Maybe it can be salvaged."

He grunted, turned to the tap and ran a gla.s.s of water for her.

"Drink."

She started to tell him he needed it more than she, then decided against it. Obediently she sipped water. "I was cooking," she said again, "and letting my mind wander. Then the thoughts weren't mine any longer. They were very clear-very personal, you could say. But they weren't mine. They were Sarah's."

Ice skidded up his spine. "You're just letting yourself get too wrapped up in all this stuff."

"Shane, I'm a sensible woman. A rational one. I know what happened here. She was cooking chicken." With a shake of her head, Rebecca set the gla.s.s on the table. "Isn't it odd that I would have decided to try Regan's recipe tonight, September 16? Sarah was cooking chicken the night before the battle."

"So now you know what they ate."

"Yes," she said, facing down his sarcasm. "Now I know. She was frying it, worried about her family, thinking of her son and the baby she carried. Wondering who would die in the morning.

Soldiers were camped not far from here, waiting for dawn. Shewas frying chicken, and her husband was out with the animals.

She wanted him to come in, to come inside so that they could close it all out and just be together. She worried about him. She'd have done anything to ease his mind."

"I think you're working too hard," Shane said carefully. "And I think you've let the fact that the anniversary is tomorrow influence you."

Steady again, she rose. "You know that's not true. You know what's here and you've decided not to face it. That's your choice, and I respect that. Even though I know some nights you dream, and the dreams trouble you, I respect your decision and your privacy. I expect you to show my work and my needs the same respect."

"My dreams are my business."

"I've just said so. I'm not asking you to tell me anything."

"No, you never ask, Rebecca." He jammed his hands into his pockets. "You just wait and whittle a person down with waiting. I don't want any part of this."

"Do you want me to go?"

When he didn't answer, she braced herself, spoke calmly. "I suppose I'll have to ask. It's important to me to be here in the morning. I can't give you clear, rational data on why, only my feelings. I'd appreciate it very much if you'd let me stay, at least another day."

"No one's asked you to go, have they?" He snapped the words out, furious with himself now. Why should he panic at the thought of her packing up? There had never been any promises.He didn't make them, didn't want them. "You want to stay, stay-but leave me out of it. I've got some work to finish up, then I'm going out."

"All right."

He wanted desperately for her to ask him where, and would have snapped her head off if she questioned him. Of course, she didn't, so he couldn't. All he could do was walk out, when all he wanted to do was stay.

Chapter Twelve

He thought about getting drunk. It wasn't a problem-solver, but it did have its points. It was a shame he wasn't in the mood for it.

Arguing with someone was a better idea, and since Rebecca wasn't going to accommodate him, he headed for town, and Devin.

He'd always been able to count on Devin for a good fight.

Shane figured it was a bonus when he found not only Devin in the sheriff's office, but Rafe, too.

"Hey, we were just talking about getting together a poker game."

Rafe greeted him with a slap on the shoulder. "Got any money?" "Got a beer around here?"

"This is a place of law and order," Devin said solemnly, then jerked his head toward the back room. "Couple in the cooler.

You up for a game?"

"Maybe." Shane stalked into the back room. "I cando what I want when I want, can't I? I don't have to check with a woman, like you guys do."

Devinand Rafe exchanged looks. "I'll give Jared a call," Rafe said, picking up the phone as Shane came back in guzzling beer.

While Rafe dialed the phone and murmured into it, Devin propped his feet on his desk. "So, what's Re-becca up to?"

"She doesn't have to check with me, either."

"Ah, had a little spat, did you?" Enjoying the idea, Devin crossed his arms behind his head. "She kick you out?"

"It's my d.a.m.n house," Shane shot back. "And Reasonable Rebecca doesn't spat. She changes," he went on, gesturing with the beer. "Right in front of your eyes. One minute she's tough and smart and c.o.c.ky. The next she's soft and lost and so sweet you'd kill anybody who'd try to hurt her. Then she's cool- Oh, she's so cool, and controlled, and-" He gulped clown beer. "a.n.a.lytical.

How the h.e.l.l are you supposed to keep up?"

"Well," Devin mused, "you can't call her bor-ing."

"Anything but. She thinks she is, at least some of the time. h.e.l.l, I don't know what she thinks she is." Shane brooded into the bottle.

"Just today, she comes across Frannie kissing me. Does she get mad, does she start a fight, accuse me of anything? No. Not that.i.t wasn't perfectly innocent, but the point is that if you're sleeping with somebody you shouldn't like the idea of them kissing somebody else. Right?"

Rafe had hung up the phone and was watching his brother carefully. "I'd agree with that. You agree with that, Dev?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

Pleased with the unity of spirit, Shane lifted the bottle again.

"There you go. But Dr. Knight, she's as cool as you please.

Studying me like I'm a smear on a lab slide again. I hate when she does that."

"Who wouldn't?" Rafe said, and sat down to enjoy himself.

Soothed by brotherly understanding, Shane finished off the first beer, then popped open the second. "And another thing-how come she doesn't ask where all this is leading? Tell me that.

