Fire and Rain

by Elizabeth Lowell

  "Find somebody else to give you the beating you think you deserve, Luke," Ten said softly. "I like you too well to enjoy hammering on you." He turned to Carla. "Go wash your face, honey, or you'll be answering a lot of questions about those tears."

  Carla fled without a word.

  When she came back, dinner was on the table and Luke was nowhere in sight. Ten looked up and smiled encouragingly at her.

  "Told you she was just slicking up to impress us," he drawled to the table at large. "Nice job, honey. You look good enough to eat."

  "Then it's a good thing for me you're already working on seconds, isn't it?" she said, smiling in return.

  Only Ten noticed that Carla's smile hovered on the brink of turning upside down, and he wasn't going to point it out. He stood, pulled out her chair and seated her with easy grace.

  "Thank you," Carla said, glancing up into his gray eyes as he bent over her. Quietly she added, "You're a good man, Ten. I don't know why some woman hasn't snaffled you off."

  "One did," Ten murmured as he sat down again next to Carla. "It was a lesson to both of us."

  "Hey, ramrod," Cosy said, jerking his thumb toward Luke's place. "The boss came in early today. Should I drag him out of the barn to eat?"

  "Depends on how lucky you feel."

  Cosy hesitated. "Uh-oh. You mean he's in the shop?"

  "Yeah."

  "Turning big hunks of wood into little bitty shavings?"

  "Yeah."

  "Is the door locked?"

  "Yeah."

  Cosy settled more deeply into his chair. "You gonna keep those potatoes for yourself or are you gonna share them with the hands what do the real work?"

  Smiling thinly, Ten passed the potatoes.

  "What are you two talking about?" Carla asked Ten.

  The ramrod hesitated, then shrugged. "When things get to grinding too hard on Luke, he goes to his wood shop in the barn and locks the door behind him. You know that bed and dresser and table in your room?"

  "I've been trying to figure a way to spirit the bedroom set out of the house when I leave," she admitted. "I've never seen any furniture one-tenth so beautiful."

  "Luke made each piece three years ago. He worked all summer, way into the night, night after night, and then put in long days of ranch work every day, as well. After a few weeks of that he looked like hell, so I decided to talk some sense into him." Ten shook his head ruefully. "That's a mistake I won't make twice. I'd as soon take on a cornered cougar with a licorice whip as tackle Luke when he's holed up in his workshop."

  Carla's uncertain appetite faded entirely as she digested Ten's words. Three years ago she had offered herself to Luke with unhappy results for both of them: I've regretted that night like I've never regretted anything in my life. So he had locked himself in his workshop and dealt with his emotions by creating an extraordinary bedroom set and putting it into a room no one used. Three weeks ago she had offered herself to Luke once more … and when it was over, he had whispered, Please don't do this to me again.

  Now Luke had locked himself away once more, and he wasn't going to come out. Not while Carla was still on the Rocking M. She was sure of it. She was also certain she couldn't let that happen. She loved Luke too much to walk away and pretend that nothing had occurred between them except a one-night stand that never should have happened.

  "Don't do it, honey," Ten said too softly for anyone but Carla to hear. "Don't be the one to give Luke the fight he's looking for. You'll both regret it."

  Carla's head snapped up. She stared at Ten, startled by his accuracy in reading her thoughts.

  "But I love him," she whispered.

  "That just makes you more vulnerable."

  "Luke came in early today. Maybe he wanted to talk to me. Maybe he…" Carla's voice frayed over the hope she couldn't put into words.

  Maybe he wanted to ask me to stay.

  The rest of the meal was a blur to Carla. She pretended to eat but only rearranged food on her plate. She looked attentive, but her thoughts went frantically around and around, trying to find a way past Luke's refusal to talk to her.

  Afterward, when the table was clean and the kitchen was spotless and Luke still hadn't come back to the house, Carla went up to her room and began the unhappy task of packing. In the hope of luring him out of the barn, she carried out her luggage and boxes and loaded everything noisily into her little truck. It was a tight fit; because rain threatened, she was stuffing everything into the passenger side of the tiny cab.

