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Zane plunked his empty cup onto the bench beside him, plucked hers out of her hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Dance with me.”
She opened her mouth to protest but he snaked one arm around her waist and swung her onto the plank floor. “Watch out for knotholes,” he said.
The music—two fiddles and a guitar, an accordion and a washtub bass—had slowed down after the lively opening reels.
Zane held her at arm’s length, his hand warm at the small of her back, his soft humming barely audible. The song was “Lorena,” a tune that always made her cry.
His fingers wrapped over hers and he pulled her closer, so close his breath ruffled the escaping curls over her ear. He smelled of cider and wood smoke. She closed her eyes and let herself float in his arms until she fancied her feet had lifted off the floor.
When the music stopped they just stood there together for a moment, and then she felt Zane jerk as a hand glommed onto his forearm.
“Well, aren’t you sweet to be so nice to your sister-in-law, Zane. Come on, now, it’s my turn.” Darla tugged at him. “It’s time for the grand march and the Virginia reel. You promised.”
“I did not promise,” he said evenly.
“Oh, but—”
“And as you can see, Darla, I am engaged at the moment.”
Without another word he swung Winifred back onto the dance floor.
“I think,” she ventured when he had danced her to the opposite side of the room, “there might be a better way to tame a tiger.”
“I don’t want to tame her.”
“I meant,” Winifred said carefully, “to keep from being eaten.”
Zane laughed at that, stopped dancing and looked Winifred full in the face. “I do not want to remarry.”
“Perhaps that is not what Darla has in mind, Zane.”
He gave her a long look. “That, too, I do not want.” He said nothing more, just held her in silence and moved them about the floor.
She felt too hot, then cold, then too warm again. He was humming along with the music again, this time a tune she did not recognize. It was in waltz time, but they kept dancing a slow two-step, as before, close enough for her to feel the heat from his body, close enough to brush his chin with her lips if she turned her head. They did not talk, and then as his arm tightened across her back she could think of nothing to say.
She thought of all the young men she had known since she had come of age, men from prominent families with brilliant music careers ahead of them; men who tossed bouquets at her over the footlights and introduced themselves over supper; men who begged for her attention, who cosseted and flattered and talked romantic nonsense.
But she had never before felt like this when she was with a man, as if her body were full of stars and a fire smoldered deep inside her. With a low laugh she tipped her head back and found Zane looking at her, his gray eyes darkened almost to charcoal.
“What is it?” she whispered. “You have such an odd look on your face, what are you thinking?”
“To be honest, I don’t really know. Ask me instead about the fiddle players or why Sarah Rose’s grandson can waltz better than I can. Or,” he said in a lower tone, “what I am feeling at this moment.”
“I cannot ask you that, Zane. What you are feeling is none of my business.”
The musicians struck up a Virginia reel and Zane steered Winifred over to join the other dancers. The line of couples advanced toward each other, bowed and moved back. Then the lead couple joined hands and circled around each other.
Zane watched his sister-in-law’s graceful form skip forward, then back, then forward again to meet him in the center and slide-step all the way to the end. Her eyes shone. Laughter lit up her face as if candles burned beneath her skin. She was gorgeous in that green dress. She was intoxicating.
She was life itself, and he knew every man in the room wanted her.
He wanted her. He stumbled, missed a step, then two before he could recover. Goodness, he must be drunk.
He watched her join hands with Wash Halliday and spin around in the center, then spin with Thad MacAllister, and a bolt of pure male possessiveness shot through him.
He was not drunk, he realized. He was stone-cold sober and he was feeling like any normal male, fiercely, agonizingly jealous.
What an irony. At last he was coming back to life after Celeste’s death, but the cruel joke God was playing on him made him grind his teeth. He couldn’t desire his sister-in-law. There was something in the Bible about it, but at the moment he couldn’t remember what it was.
