Page 68

He pulled back and placed a finger to her lips. Staring straight into her eyes, with the ghosts of Whitefire Lake as his witnesses, Turner repeated, “I love you. Believe me.”

“But—”

“Don’t fight it.”

Tears slid down her cheeks. Could it be true? She hardly dared believe him, and yet the gaze touching hers—caressing hers—claimed that she was and always had been his whole life. “Oh, God,” she whispered, and threw her arms around him. “I love you, too, Turner. I always have.”

“Then marry me,” he said simply. “Let’s not wait. It’s time we gave our son a family and time we built a life for our new little one.”

“But—”

“Now, marry me.”

Things were going so fast. Heather’s mind was spinning. “Now?” she repeated as he kissed away her tears.

“Isn’t there a preacher over there?” He cocked his head toward the old summer camp and the lights flickering through the trees.

“I don’t know….Yes, I suppose, but do you think—?” Without another word, he lifted her onto his horse, then swung into the saddle behind her. Wrapping one solid arm around her middle, he urged the horse forward toward the bobbing colored lights and the music. “Where’s Adam?”

“With my mother—”

He grimaced at that. “Well, as soon as we find him and a preacher we’re getting married.”

“But Rachelle… Jackson…”

Turner laughed low in his throat. “Somehow, I don’t think they’ll mind. They seem to like to cause a stir.”

“But why—why now?” she asked.

“You’re as bad as Mazie with all your questions,” he said, but chuckled. “I finally got hold of Zeke, and the next time I see that old coot, I intend to fill his backside with buckshot.”

“Why?”

“He admitted you called, that you were frantic to reach me, but by the time I returned, you’d already married. As for the letters I sent you, I mailed them to the Lazy K with instructions to forward them ’cause I didn’t have your address. Zeke, thinking he was doing us a big favor, burned every last one.”

“Oh, no—”

“As I said, ‘buckshot.’” But he smiled and kissed her temple.

Then, as if he’d truly lost his mind, he reached into the inner pocket of his suede jacket, withdrew a crisp white envelope,and while Sampson broke into a lope, started shredding the neatly-typed pages.

“What—?”

“Confetti, for the bride and groom. Compliments of Thomas Fitzpatrick.”

“I don’t understand—”

He let the torn pages disperse on the wind, the ragged pieces drifting to the lake. “All you have to understand, lady, is that I love you.” With a kiss to her rounded lips, he spurred the horse forward. The wind tore at her hair, and the waters of Whitefire Lake lapped at the tree-studded shore. Turner’s arm tightened around her, his lips buried against her neck, and they galloped toward their future as husband and wife.

Together forever, she thought, as the lake flashed by in a blur, and she thought she heard laughter in the trees. Hers? Turner’s? Or the ghosts of the past who knew the powers of Whitefire Lake?

* * * * *