Free Fire and Rain by Elizabeth Lowell

times before the problem was taken care of. At the same time he watched Carla while she set down the coffeepot, shifted the hot pads so that both hands were protected and poured him a mug of coffee. She maneuvered the awkward pot with unexpected grace. Nearly two months of working on the ranch had taught her how to handle the heavy kitchen equipment.
     "You do that real slick," Luke said.
     Carla looked up, startled. "What?"
     For a moment Luke forgot what he had been saying. Carla's eyes were close, clear, like blue-green river pools lit from within. Her lips were full and pink, their soft curves a silent invitation to a man's hungry mouth.
     "The coffeepot," Luke said, his voice deep. "You handle it like you've been doing it all your life."
     "Pain is a great teacher," Carla said dryly. "You don't have to get burned more than two or three times before you figure out that there's no future in hurting."
     Luke's eyes narrowed to glittering amber slits as her words sliced through him like razors. Pain is a great teacher. There's no future in hurting. He wondered if Ten had been right, if Carla had come back to the Rocking M to cure herself of the pain of wanting a man who didn't want her.
     But Luke did want her. He wanted her until he welcomed pain as a diversion from the agony gnawing in his guts whenever he looked at her and saw what he should not have. Even if she weren't innocent, she was still his best friend's kid sister; and even if she had been a complete stranger, there was still the grim truth about the Rocking M and women. The two didn't mix, as every MacKenzie man but one had found to his grief.
     And yet there Carla stood, watching Luke with hungry, haunted, haunting eyes, making his body harden in a single wild rush, forcing him to bite back a curse and a groan.
      Stop looking at me , he railed at Carla silently. Stop wanting me. Can't you feel what you're doing to me? Is this revenge for what I did to you three years ago?

     The words went no farther than Luke's mind, for he had just discovered that the protective layer of anger he had wrapped around himself since Carla had arrived was gone, worn out by nearly eight weeks of use. Nothing came to him in his need except a bone-deep weariness and the understanding that Ten had been half-right – Luke had been beating a hog-tied pony.
     But the pony was himself, not Carla.
     Wearily Luke rubbed his neck with his right hand, trying to loosen his muscles. It wasn't the endless days of hard driving and hard riding that had tied him in knots; it was that he had run and run and run – and then looked up only to find himself in the same place where he had started, reflected in the eyes of Cash's kid sister.
     "Did the big storm catch you on the wrong side of Picture Wash?"
     Carla's soft question sank slowly into Luke's churning thoughts. All that hadn't been said sank in, as well her hesitation even to speak to him, her concern that he had been out in the open when thunder rolled down from the peaks and the earth shuddered, and her yearning simply to hear his voice answering her own.
     Luke knew just how painful that yearning was, for he had been haunted in exactly the same way. He had heard Carla's voice on the wind, in the darkness, in the silver veils of rain sliding over ancient cliffs. More than once he had awakened in the night, certain that he had only to reach out to feel her softness and warmth curled alongside his body; but his seeking hands had found only darkness and the cold, rust-colored earth of the remote canyon where he had camped.
     "No," Luke said softly. "I was back in one of those side canyons where the cliffs make an overhang that keeps out the rain."
     "Like September Canyon?"
     "Yes. Did Cash tell you about that place?"
     "No. You did, when I was fourteen and you gave me a fragment of Anasazi pottery you had found along September Creek. I still have the shard. It's my … talisman, I guess. It reminds me of all that once was