Warrior

8

The first red-gold tint of dawn had barely seeped through the cabin window when Baby scratched at the door, looked toward Eden's sleeping bag, then pawed the door again.

"Lord, Baby," Eden muttered, sitting up, yawning. "Don't you ever sleep?"

Baby whined.

"Stay put," said a deep voice. "I'll let him out."

Eden looked over at the mound of sleeping bag and blankets that was Nevada. "I'm already up. Besides, I've done nothing but lie around since you got here three days ago." She rubbed her eyes and stretched again. "I'm like Baby – ready to prowl."

Nevada didn't bother to argue. He came out of the sleeping bag and got to his feet in an uninterrupted motion, took two long strides and opened the cabin door. Baby flowed outside like a shadow left over from the vanishing night. Nevada shut the door and turned back toward his sleeping bag.

Eden's breath came in with an audible rush when she opened her eyes once more. Nevada wore only black jeans, and all but one of the steel buttons were undone. Hints of golden light caressed him like a lover, emphasizing the shift and coil of powerful muscles beneath smooth skin. Black hair glowed and licked over his torso like dark flames. An odd feeling lanced through Eden, a hunger and a yearning that was unlike anything she had ever experienced.

When Nevada reached for his black flannel shirt and began putting it on, Eden wanted to protest. She also wanted to run her hands over Nevada, to test the strength and resilience of his muscles, to savor all the textures of his midnight hair with her palms and fingertips, to taste his lips, his cheeks, his eyelashes, his shoulders, to trace every velvet shadow on his body with the tip of her tongue…

"Eden? Are you all right?" Nevada stared into the shadows, wondering at the cause of Eden's unnatural stillness.

"Yes," she said faintly.

"You don't sound like it," he said as he rolled up his sleeves. "How does your chest feel? Still tight?"

"I'm fine."

"You won't be if you don't stay warm." Nevada crossed the cabin, knelt, and stuffed Eden back under the mound of covers. "You're shivering. Damn it, are you trying to get pneumonia?"

Eden shook her head. "Don't worry. I'm a long way from pneumonia."

"I knew you believed in fairy tales," he muttered, pushing the blankets up to Eden's chin. "Pneumonia is unpredictable. One minute you've got the flu or a cold and the next minute, bang, you're fighting for your life."

Memories sleeted through Eden, ripping away everything but the past. She tried to speak but had no voice. She swallowed and tried again.

"I know about pneumonia." The resonances of certainty, grief and acceptance in Eden's voice made Nevada's hands pause over her blankets. He looked at her intently. In the increasing light of dawn her eyes were wide, shimmering with tears, unblinking, focused on something only she could see.

He caught a tear on his fingertip. It burned against his skin like a molten diamond.

"Eden," he said softly.

She let out her breath in a ragged sigh and blinked away the tears. "It's all right. It's just that sometimes… sometimes the memories… are stronger than other times."

"Yes," he said simply. "Sometimes they are."

Hazel eyes focused on Nevada. Eden smiled despite the traces of tears still shining on her eyelashes.

"The memories aren't sad, not completely," she said. "Just… bittersweet. Aurora was ten months old, and alive the way only a healthy baby can be. Tears and laughter, going full tilt one minute and sound asleep the next. Sweet little tornado. Her laughter made me think of bright orange poppies."

Eden smiled, remembering, and her smile was as real as her tears had been. Nevada's throat tightened around emotions he had not permitted himself to feel for too many years.

"How long ago," he asked, his voice low.

"Six years. Early in spring. I was sixteen, too old to be a child and not old enough to be anything else," Eden said, looking past Nevada, remembering another time, another place. "My sister, Aurora, was almost one. She got sick the way babies do, sniffles and short temper and endless fussing. Then she got an ear infection, then another cold, another infection, a cough, and each time she fussed less."

Eden hesitated before continuing in a low voice. "A late storm came down out of the Arctic, the temperature dropped seventy degrees and Aurora's breathing changed. We managed to get out on the radio to ask for help, but nothing could fly in that storm. All we could do was keep Aurora warm and pray that the storm broke in time."

Nevada closed his eyes for a moment, understanding all too well the feelings of helplessness and pain that Eden's family had endured. He had seen too many shattered families, shattered villages, shattered lands.

