Warrior

10

As always when Baby was around, Eden woke up at dawn. As had become her habit in the past week, she looked automatically to the place where Nevada's bedroll had been.

It was empty.

It had been empty for seven days. She had no reason to believe it wouldn't always be empty. Nevada had made love to her, made her cry out with the pleasure and beauty of his touch – and then he had left without a word. He hadn't been back since.

Silently Eden asked the question that had been aching inside her every moment since she had awakened alone.

Why did you leave, Nevada? When I asked you why you hated wanting me, you told me it was because you didn't have me. Then we made love and you walked away as though nothing had happened. Why, Nevada? Didn't I please you?

Blinking back the tears that would do no good, Eden got up and quickly began preparing her breakfast. Her breath made silver-white plumes in the cabin's cold air. The chinook had been followed by a cold northern wind that had settled in as though it meant to stay until June. Last night a thin veil of snow had fallen once more over the land, making the ground glitter whitely.

"If that mama cougar has gone hunting, we'll find her tracks. Then I'll finally find her den. Right, Baby?" Eden asked, her voice husky from lack of use.

The big animal's ears pricked alertly at her first word. His yellow eyes had a gemlike clarity as they followed Eden's every motion until breakfast was eaten and the cabin was put in order.

"Ready to go tracking?"

Instantly Baby was on his feet, vibrating with eagerness. He pawed at the front door.

"I thought you would be. This time let's find something bigger than a bobcat."

Baby whined and pranced, understanding only that his favorite activity was about to begin.

Vowing to think only about cougars rather than the man who had touched her soul and then walked away as though nothing had happened, Eden opened the door and let Baby out. He shot across the clearing and raced into the sparse forest like a low-flying shadow.

Eden slipped on her backpack and walked quickly out into the light. The tracks Baby left were crisp, clear, and unnecessary. She knew where he was going – to the creek in the bottom of a ravine, and up the opposite slope to the base of the big fir tree where the cougar had first been spotted. The cat had managed to elude her trackers since the wild chase two weeks ago.

While looking for the mama cougar, Eden had found the tracks of two other cougars, photographed them, logged them, and followed them as far as possible. One of the cougars had been a young cat searching for territory that was unoccupied by other cougars. The boundary markers left by resident cougars had discouraged the young cat, pushing it along until it was beyond the boundaries of Eden's study area.

The second cougar whose tracks Eden had found was apparently a permanent resident, but it didn't have a den, which meant that it wasn't a female with cubs. Cougars without cubs covered as much as thirty miles in a day. Following such animals was very difficult, even when Baby's nose was thrown into the effort. In bad weather, tracking cats without radio collars was impossible.

Eden had pinned her hopes on Nevada's belief that the "big tree cougar" was a mama. The fact that the cat had vanished for the past two weeks was encouraging rather than discouraging. It probably meant that the fir tree was more toward the edge of the cougar's territory than in its center, and the cubs were keeping her close to home. But a mama cougar nursing cubs had to eat to keep up her own strength, which meant she had to go out and hunt. Hunting cats left tracks, especially in freshly fallen snow.

When Eden reached the big tree, Baby was casting about for fresh scent. When he found none, he looked to Eden. She whistled. Baby shot off along the shoulder of the rise, quartering a new area. She followed his progress, whistling or calling occasional instructions, communicating with him in a code that the two of them had worked out over years of hunting together.

Three hours later and seven miles distant from the big tree, Baby struck fresh tracks. His howl electrified the silent land. Instantly Eden whistled for Baby to return to her. He obeyed on the run, mouth wide, pink tongue lolling, laughing up at her when he found her.

At Eden's signal, Baby fell in step at her left heel. So long as Baby hadn't been penned up for days, he was more than happy to collaborate on the hunt. In the past week, he had gotten plenty of exercise. Eden had spent as little time as possible within the cabin, for it was haunted by Nevada's absence.

