"Michael!"

  She twisted out of his arms with a wrench, then clasped a hand over her mouth in horror when Michael teetered on the edge of the cloud. She quickly made a grab for him, but her hand fell an inch short. The pudgy little angel tumbled down among the dancers, and she knelt with her hand still extended, her eyes wide.

  Of course, no one on the floor noticed. The waft of breeze through the room stirred a few curls on the women's heads, but they attributed it to air coming through the open doors of the schoolroom. As soon as he gained control of his wings, Michael zipped back above the dancers and hovered against the ceiling, his arms crossed as he silently glared at her.

  Angela rose to her feet. "Uh... I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean..." She dropped her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. "Th... thank you for the dance, Michael," she murmured, her eyes filling with tears.

  Michael's defiant stance wilted and slowly he drifted down to the cloud and settled beside her. "Oh, shoot. It's okay. Look, it was an accident. Let's finish our dance. Please?"

  Tess lazily opened her eyes and glanced over Stone's shoulder. She saw Rain sitting in one of the chairs against the wall, but he wasn't watching the dancers. Instead, he gazed up at the ceiling, not a hint of the sleepiness she had seen earlier on his face.

  Suddenly a grin split Rain's face and he lifted a hand, almost as though signaling a gesture of concurrence to someone overhead. She started to draw back in Stone's arms to try to follow Rain's gaze, but he murmured softly to her and lifted his hand from her back to draw her head onto his shoulder again. With a contented sigh, she complied.

  Twenty-Three

  "I'm sure not going to stay here," Tess ground out the next morning after Silver Eagle and the children had ridden off. "What if something happens to you out there alone—like that snakebite? You could lay there and die!"

  "You'll do what the hell I tell you to do!" Stone fired back. "I've told you over and over that my rules go around here!"

  "Well, Mr. Boss Man, that might work on the kids, but I'm a grown woman. Just how do you think you're going to make sure I stay behind? Tie me to the bedpost? Or maybe you'll tie me and Lonesome out beside the privy and leave us each a pan of water and a bowl of food."

  "Don't tempt me. Only thing is, I'd have to explain to Jasper why he had two extra animals to take care of."

  "Animals! Why, you overbearing louse! You... you chauvinistic pig!"

  "Oink, oink," he muttered.

  She quickly clenched her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down hard. She wasn't going to laugh.

  She balled her hands into fists and plopped them on her hips, glaring at him. He glared back. She had to retort—it was her turn. But she couldn't yell at him with her lip caught like that.

  "You..." Big mistake. The giggles penned in her chest erupted. She snorted, and he wrinkled his nose at her.

  "Here, piggy," he called softly, then burst into laughter when she fell onto the bench by the kitchen table, clutching her stomach.

  Stone sat down beside her and took her hand. "Look, honey, I have to do this. The army post at Fort Sill will buy even half-broken horses at a pretty good price. And I promised Jasper Smith he could have his pick of the mares in the herd I'm bringing in if he'd stay here and care for my stock."

  "And how are you going to drive a herd of horses to an army post all by yourself—even if you do manage to get some this time?" Tess tugged at her hand, trying to ignore the warmth spreading up her arm as Stone's thumb stroked her palm. "For that matter, how are you going to pen them up by yourself? Stone, let go of me. I can't think."

  "Then don't think," he whispered. "Just feel." He shifted closer to her on the bench and dropped her hand. But he slipped his arm around her waist and bent to nuzzle her ear, his warm breath sending a cascade of shivers down her body and a throb of desire curling through her veins. He kissed a path down her cheek and nibbled at the corner of her mouth.

  "That's not going to work," she said in as firm a voice as she could manage. "I'm still going with you."

  Stone moved his nibbling to her lips, barely brushing them with cloud-soft caresses. One hand moved to cup the bottom of her breast, while the other stroked her back. Without ever kissing her fully, he moved his mouth to her jawline and down to her neck. Nudging aside the collar of her blouse, he very gently nipped at the sensitive spot just above her collarbone, then circled the area with his tongue.

