The Stealth Commandos Trilogy (44 page)

His voice stirred her senses like the wind rifling through the trees overhead. His hand stroked down her arm and caught hold of the fist she’d clasped against her stomach. He covered it and brought her up against him, holding her gently, breathing warmth into her hair.

“This could work,” she allowed.

He felt wonderful, as warm and enveloping as the night he’d held her on the mountain. She closed her eyes, wishing as she had then that she could be absorbed into his heat, drawn into his sheltering male strength like a kitten tucked away in a pocket. She didn’t want to move, to think, or even to breathe, for fear that she might lose the beautiful feelings he brought her.

“Honor, you said some things in there, and I—” He hesitated, clearing the graininess from his throat. “I know you were angry at your father, but I wondered if you meant all of that . . . or any of it?”

Was he stumbling over the words? She thanked God at that moment that she wasn’t looking a him. Surely he would have seen the astonishment in her eyes. She never thought she would live long enough to hear Johnny Starhawk fumble his lines. She must really have blown some circuits with her proposal.

“Honor?” he pressed, his arm tightening around her middle. “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you mean it?”

A terrible impulse came over her. She wanted to do something she wouldn’t have believed herself capable of. She wanted to keep him dangling. “That I loved my father?” she said softly, wickedly. “Of course I meant it.”

The muscles of his arm tautened. She could feel the heat of his body burning through her clothing. She could hear his impatient exhalation and knew she was in trouble. Wonderful trouble!

He turned her in his arms, whirling her so possessively, she was breathless and dizzy as he caught her up against him. The dark flames leaped in his eyes. His gaze burned as hotly as ever, but there was love in its heat, tenderness.

“Didn’t anybody ever teach you not to tease the animals in the zoo?” he warned. A sexy growl rumbled in his throat as he curved his hand to her throat. “Despite your efforts, this one isn’t quite tamed or domesticated yet.”

“And never will be,” she conceded, a thrill spiraling up from the depths of her. “Despite my efforts.” She touched his mouth, her fingers trembling over its fine sensuality. “Yes, I meant it, every word. I love you, Johnny. I always have.”

He smiled with effort, as if his jaw had suddenly locked. “Forgive me if I’m having some trouble with this,” he said. “I never thought it could happen.” His laughter had an aching sound. “Are you sure? You actually want to marry me? A crazy Irish-Apache lawyer?”

“It’s the lawyer part I’m worried about.”

He shook his head, disbelieving. “As long as you know what you’re getting into. I’m not an easy man to live with. I’m prone to jealous rages, and I’ll probably do terrible things to you, just like in the mountains.”

“Oh! I’m looking forward to it!”

His jaw locked again, and his dark eyes flared with pain and passion. “I love you, baby.”

She gazed up at him, her chin trembling, her heart so full she couldn’t speak a word.

Johnny knew the sweetest kind of agony as he pulled her into his arms and rocked her. She felt like heaven, or all he would ever know of that perfect place. She was the girl of his dreams, the woman of his heart. Maybe this was destiny playing itself out in his life in some inexplicable way. He didn’t know. But whatever was happening, it was bigger than his puny doubts and fears. He knew legal procedure like the back of his hand, but there was so much he didn’t understand about life, things like forgiveness, tolerance, and humility. Maybe he was supposed to learn those things . . . from her.

“Let’s have kids,” he said, holding her back.

“Oh, yes! Beautiful Irish-Apache babies with dark eyes.”

“No way,” he countered, laughing huskily. “Dimpled cherubs with golden hair and misty blue eyes.”
He loved her.
Nothing could alter that irrefutable fact. He loved her like nothing else in this world, with every cell of his heart and mind.

A leaf spiraled down from one of the trees above them and landed in Honor’s hair. Johnny picked it out of her blond tresses and was about to toss it aside when Honor gasped.

“No, let me,” she said, taking it from him. She waited for a gust of wind and released the leaf, watching it catch the currents and soar, free and trembling, off on a great adventure.

Tears sparkled in her eyes as she turned back to Johnny. “That was your grandfather wishing us good luck.”

Six Months Later . . .

J
OHNNY HAD NEVER
seen the river look like that. Even in his youth, when the sunsets had often been spectacular, he’d never seen the twilight sky open up and pour out its fire, turning the water’s surface to a necklace of dark jewels set in gold.

The crowd that had gathered for the ceremony alongside the riverbanks seemed silenced by its beauty. Or perhaps it was the woman walking among them who created the hush. The water’s jeweled surface was Honor’s backdrop as she approached the canopy of cottonwoods where Johnny stood with Chy Starhawk. In her fringed and beaded buckskin dress and with her hair around her shoulders, she looked as if she’d risen from the river’s golden radiance.

“Johnny,” she said, his name on her lips even before she’d reached him. Tears sparkled in her eyes as if she were reliving some tender moment of their adolescence. She came to stand beside him and took his dusky hand, reminding him how different they were, and how much the same.

Johnny thought about the gamut of emotion he’d experienced in their relationship—the young love and reverence, the hurt, the hatred, the grief—and realized he’d come full circle. Perhaps he could never love her with the same fierce purity of youth, perhaps their innocence was gone forever, but the reverence was there, the sweetness that ripped through his heart and seared his soul like fire. His feelings for her were as deep and spiritual as they were animal. They’d taken on a unifying force that seemed as elemental as the earth itself.

