Only 04 - Only Love

me, promising me everything I’ve ever wanted and have never been able to name. Then I’ll set out again, because there’s nothing as grand as the sunrise I haven’t seen. Nothing.”
    Shannon fought against a sorrow so sharp it made her breath break. There was no reason for her to feel such grief. Whip was barely more than a stranger to her. She shouldn’t care if he stayed forever or left in the next hour.
    But she cared so much it was a knife turning deep inside her. She closed her eyes and fought the unexpected pain.
    “Like I said, honey girl,” Whip said gently, “I’m a yondering man.”
    Shannon’s eyes opened. She looked at the man she knew only as Whip. Then she looked at his savagely clear eyes, eyes that had seen so much and yet moved on to another view, a different place, one more distant sunrise, for there was always more to see.
    Always.
    I hear your warning, yondering man. Don’t try to hold you. Don’t dream on you.
    Don’t love you.
    Yet Shannon had the uneasy feeling Whip’s warning had come too late. Somewhere deep inside her, something she had never felt before had awakened.
    She prayed that it was only desire.

6
    A WEEK later Shannon awoke just after dawn to the sound of an ax taking big bites from a tree. Relief washed through her.
    Nothing changed while I slept. He’s still here.
    If the Culpeppers came skulking around, they would find Shannon with a shotgun in her hands, a snarling dog at her heels…and a man called Whip by her side.
    “See?” Shannon whispered to herself. “I told you he would still be here in the morning.”
    This time.
    When Shannon hadn’t heard Whip’s panpipes last night, she wondered if he had saddled up and left Echo Basin, never to return again. But he hadn’t. He was still here, still doing all the chores that had been difficult for Shannon to do alone.
    Whip had repaired the lean-to where the old mule spent the worst of the winter, then he had trimmed and shod the beast’s hooves with horse-shoes Silent John never had gotten around to using. Whip had rehung the cabin door so that it closed evenly without being shoved or leaned on or kicked. Then Whip had rammed caulking so tightly between the cabin’s logs that the wind couldn’t getpast to steal the fire’s warmth. He had chopped down eight trees and was working on a ninth.
    Not only would Shannon have firewood curing for winter, with those trees gone there would be enough sun on the south side of the cabin for her to have a small kitchen garden. It was something she had always wanted, but she had given up on the idea four years ago. It had taken six days for her to gnaw through a tree with an ax, and then the tree had knocked her silly by falling the wrong way.
    Silent John had laughed when she told him the story about the tree falling on her. But when she told Whip about it a few days ago, he hadn’t laughed at all. He had said something under his breath and then told her in very plain English that if he ever caught her trying to chop down a tree, they would both regret it—but she would regret it more.
    Then, yesterday morning, the trees on the south side of the cabin had started to come down one by one, felled by a man who attacked each tree as though it was an enemy.
    Humming quietly to herself, Shannon got out of bed and started the breakfast fire. As she worked, anticipation swirled through her like heat through flame. Soon Whip would call out and she would bring a pan of warm water to the bench at the side of the cabin. Then she would watch while he washed and shaved.
    If she was lucky, he would overlook a bit of lather on his mustache or in the dimple on his chin. She would stand close to dab at the soap…and then she would look up and see the quicksilver of his eyes burning down at her, and the flare of hisnostrils as he caught the scent of spearmint on her hands and breath.
    “You’re a fool, Shannon Conner Smith,” she told herself firmly. “You’re letting that yondering man get too close.”
    Yet all Shannon truly cared about was getting Whip closer still. She hungered for him in ways that were as old as desire and as new as sunrise.
    She struck a match and bent over the open door of the wood stove. The flames caught and entwined with an ease that reminded her of Whip’s masculine grace. Heat filled the stove and radiated out into the room as wood and fire consumed one another.
    Is that what it would be like with Whip? Would we feed one another until everything was