But Carla was no longer a girl to flee from a man's anger. She held her ground despite the pain of his words twisting through her.
"That wasn't sex," she said. "It was love."
"It was sex," Luke countered savagely. "That's all men and women feel for each other. Plain old lust, schoolgirl."
"Some men. Some women," Carla agreed. She walked slowly toward him, fingers shaking slightly as she undid the top button of the black shirt, then a second, then a third. Her whole body was trembling with an urgency that was the other face of desire. She had to make him understand. She simply had to. "But not everyone is like that. I love you. Luke."
"Do you? Then button up and leave me in peace."
"But you won't be in peace. You'll be aching. You want me. You can't deny it, Luke. The evidence is right in front of you for both of us to see."
He said a single, harsh word.
She smiled sadly. "That's the general idea, but in our case it's called making love."
"
I don't love you.
"
Carla's step faltered but didn't stop. She gathered her courage and continued to stalk her cornered cougar.
"I don't believe you," she said.
When her fingers undid the final button, the shirt parted to reveal the very feminine curves beneath. Luke's breath came in swiftly as her body was revealed and then concealed with each motion of the long, open shirt. He tried to look away, but couldn't. She was his own dream walking toward him, calling to him, her voice as much a part of him as his soul.
"Don't do this, baby."
"You're a big, strong man," Carla said, kneeling between Luke's long legs. "If you don't love me, prove it.
Stop me
."
Her challenge was as unexpected to Luke as the feeling of his jeans coming suddenly undone, revealing the hard proof of his desire. He grabbed her wrists and dragged her hands upward, away from his hungry body.
It was a mistake. Even as her fingers tested the power of his clenched chest muscles, her hair fell across his hot, erect flesh in a silken caress. Before he had recovered from the shock, he felt the tip of her tongue in a soft, incendiary touch.
If he hadn't already been sitting down, the savage torrent of his own response would have brought him to his knees. A harsh sound was ripped from his throat as every muscle in his big body clenched with the violence of his passion. He held her wrists with bruising force, but neither he nor she knew it. They knew only that the world was ablaze and they were the burning center of fire.
Between each sleek caress, each glide of velvet tongue against satin skin, Carla whispered her love to Luke; and somewhere between initial refusal and final acceptance, his hands released her wrists and his fingers threaded into her hair, caressing, holding and teaching her with the same aching motions. Every breath he took was her name, every heartbeat a hammering demand, his body hot, shimmering with leashed passion until he groaned harshly and could take no more. He lifted her, fitted her over himself and gave her what she had demanded, burying his hungry flesh in her, filling her with the sultry pulse of his ecstasy until the wild, shuddering release was finally spent and he could breathe once more.
"Think about this when I'm gone," Carla said, kissing Luke's eyelids, his cheeks, tasting the salt of passion glistening on his skin. "Think about this and remember what it was like to be loved by me. Then come to me, Luke. I'll be waiting for you, loving you."
~16~
"When are you going to stop this foolishness and call him?" Cash demanded from the hallway of Carla's apartment. His tone was divided between exasperation and concern, as was the look he gave her.
Carla glanced from the enigmatic shard of pottery lying in her palm to the dresser where the telephone sat in a silence that hadn't been broken for ten weeks. Slowly she looked at the twilight-blue color of Cash's eyes as he walked into her bedroom. His usual easy smile was absent and his jawline looked frankly belligerent. His sun-streaked, chestnut hair was awry, making its indomitable natural wave all the more pronounced.
"Call who?" she asked.
"Santa Claus," Cash retorted.
"It's a bit early for Christmas lists."
"It's nearly Thanksgiving and you've been home since the end of August."
Carla's slender fingers curled protectively around the pot shard. She said nothing. She could count as well as her brother could. Better. She knew to the day when she had become pregnant: the last day on the Rocking M, when she had risked everything on one last throw of the dice.
And lost.
"Well?" demanded Cash. "Well what?"
"When are you going to call Luke?"
Very gently Carla replaced the shard in its hand-carved nest, closed the lid and put the box on the dresser.