  No one came out of the barn while Carla arranged and rearranged boxes in the truck's small space. The men who poked their heads out of the bunkhouse and offered to help her were politely refused. She made many unnecessary trips, taking up as much time as possible, but finally she had no more excuses to linger around the yard and cast hopeful, sideways glances at the barn.

  Carla went upstairs and washed her hair during a leisurely shower, hoping if she weren't downstairs, Luke would feel free to come into the house. The instant she stepped out of the bathroom, she knew that Luke hadn't come in from the barn. There were no small sounds of someone stirring around the kitchen warming food or pouring coffee or washing up. There was simply silence and darkness and the distant flare of lightning dancing over MacKenzie Ridge.

  Luke, don't send me away like this, not a word, nothing but silence. Talk to me. Give me a chance.

  Nothing came in answer to Carla's plea but summer thunder, a reverberation more felt than heard.

  Carla went to the dresser, opened the box Luke had carved for her and picked up the pottery fragment within. It was cool and hard and smooth, as though time itself had condensed in her palm. For long, long minutes she stood motionless, infusing ancient clay with the living warmth of her own body, holding the shard as though it were a talisman against her deepest fears. Finally, gently, she replaced the shard and packed the box into the overnight case that was her only remaining bit of luggage.

  The sheets were as cool as the Anasazi fragment had been. Carla lay between them and waited to hear Luke's footsteps coming up the stairs.

  The storm came first, a sudden, sweeping tumult riding on the back of a wild wind. Carla listened to all the voices of the storm, the high keening of the wind and the bass response of thunder, the sudden crackle of lightning and the liquid drumroll of rain. In between she heard the sound of Luke's footsteps coming up the stairs. He passed her door without a pause. The noise of the bathroom shower blended seamlessly with the falling rain – long and hard and relentless. Both shower and rain stopped with no warning. In the silent spaces between peals of retreating thunder, random creakings of the floorboards told Carla that Luke was prowling the confines of bedroom and bath, bedroom and bath and back again, ceaselessly.

  Carla lay and listened, her hands clenched at her sides, her whole mind caught up in a single, silent plea: Come to me, Luke. Once, just once, can't you come to me?

  The footsteps came down the hall and passed her bedroom door after a hesitation so small she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined it. The stairs creaked, telling her that he was walking toward the kitchen.

  Walking away from her.

  Carla waited and waited, but the footsteps didn't return. Anger came to her as suddenly as the rainstorm had come to the land. With a sweeping motion of her arm, she threw the bed covers aside and stood trembling, flooded with adrenaline and determination.

  I'll make him listen to me.

  Wearing only the black shirt Luke had left with Cash and she had never returned, Carla went down the hall on soundless bare feet. The only light on in the house came from the kitchen, but it was enough to illuminate the stairs. She took them in a rush.

  Luke wasn't in the kitchen as Carla had expected. He was in the dining room, his chair turned away from the table, his elbows on his knees, a cup of forgotten coffee cooling on the table beside him. He was barefoot, wearing half-fastened jeans with nothing beneath but the desire that had made sleep impossible.

  When Luke's
eyes met hers, Carla felt as though she had touched bare electrical wire. His eyes had the feral blaze of a cornered cougar.

  "Go back to bed, schoolgirl. Go now."

  "We have to talk."

  "Why? Are you pregnant?" he demanded, giving voice to the thought that had haunted him, his baby growing inside Carla's body, the sad history of the Rocking M repeating itself all over again after he had vowed that it would end with him.

  Yet he wanted that baby with a yearning that was as deep as his need for Carla. Being torn between what he wanted and what he knew he must not have was making him wild. He could take no more – especially when she stood in front of him, wearing his shirt, her eyes luminous and her body etched in fire on his senses.

  "It's not that," Carla said impatiently, determined not to be distracted from the main issue, which was Luke's determination not to face what was between them. "It's your refusal to—"

  Luke's temper flashed at Carla's casual dismissal of the very pregnancy that had haunted him. He cut off her words with the same kind of attack that had once driven her away from the Rocking M and him. But not far enough. Not long enough.

