The Warrior (34 page)

That was the wrong thing to say.

John opened the door with a shove, slamming it against the inside wall as he strode in.

Alicia's eyes widened, and her heart skipped a beat. Oops. Maybe she'd overdone the indignation a bit. John Nightwalker looked beyond pissed.

He walked up to her until there were mere inches between their bodies, then poked a finger at her chest, using it to drive home every word he spoke.

“I did
not
lie to you. You just didn't believe me. You're wallowing in your own misery. I didn't cause it. You can wallow all you like, but do
not
blame me for it.”

“Ow,” she complained, rubbing at the spot above her right breast where he'd poked as he spoke. “That hurt.”

“Good,” he shot back.

She sighed. “What did you come to tell me?”

“The highway patrolman from the wreck called. He said the woman regained consciousness and is going to live. She has epilepsy. That's what caused her to crash. The officer also recognized my name and put two and two together. He knows who you are. He said not to worry, he won't give us up, but he wanted me to tell you something. He said he knew it must have been really tough for you to give your father up, but he wanted to thank you for it. He has a brother who's in Iraq with the marines.”

Then he turned around and left, slamming the door shut as loudly as he'd swung it open.

Alicia sniffed, then grabbed another tissue and blew again. “That went well,” she mumbled, then picked up the scattered tissues and tossed them into the wastebasket, before leaving the room.

She expected John to be in his bedroom, ignoring her existence, as she stomped toward the kitchen. She wanted something cold to drink, and considering the fact that she'd sulked her way through dinner, she was still hungry.

She fixed herself a cold Pepsi and was in the act of making a sandwich when John appeared in the doorway.

His first thought was that she'd come a long way
from the woman who'd never made herself a meal, becoming someone at home with a fully loaded refrigerator. “I didn't know you were in here,” he said. “Sorry.”

She shrugged. “It's your house,” she said, and continued to smear mayonnaise on the bread.

He started to say something, then knew it would just turn into another brawl, and turned and walked away.

Alicia felt a little bit guilty, but she kept on making her food. Instead of taking it to her room, she sat down at the kitchen table and proceeded to eat.

A few minutes later, John reappeared in the doorway.

“Sorry,” he repeated. “I thought you were back in your room.”

She licked a swipe of mayonnaise off her finger, then sighed.

“John. Shut up, would you? Stop apologizing for walking around your own house. I'm the interloper here, and obviously an unwanted one. Granted, I'm hurt, and I feel bent all to hell and back, but I've learned that I don't break. Go about your business and leave me to stew in the mess of my own creation, okay?”

The last thing she expected was to hear him laugh. When she looked up, he was already gone, but she could hear him laughing all the way down the hall.

“Happy to have supplied the humor for the day,” she muttered, then got up and carried her dishes to the dishwasher, too preoccupied to realize that she'd been the one to put the first big crack in the wall between them.

John was still grinning when he got to his office. Granted, there were huge hurdles to get back to where they'd been before his big reveal, but this was the first exchange between them that had made him believe there
might be hope for them yet. He had to give her credit where credit was due. She was one hell of a woman, and she'd been right on all counts. She could be hurt, but it would obviously take more than what he and her father had dished out to put her under.

When she'd told him to shut up in such a tired, disgusted voice, he'd wanted to kiss her. She was the most aggravating, hardheaded, single-minded, defiant woman he'd ever known. Not even White Fawn had been able to stand up to his authority as a second chief. But it was quite obvious to him now that Alicia Ponte was not impressed with his status or with him—or, as she'd so succinctly stated, with men in general.

He chuckled again and turned on his computer. It would be impossible for him to sleep now. And it was just breaking day across the world. It was always time somewhere to do a little business through the World Wide Web. As he waited for his computer to boot up, it was not lost upon him what vast strides mankind had taken since the day he'd first drawn breath. His father would have called him crazy if he'd tried to explain televisions and telephones, not to mention the fact that men had walked on the moon.