"I'm not."
"What?" Cash said.
"I'm not going to call Luke. I've chased the poor man for seven years. Don't you think it's time I left him in peace?"
Uneasily Cash assessed his sister's expression. Carla had grown up since the beginning of summer. Though she had said nothing specific, the sadness underlying her smiles told Cash that the summer hadn't worked out the way he had expected. What he didn't know was why.
"Luke has been fascinated by you for years, but you were too young," Cash said with his customary bluntness. "By the time you were old enough, he had made a habit of pushing you away. To make it worse, he has this fool idea that the Rocking M destroys women, and he loves that ranch the way most men love a woman. So I threw in a set of winning hands and sent you off for a summer of cooking on the Rocking M, where Luke could see for himself that you weren't going to fold up and cry just because you couldn't get your nails done every two weeks."
Surprise replaced sadness in Carla's face. "You set me up with that card game?"
"You bet I did. I thought the summer would give you two a chance to get acquainted with each other as adults, without me around to remind either of you about the years when you were a young girl in braids with a massive crush on a man who was old enough and decent enough to keep his hands in his pockets!"
"It worked," Carla said neutrally. "You weren't around to remind us."
"Like hell it worked. We're back to where we were three years ago, with Luke meeting me in West Fork for cards and beer and asking sideways questions about how you are and if you're dating and do I like any of the men you bring home."
Carla closed her eyes so that Cash wouldn't see the wild flare of hope his words had given to her. The hope was as unreasonable as her seven years of longing for a man who didn't love her had been.
"Luke is just making polite conversation," Carla said, her voice soft in an effort to hide her pain. "If he really wanted to know about me, he would pick up a phone and ask me himself."
"That's what I told him the last time he asked."
She smiled sadly. "And the phone hasn't rung, has it?"
"So make it ring. Call him."
"No."
The word was soft, final.
"Then I will."
"Please, Cash. Don't."
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't."
"I don't want you to."
"That's emotion, not reason. Give me a reason, Carla. I'm fed up with watching the two people I love walking around half-alive. I was looking forward to a wedding at the end of summer, not a damned funeral!"
A single look at Cash's face told Carla that she wasn't going to win this argument. Her brother's easy smile and warm laughter concealed a steel core that was as deep and as hard as Luke MacKenzie's.
"Would you settle for being an uncle?" she asked softly.
"What?"
"I'm pregnant."
A shuttered look settled over Cash's face as he absorbed Carla's words. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Does Luke know?"
"No."
Cash grunted. "I didn't think so. If he knew, I'd have a brother-in-law damned quick, wouldn't I?"
"No."
There was a long silence while Cash waited for Carla to explain. She said nothing.
"Talk to me," Cash said curtly. "I trusted Luke. Tell me why I shouldn't go out to the Rocking M and beat that son of a bitch within an inch of his life."
"It wasn't Luke's fault."
"That's bull, Carla! He's old enough to keep his hands in his pockets, and he damn well knows how babies are made or not made! Any man who seduces a virgin should have the decency—"
"He didn't seduce me," Carla said, cutting across her brother's angry words. "I seduced him."
"
What?
"
"I seduced Luke MacKenzie!" Carla yelled, letting go of her pride and her temper in the same instant. "I came up on his blind side, took off my clothes and made him an offer he couldn't refuse!" She took a deep, sawing breath and said more calmly, "So if you feel you have to beat somebody for a breach of trust, beat me."
Cash opened his mouth. No words came out. He cleared his throat and asked carefully, "And afterward?"
"Luke felt obliged to get married. I refused."
"Why?"
It was Carla's turn to be shocked into silence. It passed quickly, driven out by the same unflinching determination that had kept her from picking up the phone and calling Luke.
"I'll tell you why, brother dear. I'll go trout fishing in hell before I marry a man who doesn't love me."
"Don't be ridiculous. Luke loves you. Hell, he's loved you for years."
Tears came suddenly to Carla's eyes. She tried to speak but was able only to shake her head slowly while she fought for self-control.
