Fire and Rain

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Carla shook her head and said nothing. Nor did she turn around.

  "Are you all right?" Luke demanded.

  Slowly she nodded.

  The line of her neck and shoulders tugged at Luke's emotions, reminding him of how vulnerable she was, how close she had come to hurting herself. The thought of boiling water scoring her soft skin made him feel as though he himself had been burned.

  "Sunshine?" Luke said softly. "Are you sure you didn't burn yourself?"

  The unexpected gentleness made tears burn beneath Carla's eyelids. She blinked fiercely, not wanting to cry in front of Luke, who already thought her a child. Schoolgirl.

  "I'm fine," she said, her voice husky.

  Carla took a steadying breath and inhaled the scent of Luke, a compound of leather and male heat and the clean fragrance of soap. She longed to turn and put her arms around him, to feel his arms around her, to hold and be held and never let go.

  But she hadn't come to the Rocking M for that. She had come to let go of something she had never held. "Thank you for saving dinner," Carla said, closing her eyes, trying not to breathe, for with each inhalation she took in the warmth and male scent of Luke.

  "Dinner?" he asked.

  "The spaghetti."

  Gently Luke turned Carla around and brought her chin up until he could see her eyes. His breath came in hard, bringing with it the promise of flowers and warmth.

  "You could have dumped that spaghetti all over the floor and I wouldn't have given a damn, so long as you weren't burned."

  He examined her face intently, then unclenched her fingers and examined them for damage. Gently he traced the backs of her hands and arms until he reached the barrier of rolled-up black sleeves. His sleeves, his shirt, her wide blue-green eyes watching him. He traced her smooth, fine-grained skin one more time and felt desire roll through him like thunder through a narrow canyon, a force that made even stone tremble. He dropped her hands and turned away abruptly.

  "Not a mark. You were lucky, schoolgirl. Next time you better think before you grab something too big for you. I might not be around to bail you out."

  The change in Luke from tender to abrupt was disorienting to Carla. Before she could stop herself, she said, "I'm not a schoolgirl."

  "Last time I checked, the University of Colorado was a school. What do you want me to do with that damned kettle?"

  There were several tempting options, but Carla limited herself to the most practical one.

  "Pour off the water in the sink."

  Luke handled the heavy, awkward kettle with an ease that made Carla flatly envious.

  "Now I know why cavewomen put up with cavemen," she muttered to herself, thinking Luke couldn't hear.

  But he could. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the compound of admiration and desire in Carla's eyes as she watched him, and didn't know whether to smile or swear at the renewed leap of his blood. As he poured gallons of steaming water into the sink, he couldn't decide whether having Carla around for the summer was the worst idea he had ever had – or the best.

  By the time Carla had the spaghetti loaded into a serving dish, the ranch hands were seated around the table in hushed expectancy. As she carried the fragrant, steaming mound of pasta into the dining room, she felt like a lion tamer carrying a single lamb chop into a cage full of big, hungry cats.

  "Start this round," she said. "I'll be back with the sauce in a minute."

  The pot with the sauce in it wasn't as awkward as the kettle of boiling water had been, but Luke had taken care of the job anyway. The sauce was now in a soup tureen. A ladle that was twenty inches long stuck out of the rich red sauce.

  "Thank you," Carla said, smiling briefly at Luke as she grabbed the tureen. "Go sit down and eat. I can handle the rest."

  Without a word Luke lifted the big tureen from Carla's hands and walked into the dining room. She found a big crockery bowl and filled it with green beans. She hurried out to the men.

  "Here you are. All I have to do is find a spoon." An assortment of mumbles greeted her. She didn't hear. She stood rooted to the floor, staring in horrified fascination as the spaghetti bowl made the rounds of the table. Each man heaped his plate with pasta, piling it high and wide, cramming aboard every bit possible and then some. By the time each man had been served, not so much as a single limp strand was left in the huge bowl.

  Cosy, who had been the last to be served, took the green beans from Carla and gave her the empty pasta bowl in return.

