«Are you going to offer to kiss it and make it better?» he asked, watching her with an intensity that was just short of demand.
Willow’s cheeks reddened. «You’re a little old for that, aren’t you?»
«The day I’m too old for a woman’s kiss, I hope they’re reading scripture over my grave.»
For an instant Caleb held Willow with the force of his eyes alone. She watched him in return, her eyes wide with what could have been desire or fear. Caleb waited for the space of a long breath before he released her by turning away. He had offered the sensual lure. She had refused it. As far as he was concerned, that ended the matter. Fancy lady or not, she had a right to choose her men.
«Go to bed, Willow.»
Caleb’s voice was as cool as the mountain wind. She blinked, surprised by the change from husky warmth to impersonal chill.
«Baking soda,» she said.
«What?»
«Baking soda would help to ease the stings.»
«I’d rather have your warm little tongue licking my wounds.»
Willow’s breath came in audibly.
«Go to bed, southern lady. Gonow.»
A trick of firelight made Caleb’s eyes burn with a gold that was clearer and hotter than flames. Willow took one look and couldn’t decide whether to run away from Caleb or toward him. The desire to step into his arms was so unnerving that she came to her feet and went the long way around the fire to the shelter, avoiding Caleb entirely.
But even when Willow was stretched out on the fragrant bed, she couldn’t fall asleep. She kept hearing Caleb’s words, kept seeing the passion burning in his eyes, kept feeling an answering passion burning deep within her own body. Lying quietly, listening to the night wind breathing freshness over the land, Willow wondered what would have happened if she had answered the sensual challenge in Caleb’s eyes.
Just as Willow was sliding into sleep, the first soft, haunting notes of the harmonica shivered up toward the moon. She recognized the song instantly, a lament to a young man lost in war. The notes wept softly, grief transformed into music and played with piercing sweetness. Tears stung at the back of her eyes as she remembered summers past, a time when the Moran family house had rung with male laughter and her mother’s happiness at being surrounded by her husband, her five tall sons, and a daughter with hair so gold as to make an angel weep with envy.
Other ballads followed «Danny Boy,» old songs brought to America by Caleb’s ancestors more than a century before, ballads and laments from England and Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Caleb knew them all. He breathed them into the night with a skill that held Willow motionless, enthralled. She could see him through the opening in the green canopy, his face lit from beneath by fire, shadows defining and enlarging him with each movement of his body.
As sleep slowly claimed Willow, Caleb became unearthly in her vision, powerful, an archangel whose harmonic voice was as pure as his body was compelling; but most compelling of all was the passionate promise burning within him, a dark fire reaching out to her, promising her heaven and Hell combined, two bodies burning in a single bright flame.
THE smell of rain and forest permeated everything. Water drummed down and ran off the tarpaulin Caleb had lashed over the evergreen boughs. There was enough room to sit up beneath the green canopy, but Caleb’s head brushed the lowest boughs. Occasional gusts of wind made the forest moan and shook the limber roof of the shelter. So far it had held. Rivulets of rain crawled down several pine branches and dripped into the strategically placed tin cup, plate, and coffeepot. While neither Caleb nor Willow was wet, neither was particularly dry.
«Three of a kind,» Caleb said, fanning his cards over his saddle, which was doing double duty as a table.
Willow frowned at her own cards. A black queen, a red jack, and three motley numbered cards frowned back at her.
«Nothing,» she said. «I think I’m missing something about this game.»
Caleb glanced at Willow from beneath black eyelashes as he gathered up the damp cards and shuffled with quick, deft motions.
«All you’re missing is decent cards,» he said, dealing rapidly. «I know you won’t believe me, but usually beginners have all the luck.»
«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’sunbudging 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
