Fire and Rain Read Free Page B

magnificence. It wasn't the absence of people that was causing Carla to question her own sanity; she loved the rugged, wild land. It was the presence of people that was giving her stomach the ohmygod flutters. To be precise, it was the presence of one particular person – Luke MacKenzie, owner of a handsome chunk of the surrounding land.
     And a handsome chunk himself.
     In the back of her mind Carla kept hearing her brother's advice. Chin up, Carla. You can do anything for a summer. Besides, you heard Luke. He won't be any harder on you than he is on any other ranch hand.

     "Thanks, big brother," Carla muttered as she remembered Cash's smiling send-off that morning. "Thanks all to hell."
     Not that she was angry with Cash for being amused by her predicament. He had only been doing what big brothers always did, which was to treat their smaller sisters with a combination of mischief, indulgence and love. Nor was it Cash's fault that Carla found herself driving over a rough road to a live-in summer job with the man who had haunted her dreams for every one of the seven years since she had been fourteen. Cash wasn't at fault because he hadn't been the one to suggest the bet that he had ultimately lost.
     However, he had neglected to mention that Luke would be part of her birthday celebration. When Carla walked in the front door and saw him, she had nearly dropped the pizza she was carrying. Luke had always had that effect on her. When he was nearby, her normal composure evaporated. She had made a fool of herself around him throughout her teenage years.
      Well, not quite all of my teenage years, Carla told herself bracingly. I was eighteen when I took the cure. Or rather, when Luke administered it.

     After that, she had stopped finding excuses to go out to the Rocking M and watch the man she loved. But she hadn't stopped soon enough. She hadn't stopped before she had told Luke that she loved him and begged him to look at her as a woman, not a girl.
     The memory of that disastrous evening still had the ability to make Carla flush, go pale and then flush again with a volatile combination of emotions she had no desire to sort out or describe. The one emotion she had no trouble putting a name to was humiliation. She had been mortified to the soles of her feet. But she had learned something useful that night. She had learned that people didn't die of embarrassment.
     They just wanted to.
     So she had turned and run from the scene of her personal Waterloo. Driving recklessly, crying, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the man who was much too sophisticated for her, she had fled the ranch. All the way home she had told herself that she hated Luke. She hadn't believed it, but she had wanted to.
     Since then, Carla had tried to put Luke MacKenzie out of her mind. She hadn't succeeded. Every time she went out on a date, she only missed Luke more. Not surprisingly, she didn't date much. The harder she tried to find other men attractive, the brighter Luke's image burned in her memory.
      No man can be that special, Carla told herself fiercely. My memory isn't reliable. If I were around Luke now, as a woman, he wouldn't be nearly so attractive to me. Familiarity breeds contempt. That's why I let all this happen. I wanted to get familiar enough to feel contempt.

     That, or outright insanity, was the only explanation for what had happened the evening of her twenty-first birthday, a celebration of the very date when she had legally become old enough to know better.
      Look on the bright side. A summer on the Rocking M beats a summer as a gofer for the Department of Archaeology. If I have to check one more reference on one more footnote, I'll do something rash.

     Get used to it. That's what being an archaeologist is all about.
     While learning about vanished cultures and peoples fascinated Carla, she wasn't certain that a career as an archaeologist was what she wanted. She was certain that she was going