Chapter 5

"Come on," Cassie said. "We'll wash our hands." She was at ease with John now that they'd finished with Rupert. Maybe tonight heralded a new beginning for them. Maybe she was ready for that.

John followed her into the kitchen, and she handed him a bar of pink soap. When he held it under the running water, the bar released the scent of roses.

"I make the soap myself," she explained, reaching to take it from him. Their hands touched, and suddenly Cassie felt as though she couldn't catch her breath. She didn't want this to be sexual. It was the last thing she wanted. But here they stood hip to hip, and unbidden thoughts and images strobe-flashed through her mind—his hands, his hands cool from the running water, her body tight against his, and then more. Much more.

The water trickled unheeded over her hands.

"Cassie, do you have a towel?"

She blinked to see John dripping water on the countertop. Thank goodness he couldn't know what she'd been thinking. To cover her confusion she whipped open a nearby drawer, not the one that held the towels, and slammed it closed with a clatter of cheese cutters and can openers and potato peelers. She said in an almost-normal tone, "You'll find a towel hanging on the back of the kitchen door."

He found it, she turned off the water, and she dried her own trembling hands on a paper towel.

"I suppose I should be going back to my place," John said reluctantly. He peered out the window into the night. Rain was pouring out of the sky, and wind continued to lash the trees. "How long do you suppose this will go on, anyway?"

How long it will go on? Half an hour. All night. Until morning. Until after you make love to me. More unwelcome thoughts, but real.

Cassie found her voice. "I've seen storms in the mountains last for hours." She swallowed and turned away. He would understand her statement as a half-veiled invitation to stay the night. She wiped her palms, so soon damp again, on her robe behind her back, where he wouldn't see.

A white-hot flash of lightning rent the distant sky, echoing and reverberating from mountain to mountain.

"I could wait a few minutes and see if it dies down."

Cassie was silent.

"Of course, if you'd rather I go, I will."

"You don't have to leave," she said, her voice no more than a murmur. She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, her eyes wide and dark. "Sleep in the guest room if you'd like."

Was this an overture? Would she withdraw it in the next moment or two? He forced a smile. "With Bertrand? I think not."

"I'd close Bertrand in the kitchen. I do that sometimes."

He shook his head. She was trying pathetically hard, making too much of an effort to fight the sexual tension strung tight between them, and it showed. She was so beautiful to him in that moment. Suddenly, he forgot to worry about how she would react. He strode toward her, wrenched her around to face him. "If I stay, I won't be sleeping with Bertrand," he said, his voice rough with emotion.

He belatedly recalled what had happened last time he'd held her in his arms. He half expected her to pull away this time, but she did not. Instead she went totally passive, not taking anything but not giving, either. He expected her to twist away at any moment. Thinking about that evening at his cabin when she'd run from him, he wondered if perhaps it was different with her now that they were on her own turf and not his. Perhaps being in her own house made her feel secure.

"Tell me why you keep running away, Cassie. I want to know."

She lifted her head and stared at him, her eyes bottomless pools of pain. Her eyes shouldn't look like that, he thought, not now when they were getting close. They should reflect hope or passion or longing or lust. He saw none of those things.

She leaned into him, her breath quickening against his skin and her breasts pressed against his chest, and he could no longer resist what he'd been wanting to do. He kissed her. He couldn't help it. He didn't expect her to respond, but as always she surprised him. Amazingly enough, her mouth was eager and urgent. It was more than he'd hoped for.

The passion he hadn't seen in her eyes expressed itself now. He'd known she was a woman who felt things deeply, and her response proved it. But even as he deepened the kiss, he knew that as much as he wanted her, he could wait. Having sex with her was not as important as understanding this woman for whom he had developed such strong feelings.

The kiss ended, and she buried her face in his shoulder.

"Wow," he said. "That was something." He tipped her face up. "Hey," he said. "I don't want to move too fast."

"Are we?" Her eyes were wide, unfathomable, searching his.