  This time he had to make it stick.

  "Then why are you here?" he asked coldly. "You want more sex? Forget it. I was damn lucky not to get you pregnant in September Canyon. I'm not a fool to fall into the same trap twice. Sex isn't worth it."

  But Carla was no longer a girl to flee from a man's anger. She held her ground despite the pain of his words twisting through her.

  "That wasn't sex," she said. "It was love."

  "It was sex," Luke countered savagely. "That's all men and women feel for each other. Plain old lust, schoolgirl."

  "Some men. Some women," Carla agreed. She walked slowly toward him, fingers shaking slightly as she undid the top button of the black shirt, then a second, then a third. Her whole body was trembling with an urgency that was the other face of desire. She had to make him understand. She simply had to. "But not everyone is like that. I love you. Luke."

  "Do you? Then button up and leave me in peace."

  "But you won't be in peace. You'll be aching. You want me. You can't deny it, Luke. The evidence is right in front of you for both of us to see."

  He said a single, harsh word.

  She smiled sadly. "That's the general idea, but in our case it's called making love."

  "I don't love you."

  Carla's step faltered but didn't stop. She gathered her courage and continued to stalk her cornered cougar.

  "I don't believe you," she said.

  When her fingers undid the final button, the shirt parted to reveal the very feminine curves beneath. Luke's breath came in swiftly as her body was revealed and then concealed with each motion of the long, open shirt. He tried to look away, but couldn't. She was his own dream walking toward him, calling to him, her voice as much a part of him as his soul.

  "Don't do this, baby."

  "You're a big, strong man," Carla said, kneeling between Luke's long legs. "If you don't love me, prove it. Stop me."

  Her challenge was as unexpected to Luke as the feeling of his jeans coming suddenly undone, revealing the hard proof of his desire. He grabbed her wrists and dragged her hands upward, away from his hungry body.

  It was a mistake. Even as her fingers tested the power of his clenched chest muscles, her hair fell across his hot, erect flesh in a silken caress. Before he had recovered from the shock, he felt the tip of her tongue in a soft, incendiary touch.

  If he hadn't already been sitting down, the savage torrent of his own response would have brought him to his knees. A harsh sound was ripped from his throat as every muscle in his big body clenched with the violence of his passion. He held her wrists with bruising force, but neither he nor she knew it. They knew only that the world was ablaze and they were the burning center of fire.

  Between each sleek caress, each glide of velvet tongue against satin skin, Carla whispered her love to Luke; and somewhere between initial refusal and final acceptance, his hands released her wrists and his fingers threaded into her hair, caressing, holding and teaching her with the same aching motions. Every breath he took was her name, every heartbeat a hammering demand, his body hot, shimmering with leashed passion until he groaned harshly and could take no more. He lifted her, fitted her over himself and gave her what she had demanded, burying his hungry flesh in her, filling her with the sultry pulse of his ecstasy until the wild, shuddering release was finally spent and he could breathe once more.

  "Think about this when I'm gone," Carla said, kissing Luke's eyelids, his cheeks, tasting the salt of passion glistening on his skin. "Think about this and remember what it was like to be loved by me. Then come to me, Luke. I'll be waiting for you, loving you."

  ~ 16 ~

  "When are you going to stop this foolishness and call him?" Cash demanded from the hallway of Carla's apartment. His tone was divided between exasperation and concern, as was the look he gave her.

  Carla glanced from the enigmatic shard of pottery lying in her palm to the dresser where the telephone sat in a silence that hadn't been broken for ten weeks. Slowly she looked at the twilight-blue color of Cash's eyes as he walked into her bedroom. His usual easy smile was absent and his jawline looked frankly belligerent. His sun-streaked, chestnut hair was awry, making its indomitable natural wave all the more pronounced.

  "Call who?" she asked.

  "Santa Claus," Cash retorted.

