“Ian!” She shrieked his name, wondering how the fire could have gotten to him so fast. And surely, if it had, he would have jumped…

Smoke. Maybe smoke had overcome him while he’d been lowering her. But no, he’d shouted to her to jump. He hadn’t sounded strangled or woozy.

“Ian! Ian, damn you, answer me!”

Smoke was pouring out the window now, great black clouds of it. She made a dozen promises to God as she shifted from one foot to the other and tried to figure out what she could do. Every window in her house was belching smoke and flame. There was no way she could go in there, no way to get to him. Even a call to the fire department would take too long. “Ian!”

And then, suddenly, filling her with a relief that nearly left her weak, she saw him. Blackened by smoke, he swung over the windowsill and climbed down the denim rope. And sticking out of the back of his black briefs was the damn diary. At any other time the sight would have been funny. Right now it just made her want to cry and scream. He’d risked his neck to bring that damn book out with him. She could have killed him.

He jumped the last ten feet, rolling with all the practiced aplomb of a paratrooper and ending up on his feet, facing her.

“What happened?” she shouted at him, furious in her relief. “Damn it, I thought—I thought—”

He knew what she had thought. He crushed her to him, holding her so that she could barely breathe. She didn’t care. She held him back every bit as hard. “The diary isn’t worth this,” she sobbed. “Ian, you should have left it. You could have been hurt. You could have been hurt.”

“I had trouble getting the damn rope nailed to the wall,” he said. “That’s all. It wasn’t the damn diary.”

Her whole life was going up in flames, she thought dismally. Everything she had ever worked for was going up in that house. Even the last few mementos from her parents were burning in the vile old woman’s rage. But none of that seemed to matter beside Ian’s safety.

With a sudden, deafening whoosh, one of the curtains of moss burst into flame. Ian grabbed her hand and dragged her toward his house, wanting them out of there before any more moss ignited.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go to your house,” Honor gasped as Ian dragged her around the hedge. “What if she sets your house on fire, too?”

At the hedge, Ian halted and looked back at her house. “Do you have fire insurance?”

“Yes, of course. The bank insisted.”

He nodded. “Good. Wait here a minute.” Then he left her standing there while he trotted back toward her burning house. Flames were shooting out the windows now, and the front door burst open with a loud bang. Overhead, the storm raged, seeming almost paltry in comparison to the fire. A steady drizzle soaked her, chilling her.

Ten feet back from her front porch, Ian halted. He yanked the notebook out of the back of his briefs where he had tucked it; then, after only an instant’s hesitation, he threw it onto the porch.

“Ian, no!” That was his proof he had done no wrong! What was he doing? She took a step forward, but it was already too late. A geyser of flame erupted through the open door and fell on the notebook, setting it on fire instantly. As if the old woman had reached out for it.

For a long time they both stood where they were, watching the book burn, watching as the house was devoured from within. An ominous groan from inside finally seemed to shake Ian as he turned and walked back to Honor, an incredible figure in nothing but soot and black briefs, his strange green eyes glowing like unearthly fire. Witch fire.

“Let’s call the fire department,” he said. Behind him, the roof caved in with a shower of sparks that ignited more of the moss.

Thunder rumbled in response, and the rain continued to fall.

The trees stood like ghastly black skeletons, denuded of moss and leaves. Dead. The house, too, was little more than a blackened heap of rubble, with the occasional charred finger reaching to the gray sky.

Standing on the road near her mailbox, Honor watched as the charred lump of the notebook stirred on the blackened remains of the porch and sheets of ash riffled and blew away. The last of it. The absolute last of it. Thunder rumbled, retreating.

A footstep alerted her, and she looked around to see Annie Sidell and her son Orville. Annie’s eyes were red. She was weeping yet for Jeb, who had been found at the bottom of a ravine. Neither Honor nor Ian had told her the real story, leaving it to the authorities to speculate about why Jeb had been on the range, where no civilian should have been.

“I’m glad it’s gone,” Annie said after a moment.

“You grew up in that house.” Honor hadn’t expected that reaction at all.

“I lived there till I was eighteen and got out quick as I could. It’s a terrible thing, Miss Honor, but I never did like my mama. She was a mean woman, mean through and through. I was…I was so scared Jeb was getting to be like her, these last few days.”

Honor turned and looked at the older woman, and felt genuine compassion for her. “I’m so sorry about Jeb.”

Annie merely nodded. “You’ll be leaving now, I reckon.”

“I…guess so.” There was evidently no reason to stay. She’d slept alone on the cot in Ian’s guest room last night, when he hadn’t returned from the range. He had said he might be gone a few days, depending on how much the Rangers needed him to do this time. He’d told her to make herself at home, but he hadn’t suggested she stay. She wondered if she should just pack her few remaining clothes and go.