"Lust," she said finally, her throat so tight she could barely squeeze the word out. "Not the same, Cash. Not the same at all."
"I don't believe you," Cash said flatly.
He reached past her for the telephone. Both of her hands clutched his wrist in a contest of strength that she couldn't possibly win.
"Then believe this," she said, her voice shaking. "If you tell Luke I'm pregnant I'll get in my truck and drive and keep on driving until I'm sure neither one of you will ever find me!"
"But, honey, you're pregnant. Be reasonable."
"I am. I'm not a charity case. I don't need a mercy marriage."
Cash flinched.
Too late, Carla remembered her brother's brief, unhappy marriage to a girl pregnant with another man's child.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that as a slap at Linda. She did what she believed she had to do." Carla put her arms around Cash and hugged him. "And your taking me in after Mom and Dad died ruined any chance you and Linda had. It also taught me that a man's sense of honor and decency is no substitute for love in a marriage. If Luke loved me, he would have called by now. He hasn't. Now it's up to me to pick up the pieces of my life. It's not Luke's problem, Cash. It's mine."
Cash kissed Carla's forehead, hugged her in return and said softly, "Honey, I'm as sure that Luke loves you as I am that I love you."
"Don't," she whispered, her voice aching with suppressed emotion. "You'll just make me cry. I miss him so much. It's like dying to know that he – he doesn't – doesn't—"
The shudder that racked Carla's body was transmitted instantly to her brother. His arms tightened around her.
"Go ahead and cry, honey," Cash whispered, closing his eyes, putting his cheek against Carla's hair, holding her. "Cry for both of us. And for Luke. Cry for him most of all, because he lost the most."
For a long time Cash held his sister, stroking her hair slowly, letting her cry out all the years of dreams that hadn't come true. When she had finally calmed, he kissed her cheek and released her.
"I'm not sure what I'm going to do about this," Cash said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping away Carla's tears. "But I know what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to pick up the phone today and tell Luke you're pregnant. I interfered once with the two of you, and it blew up in everyone's face."
Cash put the handkerchief in Carla's hand and wrapped her fingers around it.
"But, honey, once you start showing, someone's sure to mention it to Luke. Then there will be blazing red hell to pay." Cash hesitated, then added softly, "If you don't tell him by Christmas, I'll have to do it for you."
What Cash didn't put into words was his belief and fervent prayer that Luke surely would have called Carla by then.
~17~
A cold wind howled down from MacKenzie Peak, a wind tipped with the promise of sleet or snow. A gust caught Ten halfway between the bunkhouse and the barn. He ducked his head, pulled up the collar of his shearling jacket and went in the side entrance to the barn. The room he headed for had once held harness for the Rocking M's wagon horses. Now the room held woodworking tools – and a man who wielded them the way a wizard wields incantations against vicious demons.
The door had been locked since the evening Carla McQueen had driven off the Rocking M. After Luke had spent a long day working on the ranch, he would spend the evening and too much of the night locked inside the room, where the scream of a power saw biting into wood filled the spaces between the cries of the winter wind.
Ten was the only man who dared to disturb Luke in his lair. Lately, even Ten was thinking the matter over three or four times before he raised his fist and rattled the door on its hinges, praying that a small bit of Christmas spirit had sunk into Luke's hard head.
"Telephone, Luke!"
"Take a message.
"I did."
"Well?"
"Cash wants to know if you've seen Carla."
The scream of the power saw ended abruptly. "What?"
"You heard me."
"What makes him th—"
"How the hell should I know?" interrupted Ten. "You have questions, go ask Cash yourself. I'm damn tired of standing around in a cold barn yelling at a man who's too blind to find his butt with both hands and a mirror the size of a full moon!"
Luke yanked opened the door and gave Ten a hard look. Ten returned it with interest.
"Give it to me again, slowly," Luke said.
"Lord, how you tempt a man," Ten muttered. "Listen up, boss. Cash McQueen is on the phone. Carla is missing. He seems to think she came here."