Carolina Moon

you are, darling. But then I like the look of you no matter what your mood. That’s handy, isn’t it? How long have we known each other, Tory?”
    She held her hair back with one hand. “Altogether? About twenty years, I suppose.”
    “No. We’ve known each other about two and a half months. Before that we knew of each other, we walked around the edges of each other. Maybe we occasionally thought about or wondered about each other. But for ‘round about two months, we’ve known each other. Do you want to know what I’ve learned about you in that space of time?”
    She couldn’t quite judge this mood. His tone was light, his face relaxed, but there was something. “I’m not sure I do.”
    “That’s one of the things I’ve learned right there. Victoria Bodeen’s a cautious woman. She rarely leaps before she looks, and then she’ll do a comprehensive study. She doesn’t trust easily. Not even herself.”
    “If you leap before you look, you lower your chances of landing on the other side in one piece.”
    “There’s another thing. Logic. A cautious and logical woman. Now, that might seem like a fairly ordinary, even uninteresting combination to some people. But those wouldn’t have taken the entire package into account. They wouldn’t have added in the determination, the brain, the wit, or the kindness. Most of all they would have missed the warmth that’s all the more precious for being so rarely shared. And all of this is wrapped, sometimes too tightly, in a very appealing package.”
    He turned onto a narrow dirt road, slowed.
    “That’s quite an analysis.”
    “It barely scratches the surface. You’re a complex and fascinating woman. Complicated and difficult. Demanding simply because you refuse to demand. Hard on a man’s ego because you never ask for a damn thing.”
    She said nothing, but her hands had linked together, a sure sign of tension. She’d heard the anger now, just the rougher edge of it, in his voice.
    “We’ll walk from here.”
    He stopped the car and climbed out. On either side the fields spread with row after row of cotton marching like soldiers. She could smell earth and manure and heat, all ripe and sweet and strong. They must have cultivated recently, she mused, turned the weeds into the earth.
    Puzzled, unsure what needed to be done here or why they had come, she followed him down the rows while the young plants brushed her legs and reminded her of childhood.
    “We haven’t had a lot of rain,” Cade said. “Enough, but not a lot. We don’t need as much irrigation as the other farms. The soil holds more water when it isn’t full of chemicals. Treat it like a natural thing and it thrives like one. Insist on changing it, force it to live up to your expectations, and it needs more and more just to get by. Couple of months, the bolls’ll open.”
    He crouched down, removing his sunglasses and hooking them on his shirt before he lifted a tightly closed boll with a fingertip. “My father would’ve used a regulator to slow the growth, a defoliant to kill the leaves. That’s what he knew. That’s how it was done. You do things different, people don’t like it much. You have to prove yourself to them. You have to want to.” He straightened, met her eyes. “How much do I have to prove to you, Tory?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “The way I figure, most people treated you a certain way. That’s what you knew. That’s how it was done. I’d say I’ve done things different.”
    “You’re angry with me.”
    “Oh yeah. I’m angry with you. We’ll get to that. But right now I’m asking what you want from me. Just exactly what you want.”
    “I don’t want anything, Cade.”
    “Goddamn it. That’s the wrong answer.” When he strode away, she hurried after him.
    “Why is it wrong? Why should I have to want things from you, or want you to be something, do something, when I’ve been happier with you, just as you are, than I’ve ever been.”
    He stopped, turned back to her. The sun beat mercilessly down on the fields. He felt the heat roll over him, roll inside him. “That’s a first. You telling me I make you happy. But I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it. I want things from you, and it’s not going to work between us if it’s all one-sided. Neither one of us is going to stay happy for long that way.”
    The ache punched into her stomach and up toward her heart. “You want to end it. I don’t—” Her breath caught, breaking her