fascinated me, but I figured you'd never go out with me. So I didn't talk to you at school for fear of having everyone watch you turn me down."
"But--but--" she sputtered.
"You were so far off with that bet business you weren't even on the planet."
"Are you telling me the truth about Lori Salter?"
"Want to ask me if I won the bet?"
"No! Now that I think about it, Lori was sort of stand- offish. I suppose..." She let the words trail off.
"Tell you anyway. I kissed her, all right. Winning the bet was a lot more fun than the kiss."
She slanted him a quelling glance.
"I didn't even come close to kissing you that night," he said. "Didn't so much as get one kind word, as I recall."
"I wanted you to kiss me!" she cried. "But not on a bet. I spent the whole time you were there trying not to burst into tears."
He shook his head. "I didn't have a clue. Between us, we blew it. I guess the only remedy is to try to make up for lost time."
"I think we already have," she said.
"Wrong. We've hardly begun." He gave her a long, speculative look. "If you hadn't been hung up on that bet and I had kissed you that night, I wonder what it would have been like?"
"We can hardly go back and find out."
He persisted. "Would you have responded?"
"What do you think?"
He ran his forefinger along the curve of her lower lip. "I think we'd still have been locked together in that kiss when your parents got home and there'd have been hell to pay."
She bit his finger.
"How come you're biting him, Mom?" Davis asked sleepily. "Because I've been teasing her," Bram said before Vala could speak.
"Oh." Davis sat up. "Hey, I don't hear the rain hitting the tent any more. Is the storm over?"
Bram's gaze caught Vala's. "Is it?" he asked.
She eased over to the flap window and looked out.
"All over," she said, glancing at Bram. "The sun's out."
Though there were hours of daylight left, Bram opted to stay where they were, give the horses a good rubdown and let the tent have a chance to dry in the sun's warmth.
Vala watched as he let Davis build their small campfire, which sputtered and smoked because of the wet. "Be careful," she called to her son, earning an exasperated look from him. It was kind of Bram to let Davis do things but she sometimes felt he didn't realize the boy was only nine.
During the storm, too much had happened both in words and deeds for her to put her thoughts and feelings in any coherent order.
The thunder and lightning were past, the rain gone, but not her inner turmoil. Seeing Bram and Davis huddle over the old map, she marveled at what that ancient scrap of deerskin had led her into. An ambush? At the moment, it almost felt like that.
She wasn't ready for any of this, wasn't ready to discover she was wrong about their last meeting, nor prepared to take up not where they'd left off then. It was completely unknown territory, as dangerous in its way as the Superstitions.
Neal had taught her men couldn't be trusted. She may have known Bram before, but that didn't count. He, too, was a man. After the divorce she'd decided it was safer not to get involved with any other man, which had been easy up until now. The problem was, Bram couldn't be put in the just any other man category, he was someone she found much too attractive and she was trapped in his company for the next few days. Luckily Davis was with them. But would he be buffer enough?
She carried her worried confusion to bed with her that evening and sleep didn't come easily.
Bram, outside under the stars, studied the very slightly lopsided moon and decided it'd be full in two days. He fell into a reverie about making love to Vala under mountain moonlight, managing to get himself completely aroused.
He shut down the erotic imaginings. Just where the devil do you think you're going to take this? He asked himself.
Sure, he wanted her, but Vala was no quick fix. Would she expect more than a night or two of pleasure? Would she understand that when she flew back east chances were they'd never see one another again? For that matter, would she even let him near her in the first place?
Smiling as he recalled her eager response to his kiss, he decided if