Fire and Rain by Elizabeth Lowell Page A

who had been the first man to be served. He was better than halfway through his plate and showed not one sign of slowing down.
      My God. Even Cash doesn't eat that much, except when we're camping and he's been tramping all over getting rock samples .
     Realization hit. A day's work out on the open range was certainly the equivalent of Cash's geological explorations. The hands were definitely going to be coming back for seconds.
     The bowl of green beans thumped onto the table. Carla turned and headed back for the kitchen.
     "Aren't you going to eat?" Luke asked as he reached for the rapidly vanishing sauce.
     "I'm not hungry."
     Carla hurried into the kitchen and began opening can after can of chili.
    ~6~
    The memory of that first night as the Rocking M's cook still had the power to raise color in Carla's cheeks a month later. The ranch hands had ribbed her mercilessly but not unkindly; Luke had muttered something about cooking for men instead of schoolboys; and Ten had gotten his head handed to him for pointing out that the food was four times as good as anything they had eaten in years, so why complain over short rations?
     In fact, Ten had gotten his head handed to him on a regular basis since Carla had come to the ranch. From the look on Luke's face at the moment, Ten was about to get another full serving of his boss's temper. Hurriedly Carla tried to take the scrub brush from Ten's hand.
     "Thanks for the help, but Luke is right. He didn't hire you to clean walls."
     "You've been working longer hours than any hand since you got here," Ten said calmly, hanging on to the brush. "This is my day off, and if I want to scrub kitchen walls, I'll damned well scrub kitchen walls."
     Luke looked at Carla's drawn, unhappy face and felt his temper rise even higher. Ten was right; Carla had been working twelve-hour days since she had come to the ranch. Every floor in the ranch house was clean enough to eat from. The kitchen counters and cupboards gleamed with cleanliness, as did the beaten-up wooden tables in the dining room. Thanks to Carla's detailed shopping lists, the pantry and cupboards were packed with various foods, the refrigerator was bursting with fresh fruits and vegetables, and a menu was posted in the dining room so that the men would know just what the coming week held in the way of meals.
     Even as Luke stood glaring at Ten and Carla, the kitchen was fragrant with the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking in the range's huge oven. Apple, cherry and blueberry pies had become staple items at the dinner table. Homemade baking powder biscuits and bread helped to fill in the cracks. Waffles and pancakes were common breakfast fare. Fresh brownies appeared in lunch bags with gratifying regularity.
     And Carla looked as though she hadn't eaten a bit of any of the bounty. Luke suspected she had lost weight since she had come to the ranch. He was certain that she smiled less frequently than ever in his memory. He was also certain that he was the cause of her unhappiness. Each time he told himself that he wouldn't lose his temper with her again, he would see her looking up at Ten with wide eyes and laughter trembling on her lips; and then Luke would feel anger racing through his blood, driving out the desire that was so much a part of him these days that he barely noticed it.
     Luke tried to tell himself he was grateful that Carla no longer followed him around like a lost puppy, but he didn't believe it. Slowly, painfully, he had come to the realization that he had wanted Carla at the ranch for the summer because of her transparent feelings for him, not despite them.
     For the past four weeks he had thought often of other summers when he had been the sun in her sky … and she had been the sun in his. At some deep, hidden level of his mind, he had wanted to know again that feeling of being special to someone. It was a heady sensation, one he had never before known, for his father had been too busy working the