Then his hands went limp as the truth of that hit him square in the face. His father would have reacted no differently than Alicia had. He would have thought his son was crazy. He would have had the shaman perform a cleansing ceremony, then send him off to renew his spirit with a vision quest. He sighed, then scrubbed his hands across his face.

Damn it if he didn't owe her an apology. Maybe not for everything, but an apology nonetheless.

He got back up and headed for the kitchen. She was probably going to hit the ceiling if she saw his face again, but this had to be said. When he got there, though, she was nowhere in sight.

“Great. She's probably back in her bedroom, and I already know how the first try at talking to her there went.”

“John.”

He turned abruptly, startled by her voice.

“What?”

“You're talking to yourself.”

“I know that,” he said, and found himself knocked off center by her attitude.

Alicia shrugged. “All right, but I just thought I'd point that out, because people who talk to themselves are often considered—”

“Crazy?” he offered.

“Um, maybe ‘eccentric' is a better word.”

He tilted his head questioningly, then held out his hand. “Truce?”

Alicia almost choked. Truce? There
was
a God. “Yes, thank you.”

John pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head, then the side of her face, then her cheek, then her lips. Over and over. And over. Until they were both breathless.

“I had a small revelation a few minutes ago,” he said softly. “Made me realize I owed you an apology.”

Alicia was so grateful he was talking to her that she was having problems concentrating on what he was saying. “How so?” she asked.

“I was booting up my computer, and as I sat there, watching this small thing called a laptop connecting me
to any place I wanted to talk to in the world, I thought what a difficult time I would have had trying to explain all the technology that we now take for granted to my father.”

Alicia wanted to ask whether he was talking about his “real” father, who he seemed not to remember or discuss, or about his five-hundred-plus-year-old father whom he surely didn't have. She decided to wait and let him surprise her.

“And?” she urged.

“And it occurred to me that he would tell me I was crazy. He would have had the shaman perform a healing ceremony on me. He would have been embarrassed before The People that his son was making such crazy statements.” He stopped to cup her face in his hands. “In other words…he would have reacted to what I said the same way you did. But I wouldn't have cast him out of my life. So I should not have cast you out, either. Does that make sense?”

She sighed. So he was still persisting in the belief that he was ancient. But so what? He was alive and vital and loved her. And he was smart and generous and brave. If she put that “quirk” into perspective, it was almost unimportant. Almost.

She put her hands over his, feeling the warmth of his blood pushing through his veins and seeing the reflection of herself in his eyes.

“John, right now I'm so happy you're not angry with me anymore that I'd agree to almost anything you said. The operative word being
almost.
Does
that
make sense to
you?
”

He heard the slight hesitance in her tone and understood it. Like him, she was reserving the right to
disagree. Beyond that, they were pretty much back on the same wavelength.

“Enough to live with,” he said.

“Me, too,” she agreed, and hugged him fiercely. She didn't care if he was crazy. She was at the point of wanting to go crazy with him rather than live another minute with him angry at her.

“So where do we go from here?” John asked.

“To bed?”

He growled beneath his breath and picked her up in his arms.

“I thought you'd never ask,” he said as he carried her down the hall.

They undressed without speaking, tearing at their clothes in hasty, jerking motions. John finished first and then reached for her, helping her out of the last bits. As she stepped out of her panties, he swooped her up in his arms. And for a moment, time seemed to stop.

He paused, taking in the satiny feel of her skin against his body, feeling the heat of her against the palms of his hands, seeing the love and the desire in her eyes and knowing he was feeling all the same things.

“Alicia…”

“Make love to me, Nightwalker. I've been missing you…missing this….”

Blood pounded through his body as he put her on his bed.
Take her. Take her. Take her.
His pulse rocked with the rhythm looping in his brain.
Love her. Love her. Love her.

So he did.

He began with her mouth, kissing those lush, sensual lips until they were pink and swollen from the pressure,
stroking every inch of her with his fingers and his tongue until every pulse point on her body was throbbing. He heard her whispers and promises, and answered back with the old words, making love to Alicia in the tongue of the Ah-ni-yv-wi-ya. Healing his heart along with his soul. And when she took him into her body, it was, for John, a sense of having come home.