  "If you hurry back with more, you may be able to have a bite yourself before we dig in for seconds," Cosy said, grinning.

  The hands who had already buried their pasta in sauce and had begun eating paused long enough to chorus Cosy's remarks. A lot of compliments for her cooking were thrown in, as well.

  Carla smiled and tried to acknowledge the praise, but her heart wasn't in it. She was thinking desperately of the gallons and gallons of boiling water that had just gone down the kitchen drain. It would be impossible to cook more spaghetti in time to get it on the table for a second serving. And even if it were possible, at the rate the sauce was disappearing, there wouldn't be anything to put on the pasta but salt, pepper and a splash of ketchup.

  Maybe Cosy's just teasing me. Surely no man could eat one of those huge servings and come back for more.

  Carla looked toward Ten, who had been the first man to be served. He was better than halfway through his plate and showed not one sign of slowing down.

  My God. Even Cash doesn't eat that much, except when we're camping and he's been tramping all over getting rock samples.

  Realization hit. A day's work out on the open range was certainly the equivalent of Cash's geological explorations. The hands were definitely going to be coming back for seconds.

  The bowl of green beans thumped onto the table. Carla turned and headed back for the kitchen.

  "Aren't you going to eat?" Luke asked as he reached for the rapidly vanishing sauce.

  "I'm not hungry."

  Carla hurried into the kitchen and began opening can after can of chili.

  ~ 6 ~

  The memory of that first night as the Rocking M's cook still had the power to raise color in Carla's cheeks a month later. The ranch hands had ribbed her mercilessly but not unkindly; Luke had muttered something about cooking for men instead of schoolboys; and Ten had gotten his head handed to him for pointing out that the food was four times as good as anything they had eaten in years, so why complain over short rations?

  In fact, Ten had gotten his head handed to him on a regular basis since Carla had come to the ranch. From the look on Luke's face at the moment, Ten was about to get another full serving of his boss's temper. Hurriedly Carla tried to take the scrub brush from Ten's hand.

  "Thanks for the help, but Luke is right. He didn't hire you to clean walls."

  "You've been working longer hours than any hand since you got here," Ten said calmly, hanging on to the brush. "This is my day off, and if I want to scrub kitchen walls, I'll damned well scrub kitchen walls."

  Luke looked at Carla's drawn, unhappy face and felt his temper rise even higher. Ten was right; Carla had been working twelve-hour days since she had come to the ranch. Every floor in the ranch house was clean enough to eat from. The kitchen counters and cupboards gleamed with cleanliness, as did the beaten-up wooden tables in the dining room. Thanks to Carla's detailed shopping lists, the pantry and cupboards were packed with various foods, the refrigerator was bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables, and a menu was posted in the dining room so that the men would know just what the coming week held in the way of meals.

  Even as Luke stood glaring at Ten and Carla, the kitchen was fragrant with the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the range's huge oven. Apple, cherry and blueberry pies had become staple items at the dinner table. Homemade baking powder biscuits and bread helped to fill in the cracks. Waffles and pancakes were common breakfast fare. Fresh brownies appeared in lunch bags with gratifying regularity.
/>   And Carla looked as though she hadn't eaten a bit of any of the bounty. Luke suspected she had lost weight since she had come to the ranch. He was certain that she smiled less frequently than ever in his memory. He was also certain that he was the cause of her unhappiness. Each time he told himself that he wouldn't lose his temper with her again, he would see her looking up at Ten with wide eyes and laughter trembling on her lips; and then Luke would feel anger racing through his blood, driving out the desire that was so much a part of him these days that he barely noticed it.

  Luke tried to tell himself he was grateful that Carla no longer followed him around like a lost puppy, but he didn't believe it. Slowly, painfully, he had come to the realization that he had wanted Carla at the ranch for the summer because of her transparent feelings for him, not despite them.

  For the past four weeks he had thought often of other summers when he had been the sun in her sky … and she had been the sun in his. At some deep, hidden level of his mind, he had wanted to know again that feeling of being special to someone. It was a heady sensation, one he had never before known, for his father had been too busy working the ranch to pay much attention to his son; and his mother had had nothing left over from fighting her own interior devils.

