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wished.
    Impatient fingers worked the buttons of his chambray shirt, and she pushed it from his shoulders. One hand brushed a feathery caress across his back while the other gathered the shirt and flung it to the ground.
    Katie broke the kiss and pulled back. Her eyes beckoned with sultry promise. Then she reached to grasp a limb above, and her breasts lifted in pagan offering. He leaned to accept just as she pulled herself up to stand upon the wood. The vision of the thinly veiled triangle right at eye level held him spellbound as she raised one leg and wrapped it over his shoulder.
    “Oh Lord, Kate,” he murmured. His chest heaved, and it took all his restraint to allow her to proceed at her own pace. Apparently the merry widow knew exactly what she wanted and far be it from him to deny her desires. A tree. A doggone tree. This one would certainly give a new dimension to his name, that’s for sure.
    Ever so slowly, he felt her weight shift as she brought her other leg up. She straddled his shoulders, holding herself away as she shifted her hands, getting a firmer grip upon the limb. He could stand it no more. He reached for her, his hands cupping the softness of her buttocks. Her throaty laugh filled his ears, and she flattened her feet against his back. Then just as he brought her to his mouth, she pulled up. She rose over his head, and before he knew what happened, Katie planted a mighty shove to his back, and pushed him from the tree.
    He hit the blackberry vines face first. Cane snapped beneath his weight, and biting thorns jabbed deeply into his skin. Stunned silent, not from the fall but from disbelief, Branch listened as that conniving little witch descended from the tree. Her bubbling laughter poured salt on every damned scratch on his body.
    Branch roared with the savagery of a rabid coyote. Thrashing to his feet, he spit dusty spider-webs from his mouth as he pinned his gaze upon Katie. Laughing with delight, she was buttoning his shirt over those remarkable breasts and wearing a disgustingly smug expression.
    “I swear, I’m gonna kill her!” he growled.
    At that, she lifted her chin and looked at him, her brilliant blue eyes alight with mirth. Standing there amid the winter-stark forest, her mahogany-colored hair in tangled disarray, with his shirt all but swallowing her in its voluminous folds, Katie Starr smote him with her heart stopping beauty.
    “But first,” Branch promised himself, “I’m gonna have her.”
    Yanking his way through the cane, he ignored the pricks of the thorns and marched toward her. Clenching his jaw, he fixed her with his most ferocious look.
    Unbelievably, the audacious minx put her thumbs to her ears, wiggled her fingers, and stuck out her tongue. And he wanted her as he had never before wanted another woman.
    Katie’s laughter filled the forest like songs of returning birds in spring. She scooped up the baby quilt and darted off in the direction of the inn.
    While watching her flee, a lazy grin crept across Branch’s face. He fought on through the vine and finally broke free. He winced when he looked down at his bare chest and saw blood oozing from a myriad of cuts, not to mention the splinters that lay embedded in his skin in a dozen places. He lifted a knuckle and wiped at a warm trickle of wetness that ran down his cheek. The grin reappeared as he gathered his gun and knife and walked back to the spot by the river where he’d been fishing.
    Branch knelt and washed in the cold, clean water of the Angelina, whistling a bawdy tune he’d first heard in a Mexican bordello. This situation would require careful consideration. The little general had declared war and could claim victory in the initial skirmish. “However”—he lifted his chin, clasped a fist to the breast in mock solemnity, and quoted John Paul Jones—“I have not yet begun to fight.”
    Rising, Branch gathered his belongings and picked up the rabbits and a stringer of fish he’d enjoyed catching before