"Lily, you're excusing what she did."

"Sheriff, that's my prerogative."

He dipped down in the water and came up a minute later.

"I don't think she'll do anything like that again," she added.

He swam to where she was and stood beside her. Somewhere deep inside, had she been hoping he'd follow her? Had she come here with deliberate intent?

His warm gaze started her blood singing. "Not many people would have done what you did."

"Probably not."

"You like surprising people, don't you?"

"I just like making my own decisions. If they surprise people..." She shrugged.

"The men talked about the mirror as though it meant something special to you."

"I'll be ordering a new one tomorrow. It will have even more meaning."

"Tell me how."

"It'll be proof that no one can take away what I've worked for."

"Always lookin' at the shiny side of the penny, aren't you?"

"I just don't waste time feeling sorry for myself."

"Or seeking revenge."

"What's the point?"

He got a strange look on his face. "Satisfaction. Justice."

"Is everything black-and-white to you? Right or wrong? Some things just are."

"I'm a lawman. I get paid to separate right from wrong."

"What if the rules get changed?"

He reached up and slicked water from his hair, and the sight of his muscled biceps made Lily feel like her feet were slipping on the smooth stones of the stream-bed, though she stood perfectly still. Each time her reaction to this man came so unexpectedly and with such energy, she frightened herself.

"You once told me you'd been married," he said.

She regretted revealing that information. "Yes."

"And that your husband got what he deserved."

"Yes," she said again.

"Is he dead?"

The sheriff was standing too close now. She didn't want him to see too much. "What does it matter to you?"

"I'm just curious. Thinking of you as a widow seems so...unfitting. How did he die?"

Thinking of the man, her throat felt as though someone had both fists around her neck. "He beat someone. They stabbed him."

"Self-defense?"

She nodded. "I don't much like to talk about it. It was a terrible time in my life."

The sheriff tipped his head back to gaze at the sky. "I understand."

He was so close, she could have reached out and touched his throat where water ran in a trickle...or his chest, which looked smooth and solid.

He lowered his gaze to the distant bank. "I had a wife once."

His words stopped her meandering thoughts. She riveted her attention on his next words.

"I didn't always hunt men. I had a regular job in a foundry. A little house. A wife." With what appeared to be a breath dredged from his soul, his chest expanded. "A child," he said on a hoarse exhalation.

Lily's heart stopped. Don't say any more. Don't tell me! I can't hear this.

"In fifteen years, I've never said those words."

Her insides were quaking like the ground beneath a stampede. Against her better judgment, she opened her mouth and asked on a terrified whisper, "What happened to them?"

"Sarah took our son to visit her parents. Coming back, their stage was attacked and robbed. They were murdered."

Her name had been Sarah. Lily pictured the young, beautiful woman and her child. In her mind Sarah looked like Evangeline Gibbs, with blond hair and a fresh innocence. She pictured the sheriff as a young man, filled with love for his family, hopes for their future...and all that ending in a violent, senseless crime of greed.

"My son would be nearly a man."

She heard years of silent pain in that statement.

"What was his name?"

"Jonathon."

Lily's chest ached now. "That's a good name."

He brought his hands up out of the water and looked at them. "Those were the first men I ever killed."

"You tracked them down?"

"It took almost a year. And when it was done I didn't feel anything. Not satisfaction. Not relief. Just nothing. By then my life had changed. The house I'd built was on land that belonged to my wife's family, so I gave it to her brother and moved on. I'd discovered I was good at finding wanted men, so that's what I did."

The water felt suddenly chilly and Lily's limbs trembled.

"You're crying."

She raised her fingers to find tears on her cheek.

He wrapped his arms around her and she pressed against his warm slick body, the water lapping against her back. Their naked bodies touched from breasts to thighs, a silky erotic sensation-warm skin, cool water...unthreatening. Incredible.

No one had ever touched her in tenderness before-no one except this man. Before Nathaniel Harding, no one had ever held her or kissed her or made her feel as though she was a desirable woman. Their first kiss had shown her a whole new world, one she'd never anticipated. It had changed the way she looked at him, the way she thought about him. And the way she thought about herself.

He bracketed her face between large, strong hands and wiped at her tears with his thumbs. "Don't cry for me."

He couldn't know how many of the tears were for both of them. For pain they shared.

He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers. The salt of her tears combined with the heady taste of this man.

She shouldn't be here. She was inviting trouble. But she couldn't let go, wouldn't miss the mind-drugging experience for anything.

Lily wrapped her arms around his back and held him tightly, drawing every last measure of pleasure from the contact. His tongue sought hers and she allowed him entry and enjoyed the dance of heat and mounting anticipation.

Lily's fiery kisses were more potent than whiskey, warming Nate and going straight to his head-as well as every other part of his body.

She was trembling in his arms and he feared she was cold, so he urged her toward the bank without releasing her. He found where she'd dropped the toweling and quickly used the length of cotton to dry her, brusquely rubbing the curvaceous contours of her body with only the flimsy material between her skin and his hands. He pressed kisses across her collarbone and along her shoulder, then knelt to dry her hips and legs, pausing in discovery to kiss the indentation at her waist and the sleek curve of her hip.

She was more beautiful than the painting above the bar. More beautiful than anything he'd known or imagined, long and slim and full-breasted, and the sight and feel of her set him on fire.

