by Cindy Gerard
Dream or reality. She no longer cared. She let the sense of security take her. At peace for the first time in a very long while, she fell asleep in the circle of his arms as the Belgian plodded steadily through the woods, her partner trailing along behind.
She woke up with a snuffling protest and burrowed closer to Abel’s warmth.
“Mackenzie.”
Soft breath tickled her cheek as a gentle hand tipped her face up.
“Wake up, little bird,” Abel whispered in her ear. “You don’t want to miss this.”
What she didn’t want to miss was the protective heat of his body.
“Come on,” he urged, and gave her a little shake. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t wake up.”
Grudgingly she dragged herself out of her cocoon and rubbed a gloved hand over her eyes.
“Look.” He pointed toward the sky.
She caught her breath on an “Ohhh” of wonder. The night was aflame with color. Vibrant reds, glowing whites, myriad shades of green and ghostly hues of blue. Shimmering waves of rainbow tones danced in a jagged arc across the ceiling of sky that had come alive with a light show that stole her breath.
“What it is?” Fully awake now, she sat up straight, not knowing where to look first or next, afraid she might miss something.
“Aurora borealis. Northern lights.”
It was another first for her. Another wonder in this land of legends and fables and ice.
“How...what causes it?”
“The scientific theory is that auroras are caused by clashes between the solar wind and the earth’s magnetic field. Like a battle between the earth and sun.”
“And the Chippewa theory?” she asked, eyes skyward.
“I’m not sure there is one.”
“Well, I have one.” She turned to look at him, averting her gaze from one thing of beauty to another. The light show reflected in his eyes as he gazed down at her.
“I think it’s Manabozho. He turned himself into a spirit, and he’s showing me with his magic colors how lucky I am to be here, at Legend Lake.”
His face softened for the longest of moments before he broke eye contact and nudged the horse back into motion. “And I think it’s time to get you out of the cold.”
She snuggled back against him. He didn’t realize it yet, but she’d come out of the cold the day she’d stumbled, half-frozen, to his door.
There was something else he didn’t know. Just as Manabozho succeeded in stealing the fire, she was determined to melt the ice frozen around Abel’s heart.
Nine
When the light show had faded and the night became even colder, Abel left her at the cabin, then headed back outside to bed down the horses. He needed the time away from her. Time to think and to put things back in perspective.
All was quiet when he slipped in the back door, telling him that she’d been exhausted and had tumbled into bed and fallen asleep.
Moving silently through the cabin, he fired up the sauna, then checked on Nashata. Satisfied that she and her brood were well settled, he stripped and showered. Wrapping a towel around his hips, he closed himself off in steam heat and solitude.
The sauna had been his biggest indulgence when he’d built the cabin. And his most necessary avenue for escape. When, in the dead of night, he’d wake with ghosts of his past chasing him, his heart hammering, his throat closed so tight he couldn’t breathe, the sauna had been his refuge. He could close himself in here. Surround himself with suffocating, mind-numbing heat, and sweat the tremors away.
Tremors hadn’t brought him here tonight. Neither had dreams of death and degradation. Mackenzie’s vivid green eyes and the stark, unrelenting desire to possess her had driven him to sweat out his demons.
He leaned back against the wall, inhaled air thick with cedar and heat...and smelled only her. Her skin. Her hair. The secret scent of her arousal.
He closed his eyes...and saw only her. Frosting on her fingers. Seduction in her eyes. The pale suppleness of her slim hips in the brutal grip of his dark hands as she entrusted her body to his keeping.
“Damn her,” he growled, raking his hair away from his face with both hands. “What is she doing to me?”
He let out a deep breath. He knew exactly what she was doing. So did she. She was stealing his resolve. She was undermining his determination. She had him telling stories, for chrissake. Childhood stories that stirred memories and emotions he’d buried long ago.
He knew better. He knew the consequences of giving in. And still he wanted. He wanted to give in to his greatest weakness—the one that had been gnawing and clawing at him since he’d taken her to his bed and went far beyond physical desire.
She made him want to trust her. To disclose the secrets of his past, expose the atrocities, mourn the loss of his own innocence and the desolation and destruction of his soul.
Are you afraid? he’d asked her. A grim smile tightened his mouth. His little bird wasn’t afraid of anything. But he was—he was so scared he ached with it.
His hands shook as he fisted them at his side. His breath thickened and clogged in his throat, as he struggled with the cloying fear of letting her too close—and the greater fear that he couldn’t keep her close enough.
This was irony at its most bitter and vindictive best. If he gave her what she wanted—the confessions of his soul—the chances were he’d lose her. If he denied her, he’d lose himself and her along the way. A woman like her couldn’t survive long in the cold, dark climate of his silence. A woman like her needed what he had never thought he could give—until she’d come into his life and knocked the props out from under him.
Make me your wife. In his mind he saw her as she’d looked when she’d lain beneath him, open, trusting, needing him as much as he’d needed the sweet sexual healing of her body.
Make me your wife. God she’d been sweet...as sweet as she looked at this moment, slipping tentatively into the steam-filled room.