The hospital had given her a week off to take care of her homeless state, and she guessed she’d better get on it. Either she had to find another place to live, or she had to think about looking for a job elsewhere. Nurses were always in demand, so she wasn’t concerned about that. She could go anywhere she chose. The question was what she chose…and whether Ian wanted her to hang around.

And what she might be hanging around for. Lord, she didn’t want to lose him. The very thought made her ache and brought tears to her eyes. But what could they have together if he only wanted sex from her? If he never shared himself in any other way? She knew now that a man could want her. Knowing that, she wanted so much more. If Ian couldn’t give it to her…well, it would be better for them both if she moved on.

Annie headed back up the road with Orville, leaving Honor with the distinct impression that she had seen what she wanted to see, that seeing the house gone for good had satisfied her somehow. Maybe Annie, too, had felt her mother’s evil presence there over the years. Maybe she, too, was feeling free at last.

Free herself, Honor went indoors and started cooking dinner for Ian and herself. He might not show up, but if he did, dinner would be ready. And maybe now he would talk to her. She had asked him twice why he’d thrown the diary into the fire, and he still hadn’t answered. There were a lot of questions that needed answering before she left.

“You’re not leaving.”

Whirling, she saw Ian standing in the kitchen door. Dressed in camouflage and his red beret, knife and sidearm strapped to his hips, he was the archetypal soldier. Just now, for some reason, he looked bigger to her than he ever had, tall, imposing. His face was still as harsh as granite, and she didn’t doubt he could kill a man with a single blow. But she also knew how infinitely gentle he could be, and the memory of his touch brought her to the edge of tears again.

“You’re not leaving,” he said again.

“There’s no reason to stay.”

“No?” He crossed the floor between them like a springing leopard and caught her right up off her feet. “Seems like we’ve got a few things to settle,” he said, heading for the stairs.

“Dinner—”

“Can damn well burn!”

She guessed it was probably going to. “You’ve got to stop grabbing me like this, Ian! I don’t like it! I’m not a piece of baggage for you to haul around any time you feel like it!”

“Sorry,” he said unrepentantly as he set her down beside their makeshift pallet. “We’ll argue about it later. Later you can tell me how I’m supposed to treat a lady. I’ve never had a lady to treat right before. I’ve never had anyone…anyone….”

He didn’t seem to be able to continue, and she no longer cared. There was something about the way he was pulling at her clothes, as if he couldn’t wait another minute, yet was terrified she would shove him away, terrified he might hurt her. Such infinite gentleness and complete impatience that she nearly burst into tears on the spot. Oh, God, how she loved him.

He’d never had anyone.

He could have found no better words to reach her heart. He had someone now. He had her, and she wanted him to know it. She wanted him never to doubt it, and she had stopped counting the cost to herself. She was his, body, heart and soul.

He set her gently down on the mattress and stood over her, stripping away his clothes with rough, impatient hands. And when he was naked, he stood there looking down at her with such hope and longing in his eyes. Waiting. Waiting for her to invite him. Sensing, finally, that some things could not be bulldozed.

Instead of reaching for him, she rose on her knees. His jutting arousal was right before her eyes, and she heard him catch his breath as she leaned forward and pressed her face to his groin. How good he smelled, she thought as she nuzzled him. Coarse hair, satiny skin, the very essence of him. And when he trembled, she knew the first real sense of power she’d felt in her entire life.

“Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me how to please you.”

She took him into her mouth and learned his textures and tastes with a hunger to reach him in ways for which there were no words. If this was the only way she could show him, tell him, let him see…

He was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane when he fell down beside her on the bed and pulled her into his arms. With his hands and mouth he painted fire over her from head to toe until she was begging him, begging him, begging him….

And then he was in her, over her, part of her, giving her the essence of himself, giving her his seed as he had given her himself. Claiming her as his very own.

She saw it in his eyes in those final moments, and she exulted fiercely.

He went downstairs and turned off the oven, the steaming rice and everything else. When he came back up, they bundled together in blankets and looked at one another in the shaft of sunlight that had somehow found its way in through the window.

“I love you,” she said. But a whole bunch of doubts had risen in her. Weakening her earlier determination to stay no matter what. She couldn’t force herself on him. He had to love her, too. But he hadn’t said he did.

He nodded; he had read her mind after all.

“That’s why I can’t stay.”

He shook his head. “That makes no sense.”

“But it does, Ian. Don’t you see? Loving you day after day when you don’t love me, waiting for you to find someone else—”

He covered her mouth with his hand. He had a lot to learn about handling women. “Who said I don’t love you?”