Alicia couldn't get enough of his kisses—of his touch. The passion in his greed to take more and more of what she gave heightened her senses. Every muscle in her body was focused on the fire building low in her belly. She wanted more, pulled him deeper and harder and faster until they were moving in sync.

Her climax came suddenly, an urgent and nearly painful demand, sweeping what was left of her senses straight out of her mind.

John felt the sudden onset of her climax, but it was the low, guttural moan near his ear that made him lose all control. The unexpected ejaculation of his seed into her womb came with all the force of a blow to the back of his head. His body was on autopilot as he thrust once, then again, then a third time, before he fell on top of her with a deep groan of satisfaction. His muscles were shaking from the exertion he'd put them through, and once again, instead of feeling empty and used up, he felt renewed.

“Alicia…Alicia…” Then he rolled, taking her with him until she was lying on top of him, still clasped tight within his embrace.

For a few quiet moments they just lay there, savoring the afterglow and the closeness. But when Alicia started to move, John slid his fingers through her hair, winding
the long dark lengths around his wrists, then sighed and closed his eyes.

Alicia was hovering on the verge between consciousness and sleep when she thought she heard him whisper one word.

“Mine.”

She sighed. It was true. For better or for worse, she'd given her heart to this man.

D
ieter was sitting at a sidewalk café, having his morning croissant and a cup of cinnamon roast coffee, when his cell phone rang. It had been over two weeks since he'd settled in at his Austrian bed-and-breakfast, and he was developing a routine that suited him just fine. But hearing that ring quickly put an end to his peace of mind. He pushed his coffee aside, dusted the croissant crumbs from his hands and answered.

“Hello, boss.”

“I was beginning to think you weren't going to answer,” Richard said shortly.

“Sorry,” Dieter said. “I was eating breakfast. Had a mouthful of food I needed to swallow.”

Richard still needed someone to bring the last of his plans to fruition and didn't want to antagonize Dieter into quitting on him when it mattered most. “Yes, well…all right,” Richard said. “I suppose I'm just impatient to put all this to rest.”

That sounded positive, which pleased Dieter. “As am I,” he said.

“You will be receiving a FedEx packet at your residence today. In it will be some instructions and a plane ticket.”

“Where am I going?” Dieter asked.

“Correct that to ‘Where are
we
going?'”

“You're coming along?”

“I will be meeting you in the Bahamas.”

“That's marvelous!” Dieter said.

“It's not exactly a vacation,” Richard reminded him.

“Yes, of course, boss. I didn't mean—”

“Never mind. Just follow my instructions to the letter and don't miss your flight.”

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I'll be there. How long do you plan to be there?”

“Until the job is done,” Richard snapped, then hung up.

Dieter sighed, dropped his phone back in his pocket and retrieved what was left of his croissant. Then he lifted his hand to signal a waiter and had his coffee refilled, determined to enjoy what might be his last peaceful day for a while.

 

Corbin Woodliff was in the middle of an exposé regarding a doctor and a welfare scam when his phone rang. He answered absently, but when he recognized his caller, his attention sharpened.

“John! Long time no word,” Corbin said. “What's been happening?”

“That's what I called to ask you,” John said. “I've been thinking of going back to Georgia, but I'm not sure where the Feds are with their search for Ponte. What can you tell me that I don't already know?”

“No much, I'm afraid. There was a flurry of investigations in the Balkans a couple of days ago that proved to be dead end. It's as if he dropped off the face of the earth.”

John frowned. It wasn't what he wanted to hear, but they weren't really any safer in Arizona than they had been in Georgia. Both places had been located and infiltrated. The fact that Alicia was still alive was mostly due to timing and planning, and he could arrange that there as well as here.