"I was the only one who didn't have a cold," Eden continued in a low voice, "so Aurora was sleeping with me. I was holding her when she died. I held her… for a long time."

The only sound was that of Nevada's big hands smoothing the blankets around Eden's shoulders as he watched her with an intensity that was almost tangible. He had no doubt of the depth and power of her grief. He could feel it beating silently around him, black velvet wings of sorrow and loss.

But he also had seen Eden smile, heard her laugh – and that, too, was genuine. Her joy in life was vivid and complex, generous and oddly serene. That was what had drawn him instantly to her – his absolute certainty that life was a hot golden cataract flowing through Eden, a fire that would burn against any darkness, any ice, any night.

Eden still smiled, although she knew that life was cruel and unpredictable, knew that it had betrayed joy and trust, leaving her to hold a dying child in her arms. She was even able to laugh.

"The ring on your necklace. It belonged to Aurora."

There was no question in Nevada's deep voice, but Eden answered anyway.

"Yes."

"Why."

Again it was not a question, not quite a plea, not fully a demand. Again Eden softly answered.

"I wear Aurora's ring to remind myself that love is never wasted, never futile."

Something stirred deep within Nevada, a part of him so long hidden that he believed it had died. The pain that came was shocking, making it impossible to breathe, much less to speak.

And he wanted to speak. He wanted to argue with Eden. He wanted it so fiercely that his hands clenched on the blankets. Yet he could find no words to counter Eden's certainty, no words to shake her serenity, nothing to equal her laughter; only a bleak, incoherent cry clawing at his soul, a cry of rage or fear or hope… or a wrenching blend of all three.

In a rush of barely controlled power, Nevada stood up and turned away from Eden. Silently she watched while he stirred the banked fire into life with a few harsh strokes, added wood, and walked to the sink. He dipped water from the bucket, primed the pump, and worked the long iron handle as savagely as though he were killing snakes. Water sped up from the hidden well and leaped out of the pump in a rushing crystal stream.

He filled three buckets, a kettle and the coffeepot before he released the pump handle. Buckets and kettle went to the hearth. The coffeepot went on the single-burner backpacking stove Eden had brought. Each move Nevada made was controlled, graceful despite the anger radiating from him like beat from the hearth.

Eden watched Nevada, reminded of the first cougar she had ever seen. It had been caged, and wild within that cage, raking with unsheathed claws at everything that came near.

What is it, Nevada? What did I say to make you so angry?

The question was asked only in the silence of Eden's mind, for she knew Nevada wouldn't answer if she spoke aloud.

After a few minutes Eden groped around in her sleeping bag, found her clothes, and dressed within the cocoon of blankets and bag. Even with pre-warmed jeans and a turtleneck sweater, she shivered when she crawled out into the cold air of the cabin. She pushed her stockinged feet into her fleece-lined moccasins, pulled on her jacket and went outside.

The soft closing of the door was like a gunshot in the taut silence of the cabin. Nevada put one more piece of firewood on the flames and sat on his heels in front of the hearth, watching the renewed leap of fire with bleak green eyes. But it wasn't the flames he was seeing. It was Eden's tears, Eden's smile, Eden's lips, Eden's eyes admiring him, wanting him.

Nevada spread his hands before the fire, saw their fine trembling, and balled his fingers into fists. He wanted Eden. He wanted her until he shook with it.

A raw word tore through the silence.

"Other than that, how do you feel?" Eden asked dryly, closing the door behind her.

Nevada spun around and came to his feet with shocking speed, his body poised for defense or attack. He hadn't heard Eden open the door.

He hadn't heard her.

"I must be losing my edge," Nevada said, lowering his hands.

She shrugged and hung her jacket on a nearby nail. "More likely your subconscious figured out I'm no threat to you, so why spend energy staying on guard?"

"No threat," Nevada repeated. Abruptly he had an impulse to laugh that was more shocking to him than the fact that he had been too caught up in his own thoughts to hear the cabin door opening behind him. "Lady, the only threat that matters is the one you don't see coming. That's the one that gets you."

"I'm not big enough to 'get' you." Eden looked past Nevada. "Besides, you can read my mind."

