"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 after 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?"