Luke barely kept himself from saying he would rather have Carla than any dinner on earth; and he would rather have her in the dining room, sitting astride his lap, her head thrown back, her nipples taut and glistening from his mouth, her body sheathing him, bringing him relief from the torment of wanting her.

"Whatever you give me always tastes good," Luke said finally, trying not to watch Carla’s mouth too hungrily.

The look in his golden eyes made her breath catch. A delicate, invisible shiver went from her breastbone to the pit of her stomach.

At that instant Carla realized that she should put Luke’s dinner on the table, return immediately to the kitchen and finish the dishes, leaving him to eat alone. Then she should go put one of the Rocking M’s movie cassettes on the VCR and watch it Alone. Or she should read one of her own or Luke’s many books on archaeology and the history of the West, or she should make more casseroles and cookies for the men to eat while she was camping in September Canyon, or…anything but sit in aching silence watching Luke eat, envying the very food that touched his lips.

"Go sit down," Carla said huskily. "I’ll bring you dinner."

She brought Luke’s food to him, sat down with him, watched him eat and envied the food that touched his lips. The silence was both electric and oddly companionable. Not until Luke had had time to appease the worst of his hunger did Carla begin asking him about his day.

"Did you see more cougar tracks around the Wildfire Canyon seep?"

He nodded and smiled to himself. "Looks like she has herself at least one cub, maybe two."

"You aren’t going to hunt her," Carla said, reading Luke’s expression and the nuances of his voice.

It was a statement rather than a question, but Luke answered Carla anyway, thinking aloud as he had become accustomed to doing with her in the quiet hours after the long day’s work was done.

"The cat’s in pretty close to the ranch buildings," Luke said slowly. Then he shrugged. "I’ll probably regret it, but I won’t touch her unless she starts living off calves instead of deer. There’s a big part of me that likes knowing cougars have come back to the lower canyons to live the way they did when Case MacKenzie rode into the country."

"Like the wild black stallion?" Carla asked.

"Well," Luke drawled, rubbing his cheek, "you can’t prove by me that that old stud is alive in anything but Ten’s mind. Cougars, now…I’ve seen cougars."

Luke sipped coffee, then leaned back in his chair, relaxing and enjoying the peaceful moment. "I think cougars must be the prettiest cat God ever made. Quick, quiet, moving smooth as water, with eyes that remind men we aren’t the only life worth caring about on earth. There were wild animals a long time before there were cities. And if we don’t screw it up, there will be wild animals a long time after humans get smart and plow the cities under."

Carla smiled softly at Luke. "Do you suppose the Anasazi sat inside their stone apartment buildings and listened to cougars scream?"

"Wouldn’t surprise me, especially in the higher canyons. But I’m sure the Anasazi heard coyotes wherever they built." Luke looked up from his coffee and caught Carla watching him with blue-green eyes full of longing. "Did you hear them last night, crying to the moon?"

"Yes. I stood by the window and listened for a long time."

"So did I."

Carla looked into Luke’s tawny eyes and felt delicate splinters of sensation quiver through her. In her mind she saw Luke standing by his bedroom window, his body bare of all but moonlight, his eyes reflecting the limitless, elemental night; and all around him, surrounding him, was the mysterious song of coyotes. In her mind she was standing there with him, sharing his warmth, wearing only cool moonlight on her skin…moonlight and the memory of what it had been like to feel Luke’s caress. Without knowing it, she shivered.

Luke’s hand tightened around his fork until his knuckles showed white. It was a physical effort for him not to reach out and pull Carla onto his lap once more, kissing her once more, caressing her breasts once more; but this time he would remove her jeans and know her soft heat for the first time, nothing between his hunger and the wild, sweet melting of her body at his touch.

"So damned beautiful," he whispered. "And so damned impossible to have."

Carla blinked and focused on the present instead of on her timeless sensual dreams. "What?"

For an instant Luke didn’t respond. When he spoke it was only half the truth, for the other half was too painful to speak aloud.

"The night," he said huskily. "It’s beautiful. It could be yesterday or tomorrow or a thousand years ago. Some things never change. Like mountains and moonlight."