  "It's a bit early for Christmas lists."

  "It's nearly Thanksgiving and you've been home since the end of August."

  Carla's slender fingers curled protectively around the pot shard. She said nothing. She could count as well as her brother could. Better. She knew to the day when she had become pregnant: the last day on the Rocking M, when she had risked everything on one last throw of the dice.

  And lost.

  "Well?" demanded Cash. "Well what?"

  "When are you going to call Luke?"

  Very gently Carla replaced the shard in its hand-carved nest, closed the lid and put the box on the dresser.

  "I'm not."

  "What?" Cash said.

  "I'm not going to call Luke. I've chased the poor man for seven years. Don't you think it's time I left him in peace?"

  Uneasily Cash assessed his sister's expression. Carla had grown up since the beginning of summer. Though she had said nothing specific, the sadness underlying her smiles told Cash that the summer hadn't worked out the way he had expected. What he didn't know was why.

  "Luke has been fascinated by you for years, but you were too young," Cash said with his customary bluntness. "By the time you were old enough, he had made a habit of pushing you away. To make it worse, he has this fool idea that the Rocking M destroys women, and he loves that ranch the way most men love a woman. So I threw in a set of winning hands and sent you off for a summer of cooking on the Rocking M, where Luke could see for himself that you weren't going to fold up and cry just because you couldn't get your nails done every two weeks."

  Surprise replaced sadness in Carla's face. "You set me up with that card game?"

  "You bet I did. I thought the summer would give you two a chance to get acquainted with each other as adults, without me around to remind either of you about the years when you were a young girl in braids with a massive crush on a man who was old enough and decent enough to keep his hands in his pockets!"

  "It worked," Carla said neutrally. "You weren't around to remind us."

  "Like hell it worked. We're back to where we were three years ago, with Luke meeting me in West Fork for cards and beer and asking sideways questions about how you are and if you're dating and do I like any of the men you bring home."

  Carla closed her eyes so that Cash wouldn't see the wild flare of hope his words had given to her. The hope was as unreasonable as her seven years of longing for a man who didn't love her had been.

  "Luke is just making polite conversation," Carla said, her voice soft in an effort to hid
e her pain. "If he really wanted to know about me, he would pick up a phone and ask me himself."

  "That's what I told him the last time he asked."

  She smiled sadly. "And the phone hasn't rung, has it?"

  "So make it ring. Call him."

  "No."

  The word was soft, final.

  "Then I will."

  "Please, Cash. Don't."

  "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."

  "I don't want you to."

  "That's emotion, not reason. Give me a reason, Carla. I'm fed up with watching the two people I love walking around half-alive. I was looking forward to a wedding at the end of summer, not a damned funeral!"

  A single look at Cash's face told Carla that she wasn't going to win this argument. Her brother's easy smile and warm laughter concealed a steel core that was as deep and as hard as Luke MacKenzie's.

  "Would you settle for being an uncle?" she asked softly.

  "What?"

  "I'm pregnant."

  A shuttered look settled over Cash's face as he absorbed Carla's words. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Does Luke know?"

  "No."

  Cash grunted. "I didn't think so. If he knew, I'd have a brother-in-law damned quick, wouldn't I?"

  "No."

  There was a long silence while Cash waited for Carla to explain. She said nothing.

  "Talk to me," Cash said curtly. "I trusted Luke. Tell me why I shouldn't go out to the Rocking M and beat that son of a bitch within an inch of his life."

  "It wasn't Luke's fault."

  "That's bull, Carla! He's old enough to keep his hands in his pockets, and he damn well knows how babies are made or not made! Any man who seduces a virgin should have the decency—"

  "He didn't seduce me," Carla said, cutting across her brother's angry words. "I seduced him."

  "What?"

  "I seduced Luke MacKenzie!" Carla yelled, letting go of her pride and her temper in the same instant. "I came up on his blind side, took off my clothes and made him an offer he couldn't refuse!" She took a deep, sawing breath and said more calmly, "So if you feel you have to beat somebody for a breach of trust, beat me."