The speed with which Carla’s cooking disappeared no longer appalled her, for she had become accustomed to thinking in terms of feeding men who routinely burned three and four thousand calories a day. During roundup, branding, calving and other seasonally demanding kinds of work, the men would work sixteen-hour days, during which they would eat a minimum of four big meals and all the “snacks” they could cram into their pockets, saddlebags or the glove compartments of their pickup trucks.
Before Carla sat down to eat, she went back to the kitchen with the stew bowls, rilling them again from the much-reduced volume of the cooking pot. After bringing the new bowls of stew, plus coffee refills, two more trays of biscuits and a new pot of honey, she sat down and ate her own dinner.
She didn’t lack for company; the men who weren’t polishing off second helpings were working their way through a third plate. By the time she had eaten her first – and only – serving, the men were through eating. It was the part of the meal Carla enjoyed most, for the full, satisfied men tended to sharpen their wits on one another while she brought in dessert.
Sometimes it was Carla who came in for her share of ribbing, but she enjoyed even that. It reminded her of the good-natured give-and-take she and Cash shared – and Luke, too, until that disastrous summer.
“What’s this I hear about you running off tomorrow and leaving us to starve?” Cosy asked as he mopped up the last of the savory gravy with a biscuit.
“True,” Carla said cheerfully. “I’ve saved up some days off.”
“And you’re going to run off to the city and never think of the brokenhearted boys you left behind.”
“Actually,” Carla said, standing up and gathering dirty plates, “I’m running off to September Canyon.”
“Same difference,” mumbled Cosy.
“It is?”
“Sure. We’ll starve just the same.”
“You can live off the fat of the land,” Ten pointed out to Cosy.
“Speak for yourself, boy. I’m trim as a rattlesnake and twice as mean.”
“Three times as ugly, too,” called Jones from the end of the table. As the other men laughed, Jones kicked back and lit up a cigarette, sending a streamer of smoke across the table. “But that’s still one hardhearted woman,” he added, gesturing toward Carla with a burned match. “Leaving us to starve and not turning a hair over it.”
“Hate to disappoint you boys,” Carla said, pausing in the doorway with her arms loaded with dishes, “but I doubled up on everything I made this week and froze half. You won’t starve.”
Shaking his head, Jones rocked back from the table and blew out another stream of smoke. When Carla returned and began passing out dessert, Jones watched her closely and said as though no time had passed, “It’s not the same a’tall. Nothing’s as good as fresh.” He gave Carla a thorough, up-and-down look and took another drag on his cigarette. ‘“Course, I might forgive you if you gave me a big kiss before you leave.”
“Nope,” Carla said instantly, hearing Ten’s chair creak as he turned toward the brash young hand.
“You sure about that?” Jones asked, blowing out smoke again, looking at her with open appraisal. “Bet I could change your mind, little darling.”
“Not a chance. Nothing personal, but kissing you would be like licking an ashtray.”
The men laughed loudly. After a moment, Jones shook his head and laughed, too. Ten’s smile flickered very briefly, but there was a look in his eyes that told Carla a ranch hand called Jones would be hearing the rough edge of his ramrod’s tongue. And, she admitted to herself, it might be just as well; during the past few weeks she had become increasingly aware of Jones. Of all the hands, he was the only one she took care not to be alone with. It was nothing he had said or done; she simply didn’t like the way he looked at her.
Ten lingered while, one by one, the other men finished dessert. The hands had taken to carrying their dirty dishes into the kitchen after a meal, which saved Carla a lot of running back and forth. There was usually some more good-humored joking as the hands grabbed a final cup of coffee before going to the bunkhouse for a night of cards, TV, VCR movies or a few rounds on the battered old pool table.
Ten rolled up his sleeves and began scraping dishes. While he did it, he kept an eye on the men who came and went from the kitchen. Especially Jones. The hands sensed their ramrod’s displeasure. No one lingered tonight. They carried in dishes, grabbed a cup of coffee, and vanished.
