Free Rainsinger by Barbara Samuel, Ruth Wind

on.
    Bemused, he sat down in the chair she had vacated, his body still tingling from the long, sensual kiss. He lifted a hand to the place on his chest where her hand had rested and absently rubbed it, tasting his mouth for the lingering flavor of her. As he listened to the shower he thought of her in there, bare and—
    The drugging cloud of arousal suddenly shattered. Daniel swore as the implications of his actions flooded the brain that had gone conveniently dead.
    He was the ultimate fool. How could he have let that happen? How could he have instigated it? He cursed and flipped off the buttons on the computer, stomped into the kitchen and turned off the light. For a moment, he stood in the middle of the living room, staring at the place where they’d stood, kissing for such a long time. He looked at the picture of Luke and Jessie, deliberately making himself remember.
    He cursed again. Would he never learn? All these months at the ranch, he’d worked on acceptance of the fact that he’d likely spend his life as a bachelor.
    Now he felt that acceptance crumbling. And not only crumbling under his attraction to Winona, but to her fatherless little sister, who plucked the cursed father string in his heart all too strongly. The situation so echoed the one he’d unwittingly put himself in with Jessie that he ought to have his head examined.
    He couldn’t bear that kind of loss again. Henceforth, he had to erect his walls and keep them firmly in place, no matter how much he wanted to kiss Winona Snow again. Kiss her and touch her and...
    Ah, hell. And damn. And hell and damn. With a growl, Daniel went to his room and closed the door decisively. This was one night he would not work late. He would stay in his room until he could pull himself together. Firmly and completely.
    He was happy with the life he’d built here, among the peach trees that were his legacy, and in the house he’d worked so hard to restore. And if he needed companionship, there were always bulletin boards for chat, and Luke and Jessie a short drive away.
    It was more than enough. A lot more than many people had. He’d make it work.

Chapter Six
    W inona sat on a sturdy upper branch of the mother tree at the center of the orchard, studying the horizon. Not a wisp of cloud, only the vast, unbroken blue sky. It had not rained at all since their arrival almost three weeks earlier.
    Below the tree, Joleen collected tiny wildflowers from the hardy desert plants and sang a sad folk song about a woman who’d chosen to leave her husband and child for a new love, and was drowned with him at sea. Cotton from the cottonwood trees surrounding the house floated on unseen eddies of wind and collected in a snow like drift on her hat, but Joleen showed no signs of her mother’s allergy.
    It was oddly peaceful to sit in the old tree, surveying the landscape the way she had as a child, Winona thought lazily. Of course, the retreat to the orchard was also an avoidance technique. Since their kiss four days before, Winona had kept out of Daniel’s way as much as possible.
    By the ease with which she managed it, she assumed he was avoiding her, as well. They didn’t play basketball the night following their first match, and Winona suspected he was pretty sore from the way he limped around the house. She considered ribbing him about it, but humor seemed an intimate thing.
    She didn’t want to be intimate with him.
    Comfortably ensconced in the cradling arms of the tree, Winona finally admitted to herself that her defensive attitude was a smoke screen of pure lies. She would not have minded a good number of intimacies with Daniel Lynch. In fact, she’d thought of little else for days.
    And nights. The nights were worse than the days. Her dreaming mind insisted upon regaling her with wondrous examples of what those delicious intimacies might be. Almost all of them involved him letting down that mane of shiny, long hair.
    She made a face. Pleasurable as those imaginings