved into the empty bunkhouse several months ago. He’d told his brother and his wife Annie that he wanted to give them more privacy, but the truth was that he’d felt out of place there. “Is something wrong?” he asked Jake.

“You could say that,” Jake answered, his voice hard. “But I’d rather discuss this in person.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Nick put his coffee cup in the sink, then walked over to the main house, which was less than a hundred yards away. Jake’s tone had put him on his guard. Whenever Jake sounded this cool and reserved something major was brewing. And on top of whatever was going on, Nick knew he’d also have to tell Jake about the letter, and what Tall Shadow had been accused of doing years ago.

From the second Nick stepped into the main house, the large two-story adobe structure they’d both grown up in, he felt the tension in the air. Annie gave him a quick “good morning” as she met him by the door carrying nine-month-old Noelle in her arms.

Nick gave his niece a kiss. “Hey sweetpea.”

The baby smiled and so did Annie. “You’re so good with kids, Nick. Why don’t you hurry up and get married?”

“It doesn’t work that way. Not in my book anyway.”

“I thought Black Raven men never went by the book—unless they wrote it themselves.”

Nick laughed. “We only play by the rules when it suits us,” he said, following her to the library.

As they entered the room, he saw Martin, who’d been the ranch foreman for as long as he could remember, as well as a family friend. He was helping Jake remove books from a shelf, then searching each one.

“What’s going on? Lose something important?”

Jake came down the ladder that allowed him to reach the top of the highest shelf in the wood-paneled library. The ceilings in most of the ground floor rooms were ten feet high. “Our mother’s diary is gone,” he said flatly.

“Gone? You mean stolen?” Nick asked, his tone now as taut as his brother’s had been.

Jake nodded. “Precisely.”

That diary had already cost them their father’s life. Its loss now made Nick’s blood turn to ice. There was no telling what price getting it back would exact this time. The journal was a treasure trove of community secrets, since just about everyone had confided in Saya, their mother, and she’d written down all her private thoughts in that leather-bound book. Last time, as they’d worked to get it back, greed and jealousy over the contents of the diary had nearly claimed Annie’s life and that of her baby.

“Did you just leave it in plain sight?” Nick demanded, trying to suppress the anger in his voice. It was just like Jake to think it impossible that anyone would break in now that he was the head of the house.

“I wasn’t careless,” Jake snapped, sensing the direction Nick’s thoughts had taken. “Far from it. I’d intended to start reading it a little at a time each night, so I took it out of our bedroom nightstand and put it down here. I honestly thought mom’s diary would be safer in these bookshelves than in any drawer.”