«May I use your knife?» she asked.

Caleb glanced up sharply. Willow’s voice was hoarse, either from lack of use or from the damp chill of the long night.

«The side meat,» she explained, not understanding the intensity of his look.

«Sit down,» Caleb said roughly, lifting the pan from her hands. «I’ll take care of it.»

Gratefully, Willow sank to the ground and stretched out, caring little that the earth beneath her was wet and cold. The ground was blessedly motionless and supported her without any effort on her part.

She was asleep before she took two breaths.

When Caleb looked up from slicing meat, he thought Willow had fainted. He came to his feet in a rush, then knelt at her side. The skin of her throat felt cool beneath his fingers, but her pulse was steady and deep and her breathing was regular. He shook his head, divided between irritation and reluctant approval of her stubbornness.

«Fancy woman or not, you’re no quitter,» he muttered.

Glancing up from time to time, Caleb resumed slicing meat into the frying pan. As soon as the coffee water boiled, he added grounds and put it back over the fire to cook. When the coffee was finished, he cooked the meat, stacked it on a piece of bark, and added the biscuit dough to the pan.

While the biscuits cooked, he began systematically cutting thick, dark willow canes as big around as his thumb from the living thicket. He peeled the bark, poured the coffee into his canteen, filled the coffeepot again, and put it over the first to heat. When the water boiled he added a handful of shredded bark and set the pot aside.

«Willow, wake up.»

Caleb’s voice was low yet clear. She didn’t respond. He leaned over and shook her shoulder gently. There was no response. The cloth beneath his hand was cold and wet. He glanced up at the sky, wondering if there was time to dry her skirt over the fire. A second was all it took for him to conclude that he couldn’t take the risk. The sun had already risen, which meant people would be up and stirring along the trail. There were no settlements along this part of the mountain range. Any sign of smoke would be like a beacon pointing toward their camping area. Willow would have to sleep wet.

Caleb put out the fire before he turned toward Willow once more.

«Wake up, honey,» Caleb said, shaking her a little less gently.

Slowly, Willow’s eyes opened, but she wasn’t truly awake. Wide and dazed, her eyes were flecked with gold and green, silver and blue. Her eyelashes were a tawny darkness that emphasized the hazel beauty of her eyes. Against the gleaming pastel dawn, she could see only the silhouette of a flat-crowned hat pushed back over a thatch of very dark hair.

«Matt?» she whispered, reaching up to touch him. «Is it really you? It’s been so long and I’ve been so lonely. …»

Caleb’s expression hardened when he heard Willow call out to her absent lover.

«Wake up, southern lady,» he said coldly. «I cooked breakfast for you, but I’m damned if I’ll feed it to you.» Impatiently, he pulled Willow upright and shoved the canteen of coffee into her hand. «Drink.»

Automatically Willow obeyed the hard edge of command in Caleb’s voice. The coffee was just short of scalding. She swallowed, blinked back tears, and drank again, eager for the strong flavor and life-giving warmth. As she swallowed, she felt the streamer of heat uncurling all the way to her stomach. Shivering with pleasure, she drank more.

«Now eat,» Caleb said, taking the canteen from her.

Willow took the bacon and biscuit that were shoved into her hands and looked at them without interest. She was too tired to go through the motions of chewing. Sighing, she started to lie down again.

«No, you don’t,» Caleb said, pulling her upright. «Eat or you’ll be so weak tonight I’ll have to tie you on your horse. And that’s just what I’ll do if I have to, southern lady.»

A single glance told Willow that he meant every word. She sighed and looked longingly at the canteen he had placed beyond her reach.

«More coffee?» Willow asked hopefully. Her voice still sounded hoarse.

«After you eat.»

«I’m not hungry.»

«You will be after your stomach gets the message that food is available.»

Willow knew Caleb was right, but that didn’t make the food look any better to her. The first few mouthfuls were the hardest. After that, her appetite improved until she was matching Caleb bite for bite and licking her fingers with surreptitious, delicate greed. He smiled slightly and piled more bacon and biscuits in her hands. She murmured her thanks even as her teeth sank into the crisp bacon. The bottom of the biscuits was like fry bread, tender and crisp from the residue of bacon fat in the pan. She had tasted nothing more delicious, not even the tender carrots she had gleaned in a frenzy of hunger from a ravaged garden.

Finally Willow could eat no more. Before she could ask, the canteen of coffee appeared beneath her nose.

«Thank you,» Willow said softly.

She closed her eyes and inhaled the hot fragrance of coffee from the open canteen. The sensual pleasure she took in the scent was as clear as the dawn stealing over the land. After she drank, she sighed and smiled.

Caleb’s body clenched against a painful shaft of raw desire. The temptation to bend over and lick the sheen of coffee from Willow’s lips was so great that he had to look away.

«I’m sorry,» she said, nudging his hand with the canteen. «I didn’t mean to be greedy.»

Caleb took the canteen, glanced down at the metal neck, and thought of the soft lips that had so recently touched it. With a searing, silent curse he capped the canteen without drinking and stood up.

«I’m going to take a look around.»

Willow barely heard him. She was stretched out on the ground once more, asleep between one breath and the next.

Caleb climbed silently up the side of the gully, stopping just short of the top. Setting aside his hat, he eased up until he could see over the land. Nothing moved but the brilliant flood of dawn. Withdrawing as quietly as he had come, Caleb went back to the bottom of the crease. It was the work of only a few minutes to cut springy, leafy branches and cover them with one of the tarpaulins that had kept the supplies dry.

