Chapter Thirteen

	“Where on earth did Simon get a change of clothes?” she asked, a couple of hours
later.  She had slipped into the kitchen, and seeing her go, Jules had followed her.  In
fact, he hadn’t been far from her side all evening.  Now, as they stood in the dining room,
they could just see his cousin and their guests through the wide diningroom doorway.
	“He keeps a few things here,” Jules said.
	“So he spends a lot of time here?”  It was obvious that Jules wasn’t going to
volunteer information, so Hayley knew it was up to her to dig for it. If she reached a point
where Jules no longer wished to pursue the topic, she felt certain he would make that fact
very clear.
	Jules looked at his cousin, who was keeping Hector’s attention with his adventure
stories.  “Sometimes,”  he said.  “When he’s not of gallivanting.”
	“I gather he travels a lot? What does he do, Jules?” she asked, curious about the
man who had once shared a tragic life with Jules.
	“He’s a wildlife and nature photographer.”  He glanced at her, then a slow,  sly
grin crept onto his face.  “Simon Crestwater.”
	She stared up at him in disbelief, her eyes immediately showing her recognition
of the name.  Jules had a glossy, hardcover coffee-table book of Crestwater photographs,
and she had poured over it many times in the days since she had arrived in the Yukon.  In
that particular book, he chronicled the Arctic, with pictures of mountains and glaciers
and snow covered trees; polar bears and arctic foxes; Aurora Borealis and the midnight
sun.  His photos of the Auroras, in fact, had drawn Hayley back  to his book many times
since she had been at the lodge. They were breathtaking, almost lifelike, and had made
Hayley even more eager to see them in person.  When she had, she had not been
disappointed.  
	But that book was not the first Hayley had seen of Simon’s work.  She had
admired Crestwater photographs even while living in San Diego, for he had also
photographed for National Geographic.  Once she’d arrived at the lodge, she had also
discovered his pictures in the similar magazine, Canadian Geographic.  Jules had a
number of both magazines, with Simon’s photos in it around the lodge.  Much of his
work showcased the arctic, and Canada’s west coast, but Hayley remembered seeing
Crestwater photos in magazines her father bought.  Pictures from all over the world,
ranging from sand dunes in the Sahara to Iguanas on Easter Island!
	“Jules!” she gasped. “I never knew Crestwater was your cousin!”
	He smiled at her. “I know. He spends months in the wild, bringing back some of
the most amazing shots.  He likes to stay up north when he can.  He’s got a place out in
the bush outside Whitehorse.  But he goes wherever he gets a contract.  He’s been all
over the world, from the rainforests of South America, to the jungles and deserts of
Africa. It suits his nomadic spirit.”
	The look she turned to face him with was no longer one of surprise or even
admiration for his cousin’s work, but one of concern and wonder. Wonder at how the two
men, separated by tragedy in their childhood, had managed to cultivate such a close
relationship in their adult years. 
	“Tell me about Simon,” she coaxed, softly.  “How you managed to keep in touch
after you and your dad left.”
	Jules sighed. “For a while after we left, I was scared to have any contact with
anyone on the reserve.  I was afraid that the brothers of Margie’s killer would find us if I
did.  But, after we had been settled up here for a while I wrote to my grandmother.  She
had always been the one strong force in my life, other than my mother, and I just felt I
had to let her know I was alright. She was so glad to hear from me. Simon said she cried
when he read my letter to her.”  
	He glanced at Hayley, noticing the question in her eyes.  “It had been almost four
years since we had left.  My grandmother had lost almost all her eyesight, and couldn’t
read my letter herself. After Margie died Simon and his brothers and sister had moved in
with my grandmother.  My mother’s other sister, who had no husband, was already
staying there looking after the old lady. 
	“Simon sent me back a very short note, telling me Grandmother was pleased to
hear from me, and a little news from the reserve.  Not much.  Then about a month later I
got another letter, from my aunt, telling me Simon had got in trouble with the law and
had been sent to a juvenile detention center.  I got one more letter after than, the last
letter I got from her.  It  was about a year after the first.  She wrote to let us know my
grandmother had died quietly in her sleep.  My aunt said her final days had been made
happier by knowing at last where I was and that I was alive and safe.  I never heard from
anyone on the reserve again after that.