  "So soft," he murmured. "So silky. So beautiful."

  She moaned in surrender. The hands she kept ordering to shove him away curled into his hair instead. White hot yearning swept away any chance of conscious thought, and she gave no resistance when he cupped her hips and stood, kicking aside the bench to get to the table.

  Wrapping her legs around his trim waist, she whimpered in longing and frustration at the denim material covering both their bodies. She instinctively moved against the bulge in his jeans, tightening her legs around him when he gasped and laid her on the table.

  He grabbed her mouth with his own, and she sparred with his tongue, her thrusts and his imitating the movements of their lower bodies. She unbuttoned her blouse and started on his shirt, fumbling uselessly almost at once when his mouth found her bare breast.

  "God, I want you," he growled as he claimed her other breast.

  "Please. Please, yes."

  Lonesome's barks rang through the door as he surged to his feet on the porch. His frenzied yaps penetrated her drugged senses, and she clutched at Stone when he buried his face against her neck and whispered a vile expletive.

  "S... someone's coming," she said in a shaky voice.

  "Jasper," he muttered. He braced his hands on the table and gazed down at her. "Lonesome could probably hold Jasper off for a while," he said in a soft voice. "But when I make love to you, darlin', it's not going to be a hurry-up deal. It's gonna be soft and slow, then wicked and wild. By the time we reach the clouds, we're gonna know every inch of each other's bodies. All right?"

  She gulped and nodded her head. He stepped back, then grasped her hands to pull her up. His eyes still smoldered behind his slit lids, and he ran them over her face and down her upper body, branding her as his own. Threading his fingers in her hair, he bent and kissed her.

  "I love you, Tess," he said after he released her. "Remember that while I'm gone, will you?" Without waiting for her answer, he turned away and strode across the floor.

  She flinched when he let the screen door bang behind him. She lifted trembling fingers and caressed her swollen lips, her body still tingling with frustrated desire. Slowly she took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart and bring a semblance of sanity to her tumbling thoughts.

  While I'm gone. The gravelly words echoed in her mind. Maybe while he was gone would be the time for her to make her final decision. It was the perfect opportunity, of course. She could ride up to the hillside undisturbed and search for the time warp—at least find out if it was still there.

  For a second she concentrated once again on recalling the sequence of events during the few minutes before she found herself in Oklahoma in 1893. She remembered looking up at the sky, her attention drawn by what she imagined was the sound of human voices. But it couldn't have been—she'd been alone on the mountainside. She frowned as a more recent recollection came to mind. The imagined voices she'd thought she heard on the mountainside had sounded sort of like the squabbling birds she hadn't been able to see in the sky the other day.

  Unable to make any sense of that portion of her memory, she recalled the stabbing pain in her twisting ankle—her fall over the cliff. She had definitely heard a sneeze—she hadn't imagined that, because the recollection was much too vivid. Then those bush roots had torn free of the soil.

  She shook her head in puzzlement. If anyone had been up on the trail—possibly the person who had sneezed—that person wouldn't have had time to rescue her, because she had entered the time tunnel immediately. She hadn't recalled it at first, while she sat on the hillside talking to Rain. But after he left to bleed the deer, the memory of her abject terror when she felt herself falling, then the whooshing flight through blackness, came back.

  If the time warp was still there—did those things close up?—if she could find it... What if she accidentally stumbled onto it—into it? She'd leave without saying good-bye to Stone and the two children she cared so deeply about. Stone's last memory of her would be her broken promise to him about saying good-bye before she left.

  The decision she had to make continued to wobble in her mind. For one thing, she'd been happier here with Stone in this primitive log cabin than in her apartment, filled with gadgets she had no time to enjoy. However, thirty years of her life kept pulling at her.

