isolated islands of illumination in the gloom.
Both Cash and Mariah ate quickly, for the metal camp plates drained heat from the food. Cash stripped the sweet flesh from the fish bones with a deftness that spoke of long practice. Cornbread steamed and breathed fragrance into the chilly air. When there was nothing left but crumbs and memories, Mariah reached for the dishes.
"I'll do them," Cash said. "You've had a hard day."
"No worse than yours."
Cash didn't argue, he simply shaved soap into a pot with his lethally sharp pocketknife, added water that had been warming in the bucket by the hearth and began washing dishes. Mariah rinsed and stacked the dishes to one side to drain, watching him from the corner of her eyes. He had rolled up his sleeves to deal with the dishes. Each movement he made revealed the muscular power of his forearms and the blunt strength in his hands.
When the dishes were over and Cash sat cross-legged opposite Mariah on the only dry patch of floor in the cabin, lantern light poured over him, highlighting the planes of his face, the sensual lines of his mouth, and the sheer power of his body. As Cash quickly dealt the cards, Mariah watched him with a fascination she slowly stopped trying to hide.
The cards she picked up time after time received very little of her attention. As a result, the pile of dried pine needles in front of her vanished as though in an invisible fire. She didn't mind. She was too busy enjoying sitting with Cash in a cabin surrounded on the outside by storm and filled on the inside by the hushed silence of pent breath.
"Are puddles worth more than pine needles?" Mariah asked, looking at the three needles left to her.
"Only if you're thirsty."
"Are you?"
"I've got all the water I can stand right now."
Mariah smiled. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, that lets out raindrops, too. I guess I have to fold. I'm busted."
Cash nudged a palm-size pile of needles from his pile over to her side of the "table."
"What's that for?" she asked.
"Your smile."
"Really? All these needles? If that's what a smile is worth, how much for a kiss?"
Abruptly Cash looked up from his cards. His glance moved almost tangibly over Mariah's face, lingering with frank intensity on the curving line of her lips. Then he looked back at his cards, his expression bleak.
"More than either of us has," he said flatly.
Several hands were played in silence but for the hissing of the lantern and the slowly diminishing rush of rain. Cash kept winning, which meant that he kept dealing cards. As he did, the lantern picked out various small scars on his hands.
"How did you get these?" Mariah asked, touching the back of Cash's right hand with her fingertips.
He froze for an instant, then let out his breath so softly she didn't hear. Her fingers were cool, but they burned on his skin, making him burn, as well.
"You pan gold for more than a few minutes in these streams and your hands get numb," Cash said. His voice was unusually deep, almost hoarse, reflecting the quickening of his body. "I've cut myself and never even known it. Same for using the rock hammer during cold weather. Easiest thing in the world to zing yourself. What my own clumsiness doesn't cause, flying chips of rock take care of."
"Clumsy?" Mariah laughed. "If you're clumsy, I'm a trout."
"Then you're in trouble, honey. I'm still hungry."
"I'm a very, very young trout."
Cash smiled grimly. "Yeah. I keep reminding myself of that. You're what … twenty-two?"
Startled by the unexpected question, Mariah nodded.
"I teach grad students who are older than you," Cash said, his tone disgusted.
"So?"
"So quit looking at me with those big golden eyes and wondering what it would be like to kiss me."
Mariah's first impulse was to deny any such thoughts. Her second was the same. Her third was embarrassment that she was so transparent.
"You see," Cash said flatly, pinning Mariah with a
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