“I’ll get a fire started and some hot water going. There’s a stream that feeds into a small pool just beyond those trees, you’re welcome to use it, though I’d ask you to skip the soap for the time being. Even that can pollute the water.” Though his tone was serious, as it always was when he discussed such things, his eyes remained friendly; Joey grimaced at an itch that seemed to travel over the entire surface of her scalp instantaneously.
“I guess I look pretty awful, don’t I?” she said wryly, tugging at her loosened braid.
He almost chuckled .”Awful? Not you. You hold up very well on the trail.” His eyes were intent on her, sweeping along her body in a way that made her tense and shiver.
“As compared to whom?” she said lightly.
“Ah.” He turned away, suddenly very interested in removing articles from his pack. “There could be no comparison.”
The casual charm with which he said the words reminded her of when she had first met him, his attempts to pursue her as just another woman to share his bed. It jarred in a way she could not quite understand.
Something made her throw caution to the winds then. “You never talk about your background, Luke. Or your past.”
He looked up again, and there was the first hint of a frown on his face. “There isn’t much to talk about,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not important.”
“I disagree.” Joey stood up and brushed the dirt from the seat of her pants. “There’s a lot about you I don’t understand, Luke. And I’d like to.” Ignoring the warning that sounded in her heart and the slow flood of heat that rose in her face, Joey plunged on deliberately.
“Maybe it’s just that I don’t like mysteries. But since we’re stuck with each other for a while, I think it’s reasonable to learn more about each other. Don’t you?”
“Reasonable?” Luke’s tone was almost mocking, though whether it mocked her or himself Joey couldn’t guess “Does reason have anything to do with this?” Suddenly he turned the full intensity of his hypnotic gaze on her, and she felt herself swaying under the impact. And then he released her, almost before she could realize what was happening.
Joey shook herself. “I don’t know how you do that, Luke. But it only makes me want to know more. I like to know what I’m dealing with. Who I’m dealing with.”
He stood up, a length of rope in his hands. “Have you forgotten, Joey, that this is a business relationship? I take you to the place you need to go, and when it’s over, you’ll be leaving town. That arrangement seemed to suit you when we left. I don’t see that anything has changed.” Turning away in dismissal, he strode across the rocky ground to rig the rope between two sturdy saplings; Joey felt the slow burn of anger compel her to follow.
“A business relationship. Is that truly all you think is between us?” Appalled by her own words, Joey stopped dead in her tracks, but it was too late. He swung around to face her, and the old menace was back in full force, cold and primitive.
“I thought you’d learned, Joey. There is nothing between us and can’t be.” He jerked from stillness with a snap as he forestalled the protest that rose, unbidden, in her throat. “No questions. I can’t give you answers.” His face almost contorted then, a brief flash of pain. “Until you leave my territory, there can be no peace for either of us. Don’t you understand?”
In the silence that followed, Joey tried to assimilate a flood of thoughts and feelings and memories into some meaningful pattern. None of it made sense, and his words did not clarify anything. Anything at all.
“I don’t understand,” she said at last, softly. “I don’t understand anything about this, or you. You’ve never bothered to explain. Why did you come after me in town, and then act the way you did at the cabin? Why? Why am I so repulsive to you now that you want to see me gone? Don’t you think you owe me the businesslike courtesy of an explanation?”