The Lost Hearts (31 page)

She wrenched from his grip.  “But you left me.”  He was standing here in front of her, blood and bones, and his beautiful face.  She could whip him now.

Trevor’s jaw flexed and he raked his hair.  His eyes fell to the ground in submission.  “I know,” he said breathlessly.  “I want you to forgive me.  I came here for that.  And t
o remind you that I made you a promise.  To never leave you again.”

Alexis was crying.  He took her tiny hand in his and pressed her fingers to his lips.  “I will never leave you again, Alexis.  Not unless you tell me to.  I belong to you now.”

Epil
ogue

“God damn it, woman,” Trevor hollered, careful to mask the grin tugging at his mouth.

“I told you I know how to do it,” Alexis bellowed defiantly through the rain.  They had been caught in a sudden torrent, and now they were digging a trench beneath the wide canopy of a tree where they would set up their tent.  Alexis whipped her face toward Trevor and speared the earth with the spade, her burgundy rivulets catching across her wet face.  “What’s that smirk?”  Her voice was a deep trumpet. 

She had had about enough of Trevor today as he bossed her.  Hadn’t they done this enough for him to see that she was more than sufficiently equipped to help him?  Despite their numerous returns to New Guinea, Trevor only grew more adept at finding new ways to put her in her place.  She growled at him, and the grin only spread wider across his face. 

“What, did you get a Ph.D. in survival skills that I don’t know about?”  Now his dimples cut sharply in his cheeks, his teeth big and bright as he dissolved into laughter.  Nothing gave him greater pleasure than goading her, especially when those sapphire eyes flashed with unruly stubbornness. 

Alexis balked, and her jaw fell open.  The earth was already beginning to flood under the sheets of rain.  They didn’t have time to bicker, but she couldn’t resist.  “Fine, let’s set up two separate tents and see how well we fare on our own.” 

Trevor snorted.  “You mean like that first time you tried to show me up?  Do you remember that night just a few short years ago, Red?  If my memory serves correctly, you spent a long uncomfortable night nursing on humble pie.”  She was just one provocation away from lunging at him and knocking off that infernal hat pulled low down over his brow.  Trevor caught the seething creature in his sight and his body melted into submission.

“Okay, okay, Red,” he conceded, stretching a hand to stroke her as he would a wild beast.  “You’re the boss.”

The rain hadn’t softened in the slightest, but they sat embedded in a shroud of warmth and silence.  Trevor couldn’t keep his eyes off the tiny obstinate figure seated just beyond his reach.  She was reorganizing her bundle with deliberate slowness, her back ramrod straight.  His smile returned in full force.  “Come keep me warm,” he croaked, his throat swelling with the threat of laughter. 

“If you think you can sweet talk me right now, you’re one sorry-”

She was flat with her back on the ground.  He had swept her beneath him, and now he crushed her with the wide heaviness of his frame.  “Quiet, Red,” his voice was gravel.  He pulled back and their eyes locked. 

He had spent most of his life with a restless heart.  A lost heart.  He could hardly remember it now when he looked at her.  He marveled at the mystery of it.  He remembered the moment he had found her in Boston, wild eyed and windless as he picked her up from the ground.  In that moment he felt all the shattered fragments of his being collect into a whole.  He hadn’t left her side since.  His black eyes softened, capturing her, and he smiled, stroking the pink curve of her mouth.  In her he could see the beginning and the end.  He was home, wherever she was. 

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