"Take your pick," he said, waving her toward them. "I think they're both about the same."

Leila peeked into both rooms, then walked through the doorway closest to her and placed her bag on the bed. She noticed that it was a much smaller bed than the one in Cade's room in Houston, but she did not linger and look as she had in the other parts of the house. There was nothing personal here, nothing to tell her which room Cade used when he visited the ranch. She felt a strangeness in being there with him so close behind her, and yet, so very far away. With so much unsaid between them there was awkwardness in the silence.

But, she thought, that is why I am here, because these things must be spoken of-they will be spoken of. But not now. This is not the right time.

Leaving her bag on the bed, she fixed a smile on her face and turned. "You said we could have breakfast? That is good, because I am hungry." She had eaten some toast with her one cup of coffee before leaving that morning, but it seemed a long time ago. "What must I do to help?" She felt strange little showers of shivers inside and rubbed her arms, though she wasn't cold.

"You want to help?" Cade looked at her, again with that so superior half smile that so clearly said he didn't see how she could. Leila was beginning to be very annoyed by that smile.

Back in the kitchen, he opened a drawer and took out a metal tool, which he placed on the countertop. Then he opened a cupboard and took out a large brown can. "If you want to help, why don't you open that while I get the coffeemaker going."

Leila picked up the tool, which was unlike anything she had seen before. It had two legs that opened when she pulled them, like a pair of scissors. Obviously, she was meant to use the tool to open the brown can, which contained coffee, she could see that. I will not ask him. I will not

My God, thought Cade, she doesn't even know how to use a can opener. He wondered if she'd ever seen one before.

"It's…a can opener," he said gruffly, moving closer to her.

She glanced up at him-a patient look, as if he had said something stupid. "Yes, I know. It is just that I have never seen one…like it…before." There was a smudge of color in each cheek, and he wondered if it was pride, or embarrassment.

"It's, uh…pretty much just your classic can opener." He edged closer still. "They're kind of a basic necessity around here, since about the only things we can leave in the house are canned goods. Power's unreliable, so we can't leave anything in the freezer. And then there are the mice…"

"Mice?" She was gazing at him, not with the maidenly horror he'd expected, but with a bright and childlike delight. "Oh, do we have mice? I would very much like to see one." She tilted her head and dimpled thoughtfully. "I do not think I have ever seen a real mouse before."

Why am I not surprised? Cade thought. Aloud he muttered, "They're a damned nuisance."

"Perhaps you should keep a cat."

"Who'd take care of it when there's nobody here?"

"Perhaps…your neighbor, what was it? Mrs. MacGruder? Since they must come to tend the horses anyway?" Her eyes were wide and ingenuous. He wondered how he'd come to be close enough to her to see himself reflected in their depths.

"What, once a day? Nah-animals need attention. You can't just leave them on their own all the time."

"Oh yes," she said softly, "that is true." And she looked at him just long enough before she said it that he felt a mean little stab of guilt.

"Here, why don't you let me do that?" he said roughly, reaching for the can opener.

She held it out of his reach. "No. I would like you to show me how to do it." And she added as a breathless afterthought, "Please."

Cade was awash with feelings he didn't know what to do with. Part of it was anger, or something close, and part was the kind of thing he imagined he might be feeling if he were trapped on a rocky shoal with the tide rising fast. And part of it, if he was honest with himself, was just plain old sexual excitement. It was her body heat, her woman's scent, partly familiar, partly exotic. He should never have let himself get so close to her. He was having trouble keeping his breathing quiet so she wouldn't hear how fast it was. He hoped she couldn't hear his heart hammering.

"Okay, here's what you do-here, let me show you." He reached again for the can opener.

And again she pulled it away, out of his reach. "No-I want to do it. Just please show me how."

What could he do? Gingerly as a rattlesnake wrangler, he reached across her and covered her hands with his. "First you have to open these up…" God, he could hardly breathe. "Then, you chomp down on the edge of the can-like this, see? That little hiss means you broke the seal. Then, you turn this…"

He felt like he was going to pass out, honest to God-just like the way he felt when he hadn't eaten in way too long. Only he didn't think he'd ever known hunger quite like this, couldn't remember ever wanting a woman the way he wanted this one. No, not wanting, needing. Like, if he couldn't have her right now, this minute, he might keel over right there on the floor.

