“Shirt.” It was all he said. But she knew. She hadn’t failed. She started laughing. Robert’s childish laughter echoed her own.
She had been determined that she wasn’t going to cry, but then, there she was, bawling like a baby, she and Robert both. Brad would have said that she was making a spectacle of herself, but Cody . . . She suspected that he would have had a tear or two in his eyes, as did the people she suddenly glimpsed through blurry eyes standing on the school porch.
Crying and grinning, what a combination they were. Joey Kills the Soldier, Dalah, Linda, Karen Many Goats, Miss Halliburton, Julie Begay, Dorothy, Becky, Delbert—they were all there.
Marshall touched her shoulder. She looked up into the warm, smiling face. “You’ll return to the schoolroom?” he asked.
She came to her feet, still holding Robert’s hand. “Not just yet. There’s something I still have to do. Don’t wait for me.”
She kissed Robert on the forehead. “I’ll come back . . . soon,” she told him, and knew that this time he understood her.
She waved at the others, who watched in puzzlement as she turned back and crossed the school grounds toward her apartment. She found what she was looking for on the top shelf of the closet where she had tossed it. She smiled shyly at her reflection in the mirror. With the blanket wrapped around her, she did look like a squaw. A marriage blanket, Cody had called it when he had bundled her in it the night of the windsong ceremony. Would he still want her?
The question echoed in the chambers of her heart with each step that took her closer to the old mission. No fear gripped her, as it used to, when she crossed the narrow foot bridge that spanned Kaibeto Wash . . . only the fear of what Cody would—or would not—do.
The mission’s heavy door was open to let in the warming sunshine. The muted pounding told her where he was. She followed the portico that rimmed the courtyard to the clapboard building at the rear. Inside a fire blazed at the forge, highlighting the planes and ridges and hollows of Cody’s chiseled face. Naked to the waist, he wielded the hammer against the anvil with a grace that was sensuously masculine. She stood there watching, afraid to move, now that she had come this far.
And she had come far. She had traveled the long road to find the woman within her. She had found Abbie Dennis.
With an Indian’s sixth sense, Cody must have perceived the presence of another in the shed. He halted his hammering of the silver strip and slowly turned to face her. For a long moment he didn’t say anything, simply stared at the barefooted woman who stood before him, her tawny gold hair draped over the blanket wrapped about her. His eyes gleamed brilliantly against his dark face. “You have made the commitment?”
“Yes.” She went to stand before him, dropping the blanket at their feet. “I want to be here at Kaibeto with you.”
Still he didn’t move. “What happens, Abbie, if that need to find the woman you are, to prove yourself, starts to eat away at you again? Will it erode your love for me, too?”
She cupped the strong line of his jaw in hands that trembled with the love she bore him and looked up into the dark eyes that hungrily searched hers. “I found myself here at Kaibeto, my love,” she whispered. “You . . . Robert . . . the others here . . . have shown me the Abbie Dennis who was inside me all along. The conflict in me—trying to be my own woman, wanting to be your woman—is resolved. I can be both. I am both.”
“And the conflict between our two worlds?” he asked, his voice husky with the anxiety that obviously gnawed at him.
A slow smile danced at the corners of her lips. “You managed to bridge both worlds. Can I, as a woman, do less?” The smile faded to a serious look of pleading. “Oh, Cody, I love your world. I love the tranquility of Kaibeto, the stark, uncluttered beauty of the landscape. I love the challenge of the elements and the people—their humor, their kindness, their honesty and open approach to life. I want to be here at Kaibeto with you.”
He encircled her with arms that gleamed with perspiration. His lips made hungry little forays over her face. “Kaibeto can wait,” he murmured. “Cambria needs us for a while. It needs our child and our children’s children ... as I need you,” he finished, and finally claimed her lips with a kiss that told of his love.
And as he lowered her to the marriage blanket, spread for them on the dirt floor, her own lips and hands told him of her own feelings, as did his whispered words of his, “Walk in beauty, my love.
###
Parris Afton Bonds is the mother of five sons and the author of thirty-five published novels. She is the co-founder of and first vice president of Romance Writers of America. Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of the three-best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in major newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages. She donates her time to teaching cretive writing to both grade school children and female inmates. The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.
Connect with Parris at http://parrisaftonbonds.com
Wind Song Page 19