"I can?"

"The buckets."

"What?" he asked, taken off guard once more. Nevada turned and looked at the buckets warming next to the fire as though he had never seen them. In some ways it was true. He had pumped water as a physical outlet, not because they needed three buckets plus a kettle of water warming by the fire. "The buckets make me a mind reader?"

"Sure. You knew I wanted to take a bath. Presto. Bathwater appears."

"Wrong. You're not well enough yet."

"Pucky."

Nevada blinked. "What?"

"Don't try to change the subject. I need a bath. This time you're not going to talk me out of it."

"I didn't talk you out of it last time," Nevada pointed out coolly. "I just said I wasn't going anywhere and you decided not to have a bath after all."

"Um. Well, this time you won't get away with it. If I don't wash my hair it's going to get up and walk off my head."

"Eden-" Nevada began.

"Nope," she interrupted. "No deal. I haven't run a fever for almost two days. I'm having a bath and that's all there is to it."

"What if I stay and watch?"

"I'll blush a lot, but I'll survive."

"You're playing with fire," he said flatly.

"People who are cold tend to do that."

Nevada shook his head in disbelief, hardly able to comprehend that someone as soft and vulnerable as Eden was ignoring the kind of warnings that had made grown men back off. "Has anyone ever mentioned that you're too stubborn for your own good?"

"Frequently. Gives me great faith in the powers of human observation."

Narrowed green eyes swept over Eden's slender body. "Oh, I'm an observant, noticing kind of man, as you pointed out. Right now I'm noticing how hard and tight your nipples get when they're cold. Do they get like that for a man's mouth, too?"

Eden's lips opened but no sound came out. She was too surprised to think coherently, much less speak.

"I've noticed your tongue, too," Nevada continued. "Quick and pink and clever. I'd like to feel it all over, everywhere, every last damned aching inch of me. But most of all I've noticed those long, long legs of yours. I want to be where they meet. I want to sink into you, all the way in, and I want to watch you while I do it. I want it so much I wake up sweating." His pale, crystalline eyes pinned Eden. "Still planning on taking a bath in front of me?"

"You're not – you can't – damn it, Nevada, you won't-"

Nevada hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and waited, watching Eden with eyes that missed nothing and concealed nothing of his response to what he saw.

Eden said something succinct and inelegant, glared at Nevada and stalked past him to the fire. Calmly Nevada joined her and added more wood, redoubling the flames.

"Scrambled eggs or oatmeal?" he asked as though nothing had happened.

"No," she said between her teeth. "Thank you."

"So polite."

"You ought to try it sometime. Works wonders in human relationships."

"I prefer honesty."

"Do you? Then try this." She flashed him a sideways look from brilliant hazel eyes. "I'm not angry because you want me. I'm angry because you hate wanting me. Why, Nevada? What is so awful about wanting me?"

"Not having you."

The breath, and much of the anger, went out of Eden in a long sigh. She started to speak, made a helpless gesture of appeal with her hands, and tried again.

"I won't say no to you, Nevada."

"Why? Do you go to bed with every man who wants you?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you're damned fussy about who touches you."

"I think you're right."

"So why me, Eden?"

When Eden opened her mouth to explain the complex, unexpected, seething, surprising mixture of emotions Nevada called out of her, the only words she could think of were very simple.

"I love you, Nevada."

His mouth flattened into a savage line. "That's what I was afraid you were telling yourself. Fairy tales. You can't accept that all there is between us is sex. I wanted you the instant I saw you. You wanted me the same way. Calling it love doesn't change what it is. Sex. Pure and simple and hot as hell."

"You can call it whatever you want."

"But you'll call it love, right?"

"Why do you care what I call it? I'm not asking you to lie to me about how you feel. When you get right down to it, I've never asked you for one damn thing but a bath!"

Nevada kept on talking as though Eden had never spoken. "Let me tell you what the real world is like, fairy-tale girl. The real world is Afghanistan, where 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 your back trail but blood and silence. The real world is a place where you fight for what you believe in, and then find out that win or lose, the weak and helpless are still the first to die. The real world is a place where you know a hundred ways to kill a man and not one damned way to save a baby's life."