"Yeah. Maybe. I don't know." He held her hand as they moved into the front room where he pulled her down on the settle beside him and curved his arm around her. She huddled against him, as though seeking shelter. He didn't mind sheltering her with his body, but he refused to hide her from herself.

He spoke gently. "Cassie—Cassie, what is your real name? Not Cassie, surely?"

"Cassandra," she whispered.

"Cassandra. A beautiful name, and I will call you by it when I want you to know that what I say is important and real and true, and when what I am going to say is meant only for you."

Cassie wondered why she was sitting here with this near-stranger, listening to him shape these words that fell so strangely upon her ears. She should be lying alone in bed, raindrops whispering on the roof, thunder shaking the house.

"Cassandra, you don't need to hide from me. I won't hurt you. Do you believe that?"

"All right," he went on, taking her silence for assent. "There's no reason for either of us to be lonely. You're a fascinating woman, and you're beautiful to me. So very, very beautiful." His hand went up to cup her cheek.

No man had complimented Cassie in that way since Kevin. She didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve anything. She wasn't worthy of the dream of happiness that curled cautiously upward as she heard herself called beautiful in John Howard's voice. She tamped the pleasure down, and when it wouldn't die, she reamed it out with memories. Kevin. Rory. Root out the joy; let it wither, let it die.

She straightened and pulled away. His eyes tried to hold her, but she refused to respond. "You'd better go. I can manage Rupert just fine."

John was stunned. Things had been going well. They'd been making progress. He knew she'd felt something for him, and now this.

In a sudden flash, he understood that Cassie didn't want to feel special and desirable. If anyone tried to build her up, she immediately tore herself down. Why hadn't he seen it before? The signs were all there—withdrawal from her previous life, her reclusive existence up here on this mountain, her resistance to being admired by a man. To being touched by a man, to allowing herself that ultimate satisfaction—the pleasure of being loved by a man.

His troubled eyes assessed the stubborn set of her jaw, but now he understood more about her than before. It only made him more determined to break through. It pained him that she wasn't able to accept what he was eager to give. Tentatively he reached out, and she sighed.

Amazingly she accepted his hand at the nape of her neck. He reached up with both hands and buried his fingers in the rich outburst of hair, raking through its vibrant depths until his fingertips met her warm scalp. The rosy scent of the soap lingered on his hands, and it was the roses he smelled as he drew in his breath sharply before he again lowered his mouth to connect with her parted lips. She opened her mouth to his, and slowly her arms slid up his chest and rested there.

John had never been one to take the sharing of another's body lightly. Intimate body contact was a privilege, and being naked together was a gift. The rest of it—the passion, the letting down of one's guard—was what made a man and a woman completely real to each other. If one or the other partner had reservations, the act became meaningless and left him feeling depressed and empty.

Cassie confused him. He'd already made up his mind that he wouldn't hide her from herself, and at the time that had seemed honest and good. But now they were kissing, her arms around his neck, and he couldn't imagine that having gone this far, either of them would want to stop. But what did she want? He never knew what she would do.

Before he was able to get all this straight in his head, she pulled away. Then, her gaze holding his, she rose, took his hand and led him into the bedroom. She kept her face turned away.

He didn't speak. Instead he watched spellbound as Cassie slowly let the robe slip from her shoulders to the floor. Rain drummed on the roof, or was it his heartbeat pounding in his ears? His mouth went suddenly dry.

He thought, I know her and yet I don't. And how well does anyone ever know another person? So far Cassie had seemed determined to deny him entrance to her tortured mind and thoughts, but now she was preparing to allow him entrance to her body. Her skin glowed in the lamplight, her legs shadowing into a dusky V visible through her thin nightgown.

He caught her in an embrace and rained kisses down the side of her neck until his lips reached her collarbone. "That feels good," she whispered.

"And this?" He slipped the strap of her gown over her shoulder and rested his hand, all gentleness, on the top curve of her breast.

"Lovely," she whispered. "Just... lovely."

"I'm not going to stop," he said.

