“Oh, I’m having it. All bad.” Willow picked up her cards, looked at them and laughed with genuine amusement. “How many do I have to keep?”
“At least two of them.”
“That many, huh?”
A smile tugged at one corner of Caleb’s mouth. A lot of women—and even more men—Caleb had played cards with would have been sulky at the run of bad luck Willow was having, but she wasn’t pouting. She accepted the cards in the same way she had accepted the hard ride, bad weather, and uncertain shelter. Watching her, it was all Caleb could do not to reach out and lift her over the saddle and into his lap. The passion that was never far beneath his surface when she was nearby had become claws of need sinking into him, twisting with each breath he took, shaking him.
Setting his jaw against the fire burning in his blood, Caleb picked up his own cards.
“Eeny, meeny…” Willow said softly.
Caleb laughed despite the hardening of his body. Willow had proven to be a good trail companion, uncomplaining, with a whimsical sense of humor that kept taking him by surprise. She wasn’t at all what he had expected of a spoiled fancy lady.
“That’s no way to do it, honey.”
“Nothing else has worked,” Willow pointed out reasonably. She put three cards face down on the saddle. “Three more, please.”
Shaking his head, Caleb dealt the cards she had requested and slipped the rejects onto the bottom of the deck.
Willow watched his deft hands with admiration. His coordination kept taking her unawares, for she kept expecting a man who was so obviously powerful to be somewhat clumsy. She picked up her cards, peeked at them, and tried to keep the poker face that Caleb had told her was necessary to a true understanding of the game.
“That bad, huh?” he asked sympathetically.
“It will cost you fifteen good pine needles to find out.”
Smiling, remembering Willow’s unbudging refusal to play for money, Caleb counted out fifteen needles from the mound in front of him.
“Call,” he said.
“Seven, six,” Willow said, laying out the red and black cards face up, “five, four, and two.”
“I’ve got a pair, jack high.”
“Is that better than what I have?”
“Honey, anything is better than what you have.”
Caleb looked from his winning hand to her useless cards. “You must be lucky at love, because you aren’t worth two straws at cards.”
“And you’re very good.” Willow lowered her lashes, watching him from beneath their fringed shelter as she asked casually, “Does that mean you’re unlucky at love?”
“I would be, if there were such a thing. Another hand?”
For a moment Willow was too surprised to speak. “You mean you don’t believe in love?”
“You mean you do?” he retorted dryly, shuffling the cards with a speed that blurred all the edges.
“What do you believe in, then?”
“Between a man and a woman?”
She nodded.
“Passion,” Caleb said succinctly, feeling the red-hot claws of his own need raking him.
The cards arched beneath his fingers and interlaced in a blur of motion, sliding over one another only to be divided, arched, and interlaced again in a new way.
“Is that all? Just passion?” Willow asked, her voice almost a whisper.
“It’s more than most men get from a woman.”
Caleb shrugged and began dealing cards. “Women want a man to take care of them. Men want a woman to warm their bed. Women call the arrangement love. Men call it by another name.” He glanced up. “Don’t give me that shocked look, Mrs. Moran. You know how the sex game is played as well as I do.”
Willow hated the flush that heated her cheeks at the mention of her married state, but was unable to do anything to stem the guilty tide of color. In silence, she picked up her cards and opened them. She stared at the numbers and faces but saw nothing.
Overhead the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The quiet was almost shocking. Wind came, shaking the shelter. With an abrupt motion Caleb emptied the contents of the tin cup into the coffeepot and placed the cup below the leak once more.
“How many?” he asked, his voice as hard as his body.
Blinking, Willow focused on Caleb as though she had never seen him before. “I beg your pardon?”
“How many cards do you want?” he asked impatiently.
“None,” she said, putting her cards aside. “It’s stopped raining. Are we going to get back on the trail?”
“Can’t wait to see your…husband?”
