Reno turned with a swiftness that was startling. His left eyebrow raised in dark surprise. «You’re real quiet on your feet for a man your size. I’ll keep it in mind.»
«Why?» Willow asked tartly. «You’re not a deer.»
The smile Reno showed Caleb wasn’t comforting. Nor was it meant to be. But when Reno turned back to Willow, his smile gentled.
«Go ahead and make a small fire,» Reno said. «It’s been too long since I’ve had a good biscuit. Even when you were a kid, you made the best biscuits I ever ate.»
«Are you sure?» Willow asked, looking up.
«Darned sure. I used to come in from the fields for supper, sniffing the wind like one of Papa’s hounds. If I smelled biscuits, I’d run to the kitchen and hide a hatful of them beforeRafe came in. I never could eat as much as he could at one sitting.»
Willow laughed, remembering. Then her laughter stilled as she remembered other times that were gone and the people who were gone with them. «I meant, are you sure about the fire. Is it safe?»
«Tonight it’s safe enough. Tomorrow night?» Reno shrugged. «Make a lot of biscuits, Willy. It could be a while before we have another fire.»
«All right.»
Saying nothing to one another, Caleb and Reno watched Willow work over the fire. When the food was ready, both men ate quickly, neatly, leaving nothing behind. Afterward, when Reno started to ask about family things, Caleb got up and went out from the small fire to make a bed. The muted voices of brother and sister followed him into the darkness, soft laughter and murmured words remembering a time that would never come again.
The knowledge of how much Willow loved her handsome, green-eyed brother was a chill spreading through Caleb’s blood, quenching his hope that she would understand what he must do. Willow had never seen the careless side of Reno, the side that took his ease at the cost of weaker people. Nor had Wolfe seen that part of Reno. Only Rebecca had, and she had paid for the bitter knowledge with her life and that of her baby girl.
Grimly, Caleb cut and piled spruce boughs, making a mattress behind a windbreak of low-growing fir. At some point, he became aware of the silence of the night, no voices murmuring, only the wind and the tiny brook. Instants later, he sensed Reno moving almost soundlessly toward him.
Caleb turned with the swift, lethal silence of a striking snake. Reno stood in the moonlight at the edge of the meadow, looking at the bed Caleb had made.
«Where are you sleeping?» Reno asked coolly.
«Here.»
«You don’t look like a man who needs a mattress.»
«Willow likes them. Underneath all that determination, she’s a soft little thing.»
Even moonlight couldn’t blur the lines of anger on Reno’s face. «Don’t push me, you son of a bitch.»
Caleb’s smile was savage. «If you don’t like being pushed, get out of my way.» He glided closer, his walk soundless, predatory. «I was hoping Willow would be asleep before we had our talk, but so be it.»
«I should kill you.»
«You could try,» Caleb offered.
His voice seethed with barely repressed violence. The thought of a rank seducer such as Reno being protective of his own little sister’s virtue made Caleb furious. But he could say nothing, for Reno was only reacting as Caleb had when it was his own sister’s virtue under discussion.
In any case, Caleb had already returned the favor, seducing Reno’s innocent little sister.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.
The thought didn’t comfort Caleb.
Reno watched Caleb with eyes turned silver by the cold moon. «A shot will bring Slater down on us like a cold rain,» Reno said.
«That’s why you’re still alive. I don’t want Willow put at risk for a snake like you.»
The flat hatred in Caleb’s voice shocked Reno. It puzzled him, too.
«I know why I’d like to kill you,» Reno said slowly, «but I don’t know why you want to kill me. It’s more than Willow, isn’t it?»
«Yes.» Then Caleb’s breath came in hard as he realized that wasn’t true. Not any longer. He had very little time left with Willow. He would fight for every minute of it any way he could and every way he had to, short of endangering her. «Don’t stand between me and Willow, Reno. You’ll only get hurt and that will hurt her. But she’s my woman. If she wants to sleep next to me, she will.»
Willow’s voice called softly from the fire. «Caleb? Matt? Is something wrong with the horses?»
«They’re fine, honey,» Caleb called in return.
«Are you too tired to play the harmonica? Matt has a wonderful voice.»
«I’ll be glad to play for you.»
Reno gave Caleb a glittering look of frustration and said in a low voice, «When she’s asleep, we’ll talk.»
«Count on it.»
Caleb brushed past Reno and walked toward the tiny fire and the girl who stood smiling and holding out her hands, watching him with a combination of worry and relief in her eyes. She was uneasy whenever her brother and Caleb were alone.
«Are you sure you aren’t too tired?» Willow asked Caleb.
He brushed a quick, fierce kiss over her lips. «I’m never too tired to please you.»
Willow clung to him and whispered hurriedly, «Matt means well. Please don’t be angry.»
After a gentle squeeze, Caleb released Willow and sat a few feet back from the fire. Before she could say anything else, the haunting notes of an old ballad lifted softly above the flames, a song telling of a young girl’s certainty that she had discovered the love of her life.
After the first few seconds, Caleb faltered. He hadn’t known what he was going to play until he heard the notes. His heart contracted at the cruel trick his mind had played. The song had been one of Rebecca’s favorites, for the words told of a girl newly in love and thinking of the future that soon would be hers.
I know where I’m going.
I know who’s going with me.
Willow and Matt sang a harmony that was all the sweeter for its simplicity. The beauty of Willow’s voice surprised Caleb, for she had never sung when he played the harmonica in the valley. She had simply curled up next to him and stared into the fire with a dreamy smile of pleasure on her lips.
The next song Caleb played was also a ballad of love, but the woman walked away, leaving the man to face a future that held nothing of children or a woman’s softness. In the third ballad it was the man who was inconstant, the woman who mourned. Without hesitation, Reno and Willow sang each song, their voices blending effortlessly, for the Moran family had spent many a cold winter night singing in front of a fire.
But both sister and brother gradually stopped singing halfway through the fourth song, the lament of a man torn between duty and love, damned no matter which way he turned. The harmonica’s supple voice wept over choices in chords no human voice could match.
Willow listened and felt chills coursing over her skin. She had heard the song many times before, had sung it often herself as a girl, and she had smiled, for the tragic words only made her own life more sweet by contrast. But this time when the final note shivered into silence, there was no laughter in her. Tears glistened in Willow’s eyelashes and made thin silver trails down her cheeks.
Silently, Caleb stood and held out his hand to her. She stood and took it without a word. Relief coursed through him. Only then did he realize how afraid he had been that Willow wouldn’t come to him in the presence of her brother.
«Good night, Matt,» Willow said.
Reno nodded curtly, for he didn’t trust himself to speak. If he hadn’t seen the naked love in Willow’s eyes when she looked at Caleb, Reno would have gone for the other man’s throat. But the love was there beyond any doubt. It might enrage Reno that Willow was no longer innocent, but there was nothing he could do to change it. Nor did he want to destroy her happiness, for there had been little of it for her in the past years.
Abruptly, Reno had some sympathy for the man in the ballad, caught between duty and love. Reno, too, was between a rock and a hard place, nowhere to turn, no comfort possible.
