A Rainbow in Paradise by Susan Aylworth

Author:Susan Aylworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, interracial romance, love story, clean romance, native american culture, debbie macomber, wholesome romance
Publisher: Susan Aylworth

Chapter Seven

Eden stretched her back against the seat of the truck. "Are we there yet?" she asked, mischief in her voice.

"Almost," Logan reassured her.

It was Labor Day, and for the past half-hour, Logan had been driving a narrow, winding trail of hairpin switchbacks and stomach-twisting angles where juniper and piňones towered over the roadway. Now as Eden watched, he brought them onto a flat plateau. All that lay above them here was the endless sky and, maybe a half-mile away, the opposing wall of the canyon.

"We're here," Logan said, setting the emergency brake.

"Ah yes, but where is here?" Eden teased, gesturing at the emptiness surrounding them.

"Come on, I'll show you."

He held out his hand and Eden took it, warmed by his touch. She was becoming more accustomed to the nearly electric jolts of energy that shot between them whenever Logan was near. She no longer startled at his touch; now she was content to bask in its warmth, enjoying it while it lasted, knowing the loss would be devastating.

Logan led the way down a narrow trail. Eden followed until they came to the cliff side. He stopped a safe distance back and pointed at the base of the opposite cliff. "Look," he ordered gently.

Eden looked. At first all she saw was the towering wall of red and yellow sandstone, then, "Oh!"

"It is something of a surprise, isn't it?"

"Oh!" she said again. "Logan, what is it?"

"White House," he answered.

Eden looked out across the valley with its meandering stream lined with tamaracks and mesquite. There, on the canyon's opposing wall, lying partly in the shelter of a natural cave some hundred feet or so above the canyon floor, and partly on the valley floor itself, lay the remains of an ancient pueblo. Carefully shaped rock-and-mud walls formed both tall, rectangular dwellings several stories high, and round ceremonial kivas, sunk deep into the earth. “Can we go down there?" Eden asked eagerly.

"We will in a little while," Logan answered. He handed her a pair of binoculars. "I thought you might like this view first. It shows you how well camouflaged these dwellings were in the old days."

"They certainly were that," Eden agreed. Using Logan's binoculars, she studied the ruin. Despite its name, the pueblo wasn't white, but it had once been covered in a pale adobe clay that blended into the surrounding rock walls, effectively hiding the village in plain sight. "I thought your people didn't live together like this," she argued, remembering what he'd told her about the rancherias on their first drive into the canyon.

"They didn't. The White House is an Anasazi ruin."

"Anasazi," she mused. "The Old Ones. Then the Anasazi aren't ancestors of the modern Navajo?"

He shook his head. "Their descendants, more than likely, are the Hopi and Tewa and other pueblo peoples of the southwest—"

"The ones you call the Kisani."

He smiled, pleased. "Right. The Kisani are all Shoshonean people, using similar languages and continuing to build in the pueblo styles learned from the Anasazi. Their high-rise pueblos always remind me of inner-city apartment buildings.

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