Fire and Rain by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

had the kind of guts that make a man want to catch moonlight and bring it to her in his cupped hands like water, just to see her smile."
     Luke sipped coffee while Carla watched, her breath held, tasting in her mind the coffee that was sliding over his tongue, wishing she could be that close to him just once before she died. Watching her, sensing what she was thinking, Luke handed the mug back to her and continued speaking.
     "Mariah held on to the land and played outlaws off against one another like a nineteenth-century Queen Elizabeth, letting no man get the upper hand in her life. For two years the outlaws fought for her favors – and made sure that no man got close to her without being killed – and then her worst fears came true. An outlaw who was better with a gun than any of the others rode into her valley. The other outlaws couldn't take the man head-on and he was too quick and too wary to take by ambush."
     "What happened?"
     "Mariah was lucky. The man was Case MacKenzie."
     "The one with the saddlebags full of gold?"
     "The same." Luke smiled. "He didn't plan to get married. He didn't even plan to fall in love. Yet before long he was writing notes to himself, talking about hair that was the color of dark mountain honey and sunlight all mixed together." Tawny, intent eyes moved over Carla's hair. "Like your hair. Your eyes are like Mariah's too, clear and direct. And your mouth is like hers. The kind of mouth that makes a man want…"
     Luke let his voice die away. He took the mug and sipped again, forcing himself not to say any more. The hint of chocolate left by Carla was sweeter than any kiss he had ever tasted.
     "Maybe you've got Turner blood in you, sunshine. The more I look at you, the more you remind me of Mariah." Luke sighed and rubbed his neck with his right hand, cursing the luck that had him living with a woman he wanted and must not take. "Mariah was the woman Case had been looking for in more ways than one. He had been trying to find Mad Jack Turner's son, to give him his share of his father's gold. Well, it was too late for Johnny Turner, but not for his daughter, Mariah. The gold was just what she needed to improve the Rocking M's beef stock, hire honest hands and make the place a real ranch instead of an outlaw roost."
     Luke laughed softly, remembering his father and grandfather telling the same story to him years ago. "And while Mariah was at it, she improved the human stock, too. She had eight children by the man no one could kill, the husband she called her 'beloved outlaw.' One of the kids was Matthew Case MacKenzie, my grandfather's father. Then came Lucas Tyrell MacKenzie, then my father, Samuel Matthew MacKenzie, and then me, Lucas Case MacKenzie. And the Rocking M came with the MacKenzie name, passed on to whichever son had the sand to make a go of ranching in this country."
     Carla looked at Luke's face, burned by wind and sun, dark from days without shaving, marked by fine lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes, lines left by a lifetime of looking into long distances and sunlight undimmed by city smoke. In his faded blue chambray shirt, worn jeans and scarred cowboy boots, Luke could have easily stepped out of the pages of his own family history.
     "I'll bet you look like him," Carla said softly.
     "My father?"
     "No. The beloved outlaw. Case."
     Something in Carla's voice made desire leap fiercely within Luke, but it was unlike any desire he had ever known. It was not only her sweet body and soft mouth he wanted; he also felt an almost overpowering need to hold her and be held by her in return, to hear her whisper that he was her beloved outlaw, the one man whom she had been born to love.
     The one man she must not love, for he could not give her the life she deserved.
     "I envy Mariah," Carla continued slowly. "She gave her outlaw everything a woman wants to give her man, and in doing so she became a part of the land every bit as much as the ancient ruins or