I'll Be There Part 15

"Can you walk?"

She did open her eyes then, judging the distance she'd have to travel skeptically. He lifted her into his arms and carried her the short distance to the bedroom. She hooked an arm around his shoulder and pressed her cheek to his chest. He was so warm and strong, but too soon, he laid her on the bed and was pulling the covers up around her. They were a poor subst.i.tute for Cord's heat.

She looked up at him, standing there, so dark and appealing, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and she wanted him. Wanted him to lie next to her and hold her through the long, dark night; to wake up next to him in the morning. Intellectually, she knew the illness and situation were fueling these feelings. She was vulnerable. They both were in this place out of time where there was nothing but the two of them. She wondered how long before they both gave in to it.

"Can I get you anything? Something to drink?"

"No, thank you." She pulled the covers up to her chin and curled into the mattress. When he turned to go, she said, "Cord?"

He stopped and looked back at her.

"Where will you sleep?"

"On the couch."

"Let me take the couch. That can't be comfortable for you."

"I've slept in tighter spots."

"But-"

"I need to be between you and the exterior doors, Jenny."

"Oh." Good thing one of them was able to maintain focus.

He stood framed in the doorway, backlit so that she was unable to read his expression, and then he simply said, "Goodnight," and was gone.

Chapter 12.

"I am going absolutely crazy. I want to go outside."

"No."

"Why?"

Jenny had spent the morning trying to read. When she'd failed utterly, she found a deck of playing cards and lost at solitaire half a dozen times. Cord had come and gone from the house, but hadn't told her where he went or what he did. He'd just come back in from one such excursion, and now, after rummaging in his bag, had come up with something he was spreading out across the kitchen table.

"You know why. It isn't safe. And-"

She held up a hand. "I know. I've been sick. But I'm better, and you said the sheriff placed me here because he believed no one would find us this far out on so much property."

"It isn't likely, but you shouldn't take unnecessary chances."

"I could wear your coat with the hood up."

"No."

Jenny stood and moved over to the door. She opened it and the rush of cool air made her skin tingle. She closed her eyes and took several cleansing breaths. The door clicked closed. She opened her eyes to find Cord towering over her. "Standing in the doorway is about as safe as standing in front of a window. And you don't need to get a chill."

"Yes, mother." He gave her a look, but no comment. As usual. She sighed and crossed her arms as she watched him move back to the table and sit. He looked good in a red corduroy shirt with only three pearl snaps fastened and lots of smooth, dark skin revealed. His long silky black hair hung loose around his shoulders. He pushed it back and secured it with a dark, elastic band so it wouldn't get in the way while he worked. The man was entirely too s.e.xy for her peace of mind. She needed a distraction, badly, but trapped in this cabin, avoiding him was impossible, so Jenny joined him at the table. She plopped into a chair. He was sorting small pieces of metal and stones in front of him.

"What are you doing?"

He gave her a dark look. "Occupying myself."

Ignoring him, she touched several items on the table: silver disks and bars, different types of stones, something that looked like fishing line, and a few small tools. "What are you going to do with all this? The stones are gorgeous."

"Jenny..."

"Come on, Cord. I'm going crazy here. I've read everything there is to read, you won't let me go outside, and, I might add, I'm not used to being told what to do." Her voice had risen as she spoke, so she took a breath to check her growing irritation with him. "Just tell me what you're doing."

He sighed. She waited. Finally, he said, "I make jewelry."

"No, really. What is all this?"

Ignoring that, he picked up a silver disk and a hammer and started flattening it. Jenny watched, trying to digest this revelation. A jewelry maker? Cord?

"I was convinced that you had been a cop. I would have never guessed jeweler."

It frightened Cord a little that Jenny could read him so easily. If this threw her off track, then it was a good thing.

"If I let you watch, does that mean I'll have endless questions to answer?"

"Maybe a few."

He continued hammering away at the piece he'd chosen, smoothing out the edges of the silver disk.

"What are you working on?"

"A pendant."

"I noticed that you wear something on a silver chain, but I haven't gotten a good look at it. Did you make it?"

"Yes." He continued to hammer.

She edged closer. Her scent and nearness made him a little lightheaded. He wasn't sure he liked the feeling. He'd always been able to maintain control with women, but this woman affected him in strange ways-ways he'd never experienced.

"May I see it?"

He'd lost the thread of the conversation when she got up to stand beside him and lean in near his shoulder, but he said, "Sure," anyway. She reached inside his shirt. Shocked at the bold move, awareness p.r.i.c.ked across his skin as he felt her hand against his bare chest. He sucked in a ragged breath, but her focus centered on the pendant she held. His pendant.

