Fire and Rain

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Ten smiled slowly. "The men understand. They can go so far and no farther."

  "Fine," Carla said, irritated by the feeling of being protected beyond any reasonable need. "But what would happen if I wanted to get to know one of the men better?"

  For an instant there was silence. Then, "Do you?"

  She threw up her hands. "That's not the point."

  "Sure it is."

  "But—"

  "Think of it this way," Ten said, interrupting calmly. "If you did want to get to know one of the hands better, you'd be doing him a real favor if you left the Rocking M and took him with you. Otherwise, he'd be a mighty sorry puppy about the time Luke turned up and started hammering out postholes with him. You don't want some nice, stupid boy on your conscience, do you?"

  "Is it so awful just to want to have fun with somebody?"

  "Try Luke."

  "I'd love to," Carla shot back. Hearing the stark emotion in her own voice made her wince. "Never mind, Ten. Guess I'm just—" she shrugged "—ragged. I'm looking forward to my time off."

  "Yeah, I'll bet cooking for this bunch of wolves can get real wearing."

  She shook her head. "Cooking, no. Cleaning? Amen."

  The outside door to the kitchen slammed behind Luke. "Then stick with cooking, schoolgirl. We're not having a fancy dress ball or white glove inspection here anytime soon," he said, tossing his hat onto the counter. "If you wax the closet floor once more I'll break my neck reaching for shirts." He threw Ten a cool look. "Working late?"

  "Just following orders."

  Luke went wholly still. "Who's crowding her?"

  "Jones," Ten said.

  "No," Carla said quickly. "It's not like that. He hasn't done anything."

  Luke looked at Ten.

  The ramrod shook his head, disagreeing with Carla.

  Luke nodded abruptly and said to Ten, "I'll draw his pay. Have him off the Rocking M by noon tomorrow."

  "Luke," Carla said urgently, "you can't fire a ranch hand just because he made a joke about kissing me."

  "Like hell I can't." He glared down at Carla with narrow golden eyes. "Jones has a bad reputation with women."

  "So does Ten, according to you," Carla pointed out tightly.

  "Not like Jones. Ten never took anything that wasn't offered. Jones did, and maybe more than once. He got off easy because the gal wasn't exactly a virgin to begin with, but that doesn't change what happened. Even a prostitute has the right to say no to a man."

  Carla started to speak but was too shocked.

  "I hired Jones because there aren't any women on the Rocking M and he's a top hand when he isn't drinking and trying to prove he's God's gift to girls. Then you came here. Jones swore to me he wouldn't drink and he wouldn't so much as look at you. I haven't caught him looking, but I'm not so sure about the booze."

  Luke glanced at Ten, who nodded.

  "Thought I smelled it on him yesterday in the pasture," Luke muttered, rubbing his neck angrily. "Damn it to hell. Tell Cosy to drive Jones into West Fork tonight. Tell Jones not to come back. Ever."

  "He'll want to hear it from you," Ten said.

  "You really think he's that stupid?" Luke asked hopefully, watching Ten with the eyes of a cougar.

  The ramrod's smile was slow and savage. "Probably not. Too bad. You've been spoiling for a fight. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy than Jones."

  "Yeah. I should have fired that SOB the second I knew Carla was coming here. Females and the Rocking M. Nothing but trouble."

  "And good cooking," Ten added. "Don't forget that. Carla's got more of those chocolate chip cookies you favor stashed in the freezer. Nothing like a good woman to spoil a man, is there?"

  "While it lasts, no. But when she's gone – and she always goes – it just makes the hard times harder."

  ~ 10 ~

  The kitchen door snapped shut behind Ten, leaving Carla and Luke alone in the taut silence. Silently she watched while Luke went to the sink, rolled up his sleeves and began washing up. He rinsed dust off his face, soaped all the way up his muscular forearms to his elbows and used a nailbrush on his hands. That was one of the things Carla had always noticed about Luke; no matter how hard he had worked or how tired he was, he always came to her table with clean hands.