And man and woman. You and me.

The words rang so clearly in Carla’s mind that she was afraid she had spoken them aloud. But Luke’s expression didn’t change. He continued to watch her with eyes like a cougar’s – tawny, intent, deep with things that were impossible to name or speak aloud. Yet like the mountain lion stalking eternity in the rippling canyon shadows, Luke was connected to the intangible, indescribable, indestructible reality of the land itself.

"And like the canyons steeped in sunlight and sage." Luke continued slowly. "Like ancient trails snaking up steep rock walls, wild maize watered by thunderstorms, stone canyons older than human memory. Things that last, all of them. Things with staying power. The land demands it That’s why most people live in cities and look for cheap thrills. It’s easier. No staying power required. But they’ll never know what it’s like to stand and look out over a canyon and feel yourself deeply rooted in the past, with the sunlight of ten thousand days locked in your body and your life branching into the future like the land itself."

Although Luke said nothing more, Carla knew he was thinking of his mother and his aunts and his grandmother, women whom the land had ground to dust and blown away on the relentless canyon winds. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, to tell him that the land lived in her soul as it did in his.

"Luke – "

"This is good stew," he said simultaneously, talking over Carla. "I suppose it has a fancy French name."

For a few seconds she fought against the change of subject Then she looked at Luke’s empty plate, freeing herself from the golden intensity of his eyes.

"Boeuf a la campagne," she admitted.

"Country beef, huh? Stew by any other name is still beef and gravy."

Carla blinked at Luke’s accurate translation before she remembered that he had a fine arts degree from the University of Colorado. He also had a library of literature and history books that provided him with entertainment more often than the TV programs dragged from the sky by the Rocking M’s satellite dish. Yet his western drawl and easy use of cowboy idioms had fooled more than one prospective beef buyer into believing that Luke had the intelligence and sophistication of a panfried steak.

"You and Ten are complete frauds, you know," she said. "Cowboys, my foot."

"Why, whatever do you mean, little bit?" Luke drawled, then spoiled it by laughing.

He settled more deeply against the back of the dining room chair, realizing as he did that evenings had become his favorite part of the day, especially when he worked late and had Carla all to himself. He enjoyed her quickness of mind and easy silences and her laughter when he told her fragments of the Rocking M’s humorous lore – the dance hall girls and the Sisters of Sobriety watching one another from the corner of their eyes while a half-drunk pet pig sat outside the church, waiting for its completely drunk master to finish wrestling the devil and go home.

"Boeuf a la campagne," Luke repeated, shaking his head, smiling. "Hell of a thing to serve to a cowboy." Then he paused, remembering what had happened that morning. "Isn’t that what you wanted to make but didn’t have the ingredients for?"

"I did a little creative substituting."

"Yeah? What did you use?"

"Juniper berries and bourbon."

Luke blinked. "Really?"

"Jest as shore as God made 'lil green apples," she drawled broadly. "Rightly speaking, I can’t call it boeuf a la campagne no more. More like Rocking M stew. Better ‘n possum, an’ thet’s God’s own truth."

Luke’s smile widened and then he laughed without restraint. So did Carla. For a few moments he felt as though he had been transported back to the time when he and Carla and Cash had sat around the old house’s rickety table long after dinner, talking and teasing and just enjoying one another’s company. It was as close to feeling part of a loving family as Luke had ever come.

Then he had ruined it by falling on Carla like a starving cougar on a rabbit. The fact that she had offered herself to him with her eyes full of girlish dreams only made his actions worse. He should have told her gently that he was honored, but it was impossible. He should have sent her on her way with her pride intact, if not her dreams. But he hadn’t. He had kissed her too hard and then had shredded her with a few savage words when she panicked.

So she had avoided him for the past three years and had come back to him this summer only to exorcise the girlish dreams of the past And him. He didn’t blame her for wanting to cut him out of her life, but he would spend the rest of his life wishing he had handled her differently. Then he could at least have continued to enjoy the undemanding companionship she brought to him, a sharing of thoughts and experiences that he had never come close to having with another woman.