He hadn't spoken with Alicia about the idea yet, but he knew she was feeling the pressure of being stranded in the middle of nowhere. They wouldn't exactly be returning to a social scene, but the ambience and comfort of the Georgia house were more suited to good vibes than the severity of this desert hideaway. This was where John came to heal when he needed peace in his life. When he had brought Alicia here to hide, he'd had no idea that they would end up healing each other.

When John didn't comment immediately, Corbin followed up.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I'm not sure. I'm going to run it by Alicia first. If we make a move, I'll let you know. And if you get any information that would help, give me a call.”

“Absolutely,” Corbin said, then added, “And don't forget, when this is over, the whole story is mine.”

“Yeah, sure,” John said, and hung up. But he already knew Corbin wasn't ever going to get the whole story. Corbin could have whatever Alicia chose to tell him about her end of it, but that was where it stopped.

He looked down at the computer screen, noted that
one of his stocks was starting to plummet and picked up the phone and called his broker.

John made arrangements to sell and hung up, then scanned the stocks for a few more minutes. After that he checked his e-mail, answered what he needed to and deleted the rest before pushing back from his desk to go look for Alicia. She'd made herself scarce right after breakfast, and he wasn't sure why, or what she was doing.

 

Alicia stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. As she dried herself off, she kept glancing out the arched window by the shower door. The day was clear. By noon the sun would be scorching. But she felt stifled. She'd never been inside this long in her life, unless she counted the winter she'd broken her leg on the ski slopes and been laid up for almost six weeks.

She dressed slowly, thinking about how she used to spend her days. If she died today, no one but John would really care. Oh, there would most likely be a media circus made out of the actual funeral, but no one would cry for her. No one would remember for long that she'd even lived. She felt the lack of conscience with which she'd lived her life. Why hadn't she done more, like volunteering in places that really needed help? God knew she had the time and money to do it.

She paused, then leaned her elbows on the windowsill and looked at the vastness of the landscape. Mountains, desert, cacti and scrub brush abounded, and while she knew it came with its own set of wildlife, there were no other people in sight. On the surface, this place was a mirror image of her life: barren and empty.

She ran her fingers through the thick, wet length of
her hair and then wrapped a towel around it to catch the drips before going to dress. Even then, she was still caught up in retrospection. Maybe her life would have been different if her mother hadn't died when she was so young. Maybe her father would have turned out to be a different kind of man.

She sighed.

Thinking about what-ifs and maybes got her nowhere. And she wasn't going to allow her father any excuse for what he'd done—what he was still trying to do. Some males in the animal world killed their own offspring to get to what they wanted. Her father was no better, and she was sick and tired of being scared.

She went back into the bathroom to use the hair dryer, then changed her mind, picked up a hairbrush, pocketed a scrunchie and headed for the terrace.

With the scorpion sting foremost in her mind, she kept her eyes on the flat, sun-bleached tiles as she walked outside. The sun was up. The sky was clear, and there were no creepy crawlers in sight. She chose a seat near the patio table, unwrapped the towel from around her head and draped it over the back of another chair. Then she unloaded the scrunchie from her pocket, turned her back to the sun and began to finger comb her hair.

As it began to dry, Alicia alternated her fingers with the brush, working with the long, silky length until it was smooth and shining. She slipped the scrunchie over her wrist to have it at the ready, then began to gather her hair into a ponytail. Just as she began, a turkey buzzard flew into her line of sight. She watched it circling overhead, slowly widening each loop to cover more territory in search of prey. Distracted by the scavenger's
hunt, her mind lost focus as her fingers continued to weave the thick strands of her hair not into a ponytail but into a single long four-stranded braid.

 

John had been through the entire house without a sign of Alicia, but when he got to the dining room and looked out through the terrace doors, he saw her. His anxiety settled as he started toward her. Then he focused on her hands and what she was doing with her hair. And he forgot to breathe.

All of a sudden he was back in his village watching White Fawn braiding her hair. Instead of separating her hair into three separate lengths, she separated it into four, ending up with a flat plait instead of a fat braid, all without being able to see what she was doing. She was the envy of many women for that simple ability and had been quietly proud of it.

