Winter Fire

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “I figured that out. Any sign that someone has been here since the Indians left?”

  “There are a few places that show recent fires,” she said. “But Ute and Conner hunt game in this canyon, and Hal surely searched here…”

  She shrugged as her voice faded.

  “Show me where to dig,” Case said.

  “You shouldn’t do that. Your leg is hardly healed.”

  “My leg stood up just fine to the last shovel work I did,” he said evenly.

  She grimaced. She had lost that argument, too. He had taken his turn burying raiders right along with Ute and Conner.

  “Fine,” she said tightly. “Dig down to China for all I care.”

  “I doubt the padres hid the silver that deep. They believed they would find hell long before they found new heathens to save.”

  A smile tugged at her mouth. Determined not to let him see it, she turned away.

  “I’ll show you where to dig,” she muttered.

  The digging went more slowly than the original search had. The ground was either packed hard or heaped up with rubble from the walls, or both.

  Soon Case discarded his hat and jacket. Then he unbuttoned his black wool shirt to the waist, started to pull out the tails, and stopped. He looked toward Sarah.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I won’t faint.”

  What she didn’t say was that she had seen him without anything at all, even a bandage. She didn’t have to say it.

  The knowledge quivered in the air between them like a bell recently struck.

  He took off his shirt, hung it over a dead piñon branch, and picked up the shovel again. He wore nothing but a wedge of curly black hair that narrowed as it approached his belt buckle.

  Sarah knew what was beneath that, too.

  Her breath shortened and she looked hastily away. Her stomach gave an odd little lurch as a tingling sensation rippled through her body.

  What’s wrong with me? she thought frantically. It’s not like I’m some wide-eyed girl to get all flustered at the sight of a man’s bare chest.

  But widow or not, she was unsettled by his half-naked body. She was also too fascinated to look away for long.

  He filled her eyes.

  His deceptively easy movements were a combination of strength and grace that reminded her of an eagle circling overhead, utterly at home within his strength in ways that she could only envy.

  Someday Conner will be like that, she thought. Strong, quick, supple.

  Fully grown.

  Fully male.

  The thought brought both pain and pleasure to her. Pain because Conner was growing up too quickly. Pleasure because he was growing up so well.

  But no man can be as beautiful as Case, she thought. Not to me. Case is…special.

  That thought was even more unsettling to her than the idea of her younger brother teetering on the brink of manhood.

  “Nothing here but more rubble,” Case said.

  “Try over there.”

  The husky note in her voice brought his head up sharply. She was looking off down the canyon, checking on the horses.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Cricket won’t wander even though he isn’t hobbled.”

  She nodded without looking back toward him. Then she raised her hot cheeks to the breeze. She wasn’t aware that the motion lifted her breasts against her shirt.

  Case stared at the gentle, unmistakably female curves pressed against the clinging doeskin. His blood surged and his body leaped with an urgency that he was becoming used to.

  That didn’t mean he liked it. He didn’t.

  If he had felt that way about women in general, it would have been one thing.

  But only Sarah had this instant effect on his body.

  With a soundless curse, he walked fifteen feet along the wall and began digging again.

  More rubble.

  He kept digging, grateful for the physical work. It helped to take the edge off his prowling, relentless sexual hunger for the young widow who watched him with shadowed, mist-gray eyes.

  The blade of the shovel hit something that was neither stone nor dirt. Ignoring the ache in his thigh, he knelt and began pulling away rectangular blocks of rubble that were about the size of adobe bricks. Shards of pottery appeared. He looked at each one, then set it aside.

  “What is it?” Sarah asked eagerly.

  “Don’t know yet.”

  She hurried over and stood near him as he dug.

  “Stay back,” he said. “I don’t want you near the wall.”

  “You’re near it.”

  “That’s different.”

  She didn’t bother to argue with such an illogical creature. She simply stayed where she was and watched.

  Yet instead of keeping her eyes on where he was digging, she was distracted by the flex and play of his body as he worked over the stubborn rubble. Like swift water flowing over boulders, he had both power and elegance. The sleek texture of his skin had an allure that made her palms itch to smooth down his back.

  Her hand was halfway to his shoulder when she realized what she was doing. She snatched back her fingers as though they had been burned.

  What am I thinking of? she asked herself. I’ve never wanted to pet a man in my life.

  Except Case.

  She didn’t know why he drew her so strongly. She knew only that he did. There was something deep inside him that called to her as surely as the flight of a wild hawk.

  Just as she called to him in turn, no matter how he tried to ignore it.

  I hate wanting you. It means not as much of me died as I’d hoped.

  She couldn’t help wondering if the ability to love was one of the things that the war hadn’t quite been able to kill in him.

  The thought was like the man himself—unnerving and alluring at the same time.

  Pushing away more rubble, Case reached carefully into the shoulder-deep hole.

  “Got it,” he said triumphantly.

  “Silver?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Keep your shirt on.”

  “Why? You didn’t.”

  His head snapped up. He saw immediately that she wasn’t looking at his hands. Instead, she was looking at him the way a kid looked at a half-unwrapped Christmas present.

