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The day shouldn’t be so warm. The day ought not to be tormenting Molly with its brilliance. But it wasn’t the day that worried her—it was the nighttime yet to come. The first of many nights she’d be alone. Not physically, because in a few weeks she’d have her business up and running and the hacienda might be overflowing with clients and maybe with tourists—but she’d be alone in her head and her heart.
She shifted on the top step of the exterior staircase to the hacienda. Her bottom had gotten a bit numb, since she’d been sitting on it for over an hour since she returned from Hopeless.
She was surprised that no one had come to visit her to check up on her. Not her mother, not Winnie, nor Davie. Perhaps they knew she wanted to be alone with her aloneness.
Had any of them stopped Saul on his walk down Hopeless Main Street to say goodbye to him? Or had he walked on, head down, just wanting to get out as fast as he could?
Her eyes watered then.
Misery. There was nothing positive to say about it.
She scanned the vista before her. Fine Calamity land.
A bird call in the distance, or maybe a coyote yip, brought her out of her drifting thoughts. She listened a while longer. There it was again—not a bird and not a coyote. It wasn’t even a real sound, not one she could determine.
She lifted her chin, trying with all her might to push down the expectancy that sizzled inside her.
Something was happening. Or about to happen.
The air hushed, except for the hum of a few insects and the sound of the fountain in the courtyard which she’d switched on just for the pleasure of hearing the running water. It was supposed to be calming, the sound of water.
She glanced at the driveway, looking for any disturbance, but there was nothing. She moved her focus a fraction and studied the curve in the driveway that dipped beyond to the hillside and the crumbling archway, which she couldn’t see from here.
She saw the top of his head first and had to blink a number of times in case this was some nightmarish vision. Then his torso came into view as he climbed her driveway, the top of his heavy backpack visible above his wide shoulders.
He wasn’t walking, he was hiking. His stride long and slightly too wide, which is the way she’d seen many hikers walk. They paced the ground evenly, bearing the weight they carried on their backs.
She stilled, holding her breath. If she stayed like this and didn’t breathe, perhaps he wouldn’t see her and go on and retrieve whatever it was he’d left behind in his bedroom over at the lodge house.
But he didn’t head for the lodge house, he headed straight for the hacienda and the steps Molly sat on.
He came to a stop at the base of the staircase and hauled his pack off his shoulders, setting it down on the ground before turning to look up at her.
“I didn’t even get as far as the You Are Now Leaving the Happy Hamlet of Hopeless sign,” he said. “Not the sign at the far end, anyway.”
She’d better stand now, because sitting here, holding her breath, didn’t feel right.
She needed to be armed and ready. “How come?” she asked, rising from the stone step.
“Because I love you.”
Her mouth dried out and her heart thumped in her chest. This was wonderful and terrible all at once. He loved her but it didn’t mean he’d stay here for her.
“Did you come back just to tell me that?” Because she couldn’t leave Hopeless.
She never wanted to leave. Was that selfish? Probably, but whatever they both needed was here. She felt that in a way that once might have frightened the living daylights out of her. But not anymore.
“I came back to tell you,” he confirmed.
“There’s more,” she said, making what might be her last stand.
There was more to be said on her side, anyway. A lot more to be determined before she threw herself at him, most likely breaking a leg in her rush to get to him.
“I love you, Molly. That’s the whole and only reason I came back.”
“Yes, but—” She pushed the wonder of him telling her he loved her aside. “I want to know what happens now.’
He didn’t lose eye contact. “I love you, Molly Mackillop. I love your mom and your grandmother. I love Winnie and I have one hundred percent respect for Davie. I love how you make a stand—” He smiled then. “Like I think you’re doing now.”
Damn right she was. She wasn’t here to be his short-time girlfriend.
“If you’ll let me,” he continued. “I’d like to stand at your side and help you make all the future stands you plan on making.”
“To stay?” she fired back. “Or just for a month or two.”
“For always.”
She had to swallow hard at that. “But what will you do?” she asked, not willing to believe this until she knew all the facts.
“I’ll take over your washhouse and start my hiking business.”
“Lodge house.”
A trace of a smile. “That one, too.”
“So you’ll just walk in here, and demand my lodge house.”
He nodded. “Yep.”
She felt the trace of a smile of her own.
“I’ve got fifty grand to put into these businesses of ours,” he said. “What have you got?”
“Twenty—once it’s returned to me. Plus my dedication and resolve, and that amounts to around another, say ten?”