His heart caught as had become habit whenever he saw her. His chest ached with a wanting that transcended physical need.
Midnight and moonlight washed in through the skylight, gilding the silken sheen of her skin as she stood there, fresh from a shower, a towel bunched between her breasts. Innocence and seduction. The combination was devastating. The intoxication complete.
He gave it up then. The pretense of distance. The denial of need. He’d been lost the first time he’d seen her. He just hadn’t known it.
He held out his hand. And gave her his trust.
The words came hard. But they came, with gravel in his voice and a tightening in his gut.
“Make me your husband.”
A new awareness clouded her eyes as they searched his—searched and sought and found the meaning of his words.
He’d given up. He’d given in. He’d given himself to her completely.
Tears glittered in her eyes, spilled down her cheeks, mingling with steam and perspiration as she let the towel fall and came to him.
“Again,” she demanded with a soft voice he could no longer deny.
He looked deep into her eyes, saw the honesty of her heart and unashamedly confessed his need. “Make me your husband, Mackenzie.” He swallowed the lump lodged in his throat. “I need—”
She pressed trembling fingers to his lips, silencing him.
“Shhh. I know what you need,” she whispered, her skin glistening, her earth mother eyes knowing, her passion uninhibited and healing as she knelt beside him.
The knot at his hips gave way as she tugged the towel free then enfolded his heavy arousal in her hands. He lifted his hips, moved into her caress as she eased over his lap and with her eyes locked on his took him deep, so deep.
Steady and slow, she rocked against him, holding him inside, matching the rhythm he set, meeting the need she had created. She took him languidly, with the seductive confidence of a woman pleasuring her man, with her guileless smiles and her own throaty murmurs of pleasure.
There was no
rush in this mating. There was no hurry now. They had forever, and they reveled in the freedom it offered.
When it was over and they’d collapsed together in a tangle of sweat-slicked limbs and thundering heartbeats, he held her against his heart. And for the first time in his life, he believed in magic.
Manabozho had stolen fire; Abel Greene had stolen something far more precious.
They stood together in the winter-barren cemetery. The sky overhead threatened snow, the color of the clouds promised wind.
Abel’s mother was buried in a lonely corner away from the family plots and the city fathers. Mackenzie gripped his hand in hers as he dropped to one knee and brushed snow away from the austere, gray headstone.
“She was too young,” Mackenzie said with a sadness in her voice that matched her husband’s eyes, when she saw the date on the headstone.
“She was never young.” His voice was as brittle as the wind, but his ability to confide his feelings warmed her like no summer sun ever could.
It had been three days since they’d been married. Three days that had changed her life as well as the life of the man at her side.
It wasn’t easy for him. He took it very slowly. He’d given her little pieces of himself at first. Little pieces that didn’t hurt and didn’t reveal much more than surface blemishes. Little pieces that began to form and shape the intricate puzzle that was a picture of his life.
When he’d asked her to come here with him today, she’d suspected he was ready to breach yet another barrier.
“Your father,” she said, hesitantly. “You haven’t spoken of him.”
He rose, dusted the snow from his hand and looked off in the distance. “Because he’s not worth talking about. He was a drunk and a drifter, who never even bothered to marry my mother. He used her, abused her...” He paused, the tension on his face was telling. She had no doubt that he’d been a target for that abuse, too. She squeezed his hand and leaned into him.
In a gesture he never would have given in to even a day ago, he put his arm around her and tucked her against his side. “He bled her dry of her money and her pride and he left her. I haven’t seen or heard from him since I was...I don’t know...ten...maybe eleven.”
“And you blame yourself for his leaving.”
He gave her a sharp look, then shrugged. “Intellectually, no.”
“But, emotionally,” she prompted, leading him toward the anger she knew was bottled up inside.
“Emotionally—let’s just say I understand Mark’s anger. I reacted the same way he did when I was his age. I was Faye Greene’s wild breed bastard. And I wanted to make damn sure everyone knew I was no good.”
Mackenzie understood what else that had made him. The outsider. The loner who wouldn’t have recognized a kindness extended because he was so busy blocking the fear of rejection with protective rage.
She hurt for the wounded little boy who now wore the scars as a man.
With a last look at his mother’s grave, he turned to her. “There were many times, even before he left, that we went hungry. Many times when she could have sold the land and made her life easier. ‘I have a faith to keep,’ she would say. It was a faith she kept for me. And it’s what drew me back to the lake.
“She left me the land, Mackenzie. The land that had belonged to the Chippewa and was entrusted to my family to keep. The land was the reason she worked two jobs. The land was the reason she fell asleep behind the wheel after working too late and too hard too often.”
He stopped abruptly, stared at her hard. “There’s a man. His name is Grunewald. John Grunewald.”
“Grunewald.” The sudden anger in his eyes frightened her. “Didn’t I see his name on a sign somewhere?”
“He’s the money man in town. Owns Grunewald-Castelle.”
“The big paper mill.”
He nodded. “He wants my timber. He’s not going to get it.”
His features had turned dark, his black eyes taking on a hardness she hadn’t seen in days.
