Fire and Rain

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Normally Carla would have stopped drinking halfway through her second glass of champagne, but nothing about her twenty-first birthday was normal – especially the presence of Luke MacKenzie. The champagne was a dancing delight that smelled as yeasty as the bread she loved to bake. Cash and Luke were in fine form, trading insults and laughter equally. When Luke poured a third glass of champagne for Carla, she was into Cash for a summer's worth of meals and Luke was down to seventy-five cents.

  Carla rooted for Cash unabashedly, frankly enjoying seeing Luke on the losing end of something for a change. Luke took the "card lessons" in good humor, squeezing every hit of mileage from his shrinking pile of small change.

  And then slowly, almost imperceptibly, Luke started winning. He rode the unexpected streak of luck aggressively, repeatedly betting everything he had and getting twice as much back from the pot. By the time the last drops from the magnum of champagne had been poured – by Carla into Luke's glass, in a blatant attempt to fuzz his mind – Cash was down to his last nickel. He tossed it into the pot philosophically, calling Luke's most recent raise.

  Luke fanned out his cards to reveal a pair of sevens, nine high. Cash made a disgusted sound and threw in his hand without showing his cards.

  "What?" Carla said in disbelief. She reached for Cash's abandoned cards, only to have her fingers lightly slapped by her brother.

  "Bad dog, drop!" he teased. "You know the rules. It costs good money to see those cards and you're broke."

  Carla withdrew her fingers and muttered, "I still don't believe that you couldn't crawl over a lousy pair of sevens."

  "You forgot the nine," Luke said.

  "It's easy to forget something that small," Carla shot back. She sighed. "Well, I guess this just wasn't your night, big brother. All you won was something you would have gotten anyway – a summer's worth of dinners cooked by yours truly."

  "Sounds like a damned good deal to me," Luke said.

  There was a moment of silence, followed by another. The silence stretched. Luke arched his dark eyebrows at Cash in silent query. Cash smiled.

  "You'll have to throw in wages," Cash said.

  "Same as I paid the last housekeeper. But she'll have to keep house, too. For that I'd bet everything on the table. One hand. Winner take all."

  "What do you say, sis?" Cash asked, turning toward Carla.

  "Huh?"

  "Luke has agreed to bet everything in the pot against your agreement to be the Rocking M's cook and housekeeper."

  "You're out of school for the summer, right?" Luke asked.

  She nodded, too off balance to tell him that she was out of school, period. She had crammed four years of studying in the three years since she had graduated from high school. It had been the perfect excuse not to spend summers on the Rocking M, as she had since she was fourteen.

  "You can start next weekend and go until the end of August. A hundred days, give or take a few," Luke said casually, but his eyes had the predatory intensity of a bird of prey. "Room, board and wages, same as for any hired hand."

  Carla stared at Cash. He smiled encouragingly. She tried to think of all the reasons she would be a raving idiot for taking the bet.

  Her blood sizzled softly, champagne and something more.

  "Do you have your toes crossed for luck?" Carla demanded of her brother.

  "Yep."

  She took a deep breath. "Go for it."

  Cash turned to Luke. "Five cards, no discard, no draw, nothing wild. Best hand wins."

  "Deal," Luke said.

  Suddenly it was so quiet that the sound of the cards being shuffled was like muffled thunder. The slap of cards on the table was distinct, rhythmic. There was the ritual exchange of words, the discreet fanning and survey of five cards. Luke's expression was impossible to read as he laid his hand face-up on the table and said neutrally, "Ace high … and nothing else. Not a damned thing."

  Cash swore and swiftly gathered all the cards together into an indistinguishable pile. "You're shot with luck tonight, Luke. All I had was a jack."

  For an instant there was silence. Then Luke began laughing. When he turned and saw Carla's stunned face, his expression changed.

  "When the isolation gets to you," Luke said carefully, "I'll let you welsh on the bet. No hard feelings and no regrets."

  "What?"

