“Because you got yourself a wise husband, Sadie. He looked real deep and saw your beauty.”
A lump the size of a boulder got stuck in Sadie’s throat.
Dwayne let his finger slide down her hair until he could tug on the end of it, his grin warm and his voice tender. “You’re a beautiful lady, Sadie,” he said in a whisper. “I only hope my new wife is half as pretty as you are.”
Sadie threw herself into Dwayne’s arms and struggled to hold back tears born of the fear and uncertainty of the last three days. Her old friend wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her tightly, and frantically apologized.
“Hell’s bells, Sadie,” he growled. “I didn’t mean to make you cry!”
“You didn’t,” she said. “Morgan did.”
Dwayne quickly set her away from him and scanned the bushes surrounding the campsite.
“I—I wasn’t saying you’re pretty because I want to steal you!” he shouted, backing away from Sadie as he spoke. “I was only trying to explain myself.”
Sadie couldn’t keep from smiling. “Oh, Dwayne. I didn’t mean Morgan was here,” she said. “What you said made me think of him, and that made me cry.”
Dwayne relaxed slightly and lifted his brows at her. “Just thinking about your husband makes you cry?” he asked incredulously. He took a step closer. “What happens when you actually see him in person?”
“I smile.”
Her answer confounded him. He scratched his dirty hair and squinted one eye at her.
“Does Morgan tell you you’re beautiful?” Dwayne suddenly asked.
“Every day,” she told him truthfully. “Without words.”
“How’s he do that?” Dwayne wanted to know, stepping closer.
“By his actions,” Sadie explained. “By caring and worrying about me. By scolding and lecturing and bossing me around. By making me so mad sometimes I want to spit. He also teases me every chance he gets. He carries all the heavy supplies in his pack, lightening my load when we hike. He also makes sure I’m warm at night. And safe. And by doing all that, Dwayne, Morgan is telling me every minute of every day that I’m beautiful.”
“Hell’s bells, Sadie. Am I going to have to do that kind of stuff for my wife?”
Sadie wiped another threatening tear away and nodded. “You are. And you’re going to love doing it, Dwayne. Because your wife will understand by your actions how much she means to you. Each small deed will tell her you think she’s beautiful and that you cherish her and are glad she’s agreed to share your life.”
Dwayne suddenly frowned at the ground. “I probably will have to show her instead of tell her, like your Morgan does.” He looked up, his expression confounded again.
“Because I don’t know Russian, Sadie. Me and Harry got us some tapes to listen to, but we just can’t get the hang of the language. And, according to the book that came with the tapes, their alphabet is missing some letters and has some other ones that look mighty weird.”
“The language of love is universal, Dwayne,” Sadie assured him, walking to her pack and slinging it onto her shoulders. She walked back to Dwayne and touched his arm. “It’
s also timeless, I’ve discovered. Don’t worry. You and Harry are going to do all right.
Because,” Sadie whispered, leaning over to kiss his blush-heated cheek,“you are beautiful, my good friend, deep down inside where it counts.”
Sadie walked out of Dwayne’s camp then and decided it was time she found her husband.
Chapter Twenty-four
Sadie knew the first rule of searchingfor someone was that the searchee had to stay put in order for the searcher to find him. If both parties wandered around in the same hundreds of square miles of forest, they likely would pass within yards of each other and not even know it.
But that theory only worked if the searchee really wished to be found, and it depended on how determined and tenacious the searcher was.
Sadie was very determined.
After wasting most of the afternoon hunting for Morgan, wearing out her boots and getting a sore throat from hollering his name over and over, Sadie finally conceded defeat. She knelt in front of Faol, who had suddenly appeared when she walked out of Dwayne’s camp, and held his big head between her hands and pleaded with the animal to help her.
“You’ve got to find Morgan, big boy,” she entreated, getting her nose within inches of his. “Before he finds me first. It’s important that I go to him with my heart in my hand and remind him again that he loves me.”
Faol whined, darting out his tongue and lapping her chin, his wagging tail shaking his whole body. Gripping the tufts of hair on the sides of his face, Sadie held him away.
“Can you do that? Can you find Morgan for me?”
He tried to wash her face again, then barked when she wouldn’t let him. Sadie let go and stood up, waving her hand at the forest.
“Go on, then. Go find Morgan,” she told the wolf, giving him a nudge with her knee.
Faol barked again, spun on his feet, and took off at a run down the trail. Sadie tightened the waist belt of her pack and started jogging after him, the thrill of the chase lifting her spirits until she was laughing out loud.
Sadie lost sight of Faol but heard him bark someplace to her left. She turned off the trail and ducked under limbs, slowing to avoid getting poked in the face by low-hanging branches. She couldn’t see Faol anymore, but the wolf was making enough noise to wake the dead.
Sadie broke onto a narrow game trail, this one obviously used by moose more than deer.
She was able to stand upright and pick up her pace again, and within twenty minutes Sadie realized exactly where Faol was leading her.
And she laughed again, at the irony of what was happening. Because it wasn’t all that long ago that she had been running down this very same trail—only away from a madman instead of toward him.
Faol had stopped at the edge of the lake. He was sitting down, his tail wagging the ground clean, and looking over his shoulder at her. He darted a look at the lake and then back at her, whining and standing up and padding over to touch her fingers. He carefully grasped the fingertips of her glove in his teeth and gently tugged.
Sadie took the hint. She pulled off her glove, knelt down, and took hold of his face again.
“I know, big boy,” she whispered. “I might be hardheaded sometimes, but I eventually figure things out. I—I’ll take good care of your son, Mister MacKeage,” she whispered.
“I’ll see that he’s happy and very glad he came to live in this time. We’ll give you some grand-babies and tell them all about your visit with us.”
Faol whined and lapped her chin, then pulled his head free and turned and looked out at the lake again. He lifted his nose into the air and sent a howl over the valley that carried into the mountains on tremulous waves.
Faol then trotted off into the forest without looking back.
Sadie stepped to where the wolf had been standing and stared at Morgan sitting on the boulder in the middle of the cove, facing her, his large hands braced on the edge of the rock and his feet lazily stirring the water.
He was naked, of course, despite the fact that there was ice lacing the shore of the lake and the air was below freezing. Steam wafted from his wet shoulders, his breath puffed in gentle billows around his head, and the water dripping from his long blond hair made icicles on the rock beside him.
“I’m beautiful, Morgan.”
“Aye, Mercedes, you are.”
“And I’m your wife.”
“I remember our vows.”
“I—I’m a modern.”
“Nobody promised us a perfect world, lass.”
“I’ll continue to be strong-minded… sometimes.”