"Why not? You do several times a year. Cash has more than once."

"That’s different."

"It sure is," Carla agreed. "Neither one of you can cook worth a damn. It’s a wonder you haven’t starved to death. I won’t have that problem. I can cook."

"Carla, damn it – " Luke took off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair in frustration.

"What?" she asked calmly.

He hung on to his temper. Barely. "Listen, schoolgirl, this may be a joke to you but it isn’t to me. What would you do if you got injured while you were all alone up here?"

"The same thing you or Cash would," Carla said matter-of-factly. "I’d treat myself as best I could and then drive out. If I couldn’t drive, I’d make the best shelter I could and wait for someone to miss me, follow my trail markers and help me."

"What if we weren’t in time?"

"What if there were a blizzard and I froze to death?" she countered.

"In August?"

Carla laughed. "That’s exactly what I said to Cash when he dragged up a blizzard as an excuse for me not to come here alone."

Luke snapped his Stetson against his thigh in taut anger. He closed the distance between himself and Carla, not stopping until he was only inches from her.

"What if some man found you here alone?" Luke demanded in a low, hard voice.

"That’s less likely to be a problem here than in so-called civilization," Carla pointed out, warily measuring Luke’s anger. "In cities women are mugged, beaten or worse. Having other people around is no guarantee a woman is safe from a man."

The sudden wariness in Carla’s eyes cost Luke what small hold he had on his tongue. For an instant all he could see was the Carla of three years ago, a girl scared and trembling as his fingers bit into her resilient hips, pulling her close, dragging her up against his hardened body.

"Don’t get scared and bolt, schoolgirl," he said coldly. "I won’t attack you."

Carla’s head came up proudly. "I never thought you would."

"You must have thought it once," he shot back, "because you ran like hell and stayed away for three years."

With a tight motion of her body, Carla turned away, looking back over the land once more.

"That was humiliation, not fear," she said finally. "I was naive enough to believe I had something to offer you. You pointed out my foolishness in very unmistakable terms. I was mortified, but you had every right to say what you did and I knew it. That’s why I was so ashamed."

Luke looked at Carla for a long moment. His mouth flattened in a line of anger and pain. When he spoke, his voice was resonant with restrained emotion.

"I’ve regretted that night like I’ve regretted nothing else in my life."

Carla turned back toward Luke, a wondering kind of surprise showing clearly in her blue-green eyes. He was looking at the sky, not at her.

"Rain coming on," he said, replacing his Stetson with a smooth motion. "We’d better get back to camp."

Her thoughts in turmoil, Carla followed Luke back to camp. There was little conversation while she cooked dinner and even less talk while Luke helped her wash dishes. She poured coffee while he added wood to the campfire, increasing the delicate, searing dance of flames. When she handed him a cup of coffee, he thanked her with a nod and then turned his back to the fire and to her, concentrating on the view of September Canyon.

During supper, the last of the red light had drained from the sky, leaving a luminous indigo twilight. Isolated clouds had expanded, flowed outward and joined with others of their kind in a slow embrace. In the darkness soft rain began to condense.

There was no dazzling flare of nearby lightning or fanfare of thunder, simply the gentle persistence of water drops materializing from the night and free-falling through darkness until they caressed the rugged body of the land. Gradually the vast silence became alive with the whispers and sighs and fragmented murmurings of tiny waterfalls gliding over massive stone cliffs.

Carla sat cross-legged near the campfire, looking across the flames at Luke. His yellow slicker had been cast aside beneath the protective overhang. His open-necked shirt, worn jeans and boots were first revealed and then concealed by the languid rise and fall of flames. The metal camp cup he held in his large hand gleamed like quicksilver. He reminded her of the land itself, enduring and powerful, full of unexpected beauty and deep silences.

Luke didn’t notice the intensity of Carla’s regard. Standing with his back to the flames, he watched the veils of raindrops glittering with reflected fire against the limitless backdrop of night. From time to time he sipped coffee from his cup. Other than that, he made no movement. He neither spoke to nor looked at Carla, yet the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, merely an extension of the shared silences they often enjoyed while he ate a late dinner or helped her clean the big coffeepot and measure out coffee for the following morning.