“Yes,” Willow whispered, closing her eyes, shutting out Caleb’s contemptuous golden glance. “Yes, I want to see Matthew very much.”
“I suppose he understands all about love.” Caleb’s voice was savage, condemning.
Willow’s eyes opened and her breath came out as though at a blow. “Yes. Matthew loves me.”
Caleb stared at Willow. There was no rush of blood to her cheeks, no refusal to meet his eyes. The mention of marriage might have made her blush, but she obviously was quite certain of one thing: Matthew Moran loved her.
The thought didn’t comfort Caleb one bit.
“How long since you’ve seen him?” he asked.
“Too long.”
“How long, fancy lady?” Caleb demanded. “A month? Six months? A year? More?” He barely restrained the question he really wanted to ask: Where were you when Reno was seducing my innocent sister, planting his seed in her, leaving her to die bearing his bastard?
But if Caleb asked that, Willow would have questions of her own. The answers would insure that she never told him where her fancy man was holed up, waiting for his fancy woman and a fortune in fancy horses to arrive.
Disgusted, Caleb threw in the cards he had just dealt.
Willow watched, but said nothing. She didn’t understand what was riding Caleb, but she sensed the savagery in him with great clarity.
“Answer me,” Caleb snarled.
“Why does it matter when I last saw Matthew?”
The slight trembling of Willow’s hands belied the composure of her voice, but Caleb wasn’t looking at her hands. He was looking at her mouth. Her lips were smooth and full, pink as her tongue. Their curves fascinated him. There were other curves he longed to touch, to taste, to test the softness of her breasts; but most of all he longed to strip off buckskin and flannel and explore the nest of golden hair that concealed her feminine secrets. The memory of that thick triangle pressing against her drenched pantelets had haunted him mercilessly.
In that instant Caleb knew if he stayed cooped up with Willow a minute longer in the enforced intimacy of the shelter, he was going to demand more than useless information from her soft lips. A few minutes ago she might have given him the kiss he hungered for, and more besides. But not now. Now she was almost frightened of him. Now she was longing for the fancy man who told her lies about love.
Caleb knew he had only himself to blame. He had let the hunger burning within him erode his self-control until he could barely call his body his own. That was stupid. Reno hadn’t seduced his girls with the rough edge of his tongue—he had whispered loving lies while he unfastened laces and plundered the soft heat beneath. That was what Willow was missing, all the smooth lies and smoother manners of a gentleman.
If Caleb wanted to sheathe himself within Willow’s body, he would have to control his savage anger at her lover. Then, maybe, Caleb would be able to control the passion that was eating into the very marrow of his bones.
With a muttered curse, he grabbed his hat and rifle and left the shelter in a coordinated rush of power. Behind him, Willow let out her breath slowly, wondering why the subject of marriage and Matthew Moran always put a razor edge on Caleb’s temper.
“I’m going to look around,” Caleb said from outside the shelter. “I’ll be gone for several hours. Don’t build a fire.”
“All right,” Willow answered.
“Caleb was right,” Willow said aloud, hoping the sound of her own voice would hold loneliness at bay. “It snowed. But then, Caleb is always right, isn’t he? That’s why I hired him.”
Willow shivered as she remembered Caleb’s savagery when he questioned her about Matthew. It was as though the very fact of her brother’s existence somehow offended Caleb.
“Not my brother,” she corrected herself quickly. “My husband. I have to remember that. Matthew is my husband, not my brother.”
Yet what Willow remembered was the intensity of Caleb’s eyes when he watched her lick honey from her fingertip, and the huskiness of his voice when he asked her if she was going to kiss his small hurts and make them better. She had been tempted, so tempted, and he had seen that. He wanted her, she was drawn to him, and he thought she was married.
Scarlet burned suddenly from Willow’s breasts to her hairline as she realized that he must think her a flirt at best, and at worst…
Fancy lady.
