"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 hide 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."

Cash opened his mouth. No words came out He cleared his throat and asked carefully, "And afterward?"

"Luke felt obliged to get married. I refused."

"Why?"

It was Carla’s turn to be shocked into silence. It passed quickly, driven out by the same unflinching determination that had kept her from picking up the phone and calling Luke.

"I’ll tell you why, brother dear. 1*11 go trout fishing in hell before I marry a man who doesn’t love me."

"Don’t be ridiculous. Luke loves you. Hell, he’s loved you for years."

Tears came suddenly to Carla’s eyes. She tried to speak but was able only to shake her head slowly while she fought for self-control.

"Lust," she said finally, her throat so tight she could barely squeeze the word out. "Not the same, Cash. Not the same at all."

"I don’t believe you," Cash said flatly.

He reached past her for the telephone. Both of her hands clutched his wrist in a contest of strength that she couldn’t possibly win.

"Then believe this," she said, her voice shaking. "If you tell Luke I’m pregnant I’ll get in my truck and drive and keep on driving until I’m sure neither one of you will ever find me!"

"But, honey, you’re pregnant. Be reasonable."

"I am. I’m not a charity case. I don’t need a mercy marriage."

Cash flinched.

Too late, Carla remembered her brother’s brief, unhappy marriage to a girl pregnant with another man’s child.

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that as a slap at Linda. She did what she believed she had to do." Carla put her arms around Cash and hugged him. "And your taking me in after Mom and Dad died ruined any chance you and Linda had. It also taught me that a man’s sense of honor and decency is no substitute for love in a marriage. If Luke loved me, he would have called by now. He hasn’t Now it’s up to me to pick up the pieces of my life. It’s not Luke’s problem, Cash. It’s mine."

Cash kissed Carla’s forehead, hugged her in return and said softly, "Honey, I’m as sure that Luke loves you as I am that I love you."

"Don’t," she whispered, her voice aching with suppressed emotion. "You’ll just make me cry. I miss him so much. It’s like dying to know that he – he doesn’t – doesn’t – "

The shudder that racked Carla’s body was transmitted instantly to her brother. His arms tightened around her.

"Go ahead and cry, honey," Cash whispered, closing his eyes, putting his cheek against Carla’s hair, holding her. "Cry for both of us. And for Luke. Cry for him most of all, because he lost the most"

For a long time Cash held his sister, stroking her hair slowly, letting her cry out all the years of dreams that hadn’t come true. When she had finally calmed, he kissed her cheek and released her.

"I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this," Cash said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping away Carla’s tears. "But I know what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to pick up the phone today and tell Luke you’re pregnant. I interfered once with the two of you, and it blew up in everyone’s face."

Cash put the handkerchief in Carla’s hand and wrapped her fingers around it.

"But, honey, once you start showing, someone’s sure to mention it to Luke. Then there will be blazing red hell to pay." Cash hesitated, then added softly, "If you don’t tell him by Christmas, I’ll have to do it for you."

What Cash didn’t put into words was his belief and fervent prayer that Luke surely would have called Carla by then.

17

A cold wind howled down from MacKenzie Peak, a wind tipped with the promise of sleet or snow. A gust caught Ten halfway between the bunkhouse and the barn. He ducked his head, pulled up the collar of his shearling jacket and went in the side entrance to the barn. The room he headed for had once held harness for the Rocking Ms wagon horses. Now the room held woodworking tools – and a man who wielded them the way a wizard wields incantations against vicious demons.

The door had been locked since the evening Carla McQueen had driven off the Rocking M. After Luke had spent a long day working on the ranch, he would spend the evening and too much of the night locked inside the room, where the scream of a power saw biting into wood filled the spaces between the cries of the winter wind.

Ten was the only man who dared to disturb Luke in his lair. Lately, even Ten was thinking the matter over three or four times before he raised his fist and rattled the door on its hinges, praying that a small bit of Christmas spirit had sunk into Luke’s hard head.

"Telephone, Luke!"

"Take a message."

"I did."

"Well?"

"Cash wants to know if you’ve seen Carla."

The scream of the power saw ended abruptly.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"What makes him th – "

"How the hell should I know?" interrupted Ten. "You have questions, go ask Cash yourself. I’m damn tired of standing around in a cold barn yelling at a man who’s too blind to find his butt with both hands and a mirror the size of a full moon!"