  And such handsome hands they were, almost elegant despite their large size. Long, lean fingers and neatly trimmed nails. A hand deft enough to pick a tiny flower without bruising it and strong enough to lift a saddle one-handed and lower it onto a cow pony's back. Luke's hands fascinated her. Warm, hard, capable of trembling with desire and yet still touching her with restraint, sensitive enough to measure and savor all the textures of her breasts, caressing her nipples from softness to velvet pebbles.

  "Did I miss some dirt?"

  Carla's head snapped up to meet Luke's eyes. "What?"

  "You were staring at my hands."

  "I…" Carla's voice died. She closed her eyes, unable to bear the exquisite torture of looking at Luke's hands any longer and remembering how it had felt to be touched by him, if only for a few moments. "I'll see if your dinner is still warm."

  "You mean the wolves left some scraps for me?"

  "I stood over the stew with a shotgun."

  He smiled. "Did you eat?"

  "A little."

  He hesitated, then said slowly, as though against his better judgment, "Keep me company and I'll help you finish off the dishes."

  "Sold," Carla said instantly. Her blue-green eyes appreciated Luke's smile and noted the signs of a long day's work in his face. "But you don't have to do my job, too. You look like you've been working so hard that you're too tired to sleep properly."

  Luke's eyes narrowed. He wondered if Carla had heard him prowling the kitchen for the past three nights. When he was awake he could banish the memory of her body pressed to his, but when he slept, it was different. In his dreams he sat half-clothed in the dining room and she came to him, laughter and sunshine and sensual heat that bathed him in passion until he cried out; and then he awakened alone, sweating, his breath a tearing sound in the darkness.

  "Sit down," Carla said. "I'll bring dinner to you. You must be starved."

  Luke barely kept himself from saying he would rather have Carla than any dinner on earth; and he would rather have her in the dining room, sitting astride his lap, her head thrown back, her nipples taut and glistening from his mouth, her body sheathing him, bringing him relief from the torment of wanting her.

  "Whatever you give me always tastes good," Luke said finally, trying not to watch Carla's mouth too hungrily.

  The look in his golden eyes made her breath catch. A delicate, invisible shiver went from her breastbone to the pit of her stomach.

  At that instant Carla realized that she should put Luke's dinner on the table, return immediately to the kitchen and finish the dishes, leaving him to eat alone. Then she should go put one of the Rocking M's movie cassettes on the VCR and watch it. Alone. Or she should read one of her own or Luke's many books on archaeology and the history of the West, or she should make more casseroles and cookies for the men to eat while she was camping in September Canyon, or … anything but sit in aching silence watching Luke eat, envying the very food that touched his lips.

  "Go sit down," Carla said huskily. "I'll bring you dinner."

  She brought Luke's food to him, sat down with him, watched him eat and envied the food that touched his lips. The silence was both electric and oddly companionable. Not until Luke had had time to appease the worst of his hunger did Carla begin asking him about his day.

  "Did you see more cougar tracks around the Wildfire Canyon seep?"

  He nodded and smiled to himself. "Looks like she has herself at least one cub, maybe two."

  "You aren't going to hunt her," Carla said, reading Luke's expression and the nuances of his voice.

  It was a statement rather than a question, but Luke answered Carla anyway, thinking aloud as he had become accustomed to doing with her in the quiet hours aft
er the long day's work was done.

  "The cat's in pretty close to the ranch buildings," Luke said slowly. Then he shrugged. "I'll probably regret it, but I won't touch her unless she starts living off calves instead of deer. There's a big part of me that likes knowing cougars have come back to the lower canyons to live the way they did when Case MacKenzie rode into the country."

  "Like the wild black stallion?" Carla asked.

  "Well," Luke drawled, rubbing his cheek, "you can't prove by me that that old stud is alive in anything but Ten's mind. Cougars, now … I've seen cougars."

  Luke sipped coffee, then leaned back in his chair, relaxing and enjoying the peaceful moment. "I think cougars must be the prettiest cat God ever made. Quick, quiet, moving smooth as water, with eyes that remind men we aren't the only life worth caring about on earth. There were wild animals a long time before there were cities. And if we don't screw it up, there will be wild animals a long time after humans get smart and plow the cities under."

