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 toask: Wherewere 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 drenchedpantelets 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.
She waited, listening, hardly daring to breathe, remembering the savagery of Caleb’s voice. She heard nothing but the fitful windunravelling the last of the storm. When she emerged tentatively from the shelter, she was alone and the sun was pouring a cataract of golden heat over the land. Clouds retreated with each passing minute, revealing newly whitened peaks.
«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
With 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 andpantelets. 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 flannellongjohns.
