Corbin's Fancy by Linda Lael Miller Page A

bank!”
    Jeff threw back his head and his laughter thundered in the night, stilling the songs of crickets and frogs. “You dreamer.”
    Tears smarted in Fancy’s eyes and goosebumps rippled over her bare skin. Her feet were so numb that she could no longer feel the stream bottom. “You bastard,” she hissed, and then she stomped up out of the water and stood facing Jeff on the shore.
    He chuckled as he draped her in the blanket. There was gentleness in the sound, as well as in the brief, warm touch of his hands. Leaving her to shudder inside the blanket, he bent to fetch her discarded underthings. With all the flourish of an experienced housewife, he gave them a brisk, snapping shake and hung them over a nearby bush.
    “I can’t leave them here,” protested Fancy.
    “Would you rather hang them by Phineas’s campfire?” asked Jeff with tender sarcasm.
    “Well—no—”
    “You didn’t plan this bath very well, did you?”
    There was no arguing the point. Fancy had wanted to be clean and she hadn’t thought beyond that point. If she had, she would have left her underthings on the bank in the first place or else brought dry ones along. “I didn’t plan on seeing you here!” she snapped, hedging.
    He sat down on a large, flat boulder at the streamside, drew his knees up, and wrapped his arms around them. “I’m sure you didn’t,” he said.
    Fancy was at a loss. She wanted to put her dress back on and head for Phineas’s campfire—Lord knew the warmth would be glorious—but something kept her there by the stream. “I should have known you wouldn’t be gentleman enough to let me bathe in peace!”
    Jeff laughed. “Yes, you should have. Come here, Fancy.”
    “Said the spider to the fly!”
    The magnificent face sobered. “I promise not to touch you,” he said, patting the rock’s smooth surface with one hand.
    Fancy believed him, though she couldn’t for the life of her have said why. She picked her way to the boulder and sat down, keeping the blanket tucked tightly around her.
    “Why didn’t Temple Royce make love to you?” Jeff asked after several seconds of thoughtful silence.
    The question, improper as it was, should have come as an insulting surprise to Fancy, but it didn’t. “I wouldn’t let him,” she said softly, drawing her knees up and resting her chin upon them.
    “Did you love him?”
    “I thought I did.” Fancy remembered Temple’s pleasure over what he’d done to Jeff Corbin and ached with shame. “I didn’t really know him, as it turned out.” Any more than I know you, she added silently.
    Jeff made no comment.
    “Why did you follow me, Jeff? Why didn’t you just let me go away? It would have been better for both of us.”
    “I’ll grant that it might have been better for you,” he said, on a long, ragged breath, as he leaned back to lie flat on the rock, his hands cupped behind his head. “For me it would have been the end.”
    Fancy sniffled and she wished that the water in that stream could have numbed her heart the way it had her toes. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
    He shifted, so that he was facing her, his head propped up on one hand. “You changed everything, Fancy. I didn’t want you to, but you insisted.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, confused, shivering in the chilling breeze that danced over the muttering stream.
    “Sorry? Damn it, woman, you resurrected me! You made me laugh—you made me mad as hell—you made me—”
    Fancy colored and covered her head with the blanket on the pretext of drying her dripping, tangled hair.
    “You made me feel again, Fancy.”
    Fancy shot to her feet suddenly, nearly losing the blanket. “Well hurrah for me!” she shouted, all but strangling on a hoarse sob.
    He caught her hand in his and pulled her back down beside him, irrespective of his promise not to touch her. “Marry me,” he said gruffly.
    That again. Anguish swept over Fancy, for she knew his reasons for proposing without his even stating