Eden tried to speak. It was futile. Nevada kept on talking, his eyes like splinters of ice, his voice emotionless, his words relentless, hammering on her, forcing her to hear.

"The real world is a place where you walk into villages with men whose wives and sisters and mothers and daughters have been murdered in ways you can't even imagine, villages where children are diseased and maimed by starvation, villages where babies are too weak to cry because they starved in the womb and their mothers have no milk and by the time you get to them, all you can do with your prayers and medicine and rage is hold those babies until they die and then you bury them and walk away, just walk away, because any man who cares for anything enough to be hurt by its loss is a fool."

"Nevada," Eden whispered, reaching for him, wanting to comfort him. "Nevada, I-"

Her words ended with a startled sound when his hands flashed out and pinned her wrists against her sides.

"Don't touch me, Eden," Nevada said in a low voice, but even as he spoke he was leaning down, coming closer to her, so close that all that lay between their mouths was the mingled heat of their breath. "I want you too much. I want you until I can't sleep, can't take a deep breath, can't look at my hands without seeing them on your body, can't – my God, I can't even lick my lips without wondering what you would taste like."

"Find out," Eden whispered against his lips. "Taste me, Nevada."

With a sound that was almost anguished, Nevada lowered his head the final fraction of an inch.

Eden's lips were soft, warm, undefended. They opened for Nevada without hesitation, yielding the secrets of her mouth to him at the first gliding touch of his tongue. Hot, generous, sweet, clean – he could not get enough of her. The changing taste and texture of her mouth lured him deeper and deeper until he could go no farther and yet he still wanted more, so much more. He was straining against her, shaking, tormented by all that he would not allow himself to take.

Then he realized that Eden was trembling, too, and her tears were hot against his lips. He tore his mouth from hers and stepped back, releasing her wrists as though they had burned him. When he licked his lips he tasted the salt of her tears. Something deep within him ached with a surprising pain.

He had tried to stay away from Eden because he had known that all he had to give her was tears. What he hadn't known was that he could still feel pain himself. The realization shocked him.

"Do you understand now?" Nevada asked in a soft voice, but there was nothing of softness in his eyes, his body, his certainty, his memories.

Eden was too shaken by Nevada's passion and his pain to do more than nod her head. At that instant she knew how he felt beyond any doubt or wishful misunderstanding. Her instincts had been right. Nevada was a winter man, his emotions frozen, and he was that way by choice, not accident. He had been stretched to the breaking point in Afghanistan. He had not broken.

And the price of remaining sane had been to walk away from his emotions. They were a weakness in a time and place where only the strongest and most fierce survived. Nevada Blackthorn had survived.

Warrior.

Eden had spoken only in the silence of her mind, yet Nevada's expression changed. He knew her too well, had known her instantly and wanted her with a violence equaled only by his refusal to acknowledge the possibility of love.

Sex, not love, Eden reminded herself, understanding now why Nevada had insisted on making the distinction ruthlessly clear.

Fairy tales. Fairy-tale girl.

Eyes closed, Eden interlaced her fingers to keep from reaching for Nevada in an offer of comfort and healing that he neither wanted nor would permit. Yet somehow she had to free her beautiful trapped cougar without getting ripped to pieces in the process.

If she could free him at all.

There was no guarantee of success. There was just his need and her love and the battle yet to be fought.

Win, lose or draw, she told herself bracingly.

No. It's win or lose, period. Nevada doesn't know any other way.

No second place. No truce. No genteel neutral ground between victory or defeat where two people could meet and shake hands and talk politely about things that didn't matter. Either they both won or they both lost. Whatever the outcome, Nevada would discover that he wasn't the only one willing to fight for what he believed in.

And what Eden believed in was love.

"Coffee's ready. Want some?" Nevada asked.

"Please," Eden said absently, still caught in the instant she had first understood the risk and necessity of what she must do.

"Back to being polite, huh?" he asked. He crouched over the coffeepot and poured a fragrant stream of coffee into a mug.

Eden gave Nevada a sidelong glance from her place by the hearth and decided it was time to fire the opening shot of her undeclared war.

"Go to the devil, Nevada, but hand over my coffee first."

