She pleaded with him to hurry. But Hunter was relentless.
He drew her up with his mouth, then slowed his movements, leaving her hovering frantically on the edge. Minutes went by while she cried his name and begged for release.
Finally, when she was cursing him and promising to permanently damage his anatomy, she at last felt the beginnings of an all-consuming shudder roll wildly through her body. She must’ve forgotten to breathe. As she sagged against him, her internal muscles convulsed again and again—and she totally blacked out.
When she opened her eyes, they were lying side by side on top of a thick pile of Navajo blankets on the floor of the main room. She turned and smiled at him.
“You okay?” he murmured.
She nodded and rolled closer. “Better than okay.”
They made love again. This time with a tenderness that nearly brought back the tears.
Over and over they reached for each other through the darkest hours of the night. With soft sighs and pleasured gasps, they explored one another’s bodies and experimented with erotic techniques.
Bailey rediscovered what she’d learned as a girl—that Hunter was a strong man who knew how and when to be vulnerable. She also came to an important revelation somewhere in the middle of having him pin her arms above her head while her legs draped over his shoulders. This was a night to end all nights. A night and a love to remember.
Something was tickling his nose. Hunter opened his eyes and found himself curled around a sleeping Bailey, with his face buried in her hair.
Not ready to disturb her yet, he inched closer to her naked body, then lay quietly, watching her sleep. Thinking about their fantastic night and about how he would like to have many, many more of them, he felt his gut wrench in response.
A long-term relationship with her would be impossible. She had been raised in the city and belonged there. He had been raised in Dinetah and belonged here.
Maybe he could find a way to exist in her rich and fast world. Maybe. But it would have to be after the Brotherhood brought an end to the Skinwalkers’ reign of terror. And then it would have to wait until after he finished his contracted service with the Tribal Police. And then…
No, it was even more than all that.
She was the sun. Brilliant. Out there. Shining her light for everyone to see.
And he was the moon. Quiet. Smiling. Only showing part of the whole at any one time.
They didn’t mesh. They never would.
Bailey stirred, turned on her back and then yawned. “Hey.” She rolled over to face him.
“Hey, yourself.”
She reached out for him, the same way she had throughout the night. But it was nearly dawn, so he took her hands in his own and held her still.
“We need to move. Pack up, eat something then leave. Let’s not make any mistakes at the last moment.”
“Okay.” She’d said the word tentatively, as though she was well aware that their sensual time together was coming to an abrupt halt. That they would never be together this way again.
Rolling on her side and sitting up, she ran a hand through her hair. “Yuck. Mind if I get in the bathroom first?”
“Not if you don’t take very long.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t. How long will it take you to fix us something to eat? I’m starved.”
He’d been turning over to sit up when she’d made that pronouncement and nearly crashed into the table leg beside their blanket. She was hungry? Before she’d said food was the last thing she wanted in the morning.
Something had really changed. But he wasn’t about to say anything. Not him. He’d rather live through the day, thanks.
True to her word, Bailey was back out of the bathroom in less than ten minutes. Amazing.
He’d found some of his great-aunt’s canned mutton stew and had heated it on the cookstove, which stood in the middle of the room, as in all traditional hogans. He’d also found a sealed tin of cornmeal and made fry bread to go with the stew. Maybe that didn’t qualify as breakfast food where Bailey came from, but it would have to do.
“Mmm. Great. I didn’t know you could cook.” She was working on her second bowl of stew.
“Sure. When I was a kid helping my mother’s clan with their sheep, I learned to make a few things over a campfire. Shepherds usually stay overnight on the hillsides or in the fields to protect their animals from predators.”
“That must’ve been an interesting part of your childhood. Better, at least, than the time you spent with your father, I would imagine.”
He nodded and then stuffed the last bite of stew into his mouth.
“I meant to ask this when we talked about your father before…. What was your mother doing while you and your dad were out driving around Navajoland?”
Swallowing with difficulty, Hunter tried to answer the question. “My mother was a schoolteacher. She home-schooled me, and worked part-time with others when I was away.”
“How come she didn’t do that with your brother?”
“Kody went to boarding school. That’s the traditional thing for Navajo kids to do. At one time, the federal government insisted on boarding schools for reservation kids. Some of those schools exist even today in Dinetah.
“Back when Kody was small,” he explained, “my mother was still hoping that if she kept everything according to tradition, the way she’d been taught, my father would see us in balance and find some harmony of his own.”
Hunter stood and poured himself a cup of the boiled coffee he’d made out of old saved grounds. “But it never happened. She gave up by the time I was old enough to attend school.”
“You told me your dad did move the family back to Dinetah, right? And he was learning the language and the traditions from you. He must’ve been trying.”
Shaking his head, Hunter took a sip of the sludge in his cup. “That wasn’t an attempt to find harmony. I’m not sure why learning the traditions seemed so important to my father. But it probably had something to do with money. That man was one of the greediest people I’ve ever known. All he cared about was money and women.”
“That’s just awful. What did your mother have to say about the women? Why didn’t she leave him?”