Carla waited until everyone had left before she turned to Ten and said neutrally, “The way you’re snarling, not one of those hands is going to so much as say good-night to me from now on.”
Ten smiled slowly. “The men understand. They can go so far and no farther.”
“Fine,” Carla said, irritated by the feeling of being protected beyond any reasonable need. “But what would happen if I wanted to get to know one of the men better?”
For an instant there was silence. Then, “Do you?”
She threw up her hands. “That’s not the point.”
“Sure it is.”
“But – “
“Think of it this way,” Ten said, interrupting calmly. “If you did want to get to know one of the hands better, you’d be doing him a real favor if you left the Rocking M and took him with you. Otherwise, he’d be a mighty sorry puppy about the time Luke turned up and started hammering out postholes with him. You don’t want some nice, stupid boy on your conscience, do you?”
“Is it so awful just to want to have fun with somebody?”
“Try Luke.”
“I’d love to,” Carla shot back. Hearing the stark emotion in her own voice made her wince. “Never mind, Ten. Guess I’m just – ” she shrugged ” – ragged. I’m looking forward to my time off.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet cooking for this bunch of wolves can get real wearing.”
She shook her head. “Cooking, no. Cleaning? Amen.”
The outside door to the kitchen slammed behind Luke. “Then stick with cooking, schoolgirl. We’re not having a fancy dress ball or white glove inspection here anytime soon,” he said, tossing his hat onto the counter. “If you wax the closet floor once more I’ll break my neck reaching for shirts.” He threw Ten a cool look. “Working late?”
“Just following orders.”
Luke went wholly still. “Who’s crowding her?”
“Jones,” Ten said.
“No,” Carla said quickly. “It’s not like that. He hasn’t done anything.”
Luke looked at Ten.
The ramrod shook his head, disagreeing with Carla.
Luke nodded abruptly and said to Ten, “I’ll draw his pay. Have him off the Rocking M by noon tomorrow.”
“Luke,” Carla said urgently, “you can’t fire a ranch hand just because he made a joke about kissing me.”
“Like hell I can’t” He glared down at Carla with narrow golden eyes. “Jones has a bad reputation with women.”
“So does Ten, according to you,” Carla pointed out tightly.
“Not like Jones. Ten never took anything that wasn’t offered. Jones did, and maybe more than once. He got off easy because the gal wasn’t exactly a virgin to begin with, but that doesn’t change what happened. Even a prostitute has the right to say no to a man.”
Carla started to speak but was too shocked.
“I hired Jones because there aren’t any women on the Rocking M and he’s a top hand when he isn’t drinking and trying to prove he’s God’s gift to girls. Then you came here. Jones swore to me he wouldn’t drink and he wouldn’t so much as look at you. I haven’t caught him looking, but I’m not so sure about the booze.”
Luke glanced at Ten, who nodded.
“Thought I smelled it on him yesterday in the pasture,” Luke muttered, rubbing his neck angrily. “Damn it to hell. Tell Cosy to drive Jones into West Fork tonight Tell Jones not to come back. Ever.”
“He’ll want to hear it from you,” Ten said.
“You really think h
e’s that stupid?” Luke asked hopefully, watching Ten with the eyes of a cougar.
The ramrod’s smile was slow and savage. “Probably not. Too bad. You’ve been spoiling for a fight. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Jones.”
“Yeah. I should have fired that SOB the second I knew Carla was coming here. Females and the Rocking M. Nothing but trouble.”
“And good cooking,” Ten added. “Don’t forget that. Carla’s got more of those chocolate chip cookies you favor stashed in the freezer. Nothing like a good woman to spoil a man, is there?”
“While it lasts, no. But when she’s gone – and she always goes – it just makes the hard times harder.”
10
The kitchen door snapped shut behind Ten, leaving Carla and Luke alone in the taut silence. Silently she watched while Luke went to the sink, rolled up his sleeves and began washing up. He rinsed dust off his face, soaped all the way up his muscular forearms to his elbows and used a nailbrush on his hands. That was one of the things Carla had always noticed about Luke; no matter how hard he had worked or how tired he was, he always came to her table with clean hands.