"I don't want you to," she said, pulling his head down so that his lips touched her nipple. "I want it to happen, I want." The words all ran together.

His breath drew heavier. "You want what?" After so much resistance, he wanted to hear it from her.

"You," she said, roughly pulling his head down again, the movement of her arm tilting her breast upward.

She felt the heat of him through her gown, smelled the rain in his still-damp hair. No time now to evoke the protection of her own special ghosts, and she pushed the thought of them to the outer reaches of her mind. There would be time enough for that later.

He touched her slowly, reverently, beginning at her lips, his finger lingering at the corner of her mouth and picking up a thread of wetness, feathering his fingertips down, swirling them slowly across her shoulders, spreading them flat on her sternum, then spiraling them around and around each breast, reverently touching each nipple and kissing it, too, and down to the silvery marks on her abdomen, leaving them to slowly tip the mossy growth below and quest there, seeking what he eventually found.

The ache started in her abdomen and radiated in waves to her legs, everywhere. Somehow he shed his clothes and they fell back upon the bed, his weight pressing her into the rumpled sheets.

Cassie felt skinful, full in her skin. His fingers tingled her, burned her, found her, filled her. Ah, the pleasures of the skin, she thought, because his skin pleasured her as much as her own. The textures of it—soft and crinkly around his eyes, full-muscled in his upper back, downy with hair on his chest and tight abdomen. Their lovemaking found its own rhythm, now faster, now slower, not fast enough, then, for him, reaching a shuddering climax, leaving him gasping above her.

And when he calmed, he nestled his head against her shoulder and said in a low voice, "I should have waited for you."

Before she could speak he had begun again, slowly, carefully, lovingly retracing the pattern. He kissed her nipples, and he wrought exquisite sensations with his fingers. She floated along on the ecstasy, delighting in the wonder of it, experiencing the beauty of one body responding to another. When he reached his peak again she rejoiced, but still it did not happen for her.

"Cassandra," he said, his mouth against her hair, "can't you?"

All the beauty, all the joy of giving, all the happiness he had brought her was not enough. Not for him, and not for her.

She remained silent, but she wanted to cry. This wonderfully thoughtful man wanted for her what she could not do. And she didn't want him to think he was less than he was, for in truth, she was the one who was less. She was unable to give herself to a man in the way he wanted.

"It's not your fault," she said unevenly, sliding away and swinging her feet over the side of the bed.

"Cassie," he said as he reached for her hand, but adroitly she twisted away, bent swiftly and picked up her robe and slid her arms into it. Before he could speak again, she left the room.

John shook his head to clear it. He'd always regarded all women as mysterious, with their cycles like the moon and the secret processes that went on inside their bodies, not to mention in their heads. But this woman with her silences and capriciousness and her frightened withdrawals must be the most mysterious woman of all.

He got up and went after her.

"Cassie, come back to bed," he said, thinking that if he were to find out anything about her, it would have to be there. It was the only place where she even halfway let down her guard.

"I think that would be a mistake, don't you?" She melted at the sight of him, so real, so beautiful, so there.

"No, I do not," he said firmly. And then, without warning, he unceremoniously picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, where he placed her on the bed.

He turned off the light. She hesitated for a moment, then rolled close to him until she rested on her side facing away from him. They lay for several minutes listening to each other breathe. Outside, the rain still fell, but there was no more thunder.

"How long has it been, Cassie?" he said finally.

"How long has what been?"

"How long without a man?"

"Aren't you overstepping your bounds?" she snapped. In the dark, he couldn't see her face.

"I don't think so. I'm not a one-night stand, you know. I'm going to be around for a while. I don't just want a warm body to lie with on cool mountain nights. I'm aiming for an honest-to-goodness intimate relationship. Which we can't have if we go on this way. So, how long?"

"Since I've been here," she finally said in a small voice. "Almost two years."

"Didn't you want—?"

She considered this. "Yes, for a while," she said.

"A little? A lot?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "A lot at first. Then not so much. As though that part of me no longer existed."

