get past it to the words. The huskiness and subtle laughter that was so much a part of her voice was gone. In its place was nothing at all, a flatness of tone that was barely human.
«I can’t believe it, Willy. You weren’t raised to —»
«No more,» Caleb said, cutting across Reno’s words. «You asked, she answered, and that’s the end of it.»
Gently, Caleb stroked Willow’s hair, silently urging her closer to him. She remained motionless, as though nothing more than moonlight was touching her. Long fingers brushed over her cheek. She turned away. With a whispered curse, Caleb dropped his hand and turned back to her brother.
«You can climb down off your high horse,» Caleb said roughly to Reno. «I’ll marry Willow as soon as we can find a preacher.»
Silence stretched, then snapped with Reno’s long sigh. His body shifted subtly, coming off the fine edge of battle readiness. His left hand curled into a fist, then relaxed.
«Damn good thing, Yuma man.»
Willow saw the change in Reno as he relaxed. She remembered the speed with which her brother had drawn his gun, and understood why Caleb had agreed to marry her. Fury uncurled in her body, an emotion as cold as her passion had been hot.
«Good?» Willow repeated softly. «A liar will marry me rather than face my brother — who happens to be a gunfighter called Reno — and that’s good?»
Abruptly, tension arced through Reno again. «Are you saying Caleb lied his way into your bed?»
«How did I lie to you?» Caleb asked simultaneously. His voice was soft but it nonetheless overrode Reno’s question. «Tell me, Willow. Tell me how I seduced you with lies. Did I promise to marry you?»
The sound Willow made could hardly be called laughter, but it was. «No. No promises.»
«Did I tell you all the lies about love and forever after that a man bent on seduction uses?»
Willow’s breath came in harshly. «No. No words of love and forever after.»
«Then how did I lie toyou? Tellme.»
The sound of Willow swallowing against the tension in her throat was painful to hear. Her eyelashes closed, but it was only for an instant. Caleb was right and they both knew it. He hadn’t had to lie. She had fallen into his hands like a peach all flushed and hot from the sun. The ease of the conquest must have surprised him. No wonder he thought she was a fancy lady.
For him, she was.
«You didn’t tell me you were hunting my brother,» Willow said at last, not looking at Caleb.
«I thought you were Reno’s fancy lady,» Caleb said roughly. «You were my best hope of avenging Rebecca. Your brother is a hard man to track down. I didn’t like using a woman to get to Reno, but given the same circumstances, I’d do the same thing again.»
Willow turned and looked at Caleb for the first time since she had walked out of one kind of darkness and into another kind, one whose end she couldn’t see.
«I hope Marty lied to your sister,» Willow said, her voice as soft and cold as snow. «I hope she heard a thousand loving lies from her man. I hope she died believing each one of them. It would make the memories less…shameful.»
«There’s no shame in what we did,» Caleb said furiously, feeling his self-control evaporating with each word Willow said. She had always had that effect on him, making a shambles of the defenses that other people found so solid. «We aren’t the first man and woman in creation who couldn’t wait for a preacher to put the seal on their marriage.»
«What marriage?» she asked.
«The one that will take place as soon as we get the hell out of here,» he retorted.
«Yuma man, I’m not marrying you.»
Caleb was too surprised to say anything.
Reno wasn’t. «You can marry him or you can bury him. Your choice, Willy.»
Caleb gave Reno a hard look, but when Caleb spoke, his voice was reasonable. «Bullets aren’t like words. You can’t take them back when you’ve gotten over your anger.»
For a few moments Willow continued to stare through Caleb as though he didn’t exist. Finally, her breath came out in a long rush. «Yes. My brother is blindingly quick with his belt gun, isn’t he?»
That wasn’t what Caleb had meant, but he was too disturbed by the quality of Willow’s voice to protest. Her voice belonged to someone much older and much less gentle than the girl whounravelled so sweetly and so completely in his arms.
«He’s quick enough,» Caleb said evenly.
Silence stretched as Willow looked at the big man she had loved before she ever really knew him. But as much as the mistake hurt, she knew it was her own doing, not Caleb’s. He may have abetted her ignorance, but he didn’t create it. He hadn’t lied to her. He hadn’t needed to.
She had lied so successfully to herself.
Silly little trout, not knowing the difference between lust and love, mistaking a backwater swirl for the river of life itself.
Willow closed her eyes and saw again the stunning instant when Reno’s gun had simply appeared in his hand. There had been no warning, no hesitation, nothing but speed and a cold steel weapon poised to kill.
Her fingers clenched together, fingers interlaced. The small wound across the back of her hand protested and wept another black tear. Willow barely felt it. Her thoughts were too painful to allow for anything except the silent scream raking at her throat.
Caleb doesn’t love me but he’ll marry me rather than face my brother’s gun.
Caleb, who had saved Willow’s life more than once on the long way to the SanJuans. Caleb, who hadn’t forced her into his becoming his fancy lady. If anything, she had forced him, tempting him in ways she hadn’t even understood at the time.
Of course Caleb doesn’t love me. An Old Testament kind of man doesn’t love a fancy lady. He uses her, though…the pleasure he finds between her legs.
The memory of her own wanton sensuality washed through Willow in a scalding tide of humiliation that receded slowly, leaving her skin as cold and colorless as her voice.
«Well, Willy,» Reno said impatiently. «What will it be? A wedding or a funeral?»
Willow knew she had to choose, but there was no choice she could live with. She couldn’t condemn Caleb to death at her brother’s hands. She couldn’t condemn herself to life with a man who at best saw her as a duty he had acquired on the way to avenging his sister’s death. And at worst…
Fancy lady.
At worst, Willow would condemn herself to marrying a man who had nothing but contempt for her and a lust that could be slaked between any woman’s legs.
Slowly, Willow opened her eyes and looked from the brother who didn’t understand her to the man who didn’t love her.
«I’ll do what I must,» Willow said.
Caleb looked at her sharply, sensing the leashed turmoil beneath the quiet words.
But Reno simply nodded, satisfied. «Nearest preacher is at the fort over the divide.» He smiled at his sister. «I’ll stand up for you, Willy, even though it will cost me most of a summer’s digging.»
«That’s not necessary,» she said.
«My pleasure.»
«Pleasure?» Willow’s voice made the men exchange uneasy glances. «There is no pleasure in a wedding performed under threat of a six-gun. That’s why you’re giving up your summer ofdigging, Reno. You want to make sure the wedding takes place.»
«You’re wrong, Willy.»
She looked at her brother as though she had never seen him before. «How can you be so sure? What makes you think that Caleb won’t just leave me and ride on as soon as he’s out of range of your gun?»
«What kind of man do you think I am?» Caleb demanded angrily.
«Old Testament,» Willow said succinctly. «You owe me nothing. I’m no kin to you. I was simply a means to an end. An eye for an eye and a virgin sister for a virgin sister. The fact that you seduced the wrong man’s sister