And such handsome hands they were, almost elegant despite their large size. Long, lean fingers and neatly trimmed nails. A hand deft enough to pick a tiny flower without bruising it and strong enough to lift a saddle one-handed and lower it onto a cow pony’s back. Luke’s hands fascinated her. Warm, hard, capable of trembling with desire and yet still touching her with restraint, sensitive enough to measure and savor all the textures of her breasts, caressing her nipples from softness to velvet pebbles.
“Did I miss some dirt?”
Carla’s head snapped up to meet Luke’s eyes. “What?”
“You were staring at my hands.”
“I…” Carla’s voice died. She closed her eyes, unable to bear the exquisite torture of looking at Luke’s hands any longer and remembering how it had felt to be touched by him, if only for a few moments. “I’ll see if your dinner is still warm.”
“You mean the wolves left some scraps for me?”
“I stood over the stew with a shotgun.”
He smiled. “Did you eat?”
“A little.”
He hesitated, then said slowly, as though against his better judgment, “Keep me company and I’ll help you finish off the dishes.”
“Sold,” Carla said instantly. Her blue-green eyes appreciated Luke’s smile and noted the signs of a long day’s work in his face. “But you don’t have to do my job, too. You look like you’ve been working so hard that you’re too tired to sleep properly.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. He wondered if Carla had heard him prowling the kitchen for the past three nights. When he was awake he could banish the memory of her body pressed to his, but when he slept, it was different. In his dreams he sat half-clothed in the dining room and she came to him, laughter and sunshine and sensual heat that bathed him in passion until he cried out; and then he awakened alone, sweating, his breath a tearing sound in the darkness.
“Sit down,” Carla said. “I’ll bring dinner to you. You must be starved.”
Luke barely kept himself from saying he would rather have Carla than any dinner on earth; and he would rather have her in the dining room, sitting astride his lap, her head thrown back, her nipples taut and glistening from his mouth, her body sheathing him, bringing him relief from the torment of wanting her.
“Whatever you give me always tastes good,” Luke said finally, trying not to watch Carla’s mouth too hungrily.
The look in his golden eyes made her breath catch. A delicate, invisible shiver went from her breastbone to the pit of her stomach.
At that instant Carla realized that she should put Luke’s dinner on the table, return immediately to the kitchen and finish the dishes, leaving him to eat alone. Then she should go put one of the Rocking M’s movie cassettes on the VCR and watch it Alone. Or she should read one of her own or Luke’s many books on archaeology and the history of the West, or she should make more casseroles and cookies for the men to eat while she was camping in September Canyon, or…anything but sit in aching silence watching Luke eat, envying the very food that touched his lips.
“Go sit down,” Carla said huskily. “I’ll bring you dinner.”
She brought Luke’s food to him, sat down with him, watched him eat and envied the food that touched his lips. The silence was both electric and oddly companionable. Not until Luke had had time to appease the worst of his hunger did Carla begin asking him about his day.
“Did you see more cougar tracks around the Wildfire Canyon seep?”
He nodded and smiled to himself. “Looks like she has herself at least one cub, maybe two.”
“You aren’t going to hunt her,” Carla said, reading Luke’s expression and the nuances of his voice.
It was a statement rather than a question, but Luke answered Carla anyway, thinking aloud as he had become accustomed to doing with her in the quiet hours after the long day’s work was done.
“The cat’s in pretty close to the ranch buildings,” Luke said slowly. Then he shrugged. “I’ll probably regret it, but I won’t touch her unless she starts living off calves instead of deer. There’s a big part of me that likes knowing cougars have come back to the lower canyons to live the way they did when Case MacKenzie rode into the country.”
“Like the wild black stallion?” Carla asked.