His mouth lifted at the left corner. Without looking at Eden he set the pot back on the burner and handed her the mug as he turned back to the fire.

"Guess I had that one coming," he said. "And a few more besides. But I'm feeling generous."

Nevada turned and looked at Eden over his shoulder. "That was the second thing I noticed about you in West Fork. Your smile. Not a bit of calculation in it. Generous."

"My smile was the second thing, huh? So what was the first thing you noticed?"

"I'm a man," Nevada said dryly. "What do you think I noticed?"

"That I was wearing a quilted down jacket?" Eden suggested, her voice as dry as his.

"Yeah, something like that. Then you started walking. You move like a woman."

"Nevada, I am a woman."

He shot Eden a glittering green look before he turned back to the fire. "You were the wrong woman in the wrong place at the wrong time – and you walked right up to me."

"You had a beard."

"So did the bartender."

"I liked yours better. It looked sleek and healthy, a wonderful male pelt. I wanted to rub my cheek against it to see if it felt as good as it looked." Eden set aside the coffee mug, stretched and smiled to herself as she fired the second shot. "Then I found out it felt even better than it looked. When you kissed me, your beard was like a thick silk brush on my skin. I liked that, Nevada. It made me wonder what your beard would feel like on my neck, on my bare shoulders, on the inside of my wrists, between my…"

"You just can't stop pushing, can you?" Nevada interrupted roughly.

Eden finished stretching, lowered her arms, and let her fingertips idly brush Nevada's hair. "When you don't leave me any room to move, it's hard not to push."

Nevada hesitated in the act of dropping another piece of wood on the already vigorous fire. When he let go of the wood, there was a shower of sparks. Without a word he rotated the buckets, bringing a cool side to meet the increasing heat of the flames. He stretched out a long arm, picked up the mug of coffee and handed it to Eden again.

"Nervous?" he asked dryly.

"What?"

"You're petting me. That's what you do when you're nervous, isn't it? Pet the nearest thing?"

Eden realized that her fingertips had returned to ruffling Nevada's hair as though he were Baby. "Like I said. It's hard not to push or touch when you're being crowded."

"I didn't know I was crowding you," Nevada said, pinning her with a pale green glance. "In fact, I would have sworn it was the other way around."

For a moment Eden sipped coffee, gathering her scattered thoughts. She had fired the first two shots, yet she felt as though she had just stumbled into an ambush. The combination of passion and calculation in Nevada's eyes was unnerving. Obviously there was more to this kind of skirmish than she had thought. Maybe she would be better off doing as Nevada did – using the kind of honesty that could rock a man back on his heels.

"I'm not used to being told when I can track cats," Eden said, "or when I can take a bath, what I can eat, where I can-"

"You're sick," Nevada interrupted.

"I was sick. I'm well now. I have a very good appreciation of my own physical limits. Being raised in the Yukon does that for you. I'm fine, Nevada. So if you keep me locked up any longer, you'd better be prepared to deal with a major case of the rips."

"The rips?"

"Yeah. I'm like Baby. If I can't tear around outside, I'll tear around inside."

"The rips," Nevada repeated, shaking his head. "Honey, I've never met anyone like you."

"That makes us even," Eden said, watching him over the rim of the mug. "I've never met anyone like you, either. And I've never been kissed like that, heaven and hell and the rainbow burning between…"

She saw the sudden expansion of Nevada's pupils, heard the intake of his breath, sensed the hot leap of his blood.

"Was it like that for you, Nevada?"

For an electric instant Eden thought Nevada was going to pull her down to the hearth and kiss her again. Instead, he came to his feet in a lithe rush, stalked across the cabin, grabbed his jacket and opened the front door.

"I'm going to look for that cougar's den."

"Too much honesty, huh?" asked Eden. "Want me to go back to being polite? Or would you rather I just work off my excess energy by petting you?"

The door closed very softly behind Nevada.

"If Baby gets in your way, send him back to me," Eden called through the door. "I'll frolic with him, instead."

Nevada didn't answer.

Eden went to the window and looked out. Nevada was heading across the clearing with long, determined strides. An ecstatic Baby was leaping around him.

"I think, in military terminology, Nevada just executed a strategic disengagement," Eden said aloud. "Ordinary folks would call it a retreat."