A few minutes later Eden was studying the tracks Baby had found. They were indeed fresh. More important, they had been left by the cougar Baby had once treed. The slightly oversize toe on the cat's left front paw was unmistakable. Eagerly Eden followed the tracks, moving quickly. The forest thinned even more, giving way to a boulder-strewn, south-facing slope. The tracks suddenly became very close together, almost overlapping. Abruptly the tracks dug in hard and deep – and vanished.

Eden paced off the length of empty snow until the tracks began again and whistled soft approval.

"Thirty-three feet in a single bound. Not bad for a young female."

Through binoculars, Eden scanned the landscape immediately in front of her. The wind gusted, shifting and swirling down the slope, blowing from her back rather than across her face.

Suddenly Baby threw back his head and howled.

"Quiet," Eden said without putting down the glasses.

Baby yapped and danced.

"Heel."

Baby heeled. And whined very softly.

"Settle down, Baby," Eden said impatiently, still scanning the landscape. "What's gotten into you?"

"Me."

The sound of Nevada's deep voice made Eden spin around and stare in disbelief. The first thing she noticed was that Nevada had a rifle slung across his back. The second thing she noticed was his eyes. They were as cold as the wind, as dispassionate as the sky, and full of shadows so bleak they made Eden want to cry out in pain.

"There was a decent tracking snow," Nevada said, "so Luke sent me back up here to help you."

Like his eyes, his voice lacked emotion.

"Sent you," Eden repeated. "I see."

She turned back and began scanning the landscape with a composure that was pure desperation. Her heart was beating much too hard, too fast, and her hands would have shaken if she hadn't gripped the binoculars until her knuckles showed white.

Luke sent me. Sent me. Sent me.

The words echoed in Eden's mind, slicing into her. Nevada couldn't have made it clearer that he hadn't sought her out for any reason other than a direct order from the owner of the Rocking M.

"Tell Luke thank-you, but it's not necessary," Eden said when she could trust her voice once more. "Baby and I do our best work alone."

"Luke didn't ask if you needed me. He told me to check on you."

"You have. I'm fine."

Narrowly Nevada surveyed the straight line of Eden's back. He heard her words, but he couldn't accept them. Her voice belonged to a stranger, flat where Eden's had been vibrant, thin where hers had been rich.

"You don't sound fine," he said.

She said nothing more.

Nevada swore beneath his breath. He walked silently up to Eden, not wanting to get any closer to her but unable to stop himself. As he moved, his body was tight with the conflict that had been tearing him apart since his self-control had broken and he had taken and surrendered to Eden in the same passionate instant.

"Damn it, I didn't want it to be this way," Nevada said harshly. "I didn't want you to be hurt."

Eden lowered the glasses. They were useless anyway, for she was crying too hard to see anything but her own tears.

"Is that why you left without so much as a word to me?" she asked. "To keep from hurting me?"

"What was I supposed to do, tell you fairy tales about love? I won't lie to you, fairy-tale girl. You knew it when you came to me at the cabin and burned me alive."

Abruptly Nevada stopped speaking. Memories of Eden's incandescent sensuality were lightning strokes of pain that scored him repeatedly, giving him no peace, ripping through new defenses and old, scoring across the unhealed past, threatening to touch him as he had vowed never to be touched again.

And he fought his hunger as he had never fought anything except death itself. Wanting, not wanting, fighting himself and her, trapped in an agonizing vise, Nevada turned Eden to face him and saw the silver glitter of her tears.

"Don't you understand?" Nevada whispered savagely. "I can't be what you want me to be."

She closed her eyes. "A man who believes in love."

"Yes," he said flatly. His hard thumbs tilted up her face to his and his fingers trembled against her skin. "I told Luke I wouldn't come up here. He told me I could take his orders or I could pack up and leave the Rocking M. I packed, but I couldn't let you run me off the only home I have, so I came up here knowing I would hurt you all over again."

"Nevada," Eden whispered, reaching to him.