  Well, one sure way to assure herself that she didn't have to make her decision right away was to go with Stone. She set her lips in a determined slant and slid off the table, buttoning her blouse as she headed for the bedroom she shared with Flower. Once she made her decision, she knew it would have to be irrevocable. And until she had a clear, unalterable path set in her own mind, she was going to stay away from that darned hillside. That was all there was to it.

  Grabbing the backpack at the foot of the bed, she turned around and retraced her steps. He hadn't left yet. His saddlebags, packed with provisions for his trip, still lay on the countertop. She swung them over her other shoulder and pushed open the screen door.

  Michael grabbed Angela's arm and swerved their flight path into a turn. "Hang on, Angie," he called. "We can go back now. They're done necking, and she's headed for the barn. I think there's gonna be a different kind of fireworks this time."

  Angela tried to pull her arm free and grabbed at a curl whipping around her face. "Michael! Oh, do slow down. We can think ourselves back to the ranch. We don't have to fly this fast."

  "Come on, Angie. This is much more fun—and great exercise. Shoot, we don't even have to worry about running into any airplanes in this sky. Isn't it great?"

  "Guardian angels don't need exercise." But she ceased trying to pull free and tipped her face up to let the wind caress her cheeks. It was fun, zipping through the sky and dodging clouds they could easily have flown through. And after all, there wasn't any rule against guardian angels having fun, was there?

  Tess ignored the two men standing beside the barn door and dropped her backpack and Stone's saddlebags before she walked inside. She probably should have at least said a polite hello to the wiry man beside Stone, but she would introduce herself after she had her horse safely saddled. She wouldn't put it past Stone to order Jasper to keep her away from the horses and tack while he was gone.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Stone grabbed her arm before she could enter the tack room.

  "Obviously, I'm going after some tack for one of the horses," she said in a fairly reasonable voice. "What else do you go into a tack room for?"

  "You don't need any tack. You're not going anywhere."

  "Oh, but I am. I told you that in the kitchen."

  "Damn it, I said you weren't!"

  She stared up at his furious face and pried his fingers off her arm one by one. She shrugged her shoulder and tilted her chin up, then walked into the tack room. After lifting a bridle from a peg, she started toward one of the smaller saddles draped over a cross bar.

  The tack-room door slammed, plunging the room into dimness. She stiffened her back, not deigning to turn around to see if Stone had locked her in or whether he was still in the small room with her. The instant her fingers touched the saddle, she heard his indrawn hiss of breath.

  "I said—you're staying here!"

  "No. I'm not."

  She tossed the bridle over her arm and hefted the saddle. Turning, she walked toward the door, where he stood blocking her path.

  "Do you realize what almost happened a few minutes ago?" Stone demanded, refusing to budge from the door. "What the hell do you think there is to stop us from makin' love when we're spending nights alone out there chasin' that wild horse herd?"

  "Why, nothing except our own rational minds, I guess," she murmured. "After all, we're adults."

  "Rational? I lose any sense of rationality when I touch you. And you don't have any better control than I do!"

  She stared up into his scowling face and quirked her lips when he jammed his hands into his pockets—probably to keep from either pulling her into his arms or strangling her, she figured. She shifted the saddle in her arms and pushed a straggling curl from her forehead.

  "This thing's starting to get heavy. Are you going to move?"

  "No!"

  "You're going to have a heck of a time going after those horses and standing here guarding me at the same time. Which horse should I take?"

  "None of them. Those horses belong to me, and I refuse to give you permission to ride any of them."

  "What are you going to do? Have me arrested for horse theft? Golly gee, do they still hang people for stealing horses these days?"

  Stone mumbled a curse and threw open the door. Muttering something about damned fool women who didn't know their place, he stomped toward the barn entrance. Shrugging, she crossed the dirt floor to one of the stalls, where a horse stood with its brown head thrust out.

  "Not that damned mare!" he said angrily. "She's in foal. Take the gelding in the next stall."

  "Whatever you say," she called back in a sweet voice.