  At that instant, he wanted nothing more than to do a little unwrapping himself.

  Don’t be more stupid than God made you, he told himself savagely. You seduce her and next thing you know she’ll be building dreams of hearth and home and kids around you.

  Kids.

  A chill rippled through Case, freezing him.

  Sarah had been hard used by life as it was. He didn’t want to hurt her any more. But if he gave in to the raw hunger coursing through him, sooner or later he would hurt her as surely as the sun rose in the east.

  He simply didn’t have what she needed. All he had was a hunger that was dangerous to both of them.

  Maybe she’s right, he thought. Maybe I should take half of the silver and run.

  Maybe I should just run, period.

  Yet even before the idea was fully formed, he rejected it with a finality that went all the way to his soul.

  It was bad enough to have to keep his hands in his pockets around the most desirable female he had ever met.

  Giving up the land, too, was unthinkable.

  “Watch it!” Sarah said.

  Hoping to stop one side of the hole from collapsing, she threw herself on her knees and made a wall of her hands. In the process, she thumped solidly into Case. He took her sudden weight without giving way an inch.

  Some of the hole collapsed despite her efforts.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were going to be buried up to your armpits.”

  “Instead, we’re both in up to our elbows,” he said dryly.

  She looked down at her forearms, which had vanished into the loose rubble. So had his. For some reason the sight struck h
er as so ridiculous that she laughed out loud.

  The unexpected sound heightened his senses almost painfully, as though he had just seen a particularly beautiful dawn.

  He turned toward Sarah, who was still leaning against him to keep from tumbling headfirst into the hole he had been digging. Only a few inches away from him, silver-gray eyes looked back at him, gleaming with amusement over life in general and the present situation in particular.

  How can she still laugh? he asked silently. She saw her family die. Her husband died. She’s poor as a wooden plate. Raiders are all around, just waiting to get their hands on her.

  And she laughs!

  “Are you all right?” she asked, breathless from laughter.

  “Of course I am.”

  “For a moment you looked like you were in pain.”

  “For a moment you acted like you were crazy,” he retorted. “Laughing like a song dog.”

  “We look silly buried up to our elbows like kids in a sandbox.”

  He couldn’t bear the dancing humor in her eyes. He glanced down at her mouth.

  Her lips were parted with the laughter that still quivered through her.

  The next thing Case knew he was so close to Sarah that he could feel the warmth of her breath on his lips.

  I shouldn’t do this, he thought.

  But he did it anyway.

  Her laughter died when she felt the sudden heat of his breath against her lips. Then his mouth was over hers, enveloping her in a kiss. Instinctively she stiffened, expecting to be overwhelmed by his much greater strength.

  Instead, he tasted her with a restraint that was astonishing in its leashed intensity.

  An odd sound came from the back of her throat. With the tip of her tongue, she returned the delicate, questing touch.

  The tremor that went through him was felt by both of them. He pulled away with a sharp movement.

  “Sorry,” he said curtly. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Puzzled, she simply looked at him with luminous gray eyes.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said. “I just—hell. I just wanted to know what laughter tasted like.”

  Sarah took a quick, soft breath. Something shivered in the pit of her stomach, a response to his words as much as his kiss.

  “So, what does it taste like?” she asked in a husky voice.

  “Like you, what else?” he said roughly.

  “I thought it tasted like you.”

  He muttered something under his breath. When he looked at her again, his eyes were as distant as his voice.

  “Are you stuck in there or can you pull out your hands?” he asked.

  She looked at him and flinched.

  I hate wanting you. It means not as much of me died as I’d hoped.

  But this time Case didn’t have to say the words aloud. They were in every cold line of his face.

  Her mouth twisted in a curve that was more resigned than humorous. Without saying a word she straightened and pulled her hands free of the rubble, wincing when one chunk of rock scrubbed roughly over her wrist.

  “Are you all right?” he asked grudgingly.

  With brisk motions she dusted off her gloves.

  “Sure. What about you?”

  Without saying anything he yanked out his hands. But he held them together in a peculiar, sheltering way, as though they were painful.

  “You’re hurt!” she cried.

  He shook his head. Holding his hands side by side to form a bowl, he slowly opened his fingers.

  Nestled on his rough leather gloves was an odd, miniature piece of pottery consisting of two mugs joined at the handles. But the cups were too small to have been of any real use.

  “It looks like part of a little girl’s tea set,” Sarah said.

  Case went white.

  “Take it away,” he said harshly.

  A single look at his face killed any protest she might have made. She lifted the ancient pottery from his hands.

  He stood abruptly and stalked off with long strides.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To check on Cricket.”

  “He’s grazing more toward the north side, down near that thick patch of brush.”

  If Case heard, he didn’t change direction. Soon he was out of sight.

  Sarah looked at the tiny double mug and wondered why it had made a grown man flee.

  12

  “It’s a toy,” Conner said, as delighted as a child. “Look. My fingertip fills one mug.”

