Memory's Embrace by Linda Lael Miller

tear in two, so great was the force with which he pulled it on. And still she could not move, could not speak.
    He turned, buttoning his shirt, his azure eyes flashingwith quiet disdain, his jawline set. It was as though by glaring at Tess he could make her disappear.
    She could not bear the expression on his face and lowered her eyes. She saw the ring then, the gold wedding band hanging from a chain around his muscular, sun-browned neck. Married. Dear God in heaven, he was married!
    Suddenly, Tess’s voice was back. “You bastard!” she screamed, bolting upright in the bunk, reaching for her own camisole, her drawers, her dress, all of which had been tossed onto the floor. Her gestures were feverish, frantic, and awkward.
    Keith didn’t even attempt to button his gaping shirt, cover his gold-matted chest or that damnable ring. He put his hands on his hips and watched Tess coldly as she wriggled and fretted her way into her clothes.
    “How could you?” she hissed, watching him through a mist of angry, wounded tears. “How could you?”
    His contempt was tangible in that tiny wagon, almost an entity in its own right. “How could I what?” he allowed at last, in a fierce rasp.
    Tess’s teeth were chattering now, even though she wasn’t cold. No, if anything, she was burning up. With shame, with revulsion, with pain. “How could you betray your wife?!” she sobbed, horrified at what he had done, what she had done, what they had done together.
    “My wife is dead,” he answered, quietly ferocious. And then he was opening the wagon door, jumping to the ground. The door slammed into the framework and then creaked accusingly on its rusty hinges.
    Tess no longer tried to dress, to think, to understand. She covered her face with both hands and allowedherself the luxury of a noisy cry. She sobbed. She cursed. She wailed.
    Even so, she could hear Keith outside, carrying on a rage of his own. The mule brayed repeatedly. The man bellowed a series of senseless epithets, and something made of metal clanged against the side wall of the wagon.
    Tess was sure it was the dishpan. The same dishpan this maniac had flung at God only two days before. At God! She was alone with a madman, on a little traveled road, and there was no going back, no escaping.
    And, remembering that she had given herself to that madman, writhing and tossing like a wanton all the while, Tess threw back her head and gave a shriek of fury that silenced both Keith Corbin and the mule.

Chapter Six
    H E WAS STOMPING AROUND THE CAMP IN A LTTTLE-BOY fury, finding the harnesses and hurling them in the direction of the mule, grasping the coffeepot and burning his fingers on the handle. Despite her wounded pride, Tess felt a mischievous sort of tenderness as she watched him.
    “Don’t jump in the creek,” she advised, as Keith cursed and shook his seared hand in the air.
    He seemed to forget his injury then. How still he stood, watching Tess, his eyes a pale and molten blue. “Why?” he rasped.
    “What do you mean, ‘why?’ It’s foolish to leap intoicy streams—I would have thought you’d learned that from the last time.”
    Keith’s jaw was rigid and his eyes flashed. Apparently her reference to the day they’d met had not lightened the moment. “I don’t make a practice of deflowering virgins, Miss Bishop,” he said coldly. “Why the hell did you let me think you—”
    “I wanted you to see me as a woman, not a girl,” she answered reasonably, approaching him now, taking his hurt hand in her own, bending her head to examine the damage. It was miniscule.
    “Did it ever occur to you that you were playing with fire, as the saying goes?”
    She looked up at him then, impishly. “I’m not the one who got burned,” she pointed out.
    “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” he countered immediately, and though he made no move to withdraw his hand, his mood was still unfriendly. Distant. “Suppose you’re pregnant?”
    Tess was terrified by