THE APACHE WARRIOR LOVED HER FOR ONE NIGHT – YEARS LATER, HE RETURNED TO CLAIM HER HEART
Chapter 5
“No,” he said. “The reality is more beautiful, and more brave, than the dream.”
He kissed her then, with all the longing of half a decade and the fierce joy of a promise kept, and she kissed him back, gripping his shoulders to make certain he was real, not another phantom of the long nights. When they finally broke apart, he pressed his forehead to hers. “We should go. There are many miles before nightfall.”
They rode all day, climbing ever higher. He taught her to read the landscape the way he did — the game trails, the springs hidden in dry ground, the signs that said danger and the signs that said water. He told her stories of his people, of ceremonies and beliefs that had carried them across centuries, and in return she told him of her life at the ranch, of the years of proving herself, of the day she had first believed she could stand alone in the world. They camped that night in a hollow sheltered from the wind, and he built a small, nearly smokeless fire, and they slept wrapped in his blanket under a canopy of stars more brilliant than any she had ever seen.
“The spirits guard these mountains,” he murmured against her hair. “Old ones. Powerful.”
“Are they friendly?”
“To those who come with good hearts,” he said. “And to those who show respect.” He tightened his arm around her. “Sleep now. Dawn comes early in the mountains.”
She closed her eyes, lulled by the steady beat of his heart and the whisper of pine boughs overhead. For the first time in five years, she fell asleep without holding the turquoise stone and sending her thoughts into the night. She no longer needed to. The man she had waited for was beside her, real and solid and hers.
The second day took them through country so raw it seemed newly made — forests of trees so ancient they felt like they were listening, ledges above dizzying drops, streams so clear she could count the stones at the bottom. And then, in the late afternoon, they crested a high ridge, and Nokashi drew rein, and Hannah gasped.
Nestled between towering peaks lay a valley like a hidden emerald. Green meadows ran down to a small lake that mirrored the sky, aspen and pine ringed the edges, and a stream glittered through the middle like a silver thread. It was so quiet, so untouched, so impossibly beautiful that it did not seem like part of the world she knew.
“This is the place I promised,” Nokashi said, and there was pride in his voice. “The Valley of Hidden Waters. My people spoke of it in stories. Few ever found it.”
“How did you discover it?”
His face darkened briefly with the memory. “After the massacre of my band, I wandered many moons, looking for a place the white men would not follow. I was wounded. Dying. I prayed to the spirits for a safe passage to the next world.” He paused. “Instead they led me here, to heal. To wait for you.”
They descended into the valley, and Hannah saw the evidence of his waiting — a sturdy lodge built in a grove near the lake, part Apache design, part frontier cabin, chinked and solid against the weather. A small corral held a handful of horses. A garden plot showed the first beginnings of cultivated plants.
“You built all of this yourself?” she asked, amazed.
“For us,” he said. “A home where no one cares whether a man is Apache or a woman is white. Where we live by our own rules, and our own hearts.”
She dismounted, overwhelmed. Five years ago, beside a waterfall, he had promised to return for her and take her somewhere the world could not tear them apart. Against every odd, against war and massacre and the entire machinery of two worlds that wanted them dead, he had kept that promise.
“Welcome home, Hannah Walker,” he said softly, coming to stand beside her.
She turned to him with tears streaming down her face. “I never stopped believing you would come back for me. Even when everyone said I was a fool to wait — to refuse every suitor — I knew in my heart you would return.”
He took her hands in his. “And I knew you would be waiting. When death came close, when the soldiers hunted me across these mountains, I fought to live. I fought to return. I fought to keep my vow.” He looked at the valley around them, at the lodge, at the woman standing in front of him. “Now we are here. And we are free.”
The sun set over their hidden valley, painting the peaks gold and crimson, and they stood together on the threshold of the life they had both sacrificed everything to claim.
That first night in the valley, Hannah did not sleep. She sat on the threshold of the lodge with the fire low behind her and watched the moon climb over the peaks, and she felt something she had not felt in years: stillness. No bugle at dawn. No schedules to keep. No officer’s wives measuring her with their eyes. Here, the only clock was the sun, and the only judge was the man who had carried her across a mountain to build her a home.
She turned to find Nokashi watching her from the doorway, his face soft in the firelight. “What are you thinking?”
“That I am finally where I belong,” she said.