  "Now you follow orders," he growled loud enough for her to hear. "Just as long as what I say agrees with what you want to do." He raised his voice a notch. "I'm leavin' in thirty seconds, with or without you. You'd better know how to saddle your own horse, because you're not gonna get a bit of help from me."

  She heaved the saddle over the stall door, then opened it and led the gray gelding through. She expertly slipped his halter off and the bridle on, then looped the reins through a round ring beside the stall. Sliding the saddle blanket from beneath the saddle, she swung it over the gelding's back and smoothed it carefully. The saddle followed, and as she reached beneath the gelding's stomach for the other end of the cinch, she glanced at the barn door.

  "Are my thirty seconds up yet?" she called. Stone snorted and disappeared from sight.

  Twenty-Four

  Shooting stars flared periodically across the ebony sky, and Tess mentally counted them instead of sheep. She gave up when she realized she'd been counting Stone's breaths instead, timing her own intakes to match his. He lay on the other side of the fire, evidently not having her problem of sleeplessness.

  Darn it anyway, she just couldn't figure him out. He'd never been at a loss for words to tell her exactly how she was irritating him, but today, he had communicated with her in grunts and hand motions—and then only when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, he totally ignored her.

  Supper had been a deadly quiet affair. She seethed again as she recalled Stone fixing his own meal of fried bacon and beans, then piling it onto his plate and walking over to a nearby rock to eat. He hadn't even left her one slice of bacon or a measly bean. He had, however, left a portion of his food on the plate and set it down for Lonesome, who had sat with cocked ears, watching Stone eat.

  It was a darned good thing she had her own backpack with her. A nearby stream furnished water, and she had boiled a freeze-dried dinner of noodles and sauce. She smiled a satisfied smirk as she remembered catching Stone gazing at her food as she twirled the noodles around her camp-kit fork and ate them with gusto. She'd bet a week's pay her noodles had tasted better than that cold can of beans! Lonesome had gobbled his own share of that meal, too, and now lay curled at her side on her sleeping bag.

  She reached down and scratched a brown ear. "Guess you know who packs tastier provisions, don't you, boy?"

  Lonesome shifted to his back, one hind leg up in the air, hiccupping in time to her scratches. She giggled softly at the picture he made, sprawled with his belly unprotected, and teasingly shifted the cadence of her fingers on his ear. Two short scratches. A pause. Three scratches this time. Lonesome's leg followed suit.

  At least she never had to second-guess the dog's attitude toward her. Ever faithful and loving, Lonesome always came when she called—bounding energetically up to her and forever grateful for a pat or a kind word. He never pouted over the few reprimands she gave him if he loped too close to her horse's heels and made the gelding skittish. When he stuck his nose into her backpack, he immediately withdrew it at her command, sitting down and lifting a paw apologetically.

  Pouting! Good grief, was Stone pouting because she had defied him and refused to stay at the ranch? Surely not. A grown man of his age should have enough maturity not to... pout?

  Suddenly she remembered the first time Granny had appeared on the doorstep of their house in town after Tess's mother's death. Seldom did Granny leave the mountain. In fact, the only time Tess had seen her in town prior to that day was at her mother's funeral, six months before.

  But Granny showed up the first day after school let out for the summer, informing Tess's father in no-nonsense tones that she'd come to fetch Tess to spend the summer with her. No, Granny had said, she wasn't going to leave Tess with her father to tend house for him. She didn't much give a darn that Tess's absence meant her father had to prepare his own meals and wash his own clothes. He had two older sons, who could just learn to use that darned washing machine themselves. If they couldn't figure out how to use the stove, there was always the barbecue pit in the backyard. Men were always so proud to show their skills on that. Tess was going back to the mountain with her grandmother, her only other female relative. She needed a woman in her life to talk to, share things with, learn a woman's ways with. Tess would return in the fall in time for school, when Granny would spend a day or so with her, helping her get some school clothes together.