Women are always asking where all this is leading. That's how you keep things from getting too intense, by setting down the cards, you know."

"Is that how?" Devin smiled serenely.

"Sure. But she doesn't ask." He chugged down beer. Thatwas why things had gotten so intense. He needed to believe that.

"And you'd think she'd get in the way, wouldn't you? You'd think she'd get in the d.a.m.n way, living there, but she just sort of fits."

"Does she?" Devin grinned and winked at Rafe.

"Sort of. I mean, there she is at breakfast in the morning, and she's always got something to talk about. She works in the kitchen most of the time, but she never gets in the way, and youstart expecting her to be there."

Rafe looked around as the door opened and Jared walked in with a large brown bag. Jared set it on Devin's desk and took out a six-pack. "We playing here?"

"Maybe later." To keep the interruption at a minimum, Devin gestured Jared to a chair. "Shane's on a roll."

"Yeah." Jared looked at Shane. "What's he rolling about?"

"Rebecca. You were saying?"

"The bedroom smells like her," Shane muttered. "She doesn't leave any of her stuff laying around, and it still smells like her.

Soap, and that stuff she rubs on her skin."

"Uh-oh," Jared said, and helped himself to a beer.

"You know, her parents sent her to boarding school when she was six. Practically a baby. She never had a chance to be a kid.

Sometimes when she laughs, she looks a little surprised by the sound of it." He paused, thought about it. "She's got a great laugh."

Jared turned to Rafe. "She kick him out?"

"He says not."

"It's my d.a.m.n house," Shane reminded them all. "My house, my land. I'm the one who says what goes on around there. If I don't like that stupid, idiotic, ridiculous equipment of hers, then that's it. I don't like that she's wrapped herself up in all this bull, and she's wearing herself down. I'm not coming in and finding her in a heap on the floor again." "What?" Amus.e.m.e.nt fled as Devin straightened in his chair.

"What happened?"

"She fainted-far as I can tell. She says she had an encounter with our great-grandmother." He downed beer to wash both worry and unease out of his system. "Yeah, right. They're both frying chicken the night before the battle. I'm not getting involved in that."

"Is she all right?" Rafe asked.

"Would I be here if she wasn't?" He raked his fingers through his hair and fought to block out the image of her pale, small, still form on the kitchen floor. But he couldn't. "She scared the h.e.l.l out of me, d.a.m.n it. d.a.m.n it." He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, rubbed the heel of his hand over his aching heart. "I can't take her being hurt. I can't stand it. The woman's ripping at me."

With an effort, he pulled himself back, took another gulp from the bottle. "She bounces back," he muttered. "I've never seen anybody bounce back like she does. She's fine now, dandy, back in control. She's not pushing me into getting hooked up with that business. She's not going to hook me into anything."

"Brother." With some sympathy, Jared opened another beer and pa.s.sed it to Shane. "You're already hooked."

"Like h.e.l.l."

"At a guess, how many times do you think about her in a given day?"

"I don't know." Annoyed, Shane decided getting drunk wasn'tsuch a bad idea after all. "I don't count."

In lawyer mode now, Jared briskly cross-examined the witness.

"Anyone else you've thought about that much, that often?"

"So what? She's living with me. You think about somebody who's in the same house day and night."

Rafe studied his nails. "It's just s.e.x."

"The h.e.l.l it is." Like a bullet, Shane was out of his chair, fists ready. "She's not just a warm body." He caught himself, and his brother's sly grin. "I'm not an animal."

"That's a switch." Unconcerned, Rafe sampled his own beer.

"How many other women have you wanted since Rebecca came along?"

Zip. Zero. Zilch. Terror. "That's not the point. The point is..." He sat again, brooded into his beer. "I forgot."

"The point is," Devin said, picking up the threads, "you've lost your balance and you're falling fast."

"He's already hit," Jared put in. "He just doesn't have the sense to know it. But, being a sensible woman, Rebecca might not fall so easy, especially for you."

"What the h.e.l.l's wrong with me?"

"As I was saying," Jared continued. "She's got a life in New York, a career, interests. You might have a problem keeping her from wriggling away. You'll have to be pretty slick to convince her to marry you." Shane choked, coughed, and gulped more beer. "You're crazy.

I'm not marrying anybody."

Rafe only smiled. "Wanna bet?"

Because Shane was terribly pale, Devin took pity on him. "Have another beer, pal. You can bunk in the back room and sleep it off."

It seemed like an excellent suggestion.

She didn't sleep. It wasn't only because Shane wasn't there and the house seemed to come alive around her. It was the wait for morning, through the longest night of her life.

She worked. It had always helped her through crises, small and large. She packed. The systematic removal of her clothing, the neat folding of it into suitcases, was a sign that she was ready to go on with the rest of her life.

If she had a worry, it was that she and Shane would part on uneasy terms. That she didn't want. When he came back, she told herself, she would try to put things back into perspective and achieve some kind of balance.

But he didn't come back, and the hours pa.s.sed slowly to dawn.

When the sun had just begun to rise, and the gray mist hung over the land, swallowing the barn, she stepped outside.