	“Then out of the blue, at the beginning of my senior year of high school, Simon
showed up in Whitehorse at my dad’s house.  He said while he’d been in detention one of
the requirements was an education. It was a much better education than he had been
getting when he’d been left to attend school on his own steam.  Half the time ha hadn’t
gone to school then, the other half he hadn’t even tried.  It was the same way I had
looked at school when I’d been living there. But in detention, he’d been reading books,
and had taken an interest in photography.  This interest was noticed, and cultivated by
one of the councillors.  It occurred to him that he just might be able to make a living out
of doing something he enjoyed.  After he’d been released he’d continued school and
gotten a job pumping gas, saving up all his money to buy a second hand camera.   He had
some pictures with him when he arrived at our house, and they were amazing.  But life
there wasn’t easy, all the old influences were still there, trying to drag him down again. 
He decided it he was going to make something of himself the only way he would ever do
it was to find Dad and me.  He spent every penny he had saved up on bus tickets to get
himself up here. 
	“He stayed with us that year, and went to highschool up here.  Dad agreed not to
charge him any rent as long as Simon got his education.  That wasn’t a hard promise for
him to make at that point in his life, not like it would have been a few years before.  He
finished school and  when I went to Vancouver he went too, and studied photography at a
college there. His professors were so impressed with his work that they submitted some
of it to various magazines. The rest, as they say, is history.”  
	He grinned down at her. “And now, I see him quite a bit when he’s around, but
he’s on the go a lot too, and he usually doesn’t contact me until he gets back up this way
again. A lot of the places he goes there isn’t exactly a mailbox at every corner. He likes
to be on the move, going new places, seeing new things. The last I had heard, he was in
Alaska.  I knew he was going to be following the FULDA Challenge this year, at the end
of January, so I figured he’d be around these parts before too long,  but I wasn’t
expecting him quite as soon as this.”  He laughed.  “He says, when the day comes that 
work stops being fun, then he’ll quit and come work for me shoveling snow.”
	Hayley laughed with him.  Somehow she wondered if Simon Crestwater would
ever see that day.  “You are two amazing men, Jules Landon,” she said.  They had both
survived incredible odds, and come out of it as fine, gentle men.  She hadn’t  given any
thought to  whether she was speaking out loud or not, and she only realized she had,
when he responded.
	“You’re an quite an amazing woman yourself, Hayley Belton," he said, then he
turned to join Simon at the pool table. 



	“Time to count down soon!”  
	It was Dolores, ever the organized socialite, who made the announcement some
time later,  when the minute hand on the old key wound clock Jules kept on a shelf on the
side wall pointed almost directly upward.  Mary and Anna had joined them, and everyone
turned to face the clock, except Dolores, who scrutinized her wristwatch closely. 
Apparently she had synchronized her watch with the clock earlier in the evening.  She
started the count down right on time.
	“Ten ... Nine ... Eight ...Seven ...”
	Jules moved closer to Hayley, slipping his arm gently around her waist. 
	“Six ... Five ... Four ...”
	Hayley felt him draw her even closer, his hand absently rubbing up and down her
side ever-so-slightly.
	“Three ... Two .... One..."
	The old clock began to shim the hour almost as soon as the last word was spoken,
and everyone raised their voices in a cheer of   "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!”
	The cry echoed through the room, followed by clapping and cheers, and everyone
started hugging everyone else.  Except Hayley.  None of them hugged Hayley. None of
them could, for Jules tightened his grip around her waist and turned her to face him in
one fluid motion. As their eyes locked, Hayley became oblivious to the commotion
around her.  Then his eyes lowered to her lips and she held her breath.  Slowly his lips
lowered to hers and in the instant after she felt his breath against her lips, they touched.
	From that moment on, Hayley was no longer aware of her surroundings, or the
passage of time. His kiss started softly, hesitantly, but as she began to kiss him back he
released the urgency he had been holding in check, and his hands pressed her hard
against him.  She raised onto her toes, and slid her hands up his chest until her fingers
were entwined behind his neck, pulling him down into their kiss, meeting him with as
much urgency as his own. 