But that was White Fawn's skill, not Alicia's.

His heart was pounding so hard he could barely think as he started out the door. Was this really happening, or was this yet another hopeless dream from which he would wake? He walked up behind her just as she slipped the scrunchie off her wrist onto the end of her braid, wrapping it around over and over until it was securely fastened, then let the braid fall. Just as she was about to get up, she saw John's shadow coming up from behind her.

“Hey…I was just about to come inside.” She turned toward him with a smile.

John cupped the side of her face, tracing her smile with a thumb, then touched the crown of her head, his fingers trembling as he ran them down the length of her
braid. There was a knot in his throat as he lifted her hair in his hand.

“Alicia…baby…how did you do that?”

“Do what?” she asked as she stood up and began gathering her things to take back inside.

“Fix your hair like that.”

“It's just a ponytail. My hair is heavy, and it keeps it off the back of my neck. Why? Is it a mess? Did I miss some bits?”

She reached for the back of her neck, searching for loose strands, only to discover something wasn't right.

“What on earth?” she mumbled, and then pulled her hair over her shoulder. She gasped, then slung it back behind her as if it were a snake.

“I didn't do that. I don't know how to do that,” she whispered, and then touched the braid again, unable to believe what she'd done.

John took her face in his hands, staring at each feature as if he'd never seen her before. She looked frightened, and he felt as if he was sleepwalking.

Alicia's voice was shaking. “What just happened? Is this another one of those Sedona moments I'm not supposed to understand?” She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let go.

“Look at me, Alicia. Look. At. Me.”

She stopped. Something was going on that she didn't understand.

“I
am
looking. I see you,” she said.

“Is it you…is it you, my love?” John whispered, letting his fingers trace the shape of her face—the curve of her hairline, the breadth of her brow, the cut of her cheekbones—then down her face all the way to her chin.

Alicia was beginning to get scared. What the hell was going on?

“John? What's wrong? Please. Talk to me.”

He shook his head as if coming out of a trance, then leaned forward and pressed his forehead against hers. For a few silent moments they were nose to nose, breath mingling, hearts pounding with shared uncertainty over what had happened.

Finally he just wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close against his heartbeat.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

“No. I think you just did something right. Something you've been trying to tell me ever since the day we met, but I couldn't see it for the hate in my heart. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“I don't understand,” Alicia said.

He looked down at the plait lying across his arms and then hugged her. “It doesn't matter. Nothing matters but that you're here.”

Alicia frowned. “You're not making sense. Of course I'm here.” Then she pulled out of his arms and looked up at him with her hands on her hips. “Are you about to freak out on me? If you are, just tell me now, so I can figure out how to help you. I've already come to terms with your…uh…shall we call them…beliefs. It's okay with me if you want to be five or five hundred. I just don't want to lose you.”

John leaned down and kissed her. He was so shaken by what had transpired that he could hardly think. There was no way he was going to try to explain this to her, too.

“You aren't going to lose me, baby,” he said softly. “And I am not going to lose you. Ever again. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, and then ran her fingers over her braid again. “What on earth is this, anyway? I wasn't really paying attention. I was watching that buzzard. I probably couldn't do this again in a million years.”

“Probably not,” John said, and then took her by the shoulders. “Hey. I've got an idea.”

Interest lit her expression. “Tell me.”

“What do you say we go home?”

She frowned, then pointed over his shoulder. “Uh, John…sweetheart…turn around. We
are
home.”

“No. I mean back to the ocean…to Georgia.”

She gasped. “Can we? I mean…this place is beautiful, but it's so…so…”

“Far?” he offered.

She smiled. “Yes. Far. It's far. Very far. From everything.”

“Well, initially, that was the reason we came, remember? But I'll keep you safe, no matter where we are.”

“You think?” she asked, suddenly nervous.

“I
know,
” John said. “The Old Ones didn't send you back to me only for me to lose you again.”