Luke yanked opened the door and gave Ten a hard look. Ten returned it with interest.

"Give it to me again, slowly," Luke said.

"Lord, how you tempt a man," Ten muttered. "Listen up, boss. Cash McQueen is on the phone. Carla is missing. He seems to think she came here."

"On the day before Christmas?"

"Maybe she has some Christmas cookies for the hands."

Luke gave Ten a disbelieving look.

"Well, she brought us cookies a few years ago," Ten said blandly. "Maybe she decided to do it again. What other reason could she have for coming all the way out here?"

Luke stepped out of the room, slammed the door behind him, locked it, pocketed the key and stalked into the house. The kitchen phone was off the hook, waiting for him.

"Cash, what the hell is going on?"

"I hoped you could tell me. I had to overnight in New Mexico. When I got back, I found a note from Carla saying she had something to do at the Rocking M. So I called, but Ten says she isn’t around."

"When did she leave?"

"She should have been at the ranch house hours ago," Cash said bluntly.

"Maybe she decided to go somewhere else."

"She would have called and left a message on my answering machine."

Luke sensed the presence of Ten behind him. He turned and shoved the phone into his ramrod’s hand.

"Talk to Cash," Luke said curtly.

"Where are you going?"

"To check the south road for tread marks left by a baby pickup truck. If I’m not back in ten minutes, you’ll know I found tracks and kept going."

"To where?"

"September Canyon."

Muddy water shot up and out from the big pickup’s tires as Luke forded Picture Wash with unusual velocity. He told himself he was pushing so hard because he was worried about Carla being alone in the desolate canyon with a storm coming on. But he didn’t believe the rational lie. He drove like hell on fire because he was afraid she would have come and gone before he got there.

What’s the hurry, cowboy? he asked himself sardonically. Nothing has changed. Nothing can change. You can’t have both Carla and the Rocking M. Beginning and end of story.

There was no answer but the power of Luke’s hands holding the big truck to the rutted road at a speed that was just short of reckless. The turnoff into September Canyon was taken in a controlled skid that made the truck shudder.

Relief coursed through Luke when he saw Carla’s tiny pickup parked near a clump of pinon. He stopped nearby, pulled on his jacket and began walking quickly toward the overhang. The rich golden light of late afternoon slanted deeply across the canyon, heightening every small crevice in the cliffs and every tiny disturbance of the soil, making the land look as though it had been freshly created.

There was no sign that Carla had been beneath the overhang since August There were no fresh ashes in the fire ring, no new tracks near the seep’s clean water, no sleeping bag stretched out and waiting for the night that would soon descend.

Iwas right She isn’t planning to stick around.

The realization sent a cold razor of fear slicing through Luke. The feeling was irrational, yet it couldn’t be denied.

Icould so easily have missed her. Why didn’t she tell me she was coming? Why did she drive all the way out to the Rocking M and not even say hello?

No sooner had the questions formed than their answers came, echoes of a summer and a passion that never should have been, Carla’s voice calling endlessly to him, haunting even his dreams: Remember what it was like to be loved by me. Then come to me, Luke. I’ll be waiting for you, loving you.

But he hadn’t gone to her. He had gone instead to the old harness room. There he had transformed his yearning, his pain and his futile dreams into gleaming curves of wood, pieces of furniture to grace the family life he would never have.

Wind curled down through the canyon, wind cold with distance and winter, wind wailing with its passage over the empty land. The overhang took the wind, muffled it, smoothed it, transformed it into voices speaking at the edge of hearing and dreams, a man and a woman intertwined, suspended between fire and rain, their cries of fulfillment glittering in the darkness.

Abruptly Luke knew why Carla hadn’t set up camp beneath the overhang. She could no more bear its seething not-quite-silence than he could.

It took only a few moments for Luke to find the tracks Carla had left when she headed up the canyon. Her footprints followed the trail markers she had left in August. All other signs of her previous visit had been washed away by rain. Luke walked quickly, fighting the impulse to run, to overtake the girl who had left nothing more of herself in September Canyon than a fragile line of tracks that wouldn’t outlive the next winter storm.