Taylor's stomach clenched. She closed her eyes, lowered her head. "You mean, you want me to marry this man you have chosen for me … the last descendant of Wolf Shadow. That's what you're saying, isn't it, Turtle?"
When she dared open her eyes and look at him, Turtle was nodding slowly.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "But I can't."
Wes started to say something, but Turtle held up a hand. "Tell me why," Turtle said.
Taylor drew a deep breath. She turned and looked into Wes's eyes, and whispered, "Because I'm in love with someone else. There's only one man I want, Turtle. Only one man … and for the life of me I can't imagine why it's taken me so long to realize that."
Wes's hands came to rest in her hair, stroking it slowly as he searched her face, unashamed tears brimming in his eyes. "Taylor?"
"I love you, Wes," she whispered. "Tell me I didn't wait too long. Tell me it's not too late."
His lips trembled as he lowered his head to kiss her. And when he lifted his head again, he whispered, "I'd have waited a lifetime, if that's what it took."
Turtle came closer. She hadn't heard him approach, so it startled her when his powder-soft hand closed on hers, and gently took the pendant away. Holding her to his side, Wes turned to face Turtle.
The old man held the pendant up before him, looking at it, eyes gleaming. "There is no need to put the pendant back into the ground, Sky Dancer. Because it is yours to wear. As your ancestor, Little Sparrow, wore it before you."
But he didn't hand it to her. Instead he pushed the heart into Wes's hands. "And yours to give to the woman you love, Raven Eyes. Just as your ancestor, Wolf Shadow, gave it before you."
Taylor blinked twice, and then sucked in a breath. "You mean…?"
Turtle nodded in a very turtlelike way. And then he simply vanished. Before her eyes. She emitted a startled cry, and scanned the place where he'd been standing only a second ago. But he was gone. And when she met Wes's eyes, she saw that they were wide … but accepting.
He put the pendant to his lips, kissed it reverently and then lowered it over her head as he had before. "Marry me, Sky Dancer," he whispered. "Share that ranch with me. Share everything with me—our lives, our children … everything."
"Yes," she told him. "Yes."
* * *
Epilogue
« ^
Wes stood on a rocky hilltop, holding Taylor's hands in his. Beyond them a wrought-iron-filigree rail surrounded the sacred resting place of Little Sparrow. And in the distance the beginnings of an oil rig loomed like a shadow. But the work on that had stopped for today.
His family surrounded him, smiling, crying some. He'd cried once or twice himself today, and maybe would again before it was over. He'd never dreamed he could be this happy, love this deeply, feel this much.
Taylor wore a doeskin dress, bleached white and lined with fringe and beads. And the turquoise heart hung around her neck. And Turtle recited words in his native tongue above them, and they both answered in the same language, which he'd been teaching to them, along with so many other things.
And then Wes held Taylor close in his arms, and he kissed her as if he would never stop. And she kissed him back just as deeply. And when Wes lifted his head away, he saw something, far off in the distance. And he touched her face and pointed, and she looked and saw it, too.
The two lovers, twined in one another's arms, as thin and transparent as mist, and as real as the ground under their feet. From somewhere beyond them a wolf yipped and then howled in a long, joyous wail. And then the phantom shapes vanished, and a warmth like nothing he'd ever known settled over Wes's heart.
"They're together," Taylor whispered. "They've finally found each other."
"And so have we, Sky Dancer," Wes whispered. "So have we."
* * * * *
Maggie Shayne - Badland's Bad Boy Page 21