by Nina Bruhns
Hands down, the past twenty-four hours had been the toughest day of his life. Even worse than the terrible day he'd left RaeAnne years ago. Back then, he'd known she would be safe—or at least thought she would. Back then, Roman himself had been the betrayer. Today he'd been betrayed from all sides. All, that is, except RaeAnne—the one person who would have been entitled.
"On a scale of one to ten, I'd give yesterday a minus fifty-eight," she agreed, idly stroking her hand down his chest. "Still, at least something good came of it."
He ran the day through his mind. Other than waking up in that sleeping bag with his arms around her, he came up empty. "Oh? And what would that be?"
"Your father. You found him, he's alive, and he's not a murderer."
Unable to hide the scorn in his voice, he commented, "No, he just abandoned his son at six years old and didn't give a rat's butt about what happened to him for the next decade or three."
RaeAnne kissed his jaw and tightened her hold around him. "That's not true," she murmured. "He moved to Pachenga just to be near you and your mother, and remember—"
"Yeah, yeah. Campanelli swore to kill us both if my father told anyone he was alive… He was that determined to keep his connection to the drug ring secret and his name unconnected to Pritchett's." Roman closed his eyes, rent by the pain that squeezed his heart. Threatened or not, how could a man do that to his own son?
"Campanelli obviously meant it. The profits from the Tecopa drug operation were too good to lose if your father revealed his connection to Pritchett after they were all arrested."
"All this time," he whispered. "All this time my father's been alive and working for the Bureau. Oh, God. I'll never forgive him, or them. I quit my job, you know. I can't work for them anymore."
"I know."
And she did. She'd been there last night when he'd chewed out his boss on the phone as they sat in O'Donnaugh's office filling in papers. It had been an angry conversation, and he was sorry for coming down so hard on his boss, who probably hadn't even known about the situation. But he didn't regret the decision.
She was quiet for a few moments, the hush of the early dawn mountains cocooning them in a gossamer of birdsong and whispering leaves.
"Your father didn't betray you," she finally said. "He thought it was the right thing to do. He sacrificed his life to keep you and your mother safe."
Roman had struggled to come to terms with this last inconceivable paradox all night. With no luck.
"You have to forgive him, Roman."
Impossible. He grasped her face between his hands, forcing her to look up at him.
"Could you?" he asked, certain of her answer. "Would you forgive a man who'd betrayed you that badly? Would you ever trust him again?"
Her lips formed a soft, knowing smile, her eyes filled with a love and wisdom he couldn't begin to fathom, and she simply whispered, "Yes."
A sob caught in his throat when, with sudden, blinding insight, he realized she wasn't talking about his father at all, but about him.
The pure joy and amazement he felt nearly lifted him from the water.
"You do? I mean, you would?"
"Yes. Provided he was capable of the same forgiveness."
He let go her face and pressed his hands to his temples. Could he forgive? Was he capable of seeing things from his father's point of view?
He thought back to that awful day he believed he'd contracted AIDS. To the anguish he'd felt, thinking if he so much as kissed RaeAnne goodbye she'd get the deadly disease. To the hopelessness of having to choose between abandoning the woman he loved more than anything, and saving her life.
In his mind, there'd been no choice. Not at that time. Could it have been the same for his father?
"We did exactly the same thing, didn't we?" he said, and wanted to laugh out loud at the cosmic justice being served up to him on a platter of retribution. Laugh—or he would start to weep and never stop.
"Yes."
All those years wasted.
It was a hard lesson.
But one he'd never, ever forget. Or repeat.
He glanced upward, to the high granite peaks blazing in a bright wash of orange light from the rising sun. It was as if they were holding their breath, waiting for his next words.
He turned to the woman in his lap, in his arms, the only woman he had ever wanted in his life, the woman he would never again let go.
"Do you have any idea how much I love you?" he whispered.
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. "Yes," she answered. "Because I love you just as much."
"Marry me," he said. "Marry me, and have my babies, and stay with me forever," he said. "Can you forgive me? Do you love me? Will you marry me?"
"Yes," she answered. "Oh, yes, yes, yes!"
And he swore he heard the mountains sigh.