“Well,” Luke drawled, rubbing his cheek, “you can’t prove by me that that old stud is alive in anything but Ten’s mind. Cougars, now…I’ve seen cougars.”
Luke sipped coffee, then leaned back in his chair, relaxing and enjoying the peaceful moment. “I think cougars must be the prettiest cat God ever made. Quick, quiet, moving smooth as water, with eyes that remind men we aren’t the only life worth caring about on earth. There were wild animals a long time before there were cities. And if we don’t screw it up, there will be wild animals a long time after humans get smart and plow the cities under.”
Carla smiled softly at Luke. “Do you suppose the Anasazi sat inside their stone apartment buildings and listened to cougars scream?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, especially in the higher canyons. But I’m sure the Anasazi heard coyotes wherever they built.” Luke looked up from his coffee and caught Carla watching him with blue-green eyes full of longing. “Did you hear them last night, crying to the moon?”
“Yes. I stood by the window and listened for a long time.”
“So did I.”
Carla looked into Luke’s tawny eyes and felt delicate splinters of sensation quiver through her. In her mind she saw Luke standing by his bedroom window, his body bare of all but moonlight, his eyes reflecting the limitless, elemental night; and all around him, surrounding him, was the mysterious song of coyotes. In her mind she was standing there with him, sharing his warmth, wearing only cool moonlight on her skin…moonlight and the memory of what it had been like to feel Luke’s caress. Without knowing it, she shivered.
Luke’s hand tightened around his fork until his knuckles showed white. It was a physical effort for him not to reach out and pull Carla onto his lap once more, kissing her once more, caressing her breasts once more; but this time he would remove her jeans and know her soft heat for the first time, nothing between his hunger and the wild, sweet melting of her body at his touch.
“So damned beautiful,” he whispered. “And so damned impossible to have.”
Carla blinked and focused on the present instead of on her timeless sensual dreams. “What?”
For an instant Luke didn’t respond. When he spoke it was only half the truth, for the other half was too painful to speak aloud.
“The night,” he said huskily. “It’s beautiful. It could be yesterday or tomorrow or a thousand years ago. Some things never change. Like mountains and moonlight.”
And man and woman. You and me.
The words rang so clearly in Carla’s mind that she was afraid she had spoken them aloud. But Luke’s e
xpression didn’t change. He continued to watch her with eyes like a cougar’s – tawny, intent, deep with things that were impossible to name or speak aloud. Yet like the mountain lion stalking eternity in the rippling canyon shadows, Luke was connected to the intangible, indescribable, indestructible reality of the land itself.
“And like the canyons steeped in sunlight and sage.” Luke continued slowly. “Like ancient trails snaking up steep rock walls, wild maize watered by thunderstorms, stone canyons older than human memory. Things that last, all of them. Things with staying power. The land demands it That’s why most people live in cities and look for cheap thrills. It’s easier. No staying power required. But they’ll never know what it’s like to stand and look out over a canyon and feel yourself deeply rooted in the past, with the sunlight of ten thousand days locked in your body and your life branching into the future like the land itself.”
Although Luke said nothing more, Carla knew he was thinking of his mother and his aunts and his grandmother, women whom the land had ground to dust and blown away on the relentless canyon winds. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, to tell him that the land lived in her soul as it did in his.
“Luke – “
“This is good stew,” he said simultaneously, talking over Carla. “I suppose it has a fancy French name.”
For a few seconds she fought against the change of subject Then she looked at Luke’s empty plate, freeing herself from the golden intensity of his eyes.
“Boeuf a la campagne,” she admitted.
“Country beef, huh? Stew by any other name is still beef and gravy.”
Carla blinked at Luke’s accurate translation before she remembered that he had a fine arts degree from the University of Colorado. He also had a library of literature and history books that provided him with entertainment more often than the TV programs dragged from the sky by the Rocking M’s satellite dish. Yet his western drawl and easy use of cowboy idioms had fooled more than one prospective beef buyer into believing that Luke had the intelligence and sophistication of a panfried steak.
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