«Do you like to fish?» Caleb asked.
«No,» she said calmly. «I love it. I will walk through fire barefoot to get to a good trout stream.»
Caleb raised black eyebrows and looked at Wolfe.
«It’s the truth,» Wolfe admitted. «She’ll be out working a piece of water on a stormy evening when everyone else is in front of a fire talking about the one that got away.»
«Why didn’t you say something sooner?» Caleb asked Wolfe. «There’s some good trout water nearby.»
«It’s too early for trout to be out of their winter torpor.»
«Not along parts of the Columbine. There’s enough hot-spring water mixed into the stream that certain stretches of it come alive long before anything else does.»
«Truly?» Jessica asked.
Caleb grinned. «Truly.»
«Wonderful!»
Jessica set aside the mending and ran into the bedroom. When she returned, her hands were full of small boxes.
«What do the streamside insects here look like?» she asked eagerly, opening boxes and setting them on the dinner table in front of the men. Tiny, carefully tied flies rested within the boxes. «Are they light or dark, big or small, colorful or drab?»
«Yes.»
She gave Caleb a slanting, sidelong glance. «Yes?»
He nodded gravely. «They’re light and dark, big and small, colorful and drab.»
«Caleb, stop teasing Jessica,» Willow called from the back of the house.
«But I’m getting so good at it.»
Jessica tried not to smile, and failed. Caleb was indeed getting quite good at teasing her.
There was the sound of the wind slamming the back door, followed by footsteps as Willow walked through the kitchen into the living room. Sleet glistened in the wool shawl she had worn to the privy.
She shook the shawl and hung it on a peg near the door for the next trip, knowing it wouldn’t be long before necessity overcame her reluctance to face the cold scouring of the spring wind. The more pregnant she became, the more frequently she was forced to visit the privy’s drafty comforts.
«Jessigets quite enough ribbing from my brothers,» Willow continued, yawning. «Why don’t you try protecting her, instead?»
«That’s Wolfe’s job,» Caleb said, giving the other man an amused look, «and God help the man who gets in Wolfe’s way.»
Wolfe looked back impassively.
Caleb’s grin was rather feral. No matter how hard Wolfe tried to conceal his irritation at the handsome Moran brothers’ gallant attentions to Jessica, Caleb sensed the jealousy that seethed just beneath Wolfe’s calm surface. Caleb would have had more sympathy for his friend, but he didn’t understand why Wolfe was so hard on his young wife.
«I don’t mind the wayRafe and Reno tease,» Jessica said as Willow walked in from the kitchen, patting back another yawn. «I never had any brothers or sisters. I had no idea how much fun it could be.»
«No siblings?» Willow asked, surprised. «You poor darling. How lonely it must have been for you.»
Jessica hesitated, then shrugged. «It was all I knew. And I had the firth and forest to roam.» «I can’t imagine having only one child,» Willow said, shaking her head. «I want a house full of kids.»
«I imagine many women feel like that before they experience childbed.»
The barely muted horror in Jessica’s voice created a pool of silence that expanded and deepened until she realized her mistake and changed the subject with a determined smile.
«Do you like to fish, Willow?»
«Caleb is the fisherman in the family. He’s very good at it.»
Caleb gave Willow a lazy, sidelong glance and a crooked smile. Though not a word was said, her cheeks turned a revealing shade of pink.
«I’m a fair fisherman,» he admitted. «Don’t care much for fishing rods or lures, though.»
«You don’t?» Jessica asked. «What do you use, then? Nets or traps? Or do you hunt like the Eskimo, with spears?»
Caleb shook his head. «Nothing that fancy.»
«How do you catch fish, then?»
«Patience, stealth, and bare hands.»
His smile shifted as he measured the deepening color of Willow’s cheeks. His golden eyes gleamed with a frank male sensuality that surprised Jessica; up to that instant, she hadn’t thought of Caleb as a particularly passionate man. She had been wrong. The hunger in his eyes as he watched his wife was barely veiled by his half-lowered lids.
«You see,» Caleb explained in a slow, deep voice, «trout like to be stroked all over. That’s why they hold station in the fastest currents. Isn’t that right, honey? Don’t they just lie there, quivering, waiting for the moment when —»
Willow’s hands clapped over her husband’s mouth, cutting off his words.
«Caleb Winslow Black, if you weren’t too big, I’d turn you over my knee and teach you a few manners!»
Laughing, Caleb turned his head quickly aside, evading his wife’s attempts to muzzle him. Believing the caress would be hidden by Willow’s hands, he flicked the tip of his tongue between two of her fingers, stroking the sensitive skin.
But Jessica saw the secret caress, just as she saw the change in Willow’s smile and the brief, sensual glide of her fingertip over his lower lip. For an instant, something quite primitive arced between man and wife; then Caleb smiled and pulled Willow onto his lap with gentle hands.
«I’m too big for your knees, honey. You fit real nice across mine, though.»
«Caleb…»
Willow’s voice died. She flushed and glanced toward the other two people in the room.
«Hush,» Caleb said softly, pressing Willow’s cheek against his shoulder. «Wolfe andJessi are husband and wife. They won’t faint if they see you sitting in my lap.»
With a sigh, Willow relaxed against her husband. He shifted her more closely against his body, brushed a kiss over her hair, and leaned toward the boxes with their intriguing array of flies.
«You’ll probably have some luck with this one,» he said to Jessica, pointing toward something that looked like a black ant. «We have mayflies and caddis, too, so that box should fill many a frying pan.»
«Is the stream you mentioned far from here?» Jessica asked.
But the question occupied only part of her mind. She was still measuring the difference between marriage as she understood it and marriage as Willow and Caleb lived it.
Is this why Wolfe can’t be reconciled to our marriage? Did he expect of marriage what Caleb and Willow so obviously have — a union of lives rather than a merger of titles and wealth?
«The Columbine isn’t far,» Caleb said. «Wolfe knows how to get there.»
«Thank you,» Jessica said quickly, «but if it’s close, I’ll just go by myself.»
«Like hell you will,» Wolfe said. «If it’s the stream I’m thinking of, there’s a band ofUtes that winters there. They like hot springs as well as white men do.»
Caleb nodded. «There’s a small camp. No more than three or four families. Mostly old men, women, and boys. I haven’t had any trouble with them.»
«Yet,» Wolfe retorted. «You let down your guard and you’ll be missing some horses real quick.»
«Keeps a man on his toes,» Caleb agreed blandly.
Wolfe laughed. «You should have been a warrior.»
«He is,» Willow said sleepily. She yawned and burrowed closer to her husband’s strength. «If he weren’t, I’d have died a year ago.»
Long, amber eyelashes flickered down and Willow sighed, relaxing deeply against her husband, letting the rest of the world fade into the warm distance of sleep.
«Reno and Wolf j helped me,» Caleb pointed out in a dry voice.
