"I did a little creative substituting."

"Yeah? What did you use?"

"Juniper berries and bourbon."

Luke blinked. "Really?"

"Jest as shore as God made 'lil green apples," she drawled broadly. "Rightly speaking, I can’t call it boeuf a 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 Carlo. 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 Mac-Kenzie 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.

Sleep was impossible. She had slept little last night, and if the sounds Luke made as he paced from bedroom to living room to kitchen and back again were any indication, he had slept no better than she had.

Trying not to think, trembling as the aftermath of her burning dream rippled through her, Carla lay and listened to the sounds in the ranch house. The upper story was quiet, which meant that Luke had already showered and gone downstairs. The smell of coffee permeated the house, which meant that someone – probably Luke – had made coffee. The back door into the kitchen snapped shut, and then she heard male voices. The words were not distinguishable, but she knew that Ten had arrived and was ribbing Luke about something.

The door to the dining room had a distinctive squeak. Carla heard it many times in the next hour as she turned restlessly in bed, first to one side and then the other, back to front to side to back, but never comfortable for long. She told herself that the smell of ham and eggs and hot cereal was making her too hungry to sleep, but she knew better. She was straining to hear Luke’s voice, wondering if he were any less withdrawn this morning than he had been last night, when he had stood up abruptly and left the table.

Carla still couldn’t believe her small joke about cowboys and drawls had offended Luke. He had laughed harder than she had. Then he had looked at her with an intensity that had made her weak. Before she could reach out to him, before she could do so much as blink, he had stood up and walked out of the room.

Oh, Luke, don’t you see how good we could be together? I can talk to you better than I can to anyone, even Cash. I can laugh and listen and you can do the same with me. We don’t even have to be in the same room to enjoy being together. Just sitting and reading in the same house with you is better than going out with men I don’t care about.

Don’t turn away from me, Luke. Let me show you that I’m more like Marian MacKenzie than I am like your mother.

The words ran over and over through Carla’s mind in a litany of pain.

"Stop it, Carla McQueen," she finally told herself aloud. "Just stop it. You can’t make someone love you, and if you aren’t old enough to know it, you should be!"

The hissed ferocity of her own words joined the unhappy thoughts that were turning in Carla’s mind. She had come here to exorcise Luke so that she would be able to get on with her life, to date and fall in love like other girls.

But cutting Luke from her heart and mind had proven to be impossible. Each shared moment of laughter, each smile, each conversation, each gentle silence, each day she spent close to Luke embedded him more deeply in her soul. Last night it had taken a frightening amount of self-control not to run after him. She didn’t know if she had the strength to hold back her emotions any longer, yet she couldn’t bear a repetition of what had happened three years ago, when she had declared her love and had been told she wasn’t old enough to know how to love a man.

Schoolgirl.

Slowly Carla realized that it had been many minutes since she had heard anyone moving around the house. The hands must have finished breakfast and gone about their work. She turned to the table next to her bed. The small travel clock told her that Cash was still several hours away from the Rocking M. Even worse, she had nothing to do to make the time pass faster. She had been packed and ready to go to September Canyon for three days. All she needed was her brother’s arrival.

With a sound of impatience Carla pushed off the bed covers and got up. She paced the room aimlessly for a few minutes before she paused in front of the dresser. She ran her fingers caressingly over the wood’s finely polished surface. After a moment, her hand went to the small carved ebony box that traveled with her everywhere. Smooth, graceful, elegant in its curving lines, the box had been a gift from Luke on her sixteenth birthday. Though he had said nothing, she suspected he had made it for her, just as he had made Cash a miniature display cabinet for gold nuggets.

Carla used the box to hold her most valued possession. Not jewelry, but a simple shard of pottery, another gift from Luke. She had been fourteen and recently orphaned when he had given the odd gift to her. She had never forgotten that moment or the tawny depths of his eyes or his deep, gentle voice trying to reach past her terrible loss and give her what comfort he could.

I found this in September Canyon and thought of you. You can look at this bit of clay and know that a long time ago a woman shaped a pot, decorated it, fed her family from it, maybe even passed it on to her children or her children’s children. One day the pot broke and another pot was made and another family was fed until that pot broke and another was made in a cycle as old as life. It’s hard, but it isn’t cruel. It’s simply the way life is. Whatever is made is eventually unmade and then remade again.

The shard nestled into Carla’s palm like an angular shadow. The black finish of the pottery was set off by white lines. The geometries looked random now, but the whole pot would have revealed patterns that were only hinted at in the shard.

And that, too, was what Luke had told Carla. Then he had held her while she wept and finally accepted that her parents were gone and would never come back again.

For a moment, echoes of past tears ached in Car-la’s throat. Very carefully she replaced the shard in its velvet-lined nest Looking back, she knew it had begun then, the years of incoherent longings that had condensed into puppy love, first love, a girl’s stumbling progress toward womanhood; it had begun with the ancient pot shard and culminated in an emotion that was as much a part of Carla as breath itself.

As the truth sank into Carla, she measured the depth of the mistake she had made in coming back to the Rocking M; there was no schoolgirl infatuation to be exorcised by a summer’s proximity to the everyday reality of Luke MacKenzie. She loved Luke with a woman’s timeless, unbounded love. She could more easily sever her right hand from her wrist than she could cut Luke from her soul.

With trembling fingers Carla set the small box back onto the dresser. Just as she turned away, the downstairs telephone rang. She grabbed her robe and raced out of the bedroom.

"Hello?"

"Caught you sleeping, didn’t I?" Cash asked.

"Nope. I’ve become a card-carrying member of the Dawn Brigade since I came to the Rocking M."

Cash laughed. "Well, go back to bed, little sister. I won’t be out to pick you up until late afternoon."

"Why?"

"The Jeep is on strike."

"What happened?"

"Who knows?"

"You needn’t sound so cheerful about it"

"Sorry, sis. I’ll do my best to get out there by four o’clock."

"But it will be too late to go to September Canyon by then and rain showers are predicted tonight and if we aren’t on the other side of Picture Wash before it fills it may be days before we can cross!"

"I’m sorry, Carla. Look, maybe I can borrow a truck and – "

"No," she interrupted, feeling guilty for jumping on Cash for something that was beyond his control. "It’s all right. I’ve just been looking forward to seeing September Canyon after all these years of hearing about it."

"Why don’t you get Luke to drive you over? He needs a few days off."

The thought of having Luke to herself within the cliff-rimmed silence of the canyon was enough to make Carla’s pulse ragged. Yet in the next instant her heartbeat settled to normal, because she knew Luke would refuse to go with her. She had asked him several times to take her to September Canyon; each time he had said no, it was too far to go for just an hour or two of looking around.

"Luke is pretty busy," Carla said neutrally. "If nothing else works out, I'll just drive on ahead. Luke has told me that the canyon isn’t hard to find, it’s just remote. You can catch up with me when you get your malevolent Jeep straightened out."