Hunter set his cup down, hesitating to tell her. Should he spit it out? He’d never told anyone in his whole life. Not even his own brother. Was it time to finally say it? And could he trust Bailey with the truth?
Yes, with a moment’s reflection, he knew he trusted her with everything. Besides that, after today he no doubt would stop seeing much of the wealthy Ms. Howard. And she would probably forget all about her affair with the Navajo policeman.
Taking a breath, he began, “My father abused my mother. Beat her. Even broke her bones sometimes. He threatened to kill her and Kody, and me, too, if she ever told anyone or tried to leave him.”
Bailey put a hand over her mouth to conceal a gasp. It was a bad image, he knew. But it was one he lived with every day of his life.
“Did you see him do it?” she asked with a frown. “Hit her?”
“Sure. Oh, my old man mostly waited until I was in bed before he let her have it. But occasionally his temper got the better of him when I was still in the room.”
“Did he hit you, too?”
“Just the one time I tried to interfere. He clipped me good in the chest. Knocked the wind out of me. That was when I was ten. The jerk didn’t live long enough for me to grow up and take him on. And he was too much of a coward to touch her when my older brother was home. Kody was big enough by then to make him sorry he ever had a temper.”
“So Kody didn’t try to stop him, either?”
“Kody didn’t know. The beatings only started after he’d gone. No one knew. I really believed my father when he said he would kill all of us if my mother or I told anyone. I already told you he was a killer. He wouldn’t have blinked an eye over our dead bodies.”
Hell. That whole miserable story sounded both trite and perverse, even to hi
s own ears. Hunter was truly sorry he’d said anything.
Now Bailey would think the worst of him. Think, as he did, that he would end up being exactly like his father.
Hunter figured it was time to change the subject.
“My mother has never agreed to tell Kody any of this. She claims it would only hurt him, and there’s nothing anyone can do now. But, hopefully, she is finally finding some happiness,” he said with a smile. “She’s getting married again. This time, the guy had better be good to her…or else. I’m no kid anymore.”
He didn’t want to tell Bailey that he and his mother had never been able to talk through what had happened to them. Or that he had been too sick to his stomach when she’d broken a bone in a car accident to even visit her. Broken bones and his mother were much too familiar and too horrifying to bear.
All that made him sound like a coward. So he kept his mouth shut.
Instead, he grinned like he always did to cover his troubles, and started picking up their dirty plates.
“Hunter?”
“Yeah?” His hands were full of dishes, but he stopped and turned to look at her.
“I love you.”
The dishes hit the floor and made a terrible clattering noise. Where the hell had that come from?
“Uh…”
“Oh, you don’t have to love me in return. It’s okay. I’m not a kid anymore, either. I’ve been to rehab and have spent hours and hours with a psychiatrist. I’m fully aware, at long last, that not everything you want wants you back.”
“Uh…” He couldn’t think, the adrenaline was rushing through his veins again. “Damn it, slick…I mean, Bailey. This is really not a good time to talk about such things. Your life is in danger.” He would try to be reasonable, even if his brain had actually flown up the chimney pipe the minute she’d spoken the words. “We’ve been out in the desert, away from your family and friends, for nearly a week. You’re still in shock from being kidnapped and nearly burned alive. You can’t know—”
“I love you, Hunter. Maybe I have since the moment we met eight years ago. Circumstances don’t change that. I’ve tried to change it, but I couldn’t. You can’t even change it. Though I know you’ve tried, too. That’s just the way it is.” She gave him a weak smile and shrugged. “I thought I should actually tell you—in case I don’t make it back.”
Hearing her talk about her own death brought him sharply into reality. He sat down next to her and picked up her hand.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you for trying to make me feel like I’m decent. Like I’m not a clone of my father. No one has ever cared enough about me to take the trouble. But, Bailey, you are not about to die. We will get out of this. In a few more hours you’ll be back home to civilization. Back in your family’s arms. Back to long hot showers and shoe shopping. I swear it.”
She was shaking her head. “You think I’m only trying to make you feel good? Don’t be an ass. People can change their lives,” she insisted. “I can. I know it. None of us is born with bad genes. Beating your wife is not hereditary. Neither is being terminally self-absorbed, like I was.”
Now she had him shaking his head. But she wouldn’t let him get a word in before she forged ahead.
“You are a good man. Look what you’re doing with your life. You fight crime during the day as a cop. And at night you’re secretly fighting the Skinwalkers in order to save the world. You’ve become a medicine man to help your clan. You care about your mother’s welfare and you love your brother. What more can you do to prove it to yourself? You are not now, never were and never will be like your father.”
“You’ve changed, I agree,” he interjected as she took a breath. “Anyone can see that. You’ve beaten your addiction, and now you’ve discovered how strong you really can be. You’re amazing. But I am not in your league, slick. Not even close. When you’re home, back having lunch with your friends, you won’t even notice I’m not around. I’ll just be that guy who helped you save the baby from a crazy group of witches.”
He dropped her hand and stood. “It’s time to clear out. The sun’s up. We have to go.”