Willow didn’t awaken when Caleb lifted her and set her on the wilderness bed. Nor did she awaken when he lay down beside her and covered both of them with a blanket and another tarpaulin. She simply sighed and curled closer to the warmth that radiated from his big body.

Angrily, Caleb remembered how Willow had reached for him and huskily called another man’s name. But as he looked at her wan face and theraintarnished gold of her hair peeking out from beneath his wool muffler, Caleb remembered what she had said about the war…living on a strip of land raided by both sides, no man to help her, and an ailing mother to care for. Under the circumstances, Caleb wondered if he could condemn Willow because she had become a fancy lady in order to survive. Other women rented out their company for less reason than survival.

And some foolish girls, like his sister, gave their virtue and their lives for a handful of smoothly spoken lies about love.

«You were luckier than Rebecca,» Caleb said in a low voice as he watched Willow. «You survived. But when you sold yourself to my sister’s seducer, you sold yourself to a dead man.»

Satisfaction curled through Caleb at the thought that never again would Willow wake up in Matthew Moran’s bed and softly call his name.

4

Caleb awoke at the first rumble of thunder. Clouds like great clipper ships were raking across the sky above the ravine. Slate-bottomed, white-topped, glittering with occasional lightning, the squall line raced before the wind.

«Just as well I didn’t try to dry that skirt,» Caleb muttered, yawning. «Sure as God made little green apples, we’re going to get wet all over again.»

Willow didn’t answer, except to make a muffled sound of protest when Caleb’s warmth was replaced by a cold gust of wind as he rolled out of bed.

«Up and at ’em, fancy lady,» he said, pushing his warm stocking feet into cold, stiff boots. «This storm will give us a few safe hours of daylight on the trail.»

Still asleep, Willow pulled the blanket more tightly around herself, trying to preserve the remaining warmth. One of Caleb’s big hands wrapped around the thick wool. With a single motion of his arm, he pulled the blanket and tarpaulin off her.

«Get up, Willow.»

As he spoke, Caleb moved away from the bed he had shared with her. He didn’t trust his response if she turned toward him sleepily and called another man’s name again.

What do you care if Reno’s fancy woman can’t keep her bedmates straight?

Caleb had no answer for the question he asked himself. He only knew that, wisely or foolishly, he did care. He wanted Willow. All that kept him from trying a bit of seduction was the chance — admittedly small, as far as he was concerned — that she actually was married to Matthew Moran. But that slight chance was enough to hold Caleb in check. Stealing some passion from a man’s fancy woman was one thing. Adultery was quite another. No matter how willing the woman might be, no matter how many men she might have had before him, Caleb would no more knowingly commit adultery than he would go back on his given word.

The problem was to determine if the girl in question was indeed married. The solution to that problem occupied part of Caleb’s mind as he climbed up the side of the ravine and looked out over the land.

No one was near. Three miles away, a horseman was headed north on the informal road that ran along the front of the Rockies. A wagon was also headed north, its mules moving smartly in a futile effort to outrun the weather. Nobody was visible heading south.

Caleb waited ten more minutes. Nothing else appeared along the track but cloud shadows skimming over the land. Between the clouds, a hawk floated in a piece of sky so blue it made Caleb’s eyes water to look at it. Sunlight the color of molten gold poured over the land. The light was hot and clean, slicing through the damp chill near the ground like an incandescent sword.

From the ravine below came the soft nickering of a stallion calling to his mares. Caleb smiled and stretched, savoring the peace of the moment and the clean scent of sunlight and earth. It was so still he could hear slight ripping sounds as the horses cropped grass. Then a gust of wind came rushing over the land, bending grass and willows alike, whispering and murmuring like an invisible river as it caressed everything between cloud and earth.

The soft-talking wind awakened Willow. For an instant she thought she was back in West Virginia, a child asleep in the meadow while her family’s horses cropped grass all around her. Then she remembered that the meadow was gone, the farms were gone, and she was no longer a child. She awoke in a rush, sitting straight up in the dappled shade of the thicket. She didn’t remember falling asleep. She certainly didn’t remember lying down on a mattress of limber branches covered by a tarpaulin.

«Caleb?» she called softly.

No one answered.

Anxiously, Willow stood up and pushed out of the tiny clearing in the thicket, ignoring the protests of her stiff body and chapped legs. A quick look assured her that the horses were still picketed downstream, their coats gleaming in the sun as they stretched their necks to get to the last bit of grass within reach of their picket ropes. Willow listened intently, but heard no movements that might have come from a man gathering twigs or seeking the privacy of a dense thicket.

But then, Caleb had never made much noise no matter what the circumstances.

Making as little noise as possible herself, Willow sought the center of a downstream thicket, struggled out of and then back into her clammy skirt, and went to check on her horses. The Arabians were moving well and no stones were caught between steel shoes and hooves. Ishmael’s back wasn’t tender. Nor was he tired. He had enough energy to pretend to be startled by her appearance. He snorted and shied like a colt, then stretched out his neck and fluttered his nostrils in a softnicker, asking her to share in the play.

«You old fraud,» Willow said softly, rubbing the stallion’s nose. «You knew who it was all the time.»

Ishmael nudged her chest playfully. Willow winced. She was still a bit sore from Deuce’s hard head.