"No! I don't want to hurt you again, but it will happen just the same unless you stop asking me to kiss you every time you look at my mouth, stop asking me to touch you every time you look at my hands, stop asking…" Nevada's eyes closed, then opened once more, clear and hard and cold. "I would sell my soul not to want you, Eden, but the devil took my soul a long time ago and I want you like hell burning."

As Eden looked at Nevada's silver-green eyes, a chill moved over her. He was a wild animal caught in a trap… and she was that trap. The knowledge was in his eyes, shadows and bleakness, watchfulness and calculation and fear, and most of all in his pain, an agony that drew Nevada's mouth into a hard line. His pain was as real as the unsheathed claws of his honesty.

Eden took a deep, shaking breath and acknowledged the truth. "I understand. You won't love me. I can't help loving you. Too bad, how sad, and all of that. Meanwhile, the earth turns and the seasons change and babies are born and some die and there's not a damn thing we can do about that, either."

"Eden…"

She waited, hoping in spite of herself.

"Eden, I…" Nevada made an odd, almost helpless gesture with his hand.

After a few more moments Eden smiled with the bittersweet acceptance that she had learned after Aurora's death.

"It's all right, Nevada. I was warned going in, and several other times along the way, and that's more than we usually get out of life. You don't have to love me. I'm yours without it, if you want me. And even if you don't."

Nevada's jaw tightened against the pain of Eden's acceptance of what he was and was not. "That's not…" he began, then his throat constricted again, taking away his ability to speak.

"Fair?" she suggested.

Eden's smile was as sad and enigmatic as her changing hazel eyes. Nevada looked away, unable to bear what he was doing to her.

"I thought you didn't believe in fairy tales, warrior."

"I don't."

"Then don't talk to me about 'fair.' If life were fair, my sister would have celebrated her sixth birthday today. But life isn't and she didn't and wailing about it won't change one damned thing."

Nevada looked back slowly. His eyes were intent, fierce. "You really mean that."

"I always say what I mean. It's a failing of mine."

"You don't believe in fairy tales, but you do believe in love," he said, unable to understand. "Knowing what life truly is, you still allow yourself to love." He hesitated, not wanting to hurt Eden any more but unable to stop himself from asking, "How can you?"

Eden looked into the untamed depths of Nevada's eyes and saw a curiosity that was as great as his wariness, as intense as his passion… a wolf circling closer and closer to the beckoning campfire, pulled toward the flames against his deepest instinct of self-preservation, enthralled by the radiant possibilities of fire.

"How can I do anything else?" Eden said simply. "Main is the animal that wrote Ecclesiastes and still laughed, still loved, still lived. Not just survival, Nevada. Living."

Silence stretched, stretched, then was broken by a harsh word. Nevada pointed off to the right, where a deer had left tracks along the margin of the open forest.

"Follow those tracks, Eden. They'll tell you all you need to know about the true nature of living."

Without a word Eden signaled for Baby to heel and began following the deer tracks, knowing what she would find. The mama cougar was alive, which meant that other life must die to sustain the cat's own life. It had always been that way. It always would be. Life fed. It was the very thing that distinguished life from death.

The deer tracks ended in a turmoil of snow and muddy earth. Cougar tracks led away. The cat had been walking easily despite the limp burden of the deer clenched in its jaws and the hooved feet dragging across the snow.

"A quick, clean kill," Eden said calmly, reading the tracks. "There's nothing surprising in that. Cougars are among the most efficient predators on earth. All you have to do is watch them move and you know that they're supremely adapted for the hunt and the kill."

She waited, but Nevada said nothing. Taking a deep breath, she turned and confronted the warrior she loved.

"In moose country," she continued, "a cougar will routinely stalk and kill moose that weigh five or even eight times as much as the cat does. Sometimes the moose wins and the cougar is injured. Cats are very tough. It takes them a long time and a horrifying amount of pain before they finally die. When it comes to death, nature is much more cruel to predators than predators are to their own prey."

Nevada simply watched Eden with bleak eyes, saying nothing.

