Elizabeth Lowell - Only His

Relieved that he was going to accept her clothes without comment, Willow answered cheerfully. «Trey and Deuce were as gentle as could be while I curried them. They held up each foot in turn and didn’t try to lean on me while I cleaned their hooves.»

Caleb’s eyes widened a fraction as he realized that she had indeed cared for his horses. That was almost as much a shock as the instant he first had seen her wearing buckskins that fit her like a pale shadow, revealing every womanly line of her body. He was beginning to think that wearing pants had been a bad idea — for his comfort, not for hers.

Nor was the top she wore any better. It cupped her breasts as lovingly as a man’s hands.

«A freight wagon is headed south, going at a good clip,» Caleb said after a moment. «Wind is from the west. If we keep the fire small, nobody on the wagon will smell it. And about moonrise, with a cold wind coming down off the peaks, we’ll be glad for a canteen of coffee and a hatful of cold bread.»

Willow flashed a smile. «Can we have coffee now, too?»

The corner of Caleb’s mouth turned up almost unwillingly as he admitted, «I was looking forward to it myself.»

When Willow was finished with the horses, she took her camisole andpantelets and washed them in the tiny creek with a sliver of soap taken from her personal baggage. Carefully, she shook the garments out and draped them over the cottonwood log near the fire, knowing that the thin fabric would dry quickly.

In silence, Caleb stacked bacon andfrybread on plates made from a slab of cottonwood bark. Willow finished pouring coffee into the canteen, sat, and began eating. As she reached for a chunk offrybread, Caleb brought out a small pot of honey, one of the many small luxuries Wolfe had thrown into the pack.

«Honey!» Willow cried softly.

«No call to go getting fresh,» Caleb said, deadpan.

When she realized what he meant, she blushed and said, «Caleb Black, you know very well I meant what’s in that pot rather than you.»

«I’m hurt.»

«And I’m Salome of the Seven Veils,» she muttered.

Caleb glanced at the nearly transparent lawn camisole and fine cottonpantelets that were draped over the cottonwood log to dry.

«Looks more like two veils from here.»

Willow said only, «Honey, please.»

«How can I resist when you ask so nicely?» he said, surrendering the clay pot.

She made a sound that was almost a giggle. His answering smile made her feel as light as fire. For a shivering instant, Willow felt almost at home again, the home that existed only in her memories and dreams — firelight and her parents and her brothers’ masculine teasing, and Matt’s affectionate deviling of the younger sister who worshipped him.

Silently, Willow tipped the jar and dribbled a tiny stream of honey over the bread. The thick liquid shimmered like captive sunlight as it was slowly absorbed into the bread. She licked up stray threads of sweetness before she sank her teeth into the unexpected treat. The complex flavor of honey spread through her mouth. Without realizing it, she made a small sound of pleasure at the back of her throat. It had been three years since she had tasted the sun-drenched richness of honey.

Caleb watched from the corner of his eye, telling himself that she wasn’t doing it on purpose, licking her lips and sending that quick little tongue out to scoop up stray drops of honey. She wasn’t putting on a show for him. She was simply enjoying the honey with a sensual intensity that aroused him as much as seeing her in nearly transparentunderthings had.

If Willow had been teasing him, Caleb would have had no difficulty ignoring or accepting her invitation, depending on how he felt at the moment. But she wasn’t issuing invitations, which put him at a real disadvantage. He wanted her. She didn’t want him.

Or if she did, she was keeping it under her hat better than any woman he had ever met.

Maybe she really is Reno’s wife. Not every man buys his woman a ring.

Then why does she blush like a kid caught stealing apples each time thewordhusbandis mentioned?

There was no answer but the obvious one — Reno wasn’t Willow’s husband.

Absently, Caleb fingered the locket he carried safely within his watch pocket. Then he looked at the angle of the sun. Three more hours of daylight. Less if a storm came. But it didn’t look like it was blowing in the right direction for a storm. A few showers here and there, maybe, but nothing like it had been last night or the night before.

With a reluctance he didn’t understand, Caleb pulled out the locket, flicked it open, and studied the two pictures inside. From what Willow had said, she was more familiar with Reno’s parents than she was with her own. All he had to do was show her the locket. If she recognized the photographs, she was Reno’s wife. If she didn’t, she wasn’t. Cut and dried.

Show it to her. Find out if she’s available.

What if she isn’t?

The question went into Caleb like a knife, telling him how much he wanted the woman with the golden hair and the laughter to match.

Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

It was easy enough to say. It had been easy enough to obey, before Caleb had met Willow. Now he wasn’t certain he could obey the letter, much less the spirit, of that ancient law.

What you don’t know won’t hurt you, right?

Wrong, fool. What you don’t know can —

«What’s that?» Willow asked, interrupting Caleb’s thoughts.

He turned toward her with a suddenness that made her flinch.

«I’m sorry,» she said quickly. «I didn’t mean to startle you.»

Caleb looked from Willow’s clear hazel eyes to the twin golden ovals of the locket lying open in his palm. Two unsmiling faces stared back up at him. With a casualness that cost a great deal, he held his hand out so that Willow could see the pictures.

«Just a locket,» he said, watching her intently.

Willow bent forward at the waist and rested her fingertips on the pad of flesh at the base of Caleb’s thumb. He responded to the light pressure by tilting his hand, giving her a better view of the pictures.