  "Women hate the Rocking M," Luke said simply. "I doubt that you'll last three weeks, much less three months. College has made a city slicker out of you. Two weekends without bright lights and you'll be whining and pining like all the other housekeepers and cooks did. You can make book on it."

  Whining and pining.

  The words echoed in Carla's mind, leaving a bright, irrational anger in their wake.

  "You're on, cowboy," she said flatly. "What's more, you're going to eat every last one of your words. Raw."

  "Doubt it."

  "I don't. I'm going to be the one who feeds them to you."

  Luke's slow smile doubled Carla's heart rate and set fire to her nerve endings. He laughed a soft, rough kind of laugh and gave her the only warning she would get.

  "There's something to remember when you start feeding me, baby."

  "What's that?"

  "I bite."

  ~ 3 ~

  What in God's name am I doing here? Have I gone entirely crazy?

  "Here" was on a dirt road winding and looping and climbing up to the Rocking M. All around Carla for mile upon uninhabited mile, the Four Corners countryside lay in unbridled magnificence. It wasn't the absence of people that was causing Carla to question her own sanity; she loved the rugged, wild land. It was the presence of people that was giving her stomach the ohmygod flutters. To be precise, it was the presence of one particular person – Luke MacKenzie, owner of a handsome chunk of the surrounding land.

  And a handsome chunk himself.

  In the back of her mind Carla kept hearing her brother's advice. Chin up, Carla. You can do anything for a summer. Besides, you heard Luke. He won't be any harder on you than he is on any other ranch hand.

  "Thanks, big brother," Carla muttered as she remembered Cash's smiling send-off that morning. "Thanks all to hell."

  Not that she was angry with Cash for being amused by her predicament. He had only been doing what big brothers always did, which was to treat their smaller sisters with a combination of mischief, indulgence and love. Nor was it Cash's fault that Carla found herself driving over a rough road to a live-in summer job with the man who had haunted her dreams for every one of the seven years since she had been fourteen. Cash wasn't at fault because he hadn't been the one to suggest the bet that he had ultimately lost.

  However, he had neglected to mention that Luke would be part of her birthday celebration. When Carla walked in the front door and saw him, she had nearly dropped the pizza she was carrying. Luke had always had that effect on her. When he was nearby, her normal composure evaporated. She had made a fool of herself around him throughout her teenage years.

  Well, not quite all of my teenage years, Carla told herself bracingly. I was eighteen when I took the cure. Or rather, when Luke administered it.

  After that, she had stopped finding excuses to go out to the Rocking M and watch the man she loved. But she hadn't stopped soon enough. She hadn't stopped before she had told Luke that she loved him and begged him to look at her as a woman, not a girl.

  The memory of that disastrous evening still had the ability to make Carla flush, go pale and then flush again with a volatile combination of emotions she had no desire to sort out or describe. The one emotion she had no trouble putting a name to was humiliation. She had been mortified to the soles of her feet. But she had learned something useful that night. She had learned that people didn't die of embarrassment.

  They just wanted to.

  So she had turned and run from the scene of her personal Waterloo. Driving recklessly, crying, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the man who was much too sophisticated for her, she had
fled the ranch. All the way home she had told herself that she hated Luke. She hadn't believed it, but she had wanted to.

  Since then, Carla had tried to put Luke MacKenzie out of her mind. She hadn't succeeded. Every time she went out on a date, she only missed Luke more. Not surprisingly, she didn't date much. The harder she tried to find other men attractive, the brighter Luke's image burned in her memory.

  No man can be that special, Carla told herself fiercely. My memory isn't reliable. If I were around Luke now, as a woman, he wouldn't be nearly so attractive to me. Familiarity breeds contempt. That's why I let all this happen. I wanted to get familiar enough to feel contempt.

  That, or outright insanity, was the only explanation for what had happened the evening of her twenty-first birthday, a celebration of the very date when she had legally become old enough to know better.