“Remember his name. And stay away from him. If he ever comes to the cabin when I’m not there—don’t talk to him. Don’t let him in. Don’t listen to anything he has to say.”
He gripped her shoulders and searched her face. “Promise me you won’t let him near you.”
“You make him sound like a monster.” The smile she forced was meant to lighten a tension that was both uncomfortable and a little frightening.
“Promise me, Mackenzie,” he demanded, his hands almost hurtful as he drew her closer. “Promise me you won’t go anywhere near him.”
“I promise,” she whispered, unsettled by his adamant request, but choosing the path of least resistance. She wouldn’t question him about Grunewald. Not today. Though the wounds his father had inflicted weren’t completely healed, they were old wounds. Grunewald’s damage was obviously fresher. And apparently he’d cut deep. “I promise,” she assured him and leaned into his embrace.
He held her close for a long moment.
“Come on,” he said finally, then walked her toward the pickup. “We need to go shopping. Mark will be coming home tomorrow. The kid needs a bed—even though he isn’t complaining, he can’t sleep in the loft forever.”
The dream came that night.
Out of the void.
Out of the darkness.
He woke up thrashing, his chest heaving, his body drenched in sweat. Violent, clawing panic grabbed him, held him down, sucked him under. He broke free with an animal roar. Wrenching out of his assassin’s grasp, he wrestied him to his back, wrapped his hands around his neck and squeezed away the life that had promised to take his.
From a distance he heard her cry. In a blur he sensed her near. He stilled, opened his eyes—and felt his heart drop to the lowest depths of his gut.
“No...oh, God, Mackenzie. No.”
With a tortured groan, he dragged her against him, a prayer foreign but reverent on his tongue as he begged her and whatever powers that might be listening to let her be all right.
“Abel, please, stop fussing. I’m fine. I was more frightened than hurt.”
“Which would explain why your throat is so sore you can hardly talk.”
“You wish,” she said, one corner of her mouth tipping up in a valiant smile, manufactured to set him at ease.
He didn’t think he’d ever be at ease again. And he would feel guilt for the rest of his life for the way he’d hurt her.
She looked as wilted as a crushed flower. He’d brought her out of the bedroom and settled her on the sofa so he could tend to her needs. Already, angry-looking bruises were forming on her neck. The memory of waking up with her fighting for her life beneath him, his fingers wrapped in a choke hold around her throat, sent a wave of nausea rolling through him.
He rose from his knees, the thickness in his chest crushing him.
“Abel,” she whispered, the raspiness in her voice telling of her injuries.
He turned to the sound as she set the ice pack aside and came to him. “Abel. The only thing that hurts me is not knowing what’s hurting you.”
He drew her carefully against him, aware as never before of her fragility...and of an inner strength he suspected even she didn’t know she possessed.
“Talk to me.” She pressed her face into his shoulder. “Trust in me.”
Trust. She was asking for the one thing he guarded above all else. In the face of what he’d put her through tonight, trust was the very least of what he owed her. It was what she wanted. It was what she needed. And if he gave it up, it was the one thing that could send her away.
He lifted her in his arms. Cradled her against his chest. Pressing his lips to her hair, he sat down on the sofa, holding her on his lap because he couldn’t bear to let her go.
The firelight danced into the darkness. His heartbeat pounded into the silence, as he held her not knowing where to start—yet knowing where it would end.
Her small hand on his jaw brought his head down.
�
��I know you don’t want to hear this. I know it may be too soon for you. But I can’t hold it in any longer. I love you, Abel Greene.”
He pinched his eyes shut against the suddenness and the sharpness of the sting.
“I love you,” she repeated, the throaty rasp in her voice a reminder of the pain he’d caused. “You have to trust me enough to believe that. What you’ve done, where you’ve been, what you’ve endured—it’s all a part of you. But it’s all a part of your past. The future is what’s important now. The future and what we can make it.
“But—” she swallowed past the soreness “—but if it’s your past that’s standing in the way of that future, then I need you to share it with me. I need to understand what I’m up against.”
He covered her hand with his and pressed it against his lips. Like the feel of her skin, she was soft and pure and clean—everything he wasn’t and never had been.
“And what if you can’t handle what I tell you? What if you find it’s so ugly and repulsive you—”
She silenced him with the press of her fingers to his lips. “What if you just trust me?”
The openness of her entreaty touched him in places he’d never allowed anyone close to. And the truth of her words allowed her access to his secrets. Secrets he’d locked inside for so long that when they broke free in his nightmares, the one person who least deserved it had gotten hurt.
He couldn’t let it happen again. One way or another, he had to protect her. And he knew that by revealing his past to her, he would. With confession, came absolution. If he let the demons out of the dark, they were less likely to bother him again. The question was, would Mackenzie follow them out the door?
He didn’t want to lose her. But he couldn’t live with himself if he hurt her again.
“When I left here,” he began, “it was with no prospects, no idea of what I was going to do with my life. And with an ultimatum to get the hell out of Dodge.” He brought his hand to his jaw, ran his fingers along the scar in a kneejerk reaction the memory that night always prompted.
“Grunewald,” she whispered, her insight no longer surprising him. “He did that to you.”