The Diamond of the Rockies [03] The Tender Vine by Kristen Heitzmann

and untied the ribbon that held the paper closed about the box. The box held writing paper painted with a border of roses.
    He said, “Every day I was gone I found you something.”
    She looked up from the paper to see him reaching once again into the pack. “Every day?”
    “You’ll like this one.”
    He handed her a tiny parcel, which she opened, finding a clear pinkish purple amethyst in a gold filigree setting on a thin gold stickpin. Her throat tightened with emotion. It was not even that the pin was beautiful, but that he had so carefully chosen each item he was presenting. She knew him, how he must have shopped about to find the right things, then haggled and paid. Tears filled her eyes as she looked up at him.
    “Don’t cry.”
    “I can’t help it.”
    He bent down and raised her chin. “I can’t give you the others if you cry, Carina.” A tear dropped to her cheek, and he stroked it away with his thumb.
    “It’s too much,” she said.
    “How else could I show you—” he dropped to his knees, face ear-nest—“ how much I care?”
    She held the stickpin to her breast and closed her eyes. She felt his lips touch hers and eagerly replied. He eased her back on the bed and kissed her deeper, catching her hair in his fingers. All her being quickened to him, her husband. She brought her arms around his neck. The rest of the gifts would have to wait.
    Quillan lay beside his wife, amazed and humbled. He hadn’t intended it—probably the doctor would frown upon it—but he’d been so gentle, every touch, he hoped, erasing the hurtful ways he’d touched her before. And now with her curled in against him, his breathing matching hers, he knew what it was to be one. He felt incredibly whole.
    Lord, don’t let me hurt her ever again . He felt an overwhelming need to protect, to guard this woman who tried to seem so fierce and independent but was truly fragile, as all life was fragile. He fought the sleep coming over him, not wanting to surrender the intensity of emotion that coursed through him as he held Carina sleeping, or nearly so, in his arms. Love, unlooked for and utterly beyond his understanding, had a grip on his heart that pained him. Maybe if he’d learned it as a child, known it for years as others did, as Carina had, in a family—maybe then it would not be so terrifying.
    But their union tonight intensified his fear of losing her. What if he couldn’t be what he promised? What if he failed her again, hurt her again? She could be vindictive, but it wasn’t that. It was his own failings that formed the nightmare. God, help me. Teach me what I need to know . He closed his eyes and buried them in Carina’s hair. With his muscles strained from digging through the snow to her, his energy spent loving her, sleep came, and Quillan succumbed.

S EVEN
    As a snowflake, icy edged, unique in shape and kind, so a soul traversing life, alone until it finds, one to which it cleaves and forms, a new and wondrous thing.
    God in perfect wisdom makes the human heart to sing.
    —Quillan
    C ARINE WOKE FOR THE FIRST TIME in Quillan’s arms. At first she thought she dreamed him there, but his warmth, the prickling of his whiskered chin on the side of her neck, the sound of his breathing, were too real. Her heart swelled. Signore! Not once had Quillan stayed with her until the morning.
    No, that wasn’t true. They’d woken together in the mine, when he’d pulled her from the shaft. And once, again in the mine, after the vigilantes had tried to hang her. But those were not the same. Still, she suddenly felt a longing for the Rose Legacy, to be alone with Quillan on the mountain. It was impossible. She couldn’t make the trip. Dr. Felden would never allow it. But if he didn’t know . . . Turning slightly, she shook Quillan.
    “No.” He nestled his face deeper into her neck.
    She laughed. “Wake up. I want to do something.”
    “So do I, but Doc Felden would have my hide.”
    Had he read her mind? Then she