"And man is the only predator who can see into the future," Eden continued in a soft, relentless voice. "Man knows that he, too, will die. That's the crucial difference between us and cougars. Yet, even knowing that we'll die, mankind is capable of creating as well as destroying, of loving as well as hating, of true living as well as sheer animal survival. Violent death is only a part of human reality, and not even the most important part at that."

"And I suppose that love is?" he asked sardonically.

"Yes." Without realizing it, Eden raised her hand to the open collar of her jacket. She touched her throat, reassured by the familiar presence of Aurora's ring. "Love is never wasted," Eden whispered. "Never. But it can hurt like nothing else on earth."

Nevada watched Eden with narrowed eyes, wanting to argue with her, to shake her from her foolish belief in love; yet the words died unspoken, for Eden's pain was very real and not foolish at all.

Saying nothing more, Eden turned away from Nevada, lifted the binoculars, and searched the landscape until she found the place where the cougar had dragged the deer. She examined the remains of the cougar's meal with the eyes of a wildlife biologist rather than those of a woman who loved deer as well as cougars. Usually cats ate their fill, raked debris over the remains and walked off to nap nearby, returning to feed until the carcass was consumed or the remains disturbed by other predators. A careful survey with the glasses allowed Eden to pick up the cougar's tracks without coming close enough to alert the wary animal when it returned to feed.

"Baby. Heel."

The big wolf came to Eden's side instantly, eyes alert, his whole being intent upon the woman who had rescued him from an agonizing steel trap despite his own best attempts to savage the very hands that were helping him. Gently, firmly, Eden's fingers wrapped around Baby's muzzle in a command for silence. The change that went over the wolf was indescribable. It was as though he had been standing in shadow and then stepped out into the sun. Past experience told Baby that the command to be quiet meant that the object of the hunt was probably close by, and the wolf was a predator from the tip of his erect ears down to the black pads of his feet. Walking as though on springs, Baby followed Eden in a wide semicircle around the deer carcass. When he came across the fresh cat tracks, he bristled but made not one sound.

For a mile they followed the tracks. Nevada followed Eden as silently as the wolf did. The cougar's tracks led up a long, shallow rise where trees offered only sparse cover, if any at all. Where the snow had melted through, a distinct green blush covered the ground. Despite the intermittent snow squalls, spring wasn't going to be denied.

Partway up the slope it became obvious that if the cougar – or the cougar's den – was on the far side, Nevada and Eden would be spotted as soon as their heads cleared the rise. Eden didn't want to panic the cat, perhaps sending it on a search for a new den for its cubs. All she wanted to do was find the cougar's tracks and follow them to the den, where she could watch the cat from a distance so as not to disturb the animal.

Frowning, Eden tested wind direction with a wet fingertip. She tested again and shrugged. The wind was weak, but unpredictable. Thankfully, scent wasn't nearly the problem it would have been if she had been tracking wolves. Cougars depended on their eyes and ears rather than their noses.

Eden stopped, looked at the gentle slope rising ahead of her, and sighed. It would be a cold, wet and sometimes muddy crawl, but there was no help for it if she hoped to get to the top without giving away her presence. She slipped out of her backpack, but before she set it aside, Nevada went past her like a black wraith. He had removed his hat and backpack but had kept his rifle.

Crouching, taking advantage of every scrap of cover, crawling on hands and knees and finally on his stomach, Nevada went up the slope with a speed and silence that sent a shiver over Eden. He moved like a cougar – confident, soundless, graceful, and potentially deadly.

Let me tell you what the real world is like, fairy-tale girl… you walk through a narrow mountain pass in single file with five handpicked men and arrive at your destination and look around and you're alone, nothing on the back trail but blood and silence.

Nevada eased up behind the cover of a bush, slowly pulled his binoculars out of his jacket, and began quartering the slope below. The cougar's tracks continued, zigzagging across a boulder field where ancient trees had fallen like jackstraws. The tracks vanished. They didn't reappear anywhere on the new snow beyond.