It occurred to him that her hands weren't moving.

"I think we are finished," she whispered, and she was looking at him, not the can.

Oh, yeah, Cade thought, we're finished, all right. All his high-minded resolve? Dead…cooked. This was going to happen, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it.

It had come down to a matter of seconds…heartbeats. He could feel her heat and her scent seeping through his shirt and into his skin. His nerve-endings were learning the shape of her breast. She looked up at him and he stared down at her parted lips, and his throat was parched, thirsty almost to the point of madness for the taste of her.

The taste of her. He remembered it now. Oh yeah, it all came rushing back to him. And he knew in that moment that he'd never stopped thirsting for the taste of her.

He made a sound…whispered something, maybe her name. His head dropped lower, closing that taunting distance between himself and the thing he craved…

A loud banging noise made him jerk upright with adrenaline squirting through his system like ice cold fire. The door-dammit. Someone was knocking on the back porch door.

A moment later, before the shock of that had begun to subside, there came a lighter tapping at the kitchen door. It opened, and a short, bandy-legged man with a completely bald head and cheeks as red as Santa Claus stuck his head in. His neighbor, of course. Deb MacGruder.

"Hey, how you folks doin'? Heard you come flyin' in."

It was impossible to stay irritated at ol' Deb, who had to be one of the nicest people ever put on this earth, and Cade didn't even try. Hoping he didn't look or sound as jangled as he felt, he invited the man in, introduced him to Leila and relieved him of the plastic grocery bags he'd brought with him.

"Edna sent you over some fresh eggs and a jug a' milk-figured you could use some." Cade noticed then that ol' Deb was sort of fidgeting and looking sideways at Leila and blushing like a tongue-tied teenager, and when he glanced over at her, he understood why. She had her dimples turned on, full wattage, and was looking about as lovely and charming as it was possible for a woman to look. Deb rubbed a hand over his sunburned scalp and coughed. "I, uh…put up some of the mares in the corral, just in case the two of you were wantin' to do some ridin' while you're here." He sounded as if he thought the possibility remote, under the circumstances.

But Cade heard a gasp from somewhere behind him, and Leila's voice, breathless and excited. "Oh, yes, thank you!"

And he realized that he ought to be feeling grateful. He'd been given a reprieve. All was not lost, after all.

Sure, he thought, what he had to do was keep his wife out riding all day until they were both so worn out and saddle sore they wouldn't be thinking about doing anything tonight except sleeping.

And tomorrow, well…that was another day. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it.


* * *

"Hey, what do you think you're doing? Come back here!"

Leila's answer to that was a peal of laughter. Crouching low over her mount's neck, she urged the mare to full gallop. Sure-footed like all of her breed, the roan mare's hooves seemed to fly over the hard ground. Dark shapes of the trees Cade had called junipers flashed by on either side of her, and their spicy scent rose into the muggy air.

At the top of the gentle rise Leila had a brief and exhilarating glimpse of forever, and then her heart lurched into her throat as the mare plunged over the top of the hill and skidded down…down into a sandy valley. With a squeal of sheer exuberance she urged the mare on across the sand and up the slope on the other side. And there she finally halted, with the wind whipping her hair and the view before her stretching all the way to the base of billowing black clouds. Laughing and out of breath, she waited for Cade to catch up.

"What the hell were you doing?" she heard him bellow as his horse's chestnut head with a white blaze appeared atop the rise. A moment later she saw Cade's face, and it was dark and stormy as the thunderclouds that filled the sky above their heads. "What're you trying to do, get yourself killed?"

Somehow, though, Leila knew the light in his eyes was not anger, and she tossed back her hair and smiled as she called back, "Killed? No, no-I am living!"

"Huh!" Muttering soothing things to his mount and patting her sweat-soaked neck, he brought her beside Leila's. "Living?"

"Oh, yes-do you not know? I am living a dream. My dream." She threw her arms wide and lifted her face to the sky. "I have dreamed of this-riding like the wind…land that goes on forever."