Bailey opened her mouth to say something else. The man was still the most frustrating son of a gun she had ever encountered. She wasn’t about to go back to her old friends and her old ways. Not now. She’d changed forever.
Arguing with him would be useless, however. So she shut her mouth and shoved her chair back to help clean up.
She used a broom for the first time in her life. Sweeping up the remnants of broken dishes was probably easier than washing them would’ve been.
As Hunter washed the frying pan and tidied up the bathroom, her brain was working overtime. Somehow in all his denial, in all that long story about his family, she could swear he was trying to tell her he was in love with her, too.
Was it just her imagination? Did she want it so badly she believed it must be true?
He acted like a man who was afraid. Not of being exactly like his father; Bailey was positive any man she loved couldn’t be that dumb.
But Hunter certainly seemed afraid to give in to his love, for some reason she couldn’t quite grasp yet.
She would understand it all eventually. If the two of them really did live through the coming day, figuring out Hunter was going to become her newest project.
Desperately in love with him now, Bailey knew she always would be. She’d said it out loud, and she felt it in every fiber and cell of her body.
Maybe she was destined to become the oldest Navajo groupie on earth. She’d be following Hunter around, while he fought crime and flirted with all the girls, until they were both stooped and gray.
Hmm. Or maybe not. That wasn’t such a great picture. But she was still determined to stick with him until she understood where he was coming from.
“You ready to take those last few miles back home, slick?”
He was standing in the doorway, waiting for her to walk out ahead of him. Seeing him with the sunlight catching in his hair, her heart flipped over and lodged in her throat. She would follow him anywhere.
“I’m right behind you,” she told him truthfully. “I can keep up. I swear.”
And she meant every word.
Levi George shoved his hand in his jacket pocket and fingered the knife he had secreted there. The director of the Navajo Department of Public Service would not normally carry a weapon. But the dog-lieutenant of the Skinwalker army, the right-hand man to the Navajo Wolf, most certainly would—and did.
“So…” Levi began, speaking with gritted teeth. “Let’s go through it again. Tell me how you let an old grandmother and a baby slip through your fingers.”
The two mercenaries standing in front of him knew they were in big trouble. One of them had already witnessed a partner lose his eyesight by means of a hot poker. And now these two were close to losing their lives.
George had met them at the right place and time this morning, as he had also done last night. He’d ordered this meeting for dawn at the old missionary cabin. And he’d fully expected them to bring the grandmother and the baby back with them. Either alive or dead. It didn’t much matter which.
Instead, they’d arrived empty-handed.
“The females must’ve had a Brotherhood warrior helping them,” the slightly more talkative of the two said. “Had to be some kind of magic that spirited them away in the end, I’m guessing.”
When the hired hand saw his boss’s eyes narrowing, he hesitated. Then he visibly began to shake and whine.
“Just like we told you at that hogan when we met last night, we had no trouble at all locating where they’d spent a few hours in a…c-coyote den.” He was stuttering with fear. “And when we followed their tracks through the cliffs and called you to meet with us, we were sure we were catching up to them. But…”
The man who had been speaking backed up a step, looking as if he was about to be sick. The director checked the other man’s whereabouts, and found him with a hand on the doo
r and ready to run.
These excuses were becoming tiresome. After he’d left them to search the area last evening, he’d spent the rest of the night putting the sacred map in its new hiding place. And it was well-hidden, if he did say so himself.
Now he was running short of time and patience. The director had only an hour or two left to get back to the Navajo Wolf with his story about losing the map. Any longer than that, and his dual personas as Skinwalker Dog and Navajo Nation Director would be permanently compromised. He himself would have no use left for a priceless map—because he wouldn’t be alive.
He pulled the knife from his pocket, flipped it open and waved it in the air. “Explain one more time what happened before we met up last night. And try to sound like you have a modicum of intelligence.”
Both men gasped. He heard a trickling noise and saw that the one by the door had wet his pants.
“Nobody moves,” George threatened. “Not until I’m satisfied there is nothing left to be done.”
“The Brotherhood must’ve helped them by magic,” the other man cried. “Had to be. Like we told you, the old woman’s tracks came right up to the edge of a slot canyon. She’d been traveling with a Navajo wearing moccasin boots. The male’s boot prints moved away from the canyon, but the old woman’s didn’t. She had to have flown off the ledge—by magic.”
The director sighed. “That’s what you claimed last night. How can you be so stupid? Where’d you check after you searched that sheep herder’s hogan?”
“Everywhere. We looked all night. Down in the bottom of the canyon. Up on the cliffs above them. There were three other hogans in the area, and we checked them all.”
This was really more than he had time for. His life was on the line. So were theirs.
Without another word, he flicked his hand and the stiletto flew across the room. It caught the man standing by the door in the ear and pinned a piece of his flesh to the door behind him.
“Ow,” the man howled. “You nearly murdered me. And I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t even say nothing to that pretty mama last night.” He grabbed his ear and sniffed. “She was supposed to be mine, too. But I was doing what you said.”
Books by Linda Conrad Page 70