She gasped, her blue eyes widening. After a moment she yanked his hand away. “You never said you did!”

He closed his eyes briefly. “I’ve…never said that to anyone. I’ve never had anyone to… Honor, I’m lousy at this. Ask me how to blow up a bridge, jump out of an airplane, field-strip an AK-47 blindfolded. That’s stuff I know how to do. This stuff is…” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to go. Ever.”

She caught her breath, and a warm glow began at her center, spreading everywhere, driving away the chill left by the years. “Ever?”

He shifted uneasily. “I could understand if you don’t want to stay. I know I’m unnerving to be around. Plenty of people have refused to have anything to do with me once they found out what I am.”

She ached for him. Oh, how she ached for him, understanding that, however alone she had felt, he had been utterly isolated.

“I’m…unnatural,” he said, his voice husky. “I know that. I understand that. And it’s human instinct to avoid people who are…mutants.”

“Oh, my God.” Honor barely breathed the words, as she understood fully, for the first time, the scars that this man bore.

“So I can understand why you wouldn’t want to stay indefinitely.”

“But you want to keep me around for…a little while?” Anger was beginning to stir in her, but not anger at him. No, it was anger against all the people who had made him feel that he wasn’t good enough.

“As long as you can stand me.”

Considering that he considered himself totally undesirable, that admission had taken guts. Guts of the kind she seemed to be a little short of herself. She was asking him to take a blind leap she wasn’t prepared to take herself, and the understanding shamed her.

Tilting her face up, she kissed him with every ounce of passion and love she felt for him. “Then you’d better plan on marrying me.”

He went instantly still. Not stiff, not rigid, just utterly, perfectly still, as if everything in him were arrested in a moment of utter amazement. When he spoke, his voice was thick. “Marriage?”

“Kids, too, I think. We haven’t exactly been behaving like responsible adults in that department, but that’s okay, because I want several. Well, maybe a half dozen.”

“Kids?”

He looked stunned, and she was scared half out of her mind, because there really wasn’t any reason on earth why he should want her. Why he should love her. Jerry hadn’t—

“Stop it,” Ian said fiercely. “Stop thinking about that creep. He was wrong about you. Wrong about everything. I want you. I need you. I love you, damn it! And if you’re crazy enough to love me, then I’m not crazy enough to let you get away!”

“Even if I want kids and marriage?”

“Especially if you want kids and marriage. I never hoped— Oh, God, baby, I never dared even dream it!”

For a long, long time she held him as close as she could and considered how odd it was that they had both lost their dreams and then rediscovered them because of that wicked old woman who was probably even now gracing the halls of hell.

A long time later, Honor asked the question again. “Ian, why did you burn the diary? It was proof you hadn’t done anything wrong. You could have cleared your name.”

He sighed and stared into the deepening twilight for a few minutes before he answered. “All that mattered,” he said finally, “was that I was free. I was free of all of it, but I don’t know how to explain it. It was as if reading it in that diary was a vindication for me. Nobody else mattered.”

“But Annie thinks—”

“I don’t know what Annie really thinks,” he said, interrupting her. “Nor does it matter. She’s the only person who might have been interested in the truth anymore, and I just couldn’t do it to her. She’s had to live with enough. She didn’t need to know that her mother was a murderer, or that her stepfather raped her sister. What possible good could it do anyone now to have all that filth come out?”

“But people still think you did terrible things.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “But I know I didn’t. That’s all that matters. I came back here with some crazy notion of laying old ghosts to rest, and that damned diary did it for me. I don’t know how or why, but it did it. I’m free of my past, Honor. Finally.”

He rolled onto his side and smiled at her, really smiled, and it transformed his entire face. “Now I have a future for the first time in my life. I want to build it with you, with our babies. I want to build it with sunshine and happiness. Away from here. Away from old ghosts and old memories. I want us both to have a fresh start, even if it’s just a couple of miles up the road.

“I want us to build our own house and fill it with ghosts of our own making. Fill it with laughter and joy and all the things life should be blessed with. There’s no room in tomorrow for the bitterness of yesterday.”

He sighed, his smile fading just a little bit. “I set her free, too, Honor. She’s gone. Can you feel it?”

Honor nodded and kissed his chin. “You set us all free. I love you.”

He cupped her chin and smiled down into her misty blue eyes. “So…will you marry me?”

“I thought that was obvious!”

He chuckled. “Honey, I may be a telepath, but I’m also a very ordinary man. I need the words as much as the next guy.”

So she leaned up to his ear and whispered all the words he wanted to hear. And in her ear he whispered all the words she needed to hear.

The only thunder that night was in their hearts and minds, in their souls and bodies.

And it was just the beginning.