Willow took a deep, steadying breath. It would be for only a few more days. A week, perhaps. Then they would be among the five peaks and Matthew would find them and they could all laugh about her necessary disguise as a married woman. Until then, she needed the disguise more than ever.
Caleb was a wild, sweet fire in her blood.
8
W ITH a curious, tingling shudder, Willow forced herself to think of something other than the man whose uncertain temper and crooked smile kept throwing her off balance. She concentrated on the sunlight beating heavily down all around her, stripping veils of mist from the wet land. Although the ground was cool, the air was rapidly becoming almost hot.
The horses had emerged from the cover of the forest and were grazing. They ate hungrily, looking up from time to time, but otherwise relaxed. Their calm told Willow that no one was nearby. For a few minutes she watched their coats steam in the rapidly heating air, reassured by the familiar presence of her Arabians. Within an hour the horses would be dry, and so would the meadow.
Willow went into the shelter and came out carrying the shotgun, a blanket, lavender soap, Caleb’s cavalry shirt, and her clean camisole and pantelets. Watching Ishmael for any sign that she wasn’t alone in the meadow, she went to the creek and followed it downstream from the camp until she found a patch of willow bushes growing right next to the water. Behind the screen of bushes she undressed until she wore only the scarlet flannel longjohns.
When Willow knelt and put her hand in the water, she barely bit back a shriek. The creek was colder than the streams she was accustomed to in West Virginia, much less one of the sun-warmed farm ponds where she had bathed whenever she could sneak away.
“The sun will warm you up,” she told herself firmly. “Now get to it before Caleb comes back.”
Willow temporized, washing in reverse of her usual order rather than stripping down right away. Still dressed, she wetted her hair and worked it into a lather. The soap fairly seemed to explode into bubbles when it hit the water. Very quickly she had lathered and rinsed her hair twice. Sitting on her heels, she wrung out her hair and shook it over her back to dry. Then she peeled off the cotton flannel and washed herself to the accompaniment of gasps and gritted teeth whenever cold water hit a particularly sensitive part of her body.
After blotting herself dry as best she could with the flannel, Willow stepped into her pantelets and camisole. She shook out Caleb’s big shirt and pulled it on over her head, lifted out her hair, and settled into shivering herself warm. It took only a few minutes. She gathered everything she had brought and walked out of the willows, looking for a warm, sunny place along the brook to wash her clothes.
A hundred yards away, Ishmael’s head came up and his ears pricked together as he saw Willow emerge from cover. He watched her walk along the stream for a minute, then went back to grazing. Certain that no one would be able to sneak up on her—except, perhaps, Caleb—Willow knelt near the water, set the shotgun within reach, and began washing her flannel underwear. When she was finished, she spread the flannel underwear on the meadow grass to dry.
The heat of the sun amazed her. Already the snowline was visibly melting up the mountain peaks, retreating with every passing minute. The air was almost hot. Its silky dryness was like a tonic after the days of overcast and rain. It was difficult for Willow to believe that she would be wanting heavy clothes when the sun went down. At the moment, even with wet hair, she was warm enough to consider peeling off Caleb’s heavy woof shirt and lying down on a blanket in the sun while her hair dried. She compromised by unbuttoning one of the rows of buttons and allowing the cavalry shirt to flop open on the right side.
The horses continued to graze quietly, assuring Willow that she was alone in the meadow. She shook out the blanket, set the shotgun nearby, and began combing snarls out of her hip-length hair. It was a tedious job, but in time most of the water-darkened strands hung freely down her back. With a sigh of relief she stretched out on her stomach to let the sun complete its work of drying her hair. Then she would finish grooming the thick mass with her brush.
The light breeze, the hum of insects working over the meadow, the muted song of birds, and the hot sun combined to unravel Willow. With a long sigh, she slid into sleep.