The man had an unremarkable face, light eyes, dark hair, a mustache, and the most outstanding pair of ears Willow had ever seen. The woman had an unremarkable face, light eyes, dark hair, no mustache, and the second most outstanding pair of ears Willow had ever seen. Surreptitiously, she glanced at Caleb, wondering if the couple was related to him. She saw nothing of them in the lines of his face, in the shape of his eyes, in the curve of his mouth.

And most especially, nothing of them in his ears.

She cleared her throat, swallowing the laughter that lurked just at the edge of her control, and murmured, «Birds of a feather…»

A corner of Caleb’s mouth lifted in a hard curl. «Yes, I thought the same thing when I first saw the pictures.»

«Then the people aren’t, er, related to you?» Willow asked carefully.

«I was going to ask you the same thing.»

Willow’s hands went to her head, lifting her thick, heavy hair away from her ears. «What do you think?»

Caleb thought he would like to take a gentle bite or two, but he said only, «What about your husband?»

Fighting a guilty tide of color, Willow looked away. «Matt’s ears are as flat as mine.»

«Not his parents, either, huh?» Caleb said, making his voice light, as though he was teasing her.

Golden hair flew as she shook her head emphatically. «No. I’ve never seen those people before in my life.»

«Sure?» he asked, smiling a slow, lazy kind of smile.

«Do you think I’d forget those ears?»

He laughed softly, feeling much better about life than he had when he awakened lusting after a woman who might have been another man’s wife.

«No, southern lady, I don’t. Those are the damnedest ears I’ve seen short of a Missouri mule.»

Willow wondered at the honey-licking satisfaction in Caleb’s smile and voice, but couldn’t help responding to it. She laughed softly, pleased that she had somehow slipped past his reserve for a few moments. Not until Caleb’s hand curled over hers did she realize that her fingertips were still resting on the hard flesh at the base of his thumb.

A shiver of awareness coursed through Willow, startling her. Instinctively, she pulled back. Sensing both the response and the wariness, Caleb released Willow’s fingers with a caressing motion that emphasized his strength and his restraint. Now that he was reasonably certain of her marital status, he was willing to conduct a careful campaign of seduction, one that would end with her pleading for him in no uncertain terms.

That wouldn’t happen today or maybe even the day after tomorrow, yetappen it would. The hunter in Caleb was as certain of his ultimate success as he was that he would find and kill the man called Reno.

The man whowasnot Willow’s husband.

«Better get your Levis on, honey,» Caleb said, standing and pulling Willow to her feet in the same motion. «We’ve got a long, hard ride ahead before we’ll be shed of Slater and his bunch.»

Shadows had already flowed down from the invisible peaks by the time Willow stood next to Ishmael, looking uncertainly at her new saddle. The stallion hadn’t objected to it. In fact, other than a flaring of his nostrils at the unfamiliar scent, he hadn’t seemed to notice any difference.

Willow did. When she bent to pick up the saddle for the first time, its unexpected weight startled her into letting it drop. Caleb reached past her, lifted the saddle one-handed, and secured it on Ishmael’s back.

«Up you go.»

Willow looked up from the leather-clad hands held out for her use as a stirrup. Caleb’s whiskey-colored eyes were watching her with a masculine speculation that startled her. Then he blinked, banking the passionate fires she sensed burning beneath his self-control.

«Shouldn’t I learn how to mount alone?» Willow asked, her voice husky.

Black eyebrows lifted. Caleb shrugged and stepped aside. «Suit yourself.»

Willow held reins and mane in her left hand, lifted her left foot up — way up — to the stirrup and grabbed the saddle horn with her right hand. Halfway up she stopped, remembering that she would have to swing her right leg over the stallion’s rump instead of over the saddle horn. A judicious boost from the flat of Caleb’s hand prevented her from dangling like an ornament from the stirrup.

«Thank you,» Willow muttered as she settled in the saddle, flushed from the tactile memory of his big hand on her bottom.

«My pleasure,» Caleb said gravely.

He hid his smile as Willow raised her left foot out of the stirrup. If he heard the swift intake of her breath when his hand closed around her ankle to move her leg back from the stirrup, he didn’t show it. «I’d better let this down a few notches. I’ve never seenJessi, but she must be an even smaller tidbit than you.»

The red in Willow’s cheeks deepened as she thought of the snug fit of the first two layers of her clothes. «I’m not small,» she muttered.

Smiling, Caleb ducked beneath Ishmael’s neck, gently removed Willow’s right foot from the stirrup, and let it down two notches, though he knew very well one notch would be enough. When he was finished, he fitted her foot in the stirrup with a care that was just short of caressing.

«Stand up, honey.»

Willow obeyed.

Caleb slid his hand along the leather beneath her bottom, testing the clearance between saddle and woman. There wasn’t enough room for his hand to move freely. It could, however, move.

At Caleb’s intimate touch Willow inhaled sharply as she went up on her tiptoes in shock. «Caleb!»

«Yes, I see,» he said blandly. «I’ll have to take the stirrups back up a notch. Sit down again.»

Slowly, Caleb removed his hand and began working over the stirrup leather again. Willow stared down at him. She could see only the black brim of his hat. Gradually, her heartbeat settled down and the feeling of not being able to breathe diminished. She took a rather ragged breath and tried to forget the staggering instant when she had felt his big hand sliding between her legs, sending unnerving sensations radiating up through her body.

Forgetting was impossible.

«Stand up again.»

«I’m sure the stirrups are just f-fine,» Willow said almost desperately.

Her low, shaken voice was as arousing to Caleb as the soft weight of her bottom pressed against his palm had been. He wanted to feel her again, to curl his hand around her heat and rock against her until she moaned.