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

Slowly Carla came to her feet. Without looking away from Luke she skirted the fire, scarcely aware of the flames, for it was the golden blaze of Luke’s eyes that consumed her. Motionless, waiting, every muscle taut with his inner struggle, he watched her slow approach. He knew he should turn away from her, walk out into the rain and keep on walking until the heavy running of his blood slowed. He shouldn’t stay rooted to the land while she came closer to him. He shouldn’t watch with eyes narrowed against the pain of wanting and his whole body rigid from battling his endless hunger for the girl who could arouse him with a word, a look, a breath.

The girl he had promised himself he would never take.

Carla stopped only inches away from Luke. She looked into his eyes until she could bear no more. She leaned forward, speaking his name in a voice as murmurous as the rain. When there was no answer, she raised a trembling hand to his cheek. The gentle touch of her ringers made him shudder as though he had been brushed by lightning. She felt the violent currents of restraint and passion coursing through him as though they were her own. She knew if she touched him again there would be no more turning back for either of them, no more frustrated desire, nothing but the sweeping reality of a man’s hunger and a woman’s answering love.