  Carla smiled softly at Luke. "Do you suppose the Anasazi sat inside their stone apartment buildings and listened to cougars scream?"

  "Wouldn't surprise me, especially in the higher canyons. But I'm sure the Anasazi heard coyotes wherever they built." Luke looked up from his coffee and caught Carla watching him with blue-green eyes full of longing. "Did you hear them last night, crying to the moon?"

  "Yes. I stood by the window and listened for a long time."

  "So did I."

  Carla looked into Luke's tawny eyes and felt delicate splinters of sensation quiver through her. In her mind she saw Luke standing by his bedroom window, his body bare of all but moonlight, his eyes reflecting the limitless, elemental night; and all around him, surrounding him, was the mysterious song of coyotes. In her mind she was standing there with him, sharing his warmth, wearing only cool moonlight on her skin … moonlight and the memory of what it had been like to feel Luke's caress. Without knowing it, she shivered.

  Luke's hand tightened around his fork until his knuckles showed white. It was a physical effort for him not to reach out and pull Carla onto his lap once more, kissing her once more, caressing her breasts once more; but this time he would remove her jeans and know her soft heat for the first time, nothing between his hunger and the wild, sweet melting of her body at his touch.

  "So damned beautiful," he whispered. "And so damned impossible to have."

  Carla blinked and focused on the present instead of on her timeless sensual dreams. "What?"

  For an instant Luke didn't respond. When he spoke it was only half the truth, for the other half was too painful to speak aloud.

  "The night," he said huskily. "It's beautiful. It could be yesterday or tomorrow or a thousand years ago. Some things never change. Like mountains and moonlight."

  And man and woman. You and me.

  The words rang so clearly in Carla's mind that she was afraid she had spoken them aloud. But Luke's expression didn't change. He continued to watch her with eyes like a cougar's – tawny, intent, deep with things that were impossible to name or speak aloud. Yet like the mountain lion stalking eternity in the rippling canyon shadows, Luke was connected to the intangible, indescribable, indestructible reality of the land itself.

  "And like the canyons steeped in sunlight and sage," Luke continued slowly. "Like ancient trails snaking up steep rock wails, wild maize watered by thunderstorms, stone canyons older than human memory. Things that last, all of them. Things with staying power. The land demands it. That's why most people live in cities and look for cheap thrills. It's easier. No staying power required. But they'll never know what it's like to stand and look out over a canyon and feel yourself deeply rooted in the past, with the sunlight of ten thousand days locked in your body and your life branching into the future like the land itself."

  Although Luke said nothing more, Carla knew he was thinking of his mother and his aunts and his grandmother, women whom the land had ground to dust and blown away on the relentless canyon winds. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, to tell him that the land lived in her soul as it did in his.

  "Luke—"

  "This is good stew," he said simultaneously, talking over Carla. "I suppose it has a fancy French name."

  For a few seconds she fought against the change of subject. Then she looked at Luke's empty plate, freeing herself from the golden intensity of his eyes.

  "Boeuf à la campagne," she admitted.

  "Country beef, huh? Stew by any other name is still beef and gravy."

  Carla blinked at Luke's accurate translation before she remembered that he had a fine arts degree from the University of Colorado. He also had a library of literature and history books that provided him with entertainment more often than the TV programs dragged from the sky by the Rocking M's satellite dish. Yet his western drawl and easy use of cowboy idioms had fooled more than one prospective beef buyer into believing that Luke had the intelligence and sophistication of a pan-fried steak.

  "You and Ten are complete frauds, you know," she said. "Cowboys, my foot."

  "Why, whatever do you mean, little bit?" Luke drawled, then spoiled it by laughing.

  He settled more deeply against the back of the dining room chair, realizing as he did that evenings had become his favorite part of the day, especially when he worked late and had Carla all to himself. He enjoyed her quickness of mind and easy silences and her laughter when he told her fragments of the Rocking M's humorous lore – the dance hall girls and the Sisters of Sobriety watching one another from the corner of their eyes while a half-drunk pet pig sat outside the church, waiting for its completely drunk master to finish wrestling the devil and go home.

