“You—varmint!” she exploded. “You really think that I had Rudy Weiss send someone after us!”
He didn’t answer her. He turned away and reached to take the saddlebags from his horse’s haunches.
It was the wrong side of enough for Callie. Her limbs found new life. With Jared cradled strongly in one arm, she marched on Daniel and sent a fierce punch into his back with her free hand. It must have packed a certain wallop, for he spun on her with his eyes wide and his teeth clenched. “Bastard!” she hissed. “And you must think that I sat there and pinched my own baby to make him cry out when it appeared that the Yanks might not stop us! I enjoy a reckless gallop across the countryside with my infant in my arms! Arrgh!” The sound escaped her, a cry, a growl, an emission of her deep-seated rage and resentment. She smashed her fist against his chest with the same fury.
“Stop it, Callie!” he cried in turn, catching her wrist, twisting it, pulling her against him. Her gaze met his, still in a rage. “Stop!”
“You stop!”
“Give me one good reason to trust you!”
She wrenched free of his hold, amazed that she could be so angry and feel the flash of tears burning in her eyes.
“One good reason? All right, Daniel, I’ll give you the best. You should have trusted me, no matter what, because I loved you.”
“Love is a word, Callie. One you know how to use well.”
She inhaled sharply. “I was trying to save your life, you fool Reb!”
“By sending me to a Yankee prison camp?”
“You’re not invincible, Daniel. They would have killed you.”
He took a step toward her. There was a deep tension etched into his features. “Would that I could really believe that, Callie. Would that I could trust you.”
The tears that had burned her eyes threatened to spill over. Maybe she had planted the seeds of doubt within his mind, but he still didn’t believe her. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe the war had made him too mistrustful, too bitter.
But she had told him the truth, as simple as it was. And she wasn’t risking placing her heart beneath his feet any longer.
She backed away from him, rubbing her chaffed wrist. “Don’t bother to put yourself out on my account, Colonel. You must be a bitter man, dragging me through enemy territory. Don’t ever forget, Daniel, that I am a Yankee. I believe in our cause. If you must mistrust me, go ahead and do so. I’ve never lied to you about my loyalties.”
He stared at her. In the night, she couldn’t fathom the emotion in his eyes.
Perhaps there was none.
She spun on her heel, and walked away from him. Exhausted, heartsick, and bone weary, she sank down by a tree. Jared was fussy. She tried to feed him and crooned to him softly. She was so hungry herself perhaps she wasn’t making decent milk for him anymore. She closed her eyes. Even the extent of her anger was fading. Everything was fading except for the pit of hunger at the bottom of her stomach.
She didn’t realize that Daniel had left her until she began to smell something with an aroma so sweet and tantalizing that she thought she had to be dreaming. What a dream. She smelled something fresh-baked, like a pie crust. There was meat in it. Maybe even beef. It had that rich, wonderful scent of beef and gravy.
There was no beef to be had. Daniel hadn’t caught and cooked anything because he didn’t want to light a fire by night.
But oh, what a dream!
Her eyes flew open.
She wasn’t dreaming. Daniel was hunched down before her with a fresh meat pie in his hands. Steam wafted above it, and it was the steam that brought the incredibly sweet and wonderful scent to her nose.
She stared at him, amazed.
He produced the fork from his mess kit, and handed it to her. She kept staring at him. “Eat slowly, or you’ll get sick,” he warned her. “But how—where—?”
“A farmhouse window, a good mile down the road. There were three of them. I only took one.”
“You stole this?”
“I confiscated it.”
“Stole it.”
“Do you want to eat it or not?”
She did. She started to raise Jared to her shoulder, but Daniel reached for his son. The baby began to cry, but for once her hunger was stronger than her maternal instinct. It had been Daniel’s idea to drag him through the countryside like this. And Daniel had claimed to be good with babies. He was welcome to be good now.