	“Hayley!”  he moaned softly against her lips, then he kissed her again, with more
passion than she knew any one person could contain.  Her lips parted in a whimper and
his tongue traced their soft edges, while her fingers found home in his hair. 
Somewhere in the distance Hayley heard the sound of cheering, and clapping.  It
registered as a faint sound, then grew louder and louder, until she seemed to emerge from
a trance to realize it was the people behind them in the room.  Jules released her lips, but
did not let go of her.
	“Jules!” she gasped, blushing as he gazed down into her eyes.  “Everybody is
watching!”
	“Let them watch,”  he said, casually, the grin on his face growing.  "As far as any
of them are concerned, you are my wife."
	“But — “
	“Shhhh, Little One.”  He silenced her with his lips, and it was a while before he
released her from his kiss again, this time to look into her eyes and brush a strand of hair
from her face.  “Or better yet, let’s not let them watch.”  Before she realized his
intentions, he took her by the hand and drew her with him as he walked — almost ran —
towards the stairs.  She laughed nervously as struggled to keep up with him, and he
smiled down at her.  Then he casually glanced over his shoulder and called back to their
guests to carry on without them.
	“Jules!” she gasped, breathlessly, when he had closed his bedroom door behind
them. “What will they be thinking?”
	His eyes laughed at her. “They’ll be thinking we’ve come up here to do this ...” 
he lowered his head and decorated her lips with a series of fleeting kisses.  “And this ...” 
His lips traced a trail of fire over her cheeks, her earlobe, and down her neck to her
shoulder.  “And this ...”  His thumb slid under the strap of her dress and slid it off her
shoulder and his lips trailed even lower.
	“But — Jules ...”  Her voice was faint, for she didn’t want to speak. She wanted to
feel.  But somewhere in her mind she recognized that there were questions.  Questions
she needed answers to.  With a strangled whimper she pressed her hands against his
chest, struggling to keep her focus.  “Why?”
	He lifted his head then, and looked down at her as his fingers slid over her bare
arm then followed the contour of the wolf tooth necklace over her chest. “Why?” he
repeated.  “Because I’m mad with desire for you, Little One! It was all I could do to keep
my hands off you all evening.  You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, and I
want you!”
	Her breath escaped her in a barely audible gasp, and he soothed her with a
fleeting kiss, but he did not kiss her long.  He wanted her, and he was determined to have
her, but right now he understood that it was the time for talking first.
	“Hayley, I told you this morning that sending you away from here was the last
thing on my mind.  I also told you I had finally found something I’d hate to lose, even
more than the lodge, remember?”
	She nodded silently and he twirled a strand of her long black hair around his
finger.
	“All my life, Hayley, I’ve struggled with who I was and where I fit in the world.
You changed all that for me, you helped me find what was missing, and I never want to
lose it again, Little One!  You are the best thing to ever happen to GreyWolf Landon,
Hayley, and I hope to be allowed to be able to remind you of that for years to come.”
	She clung to him, partly because she couldn’t bear not to touch him and partly
because she feared that if she didn’t she would crumple at his feet.  “You said that this
morning. The best thing to ever happen to GreyWolf.  I thought you meant the lodge,
Jules.”
	“Darling, you are a great asset to the lodge, but no, I was talking about this
GreyWolf.”  
	She stared into the front of his shirt, and with one hand she slid her fingers to rub
gently over the metal dream catcher he wore on his string tie.  “A Dream Catcher,” she
said, under her breath.
	“Yes. And it has caught me the most precious dream of all, though I still don’t
dare to hope that it will come true.  Hayley, if you will have me, I want desperately for
you to be my wife — my real wife.  I don’t want you to leave the lodge. I couldn’t bear to
be apart from you for even a moment without knowing you were here, waiting for me,
when I got back.”
	“But Jules — are you saying that — ?”
	“I’m saying I want you, Hayley. I want your skin against my skin in my bed, like a
wife lays with her husband.  I’m saying I love you, with all my heart, Little One.  Can’t
you see that?  I want to live the rest of my days with you, loving you, raising a family —
a beautiful little girl named Aurora perhaps, who looks just like her beautiful mother, and
some brothers and sisters for her?  I want to grow old together, Hayley.”  His fingers
brushed softly across her cheeks now, and he kissed her just as a butterfly would light
fleetingly on her lips.  “But if you don’t love me back, I’ll understand.”
