"Do us both a favor, Ten," Luke said, giving the other man a hard look.
"Sure."
"Stop trying to run interference for Carla. Every time you start hovering over her like a mother hen, I get to thinking about how good stewed chicken would taste."
There was an instant’s silence before Ten threw back his head and laughed. He was still laughing when Luke set out for the barn with angry, long-legged strides.
7
"Did you find that ghost stud yet?" Ten asked Luke.
The ramrod’s voice had no inflection but his smoke-gray eyes were lit with a combination of sympathy and laughter. Ten knew that Luke had spent long hours out on the range in order to avoid being close to Carla, not to find the near-mythical black stallion that inhabited the narrow red canyons and rugged breaks of the extreme southeastern portion of the Rocking M.
"No, but I saw his tracks a time or two," Luke retorted, piling a huge helping of roast beef, browned potatoes and gravy on his plate.
He glanced up as Carla put a bowl of crisp, fresh green beans next to his plate. With difficulty he forced himself to watch his dinner instead of Carla. She was more beautiful to him each time he looked at her. The thought that he had driven her into the arms of some college boy had tormented Luke. His days had become longer and longer, but even half-dead from overwork, he had only to look at Carla to feel hot claws of desire sinking into him.
Finally Luke’s thoughts had driven him to stay away from the ranch house entirely. He had spent five days roaming the Rocking M, sleeping out, waking with his whole body hot, clenched, burning with passion. During the day he had chased his thoughts as though they were cloud shadows flying over the face of the land.
At the end of five days, Luke still hadn’t decided which was worse, the thought that Carla had had another man, or the realization that her virginity would no longer be a barrier holding them apart They wanted each other. They were both of age. They could take each other, work the passion out of their systems, and then they could go on with life the only way that made any sense.
Separately.
She came here to cure herself of me. Why the hell hold back? Why not take what we both want so bad that we can’t look at each other without shaking?
"Thanks," Luke said to Carla, his voice harsher than he had meant it to be.
Carla’s smile was soft and hesitant, for Luke’s expression was forbidding. He had been out on the range for the past five days; even before that he had been distant Ever since he and Ten had argued almost four weeks ago. If they had argued. Ten had refused to talk about it. In any case, there certainly seemed to be no anger between the two men now.
For a few unguarded moments, Carla’s luminous blue-green eyes watched Luke with transparent hunger, measuring the changes five days had made. His beard stubble had become a thick darkness from cheek to jaw, making his rare smiles flash by comparison. He looked tired, drawn, as though he had been sleeping as badly as she had.
Forcing herself not to linger at the table with Luke, Carla went back to the kitchen. She had already done the dinner dishes and was in the process of mixing up a quadruple batch of cookies. No matter how many cookies she made, they disappeared in a matter of hours. There were times when she thought the men were feeding them to the cows.
"Got any more of that coffee?" called Luke from the dining room.
"About a gallon. How’s the gravy holding out?"
"You could bring a quart of that, too."
Carla smiled to herself as she filled another gravy boat, grabbed two hot pads and wrapped them around the thin wire handle of the coffeepot. When she got to the dining room, Ten was gone.
"Where’s Ten?"
Luke grimaced at Carla’s mention of the other man. "In the bunkhouse, I imagine. Why? You need something?"
"No. I was just wondering how Cosy’s hand is doing."
Luke took the gravy boat and began drowning potatoes. "What did Cosy do this time?"
"He cut himself and wouldn’t go to the doctor. I sewed it up as best I could, but I’m no surgeon."
Gravy slopped heavily from the boat and ran down onto the clean table as Luke’s head snapped toward Carla.
"You what?" he asked.
"I sewed Cosy up with the curved needle and silk thread I have in my camping kit. Cash taught me how to do it years ago. He’s forever cutting his hands when he’s out prospecting. Most of the time a butterfly bandage will get the job done, but Cosy wouldn’t hear of anything that fancy. He said a plain old needle and thread was all he wanted. When I was finished he doused everything in the gentian violet solution I’ve been putting on the calf that cut itself on wire." She glanced aside at Luke’s plate. "Your gravy is getting away."
Luke looked down, scooped up runaway gravy on his finger and licked it off. He had to repeat the process several times before the problem was taken care of. At the same time he watched Carla while she set down the coffeepot, shifted the hot pads so that both hands were protected and poured him a mug of coffee. She maneuvered the awkward pot with unexpected grace. Nearly two months of working on the ranch had taught her how to handle the heavy kitchen equipment.
"You do that real slick," Luke said.
Carla looked up, startled. "What?"
For a moment Luke forgot what he had been saying. Carla’s eyes were close, clear, like blue-green river pools lit from within. Her lips were full and pink, their soft curves a silent invitation to a man’s hungry mouth.
"The coffeepot," Luke said, his voice deep. "You handle it like you’ve been doing it all your life."
"Pain is a great teacher," Carla said dryly. "You don’t have to get burned more than two or three times before you figure out that there’s no future in hurting."
Luke’s eyes narrowed to glittering amber slits as her words sliced through him like razors. Pain is a great teacher. There’s no future in hurting. He wondered if Ten had been right, if Carla had come back to the Rocking M to cure herself of the pain of wanting a man who didn’t want her.
But Luke did want her. He wanted her until he welcomed pain as a diversion from the agony gnawing in his guts whenever he looked at her and saw what he should not have. Even if she weren’t innocent, she was still his best friend’s kid sister, and even if she had been a complete stranger, there was still the grim truth about the Rocking M and women. The two didn’t mix, as every MacKenzie man but one had found to his grief.
And yet there Carla stood, watching Luke with hungry, haunted, haunting eyes, making his body harden in a single wild rush, forcing him to bite back a curse and a groan.
Stop looking at me, he railed at Carla silently. Stop wanting me. Can’t you feel what you’re doing to me? Is this revenge for what I did to you three years ago?
The words went no farther than Luke’s mind, for he had just discovered that the protective layer of anger he had wrapped around himself since Carla had arrived was gone, worn out by nearly eight weeks of use. Nothing came to him in his need except a bone-deep weariness and the understanding that Ten had been half-right – Luke had been beating a hog-tied pony.
But the pony was himself, not Carla.
Wearily Luke rubbed his neck with his right hand, trying to loosen his muscles. It wasn’t the endless days of hard driving and hard riding that had tied him in knots; it was that he had run and run and run – and then looked up only to find himself in the same place where he had started, reflected in the eyes of Cash’s kid sister.
"Did the big storm catch you on the wrong side of Picture Wash?"
Carla’s soft question sank slowly into Luke’s churning thoughts. All that hadn’t been said sank in, as well – her hesitation even to speak to him, her concern that he had been out in the open when thunder rolled down from the peaks and the earth shuddered, and her yearning simply to hear his voice answering her own.