  Look on the bright side. A summer on the Rocking M beats a summer as a gofer for the Department of Archaeology. If I have to check one more reference on one more footnote, I'll do something rash.

  Get used to it. That's what being an archaeologist is all about.

  While learning about vanished cultures and peoples fascinated Carla, she wasn't certain that a career as an archaeologist was what she wanted. She was certain that she was going to find out; she would begin work on her master's degree in the fall. But first she had to get through the summer. And Luke.

  Carla's mind was still seething with silent questions when she drove into the Rocking M's ranch yard, got out slowly and stretched. She was presently just under three and one half hours from the bright lights of Cortez, assuming that the weather continued fair and clear. In bad weather, she was anywhere between six and sixty hours from "civilization."

  The isolation didn't bother her. In fact, it was a positive lure; she had always felt drawn to the wide, wild sweep of the land. After she had turned seventeen, the only serious arguments she and her brother had ever had was over her tendency to go from camp with a canteen, a compass, and a backpack, and leave behind a note and an arrow made of pebbles to indicate the direction of her exploration. The fact that Cash did precisely the same thing didn't lessen his anger at Carla; in Cash's book, what was sauce for the goose was not sauce for the gander. When Carla had gone to Luke looking for sympathy, he had calmly told her that he didn't want her going alone anywhere on the ranch, including the pasture across the road from the big house.

  Carla's mouth turned up slightly at the memory. She had been furious when the two men had ganged up against her. When she had started to point out that Luke was being unreasonable, he had told her that as long as she was on the Rocking M she would obey his orders. Period. End of discussion.

  She hadn't argued. The next time she went into West Fork for supplies, she had started looking for work. That afternoon she got work as the cook and housekeeper for the OK Corral, a small motel-coffee shop at the edge of West Fork. The job included room and board. She had gone back to the Rocking M, unloaded the supplies, and started packing her clothes. When she was ready to leave, she went looking for Ten, Luke's ramrod. Ten had listened to her request, discovered where she was going to be working, and had gone to find Luke. Luke had flatly refused to let her use any of the ranch vehicles for any reason whatsoever, effectively imprisoning her on the Rocking M until Cash returned from his latest round of explorations.

  Remembering the blowup that had followed made Carla's faint smile fade.

  "Such a long face."

  The sound of Luke's voice made Carla jump, for she had thought she was alone. She looked toward the long front porch of the ranch house. Luke was sitting in the shadows watching her. She couldn't help staring as he stood up, stepped off the porch and walked into the bright sunlight. It had been only a day since the card game in which she had lost her summer freedom, but she looked at Luke as though it had been a year since she had seen him.

  Nothing about him had changed. Long-boned, hard, with a muscular grace that had always fascinated her, Luke overshadowed every other man she had ever known. He had haunted her, making boyfriends impossible. She could enjoy other students' company, pal around with them, go to shows or football games; but she simply couldn't take the boys seriously. When they wanted to go from friendship to something more intense, she gently, inevitably, withdrew.

  Carla watched Luke walking toward her and prayed that her half-formed plan would work, that she would be able to get Luke out of her system, to cure herself of her futile longing for a man who didn't want her.

  Not until Luke stood close enough for her to see that the sun had turned his eyes into clear, deep gold did Carla realize the true extent of her wager – and her risk. What if this didn't work? What if being close to Luke only increased her longing? What if this turned out to be as big a mistake as her job in West Fork had been?

  "Already unhappy at being stuck in the sticks for a few months?" Luke continued, watching Carla closely.

  "No. I was thinking about the summer I got a job at the OK Corral."

  Luke's eyes narrowed and his mouth became a thin line. Carla winced.

  "You got off easy," he said flatly. "If you'd been my sister, I would have nailed your backside to the barn for a stunt like that."

  "Cash is brighter than that."

  "Or dumber."

  "Maybe he decided that teaching me wilderness skills was better than having me move out."

  "Not just 'out', schoolgirl. Into a no-tell motel."

  "A what?"

  "The OK Corral is the biggest hot-sheet operation this side of Cortez."

