Cale wasn’t sure where he was when he awoke. He smelled coffee, though, so he figured he must’ve found company. Or company had found him.
“ ’Bout time you woke up,” a deep voice said.
“Laidlaw.” Cale rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned.
He had shot three deer the day he left. He could have gone back home that same night. Only his pride wouldn’t let him. He figured he would give Raven time alone to stew. Then maybe she would be a little more grateful for his company when he returned.
Every night as he had made himself a pallet on the cold hard ground, he had promised himself he would go home the next morning. And every morning he awoke determined to stay away for at least a month. It was becoming a damned matter of honor.
“Thought you’d be tucked up in bed all right and tight with that woman you took home with you,” Laidlaw said. “What’re you doing down here roaming around the valley?”
Cale stretched out the kinks another night on the ground had put in his muscles. “I left,” he said flatly.
Laidlaw laughed. “Threw you out, huh?”
Cale grimaced. “I told you I left.”
“Yeah. And I’m Julius Caesar.”
“Damned woman was obsessed with cleaning,” Cale complained. “Washing dishes. Sweeping. Throwing things out. Burning stuff!”
“That’s a woman for you,” Laidlaw said. “Nest builders, every one.”
“I already had my nest feathered the way I wanted it,” Cale muttered.
“How long you been gone?”
“A week,” Cale admitted. A week of nights spent dreaming about a woman with dark eyes and shiny black hair. A week of days spent feeling the softness of her hands against his flesh. A week of regrets for his foolish pride.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” Laidlaw asked. “Why didn’t you come back to the rendezvous? There was enough whiskey around to float a canoe, horse races, arm wrestling. Rip-roaring good fun. Only broke up yesterday. We could have raised the roof together.”
“I wanted to be alone.”
“Missed her, huh?”
“I didn’t say that,” Cale snapped.
“See it on your face,” Laidlaw said philosophically. “You’re wound up tight as a bowstring. Only one thing does that to a man. You need a woman. Bad.”
“I don’t need her,” Cale retorted. “Damned if I do!”
Laidlaw squinted at the low, dark gray clouds that scudded just across the tips of an ancient forest of fir and lodgepole pine. “Gonna rain, I think.” He tightened his horsehair coat—the one he had made from the skin of his favorite gelding when it was killed in a fight with a mountain lion. “Stay here, and you’re going to get a real dousing.”
“I don’t care,” Cale said stubbornly.
“You planning to find another place to spend the winter?”
“Her father’s coming to get her when the first snow falls,” Cale said sullenly.
“Too bad.”
“You want to come hole up with me?” Cale asked.
Laidlaw laughed, a deep guffaw that came up from his belly. “Never thought I’d see you scared. And of a woman.”
“I’m not scared. I just thought—”
Laidlaw shook his head to cut off Cale’s flimsy excuses. “You’re going to have to face her sooner or later.”
“Damned woman stiffens like a board when I get near her. Threatened to cut me up if I touched her.” Cale was appalled at how much his need for Raven escaped in his voice.
Laidlaw cocked a brow speculatively. “Are you telling me you don’t know how to woo a woman into bed?”
Cale felt the telltale heat under his skin. “I know how. Doesn’t mean I want to.”
“You want to,” Laidlaw said with certainty. “Woman’s gotta be made to feel like sleeping with a man’s her own idea. Then she’s happy as a bee in clover. I’ve got faith in you, boy.”
Cale snickered. “That’s a comfort.” He reached for the coffeepot and ended up wrenching his barely healed stab wound. He drew back and worked the sore muscle by rolling his shoulder. He had yanked the stitches out himself, wishing the whole time for Raven’s gentle touch. Damn it, I miss her.
Cale hadn’t realized he had spoken aloud until he saw the cheeky grin on Laidlaw’s face. He scowled. “I want her,” he admitted. “I haven’t had a woman in a long time.”
As if any woman would do. Cale knew good and well there was only one woman he wanted. She had dark eyes and hair the shiny black of a raven’s wing, and she was waiting for him in his very own cabin up the mountain.
“With your luck, she won’t even be there when you get back,” Laidlaw said.
Cale froze. The thought had never even crossed his mind. Or rather, he hadn’t allowed it to cross his mind. Raven had agreed to the bargain. And, after all, she had the whole damned cabin to herself, along with all of his supplies. Why would she want to leave? He felt a cold terror at the very idea.
“Hey,” Laidlaw said. “I was kidding.”
Cale had already torn his ground cloth off the bed of pine boughs and was shoving it into his saddlebags. He grabbed things from the makeshift camp and packed without regard to neatness.
“Can’t you stay for a cup of coffee?” Laidlaw asked.
“I’ve been gone too long already,” Cale said. “I have to get back. Help yourself. I’ll leave the pot.”
“So long,” Laidlaw said, clearly amused at Cale’s headlong flight. “I’ll see you at the next rendezvous.”
Cale didn’t even wave goodbye as he headed up the mountain toward his cabin. As he rode, he thought of all the things that could have happened to Raven. If she had stayed, that is. Three Toes might have come hunting berries and caught her unawares. There were Blackfeet and Arikara roaming the hills. She might have hurt herself chopping wood. Or slipped and fallen and broken her leg.
His mind created horrors he wouldn’t have believed in a more rational state. But there was nothing logical about his need to return to the cabin. He was a lemming headed over a cliff into the sea. Raven was his. Pride didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered except getting back to her.