His lips returned to her mouth. When he spoke again, his breath washed sweetly over her.
“One day I found a tiny spring no bigger than my fist. The water was cool and pure. A plant with a single flower clung to a crack in the rock around the spring. The flower was so fragile and yet so fierce with life. I sat and watched it. Just watched it.”
He kissed her eyelashes where a few tears still clung.
“When the flower began to wilt beneath the brutal sun, I took off my hat and shaded the petals until the sun went down. Then I walked out of the Atacama and flew back to the only thing I’ve ever found that was more unexpected and beautiful than that flower. You.”
Gently, completely, Cain found again each texture of Shelley’s mouth, each taste of her warmth, the unrestrained sweetness of her tongue caressing his. Her fingers worked through his hair, seeking and finding the heat of his scalp.
“You don’t have to go on the road to live with me,” he said against her lips. “I came back to stay with you.”
“But I want to see your world. I’m not afraid anymore.”
“What were you afraid of? Me?”
“No. Me. I have a wanderlust just as deep as yours.”
His gray eyes kindled with laughter. “I knew it! But I was afraid you’d never admit it.”
“How did you know? More of your killer insight?”
“No. You told me.”
“When?”
“When you bought that.”
He pointed to the universe of stars she had hung above his bed.
“Look at it,” he said. “That painting would have terrified a true homebody.”
Shelley looked at the countless, swirling possibilities calling to her, a siren song of the unknown and the unknowable.
Like Cain.
“Yes,” she said. “I just couldn’t admit it, because I needed security even more than I needed to roam.”
“I know. That’s why I came back.”
“It’s different now. You’re the only home I need or want.”
“Are you sure?”
“Maybe we’ll want a home base when the kids are old enough to care. Maybe not. It depends on the kids.” She looked away from the painting to the man she loved. “You do want children, don’t you?”
He smiled. “What do you think?”
“I think you would have helped me steal Billy.”
He whispered her name and his love. Long fingers stroked her neck, her shoulders, her breasts.
“I’d rather make kids of our own,” he said. “The world needs more women like you.”
Shelley’s breath caught. In a shimmering, hot rush she flowered beneath Cain’s loving touch. Her palms slid down his body until he tightened and groaned, moving against the sweet pressure of her hands. His own hands sought and found the hot, unexpected spring within her and felt the fragile, fierce flower bloom for him.
“Show me the landscapes of your soul,” she whispered as she joined with the man she loved.
“It will take a lifetime.”
“Then I wish we had more than one life to share.”
“Maybe we do,” he said, gathering her closer with each heartbeat, each shared movement, locked deep and sweet within her. “All those stars, a universe of possibilities . . . .”
Together they explored the most compelling of those possibilities, the shimmering landscape of the soul known as love.
About the Author
Elizabeth Lowell’s many remarkable historical and contemporary novels include New York Times bestsellers, Forget Me Not, Only Love, A Woman Without Lies, Autumn Lover and Winter Fire. Her latest major accomplishments, Amber Beach, Jade Island, and Pearl Cove were instant New York Times bestsellers. Ms. Lowell has more than fifteen million books in print. She lives in Palm Springs, California, with her husband with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym.
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Credits
Cover designed by Fredericka Ribes
BOOKS BY ELIZABETH LOWELL
Amber Beach*
Autumn Lover
Beautiful Dreamer*
Desert Rain*
Eden Burning*
Enchanted
Forbidden
Forget Me Not*
Jade Island*
Lover in the Rough*
Midnight in Ruby Bayou
Moving Target*
Only His
Only Love
Only Mine
Only You
Pearl Cove*
Remember Summer*
To the Ends of the Earth*
Where the Heart Is*
Winter Fire
A Woman Without Lies*
*Available as a HarperCollins e-book.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
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http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
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http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
WHERE THE HEART IS was previously published in an altered form entitled TRAVELING MAN by Silhouette Books in 1985.
WHERE THE HEART IS. Copyright © 1985 by Ann Maxwell; 1997 by Two of a Kind, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2001 ISBN: 9780061802348
First Avon Books Printing: May 1997
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