There. He dared to think her name.

Though he gritted his teeth and wished it away, agony gripped him from head to toe. He wondered if the pain would ever leave him.

"You can… you can go back now," Kristin said suddenly.

"What?" His voice was sharp.

"Our deal." She spoke softly, her voice a mere whisper, as if tears hovered behind her words, tears and just a touch of anxiety. "It's — it's made now, isn't it?"

He hesitated before he answered her. "Yes, your bloody bargain is made, Miss McCahy."

"Then you could… you could go back. Across the hall."

He didn't know what demon seized him. He didn't care if he was heard by the others in the house, didn't care about anything at all. He sat up in a sudden fury and wrenched her around to face him. He spoke bitingly, trying to make every word sting like the stroke of a lash.

"Not on your life, my little prima donna. You invited me in here. Now you've got me. That was the game, Kristin. You knew it was going to go by my rules —"

"My God!" she cried, jerking away from his touch. "Have you no consideration, no —"

"Compassion? Not a whit. This is what you wanted, and now you've got it."

She was beautiful still, he thought. The moonlight was playing over her breasts, and they were damp and shimmering and very, very fine, the nipples still enlarged and hard. He felt a quickening inside him all over again, and with it felt the return of the pain. The pain of betrayal. It was all right with whores, with tavern girls. It was something else with this innocent young beauty.

He scowled fiercely and turned his back on her. "Go to sleep, Kristin."

She didn't move. She didn't answer him. Not for endless seconds.

"Go to sleep?" she repeated incredulously.

"Damn it, yes, go to sleep." He swung around again and pressed her down on the bed. She started to fight him, and he wasn't in the mood to take it. Dark anger was in him, dark, brooding anger, and though he didn't mean to be cruel to her, he didn't seem to be able to help himself. He caught her shoulders and shook them. "Good night, Kristin. Go to sleep."

"Leave," she said stubbornly.

"I'll be damned if I will."

"Then I'll leave."

"And I'll be damned if you'll leave, either. Now go to sleep!"

He turned around, offering her his back once again. He didn't know why he had started this bout, but now that he had begun it, he wasn't about to lose.

He felt it when she started to rise, and he turned with frightening speed, sweeping his arm around her waist and holding her still. He felt her heart beating like that of a doe.

"Go to sleep!"

He heard her teeth grating, but she didn't move, not again. He knew she was planning to wait until he fell asleep, then slip away.

He smiled. She had another think coming. He would feel her slightest movement. He would awaken.

When she did try to move, he kept his eyes closed and held her fast. He heard her swearing softly, and he heard the threat of sobs coming to her whispering voice.

But then it was she who fell into an exhausted sleep. And it was he who awoke first with the morning. He stood and stretched and padded naked to the window and looked out on a beautiful summer's day. It was a fine ranch, he thought. Then he sighed, and he knew that she would think she had sold herself dearly in the night.

He had sold himself dearly, too. He had sold his honor, and he would have to stay, and he would have to protect her.

He walked over to the bed. The evidence of their night together was painfully obvious in the twisted bedding.

Her face was covered by long, soft tendrils of hair that picked up gold from the sun. A hand seemed to tighten around his heart and squeeze.

Cole stepped closer to the bed and covered Kristin with the top sheet and the comforter. Then he stepped to the door, glanced out and returned to the room across the hall to wash and dress.

Kristin knew it was late when she awoke. She opened her eyes and saw that the sun had risen high, then closed her eyes again and discovered that she was shaking.

She had almost believed that she had dreamed the entire episode.

But she hadn't. Cole Slater was gone, but he had definitely been there, and just thinking about everything that had happened made her shake again and burn crimson to the roots of her hair.

A knock sounded at her door. "Kristin?"

It was Shannon. Kristin sat bolt upright and looked at the bed. The comforter seemed to hide the sins of the night.

"Shannon, just a minute!" she cried out. Her gown was on the floor beside the bed. She made a dive for it, wincing at the soreness that plagued her thighs. Then she realized that the gown was torn and ragged, and she knew why it had seemed to melt away the night before. Bitterly she wound it into a ball, stuffed it into her dresser and dragged out an old flannel gown. Breathless, she told Shannon to come in.

