Just before dawn, she rose.Her clothes were still there, in the valise.She changed into a clean dress and pulled a shawl around her shoulders and started toward the pool as the first rays of the morning sun lightened the night sky.
She saw Rafe at the same time he apparently heard her.He had been sitting cross-legged near the rock, and he stood as she approached.
Without saying anything, he just held out his arms to her, as if he, too, had made some kind of decision.She walked into them and felt them close around her, and she laid her head against his chest, just standing there, comforted by his closeness.
She didn’t know how long it was before they moved.She didn’t want to move, to break this moment that somehow spoke of love more than words she’d wanted so badly.
He finally moved a few inches away, and she looked up at him, at those vivid sea-green eyes that were now alive with emotions he’d never allowed to show before.He put a finger to his mouth and guided her away, up in the rocks where they had watched the bears before.
Shea didn’t know how he knew, for she had heard nothing, but in several minutes a doe approached the pool and looked cautiously around, and then a fawn followed it out into the open, and with a grace Shea had never seen before, the two bent their lovely heads and drank from the clear blue water.Her hand tightened around his.The deer he had promised mornings ago.
She breathed deeply at the utter enchantment below: the mist from the waterfall, the peaceful pool, the deer, the streaks of light above now casting a golden glow over the scene as if blessing it.She wished she had her drawing pad, and the most wonderful paints, but even then she knew she could never re-create the complete tranquillity of the moment.Nor the joy of sharing it with the quiet, complex man beside her.A man capable of the exquisite gentleness required to gain the trust of animals, and yet who could harbor the most violent of emotions.She was beginning to understand, though.For a time she had hated her father for what he had done; there was a residue of that anger left, though it was tempered now with his own pain and regret.
They watched as the sky lightened and the deer retreated into the woods, blending almost immediately into their surroundings as if they had never been there.
She turned and looked up at Rafe, and she knew her heart was in her eyes.“No matter what you think,” she said haltingly, “I’ll never be whole without you.”
A muscle in his cheek worked.“You don’t understand,” he said.
“I do,” she said, willing him to believe.“I know that you think leaving is best for me.It’s not.I’m not a child, Rafe.I never … have felt this way before, and I won’t ever feel this way again about someone else.You can go, but you will still carry part of me with you, and the part that remains won’t be worth much.”
“I’ll be going back to prison,” he said, having finally made a decision during the past few hours.He had thought it would be the hardest he’d ever made, but leaving Shea was even more difficult.
“You said you would never go back.”
“Your father has taught me you can’t run from what you’ve done,” he said slowly.“I’ve been trying to come to terms with that tonight.”
“You had reason,” she said fiercely.
“Not for involving Clint and the others.Or for the deaths of those miners.That never would have happened if I hadn’t come here.”
“You had nothing to do with that.”
“Didn’t I?Hate begets hate, Shea.Violence begets violence.I should have taken my freedom and enjoyed it.”
“Then I wouldn’t have met you.”
“No.You would have settled down as Randall’s daughter, been courted, and married.”He hesitated.“Have a family.”
“I don’t think so,” she said softly.“I’ve been waiting all my life for you, I think.No one else would have done.”
He smiled wryly.“You must like lost causes.”
“You’re not a lost cause,” she said indignantly.
“Ah, Shea.I’ve been alone all my life.I don’t know how to live with anyone … even if I had a chance.”
“There’s never been … anyone?”
He hesitated.“Once.I was … to be married.She returned the ring … by messenger … after I was charged.”
Shea felt indignation and jealousy rush through her.“She didn’t believe you?”
“She never even asked,” he said with a shrug.
“Then you were well rid of her,” she said, but the dry tone in his voice didn’t quite hide the wound behind it.No wonder he didn’t trust anyone.
He smiled slowly but without warmth.“I finally reached that same conclusion, but …”