	She curled her fingers around the Dream Catcher and lifted her eyes to his.
	“Jules,” she breathed softly, yet now more certain of this than she had ever been
of anything in her life. “My mother always said that everything happens for a reason, and
she told me coming up here might be the best thing for me.  I was meant to be here,
Jules, to be your wife, to love you.”
	His eyes registered surprise, and Hayley chuckled.  It was the first time she had
ever seen him look unsure of himself over anything.  “Do you really mean that, Little
One?  It was more than I could ever hope for, to dream that you might love me as I love
you.” he asked, and she nodded with a smile.
	 “So much that it hurts,” she said, and this time it was she who kissed him, lifting
onto her toes to reach his lips, to show him just exactly how much she really did love
him.

	Several hours later, as Hayley lay wrapped in Jules’s arms under the sheets in his
bed, with nothing but their skin and their love between them, she ran her hand softly over
his chest and looked up towards his face. 
	“I love you, Jules Landon,” she said in a breath.  He reached for her hand, curled
his fingers around hers, and held her hand still over his heart. 
	“My dream has come true after all, Little One, my Ayasha.”  Then he shifted, and
lifted up onto his elbow, smoothing the sheet away from her breasts to look at her
nakedness in the moonlight.   “You are beautiful.”
	He kissed her softly then, a reminder of their lovemaking, then looked into her
eyes.  “When shall we be married?” he asked her.
	“When can we?”
	He smiled. “As soon as possible.  I want to be able to proudly show you off as my
wife and really mean it.”
	“Jules!”  She lifted her head as an idea suddenly occurred to her.  "Do you think
Simon would do our wedding pictures?  I know his specialty is nature and wildlife, not
portraits, but I would love to have him do it, if you think he would.”
	“We can ask him,” Jules agreed.  “I doubt very much if he’d say no.”
	She rested her head back against his chest and smiled. “I hope he’ll agree.”
	“Then we’ll have to get married pretty soon, though,” Jules said. “Simon’s
heading off with the dogs mushers to photograph the FULDA Challenge at the end of the
month.  I don’t want to wait til he comes back. Then who knows where he'll end up after
that.” 
	“How soon?”
	“As soon as the Shellington’s leave?”
	“Mmmm,” she agreed, drawing pictures on his chest with a finger.  Then she
chewed on her lip. “Will we ever tell them the truth?”
He sighed and shook his head.  “The Shellington's? I don’t think so.  At least, not right
now, although I don’t think there is anything you could do or say to them right now that
would make them your enemies. After what you said to Dolores, she’s a complete
convert!” 
	There was laughter in his voice, and Hayley lifted her chin to see his face better.
“I really am sorry about my outburst, Jules.  And Dolores may be converted, but Hector
seemed to be reluctant to accept her way of thinking.”
	“Reluctant?"  He raised his brows and looked own at her.  "Perhaps, but I think
he’s coming around nicely.  He took me aside this afternoon, remember?  When I was
trying to make time to get back to you, to clear up everything I hadn’t said yet.  We spent
a lot of time talking, and when we were done, he gave me a cheque.  He made a large
donation towards the lodge.”  Jules smiled at her wide eyed expression.  “He said he
liked your spunk, and your straightforwardness.  Things he says Carolyn doesn’t have.”
	“Oh!” Hayley breathed softly, then she chuckled slightly.  “Oh dear! Poor
Carolyn.”
	“Yeah, I have a feeling she’s going to have a fight on her hands with her father,
but not the one she thinks.  He actually likes Tomas.  Carolyn and Dolores don’t know it,
and neither does Tomas, but Hector has funded a fair bit of the boy’s education.  He
recognized potential when he saw it.  He’s just a little disappointed that he saw it in
Tomas, and not Carolyn.”  Jules grinned, and traced the length of Hayley’s nose with his
finger.  “And he sees it in you, too, my Ayasha.”
	Hayley cuddled in closer to him, reveling in the scent and feel of him, and sighed.
“This is all like a dream.”
	“Good thing I believe in Dream Catchers,”  Jules said softly into her hair.