Carla fought not to smile. She failed.
The left corner of Ten's mouth turned up. "Finally we took up a collection to buy her a bus ticket to Nome."
"Alaska?" asked Carla.
"Yeah. She got a job scaring grizzlies away from salmon nets."
Feminine laughter bubbled up. Soon Ten was laughing, too. Neither one of them noticed the big man who had come to the kitchen through the living room and was now leaning against the corner counter, his thumbs hooked in his belt and his mouth a bleak downward curve. He glanced at the clock. Six-forty. He glanced at the stove. Everything looked hot and ready to go. Whiskey-colored eyes cut back to the laughing couple in the dining room.
Just when Luke had opened his mouth to say something savage on the subject of cooks who couldn't get dinner ready on time, Carla grabbed Ten's wrist and looked at his watch.
"The pasta should be done by now, if the hands don't mind it al dente."
"What?"
"Chewy," she said succinctly.
"Hell, after a day on the range, we'll eat whatever we can get, any way we can get it, including raw."
Carla grimaced. "Yuck.Pasta sticks to your teeth that way."
Laughing, shaking his head, Ten leaned forward and tugged gently on a shining strand of Carla's hair. "I'm glad you're back. You bring sunlight with you."
Almost shyly, Carla said, "Thanks, Ten. It's good to be back. I love this place."
"The place or the owner?"
The question was so soft that Carla could pretend not to have heard it at all. So she smiled at Ten and turned toward the kitchen without answering, not knowing how much her sad smile revealed of her thoughts. As soon as she was through the door she spotted Luke leaning against the counter, impatience and anger in every hard line of his body.
"I was wondering when you'd remember that you were hired to cook, not to flirt with my ramrod."
"I wasn't flir—"
"Like hell you weren't," Luke said curtly, interrupting Carla. "Watch it, schoolgirl. Ten smiles and is handsome as sin, but that soft-drawling SOB has broken more hearts than any twelve men I know. He's not the marrying kind, but he's plenty human. If you throw yourself at him hard enough, he might just reach out and grab what's being offered. And we both know how good you are at throwing yourself."
Carla went pale and turned away.
Luke swore harshly beneath his breath, furious with her and Ten and himself and everything else that came to mind. He watched with narrowed, glittering eyes while Carla grabbed two pot holders and went to the kitchen range. By the time he realized that she was reaching for the wildly boiling kettle of spaghetti and water, it was too late. She was already struggling with the huge kettle, her whole body straining as she lifted at arm's length the weight of five gallons of water and ten pounds of pasta.
Just as Carla realized that she couldn't handle the kettle – and hadn't the strength to lower it without splashing boiling water down her front – Luke's arms shot around her body. He covered her hands with his own and lifted, taking the weight of the kettle from her quivering arms. Together they gently set the heavy pot on the back burner once more. For a few moments neither one moved, shaken by the realization of how close Carla had come to a painful accident.
Luke bent his head, brushing his cheek so lightly against Carla's hair that she couldn't feel it. When he took a breath he smelled flowers. The scent was dizzying, for it carried with it a promise of womanly warmth, a promise that was repeated in Carla's curving hips pressed against his body. She was trembling, breathing with soft, tearing sounds.
Desire turned like an unsheathed knife in Luke's guts, hardening him with shocking speed. He lifted his hands and stepped back as though he had been burned. And he had, but by something hotter than boiling water.
"My God, schoolgirl!" Luke exploded. "Don't you know better than to try to lift five gallons of boiling water off the back of this stove?"
Carla shook her head and said nothing. Nor did she turn around.
"Are you all right?" Luke demanded.
Slowly she nodded.
The line of her neck and shoulders tugged at Luke's emotions, reminding him of how vulnerable she was, how close she had come to hurting herself. The thought of boiling water scoring her soft skin made him feel as though he himself had been burned.
"Sunshine?" Luke said softly. "Are you sure you didn't burn yourself?"
The unexpected gentleness made tears burn beneath Carla's eyelids. She blinked fiercely, not wanting to cry in front of Luke, who already thought her a child.
