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“Tomorrow, I’m calling for the preacher. It won’t be a church wedding, but I refuse to spend another day without a piece of paper that says you’re my wife.”
Evie hugged him tight, then pulled away to kiss his lips. “I love you, Alex Walker, and I’ve told you before, I don’t need a piece of paper to know I’m married to you.”
“This is one argument you’re not going to win, Evie,” he said. “No one is ever going to take you from me again. And as soon as you’re well enough, I’m taking you and my son home so I can uphold my promise to you.”
“What promise?” Evie’s eyebrows raised.
He hugged her close and whispered in her ear, “That you will wake up each morning to watch the sun rise above the Tetons.”
Epilogue
Five years later
Laurent Berard ran his hand down the length his wife’s silky black hair, and Whispering Waters turned in his arms. Her soft smile sent a warm sensation through his chest.
“Yancey will return with our daughter very shortly. We should take advantage of our time alone,” she breathed against his shoulder, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Laurent groaned. He leaned toward her, and their lips met in a kiss that started slowly and quickly grew in urgency.
“You are insatiable, wife,” he said, and lifted her onto their bed.
“Very soon, we will not have much time to ourselves,” she said huskily, and stared up at him. An expectant look flashed in her eyes.
Laurent’s heart skipped in his chest. His eyes searched his wife’s face. “What are you saying, mon amor?”
“By next spring, you will be a father again.” Her smile grew wide. “Perhaps a brother this time for Raven. Perhaps then she will cease to torment Shadow Walker and Evelyn’s sons. She follows poor Joseph around so much, he hides each time they’re together.” She laughed softly. “At least Lucas and she are of the same age, but for some reason she has taken a liking to Joseph.”
Laurent chuckled. Joy and contentment filled him. He ran his hand along his wife’s flat abdomen, envisioning her full and round with another child growing in her belly. For the first two years of their marriage, they had tried for a baby. He remembered how Whispering Waters had blamed herself, saying she was barren and useless as a wife. She had watched and doted on Evelyn’s young son, never showing her deep sorrow and perhaps even jealously that her friend was a mother. When Evelyn and Alex announced another pregnancy, Whispering Waters had cried for days. Nothing Laurent could do would snap her out of her sorrow, until one day she came to him, the biggest smile on her face that he’d ever seen. The birth of their daughter, Sophia, who was known as Little Raven among her mother’s people, had been nothing short of a miracle. Now, he would be a father again?
“Perhaps our beautiful daughter will marry Joseph someday. Although he might be as reluctant as his father was to finally admit his love for Evelyn.”
Whispering Waters laughed. “She will have to behave more like a proper young woman should before he takes notice of her. All she wants to do is dig in the dirt and steal away his toys. She has not made a good impression on a potential future husband.”
Laurent leaned over his wife and kissed her. “She is only two years old. She still has time. She will grow up to be as beautiful as you, and then no man will be able to resist her. I will have a difficult time fending off all of her suitors.”
“She has our friend Yancey wrapped around her little finger. He loves her as if she was his own daughter.”
Laurent smiled. The eastern dandy certainly had a way with his daughter. “She will miss him when he returns to the big city in the east.” Laurent unbuckled his belt and tossed his pistol on the table in the center of his cabin.
“Perhaps he will choose to stay here with us. I know of a young woman who would make a suitable wife for him.” Whispering Waters smiled.
Laurent wasn’t sure that Yancey planned to stay in the mountains. He had learned what he had come to learn, and his father was calling him back to the eastern city to run the family business. “He has learned a lot over the years. Perhaps he will stay. He hasn’t said.”
“Let’s not speak of him now, my husband.” Whispering Waters tugged on his shirt.
Laurent kissed his wife. He dropped his belt to the ground and joined her on the bed, then pulled her into his arms. No sooner had he relaxed next to her, when a loud bang jolted them apart. Laurent leapt from the bed, his eyes darting to where his pistol lay on the table a few feet away, then to the man who stood in the doorway. Whispering Waters gasped behind him.