She traced its unusual pattern with the tip of her finger. "Two arrows crossed. It looks like the directions on a weather vane. You know, north, south, east and west."

"It symbolizes that everything is connected."

"And the stones in the arrows?"

"The blue is water, the red-fire. The green, earth, the clear, wind."

"And the multi-colored stone in the center? It's very unusual. It sparkles with a life of its own."

He looked away, still unnerved by nearness. "The joining of souls when two lives intersect and become one." He took the pendant from her hand and dropped it inside his shirt. Leaning forward, he began hammering again.

"Who would have known?" Humor laced her words. "You're a romantic?"

"A realist. Life springs from the joining of two people."

"Opposites attract, like water and fire."

"The elements of water, fire and wind can destroy the earth."

"Or strengthen it."

"Yes, but only when people live in harmony with the land."

"At one with the elements."

Cord nodded. She understood perfectly-all but his reason for wearing the pendant. The idealistic teenager who'd created it in his grandfather's workshop had made two; one for him and the other for the woman who would become his life mate. The second lay tarnishing in a drawer, its promise never fulfilled. Even he didn't fully understand why he still wore the pendant.

He held no illusions about finding someone to share his life. His was a life destined to be lived alone in a world where a wife's dreams couldn't be shattered by the loss of her mate. The faces of the wives who'd lost their husbands because of his mistakes came unbidden to his mind.

"May I?"

Cord looked up at Jenny, surprised to see that she was still only a touch away. She took the hammer from him. The feel of her hand against his tied his stomach in knots.

"What were you doing to this?" she asked.

"Smoothing out the edges."

She leaned over and touched the metal to get a feel for it, then hammered at the roughest spots until they felt even. "Wouldn't it be great if we could smooth out our rough edges so easily?"

He liked to think that hammering away at a piece helped him smooth out the rough edges of his ragged emotions. She might disagree.

"What type of design will this one be?"

She sat on his thigh as if it were the most natural thing in the world while she continued to work the metal. Having her so close set off a series of wild fantasies, the least of which was the urge to pull her back against him and taste the fragrant skin at the side of her neck.

She looked over her shoulder at him. "Cord?" When he didn't respond, she repeated, "What kind of design will this be?"

"I don't know." Maybe a silvery moon with dark stones that held the mystery of her-of what her life would become.

"You don't have the design sketched out anywhere?"

"No. It emerges from the metal as I work it."

She handed him the hammer. "Then you'd better take this back, because I don't know where I'm going. I don't want to mess it up."

"You couldn't. This is just preliminary shaping."

"Where did you learn to do this?"

She didn't move, so he reached around her to hold the silver with one hand and hammer with the other which resulted in settling her against his chest. It didn't escape his notice that she fit like she belonged there. "My grandfather was Navaho. He taught me. It was a marketable skill that was supposed to give me a means of supporting myself. Keep me out of trouble."

"But it didn't. Keep you out of trouble."

Cord laughed. "No." She was too insightful. He bet she was a h.e.l.l of a reporter.

Jenny smiled. "Of course not." She watched him work silently for a few minutes, then asked, "Do you sell your work?"

"Yeah. I have standing orders from several jewelers and Native American galleries for whatever I make."

"Local?"

"All over."

"What do you see in this?"

He held the silver disk he'd been working on up to the light. "Beauty."

She nodded. "How will you interpret that?"

"I'll begin with these sapphires." He set aside several of the small stones. But first, he would etch out a design in the silver that would allow silvery light to flow through the pendant.

Cord moved his arm from around her so that he could concentrate on the work with a steady hand. He slipped on safety gla.s.ses and warned, "Watch out." She leaned back as tiny shards of silver flew around his hands. The curved lines were her neck and lips. The ovals, her eyes. The angled lines her nose and cheeks.

Satisfied, he blew against the surface to clear the remaining dust and fragments. Then he began putting the stones in rows beside the disc, with some deep blue topaz the color of her eyes interspersed among them.

When he placed the last stone, she said, "Perfect."

He looked up at her and agreed. "Yes."

"How will you attach the stones?" she asked softly, feeling the same awareness he did.

"I'll make settings for them and weld them onto the disk."

"Yes, then the light will flow through the silver to give the stones life."

"If the darkness from the wearer's skin doesn't kill the effect," he said, feeling his mood dip.

"Light dispels darkness."