Patiently Nevada scanned the boulders, looking for several big stones canted together to create a sheltered hollow, or for an uprooted tree, or for any irregularity in the land that would provide a den for a mama cougar and her cubs. Finally he spotted a collection of boulders with an opening at their base where a tree had blown down and created a small cave between the uprooted tree and the rocks. In the darkness of the hollow lay a long, tawny shadow.

Nevada focused the glasses and found himself looking at the white muzzle, wheat-colored cheeks and sleek black facial markings of an adult female cougar. There was no doubt about the cat's sex, for she was lying on her side while three spotted cubs nursed enthusiastically.

Slowly Nevada put down the glasses and looked until he spotted the den once more. He memorized landmarks, cover, approaches, and the general lie of the land with the thoroughness of a man whose life had depended on knowing just such information in the past. When he was satisfied that he could find the den again, he retreated down the slope as swiftly and silently as he had gone up it.

Eden waited for him at the bottom, a silent question in her eyes. He nodded and slid his hand up along her cheek, holding her while he bent down until he could speak directly against her ear. Although there was little chance of the cat's hearing them, Nevada knew that voices carried an astonishing distance in the snowy silence.

"She's denned up about two hundred feet beyond the far side of the rise," he said softly. "She has three cubs."

A shiver coursed through Eden's body, but it came from the touch of Nevada's hand rather than from the news about the mama cougar.

"Did she sense you?" Eden asked, her voice low and soft.

"No." Nevada lowered his hand. "She's still sleeping off her meal. I doubt that she'll be out and about before sunset. Maybe not even then."

"Do you have a clear field of view from the ridge?"

"Pretty good. It would be even better from there," he said, pointing to a spot farther along the crest, "but that's the way she went from her kill to the den. I didn't figure you wanted to leave tracks there."

"Not until she's finished with the deer," Eden agreed.

Eden tried to think about possible hiding places, places to build a blind for observation, places where the cougar wouldn't be likely to find them and become alarmed; but all she could think about at that instant was how close Nevada was, and how much closer he had been seven days ago.

Motionless, Nevada watched Eden's changing hazel eyes and the delicate pressure of her teeth against her lower lip and the fiddling of her fingers over his jacket hem while she thought about other things. If she had been aware of her actions, Nevada would have been angry. But he knew she wasn't aware of what she was doing. Unfortunately, that knowledge did nothing to counter the sudden hard rush of his blood when her hand brushed against his jeans. He captured her fingers and placed them on his beard.

"If you have to pet me while you think, keep it above the waist."

Eden flushed. "I didn't mean-"

"I know," Nevada interrupted tightly. "You weren't thinking about what you were doing. But I was. I like being petted by you. I like it way too much. The ground is cold and hard and wet, but I wouldn't care, and after a few minutes you wouldn't, either. The mama cougar might get kind of curious, though. You make such wild sounds when I'm buried in you."

Eden's color deepened to scarlet.

"Don't," Nevada said in a husky voice, knowing he shouldn't speak but unable to help himself. "I like hearing you, feeling you, smelling you, tasting you. I liked it too damn much. You were a virgin, but you took all of me and shivered with pleasure…" He let breath rush out between his teeth in a hissing curse. "I came up here for cougars, not sex. So get on up that slope and watch your mama cat, fairy-tale girl. I'll circle around and reconnoiter the far side."

Nevada turned and walked off, heading away from the rise, moving with the easy, powerful stride that was as much a part of him as his pale green eyes. Eden watched him for a full minute before she took a ragged breath, turned around and went up the rise, following the tracks Nevada had made.

I came up here for cougars, not sex.

The words hurt, but he had no more meant to hurt her than she had meant for her absentminded fidgeting to arouse him.

You wouldn't have gotten sex from me, Nevada Blackthorn. You never have. You never will. What I gave you was love, not sex, and somewhere deep inside your stubborn warrior soul you know it.

Don't you?

There was no answer but the one implicit in the nickname Nevada had given to her.

Fairy-tale girl.