  "Hot sheet?" she asked. Suddenly understanding dawned. "You don't mean…?"

  "I sure as hell do."

  "Oh … my … God."

  Carla's blue-green eyes widened in comprehension. Amused by her own naïveté, she shook her head slowly, making light twist through her sun-streaked chestnut hair. Unable to hold back any longer, she let laughter bubble up. She finally understood why Luke had kept her a virtual prisoner on the ranch until Cash had come in from his geological explorations three days later.

  As Luke watched Carla, his mouth gentled into a smile. Something that was both pain and pleasure expanded through him. It had been so good during the years when he and Cash had shared between them the radiant freshness that was Carla. She had a way of brightening everything she touched. Luke hadn't wanted to let Carla go out into the world any more than Cash had. The world could be brutal to a gentle young girl.

  So we kept her and then I was the one to teach her how brutal the world can be.

  The thought made Luke's expression harden. The memory of Carla's tear-streaked, frightened face, the broken sounds she had made as she fled into the night three years before; all of it haunted him.

  "Lord, sunshine," Luke said in a deeper voice. "You were so innocent. No wonder Cash wanted to build a fence around you to keep out the wolves."

  Carla's laughter died as she looked at Luke and knew that he was thinking of the night she had thrown herself at him. She felt herself going pale, then flushing beneath a rising tide of embarrassment. She hated the revealing color but knew there was nothing she could do to avoid or conceal it. So she ignored it, just as she tried to ignore Luke's comment about her innocence, his words like salt on the raw wound of her memories.

  Yet if she were to survive this summer – and Luke – the past had to be put behind her. She was a woman now, not a stupid girl blinded by naive dreams of being loved by a man who was years too experienced for her.

  "Fortunately, innocence is curable," Carla said. "Time works miracles. Where do you want me to put my stuff?"

  For an instant she held her breath, silently willing Luke to accept the change of subject. She really couldn't bear reliving the lowest moment of her life all over again. Not in front of Luke, with his intense glance measuring every bright shade of her humiliation.

  "Sunshine, that night you came and—"

  "My name is Carla," she interrupted tightly, turning away, going to the tiny bed of the picku
p truck. "Do you want me to park at the old house?"

  "No. You'll be staying at the big house."

  "But—"

  "But nothing. I'm not having anything as innocent as you running loose after dark. One of my hands is no good around women, and none of them is any better than he has to be. When Cash is here, you can bunk in with him at the old house if you want. Otherwise, you're in the big house with me. It's hard to get men to work on a place as isolated as the Rocking M. I'd hate to have to drive one of my hands to the hospital because he was drinking and saw a light on in the old house and thought he'd try his luck."

  "None of your men would—"

  "Didn't you learn anything three years ago?" Luke cut in. "Men drink to forget, and one of the first things they forget is to keep their hands off an innocent girl like you."

  "I'm not an inno—"

  "Put that suitcase back," Luke said coldly, interrupting Carla again.

  "What?" she asked, stopping in the act of taking a suitcase from the truck's small, open bed.

  "I'm not going to spend the summer arguing with the hired help. If you can't take a simple order you can turn that toy truck around and get the hell off the Rocking M."

  Carla stared in disbelief at Luke. Hurt and anger warred within her.

  "Would you treat me like this if Cash were here?"

  "If Cash were here, I wouldn't have to worry about protecting you from your own foolishness. He'd take care of it for me."

  "I'm twenty-one, legally of age."

  "Schoolgirl, when it comes to men and an isolated ranch like this, you aren't even out of kindergarten. Take your pick – the big house or the road to town."

  Carla turned and began rummaging in the truck bed again. She hoped Luke couldn't see the tiny trembling of her hands at the thought of living in the same house with him, seeing him at all hours of light and darkness, fixing his food, making his bed, washing his clothes, folding them, caring for him. A thousand subtle intimacies, his whiskey-colored eyes watching her, no place to retreat, no place to hide.