Shannon came in with a pot of coffee and a cup and breakfast on a silver tray. Kristin stared at it blankly and arched a brow at her younger sister.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Shannon told her.

"Breakfast? In bed?" The ranch was a place where they barely eked out their existence. Breakfast in bed was a luxury they never afforded themselves. "After I've slept all morning?"

"Delilah was going to wake you. Cole said that maybe things had been hard on you lately and that maybe you needed to sleep."

"Oh, Cole said that, did he?"

Shannon ignored the question. "I rode out to the north pasture with Cole and Pete, and everything's going fine for the day."

Kristin kissed her sister's cheek and plopped on the bed, wincing again. It even hurt a little to sit.

She felt her face flood with color again, and she lowered her head, trying to hide her blush behind her hair. She still didn't know if she hated him, or if her feeling had become something different, something softer.

A little flush of fever seemed to touch her. She was breathing too fast, and her heart was hammering. She couldn't forget the night. She couldn't forget how she had felt, and she didn't know whether to be amazed or grateful or awed — or ashamed. The future loomed before them. They had a deal. He had said he would stay. And he hadn't left her room, and she —

She couldn't help wondering what he intended for their personal future together. Did he mean to do it… again?

"My Lord, Kristin, but you're flushed!" Shannon said with alarm.

"I'm all right," Kristin said hastily. She sipped the coffee too quickly and burned her lip. She set the cup down. "This was really sweet. The breakfast."

"Oh," Shannon said nonchalantly, "this was Cole's idea, too. He seemed to think you might have a little trouble getting up this morning."

"Oh, he did, did he?" She bit so hard into a piece of bacon that her teeth snapped together. He was laughing at her again, it seemed, and he didn't even have the decency to do it to her face. She longed for the chance to give him a good hard slap just once.

She caught herself. He had warned her. They were playing by his rules. And there was only one thing she was gaining from it all. Safety. She had agreed to the rules. She had meant to seduce him, she had meant for it all to happen, she had wanted the deal. It was just that she wasn't at all sure who had seduced whom.

"Where is Cole now?" she asked Shannon. She was surprised to find that she had a ravenous appetite.

Shannon shrugged. "I'm not sure. But do you know what?" she asked excitedly.

"No. What?"

"He says he's going to stay around for a while. Isn't that wonderful, Kristin?"

Kristin swallowed and nodded. "Yes. It's wonderful."

"Samson says it's a miracle. He says God has looked down on us with mercy at long last."

The Lord certainly does work in mysterious ways," Kristin murmured dryly.

Shannon, who had seated herself at the foot of the bed, leaped up and hugged Kristin. "We're going to make it," she whispered. "We're really going to make it."

She had underestimated Shannon, Kristin realized. She had felt their father's death every bit as keenly as Kristin had.

And because she felt it so strongly, she had learned to hate, just as Kristin had.

"I've got to get back downstairs. Delilah is baking bread and making preserves and I promised to help."

Kristin nodded. "I'll be right down, too."

When her sister had left, Kristin washed hastily. She couldn't help remembering every place he had touched her, everything he had done to her. And then, naturally, she started trembling again, thinking about the feeling that had come over her. In the midst of carnage, a brief, stolen moment of ecstasy.

Shameful ecstasy.

Ecstasy.

She wondered if it had ever really been, if it could ever come again.

She dressed, trying desperately to quit thinking. If she didn't, she would walk around all day as red as a beet.

She dressed for work. There was some fencing down on the north side, and she had told Pete she'd come out and look at it. The stash of gold hidden in the hayloft was dwindling, but they could afford to repair the fencing. And if she could just hang on to her stock a while longer, she could command fair prices from any number of buyers in the spring. She had to remember that she was fighting for the land. Nothing else mattered.

In breeches and boots, Kristin started for the doorway. Then she remembered her bedding, and the telltale sheets.

Delilah usually did the beds. She kept the house with Shannon's help. Samson kept it from falling apart. Pete and Kristin ran the ranch. That was just the way things had worked out.