And he was. He walked away from her, gently rocking the baby on his shoulder, talking to him. Callie couldn’t hear his words. She worried for just a second, and then she worried no more. She dived into the meat pie.
The first bite was heaven. The second bite was even sweeter still. She tried to warn herself to slow down, but the food was so good that she began to eat faster and faster. The food hit her empty stomach. Had she been standing, she would have swayed. She bit down hard, fighting a wave of nausea. Slowly, it passed. She looked down at the pie again. She had eaten more than half of it.
She waited a minute, assuring herself that she could stand, and that she wouldn’t be sick. Then she rose, and walked the pie slowly over to Daniel.
She wanted to clobber him, but she felt compelled to apologize about the food. She did so, regally, trying to dredge up the best of her prewar manners.
“I’m so sorry. I believe that I’ve managed to consume a great deal more than my share.”
There was the first light of humor in his eyes as they met hers.
“It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right, sir! I had no—”
“Callie, you’re feeding a baby. And we’re not at a barn dance, or in someone’s parlor. It’s all right.” He exchanged the baby for the pie, plucking the fork from her fingers. She had a feeling he would have lit into the pie with just his fingers if that meant saving some of the juices.
She would have done so herself.
He walked away from her, calling to her over his shoulder. “There’s water, just down through the embankment over there. It’s a creek, but it’s running pretty deep, and there’s plenty of rapids and falls along it. Be careful.”
She nodded and turned away from him. She found a clean diaper for Jared and one of the few clean sacques she had along for him. She hurried down to the water.
It might be dangerous, she thought, but it was breathtaking. There was a moon out, and it was glittering down on the water that rushed over rocks, creating tiny falls. The creek ran straight to the river, she was sure, and it had some of the scope and power of the Potomac. The water seemed to dance in the moonlight, beautiful, magical.
She set Jared down on the soft shoulder, changed him and cleaned him, talking to him all the while. He smiled and gurgled in turn. She rinsed out his old clothing and diaper, and set them to dry on a rock. They probably wouldn’t do so overnight, but in the morning they might.
She drank deeply, and splashed the water over her face and throat and arms. It felt so cool, so clean, after the long day. Days, she reminded herself. She had never felt so sweaty, so dirty. She glanced out over the creek, longing to dive right into it.
Some slight sound came from behind her. She swiveled around on her haunches.
Daniel was behind her. Leaning against a tree, he watched her. She wondered just how long he had been there. He walked down to her and fell on his knees beside her. He swept off his hat, then buried his own face in the water. He rose with it falling from him in splatters and waves. He cupped his hands and drank deeply. Then he eyed her, speculatively. “Good night, Mrs. Michaelson,” he said softly.
He rose and walked slowly up the shoulder. He didn’t go very far. She saw that he had led the horses to a nearby tree and tethered them. He had set the blanket down under the shade of a heavy old oak. He stretched out on it, adjusting his hat over his face to cut out the moonlight.
Well, she wasn’t going to curl up by him. Not tonight.
She picked up Jared. She whispered to him, playing for a while, and Jared smiled and coo
ed and played back. He became fussy, and Callie fed him, and in time, he fell asleep at her breast. She adjusted her bodice and turned at last. There was another large oak near Daniel. She could spread her shawl out there for the baby to sleep on.
She did so, curling up beside him. The ground felt very rough and gritty. And dirty.
It was supposed to be dirty, she reminded herself. It was dirt.
But she began to wonder what crawled in it, as she never did when she slept beside Daniel. When she heard the hoot of an owl, she bolted up, nearly dislodging Jared.
Daniel was up, too, instantly alert. He stared at Callie in the moonlight.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Trying to sleep.”
“Why are you over there?”
“Because I don’t care to sleep that close to you!”
He arched a brow. “Oh, I see. Fickle. Eat my pie, but eschew my bed!”
He was laughing at her, she thought. She turned her back on him, stretching out to try to sleep again.
He sighed. “Get over here, Callie.”
“I will not.”
“Get over here.”