  Damn it all to hell, Luke fumed silently. Why did Carla have to grow up and spoil everything?

  There was no answer for Luke's angry question, unless the insistent beat of his own blood was a kind of answer. Maybe Carla hadn't spoiled anything after all. Maybe she had grown up enough not to run away in fear if he held her against his rigid, hungry body and tasted the honey of her mouth once more.

  Not a chance. She's just a schoolgirl.

  She's twenty-one. A lot of women have kids by the time they're that age – and they didn't get them by running away from a man's kiss, either.

  Luke knew his reasoning was true as far as it went. But there was another truth, one that came a lot closer to home, a truth that lay beneath Luke's hair-trigger temper.

  There are two men I call friends. She's the kid sister of one of those men.

  Yeah. And she's going to break her heart on the other one if I don't stop it.

  That's Ten's problem. And Cash's.

  But it wasn't, and Luke knew it. He wanted Carla. He wanted to take the clothes from her body and look at her, touch her, taste her, sheathe himself in her until there was nothing but her passionate heat bathing him and ecstasy bursting through both of them. He wanted that until he woke up sweating, shaking, wild.

  She is Cash's sister, for God's sake! Have you forgotten that?

  No. That's why I waited until she turned twenty-one, old enough to do whatever she damn well pleases.

  Silent questions, answers, questions, retorts, questions; and finally the question that had no answer but silence and rage.

  Are you going to ask her to marry you?

  It was an impossible situation. Luke had vowed long ago that he would never ask a woman to be his wife unless she were ranch-born and ranch-raised, able to accept the hard work and isolation that was a part and parcel of the Rocking M's rugged life.

  But Luke had found no ranch girl who could reach down past his harsh exterior and touch his soul. He had found no ranch girl who could make his body leap into readiness with a look, a smile, the clean scent of her skin. That was what Carla did. She made the raw lighting of desire run like liquid fire in his veins.

  Gradually Luke realized that Carla was watching him with shadowed, unhappy eyes; and Ten was watching everything with an infuriating smile on his handsome face.

  "Counting to a hundred, boss man?" Ten asked in mock sympathy. "You know, you never did have the temper of a saint or a martyr, but lately you could have taught Satan himself a trick or two."

  Ten's drawl was as mocking as his smile. Luke felt his hold on his temper slipping. The only thing that made him hang on to his self-control was the certainty that Ten wanted him to lose it.

  "Keep pushing, Tennessee. You'll get there."

  "I'll take that as a promise."

  "Carla, why don't you go check on those kittens in the barn," Luke said, never looking away from Ten's calm, handsome face. "Make sure none of them get lost."

  "The cookies will—"

  "I'll take care of them," Luke interrupted, his voice soft. Too soft.

  Carla looked from one man to the other with wide, worried eyes. She started to speak, only to have her mouth go dry when Luke looked at her. Without another word she turned away. The taut silence was broken by the light sound of Carla's retreating footsteps. The back screen door squeaked open and banged shut.

  Luke waited for a long count of fifteen before he spoke.

  "All right, Ten. Let's have it."

  "You do know how to tempt a man," muttered Ten, watching Luke with narrow gray eyes.

  "So do you. Why are you trying to pick a fight with me?"

  Ten didn't bother to deny it. "Just thought I'd give you something as mean as yourself to take out your temper on."

  "Meaning?"

  "You've been riding Carla hard since she got here. No matter what she does, you tear a strip off her."

  "Maybe. And maybe I think my cook has better things to do than chase my ramrod."

  "Yeah, I kind of thought that might be the burr under your saddle." Ten's mocking smile faded.

  "You don't have a kind word to say to Carla, yet when someone else does, you jump real salty. You never used to be a dog in the manger, but the way you're acting lately, a man might think if you can't have Carla you don't want anyone to have her."

  "She's too young to talk about having."