* * *
Epilogue
«^
Three Months Later
RaeAnne Santangelo slipped her hand through the crook of her husband's arm and leaned into him. A tear slipped down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away. She didn't want the others to know what a silly, sentimental fool she was, crying at the funeral of people who'd died over a hundred and fifty years ago.
Still, it was amazing she even remembered how to cry, she'd been so incredibly happy for the past three mouths.
She glanced up at Roman, the source of her greatest joy. He was watching her, and winked when she looked up.
Caught.
Oh, well. It wasn't as if he didn't know every last detail about her anyway by now, including her embarrassing propensity for misting up over old movies, greeting card commercials, weddings—especially her own—and apparently funerals, too.
He pulled her closer as they watched his father, Hector, chanting over the grave of Crawford Edisto and the Indian woman he'd spent his life with. It was sad that they'd been taken at the same time by disease, probably yellow fever according to Dr. Cooper, the forensic anthropologist from Berkeley. But the couple had been old by then, and if they loved each other even half as much as RaeAnne loved Roman, one wouldn't have lasted a week without the other.
Hector Santangelo's voice was deep and clear as he sang a Paiute prayer over the grave. RaeAnne was pleased he'd consented to do the ceremony. There had been more than a few rocky conversations between him and Roman after they'd found each other. But she was so proud of the way Roman had kept his promise to forgive his father.
The two had talked endlessly about the past, sharing memories and stories of the years they'd missed. He'd learned how Hector had been recruited by the FBI, how he'd kicked his heroin addiction, then spent many years after his "death" working undercover, fighting the South American drug war, because he was so angry over what it had done to his life, and what it had cost him.
RaeAnne smiled up at her husband. Like father, like son. They were so much alike it was almost scary.
The soft, repetitive words of the Indian song flowed up through the fall-scarlet trees of Cleary Hot Springs as the great-great-great-grandnieces and nephews of Crawford Edisto solemnly poured shovels full of dirt over the grave of their ancestor and his bride. They'd been delighted with RaeAnne's discovery, to the tune of a hefty bonus check—enough for a nice down payment on an old Victorian fixer-upper nestled along the Russian River, that Roman was restoring in-between his veterinary studies.
Not that they needed the money. It turned out Roman had saved twenty years worth of Navy and FBI paychecks, invested wisely and could easily afford to retire and fulfill his dream of becoming a small animal vet.
"Hi Miss Martin—I mean Mrs. Santangelo," whispered Toby as he handed her a shovel when it came her turn to help fill. "This is so great."
"It was a good idea, wasn't it?"
Everyone had debated about what was the best thing to do with the remains. Back in May, RaeAnne had elected to leave them exactly as they were and not excavate more than a few sample bones for Dr. Cooper to analyze and extract DNA from. Dr. Cooper h
ad been able to prove they were indeed Crawford's remains. In the end, it had been decided to leave the burial site where it was, replacing the bones in their original positions, with the addition of two lovely headstones to mark the graves.
"Yeah," Toby agreed. "Very cool. Especially the Indian ceremony part."
She grinned. Toby had suggested it to her, and she had suggested it to the relatives. They'd loved the idea of a mixed-culture memorial service. So, over Thanksgiving vacation when everyone was able to get off work and school, they had all gathered together to celebrate.
"RaeAnne. Roman," Philip O'Donnaugh said as she passed her shovel to him, giving him a quick hug as she did so. He accepted Roman's slap on the back with a good-natured smile.
Now, that was the weirdest thing of all—Roman and Philip's friendship.
She suspected it had been mostly guilt that had driven Roman to invite him out for their first beer. Guilt that he'd believed Philip to be the perpetrator of all sorts of vice, corruption and nefarious reasons for courting her. But, somehow, in the weeks since the sheriff's office had become the center of the biggest scandal to hit Inyo County since … well, since ever, he and Philip had become fast friends.
Philip had been exonerated of all wrongdoing, of course. She'd never doubted it for a minute. But despite that, right after the Grand Jury investigation, he'd resigned his job as sheriff. Roman had invited him to fly up to Sonoma, and to her surprise, he'd accepted. To her even greater surprise, he'd left their place two weeks later riding Roman's Harley.
Roman had claimed he didn't need it anymore. He was buying a Volvo.