Smiling, she tested the water in the nearest bucket and nodded approvingly. By the time she finished breakfast, the water would be warm enough for a bath.

*

Two hours later Eden was humming softly, feeling as clean as the sunlight itself. When she went outside to check on the bedding she had draped over the woodpile to air, warm air surrounded her. She shook out Nevada's sleeping bag and flipped it over to soak up more sunshine. The sheet she used to line her own bag was hanging from a rope strung between the cabin and a nearby tree. She touched the sheet. Nearly dry, but not quite. The lacy beige bras were still damp. The pairs of panties were almost dry, but not quite. She decided she could live without underwear for another hour. She went to check on her own bag, which was thrown over a bush in the clearing beyond the cabin. Warm air was everywhere, breathing spring into the day.

With the season's typical capriciousness, a chinook had arrived, sending the temperature soaring into the seventies. Meltwater trickled and glittered and shone everywhere. The sunlight itself was hot. The shade was crisp. The warm wind was a transparent river of wine. The air was rich with the scent of newly revealed earth. Every breath, every instant of being alive, was a sensual feast.

When a hidden bird sang, Eden stopped in the act of reaching for her sleeping bag and closed her eyes, absorbing the piercing, unexpected song with the same intense awareness with which she absorbed the sunlight itself. The bird repeated its call, notes rippling and soaring, transforming the day with music.

There was a rush of air, the near-silent brushing of feet against the ground, and a certainty that she was no longer alone. Eden opened her eyes and turned around.

"Hello, Baby," she said, rubbing the animal's fur, but it was Nevada she was looking at. In the sunlight he looked both dark and fierce, the power of him apparent in even his smallest movement. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I narrowed the search area. I'll try again after lunch. With this chinook, the snow is melting fast, even in sheltered places." Nevada's eyes noted the sheen of Eden's pale hair, the delicate color of her cheeks, the subtle radiance of her skin that only health could give. He closed his eyes for an instant, trying to still the hard rush of his blood. It was impossible. "Did you enjoy your bath?"

"Yes. I heated more water for you, in case you were interested."

"I am. Thank you."

Nevada's formality made Eden blink. "You're welcome. Yell when you're finished and I'll make lunch."

Nevada nodded, turned away and walked into the cabin without looking back. Sighing, Eden pulled her sleeping bag off the bush, shook out the warm folds and draped the bag over the bush once more.

Nevada's right. Warfare shouldn't be polite. It's worse that way.

Warfare didn't get any better when conducted over a meal. The hard salami and zesty mustard sandwiches Eden made lost their savor when eaten in stilted silence. She tried conversational gambits that ranged from outrageous to abstruse. Polite, dead-end answers were Nevada's only response.

Finally Eden looked at Baby, who was begging shamelessly at Nevada's knee, and said, "Bite him."

Baby gave his mistress a look of lupine disbelief.

"You heard me," Eden said. "First Nevada complains when I'm polite. Then he walks out on me when I'm honest. Then he uses politeness as a weapon against me. So make lunch out of him. Lord knows the man isn't good for anything else."

Baby ignored her. He rested his long muzzle once again on Nevada's forearm just beneath the rolled-up sleeve.

"Give the man some space, Baby," Eden said. "Can't you see he isn't interested? Quit begging."

Eden winced as her own words echoed in her mind. Not bad advice. I think I'll take it myself.

She stood up, opened the cabin door, looked at Baby and said, "Out."

Baby trotted outside, found a pool of deep shade and flopped down. Eden stowed the remaining food in the ice chest and went to stand by the open window, letting sunlight and warm spring wind wash over her.

Nevada finished his sandwich, drank some springwater and began packing his gear and stacking it near the door, ready to be carried to the truck. As the stack grew, Eden realized that Nevada was preparing to return to the ranch headquarters – and there was no guarantee that he would be back at Wildfire Canyon anytime in the future.

The realization sent a chill through Eden. When she had decided to fight the battle on Nevada's terms, she hadn't considered what she would do if he simply withdrew from the field, taking her heart with him and leaving her no chance to touch him in return.

Eden didn't know much about waging war. Nevada did. He was very good at it.