  "Bull, boss man. She's a woman all the way to the soles of her feet." Ten saw the shift in Luke's expression, the flash of hunger and anger. The ramrod nodded, satisfied with what he saw. "She's fully of age. If she wants a man, she's entitled."

  "Leave her alone, Ten."

  "Why? You've made it real clear you don't want her. Hell, it's not like she was a kid anymore. The men in Boulder aren't blind. By now, one of them has probably taught her why women are soft and men are hard."

  "Drop it."

  Ten sighed, lifted his hat and raked his fingers through his black hair. "You're being a damned fool," he said calmly. "The way I see it, Carla has loved you for years and you've pushed her away for years. Finally you made it stick. She went off to college and found men who didn't push her away. She grew up. Then she came back to see how you stacked up against her memories and her new experiences with men."

  "Carla isn't the type to sleep around," Luke said tightly.

  "Who said anything about sleeping around?" Ten retorted. "I was talking about a young girl who was sent out of here with her pride in shreds. Seems to me she could be forgiven for finding a nice boy or two who wanted to kiss all the wounds and make her feel like a woman instead of a 'schoolgirl.'"

  Luke said not one word, but the thought of Carla being touched by another man shook him. The thought of her being taken by anyone sent a killing rage through Luke's veins. He had been so sure, so unspeakably certain, that she would never allow anyone to touch her but him.

  Ten measured the barely contained rage in Luke's expression and shrugged. "Suit yourself, boss man. But you should know one thing. Carla told me she came here this summer to get over you. You keep riding roughshod over her feelings and she'll walk out of here at the end of the summer and never look back. Then where will you be? You may not be her first man, but so what? You're the one who was given first call and you turned her down flat. Your fault, not hers. You'll never find another woman with half what she has to offer and you know it."

  There was a long, taut silence while Luke measured Ten with the cold yellow eyes of a cornered mountain lion.

  "I wasn't cut out to live in a city," Luke said finally.

  "Did she ask you to?"

  "No, but sooner or later she would. The Rocking M is hell on women. I'd rather not marry at all than have a woman walk out on her kids and her husband, or hit the bott
le or go crazy staying on the ranch and make everyone's life a living hell."

  "Carla wouldn't—"

  "Like flaming hell she wouldn't," Luke said savagely. "Do you think my mother or my aunts wanted to betray their children and husbands? Do you think my father or my uncles deliberately picked weak women to marry? Do you think I want to watch Carla get thin and sullen grieving for a way of life she can't have if she's my wife? Or maybe you think I should be like some college kid and just take what she's offering and not worry about marriage, is that it?"

  Ten swore beneath his breath, the words all the more violent for the softness of his voice.

  "Now you're beginning to understand," Luke said. "Stay away from her, Ten. This is the only warning you'll get."

  "What if I'm thinking of marriage?"

  Luke closed his eyes for an instant. When they opened there was no emotion showing; not anger, not fear, not desire, nothing but an icy emptiness.

  "Are you thinking of marriage?" he asked softly.

  "She's the kind of woman that makes a man think of hearth fires and long winter nights and babies teething on your knuckles," Ten said. Then he sighed, raked his fingers through his hair again and added, "But that's all it will ever be for this cowboy. Thinking. Dreaming. I'm piss-poor husband material and no one knows it better than I do." He jerked his hat into place and met Luke's eyes. "Ease off on the spurs, Luke. Carla has a real tender hide where you're concerned."

  "And if I don't?" Luke asked, more curious than angry.

  "I'll get to feeling protective and you'll jump salty one too many times and we'll have hell's own fight. Then you'll be short one ramrod and the ranch will be short one boss." Ten smiled wolfishly. "You're bigger than I am, but you'd start out fighting fair. I wouldn't. Be quite a brawl while it lasted."

  Unwillingly Luke smiled in return, then laughed. After a moment his face settled into grim lines once more.

  "Hell of a mess, isn't it?" Luke said quietly.

  "It'll do," agreed Ten. "Why in God's name did you let Carla come to the ranch this summer if you knew it was going to drive you crazy?"