Schoolgirl
.
"I'm fine," she said, her voice husky.
Carla took a steadying breath and inhaled the scent of Luke, a compound of leather and male heat and the clean fragrance of soap. She longed to turn and put her arms around him, to feel his arms around her, to hold and be held and never let go.
But she hadn't come to the Rocking M for that. She had come to let go of something she had never held. "Thank you for saving dinner," Carla said, closing her eyes, trying not to breathe, for with each inhalation she took in the warmth and male scent of Luke.
"Dinner?" he asked.
"The spaghetti."
Gently Luke turned Carla around and brought her chin up until he could see her eyes. His breath came in hard, bringing with it the promise of flowers and warmth.
"You could have dumped that spaghetti all over the floor and I wouldn't have given a damn, so long as you weren't burned."
He examined her face intently, then unclenched her fingers and examined them for damage. Gently he traced the backs of her hands and arms until he reached the barrier of rolled-up black sleeves. His sleeves, his shirt, her wide blue-green eyes watching him. He traced her smooth, fine-grained skin one more time and felt desire roll through him like thunder through a narrow canyon, a force that made even stone tremble. He dropped her hands and turned away abruptly.
"Not a mark. You were lucky, schoolgirl. Next time you better think before you grab something too big for you. I might not be around to bail you out."
The change in Luke from tender to abrupt was disorienting to Carla. Before she could stop herself, she said, "I'm not a schoolgirl."
"Last time I checked, the University of Colorado was a school. What do you want me to do with that damned kettle?"
There were several tempting options, but Carla limited herself to the most practical one.
"Pour off the water in the sink."
Luke handled the heavy, awkward kettle with an ease that made Carla flatly envious.
"Now I know why cavewomen put up with cavemen," she muttered to herself, thinking Luke couldn't hear.
But he could. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the compound of admiration and desire in Carla's eyes as she watched him, and didn't know whether to smile or swear at the renewed leap of his blood. As he poured gallons of steaming water into the sink, he couldn't decide whether having Carla around for the summer was the worst idea he had ever had – or the best.
By the time Carla had the spaghetti loaded into a serving dish, the ranch hands were seated around the table in hushed expectancy. As she carried the fragrant, steaming mound of pasta into the dining room, she felt like a lion tamer carrying a single lamb chop into a cage full of big, hungry cats.
"Start this round," she said. "I'll be back with the sauce in a minute."
The pot with the sauce in it wasn't as awkward as the kettle of boiling water had been, but Luke had taken care of the job anyway. The sauce was now in a soup tureen. A ladle that was twenty inches long stuck out of the rich red sauce.
"Thank you," Carla said, smiling briefly at Luke as she grabbed the tureen. "Go sit down and eat. I can handle the rest."
Without a word Luke lifted the big tureen from Carla's hands and walked into the dining room. She found a big crockery bowl and filled it with green beans. She hurried out to the men.
"Here you are. All I have to do is find a spoon." An assortment of mumbles greeted her. She didn't hear. She stood rooted to the floor, staring in horrified fascination as the spaghetti bowl made the rounds of the table. Each man heaped his plate with pasta, piling it high and wide, cramming aboard every bit possible and then some. By the time each man had been served, not so much as a single limp strand was left in the huge bowl.
Cosy, who had been the last to be served, took the green beans from Carla and gave her the empty pasta bowl in return.
"If you hurry back with more, you may be able to have a bite yourself before we dig in for seconds," Cosy said, grinning.
The hands who had already buried their pasta in sauce and had begun eating paused long enough to chorus Cosy's remarks. A lot of compliments for her cooking were thrown in, as well.
Carla smiled and tried to acknowledge the praise, but her heart wasn't in it. She was thinking desperately of the gallons and gallons of boiling water that had just gone down the kitchen drain. It would be impossible to cook more spaghetti in time to get it on the table for a second serving. And even if it were possible, at the rate the sauce was disappearing, there wouldn't be anything to put on the pasta but salt, pepper and a splash of ketchup.