"Why?" Carla asked without warning, as though only seconds had intervened since Luke had stood with her and looked out over the late afternoon on the promontory half a mile up September Canyon.

Not turning around, Luke answered in the same way. "Why did I grab you three years ago?" He laughed roughly. "Hell, schoolgirl, you’re not that naive."

"And I’m not a schoolgirl anymore. Didn’t Cash tell you? I went to college year-round so I could graduate in three years."

Luke said nothing.

Carla persisted, unable to help herself, needing to know about the night that had changed her life, the night that apparently had scarred Luke, too. "Why do you regret what happened so much?"

For a long time there was only silence and the sinuous dance of fire and rain.

"It was the sweetest offer I’ve ever had," Luke said finally. "You deserved better for it than I gave you. You deserved slow dancing and candlelight kisses and candy wrapped in fancy foil. You deserved a gentle refusal or a gentle lover, and you got… me."

Carla was too surprised to speak. She watched.

Luke’s shoulders move in what could have been a shrug or the unconscious motion of a man readjusting a heavy burden.

"There was nothing gentle or civilized in me that night. I wanted you until I shook with it I’d wanted you like that for years. When you seemed to want me, I lost my head."

Luke turned, snapped his wrist and sent the dregs of his coffee hissing into the fire.

"It’s just as well," he continued. "Once I was sober I’d have hated myself for taking you. You were so damned innocent. It was better mat some other man got to be your first lover. At least he didn’t hurt you."

"What?"

Again Luke laughed roughly as he bent over the coffeepot, refilling his cup while he talked. "If your lover had hurt you, it would have made the front pages – ‘Cash McQueen Avenges Kid Sister.’ But there weren’t any headlines."

"Not surprising. There wasn’t any lover, either."

Luke’s head snapped up. For the first time since they had come to camp he looked directly at Carla. Firelight outlined his shocked expression.

"Are you saying that you’re… that you haven’t…?"

"You needn’t look at me like I just fell out of a passing UFO," Carla said uncomfortably. "Has it ever occurred to you that all the studies saying half or two-thirds of girls have lovers before they’re married also means that between one-third and one-half of the girls don’t? What’s so shocking about that?"

"One-third of you are saving yourselves for marriage, is that it?" Luke asked as he set aside the coffeepot and straightened up again.

Carla shrugged, but Luke didn’t notice. He had turned his back to the fire again – and to her.

"1 don’t know what their reason for waiting is," Carla said. "I only know mine."

Silence, a sip of coffee, then Luke asked slowly, "What’s your reason?"

"The flame isn’t worth the candle."

"What?"

"More pain than gain," Carla said succinctly. "You see, the older I get, the more I realize that I don’t like men being close to me. Not like that. Breathing their breath. Tasting them. Not able to move without touching them. Close."

Slowly, as though pulled against his will, Luke turned around to face Carla again. He looked at her for a long, taut moment before he said, "You had a funny way of showing it that night in the dining room when you gave me the sweetest dessert a man ever had."

The memory of those few, incredible moments in Luke’s arms went through Carla like lightning. She tried to speak but was afraid to trust her voice. She licked her lips, looked away from him and tried again to talk.

"It’s different with you," she said huskily. "It always has been. I can’t…help it That’s just how it is."

Although Carla tried to speak casually, her voice trembled. The honesty of her words hadn’t come without cost; but then, neither had Luke’s confession that it had been desire rather than contempt for her that had driven him three years ago.

Abruptly Luke turned away and began prowling the perimeter of the overhang as though he were a cougar measuring the dimensions of its captivity. Half a creature of fire, half a creature of night, wrapped in the elemental rhythms of rain, Luke was a figure born from Carla’s dreams. Unable to look away from his lithe, powerful, restless movements, she simply sat and watched him with a soul-deep hunger she couldn’t disguise.

And then he turned and looked at her with a hunger as deep as her own.

13