He nodded. “I’d say that was fair.”
“And I’m likely to sell my work to magazines and tourist boards and such,” she said. “So I reckon I’d easily come up with another ten to twenty grand in next to no time.”
“In which case, some of my fifty grand could go into the remaining renovations on the hacienda. Like the archway, for a start. And of course, I’d be offering my skills as a roof tiler free of charge because I’d be getting room and board, wouldn’t I?” His smile veered toward a grin.
“Where will we live?” she asked. And will we live together, or will we have a partnership with benefits?
“We’ll live in the two-story part of the hacienda. Together,” he added.
“How together?”
“For better or worse together.” He took a step up the staircase. “I made a mistake, Molly. I listened to my gut instinct.”
“What’s wrong with that? You’re supposed to listen to your instinct.”
He shook his head. “I forgot that I’d changed. I was stuck in the old mindset, not the new. Hell, I didn’t even realize there was a new way to think. Until I realized I was free. Free to stay.”
“I don’t understand.” But she stepped down a step, wanting to get closer in order to gauge his expression more deeply.
Saul stepped up another step. “It’s like the hurt was driving me. Being shunned—or feeling like I’d been shunned. I let that hurt tell me what to do. Like listening to the devil when an angel is smiling at you and telling you which road you should really be on.”
It pained her to think that anything she might have done unintentionally had created this crossroad for him. “Are you referring to me?”
“No, Molly. Not you. Not Alice. Not even fate. Just my bad that I didn’t listen to what sense was telling me. Do you know what they say in Colorado? If you climb onto the saddle, you’d better be ready for the ride. Well, I climbed on and got thrown. Worst of all, I didn’t get back on the horse.”
No way was he the coward he was depicting himself as. “There isn’t any part of you—inside or out—that isn’t daring and brave, and more than that, there isn’t any part of you that doesn’t care.”
He nodded slowly, but it wasn’t in agreement necessarily, more like he was thinking a lot deeper. “You get me. You got me from the start. I’m just catching up, here.” Another whisper of a smile flew over his face. “Will you give me a chance to show you how much I care? To show you how brave and daring I can be, by asking you to marry me when I’m not sure yet that you’ll say yes.”
“Marry you?” That would mean he’d have to stay.
“I don’t ask lightly, Molly. No messing around. We get married and we stay married. Long-term. No matter what.”
“I can probably do that.” Just watch me.
“You can be happy for me now. Remember what we talked about, up on the roof?”
She nodded. “You said you were happy for me, because I’d found the real me again after years of hiding.”
“And you said you’d like to be happy for me, and I said I’d let you know when that time came.” He took another step up. “Now’s the time. Will you be happy for me?”
“I really want to believe this is happening and not a dream...”
“It’s because of you that I’m happy. It’s because of you I discovered there’s only one me. That one me wants to be with you, because you’re my happiness. You’re my heart and my soul.”
Her heart melted and her soul soared.
“I love you, Molly. More than the ground I love to walk. More than the vista I’ve been walking toward for thirty years. You’re my horizon, Molly Mackillop. I’m home.”
Goosebumps covered her skin in short, sweet stabs of joy. He loved her.
“Do you know how bad I felt?” she asked.
“If it’s as bad as I’ve been feeling since you drove off and left me, it was real bad.”
“I’ve sat here for over an hour, being lonesome and pathetic.”
“I’m sorry.” His smile was a little deeper now, and so was the love in his eyes. “I walked back as fast as I could. Can you forgive me?”
She skipped down the steps and in one second flat she had her arms flung around his neck and was wrapped in his embrace.
“I love you,” she told him, her face pressed to his, cheek to cheek.
“I love that you love me, you beautiful, crazy woman.” His voice sounded choked with emotion.
All the warmth inside her curled like butter pats, and heaven ballooned in her chest.
“I wanted us to be right for each other,” she admitted. “I wanted it so much.”
He pulled back, so they were looking at each other. “We’re damn well perfect for each other. We won’t let anyone tell us otherwise.”
“Pact?” She held up her hand, fingers folded except for her little finger.
He hooked his little finger around hers and the knot of forever love—no matter what—seared not only their fingers together, but their truth.
“Love you,” he said.
“Love you, too.”
Little fingers knotted, he leaned close, and murmured, “You’re my world, Molly.”
“You’re my everything,” she whispered back, a moment before his mouth hit hers and heaven arrived.
