Free 10 Ways to Steal Your Lover by Dee Tenorio Page B

she’d gleaned from the trip she and Craig had made
to the ranch for Kane’s grandmother’s funeral.
             Beautiful land, peaceful and well cared
for, with hills and mountains in every direction. The sunsets were what she
thought about most. With the sky a curving blend of golds and purples and
blues, the peaks and valleys an inky black reaching up to the unfurling stars
twinkling above.
             Kane had been virtually silent for the
entire three days they’d visited, but he’d taken her hand at the funeral when
she’d offered it, only letting go to give the eulogy in his rough, almost
broken sounding voice.
             “She always liked to tease him that they
would never have gotten together if he hadn’t run away with her.”
             “Run away?”
             “According to him, he borrowed her.” The
affection in his tone told her how many times he’d heard that word correction.
“When they first met, she wouldn’t give him the time of day. She had plans to
go to college—which was pretty progressive still in 1939. She wanted to get a
business degree and he was a horse rancher who had no interest in seeing more
of the world or changing it in any way other than raising and training good
stock, but he was stuck on her no matter how she put him off. He wrote her
letters when she went to school, though she said she didn’t want him to, she
never returned a single one. For two years, that’s how it went. Him writing,
her pretending she didn’t care.”
             “What happened to change things?” Delilah
asked, twining their fingers together.
             “Pearl Harbor. My grandfather loved the
land, but he felt enlisting was the right thing to do. When he wrote to tell my
grandmother, she left school and came all the way back home to tell him he was
out of his fool mind.”
             “Her words?”
             “Definitely hers.” Kane chuckled. “Gramps
decided when she showed up, that was all the sign he needed. He threw her over
his shoulder and took off with her into the mountains. He didn’t bring her back
until she agreed to marry him.”
             “You know, these days, that’s called
stalking and kidnapping.”
             “But back in ’41, it was romantic.” That finally
got a smile back on his face. Her relief at seeing it said a little more than
she could handle, but she decided to ignore that for now. She’d hurt him with
what she said, no matter that she’d hurt herself as well.
             “Did he still enlist?”
             Kane nodded. “Came home at the end of his
tour with a Silver Star and a bullet in his shoulder that stayed there ‘til the
day he died.” Kane lifted his left hand, showing her the broad gold band. “He
wore this 'til the day he died, too. The two pieces of metal he said he thanked
God for every day. The bullet saved his life and brought him home, but the
ring… His ring was his life.”
             “He must have really loved her.” It
didn’t need saying, but Delilah couldn’t hold the awe back.
             “They had six kids, saw each other
through three of them dying, nearly lost everything a few times and almost died
a few times themselves in all those years, but never once did that love ever
waver. When he died, he left his ring for me. He wanted me to always remember
that love was the most important part of a man’s life. Not his mistakes, not
his successes. Just the simple fact that he was able to truly love someone enough
to share a lifetime with them. He wanted that for me. That’s why I've carried
their rings on a chain around my neck since she died. I wanted that for me
too.” He lifted the hand that held hers, turning it into the light so that the
stones on the rings caught the sun and shone with startling brilliance. Then he
lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them reverently. “I want it with you,
Delilah.”