«Damnation.Will you listen or do I have to —»

«— you are Tree That Stands Alone and lying with me was the worst mistake of your life!»

«Wrong,» Wolfe said furiously. «The worst mistake of my life was promising Willow I’d try talking with you first!»

With no warning, Wolfe yanked Jessica out of the saddle and fastened his mouth over hers. She twisted and thrashed against him, but he was much too strong. He absorbed her struggles until the wild urgency of his kiss reached her on a level deeper than words.

Unable to deny Wolfe and herself any longer, Jessica yielded to him the softness he had already taken, sharing the kiss with him. It was a long time before he lifted his head.

«This is the only truth that matters,» Wolfe said finally, brushing Jessica’s tears away. «You are mine, only mine. And I am yours.»

«You are Tree That Stands Alone.»

«And you are the sun in my sky. Don’t take the sun from me, Jessi.»

She tried to speak, but was too moved by what she saw in his eyes to say more than his name.

«Wolfe?»

«Stay with me, Jessi Lonetree,» he whispered. «Share the wild land with me. Love me as much as I love you.»

Epilogue

In the following months, Wolfe showed Jessica his favorite places in the western land. Together they smelted the rain winds sweeping across the desert, wearing robes of lightning and bringing the miracle of water to a dry land. Together they stood among stone buttes anchored like great ships in a boundless sea of sand.

Together they saw a canyon so vast it could be crossed only by the sun, and at its bottom a river coiled like a silver medicine snake, untouched, untouchable. Together they stood in the sun-washed silence of cities built by men long dead. Ancient, enigmatic, set into sheer rock cliffs, nothing inhabited the stone cities but the wind. No paths led to the buildings and no paths came away, yet the cities remained, filled with mysteries and spirits of a time long past, unknown, unknowable.

Together they followed streams that had no name up the slopes of mountains that were also unnamed, climbing so high that angels sang in the ringing silence just before moonrise. Together they drank from lakes as blue as Wolfe’s eyes and fell asleep in each other’s arms, waking to find the aspens ablaze with winter’s first kiss.

Finally they followed the sunrise back to the SanJuans. An hour’s lazy ride from Willow and Caleb’s home, Wolfe and Jessica built their own home along the Columbine’s clear waters. There Wolfe talked to mustangs and Jessica stalked living rainbows through deep river pools. There beneath a sky as deep and wild as their love, they created new life where none had been before, boys with Wolfe’s fluid strength and girls with Jessica’s laughter and fire.

And through all the peace and storms of all their years, Jessica was the sun in Wolfe’s sky, bringing light and life to Tree That Stands Alone.