The baby-blue station wagon was now parked down by the cabin, sandwiched between the Harley and Toby's old rustbucket truck.
"Let me borrow the bike," Roman asked Philip when the ceremony was over and everyone had shared a feed around the river-cobble fire ring in the meadow. "We won't be gone long."
"Sure," Philip said, tossing him the keys.
"Come on," Roman urged RaeAnne when she hesitated.
She glanced uncertainly at the sputtering machine, but then hopped on behind him. What the hell. She'd been taking chances ever since he'd cut her down from that stupid tree Toby'd tied her to. What was one more?
"Tuck in your chin, it's going to be windy," he advised, then pulled her hands around his waist and leaned around to kiss her. "Hang on."
The bike leaped forward. She slipped her hands under his leather jacket and held on tight.
It was the first time she'd ever been on a motorcycle. On the twisty mountain road he didn't drive fast, but it was exhilarating nonetheless. Just as all the firsts she'd shared with her new husband had been.
The smell of warm leather and hot man tickled her nose, the feel of firm muscles tantalizing her fingers. Lord, he turned her on. He could just walk by, and she would melt at the man's feet. She nestled against him and kissed the back of his neck, lingering with her lips and tongue so he'd be sure to notice. She wasn't disappointed. He swerved the bike into a cutout and parked it, pulling her off the seat and into a hot kiss.
"We don't have enough time for this," he said on a half laugh, half moan, after he'd kissed her thoroughly. "I promised Phil we'd be back soon."
That's when she noticed where they were. Her thinking spot.
He led her by the hand along the path, taking them out onto the huge granite boulder where they'd already shared so much.
"What's going on?" she asked as he took her in his arms, turning her so they both faced the towering mountains.
"There's something I've been wanting to do."
She could hardly wait. Usually those words were followed by a new, breathtakingly erotic experience for both of them.
She glanced up, puzzled, when he took a big breath and shouted to the peaks at the top of his lungs, "Thank you!"
What on earth?
"Is this some weird Indian custom I don't know about?" she asked. "Or should I be worried about you?"
He chuckled, nuzzling her cheek. "I'm not sure," he said. "But I'm not taking any chances."
"On what?"
"We never did find out who sent me that copy of your Forest Service dig application. Tanya swears it wasn't her."
She digested that for a second, unable to make heads or tails of his logic. "So you're saying … the mountains sent it?" She grinned, expecting him to laugh out loud at her outrageous suggestion.
But he just grinned back and shrugged. "It certainly wasn't O'Donnaugh."
"Your dad did it. I'll bet anything."
"Anything?" He lifted a brow suggestively.
She should know better than to bet with him. She'd lost on several memorable occasions. But truth be told, she hadn't minded a bit when he collected his winnings.
"Anything," she assured. "You be sure to ask him."
"Oh, don't you worry, I will. In the meantime…" He cupped his large hand gently around her head and drew her lips to his. "A kiss to seal the bargain."
"I thought you'd never ask."
She melted into him, flowing into his embrace like a river to the sea. His tongue was slow and sensual, his lips warm and tender. Her heart did an endless, dizzy spiral, beating to the pulse of her boundless love for her man.
"Have I told you lately how much I love you?" she whispered.
"Not nearly enough," he murmured, despite her reminders at least a hundred times a day.
His lips caressed hers, his hand stealing under her blouse. It sought her belly, and settled there, gently possessive in its touch.
"Tell me again."
She obliged, whispering the words over and over as she kissed each precious inch of his mouth and cheeks and nose. "I love you. I love you. I love you…"
They'd waited until after they'd gotten married in Las Vegas—the same day he asked her—to buy a pregnancy test kit. She hadn't been carrying his child then, but they'd had three months to remedy the situation. This morning the stick had turned pink.
"You've made me the happiest man in the world," he said, gazing into her eyes, and she knew he'd left the past completely behind.
As had she. They'd both come a long way, their future bright, based on a foundation of love and commitment.
"I've always loved you, and I always will," he promised. "No matter what life throws our way, I'll never leave you."
Her eyes filled with tears, her heart with joy, and her life flowed with a sweetness she never thought possible.
"I know," she said.
And this time she truly believed.
* * * *