Her voice trailed off and she gazed out across the lake in silence for a long minute. Then she looked at him guiltily and blushed. “I didn’t mean to say those things, at least not that way. They sound almost as though I was dissatisfied, and I’m not. Not now. I’ve got everything I want.”
She rose and tugged at him to get to his feet. “Come on, let’s take the boat and row across the lake. I still want to show you the desert before night.”
There was a small wooden boat, just the right size for the two of them. He took the oars and rowed, while she stood in the prow of the boat and pretended to be a figurehead. He watched the breeze play with her long brown hair, catching one strand at a time and playing with it before dropping it for another. All the way across, he never took his eyes off