Their hands joined, they turned to face Chy Starhawk and to silently receive his blessings. In the ancient language of the Apache, the shaman said a traditional prayer for the woman first, and then for the man, after which he turned in each direction of the compass, offering sacred pollen to the four winds.

When he was finished, Chy Starhawk stepped aside, and the minister of the church Honor had attended as a child stepped forward. “We are gathered here today to unite this man and this woman in holy matrimony,” he said to the crowd.

Blood roared through Johnny’s heart, blocking out everything else the clergyman said. Johnny heard nothing but the low thunder of the river behind them, the answering thunder of his pulse. He was aware that Honor had released his hand, that she was standing beside him, but nothing else reached his consciousness until the minister repeated the phrase, “Who gives this woman . . . ?”

In the silence that followed, Johnny turned to the crowd and saw Hale Bartholomew rise. The older man’s blue eyes were lit like torches in the frail bones of his face. They burned with the pride of his bearing and the last vestiges of his indomitable will to win. Honor’s father was reluctant in his surrender, but Johnny accepted the grace with which the older man met his gaze, the wisdom with which he acknowledged what was inevitable. They might never be friends, Johnny realized, but they both loved the same woman, and that would keep them from being enemies, from meeting in the battleground of the courtroom.

“I do,” Hale Bartholomew said. “I give this woman.” Johnny watched as Honor’s eyes filled with tears. He wanted to stop the ceremony and take her into his arms. He wanted to shield her from anything and everything that could hurt her, but he knew her pain came from joy. She hadn’t expected her father to come to this ceremony, or that he would ever dignify their union in such a way.

Johnny reached for her hand, gripping it tightly. As they turned back to the minister, something that might have been tears blurred his own eyes. He felt her joy, her pain. He wanted her to feel his reassurance. It would be all right. They would balance the years of heartbreak with as many years of happiness. Only tears of joy, Honor, he promised silently, swearing to do everything in his power to keep that vow. Only tears of joy.

The crowd rose to their feet as the minister pronounced the couple husband and wife. As Johnny turned to Honor, he caught a glimpse of familiar faces among the guests—Chase Beaudine with a cowboy hat tilted low over his eyes and a dimpled redheaded baby in his arms. His wife, Annie, was standing next to him, very proud, very pregnant. Even Geoff Dias was there, sitting on his Harley at the back of the assembly, a raffish smile on his face. But what Johnny didn’t see as he bent to kiss his new bride was the hawk soaring over their heads.

It swooped and dipped above them, its snow-white wingtips silvery in the sunlight as it pulled out of a graceful dive and swept upward, ever upward, rising to meet the falling sun. Chy Starhawk saw the magnificent creature and turned, following the bird’s ascent until, in a sudden, brilliant flash, it disappeared from sight. It was a good omen. All things would flow in harmony for the new couple, the sun, the moon, the stars. Their love, brought to life at the river’s edge, would be fruitful, just as the spring floods made the earth warm and the soil fertile. The seed of their seed would be favored for generations to come.

The shaman smiled. His blessing had been heard.

M
ANY THANKS TO
John Flint, a volunteer at the Apache Culture Center in Fort Apache, Arizona, for taking the time to describe the natural beauty of the White Mountain Apache Reservation to me, complete with the technical logistics of the town of Whiteriver. He was infinitely patient with a nervous writer who’d never personally visited the reservation but wanted very much to get the details right. If I succeeded, he deserves a large share of the credit. Where I didn’t succeed, the responsibility is entirely mine.

My thanks also to Edgar Perry, head of the Apache Culture Center, for the graciousness with which he allowed me to interrupt his busy schedule with my questions. I owe a debt of gratitude to both Mr. Perry and Mr. Flint for their input on ancient Apache rituals and ceremonies—and for understanding that I had to take some “literary license” with certain elements of a rich and wonderful culture for the dramatic purposes of this story.

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Nine

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Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

“
P
SSSST,
R
ANDY!
This guy’s the closest thing to an untamed animal I’ve seen outside the L.A. Zoo. Shall I send him in?”

Miranda Witherspoon glanced up from the work on her desk, wincing at the flushed excitement of her personal assistant, who’d just opened the office door a crack and stuck her head in.

“See if you can reschedule him, Barb,” Randy pleaded, gingerly pressing her fingertips to a spot just above her right eyebrow and what promised to be the mother of all headaches. “The last applicant tried to bench press my file cabinet. And the one before that—with the shaved head and gargoyle tattoos—had hand grenades stashed in his camouflage fatigues. I saw them when he scratched himself.
Please
, Barb, make up some excuse.”

“I’m not sure that’s wise, Randy. He’s not the type you pat on the bottom and point toward the door.” Her voice dropped to a hush. “He looks like he could rip the buttons off your blouse with his teeth.”

Randy shuddered. “Then tell him I’ve got PMS. Macho types are known to be terrified of mice and overwrought women. It’s a male hormone thing.”

Barb shot Randy a long-suffering look, mumbled something that sounded like “craven coward,” and shut the door.

Randy continued to massage the tenderness above her eyebrow, one of the many trigger points for her tension headaches, according to her chiropractor. Her relief at postponing the appointment was mixed. She’d been interviewing mercenaries all morning, and if she’d known how difficult it was going to be hiring someone to find her missing fiancé, she would have tried an employment agency instead of taking out an ad in a soldier-of-fortune magazine. The men who’d responded so far looked more than capable of handling the job, but they’d all refused the assignment when she’d mentioned the Brazilian crime czar she believed was involved in her fiancé’s disappearance.