“I will not sleep beside a bloody Reb who won’t even trust me!”
“You’ve warned me that you’re a Yank through and through. I don’t dare trust you completely. Now, are you coming over here?”
“No, I’m not!”
He was on his feet, striding her way. She bolted warily to a sitting position. “Are you planning on apologizing?” she asked him.
“No!”
“Then I am not coming over!”
“Give in, Callie.”
“I will not. You give in.”
“Hell no! I don’t give in. It’s all we Rebs have got.”
“Well then, sir, we are at a statement, and no one wins!”
He paused, directly above her. She shrieked out as he reached down and plucked her up into his arms. His hold was tight. His eyes were fierce.
“No, Callie!” he corrected her as she stared at him, lips tight, body tense. “I win.”
“Why the hell do you win?”
“Because I’m bigger. And stronger. And because you’re going to sleep where I put you, that’s why!”
He turned around, heading for the tree. “Daniel, don’t you dare—Daniel, the baby!” she reminded him.
“I’m going back for him,” he assured her, depositing her none too gently on the blanket beneath the tree that he had chosen. As he promised, he turned back for Jared.
A minute later her sleeping child was pressed back into her arms.
She kept her back stiff and hard to him all through the night.
Toward morning he awoke briefly, as she did, when Jared began to cry with hunger. Callie was very aware of him behind her, but she kept silent, her back stiff even then. She felt Daniel lie down beside her again.
She never went back to sleep after that point. She lay there for a long while, just watching as the first faint streaks of dawn began to peek softly through the leaves of the tree overhead. She closed her eyes, and she could hear the light chirping of the birds, and the soft rush of the water in the brook so near them. She opened her eyes again. The light that slowly began to flood around them seemed colored itself, pink and gold and orange and even crimson. It flickered gently, beautifully, over the trees, the earth, and the bubbling water. The earth smelled rich with the coming of the morning. From where Callie lay, it might have been a little stretch of Paradise, rather than a piece of border land, deeply divided between North and South.
For once, it was hard to think of the war. Callie sat up, watching how the light of dawn played over the water. The colors were truly glorious, dancing, playing on the foam that jumped and bubbled over the rocks.
She glanced at Jared. He slept soundly, his little mouth open, his tiny limbs splayed. She smiled. Her smile fading, she glanced at his father. Daniel, too, it seemed, slept peacefully.
Carefully, so as not to arouse either of them, she rose. She walked down to the creek bed. The water was so clean and enticing. And she was so dusty and sweaty and miserable.
She glanced back at the sleeping men in her life. She shed her shirt and bodice and her petticoat and pantalets. She shivered as the morning air hit her, clad only in her long chemise. She wanted to strip it away, too, but she didn’t. She glanced at Daniel again nervously, but then she didn’t care. The temptation to soak herself in the cool clean water was overwhelming.
She stepped into it. She nearly screamed as the cold first struck her, but she swallowed down the urge. She moved farther across the creek, grateful that it grew deeper, deep enough for her to sink into it to her waist, and filled enough with rock so that her toes didn’t sink into squishy mud. She shivered violently at first, but as she came down into the water, her shivering ceased. It was beautiful. It seemed to cleanse away the days of riding, the mud and the dust.
She found a low, flat rock beneath a craggy rapid and sat upon it, delighting in the water that cascaded down upon her head and hair. She scrubbed her face with it, and rubbed it over her shoulders. She stretched out, allowing it to fall over her breasts and belly and thighs. She opened her mouth, and drank it, and she cupped it into her hands and sluiced it over her throat once again.
She looked to the embankment.
Jared still slept.
Daniel did not.
Barefoot and in his uniform breeches only, he was standing on the embankment. He had cast off his frock coat and shirt to bury his torso in the water, it seemed, but then he had seen her. He watched her now, the sun glistening over the bronze muscles of his shoulders and chest, and the lean ripple of flesh that led down to his belly.
His eyes met hers.