  Sarah smiled.

  “Careful,” she said. “It’s very old.”

  Lola chuckled and admired the joined, tiny black and white mugs resting on Sarah’s palm.

  “I haven’t seen anything that cunning since my cousin made me a doll small enough to fit in a duck-egg cradle,” Lola said. “Lordy, lordy, that was a long time ago.”

  Ute looked at the odd mug from all sides, grunted, and said one word.

  “Wedding.”

  “What?” Sarah asked.

  “It’s like a…” Ute searched for a word.

  “Ceremonial mug?” she suggested. “Only used on special occasions?”

  He nodded vigorously.

  “My mother’s brother’s people used them when a couple got hitched,” Ute said. “Some ’Paches do, too, so I hear. Shaped different, though.”

  “As small as this?” Sarah asked.

  “Hell, no,” he said in disgust. “Man couldn’t wet even half of his whistle with them thimbles.”

  “Have you ever heard of anything like this?” Conner asked, turning toward Case.

  Case shrugged without bothering to turn around.

  Disappointed by the other man’s lack of interest, Conner shifted his attention back to Sarah.

  “Was there any more?” he asked his sister eagerly.

  “Listen to you,” she said, laughing. “They way you’re acting, you’d think it was Spanish silver.”

  “It’s as good as,” Conner said.

  Ute snorted. “Boy, you try spending that trash and you’ll find out right quick the difference twixt mud and metal.”

  Conner shot Ute a disgusted look.

  “What I meant,” Conner said, “was that the mug and Spanish silver are both valuable because they’re…well, history, I guess. It’s like touching a piece of something or someone who lived a long, long time ago.”

  “Yes,” Sarah agreed. “Kind of ghostly, but in a good way.”

  Her brother stared at the miniature pottery, obviously fascinated.

  “If you found enough things like this,” he said finally, “maybe you could understand what the people who made it were like, what they thought and felt and dreamed.”

  “You sound like Father,” she whispered. “He loved the ancient things best of all.”

  “What do you need a bunch of junk for?” Lola asked. “You already know what them folks was like.”

  “Why do you say that?” Conner asked. “Because Ute came from people like these?”

  “Hell, boy. Ute’s more a mongrel than that dog slinking around trying to herd chickens.”

  Ute chuckled.

  “They was people,” Lola said, pointing to the double mug. “Good, bad, greedy, giving, smart, stupid, and everything betwixt and between. Just people like us.”

  “We don’t make mugs like that,” Conner said.

  “But we get thirsty and we drink out of more than our hands,” she retorted.

  “We make toys for our children that are miniatures of things we use every day,” Sarah added.

  “Little wagons instead of big?” Conner asked.

  “Dolls instead of babies,” she agreed, smiling. “And tea sets instead of—”

  The cabin door shut behind Case. Hard.

  “Whew,” Lola said. “Glad to see the back of that boy heading out. Like having a grizzly with a sore tooth in to supper.”

  “Some folks don’t like ghost things,” Ute said.

  “Huh,” Conn
er said. “You think he’s scared of a little—”

  “Afraid of,” Sarah corrected.

  “Afraid of a girl’s toy?”

  “Not liking something ain’t the same as being scared of it,” Ute said. “I don’t like fish worth a tinker’s damn, but I sure ain’t scared of ’em.”

  “You eat snakes,” Conner said.

  “They ain’t slimy. Fish is slimy as snot.”

  Sarah cleared her throat.

  “’Scuse me,” Ute muttered. “Got to get some firewood.”

  “Good idea,” she said, looking directly at her brother. “Take the piebald mustang. She’s used to awkward loads.”

  “Hell, I know that,” Conner said, disgusted. “Who do you think taught her to pack loads like a burro?”

  She bit back an impatient retort. He was right. He had been the one to coax the mustang into accepting double duty as a pack animal.

  But the habit of giving orders to her little brother was hard to break.

  You have Conner tied so tight to you with those apron strings it’s a blazing wonder he can breathe.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said quietly.

  Surprised, Conner turned back and stared at his sister.

  “I shouldn’t be telling you things you already know,” she explained. “I’ll try to do better.”

  He smiled with a gentleness that made her eyes burn.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Sometimes I need reminding, even though I shouldn’t.”

  She smiled, went to her brother, and gave him a quick hug. Though he lacked the muscle he would carry when fully grown, her head fit easily beneath his chin.

  “I keep forgetting how big you are,” she said.

  “So does he,” Lola said. “Keeps tripping over things with them outsized hooves of his.”

  “See if I hold any more yarn for you to wind,” Conner threatened.

  “I’ll just find you where you fall and use your big feet,” she retorted.

  Laughing, Conner left the cabin to help scrounge firewood.

  “What’s for dinner?” he called from just beyond the door.

  “Beans,” Lola and Sarah yelled at the same time.

  “Lord, what a treat!” he called. “I haven’t had beans for, oh, two, three hours.”

  “There are sage hens, too,” Sarah added.

  The front door opened suddenly.

  “Sage hens?” Conner asked.