  "Boeuf à la campagne," Luke repeated, shaking his head, smiling. "Hell of a thing to serve to a cowboy." Then he paused, remembering what had happened that morning. "Isn't that what you wanted to make but didn't have the ingredients for?"

  "I did a little creative substituting."

  "Yeah? What did you use?"

  "Juniper berries and bourbon."

  Luke blinked. "Really?"

  "Jest as shore as God made l'il green apples," she drawled broadly. "Rightly speaking, I can't call it boeuf à la campagne no more. More like Rocking M stew. Better 'n possum, an' thet's God's own truth."

  Luke's smile widened and then he laughed without restraint. So did Carla. For a few moments he felt as though he had been transported back to the time when he and Carla and Cash had sat around the old house's rickety table long after dinner, talking and teasing and just enjoying one another's company. It was as close to feeling part of a loving family as Luke had ever come.

  Then he had ruined it by falling on Carla like a starving cougar on a rabbit. The fact that she had offered herself to him with her eyes full of girlish dreams only made his actions worse. He should have told her gently that he was honored, but it was impossible. He should have sent her on her way with her pride intact, if not her dreams. But he hadn't. He had kissed her too hard and then had shredded her with a few savage words when she panicked.

  So she had avoided him for the past three years and had come back to him this summer only to exorcise the girlish dreams of the past. And him. He didn't blame her for wanting to cut him out of her life, but he would spend the rest of his life wishing he had handled her differently. Then he could at least have continued to enjoy the undemanding companionship she brought to him, a sharing of thoughts and experiences that he had never come close to having with another woman.

  Sex he could have from any number of females. Peace was something he had known only with Carla.

  Sunshine.

  Luke didn't know he had said the word aloud until he saw the sudden expansion of Carla's pupils as she watched him questioningly. He stood up with a controlled violence that hinted at the turbulence beneath his impassive exterior.

  Who are you trying to kid, cowboy? Luke asked himself derisively. You want more than conversation and good cooking from Carla. You want everything she has to give to a man,
and you want it as hard and as hot and as deep as possible.

  Yes. And that's why I'll stay the hell away from her. I've gone this long without having her. I can go the rest of my life. What I couldn't survive would be watching the light in her eyes killed by the one thing in life that I love – this savage land.

  She loves the ranch. She's said so more than once.

  Sure. For a few weeks every summer. Big deal.

  She's been here a lot longer than a few weeks. Not once has she whined about not having anything to do or anyone to talk to or anything else. Hell, she's not even planning on going into town on her days off. She's going camping with Cash.

  Wait until winter. Wait until the weather closes down and there's no way in hell to get off the Rocking M.

  Luke's inner argument ended as though cut off by a knife. The horrifying harmony of his mother's screams rising and falling with the wind still echoed through his nightmares. He would never subject someone he cared about to that kind of torment.

  Never.

  ~ 11 ~

  There was no one about, no one near, no one in the world but Luke bending down to Carla, enveloping her in his warmth. His arms closed around her and she trembled even as she locked her arms around him. There was nothing under her feet, nothing over her head; she was spinning slowly, slowly, and he was spinning with her, holding her close, moving against her with sweet friction while around them a campfire burned in the slow rhythms of consummation, setting fire to the world, tongues of fire everywhere, everything burning and spinning and burning, she was burning—

  Carla's eyes opened and her hands clenched the sheets as the aftermath of the dream twisted through her body. Her breath was broken, her skin hot, her body aching everywhere Luke had touched her weeks ago, touching her for only a few moments before setting her aside and telling her never to offer herself to him again.

  I'm afraid I won't have the strength to say no. Then I would take you and hate you…

  Beyond the window, dawn spread down MacKenzie Ridge's black slopes, bathing the shadowed land in the colors of life. Restlessly Carla threw back the covers and got up. She was reaching for her clothes when she remembered that today was the beginning of her time off. Smoothing Luke's black shirt around her hips, she went back to bed.