Lorelei suddenly noticed white crosses dotting the space in the center of the fence. She stepped back, her breath in her throat. “Who?”
Christopher encircled her waist and brought her against his side. “They’re just graves of birds, squirrels, and a colt that was stillborn. Chris showed me them this afternoon.” Lorelei relaxed against his side, unsure why she was so shaken. She’d seen plenty of graveyards in her life. She’d buried two parents. Her brothers lay under a battlefield in southern Kentucky. But these little crosses seemed worse stuck in the middle of so much life.
“Why did they bury them so close to the house?”
Christopher glanced behind him as if to check the distance. “It’s not so close. They planted this white oak when they first moved here. It’s doubled in size, and it’s the only shade for miles. This is a good place to be buried, I think.”
“Is that where you want to be buried? Under the shade of a tree?”
“No, I just want to be left where I fall. I want to turn into dust. Blow back into the desert.”
Lorelei tried to pull away from him. This was not the conversation she had planned to have. “That’s awful. I can’t bear to think of you dying alone.”
He held her to him. “No. Don’t think about that.”
“How do you want me to remember you?”
“As a man who tried to help you.” He tightened his hold.
“Should I tell my husband about you?”
He swallowed, then turned his attention back to the little graveyard. “No.”
Arguing with him didn’t work, so she’d give him a taste of his good idea. “Don’t you think he deserves to know? Some might say I’m soiled goods.”
He turned to face her, gripping her shoulders. “Don’t say that. It’s not true.”
She traced the line of his cheekbone. “I said somebody else might think that. I don’t think that.”
He closed his hand around hers and brought her fingers to his lips. “Good.”
She forced herself to keep her breathing steady. “How will you remember me?”
He flattened her palm against his mouth and licked the sensitive center. “As the woman—” He cut himself off.
Lorelei clamped her lips shut to contain her sudden burst of hope. He meant to say something he didn’t want to say. She waited but didn’t prod. If he felt too vulnerable, he’d close up and their conversation would be over.
He dropped her hand. “Hell, I won’t have to remember you. I’ll never be able to stop thinking about you.”
Difficult as it was, she kept up her game. “It must be hard to give me up, then.”
He wrapped his other arm around her waist and pulled her to him. He stared at her mouth for a long time, then kissed her hard, forcing his tongue past her lips as he pulled her tightly against him.
Lorelei leaned into him, gave herself over to the kiss in knee-sagging relief. His familiar taste carried her past all the things that had torn them apart.
But he broke the kiss too soon. “Walking away is easy. Thinking there could ever be anything else between us is hard.”
“I don’t believe you. The way you kissed me tells a different story.”
He shrugged, casually disengaging himself from their embrace. “Kissing you isn’t something I have a problem with. I would gladly lay you down right here, in plain view of the house, and make love to you until the sun comes up. It’s what comes after that’s a problem.”
“Being stuck with me?” She heard the hurt in her own voice, and surely he would hear it too.
He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “Being stuck with you is the good part. Your life expectancy would be the problem.”
She planted her hands on her waist to keep from swinging at him. “Jay doesn’t blame you for what happened.”
His defeated calm rippled ever so slightly. “You don’t know about that.”
“What’s there to know?”
“I don’t want to talk about Jay.”
“I’m involved in this, too. You’re shutting me out. I gave myself to you.”
“I never asked you to.”
The anger in his voice won his argument and silenced Lorelei. She clamped her mouth shut, but the effort couldn’t keep back her words. “I can’t help but care about you.”
“I told you from the start, I’m not the kind of man you want. I can’t do what Jay’s done. I can’t build a life out of dust and desert, keep working on it year after year, knowing the desert’s going to win. I couldn’t build a graveyard with room enough for my family and keep on going.”