He dried himself quickly, then spread the damp toweling on the ground and took her hand to urge her down beside him. She looked up at him as though she couldn't quite believe they were here and that this was happening. He felt the same.

"You're the prettiest thing I've ever seen, Lily." He lay alongside her and looked at her body in the moonlight. Unbidden came thoughts of other men who'd seen her body and enjoyed her kisses, but he banished those to the back of his mind and concentrated on this moment, on the feelings she inspired.

"I've got a fire inside for you like nothin' I've ever felt before. You feel it, too, don't you?"

She nodded.

He'd thought himself a strong man, hardened by life and living, but Lily exposed his weaknesses. All the willpower he'd thought he possessed was like dandelion seed scattered in the wind when he looked at her, thought of her, touched her.

He skimmed his thumb along her smooth cheek, the fine line of her jaw, and touched her lower lip. Her breath warmed his fingers.

He stroked the back of her thigh, up but not as far as her bottom, then back down. The back of her knee was silken and sensitive, because she caught her breath. Oh, to be touching Lily Divine was the most exquisite pleasure, to hear her responsive sighs the most rapturous torture on earth. Pure bliss to skim his palm along her flesh, to bring his fingers to the delicate skin on the inside of her thigh and feel her body tremble.

He wanted to move his hand higher, touch her intimately and make her shudder against him, but he waited, listened to her breathing even out, and kissed her.

She was the one who opened her mouth this time, tilting her head and taking his tongue in her mouth as though she was making love to his body. She had to feel him hard and aching against her, had to know how desperate he was for her. The pleasure he sought was so close his stomach knotted with anticipation. But he took his time kissing her, caressing her thigh, then brought his hand up to cup her breast.

Her breasts were even more luscious than the artist had portrayed them. And he had the privilege of them in his hands, against his cheek. He lowered his head and indulged himself in the sheer gratification of tasting her. She clutched his head to her breast, digging her fingers into his hair.

He flicked his tongue against her nipple, and she arched herself toward him with a soft groan. His desire for her wasn't satisfied, and he crawled upward to take her mouth, deep and hungrily this time. Why he should feel honored to make love to a woman who sold herself to every miner who came down the pike, he couldn't fathom. But here he was, deluded into feeling as though he was the man she'd been waiting for.

Nate grasped behind her knee and pulled her leg up around his hip, and she crushed into him. He splayed his hand across her lush bottom, stroking, kneading, as the need he'd stored up for years spiraled upward and spread like wildfire.

He rolled so that she was on top of him, her cold wet hair draping his cheek and shoulder, and she took control of the kiss while he caressed her backside with both hands.

She ran her hand over his face and down his shoulder to his chest, then along their sides to his hip.

He rolled them again, and they were on the bed of long soft grass now. Nate wedged his knee between her thighs, and she gasped and pressed into his thigh. Against his leg she was slick molten heat. Everything about Lily was more intense, more vibrant, more exciting than any woman he had ever known. Everything from her colorful speech to her sometimes flamboyant manner of dress. This was more splendid, as well.

He separated their mouths and stared into her lovely face in the moonlight. "You said you weren't sorry for the kiss that night."

"I wasn't."

"What about this? Will you be sorry for this?"

"Will you?" she returned.

"No."

She lay with one hand on his back, the other at his hip, her hair drying in ringlets around her face.

Their bodies strained to join. Heat pounded where Nate nudged between her thighs.

"Answer," he demanded. "Will you be sorry?"

"No."

Focused on her face, he reached between them and touched her. She was so still, he feared his touch didn't please her, but then she made a sound like a hiccup and he knew just where to focus his attention.

She turned her head aside and closed her eyes. Her hips arched convulsively into him.

"Look at me." He said it more gruffly than he'd intended.

She did and he poised himself.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and grasped both of his upper arms.

Nate slid into her tight heat with a groan of pleasure and a shiver that spread from where they were joined all the way to his scalp. "You are divine, Miss Lily, no doubt about it."

He remained raised on his arms to watch her expression as he moved and took up a rhythm that was almost too much, too strong, too blissful to sustain. This woman carried him to the edge of reason and dangled him from the precipice, and he'd never loved anything more. He wanted to lose control, but he wanted to take her with him, so he kissed her, touched her, grasped her hips and angled himself to give her the most pleasure.

She encouraged him with breathless sounds and a tightening of her fingers on his shoulders. His senses were so full of her, his body so lost in her, he didn't want to miss a moment or return to reason, ever.

But he had to, of course.

Her body tensed and pulsed around him, and she pulled him down to hold him close. He buried his face in the delicious scent of her neck, held her tightly and took his own release in a blinding rush of sensation.

Neither of them moved for long seconds as their breathing slowed and their bodies cooled. Nate slid to her side and cradled her in his arms.

Lily would never let him know how deeply she'd been touched by his gentleness and unselfish concern. She'd never known a man's tender caress before, never taken pleasure in this act she'd only feared and dreaded. Just as she'd learned what she'd been missing in his kisses, she now knew the vast extent of what had been stolen from her.

Her pride. Her self-respect. Her dignity and worth. Her pleasure in being a woman. All the things her father had sold so cheaply and that her husband had crushed with his abuse.