"I'm going to help you find it again," he said, tracing the whorls of her ear with a fingertip. She loved the whisper of his finger on her ear.

"Not possible," she said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

"Well, I'm going to have a hell of a good time trying," he told her, and then he was shifting himself across her, lying on the other side of her, gazing into her eyes. Their eyes had adjusted to the dark, and a thin ribbon of light from the front room illumined her face.

"Would you mind taking off that robe?" he said politely. "I very much prefer making love to naked ladies."

She couldn't help smiling. After she obliged, he tugged it from under the bedcovers and threw it across the room.

"Why did you do that?"

"So I can watch you walk nude across the room in the morning."

She cuddled up to the strong, solid bulk of him. It seemed strange to feel sexual.

"And now, shall we try it again?"

Let him do with me what he will, she thought helplessly.

And so he did.

* * *

Morning. Gray fingers of light climbing the far wall, because they had never pulled the curtain across the window. Tigger meowing to come in the house, and Bertrand scratching to be released from the guest room. Memory also knocked, and Cassie opened the door.

She lay on her back in the early morning quiet and pictured Kevin. She always thought of Kevin first thing in the morning. And Rory. Kevin, his tawny hair tousled over his forehead, his morning growth of beard rough against her breasts. Rory, waking before they did and running in rosy from sleep to pounce on their bed, knocking pillows to the floor. Laughter. Tickling. Giggling. So different from now, and so long ago.

But this was John. Oh, Kevin. Oh, Rory. Oh, Cassie, what have you done?

Trying not to roll over on his side of the mattress, she slid carefully out of bed and retrieved her robe across the room. John hadn't seen her walk nude across the room after all. It occurred to her that she should have had some feeling about that, but she felt no humor, no sadness, no anticipation of next time, nothing.

She went to the hearth to check on the raccoon. It was asleep. She nudged open the guest-room door and Bertrand shot out, his feet scrabbling on the floor. When he hid himself under the couch, she put the box with the raccoon in the guest room and closed the door. Then she let in Tigger, who wound around her feet. Finally, she went into the bathroom and washed her face and brushed her hair and teeth. She slipped on a plum-colored shift before hanging her robe on the door hook, the scent of last night's lovemaking wafting from its folds.

Then she took her dulcimer from its shelf and sat with the case in her lap, thinking longingly of Kevin and his thoughtfulness in having it made for her, stroking the fine leather and watching the sun come up over Pride's Peak.

It came to her in bits and pieces, the song. A chorus first, a rhythmic cadence. Then a word or two about the way people live their lives in tiers—tears, a possibility of a play on words here—one tier as a child, the next highest as a husband or a wife, the next as a parent and finally as a grandparent. Before she could lose it, she whipped the dulcimer from its case and strummed a few chords. She rummaged in Gran's desk for a scrap of paper and jotted down the words in almost indecipherable chicken scratches. The chords she would work out later—no, now, it would have to be now, because later she might not remember—oh, it had been so long since she had been able to write her music.

John heard the notes from the bedroom. Groggily he reached for Cassie's warmth, but she wasn't beside him. Then the fog of sleep halfway retreated, and he thought, That's Cassie making that music.

Puzzled, he pulled on his pants and shook his hair out of his eyes. He opened the bedroom door slowly so he wouldn't disturb her. And when his gaze fell upon her, he saw her in profile against the sunrise over the mountain. He was staggered at what he should have realized long ago.

But he couldn't have known because he had always considered her face as a whole, two different but beautiful sides to it, a highly individual kind of face. In her pictures, on television, she had always been photographed from one side, the right. And her face had once been rounder, without those lean planes beneath her cheekbones.

Cassie stopped strumming the dulcimer when she saw John standing there. She was so involved in the creation of her song that she hadn't noticed him when he stepped out of the bedroom. She caught her breath at the astonishment on his face, and in that moment she knew her secret was out.

It all fit: the mountain dulcimer, the goose quill, her retreat to a place where virtually no one could find her.

"Cassandra," he said unevenly. "You are—you must be—Cassandra Dare!"