She had kept on the chemise for modesty’s sake. How foolish. For it was sheer and pale, and it was plastered against her, and it hid nothing of her body. It accented it, she thought, clinging to every curve and angle. Puckering over her breasts. Molding tight to the triangle at her legs.
She needed to do something. To sink low into the water, to cover herself.
But as she watched him, she discovered that she couldn’t move.
Daniel had no such problem.
His eyes held hers. With a slow stride, he started across the rushing creek. The water waltzed and danced and rushed around his gray pants legs. It shimmered in droplets on his shoulders and chest. He had grown lean, she thought vaguely. Lean, but hard, harder than ever. A pulse ticked against the cord of his throat, and muscles constricted and rippled as he moved.
Leave, she told herself. Push away from the rock, and leave. Walk by him. He will not stop you.
But she didn’t leave. She stayed there, watching as he came. Feeling his eyes burn into her. He came close, closer still. The heat and power of his body became tangible.
And still, she didn’t move.
He stood in front of her in his taut, soaked breeches. She raised her chin, to better look into his eyes. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue against the dryness that so suddenly and so fiercely plagued them.
He was watching her mouth. He was going to kiss her. He did not.
He suddenly dropped to his knees in the shallow water, his hands bracing her hips. She should have moved. She should have cried out. She should have denounced him for the way that he condemned her.
She did nothing. She was electrified, caught in his hold, in the staggering heat of his body.
And in the kiss that finally touched her. Not her lips. Her belly. Through the thin fabric of her chemise, she felt his lips. Then felt the ragged, searing fire of his tongue as it moved in a staggering path across the plane of her stomach. Touching her navel, lowering to tease and taunt in an ever closer pattern to the heat and pulse that had now begun to throb between her thighs.
Cry out, stop him! she warned herself. She opened her mouth, but no words would come, only a choking, breathless sound. He stood, rising before her. His hands moved possessively over the length of her.
Touching her, warming her. His mouth, his lips, his kiss, focused on her breasts. Closing over the fabric, heedless of it, no, using it. The movement of cloth and the heat and dampness of his mouth upon her nipple were nearly more than she could bear. He tugged gently, then suckled hard, drawing her into his mouth, easing his hold, playing his tongue upon her again. He must taste the baby’s milk, she thought, her face flaming, but if so, then he was fascinated by it. For his intimate touch moved over her breasts again and again.
At long last, his lips found hers. Found them, and held them. Moved upon them frantically, demanding more and more. His mouth parted hers, his tongue delved deeply, plundered, and caressed once again. She began to shake and shiver wildly, not from the cold of the water, but from the heat of the man.
His mouth closed over her shoulder, his teeth nipped lightly, his tongue bathed her. His kiss trailed down the sodden valley of cloth between her breasts. He created a line with his tongue. The line began to burn.
And to travel farther and farther down.
It seemed to lazily sear the length of her. Touching her navel again. Forming a distinct trail beneath it. Coming lower and lower and then finding the very heart of the throbbing between her thighs. Touching upon soft and intimate places with the fabric still between his mouth’s caress and the tender and sensitive and secret regions of her flesh. Had fire been set to dry kindling, no sensation could have been more explosive. Sweet honeyed ripplings of pleasure burst through Callie, and she cast her head back, trying not to cry out with the sheer sensual pleasure that filled her, but emitting soft moans despite her best efforts.
And he kept on and on until she was shivering anew, filled to the bursting point, scarcely able to stand. Perhaps he knew his own power, for the very moment she would have fallen, he was up, scooping her into his arms, carrying her to the embankment. In seconds his breeches were shed, unleashing the ardency of his desire to spring to life before her. She closed her eyes, shivering, wanting him.
He lowered himself upon her. She was barely aware of the earth and sky and the rush of the water, and then again, she had never felt them so keenly. She felt her back, moving over the earth, she felt the hot touch of the sun, she felt the cooling sensation of the water.