Maybe Cosy's just teasing me. Surely no man could eat one of those huge servings and come back for more.
Carla looked toward Ten, who had been the first man to be served. He was better than halfway through his plate and showed not one sign of slowing down.
My God. Even Cash doesn't eat that much, except when we're camping and he's been tramping all over getting rock samples
.
Realization hit. A day's work out on the open range was certainly the equivalent of Cash's geological explorations. The hands were definitely going to be coming back for seconds.
The bowl of green beans thumped onto the table. Carla turned and headed back for the kitchen.
"Aren't you going to eat?" Luke asked as he reached for the rapidly vanishing sauce.
"I'm not hungry."
Carla hurried into the kitchen and began opening can after can of chili.
~6~
The memory of that first night as the Rocking M's cook still had the power to raise color in Carla's cheeks a month later. The ranch hands had ribbed her mercilessly but not unkindly; Luke had muttered something about cooking for men instead of schoolboys; and Ten had gotten his head handed to him for pointing out that the food was four times as good as anything they had eaten in years, so why complain over short rations?
In fact, Ten had gotten his head handed to him on a regular basis since Carla had come to the ranch. From the look on Luke's face at the moment, Ten was about to get another full serving of his boss's temper. Hurriedly Carla tried to take the scrub brush from Ten's hand.
"Thanks for the help, but Luke is right. He didn't hire you to clean walls."
"You've been working longer hours than any hand since you got here," Ten said calmly, hanging on to the brush. "This is my day off, and if I want to scrub kitchen walls, I'll damned well scrub kitchen walls."
Luke looked at Carla's drawn, unhappy face and felt his temper rise even higher. Ten was right; Carla had been working twelve-hour days since she had come to the ranch. Every floor in the ranch house was clean enough to eat from. The kitchen counters and cupboards gleamed with cleanliness, as did the beaten-up wooden tables in the dining room. Thanks to Carla's detailed shopping lists, the pantry and cupboards were packed with various foods, the refrigerator was bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables, and a menu was posted in the dining room so that the men would know just what the coming week held in the way of meals.
Even as Luke stood glaring at Ten and Carla, the kitchen was fragrant with the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the range's huge oven. Apple, cherry and blueberry pies had become staple items at the dinner table. Homemade baking powder biscuits and bread helped to fill in the cracks. Waffles and pancakes were common breakfast fare. Fresh brownies appeared in lunch bags with gratifying regularity.
And Carla looked as though she hadn't eaten a bit of any of the bounty. Luke suspected she had lost weight since she had come to the ranch. He was certain that she smiled less frequently than ever in his memory. He was also certain that he was the cause of her unhappiness. Each time he told himself that he wouldn't lose his temper with her again, he would see her looking up at Ten with wide eyes and laughter trembling on her lips; and then Luke would feel anger racing through his blood, driving out the desire that was so much a part of him these days that he barely noticed it.
Luke tried to tell himself he was grateful that Carla no longer followed him around like a lost puppy, but he didn't believe it. Slowly, painfully, he had come to the realization that he had wanted Carla at the ranch for the summer because of her transparent feelings for him, not despite them.
For the past four weeks he had thought often of other summers when he had been the sun in her sky … and she had been the sun in his. At some deep, hidden level of his mind, he had wanted to know again that feeling of being special to someone. It was a heady sensation, one he had never before known, for his father had been too busy working the ranch to pay much attention to his son; and his mother had had nothing left over from fighting her own interior devils.
Damn it all to hell,
Luke fumed silently.
Why did Carla have to grow up and spoil everything?
There was no answer for Luke's angry question, unless the insistent beat of his own blood was a kind of answer. Maybe Carla hadn't spoiled anything after all. Maybe she had grown up enough not to run away in fear if he held her against his rigid, hungry body and tasted the honey of her mouth once more.
Not a chance. She's just a schoolgirl.
She's twenty-one. A lot of women have kids by the time they're that age – and they didn't get them by running away from a man's kiss, either.