The controlled, throaty rumble of a powerful car engine distracted Ten. He looked out through the window into the last light of evening. The paint job on the car was a dirt-streaked, sun-faded black, but everything that affected the car's function was in top shape. The tires were new, the lights were bright and hard, and the engine purred like a well-fed cougar.
Even before the driver got out and stretched, Ten knew that Nevada Blackthorn had come back to the Rocking M.
Smiling with anticipation, Ten watched his younger brother climb the front steps with the lithe, coordinated motions of an athlete or a highly trained warrior. The knock on the door was distinct, staccato without being impatient. Ten's smile widened. There had been a time when his brother would have driven up in a cloud of dust and knocked on the door hard enough to rattle the hinges.
"Come on in, Nevada."
The door opened and shut without noise. Nevada crossed the room the same way. Without noise. Tall, wide-shouldered, his thick black hair two inches long and his dense beard half that length, Nevada looked as hard as he was. Even as his pale, ice-green eyes took in the room with its multiple doorways, his unnaturally acute hearing noted the near-silent approach of someone coming toward the living room through the kitchen.
Knowing that Ten was baby-sitting Logan, Diana had been all but tiptoeing across the kitchen as she headed for the living room. She didn't get that far. Two steps from the doorway she froze at the sight of the lean, long-boned, broad-shouldered stranger who moved like Ten when he was fighting.
Ten held Logan and watched Nevada cross the floor toward the rocking chair. Rain-colored eyes measured the changes in Nevada-the brackets of anger or pain around his flat, unsmiling mouth, the razor-fine physical edge, his muscular weight always poised on the balls of his feet because he had to be ready to throw himself into flight or battle at even instant. For Ten, looking at Nevada was like going back in time, seeing himself years ago, youthful dreams and emotions burned out by the timeless cruelty of war.
Silently Nevada stood in front of the rocking chair, staring down at his brother and the baby.
"I will be damned. Yours?"
Ten shook his head. "Not a chance. I know what kind of husband I make. I'm definitely a short-term man. Marriage should be a long-term affair."
Nevada grunted. "The bitch you married didn't make much of a wife, long or short."
The corner of Ten's mouth curled sardonically, "Wasn't all her fault. Women aren't interested in me for more than a few weeks."
"The way I remember it, you weren't real interested yourself after a few weeks. Two months was your limit. Then you were tugging at the bit, looking for new worlds to conquer."
"The curse of the Blackthorns," Ten agreed, his voice casual. "Warriors, not husbands."
Diana stood motionless, her throat clenched around a cry of protest and pain, realizing that she had lost a gamble she hadn't even understood she was taking. She had understood the risk of physical injury she took in trusting Ten, and she had been lucky; Ten had given her extraordinary physical pleasure and no pain at all.
But she hadn't understood that she was risking her emotions and unborn dreams. Now she felt as she had the instant the kiva ceiling had given way beneath her feet.
No wonder Ten has been so careful not to touch me when other people are around. He doesn't want them to know we're lovers. They might assume something more, something that has to do with shared lives, shared promises, shared love. But he doesn't see us that way.
I didn't know I saw us that way until now, just now, when a dream I didn't even know I had burst and I fell through to reality.
God, I hope the landing is easier than the fall.
Diana clenched her teeth and forced herself to let out the breath she had instinctively held at the first instant of tearing pain. Silently, gradually, she took in air and let it out again, bringing strength back to her body. After a few aching breaths, her ears stopped ringing. The words from the other room began to have meaning again, Nevada speaking in tones that were like Ten's but without the emotion.
"Heard anything from Utah?"
"He's tired of jungles," Ten said.
Nevada grunted. "Anytime he wants to swap sea-level tropics for Afghanistan's high passes, he can have at it."
"Thought the country calmed down after the Russians left." Ten gave Nevada a measuring, gray-eyed glance. "Thought that was why you decided to come home."
"The Afghani tribesmen have been killing each other for a thousand years. They'll be killing each other a thousand years from now. They're fighting men. They'd take on Satan for the pure hell of it."
"So would you."
Nevada's pale green eyes locked with Ten's. "I did. Lost."
Ten held out his right hand. "I don't know of any man who ever won. Welcome back, brother. You've been a long time coming home."
The deep affection in Ten's voice went through Diana, shaking her all over again, telling her that she was jealous of Ten's brother. The realization appalled her, and the pain.
All the old wives' tales are true: the landing is worse than the fall.
Diana looked around almost wildly. She had to leave, and leave quickly, before she was discovered. She couldn't face Ten with jealousy and despair and pain shaking her.
"Never thought I'd say it," Nevada said quietly, "but it's good to see your ugly face again. Now maybe you'll introduce me to the lady standing behind me."
Ten leaned sideways, looking around his brother's body toward the front door.
"Kitchen door," Nevada said, stepping aside.
Diana heard the words but took another step backward anyway, wondering bitterly how Nevada had known she was behind him. She hadn't made a sound. In fact, she had barely breathed, especially after hearing Ten's matter-of-fact summation of his lack of enduring appeal to women. And theirs to him.
"Diana? Is that you? Come on in, honey. I want you to meet my brother Nevada. Nevada, this is Diana Saxton."
Nevada turned around and Diana knew she couldn't flee. The pale green eyes that were examining her were as passionless as Nevada's voice. She had an unnerving sense of looking into the eyes of a wolf or a cougar.
"How did you know I was here?" Diana asked almost angrily.
"Your scent."
Nevada's neutral tone did nothing to calm Diana. The man's unsmiling, measuring aloofness overwhelmed all other impressions she had of him, even the obvious one of his dark, hard, male appeal.
Nevada looked from Diana to the baby sucking industriously on Ten's finger. "Yours?"
"No," she said in a strained voice. "That's Logan MacKenzie."
"Luke's baby?" Nevada asked, looking at Ten.
Ten nodded.
"You mean that long-legged little girl you told me about finally ran him to ground?"
"She sure did. Then she let him go. He decided he didn't want to go anywhere without her."
Nevada shrugged. "To each his own. For the Blackthorns, that means single harness, not double."
Ten looked at Diana's tight, pale face and at his brother, who was a younger, harder reflection of himself. Ten looked down for a long moment at the baby in his lap, then he met again the unsmiling eyes of a warrior who had fought too long.
"Hope you haven't lost your taste for sleeping out," Ten said. "Jervis is getting damned tired of weekends in September Canyon."
"I don't sleep much, so it doesn't matter where I lie down."
Ten's eyes narrowed as he remembered the years he had spent relearning how to sleep like a civilized man instead of a wild animal, coming alert with even-unusual noise, waking up in a single rush with a knife in one hand and a man's throat in the other.
"It will pass," Ten said quietly.
Nevada said nothing.