When Ishmael nickered, she awoke with a start. Even as her hand closed around the shotgun, she recognized Caleb approaching her with long, easy strides. Hastily, she sat up and flipped the blanket across her legs. Her hair slid forward over her shoulders in an untamed fall of gold. Frantically, she groped around the blanket but couldn’t find the brush and comb.
“Good thing nobody is nearby,” Caleb said. “Between that red stallion and your underwear drying on the grass, it would take a blind man to overlook us.”
“You didn’t tell me to keep the horses in the forest,” Willow muttered as she rearranged the blanket to cover her bare feet.
“I didn’t tell you to keep your pants on, either.”
Caleb’s voice was neutral, giving no indication as to his mood. Willow looked cautiously at him through the screen of her dark amber eyelashes. His smile flashed crookedly against the black backdrop of his beard.
“Don’t worry, honey. If I wanted the horses in the forest, I would have picketed them there myself. As for your clothes,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners, “they don’t stand out nearly as much as that red stud.”
Relieved, Willow smiled up at Caleb. The day was too warm and too unexpectedly wonderful to spend arguing. His own smile widened as he bent and scooped up the brush and tortoiseshell comb that were peeking out from the meadow grass.
“Looking for these?” Caleb asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
Instead of putting them in Willow’s outstretched hand, he moved behind her, knelt, and calmly began combing her hair. After her first, startled reaction was ignored, she accepted the small intimacy.
For such a big man, Caleb’s hands were light and surprisingly gentle. Patiently he worked the remaining snarls from Willow’s long, sun-warmed hair. With an unconscious sigh of pleasure, she relaxed beneath his hands.
Caleb’s eyes narrowed as he measured her response to his, but he made sure that Willow saw nothing of his response, for he didn’t think he could conceal the hunger in his eyes and body. Delicately he drew the comb through the incandescent gold of her hair, easing out all tangles before he set the comb aside and switched to the brush without interrupting the slow rhythms of his hands moving over her hair.
“You’re very good at this,” Willow said after a time of hushed silence.
“I had a lot of practice when I was a boy. My mother had a hard time carry
ing a baby. Most of the time she was so ill she couldn’t wash and comb out her own hair.”
“You did it for her?”
Caleb’s answer was a rumble of sound that had no meaning beyond agreement. “Mom had no daughters and no other living children until Rebecca.”
“Your sister?”
“Yes, my baby sister. She was beautiful, as sleek and quick as a mink. All the boys wanted her, but she wouldn’t have any part of them, until…”
Willow heard both sadness and rage in Caleb’s voice and sensed that the girl called Rebecca hadn’t made a happy choice in her man.
“I’m sorry,” Willow whispered, touching Caleb’s hand where it rested on her shoulder. “It must be very hard for you to be away from your family.”
Caleb had no doubt that Willow meant every word she said. He also had no doubt that she made no connection between herself and a girl called Rebecca Black. When Caleb thought about it, he realized Willow’s ignorance was hardly surprising. Reno wouldn’t be likely to discuss one conquest with another.
Anger prowled in Caleb, but it was no competitor at the moment for the desire that permeated every bit of his big body. He lifted a fistful of Willow’s thick hair and let it slide from his grip in a silky, golden waterfall. The scent of lavender drifted up to him. He knew that her clothes would smell of the same lavender soap she had used on her hair. He inhaled deeply, letting the fragrance expand through him. For some reason he liked lavender even better than the rose sachet Jessica Charteris preferred. Lavender refreshed his senses and tantalized them at the same time.
“My father was an Army surveyor,” Caleb said almost absently as he watched the silken drift of Willow’s hair down her back. “He was gone more than he was home. I did what I could to care for Mother. The part I liked best was brushing her hair. It was black and straight, like mine. Light used to make bluewhite rainbows in it. I thought it was the softest, most beautiful thing in the world, until now.”
Willow shivered as Caleb’s palm moved caressingly from her forehead to her nape and burrowed beneath the thickness of her hair. His hand lifted and let the smooth strands slide away.
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